Two fates of Zinaida Reich. Women in the life and work of S.A. Yesenina Russian actress who played Zinaida Reich

Reich Zinaida

On June 21, 1894, Zinaida Nikolaevna Reich, a talented theatrical actress, wife of Sergei Yesenin and Vsevolod Meyerhold, was born in Odessa. Sergei Yesenin was a great poet. Vsevolod Meyerhold is a great director. Zinaida Reich is the prima of his theater. This is enough to get an idea of \u200b\u200btheir place in Russian culture. There is another story - private, personal, hidden. It is she who determines actions and destinies: love for a woman becomes the personification of love for revolution (or passion for new forms in art). Such a story has its own coordinates: Zinaida Reich was the wife of Sergei Yesenin and the second wife of Vsevolod Meyerhold. Behind this - love and betrayal, broken destinies, madness, rebirth to a new life. And great performances in which everything was transformed. How talented she turned out to be an actress is no longer important. Her extraordinary life was full of secrets, her terrible death shocked her contemporaries ...

Zinaida Reich's parents met by chance, on the train. The Russified German August Reich was born into a family of Lutheran origin from Silesia. He worked as a mechanic, steamboat and locomotive driver. To marry the Orthodox Christian Anna Ivanovna Viktorova, who came from impoverished nobles, August had to accept her faith and become Nikolai Andreevich. In 1892, they got married and began to live on the outskirts of Odessa, in the area known as Blizhnye Mills. Here their daughter Zinochka was born. She studied in Odessa, at the women's gymnasium.

The father passed on to his daughter not only a German surname, but also a passion for books, circles, finding his own way, reading revolutionary literature. For active membership in the RSDLP, Nikolai Reich was forced to leave Odessa for Bender, the family moves with him. Drawn into the political struggle, the girl is expelled from the 8th grade of the gymnasium, but this does not stop her.

In 1913, Zinaida joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party, a year later she was arrested, and spent two months in prison. The mother managed to procure a certificate of secondary education for her, but the document on political reliability was refused. Carrying out active propaganda work, Zinaida soon moved to Petrograd, where she entered the history and literary faculty of the Higher Courses for Women S.G. Raevsky, takes sculpture lessons, studies foreign languages. Subsequently, she will mark in the questionnaire: "I know German, French and Latin." At the same time he works as a technical secretary in the Socialist-Revolutionary newspaper Delo Naroda and in the Society for the Distribution of Socialist-Revolutionary Literature and Newspapers. It is there that she meets Sergei Yesenin.

In the spring of 1917, he visited the editorial office, but the person he needed was absent. Getting ready to leave, the poet drew attention to a gentle, classically impeccable beauty girl. Zinaida Nikolaevna was twenty-third. Yesenin went up to her, sat down next to her and started talking. When the editorial staff he needed came and invited him, Sergei Alexandrovich, busy with beautiful girl, waved him off: "Okay, I better sit here." Young people often met, but always in public they turned to each other for "you", the relationship was extremely restrained. During one of the meetings, he presented Zina with his photograph with the inscription: “For the fact that you appeared to me as an awkward girl on my way. Sergei". She was also passionately carried away by the aspiring poet.

In July 1917, Sergei Yesenin persuades Zinaida Reich to make a trip to the White Sea. They visited Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Solovki. On the trip, Yesenin made an offer to Zinaida. It was decided to get married in Vologda. There was only enough money for wedding rings and an outfit for the bride. The bouquet laid in such cases was picked from wildflowers. For Yesenin, it was almost a game. But for Reich love to her first husband turned out to be life. Her pride always gave way to this fatal affection.

At the end of August 1917, the young people arrived in Orel to celebrate a modest wedding, to meet Reich's parents, who moved to the Russian outback from Bender at the invitation of their mother's sister Zinaida. In September, the young people returned to Petrograd, where they rented two rooms on Liteiny. Sergei happily boasted to each acquaintance: "I have a wife!" He wrote poetry, read them to his wife. The dedication “ZNE” appeared on the draft of the poem “Inonia”.

In 1918, the People's Commissariat for Food, where Reich got a job, since Yesenin's fees were not enough for life, moved to Moscow. The couple who were expecting their first child also went there. There was nowhere to live, Yesenin, carried away by publishing and bohemian adventures, his pregnant wife became a burden. Soon Zinaida Nikolaevna went to give birth to her parents in Oryol. And when she returned to show the one-year-old Tanyusha to her father, Sergei Alexandrovich, in order to get both of them off his hands, asked his closest friend to lie to Reich, as if he had been seriously attracted by another woman for a long time. The insulted wife left Yesenin alone. And in February 1920 she gave birth to a son, Constantine. The blond father was not too inclined to recognize the dark-haired heir, which drew the line under the final break.

Actually, the motives for Yesenin's behavior are quite obvious. Most of all, he wanted fame and was at the same time, as they would say now, a first-class image maker. Even in St. Petersburg, he allowed himself to be taken to the homes of famous writers like a fairground bear, prudently donning red boots and an embroidered jersey, which he would never have worn in the village. Characteristically, he did not want to transport his sisters to the city, so as not to "expose" his thoughtful village image. It mingled a thirst for fame, the complexes of a peasant who recently entered the city, and contempt for the highbrow. He was going to leave them far behind, and for the time being he hid under the guise of a village simpleton. Once, having become fond of the ugly freckled daughter of Chaliapin, the poet thoughtfully dropped: “But how great it turned out: Yesenin and Chaliapin ... Huh? .. Marry, or what? ..”. He already understood that he was in a hurry with the marriage, and now he was trying on brands that were more sonorous than Reich, capable of illuminating his, not yet too well-known, name with the rays of someone else's glory. First I tried on the name of Chaliapin. Soon came the turn of such names as Isadora Duncan and Sophia Tolstaya.

For some time, Reich found shelter in a mother and child home on Ostozhenka. It was a difficult period in her life - the children were ill, Zinaida herself miraculously survived. At first, there were some attempts to improve relations with her husband, but the past never returned. Zinaida Reich and her children move to Oryol and on October 5, 1921, she receives an official divorce from Sergei Yesenin.

But a strong-minded woman, even when left alone with two children, did not lose heart, but found her way. Soon, Zinaida Reich returned to Moscow, where she became a student at the State Experimental Theater Workshops, which was then headed by one of the most famous directors, Vsevolod Meyerhold. He was called the leader of the "Theater October".

There were always a lot of talented young people next to him and Zinaida, constantly being in this sweet artistic world, soon completely “thawed out her soul” and reached out to meet people.

It is not hard to guess that the young, beautiful and capable student immediately won the heart of the master. Meyerhold was 20 years older than her, and this circumstance immediately predetermined the special nature of their relationship. Zinaida Reich became the second - along with the stage - the meaning of his existence.

Soon Meyerhold not only marries Reich, but also adopts her children. He went to her 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 sorrow and joy - besides, they had three daughters. But he acted in the spirit of his ideas about duty, responsibility and male action: he cut off his past life and even took a new name: now his name was Meyerhold-Reich. They became one, and he had to create her anew - she had to become a great actress. Both the love and the director's genius of the Master performed a miracle. But this has to do with the history of the theater, and not with a small, private history that went on as usual.

Vsevolod Emilievich passionately loved his young wife and was jealous of her all his life. After all, a scandalous poet appeared in her life again. The prodigal father would come to the Meyerholds' house, and in the middle of the night, he could demand the children. But this is not enough: Yesenin began to meet with Reich on the side ...

