More than 70 years later, after the collapse of the USSR, many scientists, historians and people who were simply not indifferent to the poet's work began to seriously talk about the possible murder of the poet. Perhaps after so much time they managed to discover the secret of his death?

In 1925, when Yesenin's body was found, it was announced that the poet had committed suicide. For decades, Soviet law enforcement agencies tried by all possible methods to hide the truth about the circumstances of the case, not even allowing their own employees to doubt the veracity of the official version. Only relatively recently, various information and facts began to come into the hands of researchers and historians, which shook the inviolability of the official version of suicide and made us seriously talk about Yesenin's murder. But, not taking into account all the existing materials proving the version of the deliberate murder of the poet, government officials still continue to resist an objective and thorough investigation, an assessment of the circumstances under which he died.

Details of Yesenin's murder

The body of the poet Sergei Yesenin was found hanging from a pipe in one of the rooms of the Angleterre Hotel in St. Petersburg on December 28, 1925. Thousands of people were shocked by the news of his death. Many acquaintances of the poet were not surprised by this ending of Yesenin's life, since he had many ill-wishers. The suicide of the poet was accepted in the circle of writers, as they were sure that representatives of the Soviet authorities brought him to this act. But even at that time there were people who did not accept the official version and assumed that in fact Yesenin was killed.

Yeseninsky "fan club":
Yesenin S.A. Yesenin, M.Z. Peretz, L.I. Kashina, E.E. Kondratiev, G.L. Balmont, G.A. Kozhevnikov.
1918, October, Moscow

The first information about the incident appeared on December 29, 1925 on the pages of the Leningrad newspapers, and the very next day the news that in one of the issues of Angleterre the famous poet Sergey Yesenin committed suicide, flew all over Russia. The so-called "friends" of the poet, his comrades and acquaintances, one after another, began to publish their own memoirs of friendship with Yesenin and his character: about drinking, hooliganism and countless women who surrounded him. Many critics that hour began to find confirmation of his desperate state in the poet's poems, seeing in them disappointment in life, serious deviations in the psyche. Newspapers published the so-called suicide letter Yesenin, which he, according to journalists, wrote in blood in a hotel room before his own death. After some time, it turned out that the poem appeared only in newspapers, and the investigation was not taken into account. During a meeting of newspapermen with the poet's mother, it was possible to find out that the letter was written a couple of months before the poet's death and was addressed to a friend Yesenin- Alexei Ganin (who was under arrest in those days, and was later executed in prison). The poet's mother Tatyana Fedorovna also admitted that she was sure that "bad people" killed Sergei. But all subsequent years, this poem was presented by newspapermen as irrefutable evidence of suicide. Yesenin.

One of the photographs of the dead Yesenin in the Angleterre room

But true writers, who doubted the official version, began to conduct independent investigations. Later, all this information and the results of the research were published in magazines and newspapers, but were never analyzed by handwriting experts in order to confirm the authorship of the documents by those who signed them. Most of the documents to this day are kept in archives under the heading "secret" and their study is impossible.

Mistakes of the investigation or intentional cover-up of the crime?

Many historians and independent investigators question the quality of the ongoing investigative actions in the case. Yesenin. The speed with which the investigation was carried out was impressive - law enforcement officers conducted several interrogations, compiled a couple of acts and protocols. On this, all investigative actions were completed. It is surprising that there was no protocol in the case, in which there should have been a description of the scene, and law enforcement officers did not conduct an investigative experiment. A month later, the investigation ceased, and the thickness of the Yesenin case file did not increase by a single new page and was not replenished with a new document.

A huge contribution to the investigation into the circumstances of Yesenin's death was made by Viktor Kuznetsov, a member of the Union of Writers of the Russian Federation, an associate professor at the Academy of Culture in St. Petersburg. In his writings, the author has repeatedly expressed his opinion that the poet was actually killed. He believed that in fact there was not a single proof that Yesenin had committed suicide, but there were many facts that indicate that he was killed.

According to Kuznetsov, on the day when Sergei Yesenin arrived in Leningrad, Chekist Blumkin, who knew the poet well and was well-connected to the circles of the literary elite, invited Yesenin to the hotel to celebrate the meeting of his comrades. But the poet did not cross the threshold of the hotel on his own. No information about the poet was found in the documents about the visitors of the Angleterre that night. After talking with the employees of the institution who worked that night, it was also established that no one met Yesenin in the hotel building. It is known that the poet, by virtue of his character, was a very sociable person and with a "remarkable" behavior, so it seems unlikely that all the hotel staff did not notice his presence. And this prompted Kuznetsov to look for an answer elsewhere. The version that he voices in his writings tells readers a completely different story of the murder. Upon arrival in Leningrad, the poet Yesenin was arrested on the verbal order of Leon Trotsky. For four days, the poet was interrogated in house number 8/23 on Mayorova Avenue. Chekists intended to make Sergei Yesenin secret officer of the Main Political Directorate. It is very doubtful that Trotsky ordered the poet's death, most likely the murder was due to negligence during interrogations. Immediately after the assassination, Blumkin called Trotsky, who gave instructions to prepare everything and expect that tomorrow there would be a report in the newspapers about a mentally unbalanced, decadent poet who had committed suicide. And that's exactly what happened.

Yakov Blumkin

In his book, Kuznetsov also suggests that the "director" of the pseudo-suicide Yesenin became the film director P. P. Petrov (Makarevich). He, having waited until the Chekists moved the body of the dead man through the basement passages Yesenin from the prison building of the Main Political Directorate to the "5" room of the Angleterre Hotel, opened it for inspection. The director himself trusted the GPU officers and did not check how they prepared the room for the performance. As a result of such uncoordinated actions, the Chekists made many mistakes: the rope was wrapped around the neck only one and a half times, and there was no loop on it at all. Also, after what they saw, it became incomprehensible to many how Yesenin, covered in blood with cut hands, could build such a pedestal on the table, climb on it, and then hang himself after that. The jacket of the deceased disappeared from the room, but most of all in the future, the researchers were alarmed by the huge mark squeezed out by a heavy object on the face of the poet - the official investigation claimed that this was an ordinary burn.

In these photographs, Yesenin's face shows signs of serious injuries.

The well-known doctor I. Oksenov also wrote about a strange wound on Yesenin's face. P. Luknitsky also recalled heavy damage in his book.

We call on everyone to take part in this action and put your signature
PETITION

For many years we believed that Sergei Yesenin killed himself. But then the carefully woven veil was torn, and the light of truth about the last days of the great poet poured into random, at first small holes. And before us began to rise the terrible fate of the objectionable ruling elite, a poet dangerous to her. Persecuted and persecuted, he did not for a moment give up either his poetic or human "I". Politicians alien to the people could not forgive him for this. The bright light of his personality hurt their eyes, made them doubt their own greatness, infallibility and omnipotence.
The first publications that the great Russian poet Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin was killed, and the fact of suicide was inspired, took place in the Soviet press in 1989. One of the authors of these publications was Colonel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Eduard Khlystalov, unknown in literary circles, whose new article we bring to the attention of our readers.
This photograph of Sergei Yesenin is published for the first time. In 1925, the poet presented it to his maternal brother Alexander Razgulyaev. As a two-month-old child, Tatyana Fedorovna Yesenina gave Sasha to be raised by Ekaterina Petrovna Razgulyaeva, who at that time lived in the village of Petrovichi. Soon the Razgulyavs' house burned down, and they left for Altai. Only in 1924, at the age of 22, Alexander first came to Konstantinovo, where he met his brother, already a famous poet. Alexander at that time worked as a switchman on the railway. The brothers became friends and met often.
Once, on the banks of the Oka, Alexander sang to his brother the folk song "Linden Age". Sergei was empathetic. Tears ran down his cheeks. Ask me what you want! he said to his brother.
Give me your photo, - Alexander asked. So this portrait appeared in the Razgulyaev family.
Literary critics for a long time hushed up the very fact of the existence of Yesenin's younger brother. He has already passed away. The heirs gave us three photographs: a portrait of Sergei Yesenin. Alexander at the fresh grave of his brother - he was late for the funeral - and Alexander Razgulyaev with his mother Tatyana Fedorovna Yesenina (on page 48).

