Galina Arturovna Benislavskaya(December 16, 1897, St. Petersburg - December 3, 1926, Moscow) - journalist, literary worker, friend and literary secretary of Sergei Yesenin. Author of memoirs about Yesenin.

Biography

She was born on December 16, 1897 in St. Petersburg. Galina Benislavskaya is a Georgian mother, her father is a Russified Frenchman by the name of Career. From childhood, she was brought up by her mother's sister Nina Polikarpovna Zubova (by the name of her first husband), a doctor by profession, who adopted Galina, since her own mother was a seriously ill person. The husband of Nina Polikarpovna, also a doctor, Arthur Kazimirovich Benislavsky became the adoptive father of Galya and gave her his last name.

In Moscow, G. A. Benislavskaya often attended literary evenings and performances by poets. On one of these evenings on September 19, 1920, she first saw Sergei Yesenin and heard him speak. At the end of 1920, their personal acquaintance took place in the Pegasus Stall cafe. Soon G. A. Benislavskaya entered the circle of people close to Yesenin. For some time Yesenin lived at Benislavskaya. On October 3, 1921, after meeting Isadora, Duncan Yesenin left Benislavskaya's apartment, as a result of which she ended up in a clinic for nervous diseases.

After returning from a trip abroad and breaking up with A. Duncan, Yesenin again settled with G. Benislavskaya in her apartment in Bryusov Lane, and his sisters Katya and Shura also lived here. In the summer of 1925, before marrying S. A. Tolstaya, Yesenin broke off relations with G. A. Benislavskaya. She was very upset by this, was treated for a nervous breakdown, and left Moscow for a while. She was not in Moscow during Yesenin's funeral either.

In December 1926, she committed suicide (shot herself) on Yesenin's grave at the Vagankovsky cemetery, leaving a note: “December 3, 1926. I killed myself here, although I know that after that even more dogs will hang on Yesenin ... But it doesn’t matter to him or me. In this grave for me everything is most precious ... ".

The nature of the relationship between Galina Benislavskaya and Sergei Yesenin

For the entire period of her five-year acquaintance with Yesenin, G. Benislavskaya was actively engaged in his literary affairs. On his instructions, she negotiated with the editors, concluded contracts with them for publications. Yesenin's letters to G. A. Benislavskaya with instructions and all sorts of requests have been preserved. Galina paid much attention to the organization of the material side of Yesenin's life.

According to the recollections of Yesenin's friends, in her relationship with Yesenin, Galina claimed the role of the only friend. Literary advice, which she often tried to give him, he, as a rule, simply ignored. All this, according to friends of Sergei Yesenin, weighed him down and ultimately led to a break with her.

Later, in her memoirs about Yesenin, written in 1926, she wrote a lot about the fact that, in her opinion, people from Yesenin's entourage tried in every possible way to destroy their relationship, to tear Yesenin away from her. She blames the Imagists, and P. V. Oreshin with A. A. Ganin, and N. A. Klyuev, and A. M. Sakharov, and even the poet’s sister Ekaterina Alexandrovna. Galina Benislavskaya left her memories of Sergei Yesenin unfinished.

Galina Benislavskaya is a person that we most likely would not have known about if she had not met an impudent and charming golden-haired boy one evening. Galina's biography is closely intertwined with his history. And the biography of Benislavskaya ended almost at the same time when he was gone. Galina Benislavskaya, whose biography has become a shadow of the biography of a loved one, is an example of devotion and love. That golden-haired boy was the poet Sergei Yesenin, for whom Galina became a friend, protector and angel.

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Photo gallery: Galina Benislavskaya, biography

Galina Benislavskaya, whose biography does not begin very lightly, grew up with her mother.

What date Galina was born is unknown. But, it is known that the biography of Benislavskaya began in 1897. The first years of her life, Benislavskaya grew up with her mother. But, then, the mother began to have mental disorders, and Galina got to her aunt. It was from her aunt that she received the surname Benislavskaya. Her real father is the Frenchman Arthur Career. He, most likely, never lived with his family, or left it immediately after the birth of Galya. Therefore, the biography of the girl has little information about him. The girl was raised by Benislavsky and his wife. He was a doctor in the Latvian city of Rezekne. When Galya got older, she left her foster parents for St. Petersburg and entered the Preobrazhensky Women's Gymnasium. The girl graduated from the educational institution with a gold medal, and then entered Kharkov University at the Faculty of Natural Sciences. Galina was a staunch revolutionary and Bolshevik. Her courage was astonishing and astonishing. For example, when the White Guards came to Kharkov, the girl was not afraid to cross the entire front in order to get to Moscow and settle there.

After moving to the capital, Galina's life improved. She had a friend, Yana Kozlovskaya, whose father, Mikhail Kozlovsky, after the revolution became the head of the People's Commissariat of Lithuania and Belarus. Since, having crossed the front, Galya fell into the hands of the Reds, who considered her a spy, her friend's father had to help the girl in order to free her. After this happened, Mikhail Kozlovsky practically took her under his wing. He helped the girl get a room in Moscow and join the party. Soon he arranged for her to be a secretary in the Special Interdepartmental Commission under the Cheka.

