How Sergei Yesenin really died. How did Yesenin die? In which hotel did Yesenin die?

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

The room was destroyed. Yesenin hung on vertical steam heating pipes. There were many injuries recorded on his body. But the investigation insisted on suicide.

According to the official version, it was considered this way: Sergey Yesenin committed suicide, but it turned out that this version does not stand up to the facts.

Now, ninety years later, many researchers (for example, St. Petersburg writer Nikolai Astafiev in the book “Tragedy in Angleterre: Characters and Performers”) claim: Yesenina killed, and many of the documents included in the case were falsified.

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

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

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

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

Nikolay Astafiev believes that this is an obvious fake, that it is not a hand Yesenina.

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

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

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

Petersburg writer Viktor Kuznetsov, While studying the documents of the Angleterre Hotel, I discovered that Yesenin did not live there at all! The poet's name is not on the list of residents of this hotel at the time when his corpse was allegedly discovered there, hanging on a steam heating pipe.

Memoir note by Yesenin, mentioned in the memoirs of V. Erlich (front side), RO IRLI, Fund 817, op. 1, storage unit thirty

None of the hotel staff or guests staying there Yesenina I haven't seen it these days. And all the “witnesses” who later testified about communication with the poet in his room at Angleterre, including Ehrlich, were secret agents of the GPU.

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

The answers received are like a carbon copy: “The cause of the poet’s death has been confirmed as a result of compression of the neck organs with a noose during hanging.”

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

Meanwhile, there are dozens circumstantial evidence, which you can work on.

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

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

Power of attorney written by V.I. Ehrlich, with an inadequate signature S.A. Yesenina

Third question: why wasn’t the so-called suicide note, the poem “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye...” attached to the investigative documents? If she is given such a status, then she must be on official business.

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

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

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

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

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

“There is Yesenin’s poem “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye...”, which he, before committing suicide, and he certainly committed suicide one hundred percent, wrote down in blood on a piece of paper and gave it to Wolf Ehrlich. Let those who defend this so-called “version” of the murder first prove to us how the killers were able to force him to invent this poem, compose it, and then write it on a piece of paper in blood.”

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

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

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

This is the first.

The second is an unnaturally bent arm. A living poet could hold on to the pipe, but after death the muscles weaken, and the suicide’s arms should fall along the body, which did not happen.

Third, scars from the lip to the chin. They are formed if the offender strangles the victim from behind.

Sergei Yesenin with his sister

Doubted suicide Sergei Yesenin and his contemporaries: Anna Akhmatova, Pavel Luknitsky, Osip Mandelstam. They doubted because they knew the daring Yesenina, and even better - the time in which they lived.

Fourth – a pierced forehead, that is, the official version explains the dent as a burn that he received Yesenin after hanging from the hot heating pipe on which he was hanging, and not from a blow during his lifetime.

But the Voronezh director Evgeniy Parshchikov, author of the film “Yesenin. 1925 – 2010,” I’m sure that’s not the case. He attracted the poet's relatives and independent experts, who found out that the photograph of the number taken after the tragedy was a fake. It was deployed to somehow explain facts that were inconvenient to the investigation.

Yesenin's room at the Angleterre Hotel after the tragedy

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

“I knew the poetess Ida Nappelbaum... So. Her brother Lev helped his father, a photographer, during filming. He told his sister how he helped a policeman standing on a stepladder remove the poet’s body from a heating pipe. He witnessed the fact that Yesenin was not hanging in a noose, as is the case with suicides, but the rope was wound around his neck several times. That’s why his body had to be removed before the writers arrived - he was hanged in a very improbable manner.”(Nikolai Brown, poet, translator, former political prisoner, public figure).

The possible ideologists behind the poet's elimination included Blumkin, and Trotsky, and Agranov, who was called the executioner of the Russian intelligentsia.

Sergei Yesenin with his mother

In suicide Yesenina The clergy also doubted it, so much so that the priests considered it possible to perform the poet’s funeral service at the funeral, which is unacceptable for suicides.

Church memorial services are still held at the poet’s grave. Priest Andrey Dudarev comes every year.

“Who can say that he committed suicide? Scar from the rope on which Yesenin allegedly hanged himself. If a person hangs himself, then this strip stretches from the chin to the back of the head, certainly from the bottom up, but here it is perpendicular to the spine. This is a noose tied around the poet’s neck and crushing not only a great man, but also Russian culture.”

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

Sergei Yesenin at work

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

Victor KOLMOGOROV

Hotel Angleterre at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century (light-colored building on the left in the foreground)

Many are convinced: Sergei Yesenin could not voluntarily die. Hanging himself is too trivial and... unpoetic for the legendary poet.

So was Yesenin killed or not?

Versions of murder

There are many versions claiming that Yesenin was killed. Some believe that in room 5 of the International Hotel (formerly Angleterre), where the poet settled, he was first severely beaten, and only then, unconscious, was hung in a noose.

Another version. They put Yesenin on the sofa, hit him on the forehead with the butt of a pistol, where a dent had formed, then they wrapped him in a carpet and tried to drag him out onto the balcony in order to take him down and take him out. But the door jammed, then the killers sat down to drink, made mischief in the room, dragged the body back and, cutting the tendon to straighten the already frozen right arm, hung it in a noose (in the picture the right arm is actually bent at the elbow joint, there is a wound on it).

All these conflicting versions are based on the same documents: the inspection report of the scene of the incident, drawn up by the local warden of the 2nd police department of Leningrad N. Gorbov and the report of the forensic medical examination of the corpse by Professor G. Gilyarevsky, post-mortem photographs and face masks poet. It is worth noting that among the enthusiasts trying to unravel the mystery of Yesenin’s death, there were poets, journalists, doctors, philosophers, teachers, artists, even a pathophysiologist and a former investigator, but there was not a single professional - a forensic doctor or criminologist.

All this prompted the All-Russian Yesenin Writers' Committee to seek help from the Bureau of Forensic Medical Examination of the Moscow Health Committee with a request to create a commission to clarify the circumstances of the poet's death. Later, professionals from the Russian Ministry of Health and leading experts in the field of forensic medicine were involved in the case.

