Nurse Maria Popova and her film double - Anka the machine gunner.
Many famous film images have real prototypes. Despite the fact that there was no Anka the machine-gunner in the legendary Chapaev division, this character cannot be called completely fictional. This image was given life by the nurse Maria Popova, who once in battle actually had to fire a machine gun instead of a wounded soldier.
It was this woman who became the prototype for Anka from the film "Chapaev", included in the hundred best films in the world. Her fate deserves no less attention than the exploits of a movie heroine.
Maria Popova
In 1934, directors Georgy and Sergei Vasiliev received the task of the party to make a film about the victories of the Red Army. In the first version, there was no Anka. Stalin was dissatisfied with the viewing and recommended adding a romantic line and a female image, which would be the embodiment of the fate of a Russian woman during the Civil War. The directors accidentally saw a publication about the nurse Maria Popova, who, under pain of death, was forced by a wounded machine gunner to shoot from Maxim. This is how Anka the machine gunner appeared.
The story of her love with Petka was also invented - in fact, there was no romance between Chapaev's assistant Peter Isaev and Maria Popova. In the first two years after the film was released, Stalin watched it 38 times. Chapaev had no less success with the audience - huge queues lined up at the cinemas.
Maria Andreevna Popova with her daughter
Maria Popova with her husband
Not only Maria Popova fought in the 25th Infantry Division of Chapaev - there were enough women there. But the story of the nurse impressed filmmakers the most. The wife of the red commissar and writer Anna Furmanov was also in the same division, after whom the main character of the film was named. By the way, in Furmanov's story, on which the film was made, there was no such character.
Varvara Myasnikova as Anka the machine gunner
Varvara Myasnikova in the movie *Chapaev*
Maria Popova was born into a peasant family in 1896. She lost her father at the age of 4, her mother at the age of 8. From this age, she had to work as laborers for wealthy fellow villagers, including the kulaks Novikovs, because of which she was later accused of not being who she claims to be.
In 1959, fighters from the same Chapaev division wrote a denunciation to Maria Popova that she, allegedly the daughter of the kulak Novikov, fought on the side of the White Guards, and when the Reds prevailed in the Civil War, she went over to their side. All this turned out to be untrue, but cost her health.
Frame from the film *Chapaev*, 1934
In fact, Maria Popova married a poor fellow villager at the age of 16, but soon her husband died. In 1917 she joined the Red Guard and took part in the battles for Samara. In 1918 she became a member of the party, in the same year she became part of the Chapaev division. She was not only a nurse - she served in cavalry intelligence, performed the duties of a military doctor. One curious incident related by Maria Popova herself is connected with this. Once, from a destroyed pharmacy, she brought two bags of soda to the division - there was nothing else there. I cut strips of paper, sprinkled the powder into them and signed “from the head”, “from the stomach”, etc. Some fighters claimed that it helped them.
Anna Nikitichna Furmanova-Steshenko
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 gunshots, the coffin was escorted by the daughter of the deceased and well-known theater and film artists. The deceased never had a direct relationship 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 just Maria
In the early thirties, Stalin was brought to see the film "Chapaev", directed by the Vasilievs. The leader did not like the picture, he called the directors to himself. Iosif Vissarionovich suggested that they introduce a female fighter into the film, as well as designate 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. Many women gathered, their stories were recorded by a whole detachment of stenographers. But only the stories told by the fighter of the Chapaev division Maria Popova were selected. In the future, when writing the script, Anna, the wife of Commissioner Dmitry Furmanov, will call her by her own name.
So just Maria will become Anka the machine gunner.
"She will be the heroine"
Released on the screens of the country in 1934, the film about the heroes of the Civil War was a huge success. His characters were perceived by the audience as real people, all events seemed genuine. The audience watched the picture 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 directors Vasiliev if it really was. Yes, they answered. He then said: here she will be the heroine,” recalls the daughter of Maria Popova Zinaida Mikhailovna.
Maria Popova herself at that time, knowing nothing, lived in ... Berlin. And when she was summoned to Moscow to be declared a national treasure, she was very frightened.
