Program for high school students

We will gather at a common table, where different social strata of society, different political parties of the early 20th century will meet face to face: left Socialist-Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks, revolutionary communists and kulaks, class-conscious proletarians and backward peasants, Proletkult poets and representatives of "decaying" bourgeois literature.

In our debate, we will touch upon many topics of the pre- and post-revolutionary period. Here are some of them:

• "Shouting" slogans of the new government and the poetic rise of S.А. Yesenin.
• "Civil war in the countryside" and the resistance of the Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik opposition in the Soviets.
• “There can be only two parties: one in power, the other in prison” (AN Bukharin). The role of the Soviets in the creative life of the poet.
• "Give the bourgeoisie a top eight ... and give the proletariat bread" (VI Lenin). Decrease in population Soviet Russia and the critical situation of villages, for example, Konstantinovo.
• The long-awaited "Decree on Land" as an opposition to the decree "On extraordinary powers ..." by Lenin.
• Vera S.A. Yesenin to the renewed Russia ("Heavenly Drummer", "Transfiguration", "Inonia" and unconscious concern for her future ("Rural Hourly", "Country of Scoundrels")
• Imagism as "clownish antics for the sake of antics" and folk art as a standard of true imagery.
• Two-facedness, betrayal, permissiveness of the new "friends" of the poet (Blumkin, Ustinov, Trotsky, Kamenev) and Yesenin's departure from the galaxy of peasant poets.

The program is accompanied by the reading of poems by S.A. Yesenin, a story about his personal life.

The duration of the program with a tour of the museum is 1 hour 30 minutes.

How the Bolsheviks raised Yesenin

It is known that Lenin and Trotsky did not have much respect for the poetry of Demyan Bedny. “Rough. Follows the reader, but you have to be ahead, ”the leader once said. Trotsky, too, although he sang praises to him in his article "Literature and Revolution", he did it not from a pure heart, but out of necessity.

Many came to the revolution "from the plow." Learned to own a saber. They tried to take poetry by storm, as they recently took Perekop. So they wrote: "Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny / Galloped on a frisky mare." Or: "Torn shirt in a sailor's way - / And shout:" Long live Trotsky! "

The young people did not lack revolutionary enthusiasm, but is this poetry? And how long could the farcical Demyan be considered the first proletarian poet?

"The face, I must say frankly, does not inspire sympathy, and the environment around it is not fragrant ... He will be laughed at, but there are also nameless seniors and juniors for this."

(Trotsky)

And whom, pray tell them, do you command to caress and exalt? Blok with his "Twelve" - ​​"the first poem about the revolution"? So for him this very revolution did not turn out very attractive, with some pogrom slogans:

Lock floors.

There will be robberies today!

We are on the mountain to all bourgeois

Let's fan the world fire

World blood fire

God! Bless!

Trotsky was smart enough to silently pass by Blok's poem, in which many (M. Gorky, K. Chukovsky, etc.) saw "satire and evil satire."

Yesenin also does not inspire confidence, you have to work and work with him. "The revolution, you see, the personality destroys", "My revolution has not yet come!" Just look, he will flee to the West, although he declares himself "to the left of the Bolsheviks":

Now on the Soviet side

I am the fiercest fellow traveler.

“How, fellow traveler! Which station? " - Trotsky sarcastically clarified.

No, Sergei Alexandrovich, we still have to make you a Bolshevik, but if we don't, then we will break you! There is only one Mayakovsky now, but who is not tired of the rumble of a barrel on the cobblestone pavement? After the roar of war and devastation, people want peace and soulfulness, but he “yells, invents crooked words,” Lenin grumbles with displeasure. But one has to be content with such poetry!

Of course, due to his duty, it is more convenient to educate and reeducate poets for Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky, but it was time to reeducate that one. Bukharin was not suitable for this purpose either, although he was considered the main ideologue of Bolshevism. Trotsky, as the most educated Bolshevik leader, closely followed, directed and commanded literature. And what came of it? All poets and writers " silver age"Left Bolshevik Russia, left" unreliable "," unstable "," politically limited fellow travelers. " Inevitably, I had to sing the praises of proletarian poets and print green youth.