Investigative experiment

The inspection report of the scene of the incident was drawn up by N. Gorbov superficially and unprofessionally: the situation in the room, the condition of the door and window locks, cadaveric changes, etc. were not described.

According to the protocol, Yesenin’s body was hanging right near the ceiling - this gave reason to doubt suicide, since the height of the ceiling in the room was supposedly 4-5 m, and the size of the overturned cabinet was 1.5 m and the poet’s height was 168 cm.

It was necessary to find out the real height of the ceiling. The matter was complicated by the fact that in 1986 the Angleterre Hotel was reconstructed. But a photograph of the 5th issue has been preserved with the inscription on the back: “May 18, 1926, 5th issue of the GOST. "Leningradskaya", formerly "Angleterre", where Yesenin lived and died." The picture was taken through an open door, visible is a vertical steam heating pipe, a carpeted floor, a fragment of the ceiling, a desk, a lamp, a chair, and a wardrobe.

Using well-known formulas and guidelines (in particular, based on the back of the table, which is closest to the wall plane), forensic scientists calculated the ceiling height to be... no more than 352 cm!

But there remained one more “weighty” argument from supporters of the poet’s murder. Thus, former investigator E. Khlystalov writes that it is impossible to tie a rope to a vertically standing pipe: under the weight of the body it will certainly slide down. To confirm his words, he recalls an experiment conducted by students of the Literary Institute in Angleterre, when the hotel was still intact: a rope tied to a vertical pipe was pulled down with a jerk of the hand.

And although judicial practice shows that you can hang yourself not only on such a pipe, but also on a door handle, the back of a chair, special experiments had to be carried out: a 169 cm tall extra was tied alternately to painted oil paint pipes of different diameters, twisted ropes made of hemp, cotton, silk with a thickness of 0.6 to 1.0 cm. Making from 1 to 6 turns and tying with all kinds of knots, he unsuccessfully tried to pull the rope off the vertical. Its freely hanging end could withstand a weight load of more than 100 kg.

Is it possible to jump out of a loop?

Proponents of the murder were confused by the fact that the noose did not cover the entire surface of the neck - the groove was directed obliquely upward and was not closed. When hanging, the groove is always directed this way, since one end of the rope is attached to an object, in this case a pipe, and the other is pulled down by the weight of the body, and the greatest pressure is placed on this place of the neck.

Could Yesenin jump out of an open loop? Is self-help possible in a loop? No. Professors of forensic medicine Minovich from Romania and Fleichmann from Germany, independently of each other, wanting to study the phenomena of asphyxia (suffocation caused by a lack of oxygen in the blood), conducted experiments on themselves: assistants suspended them on a soft rope, and Minovich managed to stay in the loop for up to 26 seconds ! Scientists noted terrible pain in the neck, excessive heaviness in the head, whistling in the ears, turning into bell ringing, and mortal melancholy. But, most importantly, from the very first seconds there is a desire to throw off the loop and... the impossibility of even lifting a finger! When asphyxia occurs, muscle adynamia occurs. Even if a person hangs himself from a door handle, he cannot straighten his knees.

What did the masks say?

Most of the versions were generated by the entry in the act: “In the middle of the forehead... a depressed groove 4 cm long and 1.5 cm wide.” Gilyarevsky himself explained it by the pressure difference in the skull during strangulation. Proponents of the murder theory interpreted the depression as a blow with the handle of a pistol, an iron, or a blunt heavy object “with terrible force».

According to the examination of the corpse, it is clear that the bones of the skull are not damaged and there is no fracture. But the “pathfinders” doubted Gilyarevsky’s impartiality. Then forensic experts examined five of the poet’s death masks, establishing that the “slightly arc-shaped” depression had a depth of 0.4-0.5 mm (this is the thickness of the skin) without mechanical damage to the bones of the skull. So, it is obvious that this is a trace from the pipe: since the loop node was on the left, the head deviated to the right and was leaning against the pipe at the time of death.

To confirm the conclusion, plasticine casts were made from plaster masks, which were struck in the frontal part with cylindrical objects. As the experiment showed, the object should have a diameter of 3.7 cm, which exactly corresponds to the parameters of a water pipe.

"And, bleeding..."

The version that Yesenin’s veins were first cut, and then the poet was hung in a noose, is found among many. It is known that during the inspection the district police officer found a cut “on right hand above the elbow on the palm side” and “there are scratches on the left hand on the hand.” Is it possible to move a cut arm, tie a rope to a pipe, or move furniture while losing blood? Forensic experts have more than once encountered the fact that people did the wrong thing with cut veins and arteries. But what kind of “blood loss” are we talking about? No traces of her were found in the room, and from the report it follows that all the wounds are superficial and do not penetrate the thickness of the skin. This means that Yesenin’s veins were not cut. From various sources it is known that from December 26 to 27 Yesenin was composing, but, not finding ink in the issue, he decided to write down the poems in blood and made an incision. Already today, experts have established the authenticity of Yesenin’s handwriting and the fact that the poem “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye” was written in blood in an amount ... no more than 0.02 ml.

And yet asphyxia

So, Yesenin’s death was caused by asphyxia - compression of the neck organs by a noose tightening under the weight of the body. He could have hanged himself at that height. There were no deep cuts on the hands. There is a pipe mark on the forehead. It is safe to say that there are no marks on Yesenin’s body characteristic of fighting or self-defense.

It is worth noting that all experiments were carried out in the presence of a prosecutor-criminologist of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation.

“Kill” at any cost?

It would seem that the Yesenin case has been put to rest. But versions of contract murder continue to multiply and take root in the consciousness of ordinary people: the recent television series of the father and son Bezrukov is an eloquent confirmation of this.

Why do they continue to “kill” Yesenin so persistently? Because he is a truly Russian poet, and the church, to put it mildly, does not welcome suicide? Or maybe, as T. Flor-Yesenin, however, accurately put it about another person: “Someone else’s fame is always attractive because it makes it possible... to “break the blockade” of one’s own obscurity”?

