Love stories. Larisa Reisner: wonderful commissioner Larisa Mikhailovna Reisner biography
7 October 2012, 14:45The female commissar from Vsevolod Vishnevsky's "Optimistic Tragedy" is Larisa Reisner. She was born on May 1, 1895 in Lublin (Poland) in the family of law professor Mikhail Reisner. 
The Reisner family allegedly came from the crusaders - the Rhine barons. Others claimed that the ancestor of M.A. Reisner is a baptized Jew. Larisa Reisner grew up as a very smart girl: every word is a knife, every phrase is an aphorism. Almost always not original, but beautiful and accurate. 
She graduated from high school with a gold medal. She studied at the Psychoneurological Institute and at the same time was a volunteer student at the university - the only woman among the men. Moreover, she knew how to behave in such a way that none of the students could allow themselves a single immodest glance. 
Larisa’s father, Professor Reisner, a very remarkable personality, also taught at the university there. His essay for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, “Treatise on the Divine Origin of Royal Power,” is known. Historians will argue for a long time - whether he was a convinced revolutionary, or a spy and traitor. And Larisa’s mother, Ekaterina Alexandrovna, née Khitrovo, was a very elegant, talented and noble woman. It was probably from her that Larisa received a fanatical love for fine literature... Ekaterina Alexandrovna was related to the Khrapovitskys and the Minister of War, General Sukhomlinov. The Reisners lived on the Petersburg side of Bolshaya Zelenina. The revolutionary-minded head of the family read successful lectures for workers. 
House of Duke H.H. of Leuchtenberg on Bolshaya Zelenina Street, where the Reisner family lived in 1907–1918. Petersburg During the First World War, she and her father founded the magazine “Rudin” (taking as the name the surname of the famous Turgenev character, a fighter for justice). The magazine was declared as a publication designed to “brand with the scourge of satire and pamphlet all the ugliness of Russian life, wherever it may be found.” The girl proved herself to be an excellent organizer: she looked for funds for the magazine, purchased paper, negotiated with printers, and negotiated with the censor. The publication did not last long, but became a school of public activity for Larisa. 
The authors of memoirs about Larisa Reisner unanimously noted her beauty. V.L. Andreev (the son of the writer Leonid Andreev), a friend of Larisa’s youth, recalled: “There was not a single man who passed by without noticing her, and every third person - a statistic precisely established by me - burst into the ground like a pillar and looked after her until We didn't disappear into the crowd." The writer Yu.N. Libedinsky also described “her extraordinary beauty, extraordinary because she completely lacked any kind of anemia or delicacy - she was either an ancient goddess or a Valkyrie of the Scandinavian sagas...” “Slender, tall, in a modest gray suit of English cut, in a light blouse with a tie tied like a man - this is how the poet Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky described her. – Dense dark braids lay in a tight circle around her head. There was something non-Russian and arrogantly cold in the regular, as if chiseled, features of her face, and in her eyes it was sharp and slightly mocking.” 
She wrote poetry. I dreamed of becoming a poet. “There was a young lady Larisa Reisner. They looked after the young lady, they laughed at her poems,” recalled Georgy Ivanov. “Not daring to squander the warmth of April, The exhausted day is waning, And on the wall, still dead, Vrubel, Breaks the frozen seal of horror...”
At the famous literary club "Shelter of Comedians" Larisa met Nikolai Gumilyov. That day, Reisner read her poems at the Shelter. Gumilyov sat silently, listened, then came up and asked permission to accompany him. The charm of an easy, non-binding affair, the taste of victory, which he was already anticipating, seduced him. The verdict was rendered and was not subject to appeal: " Beautiful girl, but completely mediocre." However, the romance of Larisa and Nikolai, despite the ardent reciprocity, turned out to be fleeting - it soon became clear that in parallel with Reisner, the poet had a love relationship with the beautiful Anna Engelhardt, whom he married in 1918. Such a betrayal of his lover caused Reisner had a storm of hatred. She once confessed to Akhmatova: “I loved him so much that I would go anywhere.” “The famous beauty Larisa Reisner,” clarifies Andrei Petrov, “loved Gumilyov so much that she even agreed to go on dates to a brothel.” Gorokhova. And when he was shot in the twenty-first, she, already a completely prosperous Soviet matron, the wife of the ambassador in Kabul, sobbed like a woman over the news received from Petrograd, mourning the “scoundrel and freak.” 
The Reisner family enthusiastically accepted both the February Revolution and the Bolshevik coup. Just after the break with Gumilyov in 1917, she linked her fate with the revolutionaries, becoming not only the wife, but also the adjutant of Raskolnikov, then the commander of the Volga-Caspian flotilla, later a prominent military and politician, diplomat, member of the Union of Soviet Writers. At first he was in love with Alexandra Kollontai. But he moved away when she drew attention to Pavel Dybenko. Nikolai Kuzmin, in his historical novel “Twilight,” is of the opinion that Reisner generally went crazy “and became a real psychopath: she even managed to climb onto Trotsky’s train and ride with him to the Eastern Front. From under the blanket of the “red commander in chief,” Reisner dived into the bed of the Baltic midshipman Raskolnikov. Revolutionary sailors, who have never fought a day and only eaten their fill on their battleships, are now in great demand among bossy erotomaniacs.” Confirms the version of Leon Trotsky’s novel with Larisa and the collection “Encyclopedia of Secrets and Sensations: Secrets of Coups and Revolutions.” Here's what it says: “The biblical temperament pushed him into the arms of artistic, adventurous and strange women. The affair with Larisa Reisner began in the midst of the civil war. During the battles near Kazan, the Volga Flotilla arrived there. On the captain’s bridge stood in a requisitioned ball gown the “Valkyrie of the Revolution” - the wife and adjutant of Commander Fyodor Raskolnikov. 
Along the flotilla's route there are many "nobody's" landowners' estates. Larisa dresses in luxurious outfits, her wardrobe is huge, there is a huge diamond on her hand - a memory of her work on the commission for accounting and protecting the treasures of the Hermitage and other museums. Tired of fighting, she took champagne baths in captured estates and wrote letters to her relatives, inviting them to stay.” Here's the paradox: now she loves luxury much more than before. He sails on the former royal yacht, comfortably settling down in the empress’s chambers. Having learned from the stories of the crew that the Empress once inscribed her name with a diamond on the window glass of the wardroom, she immediately drew her name with a diamond - the same one. 
She, together with Fyodor Raskolnikov, her husband, commander of the naval forces of the Republic, lives in the Admiralty, where she has equipped herself with an amazing boudoir in oriental style(the trophies of the military campaign came in handy). The walls of the boudoir are tightly covered with exotic fabrics; bronze copper Buddhas, oriental plates, and exquisite figurines gleam in all corners. In this boudoir, Larisa receives guests - in a luxurious robe stitched with gold threads. In the hungry winter of 1920, when people were dying of hunger in the streets, she organized receptions at the Admiralty, where she invited her old acquaintances. Long unaccustomed to such luxury and splendor, guests awkwardly stomp on the sparkling parquet floor and are afraid to stretch out their hands for an exquisite treat - fragrant tea and sandwiches with caviar. She organized one of the parties to make it easier for the security officers to arrest the guests invited to her. And at the masquerade ball in the House of Arts she appears in a unique dress by the artist Bakst, which was a true theatrical jewel. How she managed to get this rare dress is still a mystery to this day. Larisa Mikhailovna had at her personal disposal “a huge brown car of the Naval Headquarters.” 
