In 1923, in her mother's Moscow office young Kravchenko met Vsevolod Pudovkin, who was very impressed with her natural beauty and talent, and recommended her to the acting school at State Institute of Cinema (VGIK).
Accused of conspiring to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders, Kamenev was brutally pressured and eventually confessed to the fabricated charges in the vain hope of saving his family.
After the death of Stalin, Kravchenko returned to Moscow and struggled to survive until the late 1950s, when Nikita Khrushchev initiated the "Thaw" in cultural life in the Soviet Union.
At that time, Kravchenko was an almost forgotten aging actress, and her career was limited to playing bit parts as mothers and grandmothers in low-budget Soviet films.
At that time, Bondarchuk was not a member of the Soviet Communist party, so he was dare to cast many actors who were previously censored under Stalin, including Kravchenko.