The great poet Sergei Yesenin had four children, but none of them had a chance to learn father's love and affection. Due to his youth or selfishness, he always gave preference to creativity and love interests. In addition, Yesenin was not too early to leave a tangible mark in the hearts of his heirs. Although the life of his children developed in different ways, they cherished the memory of their father and knew the poet's work well.
Yesenin's illegitimate children
For the first time, Yesenin became a father at the age of 19. Two years earlier, he left his native Ryazan province and came to Moscow. He earned his living first in a butcher's shop, then got a job in the printing house of the entrepreneur Snytin, where he met the proofreader Anna Izryadnova. The lovers decided to live together without formalizing the relationship on paper. Less than a year later - December 21, 1914 - their son Yuri was born. As Anna recalled, the young father literally glowed with happiness at the sight of the child. He even dedicated a small poem to the heir. However, the family idyll lasted only a month: Yesenin left his once beloved woman and little son in February 1915. From that moment until his death, he only occasionally appeared in their lives.
Yuri received his professional education at an aviation technical school. He literally knew his father's work by heart. Unfortunately, in 1934 he was not lucky to be in the company of young people, where seditious thoughts were expressed against the current government. Later, one of the participants in that conversation, detained in a completely different case, decided to mention an old episode in his testimony.
Yesenin's son was arrested in 1935 while serving in the army. He was accused of terrorist activities and sentenced to capital punishment. Yuri was shot on August 13, 1937, and his mother never learned anything about the fate of her son. Anna Izryadnova did not live to see the end of "ten years without the right to correspond" and died in 1946. The name of the unjustly accused Yuri Yesenin was rehabilitated by the efforts of his half-brother Alexander in 1956.
For the last, fourth time, Sergei Yesenin became a father a year and a half before his death. His next muse and beloved was not for long the translator and poetess Nadezhda Volpin. From this novel, a son, Alexander, was born on May 12, 1924. Moreover, Yesenin, having learned about the imminent appearance of the child, did not feel great joy, then the proud girl fled from him to Leningrad, without leaving a new address. The boy was born remarkably similar to the famous father. True, the poet managed to see him only twice.
Alexander Yesenin-Volpin received an excellent education, graduating from the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics and postgraduate studies at Moscow State University. But for many years he was known mainly as an ardent opponent of the Soviet regime and one of the leaders of the dissident movement. Yesenin's youngest son paid for his freedom of thought more than once: he was sent into exile in the Karaganda region, forcibly treated in psychiatric hospitals, and imprisoned.
Finally, in 1972, Alexander was literally forced to emigrate to the United States. Overseas, he was engaged in teaching, not forgetting to scold the Soviet government. Also, a theorem that applies to dyadic spaces bears his name. Yesenin-Volpin lived the longest life among all the heirs of the great poet. He passed away on March 16, 2016 on the cusp of his 92nd birthday.
Children from his wife Zinaida Reich
Yesenin officially married three times. The future famous actress Zinaida Reich became his first legal wife. They met in the editorial office of the newspaper "People's Delo", where the girl worked as a secretary-typist. In July 1917, the couple got married in a small village church in the Vologda district. The relationship of the spouses was short-lived and dramatic, but two children were born in this marriage. Daughter Tatyana was born on May 29, 1918, and son Konstantin - on February 3, 1920. When the youngest child was one year old, Yesenin filed an application for divorce.
However, very soon Zinaida found her real happiness, having met Vsevolod Meyerhold while studying at the Higher Directing Workshops. In 1922 he became her husband and treated Reich's children like family. Sometimes a real father appeared in their lives. But he gave more preference to his daughter than his son, since the girl was more like him.
The fate of Tatyana Yesenina took a sharp turn when in 1939 her stepfather Meyerhold was arrested and shot, and soon her mother was killed under mysterious circumstances. The girl lost her closest relatives and took care of her younger brother Konstantin. During the Great Patriotic War, Tatiana went to evacuate to Uzbekistan and stayed there until the end of her life. She worked as a correspondent, scientific editor, wrote several books about her famous parents and stepfather. She passed away on May 5, 1992 in Tashkent.
Yesenin's middle son Konstantin graduated from the Moscow Civil Engineering Institute. In difficult student years, Anna Izryadnova, the mother of the poet's eldest son, helped him. When the war began, the young man went to the front, where he was wounded three times and even mistakenly credited with the dead. In peacetime, he continued his studies at the institute, and then worked in the construction industry.
A serious passion for football prompted Konstantin to keep statistical records of these sports events, and as a result, he became famous throughout the country as one of the first football observers. Yesenin's middle son was a member of the Union of Journalists, published several books on sports topics. In addition, he took great care of the memory of his father, took part in events dedicated to the poet. Konstantin Yesenin died on April 26, 1986. He died in Moscow and is buried in the same grave with his mother Zinaida Reich.
