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Irena Vysotskaya - Forum "Vladimir Vysotsky. Creativity and Fate"

Writer and journalist Irena Vysotskaya has been officially recognized as one of the biographers of the famous poet, singer and artist since she published a book of memoirs “My Brother Vysotsky” for the 70th anniversary of Vladimir Semenovich. At the origins." She still lives today in the same apartment where the aspiring artist Volodya Vysotsky sang his first songs with a guitar, squinting at the reaction of his family: “I realized what my love at first sight was doing at the police station.” The reel of the Comet tape recorder, turned on by Irena’s father, was then spinning just like that, just in case. No one could yet imagine that in a few years Vladimir Vysotsky would become the idol of millions.

“VOLODYA CALLED THE ALBUM OF THE FIRST SONGS “At UNCLE’S”

Irena Alekseevna, I won’t be mistaken if I say: Vladimir Vysotsky did not visit your apartment on Kuusinen Street to simply observe the rules of family decency...

Volodya was spiritually close to my father Alexei Vladimirovich and respected him very much. As soon as we all got together as a family - on the occasion of a holiday or some date, he would not leave dad’s side. The guests are having fun, drinking, eating, and Vova meticulously asks about the war and hangs on every word.

My father, a former military journalist, had something to tell - his front-line essays were published in Izvestia, in Red Star, and later the book “And Let the Morning Come” was published about the fearless defenders of Odessa and Sevastopol. In addition, under the Ministry river fleet RSFSR, he created a documentary film studio and made film essays about those who went through the heat of war, miraculously survived and connected their lives with the river fleet.

- Maybe this closeness is explained by the fact that his uncle did not treat Vysotsky’s songs as strictly as his father?

It's not a matter of severity. Our fathers have different souls. Volodya's father, Semyon Vladimirovich, was busy with his own career, which made him a very cautious person. But caution and Vladimir Vysotsky are incompatible concepts. I remember when Marina Vladi appeared in Volodya’s life, his father was proud, first of all, that his daughter-in-law was a member of the French Communist Party.

My dad was one of the first to appreciate his nephew’s songs. He recorded them at home on a Comet reel-to-reel tape recorder and replicated them in his work studio back in the late 50s. Volodya called this album of his first songs: “At Uncle’s.” In 1975 they took this film from us, vowing to return it in a day. And of course, they didn’t give it away. Many years later they brought me a photograph of a cardboard case with an inscription made by my father’s hand: “Volodya.”

- As far as I know, Vladimir Semenovich took the death of your father very hard...

Yes. Dad passed away on October 28, 1977. Volodya received the news of this in Paris. Terrible pain, irreparable loss... After several hours of searching around Paris, Marina found him in a station restaurant. He cried... Volodya often remembered Alexei Vladimirovich at concerts and among friends.

For example, in the city of Navoi, Uzbek SSR, he said: “Last year my uncle died... And when they carried his body, 17 pilots walked ahead and carried 17 of his orders on 17 red morocco pillows, and there was even nowhere to put the medals. This was the kind of man..."

Everything in life is predetermined by chance: if Vladimir Vysotsky’s parents had not met, there would have been neither such a Hamlet, nor such a Zheglov, nor songs that still turn the souls of millions of Vysotsky’s fans. How did Nina Maksimovna and Vladimir Semenovich meet?

Thanks to the brother of Nina Maksimovna, then still Ninochka Seregina, a translator from Intourist. She was very pretty, with a chiseled figure - she was offered more than once to become a model. Semyon Vysotsky studied at the Polytechnic College of Communications, and his classmate turned out to be Nina Maksimovna’s brother, Vladimir Seregin, who, at the right opportunity, introduced them to each other. Ninochka and Semyon were walking around Moscow. She knew the history of the streets very well, he entertained her with anecdotes, changing his voice, portraying different characters, playing the piano, singing Vertinsky for her. We got married in '37.

And a few years after the war, Volodya got “Aunt Zhenechka,” a stepmother who replaced his mother in Germany, where for several years he lived with his father and his new wife.

Volodya at least ate his fill there. He became friends with his stepmother, but he simply adored his mother. And in general... Semyon Vladimirovich was smart, well-read, but Nina Maksimovna still gave Volodya more, it seems to me. By the way, she is also a wonderful housewife, she taught me how to knit, and all my life I have been dressing in home-made things.

Nina Maksimovna never married again. Although Iza Vysotskaya, Vladimir’s first wife, recalls in her book a scandalous scene when the mother-in-law reacted with hostility to the news of her daughter-in-law’s pregnancy. She defended the right to live her own life - that means she wasn’t alone?

At that time she had a certain Zhorik... a stupid man. He treated Volodya badly. Nina Maksimovna quickly broke up with him.

Your mother returned from the war without an arm. But judging by the photographs in your book, from which a spectacular woman, a real beauty, looks, Alexandra Ivanovna did not feel disabled...

My parents met in 1941, and in 1943 my mother was blown up by a mine and had her arm amputated. But this did not change their relationship with dad. They were a stunningly beautiful couple: they used to walk down the street, and I was a little behind, and people would ask me: “Are these probably actors?” I remember this incident...

When they remembered Evgenia Stepanovna, Volodya’s stepmother (she was leaving the entrance just at the moment when a huge icicle fell from the roof and died), my mother helped set the table. She was about 60. So, Volodya’s friends, half her age, looked at her mother with such admiration! You can’t even imagine how orderly the house was, what kind of pies my mother baked! I think it's out of love for dad. And he loved her very much.

“YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN WHAT WAS HAPPENING IN THE METRO WHEN VYSOTSKY ENTERED THERE—THE GIRLS FALLED INTO HIS HANDS”

You and Volodya a big difference aged. He probably didn’t notice you, as often happens between younger sisters and older brothers?

I remember that I first saw Volodya in 1959, when our family returned from Mukachevo (my dad served there, and Volodya, by the way, was visiting us) to Moscow. Our apartment was undergoing renovations, so they settled me on Bolshoi Karetny with Uncle Senya and Aunt Zhenya. Somehow Volodya appeared, he was 21 years old. “Well, hello,” he says, “curly! I'm your Moscow brother. Do you recognize it? - and made a funny face.

Contact with me was established from the first minute and forever. Volodya did not pretend to be an important adult, but perceived me as an equal, and this flattered me very much. I heard adults say about Volodya that he has been very neat since childhood, he has an amazing love for order and cleanliness. Before going to bed, trying to show that I also had this dignity, I hung my toiletries on all the free chairs.

- And soon Vysotsky married Iza Zhukova and probably brought her to your house. Did you approve of your brother's choice?

