Georgy Zhzhenov: biography, personal life, family, wife, children. Georgy Zhzhenov. “My life is a complete mistake” Georgy Zhzhenov was convicted for what

Outstanding Soviet actor Georgy Zhzhenov lived long life. Not only fame and success fell to his lot, but also serious trials. So, in the era Stalin's repressions he was twice convicted on trumped-up charges.

Circus and cinema

Georgy Stepanovich Zhzhenov was born in March 1915 in Petrograd, in the family of a baker. Despite the fact that the family was poor, the children were drawn to study. Georgy's older brother Boris entered the university in the early 30s, and Georgy himself, after graduating from an eight-year school with a physics and mathematics degree, was admitted to the acrobatic department variety and circus school. Soon, together with one of his fellow students, his namesake, he began performing in the arena of the Leningrad Circus in the acrobatic duet “2-Georges-2”.

It was at the circus that Lenfilm employees saw him. The young man received main role in the film "The Hero's Mistake" (1932). After that, leaving the circus, Zhzhenov entered the Leningrad College of Performing Arts on the course of Sergei Gerasimov. He starred in several films, including the legendary Chapaev.

Walking through torment

In December 1934, Kirov was killed in Leningrad. Boris Zhzhenov, like other Leningrad State University students, was supposed to take part in the funeral procession. But he refused, since he did not have proper shoes to spend several hours in the cold... This was regarded as a hostile attitude towards Soviet power. Soon Boris was expelled from the university. He was later reinstated, but in December 1936 he was again summoned to the NKVD. He never returned from there, receiving seven years for “anti-Soviet activities.”

The Zhzhenov family was evicted from Leningrad. In addition to Georgy, his fellow filmmakers and Gerasimov himself stood up for him.
In the summer of 1938, Zhzhenov, together with a group of film actors, went to film in Komsomolsk-on-Amur. On the train they met an American diplomat who was traveling to Vladivostok as part of a delegation. Of course, fellow travelers were talking to each other. After the trip, the NKVD received a report about “contacts with a foreigner.” This plus the reputation of a relative of the “enemy of the people” was quite enough to accuse Zhzhonov of espionage. When Georgy returned to Leningrad, they came for him.

In the famous Leningrad prison "Crosses" Zhzhenov had to go through all the circles of hell. He was interrogated with passion - tortured, beaten, deprived of sleep... Others could not stand the bullying and confessed to the most absurd things. But the athletic, trained artist flatly refused to admit the charge of espionage. As a result, he was not shot, but given five years in the camps.
This is how Zhzhenov ended up in Kolyma, where he had to endure hunger, cold, exhausting work, and the daily struggle for survival... During the war, almost no food was delivered to the Kolyma camps, and prisoners died in the hundreds.

In 1943, the head of a traveling acting propaganda team, Nikanorov, accidentally recognized a former film actor in a scab-covered goner from a penal camp at the Glukhar mine, and first achieved his transfer to his propaganda team, and then to the Magadan Musical Drama Theater, the troupe of which was almost entirely made up of prisoners.

In 1944, the actor's prison term was coming to an end. However, he was summoned to the camp authorities and asked to sign a resolution for an additional term - another 21 months in the camps.

Second try

In 1945, Zhzhenov was finally released, and thanks to Gerasimov, he found work at the Sverdlovsk film studio, where he starred in the film “Alitet Goes to the Mountains” - about Soviet Chukotka. But in 1949, the actor was arrested again. This time, however, he was sentenced not to the camps, but to exile in Norilsk. There he got a job at the local drama theater named after Mayakovsky, where he played together with Innokenty Smoktunovsky, who went to Siberia to sit out time of troubles- He feared arrest for being captured by the Germans in 1943.

In Norilsk, Zhzhenov tried to start a family with actress Irina Makhaeva. For him, this was already his third marriage - the previous two were interrupted by arrests... Later they had a daughter, Marina.
Only in 1955, having been completely rehabilitated, was the actor able to return to Leningrad. At first he worked in the regional drama theater, but already in 1956 he began acting in Lenfilm. He gained national fame in the late 60s and early 70s after starring in the films “The Resident’s Mistake” and “The Resident’s Fate.”
The actor was awarded many state awards, and in 2005 the whole country celebrated the 90th birthday of Georgy Zhzhonov - people's artist and a former prisoner.

