Zinaida Reich - biography, information, personal life. The tragic biography of Zinaida Reich Russian actress who played Zinaida Reich
September 16, 2015, 12:19Their path to each other was difficult, but it was the path of outstanding creative personalities, and in such a situation one can hardly expect anything else.
Vsevolod Meyerhold was born on January 28, 1874 in the city of Penza into a Russified German family. He studied in Moscow at the Faculty of Law, then entered drama courses, was an artist of the Moscow Art Theater, and later - a provincial director working according to the method of the Art Theater. Journalists called him a decadent, the first actress of the Alexandria Theater, Marya Gavrilovna Savina, quarreled with him - she really did not like that the director of the imperial theaters, the subtlest Vladimir Telyakovsky, relied on young directing and took Meyerhold on staff. Even enemies recognized his gift, he made a big name for himself, but the October Socialist Revolution, or, as they say now, the October Revolution brought him to the founders of the new theater.
By the time of the meeting with Zinaida Reich, who became the second - along with the stage - the meaning of his existence, Meyerhold was already 47 years old, he was famous, married, had three daughters. But Reich Meyerhold fell in love with Zinaida passionately, selflessly, without memory. Having a thin, intelligent and devoted wife, he felt the need for a different woman, free and liberated. And such a woman turned out to be Zinaida Nikolaevna.
Zinaida Nikolaevna Reich was born on June 21, 1894 in the village of Near Mills near Odessa in the family of a Russified German railway worker. While still in the 8th grade, she fell under the supervision of the police and was expelled from the gymnasium for her political connection with the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. Unlike her father, an old member of the RSDLP, the young schoolgirl chose an extremist party that staked on terror. In this act, youthful maximalism was fully manifested. She threw herself headlong into the revolution. 
It was in the editorial office of the Socialist-Revolutionary newspaper Delo Naroda, where Reich served as a typist in 1917, that she became passionately interested in the novice poet Sergei Yesenin, who published in this newspaper. Love broke out instantly, and in August of the same year they got married. Moreover, love completely pushed aside the "politics", which Yesenin did not approve of at all. In the short interval between February and October, Reich, with the same vehemence that only yesterday pushed her into the revolution, now gave herself up to building a family nest. At first, the newlyweds lived apart, as if looking closely at each other, but soon they settled together, and Yesenin even demanded that Zinaida leave her job. They lived without much comfort, but did not live in poverty and even received guests. With pride, Yesenin informed everyone and everyone: "I have a wife." Even Blok noted in surprise in his diary: “Yesenin is now married. Get used to the property.
However, the times were difficult, hungry, one could not even dream of “property”. And therefore, the family idyll quickly ended. For a while, the young spouses broke up. Yesenin went to Konstantinov, the pregnant Zinaida Nikolaevna went to her parents in Orel, where in May 1918 she gave birth to a daughter, Tatyana. Almost two years later, their second child was born - son Konstantin. But the family nest was gone. As Yesenin's daughter Tatyana wrote: "The parents parted for good somewhere at the turn of 1919-1920, after which they never lived together." 
It took extraordinary strength of mind to start life anew. And Zinaida Nikolaevna succeeded. In August 1920, she joined the People's Commissariat for Education as an inspector of the sub-department of people's houses, and in the fall of the following year she became a student at the State Experimental Theater Workshops (GEKTEMAS). It is difficult to say how long Zinaida Reich grieved after the break with Yesenin, huddling with two kids in the Orphanage on Ostozhenka. In any case, she did not remain without admirers, one of whom was the famous critic Viktor Shklovsky. But in the end, fate brought her to Meyerhold. And bringing it together, tied it tightly. Despite the twenty-year age difference, a "relationship" began.
Contemporaries gave Zinaida Reich the most controversial assessments. Some describe her as a beauty, a devoted wife and a wonderful mother. In other memories, she looks exalted, unbalanced, by no means beautiful, but possessing a certain sex appeal, a woman who could not help but give reasons for jealousy to both husbands. First Yesenin, then Meyerhold.
Arriving at Meyerhold's studio, Reich was carried away by his creative ideas for creating a new, avant-garde theater. Not finding herself in the revolution, she fell into the emotional, sensual environment of Meyerhold, and he was able to discover what was hidden so deeply in her. “The master built a performance, as they build a house, and to be in this house, even with a doorknob, was happiness,” the actors said about the great Meyerhold.
Their meeting was fateful. Looking for his Galatea, he fell in love with a young student. In 1921, the students of GEKTEMAS, going to school :) along the lanes between Tverskaya and Bolshaya Nikitskaya, often noticed a strange figure - looking closer, they realized that there were not one, but two people under the Red Army overcoat. The teacher was hugging their classmate, the twenty-five-year-old beauty Reich. Those around him did not like it: those who loved Meyerhold did not forgive Reich for his love. Enemies, of which Meyerhold had many, did not forgive him either.
Like Stanislavsky, Meyerhold was a chaste man, and gossipers around the theater never found "plots" in his personal life that could give food to their imagination. For Meyerhold, personal life and stage work were separated from each other. If he was carried away at times, as, for example, by the charming Nina Kovalenskaya, then his feelings invariably remained in the spiritual and platonic sphere. Reich, on the other hand, united the halves of Meyerhold's being into one whole: home and stage, work and love, theater and life.
