Editing Vladimir Mayakovsky (section)

==Life and career==
[[File:Mayakovsky House Museum 2.jpg|thumb|right|200px|The house in Georgia where Mayakovsky was born]]
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky was born in 1893 in [[Baghdati]], [[Kutais Governorate]], [[Georgia (country)|Georgia]], then part of the [[Russian Empire]], to Alexandra Alexeyevna (née Pavlenko), a housewife, and Vladimir Mayakovsky, a local forester. His father belonged to a noble family and was a distant relative of the writer [[Grigory Danilevsky]]. Vladimir Vladimirovich had two sisters, Olga and [[Lyudmila Mayakovskaya|Lyudmila]], and a brother Konstantin, who died at the age of three.<ref name="dic_90">{{cite web | author=Iskrzhitskaya, I.Y. |date=1990 |url=http://az.lib.ru/m/majakowskij_w_w/text_0420.shtml |title=Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky |work=Russian Writers. Biobibliographical dictionary. Vol.2.| publisher=Prosveshchenye |access-date=13 January 2015}}</ref> The family was of Russian and [[Zaporozhian Cossacks|Zaporozhian Cossack]] descent on their father's side and Ukrainian on their mother's.<ref name="mikhaylov">{{cite web | author=Mikhaylov, Al. |date=1988 |url=http://az.lib.ru/m/majakowskij_w_w/text_0290.shtml |title=Mayakovsky |publisher=Lives of Distinguished People. Molodaya Gvardiya |access-date=13 January 2015}}</ref> 
[[File:Mayakovsky-SN-001.jpg|thumb|left|200px|The Mayakovskys in Kutaisi]]

At home the family spoke Russian. With his friends and at school, Mayakovsky spoke [[Georgian language|Georgian]]. "I was born in the Caucasus, my father is a Cossack, my mother is Ukrainian. My mother tongue is Georgian. Thus three cultures are united in me," he told the [[Prague]] newspaper ''[[Prager Presse]]'' in a 1927 interview.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://feb-web.ru/feb/mayakovsky/texts/ms0/msd/msd-232-.htm?cmd=p|title=ФЭБ: Маяковский. Из беседы с сотрудником газеты «Прагер пресс». — 1961|publisher=feb-web.ru|accessdate=2022-08-26|archive-date=2018-07-25|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180725122820/http://feb-web.ru/feb/mayakovsky/texts/ms0/msd/msd-232-.htm?cmd=p}}</ref> For Mayakovsky, Georgia was his eternal symbol of beauty. "I know, it's nonsense, Eden and Paradise, but since people sang about them // It must have been Georgia, the joyful land, that those poets were having in mind", he wrote later.<ref name="dic_90"/><ref>Я знаю: / глупость – эдемы и рай! / Но если / пелось про это, // должно быть, / Грузию, радостный край, / подразумевали поэты.</ref>

In 1902, Mayakovsky joined the Kutaisi [[Gymnasium (school)|gymnasium]]. Later as a 14-year-old, he took part in [[socialist]] demonstrations in the town of [[Kutaisi]].<ref name="dic_90"/> His mother, aware of his activities, apparently did not mind. "People around warned us we were giving a young boy too much freedom. But I saw him developing according to the new trends, sympathized with him and pandered to his aspirations," she later remembered.<ref name="mikhaylov"/> His father died suddenly in 1906, when Mayakovsky was thirteen. (The father pricked his finger on a rusty pin while filing papers and died of [[blood poisoning]].) His widowed mother moved the family to [[Moscow]] after selling all their movable property.<ref name="dic_90"/><ref name="kirjasto">{{cite web |url=http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/majakovs.htm |title=Vladimir Mayakovsky |website=Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi) |first=Petri |last=Liukkonen |publisher=[[Kuusankoski]] Public Library |location=Finland |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110716124823/http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/majakovs.htm |archive-date=16 July 2011 |url-status=dead |df=dmy-all }}</ref>

