The Mystery of Olga Chekhova Read online

  p. 20‘such a beauty . . .’, Tatyana Alekseevna Gaidamovich, interview, 4January 2003.

  p. 20 ‘You will definitely ...’, Tschechowa, 1973, p. 37. Needless to say, her conversation with Duse is different in the two versions of her memoirs. In the 1952 version Duse also gives her a tiny pair of silver ice-skates for a doll and says: ‘You are so beautiful that you should be kept away from the theatre!’, Tschechowa, 1952a, p. 69.

  3. Mikhail Chekhov

  p. 21 Mikhail Chekhov at Maly Theatre School, Sergei Mikhailovich Chekhov, MS, AD-MCM/Sakharova/File 81.

  p. 21 October 1911, echov, 1992, p. 44.

  p. 21 ‘He was short, thin and moved restlessly ...’, Sergei Mikhailovich Chekhov, MS, AD-MCM/Sakharova/File 81.

  p. 22 ‘as if I had to ...’, echov, 1992, p. 57.

  p. 22 ‘Thank you, Aunt Masha ...’, quoted Sergei Mikhailovich Chekhov, MS, AD-MCM/Sakharova/File 81.

  p. 22 Aleksandr Chekhov’s death, echov, 1992, pp. 28—9.

  p. 23 ‘I visited Mishka several times ...’, Valdimir Ivanovich Chekhov, 19 August 1913, quoted Sergei Mikhailovich Chekhov, MS, AD-MCM/Sakharova/File 81.

  p. 23 ‘second-rate people’, Sergei Mikhailovich Chekhov, MS, AD-MCM/Sakharova/File 81.

  p. 24 ‘Volodya wrapped in this carpet ...’, ibid.

  p. 24‘My darling Mashechka, calm down ...’, ibid.

  p. 25 ‘Agitation is expressed . . .’, Stanislavsky, Sobranie sochineny, Vol. VI, p. 48, quoted Benedetti, 1988, p. 191.

  p. 25 Breakfasts with Stanislavsky, echov, 1992, p. 58.

  p. 26 Prechistensky bulvar was renamed Gogolevsky bulvar in the early 1920s, after the revolution.

  p. 26 The Rose and the Cross, L. K. Knipper, p. 13.

  4. Misha and Olga

  p. 27 ‘From my earliest youth . . .’, Cechov, 1992, p. 33.

  p. 28 Misha’s only comment on their engagement was: ‘Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova had two nieces staying with her and I decided to marry one of them’, ibid., p. 71. He was, however, more generous about the failure of their marriage later.

  p. 29 If such a man kissed me‘, Tschechowa, 1973, p. 53. See also Tschechowa, 1952a, pp. 83—4 for other variations.

  p. 30 To this day, a passport in Russia is also the state internal identity card.

  p. 30 ‘Oh, but your nephew . . .’, Sergei Mikhailovich Chekhov, MS, AD-MCM/Sakharova/File 81. According to Olga Chekhova, Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova rang the apartment to find out why Misha had failed to appear at the theatre, Tschechowa, 1973, pp. 86-7.

  p. 31 ‘I said that [Olga] herself ...’, Sergei Mikhailovich Chekhov, MS, AD-MCM/Sakharova/File 81.

  p. 31 ‘Come at once’, Tschechowa, 1973, p. 56.

  p. 32 ‘Thank God . . .’, ibid.

  p. 32 If Olga’s father, Konstantin Knipper, was there at that time, then it was probably on a brief visit. Between 1912 and 1915 he was based mostly in Ekaterinburg, where Olga’s imagined friends the Grand Duchesses were to be murdered four years later.

  p. 32 ‘crying her eyes out’, Tschechowa, 1973, p. 57.

  p. 32 Olga’s threatened suicide, Tschechowa, 1952a, p. 87.

  p. 32‘We’re already in Petrograd for a week ...’, Sergei Mikhailovich Chekhov, Sakharova (ed.), p. 264.

  p. 33 ‘Beautiful Mashechka ...’, quoted Sergei Mikhailovich Chekhov, MS, AD-MCM/Sakharova/File 81.

  p. 33 ‘I was at the family dinner ...’, ibid.

  p. 33 ‘two left hands’, Tschechowa, 1973, p. 58.

  p. 33 ‘waiting for one’s call-up ...’, Cechov, 1992, p. 148.

  p. 34 ‘surge of false patriotism’, L. K. Knipper, p. 14.