At the end of the same 1920, L.M. Reisner moved to Moscow. Osip Mandelstam, who visited the “rebellious couple” several times in their new apartment said that Raskolnikov and Larisa lived truly luxuriously in hungry Moscow - a mansion, servants, a superbly set table. In this they differed from the Bolsheviks of the old generation, who for a long time maintained modest habits. Larisa and her husband found an appropriate justification for their lifestyle: “we are building a new state, we are needed, our activities are creative, and therefore it would be hypocrisy to deny ourselves what always goes to people in power.” In 1921, Larisa went with her husband to Afghanistan. Fedor was appointed plenipotentiary representative of the RSFSR in this country. And in the same year Nikolai Gumilv died, shot by executioners representing the power for which she was ready to give her life... 
This appointment for the former commander of the Baltic Fleet was actually a political exile for mistakes and miscalculations, which, in the opinion of the country's party leadership, led to the Kronstadt rebellion. In Kabul, Fyodor Raskolnikov had to make significant efforts to neutralize the machinations of British diplomacy. Larisa Reisner provided him with great help in this. Due to Eastern specifics, not being able to directly influence the course of diplomatic negotiations, she, as the ambassador’s wife, met the beloved wife of Emir Amannuly Khan and his mother and established close friendly relations with them. 
Larisa Reisner (second from left) and Russian embassy staff at the Afghan Independence Day. 1922
Since both these women played important role in the life of the Kabul court, then through them she was able not only to receive valuable information about court intrigues, but also to influence the political situation in Kabul. 
Larisa Reisner (second from left) with the French ambassador and his wife (to her right).
However, as relations between the two neighboring countries improved, and the life of the Soviet diplomatic mission in Kabul became more and more routine, a crisis began to brew in the Raskolnikov family. Two extraordinary energetic people, Fyodor Raskolnikov and Larisa Reisner, could not exist in conditions of measured life and peace. As soon as the feeling of novelty in the perception of oriental exoticism disappeared, and the intensity of the diplomatic battles weakened, they were overcome by boredom and longing for their homeland, where the “last and decisive battle” was still going on. 
Larisa Reisner and Fyodor Raskolnikov, each separately, turn to Leon Trotsky, who was in charge of the People's Commissariat Department, with a request for a recall from Afghanistan. Unlike Raskolnikov's laconic letters, which end with an unchanging communist greeting, Larisa's letters are the subject of literary prose in miniature. From a letter from L.M. Reisner L.D. To Trotsky on July 24, 1922: “I’m tired of the south, of the always almost cloudless sky, of nature, to which the East does not consider it necessary to add anything of its own, of satiety, beauty and generally everything dumb. Still best years they leave - one also feels sorry for them, especially in the evenings, when at dusk the mullahs in all the nearby villages with shrill self-confidence begin to call on the Lord God.” In the end, Larisa Reisner's patience ran out, and in the spring of 1923, in the literal sense of the word, she fled to Russia with the firm intention of “scratching her husband out of the sand with all her might.” Raskolnikov remained in Kabul, hoping to meet his wife again soon. But fate decreed otherwise. Instead of the expected order from the Drug Department to withdraw from Afghanistan, he unexpectedly received a letter from Larisa proposing a divorce. This is how it ended family life this "rebellious couple". After her return from Afghanistan, Larisa visited all her acquaintances, including those who were close to the literary circles that had alienated her at one time. 
Since 1923, the style of Larisa Reisner's essays has changed dramatically. Many knew that behind this was Karl Radek (Zobelson), a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, a witty and cynical publicist, a writer of jokes, not a handsome man. Raskolnikov did not give Larisa a divorce, but how could that have stopped the “Valkyrie of the revolution”? Radek and Reisner began to live together. Finally, a divorce was obtained. With Radek in the fall of 1923, Larisa traveled to Germany and witnessed the rise and defeat of the revolution. A book of her essays about this trip, “Hamburg on the Barricades,” was published in 1924. IN next year A book of essays "Afghanistan" is published. 
Larisa with her brother Igor. Wiesbaden. 1925 In February 1926, Larisa Mikhailovna Reisner died of typhoid fever. In the Kremlin hospital, where she was dying, her mother was on duty with her, who committed suicide immediately after her daughter’s death. The poet Varlam Shalamov left the following memories: “A young woman, the hope of literature, a beauty, a heroine of the Civil War, died of typhoid fever at the age of thirty. Some kind of nonsense. No one believed it. But Reisner died. I saw her several times in the editorial offices of magazines , she hasn’t been on the streets or at literary debates... 
The coffin stood in the printing house on Nikitsky Boulevard. The yard was filled with people - military men, diplomats, writers. The coffin was carried out, and for the last time there was a glimpse of brown hair, arranged in rings around the head. Karl Radek was led behind the coffin by the arms..." L.M. Reisner was buried at the "site of the communards" at the Vagankovskoye cemetery. One of the obituaries said: "She should have died somewhere in the steppe, in the sea, in the mountains , with a tightly clenched rifle or Mauser." It is not difficult to assume that if Larisa Reisner had lived to see the repressions of the 30s of the 20th century, she would hardly have remained alive, being a supporter of Trotsky and having in the past such husbands as Raskolnikov and Radek.
Blinding with her beauty, this amazing woman flashed like a comet against the backdrop of the events of 1917. She was called the Pallas of the Revolution, the Valkyrie of the ancient sagas, a rare human specimen. Some people remember Larisa Reisner as an ancient goddess, and others as a ruthless commissar. She became the prototype of the main character of Vsevolod Vishnevsky's "Optimistic Tragedy", who could tame a crowd of angry sailors with one glance...
Birth of an Angel
Larisa was born on the first day of May. Only angels are born on Walpurgis Night. But it was obvious from everything that this heavenly creature would still surprise everyone with her character. In the family of law professor Reisner, this girl grew up in prosperity and comfort, surrounded by affection and care, the attention of governesses, servants and the love of her parents. Curious and capable, Larisa graduated from a women's gymnasium with a gold medal and entered the St. Petersburg Psychoneurological Institute, where her dad taught.
At the same time, as a volunteer, she attended classes on the history of politics at the university. Being a very subtle and sensitive person, the girl was fond of poetry and loved to rhyme herself. The ideas of social democracy were in the air in Larisa’s family, which probably influenced her future fate. For several years, Reisner, together with her father, published and edited the magazine "Rudin", where she published her notes and feuilletons. That's when her masculine mentality and ability to logically prove her point of view first emerged.
Energetic and sociable, Larisa attracted Osip Mandelstam and Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky to collaborate. During this period, Reisner wrote her first romantic play, Atlantis. Later she was invited to work in the editorial office of Maxim Gorky's newspaper " New life".
Gafiz and Leri
Larisa never knew defeat; she was a winner by nature. This also applied to men. She had dozens of easy conquests to her credit, but in the fall of 1916 she met true love, to which I surrendered with every fiber of my exalted soul.
Reisner saw Nikolai Gumilyov, a poet and officer, at that time still the husband of Anna Akhmatova, in the bohemian tavern "Comedians' Halt" on the Champs of Mars. She turned on all her feminine charm and wit and won the heart of a male warrior very easily.
Gumilyov was a passionate and amorous person, and Larisa knew how to light a fire in him. He wrote to her that he never believed in the transmigration of souls, but for him Larisa acquired the image of either Spartan Helen or Roland’s Angelica.
Nikolai swore that he was going crazy just from the thought of his beloved Leri, as he affectionately called her. She called him Hafiz and was ready to follow her beloved even to the ends of the earth. Therefore, she humiliated herself to the point that she agreed to meet with Gumilev even in a brothel on Gorokhovaya.
“The Abduction of the Beautiful” did not take place, the escape with her beloved to the ends of the world faded into oblivion when Larisa found out that her Gafiz was having an affair with Anna Engelhard, who would later become Nikolai’s wife. This was Leri's first defeat. The breakup was very painful and final. In parting, Reisner wrote to the poet: “My dear, beloved! I wish you to meet miracles and create them yourself. Your Leri.” And soon Gumilev was gone: he was shot by the Bolsheviks.
