the Bolshoi Ballet's first major international tour", as she was considered "politically suspect" and was "non-exportable". In 1948, the Zhdanov Doctrine took effect, and with her family history, and being Jewish, she became a "natural target . . . publicly humiliated and excoriated for not attending political meetings". As a result, dancing roles were continually denied her and for sixteen years she could tour only within the Eastern Bloc. She became a "provincial artist, consigned to grimy, unrewarding bus tours, exclusively for local consumption", writes Homans. In 1958, Plisetskaya received the title of the People's Artist of the USSR. That same year, she married the young composer Rodion Shchedrin, whose subsequent fame she shared. Wanting to dance internationally, she rebelled and defied Soviet expectations. On one occasion, to gain the attention and respect from some of the country's leaders, she gave one of the most powerful performances of her career, in Swan Lake, for her 1956 concert in Moscow. Homans describes that "extraordinary performance": International tours Soviet leader Khrushchev was still concerned, writes historian David Caute, that "her defection would have been useful for the West as anti-Soviet propaganda". She wrote him "a long and forthright expression of her patriotism and her indignation that it should be doubted". Subsequently, the travel ban was lifted in 1959 on Khrushchev's personal intercession, as it became clear to him that striking Plisetskaya from the Bolshoi's participants could have serious consequences for the tour's success. In his memoirs, Khrushchev writes that Plisetskaya "was not only the best ballerina in the Soviet Union, but the best in the world". Able to travel the world as a member of the Bolshoi, Plisetskaya changed the world of ballet by her skills and technique, setting a higher standard for ballerinas both in terms of technical brilliance and dramatic presence. Having allowed her to tour in New York, Khrushchev was immensely satisfied upon reading the reviews of her performances. "He embraced her upon her return: 'Good girl, coming back. Not making me look like a fool. You didn't let me down.'" Within a few years, Plisetskaya was recognized as "an international superstar" and a continuous "box office hit throughout the world". The Soviet Union treated her as a favored cultural emissary, as "the dancer who did not defect". Although she toured extensively during the same years that other dancers defected, including Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov, "Plisetskaya