Perhaps it was. Death of Remarkable People: Vladimir Mayakovsky

The fatal shot that the last affection of the poet, Veronika Polonskaya, heard when leaving the room on Lubyanka, sounded on April 14, 1930 ...

Mayakovsky's death at the age of thirty-seven raised many questions from his contemporaries. Why did the genius, beloved by the people and the Soviet government, "singer of the revolution" voluntarily die?

There is no doubt that it was suicide. The results of an examination conducted by criminologists 60 years after the death of the poet confirmed that Mayakovsky shot himself. established the authenticity of what had been written two days earlier. The very fact that the note was drawn up in advance speaks in favor of the thoughtfulness of this act.

When Yesenin passed away three years earlier, Mayakovsky writes: “It is not difficult to die in this life.
Make life much more difficult." With these lines, he puts a bitter assessment of escaping from reality with the help of suicide. About his own death, he writes: "... this is not a way ... but I have no way out."

We will never know the exact answer to the question of what broke the poet so much. But Mayakovsky's voluntary death can be partly explained by the events preceding his death. In part, the choice of the poet reveals his work. The famous lines from the poem "Man", written in 1917: "And the heart is eager for a shot, and the throat is raving with a razor ...", speak for themselves.

In general, Mayakovsky's poetry is a mirror of his nervous, contradictory nature. His poems are full of either almost teenage delight and enthusiasm, or bile and bitterness of disappointment. This is how Vladimir Mayakovsky was described by his contemporaries. The same main witness to the poet's suicide writes in her memoirs: “In general, he always had extremes. I do not remember Mayakovsky ... calm ... ".

The poet had many reasons to draw the last line. Married Lilya Brik, the main love and muse of Mayakovsky, all her life approached and moved away from him, but never completely belonged to him. Long before the tragedy, the poet had already flirted with his fate twice, and the reason for this was an all-encompassing passion for this woman. But then Mayakovsky, whose death still worries the minds, remained alive - the weapon misfired.

Serious health problems that began due to overwork and severe flu, the deafening failure of the play "Bath" in March 1930, parting with which the poet asked to become his wife ... All these life collisions, indeed, blow after blow, seemed to be preparing Mayakovsky's death. Kneeling in front of Veronika Polonskaya, persuading her to stay with him, the poet clung to his relationship with her like a saving straw. But the actress was not ready for such a decisive step as a divorce from her husband ... When the door closed behind her, a revolver with a single bullet in the clip put an end to the life of one of the greatest poets.

During his lifetime, Mayakovsky had many novels, although he was never officially married. Among his lovers there were many Russian emigrants - Tatyana Yakovleva, Ellie Jones. The most serious hobby in Mayakovsky's life was an affair with Lilya Brik. Despite the fact that she was married, the relationship between them continued for many years. Moreover, for a long period of his life, the poet lived in the same house with the Brik family. This love triangle existed for several years, until Mayakovsky met the young actress Veronika Polonskaya, who at that time was 21 years old. Neither the age difference of 15 years, nor the presence of an official spouse could prevent this connection. It is known that the poet planned a life together with her and in every possible way insisted on a divorce. This story became the reason for the official version of suicide. On the day of his death, Mayakovsky was refused by Veronica, which provoked, according to many historians, a serious nervous shock that led to such tragic events. In any case, Mayakovsky's family, including his mother and sisters, believed that it was Polonskaya who was to blame for his death.

Mayakovsky left a suicide note with the following content:
"ALL

Don't blame anyone for dying and please don't gossip. The dead man disliked this terribly.
Mom, sisters and comrades, forgive me - this is not the way (I do not advise others), but I have no way out.
Lily - love me.
Comrade government, my family is Lilya Brik, mother, sisters and Veronika Vitoldovna Polonskaya. -
If you give them a decent life, thank you.
Give the poems you have started to the Briks, they will figure it out.
As they say - "the incident is ruined", the love boat crashed into everyday life
I am counting on life and there is no need for a list of mutual pains, troubles and insults.
happy to stay

VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY.

Mayakovsky Vladimir Vladimirovich - Soviet poet who achieved success and recognition. He was born in 1893 in the Caucasus. His works can be identified by the emotional nature of the poems and by the well-recognized "ladder" of the text, which later became his "calling card".

