Who introduced Meyerhold to Reich what an actress. Zinaida Reich. Great love stories: Sergei Yesenin and Zinaida Reich

Zinaida Nikolaevna Raikh. Born on June 21 (July 3), 1894 in the village of Blizhnie Millnitsy near Odessa - killed on July 15, 1939 in Moscow. Russian and Soviet theater actress. Honored Artist of the RSFSR. The first wife of the poet Sergei Yesenin.

Zinaida Reich was born on June 21 (July 3 in a new style) on July 1894 in the village of Blizhnye Mills near Odessa.

Father - Nikolai Andreevich Reich (1862-1942), his birth name is August Reich. Originally from Silesia, German. He worked as a railway driver.

Mother - Anna Ivanovna Viktorova (1867-1945), Russian.

Zinaida's father was a Social Democrat, a member of the RSDLP since 1897, and her daughter adhered to her father's views.

In 1907, due to his father's participation in revolutionary events, the family was expelled from Odessa and settled in Bendery, where his father got a job as a mechanic in railway workshops. Zinaida entered Vera Gerasimenko's girls' gymnasium, but after finishing only 8 classes, she was expelled for political reasons.

Since 1913 - a member of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs).

Her mother, Anna Ivanovna, with difficulty managed to procure a certificate of secondary education for her daughter. After that, Zinaida left for Petrograd, and her parents moved to the city of Oryol to her mother's older sister, Varvara Ivanovna Danziger.

In Petrograd, Zinaida Reich entered the Higher Women's History, Literary and Legal Courses of N.P. Raeva, where, in addition to studying the basic disciplines, she took sculpture lessons and studied foreign languages. After graduation, she worked as a secretary-typist in the editorial office of the Socialist-Revolutionary newspaper Delo Narodu, where she, at the age of twenty three years I met my future husband, who was published in this newspaper.

From August 1918 in Orel she worked as an inspector of the People's Commissariat for Education. Soon she became the head of the theater and cinematographic section of the Oryol District Military Commissariat, and from June 1 to October 1, 1919, she was the head of the arts subsection in the provincial department of public education.

From March 1921, Reich taught the history of theater and costume in theater courses in Orel.

In the fall of 1921, she became a student at the Higher Directing Workshops in Moscow, where she studied together with S. I. Yutkevich. He supervised this workshop, which Reich met when she was working at the People's Commissariat for Education and soon became his wife.

She made her stage debut on January 19, 1924 at the Meyerhold Theater in the role of Aksyusha in the play "The Forest" by A. N. Ostrovsky. Reich was one of the most famous Moscow actresses, in the 1930s she became the leading actress of the Meyerhold Theater. For thirteen years of work in GOSTiM, she played a little more than ten roles. Meyerhold, sincerely loving his wife, did everything to make her the only star of his theater.

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Zinaida was a woman of rare beauty. Passion and disposition were combined in her with refinement and grace. Slender, tall, black-eyed and black-haired, with delicate features, Reich was bright and showy.

In 1934 he watched the play "The Lady of the Camellias", in which Reich played the main role, and did not like the play. Criticism fell upon Meyerhold with accusations of aesthetics. Zinaida Reich wrote in a letter to Stalin that he did not understand art.

In 1938, GOSTM was closed, and soon Meyerhold was arrested. Outside this theater, Reich's artistic activities were interrupted.

The assassination of Zinaida Reich

On the night of July 14-15, 1939, Zinaida Reich was brutally killed by unknown persons who entered her Moscow apartment in Bryusov Lane at night.

The attackers stabbed her seventeen and fled. The actress died on the way to the hospital. This happened 24 days after Meyerhold's arrest.

The mystery of her death remains unsolved. The initial charge of the murder of Zinaida Reich was brought against Meyerhold's friend, Honored Artist of the RSFSR, soloist of the Bolshoi Theater Dmitry Golovin, and his son, director Vitaly Golovin.

Reich accused of murder by the Military Collegium The Supreme Court The USSR shot V.T. Varnakov (27.07.1941), A.I. Kurnosov and A.M. Ogoltsov (28.07.1941).

She was buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery in Moscow (section 17), in the same grave with her son, Konstantin Yesenin. “Reich was brutally, mysteriously killed a few days after Meyerhold's arrest and was buried in silence, and one person followed her coffin,” Olga Bergholts wrote in her diary on March 13, 1941.

Zinaida Reich (documentary)

Personal life of Zinaida Reich:

On July 30, 1917, she married Sergei Yesenin, whom she met while working in the editorial office of the Socialist-Revolutionary newspaper "Delo Naroda".

They got married during their trip to the homeland of Alexei Ganin, a close friend of Yesenin. The wedding took place in the ancient stone church of Kirik and Iulitta in the village of Tolstikovo, Vologda district. The groom's witnesses were: the Spasskaya volost, the village of Ivanovskaya peasant Pavel Pavlovich Khitrov and the Ustyanskaya volost, the village of Ustya peasant Sergei Mikhailovich Baraev; from the bride's side: the Arkhangelsk volost, the village of Konshino, the peasant Alexei Alekseevich Ganin and the city of Vologda, the merchant's son Dmitry Dmitrievich Devyatkov. The sacrament of the wedding was performed: the priest Viktor Pevgov with the psalmist Alexei Kratirov.

“A hundred came out, I'm getting married. Zinaida ”- this telegram was received by her father Nikolai Reich in July 1917 and sent his daughter's money to Vologda.

