On November 23, 1981, a certain Maria Andreevna Popova was buried at the Novokuntsevo cemetery in Moscow. As the 86-year-old woman bequeathed, with military honors. To the sound of gun shots, the coffin was escorted by the daughter of the deceased and well-known theater and film artists. Direct relationship The deceased never had any connection to the world of cinema. However, until her death, she had to “play the role” for which Joseph Stalin personally “approved” her.
The first version of the film "Chapaev" and simply Maria
In the early thirties, Stalin was brought to watch the film “Chapaev,” directed by the Vasilievs. The leader did not like the picture, he called the directors to his place. Joseph Vissarionovich suggested that they introduce a female fighter into the film, as well as indicate a “romantic line.”
The Vasiliev brothers, who were actually just namesakes, got down to business.
All the women who fought in the legendary 25th Chapaev Rifle Division were invited to the Red Army Museum. They were asked to tell stories from front-line life for a future film. There were a lot of women gathered, their stories were recorded by a whole squad of stenographers. But only the stories told by Maria Popova, a soldier of the Chapaev division, were selected. In the future, when writing the script, the wife of Commissioner Dmitry Furmanov, Anna, will call her by her name.
So easily Maria will become Anka the machine gunner.
"She will be the heroine"
The film about the heroes of the Civil War, released on screens across the country in 1934, was a tremendous success. His characters were perceived by the audience as real people, all the events seemed genuine. Spectators watched the film more than a dozen times. However, like Stalin himself, who was interested in the military exploits of Maria Popova.
“Mom said that he asked the Vasiliev directors if it really happened. “Yes,” they answered. He then said: “she will be the heroine,” recalls Maria Popova’s daughter Zinaida Mikhailovna.
Maria Popova herself at that time, knowing nothing, lived in... Berlin. And when she was called to Moscow to be declared a national treasure, she was very scared.
"Masha, rub your eyes with onion"
The future "Anka the machine gunner" was born in 1896 in the Samara province. At the age of 16 she was married to Ivan Popov. But she and her husband did not live long. Ivan Popov died shortly after the wedding.
Photo: from the personal archive of the Popov family
“When they buried her husband (he, by the way, was not my father), the neighbors whispered: Masha, you should at least rub your eyes with onions so that there will be tears,” says Zinaida Popova. “He, as my mother recalled, often suffered from stomach pains And during another acute attack he died. And I still don’t know who my real father is. My mother took many secrets with her to the grave, including the secret about my father.”
After the death of her husband, Popova got a job as a nanny in a hospital. Then she worked at the Samara Pipe Factory. Here I joined the party. When the Civil War began, Maria took part in the battles for Samara.
“In 1918, when the White Czechs took the city with the support of the White Guards, my mother was captured, but she and several other soldiers managed to escape,” says Zinaida Popova. “Somewhere in the steppe they came across the advanced units of the 25th Chapaev Division.” .
In the division, Maria Popova initially served as an assistant doctor. In one of the battles, she crawled up to a soldier wounded in the arm, and he literally forced her to fire a machine gun, because he himself could not press two triggers at the same time. For this fight, Chapaev awarded her a watch. He later decided that Maria Popova’s place was in horse reconnaissance.
Together with Vasily Ivanovich, they fought for a year - until Chapaev’s death.
“Chapaev could not stand the presence of female non-fighters in his division”
“It must be said right away that Vasily Ivanovich could not stand the presence of female non-fighters in his division,” says the granddaughter of the legendary division commander Tatyana Chapaeva. “He also quarreled with Furmanov precisely because he brought his wife Anna to the front. Vasily Ivanovich came in to the commissar’s hut and saw that some woman was lying in bed. Vasily Ivanovich demanded that Commissar Furmanov send Anna Nikitichna to the rear.”
Photo from the personal archive of Tatyana Chapaeva
Both Chapaev and Furmanov almost simultaneously sent telegrams to Frunze that they did not want to serve together. But the commission, headed by Kuibyshev himself, recalled Furmanov.
“They will serve and fight with their grandfather for only 4 months. Anna Nikitichna will be responsible for cultural and propaganda activities in the division all this time. So, in principle, she saw everything that happened at the front with her own eyes. And she cannot be called an abstract screenwriter film," says Tatyana Chapaeva.
As for the film itself, Tatyana Chapaeva believes that over the past twenty years, both real characters, and about the actors who played the main roles, “so much outright nonsense and nonsense has been written” that sometimes “it just makes your hair stand on end.” Chapaev’s granddaughter is also annoyed by the merciless exploitation of the division commander’s name, be it advertising or computer “shooters”.
"If we talk about the nonsense that last years managed to write and reproduce, then I undoubtedly give first place to the one who came up with the idea that Vasily Ivanovich and Anna Furmanova were lovers,” says Tatyana Chapaeva indignantly. - Secondly, to the one who got it from somewhere that supposedly Pyotr Isaev (Petka) a year later, when the soldiers held a memorial for Chapai, shot himself. With the motivation that it was he who did not save his commander. There is another very common myth. It’s as if the wife of the actor Leonid Kmit, who played the role of Petka, was so jealous of her husband of the movie Anka that she committed suicide.”
Tatyana Chapaeva added that in fact Pyotr Isaev was not the peasant simpleton as shown in the film. This highly educated officer never served as Chapaev’s orderly, but was a special ensign important matters, and subsequently the head of the communications brigade. In principle, there could be no love between him and Anka - Maria Andreevna Popova. And in real life It was she who taught him how to use a machine gun.
“I have been friends with Maria Andreevna’s daughter Zinaida Mikhailovna for many years. I often visited them in their house on Tverskaya. Maria Andreevna always seemed to me a very calm, reasonable person. Of course, I asked her a lot about my grandfather. After all, she, who served in The reconnaissance company of the Chapaev division, unlike me, knew my grandfather personally,” said Tatyana Chapaeva.
