How Sergei Yesenin actually died. How Yesenin died Yesenin committed suicide

In the first half of the 20s of the XX century, Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin (1895-1925) was unanimously recognized by both fans and critics as the best poet of the young Soviet Socialist Republic, which overthrew the power of the landowners and capitalists. Being a native of peasants, he was considered a prominent representative of the new peasant poetry. Subsequently, with the participation of Yesenin, the "Order of the Imagists" was founded. It would be more correct to call it a literary group adhering to a new literary trend.

The poet happened to live at a time when the old foundations were collapsing, and they were replaced by the new and unknown. In this difficult situation, Sergei Alexandrovich gravitated more toward the disappearing Rus', toward "golden log huts." The kind village atmosphere was familiar to him from childhood, and, therefore, closer and dearer than fluttering red banners and fiery speeches from armored cars. The poet was an excellent connoisseur of the true Russian soul. This is what people valued in him, and therefore the unexpected death of Sergei Yesenin on December 28, 1925 became a huge tragedy for the country.

Cause of Yesenin's death

The poet's life ended at the age of 30. He left the mortal world at the peak of his creativity. Depression is generally accepted as the cause of the tragedy. It is inherent in all creative individuals, as these people are constantly in search of the meaning of their existence. They are not allowed to rest serenely on their laurels, and their own works, praised by others, seem uninteresting, mediocre and faded.

In this case, depression was aggravated by loneliness. The poet's personal life was definitely not going well. On July 30, 1917, the wedding of Sergei Alexandrovich with his first wife Zinaida Nikolaevna Reich (1894-1939) took place. But family life did not last long. On October 5, 1921, the marriage was annulled at the initiative of the poet himself. In 1922, the abandoned wife tied the bonds of Hymen with Vsevolod Meyerhold, who was 20 years older than her. And on the night of July 15, 1939, Zinaida Nikolaevna was brutally murdered in her Moscow apartment. The killers were never found.

In the autumn of 1921, Yesenin met the American dancer Isadora Duncan (1877-1927). The marriage with her was formalized in 1922, and annulled in 1924. That is, family relations with our hero again did not work out. Here, as they say, I found a scythe on a stone. People who knew this couple closely noted constant scandals and showdowns. The second wife of the poet also ended her life tragically. She went for a ride in a car, a long scarf wound around the wheel axle and strangled the dancer.

On October 18, 1925, Sergei Alexandrovich registered his marriage with his third and last wife, Sophia Andreevna Tolstaya (1900-1957). But this marriage lasted a little more than 2 months, and from the first days it did not seem happy for friends and acquaintances. The newlyweds practically did not live together, which only aggravated the loneliness of the poet.

Wives of Sergei Yesenin
From left to right: Zinaida Reich, Isadora Duncan, Sofia Tolstaya

It should also be noted that in the last years of his life Yesenin was predisposed to alcohol. He liked to drink well, make some noise and quarrel. This behavior drew close attention from the GPU. The bad inclinations of Sergei Alexandrovich did not suit the Chekists, as they contradicted the image of a bright creative personality cherished by the socialist state of workers and peasants. The poet also began ideological disagreements with the Soviet authorities. And it was much more serious than drinking and scandals.

In November, our hero underwent a course of treatment at a neuropsychiatric hospital. The reason was a shattered psyche. This was affected by an unsuccessful family life, the abuse of bad habits and a creative crisis. The doctors did everything they could, and in early December, Sergei Alexandrovich said goodbye to the clinic.

In the last decade of December, Yesenin left Moscow for Leningrad. He settled in the Angleterre Hotel. Here, in room number 5, the tragedy occurred. Depression, loneliness, hopelessness fell upon the poet with a vengeance. Unable to withstand this burden, he hanged himself. This is the official version, which quite plausibly explains the death of Sergei Yesenin.

However, there were people who questioned the official conclusion. And today there is an opinion that the Chekists killed the poet. His ideological views began to diverge from the official ones. This was the reason for the crime against a talented person. But what are these suspicions based on? After all, the year is not 37, but only 25. The difference is huge, one might say, an abyss. But let's take a closer look at the documents drawn up in connection with the death of a talented Russian poet.

Investigation documents

When a misfortune happens to a person, representatives of law enforcement agencies immediately appear. They inspect the scene of the incident and draw up an appropriate act. Such an act was also drawn up upon the discovery of Yesenin's body. Comrade Gorbov, a precinct officer of the 2nd department of the Leningrad police, wrote it.

Incident site inspection report

This act was drawn up on December 28, 1925 by district police officer Gorbov in the presence of the hotel manager Comrade. Nazarov Vasily Mikhailovich and attesting witnesses about the found corpse of a hanged citizen in a hotel room. According to a telephone message from the hotel manager to the police station, I arrived at the scene and found the following: a man was hanging from a rope tied to a central heating pipe. His face is turned to the pipe. The right hand gripped the pipe. The body hangs from the ceiling, and more than a meter from the feet to the floor.

On the floor, near the hanged man, lies an overturned pedestal. There is also a candelabra nearby, which, apparently, used to stand on it. When removing the corpse and examining it, a cut was found on the inside of the right arm above the elbow. There are scratches on the left hand. A bruise under the left eye. Body worn: gray trousers, white nightgown, black socks, black shoes. The documents indicate that the hanged man is Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin, who arrived in Moscow on December 24, 1925. He has a certificate number 42-8516 and a power of attorney to receive 640 rubles.
Signatures:
V. Nazarov
(Witnesses) V. Rozhdestvensky, P. Medvedev, M. Froman, V. Erlich.
Police officer (the first letters are illegible) ... Shinsky.
Precinct 2nd dep. LGM N. Gorbov.

Yesenin's body taken out of the noose

Any specialist in forensic science can immediately say that on the basis of this act it is impossible to make a conclusion about suicide. The document is written, to put it mildly, unprofessionally. The scene was not properly inspected. The first thing to pay attention to was the condition of the door locks, the locks on the windows, the presence of a key in the keyhole. It is not indicated in what condition the things in the room were: they lay neatly or were scattered.

Nothing is clear about the clothes on the body of the deceased. Was it torn, unbuttoned, deflated, or was in a normal and tidy condition. Were there blood stains or any other stains on the floor, table, bed. What object was cut on the hand of the corpse. Where the poet took the rope to carry out the act of suicide. The act does not indicate when it was drawn up. There are also no marks on the beginning and end of investigative actions.

These flaws in the work of the district police officer aroused serious suspicions among independent researchers who carefully studied the death of Sergei Yesenin. An opinion was formed that in this way the KGB tried to hide the murder and present it as a suicide. The act itself is written with spelling errors, and the facts stated in it are reflected in inert language. Gorbov, at one time, worked as a typesetter in a printing house, and then as a political commissar in the troops, so it can be assumed that the act was not written by him. However, these activities cannot serve as proof of perfect literacy.

Even teachers of the Russian language make mistakes, let alone those who come from a peasant environment. In Russia at that time, the vast majority of the population was illiterate. The situation improved only in the second half of the 1930s, when young people who received a secondary education went to work in enterprises and institutions.

Some independent researchers suggest that Gorbov himself was involved in the murder of the young poet. This also includes the secretary of the Leningrad Council, Leonov, and the head of the city police, Yegorov. The death of Sergei Yesenin is also associated with his friend, the poet Wolf Erlich, since he was allegedly a secret employee of the GPU.

As for cooperation with the political administration, at that time very many citizens expressed their readiness to help him. Life was hard, hungry. There was unemployment in the country, and people had to somehow survive, feed their children, receive at least some money. Agents had the opportunity to get a job and lead a more or less acceptable existence. This is in the well-fed and drunk 70s, when the main independent investigations were conducted, every citizen had a guaranteed piece of bread. And so it was difficult to understand people who lived 50 years earlier.

But let's move on from the act of examining the scene of the incident to the act of autopsy. It was conducted by the forensic medical expert A. G. Gilyarevsky.

Autopsy act

On December 29, 1925, in the mortuary department of the Obukhov hospital, an autopsy was performed on the corpse of citizen Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin.