You know, I only remember Iza when Volodya passed away. She was friends with his father, coming to Moscow from Nizhny Tagil, she even stayed with him and helped with the housework. And here is the first acquaintance with Lyusya Abramova (second Semyon Vysotsky with his mother Irena Alekseevna, who worked all her life as a cosmetologist on Khreshchatyk. “Among her clients was Klavdiya Shulzhenko herself” Vysotsky's wife, mother of his sons Arkady and Nikita. - Note ed.) I remember. She came to blue dress from shiny braid. Her huge gray-blue eyes were mesmerizing. Lucy was unusually good and impressive.

I wonder how they reacted to the appearance of the French film star Marina Vladi in your ordinary Moscow apartment? One can only imagine how worried everyone was then, they didn’t know where to sit, what to talk about at the table?

Marina turned out to be not at all arrogant, it was easy to communicate with her. It was impossible not to respect her - simple, but so strong. And in general - she close person for our family.

When my dad got sick, he was bedridden for two years! - Volodya and Marina often visited him. She always came as soon as she arrived in Moscow from Paris, bringing unprecedented delicacies - smoked eels, caviar, something else. And Marina also did a lot for Vova, she fought for him all the time (I know what it’s like to fight for a husband, I had to too).

- And yet... Marina Vladi was not his only woman, is that true?

You see, they still lived in different countries. This means a lot. They could introduce him to girls, and then tell Marina: they said they saw him with someone, they spread gossip. You had to see what was going on in the metro if Vysotsky entered there - the girls fell into his arms. But he loved Marina very much, they deeply understood each other.

“THE CHILDREN HAD A GRESTION AGAINST MARINA VLADI FOR TOOKING THEIR FATHER FROM THE FAMILY”

After the publication of Marina Vladi’s book “Vladimir, or Interrupted Flight,” the Vysotsky family quarreled with her. Did they not like the fact that she was so frank in her book?

When Volodya was alive, Semyon Vladimirovich tried to please her. And then the Vysotskys offended her - and this was connected with Volodya’s inheritance! - True, after a while they apologized. Probably his children still had a grudge against Marina for taking their father away from the family.

-Are you talking to Marina Vladi today?

Unfortunately no. Marina is very smart, wonderful person and lived a very difficult life. But still, she’s a star, I can’t bother her. Plus, I think a lot of the memories are painful for her.

Does being part of the Vysotsky family name help you in life? Can you, for example, call the Taganka Theater and ask for countermarks for the performance?

What are you talking about! Even during Volodya’s life, I kept trying to pay for tickets. And my late brother Sasha was not at Taganka at all - he was embarrassed to bother Volodya. Our famous cousin, by the way, was also an extremely modest and intelligent man. I have never heard Volodya speak ill of anyone. At the very least, mild irony. He got this, of course, from his mother Nina Maksimovna.

- Are you as friendly with the sons of Vladimir Semenovich today as you are with him?

Alas. We communicate with them very rarely. Volodya has many grandchildren, fortunately, but I practically don’t know them. Some of them, I know, live abroad, in the USA. For the 65th anniversary of the Victory, I prepared for publication a book by my dad with memories of the war. I turned to Nikita Vysotsky with a request to help present the book. Thank you, he didn’t refuse.

- You write books yourself. Is writing a job or a hobby for you?

If writing fed me, I could consider it work. Doesn't feed. But I live for it. I write fairy tales - I like this genre because it’s something special, unusual world you can come up with it yourself.

And hide in it from the real world. A year ago they wrote that they wanted to take away your apartment - the same one where Vladimir Vysotsky visited many times, where he first performed his songs. This is true?

Unfortunately. The story is sad. My brother Alexander died in 1992, and his children, my mother’s grandchildren, simply abandoned her. They never visited their grandmother, although she was seriously ill. They didn't even come to her funeral. I’m not a business person, so I earned as much as I could to buy medicine for my mother. In general, we lived a very difficult life.

Participants in the forum dedicated to Vladimir Vysotsky, who learned about the misfortune, helped me see my mother off on her last journey. Strangers turned out to be closer to their relatives, who didn’t even have a flower for their grandmother. But I had the audacity to hire lawyers and declare my rights to our apartment.

I buried first my dad, then my brother, then my mom, and this apartment is the only thing I have. At the trial they poured so much dirt on my parents! But I continue to fight... True, I have become like a robot: I move mechanically, I do something out of inertia.

Is it really possible that the apartment will have to be exchanged and people will move in there who, perhaps, will not even know who has been within these walls?

I will not trade the memory of people dear to me for the sake of someone else's greed.

P.S. For assistance in preparing the material, the author thanks Pavel Evdokimov, a participant in the forum “Vladimir Vysotsky. Creativity and destiny."

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I know how Vladimir Vysotsky treated his uncle, Alexei Vysotsky, so I am happy to give the go-ahead to this unique book.
Vsevolod Abdulov

We all come from childhood. The family gives birth to the first sprouts of goodness and talent - and the book by Vladimir Vysotsky’s sister for the first time allows us to look at the poet’s childhood through the eyes of a family member, tells about the true friendship that connected the nephew with his uncle, front-line hero, Alexei Vysotsky, about the older generation of the Vysotsky family.
Vadim Duz-Kryatchenko

The memory hit my nerves like a whip -
Each image in it was unique...
Vladimir Vysotsky

Part one
Short lines that last a lifetime

When we leave, we leave behind our deeds and our actions. Embodied in metal or stone, constellations of colors on canvas or book lines, thoughts. Our descendants will judge us by them...
Vladimir Vysotsky... Amazing talent. An amazing person, who during his lifetime received a storm of love from the whole country. That love that does not dry up even now, many years after his death.
Much has been written about him. About poems and songs, about prose. About roles played to the limit, at the last intensity, in theater and cinema. Memories of family and friends. Those who happened to live and work next to him. Or touch...
There is some strange pattern in the appearance of publications. The more years pass, the fewer eyewitnesses remain, the more they try to present the public with “fried” facts.
And opportunistic works with exorbitantly pretentious titles appear in the light of day. Where deeply personal (and are they true?) episodes are sucked and savored. I just want to say to these authors: if you know Vysotsky so well, why don’t you remember how during concerts, answering notes, he asked not to get into personal matters, and even more so not to misinterpret him, inclining him in every way. “Listen to my songs, I’m all about them.” Were there any mistresses and how many, why did he inject painkillers when they were bothering his kidneys, so that later he could call it drugs and thoughtfully say: “Yes, he left on time...” Let’s leave this... Otherwise, questions like those posed in the letter below will firmly enter the consciousness and already affirmative form.
I will only quote the words of a high-society specialist, candidate of medical sciences, associate professor Gennady Bruk. Let me quote you to say goodbye to this topic forever:
“The concept of “drug addict” does not apply to Vysotsky. A drug addict is someone who lives on drugs for the sake of drugs: injecting yourself is nirvana, hallucinosis, and as soon as it passes, searching for drugs again.”
Vladimir and I are connected by family ties: our fathers are siblings. We have the same roots. And I want to sketch them, in conjunction with Volodya, at least a little bit. So that the image of this charming and courageous man becomes closer and more understandable to someone.
It's a strange thing - memories. They either overwhelm you, then, interspersed with doubt - will this be interesting? - fade. And yet, where to start? Maybe from the stories of my parents? From that strong sense of duty that prompted my then eighteen-year-old father (Semyon Vladimirovich was absent for some reason) to take my older brother’s wife, Nina Maksimovna, and newborn Volodya from the maternity hospital in MONIKI (Moscow Regional Research Clinical Institute). Years later, in the same MONIKs where the life of one began, the life of another will end: in May 1975, Alexey Vladimirovich will undergo surgery, and then state that he will remain on this earth for about a month...