“He has a representative appearance, but still doesn’t know how to dress himself like a woman with taste.”
After the Civil War, Popova studied at Moscow State University at the Faculty of Soviet Law. And in 1931 she was sent to Berlin, appointing her as an assistant in the legal department of the trade mission.
A young lawyer, Maria Popova, arrived in Berlin wearing a colorful jacket, fastened with two large pins instead of buttons. This is how she appeared for the first time before Evgenia Alliluyeva, head of the personnel department of the Trade Mission.
Photo: from the personal archive of the Popov family
“Of course, a devoted comrade to us. In January 1931, after graduating from the Faculty of Law of Moscow State University, she was sent to work at the Soviet Trade Mission in Berlin. She speaks little German. She knows how to treat people. She has a representative appearance, but she still doesn’t know how to dress herself like a woman with taste.”
From the very first meeting, Popova and Alliluyeva became friends. Maria confessed to her that she was pregnant, whispered the name of the child’s father, and Evgenia kept this secret forever.
Maria learned to dress with taste from fashionista Evgenia Alliluyeva. By the time her daughter was born, she no longer stood out from the crowd of well-dressed Berlin Frau.
On a voluntary basis, Maria Popova was also appointed director of the club of the Soviet colony. All these positions provided opportunities for contacts and a certain freedom of movement. Maria Andreevna helped sent compatriots adapt to Germany and brought them together with the right people.
From the profile of Maria Andreevna Popova, an employee of the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army Headquarters:
“In 1931-1934, she worked at the Soviet Trade Mission in Berlin as a referent and chairman of the joint committee of trade unions of the Sovkolonia. An intelligent, fairly theoretically trained corporate employee. A social activist.”
“I don’t know what my mother did in Germany, but I saw her so rarely that I called her “Frau Popova.” And “mummy” - “Mutillein” - she called her nanny Ani. I spoke German and thanks to the nanny I was a very politicized child, - recalls Zinaida Popova. - Nanny voted for Hitler in the 1933 elections, because he gave everyone a job. She went to almost all the rallies, and she took me with her in a stroller. I told everyone: mouth is front, mouth is front! when the fascists came to power, I also told everyone to put their mouths to front!”
“Did your mother bring a machine gun with her?”
Soviet newspapers quickly picked up the news of real prototype The machine gunners made Maria Popova a real heroine.
Popova did not object: fame pleasantly tickled her pride. Of course, some of the fighting friends were upset. Many risked their lives no less than Popova, but she alone got the glory.
However, Maria had no time for this. She received a new assignment.
From the profile of Maria Andreevna Popova, an employee of the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army Headquarters:
“In November 1935, she was recruited to work in the RU of the Red Army. From May 1936 to May 1937, she was on a business trip to Stockholm through Intourist. She has a lot of practical intelligence and savvy. She works hard on the Swedish language. She has a calm, self-possessed character.”
Residents of the Soviet settlement in Stockholm greeted Maria Popova as a heroine. One boy asked Zina: “Did your mother bring a machine gun with her?”
Maria Andreevna developed an almost domestic relationship with the USSR Ambassador to Sweden Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai. They were very friendly.
In May 1937, Popova was informed that her business trip to Stockholm was over. With heavy forebodings, Maria Andreevna returned to Moscow. But so far everything was going well. She had a job, she was given an apartment on Tverskaya.
"Only Trotskyists beat children"
One day the doorbell rang. The call was persistent. It turned out that the neighbors were complaining about their daughter.
Zina organized a rally in the yard and explained to the children that adults were now conducting an operation in the Arctic Ocean to rescue the “Papaninites.” “Polar explorers are freezing,” said Zina, “they need clothes.” The kids ran to the Moscow River and threw their coats onto the floating ice floes. Zina told them that the ice floes would certainly wash out into the ocean.
“Mother took an old soldier’s belt from the wall and spanked me. She asked: “Why aren’t you crying, you bastard?” And I said: “I won’t. Only Trotskyists beat children,” recalls Zinaida Popova.
"Hero Chapaev walked through the Urals..."
Song "Hero Chapaev walked through the Urals"
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Before the Great Patriotic War, arrests of fighters of the Chapaev division began.
Ivan Kutyakov was killed by the Chekists - he commanded the division after the death of Chapaev. When they came for Kutyakov, he shouted that he would not be released alive and began shooting at the guards. They returned fire.
Popova was not touched in those years. And in 1942 she was again called to the front in the propaganda brigade.
Maria Andreevna took her daughter to her relatives in Kuibyshev, and she herself, as part of a lecture group, traveled to the fronts - raising the morale of the troops. After watching the film “Chapayev,” Maria Popova most often told the soldiers about the history of the creation of the song “Chapayev the Hero Walked Through the Urals.” She composed it after the death of the division commander.
One day, Alexander Alexandrov, the leader of the famous Red Banner Song and Dance Ensemble, heard the song. At his request, Maria Andreevna wrote a few more lines. “The Ural River is deep, the banks are steep, and the steppe is wide - that’s where our people beat the enemy.”
The war is over. Stalin died. The Khrushchev thaw began.
Sovremennik, CNN and the placebo effect
Friends of Maria Andreevna’s daughter increasingly began to come to the Popovs’ apartment in house number six on Tverskaya. Zinaida Mikhailovna had just graduated from the Institute at that time international relations. In the future, she will become the editor of the Moscow bureau of CNN, and will work in the bureaus of the Los Angeles Times and the Japanese newspaper Mainichi.
And then she introduced her mother to the young artists of the Moscow Art Theater, who decided to create their own theater - Sovremennik. Zinaida will marry one of them, actor Igor Vasiliev.
At that time, little-known young and talented artists were rehearsing the play “Forever Alive”. Maria Andreevna let them in, allocating one of the rooms in her apartment for night rehearsals.
