The mystery of the death of Leonid Bykov: What made loved ones doubt the version of the accident

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

On December 12, the famous director, actor and screenwriter Leonid Bykov could have turned 89 years old, but back in 1979 his life was cut short in a car accident. Sudden deaths of popular artists always cause great resonance, but in this case there was a lot of talk: it was said that the version of the accident did not stand up to criticism. The actor's relatives suggested that this accident was rigged, and many acquaintances did not rule out the version of suicide - after all, shortly before his death, Leonid Bykov admitted that he did not want to live …

Leonid Bykov can be called a real folk hero - the audience simply adored him. But he could never appear on the screens, because from childhood he dreamed of becoming not an actor, but a pilot. But the first time he was not admitted to the flight school due to the fact that the young man attributed 2 years to himself in the documents, and he was exposed, and the second time he entered the Leningrad Special School for Pilots, but studied for only one month, and then he was expelled. After that, Bykov decided to storm the theatrical universities in Kiev and Kharkov, since even at school age he was fond of theater and participated in amateur performances. After graduating from the Kharkov Theater Institute, Bykov was accepted into the troupe of the Kharkov Theater. T. Shevchenko.

In the early 1950s. Leonid Bykov began acting in films and soon became a real star of post-war cinema and one of the most beloved actors among the people. This happened thanks to the roles in the films "Tiger Tamer", "Maxim Perepelitsa", "My Dear Man", "Volunteers", "Aleshkin's Love" and others. Bykov tried his hand as a director at Lenfilm. He shot the comedy "Bunny", where he played the main role. However, he was not allowed to shoot any more and new roles were not offered. "". Bykov returned to Kiev, where, unfortunately, he also could not realize his creative plans for some time.

1970s became the finest hour for Leonid Bykov - in 1972 his film "Only" Old Men Go to Battle "was released, rightly recognized as one of the best films about the Great Patriotic War. At the same time, it was one of the best acting works by Bykov. Five years later, another of his films about the war was released - "Aty-bats, soldiers were walking …", and a year later the director began filming the fantastic film "The Alien", but he did not have time to complete the work.

On April 11, 1979, the famous actor and director died in a car accident on the Kiev-Minsk highway. As it turned out, he made an attempt to overtake, drove into the oncoming lane and collided with a truck. According to the experts' conclusion, the truck driver could not prevent collisions, and the accident occurred through the fault of Bykov himself. The criminal case was closed due to the lack of corpus delicti, but later friends and relatives of the actor expressed doubts about the official version.

The reason for doubting the accident of what happened was the fact that 3 years before his death, Leonid Bykov, as it turned out, wrote a farewell letter to friends, in which he gave recommendations about his own funeral. By some mystical accident, this letter lay in the desk of the editor of the Kiev film studio for three years and was discovered three days before the director's death. The text of the letter looked like a will. This led many to believe in the version of suicide: supposedly the actor had been thinking about death for a long time and even planned it. Problems at the film studio, downtime, which lasted for years (for 9 years of work at the Kiev film studio, he was allowed to shoot only 2 films), really very depressed the director and led to gloomy reflections. "", He wrote in a letter in April 1976.

However, Bykov wrote farewell letters to friends and relatives not because he was going to commit suicide, but because by the age of 50 he had already suffered 3 heart attacks and was afraid that the next one could be the last. Daughter of Leonid Bykov Maryana categorically rejects the version and suicide: "".

As the examination showed, during the road accident Bykov tried to avoid a collision to the last, which excludes the version of suicide. According to experts, the accident was unlikely to have been specially set up, therefore, the version of the involvement of the KGB, expressed by Bykov's daughter, also did not find confirmation. The death of the famous actor and director is still a mystery, although most experts still lean towards the version of the accident.

This film became a classic of Soviet cinema, although Leonid Bykov was forbidden to shoot: What is left behind the scenes of the film "Only old men go to battle".