In 1938 , her father was arrested and later executed during the Stalinist purges , during which tens of thousands of people were murdered . According to ballet scholar Jennifer Homans , her father was a committed Communist , and had earlier been " proclaimed a national hero for his work on behalf of the Soviet coal industry . " Soviet leader Vyacheslav Molotov presented him with one of the Soviet Union 's first manufactured cars . Her mother was arrested soon after and sent to a labor camp ( Gulag ) in Kazakhstan for the next three years . Maya and her seven-month-old baby brother were taken in by their maternal aunt , ballerina Sulamith Messerer , until their mother was released in 1941
Stalinist purges
Great Purge
Maya Plisetskaya