A man of inflexible role

On December 8, 2005, in Moscow, at the Pirogov National Medical and Surgical Center, Georgy Zhzhenov, People's Artist of the USSR, holder of many orders and laureate of many awards, died at the age of 91. His life included about 200 roles and 16 years of prisons, camps, and exile.

Perhaps the secret of the active longevity of Georgy Zhzhenov, who until his death appeared on the stage of the Mossovet Theater in Ernst Thompson’s play “On Golden Lake,” is precisely that 16 best years life. There was such a unique breed of people who served incredible terms and seemed to decide that the wasted years “didn’t count” and they had to do everything that they would have done if their life had turned out like a human being, and until then not die. These were the writer Oleg Volkov, who served 28 years and lived to be almost 100, the artist Alexander Baturin, who served 20 years and lived to be 90, and Georgy Zhzhenov.

It is more difficult for an actor to start life over than for a writer. Zhzhenov’s second film debut took place after rehabilitation in 1955, the first in 1932 in “The Hero’s Mistake” by Eduard Ioganson, where his friend Efim Kopelyan also made his debut. He had already trained as an acrobat at the Leningrad Variety and Circus College, where he entered at the age of 15 according to the documents of his older brother Boris, and performed in the circus act of cascading eccentrics “2-Georges-2”. Hardening helped in the camp, although Zhzhenov himself believed that he survived thanks to his “low intelligence” and the fact that even before his arrest he had “no faith in justice, in the law.”

In 1932, Georgy Zhzhenov entered the workshop of Sergei Gerasimov at the Leningrad Institute of Performing Arts, starred in small roles, but in high-profile films: in “Chapaev” (1934) he played Timoshka, Furmanov’s adjutant. At the request of Sergei Gerasimov, the NKVD released him to film “Komsomolsk” (1938). He was supposed to go into exile: Boris was already in prison, he would die in Vorkuta in 1943, and then the Romanian occupiers would kill his second brother in Mariupol. Zhzhenov believed that from then on he lived for three people.

Returning from filming, he was arrested, asked his wife not to wait for him, and was tortured at Kresty. I didn’t forget or forgive anything. During perestroika, he published stories comparable in degree of horror and vigilance to the prose of Varlam Shalamov. I went with director Sergei Miroshnichenko around Kolyma. In the television film “Russian Cross”, from under the actor’s imperturbable mask, a desperate grin flashed, as the thieves called him, of a “murky fraer” with whom it is better not to mess: it is unknown how he will respond to an attack. Having been released from Kolyma in 1945, he played in the First Polar Drama Theater (1945-1946), at the request of Gerasimov, who had not forgotten him, worked at the Sverdlovsk Film Studio (1947-1948), after its transfer to Moscow, where the exile’s path was barred, at the Theater drama Pavlov-on-Oka, from where he was taken again and sent into lifelong exile. While waiting for Stalin’s death, he played at the Norilsk Theater together with the wary Innokenty Smoktunovsky, who was hiding there from repression “for captivity.” Zhzhenov literally pushed him, so that such talent would not be lost, to Moscow with letters of recommendation to his friend from his youth, Arkady Raikin.

In 1955, he returned to Leningrad, played in the regional theater at Liteiny, the Lensovet Theater, in 1968 Yuri Zavadsky invited him to Moscow to play in the play “Escape from Life” last days Leo Tolstoy. The play was closed, but the Mossovet Theater became Zhzhenov’s home for 35 years.

There are strange rhymes in life. Zhzhenov was imprisoned as an “American spy”: on the Trans-Siberian train, the actors drank with the American naval attaché. In his “second life” he was the most “American” actor in Soviet cinema. He can only be compared with the stars of the “golden age” of Hollywood - Humphrey Bogart, James Stewart. He didn't "reincarnate". He filled the screen with proud individualism, restrained masculinity, sophisticated insight, and weighty presence in any role. He was proud that writer James Aldridge imagined him as the pilot from “The Last Inch,” and an American consultant on the set of “All the King’s Men” (1972) by Naum Ardashnikov and Alexander Gutkevich called his face “the most American.” He rightly considered the role of the demagogue-governor Willie Stark, the embodiment of imperious madness, to be the best in his life. A shiver goes through when Willie cries in front of the crowd: “Blood! I see blood on the moon! Give me the axe!”