Masha, rub your eyes with a bow
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 with her husband, they did not live long. Ivan Popov died shortly after the wedding.
“When her husband was buried (he, by the way, was not my father), the neighbors whispered: Masha, you could at least rub your eyes with an onion so that there were tears,” says Zinaida Popova. “He, as my mother recalled, often suffered from pain in the abdomen "And during another acute attack he died. And who is my real father, I still don't know. 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 Plant. Here she joined the party. When the Civil War began, Maria participated in the battles for Samara.
“In 1918, when the Whites 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 stumbled upon 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 shoot from a machine gun, because he himself could not press two triggers at the same time. For this fight, Chapaev awarded her a watch. He also decided later that Maria Popova had the right place in equestrian intelligence.
Together with Vasily Ivanovich, they will fight for a year - until the death of Chapaev.
"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 commander Tatyana Chapaeva. “He also quarreled with Furmanov precisely because he brought his wife Anna to the front. Vasily Ivanovich came in into 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 reproduce, then I undoubtedly give the first place to the one who came up with the idea that Vasily Ivanovich and Anna Furmanova were lovers,” says Tatyana Chapaeva indignantly. I got it from somewhere that allegedly Pyotr Isaev (Petka) shot himself a year later, when the soldiers held a wake for Chapai, with the motivation that it was he who did not save his commander. There is another very common myth. As if the wife of actor Leonid Kmit, who played the role of Petka, was so jealous of her husband for the cinematic Anka that she committed suicide.
Tatyana Chapaeva added that, in fact, Pyotr Isaev was not a peasant simpleton, as shown in the film. This highly educated officer in Chapaev's batmen never served, but was a guarantor for especially important cases, and later the head of the communications brigade. In principle, there could not be any love between him and Anka - Maria Andreevna Popova. And in real life, it was she who taught him how to handle a machine gun.
“I have been friends with Maria Andreevna’s daughter Zinaida Mikhailovna for many years. I often visited them at 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 reconnaissance company of the Chapaev division, unlike me, knew my grandfather personally," said Tatyana Chapaeva.
"The appearance is representative, but she still does not know how to dress herself 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, appointed as an assistant to the legal department of the trade mission.
In Berlin, a young lawyer, Maria Popova, arrived in 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 Representation.
"Of course, a devoted comrade to us. In January 1931, after graduating from the law faculty of Moscow State University, she was sent to work in the Soviet Trade Representation in Berlin. She speaks German poorly. She knows how to deal with people. She has a personable appearance, but she still does not 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.
From fashionista Evgenia Alliluyeva, Maria learned to dress with taste. 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 the seconded compatriots to adapt in Germany, brought them together with the right people.
From the characteristics of an employee of the Intelligence Directorate of the headquarters of the Red Army Popova Maria Andreevna:
"In 1931-1934, she worked in the Soviet Trade Representation in Berlin as a referent and chairman of the joint committee of trade unions of the Sovkolonia. An intelligent, fairly theoretically trained corporant. A social woman."
“I don’t know what my mother did in Germany, but I saw her so rarely that I called her“ Frau Popova ”. - recalls Zinaida Popova. - The nanny voted for Hitler in the elections of 1933, because he gave everyone a job. She went to almost all rallies, and carried me with her in a stroller. I told everyone: mouth front! mouth front! And when the fascists came to power, I also told everyone to mouth the 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 a real heroine out of Maria Popova.
Popova did not mind: fame pleasantly tickled pride. Of course, some of the fighting friends were upset. Many risked their lives no less than Popova, but the glory went to her alone.
However, Mary was not up to it. She received a new assignment.
From the characteristics of an employee of the Intelligence Directorate of the headquarters of the Red Army Popova Maria Andreevna:
"In November 1935, she was recruited to work in the Red Army Republic of Uzbekistan. From May 1936 to May 1937 she was on a business trip in Stockholm along the Intourist line. She has a lot of practical intelligence and ingenuity. She works hard on the Swedish language. Her character is calm, restrained."
The inhabitants 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?"
With the USSR Ambassador to Sweden, Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai, Maria Andreevna developed almost domestic relations. They were very friendly.
