Vladimir Vysotsky and Nikita Khrushchev: what they talked about before the death of the former secretary general

After much persuasion, the granddaughter of the disgraced ex-general secretary Julia agreed to help. Everything happened so unexpectedly that Vladimir Semenovich forgot his guitar. But the most unusual thing was during the meeting...

Gennady Charodeyev

Even today, more than forty years after the poet's death, many recollections, trying to emphasize their closeness to the "Taganskaya celebrity", lie from high stands. And yet there are honest books. Among them - “Vladimir Vysotsky. Between Word and Glory. Memories”, which, after a long silence in January 2003, was written by a close friend of the poet David Karapetyan.

For the first time, Marina Vlady remembered about Karapetyan in her book "Vladimir or an Interrupted Flight". In it, she said that "the mysterious David" was very close to Volodya in the early 1970s. With him, Vysotsky went on drunken spree, traveled around Armenia, went “on a visit to Makhno” in Gulyaypole and to the disgraced Khrushchev in Petrovo-Dalnee.

At the presentation of the book, I asked David Saakovich: decades have passed since Vysotsky's death. During all this time, you have never come forward with memories of him anywhere. Why?

- I didn't think that I would ever want to publicly confess my love to Volodya, - answered Karapetyan. - I did not want to participate in a sold-out performance called "We and Vysotsky."

He said that they met Volodya in May 1967. At that time, David was graduating from InYaz and courting a beautiful girl Tatyana. It turned out that she closely knows the actor and bard Volodya Vysotsky from the Taganka Theater. Then he was not very interesting to David. But after a while, Tanya brought Vysotsky's notes, and Karapetyan, according to his confession, capitulated. Then they became friends for life.

- In 1970, you and Vysotsky visited the disgraced Khrushchev at the dacha in Petrovo-Dalny...

“For some reason, Julia introduced us to Grandfather as actors of the Sovremennik Theater,” recalled David Karapetyan. - Maybe because Khrushchev had just been there shortly before that at a play based on Mikhail Shatrov's play “The Bolsheviks”. There was understandable alertness in Khrushchev, but on the whole he behaved in a relaxed manner.

The dacha in Petrovo-Dalniy was located on the banks of the Istra, not far from its confluence with the Moskva River. Around the house - a somewhat neglected apple orchard, flower beds. The house was a one-story log cabin, sheathed with clapboard and painted in a poisonous green color. Since Khrushchev did not play billiards, the billiard room was rebuilt into a dining room. There was also a guard house at the gate and a "summer kitchen" on the site.

Nikita Sergeyevich's room was also small - about 15 square meters: two walls almost completely occupied the windows overlooking the veranda and the garden. In the room there was a three-door wardrobe, on which lay a box with three pistols - gifts from the Chekists. “Without cartridges - just in case,” explained Nikita Sergeyevich.

There was a bed against the only blank wall, and on the wall was a small painting by the artist Nalbandian depicting Lenin in exile.

Former colleagues in the party and Soviet leadership did not come to the disgraced leader. It was also forbidden to the employees of the special services who worked for him earlier. Rare guests to Khrushchev were mainly brought by children and granddaughter Julia. Film director Roman Carmen with his wife Maya and daughter Alena, playwright Mikhail Shatrov visited a couple of times, relatives of the army commander Iona Yakir, who was shot in 1937, and some of the children of former leaders of the "fraternal communist parties" came.

Nikita Sergeyevich, it turns out, has never heard anything about Vysotsky! The granddaughter tried to tell something, explain something, but he lived in the Looking Glass, in another world, so to speak, in an unreal space.

Almost immediately the conversation turned to Volodya's problems. It turned out that Khrushchev had not heard Vysotsky's songs, so no detailed conversation on this topic happened. Then Vysotsky outlined his position to Khrushchev in very simple words: “My songs are scolded, they are not allowed to perform, they put a spoke in the wheel at every step. And people want to listen ... To whom from the management should I turn? You know everyone up there, Nikita Sergeyevich".