Many years later on front door entrance No. 8 in the house on Tverskaya there will be a sign that it was in Maria Andreevna Popova’s apartment that “in fact, the birth of future theater"Contemporary".
Of course, the youth pestered “Anka the Machine Gunner” with questions.
The story about the placebo effect, repeatedly told by Maria Andreevna, has always enjoyed constant success.
In the destroyed pharmacy of the small town, where the Chapaevites entered, there were two bags of soda. Nurse Popova loaded them onto a cart and brought them to the division. She cut the paper into strips, poured powder, rolled it up and wrote: “from the head”, “from the stomach” and distributed it to the fighters. It helped some.
The medical fame of the medical assistant Maria Popova then eclipsed the authority of the division doctor, who did not give such medicines.
The Chapaevites complained about the doctor to the division commander and cited Maria as an example.
The young artists laughed while listening to Maria Andreevna. She laughed with them. But it became more and more difficult to seem like a cheerful housewife.
Denunciation
In 1959, Popova was summoned to the party Central Committee. From her foreign outfits, Maria Andreevna chose the most formal one and went to Old Square. And when she returned, the housekeeper Marusya, who had served the Popovs for many years, sensing something was wrong, rushed to get medicine.
It turned out that several old Chapaevites wrote a letter to the Party Control Committee of the CPSU Central Committee, in which they reported that Maria Popova was actually Novikova, the daughter of kulaks from the village of Vyazovy Gai. That she fought on the side of the Whites, she was allegedly seen among the White Guards. And when the advantage is Civil War they began to take the Reds, forged a party card and came to the Chapaev division.
The main thing the signatories accused Popova of was: “She is not Anka.”
An employee of the Party Control Committee left Moscow on a special assignment to Maria Andreevna’s homeland - Kuibyshev, former Samara.
Still Anka the Machine Gunner
And then Maria Popova proved that she is still Anka the machine gunner.
Like in that battle with the Kappelites, in famous stage from the film about Chapaev, she decided to let her enemies get closer.
They began to appear in newspapers and magazines large quantities Interview with the famous Chapaevka Popova.
In them she said that she had never been the prototype of Anka the machine gunner, that this was a collective image. Maria Andreevna listed the names of her fighting friends who were worthy of no less glory than she was. Well, since Stalin called her Anka, she herself never claimed this. Opponents were confused.
And a man who had gone there on a special party assignment returned to Moscow from Kuibyshev. He worked conscientiously. The certificate submitted to the party Central Committee, a copy of which is still kept by the “daughter of Anka the machine gunner,” stated:
"Popova Maria Andreevna, a native of the village of Vyazov Gai, Samara province. Her maiden name was Golovin. Popova's father, a poor peasant Andrei Romanovich Golovin, was called up to serve in the Black Sea Fleet, became one of the first Russian military divers. His name is mentioned in the story Soviet writer Konstantin Paustovsky. During one of the dives he received decompression sickness, was demobilized and died when his daughter Maria Popova was 4 years old. Maria Popova's mother died when the girl was 8 years old.
Photo: from the personal archive of Tatyana Chapaeva
In the center in the bottom row is the daughter of V.I. Chapaev Klavdiya Chapaeva. In the upper one, Maria Andreevna Popova and D. Furmanov’s daughter Anna Furmanova
From this age, Maria Andreevna worked as a laborer for wealthy fellow villagers, including the kulaks Novikovs. Popova developed a close relationship with this family. It was they who were evacuated during the Great Patriotic War Popova's daughter Zinaida. And it was precisely as a relative of the Novikovs that Popova passed herself off when she tried to escape from white captivity in 1918. Information from a witness, Popova’s fellow soldier, that during interrogation by the White Czechs she called herself Novikova, is stored in the secret archives of the Red Army.
At the age of 16, Maria Andreevna was married to a poor fellow villager, Ivan Popov. But a few days after the wedding, the husband died of inflammation of the peritoneum.
Since 1914, Maria Popova has been working in Samara. In 1717 she joined the Red Guard and took part in battles on the Dutov Front. In 1918, she was awarded a ticket as a member of the Bolshevik Party. The ticket was presented by Nikolai Shvernik, a member of the party cell of the Samara Pipe Plant. As part of the Chapaev division since June 18. Popova repeatedly carried out important command assignments: she worked in the Bolshevik underground, and prevented a counter-revolutionary mutiny in the First Socialist Regiment of Military Sailors. She served in cavalry reconnaissance and at the same time performed the duties of a medical assistant.
A person of unparalleled personal courage: during battles she repeatedly took command of cavalry crews instead of commanders who died or fled from the battlefield. Wounded, shell-shocked. Awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
In 1924, Army Commander Frunze personally sent her to study at the workers' faculty of the Kharkov Medical Institute. In 1928 she entered the Moscow State University. Further life path Maria Popova is not interested in the investigation."
“All that’s left is movies and jokes”
Popova was again summoned to the Central Committee. She was received by the Chairman of the Central Committee of Party Control Nikolai Ivanovich Shvernik. The same Shvernik who once handed her a party card when she worked in Samara at a pipe factory.
“He said to his mother: well, Marusya, did they torture you? Calm down, you are acquitted on all counts,” recalls Zinaida Popova. “She wanted to answer him that he could have stopped this torment long ago, but she just waved her hand and left.” .
That same evening, a company of Chapaevites gathered for a traditional meeting in the house of Commissioner Furmanov’s daughter Anna. As always, Boris Babochkin, who played the role of the legendary division commander, was at Chapaev’s gatherings.
“Mom says: now I’ll tell you a joke. Petka comes to Chapaev and asks: Vasily Ivanovich, where is Anka? - Yes, there she is, lying on the stove with radiculitis. - Well, why couldn’t she find a Russian? - says Petka, - Zinaida Popova recalls her mother’s story. “Babochkin’s face wrinkled, he began to shout at his mother: “How dare you, Marusya, retell these nasty jokes? And my mother says: “Just think, what does it matter? All that’s left is movies and jokes.”