The deceased is 30 years old. Physical development is correct, fatness is normal. The skin is pale. The pupils are dilated evenly. Nose openings are free, lips are closed. The tip of the tongue is pressed between the teeth. The genitals are normal, the anus is clean. The lower limbs are dark purple in color. They have petechial hemorrhages. In the middle of the forehead there is a depressed vertical furrow 4 cm long and 1.2 cm wide. An abrasion under the left eye.

Above the larynx on the neck there is a red furrow. It is directed upwards from the left and ends near the auricle. On the right, the furrow goes up to the back of the head. The width of the furrow corresponds to the diameter of the goose feather. In the lower third of the right shoulder there is a 4 cm long scratch on the skin. In the lower third of the left shoulder there is a horizontal scratch and 3 vertical scratches. The length of each of them is about 3 cm. No other damage was found.

The skull has no damage. A bruise is observed in the place of the depressed furrow on the forehead. The weight of the brain is 1920 grams, the vessels are normal. The medulla glistens at the sites of incisions. The abdominal organs are located correctly. The peritoneum is smooth, intestinal loops are red. There are traces of food mixture in the esophagus. Foamy mucus is observed in the larynx and trachea. The lungs are located freely in the chest. The size of the heart corresponds to the fist of the deceased. Valves and holes are in good condition.

300 grams of a semi-liquid food mixture was found in the stomach. It gives off a faint wine smell. The spleen capsule is wrinkled. The liver is dark red. The kidneys are dark red. The renal canal is normal.

Conclusion
Based on the autopsy data, it should be argued that the death of Sergei Yesenin came from asphyxia. It arose as a result of compression of the respiratory tract through hanging. The indentation found on the forehead could be the result of pressure during hanging. The dark purple color of the lower extremities and punctate bruising on them indicate that the deceased was in the loop for a very long time. Wounds on the upper limbs do not pose any danger to life.
Signatures:
Forensic medical expert Gilyarevsky.
Witnesses - illegible signatures.

Farewell to the great poet

So murder or suicide?

Is this act of autopsy objective enough? Some independent researchers thought not. Therefore, in 1989, a special commission was created to investigate the death of the poet. The chairman of the commission was Yuri Lvovich Prokushev (1920-2004). He is an honored scientist, literary critic and writer.

At the request of the commission of the ball, a thorough examination was carried out. Pathologists studied the documents of those years, got acquainted with the KGB archives and analyzed the posthumous photographs of the poet. As a result, experts formed an opinion that refutes the statements of independent researchers.

So the supporters of the murder argued that it was impossible to hang oneself on a vertical heating pipe. They even conducted an experiment: they tied a belt on the pipe, and it slipped down. In addition, given the ceiling height of 4 meters, the poet, whose height was about 170 cm, simply could not fix his murder weapon under the ceiling.

However, in accordance with the examination, it was found that the height of the ceiling in room No. 5 was 3.52 meters. There was a stand with a height of 1.5 meters. Therefore, the poet, who had an average height, could easily fasten a cotton, hemp or silk rope with a diameter of 0.8-1 cm under the very ceiling on a smooth pipe. At the same time, the rope could withstand a load of more than 100 kg.

But there is a more weighty argument indicating that the matter is unclean. This is a depressed furrow on the forehead. It is reflected in the act of autopsy. Some independent experts argued that such an injury could only be inflicted with a heavy blunt object. This gave rise to the opinion that the death of Sergei Yesenin was violent.

Alas, this indentation also found a completely logical explanation, excluding the sinister interference of the Chekists in the life of the poet. The depth of the furrow is 3-5 mm and corresponds to the depth of the skin. But where could such an education come from? The face of the corpse was turned to the pipe. This is stated in the inspection report. The indentation could have arisen from contact with a solid cylindrical object, that is, a pipe. The agonizing man pressed his forehead against hers forcefully. But no damage to the frontal bone was found. Therefore, there was neither a blunt object nor a traumatic brain injury.

What is the conclusion? Most likely, the poet committed suicide. This is indicated at least by the fact that in the last years of his life Sergei Alexandrovich spoke very often about death. We counted the number of such references in the works of the writer. For the last two years there were 397 of them. Moreover, in half of the poems the poet speaks of his own death and suicide.

Nowadays, the version of suicide is considered official. It is supported by the opinions of very authoritative and respected people. But every reasonable person understands that since there were no direct witnesses, then it is impossible to state something with 100% certainty. Therefore, it can be assumed that Yesenin was killed. However, proofs are needed, but they are not, and will not be any more. So it remains only to assume and fantasize, and people are very good at this.

Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin - fair-haired, blue-eyed, with an amazing gentle and charming smile. A peasant nugget, young and promising, who came from the Ryazan province, first to Moscow, and then to Petrograd, full of hopes and the brightest aspirations to conquer the world with his poetry ...

This is a real anguish of poetic creativity, when a person got too much talent. A huge, immense gift from the Lord God fell upon the bright, golden head of the poet. To cope with this, and properly dispose of it, is very difficult ...

And now, ten years later, he is deadly tired ...

How it all began

Yesenin's parents, the first child died as a ten-month-old baby, and then the couple had no children for a long time. Sergei's mother spent long days in prayer. We can say that the future poet was a begging child. But the family did not live together.
Father spent months in Moscow. The mother could not stand it and returned to her parents' house, and after that she left to work. Seryozha was raised by his maternal grandfather and grandmother, and three unmarried maternal brothers, distinguished by their boldness, originality and broad soul, brought educational moments into the life of a little boy.

Grandfather was a very educated person for his time, he was able to give a lot to his grandson. And the mother, who returned from work, surrounded Seryozha with affection and care, as if trying to give everything that she had missed in raising her son.
The first school years the boy studied with some special zeal. I read a lot. As a result, he learned to be a rural teacher, which his parents were very happy about.
But Sergei had a dream. Move to the city and print his poems, which he wrote from the age of eight. Father, a well-read man, but still does not believe that one can earn money with poetry. He insists that his son work with him in the butcher shop.
Later, Sergei will give his first fee for the poem "Birch" to his father, as a token of his innocence.

First achievements

Having settled in the printing house of Sytin, the poet meets Anna Izryadnova. With her, Sergei has a rapprochement, quick and easy. From this common-law wife, Yesenin had his first son. But this woman did not inspire him for poetry.
Yes, and Moscow "printed" it badly. And the talent was torn out, I wanted to become famous. And now moving to Petrograd. Somehow, by hook or by crook, Sergei gets to Blok and captivates, at that time, the main poet of Russia. The peasant nugget fell in love in Petrograd, gradually all doors open before him. True, I had to change the classic costume from a needle to a common one.

This is what a peasant poet should look like. Especially if he just came from the earth. And now Yesenin enthusiastically tries to take from life everything that she offers him. In 1916, he is presented to the Empress, who will present the poet with a gold watch - a step towards fame and success, not many will appreciate him. After all, in a little over a year, after the October Revolution, when the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries were defeated, Sergei would loudly declare himself a Bolshevik. Yes, I had to readjust. But it seems that Yesenin really took the revolution with enthusiasm.
It must be remembered that at the time of the revolution, Sergei was a little over twenty years old. And the youth is greedy for renewal. Reassured by the changes, the poet understands how false and destructive everything is:

Do you hear? Do you hear a loud knock?
This is a rake of dawn through the forests.
With oars of severed hands
You are rowing into the land of the future.

It was a serious first turning point in Yesenin's life.

Personal

The first revolutionary year was for Sergei the year of the first official, one might even say sudden, marriage. Frantic quarrels and stormy reconciliations were in the nature of the poet. True, there was a craving for family life, their own housing, and a wife.

But the image of the bohemian poet knocked him out of this rut. Despite the short marriage, two children were born in it. There are no lines dedicated to Zinaida during the period of their life together in Yesenin's poetry. Regret will pour out in verses later:

But you are children
Lost in the world
his wife
Easily passed on to someone else...

Here they are, the children of the poet, Tatyana and Konstantin, who were raised by the second husband of Zinaida Reich Meyerhold. He adopted children, loved and cared for them like a father.

