Soe
29.09.2019

Death of Mayakovsky: the tragic ending of the poet


The question of why the great Russian poet Mayakovsky shot himself has still not received and probably will not receive an unambiguous answer. It is difficult to understand what exactly prompted a person to commit suicide.

Rumors and speculation about Mayakovsky’s suicide

True, in last years More and more publications began to appear in the press claiming that there was supposedly no suicide, and that the poet’s death was the result of a well-thought-out and successfully carried out conspiracy. According to one of the versions, which is especially popular with the masses and therefore has become quite widespread, Mayakovsky was killed and then disguised as a suicide by security officers, that is, agents of the OGPU. Yulian Semenov, who is the author of the well-known painting “Seventeen Moments of Spring,” tried to promote this. But, judging by the theme of his masterpiece, he saw the machinations of the secret service in everything and generally had a tendency to exaggerate everything. If you start to analyze it in detail, you end up with continuous gaps, inaccuracies and inconsistencies.

Most likely, the fact was that at one time the then young Mayakovsky met an equally young Moscow Art Theater actress named Veronika Vitoldovna Polonskaya. But, unfortunately, love does not choose, and she was already married to Mayakovsky’s colleague, also a poet Yanshin. They had a love relationship that periodically reached a peak in the intensity of passions, then subsided and almost completely came to naught. But Mayakovsky’s subtle poetic soul finally got tired of this and he set an ultimatum, they say, either she gets a divorce, or everything will be over between them. Moreover, then he simply will not be able to live and will shoot himself.

The day before, the lovers had a meeting at the apartment of the then famous writer, Kataev, during which Veronica tried to dissuade her beloved from such drastic actions. Mayakovsky, who had permission to carry firearms, carried a pistol with him everywhere. Earlier, at a similar meeting, he had already threatened to shoot himself if Polonskaya did not leave her husband for him, but now, apparently, his patience has run out. Being an unbalanced and very emotional person, he acted impulsively and without thinking. Throughout the evening there was correspondence between Mayakovsky and Polonskaya. The poet was quiet, thoughtful, even sad, and kept looking for her with his eyes. Then he saw them home late at night, called a car himself and drove to his place. In the morning he picked up Veronica to take her to a rehearsal at the theater. But in the end they had a row again, because he was jealous of his husband and even of the theater itself. But, according to Polonskaya, he no longer thought about suicide. His life ended just a few hours later, on a sunny, fine day. This is not so surprising in light of the disorder of his actions and susceptibility to emotions. In fact, love and the subtlety of an oversensitive soul are to blame, as well as circumstances. But it’s unlikely that the security officers cared about this.

In fact, suicide was the result of many factors, personal, professional, literary-political - and purely political. In recent years, Mayakovsky has gradually come to the understanding that his services are not in demand, that he does not have a natural, self-evident place in the society under construction, where in literature and literary politics people who did not have any qualifications for this have taken the lead roles.

The last six months have been marked by a number of setbacks and defeats: a forcibly interrupted romance with Tatyana, a boycott of the exhibition “20 Years of Work”, the failure of “Bath”, a humiliating capitulation to RAPP, a break with her closest friends, a prolonged flu and mental fatigue, Nora’s refusal to leave her husband when Mayakovsky wanted this.

Lily's first reaction was shock and shock.

“I don’t understand anything at all now,” she wrote to Elsa from Berlin when the news reached her. “How unbearable!” When Lily wrote to her sister again two weeks later, she explained the suicide by saying that “Volodya was terribly overworked and, alone , couldn’t cope with himself.” If she and Osip Maksimovich had been in Moscow, “this wouldn’t have happened,” she thought, and repeated the same phrase two weeks later, again in a letter to Elsa, adding: “I know for sure, how it happened, but in order to understand it, you had to know Volodya the way I knew him.<... >Volodya shot like a gambler from a completely new, never fired revolver [pistol. - B.Ya.]; 50 percent is a misfire. Such a misfire happened 13 years ago, in St. Petersburg. He tempted fate for the second time*.

He shot himself in front of Nora, but she can be blamed like an orange peel on which he slipped, fell and fell to his death." The conviction that Mayakovsky would not have shot himself if he and Osip were at home was shared by many; in addition to the poet’s mother, this was also the opinion of Korney Chukovsky, who wrote to Galina Katanyan on April 15:

“All these days I’ve been crying like a fool. I’m sure that if Lily Yuryevna and Osip Maksimovich were here in Moscow, this wouldn’t have happened...”