Meyerhold went to Reich from the woman with whom he had lived all his life. They met as children, got married during their student years, and his wife supported him in sorrow and in joy - besides, they had three daughters. But he acted in the spirit of his ideas about duty, responsibility and masculine deed: he cut off his past life and even took a new surname - now his name was Meyerhold-Reich. He set out to create his beloved again - she was to become a great actress. 
It is clear that Vsevolod Emilievich passionately loved his wife and was in a state of jealous excitement all his life. Director Valentin Pluchek said that once, during the rehearsal of "Banny", Reich flirted a little with Mayakovsky - it seems that she was flattered that he laid eyes on her. And when Mayakovsky went to smoke in the lobby, and Zinaida Nikolaevna followed him, Meyerhold announced a break, although the rehearsal had barely begun, and immediately joined them. It's not that he didn't trust his other half. But, feeling the full extent of her femininity, he preferred to look after, without vouching, apparently, even for friends. But who truly gave rise to jealousy was Yesenin, who suddenly appeared in the life of a happy couple. After all, becoming the wife of the famous Meyerhold (and soon his first actress), Reich again aroused the selfish interest of the scandalous poet. Meyerhold's biographer recalled that the only person to whom the violent and drunk Yesenin obeyed was, oddly enough, Vsevolod Emilievich. The prodigal father appeared at the Meyerholds' house, could demand in the middle of the night to show the children whom Vsevolod Emilievich, by the way, adopted. But this is not enough: Yesenin began to meet with Reich on the side. 
When Yesenin committed suicide, Reich had a severe seizure. The devoted Meyerhold gave her medicines, changed compresses, and accompanied her to her funeral. Reich was moving away from the experienced shock for many years.
We dare to assume that she loved both, although in different ways. Yesenin - passionately and obsessively. Meyerhold - clearly, joyfully and gratefully. Arriving from a rehearsal, she could declare to the whole house: “Meyerhold is a god!”. And immediately reprimand your deity for a petty domestic offense. She sought to free him from household chores so that the master could belong entirely to creativity. He, in turn, trusted her aesthetic instinct, often consulted on sketches for performances. 
In the theater, Reich was not loved and constantly humiliated. Meyerhold, taking care of the peace and spiritual comfort of his wife, was ready for anything. He did not even tolerate an ironic tone in relation to Reich. Once, at a gathering of the troupe, he announced that he wanted to stage Hamlet. Actor Nikolai Okhlopkov (memorable to the general public for the role of Vaska Buslay in the film "Alexander Nevsky") imprudently asked: "And who is in the lead role?" Meyerhold seemed to answer in earnest: "Of course, Reich." The unrestrained Okhlopkov laughed: "If Reich is Hamlet, then I am Ophelia ..." And he was immediately fired. 
But Meyerhold's main merit to his wife was not that he stood guard over her professional reputation, that he adopted children and provided them with a sense of security and a reliable home, that he made a good actress out of a helpless debutante who knew hot audience delight, the main thing - he gave her long years of mental health, protecting her from the disease that overtook her in her youth and relapses of which appeared only after a decade and a half, provoked by the newspaper persecution of Meyerhold and the closure of the theater. 
At the age of 26, in early 1921, Reich experienced a cascade of ailments: typhoid fever, lupus, and typhus. The future spouses were still on "you" when Zinaida Nikolaevna, to Meyerhold's amazement, suddenly said: "Knives stick out of your heart." These were the first symptoms of brain poisoning with typhoid poison. Such intoxications usually lead to violent insanity (and Zinaida Nikolaevna had an alternation of several manias). But the attacks soon pass, although the consequences may accompany the patient to the very grave. Meyerhold knew that in order to be cured, Reich had to be loaded with interesting work and protected from unrest. What he did throughout his life together. 
The last performance for Meyerhold was the French love melodrama of the Dumas son, The Lady of the Camellias. The master staged the performance exclusively for Reich and counting on Reich.
But once in the hall there was a spectator who not only appreciated the amazing decoration and beauty of the French aristocratic court, he understood the subtext of the performance, the desire for a beautiful, prosperous life free from ideology. That spectator was Stalin. And in 1938, the Committee for the Arts adopted a resolution on the liquidation of the Vsevolod Meyerhold Theater. The last performance of The Lady of the Camellias took place on the evening of January 7th. Having played the final scene - the death of Margarita - Zinaida Nikolaevna lost consciousness. She was carried backstage in her arms. The theater was closed as "hostile to Soviet art".
So, the Meyerhold Theater was closed, and a real protracted persecution of the famous director began. Newspapers blackened his work in every possible way, and a woman tormented by her ghosts rushed about in his house. The suspicious, vulnerable, cornered old man looked after his wife like a nanny, and she struggled, trying to break the ropes that tied her to the bed. The doctors did not encourage him, and he, perhaps no longer believing in anything, brought her a drink and wiped her forehead with a damp towel. Miracles rarely happen, but sometimes they do happen: Meyerhold, who was crouching in the next room, was awakened by indistinct muttering, he went in to his wife and saw that she, having raised herself in bed, looked at her hands and said in an undertone: “What dirt ...”