At the end of August 1917, the young people came to Oryol with Alexei Ganin to celebrate a modest wedding, to meet Zinaida's parents and relatives. In September they returned to Petrograd, where they lived separately for some time. At the beginning of 1918, Yesenin left Petrograd.

In April 1918, Zinaida Yesenina, in anticipation of giving birth, went to Oryol to her parents. There, on May 29, 1918, she gave birth to a daughter, who was named Tatiana.

After A.I.Denikin's retreat from Oryol of the White Army, Zinaida Yesenina, together with her daughter, went to her husband in Moscow. The three of them lived for about a year, but a break soon followed, and Zinaida, taking her daughter, went to her parents. Leaving her daughter with her parents in Orel, she returned to her husband, but soon they parted again. On February 3, 1920, at the House of Mother and Child in Moscow, she gave birth to a son, Konstantin. The child immediately fell seriously ill, and Zinaida urgently took him to Kislovodsk. Little Kostya was cured, but Zinaida herself fell ill.

The break with Yesenin and her son's illness greatly affected her health. The treatment took place in a clinic for neurotic patients.

On February 19, 1921, a statement was received at the Oryol city court: “I ask you not to refuse my divorce from my wife Zinaida Nikolaevna Yesenina-Reich at your disposal. Our children Tatiana are three years old and my son Konstantin is one year old - I leave them to be raised by my ex-wife Zinaida Nikolaevna Reich, taking over material support them, in which I subscribe. Sergey Yesenin".

In 1922, while a student at the Higher Directing Workshops in Moscow, Zinaida Reich married director Vsevolod Meyerhold.

In the summer of 1922, together with Meyerhold, they took the children from Orel to Moscow - to a house on Novinsky Boulevard. Meyerhold adopted Tatiana and Konstantin, loved and cared for them like a father. Sergei Yesenin also came to their apartment to visit his children. Soon Zinaida's parents also moved from Orel to their daughter in Moscow.

Theatrical works of Zinaida Reich:

Aksyusha - "Forest"
Sibylla - "D.E." Podgaetsky
Stefka - "Teacher Bubus" Faiko
Varvara - Erdman's "Mandate"
Anna Andreevna - "The Inspector General"
Stella - "The Magnanimous Cuckold" by Crommelink
Sophia - "Woe to Wit" after Woe from Wit
Vera - "Commander 2" Selvinsky
Phosphoric woman - "Bath"
Carmen - "The Last Resolute" by Vishnevsky
Goncharova - "List of Benefits" by Olesha
Marguerite Gaultier - "Lady of the Camellias" by Dumas the son
Popova - "33 faints" according to Chekhov

September 16, 2015 12:19 pm

Their path to each other was difficult, but it was the path of outstanding creative personalities, and in such a situation, one can hardly expect anything else.

Vsevolod Meyerhold was born on January 28, 1874 in the city of Penza in a Russianized German family. He studied in Moscow at the Faculty of Law, then entered drama courses, was an artist of the Moscow Art Theater, and later - a provincial director working according to the method of the Art Theater. Journalists called him a decadent, the first actress of the Alexandria Theater, Marya Gavrilovna Savina, quarreled with him - she really did not like that the director of the imperial theaters, the thinnest Vladimir Telyakovsky made a bet on a young director and took Meyerhold to the staff. Even his enemies recognized his gift, he made a big name for himself, but the October socialist revolution, or, as they say now, the October coup, brought him to the founders of the new theater.

By the time he met Zinaida Reich, who became the second - along with the stage - the meaning of his existence, Meyerhold was already 47 years old, he was famous, married, had three daughters. But Reich Meyerhold fell in love with Zinaida passionately, selflessly, without memory. Having a delicate, intelligent and devoted wife, he felt the need for a different woman, free and liberated. And Zinaida Nikolaevna turned out to be such a woman.

Zinaida Nikolaevna Reich was born on June 21, 1894 in the village of Blizhnye Mills near Odessa in the family of a Russianized German railroad worker. While still in 8th grade, she fell under police supervision and was expelled from the gymnasium for political connection with the party of Socialist-Revolutionaries. Unlike her father, an old member of the RSDLP, the young schoolgirl chose an extremist party that relied on terror. In this act, youthful maximalism was fully manifested. She threw herself headlong into the revolution.

It was in the editorial office of the Socialist-Revolutionary newspaper Delo Naroda, where Reich served as a typist in 1917, that she was passionately carried away by the novice poet Sergei Yesenin, who was published in this newspaper. Love broke out instantly, and in August of the same year they got married. Moreover, love completely pushed aside "politics", which Yesenin did not approve of at all. In the short interval between February and October, Reich, with the same fervor that had pushed her into revolution yesterday, now gave herself up to the construction of the family nest. At first, the newlyweds lived apart, as if looking closely at each other, but soon they settled together, and Yesenin even demanded that Zinaida leave her job. They lived without much comfort, but did not live in poverty and even received guests. With pride Yesenin reported to everyone: "I have a wife." Even Blok remarked in surprise in his diary: “Yesenin is now married. Getting used to property. "

However, the times were difficult, hungry, and one could not even dream of "property". And therefore, the family idyll quickly ended. For some time, the young couple parted. Yesenin went to Konstantinov, pregnant Zinaida Nikolaevna went to her parents in Oryol, where in May 1918 she gave birth to her daughter Tatyana. Almost two years later, their second child, the son of Konstantin, was born. But the family nest was gone. As Yesenin’s daughter Tatyana wrote: “The parents completely left somewhere at the turn of 1919-1920, after which they never lived together.”