By the way, Galya was not only a devoted Bolshevik and a revolutionary. She also loved to read, understood literature and went to the Pegasus Stable cafe, where the most talented poets of Moscow read their poems. Probably, the love of poetry played a major role in the fact that the fate of Galya changed dramatically on the evening of September 19, 1920. She was then twenty-three years old and she went with a friend to one of the evenings of poetry at the Polytechnic Museum. It was then that she saw a handsome young man who brazenly looked at her, and then began to read his poems and Galya realized that he was her destiny. Yesenin was then twenty-five years old. He was already famous in Moscow, had already managed to get married and divorced, and then marry again. Galya understood that he was a lover of gossip and walk with women. But, she felt that she could not live without him. This was the only man to whom she immediately wanted to submit, to surrender both in soul and body. Galya was a smart girl and understood that she probably would not become his wife, but she still tried to believe in the best. She became his secretary, helped in everything, was engaged in the publication of his poems. Yesenin appreciated and respected Galina, sometimes even represented his wife, but, nevertheless, she was more of a friend to him than a woman. He knew that he could rely on her, that she would fulfill all his whims and took advantage of this. But, Galya forgave everything and waited. And then the dancer Isadora Dnkan appeared in the life of the poet and Galina felt that she was losing Sergei. He began to avoid her. He came to rare meetings at the Mtoilo Pegasa cafe only with his lover, and Galya realized that she hated him. Then Yesenin and Duncan got married and went to the USA for a year. And Galya ended up in the clinic with a nervous breakdown. She was very difficult to experience separation from Yesenin, constantly thinking about him and dreaming only of seeing him at least out of the corner of her eye. And then Yesenin returned and said that he was breaking up with Isadora. Galina's joy knew no bounds. Together they wrote telegrams to Duncan telling her to forget about Sergei, since he now belongs to Galya. But, unfortunately, he could not love Galina. A little time passed, Sergei again began to drink, cheat, bring friends to Galya, where he lived and drink with them. Galina endured everything and only tried to protect him from alcohol. And Sergei accused her of cheating with his friends, insulted and humiliated her. In the end, he decided to marry Tolstoy's granddaughter, and then Benislavskaya could not stand it. She understood, like all of Yesenin's acquaintances and friends, that this marriage was pointless, that he did not love Tolstaya, but was simply chasing the name of the girl's famous grandfather. It was stupid and humiliating and Galina decided to break ties with Sergei. She loved him very much and missed him, but she began to convince herself that she was obliged to love another. This "other" was Trotsky's son. She began to meet with him, but, anyway, she talked with Sergey, who sent her letters from Batumi, where he was resting with his new wife, told her everything.

And then another quarrel occurred, Galina broke all ties with Yesenin, although, probably, she later regretted it very much. Already before his death, Sergei was looking for a meeting with her, but she refused the poet. And then Galya ended up in a hospital, where she learned about the death of her beloved. She did not go to the funeral, although everyone knew that this was the end for her. And that was the end. The whole next year, the woman was engaged in writing memoirs about Yesenin and putting his affairs in order. And on December 3, 1926, she went to Yesenin's grave and committed suicide there. The girl did not die immediately. The watchman found her and called an ambulance, but the woman died on the way to the hospital. Thus ended the life story of the most devoted girl who, being unloved, loved all her life and could not live without the one to whom she gave everything. That is why, on her grave, which is located next to the grave of the poet, for a long time only two words “Faithful Galya” were carved.

They were very different. He is charming and artistic, with golden hair and a light, doe-like gait. She is a half-French, half-Georgian, burning brunette with big green eyes. When walking, she raised her legs a little higher than expected, and she was called "Yesenin's cyclist" behind her back. Few believed in their love.

By the time of the meeting with Benislavskaya, Yesenin was already famous - one of the theorists of a powerful literary group of Imagists, who proclaimed the creation of an image as the goal of creativity, the author of nine books. He was married twice. From the first, civil marriage with Anna Izryadnova, an employee of the Sytin printing house, Yesenin had a son, Yuri (George), who was born in 1914. A desired child, Yesenin was preparing for his birth. He heated the stove, washed the room, even cooked dinner and bought a cake.

The second time the poet married in 1917. His married wife, Zinaida Nikolaevna Reich, then worked as a secretary in the newspaper Delo Naroda. Yesenin and Reich had two children - daughter Tatyana, born in 1918, and son Konstantin, born in 1920. Yesenin loved Zinaida and cherished children. But he could not forgive her deceit. After "terrifying scenes of jealousy" in 1919, they finally parted. Yesenin did not go to see his newborn son.

The life of Galina Benislavskaya before meeting Yesenin was full of adventures. She was born in St. Petersburg on December 16, 1897. Her father, French by nationality, soon abandoned the family. The mother got a nervous illness from this shock and did not recover soon. Galya grew up in foreign families from the age of three, she was very worried about this, she considered herself rootless. First, the girl was raised by her father's sister, then her mother's sister, Nina Zubova. Galya spent her childhood in the Rykopol estate near the Latvian town of Rezhitsa. It belonged to her aunt's husband, Arthur Benislavsky, a wealthy man, a doctor, and a hospital manager. Over time, Arthur Kazimirovich adopted Galya, gave her his last name.

Galya studied at the best gymnasium in Petrograd - Preobrazhenskaya. She graduated with a gold medal, read a lot, was an avid theater goer. In the summer, when she came to Rykopol, she was transformed; beyond recognition - into the savage. She avoided the company of foster parents and their eminent neighbors. For days on end she rode, swam, loved to shoot a gun.

When Galya grew up, it turned out that her and her adoptive parents' views on life were so different that conflicts began in the family. Aunt and foster father - the nobles - did not understand.
how Galya, following her friend Yana Kozlovskaya, the daughter of a professional revolutionary, could be carried away by Bolshevik ideas. In 1917, Galya joined the Bolshevik Party and decided to break with her family. Fate brought her to Kharkov, where she lived until 1919, when the whites occupied the city. Making her way through the front line, Galya was captured.