Trotsky did not stand on ceremony with the poets:

“Those who have joined will not remove the North Star from the sky, nor will they invent silent gunpowder. But they are useful, necessary - they will go as manure for a new culture. And this is not so little ... We know very well the political limitations, instability, unreliability of fellow travelers. But if we throw out Pilnyak with his "Naked Year", serapions with Vsevolod Ivanov, Tikhonov and Polonskaya, Mayakovsky, Yesenin, so what, in fact, will remain, except for the unpaid promissory notes for future proletarian literature?

The field of art is not where the party can command. "

The words are correct, but one should not take them at face value - they were said when the party had already passed judgment on all those who were "on their own." "Furious communist" (as St. Kunyaev calls him), journalist and party leader Georgy Ustinov announced this decision in his 1923 article. In it, the peasant poets Yesenin, Klyuev, Klychkov and Oreshin were first called "psychobandits", and the chapter of the article was called "Condemned to death."

“Do poets sense their doom? Sure. Grandfather's Russia has become a thing of the past, and together with her, her poets depart with a melancholy song. “For me, Proletkult will not cry, / And Smolny will not cook kutya,” Nikolai Klyuev sighs melancholy. And Yesenin - the brightest, most gifted poet of the transitional era and the most incorrigible psycho-bandit, echoes his brother: "I am the last poet of the village."

Why was Yesenin not on the way with the Bolsheviks?

“Vardin is very nice to me and very attentive. He is a wonderful, simple and warm-hearted person. Everything he does in literary politics, he does as an honest communist. One problem is that he loves communism more than literature. "

Yesenin wrote this to his sister, but he knew that all his letters were becoming the property of well-known organs. Galina Benislavskaya quotes these lines, and adds on her own behalf: "Vardin, despite the narrowness of his views, had a beneficial effect on Sergei Alexandrovich in the sense of defining his" political orientation "(...)" Good relationship to Vardin he had forever. Even in a letter from the Caucasus to Katya, mentioning that he was not on his way with Vardin, he spoke of Vardin as a wonderful person. "

All the Bolsheviks who closely surrounded Yesenin - Vardin, Voronsky, Berzin, and others - undoubtedly were good people but they loved communism more than literature.

Yesenin said definitely:"I will give my whole soul to October and May, but I will not give up my dear lyre." By Albert Rees Williams:“I met Yesenin shortly after his break with the dancer Isadora Duncan. Yesenin was looking for a spacious and comfortable apartment. But in overpopulated Moscow it was difficult to find such an apartment, and someone advised the poet to turn to Kalinin.

It doesn't matter, - Yesenin declared with all the self-confidence of his youth, - he will be glad to see Pushkin in today's Russia, - and immediately added, - or any of his friends.

I must say that Yesenin did not have an apartment. No. For all the years of his stay in his beloved Moscow, he never had his own corner. Everybody has been writing about Yesenin's homelessness over the past two years. Here is a literally anecdotal episode: "A friend with whom Yesenin came, asks him:" Where are you going to spend the night? " “I don’t know,” the poet replies, “let's go to you at least.” A. Nazarova told about the same: “Yesenin was terribly tormented, not having a permanent home. On Bogoslovsky - a room was needed by Mariengof and Kolobov, on Nikitskaya - I and Galya lived in the same room. He then spent the night with us, then at Bogoslovsky, then somewhere else, like a homeless dog wandering and, unable to work or live calmly ... His sister also huddled somewhere in Zamoskvorechye. Another sister was supposed to come from the village. "

The poet took the advice of his friends and went to Kalinin. What the conversation was going on between them, we must never know, but, apparently, Mikhail Ivanovich was talking simply, advised Yesenin to go to his village and live there for two years. In other words, he advised me to get out of Moscow and get off into the wilderness. Kalinin probably had reasons for this advice. Yesenin did not listen to Mikhail Il Ivanovich. And what immediately followed this disobedience? All adversity fell on Yesenin: collections were not published, poems were not published.

In one of his poems, he wrote:

I am the rightful owner of the Russian country,

He wandered the earth like a stray dog.