In July 1906, Mayakovsky joined the 4th form of Moscow's 5th Classic gymnasium and soon developed a passion for [[Marxism|Marxist]] literature. "Never cared for fiction. For me it was philosophy, [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel|Hegel]], natural sciences, but first and foremost, Marxism. There'd be no higher art for me than "[[A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy|The Foreword]]" by [[Karl Marx|Marx]]," he recalled in the 1920s in his autobiography ''I, Myself''.<ref>''I, Myself ''(autobiography). ''The Works by Vladimir Mayakovsky'' in 6 volumes. Ogonyok Library. Pravda Publishers. Moscow, 1973. Vol.I, pp.</ref> In 1907 Mayakovsky became a member of his gymnasium's underground Social Democrats' circle, taking part in numerous activities of the [[Russian Social Democratic Labour Party]] which he, given the nickname "Comrade Konstantin",<ref name="haaretz">{{cite news | url=http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/the-raging-bull-of-russian-poetry-1.224897|title=The Raging Bull of Russian Poetry| newspaper=Haaretz| access-date=13 January 2015}}</ref> joined the same year.<ref name="timeline">{{cite web | date=1988| url=http://az.lib.ru/m/majakowskij_w_w/text_0290.shtml|title=V.V. Mayakovsky biography. Timeline| publisher=The Lives of the Distinguished People series. Issue No.700. Molodaya Gvardiya, Moscow| access-date=13 January 2015}}</ref><ref name="poets">{{cite web | url=http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/vladimir-mayakovsky|title=Vladimir Mayakovsky| publisher=www.poets.org| access-date=13 January 2014}}</ref> In 1908, the boy was dismissed from the gymnasium because his mother was no longer able to afford the tuition fees.<ref name="vm">{{cite web |url=http://www.vmayakovsky.ru/mbiography/ |title=Vladimir mayakovsky. Biography| publisher=The New Literary net| access-date=13 January 2014}}</ref> For two years he studied at the Stroganov School of Industrial Arts, where his sister Lyudmila had started her studies a few years earlier.<ref name="kirjasto"/>
[[File:Mayakovsky-1910.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Mayakovsky in 1910]]
As a young [[Bolshevik]] activist, Mayakovsky distributed propaganda leaflets, possessed a pistol without a license, and in 1909 got involved in smuggling female political activists out of prison. This resulted in a series of arrests and finally an 11-month imprisonment.<ref name="haaretz"/> It was in solitary confinement in the Moscow [[Butyrka prison]] that Mayakovsky started writing verses for the first time.<ref name="britannica">{{cite encyclopedia | url=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/370851/Vladimir-Vladimirovich-Mayakovsky|title=Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky| encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica| access-date=13 January 2014}}</ref> "Revolution and poetry got entangled in my head and became one," he wrote in ''I, Myself''.<ref name="dic_90"/> As a minor, Mayakovsky was spared a serious prison sentence (with associated deportation) and in January 1910 was released.<ref name="vm"/> A warden confiscated the young man's notebook. Years later Mayakovsky conceded that was all for the better, yet he always cited 1909 as the year his literary career started.<ref name="dic_90"/>

Upon his release from prison, Mayakovsky remained an ardent Socialist, but realized his own inadequacy as a serious revolutionary. Having left the Party (never to re-join it), he concentrated on education. "I stopped my Party activities. Sat down and started to learn… Now my intention was to make the Socialist art," he later remembered.<ref name="v_m">{{cite web | url=http://v-mayakovsky.com/biography.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091113042150/http://v-mayakovsky.com/biography.html | url-status=usurped | archive-date=13 November 2009 |title=Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky. Biography| publisher=Mayakovsky site| access-date=13 January 2014}}</ref>

In 1911, Mayakovsky enrolled in the [[Moscow Art School]]. In September 1911 a brief encounter with fellow student [[David Burlyuk]] (which nearly ended with a fight) led to a lasting friendship and had historic consequences for the nascent Russian Futurist movement.<ref name="timeline"/><ref name="britannica"/> Mayakovsky became an active member (and soon a spokesman) for the group {{Interlanguage link| Hylaea (literature) | ru |3= Гилея (группа)|lt=Hylaea}} ({{lang|ru|Гилея}}), which sought to free the arts from academic traditions: its members would read poetry on street corners, throw tea at their audiences, and make their public appearances an annoyance for the art [[the Establishment|establishment]].<ref name="kirjasto"/>

Burlyuk, on having heard Mayakovsky's verses, declared him "a genius poet".<ref name="vm"/><ref name="max">{{cite web | url=http://max.mmlc.northwestern.edu/mdenner/Demo/poetpage/mayakovsky.html|title=Vladimir Mayakovsky biography. Timeline |publisher=max.mmlc.northwestern.edu| access-date=13 January 2015}}</ref> Later Soviet researchers tried to downplay the significance of the fact, but even after their friendship ended and their ways parted, Mayakovsky continued to give credit to his mentor, referring to him as "my wonderful friend". "It was Burlyuk who turned me into a poet. He read the French and the Germans to me. He pressed books on me. He would come and talk endlessly. He didn't let me get away. He would subsidize me with 50 kopeks each day so that I'd write and not be hungry," Mayakovsky wrote in "I, Myself".<ref name="haaretz"/>

===Literary career===
[[File:Poshechina obshestvennomu vkusu.jpg|thumb|left|200px|Mayakovsky (center) with the fellow Futurist group members]]
On 17 November 1912, Mayakovsky made his first public performance at Stray Dog, the artistic basement in Saint Petersburg.<ref name="timeline"/> In December of that year his first published poems, "Night" ({{lang|ru|Ночь}}) and "Morning" ({{lang|ru|Утро}}) appeared in the Futurists' Manifesto ''A Slap in the Face of Public Taste'',<ref>{{Cite book|title=Russian Futurism Through Its Manifestoes, 1912 – 1928|last=Lawton|first=Anna|publisher=Cornell University Press|year=1988|isbn=0-8014-9492-3|location=Ithaca, New York| pages=51–52}}</ref> signed by Mayakovsky, as well as [[Velemir Khlebnikov]], David Burlyuk and [[Alexey Kruchenykh]], calling among other things for... "throwing [[Pushkin]], [[Dostoyevsky]], [[Lev Tolstoy|Tolstoy]], etc, etc, off the steamboat of the modernity."<ref name="timeline"/><ref name="vm"/>

