Biography of Nicky Turbine. Nika Turbina. The investigation is led by the astrologer “Rain, night, broken window”

Nika Turbina has become a real phenomenon in literature. The girl began writing poetry in early childhood. Moreover, the theme for the works was adult and mature lyrics; Nika wrote about love. Turbine amazed the whole world: the poems of the poetess-genius cannot be attributed to any direction, they stand apart. Nika's biography is similar to her poems: short and full of drama.

Childhood and youth

Nika Georgievna Turbina was born on December 17, 1974 in Yalta, she was the only child in the family. Her mother is the popular artist Maya Turbina, the girl was the granddaughter of the writer Anatoly Nikanorkin.

The early years of her life were overshadowed by illness; Nika suffered from asthma. As her family said, the girl hardly slept at night. At the same time, American doctors told her grandmother, who traveled everywhere with Nika, that with such stress the child should attend consultations with a psychologist.

In 1985, the Turbins moved to live in the capital, where the girl attended school No. 710. In Moscow, Nika’s mother married a second time and gave birth to a second daughter, Maria.

Creation

At the age of 4, she asked her mother and grandmother to write down poems that, according to her, God told her. The first recorded poem is “Scarlet Moon”. In 1981, Nika went to 1st grade, and gradually the fame of the “miracle child” spread beyond the peninsula. When Nika’s poems got to, they were published by Komsomolskaya Pravda.

At the age of 9, Turbina had already published a collection of poems, “Draft,” in Moscow. In the future, this book was translated into 12 languages. wrote a preface to this work. The poet took an active part in the life of the young poetess.

Thanks to his support, the girl entered the literary circles of the capital on an equal footing, and at the age of 10 she performed at the Poets and the Earth festival. There, Nika was awarded the main prize - the Golden Lion.

Nika Turbina reads her poem “I am wormwood grass”

In 1989, Nika turned 15 years old, and she played a role in Ayan Shakhmalieva’s feature film “It Was by the Sea.” The film tells about the pupils of a boarding school, where cruel morals reigned. At that time, the girl had not read her poems publicly for a long time.

Nika entered VGIK and tried to launch a television project about failed suicides. After, in 1994, Turbina was accepted into the Moscow State Institute of Cinematography without exams, the course was taught by Alena Galich, who became not only a favorite teacher, but also close friend.

At that time, Nika’s psyche was severely disturbed, but despite this, Turbina studied very well in the first semester. She started writing poems again and kept diaries. Nick wrote on every piece of paper, including with lipstick, when there was no pencil at hand.

Then the girl left with her lover for Yalta, but never returned for the exams. It was not possible to recover at the institute immediately, and only in the correspondence department.

Personal life

In 1990, the poetess had a nervous breakdown, after which she left for Switzerland. The official reason for leaving was stated to be study, but in fact Nika was being treated in a psychiatric clinic in Lausanne. There she entered into an official marriage with her treating psychiatrist, Signor Giovanni: before that they knew each other by correspondence. He wrote that he allegedly “treated patients with her poems.”

The girl’s husband was a professor; at the time of marriage he was 76, and Nika was 16 years old. He did not offend the girl, but was constantly absent from work. Turbine became addicted to alcohol and a year later suddenly returned home. The young girl never thought about the professor again.

Upon returning home, Nika fell in love at first sight with the bartender who worked at the Oreanda Hotel; at that time the girl was 17 years old. Literally on the second day of meeting the girl was already getting ready to get married. Konstantin treated Nika well, but immediately said that he was not going to get married.

Then the young man had a friend in Japan, and the guy was going to go to her for permanent residence. But Nika was so in love that it was impossible to extinguish her feelings. This complex romance lasted 5 years.

Nika’s personal life can hardly be called successful; the last partner of the talented poetess was Alexander Mironov.

Last years and death

In May 1997, a tragedy occurred. That day, Nika and her friend Alexander were drinking, and the young people had a quarrel. Turbine rushed to the balcony, as she later admitted, “as a joke,” but could not resist and hung. Both immediately sobered up: the guy grabbed her hands, and Nika tried to climb back. But she lost it. The girl was saved only by a tree, which she caught on while falling.

Nika had many serious injuries, including spinal damage and a broken collarbone. Thanks to the agreements of Alena Galich, Turbina was supposed to be admitted to a special American clinic. To receive discounts, they collected many signatures, but when consent came from the Americans, Nika’s mother unexpectedly took her to Yalta. There, the girl ended up in a psychiatric hospital after a violent seizure: this had never happened before.

The circumstances of the girl's death are not known for certain. On May 11, 2002, Nika and Alexander Mironov were visiting a friend Inna, who lived on the same street. Friends drank alcohol. When Sasha and Inna went to the store, Nika was waiting for them, sitting on the window sill of the 5th floor, her legs dangling down.

This position was her favorite; Turbina was not afraid of heights. At one point, most likely, Nika turned unsuccessfully; she has always had poor coordination. A passerby walking nearby with a dog saw the girl hanging from the window and heard a cry:

“Sasha, help me, I’m about to lose my temper!”

But tragedy was inevitable.

In order to perform Nika’s funeral service in church, Alena Galich asked the police not to record her friend’s death as suicide. Therefore, the column about the cause of death was left blank: there was a dash there. Alena also ensured that Nika’s ashes were buried at the Vagankovskoye cemetery. The poetess's funeral took place on June 25, 2002, exactly 40 days after the girl's tragic death. The niche where Nika Turbina’s ashes are buried is located in section 72.

Documentary film about Nika Turbina

A year before the girl’s death, Anatoly Borisyuk filmed documentary entitled “Nika Turbina: the story of take-off.” Then he reported that everyone had forgotten Nika, her talent and genius. Anatoly said in one of his interviews:

“She’s 26 years old, her whole life is ahead of her, but it feels like she’s already lived it almost to the end.”

Fans have created Nika Turbina’s Internet site, where you can find poems and photographs of the poetess.

Bibliography

• 1984 – “Draft”
• 1991 – “Steps up, steps down”
• 2004 – “So as not to forget”
• 2011 – “I began to draw my destiny: poems, notes”

And under your feet is sin.

Steps down, or Interrupted flight...

“You never die from someone else, but always from yourself.”

F. Nietzsche.

The flight to the stars turned into a tragic dive. The excitement around the young poetess subsided and, as often happens, Nika was completely forgotten over time. Fame disappeared as suddenly as it appeared...

And the psychological stress that coincided with adolescence, nevertheless, greatly influenced the formation of the psyche.

Nika had neither education nor profession, she had not even really mastered literacy. No one made sure that the miracle child, who in a trance dictated poems that delighted the whole world, learned to write correctly! No one told the girl how to further develop and polish her poetic gift. She was simply thrown to the sidelines.

To claim that a child who is involved in art from an early age, whether poetry, music or painting, will definitely grow up to be a bright, strong, full-fledged personality is a big misconception. Alas, this is far from the case.

Nika was unable to cope with her own life, to come to terms with such an unpoetic reality. In front of the eyes of indifferent adults, who had squeezed everything they could out of the “poetic Mozart” - money and fame - Nika Turbina was turning into, in their opinion, a moral monster, absolutely unadapted to life.

Poetry is gone, replaced by drugs and alcohol. Neither her mother and grandmother, nor Alena Galich, her teacher at the Institute of Culture and, perhaps, her only friend, did not hide the fact that Nika suffered from alcoholism. The only one who tried to save Nika from herself.

“Alas... Nikusha got terribly drunk. No amount of stitching had any effect on her. She immediately cut out the ampoules. Doctors said that this is a unique phenomenon; no methods work on her. No way! It was a terrible tragedy!..."- told Alena Galich.

Nika wrote notes that she would not drink or be late for classes, but three days later she again plunged into binge drinking.

From a 1995 interview:

“Do you want a very big truth? What can I say about what happened at that time? Besides what I already said - cold, hungry, hard. I really wanted warmth, love, people, hands, eyes, excuse the banality...”

She was forgotten by those who gave her a ticket to Big world - Yevtushenko, Albert Likhanov. The adult Turbina recalled her meeting with Likhanov with irony: “Now I’ll make you laugh. A month ago, the secretary of the children's writer Alberta Likhanov found me through some left path. I came to him. Likhanov stared at me for a long time, asking completely boorish questions. Finally, I say: “Albert Anatolyevich, why do you need me at all? I lost my time.” - “I’m writing a book. I really need you as a test subject. It’s very interesting to watch how little geniuses grow into fools.”

But, perhaps, the most painful thing for Nika was to go through a break with her idol, Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Nicky’s grandmother remembers: “And Yevtushenko... We forgave him. Or rather, they forgot. He betrayed Nika. But you can’t betray a child. He picked it up and threw it away!”

And Nika herself once said: “I wish him a peaceful old age.”

Faces fade from memory

Like last year's leaves.

Autumn left only

Morning gloomy taste.

Faces leave, but rarely

The cold comes to the heart.

The yellow leaves come to mind.

With someone's portrait broken.

