Who was hiding behind the image of the heroine of the song "Murka": The real prototypes of Marusya Klimova

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

Probably everyone has heard the song "Murka" at least once in his life. There are many variants of it, but the most famous is the one in which Marusya Klimova is mentioned. Attempts to establish a real prototype of the heroine of this song have been made more than once, and the version about a Chekist girl with the same name and surname introduced into the Odessa criminal world is considered the most probable. However, in other versions of the song, the heroines appear under different names, which forces researchers to put forward new assumptions. Disputes about who this character was written off from, and whether he existed in reality, continue to this day.

The earliest mentions of "Murka" are contained in the archives of the Odessa Criminal Investigation Department in the early 1920s. The authorship of this song is attributed to the composer Oskar Strok and the feuilletonist, playwright and screenwriter from Odessa Yakov Yadov, although they themselves have never confirmed this fact. This song had so many options that, even if it was not a folk song, it went into the people a long time ago, and it is extremely difficult to find the first version of this song in our time.

Most researchers agree on one thing: the heroine of the song really had a real prototype. In the early 1920s. In Odessa, there were legends about a Chekist girl who was introduced into a local gang, who died from a bullet of bandits during a secret operation. At that time, there was a rampant crime in the port city, the forces of criminals outnumbered the forces of the police, there was a lack of qualified personnel in the criminal investigation department, and the largest operations were planned in the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department - the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department.

According to the most widespread version, the song is about a secret Cheka operation. Judging by the phrase "And the GubChK followed her", the action takes place from 1918 (the date of the creation of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department) to the beginning of 1922 (then the Provincial Extraordinary Commission was renamed the GPU). In 1921, the Cheka and the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department developed an operation, the purpose of which was to eliminate the leader of the criminal world in Odessa, nicknamed Brilliant. A whole group of operatives had to infiltrate the criminals under the guise of a "gang of guest performers" acting on behalf of Nestor Makhno. Among them was 25-year-old Maria Klimova, who was carrying out a special mission - she needed to gain confidence in the cautious and suspicious Diamond and play the role of bait. The fact that Marusya really had something to do with the Cheka is proved by the lines from the song: "". It is simply impossible to imagine in an Odessa restaurant a representative of the criminal world in the vestments traditional for the Chekists, and even with a revolver at the ready.

Obviously, an employee of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department managed to cope with this task and earn authority in the criminal world of Odessa, but one can only guess how events unfolded further. Either she was declassified, or Brilliant dealt with her out of jealousy, or her death was staged by operatives. The song ends with the words "" (in another version - "pen"). However, the search for a possible burial place for the heroine of the song in Odessa was never crowned with success.

No documentary information about the course of this operation has been preserved. In the archives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, they found only a registration card, according to which Maria Prokofievna Klimova, originally from Veliky Ustyug, Vologda Oblast, was a captain of the reserve militia. The ranks were introduced to the police in the mid-1930s, which means that the woman survived to this time. In addition, the registration card also indicates the date of her exclusion from the authorities - 1952, which indicates that "Murka" not only survived, but also worked up to retirement. If, of course, it was her. After all, the personal file of Maria Klimova has not survived - only a registration card.

However, the text of the songs itself and the record card with the name of Maria Klimova were too few to draw definite conclusions. There are too many blank spots in this legend, which makes researchers doubt this version and look for other prototypes. One of their arguments was that the woman captured in the only photograph of Maria Klimova could hardly interest a connoisseur of the female beauty of the Diamond.

According to another version, this photo depicts another Marusya - the anarchist Maria Nikiforova, who could also become the prototype of Murka. She was born in Zaporozhye, at the age of 16 she fled from home, joined the anarchists and really became an associate of Nestor Makhno. According to some sources, in 1919 she was captured and executed, according to others, she went to work in the Cheka and ended up in the early 1920s. in Odessa under a new name.

Among the possible prototypes of the heroine of the song, the Cossack Sasha Sokolovskaya is also called, who during the Civil War lost all her brothers and husband and took up arms herself. Companions called her atamanshe Marusya, and one of her contemporaries wrote about her: "". In one of the versions of the song, another name of the heroine is mentioned - Shurka.

The author of the book "A Song About My Murka" Alexander Sidorov is sure: the prototype of the heroine was the Odessa Chekist, nicknamed Dora. The 20-year-old girl was reputed to be the main executioner in the local Cheka, and in 1919 she was executed by her own Chekists. Sergey Melgunov in the book “The Red Terror in Russia. 1918-1923 "wrote about her:" ". It was said that she was a double agent and revolved in a thieves' environment. Allegedly, once Yakov Yadov met her and wrote a song about Murka. But it is rather difficult to imagine the executioner Dora as a victim of a bandit bullet from the song.

Where the gang came to Odessa from is also unclear. In different versions, these are “a gang from Rostov”, “a gang from Amur”, “a gang from Amurka” (a district in Dnepropetrovsk, where a cruel gang was operating in the 1920s), “a gang because of MUR”, and the main character is then Murka, then Shurka, then Lyubka. The words about Amur led researchers to speculate that the song about the Odessa gang was remade from an earlier version, where it was actually about the cruel partisan detachment of Yakov Tryapitsyn and his girlfriend Nina Lebedeva-Kiyashko, who staged a massacre in Nikolaevsk-on-Amur … This woman had the nickname "Comrade Marusia". They both received capital punishment in 1920.

It is still argued about whether Marusya was a collective image or a real character. However, most researchers agree on one thing: this song is based on real events. But since all the employees of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department were called "Murki", and all the bandits' friends were called "Maruski", it is rather difficult to establish the only probable prototype. Perhaps this is a mystery that remains to be solved in the future …

Another Odessa legend was the famous criminal investigation officer: David Gotsman in life and on the screen.