It took extraordinary fortitude to start life anew. And Zinaida Nikolaevna succeeded. In August 1920, she entered the service of the People's Commissariat for Education - an inspector of the subdivision of people's houses, and in the fall of the following year she became a student at the State Experimental Theater Workshops (GEKTEMAS). It is difficult to say how long Zinaida Reich grieved after breaking up with Yesenin for a long time, huddling with two kids in the Children's Home on Ostozhenka. In any case, she did not remain without fans, one of which was the famous critic Viktor Shklovsky. But in the end, fate brought her to Meyerhold. And having brought it together, I tied it tightly. Despite the twenty-year age difference, a "relationship" began.

Contemporaries gave Zinaida Reich the most conflicting assessments. Some describe her as a beautiful woman, a devoted wife and a wonderful mother. In other memories, she looks exalted, unbalanced, not at all beautiful, but possessed a certain sex appeal, a woman who could not but give reasons for jealousy for both husbands. First to Yesenin, then to Meyerhold.

Arriving at Meyerhold's studio, Reich was carried away by his creative ideas for creating a new, avant-garde theater. Not finding herself in the revolution, she found herself in the emotional, sensual environment of Meyerhold, and he was able to discover what was hidden so deeply in her. “The master was building a play, how a house is being built, and it was happiness to be in this house, even with a doorknob,” the actors said about the great Meyerhold.

Their meeting was fateful. Looking for his Galatea, he fell in love with a young student. In 1921, the listeners of GACKTEMAS, walking to the school :) along the lanes between Tverskaya and Bolshaya Nikitskaya, often noticed a strange figure - looking closely, they realized that there were not one, but two people under the Red Army overcoat. The teacher hugged their classmate, twenty-five-year-old beauty Reich. Those around him did not like this: those who loved Meyerhold did not forgive Reich for his love. He was not forgiven by his enemies, of whom Meyerhold had many.

Like Stanislavsky, Meyerhold was a chaste man, and theatrical gossipers never found in his personal life "plots" that could feed their imaginations. For Meyerhold, personal life and stage work were separate from each other. If he was fond of at times, as, for example, the charming Nina Kovalenskaya, then his feelings invariably remained in the spiritual and platonic sphere. Reich, on the other hand, united the halves of Meyerhold's existence into one whole: house and stage, work and love, theater and life.

Meyerhold went to Reich from the woman with whom he lived all his life. They met as children, got married during their student days, and his wife supported him in grief and joy - besides, they had three daughters. But he acted in the spirit of his ideas about duty, responsibility and male deed: he cut off his past life and even took a new name - now his name was Meyerhold-Reich. He set out to create his beloved anew - she was to become a great actress.

It is clear that Vsevolod Emilievich passionately loved his wife and was in a state of jealous excitement all his life. Director Valentin Pluchek said that once, during the rehearsal of "Bath", Reich flirted slightly with Mayakovsky - it seems that she was flattered that he had laid eyes on her. And when Mayakovsky went to smoke in the foyer, and Zinaida Nikolaevna followed him, Meyerhold announced a break, although the rehearsal barely had time to begin, and immediately joined them. It's not that he doesn't trust his half. But, feeling the full degree of her femininity, he preferred to look after, not vouching, apparently, even for friends. But who really gave a reason for jealousy was Yesenin, who suddenly appeared in the life of a happy couple. After becoming the wife of the famous Meyerhold (and soon his first actress), Reich again aroused the selfless interest of the scandalous poet. Meyerhold's biographer recalled that the only person to whom the violent and drunk Yesenin obeyed was, oddly enough, Vsevolod Emilievich. The prodigal father came to the Meyerholds' house, could demand in the middle of the night to produce the children whom Vsevolod Emilievich, incidentally, had adopted. But this is not enough: Yesenin began to meet with Reich on the side.

When Yesenin committed suicide, Reich suffered a severe seizure. The devotee Meyerhold gave her medicines, changed compresses and accompanied her at the funeral. Reich walked away from the shock she experienced for many years.

Let us assume that she loved both, although in different ways. Yesenin - passionate and obsessed. Meyerhold - clear, joyful and grateful. Coming from the rehearsal, she could declare to the whole house: "Meyerhold is God!" And immediately scold your deity for a minor domestic offense. She strove to free him from household chores so that the master could wholly belong to creativity. He, in turn, trusted her aesthetic sense, often consulted on sketches for performances.

In the theater, Reich was disliked and constantly humiliated. Meyerhold, taking care of the peace and comfort of his wife, was ready for anything. He did not even tolerate an ironic tone in relation to Reich. Once at a troupe meeting, he announced that he wanted to stage "Hamlet". Actor Nikolai Okhlopkov (remembered by the general public for the role of Vaska Buslai in the film "Alexander Nevsky") imprudently asked: "And who starring? ". Meyerhold seems to have answered seriously: "Of course, Reich." The unrestrained Okhlopkov laughed: "If Reich is Hamlet, then I am Ophelia ..." And he was immediately fired.

But the main merit of Meyerhold to his wife was not that he stood guard over her professional reputation, that he adopted the children and provided them with a sense of security and a safe home, that he made a good actress out of a helpless debutante, who knew the hot audience's delight, the main thing - he gave her many years of mental health, protecting her from the illness that overtook her in her youth and the relapses of which appeared only after a decade and a half, provoked by the newspaper harassment of Meyerhold and the closure of the theater.