Bitter from the present

It's scary to live forgotten.

The poet's great gift turned into a gift of great despair, poetic inspiration into alcoholic delirium. The once brilliantly beautiful Nika has withdrawn into herself. In her small apartment on the very outskirts of Moscow, only two cats and a dog lived. Nika didn’t particularly trust people. However, none of the people near her stayed long. Probably because, next to a poet, an ordinary person simply cannot breathe.

“They led an elephant through the streets. It was Nika Turbina. And then the elephant was abandoned and forgotten", - this is what the already adult Nika said, surrounded by empty bottles and dubious friends.

She brushed away rare journalists as if they were annoying flies, and when asked “How do you imagine your future?”- answered vaguely: "No way. I have no future, I live for today and stupid sentimental female hopes. Let's see. But I write, it still supports me.”

“More or less everything flows and moves. I am completing directing courses, theater and film director. Now I’m somehow working on a side hustle, I’ll star in “Morning Mail”, or somewhere else, little things like that to somehow stay afloat. Everything is fine with the poems, they are written. The smoking room is still alive.”(From an interview in 2000)

There were also those who simply mocked the unfortunate girl, to whom the label “former poet” was firmly attached. They say that she has completely fallen down, she no longer remembers her poems due to drunkenness.

Alena Galich explains: “This dirty story happened to Nikusha several years ago. One Yalta film studio decided to film a program about Turbina. But before filming, the TV crew put a bottle of vodka in front of her, knowing full well that she shouldn’t drink. After the bottle was empty, they began to remove it. Drunk Nika couldn’t remember a single line and sent everyone to hell right in front of the TV camera.”

Not without hypocrisy: “The further degradation of the child’s morality and entire personality was so fast and terrible that we do not dare to write about it, because... her relatives are still alive.”

I am wormwood grass...

We live in such a way that glory is with us forever,

Intoxicated blood, mad delirium,

And maybe that’s the burning poison,

But there is no sweeter poison in the world.

K. Balmont.

Nika cannot get rid of alcoholism throughout her life. The damaged psyche is not restored, relationships with men are created and broken...

Useless to anyone, forgotten by everyone, she falls twice from the 5th floor. The first time, in 1997, after a quarrel with her partner, trying to commit suicide, as she later said, “as a joke.” That time she escaped with a broken spine, broke both forearms, and shattered her pelvic bones. Money for treatment was collected by the whole world - Yalta and Moscow friends, and one person also helped a lot American businessman. Surprisingly, “Uncle Zhenya” (Yevtushenko) did not react to this tragedy.

Everything worked out well: Nika underwent 12 operations; the only reminders of the incident were incredible back pain and numerous scars. It was mentioned in the newspapers that Turbine was completely paralyzed. Turbina will tell journalists with a grin that she was just shaking out the rug and slipped - “I fell unsuccessfully from the fifth floor. She remained alive."

I am wormwood grass

Bitterness on the lips

Bitterness in words

I am wormwood grass...

And a groan over the steppe.

surrounded by wind

Thin stalk

He's broken...

Born of pain

A bitter tear.

It will fall into the ground -

I am wormwood grass...

Her “suicides” were rather pseudo-suicides. Nika, indeed, had jumped from the balcony before and cut veins, but immediately ran to sew them up. Many, and above all Alena Galich, can confirm that these were not serious attempts, but rebellion. After all, Nika, like no one else, wanted to live, wanted to find herself...

In general, Nika was full of contradictions. Several suicide attempts and at the same time an insatiable thirst for life.

Alena Galich recalls: “There were attempts, but it was not a constant desire: on the contrary, she wanted to live. After such attempts, she immediately came to her senses, she was stunned, and she began to wildly fight for life.”

A word always has a beginning

Even though it is said in pain,

At least in joy.

I lost it overnight

All the letters that appear in the alphabet.

At the crossroads the rhymes met,

But there is no traffic light - there is an accident.

Am I already denied?

Collect dawn into poetry?

And you can’t find the old lines,

What were described by time.

I wander along eternal roads,

But it turned out to be so pointless.

Was Nika Turbina killed?

Alas, death took its toll, and fate did not have mercy on Nika the second time. But there is almost a detective story connected with Nika’s death; there are many mysteries in her death.

On May 11, 2002, she was sitting on the windowsill, her legs hanging out of the window, and suddenly... she fell... Witnesses claim that it was an accident, and Nika managed to grab the ledge on the window at the last moment.

Alena Galich, considering everything connected with Nika’s death to be “completely absurd,” petitioned the Moscow police leadership to open a criminal case into Turbina’s death. There was plenty of evidence.

Here's what one of Nika's neighbors said:

“I heard screams and looked out the window. Two men stood in front of the house and pointed their hands up. A girl was hanging on the ledge of a fifth-floor window, clutching it with her hands. She shouted: “Sasha, I’m going to fall! Help me! Sasha, I’m going to lose it!”

I rushed to call an ambulance, and when I ran out into the street, the girl was already lying on the ground. The blow was so strong that her jeans burst. When the ambulance arrived, she was still alive. The doctors tried to insert the breathing apparatus tube into her throat, but the girl with a weak movement of her hand knocked it out of her mouth. I couldn’t stand it and went into the apartment. I still remember her beautiful and for some reason very calm face.”

When the police arrived, no one opened the door to the apartment. They wanted to call the Ministry of Emergency Situations and break down the iron door. After this, the neighbor noticed the open window of the entrance on the second floor. It seemed that someone was still in the apartment and managed to escape before the police arrived: this unknown person climbed out through the window into the backyard. Was Nika Turbina killed?

...She did not live to see 28 years of age. It would seem that your whole life is ahead, but in reality - a broken soul, broken hopes, numerous suicide attempts, a stay in a psychiatric hospital; long, deep binges; loneliness…

There is emptiness ahead...

...They couldn’t save her. Subsequently, one of the ambulance doctors said that on the way to the hospital, when he was about to give Nika an injection to maintain her heart function, she uttered a single phrase: "No need"…

In Turbina’s death certificate, there is a dash in the “cause of death” column, the medical report states that death occurred as a result of injury, and the following is added in pen: “Fall from the fifth floor, location and circumstances of injury unknown”.

They wrote it off as suicide. A criminal case was not opened - why does the Moscow police need another hang-up? And who needs to investigate the facts of the death of a crazy alcoholic? After all, this is exactly how Nika seemed to her neighbors and casual drinking buddies.

The body of the deceased poetess was taken to the morgue of the Sklifosovsky hospital, where it lay for several days... unclaimed and was then cremated. Even Nika’s only friend, Alena Galich, learned about the tragedy on the 8th day: “At the beginning of May I was busy moving to a new apartment. In addition, Sasha Mironov, Nika’s partner, hid her death from everyone. As far as I know, he was just drinking heavily, and he had no time to attend to Nicky’s funeral.”

It so happened that only Alena Galich and her son came to see Turbina off on her last journey, Sasha Mironov, a former “Afghan”, a formerly talented actor, and at that time, according to Alena, “a weak-willed person and a quiet alcoholic,” and a couple of dubious, homeless-looking personalities. My parents were in Yalta at that time and could not leave due to lack of money - they did not have $600 for a ticket. Nobody even brought Nika flowers.

Alena recalls the details of the funeral:

“Sasha escorted us out of the morgue, saying that there was no need to take the coffin anywhere. Allegedly, the body is cremated right in Sklif. Both he and his friends left with us - they were heading somewhere for a drink. I didn’t even realize that he was lying and there was no crematorium at the morgue. ...Sklifovo employees were dragging a coffin with a note pinned to it: “For cremation at the Nikolo-Arkhangelsk Crematorium.”

The world-famous poetess would have been buried as a homeless person if not for the efforts of Alena Galich. She knocked on the thresholds of literary associations, petitioned the Moscow government to have Nika buried in one of the central cemeteries of Moscow and the last refuge of many great poets.

On June 25, 2002, exactly 40 days after the tragic death, the urn with Nika’s ashes was buried at the Vagankovskoye cemetery

And what about “Uncle Zhenya”? When asked by Komsomolskaya Pravda what he thinks about this tragedy, Evgeniy Aleksandrovich raised his eyebrows in surprise:

“Yes, terrible news... How did it all happen?” The poet preferred to get off with general phrases: “She was a talented girl, with an extraordinary personality. You know, I helped Nika publish her first book of poetry here in Russia, and then in Italy, in England. I believe that a person needs to come to the rescue twice: when he takes the first step in an independent life and when he tries to get up, having stumbled for the first time. I have a lot of memories associated with Nika. All kinds. But it's too early to talk about it. Hurt".

Alas, the second time Yevtushenko never came to Nika’s aid.

Suddenly a ringing sound... A person’s life is cut short

That's probably the whole story. Is it all?

Two thin books of poetry, a bag of papers left on the floor of a Moscow apartment, and scattered, often contradictory, memories - that’s all that remains of the miracle child, a little girl with huge eyes full of childish sorrow.

They said that Nika Turbina had the gift of foresight.