He brought warm water, spoke to her - and realized that Zinaida Reich had regained her sanity. 
Meyerhold was arrested on June 20, 1939 in his Leningrad apartment. On February 1, 1940, Meyerhold was tried, sentenced to death with confiscation of property, and the next day the sentence was carried out. He never found out that his beloved Zinaida had been dead for seven months. 
On the day when Vsevolod Emilievich was arrested, a search was carried out in their Moscow apartment in Bryusovsky Lane. Probably, Zinaida Nikolaevna foresaw trouble: she prudently sent her two children from her marriage to Yesenin - Tatyana and Konstantin - from home. A few days later, on July 15, 1939, she was found half-dead in her own bedroom, with multiple stab wounds. To the ambulance doctor's attempts to stop the bleeding, she replied: "Leave me, doctor, I'm dying ..." She died on the way to the hospital.
It is still not known exactly what happened on that fateful day. All valuables - rings, bracelets, gold watches - were left lying on the table next to the bed. Nothing was missing from the house. Someone claimed that the housekeeper, who was found with a broken head, frightened off the thieves.
Zinaida Reich was buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery, not far from Yesenin's grave. The place where Meyerhold is buried is still unknown. Subsequently, an inscription was added to her monument: "Vsevolod Emilievich Meyerhold." So even after death they were together. Bright life, terrible death, great love...
Zinaida Nikolaevna Reich. She was born on June 21 (July 3), 1894 in the village of Near Melnitsy near Odessa - she was killed on July 15, 1939 in Moscow. Russian and Soviet theater actress. Honored Artist of the RSFSR. The first wife of the poet Sergei Yesenin.
Zinaida Reich was born on June 21 (July 3, New Style) July 1894 in the village of Blizhnie Melnitsy near Odessa.
Father - Nikolai Andreevich Reich (1862-1942), his birth name is August Reich. Originally from Silesia, German. He worked as a railroad engineer.
Mother - Anna Ivanovna Viktorova (1867-1945), Russian.
Zinaida's father was a Social Democrat, a member of the RSDLP since 1897, and the daughter adhered to her father's views.
In 1907, due to his father's participation in revolutionary events, the family was expelled from Odessa and settled in Bendery, where his father got a job as a mechanic in railway workshops. Zinaida entered the gymnasium for girls of Vera Gerasimenko, but, having finished only 8 classes, she was expelled for political reasons.
Since 1913 - a member of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs).
Her mother, Anna Ivanovna, hardly managed to obtain a certificate of secondary education for her daughter. After that, Zinaida left for Petrograd, and her parents moved to the city of Oryol to her mother's older sister, Varvara Ivanovna Danziger.
In Petrograd, Zinaida Reich entered the Higher Women's Historical, Literary and Law Courses of N. P. Raev, where, in addition to studying basic disciplines, she took sculpture lessons and studied foreign languages. After graduation, she worked as a secretary-typist in the editorial office of the Socialist-Revolutionary newspaper Delo Naroda, where at the age of twenty-three she met her future husband, who was published in this newspaper.
From August 1918 in Orel she worked as an inspector of the People's Commissariat for Education. Soon she became the head of the theatrical and cinematographic section of the Oryol district military commissariat, and from June 1 to October 1, 1919 she was the head of the arts subdepartment in the provincial department of public education.
From March 1921, Reich taught theater and costume history in Orel at theater courses.
In the autumn of 1921, she became a student at the Higher Director's Workshops in Moscow, where she studied with S. I. Yutkevich. He led this workshop, whom Reich met when she worked at the People's Commissariat for Education and soon became his wife.
She made her stage debut on January 19, 1924 at the Meyerhold Theater in the role of Aksyusha in the play "The Forest" by A. N. Ostrovsky. Reich was one of the most famous Moscow actresses, in the 1930s she became the leading actress of the Meyerhold Theater. For thirteen years of work in GOSTiM, she played a little more than ten roles. Meyerhold, sincerely loving his wife, did everything to make her the only star of his theater.
According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Zinaida was a woman of rare beauty. Passion and temper were combined in it with sophistication and grace. Slender, tall, dark-eyed and black-haired, with delicate features, Reich was flamboyant and showy.
In 1934, he watched the play "The Lady of the Camellias", in which Reich played the main role, and he did not like the performance. Criticism fell upon Meyerhold with accusations of aestheticism. Zinaida Reich wrote in a letter to Stalin that he did not understand art.
In 1938, GOSTiM was closed, and soon Meyerhold was arrested. Outside this theater, Reich's artistic activity was interrupted.
The murder of Zinaida Reich
On the night of July 14-15, 1939, Zinaida Reich was brutally murdered by unknown people who entered her Moscow apartment in Bryusov Lane at night.
The attackers inflicted seventeen knife wounds on her and fled. The actress died on the way to the hospital. This happened 24 days after Meyerhold's arrest.
The mystery of her death remains unsolved. The initial charge of the murder of Zinaida Reich was brought against Meyerhold's friend, Honored Artist of the RSFSR, soloist of the Bolshoi Theater Dmitry Golovin, and his son, director Vitaly Golovin.
V. T. Varnakov (07/27/1941), A. I. Kurnosov and A. M. Ogoltsov (07/28/1941) were shot with the charge of murdering Reich by the verdict of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR.