She was about to be shot. But at Denikin's headquarters, she quite unexpectedly met her foster father, who served in the hospital. Artur Kazimirovich stood up for her, said that she was his daughter, and she was released. He still did not share her views, but he did not refuse to help cross the front line - he gave her a certificate of the sister of mercy of the Volunteer Army. Because of this certificate, when she reached the Reds, she was almost shot again. This time, Galina Benislavskaya was rescued by the father of Yana's friend, whom she called her guarantor.

In her youth, Galina was fond of
poetry and painting,
spent a lot of time in museums

The acquaintance of the poet and the green-eyed girl took place at the evening "Trial of the Imagists" in the Great Hall of the Conservatory on November 4, 1920. She sat in front of the stage and desperately applauded the poems and the boy in the deer jacket who read them:

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

Galya recalled how, at the next poetry evening, Yesenin suddenly ran up to her, and she thought: “How he flew up to the girl!” But she came home with glee, “as if, like in a fairy tale, she found a magical treasured thing. I fell asleep with the thought of him, and when I woke up, the first thought was about S.A. - just as it happens in childhood: “Is there sun today?” "WITH. BUT." - This is Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin. Galina called him by his first name and patronymic for many years.

Since then, she went to all literary evenings with the participation of the poet and in the Pegasus Stall cafe on Tverskaya. Every evening there was some kind of report, performances by poets, heated debates about poetry. Yesenin looked in her direction. One day she came to the Stable without a friend. Yesenin said hello, asked something about the cafe, of which he was a co-owner, and then all evening they talked about Mayakovsky, about poetry. Yesenin was very meek and affectionate.

“We went in a long line,” recalled Benislavskaya, “infinitely joyful meetings, then in the shop<имажинистов>, then in the Stable. I lived these meetings - from one to another. His poems captured me no less than he himself. This time, from March to August 1921, Galina called the best time of her life.

“In the future, and relatively not far away,” she later wrote in a sketch of her memoirs, “I will struggle in myself with this feeling ... inflate in myself the slightest disposition towards others, if only to free myself from S.A., from this blessed one and, together with that painful illness, she didn’t know about anything, she didn’t think about any consequences, but without thinking, she reached out like to the sun, to him.

"The best time" coincided with the work of Sergei Yesenin on the poem "Pugachev". Following the example of Pushkin, he decided to visit those places where 150 years ago, under the leadership of this Don Cossack, the Peasant War was going on. Before leaving, Yesenin, with mystical amazement, looking into Gali's eyes, burning in the sun like emeralds, joyfully turned to his friend, poet Anatoly Mariengof: “Tolya, look, they are green. Green eyes". Returning from a trip, he presented Galya with beautiful oriental shawls and a ring with a monogram on the stone “S. E., fine workmanship. Galya wore it until the end of her life.

Galina Benislavskaya with her friend
Anna Nazarova. On the right hand of Galina
ring donated by Yesenin

By the time Pugachev was completed, Galya had won a victory over her most serious rival, the poetess Nadia Volytin. “The whole evening of the holiday,” Volytin recalled years later about one evening in the Pegasus Stall, “Yesenin sat at a table with Galya Benislavskaya and with one of her friends ... She seemed unusually prettier. All shone with happiness. Even the eyes - like mine, green, but with thicker eyelashes - seemed to brighten, become completely emerald (they took on the blueness from Yesenin's eyes, flashed in my bitter thoughts) and were inseparably riveted to the poet's face. The girlfriend was clearly only for decoration - that's why she was not remembered ... “Now the desired victory is being celebrated here,” I said to myself. Ey, not them!”

Their happy meetings continued even when Yesenin met the famous American dancer Isadora Duncan. He was 26, Isadora - 44. The age difference did not bother him: Duncan was pretty. A chiseled neck, a small mouth and a floating gait. A great woman, glorified by thousands of aesthetes of the world. “Isadora had hundreds of men, and I will be the last,” the poet said to his friends.

But he did not dare to part with Galya. On October 5, 1921, literally a day after meeting and getting closer to Duncan, he asked Benislavskaya for a meeting: “I'll be waiting for you! Without". "Without" means "without a girlfriend." On October 8, Yesenin met Galya again and presented her with a Bible. In the book, he underlined the words about the attitude towards a woman:

“And I found that a woman is bitterer than death, because she is a snare, and her heart is a snare, her hands are shackles; the good before God will be saved from her, but the sinner will be caught by her.<.. .>What else was my soul looking for, and I did not find? I found one man out of a thousand, but I did not find a woman among them all” (Ecclesiastes 7:26, 28).

In love, happy Galina did not notice the changes in Yesenin. Only in the winter did she learn of his meetings with Duncan. She wrote in her diary: “I would like to know what kind of liar said that you can not be jealous! By God, I would like to see this idiot! That's nonsense! You can superbly own, manage yourself, you can not give a look, more than that - you can play happy when you feel on yourself that you are the second; finally, you can even deceive yourself, but still, if you love so truly, you can’t be calm when your loved one sees, feels another ... And yet I will love, I will be meek and devoted, despite any suffering and humiliation."

In January 1922, Yesenin presented Galina with the book "Pugachev" with an autograph: "Dear Galya, the culprit of some chapters of S. Yesenin." This inscription contains a recognition of the inspiration that his meetings with her in 1921 brought him, and a farewell, the last "for memory". Galya did not part with the book and carried it everywhere with her, wrapping it in yellowish paper. In her diary lines of those months - a feeling of spiritual tragedy, pain, despair, emptiness. Resentment against all the women whom Yesenin loved - Reich is “no better than a“ toad ”, Duncan is an old woman. And even an insult to him: “I remembered that everything was a game. We, as children, were sincerely interested in the game (both: me and him), but his mother called him, he quit the game, and I was alone and there was no one to call to finish the game. But still, I started the game, not him. True, children do this - I liked it, so instead of getting to know each other, I’ll come up and say: “Let's play together!”

