Badly Great

Ryabchinskaya T. A.

TWO LIVES – TWO DEATHS
(Sergei Yesenin and Galina Benislavskaya)

Memories over a freshly filled grave, not yet recognized as something immutable in the world - about a person who is still painful to call dead, can hardly be impartial and objective, free from purely individual interpretations words, actions and experiences of the deceased, although the words and facts themselves can be told quite truthfully.
About to talk about absolutely stranger from hearsay, certain errors and inaccuracies cannot be avoided. Moreover, so much good and bad has already been written about Yesenin and the people surrounding the poet that it seems completely impossible to find the truth somewhere not an easy task. And let everyone, in the polyphonic stream of memories of S. Yesenin’s contemporaries, find his own truth, suggested to him by his own heart.
As G. Ivanov said 1 “A magical strangeness happened to Yesenin’s fate: everything connected with him seemed to be excluded from the general law of dying, and continued to live. Chemical composition spring air can be explored and identified, but how much more natural is it to simply breathe it in? full breasts..." Yesenin's poetry is the air we need.
Yesenin believed that only those who are in pain, who know how to feel pain, have the right to write poetry, that a person becomes a true poet only in those moments when he is in pain” (E. Sokol 2 ). And how it always hurt him! Poet Andrey Bely 3 believed that Yesenin had been insulted by some highest degree human humanity.
As Anatole France said, “a poet cannot be approached with the same standards with which prudent people are approached. The poet’s impressionability - his weapon - often turns against him.” Yesenin's poems are always in tune with what he felt. And there has never been a poet in Rus' with such penetrating lyricism and magical mastery of words, who achieved such a picturesque embodiment of beauty and sadness, strength and gentleness, good nature and severity of the Russian character. Throughout his short life, Yesenin aroused violent, contradictory passions in those around him, and he himself was torn by equally stormy and contradictory passions.
Sincere love for the poet inevitably evokes a desire to understand what was going on in his soul, what caused the birth of the bright pearls of his work, who was next to him at that moment?
S. Yesenin and G. Benislavskaya - everyone who was next to them has their own and ambiguous view of them from the outside. Now available to everyone diary entries 4 and memories of Galina Benislavskaya herself 5 , by which one can judge what thoughts guided her actions and determined her relationship with S. Yesenin and his entourage. Let's try to recreate the pages of their lives from the words of relatives, friends and enemies.
What was she like, this mysterious and contradictory woman, who no longer wanted to live in a world where her Poet was not, where there was no longer any reason to exist, who left him prudently and in cold blood? Is she strong or weak? Who knows? Mayakovsky also believed that “dying in this life is not new, making life much more difficult” and more necessary, and left it after Yesenin (although there are attempts to question his unauthorized departure). Let's leave this question unanswered.
Galina Arturovna Benislavskaya born in St. Petersburg in 1897. Her father Arthur Carrier (French by birth) was a student at that time. When the girl was five years old, she and her mother separated. She lived with her father's relatives for about a year, and then her mother, a Georgian by origin, took her to the Caucasus. Soon the mother became seriously ill mental disorder. The child was taken in by his maternal aunt N.P. Zubova and her husband Arthur Kazimirovich Benislavsky, who, having adopted Galya, left for Latvia. Galya studied at a boarding school in Vilna, then at the Preobrazhenskaya eight-grade girls' gymnasium in Petrograd. The gymnasium teachers had progressive views and instilled in students curiosity and independent thinking skills. Among the students, children of the advanced intelligentsia occupied a predominant position. With particular enthusiasm Galya studied history, literature, natural Sciences. In 1917, she graduated from high school with a gold medal.
A.K. Benislavsky was a more than wealthy man. Not far from the town of Rezhitsa, he had an estate where Galya spent her summer holidays. She was not constrained in any way financially. But as political situation Things became more and more tense in the country, and as Gali developed her independent views, disputes and conflicts began in the family, which ultimately had political overtones.
Yana Kozlovskaya, who knew G. Benislavskaya closely, her friend from the gymnasium (and in later life), testifies: “Under my influence and the influence of my parents (they are old Bolsheviks), Galya joined the party in May 1917.” Counting on an independent life and independence, Benislavskaya leaves for Kharkov, where she enters the university in the natural sciences department 6 .
During the Civil War, when the Whites cut off Kharkov, she decided to cross the front line to move to Soviet side. With a fake ID as a Volunteer Army nurse, she succeeds. However, she is detained at the location of the front-line Soviet unit, fearing that she arrived on espionage missions. In search of an excuse, G. Benislavskaya refers to her friend’s father, M. Yu. Kozlovsky (Lenin’s accomplice in secret financial transactions), who, in response to a request by telegram, confirms his acquaintance with G. Benislavskaya and vouches for her. Benislavskaya is cleared of suspicion, and soon she finds herself in Moscow. With the assistance of the same M. Yu. Kozlovsky, she goes to work at economic management The Cheka, as a secretary and fanatically devoted to the ideas of the revolution, works with the most famous political executioner at that time, N.V. Krylenko, who at that time was its boss. For some time, Benislavskaya lived in the Kremlin next to the communist leaders, including Leiba Sosnovsky (let's remember this name). She was proud of her profession and did not hide it.
After recovering from a nervous disorder as a result of the shocks and experiences that befell the girl, she left the Cheka in 1922 and went to work at the editorial office of the newspaper “Bednota” as an assistant secretary.
Many who knew Galina admired her inner strength and spiritual beauty (A. Miklashevskaya 7 , S. Vinogradskaya 8 ).
At the time of her acquaintance with Yesenin (1919-1920), she looked like a girl in whom, when she argued with enthusiasm or laughed recklessly, something boyish was visible. “Her eyes were wonderful! Large brown (so it seemed to the author of the memoirs) with golden sparks, almost fused, pretentiously curved eyebrows under a straight, narrow nose, which gave her narrow face special significance. Luxurious, curled eyelashes. An ironic mouth and high forehead testified to intelligence and willpower. On her head is a motley cap, setting off her clearly oriental head, framed by magnificent hair (E. Styrskaya) 9 . She looked like a Georgian and was distinguished by her peculiar beauty and attractiveness. combed my hair short hair parted in the middle, like a young man. While talking, she liked to put her hands in the cuffs of her sleeves. In the presence of Sergei Yesenin, Galina blossomed, a gentle blush appeared on her cheeks, her movements became light. Her green eyes, falling into the sun's rays, lit up like two emeralds (M. Roizman 10 )). Yesenin’s sister Katya wrote that Galya’s eye color was grayish-green. Many people jokingly said that she was a cat breed. Galya walked, moving her legs in a straight line and raising her knees a little higher than required, as if she was riding a bicycle, which Yesenin was the first to notice. She rarely left her bicycle, for which she was called Yesenin’s cyclist behind her back.
Where did the paths of the staunch Bolshevik Galya Benislavskaya and the famous poet S. Yesenin cross?
The first meeting with the poet in 1916 was at one of his public speeches, but Galina left virtually no trace of her memory 6 . This is how she describes her second and fateful meeting with the poet in 1919 (in her diary she writes in 1920): “I saw Yesenin for the first time in my life in August or September at the Polytechnic Museum at an evening of all literary groups (there was a comic literary trial of the Imagists). Someone was reading poetry, and at that time Mariengof and Yesenin appeared in top hats. Yesenin’s top hat is just like a cow’s saddle. He is short in stature, has a tall top hat on his head - a comical cinematic figure 5 ).
The trial begins. Speakers from different groups: neoclassicists, acmeists, symbolists... The defendants are talking, chewing something, laughing... (I told Yana in her ear that they were chewing cocaine; I didn’t know then whether they were snorting or chewing it.) In their group were Shershenevich, Mariengof, Gruzinov, Yesenin and their “defender” - Fedor Zhits. The defendants are given the floor. I don’t remember who said what, I even got bored. Suddenly that same boy comes out: a short, open deerskin jacket, hands in his trouser pockets, completely golden hair, as if alive. Throwing his head and waist back slightly, he begins to read:

Spit, wind, with armfuls of leaves, -
I'm just like you, bully.