She was buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery in Moscow (section 17), in the same grave with her son, Konstantin Yesenin. “Reich was brutally, mysteriously killed a few days after Meyerhold’s arrest and buried quietly, and one person followed her coffin,” Olga Bergholz wrote in her diary on March 13, 1941.
Zinaida Reich (documentary)
Personal life of Zinaida Reich:
On July 30, 1917, she married Sergei Yesenin, whom she met while working at the editorial office of the Socialist-Revolutionary newspaper Delo Naroda.
They got married during their trip to the homeland of Alexei Ganin, a close friend of Yesenin. The wedding took place in the ancient stone church of Kirik and Julitta in the village of Tolstikovo, Vologda district. Witnesses from the side of the groom were: the Spassky volost, the village of Ivanovo peasant Pavel Pavlovich Khitrov and the Ustyansk volost, the village of Ustya, the peasant Sergey Mikhailovich Baraev; from the side of the bride: the Arkhangelsk volost, the village of Konshino, the peasant Alexei Alekseevich Ganin and the city of Vologda, the merchant's son Dmitry Dmitrievich Devyatkov. The sacrament of the wedding was performed: the priest Viktor Pevgov with the psalmist Alexei Kratirov.
“One hundred came out, I’m getting married. Zinaida, ”her father Nikolai Reich received such a telegram in July 1917 and sent money to his daughter in Vologda.
At the end of August 1917, the young people arrived in Orel with Alexei Ganin to celebrate a modest wedding, to meet Zinaida's parents and relatives. In September they returned to Petrograd, where they lived separately for some time. In early 1918 Yesenin left Petrograd.
In April 1918, Zinaida Yesenina, in anticipation of childbirth, went to Oryol to her parents. There, on May 29, 1918, she gave birth to a daughter, who was named Tatyana.
After the retreat from Orel of the White Army of A.I. Denikin, Zinaida Yesenina, together with her daughter, went to her husband in Moscow. For about a year they lived together, but a break soon followed, and Zinaida, taking her daughter, left for her parents. Leaving her daughter with her parents in Orel, she returned to her husband, but soon they parted again. On February 3, 1920, in the House of Mother and Child in Moscow, she gave birth to a son, Konstantin. The child immediately fell seriously ill, and Zinaida urgently took him to Kislovodsk. Little Kostya was cured, but Zinaida herself fell ill.
The break with Yesenin and the illness of her son greatly affected her health. The treatment took place in a clinic for the nervously ill.
On February 19, 1921, the court of the city of Orel received a statement: “I ask you not to refuse your disposal of my divorce from my wife Zinaida Nikolaevna Yesenina-Reich. I leave our children Tatiana, three years old, and son Konstantin, one year old, to be raised by my ex-wife Zinaida Nikolaevna Reich, taking on their material support, in which I sign. Sergey Yesenin".
In 1922, while a student at the Higher Director's Workshops in Moscow, Zinaida Reich married director Vsevolod Meyerhold.
In the summer of 1922, together with Meyerhold, they took the children from Orel to Moscow - to a house on Novinsky Boulevard. Meyerhold adopted Tatyana and Konstantin, loved and cared for them like a father. Sergei Yesenin also came to their apartment to visit his children. Soon Zinaida's parents also moved from Orel to their daughter in Moscow.
Theatrical works of Zinaida Reich:
Aksyusha - "Forest"
Sybil - "D.E." Podgaetsky
Stefka - "Teacher Bubus" Fiko
Varvara - Erdman's "Mandate"
Anna Andreevna - "Inspector"
Stella - "The Magnanimous Cuckold" Crommelinck
Sophia - "Woe to the Wit" by "Woe from Wit"
Vera - "Commander 2" by Selvinsky
Phosphoric woman - "Bath"
Carmen - Wisniewski's "Last Resolute"
Goncharova - Olesha's "List of Good Deeds"
Marguerite Gauthier - "The Lady of the Camellias" Dumas son
Popova - "33 fainting" according to Chekhov
Favorite woman, muse Sergei Yesenin And Vsevolod Meyerhold, the famous Moscow actress of the 20th century, Zinaida Reich, never intended to work in the theater and, moreover, did not dream of such great husbands that life gave her. She was born on July 3, 1894 in the family of a railway engineer, a Russified German. Nikolai Andreevich Reich, and a poor noblewoman Anna Ioanova. Having received her secondary education in Kyiv, the girl went to Petrograd to study at the Faculty of History and Literature of the Higher Women's Courses. Zinaida was always drawn to the revolutionary movement, and she quickly joined the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, taking a job as a secretary-typist in the editorial office of the newspaper Delo Naroda. In this publication, her first meeting with her future husband, the young poet Sergei Yesenin, took place.
Zinaida Reich. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
Zinaida Reich and the "robber of curly fields"
Contemporaries of Zinaida Reich claimed that she was a talented, intelligent woman, possessed some kind of magnetic force that attracted men. Many fell in love with her, but Yesenin's friend became especially interested in the girl Alexey Ganin. The poet himself at that time courted Mina Svirskaya, worked in the library at the time of publication.
