The death of Mayakovsky: the tragic finale of the poet.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (1893-1930) is considered an outstanding Soviet poet. In addition to poetry, he was also engaged in dramaturgy, writing screenplays, tried himself as a film director and film actor. He took an active part in the work of the creative association "LEF". That is, we see a bright creative personality, incredibly popular in the 20s of the last century. The whole country knew the name of the poet. Some people liked his poems, others not so much. Indeed, they were somewhat specific and found recognition among supporters of just such a peculiar expression of their inner world.

But we will not talk about the work of the poet. To this day it raises many questions. Mayakovsky's unexpected death on April 14, 1930. Vladimir Vladimirovich died at the age of 36. This is the very happy period of life when you look with the same irony at those who are older and those who are younger than you. There are still many, many years of life ahead, but the fateful path of the creator for some reason was cut short, leaving in the souls of people a feeling of confusion, mixed with bewilderment.

Naturally, there was a consequence. Organized by the OGPU. The official conclusion was suicide. We can agree with this, since creative people are inherently very unpredictable. They see the world around them differently than other people. Forever some throwing, doubts, disappointments and a constant search for something elusive all the time. In a word, it is very difficult to understand what they want to get from this life. And now, at the peak of disappointment, the cold muzzle of a pistol is brought to the temple or heart. A shot, and all problems are solved by themselves in the simplest and most proven way.

However, the suicide of Vladimir Vladimirovich left a lot of questions and ambiguities. They clearly indicate that there was no suicide, but there was murder. Moreover, it was carried out by official state bodies, which were originally supposed to protect citizens from rash and dangerous acts. So where is the truth? In this case, she is not at fault, but in facts that clearly indicate not just a criminal, but a political crime. But to understand the essence of the issue, you need to know the particulars. Therefore, we will first get to know the Brik family in more detail, with which our hero had a long close relationship.

Briki

Lilya Yurievna Brik (1891-1978) - a famous Soviet writer and her husband Osip Maksimovich Brik (1888-1945) - a literary critic and literary critic. This couple met the talented young poet in July 1915. After that, a new stage began in Mayakovsky's life, which lasted 15 years until his death.

Vladimir and Lily fell in love with each other. But Osip Maksimovich did not interfere with this feeling. The trinity began to live together, which caused a lot of gossip in literary circles. What happened there and how it happened is irrelevant for this story. It is much more important to know that Brikov and Mayakovsky were connected not only by spiritual, but also by material relations. Under Soviet rule, the poet was by no means a poor man. It is quite natural that he shared part of his income with the Briks.

Mayakovsky and Lilya Brik

It can be assumed that this is why Lily tried with all her might to tie Vladimir to herself. Since 1926, the trinity lived in a Moscow apartment, which the poet received. This is Gendrikov Lane (now Mayakovsky Lane). It is located in the very center of Moscow not far from Taganskaya Square. The Briks did not have the opportunity to get a separate apartment at that time. The huge city lived in communal apartments, and only outstanding personalities who brought significant benefits to the existing regime had their own living space.

Since 1922, Mayakovsky's works began to be published in major publications. The fees were so high that the trio began to spend a lot of time abroad, staying in expensive hotels. Therefore, it was not in the interests of the Briks to break off relations with a gifted and naive poet who was a good cash cow.

Heart affairs of Vladimir Mayakovsky

Being completely dependent on Lily Brik, our hero from time to time entered into intimate relationships with other women. In 1925, he traveled to America and began a love affair with Ellie Jones there. She was an emigrant from Russia, so the language barrier did not bother them. From this connection, on June 15, 1926, a girl was born who received the name Helen (Elena). She is alive to this day. He is a philosopher and writer, maintains a close relationship with Russia.

In 1928, Mayakovsky met Tatyana Yakovleva in Paris. Along the way, Vladimir bought Lily Brik a French car. He chose it together with Yakovleva. For Moscow at that time it was an unimaginable luxury. The poet wanted to create a family with his new Parisian passion, but she did not express a desire to go to Bolshevik Russia.

However, Vladimir did not lose hope to unite himself with the bonds of Hymen and Tatyana and finally say goodbye to the Briks. This, of course, was not part of Lily's plans. In April 1929, she introduced the poet to the young and beautiful actress Veronika Polonskaya, who had been married to actor Mikhail Yanshin for 4 years.

Our hero was seriously carried away by a girl who was 15 years younger than him. Very opportunely, news came from Paris that supposedly Yakovleva was marrying a well-born Frenchman. Therefore, Vladimir quickly forgot his foreign passion and focused all his attention on Veronica. It was this girl who became the main witness to the tragedy, because Mayakovsky's death occurred almost before her eyes.

Chronology of tragic events

Possible cause of death

If we assume that Vladimir Vladimirovich was killed, then why was this done, who did he interfere with? In 1918, the poet inextricably linked his fate with the Bolshevik Party. He was a tribune preaching the ideas of world revolution. That is why it was such a huge success with various publishers. He was paid huge fees, provided with separate housing, but in return they demanded devotion and loyalty.

However, by the end of the 20s, notes of disappointment with the existing regime began to slip in the works of the poet. There were still years of collectivization ahead, a terrible famine, repressions, and Vladimir Vladimirovich already felt in his soul the mortal danger hanging over the country. It became increasingly difficult for him to praise the existing reality. I had to step over my understanding of the world and moral principles more and more often.

A wave of jubilation was gaining strength in the country. Everyone admired or pretended to admire the achievements of the socialist system, and Mayakovsky began to satirically denounce all sorts of "rubbish". It sounded out of tune with the enthusiastic chorus of sycophants and opportunists. The authorities very quickly felt that the poet had become different. He has changed, and in a way that is dangerous for the regime. The first sign was the criticism of his plays "Bug" and "Bath". Then the portrait disappeared from a literary magazine, and persecution in the press unfolded.

Along with this, the Chekists began to patronize the poet. They began to visit regularly as good friends, because Lilya Brik loved to receive guests. But it's one thing when fellow writers come, and another thing when an OGPU officer comes into the apartment on a friendly visit. We must also not forget that Osip Maksimovich Brik in 1919-1921 was an employee of the Cheka. And there are no former Chekists.

All this guardianship was carried out in order to check the reliability of the poet. The results were deplorable for Vladimir Vladimirovich. The decision was made to remove it. It could not have been otherwise, because a reforged tribune could cause great ideological harm to the communist regime.

The last day of the poet's life

Mayakovsky's death, as already mentioned, occurred on April 14, 1930. There were no Briks in Moscow: they went abroad back in February. The poet decided to take advantage of their absence in order to finally break the protracted relationship leading nowhere. He wanted to create a normal family and for this he chose Veronica Polonskaya. In early April, he makes a cash contribution to a housing cooperative in order to purchase an apartment for himself, and leave the existing living space to a voluptuous and mercenary couple.

On Monday, April 14, the poet arrives at Polonskaya at 8 o'clock in the morning and takes her to his place. There is a conversation going on between them. Vladimir demands that Veronika leave her husband and go to him right now. The woman says that she cannot leave Yanshin right away. She does not refuse Mayakovsky, assures that she loves him, but she needs time. After that, Polonskaya leaves the apartment, as at 10-30 she has a rehearsal in the theater. She goes out into the front door and then hears the sound of a revolver shot. Veronica runs back into the room just a moment after leaving and sees that Vladimir is lying on the floor with his arms outstretched.

