5 lucky stars of the Soviet circus who were on the verge of death in the arena

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

There are almost no safe professions in the circus. Despite all the insurances, injuries are part of the life of circus performers. And sometimes the artists walk so close to death that they probably hear her cold breath. The Soviet circus was no exception, although accidents in the arena in the USSR tried not to cover too much in the press.

Almost killed by a dragon

In the pre-war USSR, Osman Abdurakhmanov, a circus strongman-Avar, was a real legend. Having inherited from his mother, Ashat Abdurakhmanova, tall (her own exceeded two meters), he also developed muscles. And not in the gym at all - having worked in a cannery since adolescence. By the way, at this plant, he surprised the audience for the first time - holding a car with his hands, trying to leave at all his ten horsepower. To hold it more conveniently, the young man lifted the car by the bumper …

The death of a strong man in the arena is a rare thing, but once, by Osman's own admission, he almost died. In Kiev, he was offered to fight a hungry boa constrictor. Osman himself said that the snake looked more like a dragon - huge, cold, with a fixed gaze. The boa constrictor tried to crush the strong man, and Osman tried to rip her off before she wrapped him around him for the third time. So the trainer warned - if the boa constrictor manages to grab his body in three turns, it will no longer be saved.

At some point, it was so tight that Osman, for the sake of saving his life, almost decided to corny strangle the boa constrictor, grabbing it with his hand under the skull. But he remembered that the state paid a lot of money for the miracle snake, having bought it in Africa, and, despite the mortal danger, decided to make every effort to remove the boa constrictor unharmed. In the end, Abdurakhmanov succeeded.

And before the circus, Osman managed to make a good film career, acting in films where real heroes were required - albeit in episodes. The glory of Abdurakhmanov became all-Union when he preferred circus to cinema, and nowhere did it reach such magnitude as in Central Asia. There, the audience crept up to the strongman in order to take a little sweat from his body with a finger and anoint their sons - so that they would also grow up as heroes!

Despite his fame, Osman was remembered by everyone as a very modest and kind person. Once he accidentally broke his friend's fingers after unsuccessfully shaking his hand. After that, Osman always extended his hand with his palm up to greet, and then gently covered the hand placed on his palm with the other palm. This greeting, as contemporaries noted, went extremely well to his whole character and even to his usual gentle expression on his face.

Mother of lions

Irina Bugrimova, as a predator trainer, was known for never hitting her lions in her life. It happened that they threw themselves at her in the cage, even inflicted serious injuries - Irina got out of the cage as soon as possible, but never hit the animal. True, she did not pull away the lions when they rushed at each other, maiming with fangs. Her position was something like this: they are animals, they use violence, but I am a man! I am above violence! And she attacked the lions by sheer willpower. It cannot be said that every time Irina was attacked, she found herself without protection at all - every time her favorite, the lion Caesar, tried to save her, covering Irina with his body and fighting for her life.

On the body of Bugrimova there were many scars from disobedience or simply excessive playfulness of pets. A tendon was severely damaged on one arm, so that the arm lost its functionality. The leg was also seriously injured in the incident with the three very first lions of Bugrimova, still teenagers. Two of them, Guy and Julius, attacked the trainer during the rehearsal; it was then that Caesar protected her for the first time, holding her brothers, until Irina's husband pulled her out of the cage. She returned to her cubs from the hospital, as if nothing had happened, and they greeted her calm.

Moreover, in the arena of Bugrimova, she worked real miracles, which, it seemed, could be made to show lions only by programming them like robots. For example, I was riding on a vertical wall on a motorcycle with a lion on my back.

Another famous Soviet trainer, Kasatkina's understudy in "Tiger Tamer" and the leading role in "Striped Flight" Margarita Nazarova, also suffered from the ward tiger. Once she stood near the tiger Pursha, and the beast was interested in the bow on her head - just as the bows of cats are attracted to. Pursh hit him with his paw and pierced the temporal artery with his claw. Margarita survived, but all her life she suffered from headaches. By the way, she always had such a wonderful relationship with Pursh that she even walked him in the yard, like a dog on a leash.

Happy accident

Yuri Nikulin told with great pleasure how he met his wife Tatyana Pokrovskaya. When he saw the girl Tanyusha for the first time in his life, he invited her to his performance in order, to be honest, to impress. And impressed nowhere else. Young clown Yura managed to fall under the hooves of a galloping horse. He was miraculously not trampled to death - the legendary clown Pencil rushed into the arena, risking his life himself, and pulled out the bloody young man. Tatiana rushed to call an ambulance. And the call was unexpectedly accepted … by Nikulin's mother.

At the hospital, it turned out that Nikulin had serious injuries - many thanks to a colleague! - did not manage to get: a small fracture, multiple abrasions and bruises. Tatiana went to visit Yuri at the hospital. These meetings replaced them with dates - during them the feeling grew and strengthened. Having already become a wife, Tatyana performed with Nikulin in clownery.

Skirts can be dangerous

Natalia Durova has repeatedly encountered accidents during the performance. Once in Vladivostok, a lynx bored in its place began to play with the ruffles of Durova's skirt and seriously injured its leg with its claws. The blood was absorbed into the clothes, and Natalya was able to bring the performance to the end, without giving away that something had gone wrong. But behind the scenes she went out of her last strength and lost consciousness from blood loss. If this had happened during the show itself, the lynx might have been considered its prey, who knows.

Another time Natalya felt a strong pain in her heart. Her partner by number, chimpanzee Yasha, managed to pick up Durova and put her on a chair before she fell to the floor - which in itself would certainly not have improved her condition. Making sure that Natalia was sitting safely, Yasha, as if nothing had happened, brilliantly played the number to the end. Immediately after the speech, Durova, of course, was helped.

The pre-revolutionary circus also had its own legends. Woman hero Agafya Zavidnaya: How Poddubny's favorite student conquered men and the arena