Eduard KHLISTALOV
Senior investigator

HOW THEY KILLED SERGEY YESENIN

About ten years ago I worked as a senior investigator at the once famous Petrovka, 38. One day the secretary of the department put an envelope on my desk. The letter was addressed to me, but there was no letter in the envelope. It contained two photographs of a dead man. On one card, a man was lying on a rich couch, on the second - in a coffin.
At first I could not understand what these photographs had to do with my criminal cases. At that time, I was investigating three cases on charges of several groups of embezzlers of state property on an especially large scale, but my defendants did not commit any murder.
Then I thought that someone decided to play a trick on me. However, after looking. near the coffin I recognized the first wife of Sergei Yesenin - Zinaida Reich, her husband Meyerhold, mother, sisters of the poet. These were Yesenin's posthumous photographs unknown to me. Who and why sent me these pictures became a mystery. Busy with current affairs, I threw the photos in my desk drawer and forgot about them. When, two or three years later, I again stumbled upon these pictures, I suddenly noticed that the right hand of the dead Yesenin was not stretched along the body, as it should be with the hanged man, but raised up. On the forehead of the corpse, between the eyebrows, one could see a wide and deep dent. Taking a magnifying glass, I found under the right eyebrow a dark round spot, very similar to a penetrating wound. At the same time, there were no signs that corpses almost always have during hanging.
And although I realized that something was wrong in Yesenin’s death, I didn’t sound the alarm here either. It was hard to imagine that Yesenin's case was investigated poorly. After all, the great poet died. At that time, the XIV Party Congress was taking place, law enforcement officials were on high alert, and the investigators gave convincing explanations to all unclear questions. I had no doubt that the necessary examinations had been carried out in the case, including a forensic medical examination, which gave a categorical conclusion about the cause of the poet's death. How I now regret that I did not immediately take up the investigation of the death of Yesenin; at that time there were still several people who knew a lot about the death of the poet ...
With a great delay, but I nevertheless took up Yesenin's case. The investigation was carried out as a private person, overcoming the inevitable bureaucratic barriers and barricades. If it were not for my official position, the certificate of a police colonel, it would hardly have been possible to establish anything, except for what everyone knew.
From childhood, we were inspired that the rural lyric poet Sergei Yesenin lived in Rus'. He wrote poems about birch trees, dogs, homeless children. He was undoubtedly a talented man, but a drunkard and a hooligan. He also got confused in his love affairs, and he had no choice but to hang himself. We are accustomed to seeing in drawings, paintings, in sculpture a young poet in a commoner's shirt, against the backdrop of a village.
... On December 29, 1925, the evening newspapers of Leningrad, and the next day the newspapers of the whole country reported that the poet Sergei Yesenin committed suicide in the International Hotel (formerly Angleterre). The poet's wife Sofya Tolstaya and the husband of Catherine's sister Vasily Nasedkin left Moscow for Leningrad. They brought the body to Moscow, and on December 31, thousands of people saw Yesenin on his last journey. The poet had a premonition of death and asked to be buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery.
Soon, in newspapers, magazines, and collections, memories of Yesenin's acquaintances and friends appeared, in which they regretted the death of the poet, recalled how he drank, hooligans, and deceived women. The hands of critics were untied: in Yesenin's poems, everyone saw the proximity of death, disappointment in life.
Yesenin's suicide letter was published, written in blood before throwing a noose around his throat.

Goodbye my friend
Goodbye.
My dear, you are in my chest.
Destined parting
Promises to meet in the future.
Goodbye my friend
without a hand or a word.
Do not be sad and do not sadness of the eyebrows, -
In this life, dying is not new,
But to live, of course, is not newer.

Yesenin's poetry was banned, his name was ordered to be forgotten. For reading the poet's poems, the 58th article relied. And they received it. The decadent poetry is harmful to the revolutionary people - the campaign against the "Yeseninism" lasted for more than a decade.
After the death of Yesenin, the state did not take care of the safety of his property, documents, manuscripts, notebooks. The Union of Writers did not take the necessary measures to preserve the creative heritage of the poet. A detailed inventory of the remaining things and papers was not compiled. All Yesenin's property fell into private and sometimes unscrupulous hands, much was lost, sailed away to distant shores. The miraculously preserved documents are scattered in various archives and cities, some have fallen into disrepair, the sheets are torn, not all of them can be read. Most of the documents have not been studied by handwriting experts, and there is no complete certainty that they are authentic or written by those persons whose names are indicated on them. Many materials are still in secret archives and are not given to researchers.
Convinced that the situation with archival data is very difficult, I decided to start the investigation with the available materials. He began to study the memoirs of Yesenin's contemporaries, his relatives and relatives. About Yesenin, I used to read everything or almost everything that appeared. Having begun to study everything again with passion, I suddenly discovered that I did not know the biography of the poet.
It is well known, for example, that Yesenin joyfully met the revolution, tried several times to join the Bolshevik Party (this was enthusiastically testified by his friends). And suddenly I stumble upon his letter dated December 4, 1920 to his friend Ivanov-Razumnik:

“Dear Razumnik Vasilyevich!

Forgive me, for God's sake, for not being able to answer your letter and postcard. So it all happened unexpectedly and stupidly. I already got ready for 25 Oct. to leave, and suddenly instead of Petersburg I had to find myself in a prison of the Cheka. This somehow stunned me, offended me, and I had to weather for a long time.
A lot has accumulated during these 2 1/2 years, in which we did not see each other. I try to write to you very many times, but our careless Russian life, like an inn, each time knocked the pen out of my hands. I wonder how else I could write so many poems and poems during this time.
Of course, the internal restructuring was great. I am grateful for everything that stretched my gut, put it into shape and gave it a tongue. But I lost everything that pleased me before from my health. I became rotten. Probably, you have already heard something about this ... ”(Collected works by Yesenin, 1970; 3 volumes; 243 p.)
Yesenin does not indicate in the letter how long he was kept in the most terrible prison in the country, and possibly the whole world. He does not write, and for what he was kept in prison, but this “stunned, offended” him. Instead of joy from the achievements of the revolution, the mood is the opposite ... Judging by the letter, on October 25, 1920, he was already in the Lubyanka. The letter is dated December 4th. Was the poet really in custody for two and a half months? As a lawyer, I began to ask other questions. If Yesenin was arrested, then there was a criminal case. And since there was a case, it means that he should have been judged. Perhaps the case was dismissed, but then the investigator, who unreasonably kept the great poet in custody, had to bear the punishment himself ... Questions, questions ...
In the magazine "Ogonyok" (No. 10) for 1929 I read a long essay by Chekist T. Samsonov under the loud title "A Novel Without Lies" + "Zoyka's Apartment". The author, admiring his decisive actions, tells how he arrested Yesenin and his companions and sent them to Lubyanka, where he even ordered a group photo of the detainees. As they say, without blinking an eye, the valiant Chekist admits to millions of readers that he kept men and women in the same cell.
I analyze the collected materials. Turns out. Samsonov arrested Yesenin in 1921. This means that this was already the second "visit" of the poet to the Lubyanka. What did he do? Could it be his drunkenness? But then what does the Cheka, which was engaged in the fight against counter-revolution, have to do with it?!
I study all the materials about Yesenin, not a word about the arrests. Maybe the answer is in these verses of his?

... I ran away from Moscow for a long time:
I get along with the police
Not in a knack
For all my beer scandal
They kept me
In tigulevka…

No, here we are talking about the detention by the police. Usually, the more you investigate the case, the fewer unsolved problems remain. In Yesenin's case, the opposite is true, riddles multiply in arithmetic progression. Questions, questions, questions...
For the tenth time I read the famous poem by V. Mayakovsky “To Sergei Yesenin”: “Well, what about the class, does he drink kvass with his thirst? Cool, he’s not a fool to drink either ... if there was ink in Angleterre, there would be no reason to cut veins ... "

So Yesenin cut his veins to write a suicide letter.
In Yesenin studies, this is an axiom. But, to be honest, I have no idea how such an operation can be performed. After all, the blood in the vessels is under pressure, and the cut vein must be clamped with the other hand. How about dipping a pen? While you write a line, you will bleed ... And yet the letter is and is stored in the Pushkin House in Leningrad. Has addressed there with inquiry, whether it was investigated by criminologists? Is the letter really written with the blood of a person and Yesenin's hand ... Several months of red tape and replies, then a short answer - NO, no research was conducted. But without this procedure, not a single document can be considered authentic.
Immediately after the death of the poet, his friend V. Knyazev wrote a poem that begins with the following stanza:

In a small dead room by the window
Golden head on the chopping block:
The stripe on the neck is not visible -
Only blood turns black on the shirt ...

Very accurate words were said by V. Knyazev about the untimely death of the great poet: “The golden head on the chopping block ...” This is the bitter truth of life: in the morgue, not only dashing, but also golden heads are placed on a wooden stand. But why is the strangulation furrow not visible in the late Yesenin? It does not disappear on the neck of the hanged man, it has a pronounced red-violet color. What is it, V. Knyazev's poetic technique or direct observation? Could he see the corpse of the poet?
After a thorough check of archival documents, he established that V. Knyazev not only saw the corpse in the morgue, but also performed the unpleasant duty of loved ones to receive the deceased's belongings there. But why did an observant person not notice the "stripes"? Perhaps she was light in color?!
During my many years of investigative practice, I have often had to deal with staged suicides. There were such facts when criminals killed a person, and then, in order to hide the atrocity, they put a noose around the neck and hung the body, hoping to deceive investigators and forensic experts. It was easy to expose them: the strangulation furrow had a lighter color or was completely absent.
Some contemporaries, including those who were in the hotel room, claimed that Yesenin first cut his veins, intending to commit suicide, but then "he did not have enough character" and he hanged himself. These messages did not inspire confidence. After all, in order to do so, he had to look for a rope with cut veins and pour blood on himself and everything around. There is no blood visible in the photo. There are other questions as well. Could a man with severed veins and partially muscle use his hands, move around the room, untie the rope, then tie it? Could the rope bear the weight of the body?
The poet A. Zharov, in hot pursuit, wrote the following lines:

It's still a little weird.
Try it here, don't be surprised:
On a simple cord from a suitcase
Your crazy life is over...

Some called the belt the subject of suicide, others - the rope, others - the cord. According to my calculations, its minimum length should have been two meters. Probably, no one has met a suitcase that would be tied in this way. In addition, Yesenin was too respectful of himself to have such a suitcase. But where did he get the two-meter cord?
It is not at all clear why Yesenin went to Leningrad to rent a room there and kill himself. If he planned to end his life, he could do it in Moscow ...
Collecting material about the death of Yesenin, getting acquainted with many publications about the poet, I discovered one sad pattern: in all the photographs published until recently, there were no traces of injuries on his face. Only those photographs were printed in which the injuries were not visible or were carefully retouched.
Stereotypes of consciousness are strong. I still could not give up the idea that Yesenin, intoxicated, did something that put him in a hopeless situation, and he committed suicide. But when I established that Yesenin had no conflict, he did not drink and did not write a suicide letter, I was amazed. I could no longer live in peace.
I began to look for a case to investigate the death of the poet Sergei Yesenin. I had to go around the archives of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Prosecutor's Office, the State Security Committee, the case was nowhere to be found. He turned to the public for help through Moscow and Leningrad newspapers, but faced cold indifference. Neither Esenin scholars, nor museum workers, nor collectors helped me in any way.
It turned out that no investigation into the causes of the tragic death of the poet was carried out. There is a folder with documents in the archive of the Gorky Institute of World Literature. They were preserved for posterity by Yesenin's wife, Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya, who carefully collected every piece of paper that had to do with the poet. How she managed to get these materials from the police and why they survived at all, we will probably never know this secret. I cite documents with the preservation of style and punctuation marks.