Soon an investigation team arrived, but not from the police, but from counterintelligence. It was headed by the head of the secret department of the OGPU, Yakov Saulovich Agranov (1893-1938). His appearance can be explained by the fact that he oversaw the creative intelligentsia. The scene of the incident was examined, the poet's body was photographed. Vladimir Vladimirovich's suicide letter, dated April 12, was found. Agranov read it aloud and put it in his tunic pocket.

Toward evening, the sculptor Konstantin Lutsky appeared. He made a plaster mask from the face of the deceased. At first, they did not want to do an autopsy, since it was already clear that the poet died from a shot in the heart. But rumors spread that Mayakovsky had syphilis, which caused the tragedy. Pathologists had to open the body, but no serious abnormalities were found in the organs. The newspapers wrote that the poet died of a transient illness. Friends signed the obituary, and that was the end of the matter.

Murder or suicide?

So how should one characterize the death of Mayakovsky? Was it murder or suicide? To shed light on this issue, let's start, as expected, with a suicide note. Here is her text:

“To everyone… Don’t blame anyone for dying and don’t gossip. The deceased didn’t like this terribly.

Comrade government, my family is Lilya Brik, mother, sister and Veronika Polonskaya. I would be grateful if you give them a tolerable life. Give the verses you have begun to the Briks, they will sort it out. As they say - the incident is over, the love boat crashed into everyday life. I am counting with life, and there is no need for a list of mutual pains, troubles and insults. Happy staying."

Here is a will written, according to the date, April 12. And the fatal shot sounded on April 14. At the same time, a love explanation with Veronica also took place, although the poet knew that he was about to die. But despite this, he insisted that the beloved immediately leave her husband. Is there any logic in this?

It is also interesting that Vladimir Vladimirovich wrote the last letter in pencil. He had money to buy a cooperative apartment, but there was not even a little thing for a pen. However, the deceased had his own very good pen with a luxurious gold nib. He never gave it to anyone, but wrote only to her. But at the most crucial moment of his life he picked up a pencil. By the way, it is much easier for them to forge handwriting than with a pen.

At one time, Sergei Eisenstein said in a narrow circle of friends that if you carefully read the style of writing, you can argue that it was not written by Mayakovsky. So who then produced this creation. Maybe there was an employee in the apparatus of the OGPU who took on such duties that were so unusual for him?

The archive contains the criminal case number 02-29. This is just the suicide case of VV Mayakovsky. It was led by investigator I. Syrtsov. So, the inspection protocol does not mention the suicide letter, as if it never existed. There is also no examination of the shirt that the poet was wearing at the time of his death. But she could tell a lot to the investigation.

But most importantly, it is absolutely unclear from the case where Polonskaya was when the fatal shot was fired. Either she was standing near the poet, or she had already left the room. As Veronica herself later claimed, she went out into the front door and only there she heard the sound of a shot. However, judging by the papers, her behavior can be interpreted in different ways. The woman ran down the stairs, and a shot rang out, or ran out of the room screaming, and it was at that moment that the poet shot himself. So maybe she saw Vladimir in his hand with a pistol, got scared and tried to hide? It seems that the investigator did not need a clear and precise answer at all.

The criminal case was closed on April 19. At the same time, it remained a mystery whether a gun was found near the body or not. How was the body? Head to the door or head into the room. If someone else entered the room and fired, then Vladimir Vladimirovich had to fall back, that is, head deep into the room. But nothing definite can be said here. Thus, it can be concluded that the investigative actions were carried out extremely carelessly. They were a pure formality. All the work was done not for the sake of establishing the truth, but for the sake of a tick that such work was done.

So the conclusion suggests itself. The poet was killed by the OGPU, but presented this case as a suicide. It was safely placed in the archive and gathered dust on the shelves until the 90s of the XX century. And who will you ask in 60 years? Moreover, Yagoda's people, including Agranov, were shot in 1937-38. So the retribution was done anyway.

Who was the winner after Mayakovsky's death?

The death of Mayakovsky was in the hands of Lily Brik. There is no talk about Osip Maksimovich, since his family life with his loving wife ended in divorce. But the Soviet government recognized Lily as the legitimate heiress of the deceased poet. She got his co-op apartment and cash savings.

But the most important thing is the archives, which, in fact, were the property of the people. However, this is not all. Since 1935, the so-called "widow" of Mayakovsky began to receive interest from the sold works of the poet. And they were printed in millions of copies, since Vladimir Vladimirovich was posthumously recognized as the best and most talented poet of the Soviet era.

As for Polonskaya, without two minutes the wife received nothing. However, no. She got gossip, talk behind her back, malevolent smirks. The last point in this epic was the divorce from her husband. Well, what can you do. That's the way this world works. Someone finds, and someone loses. But let's be optimistic. Folk wisdom says: "What does not happen is always for the better."

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky Born on July 7 (19), 1893 in Baghdati, Kutaisi province - died on April 14, 1930 in Moscow. Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, screenwriter, film director, actor, artist. One of the most prominent poets of the 20th century.

Vladimir Mayakovsky was born on July 7 (19 according to the new style) July 1893 in Bagdati, Kutaisi province (Georgia).

Father - Vladimir Konstantinovich Mayakovsky (1857-1906), served as a forester of the third category in the Erivan province, from 1889 in the Bagdat forestry. The father died of blood poisoning after he pricked his finger with a needle while sewing papers - since then, Vladimir Mayakovsky had a phobia of pins, needles, hairpins, etc., fearing infection, bacteriophobia haunted him all his life.

Mother - Alexandra Alekseevna Pavlenko (1867-1954), from the Kuban Cossacks, was born in the village of Ternovskaya in the Kuban.

In the poem "Vladikavkaz - Tiflis" Mayakovsky calls himself a "Georgian".

One of his grandmothers, Efrosinya Osipovna Danilevskaya, is a cousin of the author of historical novels G. P. Danilevsky.

He had two sisters: Lyudmila (1884-1972) and Olga (1890-1949).

He had two brothers: Konstantin (died at the age of three from scarlet fever) and Alexander (died in infancy).

In 1902, Mayakovsky entered the gymnasium in Kutaisi. Like his parents, he was fluent in Georgian.

In his youth, he participated in revolutionary demonstrations, read propaganda pamphlets.

After the death of his father in 1906, Mayakovsky, together with his mother and sisters, moved to Moscow, where he entered the IV grade of the 5th classical gymnasium (now Moscow school No. 91 on Povarskaya Street, the building has not been preserved), studied in the same class with his brother - Shura.

The family lived in poverty. In March 1908, he was expelled from the 5th grade due to non-payment of tuition.

Mayakovsky published the first "half-poem" in the illegal magazine Impulse, which was published by the Third Gymnasium. According to him, "it turned out incredibly revolutionary and equally ugly."

In Moscow, Mayakovsky met revolutionary-minded students, began to get involved in Marxist literature, and in 1908 joined the RSDLP. He was a propagandist in the commercial and industrial sub-district, in 1908-1909 he was arrested three times (on the case of an underground printing house, on suspicion of being associated with a group of anarchist expropriators, on suspicion of complicity in the escape of female political convicts from Novinsky prison).

