The Mystery of Olga Chekhova (39 page)

Vilenkin, V. Ya,
Kachalov,
Moscow, 1976

Vilenkin, V. Ya (ed.),
Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova,
Vol II,
Perepiska O. L. Knipper-Chekhovoi (1896-1959), Vospomininaniya ob O. L. Knipper-Chekhovoi,
Moscow, 1972

Werth, Alexander,
Russia at War,
London, 1964

Wolf, Vitali,
Teatralnyi dozhd,
Moscow, 1998

Zolotnitsky, David,
Meyerhold: Roman s sovetski vlastyu,
Moscow, 1999

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The original spark which led to this book came in 2000 from Dr Galya Vinogradova, with whom I stayed in Moscow while researching
Berlin: The Downfall 1945.
Her daughter Dr Lyuba Vinogradova, to whom I owe so much for all her help over the last ten years, then suggested that she should drop by the Chekhov museum at Melikhovo, which is not that far from their dacha. This is where the Chekhova story started in earnest.

From then on many people have helped in many different ways, both large and small. I am extremely grateful to Judith Baum, Professor Anatoly Aleksandrovich Chernobayev, Professor Tatyana Alekseevna Gaidamovich, Wolf Gebhardt, Angelica von Hase, the film historian Renata Helker, who generously gave me access to her Privatarchiv Knipper/Chekhova, Academician Andrei Lvovich Knipper, Lesley Levene, Douglas Matthews, Igor Aleksandrovich Shchors, Mariya Vadimovna Shverubovich, Professor Anatoly Pavlovich Sudoplatov, Boris Voladarsky and Zoya Vasileevna Zarubina.

Once again it has been a great pleasure and an enormous help working with the BBC. I am extremely grateful to Laurence Rees, Jonathan Stamp and Thecla Schreuders, the director, whose constant well-aimed questions produced an enjoyable and very useful debate.

Andrew Nurnberg is mercifully still my agent and Eleo Gordon my editor at Penguin. I owe them both, as always, a very great deal. But naturally my deepest thanks go to my wife, Artemis Cooper, who along with everything else vastly improved the manuscript with her editing.

INDEX

The numbers in italics refer to illustrations.

Abakumov, Colonel General Viktor

heads SMERSh

Olga Chekhova writes reports for

receives reports on Olga Chekhova in Germany

Serov denounces

womanizing

Olga Chekhova requests more sentries from

Olga Chekhova maintains contact with

purged

Aimée

Akhmatova, Anna

Akulov, E. A.

Alekseiev factories.

Alexander III, Tsar statue destroyed

Alexandra, Tsarina

unpopularity

sets up wartime hospital

and Rasputin

Alliluyeva, Nadezhda (Stalin’s wife)

Anosov, Nikolai

Anosova, Lyubov, see Knipper, Lyubov

Anya Kraeva

Armand, Paul

Attolico, Contessa

Aunt Masha, see Chekhova, Mariya

Aunt Olya,
see
Knipper Chekhova, Olga

Baake, Major von

Baarova, Lida

Babel, Isaac

Baklanova, Sofya

Baku

twenty-six commissars

Baldanov, General Nikolai

Bandrowska-Turskaya, Ewa

Barbarossa, Operation (1941)

Battle of Britain (1940)

Bifreite Hände

Bel Ami

Berezhkov, Valentin

Beria, Lavrenty

persecutes Meyerhold

makes Rybkina Olga Chekhova’s controller

violates women

in Great Terror

Beria, Lavrenty - cont.

interviews Janusz Radziwill

establishes spy network

and Mariya Melikova

disbelieves war reports on German advance

restores order in wartime Moscow

reaction to German invasion

and risk of air attack on Moscow parade

and assassination plot against Hitler

and Lev and Mariya’s bogus defection to Germans

as Olga Chekhova’s protector

sadism

on Olga Chekhova’s diary

orders Olga Chekhova’s return to Berlin

considers Olga Chekhova’s future

and newspaper attacks on Olga Chekhova

destroys Abakumov

seizes control after Stalin’s death

arrested

Berlin

Olga Chekhova first arrives in

Kachalov group visits

Russian émigré community in

Moscow Art Theatre touring company plays in

Olga Chekhova’s life and homes in

Nazi unpopularity in

bombed

Olga Chekhova moves from during war

and Red Army advance

Olga Chekhova returned to (1945)

women in

airlift (1949)

