 In 1949, Zhemchuzhina was arrested by the Soviet secret police, charged with treason, and sent into internal exile, where she remained until after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953.Zhemchuzhina was born Perl Semyonovna Karpovskaya to the family of a Jewish tailor in the village of Polohy, in the Aleksandrov uyezd of Yekaterinoslav Governorate (today Zaporizhia Oblast, Ukraine).She joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party of Bolsheviks in 1918 and served as a propaganda commissar in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War.