Death of Remarkable People: Vladimir Mayakovsky. Mayakovsky's death: the poet's tragic finale
For the first time, a professional examination of the shirt in which the poet was found in his office on Lubyanka, his pistol and the fatal bullet was carried outAT At eleven o'clock in the morning on April 14, 1930, in Moscow, in Lubyansky passage, a shot was fired in the room of Vladimir Mayakovsky ... The Leningrad Krasnaya Gazeta reported: “Mayakovsky's suicide. Today, at 10:17 am, Vladimir Mayakovsky committed suicide in his working room with a shot from a revolver in the region of the heart. Arriving "Ambulance" found him already dead. Last few days
V.V. Mayakovsky did not reveal any spiritual discord, and nothing foreshadowed a catastrophe. On the night of yesterday, contrary to his usual habit, he did not spend the night at home. Returned home at 7 o'clock. morning. During the day he did not leave the room. He spent the night at home. This morning he went out somewhere and after a short time returned in a taxi, accompanied by the artist of the Moscow Art Theater X. Soon a shot rang out from Mayakovsky’s room, after which artist X ran out. An ambulance was immediately called, but even before her arrival, Mayakovsky died . Those who ran into the room found Mayakovsky lying on the floor, shot through the chest. The deceased left two notes: one - to his sister, in which he gives her money, and the other - to friends, where he writes that "he knows very well that suicide is not an option, but he has no other way ...".
Upon the death of V. Mayakovsky, a criminal case was opened, which was conducted by the investigator Syrtsov.
On the afternoon of April 14, Mayakovsky's body was transferred to an apartment in Gendrikov Lane, where he lived permanently. In a small room of the apartment at 20 o'clock, the scientists of the Institute of the Brain removed the poet's brain.
It is known that the last person who saw the poet alive was the 22-year-old actress of the Moscow Art Theater Veronika Polonskaya, who was in a hurry to rehearse that morning. V. Polonskaya recalled: “I left. She walked a few steps to the front door. There was a shot. My legs gave way, I screamed and rushed along the corridor, I could not force myself to enter.
Nameless killer?
Journalist-researcher V.I. Skoryatin managed to collect and analyze a wealth of factual material. Many facts from the life of the poet and people close to him before this study, published in the journal "Journalist" (1989-1994), and later in the book "The Secret of the Death of Vladimir Mayakovsky" (M., "Belfry-MG", 1998) , remained unknown.
He managed to establish that in 1930, in the communal apartment in Lubyansky passage, in which the poet's study was located, there was another small room, which was later blocked by a wall. “Now imagine,” the journalist reflects, “Polonskaya quickly descends the stairs. The door to the poet's room opens. On the threshold - someone. Seeing a weapon in his hands, Mayakovsky shouts indignantly ... Shot. The poet falls. The killer approaches the table. Leaves a letter on it. Lays the weapon on the floor. And then hides in the bathroom or toilet. And after the neighbors came running to the noise, he gets to the stairs through the back door. Well, a bold version, which, of course, requires weighty evidence.
In confirmation of the version of the poet's murder, the journalist cites a photograph in which Mayakovsky's body lies on the floor, "his mouth is open in a scream." V. Skoryatin asks: “A suicide screams before a shot?!”.
By the way, it could be. And you should also know that after death the human body relaxes, the muscles become soft, as if they come to a state of rest. The dead man's mouth opens slightly, the lower jaw droops, which, in fact, is reflected in the photograph.
Veronika Vitoldovna returned immediately after the shot. And when did “someone” manage to commit his atrocity, and even hide so that no one saw him?
Three "young" neighbors of Mayakovsky, as V. Skoryatin writes, at that time were in a "small room in the kitchen." Naturally, having heard a shot and jumping out into the corridor, they were bound to run into a man who was leaving the poet's room. However, neither the actress nor the "young neighbors" saw anyone.
Polonskaya claimed that Mayakovsky was lying on his back. But a number of researchers believe that the poet's body lay face down. However, photographs taken at the scene show the poet lying face up, with a dark spot on the shirt on the left. This is how blood usually looks in black and white photographs.
There were also sensational statements that Mayakovsky was shot twice ... In the program “Before and after midnight”, the well-known television journalist Vladimir Molchanov suggested that there were traces of two shots on the photograph of the dead Mayakovsky shown to him.
And there was a lot of gossip about the forensic medical examination of the poet's body. On the very first day, the famous professor-pathologist V. Talalaev performed an autopsy of the poet's body in the morgue of the medical faculty of Moscow State University. According to the memoirs of V. Sutyrin, on the night of April 17, a re-opening of the body took place due to the fact that rumors spread about Mayakovsky allegedly having a venereal disease. An autopsy performed by Professor Talalaev found no signs of venereal disease.
Rumors and speculation about the death of Mayakovsky fanned an unhealthy hype, but at the same time pointed to the miscalculations of the investigators of the 30s.
The journalist Skoryatin, obviously, did not even imagine what a valuable service he rendered to the specialists by mentioning the shirt that Mayakovsky was wearing at the time of the shot. Therefore, the shirt survived! But this is the most valuable material evidence!
After the death of the poet, this relic was kept by L.Yu. Brik. In the mid-1950s, Lilya Yuryevna handed over the shirt to the museum for storage, about which there is a corresponding entry in the Museum's Book of Receipts.
In the special depository of the museum, L.E. Kolesnikova, head of the sector of material values, took out an oblong box, carefully unfolded several layers of paper impregnated with a special composition. It turns out that neither in the 1930s, nor in subsequent years, an examination of the shirt was carried out! An agreement was immediately reached with the museum that the shirt would be handed over to specialists for research.
Expertise
Researchers of the Federal Center for Forensic Examinations of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation E. Safronsky immediately began the study,
I. Kudesheva, a specialist in the field of traces of a shot, and the author of these lines is a forensic medical expert. First of all, it was necessary to establish that it was in this shirt, bought by the poet in Paris, that Mayakovsky was at the time of the shot.
In the photographs of Mayakovsky's body taken at the scene, the pattern of the fabric, the texture of the shirt, the shape and localization of the blood stain, the gunshot wound itself, are clearly distinguishable. These photos have been enlarged. The experts photographed the submitted shirt from the same angle and with the same magnification and carried out a photo alignment. All details matched.
From "Research": “On the left side of the front of the shirt there is one through damage of a rounded shape measuring 6 x 8 mm”. Thus, immediately burst version of the traces of two shots on the shirt. The results of microscopic examination, the shape and size of the damage, the state of the edges of this damage, the presence of a defect (absence) of the tissue made it possible to conclude that the gunshot nature of the hole that arose from a shot by a single projectile.
It is known that in order to determine whether a person shot himself or was shot at him, it is necessary to establish the distance of the shot. In forensic medicine and forensics, it is customary to distinguish three main distances: point-blank shot, close-range shot, and long-range shot. If it is established that on April 14, 1930, in the room of V.V. Mayakovsky, a shot sounded from a long distance, which means that someone shot at the poet ...
The specialists had to work hard and painstakingly - to find signs characterizing the distance of a shot that sounded more than 60 years ago.
From the "Conclusion": "1. Damage on the shirt of V.V. Mayakovsky is an input gunshot, formed when fired from a “side stop” distance in the direction from front to back and somewhat from right to left, almost in a horizontal plane.
2. Judging by the characteristics of the damage, a short-barreled weapon (for example, a pistol) was used and a low-powered cartridge was used.
3. The small size of the blood-soaked area located around the entrance gunshot injury indicates its formation due to a simultaneous ejection of blood from the wound, and the absence of vertical blood streaks indicates that immediately after V.V. Mayakovsky was in a horizontal position, lying on his back.
So the dispute over the position of Mayakovsky's body after the shot is over.
"4. The shape and small size of the blood blots located below the damage, and the peculiarity of their location along the arc, indicate that they arose as a result of the fall of small drops of blood from a small height onto the shirt in the process of moving down the right hand, splashed with blood, or from the weapon, in the same hand."
Detection of traces of a shot at a side stop, the absence of traces of a struggle and self-defense are typical for a shot fired by one's own hand.
Neither the prescription of the shot, nor the treatment of the shirt with a special composition should serve as an obstacle to the conduct of complex medical ballistic examinations. Thus, the conducted research has not only historical, but also scientific interest.
Death autograph
“He was without a jacket. The jacket hung on a chair and there was a letter, his last letter, which he wrote, ”recalled the artist N.F. Denisovsky. From this room - "boats", as the poet liked to call it, rumors have reached our days that this letter was not written by Mayakovsky. Moreover, the name of the "author" of the letter was also given.
But it is impossible to forge handwriting so that this forgery is not revealed by forensic specialists. Only now, work is underway abroad on the possibility of a computer (!) Forgery of handwriting.
How many copies were crossed around the suicide letter, done in pencil, almost without punctuation marks: “Everyone. Don't blame anyone for dying and please don't gossip. The dead man did not like this terribly ... ".
It never occurred to anyone to take into account this dying request of the poet.
The letter was submitted in December 1991 for examination to the laboratory of forensic handwriting examinations of the All-Russian Research Institute of Forensic Examinations of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation (now the Federal Center for Forensic Examinations of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation). The question was put before the experts: to establish whether the said letter was executed by Mayakovsky V.V. or by another person.
Yu.N. Pogibko and senior researcher of the same laboratory, candidate of legal sciences R.Kh. Panov. The “Conclusions” made by the experts are fully consistent with the research part: “The handwritten text of a suicide letter on behalf of Mayakovsky V.V., beginning with the words “To everyone. Don’t blame anyone for the fact that I’m dying ... ”, and ending with the words“ ... You will receive the rest from Gr.V.M. ”, dated 04.12.30, was made by Mayakovsky Vladimir Vladimirovich himself.
This text was written by Mayakovsky V.V. under the influence of some factors that “knock down” his usual writing process, among which the most likely is an unusual psychophysiological state associated with excitement”. But the letter was written not on the day of the suicide, but earlier: "Immediately before suicide, the signs of unusualness would have been more pronounced." The letter, according to experts, indeed it was written on April 12, as the poet dated it.
Researchers of creativity V.V. Mayakovsky, journalists tried to find a criminal case on the "fact of Mayakovsky's death." However, it was nowhere to be found... In order to put an end to the research, to verify the results we obtained, it was necessary to have Delo. But there was no "Deed" ...
Yezhov folder
Materials about the death of Mayakovsky were kept in the Presidential Archive, but in a completely different folder, and were finally transferred to the special depository of the State Museum of V.V. Mayakovsky. Museum director S.E. Strizhneva kindly agreed to acquaint me with the documents.
I am sitting in Svetlana Evgenievna's small cozy office. In front of me is a cardboard gray folder, an inscription in large black print immediately catches my eye: “NIKOLAI IVANOVICH EZHOV.” Below - "Started on April 12, 1930. Finished on January 24, 1958." In the folder - the second folder: "Criminal case no. 02 - 29. 1930 About the suicide of Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky. Started April 14, 1930. Consequently, the case "On the suicide of Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky" was under the control of the almighty and sinister secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, who oversaw the administrative bodies, including the state security agencies. In the folder - just a few sheets of already slightly yellowed paper. Here are excerpts from the protocol of the inspection of the scene of the incident, with spelling observance:
"PROTOCOL.
The corpse of Mayakovsky lies on the floor.
In the middle of the room on the floor on his back lies the corpse of Mayakovsky. He lies with his head to the front door ... The head is slightly turned to the right, the eyes are open, the pupils are dilated, the mouth is half open. There is no rigor mortis. On the chest, 3 cm above the left nipple, there is a wound of a rounded shape, with a diameter of about two thirds of a centimeter. The circumference of the wound is slightly stained with blood. There is no exit hole. On the right side on the back in the area of the last ribs under the skin, a solid foreign body is palpable, not significant in size. The corpse is dressed in a shirt ... on the left side of the chest, according to the described wound, there is an irregularly shaped hole on the shirt, about one centimeter in diameter, around this hole the shirt is stained with blood for about ten centimeters. Circumference of shirt opening with traces of opal. Between the legs of the corpse lies a revolver of the Mauser system, caliber 7.65 No. 312045 (this revolver was taken by Comrade Gendin to the GPU). Not a single cartridge was found in the revolver. On the left side of the corpse at a distance from the body lies an empty spent cartridge case from a Mauser revolver of the specified caliber.
duty investigator
/signature/. Medical expert
/signature/. Witnesses /signatures/”.
The protocol was drawn up at an extremely low methodological level. But what we have, we have ...
Pay attention: "On the right side on the back, in the area of the last ribs, a solid foreign body is palpable, not significant in size."
The presence of a “foreign object” under the skin in the region of the lower right ribs, obviously, suggested that the shot was fired from left to right, i.e. left hand. Experts, on the other hand, are aware of the possibility of changing the direction of a bullet's flight in the body when it encounters an obstacle.
Professors A.P. Gromov and V.G. Naumenko pointed out: “Different densities also affect the diameter of the channel, as well as internal rebound (change in the direction of the bullet). Ricochet can occur not only from a meeting with a bone, but also with soft tissues. American experts call such bullets "wandering". And in this case, a bullet from a low-power cartridge, having met with an obstacle (vertebra, rib, etc.), slid down and, having lost its destructive power, got stuck in the subcutaneous fat, where it was palpated in the form of a “solid foreign body”.
Examining the shirt, not knowing the protocol, the experts turned out to be right: the shot was fired at close range Mayakovsky's body lay on his back. The memory did not fail V.V. Polonskaya: "He looked straight at me and tried to raise his head...".