On May 37, Popova was informed that her business trip to Stockholm was over. With heavy forebodings, Maria Andreevna returned to Moscow. But so far everything has been going well. She had a job, she was given an apartment on Tverskaya.
"Children are beaten only by Trotskyists"
One day the doorbell rang. The call was persistent. It turned out that the neighbors were complaining about their daughter.
Zina arranged a rally in the yard, explained to the children that adults were now conducting an operation in the Arctic Ocean to rescue the “Papanins”. “Polar explorers are freezing,” Zina said, “they need clothes.” The children ran to the Moscow River and dropped their little coats on the ice floes passing by. Zina told them that the ice floes would certainly end up in the ocean.
“Mother took an old soldier's belt off the wall and slapped me. She asked: “Why are you, bastard, not crying?” And I said, “I won’t. Only Trotskyists beat children,” recalls Zinaida Popova.
"Chapaev-hero walked around the Urals ..."
Before the Great Patriotic War, the arrests of the fighters of the Chapaev division began.
Ivan Kutyakov was killed by Chekists - he commanded a division after the death of Chapaev. When they came for Kutyakov, he shouted that he would not be killed alive, and began to shoot at the guards. They opened fire back.
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 - she raised morale among the troops. After watching the film "Chapaev", Maria Popova most often told the soldiers about the history of the creation of the song "Chapaev the Hero Walked in the Urals." She composed it after the death of the division commander.
Once the song was heard by Alexander Alexandrov, the head of the famous Red Banner Song and Dance Ensemble. At his request, Maria Andreevna wrote a few more lines. "The Ural River is deep, steep banks, and the steppe and the steppe are wide - there ours beat the enemy."
The war is over. Stalin died. The Khrushchev thaw began.
"Contemporary", CNN and the placebo effect
Friends of Maria Andreevna's daughter began to come to the Popovs' apartment at number six on Tverskaya more and more often. Zinaida Mikhailovna at that time had just graduated from the Institute of International Relations. In the future, she will become the editor of the Moscow bureau of CNN, 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. For one of them, actor Igor Vasiliev, Zinaida will marry.
At that time, while little-known young and talented artists were rehearsing the play "Forever Alive". Maria Andreevna let them in, allocating one of the rooms of her apartment for night rehearsals.
Many years later, a sign appeared on the front door of entrance No. 8 in the house on Tverskaya, that it was in the apartment of Maria Andreevna Popova that "in fact, the future Sovremennik Theater was born."
Of course, the youth pestered the "Anka the Machine Gunner" with questions.
The story about the placebo effect, repeatedly told by Maria Andreevna, has always been a success.
In the ruined pharmacy of a small town, where the Chapaevs entered, there were two bags of soda. The nurse Popova loaded them onto a cart and brought them to the division. She cut paper into strips, poured powder, folded it and wrote: "from the head", "from the stomach" and handed it out to the fighters. Some helped.
The medical fame of the medical assistant Maria Popova then overshadowed the authority of the division doctor, who did not give such medicines.
The Chapayevites complained about the doctor to the division commander and cited Maria as an example.
Young artists laughed while listening to Maria Andreevna. She laughed along with them. But it became more and more difficult to seem like a cheerful mistress of the house.
denunciation
In 1959, Popova was summoned to the Central Committee of the party. Of her foreign outfits, Maria Andreevna chose the most strict and went to the Old Square. And when she returned, the housekeeper Marusya, who served with 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 under the Central Committee of the CPSU, in which they reported that Maria Popova was in fact 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 Whites. And when the Reds began to take the advantage in the Civil War, she forged a party ticket and came to the Chapaev division.
The main thing that the signatories accused Popova of was: "She is not Anka."
On the homeland of Maria Andreevna - in Kuibyshev, the former Samara - an employee of the Party Control Committee left Moscow on a special assignment.
Still Anka the Heavy
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.
In newspapers and magazines, interviews of the famous Chapaevka Popova began to appear in large numbers.
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 girlfriends, who were worthy of no less glory than she. Well, since Stalin called her Anka, she herself never claimed this. Opponents were confused.