"ACT"

On December 28, 1925, this act was drawn up by my accountant. warden 2nd from. L.G.M. N. Gorbov in the presence of the manager of the hotel International Comrade. Nazarov and witnesses. According to the telephone message of the manager of the hotel grazh. Nazarova V. Mikh, about a citizen hanging himself in a hotel room. Arriving at the place, I found a man hanging on the central heating pipe in the following form, the neck was tightened not with a dead loop, but only on the right side of the neck, his face was turned to the pipe, and with his right hand he grabbed the pipe, the corpse hung under the very ceiling and his legs were about 1 1/2 meters, near the place where the hanged man was found, there was an overturned pedestal, and the chandelier standing on it lay on the floor. When removing the corpse from the rope and examining it, it was found on the right arm above the elbow on the palm side of the cut on the left arm on the hand, scratches, a bruise under the left eye, dressed in gray trousers, a nightgown, black socks and black patent leather shoes. According to the documents presented, Yesenin Sergei Alexandrovich, a writer who arrived from Moscow on December 24, 1925, turned out to hang himself.
Below this text, the act is supplemented: "Certificate No. 42-8516 and a power of attorney to receive 640 rubles in the name of Erlich." The poet Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky, the critic P. Medvedev, and the writer M. Froman signed as witnesses. Below is the signature of V. Erlich, which, apparently, was executed later than everyone else, when he presented his certificate and power of attorney to the district warden.
From a professional point of view, the document is bewildering. Firstly. N. Gorbov was obliged to draw up not an act, but a protocol for examining the scene. Secondly, be sure to indicate the time of the inspection, the names and addresses of witnesses. It had to be started without fail in the presence of attesting witnesses, so that they would later confirm the correctness of the entry in the protocol. N. Gorbov was obliged to examine the corpse with the participation of a forensic medical expert or, in extreme cases, a doctor. There is not a word about either in the protocol.
The district warden did not actually examine the scene of the incident: he did not record the presence of blood on the floor and the desk, did not find out what was used to cut the right hand of the corpse, where the rope was taken from for hanging, did not describe the state of the deceased’s belongings, the presence of money, did not attach material to the case evidence (rope, razor, other items). N. Gorbov did not note a very important circumstance: was the electric light on when the deceased was found? The warden did not find out the condition of the locks and locks on the front door and windows; did not write about how the persons who discovered the corpse got into the hotel room ...
The face of the dead Yesenin was mutilated, burned, there was a bruise under the left eye. All this required an explanation and the adoption of immediate investigative actions. Apparently, suspicion immediately arose in the murder of the poet, because the agent of the criminal investigation department of the 1st brigade F. Ivanov came to the hotel. This brigade investigated criminal cases of the gravest crimes against the person. However, what this detective was doing at the scene, what investigative or operational actions he carried out, has not yet been found out.
I examined N. Gorbov's act with special care. Since the persons indicated there are no longer alive, I had to turn to archival sources, the memories of the participants in the events of that gloomy winter morning.
Poet Sun. The Christmas and literary critic P. Medvedev wrote that for them the message about the death of Yesenin in Leningrad was a complete surprise. That morning it was cold in the city, a blizzard was blowing, in the Union of Poets people were sitting in their clothes. P. Medvedev picked up the phone and Sun. Rozhdestvensky saw how his face was distorted by the terrible news. Who called the Union of Poets is still unknown. Rozhdestvensky and Medvedev ran to the International Hotel and appeared there among the first (P. Medvedev was destroyed in the 30s as an enemy of the people).
“Directly opposite the threshold, somewhat obliquely, a convulsively stretched body lay on the carpet. The right hand was slightly raised and stiffened in an unaccustomed curve. The swollen face was terrible - nothing in it any longer resembled the former Sergei. Only the familiar slight yellowness of the hair still obliquely covered the forehead. He was dressed in fashionable, freshly ironed trousers. A dandy jacket hung right there on the back of a chair. And I was especially struck by the narrow, angled toes of patent leather boots. On a small plush sofa, at a round table with a decanter of water, sat a policeman in a tightly belted overcoat, running a pencil stub over paper, writing a protocol. He seemed to rejoice at our arrival and immediately forced us to sign as witnesses. In this dry document, everything was said briefly and precisely, and this made the senseless fact of suicide seem even more absurd and terrible to me ”(Vs. Rozhdestvensky).
Sun. Rozhdestvensky could point out the brevity of the document (act) drawn up by N. Gorbov, but he had no right to judge its accuracy. He, Medvedev and Froman came to the hotel room when Yesenin's corpse was lying on the floor. Whether he hung in a noose, they did not see.
It's too late to blame Vs. Rozhdestvensky and the rest in the rashness with which they signed the ill-fated act. Apparently, what happened shocked them so much that they forgot about the legal side of the event ... Sun. Rozhdestvensky highly appreciated S. A. Yesenin, left wonderful memories of him, made us think again about the bitter fate of the Russian poet when he wrote: “a policeman in a tightly belted overcoat sat, and, driving a pencil stub over paper, wrote a protocol.”
The district warden N. Gorbov did not even take off his overcoat at the scene. Criminologists have the concept of "professional deformation". Gorbov also has social deformation. He doesn't care whose body lies at his feet: a criminal or a great Russian poet.
The information I have collected bit by bit allows me to introduce in general terms the personality of the district warden. Gorbov Nikolai Mikhailovich, born in 1885, a native of Leningrad, worked in the police for only five months as an ordinary policeman. An order to enroll him in the post of warden was not found. On June 15, 1929, he was arrested and disappeared.
Here is the picture. The only official document from the place of Yesenin's death could not be taken as evidence not only of suicide, but even of the fact of hanging. Three attesting witnesses did not see the corpse in the noose, while the district police officer could well write anything in the act.
I completely rule out the possibility of a careless attitude of the authorities towards the death of an ambiguous figure like Yesenin, which means that a set of oversights and inconsistencies during the interrogation was deliberately inspired. For what? There is only one answer: to hide the cause and circumstances of the death of the poet.
When the investigator suspects a murder, he begins to study the case again. Only he usually does it more or less in hot pursuit, but I had to conduct an inquest more than half a century later, when most of the participants were not alive.
... As you know, the work of S. A. Yesenin fell on a tragic period in the history of Russia: the imperialist war, then the February Revolution and the October Revolution, an unheard of cruelty civil war and a terrible famine, red terror and complete economic devastation, looting of museums, private collections, churches, libraries, archives and export of national values ​​abroad.
Was it before poetry for the unfortunate, tormented people? This is on the one hand, and on the other hand, in order to print poetry, it was necessary to obtain two visas - from the State Publishing House and from military censorship, or rather, from the GPU in Lubyanka.
Yesenin did not write pleasurable poems in honor of the proletarian leaders, which is why they did not publish him. And it was necessary to live on something. Yesenin had to go to a variety of tricks to release a book of poems. For example, at the request of Yesenin, the workers of the printing house set up another city of publication. This prevented the authorities from checking where the book was printed and from "taking action" against those publishers that evaded censorship.
The poet did not see the results of the October coup from the Kremlin offices. Possessing a heightened sense of justice, how could he internally agree with the destruction of the Russian intelligentsia, including his close friends - writers, artists, musicians, artists? Was he really so naive as to believe in the need for daily executions of people in greater numbers than in all the years of the reign of Nicholas II? Did he really approve of the brutal reprisals against all members of the royal family and the innocent young daughters of the tsar, with whom he had a touching friendship in 1916? No, it was not so simple as not to figure out where people are being led by people who have lived on other people's money abroad for more than ten years and do not know the aspirations of ordinary people. Sometimes the poet broke down:

That's the country!
What the hell am I
Oral in verse
that I am friendly with the people?
My poetry is no longer needed here
And, perhaps, myself
also not needed here.

A contemporary of S. A. Yesenin, V. Shershenevich, recalled this period: “When our paths were cut off, Yesenin said:“ If the State Publishing House does not allow us to print, let's write on the walls. About the episode when Yesenin with a group of fellow poets, armed with paint and brushes at night on the walls of houses, “gave” names to the streets in honor of himself and his friends, our literature tells how about his next hooligan trick. I think this is a protest against censorship and the actions of the authorities to change the historical names of streets and squares in Moscow to the names of persons alien to the people. (In 1921-1922 alone, about five hundred streets and squares were renamed in the capital.)
It was a terrible time for creative people. Without having made a career in the party, the army or the GPU, having failed to organize their own profitable business, many rogues and grabbers rushed to seek their fortune in literature and art. Lacking elementary talent, having poor command of the Russian language, they covered up their creative helplessness in art with new avant-garde forms. Their poems with equal success could be read from the end, and picturesque paintings looked upside down. It was these people, who arrived from abroad after the February Revolution, who seized all the creative unions, editorial offices of newspapers and magazines, and publishing houses. In hours of impotent rage, not knowing how to help himself and his people, Yesenin wrote:

Protect me, tender moisture.
May is blue, June is blue,
We were overpowered by strangers.
And they are not allowed to go home.

I know, if not in the cast-iron distances,
Someone else's shelter and a bag on the shoulders,
Only sorry for those foolish, young,
Who killed themselves in the heat of the moment.