Next sheet:
"Report. ... on this date at 11 o'clock I arrived at the scene of the incident along Lubyansky passage, 3, apt. No. 12, where the writer Mayakovsky Vladimir Vladimirovich shot himself ... subsequently, employees of the MUR arrived ... early. secret department Agranov ... Olievsky withdrew a suicide note. The forensic medical expert found that Mr. Mayakovsky committed suicide by shooting himself with a Mauser revolver in the heart, after which instant death occurred.
V.V. During the interrogation, Polonskaya confirmed the facts known to us.
On the second day after the death of V.V. Mayakovsky was summoned for questioning by citizens Krivtsov N.Ya., Skobeleva and other neighbors. None of them could categorically assert that Polonskaya was in Mayakovsky's room at the time of the shot.
In Mayakovsky's entourage there were many familiar Chekists. But it should be remembered that in those years the very word "chekist" was surrounded by a romantic halo. In particular, the poet was friends with Ya.S. Agranov, head of the secret department of the OGPU. Moreover, Agranov gave Mayakovsky, a great lover of weapons, a gun. Agranov, subsequently shot, is a sinister figure. It was Agranov who received operational information collected by agents after the death of the poet. On the pages of once secret documents, you can find the most unexpected things.
"WITH. secret.
Summary.
From 9 o'clock. on st. Vorovskogo,
52, where the corpse of Mayakovsky is located, the public began to gather and by 10.20
3000 people. At 11 o'clock the public was let through to Mayakovsky's coffin. Standing in line ... about the cause of Mayakovsky's suicide and the political nature of the conversation is not heard.
Pom. early 3 sec. Operoda
/Signature/".
"Start. SO OGPU Comrade Agranov.
Agent-information summary
5 sec. SO OGPU No. 45 of April 18, 1930
The news of Mayakovsky's suicide made a very strong impression on the public ... Talk exclusively about the romantic cause of death. From the conversations, the following can be emphasized ...
Talk, gossip.
Newspaper reports of suicide, a romantic lining, an intriguing posthumous letter aroused an unhealthy curiosity among the layman for the most part.
... The newspaper hype about Mayakovsky was called a clever collision for fools. Before the face of foreign countries, before public opinion abroad, it was necessary to present the death of Mayakovsky as the death of a revolutionary poet who died because of a personal drama.
The report of Syrtsov (the investigator) about Mayakovsky's long-term illness is considered extremely unsuccessful. They talk about syphilis and so on.
Beginning 5 sec. SO OGPU /Signature/”.
Even after many years, the state security agencies tried to "probe" the mood of the intelligentsia, its attitude towards the death of Mayakovsky. I happened to get acquainted with the "Protocol of Conversation"
MM. Zoshchenko with an employee of the Leningrad Directorate of the NKGB, held on July 20, 1944:
“22. Do you now consider the cause of Mayakovsky's death clear?
“She continues to be mysterious. It is curious that the revolver from which Mayakovsky shot himself was a gift from the famous Chekist Agranov.
23. Does this suggest that Mayakovsky's suicide was provocatively prepared?
"Maybe. Anyway, it's not about women. Veronika Polonskaya, about whom there were so many different guesses, told me that she was not intimately close to Mayakovsky.
The dignity and courage with which the disgraced Zoshchenko carried himself during the so-called conversation, and in fact, the interrogation, is striking.
Forensic conclusion
In the name of the director of the Russian Federal Center for Forensic Examinations, the director of the State Museum of Mayakovsky S.E. A letter was sent to Strizhneva with a request to conduct a study of the Browning pistol, bullet and cartridge case received by the museum from the Presidential Archive, from the materials of Mayakovsky's investigation file ...
Let's get back to the Protocol: "... lies a revolver of the Mauser system, caliber 7.65". What kind of weapon did Mayakovsky shoot himself with? According to certificate No. 4178/22076, Mayakovsky had two pistols: the Browning systems and the Bayard systems - short-barreled weapons. Maybe the shot was fired from a Browning? But I do not believe that a professional investigator could confuse a Browning with a Mauser.
On the table in front of the experts - a spent cartridge case, a bullet and a holster with a weapon. With a habitual movement, Emil Grigorievich removes from his holster ... Browning No. 268979!
“As a result of the study, a complex of signs was revealed, indicating that from the weapon submitted for examination ... a shot (shots) was not fired (shots were not fired),” S. Nikolaeva established. Means, Is the wrong weapon attached to the case file as material evidence? The examination of the bullet extracted from the body of Mayakovsky and the cartridge case, also attached to the case, was carried out by expert E.G. Safronsky. After examining the bullet, the expert dispassionately writes: "The established data indicate that the presented bullet is part of a 7.65 mm Browning cartridge of the 1900 model."
So what's the deal? But then the expert established that the bullet under study was fired from a Mauser pistol, model 1914. "However,- the expert continues the research, - to check the version of the possibility of firing the bullet under investigation from the Browning pistol No. .65 mm Browning cartridge model 1900 was fired ... from a Mauser pistol model 1914 in 7.65 mm caliber. The case of a 7.65 mm Browning cartridge of the 1900 model presented for research was fired, expert Safronsky established, not in the Browning pistol No. 268979, but in the Mauser pistol of the 1914 model of the 7.65 mm caliber.
Hence, the shot was fired from a Mauser! Brilliant research! It was the Mauser that was noted in the inspection protocol.
Who changed weapons? Let us recall the protocol of the “conversation” between the NKGB officer and M.M. Zoshchenko: “It is curious that the revolver from which Mayakovsky shot himself was presented to him by the famous Chekist Agranov.” Didn't Agranov himself change weapons, adding Mayakovsky's Browning to the case?
Instead of an epilogue
The decision to die in the vast majority of cases is an intimate matter: to close yourself in a room and not see anyone else.
We will never know what really happened to Vladimir Vladimirovich. He was a very great poet with an absolutely unprotected emotional life. Suicide is always associated with deep layers of the psyche. The spiritual world of man is a mysterious and silent space...
Alexander MASLOV, professor of forensic medicine, forensic expert
Rumyantseva Natalia Leonidovna was born in 1948 in Erfurt, Germany. Graduated from the Moscow Regional Pedagogical Institute. N. K. Krupskaya with a degree in Russian language and literature. Retired Police Lieutenant Colonel. Published in the journal "Historian and Artist". Lives in Moscow. In the "New World" published for the first time.
On the day of the death of Vladimir Mayakovsky, one of the journalists managed to call Leningrad, and Krasnaya Gazeta, dated April 14, 1930, came out with the message that Mayakovsky was shot by an actress of the Moscow Art Theater. "This morning he<…>returned in a taxi, accompanied by the artist of the Moscow Art Theater N. Soon a revolver shot was heard from Mayakovsky’s room, after which the artist N ran out. An ambulance was immediately called, but even before her arrival, V. Mayakovsky died. Those who ran into the room found Mayakovsky lying on the floor with a bullet through his chest. But after a few hours they started talking about suicide. The editor-in-chief of the Izvestiya newspaper, V. M. Gronsky, recalled that on that day he was present at an evening meeting of either the Council of People's Commissars or the Politburo of the Central Committee: “And Yagoda told me about this. We sat with him on the sidelines next to the window. He asked me if I knew about Mayakovsky's suicide. I say that here is Mogilny for me (assistant to Vyacheslav Molotov, at that time a member of the secretariat of the Central Committee. - N.R.) said. Well he told me some details<…>” Gronsky, after a meeting at about 11 pm, arrived at the editorial office, threw, according to him, the prepared materials about suicide into the basket and wrote a short article that began with the words: “He died (did not commit suicide! - N.R.) Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky”, called Stalin, read out the text. Stalin approved the text, and at his direction the message was given by ROSTA, Pravda and all other mass media.
Lines from a letter from V. Veshnev dated April 16-18, 1930 are quoted by Benedikt Sarnov: “On the first day, as usual, the most ridiculous rumors circulated, such as, for example, that Veronika Polonskaya, an artist of the Moscow Art Theater, shot him. The newspapers dispelled all the ridiculous rumors.
To substantiate the official version in the first half of the 1930s, an employee of the Institute of the Brain G. I. Polyakov was invited, who compiled correspondence conclusion based on the testimony of Lily and Osip Brikov and people close to them: Lev Kassil, Alexander Bromberg, Nikolai Aseev. Note that in this list there are no mothers, sisters, no friends who are not related to the Briks. Polyakov noted a number of mental features of Mayakovsky's personality and tried to reconstruct his physical and mental state on the eve of suicide. Polyakov considered the flu suffered by Mayakovsky shortly before his death as one of the serious factors, pointed out that the poet was hoarse and overtired; before his death, apathy appeared, complained of loneliness, was nervous and irritable. Polyakov pointed out that against the background of such a state, the “fatal outcome” could be provoked by the poet’s characteristic “unbalanced character” and “his tendency to impulsive, under the influence of the minute, reactions.”
findings correspondence G. I. Polyakov’s research raises doubts: according to Po-lyakov, it turns out that everyone who has had the flu can commit suicide. True, the idea of the flu as a cause of suicide first occurred not to an employee of the Institute of the Brain, but to someone else, it was voiced shortly after the death of Mayakovsky: in the diary of Mikhail Prezent it is written: “20.4.30. When examining the brain of M[yakovsky], influenza microbes were found that caused the poet's mental fatigue.
Conclusions about Vladimir Vladimirovich's lack of willpower and composure are refuted by people who knew him closely from the “non-Brikovsky” circle. The conclusion about impulsiveness in making a decision to die also sounds strange: Mayakovsky, according to the official version, two days went with a suicide letter written, did work, made appointments, decided with Veronika Vitoldovna Polonskaya the issue of creating a family, visited guests, played cards.
Relatives and friends, who knew Mayakovsky's character no worse than Brikov, denied his suicidal tendencies. Vasily Kamensky claimed that during their friendship, Volodya never thought about suicide. “About love for his mother and the recognition that he would never commit suicide primarily because of her, Mayakovsky spoke to Veronika Polonskaya in that difficult year for him, when he, as if jokingly, was asked if he was going to leave this world" . A neighbor in an apartment in Lubyansky Lane, student Bolshin, told the investigator that Mayakovsky "was of a balanced character and was very rarely gloomy."
From the protocol of interrogation of M. Yanshin: “... in the company of Vl. Vl. we were always very pleased to visit. It was a pleasure for me and Nora (my wife) to be with a person mentally strong and healthy, devoid of any “merdihlyundey” and melancholy, which was often found among other people around us.
The report of Arbuzov’s agent to Y. Agranov dated April 18, 1930 states that “the poet’s sister Lyudmila, who was not allowed into the office (there was an investigation), kept repeating: “I can’t believe this. I have to see it myself. It cannot be that Volodya, so strong, so smart, could do this. The plan of Mayakovsky's conversation with Polonskaya on the eve of his death contains the item: “11). I will not end my life I will not deliver such pleasure<вия>thin<ожественному>theater".
By the way, Nikolai Aseev said: “In 1913, in St. Petersburg, a secret consultation of psychiatrists was held under the guise of a party to determine his mental abilities.” The secret consultation found no pathology: Mayakovsky was recognized as a mentally healthy person.
These testimonies cast doubt on the objectivity of G. I. Polyakov's expertise. It would be interesting to know the opinion of independent experts on the conclusion made by in absentia.
The suicide version, approved by the official investigation, was diligently carried out by Lilya Brik and her entourage. They - and not a mother, not sisters, not friends - were looking for a predisposition to suicide in the character of the poet. Lilya Brik claimed that Vladimir Vladimirovich made attempts to commit suicide more than once. The first was in 1916: “... early in the morning I was awakened by a telephone call. The muffled, quiet voice of Mayakovsky: └I shoot myself. Farewell, Lilik."
I shouted: └Wait for me! - she threw something over her dressing gown, rolled down the stairs, begged, drove, beat the driver in the back with her fists. Mayakovsky opened the door for me. There was a pistol on the table in his room. He said: “I shot, misfire, didn’t dare a second time, I was waiting for you” . However, Mayakovsky since 1915 lived on Nadezhdinskaya Street in St. Petersburg, which is a five-minute walk from Zhukovsky Street, where the Briks lived. The episode with the cab driver is a clear inaccuracy that casts doubt on the veracity of the whole story. About the second case, Lilya told the Lefovka artist Elizaveta Lavinskaya: “... when he wrote └About this”, he also shot himself. He called me on the phone and said: "I'm going to shoot myself." I told him to wait for my arrival - now I'm going. Ran out to the Lubyanka. He sits, cries, a revolver is lying next to him, he says there was a misfire, he will not shoot a second time. I yelled at him like he was a boy." However, it is known that Mayakovsky and L. Brik had an agreement not to see each other for two months. They claimed they held him and didn't meet
during the creation of the poem "About it". Let's pay attention to the same plot of each story, where phone calls and misfires appear, to inconsistencies, to the absence of witnesses who could confirm what happened.
L. Brik made attempts to find such a witness. So, she wrote to Elsa Triola on June 29, 1939 (letter No. 29): “2. Volodya very often talked about suicide. Just a little, I threatened: - I'll shoot myself ... " Triolet answered immediately and carefully (letter No. 30): "2). Volodya, in those days, did not talk about suicide with strangers, I never heard of it.
Moreover, in October 1929, Lily Yuryevna, according to her diary, herself actually provoked Mayakovsky to commit suicide: she read aloud lines from a letter allegedly received from Elsa Triolet in front of witnesses that Tatyana Yakovleva was getting married. Apparently, an excess was expected, but it did not follow. Vladimir Vladimirovich left for Leningrad to give lectures. A week later, L. Yu. Brik wrote in her diary: “10/17/1929. I'm worried about Volodya. In the morning I called him in Leningrad.<…> She asked if he would put a bullet in his forehead because of Tatiana(emphasis mine. - N.R.) - they are worried in Paris.