Commissioner
After the betrayal of her loved one, Reisner plunged into the cycle of revolution. She did not establish herself as a poet, she failed in love, but found herself in the field of commissar of the Baltic Fleet. Her blood was excited by the opportunity to command, command and risk her life. Larisa got adrenaline from walking in a leather jacket and with a Mauser in her belt. From a gentle angel she turned into a warlike fury. She treated the sailors like a queen treated her courtiers.
Some contemporaries argued that Reisner was carried away by the expropriation of values. The first thing she did after becoming a commissioner was to take over the apartment of the former naval minister Grigorovich, keeping for herself all the antiques that were there. Her credo was far from revolutionary, but smacked of anarchy: “Our actions are creation, and therefore it would be hypocrisy to limit ourselves to what always goes to people in power.”
One day, the poet Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky came to visit Reisner and was surprised by the abundance of paintings, carpets, bronze oriental sculptures, majolica vases and dishes, and crystal bottles of perfume. The hostess was dressed in a silk robe embroidered with gold threads; her elegant neck and hands were decorated with diamonds and emeralds. She was loyal to the regime, but loved only herself in it.
During this period of her life, Larisa became interested in Leon Trotsky, People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs. In him she respected his sharp mind, determination, organizational skills and gift of oratory. Besides, he was a wonderful lover. But the main thing that united them was the revolutionary spirit.
Married to an Ambassador
Trotsky's deputy at that time was Fyodor Raskolnikov, a red commander, a fearless warrior, "slant fathoms in the shoulders." Reisner probably wanted to be a weak woman for a little while and rest her head on a strong man’s shoulder. The former legendary Baltic man was appointed ambassador to Afghanistan. Larisa married Fyodor and went with him to Kabul.
Local residents looked with surprise at the former poetess, shining with the beauty of her open face, and gracefully riding around a zealous horse. After impoverished and hungry Moscow, Afghanistan, with its abundance of roses and fountains, seemed like paradise.
But Larisa felt stuffy in paradise. She quickly became disillusioned with her husband, calling him a man and a dumbass. He was straightforward and honest and loved with an open soul. Reisner wanted intrigue, an explosion, a peak of feelings in a relationship.
The measured and comfortable life irritated her. Soon she got tired of the family idyll, and she returned to Russia. Raskolnikov wrote to his wife, persuading her with all “diplomatic” techniques to return. He said that their marriage had not yet exhausted all possibilities and feelings could be revived. But the divorce still took place.
Last sip
In Russia, the femme fatale has found a new affection. It turned out to be Karl Radek, the famous journalist. He had two weaknesses - expensive tobacco and beautiful women. He cleverly manipulated the latter, leaving them in the dark about what a huge collection of conquered beauties the heartthrob had.
At the same time, he remained an ideal husband and loving father. Together with Karl, Reisner visited Germany and the Donbass, where she wrote books, and Radek enjoyed her love. Everything ended unexpectedly when Larisa drank a glass of fresh milk and died of typhoid fever. She was only thirty years old. 
Larisa Reisner: “We are too contemporaries of our era to understand what value for the future... its eyewitnesses, incorruptible witnesses of its suffering, heroism, dirt, poverty and greatness have.”
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Larisa Mikhailovna Reisner(German) Larissa Michailowna Reissner, (13) May, Lublin - February 9, Moscow) - revolutionary, participant in the Russian Civil War, journalist, poet, writer. Sister of I. M. Reisner.
Biography
Larisa Reisner was born in the family of a lawyer, professor of law Mikhail Andreevich Reisner in Poland (Lublin). Official documents indicate May 1 as the date of birth of Larisa Mikhailovna Reisner. In fact, Larisa was born on the night from the first to the second, but chose to indicate May 1 as her birthday in the future. Firstly, this day marks a big holiday celebrated in Germany - Walpurgis Night (from April 30 to May 1), and Larisa never forgot about her (Baltic Sea) German roots, and secondly, May 1 is an international day of solidarity workers
In 1916-1917 she was an employee of the internationalist magazine “Letopis” and M. Gorky’s newspaper “New Life”.
In 1916-1917, Reisner experienced a stormy romance with N. S. Gumilyov, which left a deep mark on her life and work (under the name “Gafiza” the poet was published in the “Autobiographical Novel”, not published during Reisner’s lifetime). The meeting of Larisa and Nikolai took place in 1916 at the Comedians Halt restaurant, where representatives of St. Petersburg bohemia gathered. It was always noisy and fun here: they drank expensive wine, read poetry, argued about things. Anna Akhmatova took her husband Nikolai’s passion for Larisa calmly, since this happened many times. Larisa's attitude towards Gumilyov was extremely emotional and exalted.
During the war, Gumilyov was in the ranks of the active army. Larisa was in St. Petersburg at that time.
The romance between Larisa and Nikolai turned out to be short-lived - it soon became clear that, in parallel with Reisner, the poet had a love relationship with Anna Engelhardt, whom he married in 1918, which caused her indignation.
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Revolution and civil war
In 1917 she participated in the activities of the commission for arts affairs of the executive committee of the Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies, and after the October Revolution she was for some time engaged in work related to the preservation of art monuments (in the Special Commission for the Registration and Protection of the Hermitage and Petrograd Museums); was secretary of A.V. Lunacharsky.
After joining the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (1918), Reisner made a unique career as a military woman: in December 1918 she became commissar of the General Staff of the RSFSR Navy, having previously served for several months as commissar of the reconnaissance detachment of the 5th Army headquarters, which hosted participation in the hostilities of the Volga-Kama flotilla.
Together with K. Radek, Reisner, as a correspondent for Krasnaya Zvezda and Izvestia, visited Germany in 1923, where she witnessed the Hamburg Uprising. She wrote a book about him, “Hamburg on the Barricades” (1924). Two more cycles of her essays are dedicated to Germany - “Berlin in 1923” and “In the Land of Hindenburg.”
After a trip to Hamburg, Reisner broke up with Radek, went to the Donbass and after the trip wrote the book “Coal, Iron and Living People” (1925).
Reisner's last major work was historical sketches-portraits dedicated to the Decembrists (“Portraits of the Decembrists”, 1925).
Death
Larisa Reisner died on February 9, 1926 in Moscow at the age of 30 from typhoid fever, after drinking a glass of raw milk. Mother and brother Igor survived. Larisa did not recover from the illness, because at that time she was very exhausted from work and personal worries. In the Kremlin hospital, where she was dying, her mother was on duty with her, who committed suicide immediately after her daughter’s death. Writer Varlam Shalamov left the following memories: “A young woman, the hope of literature, a beauty, a heroine of the Civil War, died of typhoid fever at the age of thirty. Some kind of nonsense. Nobody believed it. But Reisner died. She was buried in plot 20 at the Vagankovskoye cemetery.” “Why did Larisa, a magnificent, rare, selected human specimen, die?” - Mikhail Koltsov asked pathetically.
One of the obituaries read:
She would need to die somewhere in the steppe, in the sea, in the mountains, with a rifle or Mauser tightly clutched.
Reviews about her
According to a number of wordsmiths around her (A. Blok, Z. Gippius, Vs. Rozhdestvensky), L. M. Reisner’s poetic talent was inferior to her beauty, and the somewhat mannered style did not correspond to the stormy, passionate nature of the author.
“The famous beauty Larisa Reisner,” clarifies Andrei Petrov, “loved Gumilyov so much that she even agreed to go on dates to the brothel on Gorokhovaya. And when he was shot in the twenty-first, she, already a completely prosperous Soviet matron, the wife of the ambassador in Kabul, sobbed like a woman over the news received from Petrograd, mourning the “scoundrel and freak.”