One day, Ganin and Reich gathered in Solovki, Alexei's homeland, and invited Sergei and Mina on a journey. However, Svirskaya, for family reasons, could not go, but Yesenin during the trip suddenly realized that he was crazy in love with Zinaida and invited her to go ashore to get married. The girl at first offended the sensitive poet, saying that she needed to think, but then she sent a short telegram to her father: “A hundred came out, I’m getting married. Zinaida. With this money, the lovers bought wedding rings and sealed their marriage in a small church near Vologda.
The newlyweds settled in Petrograd on Liteiny. Zinaida tried to create all the conditions for Sergei to be creative. At first, a quiet family life was successful, the poet even dissuaded himself from cheerful bachelor drinking parties. But happiness was short-lived. Despite the fact that Yesenin himself boasted of "Don Juan victories", he was terribly jealous and could not forgive his beloved that he was not the first man in her life.
Every year Yesenin's fame grew, the poet had many admirers and even more drinking companions. After drinking, he became unbearable and made terrible scandals for his wife: first he beat, and then rolled at his feet, begging for forgiveness. In 1917, Zinaida became pregnant and, closer to giving birth, went to her parents in Oryol.
The couple had a girl, who was named after Sergei's mother - Tatiana. After the birth of a child, the new peasant poet did not visit his wife, did not call and did not wait. Zinaida herself came to her husband with a one-year-old daughter. For about a year they lived together, but a break soon followed.
In February 1920, in the House of Mother and Child, a young wife gave birth to a son, Konstantin, whom Sergei did not even consider it necessary to meet. Their meeting happened by chance at the station, then he did not recognize his child, saying only: “Fu! Black! .. Yesenins are not black ... ".
Zinaida Reich with children, Konstantin and Tatyana Yesenin. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
Little Kostya fell seriously ill immediately after birth, and Zinaida was forced to go with her son to Kislovodsk for treatment. The break with Yesenin and the poor health of the baby had a strong impact on the young woman, she ended up in a clinic for the nervously ill. Upon returning to her parents, Zinaida was in for another shock: a telegram arrived in which Sergei asked for a divorce.
The marriage of Reich and Yesenin was annulled in 1921, and in 1924 the “robber of curly fields” dedicated the poignant lines of the poem “Letter to a Woman” to Zinaida, where he sincerely repented of his behavior:
Sergei Yesenin, 1922 Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Forgive me...
I know you are not the one
Do you live
With a serious, intelligent husband;
That you do not need our maeta,
And I myself to you
Not a bit needed.
Muse of the theater
After breaking up with Yesenin, another life awaited Zinaida: new love and professional success. The young woman moved away from the revolutionary movements and moved into the actress. She entered the Higher Theater Workshop, where Vsevolod Meyerhold taught. The eminent director fell desperately in love with a student, despite the fact that he was 20 years older, had a wife with whom he lived all his life, and three children. For the sake of Zinaida, Meyerhold left a large family and adopted her kids. Before the wedding, Vsevolod even asked Yesenin for permission to marry, who remained true to his character, answering: “Do me a favor. I'll be grateful to the grave."
Along with the stage, Zinaida became the meaning of existence for Meyerhold. The skillful director dreamed of making her the only star of the theater, but the woman in the troupe was not loved and not recognized, and critics frankly called mediocre. Soon, because of a quarrel with Zinaida, the great Maria Babanova and Erast Garin left the theater - Reich became the first actress. And over time, and a good actress: love and directorial genius performed a miracle.
Sun. Meyerhold and a portrait of Z. Reich. Photo: public domain
As soon as Zinaida became popular, Yesenin realized who he had lost. Fatherly feelings awakened in him. The poet demanded the opportunity to communicate with children, but most importantly, the actress began secret dates with her ex-husband. Meyerhold knew about these meetings, but endured. Dating was stopped by the unexpected death of the great poet, which was a real blow for Zinaida. At the funeral of Yesenin, Reich lamented: "My sun has gone ...".
After the tragic death of the poet, the Meyerhold family lived for another thirteen quiet years. But their happy life was violated not by a strange man, but by the state. The great director was not pleasing to the authorities: in 1938 the theater was closed, and then he himself was arrested. Zinaida considered everything that was happening a terrible mistake and wrote a letter to Stalin, where she tried to explain that Meyerhold was a brilliant director, and the addressee did not understand anything in the theater. But her note only aggravated the situation: in the summer of 1939, Reich herself was brutally murdered in her own apartment.
After Zinaida's funeral, her children were evicted, and Beria's mistress and his driver moved into their apartment. Six months later, Meyerhold was shot as a "spy for British and Japanese intelligence." This finally ended the difficult love story of an outstanding woman and two men who left a deep mark on the history of Russian culture.
Zinaida Reich was the daughter of a revolutionary. At school, she was in an underground circle and dreamed of doing social work. The actress first appeared on stage in Vsevolod Meyerhold's performance "The Forest" when she was 30 years old. Zinaida Reich was dedicated to poems by her first husband Sergei Yesenin, poets Alexei Ganin and Boris Pasternak. Foreign critics called her "sincere and deeply feeling".