The conclusion that Nora was no more to blame than an orange peel on which someone slipped is, for all its superficiality, correct: Nora is the last straw, that’s all. Lily meant that it was not external factors that led to Mayakovsky’s suicide, but other, deeper reasons.

One of them was Mayakovsky’s fear of growing old. Old age terrified him, and he often returned to this topic in conversations with Lily. “Volodya to old age? Never!” Lily exclaimed in surprise in response to the words of Yakobson’s novel that he could not imagine Mayakovsky old. “He has already shot himself twice, leaving one bullet in the revolver clip. In the end, the bullet will hit.” “Death is not scary, old age is scary, it’s better for old people not to live,” Mayakovsky explained to his friend Natalya Ryabova when he was thirty-three. To her question about when old age sets in, he replied that a man is old when he is thirty-five, and a woman before. “How often have I heard from Mayakovsky the words “I’ll shoot myself, commit suicide, 35 years old is old age! I’ll live to see thirty. I won’t go any further,” wrote Lily.

The fear of growing old was closely related to his fear of losing his magnetic power as a man. “When a man is not older than 25, all women love him,” he explained to the twenty-five-year-old poet Zharov shortly before his suicide, “and when he is older than 25, then all women love him too, with the exception of one, the one you love and who does not love you.”

If anyone realized that Mayakovsky, in the words of Chukovsky, was “a suicide by vocation,” it was Lily. But it was not necessary to know him so closely to understand that the reasons for suicide should be sought in the internal contradictions that always tormented him.

For Marina Tsvetaeva, who had lived in exile since 1921 but saw Mayakovsky as a brother in spirit, his suicide was a tragic but logical result of the destructive internal struggle between the lyricist and the tribune.

“For twelve years in a row the man Mayakovsky killed the Mayakovsky poet within himself, in the thirteenth year the poet stood up and killed the man.” Pasternak came to a similar conclusion - and in his opinion, Mayakovsky shot himself “out of pride, because he condemned something in himself or around himself that his pride could not come to terms with.” If the suicide did not surprise the closest circle, then for those who knew only the public, external side of Mayakovsky - a futuristic and communist agitator, a loud pop poet, a brilliant polemicist - it came as a real surprise. “Such a death does not fit in with Mayakovsky as we know him,” Khalatov analyzed the suicide, thereby proving that he did not know him. “It is almost impossible to combine the idea of ​​suicide with this appearance,” wrote Lunacharsky, and the editorial of Pravda stated that Mayakovsky’s death “is so inconsistent with his entire life, so unmotivated by all of his work.” According to Mikhail Koltsov, the pistol was not held by the real Mayakovsky, but by “someone else, random, who temporarily took possession of the weakened psyche of the poet - social activist and revolutionary.”

“It’s not clear,” commented Demyan Bedny, asking rhetorically: “What did he lack?”

As if we were talking about missing external comfort.

MAYAKOVSKY. THE MYSTERY OF DEATH: THE i IS DONE
For the first time, a professional examination of the shirt in which the poet was found in his office on Lubyanka, his pistol and the fatal bullet was carried outIN At eleven o’clock in the morning on April 14, 1930 in Moscow, in Lubyansky Proezd, a shot was fired in the room of Vladimir Mayakovsky... The Leningrad “Red Gazeta” reported: “Suicide of Mayakovsky. Today at 10:17 am, Vladimir Mayakovsky committed suicide in his work room with a revolver shot to the heart area. The ambulance arrived and found him already dead. Last few days
V.V. Mayakovsky showed no signs of mental discord, and nothing foreshadowed a catastrophe. On the night of yesterday, contrary to usual, he did not spend the night at home. Returned home at 7 o'clock. morning. During the day he did not leave the room. He spent the night at home. This morning he went out somewhere and after a short time returned to the taxi, accompanied by the Moscow Art Theater artist X. Soon a shot was heard from Mayakovsky’s room, followed by the artist X. An ambulance was immediately called, but even before its arrival Mayakovsky died . Those who ran into the room found Mayakovsky lying on the floor with a bullet through his chest. The deceased left two notes: one to his sister, in which he gives her money, and the other to his friends, where he writes that “he knows very well that suicide is not a solution, but he has no other way...”.
A criminal case was opened into the death of V. Mayakovsky, which was led by investigator Syrtsov.
On the afternoon of April 14, Mayakovsky’s body was transported to an apartment on Gendrikov Lane, where he lived permanently. In a small room of the apartment at 20 o'clock, researchers from the Brain Institute extracted the poet's brain.
It is known that the last person who saw the poet alive was the 22-year-old actress of the Moscow Art Theater Veronika Polonskaya, who was in a hurry that morning for a rehearsal. V. Polonskaya recalled: “I came out. She walked a few steps to the front door. A shot rang out. My legs gave way, I screamed and rushed along the corridor, I could not bring myself to enter.