The poet V. Rozhdestvensky told how he visited the “beautiful commissar” together with his friends Mikhail Kuzmin and Osip Mandelstam:
“Larissa lived at the Admiralty at that time. The sailor on duty led us through dark, echoing and strict corridors. Before the door to Larisa’s private apartments, timidity and awkwardness took possession of us, so ceremonially was our arrival announced. Larisa was waiting for us in a small room, covered from top to bottom with exotic fabrics... On a wide and low ottoman there was an abundance of english books, next to a thick ancient Greek dictionary. On the low oriental table, the crystal edges of countless bottles of perfume and some copper vessels and boxes, polished to a shine, sparkled and sparkled... Larisa was dressed in something like a robe, stitched with heavy threads...”
“Larisa Reisner, the wife of the famous Raskolnikov, came from Moscow,” recalled the poet’s aunt, M. A. Beketova. - She came with the express purpose of recruiting Al. Al. a member of the Communist Party and, as they say, courted him. There were horseback rides, car rides, interesting evenings with cognac, etc. Al. Al. willingly rode horseback and generally spent time with Larisa Reisner, not without pleasure, since she is a young, beautiful and interesting woman, but she still failed to recruit him into the party, and he remained what he was before meeting her ... "
Leon Trotsky in his memoirs (“My Life”) recalled Reisner this way:
“Blinding many, this beautiful young woman flashed like a hot meteor against the backdrop of the revolution. With the appearance of an Olympian goddess, she combined a subtle ironic mind and the courage of a warrior. After the Whites captured Kazan, she, disguised as a peasant woman, went to the enemy camp for reconnaissance. But her appearance was too unusual. She was arrested. A Japanese intelligence officer interrogated her. During the break, she slipped through a poorly guarded door and disappeared. Since then she has worked in intelligence. Later she sailed on warships and took part in battles. She dedicated civil war essays that will remain in literature. With the same brightness, she wrote about the Ural industry and the workers' uprising in the Ruhr. She wanted to see and know everything, to participate in everything. In a few short years she grew into a first-class writer. Having passed unharmed through fire and water, this Pallas of the Revolution suddenly burned down from typhus in the calm atmosphere of Moscow, before reaching thirty years of age.”
“There was not a single man who passed by without noticing her, and every third man - a statistic precisely established by me - burst into the ground like a pillar and looked after us until we disappeared into the crowd.” V. L. Andreev (son of the writer Leonid Andreev)
“Slender, tall, in a modest gray suit of English cut, in a light blouse with a tie tied like a man,” this is how the poet Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky described her. - Dense dark braids lay in a tight circle around her head. In the regular, as if chiseled, features of her face there was something non-Russian and arrogantly cold, and in her eyes it was sharp and slightly mocking.”
In culture and art
- Larisa Reisner became the prototype of the female commissioner depicted in the play “Optimistic Tragedy” by Vsevolod Vishnevsky.[[K:Wikipedia:Articles without sources (country: Lua error: callParserFunction: function "#property" was not found. )]][[K:Wikipedia:Articles without sources (country: Lua error: callParserFunction: function "#property" was not found. )]][[K:Wikipedia:Articles without sources (country: Lua error: callParserFunction: function "#property" was not found. )]] [ ]
- B. L. Pasternak’s enthusiastic attitude towards L. M. Reisner, who considered her “charm incarnate,” gave him reason to call the main character of his novel “Doctor Zhivago” Larisa.
- I. Kramov wrote the book “Morning Wind” about the life of Larisa Reisner.
- In the fourth trilogy of the cycle “The Eye of Power” by Andrei Valentinov, written in the genre of alternative reality, there is a character Larisa Mikhailovna, nicknamed “Gondla” (“Gondla” is a play by Nikolai Gumilyov, Gumilyov associated Reisner with Leri, the heroine of the play). She is also married to a man named K. Radek.
- Larisa Reisner is mentioned more than once in the novel by Boris Akunin (Chkhartishvili) “Another Way” (2015)
Essays
- Shakespeare's female types: 1-2 / Leo Rinus. - Riga: Science and Life, . - 2 t.; 12. - (Miniature library “Science and Life”).
- Ophelia. - 47 s.
- "Atlantis". Play, in the almanac “Rosehip”, No. 21, 1913
- Hamburg on the barricades. - Moscow, 1924, 1925. - essays on the Hamburg uprising of 1923.
- Asian stories. - Moscow, “Ogonyok”, 1925.
- Afghanistan. - M.-L., GIZ, 1925.
- Coal, iron and living people. - M.-L., GIZ, 1925.
- In the land of the Hindenburg. - Moscow, 1926.
- Oksenov I. - Leningrad, 1927.
- Collected works. T.1. - M.-L., GIZ, 1928. - 4,000 copies.
- Collected works. T.2. - M.-L., 1928.
- Front. - Moscow, 1924, 1928, 1932. - a book of essays about the civil war.
- Hamburg auf den Barrikaden. Erlebtes und Erhörtes aus dem Hamburger Aufstand 1923. Berlin 1925
- Eine Reise durch die deutsche Republik. Berlin 1926
- RSL, Department of Manuscripts, F.245. Reisner Larisa Mikhailovna: archival fund, 1895-1929. - 819 units hr.
The expressionistic style of her books, rich in metaphors, conveying, as she believed, the pathos of the time, was not accepted by proletarian criticism, but it is this style that raises her prose, in which the image of the era arises from the richness of the author’s associations, above the level of ordinary journalism.
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Notes
Links
Literature
- Przhiborovskaya, Galina Andreevna. Larisa Reisner. - M.: Young Guard, 2008. - 487, : ill. With. - (Life of remarkable people: ser. biogr.; issue 1086). - ISBN 978-5-235-03073-2.
- Pole L.// Literary Encyclopedia: In 11 volumes - [M.], 1929-1939. T. 9. - M.: OGIZ RSFSR, State. int. “Owl. Encyclical,” 1935. - Stb. 593-596.
An excerpt characterizing Reisner, Larisa Mikhailovna
- Do you want me to show you how to do it?I just nodded in agreement, very afraid that she would change her mind. But the girl was clearly not going to “change her mind”, on the contrary - she was very happy to have found someone who was almost her same age, and now, if I understood something, she was not going to let me go so easily... This “ perspective" completely suited me, and I prepared to listen carefully about its incredible wonders...
“Everything here is much easier than on Earth,” Stella chirped, very pleased with the attention she received, “you just have to forget about the “level” on which you still live (!) and focus on what you want to see . Try to imagine it very accurately and it will come.
I tried to disconnect from all extraneous thoughts, but it didn’t work. For some reason this has always been difficult for me.
Then, finally, everything disappeared somewhere, and I was left hanging in complete emptiness... A feeling of Complete Peace appeared, so rich in its completeness that it was impossible to experience on Earth... Then the emptiness began to be filled with a fog sparkling with all the colors of the rainbow, which became more and more and became more dense, becoming like a brilliant and very dense ball of stars... Smoothly and slowly this “ball” began to unravel and grow until it looked like a gigantic sparkling spiral, stunning in its beauty, the end of which was “sprayed” by thousands of stars and went wherever - into an invisible distance... I looked dumbfounded at this fabulous unearthly beauty, trying to understand how and where it came from?.. It couldn’t even occur to me that it was really me who created this in my imagination... And also, I I couldn’t get rid of the very strange feeling that THIS was my real home…
“What is this?” a thin voice asked in a stunned whisper.
Stella stood “frozen” in a stupor, unable to make even the slightest movement, and with eyes as round as large saucers, she observed this incredible beauty that had suddenly fallen from somewhere...
