Reich gave birth to two children to Yesenin: a son, Kostya, and a daughter, Tanya.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS.
Unfortunately, none of these novels brought him happiness.
“Awkward girl”
Zinaida was born near Odessa. Father – German Nikolai Reich, railway engineer, member of the RSDLP. Mother is an impoverished Russian noblewoman, Anna Viktorova. Zinaida
Even in high school I was interested in revolutionary ideas. From there she was expelled for “political unreliability” after the eighth grade. She went to St. Petersburg and joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party. She worked as a typist secretary at the newspaper Delo Naroda. Sergei Yesenin published poetry here. He gave his secretary his photo with the inscription: “Because you appeared to me as a clumsy girl on my way. Sergei.”
The “clumsy girl” was a beauty. “Unusual matte skin and absolute femininity,” recalled theatre artist Sofya Vishnevetskaya. “Beautiful eyes like cherries. And eyelids are like two petals.”
Poet Alexei Ganin had his beloved taken away from under his very eyes. Photo: wikipedia.org
Reich already had an admirer – the poet Alexei Ganin, a close friend of Yesenin. Unfortunately for him, he invited Zinaida and Sergei to his homeland, Vologda. Why did you take Yesenin? I understood that a girl would not go with him, but here he had company. I hoped to declare my love.
Yesenin turned out to be more agile. “I want to marry you!” he said to Reich when his friend left. “Let me think,” she replied. The poet was upset. What are you supposed to think? Zinaida said: “Yes.” And she telegraphed to her father: “Come out a hundred, I’m getting married.”
The money sent by my father was enough for the wedding rings and the wedding ceremony. It took place on July 30, 1917. The witness on the bride’s side was… the unfortunate Ganin.
I couldn’t stand the test of fame.
In Petrograd, the newlyweds rented two rooms in a house at Liteiny, 33. A close friend of the family, poet Vladimir Chernyavsky, godfather of their first-born Tatyana (born in 1918), recalled: “We lived without much comfort, but not too badly either. Sergei published a lot and was paid like a poet of great magnitude. They knew how to be gracious hosts. At the small dining table near the stove, on which revolutionary potatoes were roasted in the evenings while conversation took place, guests often gathered around the samovar. He was delighted with this unpretentious romance and enjoyed the right to simple words: “I have a wife.”
The jealous poet forbade his wife to work for the newspaper and attend sculpture courses: “One must have children, not sculpt sculptures.” Later, Zinaida showed character and got a job as a typist at the People’s Commissariat of Food. In the spring of 1918, the Soviet government moved from Petrograd to Moscow. The Yesenins also moved to the new capital. Reich went to Nadezhda Krupskaya as a consultant to the People’s Commissariat of Education. In 1920 she gave birth to a son, Konstantin.
Yesenin had no time for a boring family life.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS.
And in October 1921 they divorced. Yesenin described the story of the breakup in his famous “Letter to a Woman”:
Do you all remember?
of course, remember
How I was left
approaching the wall;
you walked excitedly
around the room
And something sharp on the face
they threw it at me.
You said: It’s our time
break,
Why does my crazy life torment you?
It’s time for you to get down to work
And my destiny is to roll further down.
The poet could not stand the test of fame. Alcohol, scandals, crowds of fans… He himself described this dissolute life in the famous cycle “Moscow Tavern”. And then the poet Anatoly Mariengof inspired his friend: they say, a true poet does not need marriage or family.
Zinaida needed a real husband, and not a “mischievous Moscow reveler” who regularly disappeared from the family. Sometimes for many months. Then they separated.
Galina Benislavskaya, Yesenin’s literary secretary and penultimate love, who shot herself in his grave, admitted: “I knew that he would never love anyone like Zinaida Nikolaevna.”
“I easily gave my wife to someone else”
In the summer of 1921, Reich, having separated from her husband but not yet officially divorced, became a student at the Senior Director’s Workshops.
In the poem “Letter from My Mother” Yesenin wrote bitterly about himself:
But you lost children all over the world,
He easily gave his wife to another,
And without family, without friendship,
without docking
You walked headlong into the tavern
whirlwind.
The “other” is Vsevolod Meyerhold, 46, a theatre reformer and workshop director, who fell in love with a student 20 years his junior.
Once, at a party, Meyerhold said to Yesenin (they were friends): “You know, Seryozha, I am in love with your wife, Zinaida Nikolaevna. If we get married, won’t you be angry with me?” Yesenin playfully bowed at his feet: “Take her, do me a favor. I will be grateful to you until death.”
It was the drunken bravado of a poet. And the director did in fact get married. In 1922.
For the sake of Zinaida, Vsevolod Emilievich left his wife and three daughters. He adopted Tatyana and Konstantin Yesenin and loved them like his own father. He brought Zinaida’s parents to live with him from Orel. He even took the surname of his beloved and became Meyerhold-Reich.
Vsevolod Meyerhold was a prominent theatre reformer. Photo: R Gorelov./TASS
He idolized his young wife, gave her comfort and a luxurious life. And he made her a famous actress. Although she did not dream of the theatre stage, she intended to become a director.
