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the Malyi Theater. Prior to her completion of
studies at the Moscow Theatrical School, Ermo-
lova had already joined the Malyi Theater.
Ermolova's frequent portrayal of romantic hero-
ines such as Joan d'Arc and Mary Stuart
endeared her to the segment of the intelligentsia
and theatergoing public that symphatized with
the revolutionary movement. After the OCTOBER
REVOLUTION , Ermolova acted in numerous pro-
ductions with more explicit revolutionary
themes. In 1920, with Vladimir LENIN in atten-
dance, she was honored for her work in a career
that spanned 50 years. Later that year, Ermolova
was named People's Artist of the Soviet Repub-
lic, the first artist to receive such a distinction.
Ermolova retired from the stage in 1921. Her
home of more than 30 years in the fashionable
Boulevard Ring of central Moscow was later
made into a museum.
ism, he led a life marked by legendary alcoholic
binges. After a marriage in 1917 that lasted only
one year, he married the American dancer
Isadora Duncan in 1921, his senior by 18 years,
even though neither spoke each other's lan-
guage. Together they toured Europe and the
United States, a celebrity couple with an affinity
for scandal. Estranged from his Russian land,
Esenin soon sank further into alcoholism and
misery. He left Duncan in 1925, returned to Rus-
sia, and married for the third time in September
1925. Three months later, however, he hanged
himself in the Hotel Angleterre in Leningrad (St.
Petersburg), leaving a remarkable farewell poem,
“Do svidania drug moi” (Goodbye, My Friend),
written in his own blood. Never accepted by the
Soviet literary establishment, he instead became
a revolutionary romantic idol to the common
Soviet citizen, who was charmed by his hand-
some appearance, his bohemian lifestyle and his
irreverence toward authority. An edition of his
collected works appeared soon after his death,
and a smaller one came out in 1948 at the height
of Stalinism. Some of his poems were turned into
songs and became immensely popular. His grave
in Vagankoe cemetery remains a popular site of
artistic pilgrimage.
Esenin, Sergei Aleksandrovich
(1895-1925)
poet
One of Russia's most beloved popular poets,
together with PUSHKIN and MAYAKOVSKY , Esenin's
brief and turbulent life ended in a suicide that
sparked a wave of sympathy suicides among his
distraught public. Esenin was born to a peasant
family in Ryazan province; rural and religious
themes pervaded his poetry. He began writing
poetry by the age of nine, and nine years later he
had become a famous poet, published by the
leading Petersburg magazines. He welcomed the
OCTOBER REVOLUTION but did not join the BOLSHE -
VIK Party, preferring instead the elemental resis-
tance to authority that he found in peasant rebels
such as Emelian Pugachev and the peasant anar-
chist Nestor MAKHNO (who appears in his poems
as Nomakh), both of whom he celebrated in his
poems. A bundle of contradictions, Esenin cele-
brated the dignity of rural life but embraced
urban decadence, living like a “peasant dandy.”
He drew deeply from religious themes but mixed
them with irreverence for symbols of tradition
such as churches and convents that bordered on
hooliganism. Embracing outrageous exhibition-
Evdokiia Feodorovna (1669-1731)
(née Lopukhina)
empress
The daughter of a palace functionary, Feodor
Abramovich Lopukhin, Evdokiia Feodorovna
was the first wife of PETER I the Great, whom she
married in February 1689. She was raised in the
traditional world of Muscovite women and had
little in common with the future czar, three
years her junior. She bore Peter three sons,
Alexis, Alexander, and Paul, but only Alexis
(1690-1718) survived to adolescence. Their
marriage was brief and unhappy, and the couple
divorced in 1698, after which Peter forced
Evdokiia to enter a nunnery. In the summer of
1718, her son and heir to the throne, Alexei,
was sentenced to death on charges of treason
but died in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St.
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