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Polina Lazareva

soviet Union sprinter

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 11, 2026
Entity authorityQ133889597 ↗
Source-derived summary

Polina Lazareva (née Solopova, born 5 May 1930) was a Ukrainian sprinter who represented the Soviet Union. She was the holder of the women's 400m world record.

Career

Lazareva achieved the women's world record for 400m on 10 May 1957 of 55.2s in Moscow.

Track and Field News ranked Lazareva, listed under her maiden name Solopova, as 7th in the world at 400m in 1957.

Lazareva won four medals at the Uniion Internationale des Etudiantes (UIE) organised sporting events at the World Festival of Youth and Students:

Gold in the 800 m in 1951

Bronze in the 4x200m relay in 1953

Gold in the 400m in 1953

Silver in the 400m in 1954

Lazarva individually or as a member of a team set 6 world record/best times:

55.7 s for 400m in Leipzig on 12 June 1954

55.2 s for 400m in Moscow on 10 May 1957

2:11.7 for 800m in Kyiv on 27 May 1952

6:49.6 for 3x800m in Moscow on 24 July 1950

6:44.8 for 3x800m in Moscow on 10 July 1951

1:12.9 for 500m in Moscow on 5 June 1953

Note:only the first two times are officially ratified world records; the first in the era of the Federation Sportive Feminine Internationale (FISU); the second in the era of the IAAF.

Lazareva also won medals in the 400m and 800m events at the Soviet championships:

silver at 400m and 800m in 1952

silver at 400m in 1953

gold at 400m in 1954

silver at 400m in 1957

Note: the titles in 1952-54 are under the surname Solopova; that in 1957 under the surname Lazareva.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Polina Lazareva” is soviet Union sprinter. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Polina, Lazareva and soviet, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1930, 1957, 1951, 1953—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1930-01-01. For this dossier, Polina, Lazareva and soviet is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “soviet Union sprinter” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q133889597. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1930, 1957, 1951 and 1953.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Polina Lazareva”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Polina Lazareva primary sources, Polina Lazareva archive and Polina research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Polina Lazareva” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.