Life (biography). Sergei Dovlatov, children Sergei Dovlatov daughter Maria Pekurovskaya: chronology of Sergei Dovlatov’s love relationships

Despite the difficult personal life of the prose writer, Elena is the one who remained with Dovlatov in immigration until the death of the writer.

Elena was born in 1939 in Leningrad. The girl's father went to war in the Marine Corps and returned disabled. Military service deprived my father of the opportunity to obtain a visa and travel abroad in the future.

When the war ended, Elena went to school. Then she turned seven years old. After finishing my studies, I worked in different positions.

Career

In 1965, Elena met Sergei Dovlatov, and a little later she met the writer’s mother. Nora Sergeevna realized that the girl was literate, and invited Elena to take the exam for the position of reader. The girl correctly spelled the word “corridor” without two “r”s and got the job.

Elena Dovlatova worked with Sergei’s mother for 13 years. During this time, she and the writer had a daughter, Ekaterina. But in 1978, Elena and Katya emigrated. First, the woman and her daughter spent some time in Italy, then went to New York for permanent residence.

Soon Elena got a job at New Journal, whose editor was Roman Gulya. But she did not occupy this place for long. Then she started working at New Russian Word. Here Elena’s career biography turned out just fine. A year after arriving in New York, Dovlatov and his mother joined Elena and Katya.

Since 1980, Sergei Dovlatov began publishing the New American magazine. The publication became a competitor to the newspaper where Elena worked. Conditions were created for the woman under which Dovlatova had to resign.

Personal life

Living with Sergei Dovlatov was difficult. The couple met when the writer had an affair with Asya Pekurovskaya. Elena and Dovlatov first met on a trolleybus. Then they drove together for two stops, and then walked along the same street for some time. Elena was heading to visit the artist, and Dovlatov was going home. For three years, young people met each other on the street. When Sergei came on leave from the army, they accidentally ran into each other near the Sever cafe. Since then, the girl’s difficult relationship with the prose writer began.

In 1966, Elena and Sergei had a daughter, Katya, but only in 1968 did he divorce his wife Asya. After the birth of their daughter, the couple moved to live with Nora Sergeevna. In 1995, Ekaterina came to Moscow and stayed to live in the capital.

Sergei married Elena in 1969. A year later, Dovlatov had a second daughter from Pekurovskaya. The girl was named Maria. Masha saw her father for the first time only at his funeral. In 1973, Asya immigrated to America and took her daughter with her.

In 1971, Sergei filed for divorce from Elena Dovlatova. Until the end of his life, the writer could not decide which of the two women he loved more.

In 1972, Sergei left for Tallinn. There he met Tamara Zibunova, with whom he stayed in an apartment. In 1975, she gave birth to the writer’s daughter Alexandra. That same year, Dovlatov returned to Leningrad.

Elena took a long time to decide to emigrate. But when the day of departure was set, obstacles began to arise. First Katya was sick, then Elena herself, then Katya again. And a couple of days before departure, Dovlatova broke her arm. She left the USSR with a plaster cast.

When Sergei and Nora Sergeevna arrived in America, Elena met them at the station. At first, Dovlatov perceived his wife as an American woman. They again began to live together with Elena and Ekaterina.

At first, the family settled in a private house, but then moved to an apartment in Queens. Over time, living conditions improved. Elena Dovlatova, in exile, gave birth to a son, Nikolai, a prose writer, on February 23, 1984 (according to some sources, December 23, 1981). American baby name is Nicholas Dawley.

In 2001, the book “Sergey Dovlatov - Igor Efimov” was published. Epistolary novel." Efimov had long wanted to publish a novel, but publishing houses refused him. Only the Zakharov publishing house agreed to release the book.

Dovlatov bequeathed the copyright to Elena’s work, and she knew that the writer was against the publication of this correspondence. As a result, the woman achieved a ban on further publications of the book. But the circulation of 15,000 copies could no longer be canceled.

In September 2007, in the northern capital, a plaque in memory of Sergei Dovlatov was opened on the house in which he lived with Elena. In honor of the event, Dovlatova and her daughter came to St. Petersburg.

Elena Dovlatova now

Now Elena Dovlatova is retired and lives in America. She loves to relax and does it well. The prose writer’s wife is connected with her old work only by one customer, for whom she periodically prints text.