Vysotsky Alexey Vladimirovich, uncle of Vladimir Vysotsky

By the way, on the scale of values, duty for Volodya will be above all else. I quote: “Family is good. Happiness is better. Career doesn’t interfere either. Duty, absolutely.” But this, by the way, is like a roll call of the moral qualities of my father and Volodya.
In the meantime, it’s a winter day in 1938. The first meeting of uncle and nephew. They will grow out of it over the years. real friendship and mutual understanding. The fact that Alexey Vladimirovich seemed to replace his older brother that day partly explains the enormous respect that Nina Maksimovna felt for my father all her life. And they, younger brother and daughter-in-law will forever remain family.
The future poet entered Big world under the “sign” of Alexey Vladimirovich. And this is deeply symbolic. After all, there are no coincidences. And spiritually Volodya is much closer to his uncle than to his father, and the poet does not hide this, but even, on the contrary, emphasizes it in every possible way during personal meetings and at concerts. But still, this first entry into the big world called “life” is not entirely ordinary. Loneliness is already visible in him, which will haunt the poet to the end. Although fate gave him extraordinary women. And if Isolda Zhukova and Lyudmila Abramova were, in my opinion, a kind of prelude to marriage, Marina Vladi became the only woman to whom he went all his life. Let me digress a little and say the little that I remember from family life Vladimir. With Isolde, my first wife cousin, a talented, bright actress, I, unfortunately, met quite late. Somewhere in the early seventies. When she came to Moscow, she always stayed with Volodya’s father, Semyon Vladimirovich. The fleeting meetings left a very pleasant impression, which, however, was confirmed by her book about Vova. An interesting detail: Volodya will forever retain a friendly disposition towards Iza.
I came across Lyusya Abramova a little more often. I remember the adults talking about how Volodya fell in love, while married to Iza, with someone else. Semyon Vladimirovich tried to reason with him, but his son threatened suicide. It’s a small world, and it so happened that my father, Alexei Vladimirovich, had Vladimir Krasutsky working as a cameraman at his studio in the early 1960s. He studied at VGIK at the same time as Lyudmila Abramova, and we had heard a lot about his future relative. “Lyudmila,” said Krasutsky, “is a very mediocre actress. In my opinion, the person is not very kind. But with huge ambitions. Loves the pose. Knowing that she is beautiful, she smokes deliberately impressively, without missing the opportunity to rant to her classmates about Western philosophers, of whom she considers herself an expert. We, the students, you understand, had a very ambivalent attitude towards such ideas.”
During Volodya’s lifetime, Lucy appeared at our house, on Kuusinen Street, only once, in 1962. Modest, friendly. I willingly recommended to my mother the magnificent knitting artist Nila Vladimirovna, whose dress she was wearing that evening.
Several times we went to visit Volodya and Lyudmila in Novye Cheryomushki. Celebrated the birthdays of Arkady and Nikita. But for some reason, with the exception of the above-mentioned case, Volodya always came to us alone.
He behaved completely differently when he married Marina Vladi. You can count on one hand the times he visited our house without his beautiful Frenchwoman. The brother glowed with love and happiness, not hiding his feelings at all. And Marina... Marina whispered after her husband the words of the songs that he sang to us. And she didn’t take her shining eyes off him. Thirty years later, I saw how another, great woman, Tamara Sinyavskaya, at an evening in memory of Muslim Magomayev, echoed her husband in the same, barely audible way. And he sang from the screen as if for her alone. And this dialogue with the film extinguished death for a moment...

Vladimir Vysotsky and Marina Vladi. Start of dating. 1967 Photo by A. Garanin

Marina was more than a wife for Volodya. She breathed in unison, understood every word, fought for his life to the last. She gave him something that has been feminine from time immemorial: so that he is fed, well dressed, so that comfort reigns in the house. It’s a great pity that they were torn between two countries: Russia and France. Many unpleasant events would not have happened if they were always together...
Marina is, of course, amazing. A beauty, a movie star with excellent taste... And one day we found her coming to them in Malye Gruziny, in work clothes, with a drill in her hands. The Parisian revolution took place in a Moscow bathroom. My brother was writing at this time. Such versatility, such an ability in the name of Love to take on more, more, more...

I am less than half a century old - forty-something, -
I am alive, we protect you and the Lord...

Volodya was blessed with extraordinary friends: Vsevolod Abdulov, Mikhail Shemyakin, Vasily Shukshin, Andrei Tarkovsky... Each of them is a unique talent. And yet loneliness. It screams in his early poems. He is trying to escape from it last years life in the circle of numerous “wrong ones...”. Or is this the lot of extraordinary people?
...But let me turn to the chronology. By the last months of 1943. My parents, who went through all the hell of the first years of the war together, separate for a short time: my father sends my mother to Moscow for further treatment after the hospital, so that later, without being separated, losing her closest friends and comrades in battles, they can reach Berlin. And again the thought of my nephew. Here, at the noisy Krasnodar flea market, whose criterion of value is bread, they choose a gift for him - yellow felt boots lined with leather. Today's boys cannot understand what a treasure they seemed to the child. But that was a different, hungry, wartime childhood.