At the age of 26, at the beginning of 1921, Reich experienced a cascade of ailments: typhoid fever, lupus, and typhus. The future spouses were still on "you" when Zinaida Nikolaevna, to the amazement of Meyerhold, suddenly said: "You have knives sticking out of your heart." These were the first symptoms of typhoid poisoning in the brain. Such intoxications usually lead to violent insanity (and Zinaida Nikolaevna had an alternation of several manias). But the attacks soon pass, although the consequences can accompany the patient to the very grave. Meyerhold knew that in order to heal Reich must be loaded with interesting work and protected from excitement. What he did throughout his life together.

The last performance for Meyerhold was the French love melodrama of Dumas-son "The Lady of the Camellias". The master staged the play exclusively for Reich and with a view to Reich.

But once a spectator appeared in the hall, who not only appreciated the amazing decoration and beauty of the French aristocratic court, he understood the subtext of the performance, the desire for a free from ideology, a beautiful, wealthy life. This spectator was Stalin. And in 1938 the Committee for the Arts adopted a resolution to liquidate Vsevolod Meyerhold's theater. The last performance "Lady of the Camellias" took place on the evening of January 7th. Having played the final scene - the death of Margarita - Zinaida Nikolaevna lost consciousness. She was carried in her arms backstage. The theater was closed as “hostile to Soviet art”.

So, the Meyerhold Theater was closed, and a real protracted persecution of the famous director began. Newspapers in every possible way vilified his work, and a woman tormented by her ghosts rushed about in his house. A suspicious, vulnerable, cornered old man courted his wife like a nanny, and she fought, trying to break the ropes that bound her to the bed. The doctors did not give him hope, and he, perhaps, no longer believing in anything, brought her a drink and wiped her forehead with a damp towel. Miracles rarely happen, but sometimes they do happen: Meyerhold, who had taken a nap in the next room, was awakened by an indistinct muttering, he went to his wife and saw that she, sitting up on the bed, was examining her hands and saying in an undertone: "What dirt ..."

He brought warm water, spoke to her - and realized that Zinaida Reich had returned to reason.

Meyerhold was arrested on June 20, 1939 in his Leningrad apartment. On February 1, 1940, Meyerhold was tried, sentenced to death with confiscation of property, and the next day the sentence was carried out. He never found out that his beloved Zinaida had been dead for seven months.

On the day when Vsevolod Emilievich was arrested, a search was carried out in their Moscow apartment in Bryusovsky Lane. Probably, Zinaida Nikolaevna had a presentiment of trouble: she prudently sent her two children from her marriage to Yesenin - Tatyana and Konstantin - from home. A few days later, on July 15, 1939, she was found half-dead in her own bedroom, with multiple stab wounds. To the ambulance doctor's attempts to stop the bleeding, she replied: "Leave me, doctor, I am dying ..." She died on the way to the hospital.

It is still not known exactly what happened on that fateful day. All valuables - rings, bracelets, gold watches - remained on the table, next to the bed. Nothing was missing from the house. Someone claimed that the housekeeper, who was found with a broken head, frightened off the thieves.

Zinaida Reich was buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery, not far from Yesenin's grave. The place where Meyerhold is buried is still unknown. Subsequently, an inscription was added to her monument: "Vsevolod Emilievich Meyerhold". So after death they ended up together. Bright life, terrible death, great love ...

« Zinaida Reich from school years she was distinguished by a tendency to rebellion.
After the eighth grade she was expelled "for political reasons" and already at the age of 19 she became a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. Parents with difficulty “managed to procure” a certificate of secondary education, after which Zinaida left for Petrograd, where she entered the Higher Courses for Women, studied sculpture, and studied foreign languages. Then she worked as a secretary-typist in the editorial office of the Socialist-Revolutionary newspaper Delo Naroda, where she met Sergei Yesenin, who was published there.
The wedding took place in the building of the Passage Hotel, but the first wedding night disappointed the poet. According to A. Mariengofa ("A novel without lies"), "Zinaida told him that he was her first. And she lied. Yesenin could never forgive her for this ... "Why did you lie, you bastard?" ... "Returning to Petrograd, they live separately for some time ... The break with Yesenin and her son's illness negatively affected her mental state. The treatment took place in a clinic for neurotic patients.
The eccentric, or more simply, hysterical, often so attractive to men character after the divorce from Yesenin deteriorated even more.
In the fall of 1921, Zinaida Reich became a student of the Higher Theater Workshops in Moscow, where she studied at the directing department, which she directed V.E. Meyerhold.
And a year later she married a famous director.
During her marriage with Meyerhold, she suffered several acute attacks of hysterical disorder, which required her hospitalization in mental asylum.
In the theater, Reich also behaved like a complete hysterical: she commanded the troupe, weaved intrigues. If any actress played her role well and deserved long applause from the audience, this was a solid guarantee that the director would soon fire her, so as not to cause another fit of hysterics in his wife due to envy.
Meyerhold, who was 20 years older, indulged her ambitions immensely.
In 1938 the theater was closed and Meyerhold was arrested.
Without him, Reich's artistic activity immediately ceased. And she wrote a letter Stalin, in which she reported that he was poorly versed in theater, that her husband was a genius, and frivolously invited the "Leader and Teacher" to her home to talk about this topic (More precisely - it was written 2 letters - Approx. I.L. Vikentieva).
After such a letter, her fate was decided.
On the night of July 15, 1939, Zinaida Reich was brutally killed by unknown persons who entered the apartment at night. The attackers stabbed her 17 times and fled.
The actress died on the way to the hospital.
The secret of her death remains unsolved.
Since the main criterion for hysterical personality disorder is theatricality of behavior and / or an exaggerated expression of one's feelings, it is not surprising that the vast majority of talented (and not so much) actresses exhibit this mental disorder.
Having such a diagnosis in no way diminishes their fame and merit; moreover, it is safe to assume that the hysterical structure of the personality helped the manifestation of artistic abilities.
There are different opinions about Reich's talent. But hardly such an outstanding director as Meyerhold, would have kept an absolutely mediocre actress in the first roles.
However, a loving man is capable of great stupidity. Undoubtedly, Zinaida Reich's hysterical personality disorder naturally determined her fate. "

Giatsintova S.V., With memory alone, M., "Art", 1989, p. 308.