Suddenly the air around us swayed violently, and a luminous creature appeared right in front of us. It looked very similar to my old “crowned” star friend, but it was clearly someone else. Having recovered from the shock and looked at him more closely, I realized that he was not at all like my old friends. It’s just that the first impression “fixed” the same ring on the forehead and similar power, but otherwise there was nothing in common between them. All the “guests” who had come to me before were tall, but this creature was very tall, probably somewhere around a full five meters. His strange sparkling clothes (if they could be called that) fluttered all the time, scattering sparkling crystal tails behind them, although not the slightest breeze was felt around. Long, silver hair shone with a strange lunar halo, creating the impression of “eternal cold” around his head... And his eyes were the kind that it would be better to never look at!.. Before I saw them, even in my wildest imagination it was impossible imagine eyes like these!.. They were incredibly bright pink color and sparkled with a thousand diamond stars, as if lighting up every time he looked at someone. It was completely unusual and breathtakingly beautiful...
He smelled of the mysterious distant Space and something else that my little child’s brain was not yet able to comprehend...
The creature raised his hand with his palm facing us and mentally said:
- I am Eley. You are not ready to come - come back...
Naturally, I was immediately wildly interested in who he was, and I really wanted to somehow hold him at least for a short time.
– Not ready for what? – I asked as calmly as I could.
- Return home. - He answered.
From him came (as it seemed to me then) incredible power and at the same time some strange deep warmth of loneliness. I wanted him to never leave, and suddenly I felt so sad that tears welled up in my eyes...
“You will come back,” he said, as if answering my sad thoughts. - But it won’t be soon... Now go away.
The glow around him became brighter... and, much to my chagrin, he disappeared...
The sparkling huge “spiral” continued to shine for some time, and then began to crumble and completely melted, leaving behind only deep night.
Stella finally “woke up” from shock, and everything around immediately shone with a cheerful light, surrounding us with fancy colors and colorful birds, which her stunning imagination hastened to quickly create, apparently wanting to free herself as quickly as possible from the oppressive impression of eternity that has fallen upon us.
“Do you think it’s me?” I whispered, still unable to believe what had happened.
- Certainly! – the little girl chirped again in a cheerful voice. – This is what you wanted, right? It is so huge and scary, although very beautiful. I would never stay there to live! – she stated with complete confidence.
And I could not forget that incredibly huge and such attractively majestic beauty, which, now I knew for sure, would forever become my dream, and the desire to someday return there would haunt me for many, many years, until, one fine day, I won’t finally find my real one, lost HOUSE…
- Why are you sad? You did it so well! – Stella exclaimed in surprise. – Do you want me to show you something else?
She wrinkled her nose conspiratorially, making her look like a cute, funny little monkey.
And again everything turned upside down, “landing” us in some crazy-bright “parrot” world... in which thousands of birds screamed wildly and this abnormal cacophony made our heads spin.
- Oh! – Stella laughed loudly, “not like that!”
And immediately there was a pleasant silence... We “played naughty” together for a long time, now alternately creating funny, cheerful, fairy-tale worlds, which really turned out to be completely easy. I couldn’t tear myself away from all this unearthly beauty and from the crystal-clear, amazing girl Stella, who carried a warm and joyful light within her, and with whom I sincerely wanted to stay close forever...
But real life, unfortunately, called me back to “sink to Earth” and I had to say goodbye, not knowing whether I would ever be able to see her again, even for a moment.
Stella looked with her big, round eyes, as if wanting and not daring to ask something... Then I decided to help her:
– Do you want me to come again? – I asked with hidden hope.
Her funny face again shone with all shades of joy:
– Are you really, really going to come?! – she squealed happily.
“I really, really will come...” I firmly promised...
The days, loaded to the brim with everyday worries, turned into weeks, and I still could not find free time to visit my sweet little friend. I thought about her almost every day and swore to myself that tomorrow I would definitely find time to “unwind my soul” for at least a couple of hours with this wonderful, bright little man... And also another, very strange thought did not give me peace - very I wanted to introduce Stella’s grandmother to my no less interesting and unusual grandmother... For some inexplicable reason, I was sure that both of these wonderful women would definitely find something to talk about...
So, finally, one fine day I suddenly decided that I’d stop putting everything off “for tomorrow” and, although I wasn’t at all sure that Stella’s grandmother would be there today, I decided that it would be wonderful if today I finally visited I’ll introduce my new girlfriend, and if I’m lucky, I’ll introduce our dear grandmothers to each other.
Some strange force literally pushed me out of the house, as if someone from afar was very softly and, at the same time, very persistently mentally calling me.
I quietly approached my grandmother and, as usual, began to hover around her, trying to figure out how best to present all this to her.
“Well, shall we go or something?” the grandmother asked calmly.
I stared at her dumbfounded, not understanding how she could find out that I was even going somewhere?!
Grandmother smiled slyly and, as if nothing had happened, asked:
“What, don’t you want to walk with me?”
In my heart, outraged by such an unceremonious invasion into my “private mental world,” I decided to “test” my grandmother.
- Well, of course I want to! – I exclaimed joyfully, and without saying where we would go, I headed towards the door.
– Take a sweater, we’ll be back late – it’ll be cool! – the grandmother shouted after him.
I couldn't stand it any longer...
- And how do you know where we are going?! – I ruffled my feathers like a frozen sparrow and muttered offendedly.
“It’s all written all over your face,” the grandmother smiled.
Of course, it wasn’t written on my face, but I would give a lot to find out how she always knew everything so confidently when it came to me?
A few minutes later we were already stomping together towards the forest, enthusiastically chatting about the most diverse and incredible stories, which she, naturally, knew much more than I did, and this was one of the reasons why I loved walking with her so much.
It was just the two of us, and there was no need to be afraid that someone would overhear and someone might not like what we were talking about.
Grandmother very easily accepted all my oddities and was never afraid of anything; and sometimes, if she saw that I was completely “lost” in something, she gave me advice to help me get out of this or that undesirable situation, but most often she simply observed how I reacted to life’s difficulties, which had already become permanent, without finally came across on my “spiked” path. Lately it has begun to seem to me that my grandmother is just waiting for something new to come along, in order to see if I have matured at least a heel, or if I am still “stuck away” in my “happy childhood”, not wanting to get out of my short childhood shirts. But even for her “cruel” behavior, I loved her very much and tried to take advantage of every convenient moment to spend time with her as often as possible.
The forest greeted us with a welcoming golden rustle autumn foliage. The weather was magnificent, and one could hope that my new friend, by “luck,” would also be there.
I picked a small bouquet of some modest autumn flowers that still remained, and a few minutes later we were already next to the cemetery, at the gate of which... in the same place sat the same miniature sweet old lady...
- And I already thought I couldn’t wait for you! – she greeted joyfully.
My jaw literally dropped from such surprise, and at that moment I apparently looked quite stupid, because the old woman, laughing cheerfully, came up to us and affectionately patted me on the cheek.
- Well, you go, honey, Stella has already been waiting for you. And we'll sit here for a while...
I didn’t even have time to ask how I would get to the same Stella, when everything disappeared again somewhere, and I found myself in the already familiar world of Stella’s wild fantasy, sparkling and shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow, and, without having time to take a better look around, I immediately I heard an enthusiastic voice:
- Oh, how good it is that you came! And I waited and waited!..
The girl flew up to me like a whirlwind and plopped a little red “dragon” right into my arms... I recoiled in surprise, but immediately laughed cheerfully, because it was the funniest and funniest creature in the world!..
