Leonid Filatov and Lydia Savchenko: 30 years of happiness that never happened

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

When they talk about Leonid Filatov's personal life, they always remember his wife, Nina Shatskaya, with whom the actor lived for more than 20 years. However, his first wife was actress Lydia Savchenko. It was she who was next to him at the very beginning, in front of her eyes and with her support, Leonid Filatov became famous and famous. He long sought her attention and said that they would have a long and happy life together. But it all ended after 30 years …

Persistent courtship

Lydia Savchenko came to the Taganka Theater a year after graduating from GITIS. She considered herself quite a happy person: she had a favorite job, she had been happily married for several years and was not going to change anything in her life. Yuri, the husband of the actress, had nothing to do with the art world, but he was well looked after and was handsome. However, it was not ardent feelings that made the girl at the age of 20 jump out to marry, but the desire to get rid of parental care as soon as possible.

She had been working at the Taganka Theater for two years already, when Leonid Filatov was accepted into the troupe. It's not that the young actress didn't like him, she just didn't pay attention to him. She was very pretty, she had enough fans, even Vladimir Vysotsky tried to look after her. But Lydia refused to go with him somewhere to visit, announcing that her husband was waiting for her.

Leonid Filatov almost from the first days in the theater began to show the actress signs of attention. He was not at all like Lydia's husband: thin, with thin legs and arms, an invariable cigarette, through and through with the smell of tobacco and slightly slovenly dressed. This was not the kind of man she could have liked.

But Filatov began a siege on all fronts. He met her at the theater, he did not take his eyes off her during rehearsals, called on dates and admired. Lydia tried to fight his courtship in different ways. She exhorted and was angry, avoided, even stopped greeting. It seemed that her reaction was completely unimportant to him. Filatov knew for sure: sooner or later this girl will become his wife.

One day he met her after a rehearsal and persuaded her to listen to him. Lydia Savchenko agreed, intending to convince him to stop pursuing her. Leonid Filatov brought her to a cafe and talked for a long time about how they would be happy together, live together all their lives and die in one day. The longer he talked, the more she wanted to listen to him. Filatov knew how to be convincing. It seems that it was then that she believed him. They started dating.

Invented happiness

For a long time they just met, wandered the streets, talked about everything in the world, kissed on a park bench. Then Lydia and Leonidas became lovers. The actress understood that she had betrayed her husband, but could not admit to him that she had another man. And rushed between Yuri and Leonid, feeling very bad at the same time. She had to choose and once she invited her husband to live separately for some time. The husband did not ask questions, he probably guessed that a temporary departure is a final separation.

She already met with Leonid Filatov openly, was happy, believed all his words. She sincerely believed that it was forever. However, once she thought: her marriage with Yuri would last until the end of her life …

She caught herself thinking how desperately she missed Leonid by her side when he went on tour or to visit his relatives in Ashgabat. He forgot to write letters to her, and then he came and again said something very convincing. She always believed him.

Once they quarreled, and she saw him driving up to the theater in a taxi with Nina Shatskaya. Lydia Savchenko decided to finally break with Filatov, but he again somehow got her forgiveness.

They did not have a special celebration on the occasion of the wedding. They signed, drove to the dorm, and celebrated with chips and cheap wine. After the wedding, Lydia devoted more and more time to her husband. She tirelessly washed, ironed, acquired new fashionable things for him. People around him began to notice how Leonid Filatov was turning into a real dude. He constantly wrote, day and night, there were many thoughts and ideas in his head. Lydia has always been his first listener and advisor. Perhaps she criticized him in vain, but then it seemed to her that in this way she helped him achieve success.

Leonid Filatov often disappeared, for several hours or for several days. She was sympathetic to his desire to be alone and asked only to warn her. But it seems he did not hear these requests. He could not come to meet her at the airport, explaining this by the absence of a telephone and by the fact that the neighbor whom Lydia called did not warn him about the arrival of his wife. He refused to put his home phone, more precisely, he said that it was impossible.

Lydia Savchenko almost sacrificially served him: she cooked, washed, cleaned, washed ashtrays and put papers in order. And far from immediately noticed how rapidly they were moving away from each other. Thanks to her efforts, their house was always warm and cozy, first in a dormitory, then in a small one-room apartment.

And there was a pregnancy, from which Lydia got rid of, because her husband was not ready to have children. It seemed to her that it was then, along with the unborn child, that feelings and mutual trust were gone from their lives.

And once, when she was at the theater, they called her. An unknown woman asked Lydia to let her husband go … to Nina Shatskaya. In the evening she talked to Leonid. He was indignant, shouted that it was someone's stupid invention. It took a long time before she realized: her husband really had an affair with Nina Shatskaya. The disappearances of Filatov, his "delays" with friends, the presence at rehearsals of performances in which he did not participate became understandable.

She did not put her husband's things out the door, such a gesture seemed too feigned to her. But as soon as the door closed behind her husband, Lydia Savchenko felt incredible relief. She was ashamed of the realization that she had been deceived for a long time, trusted and did not want to notice the obvious things.

However, she never considered her marriage to Filatov a mistake. Probably, she needed to go this way in order to come to herself as a result. She was happy, learned a lot and understood a lot about herself. Now she knew for sure: happiness cannot be built on someone else's misfortune. Once she betrayed her first husband, and the second betrayed her. Everything is correct, and it should have happened.

Shortly after the divorce, Lydia Savchenko married a man whom she met in line when she set up her home phone. Leonid Filatov married Nina Shatskaya. The former spouses met in the theater, but the actor did not seem to notice Lydia, he did not even always greet her. As if those same 30 years were not together.

He lived brightly, greedily, avidly. And he loved just as insatiably. He fell in love. He loved. He lived. And his life is love. Nina Shatskaya became the main love of Leonid Filatov. But their great happiness was preceded by a series of meetings, partings, deaf hopelessness and fervent hope. They had a complex, but very vivid biography of love.