The writer, playwright and folklorist was killed in St. Petersburg on December 27, 1925. The killers moved the body of the poet to room 5 of the Angleterre Hotel and tied it to a heating pipe under the ceiling, staging a suicide. There is hope that 85 years after the death of Sergei Yesenin, the light of truth will shed, and the secret of his death will be revealed to all the people of Russia, which the poet loved and sang so much about.

O Rus' - the raspberry field And the blue that fell into the river - I love Your lake melancholy to the point of joy and pain.

85 years ago, Sergei Yesenin was found dead and was declared a suicide. For decades, the authorities did not allow anyone to doubt this, hiding the truth by any means.

Only in the last twenty-odd years did facts begin to emerge that contradict the declared version of the poet’s suicide, and these facts began to be discussed and studied. However, to this day, despite the fact that there are materials that prove that a premeditated murder was committed, government bodies prevent a thorough and objective analysis of the circumstances of the poet’s death.

On December 28, 1925, Sergei Yesenin was found hanged in a hotel room. The news of this shocked many. Some were not surprised by this outcome, since Yesenin had ill-wishers. The version of suicide was also supported by emigrant writers of the 20s. They said that the Soviet government hounded the poet. But there were also those who did not believe in the poet’s suicide. On December 29, 1925, the evening newspapers of Leningrad, and on December 30, newspapers throughout Russia reported that the poet Sergei Yesenin committed suicide at the International Hotel.

Imaginary friends, acquaintances and friends of the poet published their memories of Yesenin in newspapers, collections and magazines, in which they expressed their regret over the death of the poet, recalled how he drank, behaved hooliganly and changed women. Critics fueled these memories with their “evidence”: in Yesenin’s poems, many saw the proximity of death and disappointment in life, mental disorder. A letter purported to be Yesenin's suicide letter was published, allegedly written by him in blood before hanging himself.

“Goodbye, my friend, goodbye. My dear, you are in my chest. Destined separation Promises a meeting ahead. Goodbye, my friend, without a hand or a word, Don’t be sad and don’t sadden your eyebrows, - In this life, dying is not new, But living, of course, is not new.”

This poem was not presented to the investigation, and it only appeared published in newspapers. It was subsequently established that it was written several months before Yesenin’s death and was addressed to his friend Alexei Ganin, who was in prison before his execution. When journalists met with the mother of the poet Sergei Yesenin, Tatyana Fedorovna, she said that Seryozha wrote these lines when he was in his homeland, and they were written in pencil, not in blood, and added with bitterness that Seryozha was killed bad people. However, all these years, the published eight lines, presented by newspapermen as a dying, farewell poem, were presented as evidence of his suicide.

Shortly before his death, Sergei Yesenin wrote in the article “Russians”: “There was no more disgusting and vile time in literary life than the time in which we live. The difficult state of the state over these years in the international struggle for its independence, by chance circumstances, brought into the arena of literature revolutionary sergeants who have merits for the proletariat, but not at all for art...” It was they - the “revolutionary sergeants,” the enemies of the poet, who, wanting to explain the reason for his suicide, began to look for the answer in his poems. They used the words about death in Yesenin’s poems as evidence against the poet himself.

However, there was such a publication. The day after the death of the poet, Krasnaya Gazeta published an article by Boris Lavrenev “In Memory of Yesenin”, with the subtitle: “Executed by degenerates” and with the epigraph: “And you will not wash away the righteous blood of the poet with all your black blood.” And the article ended like this: “And my moral duty instructs me to tell the naked truth once in my life and call the executioners and murderers - executioners and murderers, whose black blood will not wash away the blood stain on the shirt of the tortured poet.”

Writers who really knew Sergei Yesenin well and did not recognize the poet’s suicide deeply felt the loss that Russia suffered. They carried out their investigations. And new generations are again conducting their investigations. Publications of these materials appeared in the media. Most of the documents have never been examined by handwriting experts, and there is no complete certainty that they are authentic and signed by those persons whose names are indicated on them. Many materials are still in secret archives and are not released to researchers.

Investigative actions still raise doubts. What was confusing was that the investigation ended very quickly. Acts and several protocols of inquiries - and that's all. There was no protocol describing the scene of the incident, and no investigative experiment was carried out. In January 1926, the investigation was not supplemented with a single document and was terminated.

Large research work in the investigation of the death of Sergei Yesenin - identifying the reasons that led to the murder, those who ordered and the specific perpetrators of the crime - was carried out by an associate professor of the department of literature of the St. Petersburg Academy of Culture, a member of the Writers' Union Russian Federation Victor Kuznetsov.

In his work “The Mystery of Yesenin’s Death,” the author wrote:

“In the story with Yesenin, the sadists acted ahead. It’s paradoxical, but true: there is not a single convincing evidence that the poet committed suicide. But there is quite a lot of evidence of murder.”

Here is how Kuznetsov describes the incident: “The director of the “staging” of Sergei Yesenin’s suicide in the 5th room of the Angleterre Hotel was Sevzapkino film director Pavel Petrovich Petrov (Makarevich), who, trusting the thugs who dragged the body of the murdered Yesenin through the basement labyrinth from the building GPU investigative prison, located on Mayorova Avenue, 8/23, did not check the 5th hotel room prepared for public viewing.”

“As a result, many questions arose: why did the rope wrap around the unfortunate man’s throat only one and a half times, and there was no loop; how Yesenin, bleeding, was able, with cut palms and other wounds, to build such a complex pyramid on the table and climb to the ceiling; what a terrible depressed mark above the bridge of the nose (the official version is a burn); Finally, the deceased’s jacket disappeared somewhere.

By the way, I. Oksenov, a well-known radiologist at that time, a member of the Leningrad literary group “Commonwealth” (1925-1929), who saw him, wrote in his “Diary”: “... a crimson stripe was visible along the forehead (the burn was from a hot steam pipe heating, against which he hit his head), his mouth was half open, his hair had developed a terrible halo around his head.” And further: “In the coffin he was no longer so scary. The burn was covered up, eyebrows and lips were drawn in.”