Then - the meeting of the new year, 1944, in Moscow, on 1st Meshchanskaya. My mother met Nina Maksimovna from her grandfather, Vladimir Semenovich. And somehow they immediately got together, like close friends after a long separation. Volodya and I’s cousin, Shulamif Duksin, experienced the same feelings when we first met Nina Maksimovna: “I came to Moscow in 1982, after Volodya’s death. She spent a lot of time with Nina Maksimovna. “She treated me like family, although she barely had time to recognize me,” recalls Aunt Sonya.
Vladimir Semenovich also treated the first wife of his eldest son with great warmth and sympathy. My father respected her very much and always helped her. And the first person who came running to dad after a complex, hours-long operation in 1975 was Nina Maksimovna. They didn’t let her see the sick man, and she left a hastily written note for him. full of love and support note.

Volodya had very tender feelings for his mother. And at the very least, the accusations against Nina Maksimovna sound stupid that in early January 1947 she sent her son to Germany to live with his father for more than a year. Yes, I let go. Because she knew: there, in material terms, they would be able to give him a thousand times more: plentiful food, and not food on cards (cards in Russia would be abolished only on December 14, 1947), and musical instruments to choose from, as well as the opportunity to learn to play them, relaxation in the best sanatoriums, and much, much more that was impossible in our country, which was just beginning to heal the terrible post-war wounds.
He writes to his mother often. Then all his life, wherever he was: in Tahiti or the Canary Islands, in Portugal or Morocco, he tried everywhere to make Nina Maksimovna at least a little involved in his life. This trait of Volodya reminds me very much of my father’s attitude towards his mother, Volodya’s and my grandmother. When guests gathered in Gaysin, in Mukachevo or later in Moscow, Alexey Vladimirovich called her in Kiev, spoke himself and asked his friends to say a few words to Irina Alekseevna so that she would not feel forgotten.

Marina Vladi

But my brother Sasha’s wife deliberately set him at odds with his mother. She set herself a goal: to alienate her brother from us, especially, as she put it, “what could we give her after the death of Alexei Vladimirovich?”... and she achieved her goal. I can’t imagine what she said, and God will be her judge. My brother died without making peace with his mother in this world. With his mother, whom he was so similar to, whom he loved very much and called her only “Masya” or “Masik”.
When my mother passed away on December 1, 2008, Larochka Simakova, Vladimir’s biographer, and I could not pick her up from the morgue for a week. There was no money. I couldn’t afford the luxury of getting a job, leaving at home a sick, eighty-five-year-old man in need of constant help, so I did odd jobs. My mother’s pension at that time was only ten thousand. The grandchildren knew perfectly well about what had happened from the Internet, but they didn’t even call. They were only interested in one thing: how to once again receive an inheritance - a piece of our apartment. But they already lived in the three-room apartment my parents bought in 1975.
All those who truly love Volodya helped. Not relatives, but people who became family to me forever: Ilya Rubinstein, Larisa Simakova, Lion Nadel, Ilya Garnik, Volodya Zaitsev, Marina Ryzhikova, Pavel Evdokimov, Vadim Duz-Kryatchenko, Pavel Alimov, Ivan Potapenko, Gennady Durasov, as well as Sibirsky fund named after V. S. Vysotsky.
I had to endure terrible moments. They would have gone through my fate much more smoothly if my husband had been nearby - Sasha Shelepanov, brothers Volodya and Sasha Vysotsky.
Sasha Vysotsky’s character, despite his roughness, is soft. In this regard, he is similar to Semyon Vladimirovich. Alexey Vladimirovich and Volodya would not allow any slander against their mothers. As for the intriguers, very soon they would bear the title “retired wives.”
Mom has always meant infinitely much to Volodya. And all the conversations, started, by the way, by Semyon Vladimirovich, that the poet called Evgenia Stepanovna Likhalatova his second mother is a fiction, a curtsey from a not very exemplary husband to his deceased wife.
It was impossible not to respect Evgenia Stepanovna, she is a man of her word, decent, kind. Literature, cinema, painting - this, of course, is the prerogative of Nina Maksimovna. Aunt Zhenya has her own strengths. An exemplary wife, she not only loved Semyon Vladimirovich - she cared for him like a small child. And what a cook! No restaurant could compare with her dishes.
Evgenia Stepanovna was doted on by her own nephews, Sasha and I. Vova treated her very warmly and considered her a family member. But he never called me mom. Only “Aunt Zhenya”. My words are confirmed by Volodya’s first wife, Iza, in her book “Short Happiness for Life”: “Volodya affectionately called her Aunt Zhenechka, hastily swallowing “aunt.”

House on 1st Meshchanskaya Street, where Vladimir Vysotsky was born

Vova Vysotsky. 1943 kindergarten Factory "Svoboda", Art. Malakhovka, Moscow region.

There was another episode, the memory of which would never have allowed him to name new wife father by mother. I don’t really want to talk about it, but myths need to be debunked if they somehow infringe on another person.
When Vova lived with his father in Germany, he constantly corresponded with his mother. And one day Nina Maksimovna sent him her photograph. Evgenia Stepanovna, a beauty, an Armenian “princess”, made fun of her in front of her child ex-wife: they say, where were your eyes, Semyon? Your Nina is so ugly!

Volodya Vysotsky. 1948 Germany

Of course, this is easily explainable, and therefore forgivable. Typical women's things. And quite small. But this is understandable to an adult, but to a child... Volodya didn’t show it, but he was very offended for his mother. And when we met, I told her everything.
Nina Maksimovna’s spiritual subtlety was captivating. In 1986, in Volodya’s famous kitchen, she and I agreed on material for the Stroitelnaya Gazeta (the article was not published, and for this reason. I, a naive person, a month later brought my classmate, Vladimir Filippov, who worked in that "Stroitelnaya Gazeta". Naturally, my material about Vysotsky was thrown out and published...). After clearing all the questions, we went to household topics. We started talking about motherhood. Fooling around, I said that, most likely, I was destined for the fate of an elderly mother. Nina Maksimovna looked at me carefully and said quietly: “There are no old mothers...”
That New Year Three of us met. Nina Maksimovna, Volodya, my mother, very young, beautiful, well-fitted military uniform, with the Order of the Patriotic War on her chest and... an indelible mark: she lost her arm at the front. Maybe this image, deposited in the depths of consciousness, will flash before the poet when he writes:

And when our girls change their overcoats to dresses,
I wouldn’t forget then, I wouldn’t forgive and I wouldn’t lose.