Olga Chekhova and family move house to Charlottenburg

Berliner Renaissance-Theater

Bertensson, Sergei

Berzarin, General Nikolai

Blaufuchs,
Der

Blok, Aleksandr
The Rose and the Cross

Blum, Vladimir

Bock, Field Marshal Fedor von

Bolsheviks

and February revolution

takeover in Moscow (1917)

low vote in 1917 election

dominance

White Army’s detestation of

Boner, Georgette

Borzhomi, Georgia

bourgeoisie

repressed

Braun, Eva

Brennende Grenze (Burning Frontiers)

Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of (1918)

Brussels

Bulgakov, Mikhail

Days of the Turbins

Burgtheater

Byron, George Gordon, Lord Cain

Cagliostro

Casablanca

Chaliapin, Feodor

Chaplin, Charlie

Cheka (security police);
see also
NKVD, OGPU

Chekhov family

Chekhov, Aleksandr (Anton’s brother)

writing ambitions

marriage to Natalya Golden

character and behaviour

decline and death

Chekhov, Anton

The Cherry Orchard

ill-health (consumption)

relations with Knipper family

Nemirovich-Danchenko supports

The Seagull

love affair and marriage with Olga Knipper

The Three Sisters
.

medical training and practice

royalties

Olga Knipper-Chekhova reminisces about

Lenin appreciates plays

effect on émigrés

celebrations for twentieth anniversary of death

house and museum

leaves Gurzuf house to Olga Knipper-Chekhova

death

Chekhov, Ivan (Anton’s brother)

Chekhov, Mikhail (Anton’s brother)

Chekhov, Mikhail (Olga Chekhova’s husband; ‘Misha’)

in Hollywood

birth

precocity and instability

acting career

and father’s death

meets Olga

drinking

frightens Masha with pretend drunkenness

womanizing

marriage to Olga

conscription deferred

indifference to political upheavals

marriage relations

nervous breakdown

in Bolshevik revolution

and Volodya’s suicide

Olga Chekhova leaves

carves wooden chessmen

second marriage (to Xenia)

opens acting studio

plays leading roles for Moscow Art Theatre

Chekhov, Mikhail -
cont.

organizes acting workspace in Moscow

plays Hamlet

fame and reputation

at Konstantin Knipper’s death

honoured in USSR

stars in
The Government Inspector

and daughter’s departure for Berlin

counter-revolutionary views

leaves Russia

in Berlin and Paris

Le Château s‘éveille
(with Georgette Boner)

wartime US film

death

Chekhov, Nikolai (Aleksandr’s son; ‘Kolya’)

Chekhov, Pavel (Anton’s father)

Chekhov, Sergei (Misha’s cousin)

Chekhov, Volodya (Ivan’s son)

visits Misha

meets and falls for Olga

Misha quarrels with

suicide

Chekhova, Ada (i.e. Olga; Misha and Olga Chekhova’s daughter),
see
Rust, Ada

Chekhova, Evgenia (Anton’s mother)

death

Chekhova, Mariya (Anton’s sister; ‘Aunt Masha’)

painting career

introduces Misha to Olga Chekhova

and Misha’s pretend drinking

in Moscow

and Olga Chekhova’s marriage to Misha

letters from Misha

typhoid and poverty

letters from Olga Knipper- Chekhova

reports Evgenia’s death

Olga Knipper-Chekhova visits in civil war

earnings from Chekhov plays abroad

Lev and Olga Knipper- Chekhova visit in Yalta

as director of Chekhov house-museum

testifies that Chekhov family of Russian Orthodox descent

in Yalta during war

Olga Chekhova writes to from post-war Berlin

Chekhova, Olga

career in Germany

honoured and exploited by Nazis

attends 1945 Moscow production of
The Cherry Orchard

education

marriage to Mikhail/Misha Chekhov

theatrical ambitions

meets Misha

studies art in Moscow

claims to have acted with Moscow Art Theatre

pregnancy and child

relations with mother-in-law

marriage relations

looks after daughter

leaves Misha

relations with Jaroszi

claims to carve chess pieces

remains in Moscow (1917—18)

