Edgard Zapashny: “My uncle did not communicate with my father for several years. The famous Zapashny circus dynasty - tragedies and secrets Is it true that Zapashny died

Died in Sochi National artist USSR Mstislav Zapashny. “I was just informed that my uncle, a famous circus artist and trainer Mstislav Mikhailovich Zapashny, has died. This happened in Sochi,” TASS quotes his nephew, general director of the Bolshoi Moscow Circus Edgard Zapashny.

ON THIS TOPIC

According to Askold Zapashny, his uncle was a legend in the circus world and made an invaluable contribution as an artist. Moreover, he was a pioneer. The famous trainer devoted his entire life to the circus. “He was a man who not only formed the foundation for the Zapashny family, but also set the bar for young people,” he noted.

The farewell to the People's Artist of the USSR will take place at the Great Moscow State Circus on Vernadsky Avenue. According to preliminary data, mourning the ceremony will take place September 26. As pop singer Joseph Kobzon told the media, most likely the trainer will be buried at the Domodedovo cemetery next to the grave of his mother.

Let us remind you that on August 24, trainer Mstislav Zapashny was urgently taken to a hospital in Sochi. Doctors diagnosed him with a strangulated hernia. Zapashny underwent emergency surgery.

Mstislav Zapashny was born on May 16, 1938 in Leningrad, into a famous circus family. The founder of the dynasty was Mikhail Zapashny (1900-1982), the father of People's Artists of the RSFSR Mstislav and Walter Zapashny. Edgar and Askold are nephews of Mstislav Zapashny. Mstislav Zapashny became known as a trainer of predatory animals and a stage director; he has repeatedly received the highest awards in the field of circus art. From May 2003 to December 2009, Zapashny was the general director of the Russian State Circus. He was a member of the Zapashny Brothers circus group.

“So he returned to his mother,” says Polina, the daughter of the famous circus artist Valery Zapashny, quietly.

From the photograph installed near the urn with ashes, a youthful man is smiling. From behind someone whispers and sighs:

- At 53, he was a real “saiga” - handsome and strong... How could he leave so absurdly?

The glare from a lit candle dances on a nearby gravestone, where it is engraved: Elena Ivanovna Zapashnaya.

“Now father and mother will be nearby...” Polina repeats like a spell.

On the ninth day after death, the ashes of Valery Zapashny were buried at the Southern Cemetery of St. Petersburg. A believer, he did not want to die... By simulating suicide, he was sure that he could still win back... A professional gymnast who knitted a figure eight with his eyes closed, he twisted three simple knots and, expecting that his second his wife Irina is about to return from the street, he threw a noose around his neck...

He lost the game with death.

For a week now, spectators have been attacking the box office of the Great Moscow Circus: “Is your performance cancelled? One of the Zapashny brothers died...” “No, this is a completely different Zapashny,” the cashiers explain wearily.

In Russia today there are not many circus names that are well-known. Everyone knows Zapashny. Mikhail Zapashny is considered the founder of the circus dynasty. The mighty port longshoreman was brought to the circus arena by Ivan Poddubny himself. Mikhail performed with his wife Lydia in the number “Sharp Shooters”. One after another, they had five children: Sergei, Walter, Anna, Mstislav and Igor.

Zapashny became famous thanks to trainers - Walter, who prepared an unprecedented attraction with a mixed group of predators: Bengal and Ussuri tigers, African lions, a black panther and a lynx, as well as Mstislav, who brought together tigers and elephants in one arena, and their children - Askold, Edgard and Mstislav Jr. And Valery Zapashny, by a cruel irony of fate, forced people to talk about himself only at the age of 53 - after his death.

“Only a broken rope could save the artist”

Along the cemetery alley, the wind blows in waves in the even rows of chrysanthemums. Covering the candle with his palm, the son of the deceased, Denis, says as if he were minting:

My father despised suicides and considered them cowards...

“Dad believed in God, he and mom got married in church,” Polina quietly echoes her brother.

And behind the scenes of the Moscow circuses, knowing the characters of the Zapashnys, no one can believe that the balanced and intelligent Valery could solve his problems by dying.

But the fact remains: a wonderful artist from the famous circus dynasty Valery Zapashny hanged himself in a circus hotel room in the city of Kursk. The fact that the trainer himself took his own life is now beyond doubt among the investigators: no traces of violence were found on his body.