This New Year's meeting is etched in my memory.
“I saw,” my mother recalls, “a boy sitting on a wooden rocking horse. Bangs, curls falling to the shoulders. The eyes were amazed. Wide open, radiant. And very inquisitive.
- And Aunt Shurochka is a military man! – more than once that evening, little Volodya reported with delight, but a little shyly, now appearing, now hiding behind the curtain. She will remain for him for the rest of his life - Aunt Shurochka... Extraordinarily courageous, beautiful...
After the war, both brothers served in Germany: Semyon Vladimirovich in Eberswalde, my father, Alexey Vladimirovich, in Rathenow. Volodya often visited us. Conversations between adults about the events of recent days that have not yet settled into memory, stories from his uncle, an artillery lieutenant colonel, who at twenty-four ended the war as the chief of staff of a high-power artillery brigade, about military operations, about the exploits of friends - this is the atmosphere that young Vladimir greedily absorbed.
As a child, he was very lively and sociable. Literally the next day after arriving in Ratenov, Gaysin or Mukachevo - small towns in Germany and Ukraine, where my father then served, he made many friends - boys about the same age as him. And what is typical, he always ruled, captivating with his reckless daring and inexhaustible supply of interesting inventions.
My parents remember the incident, as we now understand, one of his peculiar “acting debuts.” Summer 1951. Mukachevo. The elders leave home somewhere, and when they return, they see this picture. A living room full of kids. Curtained windows. Only a few dim lamps are lit. Music. In the center of the room, Volodya gives an impromptu performance: dancing, parody numbers. The audience and the actor were so captivated that they did not immediately notice the arrival of the “uninvited” to the performance.

Nina Maksimovna Vysotskaya with her son Volodya Vysotsky. 1950 Photo by N. Lvov

Vladimir Vysotsky. 1961

From left to right: Evgenia Vysotskaya-Likholatova, Volodya and Semyon Vysotsky. Winter 1948–1947, Eberswalde

In Mukachevo, in our living room there was a Becker piano. A sad reminder of how they tried to introduce my brother Sasha to music. After many months of “torture,” Alexander categorically refused to study. By the way, the piano is the second and last musical instrument in my brother’s creative life. And before that there was a violin. Once captured by sobbing magical sounds, Sasha expressed a desire to become the second Paganini. They immediately bought him a beautiful violin from the famous Transcarpathian gypsy violinist. A young teacher began to visit Sasha regularly, claiming that the boy showed promise. The parents rejoiced at the child’s “success” until they realized: the secret of their son’s talent lay in the beauty of Alexandra Ivanovna, whom the teacher came to see.
But be that as it may, Sasha acquired some musical skills, so that evening the aspiring actor Vladimir Vysotsky was accompanied on the piano by his cousin, Alexander Vysotsky.
Igor Cheypesh, our neighbor in Mukachevo, also remembers this episode. He is the same age as Volodya, but with youth- a good boy, an excellent student and a neat guy. In the late seventies, while in Moscow as a diplomatic representative of the Hungarian People's Republic, he characterizes his nephew Alexei Vladimirovich very briefly: “N-n-well, this Vovka...” And meaningfully shakes his head. Say no more. But even so, everything is clear: he did not approve of Vova’s amusements, apparently he only observed.
Volodya sends affectionate, laconic letters home from Mukachevo - a manner preserved to the end -. One of them was shown to me many years later by Nina Maksimovna. “Mommy, dear,” the son reports, not without humor, “I’m relaxing here very well. And, like Julius Caesar, I do three things at once: I bathe, eat and sleep.”
The fabulous beauty of Mukachevo will be remembered forever. It couldn’t have been any other way. A spirit of mystery and mysticism hovers over the medieval buildings of the city. The legends that old-timers tirelessly tell are full of poetry. One of them is about Saint Martin, the patron saint of Mukachevo. He was born in the 4th century in Pannonia (modern Hungary) and converted to Christianity. At the insistence of his parents, he was forced to enlist in the Roman cavalry. One day, on his way to winter quarters, he, as always, distributes all the money he has to the beggars crowding at the city gates. Suddenly another one comes out to meet him - half-dressed, chilled. Without hesitation, Martin takes off the warrior’s scarlet cloak, cuts it into two halves and hands one of them to the poor man. At night, Jesus Christ appears to Martin in a dream with half a cloak. It was him in the form of a beggar. From now on, Martin's path is predetermined: service to God.
And how many legends have been written about the majestic Palanok Castle. Awe-inspiring fiction, like the legends about Count Dracula, is intertwined with historical events: the walls of the castle held back the onslaught of the Cumans, the Tatar-Mongol hordes, and the siege of the Austrian troops. In the 20th century, Palanok for some time became barracks for soldiers of the Czechoslovak and Hungarian armies.

Evgenia Stepanovna Vysotskaya-Likholatova. Kyiv. 1952

Volodya Vysotsky (first on the right) in the sanatorium. Germany. 1948

Mukachevo would respond in the 1970s, when Volodya and director Les Tanyuk decided to “sound” Brecht’s “Mahogany”. Here it is, the poet’s extraordinary memory-piggy bank!
I will quote an excerpt from the wonderful memoirs of Les Tanyuk and deliberately not limit myself to just lines about the city where I was born. I’ll take it more broadly, because this is a unique opportunity to see Vladimir “live” in the creative process:
“At night I feel like I was a child. I just get tired faster. I found it and am trying to put together pieces of Vysotsky’s notes into a whole, so that it won’t be forgotten. According to “Mahogany” (he pronounced – “Mah! – agony!”).
Mach - agony.
So, what kind of performance did we want to stage at Pushkinsky?
Let me start with the fact that Vysotsky was fixated on a motorcycle. Or because I loved Jack Nicholson, and the film “Night Riders” had just come out, or because the era was filled with rockers - I don’t know. I think he himself was not against taming the wayward horse - the motorcycle...
But it really was great idea, formally modern and essentially.
He was interested in the scene.

Alexandra Vysotskaya. 1943 Kuban

– Listen, what if it’s not a bare wasteland or a landfill? - he asked already at the first or second meeting - Everyone is tired of these virgin trailers. Even if Borovsky knocks them out of real clapboard. So: what if it’s not a garbage pit, but an ancient castle? How is it in Mukachevo? By jeep - across the drawbridge, with wheels - over stained glass windows and paintings, icons and knights! A? We arrived - we fucked up! Have you seen the Mukachevo castle?
- Certainly. But why exactly Mukachevo?
– I went there as a kid. To relatives. We rested on Latoritsa. Beauty - you can't draw it! A castle on a mountain, in the sky, above - one God. And the whole town is like Tallinn! And the proletarian looks at this beauty in a tattered jeep! Gas, dirt, gasoline, machine guns, beer cans and girls. A? And in the end there is a flood. World. And everything falls through - “into fog, fog, fog...”.
I didn’t have time to agree or protest when, in order not to seem too “lyrical,” he cut the mood with a “joke”:

But will Europe perish?
From the universal flood, -
Or will slanting Asia save her again?