Throughout life, he was energetic, did not keep his mouth shut, for which he was in prison, he was a scandalous person. Vladimir Mayakovsky made a huge contribution to the treasury of Russian culture. But who would have thought that Mayakovsky V.V. allotted so short lines. He died when he was 36 years old. But why and how did Mayakovsky die?

From the personal life of the poet

The mysterious death of Mayakovsky worried experts for a very long time.

His personal life did not please him. Everyone laughed at his desire to have a normal family, and especially Lilya Brik, the beloved woman of his whole life. She said that if she gave birth to a child for him, then he would never give birth to a single talented verse. And he increasingly began to talk about suicide as the only salvation.

Love and death

In an attempt to free himself from Lily's spell, he tried to start his life over with a clean slate.

His last passion was Veronika Polonskaya, a beautiful actress of the Moscow Art Theater. On April 14, 1930, they were supposed to have a date. He locked the door and spoke for a long time about her divorcing her husband and moving in with him immediately. But Veronica (Nora) could not decide to leave Mikhail Yanshin, realizing that at any moment their romance could end. He went out the door, she heard the sound of a shot, ran to her lover and saw blood on his body.

The shot was fired point-blank in the heart. A suicide note dated April 12 was also found.

Versions of the death of Mayakovsky

What is the cause of Mayakovsky's death? Beloved woman, or the fact that he was afraid of old age, or his conflicts with poets, whom he ceased to understand, as they did him. He was a revolutionary, but the revolution is already over. There are several versions of the death of the poet, each has its supporters and opponents.

Murder. Perhaps someone wanted him dead? Opponents of this version say that Vladimir Vladimirovich was preparing to die. After all, he left a suicide note. But the fact that the note was written in pencil is alarming. Since, firstly, handwriting with a pencil can be faked more easily, graphologists assure. In addition, as V.I. Skoryatin stated, Mayakovsky was kind to his fountain pen and, most likely, would have begun to write the last letter with it. And S. Eisenstein notes that Mayakovsky did not write anything like that at all, and the note is the work of his killers. In defense of the version of the murder, the fact that Mayakovsky had a broken nose, although he fell on his back, also speaks. According to Nora, when they found him, Vladimir Vladimirovich was lying on his back with his eyes open and tried to tell her something, but did not have time. Another argument in favor of the fact that Mayakovsky would not have killed himself: when he heard the news of the suicide of Sergei Yesenin, he severely condemned him, calling such an act cowardly. As a rule, the Soviet secret services are accused of the poet's murder.

Accident. The most unpopular version says that the poet died as a result of a sad combination of circumstances. The fact is that Mayakovsky several times arranged extreme sports for himself with one bullet in a seven-shot pistol. And did this time his luck fail him in the game of "Russian roulette"?

Suicide. Today it is the official version. It is followed by most researchers. Yes, and according to the memoirs of Lilia Brik, Mayakovsky tried to commit suicide more than once. It is also noted that the poet had sudden mood swings. He was overwhelmed with emotions of joy when he had success, and failures led him into a deep depression.

The true cause of the poet's death is still the subject of heated debate.

So, we promised a teaser. There he is.

More than once we have published materials that we have combined under the heading "Death of Remarkable People". And now we are at the final spurt in the preparation of the book, where we have collected all these - and many other clinical cases. Unfortunately, the preparation was delayed for several weeks due to the failure of the computer of one of the authors of the blog. But we can overcome everything. And here is one of the chapters of the future book.

Mayakovsky and Lilya Brik

Cherchez la femme. This short catchphrase, which came from France, can be used to name almost the entire bright, rich and extraordinarily tragic life of the “singer of the proletariats” Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky, whose tongue burned with fire, and his word broke the hearts of both ordinary working people and the most sophisticated intelligent public. He did not know how to do something halfway: if he wrote, he gave himself completely to it, if he spoke, then everything that was in his thoughts and from a pure heart, if he loved, then passionately, recklessly and for life. But he came across ladies of the heart, to put it mildly ... ungrateful. And the last of them, by the way, the thirteenth in a row, nevertheless became fatal, playing an important role in the "tragedy", according to the plot of which Mayakovsky met face to face with the "Mauser". It would seem that the story is as old as the world: a woman, an unhappy love, superimposed on the nature of a fine mental organization, also with signs of depression - a suicide of pure water. But in the words of the popular TV presenter of the 80s Vladimir Molchanov from the program “Before and after midnight”, we will ask “So is this suicide or ...?”