The bookstore, from which he had some income, changed hands. The Pegasus Stable cafe, where he was the owner on shares with others and received dividends, went bankrupt, and was also soon closed.

Isadora sent a reassuring telegram:

“My deeds are brilliant. I was at Trotsky's. He treated me amazingly. Thanks to his help, now they give me large funds for publishing. "

And what is in practice? Yesenin has always had a difficult time, but he has never had such a difficult time. Read the lines from Galina Benislavskaya's diary that have never been published:

"Understand," the poet complained, "I am not the owner in my house, I have to knock at my house, and they do not open to me."

“Sometimes it seemed to him, and so in fact it was, he was rejected and wiped away. After all, in the end, all the peasantry of the USSR is ideologically alien to the communist worldview, but we are drawing them into new construction.

We are involved because it is a force, a large value. It was very difficult for Sergei Alexandrovich that in this regard he was ignored as a person and as a social value. The situation was created like this: either come to us with a ready-made worldview, or we do not need you, you are a poisonous flower that can only poison the psyche of young people. "

Sergei Alexandrovich suffered greatly from his inactivity.“They will not be forgiven, they will be avenged for this. Let me be a victim, I must be a victim for everyone who is "not allowed". They don't let me in, they don't want to, well, let's see. Everyone will be angry for me. This is not a pound of raisins. How else angry. And we are all evil. You don't know how angry we are if we are wronged. Don't touch it, otherwise it will be bad. I will shout, I will, I will be everywhere. They put them in - let them plant them - it will be even worse. We always wait and endure for a long time. But don't touch! No need!"

“For how many years our authorities hid these ingenuous lines of a person close to the poet. And all in order to hide the truth about the persecution of Yesenin by the leaders of the Bolsheviks for political reasons ", - said Eduard Khlystalov.

Evdokimov's memoirs (chapter "On a Wooden Sofa") also testify to how the Bolsheviks "brought up" Yesenin.

“In August, the Literary and Art Department was transferred along the same corridor to the very end. It was heavy and stuffy in two small rooms, cluttered with wardrobes and tables with bad archaic heating, with overcrowded rooms with service personnel and the visiting audience. And they brought in: no smoking in the rooms.

A small wooden sofa for three was set up in the corridor by the door. On this sofa, perhaps, a rare contemporary writer has not spent a few minutes of his life.

And almost every visit to Yesenin also began with this sofa. He came, lit a cigarette, and went out into the corridor.

He visited quite often all autumn. And somehow it happened that most often I met him on the sofa, noticing a familiar figure in the corridor from afar ...

Usually, monthly payments of a thousand rubles had to be issued by Yesenin's powers of attorney to either his wife or cousin Ilya Yesenin. Before the poet's marriage to SL. Tolstoy's sister, YEL, received money. Yesenin.

In order to save money, when a poet came for them in a drunken state, we considered it our duty not to give him money.

Under a plausible pretext, I quickly went to the lower floor, to the financial sector, warned our workmates not to give money to Yesenin at the cash register, or took an already issued order from the cash register. In cases of the poet's persistence, the issuance was delayed until 3 o'clock in the afternoon, then they gave him a check to the bank, when operations there that day had already stopped. IN the latter case there was a hope that the poet would sober up in the morning and the money would not be wasted. "

I must say, this is how the Bolshevik government brought up not only Yesenin. They remember, for example, how Vladimir Mayakovsky was dancing tap-dancing in the office of the chief accountant with the promise that he would not leave until all the money was on the table. From all the offices, employees and employees came to see and admire this spectacle. Mayakovsky knew how to get his way.

Yesenin did not have such a stranglehold. He was delicate, and if he left with empty handed, then did not look in the eyes. He was ashamed of the people. And Evdokimov remembered all his life this guilt before Yesenin.

Suppose that Yesenin, "educating", was deprived of money for the purpose of "prevention", but in the same way, Benislavskaya or her sister Katya had to travel many times, "and often there was not even a tram." Did this also contribute to a "sober existence" or, on the contrary, pushed to taverns with a desire to drown out the offense?

Even on the last day, leaving Moscow for good, he was unable to get money, despite the fact that he came from the hospital three days before his departure and warned about it.