In October 1913, Mayakovsky gave the performance at the Pink Lantern café, reciting his new poem "Take That!" ({{lang|ru|Нате!}}) for the first time. The concert at the Petersburg's Luna-Park saw the premiere of the poetic monodrama ''[[Vladimir Mayakovsky (tragedy)|Vladimir Mayakovsky]]'', with the author in a leading role, stage decorations designed by [[Pavel Filonov]] and Iosif Shkolnik.<ref name="timeline"/><ref name="britannica"/> In 1913 Mayakovsky's first poetry collection called ''I'' ({{lang|ru|Я}}) came out, its original limited edition 300 copies [[Lithography|lithographically]] printed. This four-poem cycle, handwritten and illustrated by Vasily Tchekrygin and Leo Shektel, later formed Part One of the 1916 compilation ''Simple as Mooing''.<ref name="vm"/>

In December 1913, Mayakovsky along with his fellow Futurist group members embarked on the Russian tour, which took them to 17 cities, including [[Simferopol]], [[Sevastopol]], [[Kerch]], [[Odessa]] and [[Kishinev]].<ref name="dic_90"/> It was a riotous affair. The audiences would go wild and often the police stopped the readings. The poets dressed outlandishly, and Mayakovsky, "a regular scandal-maker" in his own words, used to appear on stage in a self-made yellow shirt which became the token of his early stage persona.<ref name="haaretz"/> The tour ended on 13 April 1914 in [[Kaluga]]<ref name="timeline"/> and cost Mayakovsky and Burlyuk their education: both were expelled from the Art school, their public appearances deemed incompatible with the school's academic principles.<ref name="timeline"/><ref name="vm"/> They learned of it while in [[Poltava]] from the local police chief, who chose the occasion as a pretext to ban the Futurists from performing on stage.<ref name="mikhaylov"/>

Having won 65 rubles in a lottery, in May 1914, Mayakovsky went to [[Repino|Kuokkala]], near Petrograd. Here he put the finishing touches to ''[[A Cloud in Trousers]]'', frequented [[Korney Chukovsky]]'s [[dacha]], sat for [[Ilya Repin]]'s painting sessions and met [[Maxim Gorky]] for the first time.<ref>Commentaries to Autobiography (I, Myself). The Works by Vladimir Mayakovsky in 6 volumes. Ogonyok Library. Pravda Publishers. Moscow, 1973. Vol.I, p.455</ref> As [[World War I]] began, Mayakovsky volunteered but was rejected as 'politically unreliable'. He worked for the Lubok Today company which produced patriotic [[lubok]] pictures, and in the ''Nov'' (Virgin Land) newspaper, which published several of his anti-war poems ("Mother and an Evening Killed by the Germans", "The War is Declared", "Me and Napoleon" among others).<ref name="mikhaylov"/> In the summer of 1915 Mayakovsky moved to Petrograd where he started contributing to the ''New Satyrikon'' magazine, writing mostly humorous verse in the vein of [[Sasha Tchorny]], one of the journal's former stalwarts. Subsequently, Maxim Gorky invited the poet to work for his journal, ''Letopis''.<ref name="dic_90"/><ref name="v_m"/>
[[File:Vladimir Mayakovsky 1914.jpg|thumb|Photo c. 1914 (caption: "Futurist Vladimir Mayakovsky")]]
In June of that year, Mayakovsky fell in love with a married woman, [[Lilya Brik]], who eagerly took upon herself the role of a '[[muse]]'. Her husband [[Osip Brik]] seemed not to mind and became the poet's close friend; later he published several books by Mayakovsky and used his entrepreneurial talents to support the Futurist movement. This love affair, as well as his ideas on World War I and Socialism, strongly influenced Mayakovsky's best known works: ''A Cloud in Trousers'' (1915),<ref name="vmlinux.org">{{cite web |url=http://vmlinux.org/ilse/lit/mayako.htm |title=A Cloud in Trousers (Part 1) by Vladimir Mayakovsky |publisher=vmlinux.org |access-date=7 April 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080621081223/http://vmlinux.org/ilse/lit/mayako.htm |archive-date=21 June 2008 |df=dmy-all }}</ref> his first major poem of appreciable length, followed by ''[[Backbone Flute]]'' (1915), ''[[The War and the World]]'' (1916) and ''[[The Man (poem)|The Man]]'' (1918).<ref name="timeline"/>