"I love my homeland
I love my homeland very much..."

He professed this love of his even in the guise of a hooligan.

If the holy army calls:
“Throw away Rus', live in paradise!”
I will say: there is no need for heaven,
Give me my homeland.

However, while loving his women, Yesenin somewhere, in modern terms, at the genetic level, retained some kind of peasant attitude towards women. This is mine... This means that I am the owner and I can even hit..., beat... to put me in my rightful place. And this came out of him in fits of anger from a consciousness fogged by wine. He could raise his hand against Z. Reich, Isadora, who, however, endured everything in silence and continued to love him, but did not consider it necessary to keep her body for him... Could the “man” dormant in him tolerate this? This largely explained his rude treatment of Duncan.
Yesenin’s relationship with his mother is completely different fourth child- Nadezhda Volpin 19 ). She is proud and free, loves him, but does not want to tie herself with family ties, realizing that they cannot tie Yesenin, who does not love her, with them. She accepted his child as a gift. Sergei Alexandrovich never offended Nadezhda. With his characteristic sensitivity, he worried about Nadezhda, reassured her and helped her. Anyone who knew Nadezhda in her youth could not help but marvel at how similar she was to Shagane! It is known that men are attracted to a woman who is similar to the one he once loved. Was it not this feeling that drew Yesenin to Shagane? It remains unknown who this northern woman he was thinking about in “Persian Motives” was. Maybe Galina Benislavskaya, as the famous Yesenin scholar E. Naumov6 believes, or maybe N. Volpin (Roizman 10 ).
Galina Benislavskaya and her love floated with the flow next to Yesenin’s life. Before her eyes, there was a breakup with Zinaida Reich, an ardent, explosive and double-edged life with Isadora Duncan, and Yesenin finally left her for his last wife, Sofya Tolstoy. What threads did the lives of these two people weave?
After the death of Galina Benislavskaya, an archive with letters and numerous manuscripts of S. Yesenin, notes, a diary and “Memories of Yesenin” was found in her apartment. These documents undoubtedly fell into unscrupulous hands. Benislavskaya's diary was sold abroad, as was the rope on which the poet's life ended a year earlier. It recently became known that enterprising people secretly took this rope to the USA, cut it into pieces and sold it at auction. (E. Khlystalov 20 ). It is unknown where Galina got this rope.
G. Benislavskaya, having passed away quite consciously, did not destroy her personal notes, perhaps because she well understood the greatness and significance of the poet, the value of everything that in the future would be of interest to posterity. She did not spare her feminine pride, keeping letters with the most bitter words of the poet for herself, as for any other woman. Benislavskaya's diary notes are a copy typed on a typewriter, made approximately in the 50s of the last century.
From the remaining documentary heritage of the great poet and his girlfriend, it is possible to form some, perhaps not entirely objective, idea of ​​their relationship. Naturally, the interpretation of all the evidence at our disposal may be ambiguous, especially since the entries in the diary were made chaotically and do not always lend themselves to precise logical understanding. But, nevertheless, we will try to do it.
Entries relating to the relationship between G. Benislavskaya and S. Yesenin begin in the diary in 1921 (and there are very few of them). At first she thinks about Yesenin, still timidly, cautiously, she pulls herself together: she has to be smart (“he’s so big,” but who am I?). It is unlikely that then a serious, intelligent girl could have high hopes that such a famous person will pay attention to her. Many girls were in love with Yesenin, which is quite natural: beautiful appearance, a charming, amazing smile, a magnificent reader of his poems and the very title of a poet. By the way, Galina’s friend Yana Kozlovskaya, comrade and literary publisher Anna Arkadyevna Berzin 21 , and many others from his circle were also in love with the poet, but in a different way. As Galina later put it, “Yana loved Yesenin less than herself,” and Galina more. But, nevertheless, he noticed her, and the relationship between them began to develop. She later recalled with emotion one meeting with Yesenin in 1921. Somewhere in the summer of 1921, Galina felt incredibly happy next to him. “Yes, March-August 1921 - what a good time.” Yesenin was close to her, he could not help but respond to the feelings of a devoted and passionately loving person. There is a mention of this in her diary, dated March 1922. “There is no humiliation that I would not go to, just to make him stop just for a little while near me, but not only physically, I need more from him: I need that warmth from him , which was in the summer, and that’s it!!!” 4 . The recording was made at the beginning of Yesenin’s already established relationship with Duncan.
Knowing that Yesenin had a wife and children, Galina did not even think about winning his heart, although her heart was already beating in a high love rhythm. Then Yesenin seemed already “accessible” to her. “As he “saw off” that night, the spiders crawled, quietly, gently, warmly. I did, I forgot, but I don’t want to forget. After all, Yesenin is alone.” After Yesenin left his wife, the poet literally found himself on the street, searching for a roof not only for work, but even for an overnight stay was his constant headache. Where did he live? Most often he had to seek refuge in the apartments of various friends and acquaintances, and a crowd of parasites and parasites would always follow him. By nature a great esthete with delicate taste, incredibly clean, he could not work in these conditions. Galina understood that his talent was on the verge of destruction. From that time on, his life was continuously connected by various threads with G. Benislavskaya, who increasingly provided him with a place in a communal apartment in Bryusovsky Lane. She understood how important normality was for Yesenin. home furnishings, family comfort.
The issue of the lack of normal living and working conditions constantly worried Yesenin. Shortly before his death, answering the questionnaire “How do our writers live,” Yesenin wrote: “I would like writers to take advantage of at least the benefits provided to Soviet employees. It is necessary to reduce the cost of rent for writers. It is advisable to have a wider room, otherwise the poet learns to see the world only through one window.”
Further, the relationship between Benislavskaya and Yesenin developed according to the usual life scenario, when people live together. But…
October 3, 1921 S. Yesenin meets Duncan. Strong feeling it literally flares up like an explosion. Benislavskaya is no longer needed. She reflects, comparing herself as a woman and Isadora: “And no matter what they tell me about old age, flabbiness, etc., I know that it was she, and not the other, who should have taken, exactly taken him. (You can take him, but you can’t give yourself to him - he doesn’t really know how to take, he can only give himself).” If externally E<сенин>and it will be about, then after A<йседоры>- all are pygmies, and, despite my endless devotion, I am nothing after her... I could be after L<идии>TO<ашиной> 3<инаиды>N<иколаевны>, but not after A<йседоры>. This is where I lose.” Bitterly she concludes: “I am “not a horse’s oats” - this says it all in relation to me as a figure.” But she is not going to “grab him by the legs” and not because “her pride would not allow it, but because it is pointless!” 4 .
In a fit of desperate jealousy towards Isadora, Galina writes: “You can perfectly control and control yourself, you can not show it, Furthermore- you can play happy when you really feel that you are second; Finally, you can even deceive yourself, but still, if you love so truly, you cannot be calm when your loved one sees and feels another. Otherwise it means you love little. You cannot calmly know that he prefers someone to you and not feel pain from this consciousness. It's like you're drowning in this feeling. I know one thing - I won’t do anything stupid or tricky, but that I’m drowning and, choking, want to get out, that’s completely clear to me.” 4 .