The “little dragon,” if you can call him that, bulged his delicate pink belly and hissed at me threateningly, apparently hoping very much to scare me in this way. But when he saw that no one was going to be scared here, he calmly settled down on my lap and began to snore peacefully, showing how good he is and how much he should be loved...
I asked Stella what its name was and how long ago she created it.
- Oh, I haven’t even figured out what to call you yet! And he appeared right now! Do you really like him? – the girl chirped cheerfully, and I felt that she was pleased to see me again.
- This is for you! – she suddenly said. - He will live with you.
The little dragon funnyly stretched out its spiky muzzle, apparently deciding to see if I had anything interesting... And suddenly licked me right on the nose! Stella squealed with delight and was clearly very pleased with her creation.
“Well, okay,” I agreed, “while I’m here, he can be with me.”
“Aren’t you going to take him with you?” – Stella was surprised.
And then I realized that she apparently doesn’t know at all that we are “different” and that we no longer live in the same world. Most likely, the grandmother, in order to feel sorry for her, did not tell the girl the whole truth, and she sincerely thought that this was exactly the same world in which she had lived before, with the only difference being that now she could still create her own world.. .
I knew for sure that I didn’t want to be the one to tell this little trusting girl what her life was really like today. She was content and happy in this “her” fantastic reality, and I mentally swore to myself that I would never and never be the one who would destroy this fairy-tale world of hers. I just couldn’t understand how my grandmother explained the sudden disappearance of her entire family and, in general, everything in which she was now living?..
“You see,” I said with a slight hesitation, smiling, “where I live, dragons are not very popular...
- So no one will see him! – the little girl chirped cheerfully.
A weight had just been lifted off my shoulders!.. I hated lying or trying to get out, and especially in front of such a pure little person as Stella was. It turned out that she understood everything perfectly and somehow managed to combine the joy of creation and the sadness of losing her family.
– And I finally found a friend here! – the little girl declared victoriously.
- Oh, well?.. Will you ever introduce me to him? – I was surprised.
She nodded her fluffy red head amusingly and squinted slyly.
- Do you want it right now? – I felt that she was literally “fidgeting” in place, unable to contain her impatience any longer.
– Are you sure that he will want to come? – I was wary.
Not because I was afraid or embarrassed of anyone, I just didn’t have the habit of bothering people without a particularly important reason, and I wasn’t sure that right now this reason was serious... But Stella was apparently into it I’m absolutely sure, because literally a split second later a man appeared next to us.
It was a very sad knight... Yes, yes, exactly a knight!.. And I was very surprised that even in this “other” world, where he could “put on” any energy “clothes”, he still did not parted with his stern knightly guise, in which he still, apparently, remembered himself very well... And for some reason I thought that he must have had some very serious reasons for this, if even after so many years he I didn’t want to part with this look.
Usually, when people die, for the first time after their death, their essences always look exactly as they looked at the moment of their physical death. Apparently, the enormous shock and wild fear of the unknown are great enough not to add any additional stress to this. When time passes (usually after a year), the essences of old and elderly people gradually begin to look young and become exactly the same as they were in the best years of their youth. Well, the untimely dead babies suddenly “grow up”, as if “catching up” with their unlived years, and become somewhat similar to their essences, as they were when they entered the bodies of these unfortunate people who died too early, or from some kind of disease untimely deceased children, with the only difference that some of them “add” a little in development, if during their short years lived in the physical body they were lucky enough... And much later, each essence changes, depending on how she continues to live in the “new” world.
And high beings living on the mental level of the earth, unlike everyone else, are even able to at will, create a “face” and “clothes”, since, having lived very for a long time(the higher the development of the essence, the less often it reincarnates into the physical body) and having become sufficiently accustomed to that “other” world, initially unfamiliar to them, they themselves are able to create and create a lot.
Why little Stella chose this particular adult and somehow deeply wounded man as her friend remains an unsolved mystery for me to this day. But since the little girl looked absolutely satisfied and happy with such an “acquisition,” I could only completely trust the unmistakable intuition of this little, crafty sorceress...
As it turned out, his name was Harold. Last time he lived in his physical earthly body more than a thousand years ago and apparently possessed a very high essence, but I felt in my heart that the memories of the period of his life in this, last, incarnation were something very painful for him, since it was from there that Harold took this deep and mournful sadness that has accompanied him for so many years...
- Here! He is very nice and you will become friends with him too! – Stella said happily, not paying attention to the fact that she new friend is also here and hears us perfectly.
It probably didn’t seem to her that talking about him in his presence might not be very right... She was simply very happy that she finally had a friend, and with this happiness she openly and with me I shared with pleasure.
Larisa Mikhailovna Reissner (German: Larissa Michailowna Reissner). Born May 1 (13), 1895 in Lublin - died February 9, 1926 in Moscow. Russian revolutionary, journalist, poet, writer.
Larisa Reisner was born on May 1 (13 according to the new style) 1895 in Lublin.
Father - Mikhail Andreevich Reisner, lawyer, professor of law.
According to official documents, she was born on May 1. However, in reality, Larisa was born on the night from the first to the second - but in the future she chose to indicate May 1 as her birthday. According to one version, this was due to her Baltic (German) roots - this day marks a major holiday celebrated in Germany: Walpurgis Night (from April 30 to May 1). According to another version, she adjusted her date of birth to coincide with International Workers' Day.
Mother - Ekaterina Alexandrovna (nee Khrapovitskaya).
Younger brother - Igor Mikhailovich Reisner (December 27, 1898 (January 8, 1899), Tomsk - February 7, 1958, Moscow), Soviet orientalist, Doctor of Historical Sciences (1953), specialist in India and Afghanistan.
She spent her early childhood in Tomsk, where her father taught at the university.
In 1903-1907, my father taught in Germany, where Larisa also often visited.
Since 1905, the Reisner family settled in St. Petersburg. There was good wealth in the house.
Larisa's father and brother were keen on the ideas of social democracy (the father knew August Bebel, Karl Liebknecht), which determined the girl's range of interests and worldview.
In St. Petersburg, Larisa graduated from the gymnasium with a gold medal, and in 1912 she entered the Psychoneurological Institute, where her father taught.
Reisner's first work was the heroic-romantic play Atlantis, published in the anthology Rosehip in 1913.
In 1915-1916, together with her father, she published the literary magazine “Rudin” (8 issues were published), the task of which was “to brand with the scourge of satire, caricature and pamphlet all the ugliness of Russian life.”
Reisner edited Rudina and published there a number of poems and harsh feuilletons ridiculing the mores of the political and creative intelligentsia of the 1910s. A special place in the ideological program of the magazine was occupied by criticism of “defencism” (in particular, criticism of G. V. Plekhanov’s views on war), which the Reisners considered a form of opportunism. However, without hiding the ideological and political physiognomy of the magazine, Reisner, as editor of Rudin, took care of “opening the way for young talents.” She attracted to cooperation in the magazine participants of the university “Circle of Poets” (of which she was a member) - O. E. Mandelstam, Vs. A. Rozhdestvensky, talented artists S. N. Gruzenberg, N. N. Kupreyanov, E. I. Pravednikov.
In May 1916, the magazine closed due to lack of funds for its publication.
In 1916-1917 she was an employee of the internationalist magazine “Letopis” and the newspaper “New Life”.
In 1917 she participated in the activities of the commission for arts affairs of the executive committee of the Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies, and after the October Revolution she was for some time engaged in work related to the preservation of art monuments (in the Special Commission for the Registration and Protection of the Hermitage and Petrograd Museums). She was the secretary of A.V. Lunacharsky.
After joining the CPSU (b) (1918), Reisner made a unique career for a woman - a military politician: in December 1918 she became commissar of the General Staff of the RSFSR Navy, having previously served for several months as commissar of the reconnaissance detachment of the 5th Army headquarters, took part in the hostilities of the Volga-Kama flotilla.
