Bystritskaya was not alone: scammers often extort money from the artists

Themis met the demands of the sister of the actress - Israeli citizen Sofia Shegelman, who during the life of Elina Avraamovna (died April 26, 2019 at the age of 91) accused her representative of fraud.

Angelica Dean

Like many journalists who write about events in the field of culture, I also spoke with Ksenia Rubtsova. In the last years of Bystritskaya’s life, it was only through Rubtsova that she could be accessed to interview or comment. Five years ago, Elina Avraamovna was pleased to talk on the phone with the media, answered questions, and remained sober until the last days, but the new director, who organized her speeches, took everything into her own hands. Sometimes Ksenia Rubtsova acted as if it was Bystritskaya in her service. But so are many agents and producers of actors.

The Maly Theater, in which Bystritskaya served, and which she attended at the training camp until the last days of her life, knew about the delicate situation with her actress (I spoke with the head of the Maly Theater troupe Vladimir Beilis, who assured me that “the theater will not abandon Elina Bystritskaya is in trouble”). But at the same time, everyone in Bystritskaya’s house, including her bills and expenses, was run by Ksenia Rubtsova. Sister Bystritskaya sued her property with her director during her lifetime.

One can only imagine in what hell the last years one of the most worthy actresses of our theater and cinema has lived. She was a lonely person who, for one reason or another, couldn’t be friends with her colleagues. And are the actors able to be friends - also a big question. I know that the Maly Theater paid very good money to Elina Bystritskaya, and at any moment I was ready to give her a car and everything that she asked. But at the same time, the theater preferred to be aloof from the difficult situation with the environment of the actress and her relatives.

Recently, People's Artist of Russia Viktor Sukhorukov told me in an interview about how the head of the costume shop of the theater asked him for a large sum of money and did not return:

- An intelligent woman, the mother, the head of the costume shop of the Maly Theater, which stores the historical layers of theatrical affairs, turned out to be a swindler, a fraud. She comes up with stories, quite believable, for which she asks for money, big money, and does not give them away. Everything arrives and arrives in the regiment of victims of it, and she invents and invents new “novels” to borrow and not give. This woman took a huge amount of money from me. I knew her before, but I didn’t know that she turned into a demon who extort money by any means and means...

The director, assistant to the artistic director of the Maly Theater Vladimir Beilis, on my question about the scandal with the accounts of Elina Bystritskaya, referred to the Internet, which "turned into garbage". Everything is so, only Viktor Sukhorukov "eye to eye" told me about the head of the costume shop from the same theater. In Russia, a lot of helpless elderly actors abandoned to their fate. Around them swarms swirl in flocks. Yes, often relatives also seem to be kites flying to share the property of famous artists, as happens with the apartment of Vasily Shukshin and the legacy of Lyudmila Gurchenko.

How not to recall the words of Voland from Bulgakov’s novel about the special “Moscow greed”: “ People are like people. They love money, but it has always been this way... Mankind loves money, no matter what it is made of, whether it is leather, paper, bronze or gold. Well, frivolous... well, well... but mercy sometimes beats in their hearts... ordinary people... in general, resemble the former... only the housing issue spoiled them".

Alas, it is like this.