Nameless killer?
Journalist-researcher V.I. Skoryatin managed to collect and analyze rich factual material. Many facts from the life of the poet and people close to him before this study, published in the magazine “Journalist” (1989-1994), and later in the book “The Mystery of the Death of Vladimir Mayakovsky” (M., “Zvonnitsa-MG”, 1998) , remained unknown.
He managed to establish that in 1930, in the communal apartment in Lubyansky Proezd, in which the poet’s study was located, there was another small room, which was subsequently blocked off with a wall. “Now imagine,” the journalist reflects, “Polonskaya quickly descends the stairs. The door to the poet's room opens. There is someone on the threshold. Seeing the weapon in his hands, Mayakovsky shouts indignantly... Shot. The poet falls. The killer approaches the table. Leaves a letter on it. He puts his weapon on the floor. And then hides in the bathroom or toilet. And after the neighbors came running in response to the noise, he went through the back door to the stairs.” Well, it’s a bold version, which certainly requires significant evidence.
To confirm the version of the poet’s murder, the journalist cites a photograph in which Mayakovsky’s body lies on the floor, “his mouth is open in a scream.” V. Skoryatin asks: “A suicide screams before shooting?!”
By the way, this could be too. You should also know that after death, the human body relaxes, the muscles become soft, and seem to come to a state of rest. The dead man's mouth opens slightly, his lower jaw hangs, which, in fact, is reflected in the photograph.
Veronica Vitoldovna returned immediately after the shot. And when did “someone” manage to commit his crime and hide so that no one could see him?
Three “young” neighbors of Mayakovsky, as V. Skoryatin writes, at that time were in “a small room in the kitchen.” Naturally, having heard the shot and rushed out into the corridor, they were bound to run into a man coming out of the poet’s room. However, neither the actress nor the “young neighbors” saw anyone.
Polonskaya claimed that Mayakovsky was lying on his back. But a number of researchers believe that the poet’s body lay face down. However, in photographs taken at the scene, the poet is lying face up, with a dark stain on the left side of his shirt. This is what blood usually looks like in black and white photographs.
There were also sensational statements that Mayakovsky was shot twice... In the program “Before and After Midnight,” the famous television journalist Vladimir Molchanov suggested that there were traces of two shots in the photograph he showed of the dead Mayakovsky.
And there was a lot of gossip about the forensic examination of the poet’s body. On the very first day, the autopsy of the poet’s body was performed by the famous professor-pathologist V. Talalaev in the morgue of the Faculty of Medicine of Moscow State University. According to the recollections of V. Sutyrin, on the night of April 17, a re-autopsy of the body took place due to the fact that rumors spread about Mayakovsky allegedly having a venereal disease. The autopsy performed by Professor Talalaev found no traces of sexually transmitted diseases.
Rumors and speculation about Mayakovsky's death inflated an unhealthy excitement, but at the same time pointed to the miscalculations of the investigators of the 30s.
Journalist Skoryatin, obviously, did not even imagine what a valuable service he provided to the specialists by mentioning the shirt that Mayakovsky was wearing at the time of the shot. Therefore, the shirt survived! But this is the most valuable material evidence!
After the poet’s death, this relic was kept by L.Yu. Brick. In the mid-50s, Lilya Yuryevna handed over the shirt for storage to the museum, about which there is a corresponding entry in the “Receipts Book” of the museum.
In the museum’s special storage room, the head of the material assets sector, L.E. Kolesnikova, took out an oblong box and carefully unwrapped several layers of paper soaked in a special composition. It turns out that no examination of the shirt was carried out either in 1930 or in subsequent years! An agreement was immediately reached with the museum that the shirt would be handed over to specialists for research.