The warrant has been written out, - said Evdokimov, - but you came too early.

Yesenin did not receive it either in the morning, or after two, or after four. And he left for Leningrad without money.

After leaving Isadora, as you know, Yesenin lived with G. Benislavskaya. She recalls:

“The three of us (me. Katya and Sergei Alexandrovich) had to live in one small room, and in the fall of 1924 a fourth was added - Shurka. And spending the night in our apartment is generally something indescribable. In my room - me, Sergei Alexandrovich, Klyuev, Ganin and someone else, and in the next small, cold room, on a broken camp bed - someone else from Sergei Alexandrovich's companions or Katya. Later, in 1925, the picture changed somewhat: in one room - Sergei Alexandrovich, Sakharov, Muran, Boldovkin, next to the same room in which her mistress lived by that time - the owner of the room herself was on the bed, and on the floor, by the window - her sister, all the space between the wall and the bed was assigned to us - me, Shura and Katya, and the last of us slept half under the bed.

But how difficult it was for Sergei Alexandrovich with money - words cannot describe this. Projector, Krasnaya Niva and Ogonyok paid neatly. But only new poems were submitted to the magazines, and this money could not be enough.

Krasnaya Nov 'paid horribly. Almost every other day I had to go there (and often there was no tram) in order to finally catch the moment when the cashier had money. In addition, more than once they gave out in parts, 30 rubles each, and in the meantime, debts were accumulating, money was needed in the village, often Sergei Alexandrovich asked to be sent. The situation was such that sometimes my salary personally saved us, and I received a little, 70 rubles. There were four permanent "dependents" (mother, father and two sisters), and they lived in different places, parents in the countryside, sisters in Moscow, and Sergei Alexandrovich himself throughout the USSR.

(…) Never in my life before and after I did not 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. Bolsheviks The plant has been working for over a year, and people all came and came to Pechatkino. Nobody knew or counted how many people had gathered here; some said five thousand, others eight thousand.

CHAPTER XX STALIN, MEN AND BOLSHEVIKS For the first time, the father of nations appeared in Pshvin's Diary in 1924: “Stalin published a pamphlet against Trotsky, 'Trotskyism or Leninism' - it is impossible to pronounce, and Kamenev called his brochure 'Leninism or Trotskyism' - it is pronounced.

CHAPTER 15 STALIN, BOLSHEVIKS AND MEN The father of nations first appeared in Pshvin's Diary in 1924: “Stalin published a pamphlet against Trotsky“ Trotskyism or Leninism ”- it is impossible to pronounce, and Kamenev called his brochure“ Leninism or Trotskyism ”- it is pronounced.

BOLSHEVIKS The changes that have taken place in the country have changed the face of the once prim capital of the empire. The daughter of the British ambassador Miri-el Buchanan saw revolutionary Petrograd like this: “Dirty red flags now fluttered over the Winter Palace, the fortress and government

Chapter thirty six. BOLSHEVIKS AGAINST BOLSHEVIKS The Cheka was almost abolished a year after its creation! Of course, it would not have come to this, but it seemed so at one time.

Chapter sixteen. Bolsheviks in power I was returning to the front. The trains were terribly crowded, but luckily I managed to get a job in the first class carriage. In Molodechno, I reported on my arrival to the commander of the 10th Army, General Valuev, and dined at his headquarters with

Chapter 3 Yesenin's Deathly Sin I have an irony ... If you want to know, Heine is my teacher. (Yesenin about himself. From the memoirs of Ehrlich) In the memoirs of P. Chagin, Yesenin mentions the name of Heinrich Heine next to the name of Karl Marx. Meanwhile, Yesenin assured that "under any weather conditions"

19 Evening at the Polytechnic Museum. Yesenin's student August Miklashevskaya. What happened after Yesenin's death Re-registration of the "Association" Some critics and literary scholars were convinced that with his article "Life and Art" Yesenin began a break with the Imagists. The same

20 Yesenin's quarrel with Mariengof. The "muzhiks" are acting. The incident in the pub. The trial of 4 poets. Yesenin's suspicious entourage In the same October 1923, Sergei met Kozhebatkin, went with him to some cafe. Alexander Melentyevich told Yesenin why they didn't pay