Lilya Yuryevna claimed that Mayakovsky wrote suicide letters more than once, but did not provide a single written evidence. There is no evidence of the existence and said letter of Elsa Triolet.
The question arises: why did Brik need to assure the public of the poet's suicide? I would venture to suggest that Yakov Agranov asked her about this, since the facts indicate that it was this version that suited the leadership of the OGPU; Let's look at why next.
Almost all of the poet's contemporaries had a feeling of some kind of reticence, a mystery that enveloped the last period of his life and death. The event is overgrown with legends. They whispered and hinted at murder. At the same time, they didn’t really believe in the “love boat that crashed into everyday life”: as you know, it “crashed” at Mayakovsky over the past eight to ten years more than once. Mariengof wrote: “What └love boat” crashed? Apparently there were two. Or perhaps three. “When there are so many women, they don’t shoot themselves from unhappy love” (from A. Akhmatova’s notebooks).
Agent "Arbuzov" reported on April 18, 1930: "Conversations in literary-art. circles are significant. Romance lining completely reclines. They say there is a more serious and deeper reason. A turning point had long since taken place in Mayakovsky, and he himself did not believe in what he wrote and hated what he wrote. Agent "SHOROCH" comes to the conclusion, "what if occasion
to suicide. love failures served, then the reasons lie much deeper: in the creative area: the weakening of talent, the discord between the official line of creativity and internal, bohemian tendencies, failures with the last play, consciousness non-values the popularity that Mayak had., etc., the main emphasis on the discord between the social. order and inner motives<…>This opinion was expressed in different shades and variations by: Em. GERMAN (MEEK), E. STYRSKAYA, V. KIRILLOV, B. PASTERNAK, I. NOVIKOV, BAGRITSKY, V. SHKLOVSKY, ARGO, LEVONTIN, ZENKEVICH and many others. friend., - and everyone refers to the fact that they └talk about it. Thus, this opinion can be considered the dominant one.
Several women mentioned that they foresaw the death of the poet: according to the memoirs of E. Lavinskaya, written 18 years later, Mayakovsky allegedly spoke of his intention to shoot himself by accidentally entering the wife of Nathan Altman and even read a suicide letter. Lavinskaya also says that the artist Rachel Smolenskaya was alerted by his strange appearance and the pistol openly lying on the table. With Irina Shchegoleva, Vladimir Vladimirovich allegedly planned to go to Leningrad on the night before his death. On the same night, Musa Malakhovskaya, Valentina Khodasevich and Natalia Bryukhanenko, according to them, offered to spend the night in an apartment in Gendrikov Lane. In Ginzburg's notebooks we find: Musya Malakhovskaya claimed that on the last night he called her on the phone in Leningrad every hour. From the diary of L. Brik: “September 6, 1930. Volodya asked Zina Sveshnikova if she would leave her husband if he began to live with her.<…>I called her on the night of the 12th at half past one, asked to come, but she was uncomfortable. These memories create a sense of the inevitability of the tragedy.
It is not known whether Mayakovsky really invited one of the women to visit him or these are myths, but it is known for sure that he was not alone in the last two days: he met with Polonskaya every day, was at a rehearsal of his play, visited, according to neighbors , an apartment on Lubyanka. On the night of the 12th to the 13th I played cards at the Aseevs' house. I spent the last night visiting Valentin Kataev in the company of artists and artists, where Veronika Polonskaya was also present, they parted almost at five o'clock in the morning. None of those present - neither during interrogations by the investigator, nor in his memoirs - mentioned that Mayakovsky was constantly running to the phone and calling someone. There is no such information in the published reports of the agents of the OGPU, by the way, confirming the version of the journalist Valentin Skoryatin that Mayakovsky was monitored in the last days of his life.
The agents of the OGPU received an order to “lead” Vladimir Vladimirovich, of course, from their leadership, which causes particular bewilderment due to the well-known close “friendship” of Mayakovsky with the bodies of the Political Administration.
The circle of close friends of the poet included too many of their employees to consider this an accident. Among the "friends-Chekists" were Ya. Agranov (Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs G. Yagoda); Z. Volovich (personnel intelligence officer); with another professional intelligence officer, L. Elbert, Mayakovsky was close for ten years, meeting abroad and in Moscow until the day of his death. Vladimir Vladimirovich was also friends with Gorb (aka Roizman), a resident of the OGPU in one of the centers of Russian emigration - Berlin, where the poet and Briki visited so often.
Mayakovsky was friends with the head of the Kharkov GPU, V. M. Gorozhanin, spent a lot of time with him, rested at sea, brought him the Collected Works of Anatole France from Paris, and dedicated the poem “To Soldiers of Dzerzhinsky”. "Citizen gave him a brand new Mauser with a document of ownership".
Mayakovsky's acquaintances also included: P. L. Voikov (Weiner), the plenipotentiary of the USSR in Poland; L. Haykis, Secretary of the Embassy in the USA; J. Maga-lif, employee of the Embassy in Berlin; journalist A. Gai (A. Menshoi), who served in the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs; M. Levidov, who worked at the Trade Delegation in London; M. Krichevsky from the Press Bureau of the Soviet Embassy in Riga. Their names are repeatedly found in the poet's correspondence with Lilya Brik.
Mayakovsky maintained relations with foreign internationalists who assisted the OGPU: the American communist Moreno, who, during the poet's stay in New York, was killed, according to Mayakovsky, by "government assassins"; with the Mexican artist Diego Rivera, who visited Vladimir Vladimirovich with Theodore Dreiser in November 1927, and in 1928 Mayakovsky brought him to his room on Lubyanka, where he showed his pistols.
An indirect confirmation of Mayakovsky's cooperation with the OGPU can be considered too frequent trips abroad, as well as the presence of personal weapons. In the book "The Investigation File of V. V. Mayakovsky" copies of five certificates for pistols (revolvers) that belonged to the poet were reproduced. However, the shot was fired from a pistol not on this list. So he also had an unregistered weapon. There is no information about the surrender of any weapons to Mayakovsky.
“Mayakovsky traveled abroad quite a lot. And these events of his creative and personal life themselves were framed as the fulfillment of some important political task to propagate the ideas of the LEF among the working (and not only) poets of a number of European countries. Beginning in 1922, he traveled abroad on average twice a year. In 1922 - 1929, Mayakovsky repeatedly visited Riga, Prague, Warsaw, Berlin, Koenigsberg, Paris, in 1925 he visited Mexico and the USA. At the same time, he often wrote to Lila Brik about his unwillingness to go: “I am sitting in Paris, as they promised me to give an answer about an American visa in two weeks. Even if they didn’t give me, then at the same second I’ll leave for Moscow ... ”
V. Skoryatin remarked about Mayakovsky's last trip in 1929: “This time the Paris trip turned out to be the longest - over two months. During this time, he will only speak publicly twice.
Questions arise: what did he do abroad, who determined the length of stay, how much money did he spend living there? In 1924, Mayakovsky hosted a banquet for 20 people for Sergei Diaghilev at the prestigious Café des Anglais. He constantly helped financially Elsa Triola and Louis Aragon. Tatyana Yakovleva recalled: “Mayakovsky was fabulously generous, spoiled them (Triole and Aragon. - N.R.), drove to restaurants, made expensive gifts.<…>At that moment, they basically lived on Mayakovsky's money.<…>» . Yes, and Tatiana herself he covered with flowers, paying for the order for the delivery of baskets at the time of departure to Moscow.
Due to the fact that the archives of the OGPU for the 20-30s have not been fully disclosed, we cannot assert that Mayakovsky was a personnel agent of this organization, but he interacted with it quite closely. Members of his "family" - Osip and Lilya Brik - were full-time employees of the Cheka - GPU - NKVD.
In proof of this, Skoryatin cited photocopies of the relevant documents in his book, as well as the memoirs of contemporaries, including Wright-Kovaleva, about L. Brik having a certificate that “allowed her to easily enter institutions closed to all other mortals,” issued to her by “Yanechka” Agranov .
It is possible that the Briks carried out a certain task of observing the Moscow intelligentsia, attracting writers and artists to the LEF, REF, or their “salon”.
At first, contemporaries considered only Brikov to be employees of the Cheka - OGPU, then the turn came to Mayakovsky. L. F. Katsis writes: “... this transformation took place (of the image of Mayakovsky. - N.R.) just between 1923 and 1924." It seems that it did not happen, but became noticeable. “To the age-old question: └So why did Mayakovsky shoot himself?” - Akhmatova calmly answered: “It was not necessary to be friends with the Chekists” .
What did Mayakovsky do that made the OGPU organize surveillance of him? Since when has it been running?
He may have become interested in "organs" after meeting Ellie Jones in Nice in 1928. It's not about their romance. Rather, it is the result of Mayakovsky's trip to America in 1925, during which Isaiah Khurgin, the chairman of the board of Amtorg, who took care of Mayakovsky during the trip and was friends with E. Jones, was killed. Stalin's former secretary B. Bazhanov recalled: “There are no diplomatic relations with America. There is no embassy or trade mission there. There is Amtorg - a trading mission that trades. In fact, it performs the functions of an embassy, a trade mission, and a base for all the underground work of the Comintern and the GPU ... ". Mayakovsky arrived in New York on August 1, and on August 19 Khurgin went to rest in the suburbs together with E. M. Sklyansky, director of the Mossukno trust, who had come on a business trip. They did not invite Mayakovsky with them. Sklyansky - Trotsky's deputy in the Revolutionary Military Council (transferred to Mossukno shortly before the trip) and his friend, was sent to America at Stalin's insistence. August 24 Khurgin and Sklyansky tragically drowned under mysterious circumstances. Bazhanov wrote in his memoirs: "Mekhlis and I were firmly convinced that Sklyansky had been drowned on Stalin's orders and that the 'accident' had been organized."
Mayakovsky hard survived the death of Khurgin and Sklyansky. Ellie Jones (real name Elizaveta Siebert), who during the Civil War worked in a famine relief mission in Samara and later emigrated to the United States, said that Mayakovsky knew that this death was not accidental. In 1928, he met with Ellie in Nice, they talked all night. Mayakovsky kept a secret affair with Ellie, although both he and Briki did not consider love affairs shameful and did not hide. For some reason, L. Yu. Brick was looking for Jones and her daughter.
During the analysis of Mayakovsky's papers after his death, two photographs of "unclarified" women were found and attached to the materials of the investigation file. There is an assumption that L. Brik gave them to Agranov, since the envelope was not numbered and not hemmed. On April 14, 1930, no papers, including women's photographs, were seized from the poet's room. However, five days later, in the decision to complete the investigation, these two photographs already appear: on one of them - Tatyana Yakovleva, on the other - either her sister Lyudmila (Mayakovsky helped her leave Soviet Russia for Paris), or Nadezhda Simon, wife the Parisian doctor at whom Mayakovsky first saw Tatyana. An urgent order was given to the agents to collect information about T. Yakovleva, the agent's certificate was filed in the file. The astonishing attention with which on the death of the poet the employees of the OGPU reacted to the one with whom Mayakovsky had not met for a year; more than that - during this time she got married, and he became interested in another.
Mayakovsky was introduced to Yakovleva by E. Triolet in 1928, immediately after the poet's return from Nice to Paris, in Dr. Simon's waiting room. When comparing the memories of both women, interesting details emerge: the doctor, a surprisingly broad specialist, treats teeth (for Elsa) and bronchitis (for Tatyana); the doctor's wife finds out about Yakovleva's sudden call to the doctor and manages to warn Elsa; the doctor makes an appointment for both immediately, early in the morning; Triolet brings Mayakovsky to him almost from the station. However, judging by the recollections of eyewitnesses, the acquaintance was planned and, therefore, necessary for something. The version of a non-random acquaintance is confirmed by the lines of a letter from Tatyana to her mother, who lived in Penza: “To him (Mayakovsky. - V.S.) <…>Ehrenburg and other acquaintances talked endlessly about me, and I received greetings from him when he had not yet seen me. Then they invited me to one house specifically to introduce them. ”
The circle of emigrants who provided assistance to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the OGPU abroad was much wider than is commonly believed. Paris at that time was the intelligence center of the world. Tatyana, who moved in a mixed society of Russian emigrants, the Parisian "golden youth", diplomats and people of art, could be of some interest to the special services. It is possible that this is why Triolet introduced her to Mayakovsky. And maybe it was not Mayakovsky who “looked after” Tatyana, but she looked after him.
Roman Yakobson wrote that Tatyana Yakovleva answered "evasively" to Mayakovsky's marriage proposals. She accepted the courtship of other admirers, including the impoverished Viscount du Plessis, whom she later married. The age difference between them and Mayakovsky was considerable. Doubt about Yakovleva’s love is also strengthened by Triolet’s letter to Lila Brik, where, according to Pierre Simon, the doctor’s brother, gossip about Yakovleva is cited: with du Plessis “Tatyana lived a long time before Volodya, and when Volodya was. They rented a house in Fontainebleau. For his part, Mayakovsky was not limited to Yakovleva: he corresponded with Ellie Jones, advertised relations with L. Brik, together with Tatiana bought Lilya a car and gifts, although it would be more logical to go shopping with Elsa Triolet, who is better acquainted with her sister's taste. A month after his last trip to Paris, he began an affair with Polonskaya. The question arises: did Mayakovsky and Yakovleva really have love, or was it just a game of it?
Apparently, Mayakovsky was being monitored not only by the agents of the OGPU, but also by Briki. “Lilya Yuryevna, knowing how hard he endures the absence of loved ones, provided not only for Elbert’s stay in Gendrikovo, but also asked other mutual acquaintances to visit the poet.<…>P. Lavut often visited Mayakovsky, and his old friend Brikov L. Greenkrug came every day.<…>Polonskaya and Yanshin came, and besides them, no one was there all this time ... ".