In the first case, he was released with transfer under the supervision of his parents by a court verdict as a minor who acted "without understanding", in the second and third cases he was released due to lack of evidence.

In prison, Mayakovsky "scandalized", so he was often transferred from unit to unit: Basmannaya, Meshchanskaya, Myasnitskaya and, finally, Butyrskaya prison, where he spent 11 months in solitary confinement No. 103. In prison in 1909, Mayakovsky again began to write poetry, but was dissatisfied with what was written.

From prison after the third arrest, he was released in January 1910. After his release, he left the party. In 1918 he wrote in his autobiography: “Why not in the party? The communists worked at the fronts. In art and education so far there are compromisers. I was sent to fish in Astrakhan.

In 1911, the poet's friend, the bohemian artist Eugenia Lang, inspired the poet to paint.

Mayakovsky studied in the preparatory class of the Stroganov School, in the studios of the artists S. Yu. Zhukovsky and P. I. Kelin. In 1911 he entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture - the only place where he was accepted without a certificate of reliability. Having met David Burliuk, the founder of the futuristic group "Gilea", he entered the poetic circle and joined the Cubo-Futurists. The first published poem was called "Night" (1912), it was included in the futuristic collection "Slap in the Face of Public Taste".

On November 30, 1912, Mayakovsky's first public performance took place in the artistic cellar "Stray Dog".

In 1913, the first collection of Mayakovsky's "I" was published (a cycle of four poems). It was written by hand, supplied with drawings by Vasily Chekrygin and Lev Zhegin, and lithographically reproduced in the amount of 300 copies. As the first section, this collection was included in the poet's book of poems "Simple as a lowing" (1916). Also, his poems appeared on the pages of the futurist almanacs "Mare's Milk", "Dead Moon", "Roaring Parnassus", etc., began to be published in periodicals.

In the same year, the poet turned to dramaturgy. The programmatic tragedy "Vladimir Mayakovsky" was written and staged. The scenery for it was written by artists from the "Union of Youth" P. N. Filonov and I. S. Shkolnik, and the author himself acted as a director and performer of the main role.

In February 1914, Mayakovsky and Burliuk were expelled from the school for public speaking.

In 1914-1915, Mayakovsky worked on the poem "A Cloud in Trousers". After the outbreak of the First World War, the poem "War is declared" was published. In August, Mayakovsky decided to sign up as a volunteer, but he was not allowed, explaining this by political unreliability. Soon, Mayakovsky expressed his attitude to the service in the tsarist army in the poem “To you!”, Which later became a song.

On March 29, 1914, Mayakovsky, together with Burliuk and Kamensky, arrived on tour in Baku - as part of the "famous Moscow futurists." In the evening of the same day, Mayakovsky read a report on futurism in the theater of the Mayilov brothers, illustrating it with poems.

In July 1915, the poet met Lilya Yurievna and Osip Maksimovich Brik. In 1915-1917, Mayakovsky, under patronage, served in the military in Petrograd at the Automobile Training School.

The soldiers were not allowed to print, but he was saved by Osip Brik, who bought the poems “Flute-Spine” and “Cloud in Pants” at 50 kopecks per line and printed it. His anti-war lyrics: “Mother and the evening killed by the Germans”, “Me and Napoleon”, the poem “War and Peace” (1915). Appeal to satire. Cycle "Hymns" for the magazine "New Satyricon" (1915). In 1916, the first large collection "Simple as a lowing" was published. 1917 - “Revolution. Poetic Chronicle".

On March 3, 1917, Mayakovsky led a detachment of 7 soldiers who arrested the commander of the Automobile Training School, General P. I. Secretev. It is curious that shortly before this, on January 31, Mayakovsky received a silver medal "For Diligence" from Secretev's hands. During the summer of 1917, Mayakovsky energetically petitioned for the recognition of him unfit for military service and was released from it in the fall.

In August 1917, he decided to write The Mystery Buff, which was completed on October 25, 1918 and staged on the anniversary of the revolution (dir. Vs. Meyerhold, art director K. Malevich).

In 1918, Mayakovsky starred in three films based on his own scripts.

Vladimir Mayakovsky in the film "The Young Lady and the Hooligan"

In March 1919, he moved to Moscow, began to actively cooperate in ROSTA (1919-1921), designed (as a poet and as an artist) propaganda and satirical posters for ROSTA (“ROSTA Windows”).

In 1919, the first collected works of the poet were published - “Everything composed by Vladimir Mayakovsky. 1909-1919".

In 1918-1919 he appeared in the newspaper Art of the Commune. Propaganda of the world revolution and the revolution of the spirit.

In 1920 he finished writing the poem "150,000,000", which reflects the theme of the world revolution.

In 1918, Mayakovsky organized the Komfut group (communist futurism), in 1922 - the MAF publishing house (Moscow Association of Futurists), which published several of his books.

In 1923 he organized the LEF group (Left Front of the Arts), the thick magazine LEF (seven issues were published in 1923-1925). Aseev, Pasternak, Osip Brik, B. Arvatov, N. Chuzhak, Tretyakov, Levidov, Shklovsky and others were actively published. He promoted Lef's theories of production art, social order, literature of fact.

At this time, the poems “About This” (1923), “To the Kursk Workers Who Mined the First Ore, a Temporary Monument by Vladimir Mayakovsky” (1923) and “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin” (1924) were published. When the author read a poem about at the Bolshoi Theater, accompanied by a 20-minute ovation, he was present. Mayakovsky mentioned the “leader of the peoples” himself in verse only twice.

Mayakovsky considers the years of the civil war to be the best time in his life; in the poem “Good!”, Written in the prosperous 1927, there are nostalgic chapters.

In 1922-1923, in a number of works, he continued to insist on the need for a world revolution and a revolution of the spirit - "The Fourth International", "The Fifth International", "My Speech at the Genoa Conference", etc.

In 1922-1924, Mayakovsky made several trips abroad - Latvia, France, Germany; wrote essays and poems about European impressions: “How does a democratic republic work?” (1922); "Paris (Conversations with the Eiffel Tower)" (1923) and a number of others.

In 1925, his longest journey took place: a trip to America. Mayakovsky visited Havana, Mexico City, and for three months performed in various US cities with poetry readings and reports. Later, poems were written (the collection "Spain. - Ocean. - Havana. - Mexico. - America") and the essay "My Discovery of America".

In 1925-1928 he traveled extensively throughout the Soviet Union, speaking to various audiences. During these years, the poet published such works as "To Comrade Netta, the steamboat and the man" (1926); "Across the cities of the Union" (1927); "The story of the foundryman Ivan Kozyrev ..." (1928).

From February 17 to February 24, 1926, Mayakovsky visited Baku, performed at the opera and drama theaters, in front of oil workers in Balakhani.

In 1922-1926, he actively collaborated with Izvestia, in 1926-1929 - with Komsomolskaya Pravda.

He was published in the magazines: "New World", "Young Guard", "Spark", "Crocodile", "Krasnaya Niva", etc. He worked in agitation and advertising, for which he was criticized by Pasternak, Kataev, Svetlov.

In 1926-1927 he wrote nine screenplays.