Expertise
Researchers from the Federal Center for Forensic Expertise of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, E. Safronsky, immediately began the study.
I. Kudesheva, a specialist in the field of gunshot traces, and the author of these lines is a forensic expert. First of all, it was necessary to establish that it was this shirt, bought by the poet in Paris, that Mayakovsky was wearing at the time of the shot.
In photographs of Mayakovsky’s body taken at the scene of the incident, the pattern of the fabric, the texture of the shirt, the shape and location of the blood stain, and the gunshot wound itself are clearly visible. These photographs have been enlarged. The experts photographed the presented shirt from the same angle and with the same magnification and carried out photo alignment. All the details matched.
From Research: “On the left side of the front of the shirt there is one round-shaped perforating damage measuring 6 x 8 mm”. Thus, immediately the version about traces of two shots on the shirt exploded. The results of a microscopic examination, the shape and size of the damage, the condition of the edges of this damage, the presence of a defect (absence) in the tissue allowed us to draw a conclusion about the gunshot nature of the hole caused by a shot from a single projectile.
It is known that in order to determine whether a person shot himself or was shot at, it is necessary to establish the distance of the shot. In forensic medicine and criminology, it is customary to distinguish between three main distances: a point-blank shot, a close-range shot, and a long-range shot. If it is established that on April 14, 1930 in V.V.’s room. Mayakovsky was shot from a long distance, which means someone shot at the poet...
The specialists had to do intense and painstaking work - to find signs characterizing the distance of the shot that was heard more than 60 years ago.
From the “Conclusion”: “1. Damage to V.V.’s shirt Mayakovsky is an entrance firearm, formed when fired from a “side rest” distance in the direction from front to back and slightly from right to left, almost in a horizontal plane.
2. Judging by the characteristics of the damage, a short-barreled weapon (for example, a pistol) was used and a low-power cartridge was used.
3. The small size of the blood-soaked area located around the entrance gunshot wound indicates its formation as a result of the immediate release of blood from the wound, and the absence of vertical blood flows indicates that immediately after receiving the wound V.V. Mayakovsky was in a horizontal position, lying on his back.”
So the dispute about the position of Mayakovsky’s body after the shot is over.
"4. The shape and small size of the blood stains located below the injury, and the peculiarity of their arrangement in an 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, spattered with blood, or from a weapon, who was in the same hand."
The detection of traces of a shot at the side, the absence of signs of struggle and self-defense are characteristic of a shot fired with one’s own hand.
Neither the age of the shot nor the treatment of the shirt with a special compound should serve as an obstacle to complex medical and ballistic examinations. Thus, the research carried out is of not only historical, but also scientific interest.

Autograph of death
“He was without a jacket. The jacket was hanging on the chair and there was a letter, his last letter that he wrote,” recalled the artist N.F. Denisovsky. From this room - the “boat”, as the poet liked to call it, rumors have reached our days that this letter was not written by Mayakovsky. Moreover, the name of the “author” of the letter was also given.
But it is impossible to forge handwriting without being detected by forensic experts. Only now work is being carried out abroad on the possibility of computer (!) handwriting forgery.
How many copies crossed around the suicide letter, written in pencil, almost without punctuation: “Everyone. Don’t blame anyone for the fact that I’m dying and please don’t gossip. The deceased didn’t like this terribly...”
It never occurred to anyone to take this dying request of the poet into account.
The letter was transferred in December 1991 for research to the laboratory of forensic handwriting examinations of the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Examinations of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation (now the Federal Center for Forensic Examinations of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation). The specialists were asked the question: to establish whether the said letter was executed by V.V. Mayakovsky. or another person.
The research was started by the head of the Research Institute of Forensic Handwriting Expertise, Candidate of Legal Sciences Yu.N. Pogibko and senior researcher of the same laboratory, Candidate of Legal Sciences R.Kh. Panova. The “Conclusions” made by the experts are fully consistent with the research part: “The handwritten text of a suicide letter on behalf of V.V. Mayakovsky, beginning with the words “To everyone.” Don’t blame anyone for the fact that I’m dying...”, and ending with the words “... You’ll get the rest from Gr.V.M.”, dated 04/12/30, was executed by Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky himself.
This text was written by V.V. Mayakovsky. under the influence of some factors that “disturb” his usual writing process, among which the most likely is an unusual psychophysiological state associated with excitement". But the letter was written not on the day of suicide, but earlier: “Immediately before suicide, signs of unusualness would have been more pronounced.” The letter, according to experts, it was indeed written on April 12, as the poet dated it.
Researchers of creativity V.V. Mayakovsky, journalists tried to find a criminal case on the “fact of Mayakovsky’s death.” However, he was nowhere to be found... In order to put an end to the research, to verify the results we received, a “Case” was necessary. But there was no “Case”...