V. A. Katanyan writes: “In March of the 30th year Snob (Elbert. - N.R.) even lived with him in Gendrikovo for several days ... ". “In what conversations with the Snob<…>their breakfasts and dinners took place, we don’t know, but Mayakovsky’s state of mind obviously did not improve from them. And it’s not entirely clear why the “Snob”, who had comfortable housing in Moscow, settled in Gendrikov Lane.
In May 1929, Osip Brik introduced Mayakovsky to Veronika Polonskaya - Nora, a friend of Lily Yurievna. Mayakovsky knew how to please women, he had admirers, and Briki had never looked for girls for him before. And then Tatyana, then Veronica. Apparently, something in the behavior of the poet began to disturb the Briks, perhaps they felt the appearance of some kind of secret in him. I’ll guess that it was this, and not the courtship of Yakovleva, that led to the famous quarrel with Lily upon Mayakovsky’s return from Paris: the “family” did not quarrel over novels. Maybe Veronika Vitoldovna was introduced to him because Polonskaya was in touch with one of the Briks, and she was instructed to find out the question of interest.
Judging by the plan of the conversation with Polonskaya, drawn up before his death, Vladimir Vladimirovich doubted her love - and wanted to "know what is being done." In the days preceding the tragedy, Mayakovsky, who had a cold, worked, checked the preparation of melomime, and resolved issues related to Nora. Polonskaya behaved ambiguously: on April 11, she and Vladimir Vladimirovich had a strong quarrel, "dispersed in mutual enmity", but in the evening they were seen together in his car. In the evening, the four of them played poker with Aseev and Yanshin. On April 12, Vladimir Vladimirovich called Polonskaya at the theater and made an appointment for 15:00. On the same day, as follows from the date stamped, he wrote a suicide letter and a plan for a "truce with his beloved woman." In the "plan" there are such phrases: "If they love, then the conversation is pleasant"; “I will not end my life, I will not deliver such pleasure. thin theater” (we already brought it); "Breake downthis very second or know what is being done. Apparently, this conversation was very important for the poet, if he thought out its course so carefully. As Polonskaya writes in her memoirs, on this day (April 12) "after the performance we met at his place." During the conversation, Mayakovsky reconciles with Polonskaya. She recalled that allegedly promised to become his wife again: after that he was in a good mood, accompanied her by car to the house, went to an apartment in Gendrikov lane, called her in the evening; “We talked for a long time and very well,” dined at the restaurant of the Herzen House. But for some reason (with a good conversation!) Polonskaya “asked him to leave, at least for two days, somewhere in a rest home. I remember that I marked these two days in his notebook. Those days were April 13 and 14. The request not to meet in the coming days is mentioned both in the interrogation protocol and in the memoirs, which convinces of its authenticity. A pause of two days suggests that Polonskaya needed to consult with someone regarding the questions posed by Mayakovsky.
Polonskaya writes that they reconciled that day. It seems that they reconciled on the 11th - if they played cards together; and in this context the will allegedly written the next morning does not fit. One thing is certain: on the 12th, and on the 13th, and on the 14th, Mayakovsky tried to call Veronika Vitoldovna to an important conversation for herself, and she tried to evade this conversation. Polonskaya claimed that the conversation was about her going to Mayakovsky from Yanshin. Note that this is known only according to Polonskaya.
Polonskaya's testimony, given to the investigator after Mayakovsky's death, and her memoirs, written eight years later, have significant discrepancies. So, from the protocol of interrogation, it follows that on April 13, Mayakovsky took her to a morning performance with a stop at an apartment in Lubyansky Lane, called the theater several times during the day, and at 4 p.m. Polonskaya herself went to Mayakovsky and asked "to leave me alone for 3 days, that then I will meet with him. In her memoirs, she writes that “on April 13, we did not see each other in the afternoon. He called at lunchtime and offered to go to the races in the morning. I said that I would go to the races with Yanshin and the Moscow Art Theater<…>. He asked what I would do in the evening. I said that they called me to Kataev, but I don’t know yet that I won’t go to him and what I will do. But after all, it follows from the protocol of interrogation that on April 13 (with a suicide letter in his pocket?) the poet takes Polonskaya through all of Moscow, visits, plans work for the following days. After a "good conversation" does not destroy the suicide letter prepared in advance. He promises to leave for a two-day vacation - and immediately invites her to the races the next day ... Solid contradictions.
One thing is certain: on April 13 they had a serious conversation. She tells the investigator that at 4 pm she went to see him from the theater “for half an hour”. Neighbors confirm that she came, but they call a different time. From the interrogation of the housekeeper and neighbor Mayakovsky N. A. Gavrilova: Polonskaya "<…>very often visited his room<…>. April 13 at about 1 pm, Mayakovsky asked me to bring two bottles of wine, which I brought along the wine through a small hole in the door, and there was some woman in the room at that time<…>it was undoubtedly Polonskaya, at the time when I was serving wine, Mayakovsky said that I should bring him a cigarette for the last time ”<...>I brought him two packs and left the cigarette, he also took it through the door. From the protocol of interrogation of a neighbor M. S. Tatariyskaya: “On April 13, he handed me 50 rubles. and asked me to tell Giza, these two days he was visibly nervous, often running away<л>and ran to the apartment. He had a woman these days, but I did not see her, but only heard her voice. On April 13, in the evening, he was behind the wall, moaning, groaning. When he left I don't know. Apparently too late."
According to Gavrilova, it turns out that Veronika Vitoldovna did not come to Mayakovsky “after the performance” at 4 pm, but much earlier, when she allegedly had a daytime performance. According to neighbors, the conversation turned out to be long, and not half an hour, as she wrote in her memoirs; On the 13th, Mayakovsky, as his neighbor Bolshin, who visited him during the day, noted during interrogation, “was in a depressed state.” Apparently, Polonskaya did not promise to go to him and become his wife, as she slyly writes in her memoirs. Veronica Vitoldovna could not but remember such a conversation.
The interrogation protocol records that Polonskaya told Mayakovsky that she did not love him, and that she did not intend to leave her husband. In memory, it's the other way around.
The conclusion suggests itself that during the first interrogation, excited, Polonskaya told the truth (perhaps not all). In the winter of 1929/1930, she decided to break off the relationship that had become difficult, but for some reason she herself could not do it: she wanted him to leave for a few days, hoping (after the arrival of the Briks?) to cut the tangled knot of relations. Mayakovsky, on the other hand, stubbornly sought meetings to ask important questions. Maybe he felt that some kind of information was leaking through her, doubted her love and began to insist on marriage, wanting to check how things really were. Hence the point “Know what is being done” in the conversation plan. For example, is it not on behalf of the Brikovs that she “fell in love” with him so quickly, and whether all the details of their relationship and conversations become known to the “family”. Therefore, he went without an invitation to visit Kataev, where Polonskaya should be.
There he tried to find out something from Veronika Vitoldovna. The showdown was witnessed by Kataev, his wife and guests - Reginin, Yanshin, Livanov. Those present called it "flower flirting". His notes, Kataev noted, the poet threw across the table with the gesture of a gambler. In anticipation of an answer, he was nervous, fiddling with a bearskin. Only Polonskaya read them. But she did not disclose what issues they discussed with Mayakovsky in writing. Polonskaya did not mention the notes in the interrogation protocol, but in her memoirs she says that Mayakovsky, during a serious conversation before the shot, told her that "he had already destroyed the pages of the notebook on which our yesterday's correspondence was filled with mutual insults." prudently.
Mayakovsky, apparently, was unable to find out the question that interested him, so he went to see Polonskaya home and agreed - with Yanshin - about tomorrow's conversation with Veronika Vitoldovna. Yanshin's position in this context seems interesting: allegedly knowing about Mayakovsky's demands regarding his wife, he shows neither curiosity for correspondence, nor jealousy, and calmly allows me to talk with her the next day. The feeling that Mikhail Mikhailovich was sure that the conversation was not about love and divorce, that Yanshin knew about the assignment, was forced to endure the poet's courtship and, if possible, covered his wife himself. This explains both his attitude to the "friendship" of his wife with Mayakovsky, and why Polonskaya did not marry Mayakovsky, and did not refuse him directly. She did not leave a child from him, had an abortion. Recall: when the close relationship between Polonskaya and Mayakovsky became public, Yanshin immediately divorced her.
The discrepancies in the testimony and memoirs of Polonskaya are obvious. Veronika Vitoldovna clearly wants to correct her behavior "for the better" and is hiding something. It seems that the testimony of witnesses to the death of Mayakovsky and documents, including the protocol of interrogation, drawn up in "hot pursuit", as less thought out, carry more reliable information. Yes, Polonskaya did not want publicity of close relations with Mayakovsky and lied to the investigator in response to a question about cohabitation with him, but it is unlikely that she had time, under the impression of what had happened, to think through all the small details, and therefore the testimony may turn out to be more truthful than memories, which are thought out, weighed with a cool head, and even discussed with L. Brik. Let's try, by comparing the available documents, to imagine how everything really happened.
Remembering that in the protocol of interrogation, Polonskaya directly says that on April 13 she finally told him “that I don’t love him, I won’t live with him just like I don’t intend to leave my husband”, let's see how events developed further.
On April 14 at 9:15 a.m. “MAYAKOVSKY phoned me at my apartment and said that he would arrive immediately; I replied that it was good, he would be waiting at the gate. When I got dressed and went out into the yard, MAYAKOVSKY walked towards the door of our apartment. We came to see him at the Lubyanka; Polonskaya warned that at half past eleven she had a rehearsal. We entered the room. “It was about 10 o'clock. morning. I did not undress, he undressed; I sat on the sofa, he sat on the carpet, which was sent on the floor at my feet and asked me to stay with him for at least one or two weeks. I told him that it was impossible, because I did not love him. To this he said - └well, well ”and asked if we would meet; I answered that └yes”, but not now. When he was about to leave for a rehearsal at the theater, he said that he would not go to see him off and asked me if I had money for a taxi. I answered no. He gave me 10 rubles, which I took; said goodbye to me, shook my hand. Note that Polonskaya, like a zombie, dutifully goes to his house to repeat her “no”. Why couldn't it be said near her house or in the car, for example? Did you have to take something from the room on Lubyanka? Maybe something was left in this room after a long and difficult conversation the day before? She does not undress: witnesses confirm that she was wearing a summer coat and a blue cap. Mayakovsky, apparently, expected to stay in the room, as he hung up his cane and took off his jacket, remaining in one shirt.
What were they talking about? Is it really about marriage? Or about something else? The bookseller came - Mayakovsky opened the door for him, not letting him into the room. The bookseller Loktev, who was invited as a witness, confirmed Polonskaya's testimony that the poet was kneeling in front of her when she was sitting on the sofa: the moment when Mayakovsky opened the door for me, she was sitting; and gr. Mayakovsk<ий>knelt before her(emphasis mine. - N.R.)" . Valentin Skoryatin read the word as "whisper", however, when compared with the spelling of the letters "t" and "w" in other words, the doubt that "stomp" is written disappears.
So, the bookseller came to Mayakovsky's apartment at 10 o'clock in the morning. knocked. After the second knock, “the greatly agitated c. Mayakovsky ripped open the door and said: comrade, throw the books at me, don’t come in, but you will get the money in the next room. It seems that Mayakovsky did not open the door for him on his knees. Apparently, having heard voices and not waiting for the door to be opened, the bookseller peeped through the crack and saw a “kneeling scene”. Then he knocked a second time, and Mayakovsky, jumping up, flung open the door with a jerk and directed the messenger to the neighbor. Bookseller gave the books to a neighbor, wrote out a receipt and received money for the previous order.
Apparently, Polonskaya tried to escape (after the abortion, she felt a physical disgust for the poet) - that's why there was "stomp" in the room - and Mayakovsky left her by force. Their struggle could continue even after the bookseller's departure. If Mayakovsky began to detain her, then at some point she could grab a pistol, shoot out of desperation and hit her in the heart. The version that Polonskaya shot him when he tried not to let her go does not look implausible. That is why he was lying on the couch, as Levin's neighbor and the artist Denisovsky, one of the first to arrive at the scene, remembered. And his mouth could be open, as Lavinskaya remembered, if he tried to prevent the shot when he saw the gun in Nora's hand.
From the interrogation protocol of Polonskaya: “I went out the door of his room, he stayed inside it, and heading to go to the front door of the apartment, at that time a shot rang out in his room and I immediately understood what was the matter, but did not dare to enter, began to shout . At the scream, the apartment neighbors ran out and after that we entered only into the room; MAYAKOVSKY lay on the floor with outstretched arms and legs with a wound in his chest. She approached him and asked what you did, but he did not answer. I began to cry, scream, and I don’t remember what happened next. ”
From the memoirs of Polonskaya: she went out, “walked a few steps to the front door” of the apartment. “There was a shot. My legs buckled, I screamed and rushed along the corridor: I could not bring myself to enter. It seemed to me that a very long time had passed before I decided to enter. But, obviously, I entered in a moment: there was still a cloud of smoke from the shot in the room. Vladimir Vladimirovich lay on the carpet with his arms outstretched. There was a tiny bloody spot on the chest." The clock showed 10.15. According to her, Mayakovsky was still alive: “His eyes were open, he looked straight at me and kept trying to raise his head. He seemed to want to say something, but his eyes were no longer alive. The face and neck were red, redder than usual. Then his head fell, and he gradually began to turn pale.