"Girl from a Working Family"
Zinaida Reich. 1920s Moscow. Photo: Alexey Temerin / Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow
Zinaida Reich with her father Nikolai Reich. 1917. Photo: fotoload.ru
Zinaida Reich. Photo: izbrannoe.com
Zinaida Reich was born on July 3, 1894 in Near Mills, a suburb of Odessa. Her father August Reich was a German, a native of Silesia. In Russia, he changed his name to Nikolai and got a job as a railway engineer. Since 1897 he was a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. The mother of the future actress, Anna Viktorova, came from an old noble family.
When Zinaida Reich was 13 years old, her family was expelled from Odessa because of Nikolai Reich's connection with the revolutionaries. The Reichs settled in the Moldovan city of Bendery. There, the actress entered the women's gymnasium of Vera Gerasimenko. She studied well, but from the first grade she was in an underground circle, whose members distributed revolutionary literature. Because of this, Zinaida Reich was expelled from the eighth grade and recognized "politically unreliable". Then the future actress moved to Kyiv, where she entered the Higher Women's Courses. There she became a member of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, and soon she once again changed her place of residence - she moved to Petrograd.
In the capital, Zinaida Reich continued her education: she became a student of the Higher Women's Historical, Literary and Law Courses of Nikolai Raev, went to additional classes in foreign languages and attended a sculpture workshop. The future actress read a lot, among her favorite writers were Knut Hamsun and Leo Tolstoy.
“As a girl from a working-class family, she [Zinaida Reich - Approx. ed] was collected, alien to bohemia and strove primarily for independence. The daughter of an active participant in the labor movement, she was thinking about social activities, among her friends were those who had been in prison and exile. But there was also something restless in her, there was a gift to be shaken by the phenomena of art and poetry. For a time she took sculpture lessons. I read the abyss. One of her favorite writers was then Hamsun, something close to her in the strange alternation of restraint and impulses characteristic of his heroes. All her life later, despite her busyness, she read a lot and voraciously, and rereading War and Peace, she repeated to someone: “Well, how did he know how to turn everyday life into a continuous holiday?”
Daughter of Zinaida Reich Tatyana Yesenina, "Zinaida Nikolaevna Reich", 1971
"Robber from Curly Fields": Zinaida Reich and Sergei Yesenin
Zinaida Reich. Photo: fotoload.ru
Zinaida Reich with children - Konstantin and Tatyana Yesenin. Photo: fotoload.ru
Poet Sergei Yesenin. 1924. Photo: Moses Nappelbaum / Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow
In early September 1917, Reich and Yesenin returned to Petrograd. At first they lived separately: as Tatyana Yesenina wrote, the poet and actress agreed "do not interfere with each other". But soon the couple moved in. Yesenin demanded that his wife leave her job and take up housekeeping. Reich agreed - she dreamed of a family and children. Literary critic Boris Gribanov wrote: “Zinaida Nikolaevna turned out to be a completely economic wife - she was businesslike, neat, and cooked well. Yesenin<...>, yearning for a normal family life, recalled how delicious Reich cooked ". However, the couple often argued. Once they even threw their wedding rings out the window, and then looked for them under the windows of the house.
At the end of 1917, Reich again found work - she became a typist in the People's Commissariat for Food of the RSFSR. Early the next year, after the capital was moved from Petrograd to Moscow, she moved to Moscow with Sergei Yesenin. They settled the spouses in the rooms of the former hotel on Tverskaya Street. Reich's friend Zinaida Geiman recalled: “Sergey Yesenin and Zinaida lived in a poor hotel room. They were uncomfortable, gloomy, bohemian… Crumbs, water, scattered on the table”.
In the same year, Zinaida Reich first appeared on stage. She played Aksyusha in Meyerhold's The Forest, based on the play of the same name by Alexander Ostrovsky. The avant-garde production, in which the director moved the action from the 19th century to the 1920s, brought Reich fame. Critics wrote that the artist mastered Meyerhold's biomechanics well - special exercises that developed the actor's physical fitness, helped him accurately perform the movements necessary for a particular scene. Ilya Ehrenburg recalled: “In a strong ensemble, among the grotesque intersections, a lyrical note sounded especially clean, sincerely, it was led by Aksyusha - Zinaida Reich with some unmistakable inner conviction”.
On December 28, 1925, Sergei Yesenin committed suicide in Leningrad at the Angleterre Hotel. Zinaida Reich was at the funeral of the poet. She took his death hard. Konstantin Yesenin wrote: “Mother lay in the bedroom, almost losing the ability of real perception. Meyerhold walked with measured steps between the bedroom and the bathroom, carrying water in jugs and wet towels. Mother once or twice ran out to us, impulsively hugged us and said that we were now orphans..
In the next few years, Reich often played leading roles in the performances of the State Theater named after Vs. Meyerhold (GosTiMa). She played the mayor's wife Anna Andreevna in The Government Inspector based on the work of the same name by Nikolai Gogol, Sophia in Woe to the Wit based on Alexander Griboyedov's play Woe from Wit, Don Laura in Pushkin's The Stone Guest.