Let us beware of condemning Zinaida Nikolaevna for these meetings. Being by nature emotional in nature, in relation to Yesenin, she simply did not control herself. It was a chronic illness like drug addiction. In his absence, the disease barely glowed, but with the appearance of the blond cherub it flared up with unprecedented strength. And then it was December 23, 1925: a night call, a desperate hysteria who learned about Yesenin Reich's suicide, and Meyerhold's calm efforts, bringing her water and wet towels. They went to the funeral together, Yesenin's mother shouted to her at the coffin: "You are to blame!" Reich walked away from the shock for many years.

We would venture to suggest that she loved both, although in different ways. Yesenin is dark and obsessive. 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 sought 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.

On the stage, Meyerhold was both God and the Tsar, in the house everything was the other way around - main role Zinaida played there. In 1928, Reich and Meyerhold moved to a cooperative house built by the famous architect Rerberg in Bryusovsky Lane, near Tverskaya. It was here that famous poets, writers, composers, artists, military leaders, academics and even stars of Western culture often dropped in for friendly and intellectual conversations and parties. Andrey Bely, Ilya Erenburg, Boris Pasternak, Yuri Olesha, Dmitry Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Sergei Eisenstein, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Pyotr Konchalovsky, Nikolai Vavilov - the list goes on and on. Meyerhold loved to surround himself with talented people, so an atmosphere of high spirituality and artistry always reigned in their apartment, which positively affected the formation of the future actress Zinaida Reich.

As an actress, she made her stage debut, playing the role of Aksyusha in Ostrovsky's play "The Forest". This event took place on January 19, 1924 at GosTIM on Triumfalnaya Square. Then other roles followed, among which one of the best - the mayor from the "Inspector General".

When the Meyerhold Theater went on tour to Germany and France, the audience and critics unanimously noted the stage charm and skill of Zinaida Reich, who soon became the leading actress in the theater, pushing into the background another prima donna of the troupe - Maria Babanova. Reich was beautiful, conspicuous, intelligent, active and ambitious and soon rose to prominence under Meyerhold, becoming a faithful assistant to the Master. Maria Babanova also loved Meyerhold, but in silence, afraid to speak openly about her feelings. Every day she could not see a happy rival, and on August 24, 1924, newspapers announced the departure of Maria Babanova from the Meyerhold Theater.

Zinaida Reich became the prima of the theater, but this did not suit everyone and caused a wave of criticism, abusive reviews appeared. And the Moscow gossips were constantly gossiping about Reich's outfits, discussing her "fabulously expensive toilets", and not only stage, but "life". In fact, Zinaida Reich dressed very modestly and inexpensively, without resorting to the services of famous tailors. She just knew her style well and carefully considered her outfits, especially evening and for diplomatic receptions. And yet critical arrows flew to Reich from all sides and, despite her brilliant performance, soon the bright streak for Vsevolod Meyerhold's performances ends, clouds of misunderstanding hang over the theater, the Masters begin to accuse him of all mortal sins, demanding repentance and self-flagellation from him. Meyerhold, the only People's Artist of Russia, was not given the title of People's Artist of the USSR. Then he was removed from the management of the construction of a new building for his theater, and this was already a harbinger of great trouble. The family felt her approach.

Meyerhold's main merit before his wife was not that he defended her professional reputation. Not adopting children and making them feel at home. Not that he made a good actress out of a helpless debutante, who knew the hot audience delight. The main thing was that he gave her many years of mental health, protecting her from the disease that overtook her in her youth and the relapses of which appeared only after a decade and a half - provoked by Meyerhold's newspaper harassment and the closure of the theater.

At the age of 26, at the beginning of the 21st, Reich experienced a cascade of ailments: typhoid fever, lupus, typhus. Then there were symptoms of brain poisoning with typhus poison. Such intoxications usually lead to violent insanity (and Zinaida Nikolaevna had an alternation of several manias). Meyerhold knew that in order to heal, Reich must be loaded with interesting work and protected from unrest. What he did throughout his life together. It is he who should be credited with the fact that if Reich and remembered about psychiatric hospital, where I visited in my youth, then ... with humor.

However, in the insane 37th, after the banning of two performances prepared for the premiere, against the background of a campaign of struggle against “formalism” unfolding in the press, when there was nothing left until the closure of the Meyerhold Theater in January 38th, Zinaida Nikolaevna's psyche could not stand it.

The first attack of darkening happened in St. Petersburg. She fought and screamed that the food was poisoned; forbade relatives to stand against the window, fearing a shot; at night she jumped up with a cry: "Now there will be an explosion"; half-dressed, with inhuman strength rushed to the street ... Doctors did not know what to do, they advised to send her to a psychiatric hospital. But Meyerhold did not give up, and he did the right thing. Reason returned. But Zinaida Nikolaevna had just over a year to live.

On January 7, 1938, Zinaida Reich took the stage for the last time as Marguerite Gaultier in the play "The Lady of the Camellias" and ... burst into tears. Further - repression, arrests, interrogations. On June 20, Vsevolod Meyerhold was arrested in Leningrad. The future enemy of the people was put in a special wagon and, after being examined for "pollution and lice", was sent to Moscow under a reinforced escort. A few days later, interrogations began. They walked day and night. A week later, the investigators achieved very tangible results: Meyerhold was forced to write a handwritten statement to Beria himself: “I tried to undermine the foundations of academic theaters. I directed a particularly strong blow towards the Bolshoi Theater and the Moscow Art Theater, and this despite the fact that they were taken under the protection of Lenin himself ... ". On February 2, 1940, Meyerhold was shot. Perhaps his life ended so tragically because of her hysteria. After the Meyerhold Theater was closed, she wrote a letter to Stalin and everywhere shouted that her husbands were being persecuted: first they hunted Yesenin, and now they are destroying Meyerhold.

After the arrest of her husband, Zinaida Reich was left alone - her daughter Tatyana with her one-year-old son lived at that time in a dacha in the Moscow region, and his son Konstantin went to Ryazan, to the homeland of Sergei Yesenin.

The day before, Zinaida Nikolaevna was extremely excited and said that she had done a great stupidity by writing a letter to Stalin. On the night of July 15, 1939, she was brutally murdered by two unknown persons in her own apartment. All things in the house remained intact. The last words of Zinaida Nikolaevna in the car were: "Don't touch me, doctor, I'm dying." On the way to the hospital, Reich died of blood loss. She received eight stab wounds in the heart and one in the neck. The funeral of the actress was more than modest. “Above” was instructed not to draw attention to them, and the artist Moskvin told the father of the deceased: “The public refuses to bury your daughter.” Reich died in the Vagankovsky cemetery.

That's all about the fate of Zinaida Reich from Odessa - an unusual woman who had her own special female form; an unusual actress with “talking eyes” and an inimitable ability not to walk, but to “float” around the stage; fatal friend of two great Masters.

Zinaida Nikolaevna Raikh

She was called a demonic woman who playfully ruined the lives of two genius men. Who was she? A poet's muse? Leading actress of the Meyerhold Theater? Or just a woman who loved and was loved?

The fantastic plot of the life of Zinaida Nikolaevna Raikh obscures for her descendants her unique path as an actress, short, but full of both strength and uniqueness of exceptional talent. Only fifteen years of stage activity, fifteen roles in the Meyerhold Theater.

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.