Zinaida Reich was the wife and muse of two prominent personalities of the early 20th century. - poet Sergei Yesenin and directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold, however, it is unfair to present her exclusively in the role of wife and muse. She was an independent figure - one of the most famous theater actresses in Moscow in the 1930s. Her fate has repeatedly made unexpected turns, and the mystery of death remains unsolved until now.

They said that she managed to live two different lives - in one she was a poor typist, a deceived wife and an unhappy single mother, in the other she lived in abundance, was famous actress, she was adored by her husband and adored by fans. And it all ended in a bloody drama - eight knife wounds inflicted by unknown persons in her apartment were the cause of death, but did not become a reason to open a criminal case.

At 23, Zinaida Reich shared the views of the Social Democrats, served as a typist in the Left Socialist-Revolutionary newspaper, was chairman of the Society for the Distribution of Propaganda Literature, and was going to marry the poet Alexei Ganin. But unexpectedly for everyone and even for herself, she married someone else. During a boat trip, Ganin's friend Sergei Yesenin invited her to get off at the nearest pier and get married. They returned to Petrograd as husband and wife.

But family life very soon bored Yesenin. He began to drink often and was not at home for a long time. The marriage did not save the birth of a daughter and a son. Yesenin rarely saw the children, and he did not recognize his son at all, saying that there could be no black-haired in their family. She went to her parents, and Yesenin went to Moscow.

Once Zinaida Reich was wandering around the city and saw an announcement that the director V. Meyerhold was recruiting students for theater courses. So she became an actress and the wife of a famous director. He adopted her children and made the prima of his theater. They said different things about her talent - the director's wife rarely hears compliments in her address from other actresses. Nevertheless, she was recognized as gifted and charismatic. Among the admirers of her talent were B. Pasternak and A. Bely.

When she was already married and managed to become a fairly famous actress, Yesenin again appeared in her life, after the completion of the romance with Isadora Duncan. They began dating secretly. It was at this time, in 1924, that the poet wrote the famous "Letter to a Woman" dedicated to Reich, in which there were the following lines:
Forgive me ...
I know: you are not the same -
You live
With a serious, intelligent husband;
That you don't need our trouble,
And I myself will you
Not a bit needed.
Live like this
As the star leads you
Under the booth of a renewed canopy.
Greetings,
Remembering you always
Your friend
Sergey Yesenin.

In 1925 the poet was found hanged. And in the 1930s. a series of arrests and executions began. This fate did not escape her husband. Meyerhold was arrested in 1939. Zinaida Reich, in her hearts, wrote a letter to Stalin that he did not understand theatrical art and that there was nothing to accuse her husband of.

Until now, they keep the terrible secrets of their death.

T.S.Esenina

Zinaida Nikolaevna Raikh

The name of Zinaida Nikolaevna Reich is rarely mentioned next to the name of Sergei Yesenin. During the years of the revolution, the poet's personal life did not leave direct traces in his work and did not attract close attention to itself.

The actress Zinaida Reich is well known to those connected with the history of the Soviet theater, her stage path can be traced month after month. But until 1924, such an actress did not exist (she played her first role at the age of 30). The image of the young Zinaida Nikolaevna Yesenina, the poet's wife, is difficult to reconstruct with documents. Her small personal archive disappeared during the war. Zinaida Nikolaevna did not live up to the age when they willingly share memories. I don't know much from my mother's stories.

Mother was a southerner, but by the time she met Yesenin she had been living in St. Petersburg for several years, earning a living herself, attending the Higher Courses for Women. The question "who to be?" hasn't been decided yet. As a girl from a working-class family, she was collected, alien to bohemia, and strove primarily for independence.

The daughter of an active participant in the labor movement, she was thinking about social activities, among her friends were those who had been in prison and exile. But there was also something restless in her, there was a gift to be shocked by the phenomena of art and poetry. For some time she took sculpture lessons. I read the abyss. One of her favorite writers was then Hamsun, something close to her in the strange alternation of restraint and impulses inherent in his heroes.

All her life later, despite her busyness, she read a lot and eagerly, and rereading War and Peace, she repeated to someone: “Well, how could he turn everyday life into a continuous holiday?”

In the spring of 1917, Zinaida Nikolaevna lived in Petrograd alone, without her parents; she worked as a typist secretary in the editorial office of the newspaper Delo Naroda. Yesenin was published here. The acquaintance took place on the day when the poet, not finding someone, because of nothing to do, got into a conversation with an editorial staff member.

And when the man he had been waiting for finally came and invited him, Sergey Alexandrovich, with his characteristic spontaneity, dismissed:

- Okay, I'd rather sit here ...

Zinaida Nikolaevna was 22 years old. She was funny and cheerful.

There is a photograph of her dated January 9, 1917. She was feminine, classically impeccable beauty, but in the family where she grew up, it was not customary to talk about it, on the contrary, she was taught that the girls with whom she was friends are "ten times more beautiful."

About three months passed from the date of their acquaintance to the wedding day. All this time, the relationship was restrained, the future spouses remained on the "you", met in public. The random episodes that the mother recalled did not say anything about the rapprochement.