  5. The Beginning of a Revolution

  p· 35 ‘patriotic plays’, ‘art showed that it had ...’, Stanislavsky, 1924, p. 548.

  p. 36 ‘the miraculous liberation of Russia’, Stanislavsky to Kotliar evsky, 3 March 1917, quoted Benedetti, 1988, p. 225.

  p. 37 ‘I hope you aren’t angry ...’, quoted Sergei Mikhailovich Chekhov, MS, AD-MCM/Sakharova/File 81.

  p. 37 ‘Deep effect’, ‘a true Russian’, ‘Paper! Pen! ...’, Tschechowa, 1952a, pp. 88-9.

  p. 37 ‘My dear Masha ...’, AD-MCM/Sakharova/File 81.

  p. 38 ‘small, utterly primitive . . .’, Tschechowa, 1973, p. 65.

  p. 38 Olga Chekhova and meningitis, Silvia Honold, ‘Gespräch mit Olga Tschechowa’, Munich, 1962, unpublished MS, p. 136, quoted Helker and Lenssen, p. 60.

  p. 40 ‘hysterical hedonism’, Figes, p. 283.

  p. 40 ‘The ethical side of the theatre ...’, Stanislavsky to Nemirovich-Danchenko, 11 August 1916, quoted Benedetti (ed.), p. 303.

  6. The End of a Marriage

  p. 41 ‘She had been brought up ...’, Sergei Mikhailovich Chekhov, MS, AD-MCM/Sakharova/File 81.

  p. 41 ‘In the drawer ...’, Cechov, 1992, p. 72.

  p. 42 Bread queues, Figes, pp. 299—300.

  p. 42 Lev Knipper and military career, Andrei Lvovich Knipper, interview, 23 September 2002.

  p. 42 ‘would probably collapse ...’, quoted Figes, pp. 321, 276.

  p. 44 Olga Chekhova on Kerensky, Tschechowa, 1952a, p. 92.

  p. 44 ‘done over’, Stanislavsky, quoted Benedetti, 1988, p. 225.

  p. 45 ‘gray-clad mobs’, etc., Stanislavsky, 1924, pp. 553-4. For The Cherry Orchard at the Theatre of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, see Benedetti, 1988, p. 226.

  p. 46 ‘The Bolsheviks are ruining . . .’, V. V. Knipper, p. 83.

  p. 47 ‘like a carved ...’, Cechov, 1992, p. 80.

  p. 48 ‘He was an adventurer ...’, ‘already in her overcoat’, ibid., pp. 78-9.

  7. Frost andFamine

  p. 52 Anya Kraeva, etc. Olga Chekhova’s movies made in Russia were never mentioned on her curriculum vitae in later years. As far as her version of history is concerned, Schlofβ Vogelöd, the first film she made in Germany, was her first film.

  p. 52 ‘Proletkult’, Figes, pp. 736-7, 742, 745.

  p. 53 ‘always served beauty ...’, ‘we have become ...’, Stanislavsky, 1924, pp. 556, 563.

  p· 53 ‘Masha my dearest ...’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper Chekhova to Mariya Pavlovna Chekhova, Moscow, 28 February 1918, Vilenkin (ed.), Vol II, p. 118.

  p. 54 ‘the devastation and neglect ...’, ‘It’s not revolution ...’, ibid., pp. 119, 74, quoted Pitcher, p. 217.

  p. 56 42 per cent of Moscow’s prostitutes, ‘ruined by the revolution’, Figes, p. 605.

  p. 56 ‘I was playing . . .’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova to Mariya Pavlovna Chekhova, Moscow, 10 April 1918, Vilenkin (ed.), Vol. II, p. 119.

  p. 57 ‘Every day, my sister Ada and I ...’, Silvia Honold, ‘Gespräch mit Olga Tschechowa’, Munich, 1962, unpublished MS, p. 51, quoted Helker and Lenssen, p. 62.

  p. 57 ‘Sugar is seventy-five roubles ...’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova to Mariya Pavlovna Chekhova, Moscow, 22-26 January 1919, Vilenkin (ed.), Vol. II, p. 120.

  p. 59 Death of Natalya Aleksandrovna, Cechov, 1992, p. 121; and SergeiMikhailovich Chekhov, MS, AD-MCM/Sakharova/File 81.