24 Yesenin's Triumph in the Union of Poets. Prototypes of Yesenin's heroines. Who is the northerner in Persian Motives? The end of the Freethinker. Explanations of Vsevolod Ivanov The beginning of Yesenin's evening in the club of poets was scheduled at nine o'clock, but even earlier the club was overcrowded with members of the Union

25 Yesenin and Mariengof in the "Mouse hole". Yesenin's marriage to S.A. Tolstoy. Yesenin's speech at the House of Press We called our new cafe on the corner of Kuznetsky Most "Mouse Hole". On the wall near the pantry, Borya Erdman mounted a spectacular showcase on a wooden board

Chapter 8. Yesenin's son comes from America to his father's grave "... to live more days don't care ... ”When Nadezhda and Osip Mandelstam came to Leningrad, they stayed at Nadezhda Volpin's house. Once the little son of the hostess was asked, pointing to Osip Emilievich:

Chapter Five Abroad The Second Congress of the R.S.D.R.P. and the split in the party. - Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. - Bronstein-Trotsky, Plekhanov and Lenin In November 1902, after finishing my term of exile, I returned to Nikolaev. There, I soon had to plunge headlong into the affairs of the local Social Democratic

Chapter 5 The Bolsheviks are in power The Bolsheviks are in power, but the overwhelming majority of noble-bourgeois Petersburg treats this fact extremely superficially: "Is it a conceivable thing? An incoming phenomenon! It will somehow end, and, obviously, very soon ..." But how and why "is obvious ", none

How children were raised in the families of Pushkin and Solzhenitsyn ... It is impossible to raise children well if you yourself are bad. Lev Tolstoy Natalia Pushkina-Lanskaya Thoughts on marriage From letters by N.N. Pushkina-Lanskaya to P.P. Lansky. "Our Heritage", No. 3.1990 ... And now I return to your

Chapter Eight. The Bolsheviks 1. The persecution of religion, which began immediately after the Bolshevik coup, surprised the naive V. A. Platonova: she could not understand why the government, which declared itself popular, was acting against traditional popular beliefs. Alexei

Yesenin in Russia after the death of Stalin, according to official data, has long been debunked and exposed. In the textbooks of literature of the 50s, several lines were devoted to him, the purpose of which was to inspire Soviet schoolchildren that there was no need to read Yesenin: he is a secondary poet, "petty-bourgeois," out of tune with the era ...

Yesenin's name was never mentioned either in print or on the radio. His books have been withdrawn from the libraries. In a word, Yesenin was officially forgotten and put into the archive forever ...

And Yesenin's popularity, meanwhile, was growing. His poems in the lists dispersed in all corners of Russia. They are memorized, chanted like songs. In the 50-60s, circles of his admirers arose under the name "Yesenin's bride". Finding themselves in conditions of relative freedom, "displaced persons" (emigrants) republished his poems. And these sloppy prints and not cheap standing books briskly dispersed not only in the camps, but also among the old emigrants.

In our time there was such amazing fact: The sixteen-year-old "Yesenin's bride" and the fifty-year-old agree on love for Yesenin. Two poles, between which there is nothing in common, converge on Yesenin - converge on Russian poetry ...

But Yesenin has long been dead. And, merciless to the living, Bolshevism was extremely lenient to the dead, especially famous ones. This is understandable: the attributes of the Great October Revolution are no longer to be found at the present time. Lenin's mummy alone is not enough. This shortfall is being successfully filled by various glorified dead men, various "cities of Gorky", "Mayakovsky squares", etc. A square would have been found for Yesenin, if he had included the sins he committed only during his lifetime ... But Yesenin has an unforgivable sin before the Soviet regime and, in general, any government - a posthumous sin. Having received immortality, Yesenin does what none of the living have succeeded in thirty years - he unites people with the sound of a poetic song, where the consciousness of common guilt and common brotherhood merge into hope and faith ...

That is why the Bolsheviks tried to convince that there was nothing to love Yesenin for. That is why it was declared "inconsistent with the era" ...