It is a pity that someone could disperse us
And no one's incomprehensible fault.
You are Russia, my Russia,
Asian side.

(TsGALI, f. 190, on. 1)

On October 3, 1921, Yesenin met the world-famous dancer Isadora Duncan, who came to Soviet Russia to teach children a new direction in dance art. The forty-year-old dancer fell in love with the poet with a passionate, selfless love. They merried. Duncan tried to take Yesenin abroad. Formally, Yesenin was allowed to leave for three months to publish his poems. He stayed abroad for over a year. Duncan did everything so that he would not return home, but the poet grievously yearned away from his homeland.
“... I took Yesenin away from Russia, where living conditions are still difficult. I wanted to save it for the world. Now he is returning to Russia to save his mind, because he cannot live without Russia. I know that a lot of hearts will pray that this great poet be saved in order to continue to create Beauty ... ”, she wrote in the newspapers.
But Yesenin's decision to return was not easy.
“It is sickening for me, the legitimate son of Russia, to be a stepson in my state. I'm tired of this b ... condescending attitude of those in power, and even more sickening to endure the sycophancy of my own brethren towards them. I can't, by God, I can't! Even though the guard shout or take a knife and stand on the main road.
And yet he returned. He came back different, as no one else knew him. He carried with him the poem "Country of Scoundrels." It has already been heard, even friends were outraged by the content:

empty fun,
Some conversations.
Well then
Well, what did you take in return?
The same crooks came
Same thieves
And the law of the revolution
All were taken prisoner.