In addition to positive reviews, notes appeared in the Soviet press in which Reich was called a mediocre actress. The poet Vladimir Mayakovsky stood up for the artist: “Here they say: Zinaida Reich. They put her in the first place. Why? Wife. It is necessary to put the question not in such a way that such and such a lady is put forward because she is his wife, but that he married her because she is a good artist.. Reich was one of Boris Pasternak's favorite actresses. After the release of the play "Woe to the Wit", he dedicated the poem "Meyerholds" to her and Meyerhold.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Zinaida Reich helped arrested writers, including playwright Nikolai Erdman, exiled to Yeniseisk. In the apartment of Reich and Meyerhold on Novinsky Boulevard, art evenings were held, which were attended by GosTiM actors, artists, writers and politicians, including People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Genrikh Yagoda and People's Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunacharsky. Foreigners who visited the USSR were often invited there - correspondents of foreign newspapers, artists.
Reich was an extremely interesting and charming woman<...>She was always surrounded by a large circle of admirers.<...>Reich loved a cheerful and brilliant life: she loved dancing parties and restaurants with gypsies, nightly balls in Moscow theaters and banquets in the people's commissariats. She loved clothes from Paris, Vienna and Warsaw, fur coats of fur seals and astrakhan, French perfumes.<...>and loved her fans. There is no reason to assert that she was a faithful wife to V. E. [Meyerhold - Approx. ed] - rather, there is evidence to think the exact opposite<...>The Reich was an invariably attractive center of society. And the attractiveness and charm of the hostess were skillfully used by the Lubyanka bosses, turning the Meyerhold residence into a fashionable Moscow salon with foreigners.
Yuri Elagin, "Dark Genius"
Letter to Stalin and assassination
Zinaida Reich as Marguerite Gauthier in Vsevolod Meyerhold's The Lady of the Camellias. 1934–1937 State Theater named after Vs. Meyerhold, Moscow. Photo: Boris Fabisovich / Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow
From left to right: poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and photographer Alexander Rodchenko (standing), composer Dmitry Shostakovich and director Vsevolod Meyerhold (sitting) at the piano. 1926. Photo: onedio.ru
Zinaida Reich with her husband Vsevolod Meyerhold. Photo: svoboda.org
In the mid-1930s, the attitude of the Soviet authorities towards the Meyerhold Theater began to change. In the press, in his productions, they found "tragic perception of the collapse of individualistic ideology", and the director's innovative techniques were called "naughty breaking". Critics met the new performances with restraint. The premiere of The Bathhouse by Vladimir Mayakovsky was unsuccessful, the performances of Nikolai Erdman's play The Suicides and Nikolai Ostrovsky's novel How the Steel Was Tempered were banned.
In 1934, Meyerhold staged the play The Lady with the Camellias based on the novel of the same name by Alexandre Dumas son at the GosTeam. In it, Zinaida Reich played the main role - Marguerite Gauthier. The performance became popular in the USSR. Based on his motives, the sculptor Natalya Danko at the Leningrad Porcelain Factory created a statuette of Zinaida Reich. The production was also praised by foreign critics. The playwright Piñero Virgilio wrote: “The acting performance does not need any corrections, but above all, much above all is the comrade who played the role of Marguerite.<...>She plays simply, without artificial tragedy, humane and sincere, deeply feeling ". However, the success of The Lady with the Camellias did not save the Meyerhold Theater from closing.
In 1936, the Pravda newspaper published an article titled "Muddle Instead of Music", which criticized Dmitri Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. It first appeared the word "Meyerholdism": “Leftist art in general denies in the theater simplicity, realism, the clarity of the image, the natural sound of the word. This is [Shostakovich's opera - Approx. ed] - transferring to the opera, to music the most negative features of "Meyerholdism" in multiplied form". After the article was published, Zinaida Reich wrote a letter to Joseph Stalin asking him to meet.
“I argue with you all the time in my head, all the time I prove you wrong sometimes in art.<...>Forgive my insolence... I am the daughter of a worker—this is the main thing for me now—I believe in my class instinct...<...>You are so endlessly, endlessly deceived, hidden and lie that you have correctly addressed the masses now. For you, I am now also the voice of the masses, and you must hear from me both bad and good. You will figure out for yourself what is right and what is wrong. I believe in your sensitivity.<...>But you understand Mayakovsky, you understand Chaplin, you understand Meyerhold too.
Stalin did not answer Reich's letter, and already on January 7, 1938, by a decree “On the liquidation of the Theater. Sun. Meyerhold” GosTiM was closed. The document said: "Theatre. Meyerhold, throughout his existence, could not free himself from the alien to Soviet art, through and through bourgeois, formalist positions.. The closure of GosTiM affected Reich's health: she was being treated for depression. Several times Meyerhold tried to go abroad with his family, but did not receive permission from the Soviet government.
June 20, 1939 Vsevolod Meyerhold was arrested on suspicion of espionage. His apartment in Moscow was sealed and searched. In the same place, a few weeks after Meyerhold's arrest, on the night of July 14-15, 1939, Zinaida Reich was killed. The actress was buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery in Moscow, not far from the grave of Sergei Yesenin.
The official investigation into the case considered that Reich's murder was committed by "for the purpose of robbery". However, relatives and acquaintances of the actress did not agree with him. They believed that the crime was organized by the NKVD. Soon after Reich's death, Lavrenty Beria's subordinates moved into her apartment.
In 1988, Tatyana Yesenina turned to the Central Committee of the CPSU with a request to find the perpetrators of the murder of her mother. She was told that it was impossible.