When his mobilization form finally arrived in the autumn of 1915, Mayakovsky found himself unwilling to go to the frontlines. Assisted by Gorky, he joined the Petrograd Military Driving school as a draftsman and was studying there until early 1917.<ref name="timeline"/> In 1916 Parus (The Sail) Publishers (again led by Gorky), published Mayakovsky's poetry compilation called ''Simple As Mooing''.<ref name="dic_90"/><ref name="timeline"/>

====1917–1927====
[[File:Mayakovsky 1917 a.jpg|thumb|left|Mayakovsky in 1917]]
Mayakovsky embraced the [[Russian Revolution of 1917|Bolshevik Russian Revolution]] wholeheartedly and for a while even worked in [[Smolny]], Petrograd, where he saw [[Vladimir Lenin]].<ref name="timeline"/> "To accept or not to accept, there was no such question… [That was] my Revolution," he wrote in ''I, Myself'' autobiography.{{citation needed|date=December 2020}} In November 1917 he took part in the Communist Party's Central committee-sanctioned assembly of writers, painters and theatre directors who expressed their allegiance to the new political regime.<ref name="timeline"/> In December that year "The Left March" ({{lang|ru|Левый марш}}, 1918) premiered at the Navy Theater, with sailors as an audience.<ref name="v_m"/>

In 1918, Mayakovsky started the short-lived ''Futurist Paper''. He also starred in three [[silent film]]s made at the Neptun Studios in Petrograd he had written scripts for. The only surviving one, ''[[The Lady and the Hooligan]]'', was based on the ''La maestrina degli operai'' (''The Workers' Young Schoolmistress'') published in 1895 by [[Edmondo De Amicis]], and directed by Evgeny Slavinsky. The other two, ''Born Not for the Money'' and ''Shackled by Film'' were directed by Nikandr Turkin and are presumed [[lost film|lost]].<ref name="timeline"/><ref>Petrić, Vlada. ''Constructivism in Film: The Man With the Movie Camera:A Cinematic Analysis''. Cambridge University Press. 1987. Page 32. {{ISBN|0-521-32174-3}}</ref>

On 7 November 1918, Mayakovsky's play ''[[Mystery-Bouffe]]'' premiered at the Petrograd Musical Drama Theatre.<ref name="timeline"/> Representing a universal flood and the subsequent joyful triumph of the "Unclean" (the proletariat) over the "Clean" (the [[bourgeoisie]]), this satirical drama's re-worked, 1921 version enjoyed even greater popular acclaim.<ref name="britannica"/><ref name="v_m"/> However, the author's attempt to make a film of the play failed, its language deemed "incomprehensible for the masses."<ref name="kirjasto"/>

In December 1918, Mayakovsky was involved with [[Osip Brik]] in discussions with the Viborg district party school of the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union#Early years (1898–1924)|Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks)]] (RKP(b)) to set up a Futurist organisation affiliated to the party. Named [[Komfut]], the organisation was formally founded in January 1919, but was swiftly dissolved following the intervention of [[Anatoly Lunacharsky]].<ref name="Jangfeldt">{{cite book |last1=Jangfeldt |first1=Bengt |title=Majakovskij and Futurism 1917-21 |date=1976 |publisher=Almqvist & Wiksell International |location=Stockholm |url=https://monoskop.org/images/e/e0/Jangfeldt_Bengt_Majakovskij_and_Futurism_1917-1921.pdf |access-date=23 December 2018}}</ref>

In March 1919, Mayakovsky moved back to Moscow where ''Vladimir Mayakovsky's Collected Works 1909–1919'' was released. The same month he started working for the Russian State Telegraph Agency ([[ROSTA]]) creating—both graphic and text— satirical [[Agitprop]] posters, aimed mostly at informing the country's largely illiterate population of the current events.<ref name="timeline"/> In the cultural climate of the early Soviet Union, his popularity grew rapidly, even if among the members of the first Bolshevik government, only [[Anatoly Lunacharsky]] supported him; others treated the Futurist art more skeptically. Mayakovsky's 1921 poem, ''[[150 000 000]]'' failed to impress Lenin, who apparently saw in it little more than a formal futuristic experiment. More favourably received by the Soviet leader was his next one, "Re Conferences" which came out in April.<ref name="timeline"/>

A vigorous spokesman for the Communist Party, Mayakovsky expressed himself in many ways. Contributing simultaneously to numerous Soviet newspapers, he poured out topical propagandistic verses and wrote didactic booklets for children while lecturing and reciting all over Russia.<ref name="britannica"/>

In May 1922, after a performance at the House of Publishing at the charity auction collecting money for the victims of [[Povolzhye]] famine, he went abroad for the first time, visiting [[Riga]], [[Berlin]] and [[Paris]], where he was invited to the studios of [[Fernand Léger]] and [[Picasso]].<ref name="kirjasto"/> Several books, including ''[[The West (Mayakovsky)|The West]]'' and ''Paris'' cycles (1922–1925) were created as a result.<ref name="timeline"/>
[[Image:Mayakovsky Pasternak.jpg|right|thumb|300px|Japanese writer [[Tamizi Naito]], [[Boris Pasternak]], [[Sergei Eisenstein]], Olga Tretyakova, [[Lilya Brik]], Vladimir Mayakovsky, Arseny Voznesensky and translator from Japan at the meeting with Tamizi Naito, 1924.]]