Further in the diary there are reflections - chaotic, abrupt, veiled about whether, loving Yesenin so much, it is worth remaining physically faithful to him? “And violation of this “loyalty,” on the one hand, can eliminate involuntary demands on E , and on the other hand, it can give good warm relations with others, if only you can create them so, non-binding, free and, although caused by p<охотью?>, but not based solely on this. But here we must not give up and not make mistakes, so that there are no complications in terms of the relationship. And if I want to be a woman, then no one dares to forbid me or reproach me for this! (His words)… And if someday E<Сенина>a different attitude will appear, then after all, losing “not<инность>"doesn't mean getting sick with a bad disease. And now I can control myself better, protect myself from stupid situations, behave with dignity, and this again will give me strength, and at the same time<он>you will feel better with me" 4 .
She definitely believes “that the soul will always be his.” “Always love Yesenin, always be ready to respond to his call - that’s all, and nothing more. I will use up everything else in me for myself... And with all this I will be more faithful and my love will be stronger, and thanks to everything that at first seemed monstrous to me in its cynicism, thanks to this it will be wiser, therefore, stronger.” She tries to convince herself that the main thing is not to change Yesenin’s soul.
In the records of 1922, the mysterious L. already appears, who is somehow connected with Anya Kozlovskaya. Perhaps she introduced Galina to L., and convinced her friend to break the “vow of fidelity” given to herself. “These few minutes made me almost happy, in any case, there is no bitterness, no resentment. This will give me the opportunity again to be quiet, meek and faithful (inside, spiritually, of course), and this is the most important thing.” And once again a mention of L appears. Among the discussions about friendship with Anya. And as a strange inconsistency, the phrase “At least L. remains a bright, joyful streak” appears among them (for whom: for Galya or Anya?). She is very grateful to Anya for something.
Later, already in 1925, Benislavskaya admits that L. is the only betrayal... Mentions of him again appear in the diary in the winter of 1924-1925. (from Galina’s attitude towards him it can be assumed that we're talking about about the same person): “This winter I realized that if I love Sergei most of all, more than myself, then I still have not only a passion for L.,” which means that there was, to some extent, a spiritual betrayal, which for Galina was more terrible... And one more mention: “... both winter (L.) and slander did their job.” Apparently, she had some reason to hide the name of this person.
Benislavskaya’s relationship with L was also difficult. “There was everything for which he could only treat me badly, and yet he did not offend me in any way. Where I least expected it, I found it there. After all, with L. I could be myself, real. Without breaking myself... “Thank you, thank you,” I wanted to say to him then, at the last meeting.” In addition to the joy of physical intimacy, he gave her warmth and understanding.” Did they meet between 1922-1925? - unknown.
This betrayal of Yesenin tormented Galina; she tries to dull the pain of realizing this with excuses. “Scary, very scary, very! This is enough, there is no need for passion or blindness, no. And he (Yesenin) knows how to love, people love so rarely. In the meantime, I will live, I will take everything I can from life, I will take care of myself, I will always be ready, if necessary, to come at his first call; at his first desire to cross out everything he had lived and everything he expected ahead, to cross it out in one sweep without hesitation, without regret... So I realized that there is more than one Yesenin in life, that you can and should love him as the main thing, but love him unselfishly, not with greedy love , demanding something from him, but the way you love this forest, not demanding that the forest live in accordance with me, or that it always be where I am. Without leaving it, perhaps I will enjoy it less, I will feel it differently... Sometimes you feel yourself not demanding anything, joyful endless devotion, meek submission - if I can, I will be there, and in winter, when the sun hides, I will remember what happened and that even now it is behind the clouds, I involuntarily admire it, and my consciousness, wise and calm, says that if it is also love, then it is better and more beautiful.” 4 ).
These are the feelings that overwhelmed this ordinary loving woman, who in 1923-1925. was the most faithful and selfless friend of Sergei Yesenin. And in his heart there always lived a love that he did not accept. “To love so much, to love so selflessly and uncontrollably. Does this really happen? But I love you, and I can’t help it; it is stronger than me, my life. If for him it was necessary to die - without hesitation, and if at the same time I knew that he would at least smile tenderly when he learned about me, death would become a joy. Today - my God, just a few minutes, a few sincere, no, not even sincere, but sincere phrases, a few minutes of patient attention - and I no longer see anything, no one except him. I myself can be the first to leave, move away, but I won’t leave internally... It often seems to calm down, calm down, but as soon as you beckon me, I’ll be here at the first call. It's funny, it's kind of doomed. And to think - I’m not my own, but in the power of another, not my will, who doesn’t even notice me.” 4 .
Yesenin abroad with Duncan. Galina is torn between jealousy and love. “After all, she (Isadora) won’t be able to save? Fire cannot protect a tree. Perhaps we have already spent it forever, and failed to save it?.. How dear it is to me. I feel it again and again. And everything that is dear to him is dear... I thought about him again. Don't drive away thoughts. I remembered that it was all a “game”. We, like children, were sincerely interested in the game (both me and him), but his mother called him, he abandoned the game, and I was alone and had no one to call to finish the game. But still, it was I who started the game, not him. True, this is what children do - I liked it, so instead of introducing me, I’ll come up and tell you. "Let's play together!" 4 . She admits that she started the game after all and has no right to demand anything from Yesenin.
The decision comes, no matter what, to always be there for him, to be necessary, to be a friend and not to demand more.
After returning from abroad and leaving Duncan, Yesenin finally settled in big house in Bryusovsky Lane, the so-called “House of Pravda”, where employees of the newspapers “Pravda” and “Bednota” lived, in a communal apartment on the 7th floor, where Galina owned two small rooms. From the window of the room there was a view of the Kremlin.
Galina, like Sergei, also loved cleanliness and comfort. The room had light wallpaper and elegant prints. The desk is in order. There is a dark tablecloth on the dining table in the middle of the room. There is a couch with beautiful pillows against one wall. To create coziness in the apartment, Yesenin draped the doors, covered the bed and couch with oriental fabrics, covered the windows with dark material, and hung a lamp hanging without a shade with a bright shawl. In this motley decorated room, sheltered from the gray, dank, foggy sky, he felt warmer. He sometimes tied a colored shawl around his head and walked around the room8. Yesenin’s sister Shura, who lived with Katya, Galina and Sergei at that time, said: “During work, so as not to disturb him, we left the room. For hours he sat at the card table or the dining table. Tired of sitting, he slowly walked around the room from end to end, with his hands in his trouser pockets or placing one of them on his neck.” 22 . Sofya Vinogradskaya8, a friend of Benislavskaya, who lived in the same house with Galina, said: “More, of course, cornflowers came to this head. And one day he, sleepy, was showered with cornflowers. On the pillow, drenched sun rays, drowning in cornflowers, lay a wonderful golden head!.. He woke up, blue cornflowers looked out of his eyes, the sun and cornflowers made him happy and happy. And he restlessly walked around the apartment, talking, joking, laughing, and was unusually kind and gentle with everyone.”
Sergei loved to joke and prank everyone and was not offended when they played on him. He explained this in verse:

Because without these eccentricities
I can't live on earth.