Mary Desty, Duncan's biographer, accompanied them to Moscow. She wrote in her book: “When the train that was taking Isadora and Sergei to Moscow started off from the platform of the Paris station, they stood with pale faces, like two little lost souls ...”
Yesenin had two more years to live. They will be the most difficult for him, but they will also become for the poet a runway to immortality.
Upon returning to Moscow, Yesenin developed a stormy activity, began to fuss about the formation of a publishing house where the works of Russian writers and poets would be printed, signed collective letters to the government, and united peasant poets around him. Quite naturally, he came under close scrutiny by the GPU staff.
Starting in September 1923, Yesenin began to be detained by police officers every now and then, taken to the emergency room of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department, charged with hooliganism and incitement to pogroms. Studying previously unknown archival materials, I discovered an interesting pattern. The people "injured" by Yesenin came to the nearest police station or called the guard policeman and demanded that the poet be brought to justice, showing good legal training. They even named the articles of the Criminal Code, according to which Yesenin should have been judged.
And one more pattern: in all cases, the detention followed the same scenario - Yesenin always found himself in a state of intoxication. As if someone was waiting for the hour when he would go out into the street after the feast. As a rule, the incident began with a trifle. Someone made a remark to Yesenin, he exploded, the policeman was called. The guardian of order, with the help of janitors, dragged Yesenin to the department by force. The detainee resisted, called the law enforcement officers bribe takers, corrupt skins, etc. Later, reports of the authorities appeared in the file about threats from the poet, about insulting the worker-peasant police by him. In all cases, there were other people with Yesenin (poet A. Ganin, I. Pribludny, A. Mariengof and others), but they were not only not detained, but also not interrogated.
A decree was in force in the country on the severe reprisal against rioters and anti-Semites, signed by V. I. Lenin as early as July 25, 1918. At the same time, there was no criminal legislation, and the legal concept of an anti-Semite and a pogromist did not exist.
Many writers of the new wave did not hide their hatred for the Russian poet Yesenin, openly persecuted, weaved skillful intrigues against him, spread gossip, anecdotes, and fables. He was repeatedly beaten and declared an anti-Semite.
- Well, what an anti-Semite I am! - he tearfully complained to his constant adherents, who loved to cling to his glory and at the same time drink and eat tightly at his expense. - I love Jews, they love me too. I have Jewish children. I am the same - anti-Georgian ...
Yesenin allowed himself to have an opinion on any issue, and it was not always flattering for party apparatchiks. Unlike many, he spoke out loud. Soon he was labeled an enemy of Soviet power.
- You what? Do you really think I'm a counterrevolutionary? - he asked his friend poet V. Erlich. - Drop it! If I were a counter-revolutionary, I would behave differently! I'm just at home. Understand? At home! And if I don't like something, I scream! It is my right. Just because I'm at home. I will not allow a White Guard to say about Soviet Russia what I say myself. This is mine, and I am the judge of this!
On November 20, 1923, the poets Yesenin, A. Ganin, S. Klychkov and P. Oreshin entered the dining room on Myasnitskaya Street, bought beer and discussed publishing matters and the upcoming evening meeting in the Union of Poets. If Yesenin still had some means of subsistence, then Ganin, Klychkov and Oreshin dragged out a beggarly lifestyle. And, of course, they could not rejoice about this. Suddenly, a stranger (M. V. Rodkin) sitting at the next table ran out into the street, called the police officers and accused the poets of anti-Semitic conversations and insulting the leader Trotsky. The poets were arrested, the well-known "case of four" appeared. Despite the slanderous campaign launched by the newspapers against Yesenin demanding severe punishment for the poet, a few days later all four were released, and the case ended in a friendly court.
On December 17, Yesenin was forced to hide from unbridled slander and slander in a dispensary (Polyanka, 52). One after another, several more criminal cases are initiated against the poet. They try to judge him, but he is not at the meetings. The judge of the Krasnopresnensky Court Komissarov (the real name could not be established) issues an arrest warrant. Employees of the GPU and the police throughout Moscow are looking for Yesenin. He, not having his own room, spends the night with various friends.
However, the GPU officers could not arrest Yesenin. On February 13, 1924, he was taken by ambulance to the surgical department of the Sheremetyevo Hospital (now the Sklifosovsky Institute). For many years there was a version that Yesenin opened his veins, wanting to commit suicide. There is another: the poet was walking or riding in a cab, his hat flew off. He wanted to catch her, slipped, fell on the window pane and cut his hand deeply.
I managed to find documents from which it is clear that Yesenin had a lacerated wound of his left forearm. He didn't have any cut wounds. He himself explained in the hospital that he fell on the glass. It must be remembered that Yesenin never complained about anyone, although he was attacked and beaten repeatedly. I assume that Yesenin was stabbed, but he did not name his offender. It is no coincidence that it was here, in a hospital bed, that he wrote his famous “Letter to Mother”. And the words: “They write to me that you, concealing anxiety ...”, were written by him because the first days the state of the poet caused fear among the doctors, and they did not let anyone see him. Relatives and friends who came to the hospital wrote notes to him.
Yesenin learned a secret from the attending physician: the GPU and police officers came for him, there is a warrant for arrest. An obligation was received from the doctor that he would inform the police about the time of the poet's discharge.
Something had to be done. In order not to let the doctor down, Yesenin was transferred to the Kremlin hospital, from where he was discharged three days later and went into an illegal position.
Under the then existing system of informing and espionage, finding Yesenin in Moscow was not a big deal for the valiant knights of the revolution. This time the poet was saved by P. B. Gannushkin, a well-known psychiatrist who treated some proletarian leaders and therefore had great authority in society. Having no formal right to do so, he gave Yesenin a certificate that he was suffering from a serious mental illness, and the poet was left alone for a while.
Until September 1924, Yesenin traveled around the cities of the country, appearing in Moscow for several days and disappearing again.
Sergei Yesenin, by all accounts, was a brave man who risked his life more than once. And at the same time he was terribly afraid of the GPU and police officers. Almost all of his contemporaries recalled the "unreasonable suspicion" of the poet, which extended not only to strangers, but even to friends and close women. But I can now say with certainty that this constant vigilance averted many troubles from him for the time being.
Reading the studies of individual Yesenin scholars, I repeatedly met with statements that S. A. Yesenin sought to the Caucasus and Central Asia in order to study ancient oriental poetry and philosophy there. To some extent, one can agree with this statement. But the main reason for the poet's trips to the Caucasus in 1924-1925 was the desire to hide from the persecution of the authorities.
On September 3, 1924, Yesenin, unexpectedly for everyone, even the closest and dearest, leaves Moscow for Baku. Goes there without prior arrangement with anyone. For what? Why so hasty? It is quite clear to me that he fled from the mortal danger that was approaching him.
True, he did not have peace in the Caucasus either. Arriving in Baku around September 6-7, he ran into Blumkin, a well-known provocateur, the murderer of the German ambassador Mirbach. After this monstrous action, Blumkin was in the shadows for some time, but then he again found himself in a responsible job in the GPU and headed the department for influencing Asian countries. Using the patronage of Trotsky and other leaders, Blumkin could commit any atrocity. Here he threatened Yesenin with a pistol. There was a version that Blumkin was jealous of the poet for his wife. This version is untenable, since she lived in Moscow at that time.
The poet, leaving his things, left for Tiflis. On September 20, he returned to Baku, acquiring a pistol. The poet was taken under his protection by the editor-in-chief of the Baku Rabochiy newspaper and the secretary of the Bolshevik Party of Azerbaijan P. I. Chagin. Yesenin was constantly under guard.
He stayed in the Caucasus until the end of February and returned to Moscow on March 1, 1925, having stayed in the south for six months, on March 27, Yesenin, unexpectedly for everyone, "drove off to Baku." What made Yesenin again leave the capital, where he had a lot to do with the publication of new poems?
As it has now become known, the GPU organized a major provocation against a group of writers, artists and artists. “Friendly” feasts were arranged through figureheads, where wine flowed like water and talk began about the cunning of the Bolsheviks. At one such meeting, the poet Alexei Ganin, instigated by a GPU agent, even wrote a proposed list of ministers of the new government and named Sergei Yesenin Minister of Education. Upon learning of this, Yesenin flared up, demanded to cross out his last name and advised not to do such things. Ganin immediately, on a table in a cafe, instead entered the 18-year-old poet Ivan Pribludny. It all felt like child's play. According to his personal qualities, Alexei Ganin could not organize a meeting of friends, let alone create a political association. But he hated the leaders of the Bolshevik Party. He was not forgiven either for this or for the “case of the four poets.”
In August 1924, the Chekists launched a secret operation against Ganin and his friends. It was necessary to prepare the exposure of the underground counter-revolutionary organization, which set as its goal the overthrow of Soviet power through terror and sabotage. With exceptional meanness, the employees of the GPU collected anonymous denunciations of their informants, carried out combinations, planted incriminating documents.
Ganin's poems were not published. He got a typographic font somewhere (perhaps the GPU officers had specially planted it on him) and printed several brochures with his works. The presence of the font was interpreted as a preparation for the printing of leaflets and appeals.
All this was done in order to accuse Ganin and his friends of creating the core of the organization "Order of Russian Fascists". 14 people were involved in the case. Among them, undoubtedly, were provocateurs, who were subsequently taken away from responsibility. The fifteenth was missing. Did someone warn Yesenin, or did he himself see the danger and hide in the Caucasus? It will be possible to answer this question when it becomes possible to get acquainted with the so far top secret files in the KGB archive. There is an affidavit that Yesenin was summoned to the GPU in the Ganin case.
On November 11, 1924, Ganin was arrested in Moscow, in Starokonyushenny lane, building 33, apartment 3. During interrogations, he did not deny meetings, conversations with friends, but claimed that they had no criminal nature. During the investigation, Ganin lost his mind and was placed for examination at the Serbsky Institute.
On March 27, 1925, a meeting of the collegium of the GPU on the case of A. Ganin and his friends was scheduled. Psychiatrists recognized the poet Alexei Ganin as mentally ill, insane. However, he was sentenced to death, and on March 30 the sentence was carried out.
Yesenin had every reason to stay away from Moscow. In early April, he was attacked by unknown persons in Batumi. In his letters to Benislavskaya, he wrote: “I didn’t write in Baku because I was sick… We were robbed by bandits (at Vardin)… When I found myself without a coat, I caught a very cold.” In the second letter, he writes that his illness is "the result of the Batumi cold."
In June, Yesenin returned to Moscow, but lived in the capital a little, constantly leaving for his homeland in Konstantinov, to his friends and acquaintances in the Moscow region. There was a break with Benislavskaya, he became close to Sophia Tolstaya and left for Baku with her on July 25, where he wrote a lot.
On September 6, he was returning by train to Moscow. The diplomatic courier A. Roga, who was riding in the car, made a remark to Yesenin. The poet flared up, rudely answered. Another passenger entered the conflict - Y. Levit. A criminal case was initiated against Yesenin and a trial was being prepared. The intervention of Lunacharsky and other party leaders with the aim of terminating the case did not bring a positive result, Judge Lipkin was preparing the process.
Yesenin got drunk. On November 26, on the recommendation of his relatives, he agreed to go to a psychiatric clinic (“crazy people are not judged”). According to the condition, the poet had to be treated for two months. However, he soon felt the danger to his life and decided to leave the hospital at an opportunity.
After 60 years, I found archival documents of this clinic. I visited the ward where the humiliated and insulted national poet of Russia once languished.
On December 21, Yesenin was able to leave the clinic and never returned to it. The attending physician Aronson visited relatives and acquaintances and asked them to persuade the poet to return. On December 22 and 23, Yesenin went to publishing houses, visited A. R. Izryadnova and his son George (Yuri), daughter Tatyana and ex-wife Zinaida Reich, left for Leningrad at night.
On December 24, he checked into the International Hotel in room five. The room was on the second floor and was furnished with expensive furniture. Only a few people knew about Yesenin's arrival in Leningrad. He always carefully concealed from everyone where he was leaving. This time I trusted only Vasily Nasedkin, whom I knew from joint studies before the revolution at the Shanyavsky People's University. In addition, Nasedkin became his relative by marrying his sister, Ekaterina Yesenina. Before the trip, Yesenin did not have time to receive a fee and asked Nasedkin to send him money to the address of the Leningrad poet V. Erlich.
Arriving at the hotel, Yesenin immediately gathered friends and acquaintances. The Ustinovs lived in the hotel. He knew Georgy Ustinov for a long time, he worked in the Leningrad "Vechernyaya Gazeta", his wife Elizaveta was 10 years younger and did not work. Yesenin always had 8-10 people. He read new poems, talked about his creative and life plans. He did not hide that he was in a psychiatric clinic. He intended to start publishing a literary magazine in Leningrad, and asked me to find him an apartment. He talked about the fact that he broke up with Tolstoy, decided to break off close relations with his relatives.
By this time, Yesenin was receiving 1,000 rubles a month from the State Publishing House for a collection of poems. Then it was a lot of money. Fees came from other editorial offices and publishing houses, that is, the poet was financially provided with prosperity. He did not see any tragedy in the break with Sophia Tolstaya.
In Leningrad, he led a sober lifestyle. Upon arrival, he delivered two half-bottles of champagne to his friends, and in the future there is no information that Yesenin was drunk. The samovar was constantly boiling on the table. The poet widely treated his friends with delicacies bought in the store.
It should be noted that December 27 was Christmas, then still celebrated in Russian families. On the occasion of this holiday, alcoholic drinks were not sold, and I managed to find out only one case of a janitor buying five or six bottles of beer for Yesenin and his company.
In recent months, Yesenin was afraid of murder and constantly kept someone near him. In the book "The Right to the Song" V. Ehrlich wrote:
“Yesenin stands in the middle of the room, legs apart, and crumples a cigarette.
- I can't! You understand? Are you my friend or not? Friend? So here it is! I want us to sleep in the same room. Do not understand? God! I'm telling you for the hundredth time that they want to kill me! I, like a beast, feel it! Well, speak! Agree?
- Agree.
- Well, that's fine! - He's completely sober.
... Double coupe. Getting ready for sleep.
- Yes! I forgot to tell you! But I was right!
- What's happened?
- And about the fact that they wanted to kill me. Do you know who? Today, when they were saying goodbye, he himself said: “I,” he says, “Sergei Alexandrovich, twice approached your room! Your happiness is that you were not alone, otherwise you would have slaughtered!
- Yes, why is he you?
- Oh, yes! Nonsense! Well, sleep well."
Wolf Erlich stayed at the hotel for the first two nights. Perhaps spent the night and the third. December 27, Sunday, Yesenin took a bath in the morning. In the presence of E. Ustinova, he gave V. Erlich a piece of paper. When Ustinova asked permission to read, Yesenin did not allow it. According to Elizabeth and according to Erlich, the poem “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye ...” was written on the sheet in blood. Ustinova Yesenin said that there was no ink in the room and he wrote the poems in blood. He showed her the hand where she saw fresh scratches.
From about two o'clock a festive table was organized in Yesenin's room. They ate a cooked goose, drank tea. There were no alcoholic drinks. The room was attended by: Erlich, Ushakovs, writer Izmailov, Ustinovs, artist Mansurov. The poet Ivan Pribludny came in for a short time, and no one noticed any mental abnormalities in Yesenin that could persuade him to commit suicide.
By six o'clock in the evening there were three left: Yesenin, Ushakov and Erlich. According to Erlich, at about eight o'clock he went home (Nekrasova street, house 29, apt. 8). Having reached Nevsky Prospekt, he remembered that he had forgotten his briefcase, and returned. Ushakov was gone. Yesenin, calm, sat at the table and looked through manuscripts with poems. Erlich took the briefcase and left.
On the morning of December 28, E. Ustinova came to Yesenin's room and knocked on the door. There was no answer. She began to knock persistently, no one responded. After some time, W. Erlich came up. The two of them started knocking. Feeling unkind, Elizabeth turned to the hotel manager V. M. Nazarov. He, pretty tinkering, opened the lock and, without looking into the room, left.
Ustinova and Erlich entered without noticing anything suspicious. Ustinova walked across the room. Wolf laid his coat on the couch. Ustinova raised her head and saw the hanging corpse of the poet... They quickly left. Nazarov called the police department. Very soon, the district warden N. Gorbov appeared at the scene of the incident, and he drew up the act cited earlier.
Now, knowing how Yesenin lived in recent years and days, let's look for answers to all the same questions, which now cannot be avoided.
When did death come? Why did the policeman decide that Yesenin had committed suicide? What evidence did he have in order not to assume that the poet was killed and then hanged? After all, the warden saw that “the neck was not tightened with a dead loop” ... Probably, he should have immediately found out who hit the deceased in the face (“a bruise under his left eye”) before hanging, why it was burned and much more ...
From the numerous recollections of eyewitnesses, newspaper publications, documents, it can be concluded that all Yesenin's belongings were scattered on the floor, the drawers were opened, there were blood stains on the table and in other places. And the clothes on the dead were in disarray, which also testified to the possibility of violence.
What did N. Gorbov do? He handed out blank forms of interrogation protocols to V. Erlich. E. Ustinova. G. Ustinov and V. Nazarov, and they wrote whatever they wanted. True, I believe that the testimony of V. Erlich was recorded by the agent of the criminal investigation department F. Ivanov. (Ivanov Fedor Ivanovich, born in 1887, an alcoholic, was dismissed from the police, then reinstated. Later he was sentenced to 8 years in prison and died in camps.)
The protocol of the interrogation of V. Erlich indicated that he had known Yesenin for about a year and had been in his room all four days, that the lock in Yesenin's room was opened by a hotel employee, that the key was sticking out from the inside of the lock.
The question arises, how did Nazarov open the door to the room? Judging by the photographs, the lock on the door was a mortise. In her memoirs, written a few days later, Ustinova indicated that Nazarov opened the door with a master key. It is impossible to open a mortise lock with a key inserted from the inside with a master key. If Nazarov (Nazarov Vasily Mikhailovich, 29 years old, a member of the Russian Communist Party, from the workers, a native of the Tula province) opened the lock with a master key, therefore, there was no key in the lock. Otherwise, Nazarov could unlock the door with a makeshift device. It resembles pliers with sharpened ends to capture the tip of the key. With such devices, apartment thieves open locks closed from the inside with keys left in them. It is even easier to close the lock from the side of the corridor in this way than to open it. In this case, the key will be from the side of the room.
If there was no key in the lock, then it is not difficult for the “specialist” to open and close the door with a master key.
Nazarov behaves at least strangely. The fifth room belonged to a high category, wealthy people who had expensive things stayed in it. The hotel manager opens the door to strangers and leaves, not caring about the safety of the property, nor about how they will close the room if there is no guest there.
This circumstance is also perplexing. The body hung just opposite the door, and it was possible not to notice it only under one condition: the room was dark. Then it becomes clear why Ustinova and Erlich entered the room as if nothing had happened and did not immediately notice the hanged man.
To solve the riddle of the Angleterre Hotel, this is a decisive circumstance. In complete darkness, Yesenin would hardly have been able to hang himself. It must have been someone else who turned off the light. (In the course of my research, I received written testimony from the Hermitage researcher V. A. Golovko. They say that before the war he studied at a technical school and their teacher V. V. Shilov confidentially told him the following story. The day before Yesenin's death Shilov agreed with him to meet at the hotel. Shilov knocked for a long time, but no one opened it. He began to wait in the lobby and saw that two men came out of Yesenin's room, closed the door behind them and headed for the exit. Shilov saw how they sat down into the car that was waiting for them and left. And the next day everyone found out about the poet's suicide. Shilov claimed that Yesenin was killed. It is impossible to verify Shilov's allegations, he died at the front.) Immediately after the tragic event, the newspapers reported that there was a doctor at the scene, who named the time of the poet's death: according to some statements - 5-6 hours, according to others - 6-7 hours before the discovery of the corpse. But not a single document or memoir, not a single newspaper gives the name of the doctor or any other information about him. However, it is this statement of the mythical doctor that is accepted as the truth, and all the people of the world believe that the death of the poet occurred at about five o'clock in the morning on December 28, 1925.
By the way, this time is very convenient for reinforcing the version of suicide. W. Ehrlich's statement written into the police protocol that the key to the castle was from inside, coupled with the hour of death, creates a certain picture of what HAPPENED in the room, the work of his lonely tenant. And everyone tried to forget that the forensic expert did not confirm this hour of death.
Another important point remains unclear. Judging by the act, the dead Yesenin grabbed the pipe. A living person, of course, can keep his arm raised, but when death occurs, it will certainly fall along the body under its own weight. It is logical to assume that death caught the poet in a different, non-vertical position and rigor mortis occurred just then, and only then the body was hung up.
It is also completely incomprehensible why the rope tied to a vertical pipe did not move down with the body ... Questions, questions ... Ten years of tireless searches, closing one, multiplied the number of unresolved ones.
Here is one of the riddles. Novaya Vechernaya Gazeta wrote: “The poet hung in a noose with a ‘wax face’. I have seen hundreds of hangmen, but not one of them had a pale face. In the gallows, it, as a rule, has a purple-bluish color, with signs that directly indicate the onset of death from asphyxia.
And here's another one. In his memoirs, G. Ustinov cites the words that he heard from the medical examiner:
"They say that the autopsy established his instantaneous death from a torn vertebrae." E. Naumov in his monograph noted: “Yesenin died not from suffocation, but from a rupture of the cervical vertebrae”, A rupture of the cervical vertebrae in a person can occur from an injury, a careless fall, etc. and not necessarily from hanging.
But in the "Memo about Sergei Yesenin", printed in hot pursuit, no longer talks about the rupture of the cervical vertebrae. “It has been established that Yesenin died of suffocation, and the loss of blood due to incisions in the veins could, in turn, contribute to fainting. Bloody streaks on his legs indicate that Yesenin hung in a noose for a long time. The autopsy also found that there were no abnormalities in Yesenin's brain. According to the experts, Yesenin's corpse hung for about 6-7 hours.
The author of the Memo undoubtedly copied the text from the act of autopsy of the poet's corpse. But why is he talking about several experts? And then the act does not say about 6-7 hours. In Yesenin's case, there is only one act, which served as the basis for the refusal to initiate a criminal case. The signature under the act is Gilyarevsky.
(Gilyarovsky Alexander Grigorievich, born in 1870, graduated from the Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg. After 1925, his fate is unknown, his wife, Vera Dmitrievna, was repressed and also disappeared without a trace.)
In his conclusion about the causes of Yesenin’s death, Gilyarevsky wrote: “Based on the autopsy data, it should be concluded that Yesenin’s death resulted from asphyxia, produced by squeezing the airways through hanging. The indentation on the forehead could have come from the pressure of hanging.
The dark purple color of the lower extremities, punctate bruises on them indicate that the deceased was in a hanging state for a long time.
Wounds on the upper limbs could have been inflicted by the deceased themselves and, as superficial ones, had no effect on death.
There is not a word in the act about the rupture of the vertebrae. Without taking upon ourselves the right to judge the quality of Gilyarevsky's conclusions, one cannot but express doubts that the act was written by Gilyarevsky's hand. (At present, the deed is partly torn to shreds in the most important place, so that each researcher can reconstruct it at his own discretion.) In any case, the identification of the handwriting was not carried out.
Doubt about the authenticity of the act is caused by the following.
1) The act is written on a plain sheet of paper without any details confirming that the document belongs to a medical institution. It does not have a registration number, a corner stamp, an official seal, a signature of the head of a hospital department or an expert bureau.
2) The act was written by hand, hastily, with smeared ink that did not have time to dry. Such an important document (concerning not only such a famous person as Yesenin, but also any person), the medical examiner was obliged to draw up in two or more copies. The original is usually sent to the interrogating officer, and a copy must remain in the files of the hospital.
3) The expert was obliged to examine the corpse, indicate the presence of bodily injuries and establish their causal relationship with the onset of death. Yesenin had numerous traces of previous falls. Confirming the presence of a small abrasion under the eye, Gilyarevsky did not indicate the mechanism of its formation. He noted the presence on the forehead of a depressed furrow about 4 centimeters long and one and a half centimeters wide, but did not describe the condition of the skull bones. He said that "the pressure on the forehead could have come from the pressure of hanging," but did not establish whether this injury was intravital or post-mortem. And most importantly, he did not indicate whether this "indentation" could cause the death of the poet or contribute to it, and whether it was formed from a blow with a hard object ...
4) The conclusions in the act do not take into account the full picture of what happened, in particular, nothing is said about the loss of blood by the dead.
5) The medical examiner notes that “the deceased was hanging for a long time”, but does not indicate how many hours. According to the conclusion of Gilyarevsky, the death of the poet could have occurred both two days and one day before the discovery of the corpse. How again not to recall the statement of the imaginary "doctor" about the recent onset of death, by which he misled the participants in the examination. It is possible that if the police knew about the possibility of Yesenin's death, say, 10 hours before the discovery of the corpse, they would have been more critical of the testimony of G. Ustinov and V. Erlich. Therefore, the statement that Yesenin died on December 28, 1925, has not been proven by anyone and should not be taken as the truth.
6) The act does not say a word about the burns on the poet's face and the mechanism of their formation.