Recognition and disappointment

What the poet dreamed of came true - confession!
Yesenin's fame grew along with people's love. Sergey traveled half of Russia, read his poems at various venues. After some speeches, he was carried out in his arms, enterprising girls sorted out the laces from his shoes, the tie that was tied on him. No one was as popular as Yesenin.

And in 1921, a new feeling bursts into the life of the poet, dazzling and uncontrollable.

I was looking for happiness in this woman,
And accidentally found death.
I did not know that love is an infection,
I didn't know that love is a plague.
Came up with a slitted eye
The bully went crazy.

In her spirit, Isadora Duncan was akin to the revolutionary raging Russia. For the beginning of the 20th century, the dances of the experimental dancer were defiant. Without a doubt, a talented, barefoot, dressed in a transparent tunic dancer turned the poet's head. True, the passionate marriage between an American dancer and a Russian poet cannot be called exemplary. The relationship was terrible, it was they who broke the poet. In addition, Isadora tore Sergei away from Russian soil, and Yesenin could not do without her.
During the hateful trip to America, the passion for the dancer grew into the same violent irritation. About America itself, the poet says:

If you want to rip out your soul here,
They will consider it: either stupid or drunk.
Here it is - the World Exchange!
Here they are - scoundrels of all countries.

There is internal discord. Strong feelings: passion, emotions, upheavals, sometimes harshness and even cruelty... Let's not turn the poet's soul inside out. Let us dwell on the fact that he had his own reasons for this.

Black man

And now the poet no longer wants a heady dope, but on the contrary, he wants transparent, undefiled air. Longing joined, for its purity, for its former youth.

Absolute genius! He is engaged in a constant search for himself, trying to understand himself first of all, without blaming anyone. His poem "The Black Man" is the last attempt to understand the dark sides of his inner world.

Here is a great feature for myself:

There was a man that adventurer
But the highest
And the best brand.

He was graceful
Besides, the poet
Even with a small
But with gripping power...

The question of why it is so scary and disgusting to live has become an edge in the path of the poet. The poetic fame that he dreamed about - he achieved, is preparing for publication a complete collection of works, which rarely could be expected during his lifetime, he has four children. But the poet rushes from city to city, and seeks salvation in hopelessness, in a new passion.

In Moscow and Petrograd, 14 criminal cases were opened against Yesenin. All of them are associated with drunken brawls and pogroms, connections with speculation. By the way, there is no evidence that someone once saw Yesenin, as they say, “drunk as a thief”. An adventurer, a hooligan, a rebel - yes, but Sergey was not exactly a lost drunkard. And all this is not from malice, but from a great inner strength.

He simply burned out in the cycle of life, giving himself irrevocably to the service of the lyrics. One of the reasons for Yesenin's death is his enormous inner strength. She ruined him. The poet dreamed of fame, he achieved it! What's next?

Still waiting for something from life

Dependence on alcohol increased, mood swings more and more often occurred, from violence to complete isolation. But, judging by the poems, the poet is still dreaming:

Predawn. Blue. Early.
And flying stars grace.
Make a wish,
I don't know what to wish for.

What to desire under the burden of life,
Cursing your inheritance and home?
I would like to have a good
See the girl under the window.

So that with cornflower blue eyes
Only me -
Not to anyone -
And with new words and feelings
Calms the heart and chest.

He wants a new quality of love. He quickly falls in love and proposes to Sophia Tolstaya, the granddaughter of Leo Nikolayevich. Three months after her marriage, Sophia will become a widow.

Sofia Andreevna was aware of what she was getting into. Sergei at that time did not lead the best way of life: drinking, gatherings, sprees, leaving home, doctors. She was sure that she could handle it and help Seryozha. She writes to her closest relatives: “I wanted to live only for him.”

Yesenin himself clings to this marriage, like the last straw. And although this marriage was famous (the poet was proud that his wife was the granddaughter of the famous writer of the Russian land), he was out of love. Sofia persuades Sergei to go to the clinic.

In general, 1925 is the period of life when the poet rushes about. He has constant trips in which he cannot find himself. Life is getting more and more uncomfortable. He tried, he tried.

He goes to Leningrad not to die, but to work. Probably, as in his youth, when he moved from Moscow to Petrograd, and he succeeded, he wanted to repeat the same path from Moscow to Leningrad. He drove for good luck.

What's happened?

About what and why happened at the Angleterre Hotel, a murder veiled by hanging or suicide, disputes have not subsided for 90 years.

On the one hand, Sergei Yesenin was really in a serious condition. On the other hand, like any talented and recalcitrant person, he managed to make a lot of enemies for himself. However, it was impossible to shoot a poet like Nikolai Gumelev. The love of the people was too great.

After all, Yesenin did things that no author could afford. He directly stated: “I won’t allow myself to wear a muzzle, and I won’t sing to the tune.”

Back in 1920, at an evening of proletarian poetry, the poet lamented: "Three years, you poets have been writing your Marxist nonsense." Yes, for one tenth of what Yesenin openly said and did, anyone else would have been shot long ago.

Some biographers are sure that Sergei Alexandrovich, who was preparing his complete works for publication, would never have abandoned this business. He was looking forward to the release of this collection. Those tuned in to a different wave say, but how is it:

I have never been so tired.
Into this gray frost and slime
I dreamed of the Ryazan sky
And my unlucky life.

I liked to wear in a light body
Quiet light and peace of the dead...

The era of the Silver Age grinded the fate of dozens of poets. The outstanding poet Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin also fell into her millstone.

Political or personal were these millstones - a mystery. It has been trying to figure it out for decades.

Data

➤ there was an accident at the Angleterre Hotel;

➤ the last verse, as evidence of farewell, “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye,” transmitted in the evening to the poet Wolf Erlich;

➤ the poet had only been out of the psycho-neurological hospital for only a week;

➤ Sergei was in a state of depression;

➤ there is an act of a forensic expert, painted to the smallest detail;

➤ there is a conclusion in which the court medical expert does not give an easy conclusion, but describes in detail that the indentation on the forehead is the result of a sharp change in pressure during hanging, and the dark purple color and pinpoint bruises on the limbs are the result of a long stay in the noose;

➤ in Leningrad, a civil memorial service was held in the union of poets;

➤ the body was transported by train to Moscow;

➤ on the last day of 1925, Yesenin was buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery.

Other versions

The version that Sergei was killed is very relevant to this day. To a greater extent, this is due to the huge people's love for the poet. No one wants to just “let go” of everyone's favorite. After all, how much more could this loud lyricist write.

Numerous versions, analysis of death to the smallest detail really make you think about the veracity of the evidence, protocols and forensic medical report. Many facts fall into doubt: the time of death, the degree of rigor mortis, the position of the limbs and their color, the condition of the tongue, those small abrasions found on the body, and so on. Both the testimonies and the competence of the legal system are called into question.

There are detailed descriptions, more like a fantastic action movie, where the wishful thinking is presented as reality. They tell how it all happened, how many people got into the poet's room, how exactly the struggle took place, in what sequence those minor injuries on the skin were received.

Some "knowers", in general, assure that the poet did not have any depression. Otherwise, how would he work in a clinic, and in three weeks he wrote six good poems.

There is even a version that Sergei only wanted to play with death and "outplayed". He died by accident, not for nothing that he grabbed the pipe with his hand. A week as from a psychiatric hospital, he drank a little, got a little drunk, hallucinations began.

Later investigation

Despite the fact that many years have passed since the death of the poet, due to mass doubts about the reliability of the first investigation after the death of Yesenin, a commission was created in 1989, headed by Yuri Lvovich Prokushev, a remarkable writer and Yesenin scholar. Under his control and supervision, many examinations, comparative characteristics, additional investigations were carried out, many documentary facts were considered.

After the work done, the final conclusion was made.

All the numerous versions and discrepancies about the murder of the poet are incompetent, far-fetched and vulgar, simply falsifying.

This is the official conclusion.

Now, when more than 90 years have passed since the death of the poet, lovers of his work and admirers of talent know one thing - the poet lives in the hearts and souls of many, delights, inspires, inspires creative upsurges.