Rain. Night. Broken window.

And shards of glass stuck in the air,

Like leaves not blown by the wind.

Suddenly there is a ringing. Exactly

A person's life is cut short.

(1982, Nike - 8 years old)

After Nika's death, her grandmother, Lyudmila Vladimirovna, with tears in her eyes admits to reporters: “Nika had a presentiment of her death. One day she said: “Bull, I will die at 27 years old. Although before that I will die dozens of times.”

A shiver runs through you when you read the prophetic lines of Nika Turbina. They are childishly imperfect in form, but wise and creepy in an adult way. Lines about a sad, lonely and misunderstood man:

The floors are endless.

And in the window opening

There will be heartless faces... (1982)

We need to start living!

But why?

I'm standing at the edge

Where does the connection with the universe end?

Exactly at midnight -

That time is constant.

I'm standing at the edge.

Well, take a step!

And you will find yourself

Immediately immortal.

Many still believe that throughout her life Nika subconsciously

strived for death (the leitmotif of death can be traced in her poems), therefore her death is most often considered not as a consequence of an accident, but as a voluntary departure from life...

A few months before the fateful day, Nika began to increasingly touch upon the topic of death in conversations (as stated by the few with whom the girl maintained contact). She said she felt her end was near. Then no one attached any importance to her words. In his last interview to a journalist’s question about children, she answered this way: “I just won’t live to see the moment when I want to give birth...”.

Here are a couple of phrases from Nika’s diary, her notes - "so as not to forget":

“I said everything about myself in poetry as a child. I didn't need a woman's body. I should have died a long time ago, I have said this more than once. Subsequently, I realized that as a poet no one needed me. As a result, she began to feel embarrassed about her poems and tried painfully and tragically to find herself.”

“...Every person needs to hide in life. Hide and stay with what is close to you. So that the world around you is somehow abstracted from you or you are abstracted from the world around you. And it doesn’t matter whether you are alone or with a loved one, whether you read or write.”

Poetry is a special way of looking at the world. There is some kind of mysticism in the destinies of almost all Russian poets.

Almost all of them are restless souls, often alcoholics, drug addicts, mentally abnormal and completely unadapted to real life.

And as a rule, they die young to become a legend.

As if all this is retribution for God's gift. Like falling stars, they flash in the sky, leaving their light in our hearts.

Nika once said that a person is like poetry:

Once upon a time in the snow

A man came to us

It was like poetry.

There were four of us

We had fun.

There was roast goose

And she didn't come

I also have a Christmas tree.

And he was lonely

Because I was

Similar to poetry.

Why do her lines make you feel cold, lonely and scared? After all, she is like all of us

I just spent my whole life looking for a way - to the light, to people, my way in life.

Who was she? A literary phenomenon? A bright personality? A daring star who accidentally burst into our world? Or just an “illegal comet,” as journalists called it? Has a fragile, vulnerable soul encountered the steel needles of human indifference and malice?

Listen!

You can't get away with anything.

Neither the brittle, hard sound -

After all, lies are dangerous echoes.

No thirst for money,

No quick steps

Potential for success.

You can't get away with anything.

Not a forgotten friend

With whom it is inconvenient,

Not a tiny ant

With your sole

Crushed without malice.

It's a vicious circle.

You can't get away with anything.

But even if it goes away -

Nothing is for free

And the man is crazy

He goes away unnoticed.

From her diary: “Life has managed to show me the inside and the face many times. Sowing, growth and seedlings. Time will tell what I collected. I made a lot of mistakes, aimed at myself. It was like a bad dream ending with signs of resentment. The main thing is that I didn’t lie, I didn’t betray, I took someone else’s pain.”

Nika Turbina never managed to warm our cold and often evil reality with her poetry. Does this mean that she failed to fulfill her destiny as a Poet? Or maybe I just didn’t have time?

On the death of Nika Turbina

...But the lines that burn the palm

They won't be your ticket to heaven!

What - you care about them

Case? Just a couple of stanzas!

Shut up! Feel the verse

Which tastes like blood.

"Sasha!!! I'm going to fall! Help me! Sasha, it’s hard for me, I’m going to lose it!” – at the height of the fifth floor, a girl was hanging with her hands on the cornice. Another moment - and her fingers unclenched... The neighbors called an ambulance. When she arrived, Nika was still alive. The doctors tried to insert a breathing apparatus tube into her mouth, but she pushed it away with a weak movement of her hand and quietly whispered: “Don’t…” They didn’t take her to the hospital.

Nika Turbina, a charming girl who at the age of four began to compose wonderful, not childishly wise poems, was once admired by the entire Soviet Union. Remember the serious child reading his works along with famous poets at the opening of the Moscow Olympics? Then this fragile girl from Yalta was considered, without exaggeration, a national treasure. They wrote a lot about her, talked about her, were proud of her, called her a child prodigy and showed her to the whole world... And then the affection of adults suddenly gave way to indifference: you never know how many young poets there are in Rus'!

She was born on December 17, 1974 in Yalta. Sofia Rotaru lived next door. One day Nika met the singer, but did not want to continue communication. In general, she grew up as an uncommunicative girl and loved to baffle adults with her unchildishly serious questions. For example, when Nikusha was only two years old, she unexpectedly asked her grandmother: “Bool! Is there a soul? Granny was confused and could not say anything in response.

Nika's favorite pastime was looking out the window, especially in rainy weather, and muttering something under her breath (as it turned out later - poetry!) or, looking in the mirror, talking to her reflection about everything in the world.

And every night the Sound came to her... That’s what the little girl called a voice that sounded from nowhere, which dictated to her lines that a few years later made her famous throughout the world! And after her fame, the first rumors appeared that Nika’s poems were dictated by space aliens or that her mother wrote them for her. They seemed too “exorbitant” and too grown-up. This lie hurt the girl very much:

Take a notebook

And write about

What did you see in your dream?

Best of the day

What became painful and light,

Write about yourself.

Then I believe you, friends:

I don't write my poems. (1982)

But the truth was simple to the point of banality. The little poetess suffered from severe bronchial asthma since childhood. In a child, choking attacks are known to cause fear before sleep. And Nika was afraid to fall asleep. More precisely, she was afraid of not waking up, choking from coughing. Therefore, at night she sat in bed, covered with pillows, and, breathing hoarsely, muttered something in bird language. This muttering was reminiscent of ancient spells and greatly frightened the relatives. Then the unclear sounds turned into clear phrases that sounded louder and louder... The words seemed to choke the baby, and at such moments she persistently called for help from adults and demanded: “Write!” Mom especially got it:

I hope for you.

Write down all my lines.

Otherwise it will definitely come

A night without sleep.

Collect my pages

In a thick notebook.

I'll try to sort them out.

Only, do you hear,

Don't leave me alone.

will transform

All my poems are in trouble. (1983)

The girl read poetry passionately, with fervor, and sometimes with a kind of detached look. It seemed that someone was really dictating them to her... After the recitation, Nika leaned back devastatedly on the pillows in anticipation of a new “poetic attack.” In an interview, she described her feelings like this: “Poems come suddenly. When it hurts or is scary. It's like giving birth. That’s why my poems carry pain in them.” According to relatives, Nika did not sleep at all until she was twelve years old. And they decided to show the girl, exhausted by insomnia, to specialists. However, the doctors just shrugged: “We don’t have a cure for talent! Let him write. If anything needs to be treated, it’s asthma...”

They say that the origins of a child’s talent must be sought from his parents. Nothing is known about Nika’s father; she stubbornly avoided talking about him until the last years of her life. Her mother, Maya Anatolyevna, was a gifted artist. But she was never able to fully realize herself, so she dreamed of raising a star out of Nika. Noticing her daughter’s obvious poetic talent, Maya Anatolyevna began reading poems by Akhmatova, Mandelstam, and Pasternak to her from early childhood. And then the useful acquaintances of my grandfather, the Crimean writer Anatoly Nikanorkin, also came in handy. Moscow writers often visited his Yalta house. Nika’s mother approached them with a request to publish her daughter’s poems in the capital. Few responded. To most writers, the idea seemed rather absurd - the girl’s psyche had not yet strengthened, early fame would only break her. In addition, Nikusha already saw the world only in dark colors:

Scarlet moon,

Scarlet moon.

Come see me

Through a dark window.

Scarlet moon,

The room is black.

Black wall.

Black houses.

Black corners.

Black herself. (1980)

Chance helped. When Nika was seven years old, Yulian Semenov came to Yalta. He was building a dacha outside the city. One day he urgently needed a car to Simferopol, and Niki’s grandmother was just heading the service department at the Yalta Hotel, where the writer was staying. It was she who convinced the master to read his granddaughter’s poems. Semyonov, annoyed by the delay, with a dissatisfied look, took a plump folder from the woman’s hands, read several poems and suddenly exclaimed: “Brilliant!” A month later, at his request, journalists came to the Turbins’ house. And on March 6, 1983, Nika’s poems first appeared in print. That day, a nine-year-old schoolgirl woke up famous.

