The most scandalous misalliance of the USSR: How the affair with the gypsy Buryatse affected the fate of Galina Brezhneva

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

Fate is unpredictable. It happens that it brings together people from different social strata and estates, the most different social statuses. Sometimes these meetings are fleeting and insignificant, but it happens that the life of each of the participants in the story changes dramatically. So it happened with Boris Buryatse, a native of the gypsy camp: if not for the connection with the daughter of the USSR General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev Galina, his name would probably have remained known to a very limited circle of people.

How fate brought the Kremlin princess to the gypsy baron

The future lover of Galina Brezhneva was born into the family of a gypsy baron. Boris spent the first seven years of his life in a camp. At seventeen, the young man already "got acquainted" with the criminal code, having received a term for theft. Taking up my mind, I decided to study and entered the department of musical comedy at GITIS. After graduation, he served in the Gypsy theater "Romen", then got a job at the Moscow Operetta Theater.

Boris did not manage to make special career advances until Galina Brezhneva entered his life. At that time, the daughter of the secretary general was married. Her husband, General Yuri Churbanov, the first deputy minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, devoted almost all of his time to the service, so the woman herself arranged her personal leisure. Having access to information about the upcoming rise in the price of gold, she bought jewelry for huge amounts, and then resold at a new price. Often, jewelry was purchased directly at a jewelry factory, and not for money, but on receipt.

With the proceeds, Galina Leonidovna went abroad, where she flaunted extravagant outfits and diamonds, spent time in a casino, surprised hotel and restaurant employees with incredibly generous tips. In her native country, Galina also loved to have fun, and also to have fun in a bohemian environment. Fascinated by gypsy songs, she was a regular at the Romen Theater, where she met the handsome Boris Buryatse, a burning brunette with gray-green eyes.

How did acquaintance with the Secretary General's daughter affect Buryatse's career?

At first glance, the young actor won Galina's heart, and the woman plunged headlong into a pool of feelings. She was not even embarrassed by the big age difference - 17 years. In love, Galina showered her beloved with gifts - from cute trinkets to a Mercedes car, arranged for him a luxurious apartment in the center of Moscow.

And most importantly, she contributed to the artist's dizzying career takeoff, having achieved his transfer to the troupe of the famous Bolshoi Theater, which greatly flattered the guy's pride. For the sake of fairness, it should be noted that Boris did not immediately receive the status of a soloist, but for several years was in the position of a trainee. But even being in secondary roles, he had a personal dressing room in the Bolshoi and a personal guard constantly on duty near it.

Beloved Brezhnev's "craft" and the sudden end of his "career"

The chic appearance: mink coats, elegant suits, a ring with a huge diamond, a massive gold chain - gave evil tongues a reason to assert that Buryatse was associated with crime. An indirect confirmation of this was the appearance in the collection of Galina Brezhneva's jewelry of a unique rarity of the times of Louis XV - a brooch in the shape of a lily, with a huge ruby and thirty diamond petals. The antique item was stolen from the apartment of the widow of the famous writer Alexei Tolstoy, along with other valuable works of art. As it turned out during the investigation, it was the brooch that was the main target of the raiders.

A year later, the apartment was robbed of the famous trainer Irina Bugrimova, who possessed one of the world's best jewelry collection. Part of the abducted person was found at the customs at the Sheremetyevo airport with a passenger flying to Germany. The attacker gave the names of his accomplices, and they testified that he had brought them to the apartment of Bugrimova Buryatse, who received fabulous commissions for the information.

Boris was charged with organizing a crime. Checks were carried out for his involvement in the theft from the apartment of Tolstoy's widow, as well as in the murder and robbery of actress Zoya Fedorova. In addition, during a search in the home of the Gypsy prince, more than a dozen sheepskin coats were found, which made it possible to add speculation to the accusations.

How the fate of Boris Buryatse and Galina Brezhneva later developed

Galina Leonidovna, who more than once rescued her lover from difficult situations, this time could not help him. She failed to persuade her husband, Yuri Churbanov, to take Boris under his protection.

Buryatse was arrested. In the "diamond case" he was one of the main defendants, received five years in prison with confiscation of property and was sent to prison. There are several versions of how the further fate of Boris Buryatse developed. According to one of them, he served a sentence in a penitentiary institution near Krasnoyarsk, and in 1987, a year after his release, he died of an attack of appendicitis in Simferopol. According to another, he died five years earlier in a prison hospital. There is an assumption that he was killed on the orders of the KGB. Some are inclined to believe that Buryatse, having been released, lived a rather long, quiet and inconspicuous life. Buried Boris Buryatse in Krasnodar.

There is an opinion that the Roma did not forgive the Brezhnev-Churbanov family for the tragic fate of a member of their community and cursed not only Galina and Yuri, but also their descendants. Of course, one can doubt the effectiveness of gypsy magic, but the facts speak for themselves. So, Churbanov had to survive the accusation of corruption and arrest. Brezhnev could not cope with the loss of the privileges of a family member of the General Secretary, "got hooked" on alcohol, gradually turned into an alcoholic and ended her days in a psychiatric hospital. Her daughter Victoria, during the perestroika period, tried to improve the financial situation by selling her and her grandfather's apartments, but she became a victim of scammers and was left without housing and money. And Victoria's daughter Galina, like her grandmother, after whom she was named, was a patient of a psychiatric hospital for many years.

The descendants of Brezhnev are perhaps the only ones who have lived almost their entire lives in their native country. Others for various reasons abandoned everything and went abroad.