Disputes about the death of the great poet do not subside

The 120th anniversary of the birth of the great Russian poet Sergei Yesenin was celebrated this year. But there is still a fierce debate about whether he committed suicide or was killed. The official version, the one that is given in encyclopedias, is the old one - we are talking about suicide. Such it was in Soviet times, such it remains now.

However, after the collapse of the USSR and the disclosure of the archives, many publications, books, documentaries appeared, which carry out a different version - Yesenin was killed. Moreover, some researchers, in particular, the St. Petersburg writer Viktor Kuznetsov, managed to obtain such documentary evidence that the version of the murder looks more than convincing.

However, more about this later - and now we will talk about what many previous researchers for some reason paid little attention to, or did not pay attention at all. Yesenin was not just killed, he could not help but be "liquidated", as they said in those days. And not at all for his "bold" conversations, numerous scandals and fights, ... but for the poems that he wrote. Let us remember how Osip Mandelstam was erased into camp dust for just one poem about the "Kremlin highlander". And Yesenin had a lot of such poems, where he speaks with hatred and contempt not only about the leaders of the communist regime, but also about this regime in general. Why didn't they pay attention to it? And, probably, for a very simple reason: these poems were not published under the Soviet regime, and if something was printed, then with cuts that have survived to our times.

The real challenge to the communist authorities was his poem "The Country of Scoundrels" - as he called the USSR in it.

Empty fun.

Some conversations!

So what?

Well, what did we take in return?

Those crooks came, the same thieves

And along with the revolution, everyone was taken prisoner ...

Gangs! Gangs!

Countrywide.

Wherever you look, wherever you go

You see how in space

on horseback

And no horses

Ossified bandits are jumping and walking ...

One of the main characters of this poem is Chekistov-Leibman, in whom the powerful Leiba Trotsky is easily guessed. In this Yesenin poem, he speaks of the Russians like this:

Lived all their life as beggars

And they built temples of God ...

Yes I had them a long time ago

Rebuilt into latrines.

The Ryazan brawler allowed himself sharp attacks against members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), characterized the Civil War as "vile and evil savagery", which ruined thousands of the finest talents:

They have Pushkin

Lermontov,

Koltsov,

And our Nekrasov in them.

I am in them.

They even have Trotsky

Lenin and Bukharin.

Is it because of my sadness

The verse blows

Looking at them

Unwashed hari.

All these seditious lines were steadily thrown out of the poet's collections from 1926 to 1990, and even today the poem "Homeless Rus'" in many collections does without them.

It is possible that Yesenin’s phrase, said in Berlin to the émigré writer Roman Gul, could also reach Trotsky: “I won’t go to Russia while it is ruled by Trotsky-Bronstein.<...>He shouldn't rule."

Trotsky certainly knew about all such attacks against him, how could he treat Yesenin after that? Moreover, in The Country of Scoundrels, the poet called Trotsky even sharper. And in those days, anti-Semitism was a criminal offense in the USSR, for such attacks they could well have been put up against the wall. They would have put anyone else, but they decided to remove the famous poet in a different way.

However, among our liberal historians there is a tendency to portray Trotsky as almost a patron of Yesenin. How does, for example, Nikolai Svanidze, who concocted a documentary about Yesenin. To justify Trotsky, Svanidze cites the fact that after the death of the poet, Trotsky published a laudatory obituary about him in Pravda. But it was nothing more than an action to cover up a crime. Trotsky-Chekistov could not in any way like the poetry of the Russian peasant poet, he fiercely hated and despised such. After all, it is no coincidence that after a magnificent funeral, the poet's poems were banned in the USSR. The enemy of Yesenin was not satisfied with his poetry of recent years, which was alien to October, about which the "architect of the revolution" himself wrote in Pravda: "The poet died because he was not akin to the revolution."

In a word, "haris" remembered everything and did not forgive anything. It was not for nothing that Lenin, himself a treacherous politician, called Trotsky "Jewish", spoke of his "Jesuitism" and "refined treachery." After Yesenin returned from abroad, Trotsky even wanted to "tame" him, offering him to head a new literary magazine, but failed to agree with the poet. Yesenin perfectly understood what awaited him for such verses from "unwashed mugs" and wrote, anticipating his tragic fate:

And the first

I need to hang

Crossing my arms behind my back

For the fact that the song

hoarse and sick

I interfered with the sleep of my native country ...

Here they hung...

Was full of creative plans

Many facts testify that Yesenin was not at all, as they say, in a state of manic depression during his arrival in Leningrad. According to contemporaries, the poet was determined to work, read poetry to friends, talked about a new magazine. In 1925, he published 8 books, he prepared a complete collection of works. Yesenin's financial situation was successful - and not only thanks to a future well-paid job. There was an agreement with the State Publishing House for the payment of royalties for the complete collection of works for a year and a half. The first transfer for 640 rubles has already been received. Back in Moscow, Yesenin told the publisher Evdokimov about his plans - work in the Polyana magazine, the leadership of which Kirov promised him. The poet’s niece Svetlana Yesenina said: “Soon, Yesenin had to move his family to Leningrad, as evidenced by his telegram dated December 7, in which the poet asked Wolf Erlich to find him a three-room apartment.” All this speaks of his positive attitude.

There is another circumstance that could not but set the poet in an optimistic mood. In Baku, he met Sergei Kirov, who treated him very well.

On December 18, 1925, the XIV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks began its work in Moscow. A grandiose political drama unfolded on it. The opposition of L. Kamenev and G. Zinoviev lost outright to Stalin. Kamenev was promoted to candidate member of the Politburo, Zinoviev lost control of the Leningrad party organization, the cleaning of which was entrusted to Kirov. Kirov was about to be transferred to Leningrad, appointing Zinoviev to his place. Moreover, Trotsky was already losing his power.

Supporters of the version of suicide invariably cite, as evidence of Yesenin's inclination to suicide, the fact of his stay in a psychiatric clinic in Moscow. Like, the poet moved with his mind on the basis of drunkenness, left the psychiatric hospital, arrived in Leningrad and immediately hanged himself. In fact, Yesenin ended up in the clinic not for health reasons at all. He was placed there, saving him from a trial that they wanted to arrange over him after the scandal on September 6, 1925 on the Baku-Moscow train, where he sharply quarreled with the diplomatic courier Alfred Roga and Yuri Levit, close acquaintances of the all-powerful Lev Kamenev. Roga and Levit, through the office of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, filed a lawsuit against the poet, demanding "retribution." Court secretary V. Goldberg scribbled threatening instructions to Yesenin. They took a written undertaking not to leave him. Yesenin's position was becoming threatening.

The way out of the difficult situation was suggested by the sisters of the poet Katya and Shura - to "hide" in the clinic of Moscow University. The poet did not agree for a long time, but nevertheless he was forced to go to the hospital on November 26, 1925. Professor Pyotr Gannushkin took care of him here, protecting him from bailiffs and all those who sought to "put" him in prison at all costs. He even gave him a certificate for this:

"Certificate

The office of the psychiatric clinic hereby certifies that the patient Yesenin S.A. has been treated in a psychiatric clinic since November 26 of this year. and to the present; due to his health, he cannot be interrogated in court.

Clinical assistant Gannushkin.

Chekists came to the clinic to arrest Yesenin, but the doctors did not extradite him.

The fact that Yesenin, in the sense of the state of the psyche, was completely healthy is evidenced by the fact that it was in the clinic that he wrote some of his poetic masterpieces: “You are my fallen maple, icy maple ...”, “You don’t love me, don’t feel sorry ..” , "Who am I? What am I? Only a dreamer…” and others. There is a version that for the same reason – fleeing from the court, he hastily left for Leningrad.

Testimony of Svarog

Contrary to statements in encyclopedias that immediately after Yesenin’s death, no one spoke about the murder for “several decades”, they began to talk about it right away. The artist Vasily Svarog, who made a drawing of the dead Yesenin without makeup, wrote in 1927: “It seems to me that this Erlich added something to him at night, well ... maybe not poison, but a strong sleeping pill. No wonder he "forgot" his briefcase in Yesenin's room. And he didn’t go home to “sleep” - with Yesenin’s note in his pocket. It was not in vain that he was spinning nearby all the time, probably, their whole company was sitting and biding their time in neighboring rooms.