Uncle Zhenya and emptiness

Soon the young poetess was invited to Moscow, where in the House of Writers she met “Uncle Zhenya” - famous poet Evgeny Yevtushenko. This meeting turned out to be fateful - it was from here that Nika Turbina’s brilliant career began. Since then, her life has changed dramatically. “Uncle Zhenya” organized trips for her throughout the country, she performed at poetry evenings, she was invited to television, newspapers wrote about her. Psychologists, medical professors and psychics worked with her. She was called an “emotional explosion”, “brilliant talent”, “poetic Mozart”... In his interviews, Yevtushenko spoke of Nick as “the greatest miracle - a child poet”, and meanwhile she told reporters about the torments of her creativity. Thanks to Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the Young Guard publishing house published a collection of her poems called “Draft” at the end of 1984 (a few days before Nika’s tenth anniversary). The same “Uncle Zhenya” helped choose the name. Firstly, this was the name of the title poem of the collection, and secondly, according to Yevtushenko, “a child is a rough draft of a person.” This book also includes lines dedicated to him, a great and powerful friend and mentor.

You are a guide

And I am a blind old man.

You are the guide.

I am traveling without a ticket.

And my question

Left unanswered

And trampled into the ground

The ashes of my friends.

You are the voice of the people.

I am a forgotten verse. (1983)

Nika's popularity grew by leaps and bounds. The Melodiya company released a record with her poems. There was no time to attend the Yalta school-gymnasium (where Marina Tsvetaeva studied at the beginning of the century): all her energy was taken up by touring around the country. The Soviet Children's Fund awarded Nika a personal scholarship. Her poems have been translated into twelve languages. She always performed in front of full houses: everyone wanted to look at the thin girl with the practiced acting gestures and habits of a star and listen to her touching, still fragile voice, the timbre of which tore people’s souls!

Nika attracted full houses not only in the Union. She was applauded in Italy and the USA, and at Columbia University there was even a conference on the technique of translating the poems of the young poetess from Russia. And as a result - a trip to Venice to the Earth and Poets festival, where Turbina was awarded a prestigious art award - the Golden Lion! Nika became the second Russian poetess to receive this award. The first was Anna Akhmatova, but she received the “lion” when she was already over sixty. And our heroine was barely twelve then... However, Nika had a sad memory associated with this award. The girl brought the “lion” home and decided to check if it was really golden. She took a hammer and beat off the animal’s paws. It turned out to be plaster.

Since then, disappointments in Nika's life have rained down like from a cornucopia. She turned thirteen when she began to notice: good Uncle Zhenya, without explaining the reasons, began to move away from her. He stopped calling and didn’t invite anyone. Many then accused him of successful PR for his own, “slightly forgotten” person, and Nika’s entourage accused him of betrayal. Although the poetess herself still hoped that Yevtushenko would return. “Nika simply idolized him,” says Nika’s grandmother Lyudmila Karpova. “I remember we were sitting with her in a small cafe on one of the canals of Venice, and next to us, at a table, was Evgeny Alexandrovich. Nika looked at him with adoration, and kept repeating to me: “Bull, buy me a beautiful White dress and shoes. I want to hit him!”

But he never returned. Not then, not a year later, not ten years later. And should he?

In the late 80s, Nika experienced her first creative crisis. She wrote no longer as passionately and not as much as in childhood. There were fewer and fewer fans, and they began to forget about the young prodigy without wise PR... The situation in the country also changed: people were more concerned about rising food prices than the successes of young talents. Changes also occurred in the Turbin family. Nika’s mother, Maya Anatolyevna, got married and gave birth to a second daughter, Masha, “an ordinary child, fortunately, who does not know how to write poetry,” who from now on received all the attention of adults. Nika was left alone again, trying in vain to adapt to her new life. In 1989, she played the main role of a bandit girl with tuberculosis in the feature film It Was by the Sea. And a little later she gave an interview to Playboy and agreed to a candid photo shoot called “The Naked Body in the Form of My Poetry.” But these feverish experiments did not return her to her former glory.

In the mid-90s, Nika gave a detailed interview to one of the central newspapers. The headline clearly reflected the essence of the painful issue - “Yevtushenko betrayed me!” Evgeniy Aleksandrovich commented on this article as follows: “My whole betrayal is that I do not continue to help. Sorry, I’m a provincial person and I don’t respect people who don’t have a feeling of gratitude. I helped - that's all. You need to put a person “on the move”, and then do it yourself. There are two tests in life: non-recognition and recognition. You have to be able to do both.” In the next interview, Nika took back her accusations: “I hid it out of childish stupidity and resentment. I was a maximalist back then. I wouldn't say that now. It's low, stupid and funny. It seems to me that Evgeniy Alexandrovich needed a young genius. He was just scared of my age. I had a difficult transition period, I was aggressive. We don't communicate now. I need to understand myself, and he doesn’t need communication with me. I’m not some Prince of Wales!”

Snow White and her dwarf

Nika always had a hard time experiencing loneliness. She rebelled, ran away from home, cut her wrists, drank sleeping pills, hanged herself, threatened to throw herself out of the window... She was afraid to live. Alone on a huge planet. She could not understand this world, she was afraid of both it and herself in it. And at the same time, she didn’t believe in death. Growing up, she explained her nihilism this way: “If a person is not a complete idiot, he occasionally experiences depression. Sometimes you just want to leave, close the door behind you and tell everyone to go to hell. And the newspapers at these moments are buzzing that “the genius has broken down, Nika drank herself, smoked and became a prostitute.” I cannot place myself in any of these categories. Although I sometimes smoke weed and drink red wine, but nothing more. I was a punk at school. She walked around half bald, half long-haired, with a fishhook in her ear. She broke windows and announced boycotts. So what's special about that?" It would seem a typical transitional age syndrome. However, Nika's problem was different.

Fame, applauding audiences, autographs, international awards are a thing of the past. And she continued to compose rhyming lines that no one needed, quickly wrote them down in lipstick on torn pieces of paper and napkins and put them in a desk drawer with the inscription “So as not to forget” (later this will be the name of her first posthumous publication, dedicated to the thirtieth anniversary of the poetess). She didn't understand how to live on. Perhaps the painful uncertainty pushed sixteen-year-old Nika to a very extravagant act: she married a 76-year-old Swiss psychologist named Giovanni. (In 1997, I interviewed Nika, in which she spoke in great detail and with a fair amount of irony about her “novel of the century.” I quote a large fragment of our conversation. - Author.)

Nika: “Everything was beautiful and tragic, like a trampled rose. Giovanni, in Russian - Vanka, was a prince in the prime of his life. He is Italian, but lived in Switzerland and headed an institute in Lausanne that treated mentally ill children with music and poetry. At that time, a book was published in Italy that fell into his hands. My poems saved some girl: she was silent from birth, and then suddenly said: “Mom.” Giovanni immediately invited me to Switzerland for a symposium. I stayed there for a week and returned to Moscow. We corresponded, and then he called and said: “Life in Russia is hopeless. It would be nice for you to see Europe. But I also need something from you. Marry me...” I agreed.”

– Was it a marriage of convenience?

Nika: “No. On an adventure. I've always been bad at calculations. I constantly end up in shit. I left and it lasted me for a year. I couldn’t live in a foreign country, especially with him. But I learned to swear in French.”

– Did you feel that he was fit to be your father?

Nika: “More likely in the mother. He had the capricious nature of a lady. He annoyed me. For example, I’m used to walking around the house in a robe. This is not accepted among them. He came to the table in a suit and tie and began to educate me. He treated me like his property and was brutally jealous.”

- Were there any reasons?

Nika: “No. I didn’t cheat on him, although I liked many young people. With his own son, who was a year younger than me, we made eyes at each other. But even he didn’t understand how such a young girl could live with an old man.”

– Was Giovanni a wealthy man?

Nika: “Yes, both in terms of the wallet and in terms of what’s in the pants. Being on hormones all the time, having buried five wives, having a bunch of children (the youngest son is fourteen, and the first-born is nearly sixty), he wouldn’t be wealthy! But for a full-fledged married life, you need something else besides a bed. And with this, despite his braininess, there were problems. He felt comfortable living with me. After all, you can mold a sixteen-year-old girl into whatever you want. I worked at his institute, they knew my name. Moreover, Russian brides are unpretentious. Buy them sandals - they’ll be happy.”

Giovanni disappeared all day long in his own clinic for mental retardation, and Nika was left to her own devices. In Switzerland, as in Russia, she again felt lonely. They say it was then that she learned to drown her sorrows in wine.

In the room of white Switzerland

Ashtray is the head.

Russian, forgotten

A child looks out the window.

The smell of ripe strawberries

The streets here are alive.

And naked Nike

It is unlikely that they will give shelter.