From the memoirs of the daughter of S. Yesenin and Z. Raikh Tatiana:

“My 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? ”Had not yet been resolved. bohemian 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 characteristic of 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, and worked as a typist secretary in the editorial office of the newspaper Delo Narodu. 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. "

There is a version that Zinaida Nikolaevna was introduced to Yesenin by his friend and then colleague in the "peasant merchant" poet Alexei Ganin (1893-1925). Perhaps it was he, being a native of the Vologda province, who gave the poet and Reich the idea of \u200b\u200ba joint trip to the most beautiful places of the Russian North. It so happened that the trip turned out to be a honeymoon trip, and Genin was in the role of a witness on the part of the bride at the wedding of Reich to Yesenin in Vologda. Reich and Yesenin were married on August 4, 1917 in the Kiriko-Ulitovskaya church near Vologda. It is possible to explain why the poet, who created one after another godless poems, got married to Zinaida Nikolaevna, if we recall that the decree on civil marriage was adopted five months later, on December 29, 1917.

In the picture given to Zinaida Nikolaevna, a poet, cheerful and thoughtful at the same time, with a shock of curly hair, is captured on it next to Mikhail Murashov, Yesenin made an inscription full of tender gratitude: "For the fact that you appeared to me as an awkward girl on my way. Sergei." Looking at the photograph of Reich taken in Petrograd at the beginning of 1917 (where she stood with her father), shortly before meeting with Yesenin, one can appreciate the poetic accuracy of these lines: a young girl with regular facial features, charming, but not yet fully aware of her own charm. Another, transformed by love and motherhood, Zinaida Reich was captured by a lens in 1918: she holds her newborn daughter in her arms and shines with happiness all over; in her mature, spiritualized beauty, in her very pose, there is something that makes you remember the Madonnas by Italian masters.

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

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, without having time to come to their senses and imagine, at least for a minute, how their life together would turn out. So we agreed "not to interfere" with each other. But all this did not last long, they soon settled together, moreover, Yesenin wished Zinaida Nikolaevna to leave her job, came with her to the editorial office and said: "She will not work for you anymore."

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

Zinaida Nikolaevna's soul was open to meet people. 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 Yesenin and Reich threw wedding rings out of the dark window and immediately rushed to look for them (of course, with the addition: "What fools we were!"). But as they got to know each other more and more, they sometimes experienced real shocks. Perhaps the word "recognized" does not exhaust everything - at each time it 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 ...

Daughter Tatiana continues her memories:

“I was born in Orel, but soon my mother left with me to Moscow and until I was one year old I lived with both parents. Then there was a gap 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 directing 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 - mother and stepfather - arrived in Oryol and took me and my brother away from 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".

It would seem that with the return of Zinaida Nikolaevna to Moscow, better times should have come for the Yesenin family, but circumstances turned out so that 1919 was the last year in their life together.

On March 20, 1920, Reich gave birth to a son. They named him Constantine. The godfather, according to a tradition that has not yet survived, was the Yesenin's longtime friend, Andrei Bely. For some time, Zinaida Nikolaevna was forced to stay with her son in the House of Mother and Child, at 36 Ostozhenka, and this speaks more eloquently than any words about the sad changes in her relationship with Yesenin.

It is difficult to say why and when exactly the gap occurred. It would be indelicate to invade the intimate world of two people dear to each other. One can only guess what were the reasons that prompted them to disperse. To a certain extent, the stormy time, devastation, deprivation, disorder of life, frequent partings are to blame, Yesenin's entourage, which took shape soon after moving from St. Petersburg to Moscow, at the time of his passion for imagism, is to blame.

One thing is beyond doubt: two solid strong human characters collided, and an "emotional explosion" of such force burst out that its echoes were heard for a long time both in the fate of Yesenin and in the fate of Reich. "No one regretted and did not turn back," the poet said at one time in "Martha Posadnitsa". No, perhaps, they both felt sorry for themselves and complained about themselves, but they could not return to the former.

For Zinaida Nikolaevna, the drama was aggravated by the dangerous illness of her son, whom she barely managed to defend. Reich's nervous shock due to her son's serious illness did not pass without leaving a trace and for a long time reminded of herself in the years when her life could seem happy and serene.

The memories of the son of Yesenin and Reich Constantine also tell us about the difficulties between loving people:

"I remember several scenes when my father came to see me and Tanya. Like all young fathers, he was especially tender towards his daughter. Tanya was his favorite. He retired with her on the landing and, sitting on the windowsill, talked to her, listened to her reciting poetry.

Households, mainly relatives on the mother's side, perceived Yesenin's appearance as a disaster. All these old men and women were terribly afraid of him - young, energetic, especially since, as my sister claimed, a rumor was spread around the house that Yesenin was going to steal us.

Tanya was released on a "date" with trepidation. I received much less attention from my father. As a child, I was very similar to my mother - in facial features, hair color. Tatiana is blonde, and Yesenin saw more of his own in her than in me.

The last arrival of my father, as I said, took place a few days before the fateful 28 December. This day has been described by many. Father went to see Anna Romanovna Izryadnova, somewhere else. He was leaving for Leningrad in earnest. Probably he went to live and work, not die. Why else would he have to bother with a huge, heavy chest filled with all his belongings. This detail, in my opinion, is essential.

I distinctly remember his face, his gestures, his behavior that evening. There was no tear, sadness in them. There was some kind of efficiency in them ... I came to say goodbye to the children. I then had a childhood diathesis. When he entered, I was sitting with my hands under the blue-glowing lamp held by the nanny.

Father did not stay in the room for long and, as always, retired with Tatyana.

I remember well the days after the news of my father's death. Mother was lying in the bedroom, almost losing the ability to real perception. Meyerhold paced between the bedroom and the bathroom, carried water in jugs, wet towels. Mother ran out to us a couple of times, hugged us impulsively and said that we were now orphans. "

The lack of housing, the birth of a son unlike his father, or maybe just the envy of heaven for unearthly harmony returned these momentarily crossed destinies to the traditional reality: "the parallels do not cross" - this is how Zinaida Reich wrote, outlining the plan of memories of "Sergunka". The disorder of the nervous system, when she parted with the one whom she called "my life, my fairy tale", threatened with loss of mind. Only her passion for the theater and the care of the Master - Vsevolod Meyerhold - brought her back to life. The repertoire of the Meyerhold Theater was staged only for "Zinochka". The Master did not allow himself any actions and words in the theater and at home that would have given her even the slightest excitement. Konstantin Yesenin later recalled how one day, having missed the train to Bolshevo, they got off at the station seven kilometers from the dacha and the middle-aged Meyerhold ran all the way, not paying attention to his fatigue and Kostya, fearing to be late in time so that "Zinaida Nikolaevna worried. "

Plays by classics and contemporaries were staged at the Meyerhold Theater, Yesenin's "Pugachev" and Mariengof's "Conspiracy of Fools" were scheduled to be staged, which were read simultaneously at the theater. With his characteristic frankness Anatoly Mariengof wrote: “At one of the theatrical disputes, Mayakovsky said from a rostrum covered with a red calico:“ They hiss about Zinaida Reich: she, they say, is Meyerhold's wife and therefore plays the main roles with him. This is not the right conversation. Reich does not play the main roles because she is Meyerhold's wife, but Meyerhold married her because she is a good actress. "Desperate nonsense! Reich was not an actress - neither good nor bad ... Not loving Zinaida Reich (which must be taken into account) , I used to say about her: "This stout Jewish lady" ... Zinaida Reich, of course, did not become a good actress, but undoubtedly famous. " And as sincerely as he thought, Mariengof spoke about personal relationships: "Whom did Yesenin love? He hated Zinaida Reich most of all. Here is her, this woman, with a face white and round as a plate, this woman whom he hated more than anyone else. in life, her - the only one - and loved.