Further, Kuznetsov cites the testimony of the then beginning informer, the young poet Pavel Luknitsky: “Yesenin looked little like himself. During the autopsy, his face was corrected as best they could, but still there was a large red spot on his forehead, a nodule in the upper corner of his right eye, an abrasion on the bridge of his nose, and his left eye was flat: it had leaked out” (“Meetings with.” Vol. 1 1924-1925. Paris: Ymca-Press, 1991).

Photographic materials - evidence of the murder version of Sergei Yesenin

All original photographs are stored in the S.A. Museum. Yesenina. Photographs of the poet’s death masks, stored both in museums and private collections, are also presented here. Readers' attention is drawn to one of the drawings by the famous Russian artist V. Svarog, made by him in the 5th room of the hotel, immediately after the discovery of S. Yesenin's body.

Photographic materials indicate not only that Sergei Yesenin did not commit self-hanging, but also that before his death he offered strong resistance to the executioners, who inflicted fatal wounds on him.

All photographs are accompanied by questions due to the discrepancy between the images and the official version claiming the poet’s suicide.

What does recognition of the official version of the death of Sergei Yesenin mean for Russia?

Emigrant, historian and writer Mikhail Koryakov categorically stated in 1950: “To spit on Yesenin means to spit on Russia and the Russian people.” Why were the people of Russia deceived, why were they forced to believe in Sergei Yesenin’s suicide? Why were his poems banned? What were the Soviet authorities and the nascent communist system so afraid of?

Allowing people to read Yesenin's poems - for the communist system, meant allowing people to believe in God, which meant losing faith in the Communist Party, and, in the end, for the Communist Party this meant losing its power over the people. Therefore, the young genius Sergei Yesenin was slandered and presented to the people as a rowdy, brawler, drunkard and womanizer, and also mentally ill.

But this turned out to be not enough for the ruling communist regime; it was necessary to make the great Russian poet a sinner - that’s why this monstrous crime was committed not only in relation to the physical destruction of the poet, but also the destruction of the conscience of the Russian people. People who believed this lie became accomplices in this crime. At its core, the murder of Sergei Yesenin is a crime against humanity.

Later, Yesenin’s poetry was banned; for reading the poet’s poems, people were prosecuted under Article 58 (an article in the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, which came into force on February 25, 1927 to counter counter-revolutionary activities). The campaign against “Yeseninism” lasted for several decades.

The return of the pure, worthy and proud name of the great Russian poet Sergei Aleksandrovich Yesenin is the return of the conscience of the people of Russia.

From the very beginning, the communist system always used the same gangster tactics: it began by creating negative rumors in society about the person it was going to persecute. If a person was broken spiritually, he no longer posed a threat to the communist system, but if a person remained faithful to some ideals, he had to be destroyed, as they did with Sergei Yesenin, whom the Soviet government put “outside the law.”

“Whoever the person who is outlawed is, he is immediately crossed out, no matter what his past merits may have been. So, there is no need to talk about any doubts about his guilt: this man is turning not just into an outcast, but into a living corpse, whose death was only a matter of time...” said Lieutenant General of Justice A.F. Katusev.

“Black Man” by Sergei Yesenin. Premonition of doom

A month before the tragedy, in November 1925, Sergei Yesenin’s poem “The Black Man” was published. In it, the poet talks about the impending disaster. It is predicted to him by a ghost who appears at night in the form of a Black Man.

Black man

He runs his finger over the vile book And, nasally over me, Like over a deceased monk, Reads to me the life of some scoundrel and drunkard, bringing melancholy and fear into my soul. Black man, Black, black... “Listen, listen,” he mutters to me, “There are many beautiful Thoughts and plans in the book. This man lived in the country of the most disgusting thugs and charlatans.” I don’t know, I don’t remember, In one village, Maybe in Kaluga, Or maybe in Ryazan, There lived a boy In a simple peasant family, Yellow-haired, With blue eyes...

And so he became an adult, and a poet, though with a small, but grasping strength...

The reason for the impending disaster was that Sergei Yesenin rejected the revolution and Soviet power. He remained faithful to God, and this is exactly what the Communist Party could not allow anyone to do by proclaiming atheism. The Ghost, the Black Man, is the communist system of Soviet power that killed the poet.

In Russia, repressions were unleashed by Stalin and his fellow party members. They ordered the death of the great Russian poet, but there were also direct executors of this order - executioners. History will name these names and call them to account. Having accepted the revolution, at first Yesenin supported it, however, he quickly realized what it was, and already in 1919 in his poem “Mare’s Ships” he wrote:

The azure will not stick its claws through from the blizzard cough-stench; The golden-coniferous garden of Skulls flies around under the neighing of storms.

Do you hear? Do you hear a loud knock? This is the rake of dawn through the forests. With the oars of severed hands you row into the land of the future.

And in his poem “Return to the Homeland” Sergei Yesenin openly expresses his attitude towards communist ideologists:

Of course, Lenin is not an icon for me either, I know the world... I love my family... But for some reason I still sit down on a wooden bench with a bow.

“Well, speak up, sister!” And so, the sister makes a fool of me, Opening her pot-bellied “Capital” like a Bible, About Marx, Engels... No matter the weather, I, of course, have not read these books.

Possessing a heightened sense of justice, Sergei Yesenin could not agree with the destruction of the Russian intelligentsia, including his close friends - writers, artists, musicians, actors. He was not naive and could not believe in the need for daily executions of people. And, of course, Yesenin could not calmly react to the brutal massacre of all members of the royal family and, moreover, the innocent young daughters of the tsar, with whom the poet was friends in 1916. Sergei Yesenin understood where the people who seized power by force were leading the people. Therefore, he often had to hide.

As a counter-revolutionary, Yesenin was repeatedly imprisoned in the Lubyanka. About his first imprisonment in this prison in 1920, he wrote to his friend Ivanov-Razumnik: “I had to end up in the Cheka prison instead of St. Petersburg. This somehow took me aback, offended me, and it took me a long time to get over it.” (Yesenin S.A. Letter to Ivanov-Razumnik, December 4, 1920 Moscow). 13 criminal cases were opened against Yesenin, the poet was constantly under surveillance and surveillance, which intensified after the publication of his poem “The Country of Scoundrels.”

