Born in Gomel in 1904, she was the youngest child in a large merchant family of Solomon (Zalman) Leibovich Feigenberg and Esfiri Mikhailovna (Meilakhovna), née Krymskaya.

[1]: 38 She married a second time to the former Red commander, Alexander Fedorovich Gladun, whom she met during one of his business trips to Odessa while serving as director of the Moscow publishing house “Economic Life”.

When Gladun was recalled to Moscow due to a spy scandal Yevgenia was sent to Berlin, where she worked as a typist at the Soviet trade mission.

[1]: 167–168 Her Moscow apartment and dacha hosted literary and musical evenings,[1]: 43  which were attended by famous writers and cultural figures: the authors Isaac Babel, Mikhail Sholokhov, and Mikhail Koltsov, the filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, the comedian and jazz musician Leonid Utesov, as well as General Semyon Uritsky and members of the Soviet nomenklatura.

When challenged by Stalin, Nikolai first tried to rid of people who posed problems related to his wife, but then he became angry when he learned that Feinberg had spent time with her fellow editor, Mikhail Sholokhov.