From Kursk, the trainer's body was transported by relatives by car to his homeland - St. Petersburg. Having received the death certificate, which indicated death from asphyxia (suffocation), the artist’s daughter and son-in-law insisted on conducting an additional psychological, psychiatric and forensic examination.

“We turned privately to one of our best specialists in St. Petersburg, who deals with cases of hanging and poisoning,” says Valery Zapashny’s son-in-law, Vladimir Filatenko. - Together with a psychologist and a psychiatrist, they reached a verdict: Valery wanted to falsify his death - he decided to scare and warn his young wife in this way. At the last moment he tried to get out of the noose, experts found marks from nails on his neck... As the experts explained, for some time - two or three minutes - he was still aware of what was happening, but he could not do anything... And then he I simply lost consciousness. During the period of slow suffocation, like the poet Yesenin, many capillary vessels burst on his body.

Only a broken rope could help Valery Zapashny, but it tightened the trainer’s neck more and more tightly. And after 4-5 minutes the artist was dead. It was no longer possible to save him.

The press suggests that the father was drunk, this is not so! - Denis gets excited. - When my father was pulled out of the noose, he younger brother Mikhail immediately began to give him artificial respiration - he did not feel any smell - his father was absolutely sober. There was a sealed bottle of vodka in the closet.

Valery's son from his first marriage, 33-year-old Denis, lived with his father in the same hotel section with a shared kitchen. And I heard how, before the tragedy unfolded, the father fiercely - in a raised voice - once again quarreled with his young wife Irina.

Father was still cutting salad in the kitchen when Irka, taking them in his arms one year old son“, slamming the door, she ran out of the hotel into the courtyard,” says Denis. - And then I look - he comes in without knocking... And in a calm voice, somehow very casually, he says: “He’s hanging.” Go shoot!” There was no shouting or wringing of hands, as she later told everyone.

“After the death of his wife, Valera stuttered for two years”

If my mother were alive, my father would live,” says Polina, wrapping her cardigan in the wind. - After her death, my father simply got lost... Winter evenings he often told us: it was as if half of me had been taken away, I became disabled... Mom was his hands, his eyes... As soon as my father caught sight of her photographs, he went away to smoke with tears in his eyes. Both are native Leningraders; they met on tour in Kuibyshev, when they were both 16 years old. Mom was a ballet dancer. And at 18 they got married. Everyone said out loud: to what extent? a beautiful couple! They were in love with each other all their lives, when they were about forty, they were called Romeo and Juliet. And at the age of 49, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. It's scary to remember what she went through... She had eight operations. But it was too late... Last months She was continuously injected with painkillers. Her father was with her until last day, she died in his arms.

After the death of his wife Lena, Valera stuttered for two years, says his eminent uncle, head of the Russian State Circus Mstislav Zapashny. - For me, Valera is the boy whom I raised and made into an artist. At first he performed with me in a number on horses, then in the aerial attraction “Soyuz” - “Apollo”, and in the circus performance “Spartak” he also had an interesting role. When I made an attraction with tigers and elephants and left the air show, I handed over “Soyuz” to the leadership of Valery... Valera performed with this attraction for some time, and then decided to become a bear trainer. When he was working in the air, he was still holding on - we had the strictest discipline and hellish workload... And then I found out that he started drinking.

During this difficult period for Valery, Irina appeared in his life.

My father advertised for a job; he needed an assistant for his act,” says Denis. - He chose 23-year-old Irina, who at that time worked as an employee at the Novosibirsk Zoo.

The father imagined that his new assistant looked like his mother in her youth, says Polina. “Soon they began to live together: my father got used to taking care of someone all his life.

When the child was born, he doted on him,” Denis continues to say. - He didn’t let Timoshka off his hands. When his little son disappeared from sight, the father could not find a place for himself, he began to run around the whole house, looking for him... And Irka soon showed what a wimp she was, endlessly screaming in her father’s face: “I’m young, I don’t want to live in the village . Take me to St. Petersburg, register me in an apartment...” I think she dreamed of getting into the arena not as an assistant, but as an artist. She demanded that her father give her a number. She found in her father’s papers an old script for “Mowgli,” which was written for our mother. The attraction was supposed to involve many animals. It got to the point that behind her father’s back she began asking her father’s son-in-law, Vladimir, for money for animals. When her father objected to her, she began to blackmail him: “I’ll take Timka and leave!”