In 1927, he restored the LEF magazine under the name "New LEF". There were 24 issues in total. In the summer of 1928, Mayakovsky became disillusioned with the LEF and left the organization and the magazine. In the same year, he began writing his personal biography, "I myself." From October 8 to December 8 - a trip abroad, on the route Berlin - Paris. In November, volumes I and II of the collected works were published.

The satirical plays The Bedbug (1928) and The Bathhouse (1929) were staged by Meyerhold. The poet's satire, especially "Bath", caused persecution from Rapp's criticism. In 1929, the poet organized the REF group, but already in February 1930 he left it, joining the RAPP.

In 1928-1929 Mayakovsky took an active part in the anti-religious campaign. It was then that the NEP was curtailed, the collectivization of agriculture began, and materials of demonstration trials of "pests" appeared in the newspapers.

In 1929, the Decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee “On Religious Associations” was issued, which worsened the situation of believers. In the same year, Art. 4 of the Constitution of the RSFSR: instead of "freedom of religious and anti-religious propaganda" in the republic, "freedom of religious confession and anti-religious propaganda" was recognized.

As a result, a need arose in the state for anti-religious works of art that corresponded to ideological changes. A number of leading Soviet poets, writers, journalists and filmmakers responded to this need. Among them was Mayakovsky. In 1929, he wrote the poem "We Must Fight", in which he denounced believers and called for rebellion.

In the same 1929, together with Maxim Gorky and Demyan Bedny, he took part in the II Congress of the Union of Militant Atheists. In his speech at the congress, Mayakovsky called on writers and poets to take part in the fight against religion: “We can already unmistakably discern a fascist Mauser behind the Catholic cassock. We can already unmistakably distinguish the cut of a fist behind the priest's cassock, but thousands of other intricacies through art entangle us with the same accursed mysticism. ... If it is still possible in one way or another to understand the brainless from the flock, who have been driving into themselves a religious feeling for whole dozens of years, the so-called believers, then we must qualify a religious writer who works consciously and still works religiously, we must qualify either as a charlatan, or like a fool. Comrades, their pre-revolutionary meetings and congresses usually ended with the call "to God" - today the congress will end with the words "to God." This is the slogan of today's writer,” he said.

Features of the style and creativity of Vladimir Mayakovsky

Many researchers of Mayakovsky's creative development liken his poetic life to a five-act action with a prologue and an epilogue.

The role of a kind of prologue in the creative path of the poet was played by the tragedy "Vladimir Mayakovsky" (1913), the first act was the poem "A Cloud in Pants" (1914-1915) and "Flute-Spine" (1915), the second act - the poem "War and Peace "(1915-1916) and" Man "(1916-1917), the third act is the play" Mystery Buff "(first version - 1918, second - 1920-1921) and the poem" 150,000,000 "(1919-1920), the fourth act - the poems "I Love" (1922), "About this" (1923) and "Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" (1924), the fifth act - the poem "Good!" (1927) and the plays "The Bedbug" (1928-1929) and "Bath" (1929-1930), the epilogue is the first and second introductions to the poem "Out loud" (1928-1930) and the poet's dying letter "To Everyone" (12 April 1930).

The rest of Mayakovsky's works, including numerous poems, gravitate towards one or another part of this general picture, which is based on the poet's major works.

In his works, Mayakovsky was uncompromising, and therefore uncomfortable. In the works written by him in the late 1920s, tragic motifs began to appear. Critics called him only a “fellow traveler”, and not a “proletarian writer”, as he wanted to see himself.

In 1930, he organized an exhibition dedicated to the 20th anniversary of his work, but he was interfered in every possible way, and none of the writers and leaders of the state visited the exposition itself.

In the spring of 1930, a grandiose performance of “Moscow is on fire” based on Mayakovsky’s play was being prepared at the Circus on Tsvetnoy Boulevard, the dress rehearsal was scheduled for April 21, but the poet did not live to see it.

Mayakovsky’s early work was expressive and metaphorical (“I’m going to sob that policemen were crucified at the crossroads”, “Can you?”), combined the energy of a rally and demonstration with the most lyrical intimacy (“The violin thrashed begging”), Nietzsche’s theomachism and carefully disguised in the soul a religious feeling ("I, who sing of the machine and England / Maybe just / In the most ordinary gospel / The thirteenth apostle").

According to the poet, it all started with the line "He launched a pineapple into the sky." David Burliuk introduced the young poet to the poetry of Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Verharne, but Whitman's free verse had a decisive influence.

Mayakovsky did not recognize traditional poetic meters, he invented rhythm for his poems; polymetric compositions are united by style and a single syntactic intonation, which is set by the graphic presentation of the verse: first, by dividing the verse into several lines written in a column, and since 1923, the famous "ladder", which became Mayakovsky's "calling card". The short flight of stairs helped Mayakovsky to make his poems read with the correct intonation, since sometimes commas were not enough.

After 1917, Mayakovsky began to write a lot, in five pre-revolutionary years he wrote one volume of poetry and prose, in twelve post-revolutionary years - eleven volumes. For example, in 1928 he wrote 125 poems and a play. He spent a lot of time traveling around the Union and abroad. On trips, sometimes he held 2-3 speeches a day (not counting participation in disputes, meetings, conferences, etc.).

However, later, disturbing and restless thoughts began to appear in Mayakovsky’s works, he exposes the vices and shortcomings of the new system (from the poem “The Sitting Ones”, 1922, to the play “The Bathhouse”, 1929).

It is believed that in the mid-1920s he began to become disillusioned with the socialist system, his so-called trips abroad are perceived as attempts to escape from himself, in the poem "Out loud" there is a line "rummaging through today's petrified shit" (in the censored version - "shit"). Although poems imbued with official cheerfulness, including those dedicated to collectivization, he continued to create until his last days.

Another feature of the poet is the combination of pathos and lyricism with the most poisonous Shchedrin satire.

Mayakovsky had a great influence on the poetry of the 20th century. Especially on Kirsanov, Voznesensky, Yevtushenko, Rozhdestvensky, Kedrov, and also made a significant contribution to children's poetry.

Mayakovsky turned to his descendants, into the distant future, confident that he would be remembered hundreds of years later:

my verse

labor

will break through the mass of years

and will appear

weighty,

rough,

visibly

like nowadays

plumbing came in

worked out

still slaves of Rome.

Vladimir Mayakovsky. Documentary

Suicide of Vladimir Mayakovsky

1930 began unsuccessfully for Mayakovsky. He was sick a lot. In February, Lilya and Osip Brik left for Europe.

Mayakovsky was worked hard in the newspapers as a "fellow traveler of the Soviet government" - while he himself saw himself as a proletarian writer.

There was an embarrassment with his long-awaited exhibition "20 Years of Work", which was not attended by any of the prominent writers and leaders of the state, which the poet hoped for. In March, the premiere of the play "Banya" was held without success, and the performance "Bedbug" was also expected to fail.

At the beginning of April 1930, a greeting "to the great proletarian poet on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of work and social activity" was withdrawn from the layout magazine "Print and Revolution". In literary circles, rumors circulated that Mayakovsky had written himself. The poet was denied a visa for a trip abroad.