He spoke about other roles, not complaining, but stating: “I only played what Oleg Efremov, Mikhail Ulyanov and also Evgeny Matveev could not digest.” Zhzhenov always played with dignity in strong genre films. Military ("Hot Snow", 1973), espionage ("Marked Atom", 1972), historical-revolutionary ("Death of the Squadron", 1965), production ("Selecting a Target", 1974). Even in the first Soviet disaster film, “Crew” (1980). Two characters stood out sharply from the series of stern and noble men he played: the traffic inspector pursuing the thief Detochkin, but understanding him, in “Beware of the Car” (1966) by Eldar Ryazanov and the white emigrant Count Tulyev in “The Resident’s Mistake” (1968) by Veniamin Dorman. In four films about the resident, Zhzhenov played not a spy propagated by the KGB, but the broken Russian fate of the twentieth century, a hero who always took responsibility, albeit mistakenly, for himself.

For his roles as security officers, Zhzhenov was showered with awards from the KGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Receiving one of them, he joked: “Will you at least give me a sunny place in my cell for this if you put me in prison again?” Over the past 17 years, he only played in “The Invisible Traveler” (1998) by Igor and Dmitry Talankin: he said that they were inviting him to act “in something that I despise, hated and hate.” In 2000, a monument to him was unveiled in Chelyabinsk; he did not know whether to “laugh or cry,” feeling only awkwardness. They gave one after another awards “For Honor and Dignity”: well, what other formula could be applied to this incredible person and the actor? He swam in the sea, drank vodka, worked on the pardon commission, complained that he had “just stopped caring for girls,” “looked closely” at Putin with the eyes of an old camp inmate and passionately rejoiced at the “acts of retaliation” of people offended by the authorities.

He was reserved, at times he even seemed withdrawn. He was simply cautious, with strangers, with colleagues, and sometimes with loved ones. That's what life taught me. Life has taught Georgy Zhzhenov a difficult and very cruel lesson.

In his youth, Georgy believed in a bright future, in the victory of communism, and even condemned the so-called “enemies of the people.” In his old age, Georgy Stepanovich greatly regretted this. I couldn’t forgive myself for having once considered my older brother an enemy of the people...

Boris Zhzhenov was an example and assistant in everything for the younger George. Boris also helped Georgiy when the boy fell in love with the circus. The older brother, without doubting the younger brother, gave him his documents so that he, still a seventh grader, could enroll in the acrobatic department of the Leningrad Variety and Circus College. On entrance exams no one noticed the substitution, and Georgy-Boris was accepted into the circus, and from the circus - into the cinema, for his first and main role Pashki Vetrov in the movie "The Hero's Mistake." Zhzhonov was quickly noticed, young, athletic, stately - the directors offered the circus performer many roles. The career was going up, but misfortune came to the family.

Photo: www.russianlook.com / Anvar Galeev

In 1934, after the murder of Kirov, a big case was unfolding in Leningrad, and mass arrests began. Boris Zhzhenov was then studying at the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics. When was the day of the funeral announced? Kirov, the students were ordered by order to appear for farewell to the communist leader. Boris then, out of his naivety, decided to take time off. He approached the Komsomol organizer and explained: “Comrade, I only have shoes with holes, I have no other shoes. It’s terribly cold outside, if I stand on the icy asphalt for several hours, I’ll end up in the hospital, and Kirov won’t get any better from it, so can I skip this event?” An hour later, the denunciation against Boris Zhzhenov was already in the dean’s office. The young man was expelled from the university in disgrace and deprived of his Leningrad registration.

But Boris Zhzhonov, like his brother, still believed in bright ideals, he wrote letters, petitions, and eventually returned to Leningrad, but not for long. In 1936, Boris Zhzhenov was arrested, and in 1937 he was sentenced to hard labor for anti-Soviet activity. He was allowed one single meeting with his family before being sent along the convoy. Georgy Zhzhenov had a hard time remembering these minutes. After all, then he told his brother to try to atone for his guilt and work better in the camp. Last words which the older brother said to the younger: “Get out...”