And a man returned to Moscow from Kuibyshev, who went there on a special task for the party. He worked conscientiously. In the certificate submitted to the Central Committee of the party, a copy of which is still kept by the "daughter of Anka the machine-gunner", it was stated:
"Popova Maria Andreevna, a native of the village of Vyazov Gai, Samara province. Girlhood - Golovina. Popova's father, a poor peasant Andrei Romanovich Golovin, was drafted into 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 During one of the dives, he received demobilization, was demobilized and died when his daughter Maria Popova was 4. Maria Popova's mother died when the girl was 8 years old.
From this age, Maria Andreevna labored 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 Popova pretended to be a relative of the Novikovs when she tried to escape from white captivity in 1918. The information of a witness, fellow soldier Popova, 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 the 17th she joined the Red Guard, participated in the battles on the Dutov front. In 1918, she was given a ticket as a member of the Bolshevik Party. The ticket was presented by a member of the party cell of the Samara Pipe Plant Nikolai Shvernik. As part of the Chapaev division since June 18. Popova repeatedly performed responsible tasks of the command: she worked in the Bolshevik underground, prevented a counter-revolutionary rebellion in the First Socialist Regiment of Navy Sailors. She served in the cavalry reconnaissance and at the same time served as a medical assistant.
A man of unparalleled personal courage: during the battles, she repeatedly took command of cavalry crews instead of commanders who died or fled the battlefield. Wounded, shell-shocked. Awarded with the Order of the Red Banner.
In 1924, personally commander Frunze was sent to study at the workers' faculty of the Kharkov Medical Institute. In 1928 she entered the Moscow State University. The further life path of Maria Popova is not of interest to the investigation."
"All that's left is movies and jokes"
Popova was again summoned to the Central Committee. It was received by Nikolai Ivanovich Shvernik, chairman of the Central Committee of Party Control. The same Shvernik who once handed her a party card when she worked in Samara at a pipe factory.
“He told his mother: well, what is Marusya, tortured you? Calm down, you are justified in all respects,” recalls Zinaida Popova. .
On the same evening, a company of Chapayevites gathered for a traditional meeting at the house of the daughter of Commissar Furmanov, Anna. As always, Boris Babochkin, who played the role of the legendary divisional commander, was at the Chapaev 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, on the stove with sciatica. - recalls the story of his mother Zinaida Popova. - Babochkin's face wrinkled up, he began to shout at his mother: "How dare you, Marusya, retell these filthy jokes? And my mother says: "Just think, what's the matter. All that's left of everything is movies and jokes."
Maria Andreevna died in the winter of 1981. No matter how her daughter asked, but even before her death she did not tell her the name of her father.
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 the 38th.
Figured out the fate of the legacy 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. Zinaida Mikhailovna was seen off on her last journey by 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 - documents, paintings by the 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, - says the artistic director of the Sovremennik Theater Galina Volchek. - In 1956, Zina and her mother Maria Andreevna allowed us, novice artists - Oleg Efremov, Evgeny Evstigneev, Oleg Tabakov, Igor Kvasha - to rehearse in their apartment. All of our first cast of the play "Forever Alive" rehearsed here. Sometimes they were delayed until the subway opened.
There was always something delicious in their house: cookies, sweets. Maria Andreevna was entitled to a special ration as a well-deserved person. Of course, we did not come because of the rations, but to listen to her stories. How she, a simple Volga girl, ended up in Chapaev's division. I remember that she was told, they say, you will be a pharmacist - to prescribe medicines to the fighters. She was indignant: “I don’t understand anything in medicine.” And Chapaev replied: "Nothing, go and figure it out." In fact, there were no medicines at all. Then she diluted either soda or flour, made powders, inscribed: “from the head”, “from the stomach”, and so on. Prescribed to the fighters. And they said that the medicine helps!
Was friends with Stalin's family
Maria Andreevna, while studying at Moscow State University, learned German well, - continues Galina Volchek. - She was sent to work in Germany (in 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 relatives of Alliluyeva, Stalin's wife, communicated, were friends ... Then they lived in Sweden, where Zina studied in a French boarding house, learned several languages. There Maria Andreevna met and became friends with Alexandra Kollontai. The circle of communication of this family was amazing!