Japanese triangle

In 1991, Nika ran away from Giovanni and returned to Russia, where luck unexpectedly smiled at her. In Yalta, she met her first love - a bartender from a currency bar named Kostya. The next day after we met, the girl ran home shouting: “Bool! I'm getting married!" It was so important for her! However, Kostya had no intention of getting married. He had a girl friend in Japan, where he later planned to emigrate. Nevertheless, the affair with Nika lasted several years. During this time, Kostya repeatedly visited her in Moscow, in her new apartment on Marshal Biryuzov Street. Nika became the owner of a two-room apartment thanks to her stepfather (he carried out some complex exchange of apartments). Kostya persuaded his beloved to move to Yalta with him. The girl persisted, using all the “charms” of her character, and the guy returned home with nothing. However, despite the quarrels, Nika idolized Kostya and often listened to his opinion. He seemed to be the only person who had power over her.

Love literally inspired Nika, and she fulfilled her childhood dream - she entered VGIK: “I always wanted to be an actress or director. My stepfather worked in the theater, I grew up among actors.” But the study did not last long. Nika made many new friends and often skipped classes. This is how she herself recalled that time: “I love big, noisy companies. I like to be the center of attention, when I'm in the mood, I'm surrounded by nice people, and I want to please some of them. I dance well. I love discos in nightclubs! I can play the guitar. Just a dream, not a girl!”

Of course, with such an interesting nightlife, studies were soon abandoned. Fortunately, Alena Galich, the daughter of a famous bard and a teacher at the Moscow Institute of Culture, intervened in Nika’s fate, and she helped the girl enter Kulek without exams (unfortunately, the young poetess never learned to write without mistakes). The course was taught by Galich herself, who later became Turbina’s friend. For the first six months, Nika studied very well. But then the drinking and drinking began again. Enraged by this behavior of her protégé, Alena Alexandrovna demanded a receipt. And Nika scrawled in childish handwriting: “I, Nika Turbina, give my word to my teacher Alena Galich that I will not drink again. And I won’t be late for class.” Three days later she went on a drinking binge again. And before the summer session, Nika, without warning, drove off to Yalta, to see Kostya. She never returned to the exams, and she was expelled from the first year for poor academic performance. “They teach there unprofessionally! – Nika said later. – I want to go to GITIS. Although I have already outgrown my studies. I have no strength for her."

Soon Kostya’s nerves also gave way. “I’m tired of Nika’s unpredictability,” he told Alena Galich. – We will never have a normal family: Nika will not be able to take responsibility for the children. She needs to be babysat herself!” Soon he got married.

Nika took the break with Kostya very hard. She drank heavily, tried to quit, turned to doctors, but no domestic coding helped her. And again Alena Galich came to the rescue. She agreed with the doctors of one of the American clinics about an inpatient examination of Nika. However, in order to receive a discount, it was necessary to collect a huge number of signatures. When the last “squiggle” was finally added to the documents, Nika’s mother unexpectedly took her to Yalta, leaving the final comment: “My daughter is not an alcoholic!” Alena Alexandrovna sat at home, cried and tore up the letters that had cost her so much effort.

And Nika was “treated” in the usual way - a new man, a businessman, appeared in her life. However, the romance did not last long. One day Nika had a violent seizure, and the young man whom she introduced to everyone as her own husband was forced to place her in a Yalta mental health clinic. Of course, she took this as another betrayal. “This bastard also paid the doctors to inject me longer!” – Nika complained later. She stayed in the hospital for three months. And the constant “guardian angel” Alena Galich and... Kostya rescued her from there. True, he soon left her again. It seemed to her that there was a hopeless dead end ahead, from which she was desperately trying to escape.

Bruises on the soul

"I'm standing at the edge,

Where does the connection end?

with the Universe.

Bridges are built here

Exactly at midnight -

That time is constant.

I'm standing at the edge.

Well, take a step! And you will find yourself

immediately immortal."

On May 15, 1997, Nika woke up at four in the morning, went out onto the balcony and took a step “over the line”: “Nobody helped me. There was no one in the apartment at all. I woke up in the hospital. Both forearms were broken, the pelvic bones were crushed, the fourth vertebra was shattered. At first I even regretted that I was alive: I suffered so much pain, so much disappointment in people... And then I began to value myself, I realized that I could still do something.”

There is another version of that accident. They say that Nika quarreled with another young man, wanted to make fun of him, stood on the windowsill, but lost her grip and hung by her arms. The guy tried to drag her back into the apartment, but couldn’t hold her, and Nika fell from the fifth floor. Be that as it may, Nika was saved by a miracle and... a tree under the window, which softened the fall. Nika underwent twelve operations, she was fitted with an Elizarov apparatus and was taught to walk again. Her name appeared in the newspapers again - we always write about tragedies more readily than about successes. In Yalta, an account was opened in the name of my grandmother, where anyone could send money. Even an American businessman helped. And she recovered! True, there were scars all over her body and terrible back pain, especially at night... Nika dreamed of saving money and making plastic surgery. But she knew how not only to dream, but also to foresee: “There is nothing shameful in the fact that a woman’s happiness is a home, children, warmth and even a kitchen. But I will never have it all. There are women in nature who are not quite women. I don't mean physically, of course. I'm one of them. And that’s why I won’t have such female happiness, although I really want it. I want to feed my loved one a delicious meal and have a baby cry in the room. I will swaddle him and be happy... Of course, I could now say: no, until I’m thirty - a career and work, and only then... Yes, I want to write poetry, because I am a good poet. But I also want female happiness, because I am a Woman!” Unfortunately, after that fatal fall, Nika was no longer physically able to have children and suffered greatly from this.

Visiting the Abyss

Nika was still afraid to live alone. I got two cats and a dog - it didn’t help. I needed a reliable friend, mentor, adviser, father, son and lover all rolled into one. The doors of her house were still open to everyone, but only a few entered, and only a few remained. One of these “delayed” was the 35-year-old actor of the theater “At the Nikitsky Gate” - Sasha Mironov. He burst into Nika’s life at the beginning of 1998 and stayed with her until the end... A former “Afghan”, Sasha once served in the border troops, was a master of sports in swimming and helped Nika in everything, which she certainly liked: “Sasha is experienced, very sympathetic and kind person. I trust him as myself, respect him and love him very much. He is a great actor! When I see him on stage, I always cry... He is the person closest to me, if not for him, I would no longer exist...” Unfortunately, like all “great actors,” Sasha drank shamelessly, which is why he lost his job. Wanting to help Nika get rid of pain, he pulled her more and more into the whirlpool of drunkenness. Subsequently, she could no longer live without vodka - as soon as money appeared, Nika immediately sent Sasha for a bottle. It was impossible to refuse her - any attempts to contradict infuriated her friend.

In 2000, the Yalta film studio made a film about Nick. Before filming, the TV crew put a bottle of vodka in front of her. When the bottle was empty, they began to remove it. Drunk Nika could not remember a single line and, right in front of the television camera, sent everyone to hell... This story caused a furore at the time. Nika was discussed again, but in the context of a “fall of genius.” However, thanks to this depressing picture, Nika got new friend, who witnessed the last drama in her life.

Before the New Year, 22-year-old Vovka caught the eye of a newspaper. The same girl from the film was looking at him from the photograph - beautiful, a little strange and so dear! In her eyes there was everything: life experience, pain, loneliness, fear, wisdom, naked soul... “This is a sign,” Vovka decided. To begin with, he found the director of the film about Nick and gave him a touching letter addressed to her, but never received an answer... A year later, he made another attempt - he went to the director’s home and asked him for the poetess’s Moscow address. Their meeting took place on January 12, 2002. Already on the way to Niki’s house, Vovka bought five tulips at a flower shop. Sasha opened the door.

– I’m Volodya, I came to Nika from Kyiv.

- Nika! Volodya is here for you,” Sasha let the guest into the house.

- Oh, flowers! I dreamed about them so much,” a young woman appeared in the doorway. She was beautiful, but she looked nothing like she did in the photo. The face seemed exhausted, the gaze was dull, the appearance was tired. Vovka took a bottle of vodka and Crimean wine from his bag and, without preamble, put them on the table. We drank. We talked about life, Vovka talked about his work in the laundry of the Lybid Hotel and that he came to Moscow for three days, especially to meet with Nika.

-Where are you staying? – genuine joy and warmth were already shining in the girl’s eyes (she was always happy to have guests).

- I don't know yet…

– You know, Vov, stay with us. Objections will not be accepted.

No one was going to object. Volodya was placed on Nika's children's bed. But the guest did not have time to sleep to his heart's content. In the middle of the night he was awakened by a heartbreaking cry: “Sasha, I’m feeling bad again, call an ambulance!” This back, when will all this end?!” Sasha ran to call his neighbors (the telephone in Nika’s apartment was turned off several months ago for non-payment). Doctors took Nika to the hospital. After some time, she returned all disheveled, collapsed on the bed and said wearily: “I ran away from them. The documents are in the hospital. Sasha, you’ll pick them up tomorrow, okay?” We went to bed again. In the morning everything happened again: Nika was again writhing on the bed in pain, calling Sasha for help, he ran to call the neighbors, Vovka was smoking on the balcony, and ambulance doctors appeared in the apartment... “I’m not going anywhere with you, do you hear?!” – Nika shouted in a drunken voice. “Treat me right here, give me an injection, do at least something, I’m going to die from pain now!!!” The injection helped only for a while... Then morning came, they drank again, talked, Sasha ran for vodka, tried in vain to fall asleep to Nika's screams, which could make you turn gray... So three days passed. Vovka left for Kyiv. I wrote letters, sent telegrams... And a week later I couldn’t stand it and rushed to Moscow again.