... It seems to me that she also had no other love. Beck her to Yesenin with a finger, she would have run away from Meyerhold without a raincoat and without an umbrella in rain and hail. "Vadim Shershenevich, who also did not consider Zinaida Reich a talented artist, could not help but admit that she" managed to develop into a major metropolitan actress ":" Of course , here the influence of Master Meyerhold was in the first place, but no Master can mold something significant out of nothing. "Mikhail Chekhov wrote to Zinaida Reich:" I still walk under the impression I got from the "Inspector General". Vsevolod Emilievich can be a genius, and this is the difficulty of working with him. If the performer of Vsevolod Emilievich only understands him, he will ruin his plan. Something more is needed, and I saw this more in you, Zinaida Nikolaevna. What is more in you - I do not know, maybe this is co-creation with Vsevolod Emilievich in this production, maybe your natural talent - I do not know, but the result is amazing. I am amazed at your ease in performing difficult assignments. And lightness is the first sign of real creativity. You, Zinaida Nikolaevna, were magnificent. "Boris Pasternak confessed to worship in letters:" Today is a crazy day, and I can't take on anything. This is a longing for yesterday evening ... I bow before both of you, and envy you that you are working with the person you love, "- and wrote a poem.

Yesenin does not have poems dedicated to Zinaida Reich, but there are lines in which her relationship with Sergei Yesenin is easily recognizable. All these poems were written during his trip to the Caucasus. Here he suddenly declared that he had "no poems about love", and "Persian motives" about the invented Persia and the real Shagane, poems about Russia and Zinaida Reich appeared:

Honey, joke, smile

Do not wake only the memory in me

About wavy rye in the moonlight.

Shagane you are mine, Shagane!

There, in the north, the girl too

She looks terribly like you

Maybe he is thinking about me ...

Shagane you are mine, Shagane!

Drown out the melancholy melancholy in your soul

Give me a breath of fresh spell

So that I am about a distant northerner

I didn't sigh, I didn't think, I didn't get bored ...

Tatiana Yesenina, the poet's daughter, many years later laid out, like solitaire, photographs in profile of Zinaida Reich and Shagane Talyan, whom Yesenin met in Batum in 1924 - the images were really "terribly similar".

On April 8, 1925, the poem "Blue Yes, a Merry Country ..." appeared with a dedication to "Helia Nikolaevna" (this is how she called herself this name of "some actress", invented, I think, by Sergei Yesenin, the six-year-old daughter of Pyotr Ivanovich Chagin, Rose) and a postscript: "Gelia Nikolaevna! It's too expensive. When you see my daughter, tell her. SE."

In March 1925, having arrived in Moscow from Baku for a month, Sergei Yesenin wrote a poem "Kachalov's Dog", which contains lines that can be attributed to Zinaida Reich, who also visited the famous artist:

My dear Jim, among your guests

There were so many different and not all.

But the one that is most silent and sad,

Didn't you come here by chance?

She will come, I give you a guarantee

And without me, in her gaze,

Lick her hand for me

For everything that I was and was not to blame.

In the same period, "A Letter to a Woman" was also written, after reading which a few years later, Konstantin Yesenin recalled one of the moments of the relationship between Zinaida Reich and Sergei Yesenin and asked: "Is this written about that case?"

You remember,

You all, of course, remember

How I stood

Approaching the wall

Excitedly walked

Are you around the room

And something sharp

They threw in my face ...

You didn't love me ...

Zinaida Reich read all these poems as her own and as strangers: they were not dedicated to her, and, although they were easily projected onto the circumstances of her life, they did not fall in time with her attitude to Sergei Yesenin:

It's not all the same - another will come

The sadness of the departed will not erase

Abandoned and dear

The one who comes will put down the song better.

And, listening to the song in silence,

Lover with another lover

Perhaps he will remember me

How about a unique flower.

The lines of the poem "A Letter from Mother" very truthfully describes the situation in the relationship between Yesenin and Reich:

But you are children

Lost in the world

Your wife

I gave it easily to another

And without family, without friendship,

No berth

You with your head

He went to the tavern pool.

Realization of this comes to Yesenin over time, perhaps late, but it comes, although he did not take it seriously earlier:

"Meyerhold has been eyeing Zinaida Reich for a long time. Once at one of the parties he asked Yesenin:

You know, Seryozha, I'm in love with your wife ... If we get married, won't you be angry with me? The poet humorously bowed to the director's feet:

Take it, do mercy ... I will be grateful to you by the grave. "[6]

She did not remember, but loved and remembered him always - all her life and his, and his death, and long after his death, until her very last hour, when she calmed down from the knife wounds. In December 1935, on the tenth anniversary of the death of Sergei Yesenin, Zinaida Reich presented her photograph - to Zinaida Geyman - with a dedication: "On the eve of the sad anniversary, my sad eyes - to you, Zinusha, as a memory of the most important and most terrible thing in my life - about Sergei" ...

Zinaida left her parental home and came to St. Petersburg. She was hired by the editorial office, where one day in the spring of 1917 the 22-year-old provincial beauty and the young poet Yesenin met.

The conversation began by chance when a blond visitor to the editorial office, not finding anyone, turned to a young employee. Already in the summer they went together to the White Sea, and on the way back on the train, Yesenin made an offer to his companion who conquered him.

The answer “Let me think” did not suit the applicant for the beauty's heart, and the company got off the train in Vologda for the wedding. There was no money, a telegram to Oryol was urgently repulsed, and the father, without demanding an explanation, sent money to his daughter. They bought an outfit for the bride and wedding rings. On the way to the church, the groom picked a bouquet of wildflowers.

Returning to Petrograd, the newlyweds lived apart at first: the hasty union did not leave time to get used to the status of a married couple.

“Still, they became husband and wife, without having time to come to their senses and imagine at least for a minute how their life together would turn out, therefore they agreed not to interfere with each other,” the daughter of Reich and Yesenina Tatyana writes in her memoirs.

However, the young got used to reality quickly and soon reunited. As a demanding spouse, Sergun, as Zinaida called her husband, wished that his wife leave her job in the editorial office and take care of the home and family comfort.

On the surface - the story of a precocious, quickly died love. Deeper - the story of a man who accepted the devil's offer. What did he trade in the hungry and cold Moscow of 1918? Money lost its value, the concept of well-being shrank to the simplest things that ensure survival - Yesenin and his friend Anatoly Mariengof huddled in one room in Bogoslovsky Lane and slept together in an icy bed. About Yesenin they did not tell anything like the rumors that circulated about Gorky: he did not become a Soviet nobleman and did not buy ancient bronze and porcelain for a pittance. But there was another, more sophisticated temptation: the poet raved about fame, the time had come to catch her by the tail.

Rurik Ivnev recalled how in February 1917 he met with "peasant poets" - Yesenin, Klyuev, Oreshin and Klychkov: "... do you not like it, or what? Our time has come!" And the point was not only that the men dressed in greatcoats made the revolution, and the village felt itself a victor. In that refined and sophisticated culture that was rapidly sinking to the bottom, Yesenin was destined for a modest place - a talented nugget, who writes, according to Blok, "fresh, clean, vociferous, wordy poetry." And now the barbarians came, and they were akin to him: the poet rejected the Petersburg culture and was going to free himself from his past.

Lenin said that the cook can be taught to run the state, Lunacharsky believed that Rubens could be made of her. A lot of courses worked in cities and villages, where everyone was taught to write poetry, sculpt and draw for free. The dawn of a new life was dawning over the world, Lunacharsky and Duncan exchanged telegrams:

I want to dance for the masses, for working people who need my art ...

Come to Moscow. We will give you a school and a thousand children. You will be able to implement your ideas on a large scale.

