Fyodor Chaliapin was stripped of his national title and banned from entering the country

On August 24, 1927, the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR adopted a resolution depriving opera singer Fyodor Chaliapin of the title of People’s Artist of the Republic and the right to return to the country.

After the October Revolution, Fyodor Chaliapin was engaged in the reconstruction of the former imperial theaters, was an elected member of the directorates of the Bolshoi and Mariinsky Theaters, and also directed the artistic part of the Mariinsky Theater. In 1918, the singer became the first artist to be awarded the title of People’s Artist of the Republic.

Commenting on the decision of the Council of People’s Commissars, People’s Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunacharsky, resolutely dismissing the political background, argued that “the only motive for depriving Chaliapin of his title was his stubborn unwillingness to come at least for a short time to his homeland and artistically serve the very people whose artist he was proclaimed …”.

The reason for such accusations was that, having gone on tour abroad on June 29, 1922, the famous Russian singer never returned to Russia. Until the spring of 1927, the Soviet authorities looked at these protracted tours “through their fingers”, since, according to the agreement, Chaliapin transferred 50% of the fees received in hard currency to the needs of the young Republic. But by the spring of 1927, the “cup of patience” of the Soviet government overflowed. The “last straw” was that Chaliapin donated 5,000 francs to the priest of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Paris, Georgy Spassky, who, at his discretion, distributed this money among the impoverished families of Russian emigrants. It all started with the fact that the singer decided to consecrate his new house on Rue d’Eilo.

“According to my old upbringing, I wished to treat this pleasant event religiously and arrange a prayer service in my apartment. I am not such a religious person as to believe that for the served prayer service, the Lord God will strengthen the roof of my house and send me a grace-filled life in a new home. But I, in any case, felt the need to thank the higher being familiar to our consciousness, which we call God, and in essence, we don’t even know whether it exists or not. There is some pleasure in being grateful. With these thoughts I went for the priest. My friend went with me alone. It was summer. We went to the churchyard, to rue Daru, went to the dearest, most educated and touching priest Father Georgy Spassky. I invited him to come to my house for a prayer service… As I was leaving Father Spassky’s, some women, ragged and ragged, with the same ragged and disheveled children, approached me at the very porch of his house. These children stood on crooked legs and were covered with scabs. Women asked to give them something for bread. But there was such an accident that neither I nor my friend had any money. It was so embarrassing to tell these unfortunates that I had no money. This disturbed the joyful mood with which I left the priest. That night I felt disgusting, ”Chaliapin himself described these events.

The next morning he handed over 5,000 francs to Father Georgy Spassky. Information about this got into the media. As the Parisian newspaper Latest News reported, “Chaliapin donated 5,000 francs to the priest Georgy Spassky for the Russian unemployed in Paris. 1,000 were given to a former naval agent, captain 1st rank Dmitriev, 1,000 were distributed to Spassky persons whom he knew, at his discretion, and 3,000 to Bishop Metropolitan Evlogy (Metropolitan Evlogii (Georgievsky) was one of the spiritual “leaders” of the Russian Orthodox Church abroad – S.I.)”.

On May 31, 1927, the Moscow magazine “Rabis” (print organ of the Central Committee of the All-Russian Trade Union of Art Workers) published a “Letter from Berlin”, in which a certain S. G. Simon (a trade union official, who, by the way, soon fled abroad – S.I.) Angrily denounced Chaliapin:

“The “people’s” has been sitting abroad for years and years, overgrown with it, and then at one fine moment he looked around and sees that the Russian people are in need. And what people! Princes, counts, barons, secret and all kinds of advisers, metropolitans, archpriests, adjutant wing, generals of his majesty’s retinue. Well, how not to pinch the heart, not the People’s Artist of the Republic, no, but the Honored Artist of the Imperial Theaters, the soloist of His Majesty?! Well, the soloist of His Majesty sends five thousand that way five francs for distribution to these unemployed. Why are we silent? Why not put an end to the mockery and arrogance over the entire USSR of this retinue of HIS MAJESTY THE PEOPLE’S ARTIST OF THE REPUBLIC?

A day later, on June 2, 1927, Komsomolskaya Pravda published Vladimir Mayakovsky’s long poem “Mr. People’s Artist”. Here are just a few lines from it:

“They say the artist is a big kid.
I don’t know if Chaliapin has a bonne.
But if Bonn is not with him,
we will explain to him instead of bonne.
There is a million humpbacked class of proletarians
and those who are submissive to the Faustian calf.
To fight the last class both
Today we met face to face.
Both the song and the verse are a bomb and a banner,
and the voice of the singer raises the class,
and the one who sings today is not with us,
he is against us.”

Concluding the poem, Vladimir Mayakovsky urged: “Tear the red wreath from the white master, people’s commissariat of education!”.

Shortly after the Council of People’s Commissars stripped Chaliapin of the title of People’s Artist of the Republic, he was called to Granel Street, to the Soviet embassy in Paris. There, Ambassador Christian Rakovsky announced to the artist that he had been deprived of Soviet citizenship, while, as Rakovsky himself later recalled, Fedor Ivanovich genuinely sobbed.

10 years after all these tragic events, in May 1937, Chaliapin was diagnosed with leukemia. On April 12, 1938, the great singer died in Paris. Until the end of his life, Chaliapin remained a Russian citizen – he did not accept foreign citizenship, he dreamed of being buried in his homeland. His wish was fulfilled by the writer Yulian Semyonov, the ashes of the singer were transported to Moscow and on October 29, 1984 were buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.

Sergei Ishkov.

Photo ruskino.ru