Stills from the film "Hot Snow". Directed by Gavriil Egiazarov. 1972 Photo: www.russianlook.com

Boris gave his mother several pieces of paper on which he was able to describe what happened to him in the dungeons of the NKVD, how they mocked him, how they tortured him to extract a confession. The mother handed the leaves to George. And he, having read it, burned page after page in the oven, despite the words of his mother: “It’s in vain, maybe this would be useful to you in life.” Then, many years later, Georgy Stepanovich called this the most shameful act in his life, he really regretted that he could not ask for forgiveness from his brother, whom he never saw again - Boris Zhzhonov died in the camp from dystrophy. But then, in 1937, Georgy could not even imagine that he would soon partly repeat the fate of his brother.

In 1938, Georgy Zhzhenov starred in the film “Komsomolsk” and, together with the entire film crew, went on a train to a film expedition to the city of Komsomolsk. Unfortunately, the actor met a naval attaché from America on the train. He doesn't think about possible consequences, easily communicated with a foreign guest. After some time, the NKVD already had denunciations against Georgy Zhzhenov, signed by one of his colleagues. In the summer of 1938, the actor was arrested and accused of espionage against the USSR. He was interrogated for days. He stood in front of the investigator for several hours. When he fell from fatigue, they lifted him up by his hair and stood him at attention again. Sentence: 5 years in Kolyma. How did you manage to survive? It's hard to say. But, as the artist recalled, he never tried to get into trouble, but he also never allowed himself to be humiliated. No one. Even to the prison authorities. Perhaps this is why he was respected. Perhaps that is why he did not die of hunger, although he could have.

Still from the film "Crew". Directed by Alexander Mitta. Mosfilm. 1979 Photo: www.russianlook.com

In his autobiographical story “Sanochki,” Georgy Stepanovich recalled that he was already close to starvation. But one day he received a notification about a parcel - his mother collected what she could and sent it to her son. I had to walk several kilometers to get the parcel. Emaciated and barely able to stand, Zhzhonov understood that he would not be able to overcome this path. But then, by a lucky coincidence, one of the operas went there to pick up parcels. Zhzhonov went with him. True, “went” is a strong word. He trudged along, barely moving his legs. In the end, his legs stopped working and he fell. And then a miracle happened. The operative put the prisoner on a sled and drove him to the parcel point. There Georgy Stepanovich warmed up, came to his senses, and received his parcel. As it turned out later, the parcel took almost three years. Sausage, chocolate - all edible supplies turned into one big frozen lump. He really wanted to eat this ice lump right away, but, realizing that he was unlikely to survive after this, Georgy Zhzhonov took this frozen stone with him, already in the camp he broke off a small piece of it and ate it.

A still from the film “Fixed to Believe.” Directed by Viktor Zhilin. Odessa terminal 1959 Photo: www.russianlook.com

Georgy Zhzhenov was released from prison only on March 26, 1945. With the “wolf ticket” there was no way back to Leningrad, much less to Moscow. He worked in provincial theaters for several years, and on June 2, 1949, he again went into exile, where he spent 4 long years. Only on December 2, 1955, the artist Georgy Zhzhenov was rehabilitated. He was given back the right to be called not a prisoner, but a person, and was allowed to move freely around the country.

He was not afraid to start life from scratch. He first got a job in Leningrad, then moved to Moscow, where he again got into cinema. Cheerful, cheerful, hopeful colleagues were not at all like him, who survived the pain and oblivion of an artist. But they loved him again, accepted him, even the authorities were favorably disposed towards Georgy Stepanovich. But he never forgot what the bureaucratic communist machine did to him.

One day, Georgy Stepanovich was invited to Georgia for a reception with high-ranking officials. He sat at the table and listened in amazement as the guests praised Joseph Stalin. In the end, someone suggested raising a glass and drinking to the leader of the peoples. Zhzhonov could not stand it. He asked those present if they were real Georgians. They nodded. Then he asked whether real Georgians forgive blood grievances. The guests shook their heads. To this, Georgy Zhzhonov told them that since they are real Georgians and do not forgive blood grievances, they will understand his reluctance to drink for Stalin, who destroyed his family, killed his brother and took away his youth. Georgy Zhzhenov was no longer afraid to tell the truth and did not believe in the bright future of communism.

Photo: www.russianlook.com / Viktor Chernov

Despite his difficult character, even during the life of Georgy Stepanovich, the authorities of Chelyabinsk approved the installation of a monument to him. Colleagues were then happy for their comrade, they said that this was recognition; he had already become a legend during his lifetime. And Georgy Stepanovich just waved his hand in response and said: “This is all awkward...”