Gumilyov explained to the former Red Army men and Kronstadt sailors how to write sonnets, so why should a beautiful woman, unlike the Red Army men and sailors who managed to graduate from high school, not become a director? Why doesn't she turn into famous actress? The sarcastic Mariengof believed that Reich was absolutely mediocre. He also recalled Meyerhold's reply:

Talent? Ha! Nonsense!

To Mariengof it seemed like a hoax: copper is copper, and no matter how shiny it is, gold will not work. Reich's acting abilities seemed small to him, his ass too big, and his success bloated. But Marienhof could not stand Reich. An open-minded person will see in this turn of her fate the story of Pygmalion and Galatea re-arranged.

By the time they met, Pygmalion was no longer young (he is 47 years old), famous, married and - unlike Yesenin - is highly reflective. Vsevolod Meyerhold studied law in Moscow, 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 Alexandrinsky Theater, Marya Gavrilovna Savina, argued 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 had a big name - but the October revolution brought him to the founders of the new theater.

And this also raises the question of temptation and its price. Someone considered the revolution the beginning of the Kingdom of God, someone else the coming of the Antichrist. Meyerhold's case is very special. He made his own aesthetic revolution and through its prism he saw what was happening around. The focus was the angle of view.

Zinaida Gippius and the people of her circle noticed dirt, meanness and human degradation: searches, executions, the widespread expansion of rudeness - and a general hatred of the Bolsheviks. And he created his own reality: the revolution "Dawn" and "Mystery-Buff" was much cleaner than the real one. The temptation was to merge with the terrible, all-destroying and at the same time seeming life-giving force coming from the roots of the people. But how could an artist admit that Satan gave him the opportunity to work without looking back at the entrepreneur, criticism, traditions, press and box office?

Meyerhold was a man of the theater, and his reality often merged with the game, and the game became a sacred rite - this is how one should understand his post-October manifestos and photographs in the Red Army uniform. He was impressionable, acrimonious, superbly educated, prone to introspection and prejudice. Zinaida Reich became the second - along with the stage - the meaning of his existence.

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 sorrow 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. They became one, and he had to create her anew - she had to become a great actress.

It was not only Marienhof who believed that Reich was absolutely mediocre. The critics thought so, and the artists of the Meyerhold Theater thought so. Mayakovsky defended her with elephantine grace: not because, they say, Meyerhold gives good roles to Zinaida Reich because she is his wife, but because he married her because she is a wonderful artist. Viktor Shklovsky called his review of Meyerhold's "The Inspector General" "Fifteen portions of the mayor" ("The mayor" was played by Reich). Meyerhold dubbed Shklovsky a fascist in print. This is how the discussions were conducted in 1926: the word "fascist", however, has not yet been filled with today's content.

Because of the Reich, the Meyerhold Theater left both Erast Garin and Babanova, and she became its first actress. And over time, and a good actress: the love and directorial genius of the Masters performed a miracle. But this has to do with the history of the theater, and not with a small, private history that went on as usual.

Everyone who was interested in the Yesenin theme knows the description of Reich given by A. Mariengof: “This is a stupid Jewish lady. Generous nature endowed her with sensual lips on her face as round as a plate ... Her crooked legs walked across the stage, as if on the deck of a ship sailing in a rolling motion. "

Yesenin's entourage did not recognize for her either the possession of beauty or acting skills.

In the fall of 1921, Z. Reich became a student at the Higher Theater Workshops, which were led by the famous Vsevolod Meyerhold. They knew each other, met during their work in the People's Commissariat for Education, at the meetings of the famous "Stray Dog", in the editorial office of the magazine published by Meyerhold.

The captivating femininity, bright appearance of Zinaida Reich finally conquered a man who had "deadly" external data - "a face with an ax, a raspy voice." After meeting a young woman, he seemed to be experiencing a second birth.

Not long before the love that flooded him, the "leader of the theatrical October" sentenced to death was on death row in Novorossiysk for a month, and now fate gave him a meeting with an amazing woman.

At one of the parties, he allegedly said to Yesenin: "You know, Seryozha, I'm in love with your wife ... if we get married, you won't be angry with me?" And Yesenin jokingly bowed to the director's feet: "Take her, do me mercy ... I'll be grateful to you by the grave."

True, when Zinaida finally left him, he swore: "He got into my family, portrayed an unrecognized genius ... He took his wife away ..."

Reich was painfully worried about her break with Yesenin, and after marriage she met him at her friend's apartment.

Meyerhold found out about secret meetings, and had a serious conversation with the owner of the apartment Z. Gaiman. “Do you know how it all ends? S.A. and Z.N. converge again, and this will be a new misfortune for her. "

Many agreed that Meyerhold, living with this woman, had a much more difficult time than his predecessor. Some believed that the well-known director, who had warmth and prosperity, would have easily returned to Yesenin, if only he had beckoned. This was the only love in her life.

Yesenin sometimes visited his children. Konstantin remembered the scene between the parents - an energetic conversation in harsh colors. Due to his early childhood, he did not remember the content, but the situation remained in his memory: the poet stood at the wall in his coat with a hat in his hands, spoke little, his mother accused him of something.

Later I read the famous poem "A Letter to a Woman" and asked: is this case described? In response, the mother only smiled.

On the day of the poet's funeral, Zinaida hugged her children and shouted: "Our sun has gone ..."

“I remember well the days after the news of my father’s death,” wrote KS Yesenin. - Mother lay in the bedroom, almost losing the ability to real perception. Meyerhold paced between the bedroom and the bathroom, carried water in jugs, wet towels. Mother ran out to us a couple of times, hugged us impulsively and said that we were now orphans. "

Life went on. Reich, according to contemporaries, even in her mature years remained an interesting and charming woman, sexy, as they would say about her today.

She was always surrounded by fans, many in a frank form showed their ardent feelings. The actress loved a cheerful and brilliant life, parties with dances, night balls in Moscow theaters, banquets in the people's commissariats.

She wore toilets from Paris, Vienna and Warsaw, expensive fur coats and perfumes, Koti powder and silk stockings. Meyerhold gave her material benefits, a position in society.

Family and the Great Terror
The essence of what was happening in the country was accurately captured by the Soviet Union Bernard Shaw, who advised to turn the Museum of the Revolution into a museum of law and order: life was ossified, art was returning to academic realism. At the time of Ona, Meyerhold was criticized by the head of the Duma Black Hundreds, Purishkevich (he did not like the fact that a decadent was allowed on the stage of the imperial theater, moreover, he took him for a Jew), now Soviet criticism has taken up him. Times have changed: before the revolution, the director of the imperial theaters, Telyakovsky, talked to Meyerhold, cautiously asking if he was plotting against the throne, but now, when participants in critical discussions easily threw the word "fascist," the worst was expected. In 1935, the dissatisfaction of the authorities turned half-fingered, Meyerhold, the only People's Artist of Russia, was not given the title of People's Artist of the USSR. Then he was removed from the management of the construction of a new building for his theater, and this was already a harbinger of great trouble. The family felt her approach. In the midst of the attacks on her husband, Zinaida Reich fell ill with a severe nervous disorder associated with a complete dullness, and was treated by a psychiatrist.

Because of her difficult nature, Meyerhold's artists had a hard time. And yet it was in the order of things - in contrast to the quarrel with Kalinin at one of the receptions. Reich shouted to him: "Everyone knows that you are a womanizer!" - the All-Union headman briskly scolded, next to him was Meyerhold breaking his fingers. He knew that his wife reacted to everything four times more sharply than an ordinary person, and an innocent joke might seem like an insult to her. That is why he turned her into an actress - on the stage Reich lived with the passions of the heroes of "The Forest", "The Inspector General", "Woe from Wit", "Ladies with Camellias". She fell in love, suffered, died in a ghostly world created by her husband's fantasy - and after the end of the performance, a peaceful, reasonable woman capable of compromise returned to him.