Maria Andreevna died in the winter of 1981. No matter how much her daughter asked, even before her death she never told her her father’s name.
A little later, in a notebook that always lay on her mother’s bedside table, Zinaida Mikhailovna found a slightly crumpled photograph of Maria Andreevna’s old front-line friend, People’s Commissar of Education Andrei Bubnov, who was shot in 1938.
Finding out the fate of the inheritance of a legendary woman
In mid-October, Zinaida Popova, the daughter of Anka the machine gunner, died in Moscow. The same Maria Andreevna Popova, who became the prototype of the heroine of the film “Chapaev” (see “By the way”). She was 84 years old. We saw Zinaida Mikhailovna off to last way only four people, not relatives.
A few days later, Popova’s former friend, artist Mikhail Safronov, raised the alarm. He stated that the new owners of the apartment took the entire family archive to the trash heap - documents, paintings by artist Yuri Bogatyrev, Vysotsky’s favorite sofa and many other memorabilia. Komsomolskaya Pravda decided to find out what happened to the legacy of Anka the machine gunner.
Soda for all diseases
Zinaida Popova died? I didn’t know... I haven’t talked to her for many years,” she says artistic director Theater "Sovremennik" Galina Volchek. - In 1956, Zina and her mother Maria Andreevna allowed us, aspiring artists - Oleg Efremov, Evgeny Evstigneev, Oleg Tabakov, Igor Kvasha, to rehearse in their apartment. Our entire first cast of the play “Forever Alive” rehearsed here. Sometimes they were delayed until the metro opened.
There was always something tasty in their house: cookies, sweets. Maria Andreevna was entitled to a special ration as an honored person. Of course, we didn’t come for the rations, but to listen to her stories. How she, a simple Volga girl, ended up in Chapaev’s division. I remember they told her that you would be a pharmacist, prescribing medicine to soldiers. She was indignant: “I don’t understand anything about medicine.” And Chapaev replied: “Nothing, go and figure it out.” In fact, there were no medicines at all. Then she mixed either soda or flour, made powders, and wrote: “from the head,” “from the stomach,” and so on. Prescribed for fighters. And they said that the medicine helps!
Was friends with Stalin's family
Maria Andreevna learned German well during her studies at Moscow State University,” continues Galina Volchek. - She was sent to work in Germany (at the Soviet trade mission, plus she was also a counterintelligence officer. - Ed.). Her daughter Zina was born in Berlin. She said that she and the family of Alliluyeva, Stalin’s wife, communicated and were friends... Then they lived in Sweden, where Zina studied in a French boarding house and learned several languages. There Maria Andreevna met and became friends with Alexandra Kollontai. The social circle of this family was amazing!
Zinaida Popova (photo on the left - as a child) recently died. She was 84 years old.
Photo: family archive.Chest of drawers with vodka for Efremov
Journalist Nadezhda Keller, who was friends with the daughter of Anka the machine gunner, recalled: “She carefully kept the fragments of her fairy-tale childhood: foreign invitations for “Miss Zina Popova”, letters (one was signed “from Aunt Kollontai”), antique trinkets, extravagant mother’s hats and gloves. The family was trimmed by the best tailors in Moscow. Zina brought fashionable items from abroad. She had a luxurious wardrobe..."
The family of Anka the machine gunner closely communicated with the descendants of Vasily Chapaev. We called one of the great-granddaughters of the legendary division commander, Evgenia Chapaeva.
“I visited their house,” says Evgenia Arturovna. - I saw photographs in which Maria Andreevna with different famous people- Voroshilov, Otto Yulievich Schmidt, Pamir explorer. Zina had a habit of keeping diaries - she wrote notes every day...
Zinaida Mikhailovna loved the bohemian life. There was an interesting story. Zina herself introduced her second husband, actor Igor Vasiliev, to her friend Lyuda, a manicurist. By that time she was already infatuated with someone else. And, so to speak, she handed her husband over “from hand to hand.” She divorced him, and then the three of them talked, Luda continued to do her manicure. Zina had affairs with different men, but she considered only her mother to be family. I didn't want to have children. She never gave birth...
Oleg Efremov also tried to marry Zina, he told KP former actor"Contemporary" Gennady Pechnikov. - He was loving. I remember the old chest of drawers in which Maria Andreevna kept the vodka she had saved for Efremov. Zina took care of everything connected with her mother, and did not throw anything out of the apartment even after her death.
"Hitler's illegitimate daughter"
Zina showed me the paintings and drawings that Bogatyrev gave her,” Petrunka Safronova told KP, ex-girlfriend Zinaida, mother of artist Mikhail Safronov. - Zinaida recalled how Bogatyrev (Popova arranged exhibitions for him. - Ed.) painted her portrait. She also scolded the artist for drawing the nose too big.
There were legends that Zina - illegitimate daughter Stalin and even Hitler. But she didn’t know for sure who her father was - her mother never told her anything.
Hundreds of people knew Zina! She communicated with Kirill Lavrov, Mikhail Kozakov, Oleg and Lisa Dal, Andrei Myagkov and many others. And none of those living today knew about her death! Even me. IN Lately new people appeared next to her, who did not allow anyone to approach her...
And they threw all Zina’s things and her diaries, Bogatyrev’s paintings, gifts out of the apartment into the trash! I personally saw how Zina’s things were taken out of the entrance and thrown into garbage containers. I recognized them. The sofa on which Vysotsky spent the night was broken, the chairs were broken. I wrote a statement to the police...
“I have the archive!”
The scandal surrounding the discarded archive was picked up by the media. And then... Conducting its own investigation, Komsomolskaya Pravda talked to a friend of the Popov family, Tatyana Chapaeva, the granddaughter of the legendary division commander. She stated her point of view on events. We do not undertake to claim that every word of hers is the truth. However, Chapaeva’s story shows that in the story of Anka the Machine Gunner’s property, not everything is so simple.