From 1922 to 1928, Mayakovsky was a prominent member of the Left Art Front (LEF) he helped to found (and coin its "literature of fact, not fiction" credo) and for a while defined his work as Communist Futurism ({{lang|ru|комфут}}).<ref name="vm"/> He edited, along with [[Sergei Tretyakov (writer)|Sergei Tretyakov]] and Osip Brik, the journal ''[[LEF (journal)|LEF]]'', its stated objective being "re-examining the ideology and practices of the so-called leftist art, rejecting individualism and increasing Art's value for the developing Communism."<ref name="poets"/> The journal's first, March 1923, issue featured Mayakovsky's poem ''[[About That]]'' ({{lang|ru|Про это}}).<ref name="timeline"/> Regarded as a ''LEF'' manifesto, it soon came out as a book illustrated by [[Alexander Rodchenko]] who also used some photographs made by Mayakovsky and Lilya Brik.<ref>{{cite web | author=Arutcheva, V., Paperny, Z.| url=http://az.lib.ru/m/majakowskij_w_w/text_0340.shtml |title=Commentaries to About That | publisher=The Complete V.V.Mayakovsky in 13 volumes. Khudozhestvennaya Literatura. Moscow, 1958. Vol. 4| access-date=13 January 2015}}</ref>

In May 1923, Mayakovsky spoke at a massive protest rally in Moscow, in the wake of [[Vatslav Vorovsky]]'s assassination. In October 1924 he gave numerous public readings of the 3,000-line epic ''[[Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (poem)|Vladimir Ilyich Lenin]]'' written on the death of the Soviet Communist leader. Next February it came out as a book, published by Gosizdat. Five years later Mayakovsky's rendition of the third part of the poem, at the Lenin Memorial evening in the [[Bolshoi Theatre]] ended with 20-minutes ovation.<ref name="britannica"/><ref name="commentaries_VIL"/> In May 1925 Mayakovsky's second trip took him to several European cities, then to the [[United States]], [[Mexico]]<ref>Mayakovsky, Vladimir (1925). "[[c:File:Mexico by Mayakovsky.pdf|Mexico]]". Trans. [[Adam Halbur]] and Andrew Krizhanovsky.</ref> and [[Republic of Cuba (1902–1959)|Cuba]]. In the US, he visited [[New York City|New York]], [[Cleveland]], [[Detroit]], [[Chicago]], [[Pittsburgh]], and [[Philadelphia]], and planned a trip to [[Boston]] that was never realized.<ref>{{cite web |title=Mayakovsky in Cleveland: A Fiery Futurist's Discovery of the Forest City|last=Shakarian|first=Pietro A.|website=Cleveland Historical |url=https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/1001 |access-date=April 27, 2023}}</ref> His book of essays ''My Discovery of America'' came out later that year.<ref name="timeline"/><ref name="vm"/>

In January 1927, the first issue of the ''[[New LEF]]'' magazine came out, again under Mayakovsky's supervision, now focusing on the documentary art. In all, 24 issues of it came out.<ref name="max"/> In October 1927 Mayakovsky recited his new poem ''All Right!'' ({{lang|ru|Хорошо!}}) for the audience of the Moscow Party conference activists in the Moscow's Red Hall.<ref name="timeline"/> In November 1927 a play called ''The 25th'' (and based upon the ''All Right!'' poem) premiered at the Leningrad Maly Opera Theatre. In summer 1928, disillusioned with LEF, he left both the organization and its magazine.<ref name="timeline"/>

====1929–1930====
[[File:Mayakovsky and Fedor Tarasov.jpg|thumb|left|240px|Mayakovsky at his 20 Years of Work exhibition, 1930]]
In 1929, the publishing house Goslitizdat released ''The Works by V. V. Mayakovsky'' in 4 volumes. In September 1929 the first assembly of the newly formed REF group gathered with Mayakovsky in the chair.<ref name="timeline"/> But behind this façade the poet's relationship with the Soviet literary establishment was quickly deteriorating. Both the REF-organized exhibition of Mayakovsky's work, celebrating the 20th anniversary of his literary career and the parallel event in the Writers' Club, "20 Years of Work" in February 1930, were ignored by the [[Russian Association of Proletarian Writers|RAPP]] members and, more importantly, the Party leadership, particularly [[Stalin]] whose attendance he was greatly anticipating. It was becoming evident that such experimental art was no longer welcomed by the regime, and that the country's most famous poet was increasingly losing favor with the higher echelons of the Party.<ref name="mikhaylov"/>