In 1918 she joined the RCP(b).
In August 1918 she went on reconnaissance to Kazan, occupied by the White Czechs. After an attack by a detachment of White Guards under the command of V.O. Kappel and B.V. Savinkov at the Tyurlema and Sviyazhsk stations (August 28, 1918), she made a reconnaissance raid from Sviyazhsk through Tyurlema to the Shikhrany station (now the city of Kanash) to restore communications between headquarters and military units 5th Army.
The People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs appointed her commissar of the Naval General Staff (temporarily from December 20, 1918, permanently from January 29, 1919). From June 1919 to mid-1920, Reisner again participated in hostilities, this time in the Volga-Caspian Flotilla, and from the summer of 1920 he became an employee of the Political Directorate of the Baltic Fleet.
During his stay in Petrograd in 1920-1921, Reisner took an active part in literary and social life, collaborated with the Petrograd Union of Poets, and established a close acquaintance with.
In 1921, she was in Afghanistan as part of the Soviet diplomatic mission, the head of which was her husband F. Raskolnikov. Larisa’s brother Igor Reisner, one of the founders of Soviet oriental studies, was also in Afghanistan. Then she broke up with Raskolnikov and returned to Moscow.
Then, together with Karl Radek, as a correspondent for Krasnaya Zvezda and Izvestia, she visited Germany in 1923, where she witnessed the Hamburg Uprising, about which she wrote the book “Hamburg on the Barricades” (1924). Two more cycles of her essays are dedicated to Germany - “Berlin in 1923” and “In the Land of Hindenburg.”
Returning from Germany, she went to Donbass and after the trip wrote the book “Coal, Iron and Living People” (1925).
Reisner's last major work was historical sketches-portraits dedicated to the Decembrists (“Portraits of the Decembrists”, 1925).
Death of Larisa Reisner
Larisa Reisner died on February 9, 1926 in Moscow at the age of 30 from typhoid fever, after drinking a glass of raw milk. Mother and brother Igor survived. Larisa did not recover from the illness, because at that time she was very exhausted from work and personal worries.
In the Kremlin hospital, where she was dying, her mother was on duty with her, who committed suicide immediately after her daughter’s death.
Writer Varlam Shalamov left the following memories: “A young woman, the hope of literature, a beauty, a heroine of the Civil War, died of typhoid fever at the age of thirty. Some kind of nonsense. Nobody believed it. But Reisner died. She was buried in plot 20 at the Vagankovskoye cemetery.”
Mikhail Koltsov pathetically asked: “Why did Larisa, a magnificent, rare, selected human specimen, die?”
In his memoirs “My Life,” Leon Trotsky recalled Reisner this way: “Dazzling many, this beautiful young woman flashed like a hot meteor against the backdrop of the revolution. With the appearance of an Olympian goddess, she combined a subtle ironic mind and the courage of a warrior. After the Whites captured Kazan, she, disguised as a peasant woman, went to the enemy camp for reconnaissance. But her appearance was too unusual. She was arrested. A Japanese intelligence officer interrogated her. During the break, she slipped through a poorly guarded door and disappeared. Since then she has worked in intelligence. Later she sailed on warships and took part in battles. She dedicated essays to the Civil War that will remain in literature. With the same brightness, she wrote about the Ural industry and the workers' uprising in the Ruhr. She wanted to see and know everything, to participate in everything. In a few short years she grew into a first-class writer. Having passed unharmed through fire and water, this Pallas of the Revolution suddenly burned down from typhus in the calm atmosphere of Moscow, before reaching thirty years of age.”
Valkyrie of the Revolution Larisa Reisner
Personal life of Larisa Reisner:
Larisa Reisner had a very stormy personal life, was in love affairs with very famous personalities and historical characters.
In 1916-1917, she had a stormy affair with, which left a deep mark on her life and work. Under the name "Hafiza" the poet is depicted in Reisner's "Autobiographical Novel", although not published during her lifetime. The meeting of Larisa and Nikolai took place in 1916 at the Comedians Halt restaurant, where representatives of St. Petersburg bohemia gathered. It was always noisy and fun here: they drank expensive wine, read poetry, and argued about politics. Larisa took her husband Nikolai’s passion for her calmly, since this happened many times. Larisa's attitude towards Gumilyov was extremely emotional and exalted.
During the First World War, Gumilyov was in the ranks of the active army. Larisa was in St. Petersburg at that time. The romance between Larisa and Nikolai turned out to be short-lived - it soon became clear that, in parallel with Reisner, the poet had a love relationship with Anna Engelhardt, whom he married in 1918.
Nikolai Gumilev - lover of Larisa Reisner
She was in a long-term relationship with Sergei Kolbasyev, a famous Russian and Soviet sailor, prose writer, marine painter and poet, jazz enthusiast (he was one of the promoters of jazz music in the USSR).
Sergei Kolbasyev - lover of Larisa Reisner
In 1918, she married the commander of the Volga military flotilla, the famous Russian revolutionary Fyodor Raskolnikov.
Nadezhda Mandelstam, who visited the couple several times, said that Raskolnikov and Reisner lived truly luxuriously in hungry Moscow - “a mansion, servants, a superbly set table.”
Fyodor Raskolnikov - husband of Larisa Reisner
In the early 1920s, when Raskolnikov was the head of the Soviet diplomatic mission in Afghanistan, she separated from him (although Raskolnikov did not give her a divorce) and returned to Moscow, where she became the lover of Karl Radek. After a joint trip to Germany in 1923, she also broke up with Radek.
Karl Radek - lover of Larisa Reisner
During her stay in Donbass, she had a relationship with the first secretary of the bush party committee in Gorlovka, A.I. Bradulov.
Bibliography of Larisa Reisner:
1913 - Shakespeare's Female Types (under the pseudonym Leo Rinus)
1913 - Ophelia
1913 - Atlantis
1917 - Rilke (about the work of the German poet)
1917 - Gondla
1923 - Hamburg auf den Barrikaden. Erlebtes und Erhörtes aus dem Hamburger Aufstand
1924 - Hamburg on the barricades
1924, 1928, 1932 - Front (book of essays about the civil war)
1925 - Asian stories
1925 - Afghanistan
1925 - Coal, iron and living people
1925 - Portraits of the Decembrists
1926 - In the land of the Hindenburg
1926 - Eine Reise durch die Deutsche Republik
1928 - Collected works. T.1-2
The image of Larisa Reisner in culture and art:
Larisa Reisner became the prototype of the female commissioner depicted in the play “Optimistic Tragedy” by Vsevolod Vishnevsky. The play was filmed, the main role was played by the actress.
His enthusiastic attitude towards Reisner, who considered her “charm incarnate,” gave him reason to call the main character of his novel “Doctor Zhivago” Larisa.
I. Kramov wrote the book “Morning Wind” about the life of Larisa Reisner.
In the fourth trilogy of the “Eye of Power” cycle by Andrei Valentinov, written in the genre of alternative reality, there is a character Larisa Mikhailovna, nicknamed “Gondla” (“Gondla” is a play by Nikolai Gumilyov; Gumilyov associated Reisner with Leri, the heroine of the play).
Larisa Reisner is mentioned more than once in the novel “The Other Way” (2015).
Featured in the 2017 biographical series.
IN different times and in different countries standards of beauty have changed greatly. However, Larisa Reisner’s appearance was so bright and impressive that even today her photographs leave one impression: a beauty! Graceful figure, regular facial features. But this was not the mannered and defenseless feminine charm characteristic of the era: courage and recklessness were visible in the chiseled features.
This woman fully corresponded to the characteristics of an absolute passionary, as defined by Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov.