One gets the impression that the act was written by Gilyarevsky under someone's pressure, without a thorough analysis of what happened. In the materials of the inquiry (in the case of Yesenin) there is a curious document that says little to an outsider, but explains a lot to a practical worker of law enforcement agencies.
"Court. honey. expert Gilyarevsky. At the same time, a copy of the telephone message No. 374 on the case of the suicide of gr. Yesenin Sergey for joining the case. Application: mentioned. Head of the 2nd department LGM - Khokhlov. The head of the interrogation table Vergei.
This document, printed on a typewriter, has a pencil inscription: “4p5STUPK”, which should be deciphered as follows: “clause 5, article 4 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the RSFSR”. Under this article, at that time, criminal cases were terminated due to the lack of corpus delicti, and based on the materials of the inquiry, they refused to initiate and investigate criminal cases.
There is no doubt that the police officers in a veiled form informed A.G. Gilyarevsky that no one would be prosecuted in this case and that he should take their opinion into account.
Doubt about the authenticity of the act arises also because I found in the archives an extract on the registration of the death of S. A. Yesenin, issued on December 29, 1925 in the registry office of the Moscow-Narva Soviet. (This information was confirmed by the leadership of the registry office archive in Leningrad.) It contains the documents that served as the basis for issuing a death certificate. In the column "cause of death" it is indicated: "suicide, hanging", and in the column "surname of the doctor" it is written: "forensic doctor Gilyarevsky No. 1017". Consequently, on December 29, Gilyarevsky's medical report under the number 1017 was presented to the registry office, and not what was attached to the case - without a number and other attributions.
It should be borne in mind that the registry office will not issue a certificate without the proper execution of the death certificate. Therefore, it can be categorically stated that there was another medical report on the causes of the tragic death of S. A. Yesenin, signed by more than one Gilyarevsky. The well-known version of the conclusion was much more convenient for refusing to initiate criminal proceedings against the murderers.
From archival documents it can be seen that the death certificate of S. A. Yesenin was received by V, Erlich. But who represented conclusion No. 1017 in the registry office is unknown. To my inquiry, the administration of the registry office archive of Leningrad replied that they did not have Gilyarevsky's act No. 1017. (“The medical certificate, on the basis of which the record of death was drawn up, was not attached to the act record.”) I consider this answer a formal reply. Much can be clarified if the archive workers spare no time and effort and try to find this act.
For readers who are poorly informed about the intricacies of criminal procedure, I will explain: only a police officer, investigator, prosecutor or court has the right to conclude what happened at the Angleterre Hotel - Yesenin's suicide or murder. Whatever conclusions the forensic experts make, the law enforcement agencies have the last word. By the way, the medical examiner Gilyarevsky did not indicate that Yesenin committed suicide.
In act No. 1017 of the medical examiner Gilyarevsky, there is an undoubted key to disclosing the death of Yesenin. I received a letter from Gilyarevsky's niece (unfortunately, she hid her last name), in which she says that he was a man of exceptional decency, a real Russian nobleman in the highest sense of the word, and could not go against his conscience in any case. In the descriptive part of the act, he left for us a number of information that allows us to doubt the poet's suicide.
“In the stomach (of the deceased - E. X.) about 300 k.s. semi-liquid food mixture that emits a non-pungent smell of wine. After analyzing all the data we have about the fateful day of Yesenin's life, we can state that the last time the poet ate food was from 14 to 18 hours. He drank beer, ate bread, pistachio nuts, and other fast-digesting foods. There was no vodka or wine. Based on modern scientific data, forensic experts say that Yesenin's death occurred no later than 3-4 hours after eating, therefore, on the evening of December 27, 1925.
Gilyarevsky also wrote:
"... loops of red intestines", "... the lower limbs are dark purple, dark red dot hemorrhages are visible on the shins in the skin." Both details, according to modern forensic experts, indicate that the body was in an upright position for at least a day.
Despite the time distance, it would be possible to conduct an investigative experiment even now. But the former leadership of Leningrad came up with an extravagant (or quite conscious?) idea to demolish the building of the former Angleterre Hotel. Despite the protests of the residents, in broad daylight, the authorities razed the historic building from the face of the earth. Let Petersburg hide one more bad deed in memory.
Who, in this case, established Yesenin's suicide? As sad as it is to admit, the newspapermen did it. The death of the poet could be reported in the evening newspapers, but this was not done. Having given a lot of space on their pages to incidents and court chronicles, neither the evening newspapers of December 28 nor the morning newspapers of December 29 took the tragedy in Angleterre, although all of Leningrad was talking about what had happened. But on the other hand, already in the evening newspapers of that day, without yet having Gilyarevsky's conclusions, the journalists announced the poet's suicide. Apparently, they were waiting for the command of the authorities, and when they received the "go-ahead", they vied with each other to come up with the details of Yesenin's death.
The editors and publishers paid special attention to the memories of friends, acquaintances, eyewitnesses, in which they enthusiastically spoke about Yesenin's drunken courage, previous suicide attempts, about his humiliation of his wife, about treatment in psychiatric hospitals. Persistently and methodically formed among the people the belief that he was a drunkard, rowdy, schizophrenic, who had no choice but to hang himself.
Shortly before his death, Yesenin wrote an article "Russians", which was never published:
“There was no more disgusting and filthy time in literary life than the time in which we live. The difficult state of the state over the years in the international struggle for its independence by chance pushed revolutionary sergeant majors into the arena of literature who have services to the proletariat, but not at all to art ... ”Wishing to explain the reason for his suicide, the poet’s enemies took the simplest path and began to look for an answer in his own poems, that is, they replaced an everyday biography with a poetic biography, which are far from always identical. The words about death in Yesenin's poems were used as evidence against him.
In contrast to the newsmen, the employees of the 2nd police department of Leningrad behaved more restrainedly and prudently. They waited for the end of the XIV Party Congress, the reaction of the public, friends, relatives of the poet, and only after that they made a decision on Yesenin's case. Without carrying out any investigative actions, at the inquiry table, Vergei only wrote a conclusion on January 20, 1926, in which he did not provide any evidence confirming Yesenin's suicide. Here's how he got out:
“Based on the foregoing, not seeing in the causes of death of c. Yesenin corpus delicti, would believe:
The material of the inquiry in accordance with paragraph 5 of Art. 4 At the PC, send the successor of the 2nd department. mountains Leningrad - to stop for lack of corpus delicti. January 20, 1926 Vergey, head of the interrogation table, I agree: early. 2nd sec. LGM (Khokhlov)".
Investigator Brodsky, also without conducting any investigation, agreed with the conclusion of Vergei and Khokhlov. Let us pay attention to the fact that the resolution does not indicate that Yesenin committed suicide. Therefore, it is appropriate to ask the question: in the actions of which persons or persons there is no corpus delicti?
All criminal cases provoked against Yesenin were terminated, and the decision to arrest was canceled only after his death - on December 30, 1925. This is how the great Russian poet Sergei Yesenin was procured.
The poet was arrested ten times and prosecuted. Only in Lubyanka he was illegally detained five times. Provocateurs from the Cheka, and then the GPU, did everything to destroy the poet in a "legal" way, One by one, his friends were killed in the cellars of the Lubyanka ... And on December 28, 1925, he himself was found hanged in the Angleterre Hotel. The trace from the rope on the neck was only under the chin, which indicated that they were strangling from behind. There were intravital injuries on the body and face. A crime was committed against the great poet of Russia, and no one has yet been punished for him.

