(Based on the materials of the conversation between Y. Shnitnikov and the writer Viktor Kuznetsov, who studied the materials of the archives for many years)
Let's start with what everyone knows: 1925, end of December - Sergei Yesenin came from Moscow to Leningrad, and stayed at the Angleterre hotel … It is with this statement that the myth of the last days of Yesenin's life begins.
I wanted to check the fact of the poet's stay at Angleterre, and at the same time try to find out the details of his stay at the hotel. It was embarrassing that none of the guests and employees of the hotel subsequently left memories of at least a fleeting meeting with a famous and beloved poet by many. There is also no evidence of who the poet could call in those December days, whom he could meet until the evening of December 27, because in St. Petersburg he had many acquaintances, and he himself was considered a rather sociable person. Did he really spend the long winter evenings in his room all alone?
City hotels in those days were under the control of the economic department of the GPU. I wanted to find the lists of residents, the working journals of the hotel in the archives of the FSB, but I received an answer from the FSB that the archive of the economic department of that time is unknown when it mysteriously disappeared. But 1925 is, as we know, the time of the NEP era with its relative freedom of entrepreneurship. This means that there must be some documents that reflect the income and taxation of citizens. And they were. All residents of the country were then accompanied by the so-called "Form No. 1", where salaries of people, additional payments, various extra earnings were recorded … Among other things, this form required the compilation of control and financial auditor lists of hotel residents with fairly extensive information about people twice a year.
I was able to find lists of Angleterre guests in the mid-1920s, and today I can list about 150 people who lived in the hotel at the end of December 1925, and about 50 Angleterre employees including cleaning ladies. The surname Yesenin does not appear on these lists. He never lived at Angleterre!
They say that the poet, since he was a famous person, could be accommodated in a hotel without the necessary formalities, by pull … However, this is out of the question. "Angleterre" at that time was a secure facility, where Chekists, party-Soviet officials of the district and provincial scale lived. It was not for nothing that on each floor there were so-called duty rooms with GPU officers who checked the documents of all the guests.
But there are many eyewitness recollections: some on the 27th evening visited the poet in the room, others took his body out of the noose in the morning, signed the act of suicide of Yesenin … However, faced with one lie, one should be careful in evaluating each document, each person, what then the way of participating in this tragedy. For example, anyone in my place would have inquired about the autopsy of the poet's body. However, it turned out that someone prudently destroyed all the autopsy reports drawn up by Dr. G. Gilyarevsky before 1926.
But there are acts of the same Gilyarevsky in subsequent years. I held them in my hands. He compared them with the Yesenin's death certificate, allegedly certified by the same Gilyarevsky. Absolutely different signature! Moreover, the style, standard, numbering of this document does not at all correspond to the then accepted norms. One gets the impression that the person simply had no idea how to do this. The act on the discovery of the poet's body in the fifth room of the hotel, which was drawn up by the district warden Nikolai Gorbov, is also doubtful.
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Among the witnesses of this tragedy were famous people - Wolf Ehrlich, Georgy Ustinov with his wife, Nikolai Klyuev, Pavel Medvedev, Ushakov … Their memories have been preserved. Let's deal with them.
Nikolai Klyuev was Yesenin's mentor at the early stage of his work, in the future - his "affectionate" opponent. This is far from the Klyuev that we know from the 1930s. Yesenin, on the other hand, in 1923 experienced a serious world outlook break, after which he completely departed from his social romanticism and approached the rejection of the February and October revolutions, Soviet power. In 1925, they were completely different people. Klyuev at that time was in terrible poverty (his tearful request to the provincial authorities to be exempted from the rent was preserved) and was completely dependent on the favors of the authorities. In part, this can explain that he did not object when he found himself on the lists of the poet's lies. Faint-hearted under the pressure of difficult life circumstances? It should be noted that in the future he never mentioned that he was that evening at Yesenin's. Accident?
Georgy Ustinov is a journalist and critic who allegedly lived at that time in Angleterre and took care of Yesenin. But his name is also missing from the hotel's guest lists. His wife Elizaveta Alekseevna is not in them either. I compared his original signature with the autograph on the police report on Yesenin's death - nothing to do! Nobody saw this "close" friend of the poet either during his farewell to Yesenin in the Writers' House, or on the wires of the body at the station. In general, the official biography of Ustinov has little to do with the factual. It is emphasized that he worked in the newspapers Pravda and Izvestia, but his work in the Bund newspaper Zvezda in Minsk is not mentioned. He was expelled from the CPSU (b) for drunkenness and the loss of ties with the party, and all his life he tried to recover in it.