From left to right: Semyon Vladimirovich, Alexey Vladimirovich with his son Sasha

“Asia” this time was him, a “Scythian”, his eyes narrowed, like those of a Japanese.
I didn't like the Jeep. For me it evoked an association with the Americans: the occupied zone, brave blacks in caps, the end of the war. Vysotsky immediately suggested another option. Motorcycle with sidecar. There are two of them in black shiny raincoats and mafia Brechtian hats under their helmets; behind them are gloomy shadows from other motorcyclists. Two take off their helmets - “blond beasts”, “true Aryans, Nordic character”, beautiful as Stirlitz.
We rejected this too - as a sign of purely German fascism. This is how the Germans entered the cities, on motorcycles with sidecars. This is how the Germans moved into our Kiev yard in 1941...
Vysotsky never thought of giving up the motorcycle. It turns out he already had a text. (“So, that’s an estimate,” said Vladimir).

I've been fixated on motorcycles for a long time.
We rush in unison - to nowhere.
Let's start and end - on a motorcycle!
On motorcycles, gentlemen!
Down with whining! Everything is in the will of God.
Stay in the saddle - and lust!
A steel hand in a leather glove
Take it to the left!

And this was already the key for what followed.
Nevertheless, at first another option appeared, “intermediate,” which we also rejected, although it was theatrical and expressive.

“Mom died on December 1 last year. Lyusya Abramova, Vovin’s second wife, also came to the cemetery, because I had no relatives left. Everybody left. Mom, dad, my husband, brother Sasha, Uncle Senya, Aunt Nina, Vova...

Mom died in December, in February I opened an inheritance case, as expected. And last Monday, BTI unexpectedly came to me to measure the apartment in which I have lived since I was four years old. It turned out that after my mother’s death, people completely strangers to me were laying claim to her.” They want to kick Irena Vysotskaya, the middle-aged cousin of Vladimir Vysotsky, out of her own home.

She has a cat and a dog, a famous brother throughout the country and an apartment on Polezhaevskaya, where the famous brother often visited with his no less famous French wife.

“Yes, yes, Vova was sitting and laughing at this very table at which you, Katenka, are now sitting, and Marina Vladi is next to him.”

The table makes an impression. It is polished and timeless, like all the creations of the late socialist era.

The table is eternal, but they want to take away the apartment. Although it was received by front-line parents for services to the country back in 1959.

Vladimir Vysotsky's cousin, Irena Vysotskaya, meets me in the yard, holding an old shaggy dog by the leash. “Rex and I live like we’re at a train station,” she looks confused and speaks in such a tone as if she doesn’t believe what she’s saying. “I don’t even want to go home now.” I understand, Katechka, that everything will be taken away from me. They are different. They can. These walls, chairs, books... I'm a simpleton. I was brought up like that. I don’t know how to respond to evil.”

Christmas tree in June

There are people who are unadapted. In life they need to be with someone, so that someone protects, saves, advises.

For Irena, her dad was such a stone wall. Alexey Vysotsky. Brother of Semyon Vladimirovich Vysotsky, uncle of Vladimir Semenovich, front-line soldier and hero.

Vysotsky dedicated war songs to him. And I always said at concerts: I’m proud of my uncle, a real military officer.

Irena serves me coffee in a porcelain cup. The porcelain cup is accompanied by a porcelain spoon with the same design. On the table, the same one where Vladimir Vysotsky drank coffee with Marina, there is a small decorated Christmas tree, probably left over from last New Year. Very beautiful - Christmas tree in June.

Irena Vysotskaya, it seems to me, is still a little girl at heart. She looks like a girl, feels like a girl. Maybe because she is a children's writer?

He composes fairy tales that are now irrelevant, not about Rublyovka, but about the victory of good over evil. Although she herself is convinced that goodness and justice are in real life they don't always win.

“The arrogant and vile ones win. My parents did not strive for wealth; they lived an average life, like everyone else. I remember mom and dad mixed condensed milk with a glass of water to pamper us... I took care of my old shoes. My parents saved money before buying a coat for my mother, white, made of leatherette. Dad later took pictures of her in this coat. Dad loved mom madly, and how he took pictures of her!” - to prove her words, Irena Vysotskaya dumps on the table a huge family archive left by her parents, several photographs from Vysotsky’s mother, Nina Maksimovna, an invaluable archive.

A childhood photograph of Volodya Vysotsky, a chubby-cheeked baby. “July 25, 1938,” written on the back side by the mother’s hand. It turns out that it’s exactly 42 years until death. “Aunt Nina gave me this card to retake.”

But Vova is a little older. With a dog. With parents. With aunt and uncle. In defeated Germany, in Moscow.

“I published a book about Volodya “My Brother Vladimir Vysotsky” with my own money. I even took out a loan. Did I really write in order to get rich? It's about our whole family. What can I tell you about one Vova? He and I are 16 years apart. I'm happy that he is my brother. But he is not himself, these are his roots, grandfather, grandmother, fathers... He grew from them. And almost no one knows anything about this. The first time I saw Vova at the age of five was with our grandmother Irina in Kyiv, and he caused me “serious mental trauma.” They made bed for us in the same room; I was an impressionable, shy child. He kept me from sleeping all night with his snoring, I was afraid to wake him up. But she didn’t say a word. And in the morning Vovka, as if nothing had happened, said: “Well, you were snoring.”

Irena says that she worried about this for a very long time. And only then I realized that Vysotsky was joking.

“My parents raised my brother Sasha and I in such a way that we always felt guilty for everything. And they couldn’t stand up for themselves. We were complex, and it seemed to me that I was the worst of all. Oh, and if someone paid attention to me, I thought it was a mistake. Our parents were heroes, with orders and medals. And we, the children of front-line soldiers, are intellectuals and idealists.”

“Yaka Lyalka!”

Her mother and father met in the first months of the war. Kuban Cossack Alexandra Taran was assigned as a military paramedic in Alexei Vysotsky’s division. And he was categorically against green girls fighting under his command.

He came to her dugout to tell her directly about this. They never parted again.

Except for the three endless summer months of 1942, when Alexei was informed that Alexandra had died.

“Mom was taking the wounded to the village of Kurchanskaya, where there was a military hospital. And then there was a direct hit from a bomb... She was the only one saved. Contusion, no left arm. When Vova grew up, he dedicated the song “When our girls change their overcoats to dresses” to his mother. She was amazingly beautiful even without her hand...”

The old surgeon who carried out the amputation gloomily watched as the wounded woman, having come to her senses, began to sob, and said to her in anger: “Why cry? God gave so much. Yaka Lyalka!”