The situation was nervous, there was a congress in Moscow, people in leather jackets were walking in the Angleterre all night. Yesenin was in a hurry to remove, so everything was so awkward and there were many traces.

The frightened janitor, who was carrying firewood and did not enter the room, heard what was happening, rushed to call the commandant of the hotel Nazarov. Where is the janitor now? At first there was a “noose” - Yesenin tried to loosen it with his right hand, so the hand stiffened in a cramp. The head was on the armrest of the sofa when Yesenin was hit above the bridge of the nose with the handle of a revolver. Then they rolled him up in a carpet and wanted to lower him off the balcony, a car was waiting around the corner. It was easier to steal. But the balcony door did not open wide enough, leaving the corpse by the balcony, in the cold. They drank, smoked, all this dirt remained ... Why do I think that they rolled it into a carpet? When I was drawing, I noticed a lot of tiny specks on my trousers and a few in my hair... they tried to straighten their arms and slashed the tendon of their right hand with a Gillette razor, these cuts were visible... They took off their jacket, wrinkled and cut, put valuables in their pockets and then they took everything away ... They were in a hurry ... They “hung up” in a hurry, already late at night, and it was not easy on a vertical riser. When they fled, Erlich stayed to check something and prepare for the version of suicide...”.

The testimony of Svarog, who was one of the few who saw the still uncleaned corpse of Yesenin, was not attached to the case in violation of the law.

There is another mysterious person in the case of the death of Yesenin, a certain L. Sosnovsky, a friend of Trotsky, a feuilletonist. It was on his accusation that the case of 4 poets accused of anti-Semitism arose (Yesenin, Klychkov, Oreshin, Ganin). All the poets died a violent death, as well as Sosnovsky (it is his name that appears in the case of the execution of the royal family), who was shot in 1937. Another victim is A. Sobol, who stood up for "anti-Semitic" poets. Shortly after Yesenin's funeral, he was found near the monument to Dostoevsky with a shot through his head.

Didn't live in Angleterre?

However, the most sensational discovery was made by the already mentioned St. Petersburg writer V. Kuznetsov: refuting the version of suicide, studying the documents of the Angleterre Hotel, he discovered that Yesenin did not live in it at all!

The poet's surname is not on the list of residents of this hotel at the time when his corpse was allegedly found hanging on a steam heating pipe. Those who remember Soviet times know well what it meant then to get a room in a prestigious hotel (and Angleterre, located next to the most prestigious hotel in the city, Astoria, was just that). Each settled was registered, the porter wrote down the data of his passport. The authorities followed this very strictly. On each floor there were special bellboys connected with the GPU, so that an unnamed tenant without registration in such a hotel could not appear in any way.

And he did not appear, because none of the hotel staff and Yesenin's guests who lived there saw these days. And all the "witnesses" who later testified about the communication with the poet in his issue of Angleterre, including Erlich, were secret agents of the GPU and said what was required of them. Moreover, we note that Yesenin was then followed, in Moscow a criminal case was opened against him, and his appearance in Leningrad could generally be considered as an escape from justice. And with such in the USSR, the conversation was short.

According to Kuznetsov, there was a short conversation with Yesenin. As soon as he appeared in Leningrad, he was immediately arrested and brought to the investigation house of the GPU at Mayorova Street, 8\25. There he was interrogated with prejudice. The operation was led by the famous Chekist Yakov Blyumkin. The meaning of the interrogations was that they wanted to recruit Yesenin as a secret employee of the GPU.

There is another version according to which the poet was required to hand over the document that compromised L. Kamenev.

In Moscow, the intoxicated Yesenin told the prose writer Tarasov-Rodionov that after the abdication of Nicholas II in 1917, the throne was offered to his brother Mikhail, and Kamenev from Siberian exile immediately sent a telegram with congratulations to the new tsar. And Michael renounced the throne. Yesenin (he served on the ambulance train in Tsarskoe Selo) boasted that this telegram, dangerous to Kamenev, was allegedly kept by him: "It is safely hidden with me." The prose writer, an informer of the GPU, immediately knocked on the right place. And Yesenin was expected in Leningrad ...

It is unlikely that Trotsky personally gave the order to kill the poet, but it just happened. Apparently, Yesenin, accustomed to fights, resisted and pushed Blumkin with force, he fell. Then a shot rang out. The photograph shows a trace of a bullet wound, and after that Blumkin hit Yesenin in the forehead with a revolver handle.
Blumkin, after the assassination from Leningrad, contacted Trotsky and asked what to do with Yesenin's corpse. He answered him that tomorrow his article would appear in the newspaper that the unbalanced, decadent poet had laid hands on himself, and everyone would be silent. They decided to stage a suicide - fortunately, the sinister house 8/25 was not far from the Angleterre. The corpse was moved to a room in which no one lived.

Of course, there is no direct evidence that this was the case, and indeed cannot be. All the witnesses are long dead, and the documents have been destroyed. However, Kuznetsov managed to get acquainted with a friend who worked at Angleterre, a cleaning lady, Varvara Vasilyeva. Before her death, she managed to tell her that late on the evening of December 27, some drunken thugs were dragging a dead body either from the attic or from the basement labyrinth. It is possible that this was Yesenin's corpse.

There are many other facts about the murder. So, for example, it is alleged that the poet wrote the famous dying verses “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye ...” in blood, since there was supposedly no ink in the room. However, in the photograph of the room where the poet was hanged, an inkwell is clearly visible on the table. In addition, it is not known where the pen with which he allegedly wrote these poems disappeared. Yesenin's jacket also disappeared from the room without a trace. Where did these things disappear, which are not in the inventory, if it was a question of suicide?

Moreover, the cuts from which Yesenin allegedly took blood to write poetry were made on his right hand, although the poet was not at all left-handed.

How could he dip a pen in them? It is very uncomfortable! Such cuts should be on his left arm. So, these are traces of torture or beatings. And how, for example, to explain the bruise under Yesenin's eye? And abrasions on the body, which are clearly visible in the photo? The dent on his forehead was explained by the fact that, having hanged himself, he pressed his forehead against a red-hot pipe of steam heating, which, they say, was this terrible burn. However, at that time the batteries in Leningrad, including the Angleterre, were barely warm. It was cold. The same Erlich testifies in his testimony that when he came to the room, he found Yesenin sitting in a fur coat!

It turns out that the only documentary evidence of suicide was the farewell poem of the poet himself. However, it was published by Erlikh, who called himself a "friend of Yesenin", but in fact the former was just a "six" spinning around the poet (and, as has long been established, a secret agent of the GPU). It is in no way possible to believe that the poet could entrust him with his tragic "message to posterity."

They say that the handwriting examination later confirmed that the handwriting belonged to Yesenin. But there is another perfectly logical explanation for this. Yakov Blyumkin was a handwriting forger. In his Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn cites the fact that Blumkin confessed in his cell that he had made a fake letter to Savinkov, so cleverly that everyone later believed it. For the GPU, the forgery of other people's letters was generally a common thing.

Contribution of "friends"

A significant contribution to the approval of the myth of Yesenin's "suicide", alas, was made by his fellow poets. In 1926, A. Kruchenykh's book "The Death of Yesenin" was published. In it, this eminent poet, who was by no means engaged by the Soviet authorities, wrote: “The stupid, hopeless whining of Yesenin and the Yesenists makes their “poetry” a howl of suicide candidates! Yes, living the way Yesenin lived, of course, is not new. Modern poets must live a new life and it is necessary to make sure that they want and can live this life and that nothing of the dying old world remains in their work ... ".

But here's the paradox, about Kruchenykh and other ill-wishers of Yesenin have long been forgotten, and the bright name of the Russian genius Sergei Yesenin and his amazing poems are still with us!

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PETITION

Running after everything speeding up its movement to a new "train"-epoch broke the strength of the poet. More and more often he speaks about his life in the past tense: “everything rolled away”, “everything flew ... far away ... past ... my heart went cold and my eyes faded”, “I lived everything”, “I lived this life as if by the way, along with others on earth ... ".