Sergei Yesenin’s poem “Country of Scoundrels” became a real challenge to the Bolshevik government, in which, in the words of Nomakh, the poet says:

Gangs! Gangs! Countrywide. Wherever you look, wherever you go, you see how in space, on horses and without horses, ossified bandits gallop and walk. These are all the same Lost Believers like me... ...................................

This year marks not only the 120th anniversary of the birth of Sergei Yesenin, but also the 90th anniversary of his tragic death. The poet died on the night of December 27-28, 1925. On the morning of December 28, Sergei Yesenin was found dead in the Leningrad Angleterre Hotel.
How did Yesenin die? Was it suicide or murder? I decided to ask residents and guests of St. Petersburg how, in their opinion, Sergei Yesenin died.

For me personally, Sergei Yesenin is a legend. Since childhood I have been reading his poems, fascinated by his life and work.

I do not claim complete biographical objectivity. I just want to understand the reasons that prompted Sergei Alexandrovich to die. And there were many of these reasons. The poet himself admitted:

I meet everything, I accept everything,
Glad and happy to take out my soul.
I came to this earth
To leave her quickly.

In the last years of his life, Yesenin thought about death especially often. “They want to kill me,” he told his friends more than once. “I feel it like an animal.”
In poetry, Sergei prophetically wrote:

And I should be hanged first
Crossing my arms behind my back
For the fact that the song is hoarse and sick
I prevented my native country from sleeping.

Yesenin was both afraid of death and desired it. Already in his early years he thought about death.

Who am I? What am I? Just a dreamer.
The blue of his eyes lost in the darkness.
I lived this life as if by the way,
Together with others on earth.

When I was at school, versions of the poet’s murder did not even arise. They explained to us that the suicide of Sergei Yesenin caused a whole wave of suicides, so his poems were banned for some time.

Sing, sing! On a fatal scale
These hands are a fatal disaster.
You just know, fuck them...
I will never die, my friend.

People first started talking about the murder version at the beginning of perestroika. In 1987, the first mass protests took place in Leningrad in connection with the demolition of the Angleterre Hotel. It was rumored that the authorities wanted to hide traces of the crime in this way. Today, only a memorial plaque on the hotel building has been preserved in memory of the fact that the poet Sergei Yesenin died here.

Snowy plain, white moon,
Our side is covered with a shroud.
And birches in white cry through the forests.
Who died here? Died? Isn't it me?

During the period of perestroika, many brochures appeared about the tragic death of Yesenin. Both love revenge and well conspiracy, and political terror, and the envy of brothers in the pen, etc. The most common versions were the murder of the poet followed by a staged suicide.

One writer said: “A writer is a special investigator important matters humanity" who is trying to "understand the common interests of earthlings."

As a criminologist lawyer who studies crime problems, I must find out, firstly, the motives for the crime, secondly, the circumstances of the death, and thirdly, the identity of the criminal or victim.
I remember taking a test in criminology and answering a question about the distinctive properties of a hanged man. A person who commits suicide by hanging has a characteristic strangulation groove from squeezing the neck with a noose. This groove has a pronounced red-violet color and does not disappear in the deceased.
On Yesenin’s corpse (judging by the photographs), the strangulation groove is almost invisible.

Was it murder or incitement to suicide?

Ancient Romans: look for someone who benefits.

Some people see the cause of death in drunkenness and nervous disorder poet.
Someone blames Yesenin’s numerous love affairs and women for everything.
Some see the reason in the poet’s creative crisis.
Someone explains Yesenin’s death as a conflict with those in power.
Someone sees in the tragic death of the poet a curse of the Yesenin family.

He's confused. Confused in his love and family ties, confused in his relationships with the authorities, with friends and enemies.
Perhaps he was not killed. But they were definitely driven to suicide.

One of the reasons for Yesenin’s early death is his suicidal sense of exclusivity, chosenness and security. Yes, he found himself a patron in Trotsky. But once, in a drunken company, Yesenin said: “I, a legitimate Russian son, am sick of being a stepson in my state... Russia is ruled by Trotsky-Bronstein... But he should not rule.”

“The poet died, died because he was not akin to the revolution,” Trotsky admitted in his speech at Yesenin’s grave. “I can’t do it anymore,” said the poet defeated by life.”

Politics ruined the poet. Writers should stay away from power and politics. You can’t outwit the authorities; in a game with the devil, the devil always wins.

It is obvious to me that Sergei Yesenin is a victim of the political regime.

Yesenin loved Rus', but did not accept the Bolshevik regime. He openly “winged” the Bolsheviks. Anyone who said a tenth of what Yesenin said would have been shot long ago.
The Bolsheviks tried for a long time to tame the poet, but came to the conclusion that it was impossible to tame Yesenin. Yesenin was a rebel and openly opposed himself to the authorities. “I won’t allow myself to be muzzled,” said the poet.

Like you, I am driven from everywhere,
I pass among iron enemies.

Like you, I'm always ready,
And even though I hear the victory horn,
But he will taste the enemy's blood
My last death leap.

To save the poet from criminal prosecution and alcohol addiction, at the end of November 1925, relatives and friends persuaded Yesenin to go for examination to a paid psychoneurological clinic at Moscow University. On November 26, 1925, Yesenin wrote to his friend Pyotr Chagin about the purpose of such a decision: “I’ll get rid of some scandals and go abroad. The marble lions there are more beautiful than our living medical dogs.”
Of course, the GPU knew about these plans.

Professor Gannushkin, discharging Yesenin from the clinic, gave his relatives a stern warning: “I must draw their attention to the fact that the attacks of melancholy, characteristic of him (Yesenin - NK), can end in suicide.”

After treatment at the clinic, Yesenin was in an unbalanced state. According to an extract from psychiatric hospital, in which Yesenin lay a month before his death, the injections given to him there brought the classic silver age to a state of monstrous depression, which he was no longer able to overcome.

On December 21, 1925, Yesenin left the clinic, canceled all powers of attorney at the State Publishing House, withdrew almost all the money from his savings book, and a day later left for Leningrad. It was an escape from imminent arrest. The poet took his manuscripts with him and wanted to work on his collected works. He had many plans, and suicide was not in these plans.