From the editor: In connection with the recent anniversary - the 65th anniversary of the death of Sergei Yesenin - a lot of publications dedicated to the poet were published in the press and on television. Some provided indirect evidence of the violent death of the poet. But none of them claimed that he committed suicide. So, in two or three years, a version burst that no one questioned for more than six decades.
However, all attempts by Eduard Khlystalov to bring the investigation of the crime to the end are still running into resistance from the relevant departments - he is not given access to archival materials. The veil of secrecy over the tragic events has not been completely dispelled.

"Miracles and Adventures" No. 1, 1991

Name: Sergei Yesenin

Age: 30 years

Place of Birth: Konstantinovo, Ryazan region

A place of death: St. Petersburg, USSR

Activity: poet - lyricist

Family status: was divorced

Biography

The great singer of Russian nature, Sergei Yesenin, probably could have written even more beautiful poetic works imbued with love for Russia, if not for his early death.

Childhood, the poet's family

Sergei Yesenin was born in the Ryazan village of Konstantinovo. The family was neither educated nor wealthy. The peasant life of a large family was remembered by the poet for the rest of his life. And the poor family has never been a dark spot in his biography. In addition to Seryozha, who was the only son, Yesenin Alexander and Tatyana raised two more daughters. The boy was sent to a zemstvo school, and then to a parochial school.

Sergei graduated from school, almost immediately decided to leave home and went to the capital. In Moscow, he got a job in a butcher's shop, and then found a job in a printing house. Previously, it was possible to get an education as a volunteer. Yesenin entered, using this chance, the historical and philosophical university department.

On the way to creativity, poetry

Yesenin continued his work, visited Surikov's circle, where poets and musicians gathered. The first poems of the beginner rhymer were published in a magazine for children. Soon the poet was lucky enough to arrive in Petrograd. He immediately showed his work to Alexander Blok. Since 1916, Sergei was called up for military service in the ambulance train of Empress Alexandra. This period made the creator of poetry famous as a poet, as he continued to create his works and even read them to the empress.

Yesenin is looking for himself in poetry, visiting different places: Central Asia, the Urals, places in the Orenburg region. Everywhere the poet reads his poems and is a great success with the public. Tashkent, Samarkand is proud of its teahouses, which the great poet had a chance to visit.

Personal life

Yesenin's first marriage was civil. He met at work in a printing house with a proofreader Anna Izryadnova. The woman gave birth to a son, Yuri, from the poet. They did not live together for long, since Sergey became interested in actress Zinaida Reich. They played a wedding in a hotel, and the witnesses at the wedding were simple peasants with a merchant's son at the head. Daughter Tanya was born, who continued her father's literary path, becoming a writer, and son Kostya. The ability to use a pen was also transferred to the son, although his profession is a construction engineer. Even the children did not keep the poet from leaving the family.

The poet promised to take care of his son and daughter, filed for divorce and left. The children were adopted by the second husband of Zinaida Meyerhold. The poet lives in the house of his secretary Benislavskaya for five years, then marries S. Tolstoy.

One day the poet met his love. He was captivated by the dancer Isadora Duncan, they went on dates to each other for six months and decided to get married. Not speaking the same language, the lovers understood each other. The young couple had a honeymoon trip to Europe: they visited Germany, France, Belgium, Italy and the United States of America. Upon returning from such a long trip, the couple broke up.

Returning to the capital, Yesenin again meets the actress Miklashevskaya, who temporarily inspires him to write beautiful poetic lines. Rarely with whom the poet met for more than a year, he often made new acquaintances. The next lover was the poet and translator Nadezhda Volpin. She gave birth to the poet's son Alexander, who has now become a mathematician and is alive and well to this day.

And again, after a year of another civil marriage, the poet officially marries Sofya Tolstaya. Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy was her grandfather. This marriage was not happy, rather Sergey felt lonely. But the wife kept a lot of the poet's personal belongings, she published all the works of her husband, wrote memoirs about him.

Other activities of the poet

In addition to writing, Yesenin is engaged in the publication of books and their sale. For these purposes, he rented a bookstore. Traveling remained the main hobby of the poet. Three times he was in the Caucasus, often visited St. Petersburg, in his native Konstantinovo was 7 times. Wandered the streets of Azerbaijan. In places visited by the poet, museums have been opened or memorial plaques have been installed. He finally determined for himself that the direction of Imagism is unable to convey the whole bunch of feelings that have been seething in him since birth.