From the height of the past years, he is surprised at the past mischief, fun:

Oh, it happened, you break your hat,
Yes, you will lay a horse in the shafts,
Yes, lie down on an armful of hay, -
Just remember what my name was.

And where did the posture come from ....

Quite naturally, against this background, the motive of leaving, saying goodbye to life arises:

In the soul - the lemon light of sunset ...,
………………………………
Flowers say goodbye to me
Bowing their heads down,
That I will never see
Her face and fatherland,
………………………
And this deathly trembling
How to accept a new kindness ....

The poet increasingly thinks about his own death as something close and inevitable:

I don't know if I'm sick
Or not sick
But only thoughts
They roam randomly.
In the ears of the grave
The sound of shovels
With a distant sob
Belfry.

Himself Deceased
In the coffin I see
Under the alleluia
The groans of the deacon.
I am forever dead to myself
I go lower
Laying on them
Two copper patches.

All the poet asks to be given "in the homeland of the beloved ... die in peace" .

The feeling of fatigue, doom grew like a snowball. Feeling like "like a horse driven in soap", you won't get far. The denouement was approaching...

“Hopeless sadness… has become my song…”

A very important prerequisite for Yesenin's suicide is the tragic component of the poet's worldview.

Hopeless sadness
In the quiet crackle of coals
By my fire
Became my song

says the author of Sick Thoughts. In style, imitative, student, in content, these lines are already Yesenin's. The high tragic note once taken will remain a characteristic feature of Yesenin's artistic world throughout all the years of his work.

The origins of the tragic worldview are in the mental trauma received in childhood.

In our work of 1993 it is said: “The poet was very early disappointed in parental love. This disappointment was due to the circumstances of his childhood ... From the age of two, Yesenin was given to be raised by his grandfather's family ... he felt infinitely lonely ... he dreamed of the time when his parents would take him to their place, ”but the “loving” mother was in no hurry for her son, ” and “at some point an event was to occur that finally destroyed the child’s faith in parental love ... given the circumstances of childhood ... the confession of Yesenin the young man is easily explained: “morally, the mother died for me a long time ago ...” ... the poet’s estrangement from his parents continued later » . Modern Russian researchers N. Kubanev and L. Nabilkina, participants in the annual conference in Yesenin's homeland, note: “Yesenin's neurotic character comes from childhood, or rather from relationships with his mother. Yesenin had a very difficult and far from rosy relationship with his mother. Sergei was neither a long-awaited nor a beloved child. The contempt of a healthy, full of strength and natural desires of a beautiful young woman for her "quel" husband, who, moreover, was rarely at home, was transferred to the child. In early childhood, Sergei perceived his mother as a strange woman. A bitter resentment fell on the heart of the future poet and the episode with the shroud: a seriously ill teenager Sergei could not forget his crying mother with "quickly scurrying fingers" that sewed his mortal clothes. So from early childhood, Sergei Yesenin felt inner loneliness, the absence of a dear and loving soul. Thus, it was the psychic trauma experienced in childhood, which consisted in the loss of faith in parental love, that determined Yesenin's tragic worldview.

Already the first literary experiments of Yesenin reveal the sensitivity of the poet's perception to the imperfection of the surrounding world and the human soul. He sees the root, the cause of human suffering and troubles, first of all, in the person himself, in the inertia and conservatism of his nature, which cannot be transformed: “You cannot rebuild a living soul forever.” Only a small part of people - a creatively thinking minority - is able to perceive new ideas, burn with a thirst for self-improvement, but this is such an insignificant part of the total mass that it is not able to have any impact on the life of mankind. “The chant”, calling for transformation, “will stir up ... Bryusov and Blok, will stir up others”, however, everything will remain the same: “the shadow will still rise from the east, the moment will also flash”. The poet is sure that “the face of the earth will not be changed by melodies”, that the evil underlying human nature is eternal: “Forever the deaf hands of the star have stretched out ... Pilate”.

Such judgments of the poet about the “soul” of a person do not allow one to doubt that it was the tragic note that formed the basis, the core of his worldview. Of course, this does not mean that it exhausted all the richness of the ideological and artistic content of his work, namely, Yu. Mamleev and O. Voronova reproach me for such a statement. Of course, Yesenin's voice in different periods of creativity, in different works has different, sometimes mutually exclusive, shades. But the statement of this fact does not refute the thesis put forward by us. Pushkin also occasionally has lines of a pessimistic nature (for example: “A gift in vain, an accidental gift, life, why have you been given to me?”), but we don’t classify him on this basis as a tragic poet? There are optimists who fall into melancholy, just as there are pessimists who show signs of unbridled gaiety.

All Yesenin's breakthroughs through the existential dead ends of existence towards the light ended in disappointment and denial of light. The point is not only in the quantitative predominance of works with tragic content, but also in the predominance of quality, which is manifested in the ideological and artistic evolution of Yesenin's themes. From what does the lyrical hero of the poet come to what? From glorifying the motherland, whose “cow's eyes” “there is no better, no more beautiful”, to disappointment (“What is the motherland? Are these dreams? in a cycle of “revolutionary” poems to a bitter conclusion: only “peck and pipe” remained from the revolution, from the hope of finding harmony in love for its loss (as happened with the lyrical hero of “Love of a Hooligan” and “Persian Motifs”).

As an existentialist romantic, Yesenin showed himself not only in his attitude, but also in the images of his work.

The existential horror of the artist before the insoluble contradictions of life, its "lead abominations", which drew them into the abyss of despair, is captured in the poems "I am the last poet of the village ...", "The Song of Bread", "Mysterious world, my ancient world ...", poems "Sorokoust ”,“ Black Man ”, etc. This is“ a farewell mass of birches scorching leaves ”, and“ wooden moon clocks ”, which“ croak ... the twelfth hour ”of the poet, and“ stone hands of the highway ”,“ squeezing the village by the neck ”, and the image of a "terrible messenger" pulling "five to the throats of the plains" .
One of the most life-affirming images of Russian folklore, peasant poetry is the image of the harvest. The poet's perception so alters the traditional image of this bright holiday that the very process of harvest appears almost like a universal apocalypse:

Sickle cuts heavy ears,
How swans are cut down the throat.

Our field has long been familiar
With an August shiver in the morning.
Tied up in sheaves of straw,
Each sheaf lies like a yellow corpse.

On carts, like hearses,
They are taken to the grave crypt - barn.
Like a deacon, barking at a mare,
The charioteer honors the funeral rank.

And then them carefully, without anger,
They lay their heads on the ground
And flails little bones
Knocked out of thin bodies.

No one will get up in the head,
That straw is also flesh!..
Ogre-mill - teeth
They put those bones in their mouths to grind them.

And, fermenting the dough from the chalk,
Heaps of delicious dishes are baked ...
That's when the whitish poison enters
Put eggs of malice in the jug of the stomach.

The death of one gives life to another - such is the immutable law of nature. It is against the law of death, which makes the existence of any individual finite, that existentialism as a philosophical direction is directed; it is against death, understood in an existentialist way, that the hero of Yesenin's poem rises.

What is not an existentialist landscape depicted in a poem

Like it's raining
From the soul, a little dead,
……………………………………………
Like a graveyard, a garden is dotted
Gnawed bones in birches

and in the poem “Are you my side, side!” :

A cold lantern in a black puddle
Reflects a lipless head ...,
……………………………………….
...between the skeletons of houses
Like a miller, the bell tower carries
Copper bags of bells,

and also in the poem "The golden grove dissuaded":

... every wanderer in the world -
Pass, enter and leave the house again,
………………………………………………………
I stand alone in the middle of the naked plain ...,
………………………………………………………
In the garden, a fire of red rowan is burning,
But he can't warm anyone?