Two days before his suicide, on April 12, Mayakovsky held a meeting with readers at the Polytechnic Institute, which gathered mainly Komsomol members, and there were many boorish shouts from the field. The poet was haunted everywhere by quarrels and scandals. His mental state became more and more disturbing and depressing.

From the spring of 1919, Mayakovsky, despite the fact that he constantly lived with the Briks, had a small boat room on the fourth floor in a communal apartment on Lubyanka for work (now it is the State Museum of V.V. Mayakovsky, Lubyansky proezd, 3/6 page 4). It was in this room that the suicide took place.

On the morning of April 14, Mayakovsky had an appointment with Veronika (Nora) Polonskaya. The poet met with Polonskaya for the second year, insisted on her divorce, and even signed up for a writers' cooperative in the passage of the Art Theater, where he was going to move to live with Nora.

As 82-year-old Polonskaya recalled in 1990 in an interview with Soviet Screen magazine (No. 13 - 1990), on that fateful morning, the poet called for her at eight o'clock, because at 10.30 she had a rehearsal with Nemirovich in the theater -Danchenko.

“I couldn’t be late, this angered Vladimir Vladimirovich. He locked the doors, hid the key in his pocket, began to demand that I not go to the theater, and generally left there. He cried ... I asked if he would take me. “No "- he said, but promised to call. And he also asked if I had money for a taxi. I had no money, he gave twenty rubles ... I managed to reach the front door and heard a shot. I rushed about, I was afraid to return. "Then she came in and saw the smoke from the shot that had not yet dissipated. There was a small bloody stain on Mayakovsky's chest. I rushed to him, I repeated: "What have you done? .." He tried to raise his head. Then his head fell, and he began to turn terribly pale ... People appeared, someone said to me: “Run, meet the ambulance ... I ran out, met. I returned, and on the stairs someone said to me: “It's too late. He died ... ", - recalled Veronika Polonskaya.

The suicide note, prepared two days earlier, is very detailed (which, according to the researchers, excludes the version of the spontaneity of the shot), begins with the words: “Do not blame anyone for the fact that I am dying, and please do not gossip, the deceased did not like this terribly ...".

The poet calls Lilya Brik (as well as Veronika Polonskaya), mother and sisters as members of his family and asks to transfer all the poems and archives to the Briks.

Letter from Vladimir Mayakovsky:

"Everyone

Don't blame anyone for dying, and please don't gossip. The dead man disliked this terribly.

Mom, sisters and comrades, I'm sorry - this is not the way (I do not advise others), but I have no way out.

Lily - love me.

Comrade government, my family is Lilya Brik, mother, sisters and Veronika Vitoldovna Polonskaya.

If you give them a decent life, thank you.

Give the started poems to the Briks, they will figure it out.

As they say -

"incident over"

love boat

crashed into life.

I'm in with life

and no list

mutual pain,

and resentment.

Happy to stay.

12/IV -30

Comrades Wappovtsy, do not consider me cowardly.

Seriously, there's nothing you can do.

Hello.

Tell Yermilov that it's a pity - he took off the slogan, we should have a fight.

In the table I have 2000 rubles. - pay tax. Get the rest from Giza.

Briki managed to arrive at the funeral, urgently interrupting the European tour. Polonskaya, on the contrary, did not dare to attend, since Mayakovsky's mother and sisters considered her to be the culprit of the death of the poet.

For three days, with an endless stream of people, the farewell went on in the House of Writers. Tens of thousands of fans of his talent were escorted to the Donskoy cemetery in an iron coffin to the singing of the Internationale. Ironically, the “futuristic” iron coffin for Mayakovsky was made by the avant-garde sculptor Anton Lavinsky, the husband of the artist Lily Lavinskaya, who gave birth to a son from a relationship with Mayakovsky.

The poet was cremated in the first Moscow crematorium, opened three years earlier, near the Donskoy Monastery. The brain was harvested for research by the Brain Institute. Initially, the ashes were located there, in the columbarium of the New Donskoy cemetery, but as a result of the persistent actions of Lilia Brik and the elder sister of the poet Lyudmila, the urn with the ashes of Mayakovsky was transferred on May 22, 1952 and buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.

Mayakovsky. Last love, last shot

Height of Vladimir Mayakovsky: 189 centimeters.

Personal life of Vladimir Mayakovsky:

Was not married. Two children from extramarital relations.

The poet had many different novels, a number of which went down in history.

He was in a relationship with Elsa Triolet, thanks to whom appeared in his life.

- "The muse of the Russian avant-garde", the hostess of one of the most famous literary and art salons in the 20th century. The author of memoirs, the addressee of the works of Vladimir Mayakovsky, who played an important role in the life of the poet. Sister of Elsa Triolet. She was married to Osip Brik, Vitaly Primakov, Vasily Katanyan.

For a long period of Mayakovsky's creative life, Lilya Brik was his muse. They met in July 1915 at her parents' dacha in Malakhovka near Moscow. At the end of July, Lily's sister Elsa Triole brought Mayakovsky, who had recently arrived from Finland, to Brikov's Petrograd apartment on ul. Zhukovsky, 7.

Briks, people far from literature, were engaged in entrepreneurship, having inherited from their parents a small but profitable coral business. Mayakovsky read at their house the yet unpublished poem "A Cloud in Pants" and, after an enthusiastic reception, dedicated it to the mistress - "To You, Lilya." The poet later called this day "the most joyful date."

Osip Brik - Lily's husband - in September 1915 published a poem in a small edition. Carried away by Lily, the poet settled in the Palais Royal Hotel on Pushkinskaya Street in Petrograd, never returning to Finland.

In November, the futurist moved even closer to Brikov's apartment - to Nadezhdinskaya Street, 52. Soon Mayakovsky introduced new friends to friends, futurist poets - D. Burliuk, V. Kamensky, B. Pasternak, V. Khlebnikov and others. Brikov's apartment on the street . Zhukovsky becomes a bohemian salon, which was attended not only by futurists, but also by M. Kuzmin, M. Gorky, V. Shklovsky, R. Yakobson, as well as other writers, philologists and artists.

Soon, a stormy romance broke out between Mayakovsky and Lilya Brik, with the obvious connivance of Osip. This novel was reflected in the poems Flute-Spine (1915) and Man (1916) and in the poems To Everything (1916), Lilichka! Instead of a letter" (1916). After that, Mayakovsky began to devote all his works (except for the poem "Vladimir Ilyich Lenin") to Lila Brik.

In 1918, Lilya and Vladimir starred in the film Chained by Film based on Mayakovsky's script. To date, the film has survived in fragments. Photographs and a large poster also survived, where Lily is drawn, entangled in film.

Vladimir Mayakovsky and Lilya Brik in the film Chained by Film

Since the summer of 1918, Mayakovsky and Briki lived together, the three of them, which quite fit into the marriage-love concept popular after the revolution, known as the "Theory of a glass of water." At this time, all three finally switched to the Bolshevik positions. In early March 1919, they moved from Petrograd to Moscow to a communal apartment at Poluektov Lane, 5, and then, from September 1920, they settled in two rooms in a house at the corner of Myasnitskaya Street at Vodopyany Lane, 3. Then all three moved to an apartment in Gendrikov lane on Taganka. Mayakovsky and Lilya worked at the ROSTA Windows, and Osip served for some time in the Cheka and was a member of the Bolshevik Party.