early film roles in Russia

life after revolution

daughter fails to recognize

leaves Russia for Berlin

German films

learns German

meets Olga Knipper-Chekhova and Lev in Germany

life and homes in Berlin

collaboration in Soviet intelligence work

reputation and success in Germany

avoids romantic relationships

stage acting

filming in Italy

welcomes family to Berlin

travels

expensive lifestyle

learns English

makes talking pictures

travels to USA

helps Misha on arrival in Berlin

and Nazi anti-Jewish actions

association with Hitler

marriage to Marcel Robyns

retains German nationality

success in
Der Blaufuchs

sends presents to family in Russia

safeguards daughter’s status in Germany

Olga Knipper-Chekhova visits on return from Paris tour (1937)

affair with Raddatz

divorces Robyns

love affair with Jep

visits German armed forces

introduced to Merkulov

on German campaign in Russia

Lev and Mariya Garikovna told to make wartime contact with

wartime German sympathies

Chekhova, Olga—
cont.

sends help to Chekhov house and museum

in wartime Berlin

rumoured to have arranged Vadim Shverubovich’s escape

moves out of wartime Berlin

romance with Sumser

role in Germany questioned

on arrival of Red Army in Berlin

returned to Moscow and interrogated (1945)

Abakumov’s treatment of

Beria orders return to Berlin

loses contact with Lev

denies newspaper accounts of collaboration

in conquered Berlin

moves to West Berlin (Charlottenburg)

and Beria’s plan to reunify Germany

post-war films

sets up film company

forms and runs cosmetics company

Frau ohne Alter

Ich verschweige nichts

death from leukaemia

Chekhova, Sofya (Volodya’s mother)

Chekhova, Vera (Olga Chekhova’s granddaughter), see Rust, Vera

Chekhova, Xenia (nee Ziller; Misha’s second wife)

Choral von Leuthen, Der

Churchill, Winston

Ciano, Count Galeazzo

Comintern activities in Germany

Committee on Un-American Activities (USA)

Cossacks in civil war

Crimea

in civil war

Lev visits

purges in

in Second World War

liberated

see
also
Yalta

Dekanozov, Vladimir

Demyanov, Aleksandr

Denikin, General Anton

Deutsche Wochenschau
(Nazi newsreel)

Dickens, Charles

The Cricket on the Hearth

Dietrich, Marlene

Dimitrov, Georgi

Djugashvili, Jakov (Stalin’s son)

Don Army

Drei von der Tankstelle, Die

Duse, Eleanor

Dzerzhinsky, Feliks

Ehrenburg, Ilya

Einstein, Albert

Eitingon, Nahum (‘General Kotov’)

Elbrus, Mount

Essentuki

Fairbanks, Douglas

Favorit der Kaiserin,
Der

February revolution (1917)

Fike, Lamar

Forst, Willi

Franco, General Francisco

Frederick II (the Great), King of Prussia

French Revolution (1789)

Frischauer, Willi

Fröhlich, Gustav

Fuchs von Glenarvon, Der

Galland, General Adolf

Garbo, Greta

Georgia

Germany

capitulates (1945)

defeat (1918)

cinema in

Soviet intelligence operations in

economic disorder (1920s)

participation in Spanish Civil War

pact with Russia (1939)

as threat to Russia

invasion and advance in Russia

Beria’s plan to reunify

see also
Berlin

Gesse, Natalya

Gest, Morris

Gestapo and censorship of letters

Glazunov, Boris

Gnesina, Yelena

Goebbels, Josef

Olga Chekhova likens to Kerensky

and low Nazi vote in Berlin