His close friend and publishing comrade A. Berzin 21 she said that when Sergei Alexandrovich laughed, those around him wanted to smile softly and tenderly, as if you were looking at the pranks of a sweet and happy child. He himself rejoiced most of all at the most varied antics and simple anecdotes, which he widely shared with everyone, but he was not annoying, but simply cheerful, and in his cheerfulness, generous.
...It was possible to talk with Yesenin endlessly. He was inexhaustible, lively, interesting in his conversations, words, political disputes, sometimes full of childish naivety, an amazing but endearing misunderstanding of the most basic things in politics.
Yesenin was a real songwriter. His poems are songs. They are not only read, but sung. At home, they constantly came up with motives for his poems and sang them to his sisters, mother, and friends. The poem “The Nightingale Has One Good Song” was written by him in the Caucasus and set to music by someone there. Upon his arrival in Moscow, he often sang it. But most of all he loved Russian songs. He spent whole evenings and sometimes days behind them. He made everyone who came to him sing. With a song you could keep him at home when, with a cold, he was getting ready to go out in the rain and slush, with a song you could drive away his bad mood, and with a song you could bring him into any mood you wanted. He knew the song, as few people know now, and he loved it - sad, playful, ancient, modern. He understood the song, felt it somehow special, in his own way. It was a great joy for him to encourage his mother to sing; she sings, and he says: “What a song! Sisters can’t do that, it’s an old song.” And he asked his sister, who had come from the village, with a face and voice similar to her mother:

You sing me that song from before
The old mother sang to us.
Without regretting the lost hope,
I can sing along with you.

He loved the accordion and dancing no less... He danced wonderfully - now wildly, squatting, with stamping feet, now easily, moving slightly, moving only the toes of his feet, barely moving his shoulders, smoothly moving his arms, with a handkerchief between his fingers, now violently, circling non-stop, then, without restraint, finishing off the trepak to the accompaniment of the constant accordion. The accordion generally occupied a large and honorable place with him, almost the same as it occupied in his poems. And he managed to provide himself with playing the harmonica in Moscow. The best harmonica players in Moscow, both simple harmonica players and very bad harmonica players, played in his apartment more than once.” 8 …
“Yesenin lived noisily and restlessly. A crowd of people was constantly making noise around him, among whom he was the noisiest, the most noisy. Those apartments where Yesenin lived knew everything but peace. And it’s not that he filled the entire apartment with his noise - he set the apartment and its inhabitants in motion, forced them to lead a common life with him. Where he visited, everything lived with him. Yesenin did not feel the difference between day and night. He planned to do the most important things at night. He made phone calls at night, got out of bed at night and went to see his friends without looking at his watch. When they asked him why he came or called several times on the phone at night, he answered in surprise, with an invariably absent-minded smile:
- Really? And I didn’t even know that it was already night. I didn't even think about it.
All this happened suddenly, unexpectedly, as unexpectedly as his departures and arrivals” (Vinogradskaya 8 ).
Galina always had a calming and calming effect on him. “Only one scandal occurred in my presence within two years. He was reassured by my calmness and my evenness towards him; I soon studied all his moods to the finest detail. I was completely unusually sensitive to his mood and condition. Out of constant concern for him grew a kind of maternal sensitivity and attentiveness towards him. Drunk, he found fault with everyone. Sometimes he tried to approach me, but the fact that I did not react in any way to the nagging calmed him down and subsequently he never touched me.” 5 .
On Sundays, when Yesenin often worked, Galina left him alone and went out of town. When a wave of inspiration came to Yesenin’s heart, he dressed festively and placed flowers on the table. He often asked to put a small hot samovar on the table, which boiled all the time. He drank a lot of tea back then. The wine disappeared from the room, he didn’t even allow narzan to be put on the table and threw it away empty bottles. Never in his life did he write a single line while drunk.
“I love poetry,” he often said, putting into this phrase a special, complete of great importance meaning. Poems truly were his element, without which he could not live. He wrote them with blood, heart and mind. He said: “If I don’t write four lines of good poetry in a whole day, I can’t sleep. It was true. He worked tirelessly (Poletaev 23 ).
Before they were published, sometimes unfinished, and sometimes during the creative process, he usually read his poems to his close friends. I read and consulted with them. Often, following their instructions, I corrected what was written. He valued advice very much, treated it with attention and gratitude; on one poem he gave to a friend, he inscribed: “To the corrector of the irregularities of this poem.”
It was his need to read his poems before they were published. He himself often volunteered to read them. S. Vinogradskaya8 says: “He loved his poems, treasured them while he was writing. When the poem has already been written and published, for him it is “such good poetry.”
- It’s not mine, it’s already someone else’s when it’s written.
When they told him that he must be the happiest man in the world, since he writes the most beautiful poetry in the world, he answered:
- But what does that matter to me? What can I do? I’ll tear it out of myself and write, and it left me, and I was left with nothing. After all, I have nothing left with me.
He said this evilly, with some kind of frenzy.
He felt like a martyr to his own poetry.

“I am condemned to hard labor of feelings
Turning the millstones of poems”...

