Zinaida Nikolaevna Rajh

Zinaida Nikolayevna Reich (also spelled Raikh or Raih; ; – 15 July 1939) was a Russian actress and one of the main stars of the Meyerhold Theatre until it was closed under Joseph Stalin.

Reich married poet Sergey Yesenin and had two children with him. After their divorce, she married the theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold. In 1939, Meyerhold was arrested by the NKVD, and she was brutally stabbed in her apartment by NKVD agents who staged a robbery.

Family and early years

Zinaida Nikolayevna Reich was born in the village of Blizhniye Melnitsy near Odessa.

Her mother was Anna Ivanovna Viktorova, a Russian noblewoman and niece of a notable Russian linguist and archaeologist.

She worked as a technical editor for Delo Naroda ('People's Cause'), a newspaper of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. There she met the poet Sergey Yesenin, who at that time was influenced by the Party. Yesenin settled in Saint Petersburg in March 1917.

Marriage to Sergey Yesenin

In spring 1917, Reich met Sergey Yesenin. The young people fell in love. They travelled to the White Sea and Russian North and got married in Kiriko-Ulitovskaya Church near Vologda on 4 August 1917. After the wedding, the couple moved to Oryol, where her parents lived. written by Yesenin's close friend, room-mate and allegedly homosexual lover, Anatoly Marienhof. Marienhof described Reich as a "crummy Jewish dame with fleshy lips on a face round as a dinner-plate". He wrote that Yesenin allegedly was upset when he saw his black-haired son, Konstantin. "No Yesenin had ever been black-haired", he allegedly said. Historians have doubted that Marienhof's description of Reich is accurate. She was of German-Russian ancestry and Russian Orthodox by faith.

Marriage to Meyerhold Reich studied at the State Experimental Theatre Workshops, headed by famous theatrical director Vsevolod Meyerhold. The actor Igor Ilyinsky was so upset that Reich received all the major roles that he left the Meyerhold Theater. Later, he revised his opinion of her acting talent and appreciated her.

Stanislavski died in August 1938. Meyerhold directed his theatre for nearly a year until he was arrested in Leningrad on 20 June 1939. Twenty-five days later, his wife Zinaida Reich was found dying in their Moscow apartment on 15 July 1939.

Two unknown assailants broke into the Reich-Meyerhold apartment during the night of 14–15 July. They stabbed her 17 times, including through the eyes. She died of severe blood loss early the next morning, 15 July. Reich had sent both her children out of the apartment that night, and nothing was taken from the apartment. The murder is generally regarded as having been organized by the NKVD.

According to Arkadiy Vaksberg, "Beria needed this sadistic farce" because the actress was extraordinarily popular, independent, outspoken and known for saying: "if Stalin can make no sense of art, let him ask Meyerhold, and he will explain".

Zinaida Reich was buried at Vagankovo Cemetery near the grave of her first husband, Sergey Yesenin.

Her Moscow apartment was given to the chauffeur of Lavrentiy Beria, who had just become head of the NKVD. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the whole apartment has been restored. It is now maintained and operated as the Meyerhold Museum.