Bibliography of Vladimir Mayakovsky:

Autobiography:

1928 - "I myself"

Poems:

1914-15 - "A Cloud in Trousers"
1915 - "Flute-spine"
1916-17 - "Man"
1921-22 - "I love"
1923 - "About it"
1924 - "Vladimir Ilyich Lenin"
1925 - "Flying Proletarian"
1927 - "Good!"

Poems:

1912 - "Night"
1912 - "Morning"
1912 - "Port"
1913 - "From street to street"
1913 - "Could you?"
1913 - "Signs"
1913 - "I": On the pavement; A few words about my wife; A few words about my mother; A few words about myself
1913 - "From fatigue"
1913 - "Adish of the city"
1913 - "Nate!"
1913 - "They don't understand anything"
1914 - Veil Jacket
1914 - "Listen"
1914 - "And yet"
1914 - "War is declared". July 20
1914 - "Mom and the Evening Killed by the Germans"
1914 - "Violin and a little nervous"
1915 - "Me and Napoleon"
1915 - "To you"
1915 - "Hymn to the Judge"
1915 - "Hymn to the scientist"
1915 - "Naval love"
1915 - "Hymn to Health"
1915 - "Hymn to Criticism"
1915 - "Hymn to Dinner"
1915 - "That's how I became a dog"
1915 - "Magnificent absurdities"
1915 - "Hymn to Bribe"
1915 - "Attentive attitude towards bribe-takers"
1915 - "Monstrous Funeral"
1916 - "Hey!"
1916 - "Giveaway"
1916 - "Tired"
1916 - Needles
1916 - "The Last Petersburg Fairy Tale"
1916 - "Russia"
1916 - Lilichka!
1916 - "To everything"
1916 - “The author dedicates these lines to himself, beloved”
1917 - "Brothers Writers"
1917 - "Revolution". April 19
1917 - "The Tale of Little Red Riding Hood"
1917 - "To the answer"
1917 - "Our March"
1918 - "Good attitude towards horses"
1918 - "Ode to the Revolution"
1918 - "Order on the army of art"
1918 - "Poet worker"
1918 - "To the Other Side"
1918 - "Left March"
1919 - "Stunning Facts"
1919 - "We are going"
1919 - "Soviet alphabet"
1919 - “Worker! Throw out non-party stupidity ... ". October
1919 - "Song of the Ryazan peasant". October
1920 - "The weapons of the Entente - money ...". July
1920 - "If you live in disarray, as the Makhnovists want ...". July
1920 - "A story about bagels and a woman who does not recognize the republic." August
1920 - "Red hedgehog"
1920 - "Attitude towards the young lady"
1920 - "Vladimir Ilyich"
1920 - "An extraordinary adventure that happened with Vladimir Mayakovsky in the summer at the dacha"
1920 - "The story of how the godfather about Wrangel was interpreted without any mind"
1920 - "Geyne"
1920 - “The cigarette case went into the grass by a third ...”
1920 - "The last page of the civil war"
1920 - "About rubbish"
1921 - "Two not quite ordinary cases"
1921 - "A poem about Myasnitskaya, about a woman and about the all-Russian scale"
1921 - "Order No. 2 of the Army of the Arts"
1922 - "Passed"
1922 - "Bastards!"
1922 - "Bureocracy"
1922 - "My speech at the Genoa Conference"
1922 - "Germany"
1923 - "About poets"
1923 - "On the" fiascos "," apogees "and other unknown things"
1923 - "Paris"
1923 - "Newspaper Day"
1923 - "We don't believe!"
1923 - "Trusts"
1923 - "April 17"
1923 - "Spring Question"
1923 - "Universal Answer"
1923 - "Thieves"
1923 - "Baku"
1923 - "Young Guard"
1923 - "Norderney"
1923 - "Moscow-Königsberg". 6 September
1923 - "Kyiv"
1924 - "January 9th"
1924 - "Be ready!"
1924 - "Bourgeois - say goodbye to pleasant days - we will finally finish off with hard money"
1924 - "Vladikavkaz - Tiflis"
1924 - "Two Berlins"
1924 - "Diplomatic"
1924 - "The rumble of uprisings, multiplied by the echo"
1924 - "Hello!"
1924 - "Kyiv"
1924 - Komsomolskaya
1924 - “A Little Difference” (“In Europe ...”)
1924 - "To the rescue"
1924 - "Every little thing is accounted for"
1924 - Let's Laugh!
1924 - "Proletarian, nip the war in the bud!"
1924 - "I protest!"
1924 - "Get your hands off China!"
1924 - "Sevastopol - Yalta"
1924 - "Selcor"
1924 - "Tamara and the Demon"
1924 - "Hard money - solid ground for the bond between the peasant and the worker"
1924 - "Wow, and fun!"
1924 - "Hooliganism"
1924 - "Jubilee"
1925 - "That's what a plane is for a peasant"
1925 - "Drag out the future!"
1925 - "Give the motor!"
1925 - "Two May"
1925 - "Red Envy"
1925 - "May"
1925 - "A little utopia about how the metro will go"
1925 - “Oh. D.V.F.”
1925 - "Rabkor" ("The Keys of Happiness" will write ... ")
1925 - “Rabkor (“Breaking through the illiteracy of the mountains with his forehead ...”)
1925 - "Third Front"
1925 - "Flag"
1925 - "Yalta - Novorossiysk"
1926 - "To Sergei Yesenin"
1926 - "Marxism is a weapon ..." April 19
1926 - "Four-story hack"
1926 - "Conversation with the financial inspector about poetry"
1926 - "Advanced Advanced"
1926 - "Bribery"
1926 - "On the agenda"
1926 - "Protection"
1926 - "Love"
1926 - "Message to the proletarian poets"
1926 - "The factory of bureaucrats"
1926 - "To Comrade Netta" July 15
1926 - "Terrible familiarity"
1926 - "Office habits"
1926 - "Hooligan"
1926 - "Conversation on the Odessa raid of landing craft"
1926 - "Letter from the writer Mayakovsky to the writer Gorky"
1926 - "Debt to Ukraine"
1926 - "October"
1927 - "Stabilization of life"
1927 - "Paper Horrors"
1927 - "To our youth"
1927 - "Across the cities of the union"
1927 - "My speech at a show trial on the occasion of a possible scandal with Professor Shengeli's lectures"
1927 - "What did you fight for?"
1927 - "Give a graceful life"
1927 - "Instead of an ode"
1927 - "Best Verse"
1927 - "Lenin is with us!"
1927 - "Spring"
1927 - "Cautious March"
1927 - "Venus de Milo and Vyacheslav Polonsky"
1927 - "Mr. "People's Artist""
1927 - "Well, well!"
1927 - "A General Guide for Beginning Toadies"
1927 - "Crimea"
1927 - "Comrade Ivanov"
1927 - "Let's see for ourselves, show them"
1927 - "Ivan Ivan Gonorarchikov"
1927 - "Miracles"
1927 - "Marusya was poisoned"
1927 - "A letter to his beloved Molchanov, abandoned by him"
1927 - "It is not clear to the masses"
1928 - "Without a rudder and without a spinner"
1928 - "Ekaterinburg-Sverdlovsk"
1928 - "The story of the caster Ivan Kozyrev about moving into a new painting"
1928 - "Emperor"
1928 - "Letter to Tatyana Yakovleva"
1929 - "Conversation with Comrade Lenin"
1929 - "Perekop enthusiasm"
1929 - "Gloomy about humorists"
1929 - Harvest March
1929 - "The Soul of Society"
1929 - "Party Candidate"
1929 - "Stick in self-criticism"
1929 - "Everything is calm in the west"
1929 - "Parisian"
1929 - "Beauties"
1929 - "Poems about the Soviet passport"
1929 - "Americans are surprised"
1929 - "An example not worthy of imitation"
1929 - "Bird of God"
1929 - "Poems about Thomas"
1929 - "I'm happy"
1929 - "Khrenov's story about Kuznetskstroy and the people of Kuznetsk"
1929 - Minority Report
1929 - "Give the material base"
1929 - "Lovers of difficulty"
1930 - “Already the second. You must have gone to bed..."
1930 - "March of shock brigades"
1930 - "Leninists"