Yezhov's folder
Materials about Mayakovsky's death were stored in the Presidential Archive, but in a completely different folder, and were finally transferred to the special storage of the State Museum of V.V. Mayakovsky. Museum director S.E. Strizhneva kindly agreed to familiarize me with the documents.
I am sitting in Svetlana Evgenievna’s small, cozy office. In front of me is a gray cardboard folder; the inscription in large black font immediately catches my eye: “YEZHOV NIKOLAI IVANOVICH.” Below - "Started April 12, 1930. Finished January 24, 1958." There is a second folder in the folder: “Criminal case no. 02 - 29. 1930 About the suicide of Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky. Started April 14, 1930." Consequently, the case “On the suicide of Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky” was under the control of the all-powerful and sinister Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, who oversaw administrative bodies, including state security agencies. In the folder there are only a few sheets of slightly yellowed paper. We present, in correct spelling, excerpts from the incident scene inspection report:
"PROTOCOL.
Mayakovsky's corpse lies on the floor.
In the middle of the room on the floor, Mayakovsky’s corpse lies on his back. Lies with his head towards the front door... The head is slightly turned to the right, the eyes are open, the pupils are dilated, the mouth is half open. There is no rigor mortis. On the chest, 3 cm above the left nipple, there is a round wound, about two-thirds of a centimeter in diameter. The circumference of the wound is slightly stained with blood. There is no exit hole. On the right side of the back, in the area of ​​the last ribs, a hard foreign body of no significant size is felt under the skin. The corpse is dressed in a shirt... on the left side of the chest, corresponding to the wound described on the shirt, there is an irregularly shaped hole, about one centimeter in diameter, around this hole the shirt is stained with blood for about ten centimeters. The circumference of the shirt hole with traces of opal. Between the legs of the corpse lies a Mauser system revolver, caliber 7.65 No. 312045 (this revolver was taken to the GPU by Comrade Gendin). There was not a single cartridge in the revolver. On the left side of the corpse, at a distance from the body, lies an empty spent cartridge case from a Mauser revolver of the indicated caliber.
Duty investigator
/signature/. Doctor-expert
/signature/. Witnesses /signatures/.”
The protocol was drawn up at an extremely low methodological level. But what we have, we have...
Please note: “On the right side of the back, in the area of ​​the last ribs, a hard foreign body of no significant size can be felt.”
The presence of a “foreign object” under the skin in the area of ​​the lower right ribs, obviously, suggested that the shot was fired from left to right, i.e. left hand. Experts know about the possibility of changing the direction of flight of a bullet in the body when meeting an obstacle.
Professor A.P. Gromov and V.G. Naumenko pointed out: “The diameter of the channel is also affected by different densities, as well as internal ricochet (changes in the direction of movement of the bullet). A ricochet can occur not only from a collision with bone, but also with soft tissue.” American experts call such bullets “wandering.” And in this case, a bullet from a low-power cartridge, encountering an obstacle (vertebra, rib, etc.), slid down and, having lost its destructive power, got stuck in the subcutaneous fat, where it was palpated in the form of a “solid foreign body.”
Examining the shirt without knowing the protocol, the experts turned out to be right: the shot was fired at point-blank range, Mayakovsky's body was lying on his back. V.V.’s memory did not fail either. Polonskaya: “He looked straight at me and kept trying to raise his head...”
Next sheet:
"Report. ...at 11 o'clock this morning I arrived at the scene of the incident at 3 Lubyansky Proezd, apt. No. 12, where the writer Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky shot himself... subsequently MUR officers arrived... beginning. secret department Agranov... Olievsky seized the suicide note. A forensic expert established that Mr. Mayakovsky committed suicide by shooting himself in the heart with a Mauser revolver, after which instant death occurred.”
V.V. During interrogation, Polonskaya confirmed the facts known to us.
On the second day after the death of V.V. Citizens N.Ya. Krivtsov, Skobeleva and other neighbors were summoned for questioning by Mayakovsky. None of them could categorically claim that Polonskaya was in Mayakovsky’s room at the time of the shot.
Mayakovsky’s circle included many familiar security officers. But it should be remembered that in those years the very word “chekist” was surrounded by a romantic aura. In particular, the poet was friends with Ya.S. Agranov, head of the secret department of the OGPU. Moreover, Agranov gave Mayakovsky, a great lover of weapons, a pistol. Agranov, who was subsequently shot, is a sinister figure. It was Agranov who received operational information collected by agents after the poet’s death. On the pages of once secret documents you can find the most unexpected things.
"WITH. secret.
Summary.
From 9 o'clock on the street Vorovsky,
52, where Mayakovsky’s corpse is located, the public began to gather and by 10.20 about
3000 people. At 11 o'clock the public began to be allowed to see Mayakovsky's coffin. Those standing in line... there is no talk about the reason for Mayakovsky’s suicide and the political nature of the conversation.
Pom. beginning 3 dept. Operada
/Signature/".
“Beg. SO OGPU to Comrade Agranov.
Agent intelligence report
5 dept. SO OGPU No. 45 dated April 18, 1930
The news of Mayakovsky's suicide made a very strong impression on the public... Talk was exclusively about the romantic cause of death. From the conversations, the following can be emphasized...
Conversations, gossip.
Newspaper reports about suicide, a romantic background, and an intriguing posthumous letter aroused, for the most part, morbid curiosity among the philistine.
...The newspaper hype about Mayakovsky was called a clever collision for fools. It was necessary, in the face of foreign countries, in front of public opinion abroad, to present Mayakovsky’s death as the death of a revolutionary poet who died because of a personal drama.
They find Syrtsov's (investigator) report about Mayakovsky's long illness extremely unfortunate. They talk about syphilis, etc.
Beginning 5 dept. SO OGPU /Signature/.”
Even many years later, state security agencies tried to “test” the mood of the intelligentsia, their attitude towards Mayakovsky’s death. I had a chance to get acquainted with the “Protocol of the Conversation”
MM. Zoshchenko with an employee of the Leningrad NKGB department, held on July 20, 1944:
"22. Do you now think the cause of Mayakovsky’s death is clear?
“She continues to remain mysterious. It is curious that the revolver with which Mayakovsky shot himself was donated by the famous security officer Agranov.”
23. Does this allow us to assume that Mayakovsky’s suicide was prepared provocatively?
"Maybe. In any case, it's not about women. Veronica Polonskaya, about whom there were so many different guesses, told me that she was not intimately close to Mayakovsky.”
The dignity and courage with which the disgraced Zoshchenko behaved during the so-called conversation, and in fact, interrogation, is striking.