So, according to Polonskaya, Mayakovsky shot himself when she went out the door of his room into the corridor. But about what Polonskaya was in the room at the time of the shot, neighbors testified. Nikolay Krivtsov, Mayakovsky’s 23-year-old neighbor: “After 10-15 hours, I heard some kind of pop in my room, like a clap of my hands, and at the same moment I went into Skobelev’s room and said in an excited voice that there was something in Mayakovsky’s room slammed, I immediately, together with Skoboleva, left my room, heading towards Mayakovsky’s apartment, at that moment the door of Mayakovsky’s room was open and an unknown citizen ran screaming from there, as I later found out by the name of Polonskaya, shouted └ save, help ” └Mayakovsky shot himself ”heading towards our kitchen, into the first Polonskaya from the kitchen, I saw Mayakovsky, who was on the threshold of the room, the door was open, I can’t say whether she was in the room at the time of the shot or went in after it, but this gap was a few seconds , after her screams, I immediately went into the room. Mayakovsky was lying on the floor with a gunshot wound in his chest, he immediately called an ambulance, Polonskaya stood on the threshold of the room, crying a lot and screaming for help, the neighbors advised her to meet an ambulance, which she brought to the apartment in about five minutes<…>» . Krivtsov is cautious in his testimony - perhaps he did not want to harm Polonskaya, not knowing all the circumstances.
The housekeeper of the neighbors in the apartment, the Bolshins, N. P. Skobina, spoke more definitely (Krivtsov called her Skobeleva and Skoboleva). Skobina, in the presence of witnesses, caught Polonskaya in a lie and gave confident evidence that she was in the room at the time of the poet's death. “Moyakovsky, together with Polonskaya, went into the room, the door of which he closed behind him, less than 15-20 minutes had passed, when I heard a shot in the kitchen in Mayakovsky’s room, sounding like a scarecrow, leaving the kitchen to another room, I immediately informed Krivtsov Nikolai Osipovich, about our misfortune, he asked what I said that Mayakovsky had a shot, it was quiet for a few seconds, I heard only some sound of Mayakovsky, listening to what would happen next, being at the door of the kitchen, which is located opposite the door of Mayakovsky’s room, I saw how the door opened room and at the same time I heard the cry of Polonskaya, "save me" grabbed her head, which left the room, I, together with Krivtsov, rushed into the inside of the room, then Mayakovsky lay on the floor. Krivtsov, began to call the ambulance station on the phone, and I ran out into the stairs and began to shout at the cry, the neighbors, Polonskaya, came together, it was also right there in the room, someone said that they needed to meet an ambulance, and it went to the courtyard of the house, from where it led in speed doctor, orderlies, and he, when examining Moyakovsky, said that he had died, turning to those present asked how it could be Polonskaya, stood behind me, I answered that she was with this citizen, pointing to Polonskaya, after that she only said that she I arrived at the place with him and began to go out when I heard a shot, I returned back, to which I answered no, it’s not true, you opened the door two seconds later and asked for └help ”I know that Polonskaya went to Moyakovsky very often, she visited Moyakovsky almost every day and in the evening."
From the story of Reginin, recorded by Mikhail Present in hot pursuit, it also follows that the shot was fired in the presence of Polonskaya: “... Reginin says: a few minutes after Mayakovsky brought Polonskaya to him, a GIZ agent knocked on the door<…>. Mayakovsky got angry - └Not up to you now, comrade! ”, But, it seems, he got this money, and the agent left. And after some, a very short time, a shot rang out, and Polonskaya ran out of Mayakovsky’s room and began to call the hostess or neighbors ... ".
If Polonskaya shot Mayakovsky, it is not surprising that she saw and remembered a puff of smoke, a rush of blood from the shot, which caused instant redness, and blurred eyes. The neighbors, who entered a minute later, did not observe the described picture. She herself, describing how blood rushed into Mayakovsky's face after the shot, how he fell and tried to raise his head
and then he began to turn pale, in fact confirms his presence next to the body at the very moment of death. Maybe it was in those seconds that Polonskaya saw his last look and said to him: “What did you do?”, Meaning that he provoked her to kill.
The presence of Polonskaya in the room at the time of the murder can be considered proven by the testimony of two witnesses and, indirectly, by her own. If we assume that Mayakovsky committed suicide, then it turns out that while Polonskaya took two or three steps to the door and went out into the corridor, he managed to go to the table or to the jacket hanging on the chair, took out a pistol, stood up so that after the shot fall on a soft ottoman, removed the fuse, set the pistol in a rather uncomfortable position: he brought his left hand closer - he didn’t press it! - to the left side (try to do it!), slightly took the pistol away from the shirt (there are no traces of gunpowder near the hole, as the examination showed) - and then fired. It is unlikely that he would have managed to do this in the couple of seconds that it took Polonskaya to go out into the corridor. Yes, and they usually shoot from a pistol in the head, and not in the chest: it is more convenient and reliable.
Investigator Sinev wrote in the protocol of the inspection of the scene: “Shirt with traces of opal.” This means that the shell of the bullet burned the fabric along the diameter of the hole. But when fired at point-blank range, dots from powder particles that did not have time to burn should remain. They are not here. Valentin Skoryatin himself examined the poet's death shirt and claims that even with the help of a magnifying glass he did not find any traces of a powder burn. So, he concludes, the muzzle was far enough from the chest. On the left - it means that he shot with his left hand. Not without reason, after the autopsy, which found a bullet on the left side, Yakov Agranov was interested in whether Mayakovsky was left-handed. M. Present writes: “Mayakovsky was left-handed. The bullet pierced the heart, lungs and kidney." Denisovsky recalls: “... suddenly Agranov comes and asks if Vladimir Vladimirovich was left-handed. It is very important. It turned out. That the bullet passed from the left side and he could only shoot himself with his left hand. We all confirmed that he was left-handed and right-handed. Handed over left, played billiards right and left
etc." . But for some reason they did not find out which hand he usually fired from.
Note that the bullet went from top to bottom: as if the shooter was standing, and the one who was shot was sitting. The report of the examination of the scene indicates that the inlet with a diameter of about 6 mm is located 3 centimeters above the left nipple. There is no exit hole. On the right side of the back in the region of the last ribs under the skin, a solid foreign body is palpable, small in size. Let's look at the conclusion of the examination of the shirt in which the poet died in 1991: “The damage on the shirt of V. V. Mayakovsky is an input gunshot, formed when fired from a side stop distance in the direction from front to back and somewhat from right to left almost in a horizontal plane.<…>immediately after being wounded, V. V. Mayakovsky was in a horizontal position, lying on his back.<…>The shape and small size of blood blots located below the damage, and the peculiarity of their location along the arc indicate that they arose as a result of the fall of small drops of blood from a small height onto the shirt in the process of moving down the right hand, splashed with blood, or from a weapon that was in the same hand." The conclusion of the examination about traces of antimony, which is formed during the thermal decomposition of the capsule composition, is interesting: it indicates that the center of the inlet on the shirt "relative to the center of damage is shifted somewhat to the right."
That is, either someone standing in front of Mayakovsky fired from the right hand, or the poet himself fired from the left hand, since it is extremely inconvenient to start the right hand with a weapon from the left side. And it was impossible for Mayakovsky to hold the pistol with his left hand at such a distance from his chest that the powder gases would not scorch his shirt.
The timing shows that Mayakovsky could not have committed suicide in the 2-3 seconds it took for Polonskaya to get out into the corridor. He would have to take out a weapon and either load it, or (in case the pistol was already loaded) remove the safety catch, cock the trigger, find the exact place of the shot, take an uncomfortable position with an emphasis on the left side, move his hand away so as not to scorch his shirt with powder gases , and even raise this hand (the bullet passed from top to bottom) - and only after that shoot. If we imagine that Polonskaya tried to get up and leave, and he, sitting on the couch, held her, tried to pull her to him and she shot at him in a state of passion, then this explains both the movement of the bullet from top to bottom, and traces of opal on the shirt, and even those changes in his face that she noticed in the first seconds after the shot.
It seems that this version could be verified in our time by an investigative experiment.
From the protocol of interrogation of a neighbor Tatariyskaya: “On the morning of April 14, he arrived with Polonskaya (who visited him often in winter) at 9 o’clock. 40 min. by my watch (but it seems to be behind). Soon a collector from Giza came and he very rudely asked him to come to me.<…>At about 10:30 Vlad knocked on the door. Vladim. and was very calm. He asked for matches to light a cigarette.
I suggested that he take the receipts from Giza and the money. Taking it in his hands, he returned from the door and handed it to me and said “I'll talk to you in the evening” He left For all the time behind the wall it was calm and quiet. At 10 o'clock. 8 min. I also went to work." Let us note that a few minutes before his death, Mayakovsky promises his neighbor to talk to her in the evening - and suddenly suicide, to which he allegedly went for two days ...
Valentin Skoryatin draws the attention of readers to the following detail: “None of those present [in the apartment] (including P. Lavut) remembered that V. Polonskaya spoke about the revolver in the hands of the poet when she ran out of the room. Why? After all, this is an important detail! She would immediately explain everything: Polonskaya runs out - Mayakovsky immediately puts a bullet in the heart. And no doubt about suicide. Skoryatin believes that later the investigator or Agranov came up with and forced Polonskaya to sign the version about the gun. Mayakovsky's entrepreneur Lavut recalled that the investigator, who took evidence from Polonskaya, first of all gave the act to Agranov, who read it to someone over the phone. “The act indicated that when Polonskaya heard a shot on the stairs,<…>she ran downstairs, got into the car and drove away. She allegedly fled from Vladimir Vladimirovich, frightened by the revolver that he pulled out. She thought he was going to shoot her." If we assume that the gun was in the hands of Polonskaya, it becomes clear why she did not talk about it at the beginning.
Polonskaya got frightened, tried to run away, jumped out of the room, slamming the door, rushing along the corridor. Together with the neighbors who arrived in time, she approached the threshold - and made sure that the poet was dead. From the protocol of Polonskaya's interrogation: "As a result, an ambulance was called." While in the room, someone told me to go meet her. I went out into the yard and outside, waited about 5 minutes. An ambulance arrived, with which I indicated the apartment, and when examining MAYAKOVSKY, they pronounced him dead. After that, I felt bad, I went out into the courtyard, and then went to the theater, since my rehearsal should be there.
The interrogation protocol says that Polonskaya went out "into the yard and into the street(emphasis mine. - N.R.), waited about 5 minutes. In fact, I think she ran to warn Agranov: it's nearby - across the road. She managed to approach the arrival of the ambulance, entered with the brigade. Bolshin's testimony confirms that Polonskaya was waiting for an ambulance at the gate, that is, she could have managed to run to the Lubyanka, report the incident and return. By the way, no source says who so urgently called Agranov and his colleagues. From the memoirs of E. Lavinskaya: “Neighbor<…>she said that, having run into the shot, she found him alive - he was still breathing. Here come the comrades(emphasis mine. - N.R.)" . Note - not just a task force, but "comrades with generals' shoulder straps" - Y. Agranov and S. Gendin.
With the arrival of the OGPU officers, mysteries began - with a change in the position of the body, with the weapon from which the poet was killed. According to one report, he was lying with his head to the door. So it appears in the protocol of the inspection of the scene, a neighbor R. Ya. Gurevich told about this: “I remember that people were crowding in a small hallway. Polonskaya stood leaning against the doorframe leading to Mayakovsky's room. She, worried, inconsistently told about what had happened. I clearly remember: one leg of Polonskaya is in the hallway, the other is in the room. And almost at her very feet - the face of Mayakovsky, as if crouched against the parquet floorboards. The head is turned to the side. With his whole body, he seemed to have leaned on an old, shabby rug. There was a pistol lying by the ottoman.” N. Aseev, who also found himself in Lubyansky Lane some time after the shot, recalled: “He was lying with his toes on the desk, head to the door» . Other eyewitnesses recall, for example, the artist Denisovsky, that he was lying with his head to the window.
If the corpse was lying on an ottoman, with its right arm and leg dangling (as Levina and Denisovsky pointed out), then the cartridge case could not be at a distance of a meter from the left side, as indicated in the protocol: the back of the ottoman is located on the left. From the protocol of the inspection of the scene: “Between the legs of the corpse lies a revolver of the └Mauser system”,<…>not a single cartridge was found in the revolver. On the left side of the corpse at a distance of one meter on the floor lies an empty cartridge case from a Mauser revolver of the specified caliber. Gurevich, as mentioned above, saw the pistol “near the couch,” Denisovsky saw it “on the floor,” but not between his legs: “He was lying with his head to the window, his feet to the door, with open eyes, with a small open dot on a light shirt near his heart. His left leg was on the couch, his right leg was slightly lowered, and his body and head were on the floor. There was a Browning on the floor." It turns out that the body half slid to the floor. Most likely, at first, the body, half-lowered from the couch, was laid on the floor, then it was turned over either when examining the scene (recall the reference in the protocol to the absence of an exit hole in the back), or when they were looking for something under it. For example, a sleeve. Apparently, the protocol for the inspection of the scene was drawn up after the body was moved. V. Skoryatin saw this as a deliberate concealment of some evidence.
The following detail is noteworthy: neither Polonskaya nor the neighbors mention the sound of a body falling to the floor. It could not be if the body fell on the couch. Nina Levina, a neighbor (she was 9 at the time), was playing with other children in her room. They did not immediately understand what had happened, and left the room when Polonskaya rushed about in front of the door, into a large corridor. Seeing the children, the actress said that Vladimir Vladimirovich shot himself, and immediately left. They opened the door to the room: Mayakovsky was lying on the corner of the couch. The right hand dangled to the floor. There was a revolver on the floor. The guys rushed to the next, 11th apartment, called L. D. Raikovskaya. She ordered Mayakovsky to be placed on a rug in front of the couch. Vladimir Vladimirovich was laid with his head to the window, his feet to the door. "I saw it well and remembered it for the rest of my life." From the interrogation of M.Yu. Raikovskaya, I didn’t see anyone else in the room at that moment, Mayakovsky, he was still alive for about 4 minutes, but he was in an unconscious state, lying on the floor ... ". Bolshin's testimony confirms Raikovskaya's presence in Mayakovsky's room even before the arrival of the police: it is possible that he was indeed lowered to the floor from the sofa before the arrival of the investigative team.