One day my dad called me in St. Petersburg and said: “I’ll bring Irina here,” recalls Valeria’s daughter, Polina. “I answered him: “I’m not ready for this yet...”

My father didn’t think about death,” says Denis. - Continuing to prepare the issue, he simultaneously worked in the suburb of Kursk - Zhuravlinka. There he began to build himself a house and set up a private zoo. Peacocks were supposed to roam “freely grazing” in the park area, and bears and lynxes were supposed to roam in a specially fenced area. But Irina was eager to go to St. Petersburg... Shortly before the tragedy, on behalf of her father, she wrote a letter of resignation to the Russian State Circus.

“I was amazed,” says Mstislav Zapashny. - Now the Russian State Circus is checking many acts, eight “bearish” acts have been submitted for disbandment, including the commission that Valerina’s act was recognized as bad and out of shape, but I did not sign the order. My nephew wrote to me: “Please give me the opportunity to make the number worthy.” I answered him: “I will send you on tour to Ukraine, correct the number as you work.” He was supposed to go there at the beginning of September. And then suddenly, on August 16, I was surprised to receive a resignation letter from Valera. The very next day I called him for negotiations.

When Valery was taken out of the loop on August 17, a ticket to Moscow for the 18th was found in his pocket.

But on August 18, the coffin with the body of Valery Zapashny stood in the arena of the circus tent in Kursk, and a few days later they said goodbye to the artist at the St. Petersburg circus in Avtovo. In the crematorium, the young widow Valeria and his children from his first marriage - Denis and Polina - were sitting in different corners...

I was amazed by Irina’s calmness,” says Polina. - The baby reconciled everyone... One-year-old Timofey kept raising his little hands to the coffin and joyfully shouting: “Dad, dad!”

Without waiting for the funeral, Irina went to her homeland in Novosibirsk.

In Sochi, at the age of 79, trainer and People's Artist of the USSR Mstislav Zapashny died. His nephew reported this to TASS on Thursday, September 22, CEO Great Moscow Circus Edgard Zapashny.

Mstislav Zapashny belongs to the famous dynasty circus performers, which dates back to 1882. His mother Lydia Zapashny was the daughter of the clown and eccentric Karl Thompson, who worked in the circus and his father was Mikhail Zapashny.

Mstislav Zapashny was born on May 16, 1938 in Leningrad. During the war, Mstislav lived in besieged Leningrad with his brothers Igor and Walter and sister Anna. They were raised by their grandmother, since their mother did not have time to return from tour when the city was already under siege. After the war, the family moved to the Volga region.

For the first time, Mstislav entered the arena at the age of five in the act of the clown Anatoly Dubino. In 1946, Mstislav and Walter Zapashny made their stage debut in Saratov.

When Walter was drafted into the army in 1949, 11-year-old Mstislav followed his brother and received the status of son of the regiment, after which the brothers began serving in the song and dance ensemble of the Odessa Military District.

In 1954, the Zapashny brothers created the “Vaulting Acrobats” act, in which they performed unique stunts. For this number, at the VI World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow, the brothers were awarded four gold medals. In 1964, Mstislav Zapashny staged a new act, “Acrobats-Voltigeurs on Horses.” This number, during a tour in France and Japan, was awarded the highest world prizes.

In 1971, Mstislav Zapashny graduated from the directing department of GITIS. In 1977, he created the only performance in the world in which elephants and tigers were in the same cage. The attraction "Elephants and Tigers" was awarded the State Prize of the Russian Federation in the field of literature and art in 1996.

Mstislav Zapashny was the director, producer and performer of the main roles in the aerial extravaganza attraction "To the Stars" (1970), in the attractions "Soyuz - Apollo" (1974), "Ball of Courage", "Aerial Flight", "Rope Walkers", as well as in themed circus performances.

Since 1991, Mstislav Zapashny served as vice-president of the World Association of Circus Professional Schools and was a permanent member of the Commission under the President of the Russian Federation for state awards in the field of literature and art.

From 1992 to 2003, Mstislav Zapashny was the artistic director and director of the Sochi State Circus. From May 2003 to December 2009, Mstislav Zapashny served as General Director of the Russian State Circus. The reason for his resignation was the company's financial and legal violations.

Let us remind you that the sons of Walter Zapashny - the general director of the Great Moscow Circus Edgard Zapashny and his brother Askold Zapashny - belong to the same famous circus dynasty.