Thus, our attempt to pave the path from the poet's attitude to the existentialist perception of reality is fully justified. It was the existential horror of the heavy tread of the new time, the fear of the inevitability of the entry of man and mankind into a new, post-industrial era, the feeling of the catastrophic nature of what is happening, giving rise to Yesenin's aching melancholy, fear of the new in life, and led to the need to be distracted, to forget:

I'm on all this rusty shit (my italics - A.L.)
I will squint my eyes and narrow ...,
……………………………………………..
And I myself, bowing my head,
I fill my eyes with wine
So as not to see the fateful face,
To think for a moment about something else.

The tragic perception of reality is dangerous not in itself, but in its possible consequences. Together with other factors discussed above (the instability of the poet's emotional sphere, the painful experience of alienation, the collapse of social illusions), the pessimistic worldview convinced the poet of the meaninglessness of existence and the justification of "leaving". But all these factors are only prerequisites for suicide, but not its real cause. The reason is always material, material, it can almost be touched, felt, watching the throwing of an individual immersed in melancholy.
Still, every person is given the strongest instinct of self-preservation, which day and night stands guard over his life.

What reason lulled the vigilance of the instinct, weakened its control over the situation and thereby predetermined the course of events according to a tragic scenario?

Further understanding of the problem will require other - medical criteria for its solution.

“Alcohol showers brains…”

In my opinion, the immediate cause of Yesenin's suicide lies in the field of medicine. I see at least two reasons convincingly explaining the poet's suicide.

The first of them is connected with the so-called “death instinct”, “love of death”, discovered by Z. Freud, the desire of any organic matter to return back to its original inorganic state.
The existence of an unconscious striving for death is easily confirmed by the images and motives of the poet's work.

In a number of poems, the hero of Yesenin calls for death:

... it's better then hurry up
Let me go to the grave
Only there I can and only in it
Heal all broken forces,
………………………………………………………………..
I want to die ,
………………………………………………………………..
Learn to be able
Never wake up
………………………………………………………………..
Would choke in this frenzy,
My last, only friend, etc.

Anticipating a tragic "point" at the end, at the very beginning of his creative path, the poet creates a poem "Confessions of a Suicide", which is a dying monologue of a person who decided to end his life. The reasons that prompt the suicide to take this step lie not in the social, but in the personal sphere. It is not society that is to blame for the rejection of life, but the "cold poison in the soul" of a suicide, which does not allow him to "live among people." He says:

And what he lived and what he loved
I myself (my italics - A.L.) madly poisoned.
With my proud soul
I passed happiness side.

Human life in the poem is interpreted as a "funeral song".

Suicide is also mentioned in the poem "Mermaid on New Year's Eve", in which the heroine of the poem, and in fact the poet himself, is obsessed with the desire to take his own life.
In the poem "I'm tired of living in my native land ..." he predicts the way to leave:

In the green evening under the window
I will hang myself on my sleeve.

But the murder weapon was not yet known for sure:

Listen, filthy heart,
My dog's heart.
I'm on you like a thief
He hid the blade in his sleeve.

Whether sooner or later I will plant
In the ribs of cold steel.

This poem was written down by the author in the diary of M. P. Murashov at an evening of writers after listening to Glinka's works “Do not tempt ...” and “Doubt”. On the same evening it was read by A. Blok. The latter asked Yesenin: “Sergey Alexandrovich, did you write this seriously or were you influenced by the music?” “Seriously,” Yesenin answered in a barely audible voice.

The poem "Listen, filthy heart ..." is one of the most pessimistic in Yesenin's lyrics. The hero explains the craving for death by the impossibility of finding meaning in life. “If there is anything in the world, it is one void,” he concludes. The ideal of humanity in the form of a just, humanistic world order appears in the poem in the form of an “eternal rotten distance”, to which the poet is tired of “strive”.

In a letter to Masha Balzamova - one of his first, timid loves - the poet admits to his first suicide attempt: “I felt sorry for myself. I could not stand the fact that empty tongues were chattering about me, and ... and now my chest hurts because of it. I drank, though not very much, essences. My breath caught, and for some reason foam began to appear; I was conscious, but in front of me everything was a little obscured by some kind of turbid haze. Then - I don’t know why myself, I suddenly started drinking milk, and everything went away ... ”

The motif of "love for death", widely represented in the early lyrics of the poet, is intensified in his work of the last two years.

The poet complains of fatigue from life, speaks of some serious illness:

I'm tired of living in my native land,
………………………………………………………………….
Tilted over and weighed down
My golden head
……………………………………………………
I'm tired of torturing myself aimlessly,
And with a smile of a strange face
I liked to wear in a light body
Quiet light and peace of the dead (my italics - A.L.),
……………………………………………………………………
Possessed by severe epilepsy,
I became a soul, like a yellow skeleton.

In 1925, Yesenin carried out a long-standing plan and wrote a cycle of "winter" poems. In these verses, the motif of “cooling” to life clearly sounds, the “heart” of the poet “cooled”, and his eyes “faded”, “everything is gone! Thinned my hair ... ", the hero "lived everything. The young men are happy, but for me only the memory of a snowy night is dashingly hushed up. The main idea that permeates the poet's "winter" verses can be expressed by the word "eh ...", repeatedly repeated in them.

In Yesenin's "winter" cycle, one of the central motifs is "farewell". The poet says goodbye to youth, to life, to his native side and stepfather's house:

That's why I almost cried
And, smiling, the soul went out, -
This hut on the porch with a dog
It's like I see it for the last time.

Determining the state of the poet in the last years of his life, the critic F. Zhits wrote: “One day I had to see the terrible breath of a hunting bag while hunting - the wings of a not accurately killed woodcock rustled in it. It is this rustling bag that seems to me the work of Yesenin of the last, most mature period.

Actually, everything in Yesenin led to death. He was looking for death, how else to explain the endless drunken scandals, after which he ended up in Bolshevik prisons, lines like “I am ready to go even to a duel”, actualization in Pushkin’s poems “Blessed is he who did not drink to the bottom and did not listen to the sound of the flute”?

Still, I personally think another cause of Yesenin's death is more likely. The poet suffered from alcoholism.

Alcoholism - in the case of Yesenin - was a secondary disease (that is, due to another, true disease - melancholy, fear of reality that did not suit the poet, trends in the development of civilization, disagreement with the rules of life accepted in society). In The Black Man, the poet's double speaks of this: “Happiness ... is the dexterity of the mind and hands. All awkward souls for the unfortunate are always known. It's nothing that broken and deceitful gestures bring a lot of torment. In thunderstorms, in storms, in the coldness of life, with heavy losses and when you are sad, seeming smiling and simple is the highest art in the world. Here it is, the real disease, the reason for the development of alcoholism - the alienation and self-alienation of the individual in the modern world, the need to appear, and not be in a socially and morally degraded society, constantly "play" the prescribed social role, not be sincere, not be yourself.

But whatever the cause of alcoholism itself, this does not make its course any less devastating and destructive.

The development of the disease of chemical dependence is mostly beyond the scope of lyrics, but the symptoms of the disease are well known to modern medicine: the formation of mental and physical dependence on the drug, personality degradation, chronic intoxication of the body and its gradual destruction, the occurrence of somatic and mental diseases (in the case of Yesenin - alcoholic delirium or at least hallucinosis). From 50 to 80% of suicides worldwide are committed as a result of mental states caused by alcoholism. This is an established fact. And, I am sure, it was the alcoholic personality change, the deformation of the psyche that pushed the poet to a fatal step. This was the main component of the death of the poet, the main reason for his premature departure.

Like any poet, Yesenin thought a lot about death, wrote about it, thereby getting rid of melancholy. But all this did not mean the inevitability of suicide. Yesenin and the poem written in blood, I'm sure, handed it over to his Leningrad "friend" in order to be saved, saved, stopped (he felt the approach of the "bony"). The tragedy of the poet is that there was no really native, close, not indifferent person to the fate of the poet, who would feel the gravity of the situation, listen, regret, warn, warm with the warmth of his soul.

Today we are talking about alcoholism as the most acute problem of modern Russia. As if in this the great national poet shared the common fate of the Russian people, drank to the dregs the cup of poison, which, since the time of Boris Godunov, has been persistently treated to the Russian people by rulers indifferent to his fate.