Similar discrepancies also apply to the weapon from which the shot was fired: Mauser No. 312045 is named in the protocol of the inspection of the scene, Mikhail Prezent wrote in his diary from someone's words about the Mauser. V. Katanyan wrote that he saw Mayakovsky, who “was lying on the floor, arms and legs spread out, with a stain of gore on his shirt, and a Mauser 7.65 (meaning the caliber. - N.R.), the same one that he acquired in the twenty-sixth year in └Dynamo ”, - cocked! - lay on the left. Cocked, this means that the last cartridge has been fired, in other words, the eight-shot pistol was prepared for one shot. Katanyan either did not know, or kept the secret of acquiring a Mauser, but only sporting weapons, and not military ones, could be bought at Dynamo. Among the weapons listed for Mayakovsky, there was no pistol with that number.
Denisovsky believed that Mayakovsky shot himself with a Browning gun. Agranov presented as material evidence Browning No. 268979, also not listed as Mayakovsky. Either the numbers of the Browning and the bayard belonging to Mayakovsky (No. 268579) were mixed up - the number 9 instead of 5 - or a pistol from the same series, issued to someone else, so the difference is one digit. (Of the four Brownings registered with Mayakovsky, only one certificate has a pistol number: No. 42508.) For some reason, the investigators did not check by registration number who was listed as the weapon from which the fatal shot was fired.
Since some other pistol was involved in the case, there are great doubts about Lily Brik's statement that Mayakovsky again loaded the pistol with one cartridge. From the correspondence of L. Brik and E. Triolet (letter 7): “Volodya, like a player, shot from a completely new, never fired revolver; He took out the clip, left only one bullet in the muzzle - and this is 50 percent - a misfire. Such a misfire was already 13 years ago, in St. Petersburg. He tempted fate for the second time. He shot himself at Nora, but she can be blamed like an orange peel on which he slipped, fell and crashed to death. Attached to the investigation file is an envelope with a spent cartridge case, which is not numbered and “most likely inscribed by L. Brik.<…>How the envelope with the sleeve ended up in the hands of Lily Yuryevna and who instructed her to sign it is unknown. Where did L. Brik, who allegedly was not in Moscow in those days, get this cartridge case? The investigators recorded the presence of the cartridge case in the report of the inspection of the scene - they also had to withdraw the cartridge case. Or did Lilya bring a cartridge case from another pistol, which Agranov presented as material evidence and which did not belong to Mayakovsky? And where is the bullet that was taken out during the autopsy and which, according to Denisovsky, was held in the palm of his hand, Agranov? Did the attached cartridge case correspond to the bullet seized during the autopsy and the pistol presented as material evidence? It was never found out which pistol interrupted Mayakovsky's life.
Where does L. Brik get accurate knowledge about the revolver, if it has not even been established exactly what brand it was? How many bullets did he have? Was it new or used? Why - “the second time”, if earlier she herself allegedly spoke about two earlier cases? Again, either discrepancies, or the creation of a myth.
The presence of numerous “holes” in the investigation into the circumstances of the death argues that there was no suicide, that, most likely, Mayakovsky was shot by Polonskaya, but the investigation did not consider this version for some good reasons. It was not without reason that high-ranking leaders from several services of the OGPU immediately arrived on the scene: in addition to the head of the secret department, Ya.
In Arkady Vaksberg's book "The Mystery and Magic of Lily Brik" it is written: "What connection existed between Mayakovsky and counterintelligence? Or intelligence? If she was not, then why on earth such a high rank from this department (S. G. Gendin. - N.R.) rushed in immediately after the shot and personally searched the poet's study, mainly interested in letters and papers?<…>The search for an imaginary compromising evidence would not immediately lead to Gendrikov such a host of Lubyanka cones of the first row.<…>In an illiterate police protocol drawn up in hot pursuit, Gendin is named the head of the 7th department of the KRO, which he really was until February 16, 1930<…>. In fact, the above-named comrade headed the newly created 9th and 10th (both at once!) Departments of the KRO (counterintelligence department) of the OGPU, just created (in February).<…>The ninth dealt with └contacts with counter-revolutionary white emigration", the tenth - └contacts with foreigners".<…>Comrade Gendin<…>rushed to Gendrikov immediately after the murder, and this is quite logical, since the person who had just killed himself was directly related to the competence of both the ninth department and the tenth. Pushing aside the other crowd, Gendin rushed to the drawers of the desk of the writer Moyakovsky, Vladimir Vladimirovich. So it was written in the police act. Apparently, the required documents were very important and there was a hope that they might be somewhere here. Only Gendin did not come to Gendrikov immediately after the murder - here Vaksberg is mistaken, Gendin and the whole group were in an apartment in Lubyansky Lane, as evidenced by other people who arrived at the place of Mayakovsky's death.
In the investigative file there is a memo about the direction on May 4, 1930, to the head of the counterintelligence department of the OGPU Gendin personally, “just in case”, a photograph of Tatyana Yakovleva with an address written in her hand, as it is said, in the case of Mayakovsky. There was also a notice of her marriage to Bertrand du Plessis, her photo and a photograph of an unknown woman. According to one version, this is the wife of Dr. Simon, according to another, this is a photo of Tatyana's sister, Lyudmila Yakovleva (we have already mentioned this). A day after the death of the poet, the Valentinov agent presented a certificate on the Yakovlev sisters. According to the daughter of T. Yakovleva, Francine du Plessis, “after the death of Mayakovsky, the OGPU officers seized part of Tatyana’s letters to her mother, Lyubov Nikolaevna Orlova.”
The question arises: was such interest in Yakovleva caused by the assumption that Mayakovsky could leave some documents with her or tell her about them? Could it be connected with this search that immediately after the funeral, L. Brik began to go through the poet's archive? Lilya sorted things and papers in the absence of relatives, and they did not mind, however, during this analysis, she kept witnesses with her - Wright and Bryukhanenko. Several times she visited Mayakovsky's mother and sisters, with whom she had not previously maintained relations. But the urn with the ashes of the poet was not taken away for more than a month ...
Meanwhile, Agranov covered Polonskaya and at the same time introduced the version of Mayakovsky's suicide, took the gun, made public the will that appeared from nowhere, and later, with the help of L. Brik, removed Polonskaya from participating in the funeral. From the diary of M. Present: “Neither she, nor Yanshin, nor Livanov were at the funeral. The first two were invited in the morning to the investigator, who kept them until the evening. They say that this was done for the special purpose of preventing them from being at the funeral.<…>» . V. Skoryatin was confused by the question: who is the investigator Syrtsov? He tried to establish where he came from, where he was listed - in the prosecutor's office or the police, but did not find any traces. In the event that Polonskaya, having gone out to meet the ambulance, told Agranov that she had killed Mayakovsky, the latter could take with him one of his subordinates, who either was the investigator Syrtsov, or called himself by that name and therefore so quickly handed over the materials of the investigation to Agranov .
What made Agranov "cover" V. Polonskaya? If the guess is correct that she was also an OGPU agent, everything falls into place. If Polonskaya was just an actress, the mistress of a famous poet, then what happened, in the terminology of law enforcement agencies, was just “everyday life”. Polonskaya would have been put on trial, which would have dealt with whether the murder or suicide took place in a room on Lubyansky. But if one OGPU agent shot another, then it is not known what details could be revealed under investigation and at trial. Therefore, the issue was dealt with at the highest level, and Agranov hushed up and confused the matter. Therefore, there was a strange break in the investigation, noticed by Skoryatin for the whole day on April 15, and juggling under the version of suicide. Therefore, Mayakovsky was cremated so urgently: a competently conducted examination could provide evidence of the murder. Agranov also decided questions about the funeral: he was present at the autopsy and farewell, and he “took” all the material evidence (weapons, bullets, wills, photographs). The funeral was arranged in such a way that it could be seen with the naked eye that the Chekists were burying their comrade-in-arms. They organized the funeral: they saw off, they stood in the guard of honor, they were the first to sign the obituary; the writers' organization rather helped them.
In her memoirs, Polonskaya wrote that on April 15 or 16, L. Yu. summoned her to her. Calls, as a rule, the head of the subordinate. So they commanded Mayakovsky - what to do, with whom to live.
Tatyana Alekseeva, in the notes to the article “Lilina Love”, writes about Veronika Vitoldovna: “The son, grandson and great-grandson left for the USA at different times, but Polonskaya was not allowed to leave.” The question is: what state secrets could an average artist possess if her exit was closed? I think none. But if she was an unspoken agent of the OGPU, then another matter.
Mayakovsky's will was used as evidence of the fact of suicide. But it is possible that the suicide letter was a well-executed forgery. It was written hastily, in pencil, on a double ledger sheet. No measures were taken to search for the magazine from which the leaflet had been torn out. The style of the document is unique. This is a mixture of a suicide letter designed to prove the voluntariness of death ("I ask you not to blame anyone for my death"), a monetary and business will, notarized or witnessed, and moralizing ("this is not the way (I do not advise others)"). Contemporaries noticed that Mayakovsky cast a shadow on Polonskaya - a married woman, having made public his connection with her, and immediately humiliates her with the exclamation: "Lily - love me." And further: "<…>why, while preparing for a decisive conversation with his beloved, he predetermines the outcome of a conversation with her that has not yet taken place on April 12 - └love boat crashed ... ”? Why, it didn’t crash in general: as we know, the poet’s proposal was accepted by Veronika Vitoldovna. When drawing up a will in advance (two days in advance), they either go to a notary, or at least certify what was written with the signatures of two witnesses. This was not done, i.e. legally the document cannot be recognized as a will.
For many, the last letter of the poet raised doubts. He was found not at the site of Mayakovsky's death, which would be logical, not in his personal room in Gendrikov Lane, where the body was transferred. The letter was discovered not by Polonskaya, not by neighbors in Lubyansky: it surfaced on the same day in the dining room of an apartment shared with the Briks in Gendrikov Lane. E. Lavinskaya recalled: “Agranov's voice came from the dining room. He stood with papers in his hands and read aloud the last letter of Vl.<адимира>Vl<адимировича>. <...>Agranov read and left the letter with him. As V. Skoryatin noted, from 10.30 am to midnight there was enough time to make a fake.
And one more thing: the words about the note first appeared in the words of the investigator I. Syrtsov in the decision to transfer the case to the prosecutor's office on April 19; it is not mentioned in the report of the inspection of the scene of the incident. However, in the case filed a report not installed person certified by another unidentified by a person named Volkov: moreover, both employees did not indicate their place of work, position, or title, and the first of them did not even indicate his last name, and there is no signature. Arriving, as it is written in the report, at Mayakovsky's apartment on April 14 at 11 o'clock, he saw the highest officials of the OGPU in a small room, looking through the poet's correspondence. He also allegedly remarked that “Comrade Olievsky seized the suicide note"
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (1893-1930) is considered an outstanding Soviet poet. In addition to poetry, he was also engaged in dramaturgy, writing screenplays, tried himself as a film director and film actor. He took an active part in the work of the creative association "LEF". That is, we see a bright creative personality, incredibly popular in the 20s of the last century. The whole country knew the name of the poet. Some people liked his poems, others not so much. Indeed, they were somewhat specific and found recognition among supporters of just such a peculiar expression of their inner world.
But we will not talk about the work of the poet. To this day it raises many questions. Mayakovsky's unexpected death on April 14, 1930. Vladimir Vladimirovich died at the age of 36. This is the very happy period of life when you look with the same irony at those who are older and those who are younger than you. There are still many, many years of life ahead, but the fateful path of the creator for some reason was cut short, leaving in the souls of people a feeling of confusion, mixed with bewilderment.
Naturally, there was a consequence. Organized by the OGPU. The official conclusion was suicide. We can agree with this, since creative people are inherently very unpredictable. They see the world around them differently than other people. Forever some throwing, doubts, disappointments and a constant search for something elusive all the time. In a word, it is very difficult to understand what they want to get from this life. And now, at the peak of disappointment, the cold muzzle of a pistol is brought to the temple or heart. A shot, and all problems are solved by themselves in the simplest and most proven way.
However, the suicide of Vladimir Vladimirovich left a lot of questions and ambiguities. They clearly indicate that there was no suicide, but there was murder. Moreover, it was carried out by official state bodies, which were originally supposed to protect citizens from rash and dangerous acts. So where is the truth? In this case, she is not at fault, but in facts that clearly indicate not just a criminal, but a political crime. But to understand the essence of the issue, you need to know the particulars. Therefore, we will first get to know the Brik family in more detail, with which our hero had a long close relationship.
Briki
Lilya Yurievna Brik (1891-1978) - a famous Soviet writer and her husband Osip Maksimovich Brik (1888-1945) - a literary critic and literary critic. This couple met the talented young poet in July 1915. After that, a new stage began in Mayakovsky's life, which lasted 15 years until his death.
Vladimir and Lily fell in love with each other. But Osip Maksimovich did not interfere with this feeling. The trinity began to live together, which caused a lot of gossip in literary circles. What happened there and how it happened is irrelevant for this story. It is much more important to know that Brikov and Mayakovsky were connected not only by spiritual, but also by material relations. Under Soviet rule, the poet was by no means a poor man. It is quite natural that he shared part of his income with the Briks.
Mayakovsky and Lilya Brik
It can be assumed that this is why Lily tried with all her might to tie Vladimir to herself. Since 1926, the trinity lived in a Moscow apartment, which the poet received. This is Gendrikov Lane (now Mayakovsky Lane). It is located in the very center of Moscow not far from Taganskaya Square. The Briks did not have the opportunity to get a separate apartment at that time. The huge city lived in communal apartments, and only outstanding personalities who brought significant benefits to the existing regime had their own living space.