Two of Mayakovsky's satirical plays, written specifically for Meyerkhold Theatre, ''[[The Bedbug]]'' (1929) and (in particular) ''[[The Bathhouse]]'' (1930) evoked stormy criticism from the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers.<ref name="poets"/> In February 1930 Mayakovsky joined RAPP, but in [[Pravda]] on 9 March, a leading member of RAPP, [[Vladimir Yermilov]], writing "with all the authority of a 23 year old who had not seen the play but had read part of the script"<ref>{{cite book |last1=McSmith |first1=Andy |title=Fear and the Muse Kept Watch, The Russian Masters - from Akhmativa and Pasternak to Shostakovich and Eisenstein - Under Stalin |date=2015 |publisher=New Press |location=New York |isbn=978-1-59558-056-6 |page=49}}</ref> categorised Mayakovsky as one of the 'petit bourgeois revolutionary intelligentsia', adding that "we hear a false 'leftist' note in Mayakovsky, a note which we know not only from literature....".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Woroszylsk |first1=Viktor |title=The Life of Mayakovsky |date=1971 |publisher=The Orion Press |location=New York |pages=438–84}}</ref> This was a potentially deadly political accusation, in that it implied an intellectual link between Mayakovsky and the [[Left Opposition]], led by [[Leon Trotsky]], whose supporters were in exile or prison. (Trotsky was known to admire Mayakovsky's poetry).<ref>{{cite book |last1=McSmith |first1=Andy |title=Fear and the Muse Kept Watch, The Russian Masters - from Akhmativa and Pasternak to Shostakovich and Eisenstein - Under Stalin |date=2015 |publisher=New Press |location=New York |isbn=978-1-59558-056-6 |page=44}}</ref> Mayakovsky retaliated by creating a huge poster mocking Yermilov, but was ordered by RAPP to take it down. In his suicide note Mayakovsky wrote "Tell Yermilov we should have completed the argument."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Woroszylsk |first1=Viktor |title=The Life of Mayakovsky |date=1971 |publisher=The Orion Press |location=New York |page=527}}</ref>

The smear campaign continued in the Soviet press, sporting slogans like "Down with Mayakovshchina!" On 9 April 1930 Mayakovsky, reading his new poem "At the Top of My Voice", was shouted down by the student audience, for being 'too obscure'.<ref name="dic_90"/><ref name="katanyan">{{cite web | author=Katanyan, Vasily| date=1985| url=http://feb-web.ru/feb/mayakovsky/kmh-abc/0.htm?cmd=0|title=Mayakovsky. The Chronology, 1893–1930 // Маяковский: Хроника жизни и деятельности. | publisher=Moscow. Sovetsky Pisatel Publishers| access-date=1 May 2015}}</ref>

===Death===
[[File:Mayakovskiy deathbed2.jpg|thumb|Body of Mayakovsky on his death bed, April 13, 1930]]
On 12 April 1930, Mayakovsky was seen in public for the last time: he took part in a discussion at the [[Sovnarkom]] meeting concerning the proposed copyright law.<ref name="timeline"/> On 14 April 1930, his current partner, actress {{ill|Veronika Polonskaya|ru|Полонская,_Вероника_Витольдовна}}, upon leaving his flat, heard a shot behind the closed door. She rushed in and found the poet lying on the floor; he had apparently shot himself through the heart.<ref name="timeline"/><ref name="polonskaya">{{cite web | author=Polonskaya, Veronika| date=1938| url=http://az.lib.ru/m/majakowskij_w_w/text_0450.shtml|title=Remembering V. Mayakovsky| publisher=Izvestia (1990)| access-date=13 January 2015}}</ref> The handwritten death note read: "To all of you. I die, but don't blame anyone for it, and please do not gossip. The deceased disliked that sort of thing terribly. Mother, sisters, comrades, forgive me – this is not a good method (I do not recommend it to others), but there is no other way out for me. Lily – love me. Comrade Government, my family consists of Lily Brik, mama, my sisters, and Veronika Vitoldovna Polonskaya. If you can provide a decent life for them, thank you. Give the poem I started to the Briks. They'll sort them out."{{citation needed|date=December 2020}} The 'unfinished poem' in his suicide note read, in part: "And so they say – "the incident dissolved" / the love boat smashed up / on the dreary routine. / I'm through with life / and [we] should absolve / from mutual hurts, afflictions and spleen."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.stihi.ru/2008/12/11/3799 |title=B. Маяковский-Любовная лодка разбилась о быт... En |author=Belyayeva Dina |work=poetic translations |publisher=Stihi.ru – national server of modern poetry |language=ru, en |trans-title=V. Mayakovsky – The Love Boat smashed up on the dreary routine ... En |access-date=7 April 2010 }}</ref> Mayakovsky's funeral on 17 April 1930, was attended by around 150,000, the third largest event of public mourning in Soviet history, surpassed only by those of [[Vladimir Lenin]] and [[Joseph Stalin]].<ref name=":1" /><ref>{{Cite book|title=Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OB90AwAAQBAJ&pg=PT371|publisher=Penguin|date=6 November 2014|access-date=8 May 2015|isbn=9780698170100|first=Stephen|last=Kotkin}}</ref> He was interred at the Moscow [[Novodevichy Cemetery]].<ref name="poets"/>