This happened on April 14, 1930 in Moscow, in Lubyansky passage. A shot rang out in the working room of Vladimir Mayakovsky. Disputes whether the poet died voluntarily or was killed have not subsided to this day.
One of its participants, Professor of the Department of Forensic Medicine of the Moscow Medical Academy named after Sechenov, Alexander Vasilyevich Maslov, tells about the virtuoso investigation of the experts.

Versions and facts

On April 14, 1930, Krasnaya Gazeta reported: “Today at 10:17 am, Vladimir Mayakovsky committed suicide in his working room with a revolver shot in the heart area. Arriving "ambulance" found him already dead. In recent days, V.V. Mayakovsky did not reveal any spiritual discord and nothing foreshadowed a catastrophe.
In the afternoon, the body was transferred to the poet's apartment in Gendrikov Lane. The sculptor K. Lutsky removed the death mask, and badly - he tore off the face of the deceased. Employees of the Institute of the Brain removed Mayakovsky's brain, which weighed 1700 g. On the very first day, in the presector of the clinic of the medical faculty of Moscow State University, the pathologist Professor Talalay performed an autopsy, and on the night of April 17, a re-opening took place: due to rumors that the poet allegedly had a venereal disease, which have not been confirmed. The body was then cremated.

As with Yesenin, Mayakovsky's suicide caused various reactions and many versions. One of the "targets" was the 22-year-old Moscow Art Theater actress Veronika Polonskaya. It is known that Mayakovsky asked her to become his wife. It was she who was the last person to see the poet alive. However, the testimony of the actress, flatmates and the data of the investigation indicate that the shot rang out immediately after Polonskaya left Mayakovsky's room. So she couldn't shoot.

The version that Mayakovsky, not in a figurative, but in the literal sense, “lay down with his temple on the barrel”, put a bullet in his head, does not stand up to criticism. The poet's brain has been preserved to this day, and, as the employees of the Institute of the Brain rightly reported in those days, "according to external examination, the brain does not show any significant deviations from the norm."
A few years ago, in the program “Before and after midnight,” the well-known TV journalist Vladimir Molchanov suggested that traces of TWO shots were clearly visible on Mayakovsky’s chest in a posthumous photograph.

This dubious hypothesis was dispelled by another journalist - V. Skoryatin, who conducted a thorough investigation. There was one shot, but he also believes that he was shot. Specifically, the head of the secret department of the OGPU Agranov, with whom, by the way, the poet was friends: hiding in the back room and waiting for Polonskaya to leave, Agranov enters the office, kills the poet, leaves a suicide letter and again goes out into the street through the back door. And then he rises to the scene as a Chekist. The version is amusing and almost fits into the laws of that time. However, without knowing it, the journalist unexpectedly helped the experts. Referring to the shirt that the poet was wearing at the time of the shot, he writes: “I examined it. And even with the help of a magnifying glass, he did not find traces of a powder burn. There is nothing on it but a brown stain of blood. So the shirt is saved!

Poet's shirt

Indeed, in the mid-1950s, L.Yu. Brik, who had the poet's shirt, handed it over to the State Museum of V.V. Mayakovsky - the relic was kept in a box and wrapped in paper impregnated with a special compound. On the left side of the front of the shirt there is a through damage, dried blood is visible around it. Surprisingly, this "material evidence" was not subjected to examination either in 1930 or later. And how many disputes were around the photos!
Having received permission for the study, I, without devoting to the essence of the matter, showed the shirt to a major specialist in forensic ballistics E.G.

Upon learning that the shot was fired more than 60 years ago, Safronsky noted that such examinations were not carried out in the USSR at that time. An agreement was reached: the specialists of the Federal Center for Forensic Expertise, where the shirt was transferred, would not know about its belonging to the poet - for the purity of the experiment.

So, a beige-pink cotton shirt is subject to research. Front placket with 4 mother-of-pearl buttons. The back of the shirt is cut with scissors from the collar to the bottom, as evidenced by the ledge-like edges of the cut and the even ends of the threads. But for the assertion that this particular shirt, bought by the poet in Paris, was on him at the time of the shot, it is not enough. In the photographs of Mayakovsky's body taken at the scene, the fabric pattern, texture, shape and localization of the blood stain, gunshot wound are clearly distinguishable. When the museum shirt was photographed from the same angle, magnification, and photo-aligned, all the details matched.

Experts from the Federal Center had a hard job - to find traces of a shot more than 60 years ago on a shirt and establish its distance. And there are three of them in forensic medicine and forensic science: a shot at point-blank range, from close and long distances. Linear cruciform injuries, characteristic of a point-blank shot, were found (they arise from the action of gases reflected from the body at the moment the projectile destroys the tissue), as well as traces of gunpowder, soot and scorching both in the injury itself and in adjacent areas of the tissue.

But it was necessary to identify a number of stable features, for which the diffuse-contact method was used, which does not destroy the shirt. It is known that when fired, a red-hot cloud flies out with a bullet, then the bullet outruns it and flies further. If they fired from a long distance, the cloud did not reach the object, if from a close one, the gas-powder suspension should have settled on the shirt. It was necessary to investigate the complex of metals that make up the shell of the bullet of the proposed cartridge.

The resulting impressions showed a small amount of lead in the area of damage, and almost no copper was found. But thanks to the diffuse-contact method for the determination of antimony (one of the components of the capsule composition), it was possible to establish a vast zone of this substance with a diameter of about 10 mm around the damage with a topography characteristic of a side-stop shot. Moreover, the sectoral deposition of antimony said that the muzzle was pressed against the shirt at an angle. And intense metallization on the left side is a sign of firing from right to left, almost in a horizontal plane, with a slight downward slope.

From the "Conclusion" of the experts:

"1. The damage on the shirt of V.V.

2. Judging by the features of the damage, a short-barreled weapon (for example, a pistol) was used and a low-powered cartridge was used.

3. The small size of the blood-soaked area located around the entrance gunshot injury indicates its formation as a result of a simultaneous ejection of blood from the wound, and the absence of vertical blood streaks indicates that immediately after the injury, V.V. Mayakovsky was in a horizontal position, lying on the back.