Why did you decide that things were thrown away? - says Tatyana Alexandrovna. - Personal archive Anki-machine gunners, something that is interesting from a historical point of view, is now with me. The will of Maria Andreevna’s daughter is to transfer everything to the Chapaev Museum in Pugachev, which is what I am going to do.
It is unclear where the paintings of actor Yuri Bogatyrev are now, which were taken out of the apartment in the house on Tverskaya.
Photo: KP Archive
When in In Moscow, 82-year-old Zinaida Popova, who considered herself the daughter of the German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, died; the media remembered and started talking about her mother.
Many Russian publications report this, copying the news without additional verification. The necropolis does not even have data, which publication is the primary source of this information.
As far as we know, Zinaida’s mother is Maria Popova- was a nurse in the Chapaev division, then studied at Moscow State University, at the same time receiving appropriate training, became an intelligence officer and was sent to the Soviet trade mission in Berlin, and then gradually introduced among the National Socialists of Germany, who in the 30s. were the closest allies of the USSR. She was well-known among the party leaders, who at that time were based in Bavaria, in Munich. While carrying out the tasks assigned to her, she had affairs with Nazi leaders.
She spent most of her time in Munich, where she met Hitler, who was just beginning to develop his ideas, and his closest like-minded people. She relaxed with them, walked, went to pubs where the Nazis gathered, and over time charmed the Fuhrer, who, as you know, had many mistresses. The Russian woman, who spoke fluent German, did not leave Hitler's close associates - Himmler, Goebbels and Goering - indifferent.
After some time, it turned out that Maria was pregnant, and when Hitler came to power, the Soviet authorities realized that it was unsafe to remain in Germany, and in 1936 she returned to the USSR with little Zina.
At home, she and her daughter almost fell under the rink of repression, but she was saved personally by Stalin, who created a kind of cult of “Anka the Machine Gunner” around the woman.
As he writes in his book “My Unknown Chapaev” Evgenia Chapaeva, great-granddaughter of the division commander, "once during the battle, a nurse from the Chapaev division Maria Popova crawled up to the old wounded machine gunner and offered to drag him to the infirmary. To which he categorically refused, moreover, he ordered the girl to shoot at the enemy instead of him. Maria recoiled in horror, waved her hands and began to make excuses, saying that I don’t know how to shoot a machine gun, and I’m afraid. Then the machine gunner took out his revolver, cocked the hammer and said: “If you don’t lie down next to the machine gun, if you don’t start shooting, I’ll shoot you like a dog.”
There was nothing to do. Popova I lay down, pressed the Maxim triggers, closed my eyes in fear and even turned away. And the machine gunner controlled the barrel of the machine gun with his healthy hand..."
This is how Anka the machine gunner appeared in the film “Chapaev”. The fact that she was named Anka is also not at all accidental. Was a film consultant Anna Furmanova- wife Dmitry Furmanov, division commissar and author of the novel "Chapaev", which glorified the division commander. She insisted that the machine gunner be named after her. By the way, from the diaries Furmanova, which at Soviet power were not published, it follows that the real reason his departure was jealousy - Chapaev diligently courted his wife. If you believe the diaries, then Anna Furmanova refused him reciprocation.
From a simple nurse she turned into a Soviet intelligence officer. Here is an excerpt from a profile of an employee of the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army Headquarters Popova Maria Andreevna:
“In 1931–1934, she worked at the Soviet Trade Representation in Berlin as a referent and chairman of the joint committee of trade unions of Sovkolonia. An intelligent, fairly theoretically trained corporate woman. A social activist.”
Later she worked in Stockholm. Further readings diverge. Evgenia Chapaeva writes that "She returned to Moscow at the end of the forties. And was immediately repressed. My grandmother, Klavdiya Vasilievna Chapaeva, rushed to her aid, and soon the repression stopped."
The article on RIA says that she returned not in 1940, but in 1937, and was not repressed.
During the Great Patriotic War Popova As part of a lecture group, she traveled to the fronts - raising morale among the troops. After watching the film “Chapayev,” she most often told the soldiers about the history of the creation of the song “Chapaev the Hero Walked Through the Urals,” which she composed after the death of the division commander.
And in 1959, several old Chapaevites wrote a letter to the Party Control Committee of the CPSU Central Committee, in which they reported that Maria Popova In fact Novikova, daughter of kulaks from the village of Vyazovy Gai. That she fought on the side of the Whites, she was allegedly seen among the White Guards. But how this story ended, read everything in the same article on RIA Novosti.
In real life, the prototype of one of the main characters of the famous Soviet film"Chapaev's" name was not Anna, but Maria Andreevna Popova.
When the “Always” historical and educational project studied the materials, it turned out that she had never been a machine gunner. At first she served in the division in her main profile - as a nurse. She turned out to be a smart and mischievous girl.
Maria Andreevna herself recounted the following incident from her sanitary practice: “In the destroyed pharmacy of a small town, where the Chapaevites entered, there were two bags of soda. Nurse Popova loaded them onto a cart and brought them to the division. She cut the paper into strips, poured powder, rolled it up and wrote: “from the head”, “from the stomach” and distributed it to the fighters. It helped some.”
After this, the popularity of nurse Maria Popova overshadowed the authority of the division’s chief physician, who did not prescribe such “miraculous” drugs. The Chapaev soldiers complained about the doctor to the division commander, saying that he was not treating well. Either way - Mashka Popova... 
True, there was one case when a nurse had to shoot with a machine gun.
During one of the battles, Maria brought machine-gun belts to the Maxim crew. The machine gun was hopelessly silent - the second number was killed outright by shrapnel from an enemy shell, and the machine gunner was seriously wounded. Having regained consciousness, the Red Army soldier ordered Maria:
- Lie down next to me and press this button, and I will operate the machine gun with my healthy hand.