The newspapermen were delighted with the inhuman screams of her heroines. But the fact is that on stage, Reich behaved as in real life. One day she found that her wallet was pulled out at the bazaar, and she screamed. And it was so scary that the shocked thief returned, quietly gave her the stolen goods and ran away.

In 1938 big story invaded the history of the family - the Meyerhold Theater was closed, and a real, massive persecution began. Newspapers tore the director to pieces, and a woman tormented by her ghosts rushed about in his house. A suspicious, vulnerable, closed, 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, but 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, sitting up in bed, she 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.

End of family
We will leave them here, between madness, despair and imminent death, tormented by uncertainty, hostility, illness, helpless and happy. Ahead was Meyerhold's letter to his recovering wife - "... to me without you, like a blind man without a guide ..."

There was another letter ahead: a desperate, to the point of insanity Reich letter to Stalin: she stood up for her husband, hinted that the leader did not understand anything in art, and invited him to visit them. The investigator who was involved in the rehabilitation of Meyerhold believed it played a very nasty role.

Ahead were the arrest and terrible letters to Molotov, written in prison in 1940.

Lying face down on the floor, I discovered the ability to wriggle and writhe and squeal like a dog being beaten with a whip by the owner ... They beat me here - a sick 65-year-old man: they laid me face down on the floor, with a rubber band they beat me on the heels and on the back ...

Ahead was the brutal and unsolved murder of Reich: none of the neighbors came out to shout. Bersenev and Giatsintova knew about her illness, and their families were accustomed to the fact that Meyerholds often scream. (In the spring of 1938, during a fit of insanity, Reich screamed for three nights in a row.) They did not take anything from the apartment, the housekeeper lay in the corridor with a broken head, the landlady's body was found in the office - she was stabbed eight times, and on the way to the hospital she died from blood loss. Beria brought his chauffeur with his family and a secretary into Meyerhold's apartment, which was divided into two. It is likely that the political police solved the housing problems of their employees in the most logical way, without wasting time on arrests, interrogations and court comedy: a huge, by the standards of the thirties, apartment in the "House of Artists" at the Central Telegraph was a very big sum.

The ending of this story is terrible, like the entire Russian XX century. And their love story is beautiful and like two drops of water similar to the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea.

Vsevolod Meyerhold: "Soon we will be like two halves of an apple again"

Dear, beloved Zinochka!

I am without You, like a blind man without a guide. This is in business. In hours without worries about business, I am without You, like an unripe fruit without the sun.

I arrived in Gorenki on the 13th, looked at the birches, and gasped. What is it? What Renaissance jeweler hung all this, as if for display, on invisible cobwebs? After all, these are the leaves of gold! (Do you remember: in childhood, we covered the wavy bark of walnuts with such delicate leaves of gold, preparing them for the Christmas tree). Look: these leaves are scattered through the air. Scattered, they froze, they seemed to be frozen ...

Their seconds last life I counted like the pulse of a dying man.

When I looked on the 13th at the fabulous world of golden autumn, at all of its miracles, I mentally babbled: Zina, Zinochka, look at these miracles and ... do not leave me, who loves you, you - my wife, sister, mother, friend , sweetheart. Golden, like this nature that works wonders!

Zina, don't leave me!

There is nothing worse than loneliness in the world!

Why did the "miracles" of nature lead me to thoughts of terrible loneliness? After all, he does not really exist! After all, it - loneliness - is short-term? ..

Beloved Zina! Take care of yourself! Rest! Get treatment! We're getting along here. And we'll handle it. And what is boring for me without you is indescribable, so it really must be endured. After all, this separation is not for months? Soon we'll be like two halves of one sweet ripe apple again, a delicious apple.

I hug you tightly, my love ...

I kiss you hard.

The letter was written on October 15, 1938. On June 20, 1939, Meyerhold will be arrested; on the night of July 15, unknown persons will kill Reich.

Pyotr MERKURIEV: "Grandfather did not understand what to slow down"

Peter Merkuryev is a famous musicologist, son of the famous artist Vasily Merkuryev. And the grandson of Vsevolod Emilievich Meyerhold and Olga Mikhailovna Munt: he left his grandmother for the sake of Zinaida Reich. Pyotr Vasilievich talks about how Meyerhold was seen by his relatives.

When you were very young, and Vsevolod Emilievich had not yet been rehabilitated, did they talk about him in your house?

Of course - and not only my parents, but everyone who came to us. People who did not talk about Meyerhold were not accepted here. On the table stood a bust of Meyerhold by the Kukryniksy, on the walls were photographs of his grandfather ...

Olga Mikhailovna Mount had a hard time parting with Vsevolod Emilievich. Have you talked about this?

They parted at the twenty-third, mom and dad met at the twenty-fourth, and I was born in the forty-third. Before dad, mom had two more husbands. I had two sisters plus three of my father's nephews from a repressed brother, besides, someone else lived with us all the time - and my mother did not work, and my father worked for the whole family ... Where can we talk about how thirty years back grandma suffered separation from grandfather? And yet I know that my grandmother really took it hard. She had a serious nervous breakdown, she even kicked her mother out of the house ... Therefore, my grandmother left Moscow.

But my mother somehow dropped the phrase that my grandmother understood Meyerhold. They were the same age - in 1923, my grandmother turned forty-nine years old. And they grew old at that time faster than now (remember how thirty-year-old Babochkin looks in the role of Chapaev), and the grandmother already looked like an old woman. Meyerhold was also forty-nine, but no one would have taken him for an old man.

The grandmother, apparently, understood that Meyerhold needed new life... But the wonderful director and theater designer Leonid Viktorovich Varpakhovsky (in the twenties he was a research fellow at the Meyerhold Theater) told me that for Vsevolod Emilievich Zinaida Nikolaevna had become a fatal woman. Perhaps his life ended so tragically because of her hysteria. After the Meyerhold Theater was closed, she wrote a letter to Stalin and everywhere shouted that her husbands were being hounded: first Yesenin was hunted down, and now Meyerhold is being destroyed.

But the sixteen years spent with Reich were the most spiritual in my grandfather's life, the most intense, creatively fruitful. Although he really treated his grandmother very cruelly. I gave a telegram from somewhere: I am arriving with my new wife and asking to vacate the apartment ...

I heard that then Olga Mikhailovna cursed him.

Yes, it did. Then my grandmother regretted it very much. After Meyerhold was taken, Olga Mikhailovna went to Moscow and, together with Zinaida Nikolaevna, collected some documents for his release. And when Zinaida Nikolaevna was killed, the grandmother was still in Moscow - she came to her, but she was not allowed into the apartment.

Then my grandmother returned to Leningrad, and on February 10, when her family was celebrating her grandfather's birthday, she said: "It seems to me that Meyerhold is no longer alive." Indeed, he was killed a week ago - but we only found out about it in 1955.

They got married thanks to the irony of fate. 22-year-old Zinochka Reich, a laughing and beautiful woman, was going to marry the poet Alexei Ganin. The girl worked as a typist in the newspaper of the Left Social Revolutionaries and often visited the library when publishing, to her friend Mina Svirskaya. Mina was looked after by the novice poet Sergei Yesenin. Alexey and Zina invited the couple on a trip to Solovki. On the eve of departure, it turned out that Mina could not go for family reasons.

The three of us set off.

Yesenin was friends with Ganin. But, left without a companion, he suddenly realized that he was madly in love with his friend's bride, Zina. He invited her to go ashore and get married in the first church. Light curls and gentle words of the young poet turned Zinochka's head. She agreed without hesitation. True, before that he asked if she had an affinity with the groom.