His stellar years were associated with the period of the civil war, along the fronts of which he accompanied on the train the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council, Leon Trotsky, and then the first wrote about him a fiery brochure "Tribune of the Revolution". All this information about the key witness of the last days of the poet's life was carefully hidden for many decades - I collected it bit by bit from little-known publications, letters, funds. The "impeccability" of this person is also protected by the secrecy label, which even today accompanies Georgy Ustinov's "personal file" in one of the archives. I was able to get acquainted with him, after which I had no doubts about the falsity and the custom-made nature of his memoirs, designed to falsify the true story of Yesenin's death. I think that the inglorious end of this man, who never found a place in his life, is not accidental either,- in 1932, his body was removed from a noose in his own apartment.
"Poet, Yesenin's friend in the last two years of his life." So Wolf Ehrlich is recommended in the reference sections of Yesenin's collected works. It was to him that the poet addressed the well-known telegram of December 7, 1925: “Immediately find two or three rooms. On the 20th I move to live in Leningrad. Wire. " How important was Ehrlich's role in Yesenin's fate? The identity of this young man was not entirely clear to me until I found that from 1920 (from the age of 18!) He was a secret employee of the Cheka-GPU and for this type of his activity was directly subordinate to the famous Chekist Ivan Leonov, in 1925 - deputy head of the Leningrad GPU.
It looks suspicious that practically the entire company of witnesses and attesting witnesses who put their signatures on the documents on Yesenin's death consists of acquaintances and friends of Wolf Ehrlich. Moreover, the literary critic Pavel Medvedev, the poets Ilya Sadofiev, Ivan Pribludny, the journalist Lazar Berman and some others were also sexists of the GPU. Where are the boundaries between their friendship, creativity and snitching? And what is the value of the memories they left behind?
Ehrlich's voyage from Moscow to Leningrad on January 16, 1926, when, in one day, he concocted a dubious death certificate for Yesenin, raises questions. At the same time, he took it to the registry office not in the Central District, on the territory of which Angleterre is located, but in the Moscow-Narva District. It was in that area that all the key administrative posts were then in the hands of the Trotskyists, with the help of which it was easier to draw up the necessary document.
The publication of the allegedly last poem of the poet "Goodbye, my friend, and goodbye …" is also associated with the name of Ehrlich. According to him, on the evening of December 27, saying goodbye, Sergei Yesenin shoved a sheet of verses into the pocket of Ehrlich's jacket with a request to read them sometime later, when he was alone. And Ehrlich "forgot" about these verses. I remembered only the next day, when the poet was no longer alive. On December 29, the poem is published in the Leningrad "Krasnaya Gazeta". Dated to December 27. But in the original there is no date of its writing.
And another question, why the original of this poem first appeared only in February 1930? He was brought to the Pushkin House by a prominent political worker, later - a literary critic Georgy Gorbachev. An entry remained in the journal: "From Erlich." But Erlich in 1930 was a small fry, an employee of the border guard of the GPU of the Transcaucasus. And the "courier" Gorbachev is a well-known political commissar, a good friend of Trotsky. Isn't it strange? Something doesn't add up here …
After getting acquainted with the memoirs of Wolf Ehrlich, with his poems, I got the impression that by the nature of his work and by his nature he was very far from Yesenin, if not to say - hostile to him. A harsh, spiteful, vengeful person is the complete opposite of an open, trusting, sentimental Sergei Yesenin.
I was literally discouraged by Ehrlich's poem "The Pig", written in 1929, which contains the following lines: "Understand, my friend, your holy name day has lost the habit of celebrating our poor age. Remember, friend, not only for pork, but a man was created for execution. " They immediately recalled from my memory the silhouette of a pig's head, drawn over the brown lines of the original Yesenin's "Goodbye …". At first, this image was mistaken for a blot. But no, the pork snout with the ears on that sheet is difficult to confuse with anything. What is behind this unexpected allegory, which has received such an ominous poetic continuation? No, it was very difficult in his relationship with Yesenin to sex with the GPU Wolf Ehrlich.
The thought of a conspiracy involuntarily arises … But why did it become necessary?
From the autumn of 1925, the poet was on trial. In September, when he and his wife were returning from Baku to Moscow, on the train he had a conflict with one of the Moscow party officials and the diplomatic courier. Through their efforts in Moscow at the station Yesenin was detained, interrogated, and soon a lawsuit was opened against the poet - already the 13th in a row. Trying to avoid trial, he goes to a psychiatric clinic at Moscow University ("psychos are not tried") under the tutelage of his fellow countryman Professor Gannushkin. It is there that the poet writes his masterpiece "You are my fallen maple, icy maple …" and other wonderful lyric poems. The poet then stood up for the People's Commissar of Education Lunacharsky, who did not need the hype about this case in the foreign press.
And then Yesenin decided to flee to Leningrad. But, of course, not for permanent residence. He generally wanted to flee the USSR.