© "I am a bodyguard" 1995 (special issue) Georgy Ivanov

Rogova Anastasia 05/10/2019 at 23:40

He allowed himself to spit on the recognized authorities, bathed in adoration of secular beauties, spent his life recklessly and ... acutely yearned for the lovely village. This is all about Sergei Yesenin. There are still many mysteries and secrets around the figure of the great poet. Including his terrible death at the Angleterre Hotel ...

October 3 (21 September according to the old style) will mark the 124th anniversary of the birth of "the last poet of the village", as Sergei Yesenin called himself. He really was already born a poet, and the Ryazan village of Konstantinovo formed character, religious beliefs and views for the rest of his life. And in whatever cities, and at whatever high-society events Yesenin then shone (and he happened to read his poems in front of Empress Maria Fedorovna), the village in him remained the main beginning. Sergei's view of life is a stubborn and wary, slightly mocking, somewhat limited, somewhat infinitely broad view of the Russian peasant.

When young Yesenin, already a recognized talent in his homeland, with publications and the blessing of teachers, arrived in St. Petersburg, he did not come to an empty place (as he coquettishly later told and wrote), but clearly understanding how he needed to behave and what was expected of him literary circles.

Nikolai Klyuev, the founder of his own circle of "new peasant" poetry, immediately guessed in the talented gold-haired native from the provinces a talent suitable for his program of performances, and carefully took the young man under his wing. Live Nikolai Klyuev today, he would become an amazing PR man or producer.

At the beginning of the 20th century, interest among the creative intelligentsia in the countryside increased a hundredfold. And Klyuev, himself having peasant roots, understood perfectly well what would amaze the audience gathering for poetry evenings. He and Yesenin, in ideally stylized peasant shirts, belted with sashes (and sometimes in bast shoes), with hair smoothed with lard, read poems from the stage about the village, about Russian melancholy - with the obligatory birch trees, horses, open spaces and peasant huts.

Klyuev himself resembled a sort of Mikula Selyaninovich, and the young Yesenin with golden curls resembled Lelia the shepherdess. They both seemed to have stepped off the lubok, showing the Petersburg public exactly the kind of village that they wanted to see: picturesque, epic, fabulous. And Yesenin's appearance and poetry were the quintessence of this fictional village. The success was tremendous. They talked about "peasant" poets everywhere. The ladies wept with delight at the sight of Sergei's golden curls, and the venerable poets applauded the folk talent on the shoulder.

But Klyuev, in his free time from performances, sat in his luxurious hotel apartments, reading in the original by foreign authors, and Yesenin mastered nightlife Northern capital. Nikolai always disapproved of the willfulness of his young comrade-in-arms, who, instead of speculating about the destiny of Russia, preferred to have fun recklessly. It is not surprising that the creative duo soon disintegrated, and Klyuev sharply condemned his former protégé.

With Anatoly Mariengof and Vadim Shershenevich, Yesenin created a new direction in poetry - Imagism, which was based on the understanding of the main goal of creativity, as creating an image. But Yesenin's poetry did not fit any literary framework. The poet was growing rapidly, and his poems were changing just as rapidly. Only one thing remained unchanged - a bitter tenderness for the village. He missed her - childhood, hopes. Although, at that time, Sergei already had everything that any poet striving for success can only dream of.

Glory, recognition, success with women, constant drinking - all this gradually turned Yesenin from a healthy peasant guy into a hysterical and capricious life-busting man. Inflated praise and admiration of the female fans made them believe in their own genius. Yesenin considered himself not only " the last poet villages ", but also the first poet of Russia. He did not like Mayakovsky - he was afraid that he would take away his listeners and recognition. He shouted when he saw newspaper articles about Mayakovsky:" I will die under the fence, on which posters with the announcement of Mayakovsky's evening will be pasted ! ". Friendship with Mariengof also ended in a complete break.

Oddly enough, only the well-aimed and caustic Zinaida Gippius, who did not like either Yesenin himself or his poems, guessed the poet's weak point - early glory. And she predicted that it was the "copper pipes" that would destroy this "cherub". Yesenin paid no attention to Gippiusikha's warning. He generally treated the representatives of Symbolism, especially the elders, without the slightest respect. Sergei was sure that he himself knows very well what creativity is, and how a real poet should live. Among the representatives of the older generation, Sergei Yesenin respected only Blok. Respected, but slightly condescending, condescending.