Zinaida Popova (photo on the left - in childhood) 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 fabulous 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 sewn by the best tailors in Moscow. Zina brought fashionable gizmos from abroad. She had a luxurious wardrobe ... "
The family of Anka the machine-gunner was in close contact with the descendants of Vasily Chapaev. We called one of the great-granddaughters of the legendary division commander - Evgenia Chapaeva.
I visited them at home, - says Evgenia Arturovna. - I saw photographs in which Maria Andreevna was with various famous people - Voroshilov, Otto Yulievich Schmidt, a researcher of the Pamirs. Zina had a habit of keeping diaries - she made 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 Luda, a manicurist. By that time, she was already infatuated with someone else. And, so to speak, she handed her husband "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 as a family. I didn't want to have children. She never gave birth...
Oleg Efremov also tried to marry Zina, ”the former Sovremennik actor Gennady Pechnikov told KP. - He was loving. I remember an old chest of drawers in which Maria Andreevna kept vodka stored up 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, a former friend of Zinaida, the mother of the artist Mikhail Safronov, told KP. - Zinaida recalled how Bogatyrev (Popova arranged exhibitions for him. - Ed.) Painted her portrait. She also scolded the artist for drawing too big a nose.
There were legends that Zina was the illegitimate daughter of Stalin and even Hitler. But who her father was, she did not know for sure - her mother never told her anything.
Zina knew hundreds of people! She talked with Kirill Lavrov, Mikhail Kozakov, Oleg and Lisa Dal, Andrey Myagkov and many others. And none of the living people knew about her death! Even me. Recently, new people have appeared next to her, who did not allow anyone to her ...
And they threw all Zina's things and her diaries, paintings by Bogatyrev, 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 filed a police report...
"I have the archive!"
The scandal around the archive thrown into the trash was picked up by the media. And then ... Conducting its own investigation, "Komsomolskaya Pravda" talked with a friend of the Popov family Tatyana Chapaeva, the granddaughter of the legendary commander. She gave her point of view on the events. We do not undertake to assert that her every word is the truth. However, Chapaeva's story shows that in the story of the property of Anka the machine-gunner, not everything is so simple.
And why did you decide that things were thrown away? - says Tatyana Alexandrovna. - The personal archive of Anka the machine-gunner, what is interesting from the point of view of history, is now with me. The will of the daughter of Maria Andreevna is to transfer everything to the Chapaev Museum in Pugachev, which I am going to do.
It is not clear where the pictures of the actor Yuri Bogatyrev are now, which were taken out of the apartment in the house on Tverskaya.
Photo: KP archive
In real life, the prototype of one of the main characters of the famous Soviet film "Chapaev" was not called Anna, but Maria Andreevna Popova.
When "Always" - a historical and educational project, studied the materials, it turned out that she had never been a machine gunner. In the division, at first she served in her main profile - a nurse. She turned out to be a sharp-witted, mischievous girl.
Maria Andreevna herself told such a case from her sanitary practice: “In the ruined pharmacy of a small town, where the Chapaevs entered, there were two bags of soda. The nurse Popova loaded them onto a cart and brought them to the division. She cut paper into strips, poured powder, folded it and wrote: "from the head", "from the stomach" and distributed it to the fighters. Some have helped."
After that, the popularity of the nurse Maria Popova overshadowed the authority of the head physician of the division, who did not prescribe such "miraculous" drugs. The Chapaev soldiers complained about the doctor to the division commander - they say that he treats badly. Whether business - Mashka Popova... 
True, there was one case when the nurse had to shoot from a machine gun.
During one of the battles, Maria brought machine-gun belts to the calculation of "Maxim". The machine gun was hopelessly silent - fragments of an enemy shell killed the second number on the spot, 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 drive a machine gun with my healthy hand.
- Are you crazy? I'm afraid, - Maria refused and tried to leave.
Having fired from the 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. At the same time, the division commander decided that the dashing girl now had the right place in equestrian reconnaissance.