Indeed, it is suicide. Moreover, his fact has become truly scientifically proven: specialists from all industries were involved in the investigation, including the most experienced doctors and forensic experts, as well as the most modern and accurate research methods. For the first time, the journalist Valentin Skoryatin made an assumption about the murder, who began to doubt whether there really were personal reasons, whether Mayakovsky really wanted to go to Paris to his beloved Tatyana Yakovleva, why in the posthumous photo his mouth is open as if in a scream. He collected many arguments for his gradually strengthened independent theory, but ... However, we will tell you about everything in order.

Anamnesis vitae

"Georgian" - this is how the poet himself often called himself. It is no coincidence, because he was born on July 7, 1893 in the Georgian village of Bagdati, Kutaisi province. If we count the two brothers of the young man who died early - Konstantin and Alexander, then there were five children in the Mayakovsky family. To say that the mother had a hard time would be an understatement. After studying three classes at the Kutaisi Gymnasium, Vladimir suffered grief - his father died, moreover, he died a rather strange and offensive death: he pierced his finger with a needle when he sewed work papers for his forestry (he worked as a third-class forester), after which sepsis developed (generalized bacterial blood poisoning).

The previously poor family had a very difficult time, they had to move to Moscow, where Volodya entered the fourth grade of the 5th classical gymnasium on Povarskaya Street. But there was not enough money to study, and two years later he was expelled.

It must be said that the boy, while still in Georgia, participated in a revolutionary demonstration, read propaganda pamphlets and was generally distinguished by his radical views and courage. firm character. Already in Moscow, he early, at the age of 15, wrote his first poem, which he himself called "incredibly revolutionary and equally ugly." Naturally, he did not remain without a company, therefore, almost immediately after being expelled from school, he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, where he was engaged in quite active propaganda, was arrested three times, spent time in several prisons, where he was transferred because he loved " quarrel." As a result, after 11 months of the last solitary cell in the Butyrka prison, he was released without falling under a single sentence. After the prison, only a notebook covered under the crust remained, which was confiscated upon release, which the poet himself was glad of, because the verses, in his opinion, turned out to be exceptionally whiny. Despite this, he calculated his work precisely from this notebook.

Then, in 1911, the poet's bohemian friend Evgenia Lang inspired Vladimir, who by that time was already two meters tall with a "slanting sazhen" in his shoulders, to paint. Therefore, after several months of training at the Stroganov School, he entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture - by the way, the only place where they did not require a certificate of reliability (otherwise they would not have taken him with a past in not so remote places). As a result, he became a Cubo-Futurist, and then published the first real poem "Night" in a collection with the very telling title "Slap in the face of public taste." And in the same 1912, Vladimir performed for the first time in the artistic basement "Stray Dog".

Mayakovsky, confirming the axiom of talented people, was talented in everything, therefore, in addition to art and writing, he took up dramaturgy, staging a tragedy named after himself in 1916, where he himself played the main role (who would doubt it). Further, works, collections, directorial and film works began to accumulate in a lump, and with them - glory and popular love. He was invited to perform in various cities of the USSR, he went on tour in Europe and America, bringing from each place more and more new and unusual, piercing, uncompromising and completely "naked" poems.

The poet, being passionate and sharp by nature, loved to fall in love with beautiful women, for which he paid, one might say, with his life. His most striking novel was the connection with the married Lilya Brik, whom he met in the Briks' apartment, where he was brought by the girl's sister, Elsa Triolet, who at that time was a "superficial" lady of the heart. From that moment on, Mayakovsky devoted all his works except for the poem “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin” exclusively to Lilya, and from the summer of 1918 he began to live with the Brikov family, following the love concept “Theory of a glass of water”, which was extremely popular at that time. According to her, the concept of marriage was blurred as such, and sex was equated with such important household needs as bathing or the same glass of water when thirsty.

However, his life was not limited to Lily, and other pretty persons (mostly married) from intellectual circles are on the “winning list”. Some of them even left illegitimate children, because the poet has never been in a registered relationship. But not a single woman could block the image of Lily in his thoughts, even despite the fact that one day after their joint (together with Lily's husband, Osip Brik) visit to Germany in 1923, Mayakovsky wrote about an "irreparable fracture" and "freedom from love and from posters.