Some believe that the poet was suffering from persecution mania. However, Yesenin had very real reasons to be arrested and put on trial. At this time, 13 criminal cases were opened against the poet.

Nikolai Aseev recalled that Yesenin, “leaning across the table towards me, whispered that he was being watched, that he couldn’t be left alone for a minute, well, he’s not a mistake either,” and, hitting himself in the pocket, he began to assure , that he always has a “dog” with him, that he will not be taken alive, etc.”

In Leningrad, Yesenin asked his friends to rent two or three rooms for him. But since suitable housing was not found, the poet stayed at the Angleterre Hotel. His “friend” Georgy Ustinov (an unofficial employee of the GPU) helped him in this. That is why the names of Yesenin and Ustinov are not on the list of guests of the Angleterre Hotel.
At that time, the Angleterre Hotel was called the International and was a departmental hotel of the Leningrad GPU. The commandant was the security officer Nazarov.

The wife of the hotel commandant Nazarov testifies that on December 27, at eleven o’clock in the evening, her husband was called to the hotel, saying that an accident had happened to Yesenin. Arriving at the hotel, Nazarov met GPU workers there...

At about 10 o'clock in the evening, a secret employee of the GPU Berman allegedly came into Yesenin's room. According to Berman, he found Yesenin drunk. However, upon inspection, no alcohol was found in Yesenin’s room.

On the morning of December 28, Georgy Ustinov’s wife went to call Yesenin for breakfast, knocked on the door for a long time, but no one answered. Yesenin’s close acquaintance, Wolf Erlich, came up. However, no one answered him from the room either. Finally they called the hotel commandant Nazarov, who opened the door with a master key, but did not enter the room himself.

According to the official version, Sergei Yesenin committed suicide. His body hung in a loop on a vertical hot heating pipe right under the ceiling at a height of almost three meters. For the noose, a rope from a foreign suitcase given to Yesenin by Maxim Gorky was used. The height of the ceiling in the room was supposedly 4–5 meters, and the size of the overturned cabinet was 1.5 meters, the height of the poet was 168 cm.

The first to be summoned to the room on the morning of December 28 were writers Rozhdestvensky and Medvedev. According to the memoirs of Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky, they saw Yesenin’s body lying on the carpet. But they were forced to sign in the protocol what they did not see - Sergei Yesenin hanged from a pipe.
Pavel Medvedev and the prose writer Mikhail Borisoglebsky, who arrived later, were secret agents of the GPU.

The act of suicide was drawn up by the local warden of the 2nd department of the Leningrad city police, Nikolai Gorbov, in the presence of the manager of the International Hotel, Comrade Nazarov, and witnesses on December 28, 1925. Moreover, none of the witnesses who signed the protocol saw Yesenin hanging on the heating pipe. When they were allowed into the room, Yesenin’s corpse, already removed from the chimney, lay on the carpet. The arm bent at the elbow indicated that the poet was trying to free himself from the noose, trying to pull the rope into his throat.

The called orderly Dubrovsky recalled that on the floor there were broken dishes, shreds of manuscripts, cigarette butts, blood clots, everything was turned upside down.
According to the testimony of the artist Vasily Svarog, who was present, there were traces of a struggle in the room, broken and scattered dishes.
However, no inspection report was drawn up at the scene of the incident. An investigative experiment was not carried out.

Some of Yesenin’s manuscripts, on which the poet worked, disappeared without a trace; the poet’s jacket and shoes were not found, and the money Yesenin had withdrawn from his savings book was not found. The pistol that Yesenin always carried with him also disappeared.
But if Sergei had a gun, he could have shot himself instead of hanging himself.

The corpse was taken to the morgue of the Obukhov hospital, where forensic expert Gilyarevsky performed an autopsy and drew up a report in which he did not indicate the approximate time of death (as he did in all other cases). In the final part of the act, Gilyarevsky wrote: “Based on the autopsy data, it should be concluded that Yesenin’s death resulted from asphyxia caused by compression respiratory tract by hanging...”

In the report, Gilyarevsky indicated that Yesenin’s pupils and eyes were normal. However, the secretary of the funeral commission, Pavel Luknitsky, noted in his note that one of Yesenin’s eyes was bulging and the other was leaking.

Who lied? And most importantly - WHY?

According to the generally accepted version, the poet, in a state of depression (a week after finishing treatment in a psychoneurological hospital), committed suicide (hanged himself).
The version of the poet’s suicide arose even before the suicide note given to the investigator by Wolf Ehrlich was found - the poem “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye,” written by Yesenin allegedly on December 27 with his own blood.

Wolf Ehrlich (also a secret employee of the GPU) stated that Yesenin allegedly asked the administration on the evening of December 27 not to let anyone into his room, because he wanted to rest. However, the commandant of Angleterre, security officer Nazarov, does not mention this in his testimony.

To confirm the version of suicide, Erlich provided the investigator with Yesenin’s last poem, allegedly given to him the day before, which he wrote with his own blood.

Goodbye, my friend, goodbye.
My dear, you are in my chest.
Destined separation
Promises a meeting ahead.

Goodbye, my friend, without a hand, without a word,
Don’t be sad and don’t have sad eyebrows, -
Dying is nothing new in this life,
But life, of course, is not newer.

Yesenin complained that there was no ink in the room and he was forced to write with his own blood. Previously, Yesenin wrote poetry in blood for lack of ink - he loved spectacular scenes.

Already today, experts have established the authenticity of Yesenin’s handwriting and the fact that the poem “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye” was written in blood in an amount of no more than 0.02 ml. But the blood belonged to Yesenin was not established by the examination.

So in whose blood are the lines “goodbye, my friend, goodbye...” written?

The address “my friend” was familiar and did not apply personally to Wolf Ehrlich - he was not a close friend of Yesenin.
There is an opinion that this poem is not a suicide note at all, but was composed earlier on the death of the poet’s friend Alexei Ganin.

Who benefited from spreading the version of Yesenin’s suicide?