- Are you crazy? “I’m afraid,” Maria refused and tried to leave.
Having fired a revolver, the machine gunner warned the girl:
- The next bullet is for you.
There was nothing to do - I had to obey. Maria lay down, closed her eyes and began to pour fire on the advancing enemy.
So Maria Popova temporarily became a machine gunner.
For this fight, Chapaev awarded her a watch. Then the division commander decided that the dashing girl’s place was now in mounted reconnaissance.
However, it so happened that this particular fight with the participation of Maria Popova was used in creating the script for the film “Chapaev”. 
On November 23, 1981, a certain Maria Andreevna Popova was buried at the Novokuntsevo cemetery in Moscow. As the 86-year-old woman bequeathed, with military honors. To the sound of gun shots, the coffin was escorted by the daughter of the deceased and well-known theater and film artists. The deceased never had a direct relationship with the world of cinema. However, until her death, she had to “play the role” for which Joseph Stalin personally “approved” her.
The first version of the film "Chapaev" and simply Maria
In the early thirties, Stalin was brought to watch the film “Chapaev,” directed by the Vasilievs. The leader did not like the picture, he called the directors to his place. Joseph Vissarionovich suggested that they introduce a female fighter into the film, as well as indicate a “romantic line.”
The Vasiliev brothers, who were actually just namesakes, got down to business.
All the women who fought in the legendary 25th Chapaev Rifle Division were invited to the Red Army Museum. They were asked to tell stories from front-line life for a future film. There were a lot of women gathered, their stories were recorded by a whole squad of stenographers. But only the stories told by Maria Popova, a soldier of the Chapaev division, were selected. In the future, when writing the script, the wife of Commissioner Dmitry Furmanov, Anna, will call her by her name.
So easily Maria will become Anka the machine gunner.
"She will be the heroine"
The film about the heroes of the Civil War, released on screens across the country in 1934, was a tremendous success. His characters were perceived by the audience as real people, all events seemed genuine. Spectators watched the film more than a dozen times. However, like Stalin himself, who was interested in the military exploits of Maria Popova.
“Mom said that he asked the Vasiliev directors if it really happened. “Yes,” they answered. He then said: “she will be the heroine,” recalls Maria Popova’s daughter Zinaida Mikhailovna.
Maria Popova herself at that time, knowing nothing, lived in... Berlin. And when she was called to Moscow to be declared a national treasure, she was very scared.
"Masha, rub your eyes with onion"
The future "Anka the machine gunner" was born in 1896 in the Samara province. At the age of 16 she was married to Ivan Popov. But she and her husband did not live long. Ivan Popov died shortly after the wedding.
“When they buried her husband (he, by the way, was not my father), the neighbors whispered: Masha, you should at least rub your eyes with onions so that there will be tears,” says Zinaida Popova. “He, as my mother recalled, often suffered from stomach pains And during another acute attack he died. And I still don’t know who my real father is. My mother took many secrets with her to the grave, including the secret about my father.”
After the death of her husband, Popova got a job as a nanny in a hospital. Then she worked at the Samara Pipe Factory. Here I joined the party. When the Civil War began, Maria took part in the battles for Samara.
“In 1918, when the White Czechs took the city with the support of the White Guards, my mother was captured, but she and several other soldiers managed to escape,” says Zinaida Popova. “Somewhere in the steppe they came across the advanced units of the 25th Chapaev Division.” .
In the division, Maria Popova initially served as an assistant doctor. In one of the battles, she crawled up to a soldier wounded in the arm, and he literally forced her to fire a machine gun, because he himself could not press two triggers at the same time. For this fight, Chapaev awarded her a watch. He later decided that Maria Popova’s place was in horse reconnaissance.
Together with Vasily Ivanovich, they fought for a year - until Chapaev’s death.
“Chapaev could not stand the presence of female non-fighters in his division”
“It must be said right away that Vasily Ivanovich could not stand the presence of female non-fighters in his division,” says the granddaughter of the legendary division commander Tatyana Chapaeva. “He also quarreled with Furmanov precisely because he brought his wife Anna to the front. Vasily Ivanovich came in to the commissar’s hut and saw that some woman was lying in bed. Vasily Ivanovich demanded that Commissar Furmanov send Anna Nikitichna to the rear.”
“If we talk about the nonsense that in recent years they have managed to write and propagate, then I undoubtedly give first place to the one who came up with the idea that Vasily Ivanovich and Anna Furmanova were lovers,” says Tatyana Chapaeva indignantly. “Second - to the one who I got it from somewhere that allegedly Pyotr Isaev (Petka) shot himself a year later, when the soldiers held a memorial for Chapay, with the motivation that it was he who did not save his commander. There is another very common myth, as if the wife of the actor Leonid Kmit. who played the role of Petka, became so jealous of her husband of the movie Anka that she committed suicide.”
Tatyana Chapaeva added that in fact Pyotr Isaev was not the peasant simpleton as shown in the film. This highly educated officer never served as Chapaev’s orderly, but was an entruster for particularly important matters, and later the head of the communications brigade. In principle, there could be no love between him and Anka - Maria Andreevna Popova. But in real life, it was she who taught him how to use a machine gun.
“I have been friends with Maria Andreevna’s daughter Zinaida Mikhailovna for many years. I often visited them in their house on Tverskaya. Maria Andreevna always seemed to me a very calm, reasonable person. Of course, I asked her a lot about my grandfather. After all, she, who served in The reconnaissance company of the Chapaev division, unlike me, knew my grandfather personally,” said Tatyana Chapaeva.
“He has a representative appearance, but still doesn’t know how to dress himself like a woman with taste.”
After the Civil War, Popova studied at Moscow State University at the Faculty of Soviet Law. And in 1931 she was sent to Berlin, appointing her as an assistant in the legal department of the trade mission.