“I knew you would come back,” Nick met him on the threshold. - Come in, Sasha is at work now. You know, he drank heavily...

They sat in the kitchen all day, hugging each other and talking about the eternal. Sasha did not participate in their conversations, but he did not object to Vovka’s presence either. He was sure that Nika simply could not cheat on him. And it was true. A couple of times Volodya accompanied Nika to work - to the Diapazon theater studio for troubled teenagers on the outskirts of Moscow. Nika and Sasha staged children's plays there. The last one in her life was “Tic Tac Toe”.

Before leaving, Vovka plucked up courage and said:

– Come to Kyiv, live for a couple of years, get comfortable... The world will kneel before you, Nikusha!

- I know. But after my death... I'm on the edge, Vovka! For everything in life you have to pay. I will die very soon without waiting...

As a parting gift, he gave Nika a player with a recording of their conversations, and she gave him her favorite book about Van Gogh, “Lust for Life”:

– It seems to me that in a past life I was Van Gogh. Read it and remember - we will not be able to communicate with you if you do not read a lot. It's too bad that we live in different cities!

On March 22, Nika arrived in Kyiv. Vovka introduced her to his friends, showed her the city... Nika promised to return in June, but did not have time. She went out the open window from the fifth floor. No one will ever know whether it was a fatal accident or a conscious decision. This time no one could save her...

Body as evidence

A criminal case into Turbina’s death was never opened. The police had their reasons for this. Firstly, Nika's first suicide attempt in 1997. Secondly, there were no people in the apartment at the time the girl fell. Pure suicide. And Nika’s cries for help were ignored by law enforcement agencies: they say that Turbina was an alcoholic, you never know who appeared to her a few seconds before her death.

There are a lot of inconsistencies and contradictions in this whole story. In the death certificate, there is a dash in the “cause” column; the medical report says that death occurred as a result of injury. And on the side there is a note: “Fall from the fifth floor, the place and circumstances of the injury are unknown.” The body of the deceased poetess lay in the morgue of the Sklifosovsky Institute of Emergency Medicine for eight days, marked “Unknown.” Sasha went on a week-long binge and didn’t even tell Maya Anatolyevna about his daughter’s death right away. According to him, he, Nika and his housemate Inna were drinking that day. When the vodka ran out, she and Inna went to the store, and when they returned, Nika was already lying on the ground, lifeless. On the day of the funeral, three of Sasha’s drinking buddies and Alena Galich and her son came to the morgue. She was the only one who brought Nika flowers. The poetess's relatives were unable to leave Yalta - there was no money. During her lifetime, Nika once said: “When I die, I want to be cremated. I don’t want worms in the ground to eat me after death.” Nika's last request was fulfilled. True, not immediately and not in the way she wanted. For some reason, Sasha said that her body was being cremated right in Sklif. And he deprived his loved ones of the last opportunity to say goodbye to Nika - after all, no one knew that there was no crematorium in this hospital.

Everyone dispersed, and Sklif’s employees dragged a lonely coffin with a pinned note “For cremation at the Nikolo-Arkhangelsk Crematorium.” They swore that they were not paid for the “loading” work.

So Nika Turbina, who had been afraid to be alone all her life, set out on her final journey. And there wasn’t a single relative nearby... Later, Alena Galich ensured that Nika had a funeral service in the church and was buried at the Vagankovskoye cemetery, in an open columbarium. Opposite is the grave of Igor Talkov.

Broken Cage

On May 10, 2002, Vovka finished reading a book about Van Gogh, given by Nika. The last time I looked at the bookmark - a piece of notebook paper in a box with an inscription written in red pencil: “I love you. Nika,” and put it aside along with the book...

The next day Nika was gone. After her death, Vovka fulfilled his last duty - he met with her mother and grandmother and gave them photographs taken in her Moscow apartment and in Kyiv. A year later, Vovka got a job, two years later he got married. Recently he was passing through Moscow again. I went into a familiar courtyard on Marshal Biryuzov Street, smoked on a bench under Nika’s window, but did not dare go up to the apartment. And to whom? After Nika’s death, one of the rooms in her two-room apartment was sold to strangers, and the second is now under lock and key, awaiting the arrival of Nika’s half-sister Masha, who graduated from school this year and is going to enter a Moscow university.

Nika's first love, Kostya, learned about her death from Alena Galich. She called him in Japan. He was silent for a long time into the telephone receiver, and then shouted: “Alena, tell everyone that Nika didn’t want to die! She had a colossal thirst for life!”

It was really very difficult with Nika. She grew up kind, sympathetic, but completely unadapted to life. She needed a person who would shield her from all adversity, save her from everyday life, from the need to earn money, get published... But where can you find such a thing in our cruel times? She understood this, and she was scared. When we met, Nika was only twenty-three - her whole life was ahead of her, but it seemed as if she had lived it almost to the end.

And she was already acutely aware that in order to finally be remembered, you just need to die. After all, a little genius is such a touching exotic. And an adult... You never know how many young poets there are in Rus'!

All I can say is thank you...
LIGHT 02.09.2006 10:40:03

Time has passed, it cannot be returned, the soul has gone to its paradise...
All that was left was the dust from the boots,
Busy everyday life
Selfish reality...
And most importantly, Her poems.
I'm sure these were her thoughts,
It’s just that the human brain has not been fully explored,
and Her consciousness of the world apparently allowed
perceive the world in such a sophisticated form, beautifully laid out in poetry and rhymes...
I believe that there is nothing super-ginal here...
Nika was a real person
With the soul of a hero,
With vices
With the taste of death on your lips...
She lived, but was abandoned,
The turbine knew about its fate...
I knew it would happen like this
But all my life I struggled with Him...
With God blessing?
With the Devil?
- With a cruel world...

For eternal memory NIKA, may your star shine.

From childhood, in which no one scared the child to vomit - with alcohol and cigarettes. And drugs.

It would frighten him so much that a boy or a girl would have allergies for the rest of his life - and they would never relieve stress in these ways.

How many more hundreds of millions of people must die for Prohibition to be introduced in Russia and Western countries?

Or is there only one way out - to wait for the capture of our countries by Muslims? In this sense, they will restore order - and very quickly.

Or still understand that the sick - especially those who make others sick - need to be isolated.

That they need to be imprisoned - as they do in Muslim countries - for several years and publicly punished with canes. Whom? EVERYONE who participated in the sale of alcohol - starting from the saleswoman (who, of course, “knew nothing about this law”) and further, including intermediaries, drivers, forwarders, manufacturers.
Exactly the same as EVERYONE in the drug supply chain is punished.

The story of the poetess-prodigy Nika Turbina, who was forgotten during her lifetime.

Nika was born on December 17, 1974 and already at the age of four she began composing poems, and at nine the first collection of her works, “Draft,” was published, which was subsequently translated into 12 languages. Her poems were not at all childish:

"Gloomy morning with cold rain.

It's bittersweet together.

The light bulb casts a mischievous light during the day.

You go to the door - I follow you.

Forgot to remove the record of the night -

That’s why the path to separation is shorter.”

The preface to Nika's book was written by the Soviet and Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Thanks to his support, Nika entered the literary circles of Moscow on an equal footing and took part in the international poetry festival “Poets and the Earth” (as part of the Venice Biennale), becoming the second Soviet poetess after Akhmatova to receive the prestigious Venice Golden Lion award. Later Nika visited the USA, where she met with Joseph Brodsky.

Turbina said that she felt comfortable at night - the girl composed her poems in the dark. Nika suffered from insomnia due to asthma, which had plagued her since early childhood. If someone sat next to her while the girl was awake, she asked to write down what “God spoke to her about.”

Until Nika became famous all over the world, of course, her parents were concerned about the girl’s strange behavior. But after Turbina’s popularity overtook her, adults no longer cared about the girl’s mental health. Although during numerous trips, doctors told Nika’s grandmother, who followed her everywhere, that with such emotional stress, the child needed consultations with a psychologist.

In 1985, when Nika was 11 years old, the Turbins moved to live in Moscow, where Nika’s mother remarried and gave birth to a daughter, about this Turbina wrote: “... Just, you hear, don’t leave me alone. All my poems will turn into trouble".

The girl grew up without a father, so she was very attached to Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who took patronage over her while she was little. However, when Nika grew up, they moved away from each other, which is why the girl was also very worried.

Turbina turned 15 years old, and she had not written or read anything of her own for a long time.

The following year, 1990, the poetess had a nervous breakdown and left for Switzerland. There she entered into a civil marriage with her psychiatrist, with whom she knew by correspondence. The professor was 76, and she was 16. Nika was interested in talking to him, but soon she started drinking and a year later returned home, leaving her husband in Lausanne.