The experiences were so strong that Galina fell ill with neurasthenia, she had to be treated in a sanatorium in Pokrovsky-Streshnevo. “There are losses no less and no less irreparable than
death, she wrote in those days. - It's scary to write about it, but it's true: the death of E<сенина>would be easier for me - I would be free in my actions. I would not know this torment - to live when there is only the will to die.

After undergoing treatment, in August 1922, Galya got a job as an assistant secretary at the editorial office of the newspaper Bednota. One of the newspaper's employees, Sergei Pokrovsky, "Apache with green eyes", immediately fell in love with Galina. He was married, his wife worked here, in the editorial office. He had two children. But that didn't stop him. Galina responded to his feelings, only hoping to forget Yesenin. Failed. “Suddenly, Yesenin will come up, call, and no matter what, no matter what it threatens, I’ll follow him like a hypnotized one,” she wrote to Pokrovsky in a farewell letter. - Because of him, I can do what no one would have forced me to do - forget myself completely. They say that a woman loves her child more than anything in the world - I could not love a child as much as I love him.

Galina did not hope that Yesenin's return from abroad on August 3, 1923 would change anything. But Yesenin returned to her, and their former feelings flared up with renewed vigor. He sincerely told Galya about his attitude towards Isadora: “There was passion, and great passion. It went on for a whole year, and then it all went away and there was nothing left, nothing. When there was passion, I didn’t see anything, but now ... ”Duncan, who went on tour to Kislovodsk, Yesenin telegraphed:“ I love another. Married and happy." He compiled the text of the telegram together with Galina.

No, she was not his official wife, but it was with her that he finally found a real family. Returning to Russia, Yesenin met not an angular young girl in whom boyish mischief was visible, but a young woman in the prime of her charm. It cannot be said that she was a real beauty. But her mysterious and significant appearance was engraved in the memory of many. Nadezhda Volpin recalled that Pokrovsky, out of jealousy, wanted to mutilate Yesenin with a razor. And when he came home, he shot ...

In the autumn of 1923, Yesenin finally moved to Benislavskaya. In one of the rooms of a communal apartment in a house on the corner of Nikitskaya and Bryusovsky lanes, he lived for about two years - until the middle of 1925. Unfortunately, the young wife of the deputy editor-in-chief of the newspaper Bednota M. S. Grandov, Elena Kononenko - their family lived in the same apartment - fell in love with Yesenin so much that she wanted to commit suicide. Grandov demanded the eviction of Yesenin, and the poet had to move to a friend for a while.

S. A. Yesenin, S. A. Klychkov, Ivan Pribludny,
N. V. Bogoslovsky. 1924, May. Moscow

For Yesenin, it was a difficult time. His unflattering comments about the Soviet government turned into persecution in the newspapers. From 1923 to 1925, seven criminal cases were opened against him, the most serious of which was the so-called "Case of Four Poets" - Yesenin, along with S. A. Klychkov, P. V. Oreshin and A. A. Ganin, were accused of anti-Semitism. The persecution of the poet undermined his health. Galya took on all the troubles of publishing, ran around hospitals, guarded him from "friends" who soldered Yesenin, searched for him at night in the police. “After Yesenin arrived from America,” Anatoly Mariengof recalled, “Galya became the closest person to him: a lover, a friend, a nanny. A nanny in the highest, noblest and most beautiful sense of the word ... "

But such an attitude towards Galya among Yesenin's friends was rather an exception. Numerous friends of the poet, who loved to eat and drink at his expense, saw Benislavskaya as their sworn enemy. Yesenin did not listen to anyone: he did not treat a single woman with such respect and reverence as Galya. Several times he offered her to formalize the relationship. But Galya, according to the poet's sister, Katya, lowered her long eyelashes and said that she would not marry just because people would think better of her.

Yesenin considered her his wife. “Dear Anatoly, we spoke with you. Galya is my wife,” he insisted in a note to Mariengof in September 1923. “Married,” he wrote in the column “Civil status” in the questionnaires. Galya knew that these were not empty words. He considered her a native person, and his sisters too. Yesenin really appreciated that Galya takes care of his sisters. He himself was ready for any sacrifice for his relatives, if only they did not concern poetry.

Somehow, a few days before his death, he confessed to the writer Tarasov-Rodionov that for him there is nothing more precious in the world than poetry. For their sake, he throws all the most precious things in life: family, wife, children. So, perhaps, Galya became a part of this love. “I hope for your taste in compilation. ..”- he trusted her in literary matters as himself. "Moscow Tavern", "Poems (1920-24th)", "Song of the Great Campaign", "On Russia and the Revolution", "Persian Motifs", "Country of Birch Calico" were published with her direct participation.

"Galia dear! I love you very much and cherish you very much. I value you very much, so do not understand my departure as something directed towards friends out of indifference. Galya dear! I repeat to you that you are very, very dear to me. Yes, and you yourself know that without your participation in my fate there would have been a lot of deplorable things, ”he wrote to Galina on April 15, 1924 from Leningrad, where he went to work on a poem about St. Petersburg - “The Song of the Great Campaign”.