Family and childhood
Larisa was born in 1895 in Poland, the daughter of law professor Mikhail Andreevich Reisner. Two years later, her brother Igor was born. According to family lore, the Reisners came from an ancient aristocratic German family, whose representatives participated in the Crusades.
The family moved to where Mikhail Andreevich was offered work: Lublin, Tomsk, Paris. In 1905, the Reisners moved to St. Petersburg. Here Larisa graduated from high school with a gold medal and entered the Psychoneurological Institute, where her father taught. She was the only female student, and behaved with her classmates so naturally and confidently that the young people did not allow themselves any liberties.
Mikhail Reisner was a multi-vector politician. He wrote a very reasonable treatise on divine origin tsarist power, but at the same time was in correspondence with Lenin and published the opposition magazine “Rudin”, where he denounced the tsarist government. Larisa took an active part in the publication of the magazine: she found sponsors, purchased paper, negotiated with printing houses and censors. Yet, after a year and a half, the magazine was banned as unreliable.
Romance with Nikolai Gumilyov
Larisa Reisner wrote quite good poems in the spirit of decadence, fashionable at that time. This style itself was distinguished by some pomposity, which gave those who wished it a reason to criticize the work of the young poetess.
The palette is gilded with thick, transparent varnish,
But it cannot quench a new thirst:
Dreams run without repeating twice,
And the hand clenches madly into a fist.
Zinaida Gippius described Larisa's lyrics as weak and pretentious, and the famous Nikolai Gumilev called her simply mediocre. The young poetess was so upset by his characterization that she cried the whole night. However, later a passionate romance arose between them. Nikolai at that time was serving in the active army and was in St. Petersburg only for a short period of leave. These two talented people came up with a love game in the oriental style, where Gumilev was Gafiz, and Larisa was Leri. In their letters they called each other that way.
The poet had a reputation as a lover of women and was known for his ability to offer his hand and heart to everyone, but in his relationship with Larisa he diligently maintained his distance, realizing that this woman would not tolerate his frivolous adventures. However, upon Nikolai’s return to St. Petersburg, she agreed to a date with him in a rather peculiar place: in a brothel. However, for poets of that period, visiting such establishments was considered a sign of fashionable rebellion and self-sufficiency.
Nikolai finally proposed to Larisa, but she refused precisely for the reason that he was dating at the same time as others. Although she explained her refusal by not wanting to hurt Anna Akhmatova: the relationship between the two poets had long been nominal... In parting, Gumilyov advised ex-girlfriend have fun, but don't get political.
It was February 1917.
A few years later, Larisa wrote about her relationship with Gumilyov: “I never loved anyone with such pain, with such a desire to die for him, as he did, the poet Gafiz, the freak and the scoundrel.”
Larisa Reisner - sailor of the revolution
Contrary to Gumilyov’s advice, Larisa plunged headlong into political activity. The family joined the winners. Larisa's brother Igor became the secretary of Dmitry Manuilsky, one of the Bolshevik deputies. And Larisa herself was engaged in propaganda among the sailors of the Baltic Fleet and worked under the leadership of Lunacharsky. As a correspondent for the Izvestia newspaper, she met the leader of a detachment of sailors sent to Moscow. The last name of this sailor was Ilyin, but he participated in the coup under the pseudonym “Fyodor Raskolnikov.” He wasn't a simple person: two higher educations and several foreign languages. These two became husband and wife, but the relationship was somewhat one-sided: Raskolnikov adored Larisa, but she did not want to live together and limit herself in hobbies.
Hobbies soon followed: Leon Trotsky became Larisa’s new passion. Another smart, extraordinary person with powerful charisma. Larisa worked under his supervision in Kazan. After an outbreak of passion between them, she returned to Raskolnikov.
At the same time, this extraordinary woman found herself at the center of all sorts of adventures. Delivering secret documents, she made her way through hostile territories; the men accompanying her died, she herself was captured, but managed to escape. Assigned to Raskolnikov's flotilla, she strove to interfere in the management of military affairs - it got to the point that her husband was forced to take her by force from the bridge and lock her in the cabin.
Larisa, regardless of the setting, looked smart and elegant, and loved perfume. The sailors of the flotilla treated her ironically: how could this spoiled woman be in the midst of battles? And they gave her an exam: they put her on a boat and went under heavy fire, waiting for this beauty to lower her tone and ask to go back. But Larisa reveled in the danger and did not spare the dead. The sailors themselves got scared and turned back, while the passenger was indignant at their cowardice.
The most elegant revolutionary
They never weaned her off her love of clothes; on the contrary: in abandoned estates and on the royal yacht “Mezhen” they found a lot of all kinds of dresses, from the most exquisite to peasant ones, and all of them suited the beautiful revolutionary. Larisa organized a “fashion show” on the ship, and the sailors, already completely in love with her, had no objections. One of these sailors was Vsevolod Vishnevsky, a future playwright; he later sang the image of Larisa Reisner in the play “Optimistic Tragedy.”
Larisa knew how to shoot perfectly, she was taught this by Nikolai Gumilyov, himself an excellent shooter. And she personally participated in the executions.
By order of Trotsky, the Baltic Fleet under the command of Raskolnikov was to attack the English fleet stationed in Reval. The condition of the ships was poor, they lost the battle, and Raskolnikov was captured and taken to England. Larisa personally participated in his exchange for English prisoners of war.
Larisa lived “to the fullest.” She took expensive trophies for herself, drove a luxury car, and took champagne baths. Her social circle included both politicians and bohemians. There were rumors that this woman was organizing receptions to make it easier for the security officers to arrest some of her guests. However, when someone told Larisa that Anna Akhmatova was starving, she brought her a huge bag of food.
Afghanistan
In 1921, Raskolnikov was offered the post of USSR plenipotentiary representative in Afghanistan. Larisa went with him. The main task of the embassy was to combat British influence in the region. Larisa was able to create worthy competition for European diplomacy. She became friends with her beloved wife and the mother of Amanullah Khan, through them she quickly received confidential information and influenced politics.
Here Larisa wrote the undoubtedly talented book “Afghanistan”.
While in this country, she learned that Nikolai Gumilyov had been shot. Larisa cried for several days, and until the end of her days she insisted that if she had been in Petrograd, she would definitely have saved her “Gafiz”.
Around that time, Larisa had a miscarriage. After that, she left for Russia and never returned to Raskolnikov. He worried for a long time, wrote letters to her, begged her to return, but in vain...
Last Passion
Larisa has a new passion: married journalist Karl Radek: a man with the appearance of an outright goner. He was a head shorter than his girlfriend, bald and blind. However, Larisa was attracted to his extraordinary intelligence.
In 1923, Radek was sent to Germany. The USSR provoked an uprising in Hamburg, Radek had to support it, and Larisa had to cover it as a journalist.
Over the next two years, she wrote a number of talented books: about Germany, about the Donbass, about the Decembrists...
Death and memories
This amazing woman repeatedly put herself at risk of dying in battle, but fate decided otherwise.
Upon returning to Moscow, Larisa drank a glass of raw milk and contracted typhoid fever. On February 9, 1926, she passed away. Thousands of people came to the House of Press to say goodbye to her.
Leon Trotsky wrote about her: “The appearance of an Olympian goddess, her ironic mind was combined with the courage of a warrior.”
Osip Mandelstam, in his “Madrigal” dedicated to Larisa, compared her to a green-eyed mermaid, and Nikolai Gumilyov praised her “Ionic curl”...
V.L. Andreev (the son of the writer Leonid Andreev), recalled: “There was not a single man who would pass by without noticing her, and every third one - a statistic precisely established by me - burst into the ground like a pillar and looked after us until we disappeared into crowd."