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Now it’s hard to imagine that in our homeland there were times when a talented person was not only not encouraged to engage in creativity, at least morally, and not just financially, but moreover, they were also kicked out of their own country, from the life to which they I'm used to it. However, these times are not so distant, and there are, as it turns out, a great many people like this. Among them is the talented writer Sergei Dovlatov, whose popularity is only growing year by year. He finally became a Russian writer, something he had dreamed of all his life. True, to great regret, this happened after the death of the author of the books. Naturally, readers are curious to know the details of the personal life of the person whose books they read. Therefore, this article is devoted to one of the facets (as it seems to us, very important) of private life - children of Sergei Dovlatov.

As it turned out, the famous writer was a good father, caring and caring for his children. He was amazed by the defenselessness and gullibility that permeated the relationship of his small extensions to himself - a big and strong man. True, not all of Sergei Dovlatov’s offspring received such tenderness and care.

In the photo - Ekaterina Dovlatova with her mother

The most important woman in the writer’s life was his second wife Elena. It was she who gave Sergei Dovlatov his first daughter Ekaterina, and a little later - already in American emigration - and his son Nikolai. The writer’s daughter Ekaterina is already 49 years old. She spent almost her entire adult life in the United States of America, where she emigrated with her mother at the age of 12. Then their father and grandmother came to visit them. Although before this, relationships in the family were very difficult, the parents even separated for some time and ceased to consider themselves a family, yet even during this period (which occurred while they were still living in Leningrad) they lived under the same roof. And forced to emigrate, Sergei Dovlatov finally returned to his wife, which resulted in the birth of a son in February 1984. The writer’s family still lives in America, occasionally traveling to their historical homeland for the next event in honor of their father and ex-husband. Katya recalls how at the age of 15, wanting to spend as much time as possible with her daughter and at the same time give her the opportunity to earn extra money, Sergei Dovlatov accepted her into the staff of the New American magazine as a translator. The writer’s adult daughter cannot remember a single day or case when her father punished her.

In the photo - Sergei Dovlatov with his son

Life is such that in the break between the birth of two children by his legal wife, Sergei Dovlatov, it turns out, had two more daughters. The first mother is the writer's first wife, Asya Pekurovskaya. Maria (that’s her daughter’s name) is now 45 years old. True, due to the rather free lifestyle that her mother led, there is an opinion that Maria’s father could also be the writer Vasily Aksyonov. Sergei Dovlatov himself learned about the existence of his daughter only in the 18th year of her life, but he reacted to this news with coolness, apparently for the same reason that there are now disputes regarding paternity. The writer Tamara Zibunova gave birth to a second illegitimate daughter, with whom he, along with his eldest daughter and mother, spent the summer of 1974 after a quarrel with his wife. The result of this pastime was a girl named Alexandra, who is now 40 years old. True, nothing else from her biography is known.
More interesting things in the section.

Dovlatov Sergei Donatovich (1941 - 1990)

Leningrad, 1978. There was a long line at the beer stall on the corner of Belinsky and Mokhovaya early in July morning. Mostly they were stern men in gray jackets and padded jackets. Only Peter I stood out in his vestments, standing modestly in the crowd of sufferers. The emperor was dressed in full uniform: a green camisole, a cocked hat with a feather, high boots, gloves with bells, sand pants with braid. The black mustache on his suspiciously ruddy face sometimes twitched impatiently. Meanwhile, the queue lived its daily life.

I'm standing behind the bald one. The king is behind me. And you will be behind the king...

Everything was explained simply: in the guise of a monarch, journalist and writer Sergei Dovlatov wormed his way into the people. Wiggling his toes in his wet boots, he terribly regretted that he had agreed to star in an amateur film from his friend Nikolai Schlippenbach. He did not hide the fact that he called Sergei solely because of his height - ninety-three meters. But the self-taught actor had plenty of time for filming: he was kicked out of work everywhere, no one was waiting at home. His wife Lena and daughter Katya have already left the USSR.

Schlippenbach conceived a provocation: he decided to pit Leningrad inhabitants against the founder of the city. And capture it all with a hidden camera. But the plan failed. Tempered by the absurdity of Soviet reality, citizens reacted sluggishly to the Tsar-Father.

Dovlatov, already in exile, will turn his filming experience into a story. And at that moment I still didn’t know that I would soon find myself abroad with a single suitcase in my hands, on the lid of which there was a half-erased hooligan inscription from the days of the pioneer camp - “shit cleaner.” I didn’t know that I would become the editor-in-chief of an American Russian-language newspaper. That his books will not only be published, but also translated - even into Japanese. And the stories will be published in the prestigious American magazine The New Yorker. Which, by the way, will be congratulated by the classic of American literature Kurt Vonnegut, who has never received this honor.

