I am Vladimir Mayakovski, and I died on April 14, 1930. The announcement of my suicide had the effect of a bullet shot into the public, which was waiting for my appearance at the meeting of those who cared about the future of Russia. We were naughty children who were to be mastered, retrained and remade into Soviet men, according to the plan of the newly minted government of the proletariat.

As I already mentioned, I did not commit a suicide. Instead, I received an invitation to come to Lubyanka, the NKVD’s headquarter, to identify a petty spy who was rubbing himself in Moscow literary circles. So, I had to obey and pay a visit to them. They showed me some photographs, and I identified the poor fellow, who was recognized as a spy. Later, when I became more familiar with the astral world, I learned that he was shot, and on the Judgment Day he received a perfectly arranged stay on the fairly decent level of the astral world. Enough about him.

Having dealt with the spy identification, the Lubyanka people started picking on me. Out of creepy fear, I joked awkwardly until I realized that I may not get out of here and that the aim of their invitation was not the identification of a spy, but my last trip to France, where I courted unsuccessfully for Tatyana Yakovleva, a complete bourgeois and fashionista, safely married to a millionaire. In her eyes, I was a beggar who cried for her husband’s money, and nothing more. In addition, I bought Pajo there for Lily Brick, and went to Nice to see my American love Ally and my daughter Elena, whom America will call Patricia Thompson by husband. In future she will have sone, my grandson Rodya, in other words, Rodger. My three-year-old daughter looked at me with my eyes. She had my eyes. I had no doubt that she was my daughter, and my heart was squeaking, because I had a hunch that I would never see her again. Destiny took care of my daughter. Ellie married a man who adored them both, mother and daughter, and Mr. Thompson was a hundred times more successful in financial matters than me. I knew and understood that Elena would receive a good American education, and therefore work, and would be a wealthy person, unlike me, a person without a decent suit, who was looking for a “little car” not for his wife, but a mistress — with sad pay-off at Lubyanka. It was time, when a “honest Soviet proletarian” could not imagine of owning an item of the bourgeois fun — a personal car.

Let’s talk better about Bulgakov and his novel Master and Margarita. The copies of the manuscript were changing readers’ hands and I was one of them. I hunt for all versions of this masterpiece and red them all. As I already told, I was shocked by suspicions of being involved in some mystical dealings. In those days, suspicions were as good as final accusations, and never revised. And KGB accused me approaching Russian immigrants throughout France, including Nice, to set codes out of the text of  Bulgakov’s novel for the communication system in the French conspiratorial counter-revolutionary organization Bulldozer. They purpose was to overthrow the Soviet regime with all its accomplishments …  Somewhere I once inadvertently joked that I consider the highest achievement of the proletariat the creation of communal apartments to solve the problem of Moscow overpopulation. After the creation of collective farms, the Russian peasantry rushed into the cities to cross themselves in the proletarians. In short, in the Lubyanka, they switched from jokes to business.

I was tied up and beaten by professionals. I could not answer, because my hands were tied. In the process of beating, I realized that it was a retribution for cooperation with the authorities, which I trusted, not understanding with whom I actually dealt. I did not enter the body back, and they continued to beat and shot the dead man. My corpse was brought to my apartment. The blood was dripping on the carpet. Then they decided which bullet was more suited to simulate suicide. Finally, they found a proper one, and others were pulled out. The blood was wiped from the carpet.

 I screamed and screamed, but no one heard me, I rushed at them, but my fist flew through their dirty faces … until an unknown force took me from my apartment to another world that people on earth do not know about.

“Have you cooperated with the NKVD?”

“No, they called me there, but I said that I was busy, let others do your work.”

The worst thing started later, when the injuries inflicted on me by the beating in the Lubyanka were healed.

As soon as I landed in a new world, some serviceable personalities led me to the Temple of Justice. I understood the importance of what is happening. We passed the crowd, and I was seated on a lonely chair at a long table in a small room. Will they beat me again? Flashed through my head. Suddenly, all the places behind the oblong table were occupied, and I realized that they were looking at me curiously as at a wild beast in a menagerie. Gradually, the picture began to clear up. I was in the Temple of Justice as a defendant, that is, in the same capacity as in Lubyanka. Silence reigned, I hoped that this time it would do without beating, but who knew how the matter would end?

The most important judge asked me which appeal would be prettier to me, Mr. Mayakovski, or Comrade  Mayakovski. That is, the beating continued, but this time not with fists, but with words and concepts. For some reason I did not know what to answer. Silence reigned again, but this time I decided to look at them all in order to understand what kind of answer they were waiting for. I answered not very loudly, but strictly: “As you wish!”

They did not like my answer, and I decided to keep my mouth shut. Someone, apparently a former white officer, asked, letting me know that they knew all the details about me. “So, you, a faithful servant of the Communists, were beaten in the dungeons of the NKVD? It was not the ordinary judge who came to judge you, here are those who were beaten and the executioners who beat.”

I wanted to leave, but there was nowhere to go. They asked me, what punishment I would wish for those who beat me to death?

I replied, this is not my concern, should I first heal my broken bones?

Our interview stopped here. Vladimir Mayakovski went silent. The interview was over.

Lately I wrote a post “Scary Guess,” about strange reasons why no one remembered American industrialists input into building Stalin’s socialism in Russia.

Massarrests of people covered the truth with clouds of fear. Accusations always connected people with some foreign power and some suspicious deals with these foreign powers. 

In my mind, arrest of Mayakovsky for cooperation with anti-Soviet organization Bulldozer sounded like the second volley of Aurora. The first volley started the Great October Revolution in Russia, the second volley started the terrible wave of mass arrests through the thirties – fear, denunciations, lies, Gulags, incredible suffering of people.

And the final note. Later , Mayakovski added a sentence:

“When I bought Pijo for Lilian Brick in Paris, she was writing the lethal denunciation on me that killed me on April 14, 1930.”   

 Truly, this was an ideal blast marking the start one of the darkest era in the Soviet history that broke the spirit of the nation for centuries.   

A few hours later, Mayakovski returned, saying the following.
It turned out that all this time the protocols about my beating, and my violent death were safe and sound in the Lubyanka archive, in quite accessible form. I hope that soon we can read more interesting materials from that archive.