...He was angry because he poured out all his thoughts, all his feelings in poetry, thereby leaving nothing for himself. He couldn't help but write. And in the intervals between writing, he fell ill, drank...
After poetry, he sought oblivion from boredom and melancholy. He said that he envies those who serve, work, and study. He doesn’t know what to do with himself and his time when he’s not writing poetry. Poems filled him completely, all life was in poetry, nothing remained outside of poetry...
He liked to read his poems only to those who “knew how to understand” them. He recognized this ability to understand his poetry by whether they knew how to “listen” to him.
“You know how to listen, you listen well,” he said. And he already trusted the one to whom this concerned. He was especially attracted and captivated by the listener who revealed familiarity with some image borrowed from antiquity, from legend, from a lost wilderness, from a long-forgotten song, who guessed an unspoken thought, who pointed out an unspoken thought, who indicated the source of the birth of an image, a face , verse" (Vinogradskaya 8 ). This is how it went creative part Yesenin’s life in G. Benislavskaya’s apartment.
IN recent years Galina was most often the first listener of his poems. She had a subtle literary taste, and Yesenin always listened to her assessments, which did not always coincide with his own, to her gentle advice. When Yesenin left, she enjoyed the unlimited powers presented to her by the poet, but never accepted any important decision without consulting him. In her letters to Yesenin in the Caucasus, she wrote: “I like “The Passing Rus'” very much. I like “Stanzas” (P. Chagin), but I can’t come to terms with “I’m not your kenar,” etc. There is no need to put this into poetry. And no one except you and Sosnovsky is interested in this. But somehow you stopped finishing your poems. I had this feeling, and, besides, others told me about it” and also: “A letter to a woman” - I went crazy about it. And I still rave about it - how good it is!”
Galina devotes herself entirely to Yesenin, forgetting about herself. As if fulfilling a duty, she carries a heavy burden of caring for the poet.
Officially being married to A. Duncan, Yesenin was very burdened by the shackles that bound him. Galina helps Yesenin free himself from the destructive attraction of A. Duncan, who soon after returning from abroad left for Crimea. “I don’t know if S promised<ергей>A<лександрович приехать к ней туда. Факт то, что почти ежедневно он получал от нее и Шнейдера телеграммы. Она все время ждала и звала его к себе. Телеграммы эти его дергали и нервировали до последней степени, напоминая о неизбежности предстоящих осложнений, объяснений, быть может, трагедии. Все придумывал, как бы это кончить сразу. В одно утро проснулся, сел на кровати и написал телеграмму: «Я говорил еще в Париже что в России я уйду ты меня очень озлобила люблю тебя но жить с тобой не буду сейчас я женат и счастлив тебе желаю того же Есенин». Дал прочесть мне. Я заметила - если кончать, то лучше не упоминать о любви и т.п. Переделал: «Я люблю другую женат и счастлив Есенин». И послал.
Since telegrams addressed to Bogoslovsky Lane (S.A. already lived on Bryusovsky) did not stop, I decided to send a telegram on my own behalf, hoping to touch purely feminine strings and thereby stop the flow of telegrams from Crimea: “Don’t send telegrams to Yesenin he will never return to you with me; Benislavskaya must be taken into account.” S.A. and I laughed. I’ve been working on this telegram the whole morning - of course, such a defiant tone is not in my spirit, and if Duncan knew me at least a little, then, of course, she would understand that this is intimidation, and nothing more. But, fortunately, she never saw me and knew nothing about my existence. Therefore, the telegram, according to stories, caused a whole storm and a devastating response: “I received a telegram, it must be your servant Benislavskaya who writes to no longer send letters and telegrams to Bogoslovsky, did he change the address, please explain the telegram, I really love Izador.”
WITH<ергей>A<лександрович>At first I laughed and was pleased that my telegram had such an effect and completely infuriated Duncan so much that she began to swear. He calculated correctly, this is the last telegram from her. But then I suddenly became afraid that upon her arrival in Moscow she would burst into our Nikitskaya street (the apartment was located on the corner of Bryusovsky Lane and Nikitskaya Street, so in letters and memoirs she is mentioned under different addresses), create a scandal and insult me. “You don’t know her, she’ll do anything,” he repeated. And, despite the assurances that in this case a good half depends on my tact and, moreover, in the apartment on Nikitskaya, if she even shows the intention of touching me, then she will get from our entire apartment, etc., he still I was afraid of this for a long time" 5 .
But Yesenin’s relationship with Isadora did not immediately break off - it was not easy. Galina tells what kind of situation he often found himself in. “As soon as they arrived at Duncan’s, he was delicately left alone with her. Scenes, persuasion, etc. Wine all the time. And in the end Klyuev forced him to smoke hashish. “This scoundrel, I alone know what a scoundrel he is,” Klyuev gave me hashish. Do you think Klyuev cannot poison? Galya, you still know very little, you don’t know everything. Oh, he can do anything. He loves no one, and nothing is dear to him. He feels bad, he didn’t succeed - and he won’t spare anyone. Just save me, don’t let me go there.” He himself trembles all the time and is pale as chalk. Suddenly he takes something out of his pocket, with fear and apprehension. It’s like a broken cigarette is a cigarette holder from a cartridge case. He bends down and listens to his ear, with despair - it’s all over, he says. “Axelrod gave it, you know, cocaine, I’ve already snorted it once, but I didn’t feel anything, it doesn’t work.” I screamed in horror: “Give it up now!” What is this?” And with all her strength she hit him on the hand. And he, confused, like a boy who realized that he was indulging in something bad and dangerous, spread out his fingers with fear and dropped them. He looked like he had gotten rid of danger. I spent half an hour searching through it, and S.A., trembling, frightened, listened and gave his word that not only would he never take cocaine into his hands in his life, but he would also punch the person who gave it to him in the face.” Galina had a beneficial influence on him. “I remember how he said that he was embarrassed to swear in front of me, “but I will teach myself not to be embarrassed by you.” He was sincerely outraged by submission even in this form.” 5 .
Who knows, if Galina Benislavskaya had not met S. Yesenin on the way, he would not have left us even earlier, dying in a drunken street fight, where his life hung in the balance so many times.
She did not bore him with her love, meekly stepping aside when Yesenin was overwhelmed by another craving for some woman. You can imagine what was going on in her soul by looking at the pages of her diary (1922) when he lived with Duncan. But it was the sun, the others shone much dimmer against her (in relation to Yesenin towards Miklashevskaya, Galina almost did not experience feelings of jealousy). Only in letters written in the winter of 1924 and spring of 1925, when Yesenin was in the Caucasus, does Galina’s love break through in tender words and lines of address: “Dear little charyonok; I kiss my beloved, dear; I kiss you tightly, tightly, just as I love you; always yours, always love, my sunshine.” The letters also constantly contain words expressing concern and concern for him: “... my heart aches, don’t you understand how hard it is not to know what’s wrong with you? “My sunshine, dear Sergei Alexandrovich. What are you doing? Hiding again? From January 1 to 21 - not a word. Why? Mood, weather or something worse? Have you decided to torture? So that they worry about you? Yes? No need. And so sad. Write, at least 2 lines, and write.” “I think about you all the time, with you all the time.” “Your silence is also very disturbing.” But she did not think of tying him to her. Before leaving the sanatorium, she told Sergei Alexandrovich: “You don’t owe me anything. If for some reason you don’t want to return to me on Nikitskaya, don’t be afraid, just say it straight. Remember that you are free, and I will never encroach on your freedom." 5 .
Besides poetry, Yesenin had no other income; he couldn’t do anything else in life. The bookstore “Artists of the Word” on Nikitskaya Street, which they owned together with A. Mariengof, brought in practically no income. Yesenin was more of a sign, a bait. The book business was run by other people. Their acquaintances, most of them also poets, constantly came to visit the poets, and the shop turned into a literary club 5 .
Creativity was for Yesenin not only a spiritual need, but also a source of existence. The money that came to him went away at a rapid speed. Due to the difficult financial situation after his parents’ house burned down in the village, his relatives were constantly dependent on Sergei Alexandrovich. Later, realizing that only in the city they can get an education and arrange their lives, he takes his cousin Ilya, sister Katya, and then his youngest, Shura, to Moscow. Ilya, although he was registered in the hostel, practically lived with them.
Galina treated Yesenin’s relatives with reproach. She believed that real He actually had no relatives. “The blood feeling of all Yesenins is very strong, because<ергей>A<лександрович>always reached out to his own people. To offend the elderly or sisters meant declaring oneself his enemy. And the more strongly S pulled<ергея>A<лександровича>towards their own people, the more outraged he was by their attitude. Loving S<ергея>A<лександровича>, respecting him and being a little surprised at the position he had achieved, both the old people, and behind them Katya, first of all saw in him a golden bag. First of all, there were thoughts and conversations about money. From their point of view, they are right. Compared to the villagers, he was rich, very rich. And therefore, regardless of the state of his affairs, they turned to him for money all the time,<в>already difficult moments. WITH<ергей>. A<лександрович>I was furious that they didn’t want to take him into consideration, and was indignant that these people see the highest good and happiness of life in money.” 5 .