For quite a long time Khrushchev could not name anyone, he thought, went over it. “I don’t even know who to advise you,” he finally said. - Better, probably, to go to Demichev. He is more or less young, progressive, he was promoted in my presence, he understands such things better than others. " But there was no particular confidence that Demichev would do something in Khrushchev's voice. (Demichev was the Minister of Culture of the USSR - ed.)

Somehow the conversation started about the Khrushchev five-story buildings. Khrushchev was very offended by the people. “Now everyone is scolding me, these houses are called“ Khrushchobs ”! And they do not say that we then pulled people out of the basements, where there was no sorting room, we gave them comfortable housing. True, small, with low ceilings, but you can live. After all, under Stalin, dwelling houses were almost never built! ”- Khrushchev was excited.

We had just sat down at the table, when suddenly Vysotsky asked: "Nikita Sergeyevich, do you have anything to drink?" And in such a tone, as if he and the owner are friends and buddies and only yesterday parted. Khrushchev reacted surprisingly calmly: “Actually, there is,” he said, and took out an open bottle of “Moscow Special” from the kitchen cabinet. Volodya immediately poured himself and David a drink, but the owner refused: "The doctors forbade me, I don't drink".

The guests asked the disgraced leader about politics, about Stalin and Beria.

“Somehow after the war”, - Khrushchev said, - “Stalin invites Mikoyan and me to dinner at his residence on Lake Ritsa. There was no one else from the Politburo. And then, to our great surprise, he opened up: "I don't trust anyone, not even myself".

Vysotsky and Karapetyan listened to Khrushchev, one might say, with their mouths open. They asked vyingly: how did he miss the conspiracy against himself?

“Yes, this one, - here he portrayed Brezhnev with facial expressions and gestures, - turned out to be a traitor. And they warned me about Suslov, they advised me to remove him, but I did not listen. Because he was a fool!"

Towards the end of the feast, Vysotsky asked if there was a guitar in the house? But there was no guitar, to which he cheerfully said: "Well, in that case, let me come again and sing for you." Here Khrushchev smiled for the first time in the whole evening. It was evident from everything that he would already like to listen to songs performed by Vysotsky.

But the meeting did not work out - Nikita Sergeyevich soon fell seriously ill. Khrushchev never heard Vysotsky alive...

At the end of the conversation with David Karapetyan, I asked if he had met with Yulia Khrushcheva in the process of preparing the book. After all, it was she who brought Vysotsky to Khrushchev and spent the whole evening in their campaign. Yulia Leonidovna could clarify something or remember that meeting.

From the expression on David Saakovich's face, I understood that contact with her for some reason did not work out. And Khrushchev’s granddaughter categorically refused to meet me, a journalist, over the phone: “I heard about Karapetyan’s book, but didn’t read it. And I will not read! I'm afraid! So much rubbish is poured out on poor Nikita Sergeyevich, and even in connection with Volodya. "

The period of the most active friendship and close communication between David Karapetyan and Vladimir Vysotsky fell on the late 1960s - early 1970s. In the last years of their lives, they hardly saw each other. In the final chapter of his book, Karapetyan talked about how his friend has changed, having ceased to be the same - modest, open and... insecure. And Vysotsky's social circle has changed. Now these were people almost entirely successful, famous and wealthy by Soviet standards...

David Karapetyan had a rather romantic profession - a translator from Italian. He had the searing appearance of a Caucasian playboy. He, according to Marina Vladi, had courteous manners that captivated world stars - Claudia Cardinale and Jacqueline Sassar (David accompanied them at Moscow film festivals).

The book of memoirs by David Karapetyan ends on July 26, 1980: Vysotsky's apartment on Malaya Gruzinskaya, in the kitchen there is a commemoration. Marina, with a glass in her hand, said that recently Volodya remembered David and regretted that he had not seen him for a long time. And the body of Vysotsky all this time was there, in the office, where friends could say goodbye to him these days.

Among them was Karapetyan...

“And I am slowly heading to the door of the office for our irrevocably last date with you, my beloved and unique comrade, my star earthly friend. See you. Until the inevitable meeting!"

David Karapetyan outlived Vladimir Vysotsky by almost 27 years.