Leaving, he was afraid to leave her alone - he was jealous. He was never able to come to terms with her stubborn desire to be formally free if he allows himself love adventures. Galya said that in relation to her he made a huge concession: knowing that she would not submit and could not be a “faithful wife” if he did not deprive himself of freedom in relation to other women, and fearing to lose her, he inspired himself with the look: we are supposedly equal, "my freedom gives the right to freedom to a woman." So the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe "faithful Gala" as a submissive, downtrodden, hopelessly and unrequitedly in love woman is a myth. She was completely different, passionate and romantic, stormy and unbridled, when mutual feelings flared up with renewed vigor and gave hope for happiness. But the relationship turned out to be “clumsy and broken” - “The poet’s crazy heart is the key to sad happiness” ...

Being a poet's companion is a feat. Galya herself, by her own admission, more than once wanted to leave Yesenin “like a woman”, to remain only a friend to him. But she could not break this thread, because she understood that not only she loved Yesenin, but he also loved her.

In a fit of jealousy, Yesenin wrote her a note: “I don’t love you like a woman ...”, seeing Galya’s chance meeting with Pokrovsky. And during a trip to Konstantinov for the wedding of his cousin in June 1925, he believed the rumors retold to him that Galya was cheating on him with his friends, and left her, announcing that he had decided to start a new life. Then he came to her more than once, sometimes drunk, and sorted out the relationship. She did not want an explanation, considering herself undeservedly accused of all sins.

“Beware of hurting me,” he told her. - If I have a passion for a woman, then I'm crazy. I will still be jealous. You don't know what it is. You will go to the service, but I will not believe. I can’t let you go away from me at all then, and if it seems to me, I’ll beat you. I myself am afraid of this, I don’t want to, but I know that I will beat. I don't want to beat you, you can't be beaten." “I knew then,” Galina wrote, “that there could be no reason, and therefore I laughed that I wouldn’t have to be beaten.”

S. A. Yesenin, V. F. Nasedkin, E. A. Yesenina,
A. A. Yesenina, A. M. Sakharov, S. A. Tolstaya. 1925. Moscow

Yesenin gave reasons. He was going to start his “new life” with Sofia Andreevna Tolstaya, a 25-year-old student of the literary and creative department of the Living Word State Institute, the granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy. They met at the celebration of Gali's name day. She got used to the fact that Yesenin was fond of and cared for women and at first did not react in any way to a new acquaintance. She wrote to Yesenin's sister, Katya, in Konstantinovo: "Yes, he is going to marry Tolstoy and at the same time says ... that it is better to shoot himself than to marry her, etc. All this is sheer nonsense." But this delirium, like rampant drunkenness, continued.

She decided not to interfere with him, she was going on vacation. Before leaving on July 16, 1925, she wrote to Yesenin: “And the last thing: in my opinion, Tolstaya is very good (according to stories about her; I don’t know her), be thrifty, if you are with her, don’t throw her; she is weaker than others, knows you less, it is more difficult for her, and it is not she who you, but you must protect her - it may turn out that this (her weakness) is your salvation.
Why am I writing this? And for you and for my own peace of mind, so that, having left, I would not be tormented by the consciousness that I did not say, but it might come in handy for you. The most surprising thing in this letter is that for the first time in it there is an appeal to Yesenin to “you”, as to a very dear person. Although at that time he already called Sophia Tolstaya his wife. A kind of preliminary wedding with Tolstoy took place on the night of July 24-25, before Yesenin's departure for Baku. The official registration of the marriage took place on September 18, 1925.

On November 16, Galya wrote about wild longing and hopeless apathy for everything. She tried to figure out the reasons: why such longing, because Sergei was not with her, or because she had lost the Sergei she believed in? On November 19, the nerves could not stand it, and Benislavskaya, just like after Yesenin's first departure, with a diagnosis of "general depressive state" was treated at the N. A. Semashko Physio-Dietetic Sanatorium. On November 26, Yesenin went to the Moscow psychiatric clinic of the 1st Moscow State University.

Galya left the hospital on December 19 with a “hope” that she had not lost her former Sergei. After the sanatorium I went to rest in Dmitrovskaya Gora to the relatives of my friend Anya Nazarova. On December 21, Yesenin left the psychiatric clinic. With the intention of starting a new life in Leningrad, he withdrew all the available money from the bank book, asked the State Publishing House to send proofs of his "Collected Poems" to Leningrad, and on December 23 he left Moscow. Settled in the Angleterre Hotel. He met with N. A. Klyuev, G. F. Ustinov, Ivan Pribludny, V. I. Erlich and others. On December 27, he wrote with his own blood the poem "Goodbye, my friend, goodbye ..." and handed it over to V. I. Erlich, who read it only after Yesenin's death. On the evening of the 27th, the poet asked the porter not to let anyone into the room. In the morning, Yesenin was found hanged in a hotel room.

Farewell to Yesenin

After Galya received a telegram from Erlich: “Tell Nasedkin Sergey Erlich died,” she wrote in her diary: “A tiny “hope” has come true, but this is irreparable.” Yesenin's death convinced Galina that her beloved suffered in the last months of his life no less than her. He remained the one in whom she believed and for whom there was nothing to be sorry about.

Thousands of people came to the funeral of the poet. There has not been such a gathering of people since Pushkin's funeral. Yesenin's wives arrived - S. A. Tolstaya, Z. N. Reich, A. R. Izryadnova. Only Gali was not there - a blizzard prevented her from coming from a remote Tver village. She was late to say goodbye to Sergei.

The fact that she was the closest person to him, no one denied. Well-known critics and writers, friends and relatives of Yesenin chose her apartment as the place of a common holiday on the occasion of the publication of the first volume of Yesenin's Collected Poems in March 1926. The poet prepared this meeting himself and desired it "to the point of nervous shudders."

Galya did not complain to anyone, did not give a single reason to suspect that her days were numbered. Only when she was gone, Anya Nazarova remembered a fact that could alert, but then passed by. Galya repeatedly asked her to show how doctors find a heart...