Sergei Dovlatov and Kurt Vonnegut 1982
Photo by Nina Alovert

However, this will not bring joy to Sergei Dovlatov. “I have never met a person who was so unhappy every minute,” wrote classmate and friend, writer Samuel Lurie, about him. - At the same time, he is invariably witty and ready for fun. Sergei played a red-haired clown, but at heart he always remained a white clown.” This same strange character trait extended to his relationships with women.



In a New York hospital

“I woke up feeling like I was in trouble.”

“The poet Okhapkin decided to get married. Then he kicked the bride out. Motives:
“She, you know, walks slowly, and most importantly, she eats every day!”

This is a sketch from Dovlatov’s book “Solo on Underwood”. A quarter of a century before its publication, Seryozha Dovlatov, a student at the Faculty of Philology at Leningrad University, had a much more romantic attitude towards family ties.

“I remember waiting for love, literally every second. Like at the airport, where you are waiting for a stranger. You stay in sight so that he can come up and say: “It’s me,” he recalled about that time.

"Two amazing fools..."

There are three people on the landing of an old Tallinn wooden house - a young pretty woman, a huge brunette and ... an absolutely naked pot-bellied old man.

Uncle Sasha, can you borrow a drink until tomorrow? – the young lady politely asks the naked man in the doorway.

Tomushka, dear, you know, I will always help you out. But in a rare case, there is nothing. He drank it all himself, a bitter drunkard. You see for yourself!

The girl was a modest resident of the Estonian capital, Tamara Zibunova, a former student at the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Tartu. Once in Leningrad, at one of the parties, she accidentally met Sergei Dovlatov. For the writer, the fleeting meeting was enough of a reason for him to drop in at night on her arrival in Tallinn. Of course, he called first.

Tamara, you probably remember me. I’m so big, black, I look like an apricot merchant...

The guest appeared drunk and demanded that the banquet be continued. But the neighbor, an underground vodka dealer, did not help.

With daughter Katya in the Pushkin Nature Reserve, 77

Kate
2011

And then Dovlatov, stunned by the nude scene, invited the hospitable hostess to the most fashionable Tallinn restaurant, Mundi Bar. After all, he had a fortune in his pocket - thirty rubles!

He asked to stay for one night, but he stayed that way,” Tamara recalled. - At the same time, almost every day a drunk came and started pestering. This categorically did not suit me. But Sergei produced some kind of hypnotic impression. And he was an even more brilliant storyteller than a writer. A month later, I had to make a decision: either call the police, or start an affair with him.

Dovlatov remained. Although Tamara knew very well: in Leningrad the writer has a wife, Elena (second marriage, after a divorce from Asya), and a daughter, Katya, is growing up. However, the unsuccessful writer abandoned them, fleeing the city, where he was suffocating from the fact that they did not publish, did not notice, did not respect his talent. The despair was so great that Dovlatov... began working as a fireman in the boiler room. If only I could somehow get a hold of myself in Tallinn. And luck finally smiles on him - the Leningrad “emigrant” is hired as a member of the staff of the main newspaper of the city, “Soviet Estonia”.

With Tamara Zibunova, Tallinn, 74

Relations with superiors were not easy. “Let's discuss the details. Just don’t be rude... - Why be rude?.. It’s useless... - In fact, you’ve already been rude!” - this is how Dovlatov describes in the collection “Compromise” an everyday conversation with his editor Turonk. From time to time a sign appears on the doors of the literature and art department with the following couplet: “Two amazing fools / Lead our culture department.” Few people doubted the authorship.

But some of his poems caused a completely unpredictable reaction. In the section “For big and small” Sergei regularly posted rhyming text, from which Russian children learned a new Estonian word. Here's one of them.

I thank Tanya
For the gift Tanin.
I say “thank you” to her,
In Estonian it is “täenan”.

In the evening, a tearful Tanya from Delovye Vedomosti came to his department: “Seryozha, don’t believe me! He’s the one who’s throwing mud at me because I left him!” - "Who?!" - “Smulson! He was the one who told you that I rewarded him with clap?!”

Tamara Zibunova writes in her memoirs: “While working in the information department of the party newspaper, Sergei came up with the column “Guests of Tallinn.” At first I looked for real guests, and then I began to invent them. For example, “Aldona Olman, guest from Riga.” Aldona is the Doberman dog of my school friend Vitya Olman.”