====Controversy surrounding death====
[[File:Mayakovsky the Last Letter-.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Mayakovsky's farewell letter]]
Mayakovsky's suicide occurred after a dispute with Polonskaya, with whom he had a brief but unstable romance. Polonskaya, who was in love with the poet, but unwilling to leave her husband, was the last one to see Mayakovsky alive.{{citation needed|date=December 2020}} But, as Lilya Brik stated in her memoirs, "the idea of suicide was like a chronic disease inside him, and like any chronic disease it worsened under circumstances that, for him, were undesirable…"<ref name="haaretz"/> According to Polonskaya, Mayakovsky mentioned suicide on 13 April, when the two were at [[Valentin Katayev]]'s place, but she thought he was trying to emotionally blackmail her and "refused to believe for a second [he] could do such a thing."<ref name="polonskaya"/>

The circumstances of Mayakovsky's death became a matter of lasting controversy. It appeared that the suicide note had been written two days before his death. Soon after the poet's death, Lilya and Osip Brik were hastily sent abroad. The bullet removed from his body didn't match the model of his pistol, and his neighbors were later reported to say they'd heard two shots.<ref name="haaretz"/> Ten days later, the officer investigating the poet's suicide was himself killed, fueling speculation about the nature of Mayakovsky's death.<ref name= "poets"/> Such speculation, often alluding to suspicion of murder by State services, especially intensified during the periods of first [[Nikita Khrushchev|Krushchevian]] [[De-Stalinization|de-Stalinisation]], later [[Glasnost]], and [[Perestroika]], as Soviet politicians sought to weaken Stalin's reputation (or Brik's, and by association, Stalin's){{Citation needed |date=March 2017}} and the positions of contemporary opponents. According to Chantal Sundaram:{{Blockquote | The extent to which rumours of Mayakovsky's murder remained widespread is indicated by the fact that even as late as the end of 1991 they prompted the State Mayakovsky Museum to commission an expert medical and criminological inquiry into the material evidence of his death kept in the museum: photographs, the shirt with traces from the gunshot, the carpet on which Mayakovsky fell, and the authenticity of the suicide note. The possibility of a forgery, suggested by [Andrei] Koloskov, had survived as a theory with different variants. But the results of a detailed hand-writing analysis found that the suicide note was undoubtedly written by Mayakovsky, and also included the conclusion that its irregularities "depict a diagnostic complex, testifying to the influence… at the moment of execution… of 'disconcerting' factors, among which the most probable is a psycho-physiological state linked with agitation." Although the findings are hardly surprising, the event is indicative of a fascination with Mayakovsky's contradictory relationship with the Soviet authorities which survived into the era of perestroika, despite the fact that he was being attacked and rejected for his political conformism at this time.<ref name=":1" />}}

===Private life===
Mayakovsky met husband and wife Osip and Lilya Brik in July 1915 at their [[dacha]] in [[Malakhovka, Moscow Oblast|Malakhovka]] nearby Moscow. Soon after that Lilya's sister, [[Elsa Triolet]], who'd had a brief affair with the poet before, invited him to the Briks' Petrograd flat. The couple at the time showed no interest in literature and were successful coral traders.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.1tv.ru/anons/194827|title=Vladimir Mayakovsky. Odd One Out. The First TV Channel premier|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130722124300/http://www.1tv.ru/anons/194827|archive-date=22 July 2013|url-status=dead|df=dmy-all}}</ref> That evening Mayakovsky recited the yet unpublished poem ''[[A Cloud in Trousers]]'' and announced it as dedicated to the hostess ("For you, Lilya"). "That was the happiest day in my life", was how he referred to the episode in his autobiography years later.<ref name="dic_90"/> According to Lilya Brik's memoirs, her husband too fell in love with the poet ("How could I have possibly failed to fall for him, if Osya loved him so?" – she once argued),<ref name="artmisto"/> whereas "Volodya did not merely fall in love with me; he attacked me, it was an assault. For two and a half years I didn't have a moment's peace. I understood right away that Volodya was a genius, but I didn't like him. I didn't like clamorous people ... I didn't like the fact that he was so tall and people in the street would stare at him; I was annoyed that he enjoyed listening to his own voice, I couldn't even stand the name Mayakovsky ... sounding so much like a cheap pen name."<ref name="haaretz"/> Both Mayakovsky's persistent adoration and rough appearance irritated her. It was, allegedly, to please her, that Mayakovsky attended a dentist, started to wear a bow tie and use a walking stick.<ref name="kirjasto"/>
[[Image:Vladimir mayakovsky and lilya brik.jpg|thumb|right|300px|[[Lilya Brik]] and Vladimir Mayakovsky]]
Soon after Osip Brik published ''A Cloud in Trousers'' in September 1915, Mayakovsky settled in the Palace Royal hotel at the Pushkinskaya Street, Petrograd, not far from where they lived. He introduced the couple to his Futurist friends and the Briks' flat quickly evolved into a modern literary salon. From then on Mayakovsky was dedicating every one of his large poems (with the obvious exception of ''Vladimir Ilyich Lenin'') to Lilya; such dedications later started to appear even in the texts he had written before they met, much to her displeasure.<ref name="haaretz"/> In summer 1918, soon after Lilya and Vladimir starred in the film ''Encased in a Film'' (only fragments of which survived), Mayakovsky and the Briks moved in together. In March 1919 all three came to Moscow and in 1920 settled in a flat at the Gondrikov Lane, [[Tagansky District|Taganka]].<ref name="ru_bio"/>