The main ailment

Friends and acquaintances of the poet agree that Yesenin's alcoholism was the primary reason for his premature departure "to the country where peace and grace." The poet himself, answering on December 5, 1925, to questions when filling out an outpatient card, in the column "Alcohol" answered: "A lot, from 24 years old." In the same place, the hand of the attending physician mercilessly deduced: "Delirium tremens, (hallucinations)." At the beginning of his bohemian life, the young healthy body of the Ryazan guy coped with the obligatory party libations. Yesenin even managed to organize "fasting" days. In 1921, he gladly notes in a letter to his friend Anatoly Mariengof: “... I won't drink like that anymore, and today, for example, I even completely refused to look at the drunken Grishka. Oh my God, how disgusting it is, and I've probably been even worse. " But the poet was not enough for a long time. IN Last year his life Yesenin became, in the words of the same Mariengof, “a man no more than one hour a day. From the first, morning, glass already darkened consciousness.

In 1922, Sergei Aleksandrovich complained in a letter to his poetic "mentor" Klyuev: "I am very tired, and my last drunken illness made me completely frayed." While in America with his wife Isadora Duncan, Yesenin drank himself to the point of epileptic seizures. In fairness, I must say that not only on the amount of whiskey drunk, but also on its quality. At that time America was shaken by the "dry law", so in the morning it was necessary to take moonshine surrogates on the chest. A. Duncan wrote in the Herald Tribune newspaper, trying to somehow shield her husband and explain drunken sabbaths with beating of mirrors in hotels: “Attacks of mental disorder, which Yesenin suffers from, occur not only from alcohol ... but also blood poisoning from drinking” banned "American whiskey, in which I have a certificate of one famous New York doctor who treated Yesenin for similar seizures in New York ...".

Relationship with the authorities

The adherents of the version of the violent death of the poet are pressing with might and main on Yesenin's fatal conflicts with the authorities. There were conflicts, but only on the basis of the poet's tavern riot. Yesenin was taken to the police 10 times. But not to torture, but to "sober up". I quote from his fellow in the pen V. Khodasevich, who knew Yesenin closely: “Regarding Yesenin, an order was given to the police in 1924 - to deliver to the station for sobering up and release, without giving further progress.” The authorities were rather touching about the singer of “Soviet Russia ". The only poem that can hardly be considered critical of the authorities is "The Country of Scoundrels". There, Yesenin has a hero named Leibman with the pseudonym Chekistov. If anyone does not know, the name of one of the leaders of the revolution, Trotsky-Bronstein, is Leib. Could Leib Davidovich be mortally offended by this coincidence? There are other "terrible" words uttered by Makhno (in the poem the bandit Nomakh): “Herd! Herd! ... Your equality is a lie and a lie. Good bait for fools. Scoundrels - a decent catch. " But a bandit must speak horror stories, that's why he is a bandit. That's all dissidence. But how many heartfelt lines Yesenin poured out on paper in favor of the Bolshevik deeds! And the poet responded to Lenin's death in the way that only a great poet-lyricist can respond: “And now he died ... The one who saved us is no longer there. And those whom he left behind, the country in a raging flood should be chained in concrete. "

Yesenin's hostility to the Bolsheviks is a myth. Of course, Sergei Aleksandrovich began to play fordybach in a drunken shop and, sometimes, uttered all kinds of lewdness, but the authorities were condescending to his tavern frontier. If he was a danger to the authorities, he would be easily accused of some kind of conspiracy and would be slapped, like, for example, the poet Nikolai Gumilyov. Yesenin was on a short leg with many Chekists. In particular, he loved to drag the famous Chekist-Mokrushnik Yakov Blumkin, who decided in the summer of 1918 the German ambassador himself, to parties. Yesenin, according to Khodasevich, for courage could offer an honest company to go to see the execution of the "counter". “I'll arrange it for you through Blumkin in one minute,” the inflamed poet-lyricist declared quite seriously.