But the demand for his publications is high, despite the “low moral level” and regular drinking. “Dovlatov can write talentedly about all sorts of nonsense,” the editors say condescendingly. Further more. He was entrusted with composing a letter on behalf of the Estonian milkmaid Linda Peips to Brezhnev himself!

He receives, without straining, 250 rubles - a very decent salary for those times. The first book in his life, “Five Corners,” should be published soon. And next to you is a close, understanding person. Not everyone can withstand the master of artistic expression!

With his wife Elena

“Seryozha lived according to literary laws,” Zibunova recalled. - When he woke up, he turned people towards him so that they fit into the plots he had invented for that day. Today I am a Turgenev woman or the wife of a Decembrist. And tomorrow – the colonel’s always well-fed daughter.

Everything collapsed overnight... During a search, Dovlatov’s “Zone” manuscript was found at the residence of a local dissident. The absurdity was that the work was openly lying in several publishing houses, awaiting reviews. But, since she was involved in the case, she ended up in the KGB. The manuscript was banned. And Dovlatov was forced to write a statement of his own free will. The layout of his long-awaited first book, Five Corners, was scattered...

On September 8, 1975, Tamara Zibunova gave birth to a daughter, who was named Sasha. On this occasion, the unemployed Dovlatov went on a drinking binge. Once, completely drunk, he almost drowned in the fountain under the windows of the maternity hospital: he was saved by Tamara’s mother and grandfather, who, fortunately, were nearby.

Evgeny Rein and Sergey Dovlatov

-Are you crazy? – the excited Estonian doctor said to Tamara. “You can’t be discharged, I just saw your husband!”
- Doctor, I just need to stop all this.

That same year, Sergei Dovlatov returned to Leningrad, to his family. Tamara put an end to their three-year relationship. He will send her letters from America until the end of his days, beginning with the words: “Dear Tomochka!”

"Pale, with Mongolian eyes"

- Dovlatov’s wife is something extraordinary! I must admit, I’ve never met anyone like that even on the subway!

Such a “flattering” description of the writer’s wife Elena, according to the book “Solo on Underwood,” was given by the simple-minded graduate student-philosopher Volodya Gubin.

Was that your wife? I didn't recognize her. Apologize to her. I like her. So inconspicuous...

Elena and Sergey Dovlatov
NY. 1985-1986
Photo from the Dovlatov family archive

And this is a quote from “Branch”. The words belong to the fatal beauty with whom the author once had an affair. (The beauty suspiciously resembles Asya Pekurovskaya).

“Thin, pale, with Mongolian eyes. The look is cold and hard, like the corner of a suitcase” - this is how Dovlatov, already on his own behalf, describes his first acquaintance with Elena in the story “Ours”.

After a stormy party, Sergei allegedly discovered a stranger in his apartment the next morning, sleeping on the next sofa. As pajamas, the guest used the owner's army tunic with a sports badge attached. The unperturbed young lady complained that he was very prickly and did not let her sleep.

“He can be understood,” the owner of the house frankly admitted.

True, Elena herself claims that Sergei... first spoke to her after accidentally bumping into her on a trolleybus. But their mutual friends agree that he very accurately conveys the character of the main woman of his life:

“Lena was incredibly silent and calm. It was not the painful silence of a broken loudspeaker. And not the menacing calm of an anti-tank mine. It was the silent calm of a root, indifferently listening to the noise of tree foliage...”

“I know why you continue to live with me,” she serenely told her unlucky husband. – You’re just too lazy to buy a folding bed...

Only such a wife could tolerate the writer Dovlatov for more than twenty years, enduring with rare composure his drunkenness, infidelity, periods of total poverty and the birth of children on the side.

“Lena was not interested in my stories. I’m not even sure that she had a good idea where I worked. I only knew that I was writing,” Dovlatov said about the beginning of their complex relationship in the story “Suitcase.” Although later it was she who would personally type out the complete collection of his works on a typewriter.

Elena Borisovna first worked in a hairdressing salon. Then the writer’s mother, Nora Sergeevna, helped her master the profession of a proofreader. Which would come in very handy for her in America, when Sergei started publishing his own newspaper in New York.

Nora Sergeevna Dovlatova, Kolya Dovlatov, Elena Dovlatova
New York, 1983

Sergei Dovlatov with his son Kolya, New York

In 1976, Dovlatov’s stories were published in the West in the magazines “Continent” and “Time and We”. In Leningrad he instantly became a peson non grata. The writer was severely beaten and imprisoned for 15 days for allegedly throwing an officer down the stairs. “If this were true, they would even give you seven years!” - they cynically explained to him at the department.