Conclusion of criminologists
Addressed to the director of the Russian Federal Center for Forensic Expertise by the director of the State Mayakovsky Museum S.E. Strizhneva was sent a letter with a request to conduct a study of the Browning pistol, bullet and cartridge case received by the museum from the Presidential Archive, from the materials of Mayakovsky’s investigative file...
Let's return to the Protocol: “...there is a revolver of the Mauser system, caliber 7.65”. What weapon did Mayakovsky shoot himself with? According to ID No. 4178/22076, Mayakovsky had two pistols: the Browning system and the Bayard system - a short-barreled weapon. Perhaps the shot was fired from a Browning gun? But I don’t believe that a professional investigator could confuse a Browning with a Mauser.
On the table in front of the experts is a spent cartridge case, a bullet and a holster with a weapon. With a habitual movement, Emil Grigorievich removes from the holster... Browning No. 268979!
“As a result of the study, a set of signs was identified indicating that from the weapon presented for examination... a shot (shots) were not fired,” S. Nikolaeva established. Means, Is the wrong weapon attached to the case file as evidence? The examination of the bullet removed from Mayakovsky’s body and the cartridge case, also attached to the case, was carried out by expert E.G. Safronsky. Having examined the bullet, the expert dispassionately writes: “Established data indicate that the presented bullet is part of the 7.65 mm Browning cartridge of the 1900 model.”
So what's the deal? But the expert further established that the bullet under study was fired from a Mauser pistol of the 1914 model. "Nevertheless,- the expert continues the study, - To check the version about the possibility of firing the test bullet from the Browning pistol No. 268979 submitted for examination, we conducted experimental shooting from the specified pistol with five 7.65 mm Browning cartridges... The results of the study allow us to make a categorical conclusion that the bullet presented for examination was 7 The .65mm Model 1900 Browning cartridge was fired... from a 7.65mm Mauser Model 1914 pistol.” The cartridge case of the 7.65 mm Browning cartridge of the 1900 model presented for research was fired, expert Safronsky established, not in the Browning pistol No. 268979, but in the Mauser pistol model 1914 of 7.65 mm caliber.
Hence, the shot was fired from a Mauser! Brilliant research! It was the Mauser that was noted in the inspection report.
Who changed the weapon? Let us recall the protocol of the “conversation” of an NKGB officer with M.M. Zoshchenko: “It is curious that the revolver with which Mayakovsky shot himself was given to him by the famous security officer Agranov.” Could it be that Agranov himself switched weapons, using Mayakovsky’s Browning?