In July 1917, Yesenin made a trip to the White Sea ("Is the sky so white or has the water faded with salt?"), He was not alone, his companions were two friends (alas, I do not remember their names) and Zinaida Nikolaevna. I have never come across a description of this trip.

On the way back, on the train, Sergei Alexandrovich proposed to his mother, saying in a loud whisper:

- I want to marry you.

Answer: "Let me think" - he was a little angry. It was decided to get married immediately. All four got off in Vologda. No one had any money. In response to the telegram: "A hundred came out, I'm getting married" - they were sent from Orel, without requiring an explanation, Zinaida Nikolaevna's father. We bought wedding rings, dressed up the bride. There was no more money for the bouquet that the groom was supposed to present to the bride. Yesenin picked a bouquet of wildflowers on the way to the church - grass was everywhere in the streets, there was a whole lawn in front of the church.

Returning to Petrograd, they lived apart for a while, and this did not work out by itself, but was something like a tribute to prudence. Still, they became husband and wife, not having time to come to their senses and imagine, at least for a minute, how their life together would turn out. Therefore we agreed "not to interfere" with each other. But all this did not last long, they soon settled together, moreover, the father wished Zinaida Nikolaevna to leave her work, came with her to the editorial office and said:

- She won't work for you anymore.

Mother obeyed everything. She wanted to have a family, husband, children. She was efficient and energetic.

Zinaida Nikolaevna's soul was open to meet people. I remember her attentive, all noticing and all understanding eyes, her constant readiness to do or say something pleasant, to find some of her own, special words for encouragement, and if they were not found - a smile, a voice, her whole being spoke out what she wanted to express. But her temper and sharp directness, inherited from her father, lay dormant.

The first quarrels were inspired by poetry. Once they threw wedding rings out of the dark window (Blok - “I threw the cherished ring into the night”) and immediately rushed to look for them (of course, my mother told this with the addition: “What fools we were!”). But as they got to know each other better, they sometimes experienced real shocks. Perhaps the word “recognized” does not exhaust everything - each time has unrolled its own spiral. One may recall that time itself exacerbated everything.

Moving to Moscow ended the best months of their lives. However, they soon parted for a while. Yesenin went to Konstantinovo, Zinaida Nikolaevna was expecting a child and went to her parents in Oryol ...

I was born in Oryol, but soon my mother left with me for Moscow, and until I was one year old I lived with both parents. Then a gap occurred between them, and Zinaida Nikolaevna again left with me to her relatives. The immediate reason, apparently, was Yesenin's rapprochement with Mariengof, whom his mother did not digest at all. How Mariengof treated her, and indeed the majority of those around her, can be judged from his book "A Novel Without Lies".

After some time, Zinaida Nikolaevna, leaving me in Orel, returned to her father, but soon they parted again ...

In the fall of 1921, she became a student at the Higher Theater Workshops. She studied not at the acting department, but at the director's department, together with S. M. Eisenstein, S. I. Yutkevich.

She met the head of these workshops, Meyerhold, while working at the People's Commissariat for Education. In the press of those days he was called the leader of the "Theater October". A former director of the St. Petersburg imperial theaters, a communist, he, too, was experiencing a kind of rebirth. Shortly before that, he visited Novorossiysk in the White Guard dungeons, was sentenced to death and spent a month on death row.

In the summer of 1922, two completely unfamiliar people to me - a mother and a stepfather - came to Oryol and took me and my brother away from my grandfather and grandmother. In the theater before Vsevolod Emilievich, many trembled. At home he was often delighted with any trifle - a funny children's phrase, a delicious dish. He treated everyone at home - put compresses, took out splinters, prescribed medications, did dressings and even injections, while he praised himself and liked to call himself "Dr. Meyerhold".

From the quiet Eagle, from the world where adults talked about things that are understandable four year old child, my brother and I found ourselves in another world full of mysterious boiling. I belonged to that large host of girls who incessantly jump and dream of ballet. But, despite all her frivolity, she yearned for the Eagle and never ceased to be surprised at people who can talk for hours about incomprehensible things. Mother was one of them, I was not yet used to her and did not share anything with her. And the "why" age took its toll, and, not daring to make a whimper every second, I decided on my own to find out what Meyerhold had talked about with his assistants for a long time. Once I had prepared a bench for myself in advance so that I could sit quietly and catch the beginning of the conversation - I imagined that then I would be able to untangle the whole thread. Alas, at the most crucial moment, something distracted me, and the experience did not work out.

An internal staircase led from our apartment to the lower floor, where the theater school and hostel were located. You could go downstairs and take a look at the biomechanics classes. At times, our entire apartment was filled with dozens of people, and a reading or rehearsal began. At dinner, my mother burst into laughter, remembering a line from a play. She was all in high spirits, from morning till night on her feet - every minute of her was filled with something. Relatives from Orel soon moved to our house, there was always someone staying in the house for a long time, Zinaida Nikolaevna headed the economy of a crowded house, established a regime. The apartment, deprived at first of the most necessary things, began to quickly acquire a residential look. The mother even managed to compose a special "menu" for the children and hang it out in the nursery. Having learned to read early and always suffering from a lack of appetite, I looked longingly at this “menu” and, having read a line like: “8 o'clock. in the evenings - tea with biscuits ", beforehand was taken to squeak:" I do not want cookies. " In Moscow we were quickly spoiled. Later, teachers were hired and we were taught discipline. In the meantime, we spent half a day with a nanny on the boulevard.