At home, she was unable to find a suitable job for a long time. Nika started studying at VGIK and tried to launch a television project about failed suicides.

In 1994, Turbina was admitted to the Moscow Institute of Culture without exams. She tried to study and even began to write poetry again, but by this time Nika’s psyche was noticeably disturbed. At the end of the first year, Nika went to Yalta to visit her lover, but never returned to the exams. Naturally, she was expelled from the institute.

Nika continued to drink and during another period of alcoholic intoxication, a terrible thing happened: she fell from the fifth floor balcony. The only thing that saved the girl was that, while falling, she caught on a tree, but still injured her spine and broke her collarbone.

Nika always told her mother and grandmother that she would leave at 27 years old. And so it happened. She fell out of a window again on May 11, 2002, only this time she could not be saved.

A month ago, 40 days after the tragic death, the brilliant girl poet was finally buried at the Vagankovskoye cemetery

Nika Turbina, a brilliant girl poet from Yalta, was buried on June 25. Exactly 40 days after her tragic death. On May 11, Nika fell from the fifth floor window of her one-room Moscow Khrushchev apartment on the very outskirts of the capital. She was cremated in Moscow and buried at the Vagankovskoye cemetery - the last refuge of many great poets. Nika Turbina’s grandmother and mother arrived in Moscow from Yalta shortly before the funeral - the whole world collected money for the trip. Just like at Nicky's funeral. $600 is an unaffordable amount for the Turbina family. Fortunately, Moscow poets helped.

Relatives wanted to take the urn with Nika’s ashes home to Yalta and bury her in the local cemetery next to her grandfather’s grave. They didn't allow it. However, they didn’t even let me say goodbye to Nika - the urn with her ashes stood with strangers even for the last night.

They say that Turbine had the gift of foresight. One day, eight-year-old Nika, a girl with an angelic face, seriously whispered in her grandmother’s ear: “Bul, I know that I will die alone”

“Mom put Nika in pillows, she was tormented by asthma attacks, but she still spoke poetry”

In Nika Turbina’s apartment in Yalta, everything remains the same as in 1974, when the girl genius was born here. The five-story Khrushchev building is located in the very center of the city. Nika lived with her mother and grandmother in a three-room apartment on the fifth floor. Now Nikina’s grandmother, mother and Maya Anatolyevna’s second daughter, Masha, live here. A tall, fair-haired girl, completely different from Nika. In August, mom and Masha are going to move to Moscow, to Nika’s apartment. Masha wants to study in the capital. And grandma She will remain in Yalta, sorting through the archive of Nikushin’s latest poems. A lean, energetic woman who never lets a cigarette out of her mouth has always been Nika’s guardian angel. She traveled with her all over the world, protecting and instructing her. Until the wayward character of Nika, who left her family at the age of fifteen, manifested itself.

Remembering her granddaughter, Lyudmila Vladimirovna breaks down into sobs. Only Nikusha’s mother, Maya Anatolyevna, hardly ever cries. She silently walks from room to room, smoking nervously, followed closely by a sniffling pug and a fat cat. The Turbins' apartment is a creative mess. A narrow corridor, dark small rooms and a huge number of books, stacks of manuscripts and paintings. Everyone in the Turbin family painted. Grandfather was known as a poet and even published a book of poems. It was believed that Nika went to him. True, no one in Nika’s family had a charming mole on her upper lip. Nikusha's room is the largest in the apartment. Bed, table and shelves with books. No luxury and very little comfort. One wall is red, another is blue, the third is green. The housemates always thought that all the Turbins were a little crazy, and advised the children not to hang out with Nika. However, this was of little interest to the girl. Because she heard the SOUND

Niki’s grandmother Lyudmila Vladimirovna recalls:

It used to be that she would come up to me, look pleadingly into my eyes and ask: “Bul, do you think SOUND will come to me again?” That’s what she called the moment when poetry came to her. Of course, I reassured Nikusha - he will come. And the SOUND really came. It's painful, it's painful. This could happen at any time, but most often at night. After two hours. She called my mother and me and ordered: “Write.” And mom wrote it down. She sat her in the pillows: Nika was tormented by asthma attacks (an inhaler in one hand, a pen in the other) and wrote quickly and quickly. Nikusha was choking, she was having an attack, and the poems seemed to pour out of her, giving no rest.

Remember when Nika's first verse was recorded?

She began writing poetry very early. Probably from about two years old. But we didn't pay any attention to it! Well, the child babbles something to himself and babbles. If it weren’t for her mother, Mike, we wouldn’t have known until she was six years old that she was writing poetry. I remember Nikusha was about three years old when a completely dumbfounded Maya came up to me and said: “Mom, you know, she’s standing by the window and whispering, in my opinion, poetry.” Nika’s whole life is connected with the window. This was her first poem we recorded - “Scarlet Moon”. And how many poems we missed because I couldn’t write them down anymore!.. I just didn’t have the strength. She didn't sleep at all. So you sit with her until three o’clock in the morning. Then an attack, again poetry. And so on endlessly. Until she was eleven and a half years old, she didn’t sleep at all! And we had to work. Therefore, they gave her some medicine so that she could rest at least a little and let us rest.

Have you contacted doctors?

I went to Kyiv several times for consultations. At the Institute of Psychology. I say, we have such a child - he is sick and writes poetry. They told me: “What can we do? Well, he writes - and let him write. But asthma needs to be treated.” Nobody told us anything intelligible. But I kept running to doctors and asking: “Make sure that the child does not write poetry! Let her sell cucumbers, but she will only be next to us!” God, how many doctors and psychics Nikusha and I visited

“When she was two years old, speaking for the first time, Nika asked: “Is there a soul?”

For her grandmother and mother, Nika was only Nikusha. She called her grandmother Bul, her mother - Green Mike. She just liked the unusual combination of sounds. Already at the age of five, Nikusha ran to the sea by herself. Grandma could barely keep up with her. It used to be that Nikusha would come to the shore, fall on his knees just before the water and whisper poetry. And the grandmother quietly watches the child from afar. Turbina studied poorly. She never mastered reading and writing, and she didn’t finish writing the words, as if she was afraid of not being able to do it in time. But she loved standing at the window of her room. By the way, the view from it is stunning - of the Crimean Mountains. It used to be that he would stand there for hours, and then he would come to his senses and shout: “Bool, Green Mike!” Come to me, we’ll play at the theater.” He lays out the dolls, plush hares and bears and begins the show. And sometimes he’ll quietly sneak into grandma’s room, bury his head in her shoulder and whisper: “Bul, why does it seem to me that I’ve been living for a hundred years? But why?.. "

Nicky’s grandmother remembers:

Sometimes it seems to me that Nika was not a child at all. Her speech and judgment were so mature. She has always been a person. And at two years old, and at twenty-two. Individuality. Yes, so complex and contradictory. We probably didn't understand a lot. No one was able to fully understand Nika. Or he didn’t want to understand. And we tried I can’t imagine what to do now that she’s so far away. I'm dying, dying I can't live! I CAN NOT! Her last poem “The sky is split like a walnut” - that’s how our life was split. It’s impossible to explain to Nick! This is a phenomenon, genius. And we couldn't save her

Even from loneliness

Well, what does grandma have to do with it? Nika had her own life. She was passing through her space. She had her own, individual world, not connected with us. On the contrary, it was she who opened the world for us! Having spoken for the first time - she was two years old - she asked: “Is there a soul?” Can you imagine? She was our support and strength!

Did Nika need a family?

Of course, she couldn't live without us. She was worried all the time that we had no money, and about a month before her death she told her husband: “Sasha, if I die, don’t leave my family. And a cat and a dog too.”

Was Nika married?

Sasha was not her legal husband. But that doesn't mean anything. This is an amazing person, we trusted him completely. Every time I talked to Moscow, I asked: “Sasha, are you still close to Nikusha?” Because she knew: if they were together, he would protect her. I was calm. Sasha is an amazing person. He is a former Afghan, ten years older than Nikusha. They have lived together for the past four and a half years. Sasha is an actor, a talented guy. He looked after Nikusha like a child. Cherished her. This was the only way to live with Nika. Forgiving and turning a blind eye to her shortcomings. She was completely defenseless. Sasha went with her to the hairdresser, even to the toilet. She definitely had to be driven. “You are a guide, and I am a blind old man” This is a photograph of her life. She couldn’t even go to the store in our house on her own, always with an accompanying person. She could walk around on her own only if she had a drink. But it looked like humiliation, a mockery of oneself

They say that Sasha himself was not averse to drinking.

I don't want to hear this. I know that Nikusha had a good time with him. All! After all, Sasha did everything around the house. I even washed her panties. In the morning I fed her breakfast right in bed. And Nikusha It was difficult with her. It happened that suddenly a terrible anger began to choke her, and then she took it out on Sasha’s car. No matter how she hit her! The last time, shortly before her death, she poured sugar into the tank. But everything was forgiven to her. Nikusha, as if to justify herself, only repeated: “Sasha, I won’t live long.”