Alexandra was on the list of the dead, but in turn thought that Alexei had died. I sent a postcard to Moscow: “How is Lesha?” The postcard was read by Semyon Vysotsky, adjutant to the head of the Main Communications Directorate of the Red Army, and immediately informed his brother Alexei about Shurochka’s resurrection.

“A happy ending is like in a fairy tale,” smiles Irena Vysotskaya. - All the Vysotskys loved their women very much. And women loved them too. Uncle Senya brought his second wife from the war, Aunt Zhenya, whom we considered an absolute beauty. But he also communicated with Volodya’s mother, Aunt Nina, until his old age. Uncle Senya was like that. And my dad, except for his mother, never looked at anyone else in his life. Although because of her he had to leave the army.”

As Irena Vysotskaya writes in her book, the wife of Lieutenant Colonel Alexei Vysotsky liked the senior officer. He began to flirt with her. And he received an answer from an enraged husband in front of all the honest people. In the materials of Vysotsky’s personal file they added: “In everyday life he is modest. By nature he is quick-tempered. There was an incident of rudeness with the chief of staff of the brigade.”

“When my dad was dying from a painful illness in the seventies, Vova, Sasha, my brother, and I argued at his bedside whether he was right or wrong when he told the commander everything he thought about him. Maybe for the sake of the children’s future it was necessary to swallow the insult? Sasha thought it was necessary. Vova is for sorting out the relationship, but not in front of everyone, but one on one. But dad was silent. He has already made the only possible choice.”

Irena in Wonderland

“Vova always helped our family, selflessly. I'm so grateful to him. Until my death I will remember that when dad was fading away, it was Vova who gave us money every month to fly to Abkhazia, to a famous healer, for a magical healing tincture that extended my father’s life by two years. Father and Vova were going to make a film based on dad’s book “Mountain Flower”; dad was an excellent documentarian. But they didn’t have time... When dad died, Vova was in Paris, found out about it, went and got drunk. Marina found him in a roadside cafe. Vova sat and cried. For him, his father was everything. And he did a lot for my brother Sasha Vova, he got him a job at Vneshtorg, with business trips abroad. Now, Katenka, I seem to be telling you little things, but this is so that you understand what kind of family we had, from the inside, and what kind of people we are, and how we stood for each other, and why now, when I am left alone , something bad happened to me.”

In 1959, Alexei Vysotsky received from the state a two-room apartment in the Polezhaevskaya metro area for his family, his wife and two children, and a room in a communal apartment on Paveletskaya for his creative work. Soon both living spaces were combined and exchanged for a three-room apartment next door.

“My brother Sasha got married in ’72. As they say, on a girl of the people. The bride's name was Zoya, she was a rowing instructor, and her mother worked in a Moscow printing house. Volodya didn’t make it to the registry office, but came to the banquet. He gave a gift and said to Sasha the phrase: “My wife is also beautiful...”

After the wedding, Alexey Vladimirovich Vysotsky sold his Volga to buy a cooperative for the newlyweds. It was necessary to pay 40 percent of the cost at once. Her father's papers remained, his notes on this topic - Irena did not throw anything away.

The newlyweds received housing at the “Water Stadium”. “Before the purchase, my brother left his parents and registered with his wife’s parents, and after my dad’s death he signed a document with a notary stating that he has no claim to our old home. That my parents’ apartment remains to me.”

Irena studied at the journalism department of Moscow State University, dreamed of becoming a journalist, and got her classmates tickets to Taganka, to see her famous brother. And she brushed off envious questions when Vysotsky gave her a ride to her native faculty in one of his foreign cars. And everything was fine with her.

When did it all go downhill?

Along with dad's illness? Or after Vysotsky’s sudden death in July 1980? Irena and her mother were left alone, and the huge, unshakable, seemingly unshakable country fell apart.

And it became unclear who to hide behind now.

As Vova sang there: “There lived bookish children who did not know battles,” and during perestroika she remained such a bookish girl, Irena from a collapsed wonderland.
There is no money and we don’t need it - there is an apartment, mom, we won’t disappear somehow.

“Zoe is completely different, earthly. Sasha said so: “She and the children are different.” I always got along easily with Vovin’s wives. With Lyusya Abramova - although she is so wise, a philosopher, not like me - a mug in life. With Marina Vladi, but she is French, a superstar, an aristocrat. She instilled her polish into Vova too. But with Zoya, my brother’s wife, I didn’t get used to it.”

Once Semyon Vladimirovich came to see them, in 1989, quite old. Having learned about the visit of a relative, Zoya, as Irena recalls, shrugged her shoulders: “Why do you know him? What can he give now?

“Of course, because the famous Volodya with his connections was no longer there,” Irena sighs. - For the sake of Sasha’s brother, I met with my daughter-in-law, of course. And with my nephews, Olya and Lesha Vysotsky. But in 1992, Sasha died. Ridiculous, stupid, accidental. He slipped at work and hit his temple and died. At first, my mother and I called Zoya and invited the children. They helped both financially and with food. My husband, I just got married, earned good money. And then it became clear that they did not want to maintain relations with us. Yes, and circumstances have changed. My husband tried to start a business, but went broke. To survive, we posted advertisements on poles, and on the way home, my husband and I collected empty bottles...

Saw “Oka” into pieces

Alexandra Ivanovna was ill for a long time, more than ten years. Irena was always with her. There was a time when you couldn’t go out to buy bread - there was no one to leave your mother with.
In addition, Irena’s husband became seriously ill.

Uncle Sena, with the help of Joseph Kobzon, managed to put him in a good hospital, but they did not save him. After his death, the urn with her husband’s ashes stood in the apartment for three months, since Zoya Vysotskaya did not give permission for his burial in the family plot. Next to Irena's father and brother. She kept the documents after Sasha’s death.

“I took my mother out for a walk every morning, no matter what the weather was like, I understood that otherwise she would die. She needed fresh air like life. And I needed my mother. She brought her to the porch, the steps were too high, she gathered her will into a fist for the last throw, and she sobbed inside. I once called Zoya, not for help, just to talk, I stepped over myself - but she didn’t talk to me. It turns out that she was humiliated in vain... She asked her grandchildren to come to their grandmother. But even after death they did not say goodbye to her.”

“Mom died,” Irena called on the evening of December 1, 2008 to her brother’s family. And hung up. They didn't come to the cemetery.

The money for the funeral of “Aunt Shurochka” - as Vladimir Semenovich affectionately called his uncle’s wife - was collected at the forum by Vysotsky and his admirers.

“Again, it turns out that Vova helped.”

And it was on Vysotsky’s forum that it became known about the apartment scandal that erupted after the death of Aunt Shura.

