She abandoned children, a scientific career, music for his sake. He, after 25 years of living together, almost as much preferred not to see and not to remember her. She is Natalya Reshetovskaya, he is the great Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn. This article is about their acquaintance, romantic relationships, his betrayals and her devotion to the last breath.
Chekhovskaya girl
Natalya Alekseevna Reshetovskaya was born on February 26, 1919 in Novocherkassk. Her mother was a teacher, and her father left with the White Army and nothing is known about his fate. In 1926, she and her mother moved to Rostov-on-Don. Then she graduated from a regular and music school and entered the chemistry department of Molotov Rostov State University.
It was at the university that the first meeting of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Natalia Reshetovskaya took place. He studied at the physics department. In the student group Natasha, this fragile young lady with big eyes, who wrote poetry and played Chopin, was a universal favorite. But it was Solzhenitsyn who, in the second year, enrolled with her in a ballroom dancing club, and there, under the rhythms of foxtrot, tango and waltz, their romance began.
Uneasy marriage
In the fourth year, in 1940, Natalya Reshetovskaya and Solzhenitsyn got married. In a small rented apartment near the university, their happiness lasted only a year. And then he went to the front, and she stayed in Rostov and entered graduate school. She waited and worked. In 1944, she defended her thesis already at Moscow State University, where she was transferred to graduate school of the chemical faculty.
When she was diagnosed with uterine cancer, he was not there. Since February 1945, Solzhenitsyn was arrested, and Natalia, who had difficulty surviving the operation and was forever deprived of the opportunity to have children, went on rare dates with him. This went on for 6 years.
Unreliable spouse
Immediately after the war, Natalya Reshetovskaya, the wife of Solzhenitsyn, who was convicted under political article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, was “asked” from Moscow University. He had 8 years of camps and eternal exile, she returned to Rostov to his mother.
Natalya Alekseevna works at an agricultural institute, is in correspondence with her beloved, but her hopes for a happy family are melting away. And here in her life appeared gallant, many years older than her, a boyfriend - associate professor of the local medical university Vsevolod Somov. Either the hopelessness broke her, or the fact that Vsevolod had two wonderful sons, and she could never have children, but Natalya Reshetovskaya filed for divorce.
Their marriage lasted 8 years (from 1948 to 1956). She became the head of the department of chemistry, Vsevolod and the sons of the soul did not cherish the exquisite Natalia. But the love of her life has called, and she will give up everything.
Solzhenitsyn's wife again
In 1956, the Supreme Court of the USSR released Alexander Solzhenitsyn for lack of corpus delicti. He has two operations to remove cancers in the testicles, years of camps and works written in custody and memorized by him. Solzhenitsyn was sent to the village of Miltsevo (Vladimir region), where he teaches mathematics and physics in high school. Here Solzhenitsyn was visited by the first wife Natalya Reshetovskaya in November 1956. And stayed. And on February 2, 1957, she again became his official wife.
Companion and earner in the family
Natalya Reshetovskaya has always been the main money earner in their family - she is an assistant professor with a salary of three hundred rubles, he is a teacher at a rate of 60 rubles. The family moved to Ryazan, she was his secretary and spent hours rewriting his manuscripts. He pestered her with domesticity and the eternal saving of time and money. They did not go to theaters, rarely received guests, but worked and wrote a lot.
Solzhenitsyn greets Nikita Khrushchev and the novel “One Day of Ivan Denisovich” (1959) is published. From that moment, Alexander Solzhenitsyn became a pop star of the time. Publications, letters, fans and meetings - all this has become a lot.
Another Natalya in the life of a writer
Glory spoiled the family for long. By 1963, when the writer was not awarded the Lenin Prize, his career began to decline. And then there was the confiscation of the archive (1965) and the active dissident activity of the writer. And treason, treason.
And in August 1968, another Natalya, Svetlova, appeared in the life of the writer. Reshetovskaya suffered. In April 1970, on the 25th anniversary of marriage, Solzhenitsyn still raises a toast for life with her to the grave, and after a few months leaves for pregnant Svetlova. For Natalia Reshetovskaya, it was a blow that almost led her to suicide. She was saved, and she all hoped for his return.
During the divorce proceedings, for which Natalya Alekseevna did not give consent, Svetlova gave birth to 3 children, and Solzhenitsyn hated his first wife. And, in the end, on June 20, 1972, a divorce was filed.
And that day she understood - she is no longer for her beloved.
Strikethrough wife
After the divorce, everyone healed their own lives. But Natalia wrote memoirs and gave interviews in which she talked about him, but he forgot about her existence and avoided meeting her. Her apartment resembled a museum in his name, the memoirs of Natalia Reshetovskaya “In a dispute over time” (1975) were seen, she was accepted into the Union of Writers of Russia (1996). This book about their acquaintance and marriage quarreled the former spouses forever. It was published in 20 countries and has been tested by the KGB. In addition, Reshetovskaya married Konstantin Semenov and moved to Moscow, which Solzhenitsyn considered her a betrayal and work for the KGB.
He did not mention her name and threatened the court if she again began to quote him in her memoirs. And so it went on for nearly 25 years. On her 80th birthday, Svetlova brought a basket of roses and repeated threats from so dear to Reshetovskaya man. And he called her after his return to Russia once and promised to rehabilitate in his books, but only after her death. She forgave them.
Last years
According to her, she never stopped thinking about her beloved Sasha. She kept notes, correspondence, and personal items. And she kept waiting for him to come. Even kept for him a spare key to the apartment.
She also remembered and wrote memoirs. One of the last works, which remained unfinished, “Love-cripple”, is a monument to all those wives who remained on the other side of the barbed wire and waited, no matter what.
She agreed with the historian and writer Nikolai Vasilievich Ledovsky and together they wrote memoirs, collected and sorted archival documents, and planned a network of museums.
And although Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn paid expenses and a nurse for his first wife, when she broke her thigh neck and could no longer get out of bed (in 2000), but he never came to her.