“The costs of supporting his relatives were high, and Sergei Alexandrovich was in a state of eternally obtaining money, which he did very ineptly. “He knew and understood one thing: he should receive money for poetry. Studying accountants and editors - with whom and how to talk, so as not to be led by the nose, but to be given money when it was due - was very difficult for him, it took a lot of energy. And who knows, who will calculate how many poems could have been born from the energy spent on this production. After all, when he achieved something in this regard, he was probably the only one who fully knew what it cost him, what nervous tension, especially since in achieving this he saw something humiliating for himself, for his independence... » 5 .
This is where Galya, her faithful friend, took upon herself the editorial and publishing chores - this is a heavy burden. How difficult and thankless this work is can be seen from her memoirs: “Their fee is given out almost as a favor, because, with a chronic lack of money, it is the courtesy of the accountant and editor to give it out today, and not in a week. Here, if you come and shed a tear, you will receive it sooner. But neither Katya nor I knew how to come with a plaintive look, and even if one of us had been able to, I imagine how S<ергей>A<лександрович>, with his pride, would be furious. And when you come with an independent air, then oh how difficult it is sometimes to scratch out this fee. The editors, of course, cannot be blamed here - they have too many more needy people in their care, and it is difficult for them to satisfy everyone. Never in my life before or after did I know the value of money and did not appreciate all the charm of receiving a certain salary, when, in essence, you depend only on the calendar.” 5 .
Yesenin said: “Thank you, Galya! You always help out! But I wouldn’t have been able to and, of course, I would have given it to him for six hundred<рублей>. You can see for yourself that I’m no good, I don’t know how to speak. Do you think you didn’t deceive me? That's it, when it's impossible, I get confused. This is very difficult for me, especially now. I can't think about it. That’s why I’m putting everything on you, and now Katya has grown up, let her do it! I’ll write, and you and Katya talk to the editors and publishers!” 5 .
“Sometimes it happened at S.<ергея>A<лександровича>. His patience ran out, he went to some editorial office himself, but it ended in tears. Having become nervous from the endless wait for money or having found himself in the company of “lovers of someone else’s account,” he went directly from the editorial office to a pub or restaurant. In the end, he arrived at night drunk and without money. At the same time, it was also scary to leave and leave him alone at home: one of these drunkards would come in or get him on the phone, and you don’t know which pub or where else to look.” Galina actually becomes his financial director, she receives money and distributes it. From Baku he sends her “stimulating telegrams”: “Do you think or not I’m sitting without money.”
Galya becomes the “guardian” not only of Yesenin himself, but also of his literary heritage. When he moved to her apartment, he gave the keys to the box where his things and manuscripts were kept to Gala. Galina constantly took care of the safety of his papers. She writes to him in letters: “How are your drafts and letters doing? Is everything safe and in order?”, “...be careful, put and do not confuse the dates under the verses.”
In general, Yesenin was careless with both his belongings and manuscripts, forgetting who he gave what to, and what he didn’t give away - they took it from him themselves. He kept his business papers, documents and belongings with friends and acquaintances. Yesenin distributed his manuscripts to friends and left them throughout Russia, wherever he visited. Much therefore remained irretrievably lost. His friend in literary circles, poetess E. Eiges 24 told how Yesenin gave her many of his papers: “Here,” said Yesenin, “I give you the third part of my manuscripts; the other two go to my mother and sister Katya.” With these words, he took out a whole pile of handwritten sheets and, separating the third part, gave it to me. I hid the sheets of paper; there were about fifty of them. Unfortunately, only three sheets of paper have survived, filled out on both sides, on the forms of the “Comune of Proletarian Writers.” A lot has gone missing. Galina alone carefully preserved every piece of paper where the letters were written in his hand.
Even his mother, a simple illiterate peasant woman who did not realize the value of her son’s manuscripts as a great poet, failed to preserve them. In Zhutaev's story 25 , recorded from the words of the poet’s mother Tatyana Fedorovna, there are the following lines: “She showed them to the old chest where Serezha’s manuscripts lay. One of them said: “Something is written here.” Tatyana Fedorovna told them: “Take it, take it, no one needs his poems now, but at least you can smoke.” The children also ran into the house, also asked for leaves and made paper kites out of them, with which they ran along the hills and slopes.”
Why did she do this - Tatyana Fedorovna explained that when in 1943 she tried to take the manuscript to the regional newspaper so that they would publish something, but they received her very warily. "Tatyana Fedorovna Yesenina." “Yesenin?” he asked and looked at me in a special way. “Well, okay, what did you bring us for the newspaper?” I give him some poems. He read it, smiled somehow unnaturally, then handed the poems to Mikhail Ivanovich. He read it and, silently handing the poems to the editor, quietly and calmly said: “Tatyana Fedorovna, we don’t publish such poems.” “Perhaps we’ll give “Letter to Mother”? - said Mikhail Ivanovich. “What, did you want to go to the front line?” - the editor raised his voice. It was very sad for me to hear such words. I don’t remember how I left this terrible building and got back on the road.”
Galina’s small apartment was becoming more and more crowded. “The three of us had to live (me, Katya and S<ергей А<лександрович>) in one small room, and in the fall of 1924 a fourth was added - Shurka. And spending the night in our apartment is something indescribable. In my room - me, S<ергей А<лександрович>, Klyuev, Ganin and someone else, in the next small cold room on a broken camp bed - someone else from S’s companions<ергея>A<лександровича>or Katya. Later, in 1925, the picture changed somewhat: in one room - C<ергей А<лександрович>, Sakharov, Muran and Boldovkin, next to each other in the same little room in which by that time its owner lived - on the bed was the owner of the room, and on the floor, by the window - her sister, all the space between the wall and the bed was allocated to us - me, Shura and Katya, and the last one of us slept half under the bed.” 5 .
The poet's faithful friends, Galina and Anya Nazarova, repeatedly tried in various instances to obtain an apartment for Yesenin. The editor-in-chief of Bednota, Grandov, was also involved in this. With his help, they contacted the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, sending copies to L. D. Trotsky and A. K. Voronsky. But all their attempts ended in vain. At best, they received the answer: “Now we satisfy the workers first, then the responsible employees, and private individuals last. Therefore, we cannot promise you anything. Come back in a month!” (A. Nazarova 26 ).
And Yesenin so needed a homely, family environment. With what longing he read the lines of Galina’s letters to him in the Caucasus: “With Shurka’s return, everything is like a family again, good and friendly. Again we go to bed on time, etc. Olya (I think Katya wrote to you - our servant) took us into her hands, in general, she and Shurka are two tightropes for me and Katya. Now we have a whole family: Shura, Katya, Olya and me, and also our neighbor.”
Sergei Alexandrovich also had a dream to organize the publication of his own magazine (almanac) of a group of peasant writers “Russians”. For this purpose, his visit took place in mid-August 1923 to the Kremlin to see Trotsky for permission to publish it, which was organized by Ya. G. Blyumkin, who then worked in Trotsky’s secretariat (A. Mariengof 27 ). In Yesenin’s letter to Duncan dated August 20, 1923 we read: “I visited Trotsky. He treated me amazingly. Thanks to his help, they now give me a lot of money for publishing.” However, none of those who had the opportunity to truly support him were interested in him, and this dream never came true, which plunged the poet into deep depression.
“In the last years of his life, Sergei Alexandrovich no longer knew how to cling to opportunities, did not know how to break through. Either he needs to open the doors, or he won’t go himself. This is where his anger came from: “they don’t let their own people home.” More than once he said, “Understand, in my house I am not the master, I have to knock on my house, and they don’t open the door for me... He was in great pain... The boundaries of someone else’s and his own guilt were mixed up... He needed help figuring it out, and there would be a way out out of the dead end and there would be something to live with...
...In moments of anger, despair, in moments when he felt left out of the social life of his homeland, when he realized that he was not to blame for this cutoff, that he wanted to be with the Soviet government, that he was moving towards it, even to the point of trying to join into the party, and it was not his fault if they failed to use his desire, failed to involve him in social work, if, as it sometimes seemed to him and as, perhaps, in fact was the case, he was rejected and wiped out. After all, in the end, the entire peasantry of the USSR is ideologically alien to the communist worldview, but we are involving them in new construction. We involve it because it is a force, a large quantity. WITH<ергею>A<лександровичу>it was very difficult that he was ignored in this regard, ignored both as a person and as a public figure. The situation has been created like this: either come to us with a ready-made, formed worldview, or we don’t need you, you are a harmful poisonous flower that can only poison the psyche of our youth.” 5 .
Abroad, Yesenin looks at his abandoned homeland in a new way. He already sees what previously passed by him. In his poem “Country of Scoundrels,” although from the lips of the bandit Nomakh (the prototype of Makhno), offensive but terribly true words sound:

Empty fun, just talk.
Well, well, what did you take in return?
The same swindlers, the same thieves came
And by the law of the revolution everyone was taken prisoner...

The authorities did everything to trample the poet under “legal” means. The persecution of Yesenin begins. His provocations to scandals became more frequent; unknown persons began to grab the poet and drag him to the police or OGPU. Some miracle saved the poet from a bandit’s knife or a bullet in the back of the head. His nerves are on edge, he arms himself with a metal stick for self-defense, P. Chagin gives him a pistol as a gift. By order of Sosnovsky, articles are published daily in Moscow newspapers on behalf of the workers demanding reprisals against the “kulak” poet. Yesenin escapes from Moscow to the Caucasus, to Leningrad.
In her memoirs, G. Benislavskaya tries to accuse the Soviet government of ignoring the poet. She is bitterly indignant that “it had no right not to understand what value is in its care, and which nevertheless not only did not contribute to the opportunity to grow further in the talent of E<сенина>, but even failed to save it; even if not to preserve, but at least to more or less provide everyday opportunities. Ah, Sobinova, Geltser, Nezhdanova are provided with these opportunities, although their contributions to spiritual culture are immeasurably smaller, if only because their creativity will die with them, and what Yesenin created will survive many generations.” 5 .
Yesenin “became embittered and became unceremonious, he no longer cared where and how to receive money, he felt his right to it: since this right is not recognized, since injustice reigns in this area, it means there is no point in playing at nobility. Very sensitive to any injustice, impetuous both in enthusiasm and in disappointment, here too he quickly came to extremes. If they offend you or deceive you, it means you have to fight and defend yourself. And it is no coincidence that he expressed this philosophy in “The Country of Scoundrels”:

...So, according to this version
Meanness is sometimes not a vice?

No no no! I don't want to die at all!
These birds are flying over us in vain.
I want to be a boy again, shaking copper from the aspen tree,
Place your palms like white slippery saucers.
What about death?
Will this thought fit in my heart?
When do I have my own home in the Penza province?
I feel sorry for the sun, I feel sorry for the month,
It's a pity the poplar above the low window.
Only for the living are they blessed
Groves, streams, steppes and greenery.
Listen, I don't care about the whole universe,
If I'm not here tomorrow.
I want to live, live, live,
Live to the point of fear and pain,
Be it a pickpocket or a gold miner,
Just to see the mice jumping in the field for joy,
Just to hear the frogs singing with delight in the well,
My white soul splashes with apple blossoms,
The wind blew my eyes into blue flames.
For God's sake, teach me
Teach me and I'll do anything
I’ll do anything to make people’s gardens ring.”

Benislavskaya was not at Yesenin’s funeral. M. Roizman 10 said: “a little after Yesenin’s death, I saw Benislavskaya at a table in the telegraph building. In front of her lay a blank form for a telegram, she sat thoughtfully, with a pen in her hand. I greeted her and saw that she had lost weight, even aged. I asked if she was sick?
“No, I’m healthy,” she answered quietly. - But every minute I think that Sergei Alexandrovich is no longer there!
After the death of Sergei Alexandrovich, Galina writes in her diary that this “tiny hope came true, but it is irreparable... Death is better than a sad life or a constantly ongoing illness. Six months in all conditions..." 4 . Disappointment with Yesenin went away, and terrible hopelessness and irreversibility of loss came. “And I have the same mortal longing for him. Everything and everything is nonsense, for those who truly saw him, they cannot see anyone, they cannot love anyone. And one-sided life is also nonsense.” She tries to live somehow, fill her soul with wine, rushes from side to side. There is no relief. And Galina decides to die. The last entry in the diary with clumsy, inept verses: “Now I don’t give a damn. And you don’t need anything, you even want to write, but not really. It seems to me that in a month, not even a week, it will pass, even pity will pass.

Leave too. Enough.
You endured, unfortunate friend,
From his involuntary melancholy,
From his involuntary torment.
What happened has passed
Your destiny is similar to everyone else
The heart was truly torn,
But the lie broke him.