Since 1922, Mayakovsky's works began to be published in major publications. The fees were so high that the trio began to spend a lot of time abroad, staying in expensive hotels. Therefore, it was not in the interests of the Briks to break off relations with a gifted and naive poet who was a good cash cow.
Heart affairs of Vladimir Mayakovsky
Being completely dependent on Lily Brik, our hero from time to time entered into intimate relationships with other women. In 1925, he traveled to America and began a love affair with Ellie Jones there. She was an emigrant from Russia, so the language barrier did not bother them. From this connection, on June 15, 1926, a girl was born who received the name Helen (Elena). She is alive to this day. He is a philosopher and writer, maintains a close relationship with Russia.
In 1928, Mayakovsky met Tatyana Yakovleva in Paris. Along the way, Vladimir bought Lily Brik a French car. He chose it together with Yakovleva. For Moscow at that time it was an unimaginable luxury. The poet wanted to create a family with his new Parisian passion, but she did not express a desire to go to Bolshevik Russia.
However, Vladimir did not lose hope to unite himself with the bonds of Hymen and Tatyana and finally say goodbye to the Briks. This, of course, was not part of Lily's plans. In April 1929, she introduced the poet to the young and beautiful actress Veronika Polonskaya, who had been married to actor Mikhail Yanshin for 4 years.
Our hero was seriously carried away by a girl who was 15 years younger than him. Very opportunely, news came from Paris that supposedly Yakovleva was marrying a well-born Frenchman. Therefore, Vladimir quickly forgot his foreign passion and focused all his attention on Veronica. It was this girl who became the main witness to the tragedy, because Mayakovsky's death occurred almost before her eyes.
Chronology of tragic events
Possible cause of death
If we assume that Vladimir Vladimirovich was killed, then why was this done, who did he interfere with? In 1918, the poet inextricably linked his fate with the Bolshevik Party. He was a tribune preaching the ideas of world revolution. That is why it was such a huge success with various publishers. He was paid huge fees, provided with separate housing, but in return they demanded devotion and loyalty.
However, by the end of the 20s, notes of disappointment with the existing regime began to slip in the works of the poet. There were still years of collectivization ahead, a terrible famine, repressions, and Vladimir Vladimirovich already felt in his soul the mortal danger hanging over the country. It became increasingly difficult for him to praise the existing reality. I had to step over my understanding of the world and moral principles more and more often.
A wave of jubilation was gaining strength in the country. Everyone admired or pretended to admire the achievements of the socialist system, and Mayakovsky began to satirically denounce all sorts of "rubbish". It sounded out of tune with the enthusiastic chorus of sycophants and opportunists. The authorities very quickly felt that the poet had become different. He has changed, and in a way that is dangerous for the regime. The first sign was the criticism of his plays "Bug" and "Bath". Then the portrait disappeared from a literary magazine, and persecution in the press unfolded.
Along with this, the Chekists began to patronize the poet. They began to visit regularly as good friends, because Lilya Brik loved to receive guests. But it's one thing when fellow writers come, and another thing when an OGPU officer comes into the apartment on a friendly visit. We must also not forget that Osip Maksimovich Brik in 1919-1921 was an employee of the Cheka. And there are no former Chekists.
All this guardianship was carried out in order to check the reliability of the poet. The results were deplorable for Vladimir Vladimirovich. The decision was made to remove it. It could not have been otherwise, because a reforged tribune could cause great ideological harm to the communist regime.
The last day of the poet's life
Mayakovsky's death, as already mentioned, occurred on April 14, 1930. There were no Briks in Moscow: they went abroad back in February. The poet decided to take advantage of their absence in order to finally break the protracted relationship leading nowhere. He wanted to create a normal family and for this he chose Veronica Polonskaya. In early April, he makes a cash contribution to a housing cooperative in order to purchase an apartment for himself, and leave the existing living space to a voluptuous and selfish couple.
On Monday, April 14, the poet arrives at Polonskaya at 8 o'clock in the morning and takes her to his place. There is a conversation going on between them. Vladimir demands that Veronika leave her husband and go to him right now. The woman says that she cannot leave Yanshin right away. She does not refuse Mayakovsky, assures that she loves him, but she needs time. After that, Polonskaya leaves the apartment, as at 10-30 she has a rehearsal in the theater. She goes out into the front door and then hears the sound of a revolver shot. Veronica runs back into the room just a moment after leaving and sees that Vladimir is lying on the floor with his arms outstretched.
Soon an investigation team arrived, but not from the police, but from counterintelligence. It was headed by the head of the secret department of the OGPU, Yakov Saulovich Agranov (1893-1938). His appearance can be explained by the fact that he oversaw the creative intelligentsia. The scene of the incident was examined, the poet's body was photographed. Vladimir Vladimirovich's suicide letter, dated April 12, was found. Agranov read it aloud and put it in his tunic pocket.
Toward evening, the sculptor Konstantin Lutsky appeared. He made a plaster mask from the face of the deceased. At first, they did not want to do an autopsy, since it was already clear that the poet died from a shot in the heart. But rumors spread that Mayakovsky had syphilis, which caused the tragedy. Pathologists had to open the body, but no serious abnormalities were found in the organs. The newspapers wrote that the poet died of a transient illness. Friends signed the obituary, and that was the end of the matter.
Murder or suicide?
So how should one characterize the death of Mayakovsky? Was it murder or suicide? To shed light on this issue, let's start, as expected, with a suicide note. Here is her text:
“To everyone… Don’t blame anyone for dying and don’t gossip. The deceased didn’t like this terribly.
Comrade government, my family is Lilya Brik, mother, sister and Veronika Polonskaya. I would be grateful if you give them a tolerable life. Give the verses you have begun to the Briks, they will sort it out. As they say - the incident is over, the love boat crashed into everyday life. I am counting with life, and there is no need for a list of mutual pains, troubles and insults. Happy staying."
Here is a will written, according to the date, April 12. And the fatal shot sounded on April 14. At the same time, a love explanation with Veronica also took place, although the poet knew that he was about to die. But despite this, he insisted that the beloved immediately leave her husband. Is there any logic in this?
It is also interesting that Vladimir Vladimirovich wrote the last letter in pencil. He had money to buy a cooperative apartment, but there was not even a little thing for a pen. However, the deceased had his own very good pen with a luxurious gold nib. He never gave it to anyone, but wrote only to her. But at the most crucial moment of his life he picked up a pencil. By the way, it is much easier for them to forge handwriting than with a pen.
At one time, Sergei Eisenstein said in a narrow circle of friends that if you carefully read the style of writing, you can argue that it was not written by Mayakovsky. So who then produced this creation. Maybe there was an employee in the apparatus of the OGPU who took on such duties that were so unusual for him?
The archive contains the criminal case number 02-29. This is just the suicide case of VV Mayakovsky. It was led by investigator I. Syrtsov. So, the inspection protocol does not mention the suicide letter, as if it never existed. There is also no examination of the shirt that the poet was wearing at the time of his death. But she could tell a lot to the investigation.
But most importantly, it is absolutely unclear from the case where Polonskaya was when the fatal shot was fired. Either she was standing near the poet, or she had already left the room. As Veronica herself later claimed, she went out into the front door and only there she heard the sound of a shot. However, judging by the papers, her behavior can be interpreted in different ways. The woman ran down the stairs, and a shot rang out, or ran out of the room screaming, and it was at that moment that the poet shot himself. So maybe she saw Vladimir in his hand with a pistol, got scared and tried to hide? It seems that the investigator did not need a clear and precise answer at all.
The criminal case was closed on April 19. At the same time, it remained a mystery whether a gun was found near the body or not. How was the body? Head to the door or head into the room. If someone else entered the room and fired, then Vladimir Vladimirovich had to fall back, that is, head deep into the room. But nothing definite can be said here. Thus, it can be concluded that the investigative actions were carried out extremely carelessly. They were a pure formality. All the work was done not for the sake of establishing the truth, but for the sake of a tick that such work was done.
So the conclusion suggests itself. The poet was killed by the OGPU, but presented this case as a suicide. It was safely placed in the archive and gathered dust on the shelves until the 90s of the XX century. And who will you ask in 60 years? Moreover, Yagoda's people, including Agranov, were shot in 1937-38. So the retribution was done anyway.
Who was the winner after Mayakovsky's death?
The death of Mayakovsky was in the hands of Lily Brik. There is no talk about Osip Maksimovich, since his family life with his loving wife ended in divorce. But the Soviet government recognized Lily as the legitimate heiress of the deceased poet. She got his co-op apartment and cash savings.
But the most important thing is the archives, which, in fact, were the property of the people. However, this is not all. Since 1935, the so-called "widow" of Mayakovsky began to receive interest from the sold works of the poet. And they were printed in millions of copies, since Vladimir Vladimirovich was posthumously recognized as the best and most talented poet of the Soviet era.
As for Polonskaya, without two minutes the wife received nothing. However, no. She got gossip, talk behind her back, malevolent smirks. The last point in this epic was the divorce from her husband. Well, what can you do. That's the way this world works. Someone finds, and someone loses. But let's be optimistic. Folk wisdom says: "What does not happen is always for the better."
85 years ago, on April 14, 1930, MAYAKOVSKY shot himself in Lubyansky passage in Moscow. This was the official version: the poet himself raised the gun to his chest, exhausted by problems with women, creative failures and syphilis (in the obituary it was written: “rapid illness”, although later tests were done, and they did not confirm the disease).
“Many classified documents and annoying unanswered questions suggest that the true truth has been distorted and hidden. Outstanding work done by a Russian researcher Valentin Skoryatin, makes you take a fresh look at the version of Mayakovsky's suicide",- spoke at a conference on Mayakovsky American professor Albert Todd.
The more materials Skoryatin found about the death of the poet, the more he noticed inconsistencies and oddities.
Several people testified that Mayakovsky was not going to consider April 14 the last day of his life. On April 10 or 12, the poet promised that he would help to make May Day slogans for the Central Committee, but asked to postpone the work for a few days because of the flu.
A little earlier, on April 4, he contributed money to the RZhSKT housing cooperative. Krasin. And he asked his friends to help him rent a house until the fall, while the house was being built. life together with Brikami burdened Mayakovsky, he wanted to have a normal family, made an offer Veronica Polonskaya.
After the death of the poet, the Briks moved to a new apartment.
Lily did not hide from her Puppy that she became a mistress Agranova, head of the Secret Department of the OGPU. Bloody investigator, who was called the executioner of the Russian intelligentsia and who personally sanctioned the execution Gumilyov, Agranov was not at all jealous of his predecessor. Even gave him a revolver. Mayakovsky was left-handed, but for some reason he took the pistol in his right hand, which was uncomfortable for him ... Years later, studying the protocol of the investigation, Skoryatin noticed that the weapon had been changed. Instead of Mauser No. 312045, recorded in the protocol, Browning No. 268979 was found.
Mayakovsky's dying letter also left many questions. Why did the poet write it with a pencil and not a pen? It is known that Mayakovsky was terribly squeamish and would not give his pen to an outsider. In addition, it is almost impossible to fake handwriting with a fountain pen, but the pros from the Agranov department made a pencil fake without difficulty.
Yes, and the content of the letter looks strange. How could it happen that Mayakovsky, who is very decent to close people, when determining the heirs, put his mother and sister after Lily? The right to inheritance was secured by the Decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR: 1/2 part - Lilya, 1/6 each - mothers and sisters. V. Polonskaya, in violation of the will of the poet - nothing. Interestingly, Agranov immediately took the original letter. Members of the government, when dividing the inheritance, were guided not by the original, but by newspaper reprints.
Agranov rushed like a bullet into Mayakovsky's room and immediately took the investigation into his own hands. Perhaps it was with his help that the investigation “did not notice” the testimony of people who ran into the room immediately after the fatal shot. They claimed that the poet fell with his feet to the door. Those who came later saw the body in a different position, with its head towards the door. Someone changed the position of the body so that there would be no thought that the poet had been shot.
Studying the death mask, the researchers noticed that the poet's nose was broken. It seems that Mayakovsky fell face down, and not on his back, as happens if a person shoots himself.
 |
APOSTLE OR JUDAS
Michael Bulgakov, who knew Mayakovsky well, did not believe in the official version of suicide. Marina Cherkashina, a researcher of Bulgakov's work, noted: “Bulgakov was so shocked that he resumed work on the novel about the prince of darkness that had been abandoned. Before his eyes, a drama of truly biblical proportions was played out. Caesar in this drama - Marx and his "omnipotent teaching", procurator Pilate (viceroy of Caesar in the USSR) - comrade Stalin, head of the secret service Yershalaim Afraniy - head of the Special Department of the OGPU Yakov Agranov(even the surname is consonant!) with berry. “Yeshua's preacher was the Master, crucified on newspaper pages; finally, a ruddy money changer from Kiriath (who exchanged his soul for 30 coins) - a tall poet from Baghdadi, who exchanged his talent for party agitprop, writes Cherkashina. - It was necessary to have remarkable courage in order to open and show in the novel the secret mechanism of such murders in a country where a well-functioning machine of political murders - the OGPU-NKVD was operating. Bulgakov did this on the sad example of Mayakovsky.
 |
And no one was deceived by the biblical entourage of the episode. Under a white cloak with bloody lining, under the togas of Aphranius and his henchmen, Chekist jackets with blue buttonholes clearly appear.
Bulgakov persistently emphasized that the biblical events of the novel took place on the 14th day of the spring month of Nisan. A direct reference to the date of the death of the poet, April 14, 1930. On the 14th, the head of the secret service of Yershalaim, Aphranius, is talking with the procurator of Judea Pilate. On the same day, Judas dies after being stabbed in the heart. Mayakovsky was dealt with without a knife. He was shot.