For a poet it is very important not only to live beautifully, but also to “depart gracefully” from life. Suicide is too commonplace. Although Yesenin tried to commit suicide several times.

On December 29, 1925, evening Leningrad newspapers, and the next day, newspapers throughout the country reported the suicide of Sergei Yesenin. The poet's wife Sofya Tolstaya and the husband of Ekaterina's sister Vasily Nasedkin left Moscow for Leningrad. They brought the poet's body to Moscow. On December 31, thousands of people saw off Yesenin on his last journey. The poet asked to be buried at the Vagankovskoye cemetery.

I want at the last minute
Ask those who will be with me -
So that for all my grave sins,
For disbelief in grace
They put me in a Russian shirt
To die under icons.

The first monument to Yesenin at the Vagankovskoye cemetery in Moscow was erected in 1955, 30 years after the poet’s death. However, some relatives of the poet still doubt that Yesenin’s body was buried there.

“The poet’s coffin disappeared from the grave at the Vagankovskoye cemetery,” says Nikolai Brown. “This was discovered in 1955 by Yesenin’s sister Shura, when the grave was opened to bury his mother Tatyana Fedorovna next to the remains of the poet. At the end of the 80s. an elderly witness was found, OGPU driver Snegirev, who on January 1, 1926 took part in removing the coffin from the grave. He didn’t know where the coffin was taken.”

The official version of suicide is just a smokescreen hiding the unpleasant truth. Relatives of Sergei Yesenin are convinced that the great poet of the Russian land was killed. This is what Sergei Yesenin’s own son, great-grandson and grandson think. There are many in the Yesenin family who died a terrible tragic death, like their great ancestor.

Immediately after Yesenin’s death, playwright Boris Lavrenev wrote that the poet was killed. In “Red Gazeta” Lavrenev published an article “Executed by degenerates.”

In 1989, the Yesenin Commission was created, and at its request, a series of examinations were carried out, leading to the following conclusion: “the now published “versions” of the murder of the poet with the subsequent staged hanging, despite some discrepancies ... are a vulgar, incompetent interpretation of special information, sometimes falsifying the results of the examination.”

The experiments were carried out in the presence of a prosecutor-criminologist of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation. Forensic experts calculated the height of the ceiling and found that it was no more than 352 cm. They conducted an investigative experiment. An extra with Yesenin’s height tied a rope to a pipe painted with oil paint and unsuccessfully tried to pull the rope off the vertical. Its freely hanging end could withstand a weight load of more than 100 kg.

However, there are many versions claiming that Yesenin was killed. Some believe that in the 5th room of the hotel where the poet settled, he was first severely beaten, and only then, in an unconscious state, he was hung in a noose.
There is a version according to which they put Yesenin on the sofa, hit him on the forehead with the butt of a pistol, where a dent formed, then wrapped him in a carpet, tried to drag him out onto the balcony in order to take him down and take him out.

Retired colonel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Eduard Khlystalov in the book “How Sergei Yesenin was killed” writes that it is impossible to tie a rope to a vertically standing pipe: under the weight of the body it will certainly slide down. To confirm his words, he recalls an experiment conducted by students of the Literary Institute in Angleterre, when the hotel was still intact: a rope tied to a vertical pipe was pulled down with a jerk of the hand.

Most of the versions were generated by the entry in the report of the forensic expert. “In the middle of the forehead... a depressed groove 4 cm long and 1.5 cm wide.” Gilyarevsky himself explained it by the pressure difference in the skull during strangulation.
Proponents of the murder theory interpreted the depression as a blow with the handle of a pistol, an iron, or a blunt heavy object “with terrible force.”

St. Petersburg writer Viktor Kuznetsov published the book “The Mystery of the Death of Sergei Yesenin.” V. Kuznetsov believes: “Upon arrival in Leningrad, he (Yesenin - N.K.) was arrested by Trotsky’s secret order. And they were allegedly kept in house No. 8/23 on Mayorova Avenue, where they were interrogated for four days. The point of the interrogations was that they wanted to recruit Yesenin as a secret employee of the GPU. I don’t think that Trotsky gave the order to kill the poet, but that’s what happened..."

Most likely, murder was not included in the pay of the security officers. They simply wanted to “buy” Yesenin, offering to become an informant in exchange for being spared criminal prosecution. Such recruitment of “sexts” is a common practice; The law enforcement officials even have a “recruitment plan.”

In case No. 89 about the death of Sergei Yesenin, investigators worked for 26 days and as a result the case was closed. How this happens and why, I know well from personal experience. One call from above is enough for your case to be closed or, conversely, closed for lack of corpus delicti.

They tell me: “there is no need for conspiracy theories.” But what to do if the materials of Sergei Yesenin’s case are still classified as “secret”. The archives are promised to be opened only in 10 years – in 2025.

Who benefits from maintaining secrecy?
Is the hidden truth really so terrible that it can compromise even the current security officers?

In 1997, Yesenin’s death mask and four photographs taken on the day of the poet’s death were put up for sale at auction. Someone is clearly trying to hide traces of the crime, to destroy the last remaining evidence.

Everyone who had anything to do with Yesenin’s death was either shot, disappeared, or committed suicide. The poet’s “friend” Georgy Ustinov hanged himself in 1932. Alexander Tarasov-Rodionov committed suicide. Writer Wolf Ehrlich and investigator Nikolai Gorbov were arrested and executed in the 30s. The commandant of Angleterre, security officer Nazarov, jumped out of the window (or, most likely, he was thrown out).

In order to establish the truth, it is necessary to demand a review of Yesenin’s case based on newly discovered circumstances. It is necessary to initiate a criminal case to exhume the poet’s body and conduct an examination.

Imagine if they prove that Yesenin was killed, that the poem “goodbye, my friend, goodbye,...” was not written in his blood and not the day before his death, that Yesenin was not buried at the Vagankovskoye cemetery, and that the order for his murder followed by staged suicide committed by one of the leaders of the party and state...

If it turns out that Yesenin’s so-called “friends” were informants of the Cheka and that they deliberately drove him to suicide, or directly committed murder, the attitude will change not only towards the classic of Russian literature, but also towards the Russian authorities.