The girl did not dare to tell the truth, that she had lost her innocence long ago. The first wedding night became a disappointment for Yesenin. Having forgiven her for lying, he later often reproached her, and sometimes he went to the point of frenzy at the thought that he was not the first.

The young did not find an apartment in Moscow, sometimes they lived separately. The fame of Sergei Yesenin spread, according to Lydia Chukovskaya, "many women were captivated by his poems, his beautiful powdered face and skillfully curled wheat curls." But he did not pay special attention to the fans. He was more interested in how best to wear a forelock - on the left or on the right side. Zinaida Reich became pregnant and left to give birth to her parents. And her husband's work was fueled by a strong male friendship with the poet Anatoly Mariengof. They rented an apartment for a couple. Yesenin called Anatoly his "berry".

It was cold in the little room. Friends kept warm under one blanket. The poet did not change his lifestyle, and when Zinaida returned to Moscow with her one-year-old daughter. Yesenin once complained to friends that Anatoly in every possible way dared him from his wife, and then he took it and got married himself. The birth of a son did not help either. Yesenin asked Marienhof to convince Reich that he had an affair with another woman. Zina believed and left. The poet did not recognize the newborn son either. He was carried away by Isadora Duncan.

And Zinaida, desperate to arrange a family life, moved into an actress. She entered the Higher Theater Workshops, where the famous Meyerhold taught. Vsevolod Emilievich was seriously carried away by the student. He was married and raised three daughters, but his love for a student, who was 20 years younger, eclipsed everything. The director suggested that Zinochka marry him, having previously asked Yesenin's permission. The man bowed, grimacing, and said: “Do mercy. I'll be grateful to the grave. " Meyerhold adopted his children. And the director's wife, upon learning that he was leaving for a young man, cursed the traitor and his passion for the holy images. Who knows if this curse had an effect, but after years they both suffered a terrible death ...

Reich soon became the prima of the Meyerhold Theater. The troupe took a dislike to the director's wife. They said that she moves around the stage like a "cow". But especially for her, such mise-en-scenes were invented, where all the action took place around Reich and she did not have to move. Zina had a falling out with the great Maria Babanova - Meyerhold showed her the door. Erast Garin had to leave too.

Best of the day

However, Zinaida really performed many roles with talent. As soon as she became a popular actress, Yesenin suddenly realized who he had lost. Father's feelings also woke up in him. He demanded the opportunity to communicate with children, Zinaida began secret meetings with her ex-husband. Meyerhold knew about them, but endured. Yesenin's death was a heavy blow to her. At his funeral, she lamented: "My sun is gone ..."

On stage, Reich sometimes did not control herself, she went into hysterics. And if to the audience such manifestations of feelings could only seem like a deep penetration into the role, then Meyerhold knew: these are symptoms of a terrible disease. Her nerves gave up in the most inappropriate situations. At a reception in the Kremlin, she once furiously pounced on Kalinin himself with the words: "Everyone knows that you are a womanizer!"

Back in 1921, 26-year-old Zina was ill with terrible diseases - lupus and typhus. Later, signs of brain poisoning with typhus poison began to make themselves felt. This usually led to insanity. The best medicine was work. The director and her loving husband knew about this, and for the time being it helped. But in 1937 another persecution of Meyerhold began. Zinaida understood how everything could end. And she had an attack. She shouted that the food was poisoned, when she saw her relatives standing at the window, she demanded to move away, fearing a shot. She jumped up at night, trying to escape naked into the street. Doctors advised to put her in a psychiatric hospital. But Meyerhold would not allow it. He fed her with a spoon, endured when his wife drove him away, not recognizing. Indeed, her mind soon returned to her. And in January 1938, Zinaida went on stage for the last time and burst into tears after the final phrase. Interrogations soon began. The theater was closed. Reich wrote a letter to Stalin. They say that she threatened to publicize the true reasons for Yesenin's death known to her.

A few days later, two men entered her apartment through the balcony. She was sitting in the office at the table. The fiends jumped up behind her. One held, and the other stabbed in the heart and neck. The housekeeper woke up from the screams. But as soon as she ran into the room, she was hit on the head. The noise was heard by the janitor. He saw how the killers jumped out of the entrance and dived into the "black funnel". Soon the housekeeper was arrested and sent to the camps, and the janitor also disappeared without a trace.

After Reich's funeral, her children were evicted, and Beria's mistress and his driver moved into their apartment. Six months later, Meyerhold was shot as a "spy of British and Japanese intelligence".

The wife of Sergei Yesenin, the wife of Vsevolod Meyerhold and an actress of his theater. Zinaida Reich was called a femme fatale who lived two different lives: in one - poverty and personal drama, in the other - wealth, devoted love, professional success. And - a heartbreaking cry towards the curtain ...

Zinaida was born in 1894 in the family of a Russified German Nikolai Reich and a poor noblewoman Anna Viktorova. The daughter shared the convictions of her father, one of the first Social Democrats, for which she paid with expulsion from the gymnasium.

In 1917, the year of meeting with Yesenin, she lived in Petrograd and served as a typist in the editorial office of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary newspaper Delo Narodu, was chairman of the Society for the Distribution of Propaganda Literature. There was also an art library, where Sergei Yesenin often dropped in - books were given by the Socialist-Revolutionary Mina Svirskaya, and everyone thought that Sergei sympathized with her. And Zina was already going to marry his friend, the novice poet Alexei Ganin. Before the engagement, they decided to go together to Solovki and further north. A friend could not, but Zinaida went.

The black-haired beauty looks great on the deck of a white steamer. Ganin stepped aside, admiring the bride, he does not hear what Zinaida and Sergey are talking about:
- Zina, this is very serious. Understand, I love you ... at first sight. Let's get married! Immediately! If you refuse, I will commit suicide ... Soon the shore ... the church ... Make up your mind! Yes or no?!
-Yes...
On the way, Sergei picked wild flowers. Not remembering themselves, forgetting about Ganin, the young got married in a small church near Vologda.

They returned to Petrograd, settled in an apartment on Liteiny and began to live a completely normal family life - Yesenin even discouraged bachelor drinking, they say, I love my wife, we, brother, are adults. And when the struggle for survival began - the time was vague and hungry - he began to mope ... Closer to childbirth, Zina went to her parents in Orel, and Sergei went to Moscow to join the imagist poets.

He did not visit his wife, did not call and did not wait. Then she took the one-year-old Tanechka and herself came to his room on Bogoslovsky, where he lived with Mariengof. Sergei did not express much joy, but he reached out to his daughter with all his heart. Soon he told her to leave, saying that all feelings were gone, that he was quite satisfied with the life he was leading. Zinaida did not want to believe: "You love me, Sergun, I know that and I don’t want to know anything else ..." And then Yesenin ... connected Mariengof. He took him out into the corridor, gently hugged his shoulders, looked into his eyes:
- But what ... I can't live with Zinaida ... Tell her, Tolya (I ask you so, how can you ask for more!) That I have another woman ...

The next day Zinaida left. After a while, I realized that she was expecting a child, I thought, maybe it’s for the best, the children will tie ... On the phone I discussed the name with my husband - we agreed if there’s a boy, then call him Constantine. And again, no news ...

A little over a year later, going with her son to Kislovodsk, she met Marienhof on the platform of the Rostov station. Having learned that Yesenin was walking somewhere nearby, she asked: "Tell Seryozha that I am going to Kostya. He did not see him. Let him come in and take a look ... If he does not want to meet with me, I can leave the compartment." The poet reluctantly, but went in, looked at his son and said: "Fu ... Black ... Black Yesenins never happen." The poor woman turned to the window, her shoulders trembled, and Yesenin turned on his heels and left ... with a light, dancing gait.