  8. Surviving the Civil War

  p. 61 ‘You’ve got red devils . . .’, Andrei Lvovich Knipper, interview, 22 September 2002.

  p. 61 Lev Knipper’s version of his role in the Russian civil war, L. K. Knipper, p. 15.

  p. 62 Cheka atrocities, Figes, pp. 646—7 for examples.

  p. 63 ‘catastrophe’, Stanislavsky, 1924, p. 557.

  p. 63 Shverubovich was Kachalov’s real family name; Kachalov was just a stage name.

  p. 63 This account of the Moscow Art Theatre group in Kharkov is based mainly on that of the stage manager, S. Bertensson, Vokrug iskusstva, Los Angeles, 1957, quoted Pitcher, pp. 219—25.

  p. 65 ‘took away all chance ...’, Stanislavsky, 1924, p. 557.

  p. 66 ‘Stanislavsky is a real artist . . .’, quoted N. I. Komarovskaya, Videnoe i perezhitoe, Moscow, 1965, p. 139, quoted Benedetti, 1988, p. 230.

  p. 67 ‘Auntie Manya, Uncle Vanya ...’, Mayakov
sky, SS, Vol. IX, pp. 107-8, quoted Benedetti, 1988, p. 248.

  p. 67 ‘We interpreted Mayakovsky’s suicide’, quoted Shentalinsky, p. 48. Mayakovsky killed himself in 1930. Stalin later insisted, with unparalleled cynicism, that Mayakovsky was ‘the most talented poet of our Soviet epoch’ and that ’indifference to his memory is a crime‘.

  p. 67 Anton Chekhov’s day. Less than five years later, Stanislavsky wrote: ‘The life that Chekhov painted is gone, but his art is still with us. Many young people know nothing of that life, for they appeared on the scene long after it passed. Revolutions and wars created cruel but interesting moments in the life of man, who in one day, sometimes in one hour, passed through what it took a man of the generation before tens of years to experience’, Stanislavsky, 1924, p. 565.

  9. The Dangers of Exile

  p. 70 Lev Knipper in civil war, Andrei Lvovich Knipper, interview, 23 September 2002.

  p. 70 Kachalov group in the Caucasus. This account comes mainly from Pitcher, pp. 221-6, which in turn comes partly from S. Bertensson, Vokrug iskusstva, Los Angeles, 1957.

  p. 71 Vadim Shverubovich, Mariya Vadimovna Shverubovich, interview, 16 September 2003.

  p. 72 Novorossiisk, Figes, p. 679.

  p. 73 Likani Palace, Montefiore, p. 546.

  p. 73‘I have been suffering . . .’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper Chekhova to Mariya Pavlovna Chekhova, Tiflis, 11 September 1920, Vilenkin (ed.), Vol. II, p. 121.

  p. 74 ‘“Our life in this house is over” ...’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova to Stanislavsky, Tiflis, 19 September 1920, ibid., p.122.

  p. 74 ‘You don’t understand ...’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper Chekhova to Mariya Pavlovna Chekhova, Tiflis, 11 September 1920, ibid., p. 121.

  p. 75 Wrangel army at Gallipoli. ‘One fifth of the corps left Gallipoli prior to its exodus to the Balkan countries [principally Bulgaria]. One soldier in four and one officer in six became refugees and left the peninsula before the rest of the army. Only 3.67per cent returned to Soviet Russia, of which a little over 0.5 per cent were officers’, N. D. Karpov, ‘Krym—Gallipoli - Balkany’, Voenno-istorichesky arkhiv, No. 1 (16), 2001, pp. 4-16.

  p. 77 ‘real mother’, Tschechowa, 1973, p. 85.

  p. 77 Krupskaya signing Olga Chekhova’s exit pass, Silvia Honold, ‘Gespräch mit Olga Tschechowa’, Munich, 1962, unpublished MS, quoted Helker and Lenssen, p. 63; Lunacharsky, Tschechowa, 1973, pp. 85-6.

  p. 78 ‘They have written to me ...’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper Chekhova to Mariya Pavlovna Chekhova, Tiflis, 11 September 1920, Vilenkin (ed.), Vol. II, p. 121.