The three of them lived until the last days of Vladimir in his apartment in Gendrikov Lane (now called Mayakovsky Lane) and became the prototype of the family for the plot of the film “Love in Three”, the script for which was written by Viktor Shklovsky, who was “in the know of all affairs”, their family friend. All Lily's attitude towards Mayakovsky can be expressed by several of her remarks at an already advanced age, according to the memoirs of the poet Andrei Voznesensky: ““ I loved making love with Osya. We then locked Volodya in the kitchen. He was eager, wanted to come to us, scratched at the door and cried, "" It is useful for Volodya to suffer, he will suffer and write good poetry."

In addition to Lily, the relationship of the poet with the Russian emigrant Tatyana Yakovleva, whom Mayakovsky met in Paris, can be called a vivid novel. By the way, this acquaintance was also “rigged” by Triolet, who, having only learned that Vladimir had arrived from Nice and stayed at the same hotel as she, asked her old friend who “suddenly appeared” to accompany her to the doctor, to whom on that Tatyana arrived at the moment. Why did she do it, you ask? For understandable selfish reasons. Firstly, Mayakovsky could at any time leave for the USA to his new lover, which would greatly undermine the reputation of his sister, "the first muse of the poet" Lily Brik. And, secondly, she used his money and did not want him to leave Paris too quickly, assuming that a new novel might delay him in the city.

But Vladimir fell head over heels in love and enveloped Yakovlev with complete care and extraordinary tenderness. That, however, did not stop Tatiana from agreeing to return to Moscow with him. The story that he paid with his Parisian fees for many years of delivering flowers to the doors of her apartment in Paris, which continued to be delivered even after his death, flew around many ears and seemed to many on the screens.

The most tragic was Mayakovsky's last love - Veronika Polonskaya, a young actress of the Moscow Art Theater, who at the time of her acquaintance with the poet was only 21 years old. She was already married to Mikhail Yanshin and cherished her husband even though she regularly went to her lovers. But the fate of the “next” did not suit Vladimir, and after a while he began to literally demand that she make the only decision, and not rush from side to side ...

Anamnesis morbi (mortis)

She sat on the couch, and he knelt in front of her and sobbed, saying that he could not live without her. She did not love him and often answered in response to these words, "Well, don't live." Was it on that fateful morning of April 14, 1930, a spur to action? May be…

Veronika Polonskaya

She was late for a rehearsal for Nemirovich-Danchenko, who scolded terribly for being late. He asked if she had money for a taxi and, having heard a negative answer, gave her 20 rubles. After that, she ran out into the front door of a small communal apartment in Poluektov Lane and heard a shot.

Yes, it was suicide. And no, there could not be a murder because, firstly, according to forensic expert Alexander Maslov and doctor Mikhail Davydov, who studied historical documents, building plans and eyewitness accounts in detail, the communal apartment was in direct access to the kitchen, from where you could even see the edge that same ill-fated room, and there at that moment the neighbors were talking at the table. And even if Lilya had gone down to the 1st floor, and at that time the killer had knocked on the apartment and “finished off” the indignantly opened poet’s mouth with a shot (it was the fact of the half-open mouth that the supporters of the theory of violent death put pressure on), then she would simply not physically hear the faint pop of the Mauser , and the killer would definitely not go unnoticed. Secondly, if she had heard, she would not have had time to get up before the “cloud frozen in the air from the shot” melted (according to Polonskaya’s memoirs). And the fact of the ajar mouth can be explained by the fact that immediately after death, the muscles before rigor mortis relax a little, as if coming to a state of rest. Because of this, the jaw dropped slightly.

Mayakovsky after death

Thirdly, there was an opinion that the posthumous note that Mayakovsky left on the table in the same room allegedly did not belong to him, because it was written in pencil (whereas the poet used the Parker pen) and with a lot of strange little things, postscripts and spelling errors. It was also dated April 12th. That is, Vladimir wrote it two days before the murder, which was also alarming. As for this, an examination took place, which confirmed that “the handwritten text of the 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 under the influence of some factors that “knock down” him the habitual process of writing, among which the most likely is an unusual psycho-physiological state associated with excitement.

Fourthly, after 60 years, a thorough study of the shirt that the poet was wearing at the time of the murder was carried out. It was carried out at the Research Institute of Forensic Medicine by a whole commission of professors Alexander Maslov (forensic expert of the highest category), Emil Safronsky (specialist in forensic ballistics) and Irina Kudesheva (expert in the study of shot marks). They were not even told whose shirt would be in their hands, so that everything was as objective as possible (blind study).