Our address, according to old memory, sounded like this: "Novinsky Boulevard, thirty-two, former Plevako house." At one time, our house and several neighboring buildings were the property of a famous lawyer. When we had a fire in 1927, Vechernyaya Moskva wrote about it, and we learned from the newspaper that our house was built before the Napoleonic invasion and was one of the survivors of the fire of 1812. The entrance wooden staircase bent with a screw, the rooms were of different heights - either one or several steps led from one to the other. Small windows in a complicated way were protected from ice patterns - an ominous glass with sulfuric acid was placed between the frames for the winter, a bottle hung under the windowsill - the end of a bandage was lowered into it, which absorbed moisture flowing from the windows.

Opposite, on the other side of the boulevard, there was a very similar building with a memorial plaque - Griboyedov lived in it. Who of his contemporaries wandered through our rooms - such questions were somehow not asked in the twenties.

Novinsky was a lively place - nearby was the Smolensk market with a huge flea market, where elderly ladies in hats with a veil were selling their fans, caskets and vases. Gypsies with bears and wandering acrobats walked along the boulevard. The visiting peasants, blinking with fear, ran across the tram line - in bast shoes, homespun army jackets, with knapsacks on their shoulders.

On the boulevard, we unexpectedly met our half-brother, Yura Yesenin. He was four years older than me. He was somehow also brought to the boulevard, and, apparently, not finding any other company for himself, he began to ride us on a sled. His mother, Anna Romanovna Izryadnova, got into a conversation on a bench with a nanny, found out "whose children", and gasped: "Brother took my sister!" She immediately wished to meet our mother. Since then Yura began to visit us, and we - to him.

Anna Romanovna was one of the women on whose dedication the world is based. Looking at her, simple and modest, eternally immersed in everyday worries, one could be deceived and not notice that she was highly endowed with a sense of humor, had a literary taste, and was well-read. Everything connected with Yesenin was sacred to her, she did not discuss or condemn his actions. The duty of those around him in relation to him was completely clear to her - to protect. And now - they did not save it. A hard worker herself, she respected a worker in him - who else, if not her, could see what path he had traveled in just ten years, how he changed himself externally and internally, how much he absorbed - in a day more than another in a week or in month.

She and her mother sympathized with each other. Over the years, Anna Romanovna became a person more and more close to our family. She parted with her son at the end of the thirties and, not knowing about his death, waited ten years for him - until her last breath.

Yesenin did not forget his first-born, sometimes he came to him. From the autumn of 1923 he began to visit us too.

Visually, I remember my father quite clearly.

It is not everyday life that cuts into children's memory, but exceptional events. For example, I was born for myself on the day when, at the age of one and a half, my finger was pinched by the door. Pain, scream, turmoil - everything lit up, stirred, and I began to exist.

With the arrival of Yesenin, adults' faces changed. Someone felt uneasy, someone was dying of curiosity. All this is passed on to children.

His first appearances were remembered completely without words, like in a silent movie.

I was five years old. I was in my natural jumping state when someone from my family grabbed me. I was first brought to the window and shown to a man in gray walking through the yard. Then they changed into a full dress with lightning speed. This alone meant that my mother was not at home - she would not have changed my clothes.

I remember the amazement with which our cook Marya Afanasyevna looked at the newcomer. Marya Afanasyevna was a bright figure in our house. Deaf, she constantly spoke loudly to herself, not suspecting that she was being heard. “You have overcooked the cutlets,” her mother would say in her ear. She walked away, grumbling to the general laughter:

- Overcooked ... You yourself overcooked! Nothing. They will eat it. The actors will eat everything.

The old woman, obviously, knew that the master's children had a father, but did not suspect that he was so young and handsome.

Yesenin has just returned from America. Everything was in perfect order from head to toe. Youth of those years for the most part I didn’t take care of myself - some from poverty, some from principle.

The eyes are both funny and sad at the same time. He looked at me, while listening to someone, not smiling. But I felt good both from the way he looked at me and from the way he looked.

When he came another time, they did not see him from the window. Zinaida Nikolaevna was at home and went to open the doorbell.

It has been years since they parted, but they had occasion to meet. The last time they saw each other was before their father's departure abroad, and this meeting was calm and peaceful.

But now the poet was on the verge of illness. Zinaida Nikolaevna greeted him with a hospitable smile, lively, all immersed in the present day. During these months, she rehearsed her first role.

He turned abruptly from the hall into the room of Anna Ivanovna, his former mother-in-law.

I saw this scene.

Someone went to my grandmother and left there, saying that "both are crying." My mother took me to the nursery and herself went somewhere. Someone was in the nursery, but was silent. I could only howl, and I cried desperately, at the top of my voice.

The father left unnoticed.

Z. N. Reich

And immediately after this, another scene appears, evoking a completely different mood. Three are sitting on the couch. On the left, Vsevolod Emilievich is smoking a cigarette, in the middle is his mother leaning against the pillows, on the right is his father, tucking one leg, his eyes down, with his characteristic look not down, but sideways. They are talking about something that I have already despaired of understanding.

At the age of six they began to teach me German, they forced me to write. I already knew that Yesenin owned the poems "She collected the most pure cranes with titmouses in the temple ...", that he wrote other poems and that he shouldn't live with us at all.

We have the first "bonna" - Olga Georgievna. Before the revolution, she worked in the same position, no less than that of the Trubetskoy princes, in that magnificent mansion that stood on Novinsky next to our house and where the Book Chamber was later located.