Poets do not live long in Russia. No country destroys its geniuses with such cruelty. Pushkin was killed, Lermontov was killed, Griboyedov was killed, Nikolai Gumilyov was killed, Nikolai Klyuev was killed, Osip Mandelstam was killed...

History, as we know, repeats itself. Current situation reminiscent of a situation a hundred years ago. Poets have not yet been destroyed, but no one hears them, just as they did not hear Sergei Yesenin...

I do not regret, do not call, do not cry,
Everything will pass like smoke from white apple trees.
Withered in gold,
I won't be young anymore.

Now you won't fight so much,
A heart touched by a chill,
And the country of birch chintz
It won't tempt you to wander around barefoot.

The wandering spirit! you are less and less often
You stir up the flame of your lips.
Oh my lost freshness,
A riot of eyes and a flood of feelings.

I have now become more stingy in my desires,
My life, did I dream about you?
As if I were a booming early spring
He rode on a pink horse.

All of us, all of us in this world are perishable,
Copper quietly pours from the maple leaves...
May you be blessed forever,
What has come to flourish and die.

Yes, autumn is leaving again...
And my heart breaks with sadness...
No one is asking me to love...
And dreams are swept away into heaps...

Everything was, was, was, was...
Will it happen? - who will tell me?
The maple leaf flies sadly
Towards the groaning earth.

I'm sick of it. Cold. Sad.
Sadness squeezes my heart. ...
Oh, how beautiful it would be to die
Having finished your journey on high!

Night is coming. The park is emptying. Quiet.
People are rushing home.
The moon rises again sadly.
Who will I give myself to in the night?

I would have sat there until dawn.
And in the morning - where to look...
I don't want an answer anymore.
If only someone loved me.

(from my true-life novel “The Wanderer (mystery)” on the New Russian Literature website)

In your opinion, HOW DID YESENIN DIED?

© Nikolay Kofirin – New Russian Literature –

Content

In one of the rooms of the Leningrad hotel Angleterre on the morning of December 28, 1925, the corpse of the proletarian poet Sergei Yesenin was discovered. Then the print media unanimously supported the version of suicide and named the reason - prolonged depression. Over time, a new version appeared: The cause of Sergei Yesenin’s death was called a staged suicide organized by OGPU employees.

We reconstruct the events of the end of December 1925

Yesenin arrived in Leningrad on December 24. The motives for his trip are still hotly debated. Someone is sure that the poet was brought to the northern capital by questions regarding the publication of a new collection of poems. Others claim that Sergei Alexandrovich was hiding from the capital’s police. You can believe this - the poet did not widely advertise his arrival in the city on the Neva. The day before, he asked a friend to rent a three-room apartment. But he didn’t succeed and he stayed at the Angleterre Hotel, which became a fatal place.

He was given number five, where party workers and famous cultural figures of the Land of the Soviets usually stayed. These days, Wolf Ehrlich, the Ustinov couple, visited the poet. According to Wolf, he handed him the poem “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye...” written on a piece of paper and asked him to read it in private.

Wolf was returning to his room, having forgotten his briefcase. The poet calmly wrote poetry, sitting at the table with a coat thrown over his shoulders. The next morning, Ustinova and Erlich came to the hotel, but could not get into the room - they had to call the commandant to open the door. Inside, in a loop, by the window, there was a dead Yesenin.

And now his biographers and creativity researchers are sure that it was suicide. Suicidal tendencies, too fine nervous organization, melancholy and depressive states were characteristic of him. Everyone knew that in Lately Alcoholism began to actively progress. The poet has repeatedly spoken about the feeling of approaching death - this theme constantly runs through his work recent years. During this period, he was getting divorced and suffered from a creative crisis.

The autopsy showed - cause of death of Sergei Yesenin there was oxygen starvation. At the same time, cuts were found on both hands, and a huge dent was on the forehead. The forensic expert concluded that it was the result of a blow. It is known that Sergei’s last request was the desire not to let anyone in to see him.

Leningrad detectives worked in the hotel room for several days, but they did not find a single piece of evidence indicating a crime. The illiterate inspection report drawn up by Nikolai Gorbov, a local police officer, states that the poet was holding a pipe with one hand; a candelabra and a low stand were overturned in the room. According to medical report death of Sergei Yesenin came at 5 am.

A poem written in blood

A few days later, Elrich found a poem given by the poet in his coat pocket. It was written in blood. Ustinova remembered that the poet complained that it was absolutely impossible to get ink in the hotel and therefore he had to cut his hands and write in blood. This explains the cut marks on his arms. But it is difficult to call the poem a death poem - it was a dedication to a friend Alexei Ganin, who was shot in March 1925 by Lubyanka servicemen. He was charged with belonging to the “Order of Russian Fascists.”

But then no one examined the sheet and it did not help in solving this case.

Staging or murder?

Many still agree that it was a murder disguised as suicide. The fact is that with a height of 168 centimeters, Sergei Alexandrovich could not physically hang himself - the ceiling height in the room reached 4 meters. There was no object nearby that could be climbed on first. The cabinet and suitcase were not suitable for these purposes.

No explanation was received for the origin of the numerous abrasions on the body and bruises, a depressed scar across the bridge of the nose, which is clearly visible in the photograph taken immediately after death of Sergei Yesenin. All this leaves room for speculation and versions.

The poet's last refuge - Vagankovskoye Cemetery

The poet's body was transported to Moscow by train. The farewell took place in the House of Printing. On December 31, 1925, Sergei Yesenin was buried at the Vagankovskoye cemetery. At the time of his death he was 30 years old. In his short life, passionate and amorous, he managed to get married three times and have a bunch of love affairs. But there was one woman who could not live without Yesenin - Galina Benislavskaya. She was the poet's personal secretary and friend and allowed him to live in her Moscow apartment. Galina often listened to the poet’s confessions and gave advice regarding the publication of poems. Did she love him or did he become the meaning of her life? It's hard to say now. But on December 3, 1926, Benislavskaya came to the grave, smoked several cigarettes in a row and shot her in the chest with a pistol. In her suicide note, the woman indicated that she was leaving this life of her own free will.