In this sense, the fate of Yesenin should become a lesson for future generations of Russians, who, I hope, will be able to get rid of their harmful addiction and revive the Russian nation.

conclusions

An analysis of the circumstances of Yesenin's death leads us to the conclusion that the poet's suicide occurred as a result of the development of alcohol phobia. It was not Yesenin who committed suicide, he was killed by a "black" double, who managed to "turn off" the poet's consciousness.

With an altered consciousness, Yesenin could think that he was being pursued, he could hear sounds, voices, see people and simply fantastic creatures that persuaded him to commit suicide, frightened him, threatened him. Suicide committed under such circumstances is always spontaneous, and suicides never leave suicide notes. They just don't have time for it.

Thus, Sergei Yesenin was killed not by Trotsky, not by Blumkin, and not by one of the poet's enemies, he was killed by the main killer of a Russian man, on whose account there are much more Russian lives than on the account of all tyrants combined - a drug called "alcohol ”, the main killer and plague of the twentieth century.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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2. Banchukov R. Myths about the death of Sergei Yesenin [Electronic resource]. – Access Mode: http://www.vestnik.com/issues/98/1208/koi/banch.htm. – Date of access: 31. 03. 2009.
3. In the world of Yesenin: Sat. Art. : / On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the birth // Comp. A. A. Mikhailov, S. S. Lesnevsky. M. : Sov. Writer, 1986. - 656 p.
4. Voronova O. E. World Esenin studies: modern aspects of the interpretation of S. A. Yesenin's work // Bulletin of the Ryazan State Pedagogical University. S. A. Yesenina. - 2003. - No. 1 (9). - S. 48 - 57.
5. Voronsky A.K. In memory of Yesenin: (From the memories) // Krasnaya Nov. - 1926. - No. 2. - S. 207-214.
6. Yesenin S. A. Selected works. - M .: Fiction, 1983. - 432 p.
7. Yesenin S. A. Collected works: In 6 volumes - M .: Fiction, 1977 - 1980. - 6 volumes.
8. Zhits F. Why do we love Yesenin (sketch) // Krasnaya Nov. - 1926. - No. 5. - S. 216-222.
9. Kubanev N. A., Nabilkina, L. N. Sergey Yesenin - "Russian Hamlet"? [Electronic resource]. – Access mode: http://www.. – Access date: 03/31/2009.
10. Lagunovsky A. M. The artistic concept of reality in the work of S. Yesenin (the problem of alienation) [Text]: author. Dis... cand. philol. Sciences. - Minsk: 1993. - 21 p.
11. Mamleev Yu. V. Yesenin and the crisis of modern civilization // Century
Sergei Yesenin: International Symposium. M., 1997. Issue. 3. - S. 368-375.
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The cause of Sergei Yesenin's suicide

The article proves that the initial reason for Sergei Yesenin’s suicide was the negative emotional conditions surrounding the poet during all his life. Among them were the peculiarities of the artist’s emotional sphere, his traits of character such as excessive vulnerability, suspiciousness, drastic mood alterations; excruciating experience of self-alienation, alienation from the society, caused by the failure of his social hopes (degeneration of the Revolution, anxiety about the lot of the state and Russian rural population); psychic trauma experienced in childhood which is called forth his tragic worldview. All the reasons mentioned had a destructive impact upon the poet's mind; they led to the necessity of finding oblivion and, as a result, caused his chronic alcoholism. Mental phenomena begotten by the disease such as alcoholic delirium and hallucinosis led to the tragedy in the Hotel Angleterre. Website of Alexander Lagunovsky

On December 28, 1925, Sergei Yesenin died. For almost a century, the poet's departure has haunted historians, researchers and admirers of his work.

Protocol with violations

A lot of accusations come against the district warden of the 2nd police department Nikolai Gorbov. The act of finding the body of Sergei Yesenin, signed by Gorbov, does not inspire confidence either in terms of grammar or professionally. A person who worked in an active-secret criminal investigation department should be aware that this document is called a protocol and is drawn up according to the model. To remove the body from the loop, as well as to describe the scene and evidence, according to all the rules, should be in the presence of attesting witnesses.
Gorbov's act (or just signed by his last name?) does not give a clear picture of what happened. And it's hard to imagine that this district warden was so illiterate, because 19 years before that he worked as a typesetter in a printing house. The handwriting and signature of this man can be reconstructed from his surviving documents: a statement and autobiography. Neither the handwriting nor the signature match.

Lack of hotel registration

Not a single document has been found confirming that Yesenin lived at the Angleterre Hotel in December 1925. And it is not clear why the poet had to stay in it, if he could stay with his close friends. Probably Yesenin never lived in Angleterre. Then the version that he was killed in another place, and after that they played the story of suicide in a hotel room, looks more convincing.

Incomplete medical examination

The act of the medical examination drawn up by the forensic expert Gilyarevsky also seems doubtful. His conclusion reads: "Based on the autopsy data, it should be concluded that Yesenin's death was due to asphyxia caused by compression of the respiratory tract through hanging. An impression on the forehead could have occurred from pressure during hanging. The dark purple color of the lower extremities, punctate bruising on them indicate that the deceased was hanged for a long time."
However, for some reason, this act does not indicate all the injuries that were on the face of the poet. This is confirmed by the photo of Yesenin, preserved in the National Public Library in St. Petersburg in a special department. In this photograph, a bullet hole in the poet's forehead and a blow mark under the right eye are clearly distinguishable. This blow could have been inflicted with the handle of a pistol, which, by the way, the poet himself had.

Predicament

Then the question arises: why was Yesenin hanged? Wouldn't it have been easier to shoot him to make it look like a suicide? Many historians are inclined to the version that Trotsky personally approved the murder of the poet. And the menial work was entrusted to the famous revolutionary Yakov Blyumkin, who got into a difficult situation during the murder, and therefore he had to play the option of hanging.

Why hanging?

The question is, why then it was necessary to “hang” the poet, if everything could be attributed to death from a shot from a revolver, which Yesenin himself had? Although, on the other hand, why did the poet himself, according to the official version, hang himself, and not shoot himself?

Valuable Witness

The magazine "Miracles and Adventures" published a letter from retired military Viktor Titarenko from the Khabarovsk Territory, in which he spoke about his conversation in the mid-70s with former prisoner Nikolai Leontiev. According to him, in 1925 he served in the OGPU together with Blumkin. Once Blumkin received an order from Trotsky to adequately punish Yesenin physically. The security officers planned to deprive the poet of his masculinity and, as if jokingly, began to pull off his trousers. The poet grabbed a copper candlestick and hit Blumkin on the head with it. He fell unconscious, and the frightened Leontiev pulled out a revolver and fired at Yesenin.
Titarenko says that Blumkin, waking up, hit Yesenin in the forehead with the handle of the revolver, and then contacted Trotsky and agreed with him on staging suicide and on measures to eliminate bloody traces. A few days later, Nikolai Leontiev was sent to the Far East for underground work at the headquarters of Ataman Semenov. There, after the war for treason against the Chekist cause, he received a 25-year sentence.
It is difficult to rely on one letter in reasoning. But in the drawing by V. Svarog, made on the morning of December 28, 1925, the poet's trousers are unbuttoned and lowered. The artist also reports that he noticed traces of a struggle in the room and a lot of villi from the carpet on the shirt and in the poet's hair. V. Svarog even then suggested that Yesenin was wrapped in a carpet after the murder.

Bullying

It was not easy to live in the USSR in 1923-1925. Trotsky considered murder a justified means of establishing the communist idea. “We must,” he wrote, “turn Russia into a desert inhabited by white Negroes, to which we will give such a tyranny that even the inhabitants of the East have never dreamed of. Through bloodbaths, we will bring the Russian intelligentsia to complete stupefaction, to idiocy, to an animal state. .."
Yesenin, it seems, knew what was hindering the plan:

And the first
I need to hang
Crossing my arms behind my back
For the fact that the song
hoarse and sick
I interfered with sleep
Native country.

It is also known that in the last years of the poet's life, the authorities subjected him to massive psychological persecution.
The truth about the death of the last poet of the village will be revealed only together with the archives of the NKVD (FSB).