The diffuse-contact method for determining metals in a gas cloud during a shot that settled on a shirt gave a clear idea of ​​its direction and application (side-stop shot). Also, according to an extract from the conclusion about the shape and small sizes of blood stains below the damage, as well as the peculiarities 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 from a weapon held in the same hand.

Therefore, in the end, the examination showed that the detection of traces of a shot at a side stop, the absence of signs of a struggle and self-defense are typical for a shot fired by one's own hand. And the suicide of Vladimir Mayakovsky has become a scientifically confirmed fact.

Death mask of Mayakovsky

Unfortunately, data on autopsy (autopsy) have not been found so far, so it remains to be “satisfied” with only the recollections of eyewitnesses. The ambulance, which arrived 5 minutes after the call (estimate the speed in the 30s!) only stated “instant death” from a gunshot wound to the heart, that is, according to medical concepts, clinical death within 5 minutes after the injury. Thanks to entries in the diary of one literary figure Mikhail Present, it was possible to establish the course of the wound channel: the bullet entered the left half of the chest along the mid-clavicular line (the trace was 3 cm above the nipple), struck the heart and left lung, and then went down, backwards and to the right and, having injured the right kidney, got stuck in the subcutaneous tissue of the right lumbar region. Thus, the wound channel had a downward direction. According to Davydov, the poet received a through gunshot wound to the heart, left lung, diaphragm, upper pole of the right kidney and soft tissues of the right retroperitoneal space, and died from a through gunshot wound to the heart with acute cardiac tamponade and cardiac arrest. Even in the conditions of modern medicine, such injuries are incompatible with life, and people die before the ambulance arrives within just a few minutes. As it happened with Mayakovsky.

There is no autopsy data, but there is a complete and detailed examination of the brain, which was extracted by the staff of the Institute of the Brain on the same day after the death of Vladimir Vladimirovich (then it was fashionable to study the brains of great contemporaries). Surprisingly, Mayakovsky's brain weighed much more than the brain of an ordinary person (1700 grams versus 1330). According to the structure of the cortex, it was determined that it was highly organized with the most developed precentral gyrus (ambivalence, the ability to work equally well with both hands), the frontal and lower parietal lobes (features of thinking and poetic gift), the speech area (eloquence) and a special combination of the lower parietal frontal and occipital lobes (artistic inclinations). In addition, the area of ​​the cortex of the left hemisphere was 88 thousand mm2, and that of the right hemisphere was 87.5 thousand mm2 against the "usual" 82.7 thousand mm2. Thus, there were even anatomical and physiological prerequisites for the extraordinary talent of the poet (however, we know very well that the size of the brain does not play a decisive role).

Such a person - gifted, rich, stately, handsome, with a loud voice, caring nature, an incredibly rich inner world - is ruined by female frivolity. But he just wanted to love and be loved ...

On April 14, 1930, in Moscow, in Lubyansky passage, a shot was fired in the working room of Vladimir Mayakovsky. Disputes whether the poet died voluntarily or was killed have not subsided to this day. One of its participants tells about the virtuoso investigation of experts,
Professor of the Department of Forensic Medicine of the Moscow Medical Academy named after Sechenov Alexander Vasilievich Maslov.

Versions and facts

On April 14, 1930, Krasnaya Gazeta reported: “Today at 10:17 am, Vladimir Mayakovsky committed suicide in his working room with a revolver shot in the heart area. Arriving "ambulance" found him already dead. In recent days, V.V. Mayakovsky did not reveal any spiritual discord and nothing foreshadowed a catastrophe.

In the afternoon, the body was transferred to the poet's apartment in Gendrikov Lane. The sculptor K. Lutsky removed the death mask, and badly - he tore off the face of the deceased. Employees of the Institute of the Brain removed Mayakovsky's brain, which weighed 1700 g. On the very first day, in the presector of the clinic of the medical faculty of Moscow State University, the pathologist Professor Talalay performed an autopsy, and on the night of April 17, a re-opening took place: due to rumors that the poet allegedly had a venereal disease, which have not been confirmed. The body was then cremated.