The dissolution of the group that worked in this poetic direction is announced. Previously, Yesenin's friends did not allow themselves offensive statements and stories about his drunken fights and unworthy behavior. Now all the newspapers were full of accusatory headlines, accusing the poet of hooligan antics. Sergei Alexandrovich had a difficult period. Even representatives of the authorities took up his drinking, sending the poet for compulsory treatment. Nothing helped.

Cause of death

Esenin's body was found in a hotel in Leningrad. He wrote his last letter in blood, having no ink in the hotel room. According to the pathologists' version of the cause of the poet's death: Sergei Alexandrovich was depressed, he had just escaped from a psychiatric clinic. This was the reason - the reason for suicide. He was found hanged in his room.

A joyless end to a biography for someone who loved life, could rejoice, enjoyed happiness. Fate measured his life a little, and he burned it, naively believing that he would still have time to turn the pages of his biographical history for a long time. The poet loved Moscow and Leningrad. Farewell to him took place in both capitals, but he was buried in Moscow.

The death of Sergei Yesenin is still one of the most mysterious tragedies of the early twentieth century. Then, on the cold night of December 28, 1925, the poet was found dead in the Angleterre Hotel in Leningrad. When the poet Vasily Nasedkin brought the coffin to Moscow, he came home and said: "Sergey was killed!" What actually happened at Angleterre on the night of December 27-28, 1925?

The room was trashed. Yesenin hung on vertical pipes of steam heating. Many injuries were recorded on his body. But the investigation insisted on suicide.

According to the official version, it was considered: Sergey Yesenin committed suicide, but it turned out that this version does not withstand a collision with facts.

Now, ninety years later, many researchers (for example, the St. Petersburg writer Nikolai Astafiev in the book “The Tragedy at Angleterre: Actors and Performers”) assert: Yesenin killed, and many of the documents attached to the case were falsified.

For example, notes supposedly Yesenin to Erlich, which were supposed to prove that the poet came to Angleterre voluntarily (according to supporters of the version of the murder), were not written by his hand.

Sergei Yesenin - in the lower left corner, Erlich - in the upper right

One note allegedly written Yesenin, sounds like this: “Vova, take things to my hotel. S. Yesenin.

Second note: “Vova, I went to Mikhailov’s restaurant, or what, or Fedorov? I'm waiting for you there. Sergey".

Nikolai Astafiev believes that this is a clear fake, that this is not a hand Yesenin.

Why was it necessary to falsify the documents of the case, if this is a banal suicide?

A little-known note attributed to S.A. Yesenin, mentioned in the protocol of the interview with V. Erlich (front side) RO IRLI, Fund 697, op. 1, unit 32

It is possible then that Yesenin taken to an empty hotel room by force, but it had to be hidden.

Petersburg writer Victor Kuznetsov, studying the documents of the Angleterre hotel, he discovered that Yesenin did not live in it at all! The poet's surname is not on the list of the residents of this hotel at the time when his corpse was allegedly found in it, hanging on a steam heating pipe.

Yesenin's memoir, mentioned in the memoirs of V. Erlich (front side), RO IRLI, Fund 817, op. 1, unit thirty

None of the hotel staff and guests living there Yesenin didn't see it these days. And all the "witnesses" who later testified about communicating with the poet in his Angleterre issue, including Erlich, were secret agents of the GPU.

In the 21st century, the poet's relatives, researchers and ordinary citizens have repeatedly applied to the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation with a request to reopen the criminal case on the alleged murder Sergei Yesenin.

The answers received, as a carbon copy: "The cause of the poet's death was confirmed as a result of compression of the neck organs by a noose during hanging."

So think what you want: either someone did it on purpose, or he really did it himself.

Meanwhile, there are dozens of circumstantial evidence on which to work.

The first question is: when, by whom and under what circumstances were all the documents of the investigation damaged? Moreover, in an identical way: they have a fragment torn out at the bottom of the sheet.

The second question: the power of attorney that is attached to the case is a power of attorney written by hand Erlich. And it has an absolutely monstrous signature on it. Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin. At a time when in things Yesenin found a power of attorney written by him, but torn.

Power of attorney written by V.I. Erlich, with an inadequate signature by S.A. Yesenin

The third question: why was the so-called suicide note not attached to the documents of the investigation - the poem "Goodbye, my friend, goodbye ..."? If she is given such a status, then she must be in official business.

The fourth question is related to the district warden, namely, his signatures on the documents: for some reason they differ. In an act dated December 28, Gorbov one signature, in the protocols of interrogation of witnesses it is completely different.

Another round of circumstantial evidence comes from the post-mortem photographs themselves. First, we don't have a photo of the corpse in the noose. Secondly, we do not have a single posthumous photograph where Sergei Alexandrovich would be depicted in full growth.

Artist Vasily Svarog, who painted the dead Yesenin without makeup, said in 1927:

“At first there was a“ noose ”- Yesenin tried to loosen it with his right hand, so the hand stiffened in a cramp. The head was on the armrest of the sofa when Yesenin was hit above the bridge of the nose with the handle of a revolver. Then they rolled him up in a carpet and wanted to lower him off the balcony, a car was waiting around the corner. It was easier to steal. But the balcony door did not open wide enough, leaving the corpse by the balcony, in the cold. They drank, smoked, all this dirt remained ... They hung up in a hurry, already late at night, and it was not easy on a vertical riser. When they fled, Erlich stayed to check something and prepare for the version of suicide ... ".

However, not everyone trusts this evidence. Philologist Oleg Lekmanov, HSE professor, biography author Sergei Yesenin, believes that the poet hanged himself.

“There is Yesenin’s poem “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye ...”, which he, before committing suicide, and he, of course, committed suicide 100%, wrote it down with blood on a piece of paper and handed it over to Wolf Erlich. Let those who defend this so-called "version" of the murder, first prove to us how the killers could make him invent, compose this poem, then write it on a piece of paper with blood.

The poem, which is now interpreted by many as material evidence, was not drawn as such. Probably because there is no date.

Poem “Goodbye…” (original) (RO IRLI, Fund 817, op. 1, item 14)

This poem can hardly be called dying, since it was transmitted Erlich the day before death. And it is quite possible that these lines were written long before Angleterre and are dedicated to a close friend Alexey Ganin, who was shot at the Lubyanka in March 1925 on charges of belonging to the Order of Russian Fascists. No examination was carried out regarding the authenticity of the very sheet that was transferred Wolf Erlich.

This is the first.

The second is an unnaturally bent arm. A living poet could hold on to the trumpet, but after death the muscles weaken, and the hands of the suicide must fall along the body, which did not happen.

Third - scars from the lip to the chin. They are formed if the perpetrator strangles the victim from behind.

Sergei Yesenin with his sister

Doubt about suicide Sergei Yesenin and his contemporaries: Anna Akhmatova, Pavel Luknitsky, Osip Mandelstam. Doubted, because they knew and impudent Yesenin, and even better - the time in which they lived.

Fourth - a pierced forehead, that is, the official version explains the dent with a burn that received Yesenin already after hanging from the hot heating pipe on which he hung, and not from an intravital blow.

But the Voronezh director Evgeny Parshchikov, author of the film "Yesenin. 1925 - 2010", I am sure that this is not so. He attracted the poet's relatives and independent experts, who found out that the photograph of the room taken after the tragedy was a fake. It was unfolded in order to somehow explain the facts that were inconvenient for the investigation.

Yesenin's room at the Angleterre Hotel after the tragedy

This picture was shown to a forensic photography expert, and he said that the picture is a mirror image of the real situation in the room, that is, the pipes are not in the right corner, but in the left. But these are not just pipes and not just corners - the direction of the wound on the forehead of Sergei Alexandrovich is such that it could only be received in the right corner. That is, we get the complete failure of the official version.

“I knew the poetess Ida Nappelbaum… So. Her brother Leo helped his father - a photographer during the filming. He told his sister how he helped a policeman standing on a stepladder remove the poet's body from the heating pipe. He witnessed the fact that Yesenin did not hang in a noose, as happens with suicides, but the rope was wound several times around his neck. That is why his body had to be removed before the arrival of the writers - he was hanged very implausibly.(Nicholas Brown, poet, translator, former political prisoner, public figure).

As possible ideologists for the elimination of the poet, there were also Blumkin, and Trotsky, and Agranov, who was called the executioner of the Russian intelligentsia.

Sergei Yesenin with his mother

In suicide Yesenin the clergy also doubted, so much so that the priests considered it possible to bury the poet at the funeral, which is unacceptable for suicides.

Church memorial services at the poet's grave are still served today. Priest Andrey Dudarev comes every year.

“Who can say that he committed suicide? A scar from the rope on which Yesenin allegedly hanged himself. If a person hangs himself, then this strip stretches from the chin to the back of the head, without fail from the bottom up, but here it is perpendicular to the spine. This is a noose tied around the neck of the poet and crushed not only a great man, but also Russian culture.

On Sunday, December 27, according to the testimony Erlich, they With Yesenin broke up. Erlich left the hotel home, but when he reached Nevsky Prospekt, he remembered that he had forgotten his briefcase in the room. Erlich returned to the hotel. Yesenin was alone. He sat at his desk and looked through the manuscript. Was calm. In the morning he was found hanged.

Sergei Yesenin at work

What exactly happened in those few December night hours is still not known for certain.

Viktor Kolmogorov

The Angleterre Hotel at the end of the first decade of the 20th century (bright building on the left in the foreground)

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

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

Cause of Yesenin's death

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Investigation documents

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

Incident site inspection report

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

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

Yesenin's body taken out of the noose

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Autopsy act

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

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

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

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

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

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

Farewell to the great poet

So murder or suicide?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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