In the novel, Pilate raises a glass of red wine like blood - Cekuba. The name of this brand is very consonant with the familiar abbreviation of the Central Committee (b) - the Bolsheviks. And here is Pilate's toast addressed to Caesar: "To you, Caesar, father of the Romans, the dearest and best of people!" The most expensive and best of people in Bulgakov's time was called only one single person.
 |
From The Master and Margarita:
- Yes, Aphranius, that's what suddenly occurred to me: did he commit suicide?
“Oh no, procurator,” Aphranius replied, even leaning back in surprise in his chair, “forgive me, but this is absolutely unbelievable!
- Ah, in this city everything is possible! I'm willing to bet that in the shortest possible time, rumors about this will spread throughout the city.
Rumors that someone helped the suicide really spread around Moscow on the same day.
But isn't it too harsh to represent a living suffering person, as Mayakovsky was, in the image of a biblical traitor? Why, in Bulgakov's eyes, could a proletarian poet be only a Judas?
Quote
Ivan Bunin:
- I think that Mayakovsky will remain in the history of the literature of the Bolshevik years as the lowest, most cynical and harmful servant of Soviet cannibalism in terms of literary praise of him.
 |
UNDERSTANDING REVOLT
Mikhail Bulgakov, the son of a professor at the Theological Academy, who came from a religious family, looked with a shudder at Mayakovsky's theomachism. He could only be Judas in his eyes, exclaiming: "I would throw blasphemy into the sky." In almost every verse, Mayakovsky voices obsessive thoughts about God, literally leads a personal rivalry with the Almighty, hoping to take his place in the hearts of people.
I, who sing of the car and England,
maybe just
In the most ordinary gospel
thirteenth apostle.
And when my voice
obscenely hoots -
from hour to hour,
the whole day,
may be,
jesus christ sniffing
my soul forget-me-not.
Back in 1916 - 1917, he wrote the poem "Man", where he builds the life of a lyrical hero (whose name is Vladimir Mayakovsky without false modesty) according to the gospel canon. Speaking about the birth of Mayakovsky, the poet plays up the plot of the Nativity of Christ. The next chapters are Mayakovsky's Passion, Mayakovsky's Ascension, Mayakovsky's Return, Mayakovsky to the Ages.
"How come
I don't sing myself
if all of me
complete nonsense,
if every move is mine
huge,
inexplicable miracle.
I DID NOT HAVE ACCUMULATED LINES AND A RUBLE
Marina Cherkashina remarks: “In the eyes of Bulgakov, Mayakovsky could only be Judas, because he betrayed his “attacking class”, becoming a new proletarian bourgeois: trips abroad, large fees, hard currency gifts to his mistress - all this did not fit well with the image of a fiery “agitator, gorlan-leader”.
"Damn! - the poet shouts to all the well-fed in the 22nd hungry year. - Let it be so that every swallowed sip burns the stomach! So that juicy steak turns around with scissors, ripping open the walls of the intestines! "All-Russian Starosta" Kalinin, having visited the southern regions, testified to the facts of cannibalism. And Mayakovsky, traveling around Berlin, orders huge portions in the most expensive restaurants. In Paris, he goes to an expensive atelier on Place Vendôme to have a dressmaker sew shirts.
At Lilina's request, he brings a latest-issue Ford from abroad to Moscow on reinforced balloon tires. The Soviet master wore silk underwear, rested in the best holiday homes, rented dachas, hired housekeepers.
“Mayakovsky's statements to the tax office allow us to create an idea of \u200b\u200bhis income. His usual income for half a year was about 6 thousand rubles, that is, 12 thousand a year. Let us compare this amount with the annual earnings of a worker, which amounted to approximately 900 rubles. Mayakovsky earned almost 13 times more,” writes Swedish literary critic Bengt Jangfeldt.
IN THE COMPANY OF GEPEUSHNIKS
Once, on the door of the apartment where Mayakovsky and Briki lived, an epigram appeared, the authorship of which was attributed to Yesenin: “Do you think Brick, the language researcher, lives here? / The spy and investigator Cheka lives here.” Osip Brik was officially recruited by the Cheka. Soon, Lily also got a certificate of an employee of the GPU under the number 5073. A specific audience gathers in their apartment: enkavedeshniki, Soviet bankers and government officials.
Parsnip later he would call this house “the Moscow police department”. Later he admitted that it was terrible to hear Lilya say: "Wait, we will have dinner soon, as soon as Osya comes from the Cheka."
Mayakovsky courted women with carelessness, as if considering them to be creatures of a lower order. He could easily describe the girl as a "delicious piece of meat" and was very fond of talking about his adventures. According to Burliuk, Mayakovsky was "little picky" in his passion. He was content with "the love of bourgeois women who cheated on their husbands in dachas - in hammocks, on swing benches, or the early unbridled passion of female students." At the same time, he wrote about "the scum that stuck to every double bed."
1. Vera Shekhtel. Mayakovsky evoked disgust and horror among the parents of the girls he knew. When the poet began dating Vera Shekhtel, the daughter of an outstanding architect, her father took all measures to cut off the connection. But in vain. Vera became pregnant and was sent abroad to have an abortion.
Then she married someone else. In 1932, her son Vadim Tonkov was born. The older generation remembers him in the image of the comic Veronika Mavrikievna.
 |
2. Lilya Brik. From a young age Leela Kagan was characterized by heightened sexual curiosity. At 17, she became pregnant by a music teacher. Lilya was rescued from pregnancy by a familiar doctor in the "dirty bedbug" - a hospital in Armavir.
By marrying Osip Brik, Lily did not even think of hiding her adventures from him. An affair with Mayakovsky, whom she called Shchenik, smoothly turned into a strange life of three.
Andrei Voznesensky would later be shocked by Lily's confession: “I loved making love to Osya. We then locked Volodya in the kitchen. He was eager, wanted to come to us, scratched at the door and cried ... "
When Lilya left for Riga, Osip and Mayakovsky had one topic of conversation: "the only person in the world is a kitty." “I am still your puppy,” Mayakovsky writes to Lilya, “I live only thinking about you, waiting for you and adore you. Every morning I come to Osya and say: "It's boring, brother Kitty, without Liska," and Oska says: "It's boring, brother Shchen, without Kitty."
Once Lilya told Mayakovsky that she loved Osip. Here's what happened next, according to the biographer Bengt Youngfeldt: “Mayakovsky sobbed, almost screamed, and from all his height rushed onto the sofa. His huge body lay on the floor, and he buried his face in the pillows and clasped his head in his hands. He sobbed. Lily bent over him in confusion. - Volodya, come on, don't cry. You are tired of such verses. - Osya ran to the kitchen for water. He sat down on the sofa and tried to raise Volodin's head. Volodya raised his face, flooded with tears, and clung to Aspen's knees. Through a sobbing howl, he shouted: “Lilya doesn’t love me!” - escaped, jumped out and ran into the kitchen. He moaned and cried there so loudly that Lilya and Osya huddled in the bedroom.
4 Ellie Jones When Mayakovsky came to America, he, not knowing English, took out a note from his pocket when meeting people. From it he read aloud an apology for not shaking hands. (Mayakovsky was very afraid of infections, he even opened doorknobs through his jacket pocket or with a napkin.) She volunteered to be his translator Ellie Jones, an emigrant who fled Russia after the revolution. In June 1926, Ellie gave birth to a daughter from Mayakovsky. Together with the girl, she arrived in Nice in 1928 - this was the first and last meeting of father and daughter.
 |
5. Tatyana Yakovleva. Lilya Brik was calm about the amorous adventures of Schenik, but Ellie Jones aroused a terrible fear in her. The poet did not hide that he fell in love. This jeopardized the financial situation of the Briks, which Mayakovsky provided. To eliminate her rival, Lily asked her sister Elsa, who lived in Paris, to introduce the poet to someone else. Elsa brought Mayakovsky with Tatyana Yakovleva. And again fatal passion! The poet fell in love so much that, when leaving, he left a lot of money in a flower shop - so that Tatyana would bring an armful of roses every Sunday.
 |
6. Veronica Polonskaya. Fearing that the amorous Puppy will marry Yakovleva and get out of the influence of the Briks, they introduce him to the actress Veronica Polonskaya. Polonskaya was married, but all of Moscow, including her husband, knew about the affair with Mayakovsky. On the eve of the death of the poet, the actress promised that she would move in with him. Maybe this is what infuriated Lily, who was given strength and omnipotence by adultery with Agranov?
Now no one will answer what happened in the poet's "room-boat" at the time of his death. Yuri Olesha said that Polonskaya, who was there, ran out shouting: “Save me!” And then the shot rang out.
Polonskaya did not come to the funeral: Mayakovsky's mother and sisters considered her guilty of the death of the poet. But Lily took the death of Mayakovsky without tragedy. After the funeral, the Briks drank tea, joked, chatted about everything in the world.
 |
From the "Conclusion" of the experts:
"one. The damage on the shirt of V.V.
2. Judging by the features of the damage, a short-barreled weapon (for example, a pistol) was used and a low-powered cartridge was used.
3. The small size of the blood-soaked area located around the entrance gunshot injury indicates its formation due to a simultaneous ejection of blood from the wound, and the absence of vertical blood streaks indicates that immediately after the injury, V.V. Mayakovsky was in a horizontal position, lying on the back.
4. The shape and small size of blood blots located below the damage, and the peculiarity of their location along the arc indicate that they arose as a result of the fall of small drops of blood from a small height onto the shirt in the process of moving down the right hand, spattered with blood, or with weapon in the same hand.
Is it possible to simulate suicide so carefully? Yes, in expert practice there are cases of staging one, two, less often five signs. But the whole complex of signs cannot be falsified. It has been established that drops of blood are not traces of bleeding from a wound: they fell from a small height from a hand or weapon. Even if we assume that Chekist Agranov (and he really knew his business) was a murderer and applied drops of blood after a shot, say, from a pipette, although according to the restored timing of events, he simply did not have time for this, it was necessary to achieve a complete coincidence of the localization of drops blood and the location of traces of antimony. But the reaction to antimony was discovered only in 1987. It was the comparison of the location of antimony and blood drops that became the pinnacle of this study.
Death autograph
The specialists of the laboratory of forensic handwriting examinations also had to work, because many, even very sensitive people, doubted the authenticity of the poet’s dying letter, made in pencil with almost no punctuation marks:
“Everyone. Don't blame anyone for dying, and please don't gossip. The dead man disliked this terribly. Mom, sisters and comrades, sorry, this is not the way (I do not advise others), but I have no way out. Lily - love me. My family is Lilya Brik, mother, sisters and Veronika Vitoldovna Polonskaya...
Love boat \ crashed into everyday life. \ I'm counting on life \ And there is no need for a list of \ Mutual \ troubles \ And insults. Happy to stay. \ Vladimir \ Mayakovsky. 12.IV.30"
From the "Conclusion" of the experts:
"The submitted letter on behalf of Mayakovsky was written by Mayakovsky himself under unusual conditions, the most likely cause of which is a psycho-physiological state caused by excitement."
There was no doubt about the dating - it was April 12, two days before death - "immediately before the suicide, the signs of unusualness would have been more pronounced." So the secret of the decision to die does not lie in the 14th day of April, but in the 12th.
"Your word, Comrade Mauser"
Relatively recently, the case “On the suicide of V.V. Mayakovsky” was transferred from the Presidential Archive to the Museum of the Poet, along with the fatal browning, bullet and cartridge case. But the protocol of the inspection of the scene, signed by the investigator and the expert doctor, says that he shot himself with a "Mauser revolver, caliber 7.65, No. 312045." According to the certificate, the poet had two pistols - a browning and a bayard. And although Krasnaya Gazeta wrote about a revolver shot, eyewitness V.A. Katanyan mentions a Mauser, and N. Denisovsky, years later, Browning, it’s still hard to imagine that a professional investigator could confuse Browning with a Mauser.
Employees of the V.V. Mayakovsky Museum turned to the Russian Federal Center for Forensic Examinations with a request to conduct a study of the Browning pistol No. 268979, bullets and cartridge cases handed over to them from the Presidential Archive, and to establish whether the poet shot himself with this weapon?
A chemical analysis of the plaque in the Browning bore led to the conclusion that "the weapon was not fired after the last cleaning." But the bullet, once removed from Mayakovsky's body, really "is part of a 7.65 mm Browning cartridge of the 1900 model." So what's the deal? The examination showed: "The caliber of the bullet, the number of tracks, the width, the angle of inclination and the right-hand direction of the tracks indicate that the bullet was fired from a Mauser model 1914 pistol."
The results of experimental shooting finally confirmed that "the bullet of the 7.65 mm Browning cartridge was fired not from the Browning pistol No. 268979, but from the 7.65 mm Mauser".
Still, Mauser. Who changed weapons? In 1944, an employee of the NKGB, “talking” with the disgraced writer M.M. Zoshchenko, asked if he considered the cause of Mayakovsky’s death clear, to which the writer adequately replied: “It continues to remain mysterious. It is curious that the revolver from which Mayakovsky shot himself was presented to him by the famous Chekist Agranov.
Could it be that Agranov himself, to whom all the materials of the investigation flocked, changed weapons, adding Mayakovsky's Browning to the case? What for? Many people knew about the “gift”, besides, the Mauser was not registered for Mayakovsky, which could greatly backfire on Agranov himself (by the way, he was later shot, but for what?). However, this is out of the realm of conjecture. Let's better respect the last request of the poet: “...please don't gossip. The dead man disliked this terribly.”
Two heads and six legs; four walk, and two lie still
Self-esteem - what is it: concept, structure, types and levels
Cassandra's Path, or Pasta Adventures War on Earth and Underground