A young lawyer, Maria Popova, arrived in Berlin wearing a colorful jacket, fastened with two large pins instead of buttons. This is how she appeared for the first time before Evgenia Alliluyeva, head of the personnel department of the Trade Mission.
“Of course, a devoted comrade to us. In January 1931, after graduating from the Faculty of Law of Moscow State University, she was sent to work at the Soviet Trade Mission in Berlin. She speaks little German. She knows how to treat people. She has a representative appearance, but she still doesn’t know how to dress herself like a woman with taste.”
From the very first meeting, Popova and Alliluyeva became friends. Maria confessed to her that she was pregnant, whispered the name of the child’s father, and Evgenia kept this secret forever.
Maria learned to dress with taste from fashionista Evgenia Alliluyeva. By the time her daughter was born, she no longer stood out from the crowd of well-dressed Berlin Frau.
On a voluntary basis, Maria Popova was also appointed director of the club of the Soviet colony. All these positions provided opportunities for contacts and a certain freedom of movement. Maria Andreevna helped sent compatriots adapt to Germany and brought them together with the right people.
From the profile of Maria Andreevna Popova, an employee of the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army Headquarters:
“In 1931-1934, she worked at the Soviet Trade Mission in Berlin as a referent and chairman of the joint committee of trade unions of the Sovkolonia. An intelligent, fairly theoretically trained corporate employee. A social activist.”
“I don’t know what my mother did in Germany, but I saw her so rarely that I called her “Frau Popova.” And “mummy” - “Mutillein” - she called her nanny Ani. I spoke German and thanks to the nanny I was a very politicized child, - recalls Zinaida Popova. - Nanny voted for Hitler in the 1933 elections, because he gave everyone a job. She went to almost all the rallies, and she took me with her in a stroller. I told everyone: mouth is front, mouth is front! when the fascists came to power, I also told everyone to put their mouths to front!”
“Did your mother bring a machine gun with her?”
Soviet newspapers quickly picked up the news about the real prototype of Anka the Machine Gunner and made Maria Popova a real heroine.
Popova did not object: fame pleasantly tickled her pride. Of course, some of the fighting friends were upset. Many risked their lives no less than Popova, but she alone got the glory.
However, Maria had no time for this. She received a new assignment.
From the profile of Maria Andreevna Popova, an employee of the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army Headquarters:
“In November 1935, she was recruited to work in the RU of the Red Army. From May 1936 to May 1937, she was on a business trip to Stockholm through Intourist. She has a lot of practical intelligence and savvy. She works hard on the Swedish language. She has a calm, self-possessed character.”
Residents of the Soviet settlement in Stockholm greeted Maria Popova as a heroine. One boy asked Zina: “Did your mother bring a machine gun with her?”
Maria Andreevna developed an almost domestic relationship with the USSR Ambassador to Sweden Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai. They were very friendly.
In May 1937, Popova was informed that her business trip to Stockholm was over. With heavy forebodings, Maria Andreevna returned to Moscow. But so far everything was going well. She had a job, she was given an apartment on Tverskaya.
"Only Trotskyists beat children"
One day the doorbell rang. The call was persistent. It turned out that the neighbors were complaining about their daughter.
Zina organized a rally in the yard and explained to the children that adults were now conducting an operation in the Arctic Ocean to rescue the “Papaninites.” “Polar explorers are freezing,” said Zina, “they need clothes.” The kids ran to the Moscow River and threw their coats onto the floating ice floes. Zina told them that the ice floes would certainly wash out into the ocean.
“Mother took an old soldier’s belt from the wall and spanked me. She asked: “Why aren’t you crying, you bastard?” And I said: “I won’t. Only Trotskyists beat children,” recalls Zinaida Popova.
"Hero Chapaev walked through the Urals..."
Before the Great Patriotic War, arrests of fighters of the Chapaev division began.
Ivan Kutyakov was killed by the Chekists - he commanded the division after the death of Chapaev. When they came for Kutyakov, he shouted that he would not be released alive and began shooting at the guards. They returned fire.
Popova was not touched in those years. And in 1942 she was again called to the front in the propaganda brigade.
Maria Andreevna took her daughter to her relatives in Kuibyshev, and she herself, as part of a lecture group, traveled to the fronts - raising the morale of the troops. After watching the film “Chapayev,” Maria Popova most often told the soldiers about the history of the creation of the song “Chapayev the Hero Walked Through the Urals.” She composed it after the death of the division commander.
One day, Alexander Alexandrov, the leader of the famous Red Banner Song and Dance Ensemble, heard the song. At his request, Maria Andreevna wrote a few more lines. “The Ural River is deep, the banks are steep, and the steppe is wide - that’s where our people beat the enemy.”
The war is over. Stalin died. The Khrushchev thaw began.
Sovremennik, CNN and the placebo effect
Friends of Maria Andreevna’s daughter increasingly began to come to the Popovs’ apartment in house number six on Tverskaya. Zinaida Mikhailovna had just graduated from the Institute of International Relations at that time. In the future, she will become the editor of the Moscow bureau of CNN, and will work in the bureaus of the Los Angeles Times and the Japanese newspaper Mainichi.
And then she introduced her mother to the young artists of the Moscow Art Theater, who decided to create their own theater - Sovremennik. Zinaida will marry one of them, actor Igor Vasiliev.
At that time, little-known young and talented artists were rehearsing the play “Forever Alive”. Maria Andreevna let them in, allocating one of the rooms in her apartment for night rehearsals.
Many years later, a sign will appear on the front door of entrance No. 8 in the house on Tverskaya that it was in Maria Andreevna Popova’s apartment that “essentially, the future Sovremennik theater was born.”
Of course, the youth pestered “Anka the Machine Gunner” with questions.