However, it so happened that it was this fight with the participation of Maria Popova that was used to create 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 gunshots, the coffin was escorted by the daughter of the deceased and well-known theater and film artists. The deceased never had a direct relationship 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 just Maria
In the early thirties, Stalin was brought to see the film "Chapaev", directed by the Vasilievs. The leader did not like the picture, he called the directors to himself. Iosif Vissarionovich suggested that they introduce a female fighter into the film, as well as designate 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. Many women gathered, their stories were recorded by a whole detachment of stenographers. But only the stories told by the fighter of the Chapaev division Maria Popova were selected. In the future, when writing the script, Anna, the wife of Commissioner Dmitry Furmanov, will call her by her own name.
So just Maria will become Anka the machine gunner.
"She will be the heroine"
Released on the screens of the country in 1934, the film about the heroes of the Civil War was a huge success. His characters were perceived by the audience as real people, all events seemed genuine. The audience watched the picture 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 directors Vasiliev if it really was. Yes, they answered. He then said: here she will be the heroine,” recalls the daughter of Maria Popova Zinaida Mikhailovna.
Maria Popova herself at that time, knowing nothing, lived in ... Berlin. And when she was summoned to Moscow to be declared a national treasure, she was very frightened.
Masha, rub your eyes with a bow
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 with her husband, they did not live long. Ivan Popov died shortly after the wedding.
Photo: from the personal archive of the Popov family
“When her husband was buried (he, by the way, was not my father), the neighbors whispered: Masha, you could at least rub your eyes with an onion so that there were tears,” says Zinaida Popova. “He, as my mother recalled, often suffered from pain in the abdomen "And during another acute attack he died. And who is my real father, I still don't know. 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 Plant. Here she joined the party. When the Civil War began, Maria participated in the battles for Samara.
“In 1918, when the Whites 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 stumbled upon 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 shoot from a machine gun, because he himself could not press two triggers at the same time. For this fight, Chapaev awarded her a watch. He also decided later that Maria Popova had the right place in equestrian intelligence.
Together with Vasily Ivanovich, they will fight for a year - until the death of Chapaev.
"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 commander Tatyana Chapaeva. “He also quarreled with Furmanov precisely because he brought his wife Anna to the front. Vasily Ivanovich came in into 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 repulsed Frunze's telegrams 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 was 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 about real characters and about the actors who played the main roles, "so much frank nonsense and nonsense has been written" that sometimes "just your hair stands 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 in recent years they have managed to write and reproduce, then I undoubtedly give the first place to the one who came up with the idea that Vasily Ivanovich and Anna Furmanova were lovers,” says Tatyana Chapaeva indignantly. I got it from somewhere that allegedly Pyotr Isaev (Petka) shot himself a year later, when the soldiers held a wake for Chapai, with the motivation that it was he who did not save his commander. There is another very common myth. As if the wife of actor Leonid Kmit, who played the role of Petka, was so jealous of her husband for the cinematic Anka that she committed suicide.
Tatyana Chapaeva added that, in fact, Pyotr Isaev was not a peasant simpleton, as shown in the film. This highly educated officer in Chapaev's batmen never served, but was a guarantor for especially important cases, and later the head of the communications brigade. In principle, there could not be any love between him and Anka - Maria Andreevna Popova. And in real life, it was she who taught him how to handle a machine gun.
“I have been friends with Maria Andreevna’s daughter Zinaida Mikhailovna for many years. I often visited them at 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 reconnaissance company of the Chapaev division, unlike me, knew my grandfather personally," said Tatyana Chapaeva.
"The appearance is representative, but she still does not know how to dress herself 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, appointed as an assistant to the legal department of the trade mission.
In Berlin, a young lawyer, Maria Popova, arrived in 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 Representation.
Photo: from the personal archive of the Popov family
"Of course, a devoted comrade to us. In January 1931, after graduating from the law faculty of Moscow State University, she was sent to work in the Soviet Trade Representation in Berlin. She speaks German poorly. She knows how to deal with people. She has a personable appearance, but she still does not 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.
From fashionista Evgenia Alliluyeva, Maria learned to dress with taste. 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 the seconded compatriots to adapt in Germany, brought them together with the right people.