100 years ago, Reich made her debut on the stage of the Meyerhold Theatre in the role of Aksyusha in the play “The Forest”, based on Ostrovsky’s play. “She didn’t know how to do anything yet, but she had the original feminine gift of being on a par with a loved one,” recalls playwright Alexander Gladkov. – The gift that turned maids into empresses. In love, he made her the first actress of his theatre with the same reckless courage with which Peter I crowned Marta Skavronskaya (the future Catherine I).”
She became a star in 1926, playing the governor in Gogol’s The Government Inspector. Critics noted her eroticism in acting. Since then, Meyerhold gave his wife all the leading female roles. Envious people are slandered: they say that the despotic wife keeps the great director and his famous theatre under control. They called her “a mediocre actress”, even “mediocre”. But in 1930, the theatre successfully toured Germany and France. Western critics called Reich “the embodiment of Sarah Bernhardt” – the same Frenchwoman who at the beginning of the 20th century was called “the most famous actress in history”.
Killed on the leader’s orders?
In 1928, Meyerhold bought two apartments in the “House of Artists” cooperative on Bryusov Lane in Moscow: a three-room apartment and a one-room one. They merged into one and settled in with Reich and their two sons. He and Zinaida had no children together.
On the night of July 15, 1939, Reich was stabbed to death in this apartment by unknown assailants. They were stabbed 17 times and fled. The actress was only 45 years old…
The brutal murder shocked Moscow. There were rumours that she was allegedly killed on Stalin’s orders. They say that she did not like the play “The Lady of the Camellias”, in which Reich shone. The theatre was closed and the director arrested. The actress sent an angry letter to the leader: they say that the Georgian does not understand anything about art, let him ask Meyerhold, he will explain to him. The leader did not forgive such anger.
What really happened? The premiere of The Lady of the Camellias took place in 1934. Reich played her most triumphant role there – the Parisian courtesan Marguerite Gautier. The leader was not happy with the performance and left the performance early. Criticism of “Meyerholdism” began in the press. In fact, Reich sent a letter to Stalin on April 29, 1937. But nothing impudent, but full of respect for “dear Joseph Vissarionovich”. He asked for a personal meeting to tell the truth about the murder of Yesenin and Mayakovsky (Stalin emphasized this proposal in his message!). He asked me to protect my husband from criticism. And he suggested reading the play “Natasha” by Lydia Seifullina about the happiness of a young collective farmer. Reich was supposed to play the main role there, but the production of the play stalled. Perhaps because the writer’s husband was arrested as an enemy of the people.
Stalin did not meet the actress. The theatre was closed in January 1938. Meyerhold himself was arrested in June 1939, 25 days before his wife was murdered. A strange “revenge of the leader”, too long-lasting, don’t you think?
After Reich’s death, his children were evicted from Bryusov Lane and the apartment was divided. Beria’s personal driver moved into the one-room apartment. And the three-room apartment was occupied by the captain of state security Vardo Maksimelishvili and her husband, a security officer. Before her marriage, she was the mistress of Lavrenty Palych, and had a son by him, whom she gave to an orphanage with the knowledge of her father.
Hence the second version: the actress was allegedly murdered by security agents in order to seize a prestigious apartment. But did Beria need the fuss of a murder when he could simply evict the wife of the “enemy of the people” Meyerhold and establish his own people there? A very common practice in the 1930s.
They write that no criminal case was even opened for the murder of the famous actress. But that is exactly what happened! And the verdicts were pronounced. Moscow detectives immediately began to work out a version of the robbery. Meyerhold and his wife lived in luxury! But none of the expensive things were missing from the apartment. Except for the tortoiseshell snuffbox with a gold frame that the director gave to his wife. At that time, it was fashionable to smoke tobacco.
A month and a half later, Vladimir Varnakov, a student at an art school, was arrested for fighting. It turned out that he was hiding a conviction for robbery. During the search, the same tobacco box was found. The student admitted that, together with his accomplices Alexei Kurnosov and Anatoly Ogoltsov, he had robbed Reich’s apartment and personally killed the actress. According to the verdict of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, they were shot.
However, the actress’s relatives did not believe the official version. It was believed that the confessions of the “killers” were obtained under torture. How, under torture, Meyerhold himself admitted to having connections with Western intelligence services and signed his own death warrant.
Zinaida Reich was buried in the same black dress from “The Lady of the Camellias” at the Vagankovskoye Cemetery, not far from her first husband, Sergei Yesenin.
HELP “KP”
Love and death
Men who loved beauty died prematurely.
1. Poet Alexey Ganin. 31 years old. Shot without trial in March 1925 as leader of the Order of Russian Fascists. Posthumously rehabilitated.
2. Poet Sergei Yesenin, 30 years old. He should have been arrested together with his friend Ganin. One of my friends, a security officer, advised me to urgently leave Moscow. The poet left for Baku for a long time. Nine months after Ganin’s death, his body was found in the Angleterre hotel. The official version is suicide. For Reich, the death of her first husband was a heavy blow. At the funeral, I cried bitterly in front of the coffin.
3. Director Vsevolod Meyerhold, 66 years old. Arrested on June 20, 1939. Sentenced under Article 58 of the Criminal Code – “counter-revolutionary activity”. On February 1, 1940, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced Vsevolod Emilievich Meyerhold-Reich to death. Posthumously rehabilitated.