  10. The Far-Flung Family

  p. 79Hamsun novel, In the Claws of Life, Pitcher, p. 227.

  p. 79 ‘rushed towards the orchestra pit . . .’, Vilenkin (ed.), Vol. II, p. 344, quoted Pitcher, p. 227.

  p. 80 ‘We lit candles....’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova to Stanislavsky, Zagreb, January—February 1921, Vilenkin (ed.), Vol. II, p. 123.

  p. 80 ‘the aunt who gave birth ...’, Andrei Lvovich Knipper, interview, 23 September 2002.

  p. 80 The complications in the return to Moscow, Mariya Vadimovna Shverubovich, interview, 25 September 2003.

  p. 81 ‘Are you staying . . .’, Tschechowa, 1973, p. 87.

  p. 81 Pension in Gross-Beeren-Strasse, ibid., p. 89. This version is rather more convincing than Olga Chekhova’s earlier account, in which she claimed that she rang Gräfin von Trittleben, whose daughter had stayed with the Knipper family in Moscow, and was received in luxury, Tschechowa, 1952a, p. 101. Perhaps the schoolfriend was the Trittleben daughter, but it is sometimes very hard to unravel the different versions.

  p. 81 The ring smuggled under her tongue. This was according to Tschechowa, 1973, p. 86. But Tschechowa, 1952a, p. 101, states that it was ‘sewn into my overcoat’.

  p. 82 ‘that she had the quintessential face ...’, ibid., p. 103.

  p. 83 ‘I could not imagine ...’, Olga Chekhova to Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, 16 March 1924, MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2761.

  p. 83 The premiere of Schlofβ Vogelöd, Helker and Lenssen, p. 82.

  p. 84 ‘We will be playing ...’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper Chekhova to E. N. Konshina, Prague, 12—18 September 1921, Vilenkin (ed.), Vol. II, pp. 124-5.

  p. 84 ‘Kachalov was looking beautiful’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhovato Stanislavsky, Prague, 18-19 September 1921, ibid., pp. 126-7.

  p. 84 ‘with a family name ...’, Vilenkin, p. 184.

  p. 84 ‘I have been ill recently’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper Chekhova to E. N. Konshina, Prague, 12-18 September 1921, Vilenkin (ed.), Vol. II, pp. 124-5.

  p. 85 ‘You mustn’t think ...’, quoted ibid., p. 127.

  p. 85 ‘I have just come back . . .’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper Chekhova to Nemirovich-Danchenko, Berlin, 14 February 1922, ibid., p. 130.

  11. The Early 1920S in Moscow and Berlin

  p. 87 ‘standard-bearer of the bourgeoisie’, quoted Benedetti (ed.), 1991, p. 316.

  p. 87 ‘When we play the farewell ...’, Stanislavsky to Nemirovich-Danchenko, Berlin, 1922, Stanislavsky, Sobranie sochineny, Vol. VII, p. 29, quoted Benedetti, 1988, p. 249.

  p. 87 ‘the same old snub-nosed little idiot Petrushka’, ibid., p. 247.

  p. 88 ‘the vivid, external ...’, Stanislavsky, Sobranie sochineny, Vol. VI, p. 256, quoted Benedetti, 1988, p. 246.

  p. 88 ‘unforgettable’, ‘As the play finished ...’, Sergei Mikhailovich Chekhov, MS, AD-MCM/Sakharova/File 81.

  p. 88 ‘I am staying with Misha . . .’, ibid.

  p. 90 UFA development in 1920S, see Beyer, 1992, pp. 10—11.

  p. 91 ‘At last!’, ‘It will be very interesting . . .’, quoted Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, ‘Zritel i slushatel’, Sovetskoe iskusstvo, 29January 1934, quoted Turovskaya, pp. 206—7.

  p. 91 ‘Here I am in Moscow . . .’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper Chekhova to Mariya Pavlovna Chekhova, Moscow, 6 June 1922, Vilenkin (ed.), Vol. II, p. 131.

