Why the eldest son of Sergei Yesenin was shot, and how the fate of the other children of the poet developed

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Sergei Yesenin never tried to be good: he drank, hooliganed, fell in love and quickly cooled down to women, without whom, as it seemed to him, he could not live without. But everyone forgave him, they adored him. And by the age of 30, the poet could boast of not sickly victories on the love front. Only officially he tied the knot three times. In addition, he had three more unofficial wives, and this is not counting fleeting connections. After himself, Yesenin left four children. True, each of them had to face considerable difficulties in life.

Yuri (aka Georgy)

For the first time, Yesenin became a father at the age of 19. With Anna Izryadnova, the poet worked together in a printing house. The young people quickly got along, and soon their son was born. Officially, the baby was named George, but his relatives called him Yura. In the first time after the birth of the baby, Sergei Alexandrovich tried to be an exemplary father: he lulled and rocked the boy, sang lullabies to him. By the way, only Yura of all the poet's children got such an honor. And only to him the father dedicated a poem. But a month later the poet left the family and moved to Petrograd, and Anna had to raise her son alone. But Yesenin, coming to Moscow, visited his son and helped financially. It seemed that Yura would follow in his father's footsteps: he began to write poetry early, but he did not dare to show them to anyone. And after graduating from school, he decided to enter the aviation technical school. Life seemed to go on as usual. But could Yuri have thought that a carelessly thrown phrase during a friendly party in 1934 would change his life forever after many years. Then the intoxicated youth jokingly argued that it would be good to drop a bomb on the Kremlin. Discussed and forgotten. But, as it turned out, one of the friends remembered this conversation. In 1935, Yesenin's son was drafted into the army, and he went to serve in Khabarovsk. A year later he was arrested. Although Yuri did not immediately understand why he was detained. Thought I had committed a war crime. However, the young man never found out that immediately after his arrest, his mother's house was searched. He also had no idea that one of those who then attended a friendly party was detained on some other matter and for some reason told about a comic conversation. But this was enough for the authorities to charge Yesenin's eldest son with a counter-revolutionary crime and conspiracy. Moreover, his father, a poet, was also never shy in expressions and clearly disliked those in power. Under such a serious article, one punishment was imposed - the death penalty. But the investigators, in order to knock confessions out of the soldier, cheated, promising him only a few years in the camps in exchange for pliability. Yuri succumbed to persuasion and repeated everything that was told to him. According to the prosecution, it turned out that he was not only preparing a terrorist attack, but was also its organizer. "Confessions" did not help Yesenin: in August 1937 he was shot. Anna Izryadnova did not know about this: she was only told that those sentenced to death for ten years did not have the right to correspond. But the inconsolable mother did not live so long: she died a year after the war. In the 50s, the poet's youngest son, Alexander Yesenin-Volpin, set out to restore the good name of Yuri. Thanks to him, the elder brother was rehabilitated, and the case against him was recognized as completely fabricated. The falsifiers were even shot, but this did not make anyone feel better.

The only daughter Tatiana

After parting with Anna Izryadnova, Yesenin soon married actress Zinaida Reich. But the relationship of lovers could hardly be called ideal: they often quarreled loudly, parted and reconciled. The couple lived together for four years, and in marriage they had a daughter, Tatyana and a son, Konstantin. But still love did not pass the test, and after a divorce from Sergei Zinaida married director Vsevolod Meyerhold. He adopted the children of his beloved and raised them as his own. By the way, Yesenin rarely visited the children from his second marriage, but he was very proud of Tatiana, a daughter so similar to him: golden-haired and blue-eyed. And how it amused him when the girl stamped her foot and declared: "I am Yesenina!"

But the heiress of the poet had to take the blows of fate already in adulthood. First, they shot her stepfather, then, right in their apartment, unknown persons killed her mother. Then Tatyana was only 21 years old, she was married and raised a little son. At the same time, her husband lost his father. And worries about the orphaned younger brother Konstantin also fell on the fragile shoulders of the girl. During the war, Yesenin's daughter was evacuated to Uzbekistan, and remained to live in this country. She worked in one of the newspapers as a journalist, wrote books about her father and sought the rehabilitation of her stepfather Vsevolod Meyerhold. Tatyana died in 1992.

Constantine is the third son

Sergei Yesenin doted on Tatyana, but Konstantin, on the contrary, did not recognize for a long time. The fact is that the boy outwardly did not look like his father at all: black-eyed and dark-haired. Moreover, the moral character of Zinaida Reich was also not ideal, so the poet doubted for a long time whether it was his son. Konstantin entered the capital's civil engineering institute. However, after the death of his stepfather and mother, he was forced from his parents' apartment to move into a small room. The young man had no money, and his sister and Anna Izryadnova supported him at that time. His father's first wife helped with food, and later, when Kostya went to the front, she sent him parcels. In November 1941, Yesenin's son voluntarily went to fight. It was hard for him: the young man received three serious wounds, and after one of them, it was completely believed that he was dead. For his valor, Yesenin received many awards, and after the war he graduated from the institute and got a job at the State Construction Committee of the USSR. But Konstantin Sergeevich was fond of not only construction. He loved football and wrote books about this game. And even Yesenin's son, although he vaguely remembered his father, painstakingly created an archive in which he collected documents about the poet's life. Konstantin died in 1986.

Alexander Yesenin-Volpin

Sasha was born a year and a half before the death of Sergei Yesenin. True, the poet himself did not really want to become a father for the fourth time. At least, the translator Nadezhda Volpin, with whom the man had a short-term romance, he offered to have an abortion. Offended by this behavior, the girl left her former lover, leaving no address. Yesenin was looking for his youngest son, but managed to see him only twice. After leaving school, Alexander entered the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics at Moscow State University, then continued his studies in graduate school. But, despite the obvious love for the exact sciences, the poet's heir also followed in his father's footsteps and at the same time wrote poetry. True, his works were not to the liking of the Soviet authorities, and in 1949 the young man was sent for compulsory treatment in a mental hospital. A year later, they recognized him as a "socially dangerous element" and sent him to Kazakhstan. After the death of Stalin, Yesenin Jr. was amnestied, but in 1959 he was again sent for compulsory treatment in a mental hospital. Alexander did not hide that he was an ardent opponent of the Soviet regime. In 1961, his book "Free Philosophical Treatise" was published in New York, which, among other things, said that there is no freedom of speech in the USSR. Naturally, Nikita Khrushchev did not pat his disgraced compatriot on the head for such statements. In 1972, Alexander Yesenin-Volpin emigrated to the United States. He worked at several universities, made several scientific discoveries. He died in 2016 at the age of 92.