The human soul is darkness for others. It seems that a person has everything - fame, prosperity, like, live and rejoice, but he suddenly, having made an unexpected act, radically changes his life. And often no one knows the reasons for such changes. So the history of Soviet cinema knows cases when well-known actors, treated kindly by spectators and directors, suddenly become criminals. Is it fate or a mistake?
Honored Artist of Russia, the beauty Valentina Malyavina … She immediately after school married a boy from a neighboring school, Alexander Zbruev. Nothing seemed to interfere with their happiness. But early marriages are sometimes very short-lived, and the couple broke up.
And while studying at the Shchukin School, Andrei Tarkovsky, still unknown to anyone, drew attention to the black-eyed beauty. He immediately invited her to star in the title role in his film "Ivan's Childhood". A romance began between them. But Tarkovsky was married.
The actress acted a lot, she fell in love just as much, got married, got divorced and got married again. But for some reason she was not happy: her two children died.
Malyavina met her last husband - also an actor - Stas Zhdanko at the play "Crime and Punishment". Then no one could have thought to grasp the mystical connection between the name of the play and what awaited them. But there was still something prophetic about it.
The young actor has long been in love with Valya in absentia. And soon they began to live together. But life somehow did not work out right away. Zhdanko, who was not offered roles, fell into depression.
The fatal event that turned the life of the brilliant actress happened in 1978. Until now, it has not been possible to establish exactly how everything happened. Malyavina herself said that after dinner, after which she drank a little, leaving the kitchen, she noticed how Stas began to fall from the chair right before her eyes. Malyavina supposedly thought that he was drunk, but then, seeing that he had stuck a knife in himself, she began to shout and call for help. The investigator to whom this version was presented believed and closed the case. But five years later, in 1983, the case was again raised from the archive on the initiative of Nikolai Popkov, a friend of Zhdanko. It was he who convinced the parents of a friend that their son was killed by Valentin Malyavin.
The trial took place. The actress was found guilty and sentenced to nine years for premeditated murder. However, the actress did not serve the full term. She was amnestied four years later.
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Today Malyavina lives in a closed boarding house for elderly people with mental disorders - for those for whom there is someone to pay. Some say that her ex-husband, the artist Zbruev, pays for her stay, while others attribute such generosity to a friend on camera.
In those years, there were significantly fewer women behind bars than today. However, the conditions of their detention were much worse. Soviet prisons and colonies were overcrowded, but new ones, based on the concept of a "bright future", were simply not built. And no one, even star celebrities, in prison could create the appropriate conditions. There were four people in the cells.
Today, many celebrities have had prison experience. For some, this is just an episode, but for some, the prison crossed out their careers and broke their destiny. And for the talented artist Sergei Zakharov, according to him, the trial and imprisonment were a test that changed his creative life in order to force him to reconsider many life values.
The whole country was talking about this somewhat strange story at one time. No joke: a famous artist, having beaten a cloakroom attendant in a restaurant, went to prison. Many sympathized with the victim, they say, the metropolitan upstarts have completely lost their conscience, they are already raising their hand against an ordinary person. Although in reality everything happened a little differently …
Once, in 1977, the artist and his friends were at a concert in the music hall. He went to the administrator for passes. According to Zakharov himself, the administrator answered him with a rude refusal, and a fight began. But Zakharov still got a pass and went to the concert. However, later, when I was sitting in a buffet with friends, an administrator showed up there in the company of former boxers like him. And the fight broke out again, though this time it was more numerous.
And as it happens, they were separated, but a few days later Zakharov received a summons from which he learned that he had beaten the administrator in such a way that he inflicted “serious bodily harm” on him. The investigation into this ordinary fight, surprisingly, lasted more than six months, five and a half of which the singer was kept in "Kresty".
And after the sentencing, he had to serve another seven months. Zakharov recalls how the investigator asked him when he managed to make so many enemies for himself?
Indeed, rumors were circulating that the first secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee Romanov was jealous of Zakharov, the beautiful singer Lyudmila Senchina, with whom he often performed and went on tour. It was said that it was by order of the "top" administrator-boxer stubbornly trying to "hook" the singer, then pestering his companion, then touching his shoulder in a narrow corridor, pestered until he achieved an explosion in response.
True or not, it is not known, but a talented twenty-seven-year-old artist, on the rise of his career, suddenly became a suspect. In the cell, he sat with an intelligent doctor who was imprisoned for an abortion, and a builder who sold building materials.
And after his release, Zakharov started everything from scratch. The former friends disappeared, there was nothing in the apartment, as the wife had to sell things to feed the family. And only after a year and a half he was able to return to the big stage, gradually moving away from the stage and directing his talent to romance.
Many famous people think that they have more rights and opportunities in this life. A star, if anything, they will regret it, "otmazhut", as the people say.
Vladimir Dolinsky - Honored Artist of Russia - also believed in this.
In 1973, the young artist of the Satire Theater was charged under the article "currency fraud", which in the USSR was considered a rather serious crime. Dolinsky was arrested.
The incredibly popular TV show "Zucchini 13 Chairs" made him a star. He went on stage with Derzhavin, Aroseva and other more or less wealthy actors. And Dolinsky also wanted to become the same as them.
In the seventies of the last century, a car, a Czech wall, a mink hat, crystal and the opportunity to dine in a restaurant at least once a week were considered prosperity. And for the sake of these simple "joys of life" Dolinsky took a risk.
The Satire Theater had to go on tour to Sweden and bought thirty dollars. The trip was canceled and the dollars had to be sold to get the rubles back. As a result, Dolinsky did not remain in the loser, which he really liked.
In the USSR, the currency was treated strictly. In 1961, the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced to death Rokotov, Yakovlev and Faibyshenko - real money-makers - currency dealers. Only Rokotov alone had twelve kilograms of gold seized during his arrest. But the amount by which Dolinsky enriched himself was only one thousand seven hundred rubles. And for this he was accused under an article that provides for punishment from five years to execution.
The Satire Theater stood up for the actor. The head of the theater, Pluchek, sent a petition to the very top, and Dolinsky was sentenced to only four years.
But the actor could not come to terms with the fact that because of some dollars he ruined his life, doomed himself to shame and lost his greatest passion - theater. And he decided to pretend to be mentally ill in the hope that he would not be sent to prison, but to a special clinic. But that did not happen. After serving four years, he was released. And Mark Zakharov took him to work in Lenkom.
This is a rare piece of luck, because ex-convicts, even celebrity convicts, are usually not needed by anyone. Many famous artists who dramatically change their lives at the peak of fame cannot then fit into life normally.
A vivid example of this is Nikolai Godovikov - Petrukha from the cult painting "White Sun of the Desert" The incredibly talented actor was adored by the whole country in the early seventies. And in the wake of this admiration, he became involved in a story that led him to prison. Godovikov's fate is a whole lump of convictions. He survived six convictions, lived on the street as a homeless person, and ended up behind bars three times. Broken life, but how it all started well. Each of his films was legendary, but his last film was "The White Sun of the Desert." More roles were not offered to him. Gradually, he began to sink lower and lower. Being unemployed, he got caught stealing and off we go …
Artists Sergey Shevkunenko, Zhanna Aguzarova, Archil Gomiashvili, footballer Eduard Streltsov, circus artist Igor Zapashny … This "star" list is quite long.
With all these people, fate was too cruel. They hate time behind bars, but it taught them to endure and wait. Wait for the freedom that they lost, and which was the very last on the list of values in their stellar era and the very first - when they lost it.