From the characteristics of an employee of the Intelligence Directorate of the headquarters of the Red Army Popova Maria Andreevna:
"In 1931-1934, she worked in the Soviet Trade Representation in Berlin as a referent and chairman of the joint committee of trade unions of the Sovkolonia. An intelligent, fairly theoretically trained corporant. A social woman."
“I don’t know what my mother did in Germany, but I saw her so rarely that I called her“ Frau Popova ”. - recalls Zinaida Popova. - The nanny voted for Hitler in the elections of 1933, because he gave everyone a job. She went to almost all rallies, and carried me with her in a stroller. I told everyone: mouth front! mouth front! And when the fascists came to power, I also told everyone to mouth the 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 a real heroine out of Maria Popova.
Popova did not mind: fame pleasantly tickled pride. Of course, some of the fighting friends were upset. Many risked their lives no less than Popova, but the glory went to her alone.
However, Mary was not up to it. She received a new assignment.
From the characteristics of an employee of the Intelligence Directorate of the headquarters of the Red Army Popova Maria Andreevna:
"In November 1935, she was recruited to work in the Red Army Republic of Uzbekistan. From May 1936 to May 1937 she was on a business trip in Stockholm along the Intourist line. She has a lot of practical intelligence and ingenuity. She works hard on the Swedish language. Her character is calm, restrained."
The inhabitants 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?"
With the USSR Ambassador to Sweden, Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai, Maria Andreevna developed almost domestic relations. They were very friendly.
On May 37, Popova was informed that her business trip to Stockholm was over. With heavy forebodings, Maria Andreevna returned to Moscow. But so far everything has been going well. She had a job, she was given an apartment on Tverskaya.
"Children are beaten only by Trotskyists"
One day the doorbell rang. The call was persistent. It turned out that the neighbors were complaining about their daughter.
Zina arranged a rally in the yard, explained to the children that adults were now conducting an operation in the Arctic Ocean to rescue the “Papanins”. “Polar explorers are freezing,” Zina said, “they need clothes.” The children ran to the Moscow River and dropped their little coats on the ice floes passing by. Zina told them that the ice floes would certainly end up in the ocean.
“Mother took an old soldier's belt off the wall and slapped me. She asked: “Why are you, bastard, not crying?” And I said, “I won’t. Only Trotskyists beat children,” recalls Zinaida Popova.
"Chapaev-hero walked around the Urals ..."
Song "Chapaev-hero walked in the Urals"
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Before the Great Patriotic War, the arrests of the fighters of the Chapaev division began.
Ivan Kutyakov was killed by Chekists - he commanded a division after the death of Chapaev. When they came for Kutyakov, he shouted that he would not be killed alive, and began to shoot at the guards. They opened fire back.
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 - she raised morale among the troops. After watching the film "Chapaev", Maria Popova most often told the soldiers about the history of the creation of the song "Chapaev the Hero Walked in the Urals." She composed it after the death of the division commander.
Once the song was heard by Alexander Alexandrov, the head of the famous Red Banner Song and Dance Ensemble. At his request, Maria Andreevna wrote a few more lines. "The Ural River is deep, steep banks, and the steppe and the steppe are wide - there ours beat the enemy."
The war is over. Stalin died. The Khrushchev thaw began.
"Contemporary", CNN and the placebo effect
Friends of Maria Andreevna's daughter began to come to the Popovs' apartment at number six on Tverskaya more and more often. Zinaida Mikhailovna at that time had just graduated from the Institute of International Relations. In the future, she will become the editor of the Moscow bureau of CNN, 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. For one of them, actor Igor Vasiliev, Zinaida will marry.
At that time, while little-known young and talented artists were rehearsing the play "Forever Alive". Maria Andreevna let them in, allocating one of the rooms of her apartment for night rehearsals.
Many years later, a sign appeared on the front door of entrance No. 8 in the house on Tverskaya, that it was in the apartment of Maria Andreevna Popova that "in fact, the future Sovremennik Theater was born."
Of course, the youth pestered the "Anka the Machine Gunner" with questions.
The story about the placebo effect, repeatedly told by Maria Andreevna, has always been a success.