Olga Georgievna was rather dry, rude and completely devoid of a sense of humor. And at night she sobbed over children's books. Somehow I woke up from her sobbing. Above the book, she held a towel, wet with tears, and muttered: "Lord, how insanely sorry for the boys."

A spacious room served as a nursery for us, where furniture almost did not take up space, in the middle there was a red carpet, toys were scattered on it and structures of chairs and stools towered.

I remember that my brother and I were playing, and Yesenin and Olga Georgievna were sitting near the buildings. It happened like this twice. He is uncomfortable with her, he reluctantly answers her questions and does not try to rape himself and entertain us. He perked up only when she began to ask about his plans. He said that he was going to go to Persia, and finished loudly and quite seriously:

- And they'll kill me there.

Only in his eyelashes something trembled. I didn’t know then that Griboyedov had been killed in Persia and that my father was secretly mocking the prince’s bonna, who also didn’t know this and, instead of jokingly answering the joke, looked at him apprehensively and fell silent.

Only once did my father take me seriously. He came then not alone, but with Galina Arturovna Benislavskaya. Listened to me reading. Then he suddenly began to teach me ... phonetics. I checked if I could hear all the sounds in the word, especially insisted that a short vowel sound was often heard between two consonants. I argued and said that since there is no letter, then there can be no sound.

Somehow, rumors reached Zinaida Nikolaevna that Yesenin wanted to "steal" us. Either both at once, or one of them. I saw my father making fun of Olga Georgievna, and I can quite imagine that he was playing a trick on someone, telling how he would steal us. Perhaps he did not even think that this conversation would reach Zinaida Nikolaevna. Or maybe he thought ...

And one day, running into my mother's bedroom, I saw an amazing picture. Zinaida Nikolaevna and aunt Alexandra Nikolaevna sat on the floor and counted money. The money lay in front of them in a whole heap - columns of coins sealed in paper, as they do in a bank. It turns out that the entire salary in the theater was given at that time by tram change.

“With this money,” her mother whispered excitedly, “you and Kostya will go to the Crimea.

I, of course, learned much later that she was whispering in the name of conspiracy. And we were really urgently sent to Crimea with Olga Georgievna and my aunt - to hide from Yesenin. There were many women in the house, and there was someone to sow panic. In those years there were many divorces, the right of a mother to remain with her children was an innovation, and cases of "abduction" of their children by fathers were passed on from mouth to mouth.

In 1925, my father worked hard, was ill more than once and often left Moscow. It seems that he was with us only twice.

In early autumn, when it was still quite warm and we were running in the air, he appeared in our yard, called me over and asked who was at home. I rushed to the basement, where the kitchen was, and brought out my grandmother, who was wiping her hands with an apron - there was no one else except her.

Yesenin was not alone, with him was a girl with a thick dark braid.

“Meet me, my wife,” he said to Anna Ivanovna with some challenge.

- Oh well, - grandmother smiled, - very nice ...

Father immediately left, he was in a state when he was completely out of time for us. Maybe he came on the very day when he registered his marriage with Sofya Andreevna Tolstoy?

In December, he came to us two days after he left the clinic, on the very evening when the train was about to take him to Leningrad. A week later, months and even years later, my relatives and friends asked me an uncountable number of times how he looked and what he said, and that is why it seems that it was yesterday.

That evening, everyone left somewhere, Olga Georgievna alone remained with us. The apartment was twilight, in the depths of the nursery only a table lamp was burning, Olga Georgievna was treating her brother with blue light for traces of diathesis on her hands. In the room was still the ten-year-old son of one of the theater workers, Kolya Butorin, he often came to us from the hostel to play. I was sitting in a "carriage" of overturned chairs and pretended to be a lady. Kolya, threatening with a pistol, “robbed” me. Among our toys was a real revolver. Thirty years later, I met Kolya Butorin in Tashkent, and we remembered everything again.

Kolya ran to open the bell and returned frightened:

- Some uncle came, in-from in such a hat.

The one who entered was already standing in the doorway of the nursery, behind him.

Kolya had seen Yesenin before and was at the age when this name already told him something. But he did not recognize him. The grown man - our bonna - also did not recognize him in the dim light, in bulky winter clothes. Besides, we all haven't seen him for a long time. But the main thing was that the disease had greatly changed his face. Olga Georgievna rose to meet, like a tousled flock:

- What do you want here? Who are you?

Yesenin narrowed his eyes. With this woman he could not speak seriously and did not say: "How did you not recognize me?"

- I came to my daughter.

- There is no daughter of yours here!

Finally I recognized him by his laughing eyes and laughed myself. Then Olga Georgievna looked at him, calmed down and returned to her occupation.

He explained that he was leaving for Leningrad, that he had already gone to the station, but he remembered that he needed to say goodbye to his children.

“I need to talk to you,” he said and sat down, without undressing, right on the floor, on the low step in the doorway. I leaned against the opposite jamb. I got scared, and I hardly remember what he said, besides, his words seemed somehow superfluous - for example, he asked: "Do you know who I am to you?"

I thought about one thing - he was leaving and would rise now to say goodbye, and I would run there - through the dark door of the office.

And so I threw myself into the darkness. He quickly caught up with me, grabbed me, but immediately let go and very carefully kissed my hand. Then he went to say goodbye to Kostya.

The door slammed shut. I got into my "carriage", Kolya grabbed a pistol ...

In the coffin, my father had a completely different face again.

Mother believed that if Yesenin had not been left alone these days, the tragedy might not have happened. Therefore, her grief was unrestrained and inconsolable and the "hole in her heart", as she said, did not heal over the years ...

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