Step into the Abyss: What Pushed Famous Russian Writers to Suicide

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

Mental suffering, inability to find a way out of a difficult situation, lack of money and fear of being a burden can lead to committing a fatal mistake. People of creative professions, who are distinguished by the subtlety of nature and instability of the psyche, are especially prone to suicide. What made Russian writers voluntarily leave this life against the background of external well-being?

Gennady Shpalikov

He was incredibly talented: he wrote poetry and screenplays, he made films himself. And he endlessly hoped that someday he would be able to change the world with his creativity. Gennady Shpalikov wrote the script for the film "Ilyich's Outpost" in his student years. Then there were "I walk around Moscow" with the song that everyone loved by Shpalikov's authorship, "I come from childhood", the only film directed by him, "Long and Happy Life."

However, at the end of the 1960s, Gennady Shpalikov was left out of work and was very upset about his own lack of demand. He began to abuse alcohol, left the family, no longer able to live on the salary of his wife, actress Inna Gulaya. Apparently, even then he began to think about leaving life, in his diaries and letters he often summed up the results. On November 1, 1974, Gennady Shpalikov hanged himself on the handle of the front door in Peredelkino, leaving behind a suicide note, where he claimed that his departure was not cowardice, but fatigue from everything and everyone.

READ ALSO: The unpredictable Gennady Shpalikov: "… I'm flying off somewhere, like a tree from a leaf …" >>

Alexander Fadeev

For a long time, the debate did not stop about why a successful writer who held a very high post, the favorite of Stalin himself, suddenly decided to die. Perhaps the formal reason was the disappointment that arose after his novel "Young Guard" was severely criticized and subsequently rewritten. On the other hand, the relatives of the young people who died at the hands of the Nazis were also unhappy. They tried to reach out to the writer and convey the true story of the tragedy.

But in 1990, the suicide note of Alexander Fadeev was finally published. He wrote about the senselessness of his existence in a country where the best writers were physically destroyed, and those who remained did not have the opportunity to say what they really think. After Stalin's death, the writer was denied meetings by the party leaders, to whom he tried to get through. On May 13, 1956, the writer shot himself.

READ ALSO: Ruined talent: why the author of "Young Guard" Alexander Fadeev committed suicide. >>

Marina Tsvetaeva

She always lived "on the edge", feeling burdened with life and unable to get rid of her problems at once. The first attempt to leave was made by her at the age of 16, but then the pistol misfired. Subsequently, the tragedies of life experienced more than once will return her to the idea of suicide: the loss of her little daughter Irina, emigration, return to Russia, panic fear associated with the outbreak of war, the arrest and death of her husband, the arrest of her eldest daughter.

She could not get a job and feed her son, who was affectionately called Moore in the family. In addition, Marina Tsvetaeva's relationship with her teenage son was very difficult. There were rumors of pressure on the poetess from the NKVD for cooperation. At some point, apparently, her patience overflowed, and she just decided to leave. On that day, August 31, 1941, there was no one next to her, which Tsvetaeva took advantage of. She left three farewell notes and hanged herself.

READ ALSO: "Here's a window again …": a soulful poem by Marina Tsvetaeva. >>

Vladimir Mayakovsky

He took his own life on April 14, 1930. This event was preceded by his emotional experiences against the background of increasing criticism of his work and growing depression. In the last minutes of his life, he demanded that the actress Veronika Polonskaya not leave him alone, but refuse to rehearse and quit the theater altogether. Hearing the refusal, the poet cried, nervously walked around the room and wrote something, blocking his desk.

A few seconds after the door closed behind the actress, a fatal shot rang out. In the note, he asked not to blame anyone for what happened and not to gossip about his death.

READ ALSO: Veronica Polonskaya: Mayakovsky's last love and the last who saw him alive >>

Sergey Yesenin

The singer of Russian birches was found hanged in a room at the Leningrad hotel "Angleterre" on December 28, 1925. The events were preceded by a prolonged depression of the poet, a week before that day he completed treatment in a neuropsychiatric clinic. Initially, the version of the investigation about the voluntary departure from life was undoubted, but later assumptions were made about the murder of Yesenin.

In 1989, numerous examinations were carried out by a special commission, which recognized the versions of the murder as unsubstantiated and incompetent.

READ ALSO: Unknown Yesenin: a poet in the memories of a woman to whom the poem "A blue fire swept around …" >>

Julia Drunina

She was fragile and sensitive, vulnerable, defenseless and at the same time very strong, fair and sensual. She loved order in everything, and therefore she prepared and thought out her own departure from life carefully, leaving clear instructions on how, what and who should do after her departure. In the poem "The Hour of Judgment", the last of the collection of the same name, prepared by the poetess before her death, she wrote that she could not and did not want to look at the new Russia, flying downhill. The second reason was the longing she felt for her husband, Alexei Kapler, who left in 1979.

Julia Drunina even chose a very peculiar way to settle scores with her own life. On November 21, 1991, she left a note on the door of the dacha, addressed to her son-in-law, asking them not to be frightened and to open the garage, calling the police. She closed the garage door behind her, started the Moskvich engine and was poisoned by carbon monoxide. They buried the urn with the ashes of Yulia Drunina in the same grave with Alexei Kapler at the Starokrymsky cemetery.

READ ALSO: The tragic fate of Yulia Drunina: what led the poetess to commit suicide. >>

And today, creative people who are constantly under the scrutiny of viewers and the press are too often depressed. They are dissatisfied with themselves, lose their meaning in life, feel lonely in the crowd. commit suicide.