In the ruined pharmacy of a small town, where the Chapaevs entered, there were two bags of soda. The nurse Popova loaded them onto a cart and brought them to the division. She cut paper into strips, poured powder, folded it and wrote: "from the head", "from the stomach" and handed it out to the fighters. Some helped.
The medical fame of the medical assistant Maria Popova then overshadowed the authority of the division doctor, who did not give such medicines.
The Chapayevites complained about the doctor to the division commander and cited Maria as an example.
Young artists laughed while listening to Maria Andreevna. She laughed along with them. But it became more and more difficult to seem like a cheerful mistress of the house.
denunciation
In 1959, Popova was summoned to the Central Committee of the party. Of her foreign outfits, Maria Andreevna chose the most strict and went to the Old Square. And when she returned, the housekeeper Marusya, who served with 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 under the Central Committee of the CPSU, in which they reported that Maria Popova was in fact 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 Whites. And when the Reds began to take the advantage in the Civil War, she forged a party ticket and came to the Chapaev division.
The main thing that the signatories accused Popova of was: "She is not Anka."
On the homeland of Maria Andreevna - in Kuibyshev, the former Samara - an employee of the Party Control Committee left Moscow on a special assignment.
Still Anka the Heavy
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.
In newspapers and magazines, interviews of the famous Chapaevka Popova began to appear in large numbers.
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 girlfriends, who were worthy of no less glory than she. Well, since Stalin called her Anka, she herself never claimed this. Opponents were confused.
And a man returned to Moscow from Kuibyshev, who went there on a special task for the party. He worked conscientiously. In the certificate submitted to the Central Committee of the party, a copy of which is still kept by the "daughter of Anka the machine-gunner", it was stated:
"Popova Maria Andreevna, a native of the village of Vyazov Gai, Samara province. Girlhood - Golovina. Popova's father, a poor peasant Andrei Romanovich Golovin, was drafted into 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 During one of the dives, he received demobilization, was demobilized and died when his daughter Maria Popova was 4. 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. At the top, Maria Andreevna Popova and D. Furmanov's daughter Anna Furmanova
From this age, Maria Andreevna labored 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 Popova pretended to be a relative of the Novikovs when she tried to escape from white captivity in 1918. The information of a witness, fellow soldier Popova, 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 the 17th she joined the Red Guard, participated in the battles on the Dutov front. In 1918, she was given a ticket as a member of the Bolshevik Party. The ticket was presented by a member of the party cell of the Samara Pipe Plant Nikolai Shvernik. As part of the Chapaev division since June 18. Popova repeatedly performed responsible tasks of the command: she worked in the Bolshevik underground, prevented a counter-revolutionary rebellion in the First Socialist Regiment of Navy Sailors. She served in the cavalry reconnaissance and at the same time served as a medical assistant.
A man of unparalleled personal courage: during the battles, she repeatedly took command of cavalry crews instead of commanders who died or fled the battlefield. Wounded, shell-shocked. Awarded with the Order of the Red Banner.
In 1924, personally commander Frunze was sent to study at the workers' faculty of the Kharkov Medical Institute. In 1928 she entered the Moscow State University. The further life path of Maria Popova is not of interest to the investigation."
"All that's left is movies and jokes"
Popova was again summoned to the Central Committee. It was received by Nikolai Ivanovich Shvernik, chairman of the Central Committee of Party Control. The same Shvernik who once handed her a party card when she worked in Samara at a pipe factory.
“He told his mother: well, what is Marusya, tortured you? Calm down, you are justified in all respects,” recalls Zinaida Popova. .
On the same evening, a company of Chapayevites gathered for a traditional meeting at the house of the daughter of Commissar Furmanov, Anna. As always, Boris Babochkin, who played the role of the legendary divisional commander, was at the Chapaev 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, on the stove with sciatica. - recalls the story of his mother Zinaida Popova. - Babochkin's face wrinkled up, he began to shout at his mother: "How dare you, Marusya, retell these filthy jokes? And my mother says: "Just think, what's the matter. All that's left of everything is movies and jokes."
Maria Andreevna died in the winter of 1981. No matter how her daughter asked, but even before her death she did not tell her the name of her father.
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 the 38th.
