Ekaterina Raikina — daughter of Arkady Raikin and actress of the Vakhtangov Theatre — has died

The actress's death and official information about its cause

Honored Artist of the RSFSR Ekaterina Raikina died in Moscow on November 3, 2026, at the age of 88. This was announced by the Yevgeny Vakhtangov Theatre, where the actress, daughter of People's Artist of the USSR Arkady Raikin and elder sister of Konstantin Raikin, served for almost half a century. According to the theatre, she died after a prolonged illness; no exact medical diagnosis was publicly disclosed. A TASS source cited by Life.ru described the death as occurring from natural causes and noted that in recent months the actress had been gradually losing strength, but remained conscious until her final days. In October, media reported her hospitalization on suspicion of acute intestinal bleeding; however, it would be incorrect to link this condition directly to her death without an official conclusion.

Career: half a century in one theatre

Ekaterina Raikina was born on April 15, 1938, in Leningrad. Her first theatrical experience came in childhood: during the Vakhtangov Theatre's tour of Leningrad, 12-year-old Ekaterina played Cosette in Les Misérables. In 1959, she graduated from the Shchukin Theatre Institute, where her teachers were Vera Lvova and Leonid Shikhmatov, and was accepted into the Vakhtangov Theatre company, where she served until 2008 and played more than 30 roles — from Cinderella and Zelima in Princess Turandot to Sofya in Ladies and Hussars and Marina in The Ides of March. Her final stage role was Betty in the play White Rabbit (premiered in 1992). She appeared in films far less frequently; among her notable works were Pious Marta, in which she played Doña Ines, Sofya Perovskaya (Gesyа Gelfman), The Trap, and the 1962 Honeymoon Trip, television versions of Vakhtangov productions. Unlike her father, who built a theatre of variety miniatures, she chose the path of a dramatic actress, and after leaving the stage she worked on systematizing her father's archives.

Family and farewell

Ekaterina Raikina was married three times — to the actors Mikhail Derzhavin, Yuri Yakovlev, and Vladimir Koval. In her marriage to Yakovlev, a son, Alexei, was born in 1961; he worked at the Yermolova Theatre and later in business; the actress has a granddaughter, Elizaveta. She outlived all three of her husbands: Yakovlev and Koval died in 2013, and Derzhavin in 2018. The farewell is scheduled for Friday, November 6, starting at approximately 11:00 at the Raikin School — the Higher School of Performing Arts founded by her brother Konstantin, which Ekaterina often visited in recent years. After the civil ceremony, a funeral service will be held at the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God 'Joy of All Who Sorrow' on Bolshaya Ordynka, followed by cremation. The burial place of her ashes has not yet been officially announced.