She treated her departure so naturally, as if he were the only deliverance from the torment of living without her beloved Sergei. “What am I, a fool, looking at the card with insane pain, what am I looking for in this card - after all, he’s not with me anyway, he’s not anywhere at all ... With all my romanticism, I can’t get anything from worshiping the grave and card, I cannot reconcile and find solace in sadness, mourning and tears.

She finally realized that “all these comedies, which were needed under him both for the struggle for my independence and for myself in general, now they are not needed and are ridiculous. Only one strong feeling flared up for L., but I crossed it out for Sergey and crossed it out very strongly, in the past it was - I won’t renounce, but now it’s ridiculous to think. Who is L. - is unknown. The relatives of Galina Benislavskaya put forward a version that this was the son of L.D. Trotsky Lev Sedov. But confirmation of the version of Sedov as Galina's lover was not found.

She did not choose the date of departure immediately. It was important for her to finish her memoirs, to sort out the documents. For 11 months and 4 days, lived by Galina after the death of Yesenin, she went through the archive without rest, wrote her memoirs. On October 3, on Sergei's birthday, she wrote a will: “She leaves all her belongings and furnishings, if possible (the devil knows what laws we have for such rootless people like me!) Leaves Shura. Kate - brother's manuscripts. He asks to give the books to Sergei's acquaintances - Kachalov, Gruzinov, Anya ... "

She chose the day of her death so that the number coincided with the birthday of a loved one, and the month - with the month of his departure. December 3, 1926 at night, Galina Benislavskaya "suicide" at the Vagankovsky cemetery at Yesenin's grave. Galya's suicide note is written on a cigarette box. She smoked cigarette after cigarette. "Suicide" here; although I know that after that even more dogs will hang on Yesenin. But it doesn't matter to him or me. In this grave, everything is dearest to me ... If the Finn is stuck after a shot in the grave, it means that even then I did not regret it. If it's a pity, I'll throw it away. 1 misfire."

The poet Vadim Shershenevich wrote about what happened: “In the winter cemetery, on the grave of Seryozha, Galya was soon found dead. She shot herself several times, but the revolver misfired. Then she committed suicide with a sharp dagger. A revolver was lying nearby and in it were several cartridges with stuffed capsules. To those who dared to slander about Galya's suicide, Anatoly Mariengof replied: “Only blockheads who importantly consider themselves skeptics do not believe in great love. At all times there were more of them than necessary.

Natalya Shubnikova-Guseva,
Gala Biography, №12, 2011

Galina Benislavskaya is a creative person, a journalist who connected her life with literature. She was born in December 97 of the outgoing nineteenth century in the northern capital of the Russian Empire.

Children's years of Benislavskaya

The girl was a mestizo - half Georgian and half French. Since her mother was very ill and was unable to support and raise a child, Galina was adopted by her maternal aunt, Nina Zubova (the surname remained from her first husband). She worked as a doctor and was married a second time to her colleague Arthur Benislavsky, who became a real father to Galina and gave the girl his last name.

Galina Benislavskaya, whose biography is interesting to all connoisseurs, spent her serene childhood and adolescence in the provincial Latvian town of Rezekne, but she received an excellent education at the St. Petersburg Women's Gymnasium, which she graduated with honors. She was a very capable girl, sociable and quite ambitious.

The revolutionary spirit of young Galina

It was during this critical period for Russia, when the country was torn apart by the bloody First World War with the advent of the new twentieth century and revolutionary moods were already in the air, Benislavskaya, under the influence of her close friend from the gymnasium and her parents, who were obsessed with the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bfighting the tsarist autocracy, entered into May of the seventeenth year to the party of the revolutionary movement of the Bolsheviks.

Her foster family had a serious passion and her daughter's views caused serious concern. And on this basis of political disagreement, as well as the desire for an independent life, Galina strengthened her decision to leave St. Petersburg and go to study in distant Kharkov. There, in the same significant year of 1917, she entered the university at the faculty of natural science.

New life in Kharkov

After some time, the city was occupied by the troops of the provisional government, and a student of Kharkov University, dreaming of leaving this place as soon as possible and getting to the Reds, who were close to her in ideological views, set off. Galina was determined to leave quickly. She left the city in the direction of the large army of the Bolsheviks, but on the way she was arrested by the Whites. The girl was almost shot according to the laws of war.

But a lucky break saved her. At that moment, when she was brought to the headquarters to clarify all the circumstances and personality, she recognized her foster father in the crowd of military men - Arthur Benislavsky, who served in the army of the White Guards as a field paramedic. Having learned that Galina was in a situation that could cost her her life, he immediately clarified the story, confirmed her identity and the fact of her paternity. He also helped her cross the front line, enrolling her as a sister of mercy and giving out all the necessary documents. But the epic whirlpool of unforeseen situations in her life did not end there, since it was the certificate received that aroused serious suspicion among the revolutionary authorities after Galina managed to get to them safely.

But this time, the perspicacious girl was not at a loss, she referred to the father of her friend, a Bolshevik, who confirmed by telegram that Galina Benislavskaya was a member of the revolutionary party and joined it back in May 1917.

party work

Later, already in the capital, on the recommendation of the same party colleague, she got a job in the commission for emergency cases. She worked here for four years, and then, as a competent specialist, she was invited by the Moscow newspaper of workers and peasants, Bednota, where Galina served for quite a long time.

Love for literature

Benislavskaya's passion for literature not only manifested itself on a professional level, but also became her true love. She was a regular at any interesting literary evening or performance of talented and promising poets. And then one day on one of these evenings a fateful meeting took place - they found a brilliant young poet Yesenin and Galina Benislavskaya.