Against the backdrop of all these events, Elena resolutely stated that she must think about the future of their daughter. Her firm decision to emigrate shocked the disgraced writer.

“The day of departure has arrived. A crowd gathered at the airport. Mainly my friends who like to drink. We said goodbye. Lena looked completely unperturbed. One of my relatives gave her a black and brown fox. For a long time I then dreamed of the grinning fox face... My daughter was wearing clumsy Skorokhodov shoes. She looked confused. That year she was completely ugly,” he recalled. On August 24, 1978, at Pulkovo airport, the writer himself boarded the Leningrad-Vienna plane, never to return to his homeland again...

Sergey Dovlatov and Peter Weil

...August in New York in 1990 turned out to be very hot, but it was easier in the suburbs. In the shadow of a small house, on a bench he had put together with his own hands, sat an absolutely gray-haired, tired man. He bought the dacha just a few months ago, personally planting three birch trees on the plot and even hanging doors in the house without outside help. True, none of them closed... 12 years of emigration dispelled all illusions about the “Western paradise”. Here, too, there were foolish bosses who ruined his favorite brainchild - the popular newspaper “Russian American”. For example, the last owner of the newspaper, a devout Jew, forbade the mention of pork in the articles, recommending its replacement with stuffed pike. There was also censorship: the New Yorker bashfully removed a comical episode from his story, which featured... a rubber penis.

The books were published, but only literary critics and residents of the Russian-speaking area of ​​Brighton Beach could appreciate them.

Viktor Nekrasov kisses Sergei Dovlatov
(as edited by The New American).

“I have been waiting for something all my life: a matriculation certificate, losing my virginity, marriage, a child, my first book, minimal money, but now everything has happened, there is nothing more to wait for, there are no sources of joy. My main mistake is in the hope that, having become legalized as a writer, I will become cheerful and happy. This did not happen,” he wrote bitterly to his friend.

The man sadly thought that soon he would have to go to the city center, hot from the sun, to meet the next guests from Russia. With the beginning of perestroika they became more frequent. “It’s no longer friends of friends, or even friends of friends, who are coming to me, but strangers of strangers!” - he lamented. However, he was unable to refuse.
A handsome fair-haired boy with long bangs jumped out onto the porch, and the gray-haired man’s heart warmed. Kolya’s birth in 1984 almost coincided with the birth of the story “The Reserve”. The man did not yet know that in Russia this would be one of his most popular works. At the very end of the story, the desperate protagonist receives a call from his wife from abroad.

“I just asked:
- We'll meet Again?
- Yes... If you love us...
- Love is for young people. For military personnel and athletes... But here everything is much more complicated. This is no longer love, but fate...”

The man's mood improved. He stood up cheerfully, patted the boy on the head and energetically went to the car...

Sergey Dovlatov, Elena Dovlatova, Vasily Aksenov. Meeting V. Aksenov at Kennedy Airport. NY. 1980.
Photo by Natasha Sharymova

The last major Russian writer of the late 20th century, Sergei Dovlatov, died in New York on August 24, 1990. This happened during another long drinking binge, which came after a meeting with guests from Moscow. The heart stopped. On this occasion, his close friend Igor Efimov spoke as follows:

Whatever is written on his death certificate, the literary diagnosis should be: “Died of inconsolable and undeserved self-dislike.”
Mikhail PANYUKOV

From left to right: Joseph Brodsky, Natasha Sharymova, Sergei Dovlatov and other visitors

Yuz Aleshkovsky and Sergey Dovlatov
Forest Hills, New York. September 3, 1980.
Photo by Nina Alovert

Joseph Brodsky and Sergei Dovlatov. Brodsky received the honorary title “Citizen of New York” on this day.
NY. December 3, 1985. Photo by Nina Alovert

Sergei Dovlatov and Joseph Brodsky. I. Brodsky's first performance before the emigrant community at the RR Gallery on Mercer Street, Soho, New York. 1979.
Photo by Nina Alovert

Sergei Dovlatov with his family.
Queens, New York. 1987
From the archives of the Dovlatov family

Sergey Dovlatov – tour guide. Mikhailovskoe. 1976.
Photo by P. G. Gorchakov. From the archive of Natasha Sharymova

Dovlatov və Petr Vail

New Year's Eve
Leningrad. 1947
From the archives of the Dovlatov family

Dovlatov in New York 1987

Joseph Brodsky and Sergei Donatovich