Do you think she had a presentiment?..

I know it. She named dates that would make your hair stand on end. One day she said: “Bul, I will die at 27 years old. Although before that I will die dozens of times.” How many times have we pulled her off the window sill on our fifth floor! They just grabbed hands! But Nikusha did fall out of the window five years ago, and they could barely put her back together piece by piece. Then she said: “I fell unsuccessfully from the fifth floor - I survived.” We were scared to hear this! We were going crazy! But the worst thing is that there was not a single person who would help us. Helped Nikusha

“They said that we owed Yevgeny Yevtushenko two thousand dollars”

It wasn't always like this. Yulian Semyonov discovered the brilliant poetess from Yalta to the world. Nika was seven years old at the time. Semyonov was just building a dacha near Yalta. Suddenly he urgently needed to fly to Moscow, he needed a car to Simferopol, and Nikina’s grandmother was working as the head of the service bureau at the Yalta Hotel, where Semenov lived. It was she who forced Semenov to open the folder with his granddaughter’s poems right in front of her. The famous writer, extremely dissatisfied with this, read several poems and suddenly exclaimed: “This is brilliant!” And a month later, at his request, a Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondent came to the Turbins’ house, and then wrote an article about the brilliant girl poet. Nika became famous.

Nicky’s grandmother remembers:

Yulian Semyonov gave Nikusha the path to life. And he did it very kindly, gently, with a desire to help. True, he soon became seriously ill and died. Then Evgeny Yevtushenko appeared in Nika’s life. They met in Moscow, in Pasternak's house. After their first meeting, he wrote a stunning poem about Nick: “I just don’t understand: where did she come from? From what rain? You, Nika created almost in emptiness, Dispelled the rain with your gaze” Yevtushenko took Nika to Venice to the “Poets and the Earth” festival, where she received the “Big Golden Lion” - the second Russian poetess after Anna Akhmatova. Nika was completely happy. I remember we were sitting with her in a small cafe on one of the canals of Venice, and Evgeniy Alexandrovich was sitting next to her at a table. Nika looked at him with adoration, and kept telling me: “Bull, buy me a beautiful white dress and shoes. I want to hit Yevtushenko!”

Was she in love with him?

As a girl, she was crazy about him! And when there was a break between them, she was incredibly worried.

What really happened?

We did not understand anything and do not understand anything! What happened? Nikusha will never know this. She waited for Yevtushenko for ten years! I kept thinking that he was about to appear. Nikusha suffered VERY MUCH! Suddenly, as a poet, she became an outcast. They simply forgot about her. They stopped inviting her, and Nikusha tore up her poems. New, just written. She tore them and shouted: “Nobody needs my poems! Why am I writing them? For what? For what? I don't need to live! No need". God, how many times did she die? She jumped out of the window and opened her veins. She couldn't live without poetry! If only someone had invited her into the audience, even if there were five spectators, and asked: “Read your poems.” Nobody. Until her death And Yevtushenko We forgave him. Or rather, they forgot. He betrayed Nika. But you can’t betray a child. He picked it up and threw it away!

Have you tried talking to him?

For what? Nika waited for him until he was 22, and then wrote a poem: “Abandoned or rebelled, There is a great chasm between us” And then she once said: “I wish him a calm old age.” What really happened? They said that we supposedly owed him two thousand dollars. Complete nonsense, I’ve never held that kind of money in my hands. Then we began to think that maybe they said something wrong in America

“No stitches for alcoholism had any effect on Nika. She immediately cut out the ampoules"

America “stood on ears” from a ten-year-old poetess from Soviet Union. Nika, as always, went abroad accompanied by her grandmother. Mom had her own life. She was preparing to become a mother again. They say that Nika had a hard time with the birth of her sister Masha. And my mother was happy that she had a normal child who slept at night and did not write poetry Then in America Nikusha was vying with each other for invitations to the most famous television and radio programs. One day the presenter asked the girl what she dreams of most. She answered without hesitation - about a big beautiful doll and Mickey Mouse. The girl's wish was immediately fulfilled.

Have you ever regretted not staying in America forever?

I think there was such a possibility. At least, when we arrived in America, we were not allowed out of the airport for two hours, everyone asked if we wanted to emigrate. Did we regret? When money became really tight, there was simply a hopeless situation, they thought: “We should have stayed.” But only then. And Nikusha never regretted it. She said that she was a Russian person, that even the walls here helped her. And she loved Yalta very much. After all, in Yalta she met Kostya - her first love

Was she suffering?

Terrible! This is a difficult situation in Nikusha's life. Kostya worked as a bartender at the Oreanda Hotel, and Nikusha fell in love with him at first sight. This was her first real feeling. Nika was seventeen. It's time. A whirlwind romance has broken out! Literally on the second day of meeting Nikusha ran home and said: “Bul, I’m getting married!” Kostya treated her very well, but immediately said that he was not going to marry. He had a friend in Japan, he went to see her and was going to stay there. I had no complaints about him, but Nikusha was so in love with him that it was simply impossible to extinguish the fire of her feelings! The romance lasted five years! It was a great tragedy! Nikusha disappeared here for five years. I dropped out of college and missed exams. Kostya went to see her in Moscow. It was very difficult. But I always understood how important this feeling was for her. And I just thought: “God, why am I so poor? I would pay Kostya 10 thousand dollars and say: “Marry her. Then you’ll get divorced.” This was very important to her. VERY! But

She didn't want to return to Yalta?

What is Yalta? This is a service for vacationers. You can become a b here. Or a saleswoman. It’s the only way here - either you sell, or Nikusha couldn’t work as an accountant or teacher. She is a free person. Her element is the sea. She spent hours on the shore, and then wrote entries in her diary. Stunning and at the same time scary Now I’ll show you one of her latest recordings. (Takes out a tattered notebook with wrinkled, torn pages here and there, opens one of them with a drawing of Nika and the word DEATH written in uneven handwriting - T.B.) Do you see? This is a crematorium. This is the road to it along which Nikusha walks. She drew herself and wrote a scary word. She knew everything, foresaw. I just didn’t put a number.

Did Nika want to be cremated?

Yes. She always said that she was afraid of worms. I would like to burn too. In truth, we wanted to scatter her ashes over the sea. It would be close to her spirit, her incomprehensible appearance in our world

When was the last time you saw Nika?

A year ago. She came to us in Yalta with Sasha. For ten days. They were in a hurry to get back to Moscow. After all, they already had their own children's theater. And both were passionate about their work. In her diaries, Nikusha wrote: “It seems to me that I can be a production director. I feel!" They worked with difficult-to-educate teenagers who were madly in love with Nika. On June 28 they were planning to come to us on the way to summer camp with their students. Did not work out

Did you often talk to Nika on the phone?

There was no telephone in her Moscow apartment. Lately, most of the calls have been from Sasha; Nikusha hasn’t been feeling well. After she jumped out of a window several years ago, she had difficulty walking. My back often hurt. Nikusha tried to relieve this pain with alcohol

Was she really an alcoholic?

Alas, Nikusha got terribly drunk. No amount of stitching had any effect on her. She immediately cut out the ampoules. Doctors said this is a unique phenomenon; no methods work on her. NO ONE! It was a terrible tragedy!.. And she smoked a lot. Like me. She shouldn't have done this. Yes, a lot of things were impossible

For example, marrying an elderly Italian

To be honest, we know very little about him. Only what Nikusha herself told in the press. She was only sixteen years old, she no longer lived with us. We knew that Nika went to Switzerland, but nothing more

Did she want to have children?

Very! Although at one time I terminated my pregnancy many times. You know, Nikusha saw signs of fate in everything. When we were returning on the plane from New York, Nika tried to pass off a beautiful doll given to her as a small child. When her deception was revealed, Nikusha cried bitterly and said: “Bull, I know I will never have children.” Then I did not attach any significance to her words and only later realized that Nikusha had known in advance all her life

P.S. An empty Moscow Khrushchev apartment, a sports bag with papers - all that remains of Nika Turbina. Another thin book of poetry - “Draft” - and memories of loved ones. Nicky's grandmother wrote a play about her. Wants to publish unpublished poems. True, the Turbin family has no money

“My life is a draft,

On which all the letters are -

Constellations.

Counted in advance

All the bad days.

My life is a draft.

All my good luck, bad luck

Stay on it

How torn

Shot scream."

I'm like a broken doll.

They forgot in the chest

Insert heart.

And left unnecessary

In a dark corner.

I'm like a broken doll

I just hear it in the morning

Quietly the dream whispered:

“Sleep, dear, long, long.

The years will fly by

And when you wake up,

People will want it again

Take in your arms

Lull you to sleep, just play,

And your heart will beat"

It's just scary to wait.

"Have pity on me, let me go,

Don’t knit wounded wings,

I don't scream anymore.

Help me, wait!

Birds fly south.

Only the heart will shrink with fear,

Loneliness is death's friend."