On February 7, 1923, on his way from Europe to the United States, he wrote a letter to Berlin to his friend, the poet Alexander Kusikov, in which he directly speaks of his rejection of the Soviet regime, adding that he "would have fled from it even to Africa." A month before his death, on November 27, the poet wrote from a psychiatric clinic to his friend Pyotr Chagin: “… I will get rid of (from scandals. - Author), I will settle, I will send everyone … and, probably, I will wave abroad. There are dead lions more beautiful than our living medical dogs."
The aim of the flight could be Great Britain, according to another assumption - the Baltic states. A short trip to Leningrad in early November 1925 also speaks of the seriousness of his intentions - did you build bridges? But someone betrayed his mood - it is possible that Ustinov: on that visit he spun next to Yesenin, drank together … Further events could develop as follows: on December 24, 1925, the poet under trial arrived from Moscow to Leningrad arrested, taken to a pre-trial detention center, interrogated, beaten to death, his body was secretly transferred to the fifth issue of Angleterre, where they staged the sacrilege known to us with “the voluntary departure of Sergei Yesenin from life” …
Needless to say, the performers could hardly have dared to take such action without sanction from above? However, who could act as the "customer" of this murder, who were entrusted with the functions of the "killer"? There are no answers to the first part of the question (there are only assumptions), and, probably, it cannot be: all instructions were given to devoted people orally and informally. As for the direct perpetrator of the murder, the most suitable figure here could be a well-known terrorist, an employee of the Cheka Yakov Blumkin.
According to the memoirs of Yesenin's Tiflis friend, writer and journalist Nikolai Verzhbitsky, Blumkin could have had personal scores with the poet: he once threatened Sergei Yesenin in Baku in 1924 and even pointed a pistol at him. Some saw Blumkin in those December days at Angleterre. However, today I cannot point to him with absolute certainty as the murderer of the poet - there is not enough material.
And then … The development of events is easy to assume: they began to cover up the traces of the crime. We managed to find out more about the participants in this action.
By the end of 1925, the Chekist Vasily Nazarov was the commandant of the Angleterre. Lover of drink, he "relaxed" and in the afternoon on Sunday, December 27, in the evening, overcame and went to bed. Late in the evening (and not in the morning, according to the official version!), The janitor called the apartment: they say, they are summoning to the hotel, to the fifth room. Nazarov, not yet sober, leaves, and returns in the morning - tired, gloomy and silent … This is the true story of the commandant's widow Antonina Lvovna. I managed to meet her shortly before her death in 1995. Despite her venerable age, she retained a clear memory - I checked the details of her memories against documents. Her husband was not verbose with her: he hanged himself, they say, a poet, they decorated him … But if he did hang himself, then perhaps there would be something to tell?
Together with Vasily Nazarov, several writers who collaborated with the GPU - Pavel Medvedev, Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky, Mikhail Frohman - put their signatures under the documents as witnesses that night. The fake act on the discovery of the body of Sergei Yesenin in the hotel was drawn up by the local policeman Nikolai Gorbov, who was trained in the secret department of the criminal investigation department. Its high chiefs were the head of the provincial police Gerasim Yegorov and the head of the UGRO Leonid Petrzhak.
Both were arrested in 1929 as Trotskyists. Subsequently, Nikolai Gorbov, after serving a term in prison on a trumped-up case, wrote a statement to the party organization (not out of a sense of resentment?), In which he pointed out the "ugly actions" of these people, as well as another major rank - the deputy head of the Leningrad GPU Ivan Leonov. There is a suspicion that it was he who was the main organizer of this action, who distributed bloody responsibilities between his trusted subordinates. And Gorbov, having relieved his soul in 1931 with his application to the Party organization, disappears without a trace a year later …
Was it really so scrupulously thought out that there were no obvious traces left? No, the perpetrators of this black business, of course, made some mistakes, especially at the stage of covering their tracks. I will add such particulars as the alleged presence of a bath in the fifth, "Yesenin" hotel room, which was noted by some of the pseudo-memoirists. I was not too lazy and found an inventory of things and furnishings at Angleterre. There was no bathtub in that room. A trifle, it seems … But, as you know, it is the details that usually let the liars down.
As a consequence of the haste, the newspaper publications on Yesenin's death are also noteworthy: the conclusion of the forensic medical examination was not yet ready, and the newspapers had already reported that Sergei Yesenin had hanged himself. Did the journalists write it themselves? Under the strict censorship of those times, which even “led” wall newspapers, without sanction from above it was impossible. And those at the top did not need the results of the examination.
Not all of the poet's contemporaries believed in the hasty official myth of his suicide. On December 30, in Krasnaya Gazeta, he wrote a bold and daring article under the heading “Executed by the degenerates” Boris Lavrenev. A well-known writer and supporter of the revolution, he managed to say his word of honor - perhaps because of someone's oversight. But later he never returned to this topic. However, everyone else was silent. People had something to fear at that time.
But we, of course, will be able to get closer to the truth in this sad story when our archives are opened after a long time …
N. Nepomniachtchi