  p. 92 ‘There was a small...’, V. V. Knipper, p. 56.

  p. 92‘For you, Olga Leonardovna ...’, ibid.

  p. 93 Ada did not marry the father of her daughter, Marina Ried. Ried was Ada’s mother’s maiden name. Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova also writes in the same letter of 6 June 1922 that she is sad that her sister-in-law is to take Olga’s little daughter to Berlin, a city ‘which I hate’. This indicates that the plan for Olga’s mother to take little Ada to Berlin had been established well before Konstantin Knipper’s death in January 1924. Olga’s sister, Ada, was again living with their aunt at 23 Prechistensky bulvar. ‘I am living here with my niece Ada ...’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper- Chekhova to P. F. Sharov, Moscow, 3 August 1922, Vilenkin (ed.), Vol. II, p. 132.

  p. 93‘On my return to Moscow ...’, L. K. Knipper, p. 23.

  p. 93 ‘after he returned . . .’, Lev Bezymenski, Die Zeit, 15 October 1993, and interview, 17 September 2003. See also Sudoplatov, 1995, p. 159. According to Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 24 September 2003, there is a file in the Lubyanka of secret correspondence between Lev and Olga. In December 1921, the Cheka had become the OGPU (Obeyedinyonnoy Gosudarstvennoy Poli tischeskoy Upravlenie), or Unified State Political Directorate. It became part of the NKVD in 1934.

  p. 95 ‘Lev has just turned up ...’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper Chekhova to P. F. Sharov, Moscow, 3 August 1922, Vilenkin (ed.), Vol. II, p. 132.

  p. 95 ‘a committee of professors...’, ‘to join the theatre on paper’, L. K. Knipper, pp. 47—8. Lev’s only son, Academician Andrei Lvovich Knipper, says himself that the only possible explanation for his father being allowed abroad so soon after his return was that he was working for the OGPU, interview, 23 September 2002.

  p. 95 ‘From time to time . . .’, quoted Lev Bezymenski, Die Zeit, 15 October 1993.

  p. 95For Cheka and OGPU operations against émigré groups, see Andrew and Gordievsky, pp. 67-78. INO was founded in 1920 and headed by Mikhail Abramovich Trilisser. In 1941 INO became INU, Inostrannoye Upravlenie, or the Foreign Intell
igence Directorate of the NKGB.

  p. 96 ‘main foreign target’, ibid., p. 115.

  p. 96 Lev Knipper and Aleksei Tolstoy, Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, interview, 24 September 2003.

  p. 97For the Russian émigré community in Berlin, see the catalogue of the exhibition ‘Das russische Berlin 1918—1941’, May 2002.

  p. 98 ‘And when are we going to hear the real chimes?’ The Tsar Fyodor production in Berlin is described in Benedetti, 1988, pp. 252—3.

  12. Home Thoughts from Abroad

  p. 100‘My fate has torn me away...’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova to E. N. Konshina, Paris, 12—14 December 1922, Vilenkin (ed.), Vol. II, pp. 134-5.

  p. 100‘It’s so noisy ...’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova to F. N. Mikhailsky, New York, 19 January 1923, ibid., p. 136.

  p. 101‘He’s thin and angular’, ‘There’s suffering in his face ...’, ‘It is so touching ...’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova to E. N. Konshina, New York, 18 November 1923, ibid., p. 143.

  p. 102‘I’m plunged into expressionism’, Freiburg, 14 June 1923, MMKhAT, K-Ch No. 2733.

  p. 102‘I spent only three days ...’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper Chekhova to V. L. Knipper, Freiburg, 27 June 1923, V. V. Knipper, p. 102.

  p. 103‘more slave labour in America ...’, Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova to V. V. Knipper, Freiburg, 31 August 1923, ibid., p. 103.

  p. 103 ‘What was our horror...’, Krokodil, 28 October 1923, quoted Benedetti, 1988, p. 263.

  p. 104‘Moscow accuses us of disloyalty ...’, Stanislavsky to Nemirovich-Danchenko, 28 December 1923, ibid.

  p. 104 Prozhektor photograph, V. V. Knipper, p. 106.

  p. 104 ‘a trustful relationship . . .’, Sudoplatov, 1996, p. 146.