“I came to the notary Naila Yusupova about entering into inheritance rights, and suddenly it turned out that Zoya’s children were also laying claim to our parents’ apartment. And also for the rest of my mother’s property. But not as the children of my brother - after all, Sasha officially renounced the inheritance - but as the grandchildren of his grandmother, whom they had not seen for many years. Although they lived in the same city. They even dug up what my mother, as a veteran, received from the Oka state, and they demand half of the car. This scrap metal was approximately valued at 78 thousand rubles. In the apartment they are entitled to 1/6th. Bathroom with toilet, kitchen. By the way, I’ve already started getting calls - they’re asking for Alexey Alexandrovich, my nephew. It turns out that now they can force me to exchange my dad’s apartment?” - Irena is crying.

“MK” tried to contact the other side of the scandal, but not a single phone number of Zoya Vasilievna and Olga Vysotskaya known to us is answered. Perhaps due to the fact that fans of Vysotsky’s work were already trying to talk to them...

Although everything we talk about is correct, according to our Civil Code, grandchildren have the right to inherit after their grandmother. If in court, during her lifetime, it was not proven that they were bad and unworthy.

But Irena Vysotskaya, unadapted to life, could not even think that she should have taken care of this in advance, even before her mother’s death. And 1/6 of the cost of a large apartment in a good area is about 50 thousand dollars even in times of crisis.

“Sometimes I lie in bed in the evening and think: how to live now? Perhaps I myself was somehow to blame for being treated this way. Can I be of any use to them? - Vysotskaya grins. - No, I don’t want to make excuses. It is dishonesty and greed that are to blame. And again I think: why do they do this? After all, everything would have gone to them after me in the end. And now, if justice does not prevail in court, and I go to trial, I will write everything off to Vovin’s children, Arkady and Nikita.”

Alexander SKOVORODKO, lawyer:

- Oddly enough, but everything is according to the law. Which simply, as is usually the case in our country, goes against basic human morality. Yes, these people have every right to their grandmother’s inheritance, even if they haven’t seen her for a hundred years.

From a legal point of view, Irena Vysotskaya had to take care of her safety in advance, even before her mother’s death - ask her to write a will in her favor or have Alexandra Ivanovna donate her share of the apartment in advance. And now there are three heirs to the grandmother’s half of the apartment - two grandchildren and a daughter.

The only way for Vysotsky’s sister to prove - and our Civil Code provides for such a situation - is that the grandmother-testator needed the help of her grandchildren, and they turned out to be unworthy and did not help her in any way. Only then can the court meet halfway and not turn the historical apartment associated with Vysotsky into “38 rooms with one restroom.”

Vysotsky's sister is almost homeless
Ekaterina Sazhneva
10.06.09 17:02

They want to evict Irena from the apartment where Vladimir Semenovich often visited

Irena Vysotskaya and Rex live like at a train station.
“Mom died on December 1 last year. Lyusya Abramova, Vovin’s second wife, also came to the cemetery, because I had no relatives left. Everybody left. Mom, dad, my husband, brother Sasha, Uncle Senya, Aunt Nina, Vova...

She has a cat and a dog, a famous brother throughout the country and an apartment on Polezhaevskaya, where the famous brother often visited with his no less famous French wife.

“Yes, yes, Vova was sitting and laughing at this very table at which you, Katenka, are now sitting, and Marina Vladi is next to him.”

The table makes an impression. It is polished and timeless, like all the creations of the late socialist era.

The table is eternal, but they want to take away the apartment. Although it was received by front-line parents for services to the country back in 1959.

Christmas tree in June

There are people who are unadapted. In life they need to be with someone, so that someone protects, saves, advises.

For Irena, her dad was such a stone wall. Alexey Vysotsky. Brother of Semyon Vladimirovich Vysotsky, uncle of Vladimir Semenovich, front-line soldier and hero.

Vysotsky dedicated war songs to him. And I always said at concerts: I’m proud of my uncle, a real military officer.

Irena Vysotskaya, it seems to me, is still a little girl at heart. She looks like a girl, feels like a girl. Maybe because she is a children's writer?

He composes fairy tales that are now irrelevant, not about Rublyovka, but about the victory of good over evil. Although she herself is convinced that goodness and justice do not always win in real life.

But Vova is a little older. With a dog. With parents. With aunt and uncle. In defeated Germany, in Moscow.

Irena says that she worried about this for a very long time. And only then I realized that Vysotsky was joking.

“Yaka Lyalka!”

He came to her dugout to tell her directly about this. They never parted again.

Except for the three endless summer months of 1942, when Alexei was informed that Alexandra had died.

The old surgeon who carried out the amputation gloomily watched as the wounded woman, having come to her senses, began to sob, and said to her in anger: “Why cry? God gave so much. Yaka Lyalka!”

Irena in Wonderland

In 1959, Alexey Vysotsky received from the state a two-room apartment in the Polezhaevskaya metro area for his family, his wife and two children, and a room in a communal apartment on Paveletskaya for his creative work. Soon both living spaces were combined and exchanged for a three-room apartment next door.

When did it all go downhill?

Along with dad's illness? Or after Vysotsky’s sudden death in July 1980? Irena and her mother were left alone, and the huge, unshakable, seemingly unshakable country fell apart.

And it became unclear who to hide behind now.

Of course, because the famous Volodya with his connections was no longer there,” Irena sighs. - For the sake of Sasha’s brother, I met with my daughter-in-law, of course. And with my nephews, Olya and Lesha Vysotsky. But in 1992, Sasha died. Ridiculous, stupid, accidental. He slipped at work and hit his temple and died. At first, my mother and I called Zoya and invited the children. They helped both financially and with food. My husband, I just got married, earned good money. And then it became clear that they did not want to maintain relations with us. Yes, and circumstances have changed. My husband tried to start a business, but went broke. To survive, we posted advertisements on poles, and on the way home, my husband and I collected empty bottles...

Saw “Oka” into pieces

“Mom died,” Irena called on the evening of December 1, 2008 to her brother’s family. And hung up. They didn't come to the cemetery.

The money for the funeral of “Aunt Shurochka” - as Vladimir Semenovich affectionately called his uncle’s wife - was collected at the forum by Vysotsky and his admirers.

“Again, it turns out that Vova helped.”

And it was on Vysotsky’s forum that it became known about the apartment scandal that erupted after the death of Aunt Shura.

Alexander SKOVORODKO, lawyer:

Oddly enough, but everything is according to the law. Which simply, as is usually the case in our country, goes against basic human morality. Yes, these people have every right to their grandmother’s inheritance, even if they haven’t seen her for a hundred years.

Part one Short lines that last a lifetime

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Part one
Short lines that last a lifetime