The birth of love

The impressionable girl fell in love with him from the very moment she heard his poems, which deeply sunk into her soul (September 19, 1920). By the end of the year, their personal acquaintance took place. Yesenin and Galina Benislavskaya met in the literary cafe Pegasus Stable, where the creative elite gathered.

After that, the girl became a close person for Yesenin, and very soon their relationship grew from friendship to a romantic relationship. For a certain period of time, he lived with her, but after meeting the ballerina, Yesenin abruptly cut off contact with Benislavskaya. A broken girl's heart was not able to withstand such unexpected and dramatic changes, which was reflected in the appearance of a serious psychological disorder. She even had to go to the hospital after another nervous breakdown.

Another heart wound

Time passed, Galina Benislavskaya recovered a little after serious experiences, and it seems that the love wound was gradually healed, but everything was not as simple as we would like. Yesenin returned from a romantic trip with a new lover, Duncan, after which they parted, and again settled with Benislavskaya, who unquestioningly accepted him. But this love epic prepared for her another blow: the summer of 25 was the period of the final break in their relationship, in which Sergey was once again the initiator. The reason was his upcoming marriage to Tolstoy.

Mental turmoil, suffering and torment again became the inseparable companions of the unfortunate girl. Galina left Moscow in order to be away from all the upcoming events and places unpleasant for her, reeking with painful echoes in her soul. There was no Benislavskaya in the capital during the funeral of her lover.

Despair leading to suicide

Unable to cope with her love experiences, Galina Benislavskaya shot herself in the winter of 26. In the same place, the girl left the last message. Galina Benislavskaya's suicide note left no doubt about her serious and voluntary intention: "I committed suicide here ... Everything is dearest to me in this grave." Although she was not lucky enough to be with her beloved in this life, the grave of Galina Benislavskaya is next to the grave of Sergei Yesenin.

Who was Benislavskaya for Sergei Yesenin?

Galina occupied a special place in the life of the poet, she always loved him madly, as if from a distance, and perceived him as he is.

Their acquaintance lasted five long and painful years for Galina. All this time she was actively engaged in his literary affairs. It was she who was his voluntary and personal secretary, who conducted all negotiations with leading publications and editorial offices on contracts. Galina always tried to give him advice, which terribly burdened the freedom-loving poet, maybe these disagreements gave a serious crack in their connection. But nevertheless, when he was near, she was immensely happy. Despite such a strange relationship, Yesenin dedicated poems to Galina Benislavskaya as a beautiful girl with an oriental appearance. The poetic lines ended like this:

Shagane you are mine, Shagane!

There, in the north, the girl too,

She looks a lot like you

Maybe he's thinking about me...

Shagane you are mine, Shagane!

Benislavskaya covered their relationship in her diary, which she left unfinished.

Faithful Galya: Galina Benislavskaya

On the afternoon of December 3, 1926, at the deserted Vagankovsky cemetery in Moscow, near the grave of the outstanding poet Sergei Yesenin, a young woman stood. A year ago, the life of a 30-year-old poet was tragically cut short in the Angleterre Hotel in Leningrad, and he was buried here. She was not at the funeral. The woman nervously smoked cigarette after cigarette. She is so young, and life, despite the difficulties and misfortunes, is so beautiful ... Finally, she made up her mind.

She took out a piece of paper, quickly, so as not to think, sketched a few lines: “She killed herself” here, although I know that after that even more dogs will hang on Yesenin. But for him, and for me, it doesn't matter. In this grave, everything is most precious to me, so in the end, I don’t give a damn about Sosnovsky and public opinion, which Sosnovsky is on about.
For a while she stood motionless. Then she wrote on a box of cigarettes: “If the finca is stuck after a shot in the grave, then even then I did not regret it. If it’s a pity I’ll throw it far away ... "
The woman took out a gun, for some reason she believed that after a shot in the heart area she would be conscious and would be able at the last minute of death to once again prove her unearthly love for Sergei Yesenin. After some time, she was able to somehow add on a box of cigarettes: “1 misfire.”
In Moscow, they will later say that there were several misfires. But the subsequent shot was accurate. The woman fell unconscious. The gun and the finca fell out of her hands ...
The shot was heard at the gatehouse. To the scene, timidly hiding behind monuments and fences, the cemetery watchman was the first to arrive in time. A mortally wounded woman in a checkered cap and a dark shabby coat lay in the snow and groaned inaudibly. The watchman ran to the church to sound the alarm. Soon the police came, the ambulance arrived. The dying woman was sent to the Botkin hospital, but she was no longer breathing. The cart turned around and took the body of the deceased to Pirogovka, to the anatomical theater. So tragically ended the life of 29-year-old Galina Benislavskaya, whose love and devotion to the poet was boundless.
Galina was born as a result of a casual relationship between a young foreigner Arthur Karier and a Georgian woman. After the birth of the girl, the quarry disappeared in an unknown direction, and her mother, due to a serious mental illness, ended up in a closed hospital. The girl was adopted by her aunt and her husband. Galina spent her childhood in a wealthy family in the Latvian city of Rezekne. Before the revolution, she graduated from the women's gymnasium in St. Petersburg with a gold medal.
During the civil war, Benislavskaya sympathized with the Bolsheviks, near Kharkov she was almost accidentally shot by whites. She managed to get to Moscow. Here she became friends with Yana Kozlovskaya, whose father was Lenin's confidant and one of the then main leaders of the Bolsheviks. He arranged for Galina in the bodies of the Cheka, contributed to her entry into the Communist Party, helped to get a room. For some time, Benislavskaya lived in the Kremlin next to the communist leaders, including the aforementioned Leiba Sosnovsky ...
For the first time, Benislavskaya saw Yesenin on September 19, 1920, at an evening at the Polytechnic Museum, at which the poet read his poems. This is how she described the meeting:
“... Suddenly the same boy comes out (the poet was 24 years old): a short open jacket, hands in the pockets of his trousers, completely golden hair, as if alive. Slightly throwing back his head and camp, he begins to read:

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

…What happened after reading it is hard to convey. Everyone suddenly jumped up from their seats and rushed to the stage, to him. They not only shouted at him, they begged him: “Read something else!” And a few minutes later, coming up already in a fur hat with a sable trim, childishly read again “Spit, wind ...”
When I came to my senses, I saw that I was also at the stage itself. How I got there, I don't know, I don't remember. Obviously, this wind picked up and spun me too ... "
Fate wanted to bring together completely different people, the 25-year-old poet Yesenin and the employee of the sinister Cheka, 23-year-old Benislavskaya. Among individual researchers of the poet's work and biography, there is a version that the Chekists specially sent Benislavskaya to Yesenin in order to be in the circle of his friends, to report on their conversations and plans. We know that she worked alongside Nikolai Krylenko, one of the most important executioners of those years, who was the prosecutor for a number of falsified VChK-GPU criminal trials, and, of course, knew a lot about the secret plans of her leaders. But we have no evidence confirming Benislavskaya's surveillance of Yesenin on the instructions of the Chekists, although in a fit of jealousy she could do a lot. If Galina received the task of the Chekists, she hardly fulfilled it, because from the very first meeting with the poet she fell in love with him with that unrequited love that borders on mental illness.
She and her friends visited each of his public performances, found out that he had children, that he divorced Zinaida Reich. She wrote about her feelings in her diary: “... So love, love so selflessly, but does it really happen? But I love, and I can not do otherwise; it is stronger than me, my life. If it were necessary for him to die? without hesitation, and if at the same time you know that he will at least smile affectionately upon learning about me, death would become a joy ... "
Soon Yesenin and Benislavskaya became close. Galina forgot that outstanding poets have loving hearts. On October 3, 1921, on Yesenin's birthday, a company gathered in the studio of the artist Yakulov. After performing in a concert, the world-famous American dancer Duncan was brought to Yakulov. 45-year-old Isadora, knowing only 20-30 Russian words, having heard Yesenin's poems, immediately understood the extraordinary talent of the young poet and was the first to call him a great Russian poet. Without a moment's hesitation, she took Yesenin to her mansion. He did not come to Benislavskaya's room, she ended up in a clinic for nervous diseases.
After almost a year and a half traveling abroad, Yesenin returned to his homeland, but he did not begin to live with an aging and jealous dancer. Two great artists cannot live side by side all the time. The poet from the fashionable mansion again came to the room of the Benislava multi-occupied communal apartment.
Yesenin enthusiastically accepted the February Revolution, with wariness of the October Revolution, but soon, especially after the arrests and executions of his friends, poets, artists, writers, famous public and political figures, and especially the royal family, with whom he was in friendship, his repeated arrests rushed across Russia his prophetic words:

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

The authorities repeatedly put Yesenin in the execution cellars of the Lubyanka, imprisoned him in the Butyrka prison, did everything to “legally” trample the poet. The works written abroad became known to a wide range of writers and young people. In them, the poet ridicules the deeds of the Bolshevik leaders. The persecution of the poet began. He broke with the Imagist poets, lost his maternal protection Duncan. Provocations began: unknown persons began to grab Yesenin, drag him to the police or the OGPU. Some miracle saved the poet from a bandit's knife or a bullet in the back of the head. Yesenin's nerves are on edge, he is armed with a metal stick for self-defense, reads his poems, shedding tears. Every day, by order of Sosnovsky (in her suicide note, Benislavskaya for the first time named one of the main stranglers of Yesenin, the ideological leader of the Bolsheviks of those years, but for decades his name was deliberately withdrawn during the publication of this note) in Moscow newspapers, articles were published on behalf of workers demanding reprisals against the “kulak » poet. Yesenin fled from Moscow, hid in the Caucasus, tried to escape from the USSR to Iran or Turkey. All these months, Benislavskaya was his faithful assistant, but not his faithful wife. Her mental imbalance threw her from one extreme to another. She began to “act out of spite” for Yesenin, cheat with his friends, she “unbridled” a feeling “for Leo” (in her notes she does not name the name “Lion”; according to some researchers, she had a short affair with Leo Sedov son Trotsky, according to others with Lev Povitsky).
Yesenin found out and broke off relations with her. Galina hated Yesenin's new circle of poets Nikolai Klyuev, Alexei Ganin, Ivan Pribludny, who were eventually shot by the authorities. Nevertheless, Yesenin occasionally continued to call Galina.
On December 27, 1925, Yesenin's life ended. Benislavskaya ended up in a psychiatric clinic. Life has lost its meaning for her.
... In the room of the deceased Benislavskaya there were numerous manuscripts of the poet's works, his letters to the deceased, various notes, diaries and "Memories of Yesenin" printed on a typewriter. Undoubtedly, these and other documents of great value fell into unscrupulous hands. Benislavskaya's diary was sold abroad, as was the rope on which the poet's life ended a year earlier. More recently, it became known that enterprising people secretly took this rope to the USA, cut it into pieces and sold it at an auction (an American gave a fragment of the rope to a collector in Tambov as a very valuable gift).
The suicide of Galina Benislavskaya shocked the public. It was decided to bury her next to Yesenin. The funeral took place on December 7th. The words were inscribed on the monument: "Vernaya Galya."