As with Yesenin, Mayakovsky's suicide caused various reactions and many versions. One of the "targets" was the 22-year-old Moscow Art Theater actress Veronika Polonskaya. It is known that Mayakovsky asked her to become his wife. It was she who was the last person to see the poet alive. However, the testimony of the actress, flatmates and the data of the investigation indicate that the shot rang out immediately after Polonskaya left Mayakovsky's room. So she couldn't shoot.

The version that Mayakovsky, not in a figurative, but in the literal sense, “lay down with his temple on the barrel”, put a bullet in his head, does not stand up to criticism. The poet's brain has been preserved to this day and, as employees of the Institute of the Brain rightly reported in those days, "according to external examination, the brain does not show any significant deviations from the norm."

A few years ago, in the program “Before and after midnight,” the well-known television journalist Vladimir Molchanov suggested that traces of TWO shots were clearly visible on Mayakovsky’s chest in a posthumous photograph.

This dubious hypothesis was dispelled by another journalist - V. Skoryatin, who conducted a thorough investigation. There was only one shot, but he also believes that Mayakovsky was shot at. Specifically, the head of the secret department of the OGPU Agranov, with whom, by the way, the poet was friends: hiding in the back room and waiting for Polonskaya to leave, Agranov enters the office, kills the poet, leaves a suicide letter and again goes out into the street through the back door. And then he rises to the scene as a Chekist. The version is amusing and almost fits into the laws of that time. However, without knowing it, the journalist unexpectedly helped the experts. Referring to the shirt that the poet was wearing at the time of the shot, he writes: “I examined it. And even with the help of a magnifying glass, he did not find traces of a powder burn. There is nothing on it but a brown stain of blood. So the shirt is saved!

Poet's shirt

Indeed, in the mid-1950s, L.Yu. Brik, who had the poet's shirt, handed it over to the State Museum of V.V. Mayakovsky - the relic was kept in a box and wrapped in paper impregnated with a special compound. On the left side of the front of the shirt there is a through damage, dried blood is visible around it. Surprisingly, this "material evidence" was not subjected to examination either in 1930 or later. And how many disputes were around the photos!
Having received permission to study, I, without devoting to the essence of the matter, showed the shirt to a major specialist in forensic ballistics E.G.

Upon learning that the shot was fired more than 60 years ago, Safronsky noted that such examinations were not carried out in the USSR at that time. An agreement was reached: the specialists of the Federal Center for Forensic Expertise, where the shirt was transferred, would not know about its belonging to the poet - for the purity of the experiment.

So, a beige-pink cotton shirt is subject to research. Front placket with 4 mother-of-pearl buttons. The back of the shirt is cut with scissors from the collar to the bottom, as evidenced by the ledge-like edges of the cut and the even ends of the threads. But for the assertion that this particular shirt, bought by the poet in Paris, was on him at the time of the shot, it is not enough. In the photographs of Mayakovsky's body taken at the scene, the fabric pattern, texture, shape and localization of the blood stain, gunshot wound are clearly distinguishable. When the museum shirt was photographed from the same angle, magnification, and photo-aligned, all the details matched.

Experts from the Federal Center had a hard job - to find traces of a shot more than 60 years ago on a shirt and establish its distance. And there are three of them in forensic medicine and forensic science: a shot at point-blank range, from close and long distances. Linear cruciform injuries, characteristic of a point-blank shot, were found (they arise from the action of gases reflected from the body at the moment the projectile destroys the tissue), as well as traces of gunpowder, soot and scorching both in the injury itself and in adjacent areas of the tissue.

But it was necessary to identify a number of stable features, for which the diffuse-contact method was used, which does not destroy the shirt. It is known that when fired, a red-hot cloud flies out with a bullet, then the bullet outruns it and flies further. If they fired from a long distance, the cloud did not reach the object, if from a close one, the gas-powder suspension should have settled on the shirt. It was necessary to investigate the complex of metals that make up the shell of the bullet of the proposed cartridge.

The resulting impressions showed a small amount of lead in the area of ​​damage, and almost no copper was found. But thanks to the diffuse-contact method for the determination of antimony (one of the components of the capsule composition), it was possible to establish a vast zone of this substance with a diameter of about 10 mm around the damage with a topography characteristic of a side-stop shot. Moreover, the sectoral deposition of antimony said that the muzzle was pressed against the shirt at an angle. And intense metallization on the left side is a sign of firing from right to left, almost in a horizontal plane, with a slight downward slope.

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 the 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 to be 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.”