The story about the placebo effect, repeatedly told by Maria Andreevna, has always enjoyed constant success.
In the destroyed pharmacy of the small town, where the Chapaevites entered, there were two bags of soda. Nurse Popova loaded them onto a cart and brought them to the division. She cut the paper into strips, poured powder, rolled it up and wrote: “from the head”, “from the stomach” and distributed it to the fighters. It helped some.
The medical fame of the medical assistant Maria Popova then eclipsed the authority of the division doctor, who did not give such medicines.
The Chapaevites complained about the doctor to the division commander and cited Maria as an example.
The young artists laughed while listening to Maria Andreevna. She laughed with them. But it became more and more difficult to seem like a cheerful housewife.
Denunciation
In 1959, Popova was summoned to the party Central Committee. From her foreign outfits, Maria Andreevna chose the most formal one and went to Old Square. And when she returned, the housekeeper Marusya, who had served the Popovs for many years, sensing something was wrong, rushed to get medicine.
It turned out that several old Chapaevites wrote a letter to the Party Control Committee of the CPSU Central Committee, in which they reported that Maria Popova was actually Novikova, the daughter of kulaks from the village of Vyazovy Gai. That she fought on the side of the Whites, she was allegedly seen among the White Guards. And when the Reds began to take the advantage in the Civil War, she forged a party card and joined the Chapaev division.
The main thing the signatories accused Popova of was: “She is not Anka.”
An employee of the Party Control Committee left Moscow on a special assignment to Maria Andreevna’s homeland - Kuibyshev, former Samara.
Still Anka the Machine Gunner
And then Maria Popova proved that she is still Anka the machine gunner.
As in that battle with the Kappelites, in the famous scene from the film about Chapaev, she decided to let the enemies get closer.
Interviews with the famous Chapaevka Popova began to appear in large numbers in newspapers and magazines.
In them she said that she had never been the prototype of Anka the machine gunner, that this was a collective image. Maria Andreevna listed the names of her fighting friends who were worthy of no less glory than she was. Well, since Stalin called her Anka, she herself never claimed this. Opponents were confused.
And a man who had gone there on a special party assignment returned to Moscow from Kuibyshev. He worked conscientiously. The certificate submitted to the party Central Committee, a copy of which is still kept by the “daughter of Anka the machine gunner,” stated:
"Popova Maria Andreevna, a native of the village of Vyazov Gai, Samara province. Her maiden name was Golovin. Popova's father, a poor peasant Andrei Romanovich Golovin, was called up to serve in the Black Sea Fleet, became one of the first Russian military divers. His name is mentioned in the story of the Soviet writer Konstantin Paustovsky received decompression sickness during one of the dives, was demobilized and died when his daughter Maria Popova was 4 years old. Maria Popova’s mother died when the girl was 8 years old.
From this age, Maria Andreevna worked as a laborer for wealthy fellow villagers, including the kulaks Novikovs. Popova developed a close relationship with this family. It was with them that Popova’s daughter, Zinaida, was evacuated during the Great Patriotic War. And it was precisely as a relative of the Novikovs that Popova passed herself off when she tried to escape from white captivity in 1918. Information from a witness, Popova’s fellow soldier, that during interrogation by the White Czechs she called herself Novikova, is stored in the secret archives of the Red Army.
At the age of 16, Maria Andreevna was married to a poor fellow villager, Ivan Popov. But a few days after the wedding, the husband died of inflammation of the peritoneum.
Since 1914, Maria Popova has been working in Samara. In 1717 she joined the Red Guard and took part in battles on the Dutov Front. In 1918, she was awarded a ticket as a member of the Bolshevik Party. The ticket was presented by Nikolai Shvernik, a member of the party cell of the Samara Pipe Plant. As part of the Chapaev division since June 18. Popova repeatedly carried out important command assignments: she worked in the Bolshevik underground, and prevented a counter-revolutionary mutiny in the First Socialist Regiment of Military Sailors. She served in cavalry reconnaissance and at the same time performed the duties of a medical assistant.
A person of unparalleled personal courage: during battles she repeatedly took command of cavalry crews instead of commanders who died or fled from the battlefield. Wounded, shell-shocked. Awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
In 1924, Army Commander Frunze personally sent her to study at the workers' faculty of the Kharkov Medical Institute. In 1928 she entered Moscow State University. The investigation is not interested in Maria Popova’s further life path.”
“All that’s left is movies and jokes”
Popova was again summoned to the Central Committee. She was received by the Chairman of the Central Committee of Party Control Nikolai Ivanovich Shvernik. The same Shvernik who once handed her a party card when she worked in Samara at a pipe factory.
“He said to his mother: well, Marusya, did they torture you? Calm down, you are acquitted on all counts,” recalls Zinaida Popova. “She wanted to answer him that he could have stopped this torment long ago, but she just waved her hand and left.” .
That same evening, a company of Chapaevites gathered for a traditional meeting in the house of Commissioner Furmanov’s daughter Anna. As always, Boris Babochkin, who played the role of the legendary division commander, was at Chapaev’s gatherings.
“Mom says: now I’ll tell you a joke. Petka comes to Chapaev and asks: Vasily Ivanovich, where is Anka? - Yes, there she is, lying on the stove with radiculitis. - Well, why couldn’t she find a Russian? - says Petka, - Zinaida Popova recalls her mother’s story. “Babochkin’s face wrinkled, he began to shout at his mother: “How dare you, Marusya, retell these nasty jokes? And my mother says: “Just think, what does it matter? All that’s left is movies and jokes.”
Maria Andreevna died in the winter of 1981. No matter how much her daughter asked, even before her death she never told her her father’s name.
A little later, in a notebook that always lay on her mother’s bedside table, Zinaida Mikhailovna found a slightly crumpled photograph of Maria Andreevna’s old front-line friend, People’s Commissar of Education Andrei Bubnov, who was shot in 1938.