4. The shape and small size of the blood blots located below the damage, and the peculiarity of their location along the arc indicate that they arose as a result of the fall of small drops of blood from a small height onto the shirt in the process of moving down the right hand, splashed with blood, or with weapon in the same hand.

Is it possible to simulate suicide so carefully? Yes, in expert practice there are cases of staging one, two, less often five signs. But the whole complex of signs cannot be falsified. It has been established that drops of blood are not traces of bleeding from a wound: they fell from a small height from a hand or weapon. Even if we assume that Chekist Agranov (and he really knew his business) was a killer and applied drops of blood after a shot, say, from a pipette, although according to the restored timing of events, he simply did not have time for this, it was necessary to achieve a complete coincidence of the localization of drops blood and the location of traces of antimony. But the reaction to antimony was discovered only in 1987. It was the comparison of the location of antimony and blood drops that became the pinnacle of this study.

Death autograph

The specialists of the laboratory of forensic handwriting examinations also had to work, because many, even very sensitive people, doubted the authenticity of the poet’s dying letter, written in pencil with almost no punctuation marks:

“Everyone. Don't blame anyone for dying, and please don't gossip. The dead man disliked this terribly. Mom, sisters and comrades, sorry, this is not the way (I do not advise others), but I have no way out. Lily - love me. My family is Lilya Brik, mother, sisters and Veronika Vitoldovna Polonskaya...
Love boat \ crashed into everyday life. \ I'm counting on life \ And there is no need for a list of \ Mutual \ troubles \ And insults. Happy to stay. \ Vladimir \ Mayakovsky. 12.IV.30"

From the "Conclusion" of the experts:

"The submitted letter on behalf of Mayakovsky was written by Mayakovsky himself under unusual conditions, the most likely cause of which is a psycho-physiological state caused by excitement."
There was no doubt about the dating - it was April 12, two days before death - "immediately before the suicide, the signs of unusualness would have been more pronounced." So the secret of the decision to die does not lie in the 14th day of April, but in the 12th.

"Your word, Comrade Mauser"

Employees of the V.V. Mayakovsky Museum turned to the Russian Federal Center for Forensic Examinations with a request to conduct a study of the Browning pistol No. 268979, bullets and cartridge cases handed over to them from the Presidential Archive, and to establish whether the poet shot himself with this weapon?

A chemical analysis of the plaque in the Browning bore led to the conclusion that "the weapon was not fired after the last cleaning." But the bullet, once removed from Mayakovsky's body, really "is part of a 7.65 mm Browning cartridge of the 1900 model." So what's the deal? The examination showed: "The caliber of the bullet, the number of tracks, the width, the angle of inclination and the right-hand direction of the tracks indicate that the bullet was fired from a Mauser model 1914 pistol."
The results of experimental shooting finally confirmed that "the bullet of the 7.65 mm Browning cartridge was fired not from the Browning pistol No. 268979, but from the 7.65 mm Mauser".

Still, Mauser. Who changed weapons? In 1944, an employee of the NKGB, “talking” with the disgraced writer M.M. Zoshchenko, asked if he considered the cause of Mayakovsky’s death clear, to which the writer adequately replied: “It continues to remain mysterious. It is curious that the revolver from which Mayakovsky shot himself was presented to him by the famous Chekist Agranov.
Could it be that Agranov himself, to whom all the materials of the investigation flocked, changed weapons, adding Mayakovsky's Browning to the case? For what? Many people knew about the “gift”, besides, the Mauser was not registered for Mayakovsky, which could greatly backfire on Agranov himself (by the way, he was later shot, but for what?). However, this is out of the realm of conjecture. Let's better respect the last request of the poet: “...please don't gossip. The dead man disliked this terribly.”

During his lifetime, Mayakovsky had many novels, although he was never officially married. Among his lovers there were many Russian emigrants - Tatyana Yakovleva, Ellie Jones. The most serious hobby in Mayakovsky's life was an affair with Lilya Brik. Despite the fact that she was married, the relationship between them continued for many years. Moreover, for a long period of his life, the poet lived in the same house with the Brik family. This love triangle existed for several years, until Mayakovsky met the young actress Veronika Polonskaya, who at that time was 21 years old. Neither the age difference of 15 years, nor the presence of an official spouse could prevent this connection. It is known that the poet planned a life together with her and strongly insisted on a divorce. This story became the reason for the official version of suicide. On the day of his death, Mayakovsky was refused by Veronica, which provoked, according to many historians, a serious nervous shock that led to such tragic events. In any case, Mayakovsky's family, including his mother and sisters, believed that it was Polonskaya who was to blame for his death.

Mayakovsky left a suicide note with the following content:
"ALL

Don't blame anyone for dying and please don't gossip. The dead man disliked this terribly.
Mom, sisters and comrades, forgive me - this is not the way (I do not advise others), but I have no way out.
Lily - love me.
Comrade government, my family is Lilya Brik, mother, sisters and Veronika Vitoldovna Polonskaya. -
If you give them a decent life, thank you.
Give the poems you have started to the Briks, they will figure it out.
As they say - "the incident is ruined", the love boat crashed into everyday life
I am counting on life and there is no need for a list of mutual pains, troubles and insults.
happy to stay

VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY.

From the "Conclusion" of the experts:

"1. The damage on the shirt of V.V.

2. Judging by the features of the damage, a short-barreled weapon (for example, a pistol) was used and a low-powered cartridge was used.

Death autograph

From the "Conclusion" of the experts:

"The submitted letter on behalf of Mayakovsky was written by Mayakovsky himself under unusual conditions, the most likely cause of which is a psycho-physiological state caused by excitement."

There was no doubt about the dating - it was April 12, two days before death - "immediately before the suicide, the signs of unusualness would have been more pronounced." So the secret of the decision to die does not lie in the 14th day of April, but in the 12th.

"Your word, Comrade Mauser"

Relatively recently, the case “On the suicide of V.V. Mayakovsky” was transferred from the Presidential Archive to the Museum of the Poet, along with the fatal browning, bullet and cartridge case. But the protocol of the inspection of the scene, signed by the investigator and the expert doctor, says that he shot himself with a "Mauser revolver, caliber 7.65, No. 312045." According to the certificate, the poet had two pistols - a browning and a bayard. And although Krasnaya Gazeta wrote about a revolver shot, eyewitness V.A. Katanyan mentions a Mauser, and N. Denisovsky, years later, Browning, it’s still hard to imagine that a professional investigator could confuse Browning with a Mauser.
Employees of the V.V. Mayakovsky Museum turned to the Russian Federal Center for Forensic Examinations with a request to conduct a study of the Browning pistol No. 268979, bullets and cartridge cases handed over to them from the Presidential Archive, and to establish whether the poet shot himself with this weapon?

The results of experimental shooting finally confirmed that "the bullet of the 7.65 mm Browning cartridge was fired not from the Browning pistol No. 268979, but from the 7.65 mm Mauser".

Could it be that Agranov himself, to whom all the materials of the investigation flocked, changed weapons, adding Mayakovsky's Browning to the case? For what? Many people knew about the “gift”, besides, the Mauser was not registered for Mayakovsky, which could greatly backfire on Agranov himself (by the way, he was later shot, but for what?). However, this is out of the realm of conjecture. Let's better respect the last request of the poet: “...please don't gossip. The dead man disliked this terribly.”