Why did actor Georgy Zhzhenov serve prison time?

The outstanding Russian and Soviet actor Georgy Zhzhenov lived a long life. Not only fame and success fell to his lot, but also serious trials. Thus, during the era of Stalinist repressions, he was twice convicted on trumped-up charges.

Circus and cinema

Georgy Stepanovich Zhzhenov was born in March 1915 in Petrograd, in the family of a baker. Despite the fact that the family was poor, the children were drawn to study. Georgy's older brother Boris entered the university in the early 30s, and Georgy himself, after graduating from an eight-year school with a physics and mathematics degree, was admitted to the acrobatic department of the circus school. Soon, together with one of his fellow students, his namesake, he began performing in the arena of the Leningrad Circus in the acrobatic duet “2-Georges-2”.

It was at the circus that Lenfilm employees saw him. The young man received the main role in the film “The Hero's Mistake” (1932). After that, leaving the circus, Zhzhenov entered the Leningrad College of Performing Arts on the course of Sergei Gerasimov. He starred in several films, including the legendary Chapaev.

Walking through torment

In December 1934, Kirov was killed in Leningrad. Boris Zhzhenov, like other Leningrad State University students, was supposed to take part in the funeral procession. But he refused, since he did not have proper shoes to spend several hours in the cold... This was regarded as a hostile attitude towards Soviet power. Soon Boris was expelled from the university. He was later reinstated, but in December 1936 he was again summoned to the NKVD. He never returned from there, receiving seven years for “anti-Soviet activities.”

The Zhzhenov family was evicted from Leningrad. In addition to Georgy, his fellow filmmakers and Gerasimov himself stood up for him.

In the summer of 1938, Zhzhenov, together with a group of film actors, went to film in Komsomolsk-on-Amur. On the train they met an American diplomat who was traveling to Vladivostok as part of a delegation. Of course, fellow travelers were talking to each other. After the trip, the NKVD received a report about “contacts with a foreigner.” This plus the reputation of a relative of the “enemy of the people” was quite enough to accuse Zhzhonov of espionage. When Georgy returned to Leningrad, they came for him.

In the famous Leningrad prison "Crosses" Zhzhenov had to go through all the circles of hell. He was interrogated with passion - tortured, beaten, deprived of sleep... Others could not stand the bullying and confessed to the most absurd things. But the athletic, trained artist flatly refused to admit the charge of espionage. As a result, he was not shot, but given five years in the camps.

This is how Zhzhenov ended up in Kolyma, where he had to endure hunger, cold, exhausting work, and the daily struggle for survival... During the war, almost no food was delivered to the Kolyma camps, and prisoners died in the hundreds.

In 1943, the head of a traveling acting propaganda team, Nikanorov, accidentally recognized a former film actor in a scab-covered goner from a penal camp at the Glukhar mine, and first achieved his transfer to his propaganda team, and then to the Magadan Musical Drama Theater, the troupe of which was almost entirely made up of prisoners.

In 1944, the actor's prison term was coming to an end. However, he was summoned to the camp authorities and asked to sign a resolution for an additional period - another 21 months in the camps.

Second try

In 1945, Zhzhenov was finally released, and thanks to Gerasimov, he found work at the Sverdlovsk film studio, where he starred in the film “Alitet Goes to the Mountains” - about Soviet Chukotka. But in 1949, the actor was arrested again. This time, however, he was sentenced not to the camps, but to exile in Norilsk. There he got a job at the local Mayakovsky Drama Theater, where he played with Innokenty Smoktunovsky, who had gone to Siberia to sit out the troubled times - he feared arrest for being captured by the Germans in 1943.

In Norilsk, Zhzhenov tried to start a family with actress Irina Makhaeva. For him, this was already his third marriage - the previous two were interrupted by arrests... Later they had a daughter, Marina.

Only in 1955, having been completely rehabilitated, was the actor able to return to Leningrad. At first he worked in the regional drama theater, but already in 1956 he began acting in Lenfilm. National fame came to him in the late 60s - early 70s after filming the films “Resident Error” and “Fate

resident." The actor was awarded many state awards, and in 2005 the whole country celebrated the 90th birthday of Georgy Zhzhonov, a people's artist and former prisoner.