They got married through a twist of fate. 22-year-old Zinochka Reich, laughter and beauty, was going to marry the poet Alexei Ganin. The girl worked as a typist in the newspaper of the Left Social Revolutionaries and often went to the library during publication, to her friend Mina Svirskaya. Mina was courted by the novice poet Sergei Yesenin. Alexei and Zina invited the couple on a trip to the Solovki. On the eve of departure, it turned out that Mina could not travel for family reasons.
The three of us went.
Yesenin was friends with Ganin. But, left without a companion, he suddenly realized that he was crazy in love with his friend's bride, Zina. He invited her to go ashore and get married in the first church. Light curls and affectionate words of the young poet turned Zinochka's head. She agreed without hesitation. True, before that he asked if she had intimacy with her fiancé.
The girl did not dare to tell the truth that she had long lost her innocence. The wedding night was a disappointment for Yesenin. Having forgiven her lie, later he often reproached her, and sometimes he went berserk at the thought that he had not been the first.
The young people did not find an apartment in Moscow, sometimes they lived apart. The glory of Sergei Yesenin was expanding, according to Lidia Chukovskaya, "many women were captivated by his poems, his beautiful powdered face and skillfully curled wheat curls." But he did not pay much attention to the fans. He was more interested in how best to wear a forelock - on the left or on the right side. Zinaida Reich became pregnant and went to give birth to her parents. And the work of her husband was fueled by a strong male friendship with the poet Anatoly Mariengof. They rented a house for a couple. Yesenin called Anatoly his "berry".
The room was cold. Friends kept warm under one blanket. The poet did not change his lifestyle, and when Zinaida returned to Moscow with her one-year-old daughter. Yesenin once complained to his friends that Anatoly in every way dared him from his wife, and then he took it and got married himself. The birth of a son did not save either. Yesenin asked Mariengof to convince Reich that he had an affair with another woman. Zina believed and left. The poet did not recognize the newborn son either. He was infatuated with Isadora Duncan.
And Zinaida, having despaired of arranging a family life, moved into an actress. She entered the Higher Theater Workshops, where the famous Meyerhold taught. Vsevolod Emilievich was seriously carried away by the student. He was married, raised three daughters, but love for a student who was 20 years younger than him overshadowed everything. The director invited Zinochka to marry him, after asking permission from Yesenin. He, grimacing, bowed and said: “Do me a favor. I'll be grateful to the grave." Meyerhold adopted his children. And the director's wife, having learned that he was leaving for a young woman, cursed the traitor and his passion in front of the holy images. Who knows if this curse had an effect, but years later they both suffered a terrible death ...
Reich soon became the prima of the Meyerhold Theater. The troupe took a dislike to the director's wife. She was said to move around the stage like a "cow". But especially for her, they came up with such mise en scenes, where all the action unfolded around Reich and she did not have to move around. Zina quarreled with the great Maria Babanova - Meyerhold pointed her to the door. Erast Garin also had to leave.
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However, Zinaida really performed many roles with talent. As soon as she became a popular actress, Yesenin suddenly realized who he had lost. Fatherly feelings awakened in him. He demanded the opportunity to communicate with children, Zinaida began secret meetings with her ex-husband. Meyerhold knew about them, but endured. Yesenin's death was a heavy blow for her. At his funeral, she lamented: “My sun has gone ...”
On stage, Reich sometimes did not control herself, she went into hysterics. And if to the audience such manifestations of feelings could seem only a deep penetration into the role, then Meyerhold knew that these were symptoms of a terrible disease. Her nerves gave out in the most inopportune situations. At a reception in the Kremlin, she once furiously attacked Kalinin himself with the words: “Everyone knows that you are a womanizer!”
Back in 1921, 26-year-old Zina fell ill with terrible diseases - lupus and typhus. Later, signs of brain poisoning with typhoid poison began to make themselves felt. This usually led to confusion. Work was the best medicine. The director and loving husband knew about this, and for the time being it helped. But in 1937, another persecution of Meyerhold began. Zinaida understood how everything could end. And she had a seizure. She shouted that the food was poisoned, seeing her relatives standing at the window, she demanded to move away, fearing a shot. She jumped up at night, trying to escape undressed into the street. Doctors advised to put her in a psychiatric hospital. But Meyerhold did not allow it. He spoon-fed her, endured when his wife drove him away, not recognizing. And indeed, soon her mind returned. And in January 1938, Zinaida went on stage for the last time and burst into tears after the final phrase. The interrogations soon began. The theater was closed. Reich wrote a letter to Stalin. They say she threatened to publicize the true causes of Yesenin's death known to her.
A few days later, two men entered her apartment through the balcony. She was sitting at the table in the office. The savages jumped up behind her. One held, and the other stabbed in the heart and neck. The housekeeper woke up screaming. But as soon as she ran into the room, she received a blow to the head. The janitor heard the noise. He saw how the killers, having jumped out of the entrance, dived into the "black funnel". Soon the housekeeper was arrested and sent to camps, and the janitor disappeared without a trace.
After Reich's funeral, her children were evicted, and Beria's mistress and his driver moved into their apartment. Six months later, Meyerhold was shot as a "spy for British and Japanese intelligence."