Very soon, the popular American dancer Isadora Duncan will replace the unknown Oryol wife. But not so far away is the time when Sergei Yesenin will be on duty near someone else's house, dying of longing for his children, knocking on the door and piteously asking to be let in for a minute, just to look ... Are you asleep? Let them be carried out ... sleeping ... he wants to see them. And Zina ... his wife ... the famous actress, the wife of Vsevolod Meyerhold.

Meyerhold, by the way, has been eyeing Zinaida Reich for a long time. Once at one of the parties I asked Yesenin:
- You know, Seryozha, I'm in love with your wife ... If we get married, you won't be angry with me?
The poet humorously bowed to the director's feet:
- Take her, do me a favor ... I'll be grateful to you.
And yet Sergei did not appreciate his wife, she will prove to him what she is capable of ... she will become an actress. And Zinaida entered the directing courses.

In the fall of 1921, she came to the studio of 48-year-old Vsevolod Meyerhold, who immediately offered her a hand and a heart. Zinaida could not make up her mind for a long time, they say, she is divorced, has two children, I don't believe in anyone ... to which the famous director simply and clearly replied: "I love you, Zinochka. And I will adopt children." Prior to that, Vsevolod lived for a quarter of a century with his first wife Olga, whom he had known since childhood, gave birth to three daughters with her. The legal wife almost went crazy when she returned from the trip and saw Zinaida - what did he find in this gloomy woman, how dare he bring her to their house? And then she took and cursed both of them before the image: "Lord, punish them!" She did it out of despair, but she took upon herself a terrible sin - she was left with nothing, and years later the death of Vsevolod and Zinaida was brutal, monstrous ...

But that later, and now Meyerhold is happy, he did not know that you can love that way ... However, Yesenin was hurt: "He rubbed into my family, portrayed an unrecognized genius ... He took his wife away ..."

Reich seemed to the director a living embodiment of the elements, a destroyer and creator, with her you can make a revolutionary theater. It doesn't matter that many considered her a mediocre actress, but her husband idolized and was ready to give her all the roles - both female and male. When the conversation turned to the production of "Hamlet" and Meyerhold was asked who would play the main character, he answered: "Of course, Zinochka." Then Okhlopkov said that he would play Ophelia, and even wrote a written application for this role, after which he flew out of the theater.

They said about Zina that she moves around the stage like a "cow". Having heard the gossip, Vsevolod Emilievich dismisses the audience's favorite Maria Babanova from the theater - thin, flexible, with a crystal voice (she is more clapped). Beloved student Erast Garin leaves the theater - Zinochka quarreled with him. Meyerhold specially for her comes up with such mise-en-scenes that there is no need to move - the action unfolds around the heroine.

Next to Meyerhold, Zina really blossomed. She felt love and care. The husband even took her last name as the second, and signed it - Meyerhold-Reich. Parents moved from Orel to Moscow, the children have everything they need: the best doctors, teachers, expensive toys, separate rooms. Soon the family moved to a 100-meter apartment. Zinaida is one of the first ladies in Moscow, she goes to diplomatic and government receptions, receives the most eminent guests in her house.

After America, after breaking up with Isadora Duncan, after Zinaida became an actress of the most avant-garde theater, the beautiful and prosperous wife of a popular director, Yesenin fell in love with his ex-wife again ...

Zinaida Reich secretly met him in the room of her friend Zinaida Gaiman. But Gaiman did not tell her that Meyerhold knew everything, that one evening he looked disgustedly into the eyes of the pimp: “I know that you are helping Zinaida meet with Yesenin. Please stop this: if they get back together, she will be unhappy ... ”The friend hid her eyes, shrugged her shoulders, they say, this is jealousy ... fantasies of an inflamed imagination ...

And Sergei Yesenin suffered without children, was jealous and desired Zinaida, whose success in Moscow and St. Petersburg overshadowed the success of Isadora Duncan. But ... on one of the dates Reich said ex-husbandthat "parallels do not cross", that's enough, she won't leave Vsevolod. ... After the poet's death, Reich gave Gaiman a photograph with the inscription: "To you, Zinushka, as a memory of the most important and most terrible thing in my life - about Sergei ..."

Meyerhold had reason to be concerned. Zinaida did not even control herself on stage. Playing the mayor, she pinched her daughter so much that she screamed for real. At the reception in the Kremlin, she furiously attacked Kalinin himself: "Everyone knows that you are a womanizer!" Any mocking glance in her direction was perceived with hostility, she could immediately throw a hysteria ... Therefore, the health of his wife worried Meyerhold more than the connection with Yesenin - after all, after America, he is also not himself, they say, his epileptic seizures have become more frequent ...

... The death of Yesenin was reported to the Meyerholds by telephone. Zinaida with a distorted face rushed into the hallway:
- I'm going to him!
- Zinochka, think ...
- I'm going to him!
- I'm going with you ...
Vsevolod Emilievich supported Zina near Yesenin's coffin when she shouted: "My fairy tale, where are you going?", Closed her back from her former mother-in-law when she declared in public: "You are to blame for everything!" He accompanied him everywhere, did not take his eyes off - if only there was no breakdown, if only everything worked out ...

In the 1930s, the Meyerholds' house was considered one of the most prosperous and hospitable in Moscow. They said that Zinaida again fed all sorts of goodies, and she herself was so good: a famous actress, beautiful woman, the husband simply worships her.

The time came when there were only "enemies" around. In 1938, articles appeared about "Meyerholdism". This meant the director's secret predilection for bourgeois art. Meyerhold was not given the title People's Artist USSR, the theater was closed. And the city has long been shuddering at night from the sharp sound of approaching cars - endless arrests were carried out. Vsevolod Emilievich turned gray and aged.

They didn’t touch him yet, but something else was depressing ... In 1939 his wife’s illness worsened. Zina shouted through the window to the security guard that she loved the Soviet regime, that the theater was closed in vain, then wrote a furious letter to Stalin. She rushed at the children and her husband, said that she did not know them, let them go out. I had to tie her to the bed with ropes. But Meyerhold did not send his wife to the insane asylum: he fed from a spoon, washed, talked to her, held her hand until he fell asleep. A few weeks later, she calmly woke up, looked at her hands and said in surprise: "What mud, what mud ..." Zinaida returned to normal life again - her husband saved her again ... But several weeks remained before the tragic denouement ...

Meyerhold was taken to St. Petersburg. At the same time, a search was carried out in the Moscow apartment. Zinaida understands that the world has collapsed, that she will no longer see her husband, the only true and true friend of life, but she does not yet know that the night lies ahead, which will become fatal for her. July 14-15, 1939. ... The body of the actress with numerous stab wounds was found in the office, and in the corridor with a broken head lay the housekeeper, hurrying to the cry of the hostess.

Vsevolod Meyerhold was shot as "a spy of the British and Japanese intelligence services," he was held for several months in prisons and beaten beyond recognition. Where his body lies is still unknown, but fate wanted Yesenin, Reich and Meyerhold to be together in another life. Zinaida was buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery, not far from Yesenin's grave. After some time, another inscription appeared on the Reich monument - Vsevolod Emilievich Meyerhold. Burial Meyerhold exists in the mass grave of the Donskoy Monastery. Cenotaph at the Vagankovskoye cemetery. The soul of Vsevolod found its Love, and the soul of Zinaida made its choice.

From the article by T. Shamankova.