Death is better than a life of sorrow or constant illness. Clear? It's clear? “Very simple!” Means? Whoa, Whoa! Six months in all conditions - you think, and still the same conclusion? Well... a bastard, as they say, and the sanatorium is “its nonsense.” Well, I delayed it for a month, a month and a half, but they read that death is better than. Well, so, here...
Sergey, I don’t love you, but it’s a pity “For the time being, for the time being...” (wrote while drunk)” 4 .
This happened on December 3, 1926 at the Vagankovskoye cemetery next to Yesenin’s grave. “The woman nervously smoked cigarette after cigarette. She is so young, and life, despite the difficulties and misfortunes, is so beautiful... Finally, she made up her mind. She took out a piece of paper, quickly, so as not to think twice, scribbled down a few lines: “I committed suicide here, although I know that after this even more dogs will be blamed on Yesenin. But both he and I won’t care. Everything that is most precious to me is in this grave, so in the end I don’t give a damn about Sosnovsky and public opinion, which Sosnovsky has in mind.” (In her suicide note, Benislavskaya for the first time named one of the main stranglers of Yesenin, the ideological leader of the Bolsheviks of those years, but for decades his name was deliberately removed when this note was published). She stood still for some time without moving. Then she wrote on a cigarette box: “If the Finn is stuck in the grave after the shot, it means that even then I did not regret it. If it’s a pity, I’ll throw it far away...”
The woman took out a pistol; for some reason she believed that after the shot in the heart area she would be conscious and would be able to once again prove her unearthly love for Sergei Yesenin at the last minute of death. After some time, she was able to somehow write on the box of cigarettes: “1 misfire.” In Moscow they will later say that there were several misfires. But the subsequent shot turned out to be accurate. The woman fell unconscious. The pistol and the Finnish woman fell out of her hands...
The shot was heard at the gatehouse. The cemetery watchman was the first to arrive at the scene of the incident, fearfully hiding behind monuments and fences. A mortally wounded woman in a checkered cap and a dark, shabby coat lay in the snow and moaned barely audibly. The watchman ran to the church to raise the alarm. Soon the police came and the ambulance arrived. The dying woman was sent to the Botkin hospital, but she was no longer breathing. The cart turned around and took the body of the deceased to Pirogovka, to the anatomical theater. This is how the life of 29-year-old Galina Benislavskaya, whose love and devotion to the poet was boundless, was tragically cut short.” This is how her death is described by Eduard Khlystalov20.

The suicide of Galina Benislavskaya shocked the public. It was decided to bury her next to Yesenin. The funeral took place on December 7. The words “Faithful Galya” were inscribed on the monument. Now the inscription on the grave is more official.
The secret of the life and death of Yesenin and Benislavskaya went with them and whether they will ever be revealed is unknown.
A disappointed, offended, and insulted woman is capable of much and even meanness. “From love to hate there is only one step.” She made it. What happened next? Recently, information has appeared (letters-notes from G. Benislavskaya to V. Erlich were discovered) with whom she maintained contact after Yesenin’s death. Did she know about his secret service in the GPU, about his possible dirty role in the death of the poet? (although his KGB dossier has not been made public, now there is practically no doubt about it, based on an analysis of his behavior and poetic opuses and other facts) (V. Kuznetsov 36 , V. Meshkov 37 ). The contents of her letters and notes indicate her extremely unbalanced state, which is quite understandable, knowing everything about her relationship with Yesenin.
Now many are asking the question: could G. Benislavskaya have had some secret assignments of the GPU related to Yesenin? There is no evidence for this, or the opposite. If there were any, it is unlikely that she performed them until the complete break with the poet. Her love for him was too great for even the great cause of the revolution to defeat her. No, she couldn't betray him then. But later, being in such a nervous breakdown, who can guarantee that she was pure before Yesenin in this sense. Perhaps she was also oppressed by some sense of guilt (although in her understanding the Cheka was not so much a punitive as a re-educational body). This could also have been one of the reasons for her suicide. Although, if we think about it, why then leave these angry lines of hatred in the diary for posterity? This is not logical. Still, I want to believe that this pain of the breakup passed without harmful consequences for Yesenin. And what was the need for even more careful supervision of the poet? Voluntary and forced spies did not allow him to take a step anyway. He lived too unprotected, as F. E. Dzerzhinsky himself told him when they met (Schneider 38 ). All his scandals and drunken, “anti-Semitic” antics with political overtones were all in plain sight. But still, the poet was afraid of something, and it was not just the suspected development of persecution mania. He was afraid of something more meaningful. It was not for nothing that before his last departure to Leningrad he burned many documents in the apartment of his first common-law wife A. Izryadnova39; it was not for nothing that they turned everything over in the hotel room of the Angleterre Hotel and took away the manuscripts, which disappeared without a trace. Galina’s “help” against this background would not be so great. Benislavskaya’s letter to Erlich in 1926 mentions facts related to Yesenin’s violent reaction to the attempt of “friends” to convince him of Benislavskaya’s unseemly role as an agent of the GPU (V. Kuznetsov 36 ). These experiences still haunt her and excite her, several months after Yesenin’s death. What kind of relationship was this if she knew the truth about Erlich? There are too many unanswerable questions. Time is running out, so are the witnesses, and the evidence is hiding deeper and deeper.
The persecution of the GPU in the mid-twenties became more severe and wider. In June 1926, the writer A. Sobol, an acquaintance of Yesenin, committed suicide, who shot himself on Tverskoy Boulevard, near the monument to Pushkin. Before his death, he mailed lengthy letters to friends, and one to People's Commissar A.V. Lunacharsky, where he wrote: “Now I am convinced that we are all in a more terrible snare. Disgusting, sticky, black. I don’t know, maybe you are already an employee of the GPU, where I was invited the other day and whose agent I was offered to become. If they pulled me down yesterday, they will pull you tomorrow, the day after tomorrow. There is already a provocateur in our midst; they know too much about us.” It was in such a situation that the great people of our era, who left an indelible mark on the history, literature and art of Russia, had to survive or die prematurely.
As the great Goethe said: “If the world splits into two parts, the crack passes through the poet’s heart.” In troubled and terrible times, a man with such a crystal clear poetic gift had to be born. His heart was torn by this crack. And everyone who was close to Yesenin during these fiery years was unlikely to be able to save him from inevitable death. “Someone said that everyone carries within themselves the spring of their destiny, and life unfolds this spring to the end. This is only part of the truth. Yesenin’s creative spring, unfolding, came across the brink of an era and broke (L. Trotsky 40 ).
There is no need to condemn or justify anyone. You just need to understand and accept everything. There is the great poet Yesenin, and there is an earthly man with his mistakes, which he did not hide, but splashed out in his poems (“how many mistakes have been made”), sins (“for my grave sins”), grievances, desires. And I wouldn’t want him to be smoothed and combed, as was done for some time in most publications about the poet of the Soviet era. He was a bundle of passions and contradictions: low and sublime, light and dark, while remaining a great Poet. And no matter what standards literary scholars measure the degree of his greatness, they will not be right to the end, because the true significance of the Poet lies in the strength of people’s love for him, for his poetry.
"WITH. A. Yesenin in the memoirs of his contemporaries" in 2 vols., M., "Fiction", 1986. Compiled by I. L. Povitsky. M.: APART, 2006. 40. L. D. Trotsky. To the death of a poet. Newspaper “Pravda” No. 15. 1926. from the book. “Life, personality, creativity”, ed. E. F. Nikitina. Ed. "Educator", 1926.