Instead of an epilogue
The decision to die in the overwhelming majority of cases is an intimate matter: lock yourself in a room and not see anyone else.
We will never know what really happened to Vladimir Vladimirovich. He was a very large poet with an absolutely unprotected emotional life. Suicide is always associated with deep layers of the psyche. The spiritual world of man is a mysterious and silent cosmos...

Alexander MASLOV, professor of forensic medicine, forensic expert

 16.09.2002

On April 14, 1930, in Moscow, in apartment 12 of building No. 3 on Lubyansky Proezd, the body of the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky was found. The cause of death was suicide.

unrequited love

During his lifetime, Mayakovsky had many affairs, 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 Veronica Polonskaya, who was 21 years old at that time. Neither the age difference of 15 years, nor the presence of an official spouse could interfere with this connection. It is known that the poet planned a life together with her and insisted in every possible way on a divorce. This story became the reason for the official version of suicide. On the day of his death, Mayakovsky received a refusal from Veronica, which provoked, as many historians say, a serious nervous shock that led to such tragic events. In any case, Mayakovsky’s family, including his mother and sisters, believed that Polonskaya was to blame for his death.

Mayakovsky left a suicide note with the following content: “To EVERYONE

Don’t blame anyone for the fact that I’m dying and please don’t gossip. The deceased did not like this terribly. Mom, sisters and comrades, forgive me - this is not the way (I don’t recommend it to others), but I have no choice. Lilya - love me. Comrade government, my family is Lilya Brik, mother, sisters and Veronica Vitoldovna Polonskaya. - If you give them a tolerable life, thank you. Give the poems you 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 settled with life and there is no need for a list of mutual pains, troubles and insults. Happy stay

VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY.

Mental trauma

Historians also consider difficult emotional experiences as one of the theories of suicide. 1930 was not a very successful year for the poet. Firstly, he was sick a lot. Secondly, Mayakovsky was harshly criticized, considering that he had already completely “written himself out”. Local newspapers saw him as an anti-Soviet writer. At one of the meetings with readers, which took place 2 days before the fateful event, he listened to a lot of unflattering reviews addressed to him. Mayakovsky himself considered himself deeply unhappy during this period. Therefore, this version has a right to exist. In many historical works one can find information that it was a depressed emotional state together with failed love that became the reason for such an act.

Promiscuous relationships contributed to the emergence of a version of syphilis, which could have caused suicide. But most researchers refute this hypothesis, arguing that such a life-loving person as Mayakovsky could not take his own life just because of this disease. And there is no official evidence that the poet was really ill. After the poet’s death, criminologists insisted on a repeat autopsy to finally verify the inconsistency of this version.

Political motives

There were also rumors that the poet was killed for ideological reasons. Some believed that Mayakovsky, with his rebellious character, posed a danger to Soviet power. Indeed, in recent years he could afford unflattering statements, but this in no way relates to his death. The murder version has no basis. The fact that the poet shot himself was officially confirmed by criminologists.

During his lifetime, Mayakovsky had many affairs, 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 Veronica Polonskaya, who at that time was 21 years old. Neither the age difference of 15 years, nor the presence of an official spouse could interfere with this connection. It is known that the poet planned a life together with her and insisted in every possible way on a divorce. This story became the reason for the official version of suicide. On the day of his death, Mayakovsky received a refusal from Veronica, which provoked, as many historians say, a serious nervous shock that led to such tragic events. In any case, Mayakovsky’s family, including his mother and sisters, believed that Polonskaya was to blame for his death.
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