In 1920, Mayakovsky had a brief romance with Lilya Lavinskaya, an artist who also contributed to ROSTA. She gave birth to a son, {{ill|Gleb-Nikita Lavinsky|ru|Лавинский, Никита Антонович}} (1921–1986), later a Soviet sculptor.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://moscow-tombs.ru/1986/lavinsky_na.htm|title=Moscow Graves. Lavinsky, N.A|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130503050921/http://moscow-tombs.ru/1986/lavinsky_na.htm|archive-date=3 May 2013|url-status=dead|df=dmy-all}}</ref> In 1922 Lilya Brik fell in love with [[Alexander Krasnoshchyokov]], the head of the Soviet [[Prombank]]. This affair resulted in the three months' rift, which was to some extent reflected in the poem ''[[About That]]'' (1923). Brik and Mayakovsky's relationships ended in 1923, but they never parted. "Now I am free from placards and love", he confessed in the poem called "For the Jubilee" (1924). Still, when in 1926 Mayakovsky was granted a state-owned flat at the Gendrikov Lane in Moscow, all three of them moved in and lived there until 1930, having turned the place into the LEF headquarters.<ref name="katanyan"/>

Mayakovsky continued to profess his devotion to Lilya whom he considered a family member. It was Brik who in the mid-1930s famously addressed Stalin with a personal letter which made all the difference in the way the poet's legacy has been treated since in the USSR. Still, she had many detractors (among them [[Lyudmila Mayakovskaya]], the poet's sister) who regarded her as an insensitive femme-fatale and cynical manipulator, who had never been really interested in either Mayakovsky or his poetry.{{citation needed|date=December 2020}} "To me, she was a kind of monster. But Mayakovsky apparently loved her that way, armed with a whip", remembered poet [[Andrey Voznesensky]] who knew Lilya Brik personally.<ref name="ru_bio">{{cite web| author=Oboymina, E., Tatkova, A.| url=http://www.biografii.ru/biogr_dop/brick_l_u/brick_l_u.htm| title=Lilya Brik and Vladimir Mayakovsky| publisher=Russian Biographies| access-date=13 January 2015| archive-date=27 June 2015| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150627202319/http://www.biografii.ru/biogr_dop/brick_l_u/brick_l_u.htm| url-status=dead}}</ref> Literary critic and historian [[Viktor Shklovsky]] who resented what he saw as the Briks' exploitation of Mayakovsky both when he lived and after his death, once called them "a family of corpse-mongers".<ref name="artmisto">{{cite web | url=http://artmisto.com/read/tales/17201-.html|title=The Briks. The Little 'Swede' Family / Брик Лиля и Брик Осип. Шведская семейка. Quotes| publisher=ArtMisto| access-date=13 January 2015}}</ref>

In summer 1925, Mayakovsky traveled to New York, where he met Russian émigré Elli Jones, born Yelizaveta Petrovna Zibert, an interpreter who spoke Russian, French, German and English fluently. They fell in love, for three months were inseparable, but decided to keep their affair secret. Soon after the poet's return to the Soviet Union, Elli gave birth to daughter [[Patricia Thompson (writer)|Patricia]]. Mayakovsky saw the girl just once, in [[Nice]], France, in 1928, when she was three.<ref name="haaretz"/> 
[[File:Tatyana yakovleva.jpg|thumb|left|upright|[[Tatiana du Plessix Liberman|Tatyana Yakovleva]]]]
Patricia Thompson, a professor of philosophy and women's studies at Lehman College in New York City, is the author of the book ''Mayakovsky in Manhattan'', in which she told the story of her parents' love affair, relying on her mother's unpublished memoirs and their private conversations prior to her death in 1985. Thompson traveled to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, looking for her roots, was welcomed there with respect and since then started to use her Russian name, Yelena Vladimirovna Mayakovskaya.<ref name="haaretz"/>

In 1928, in Paris Mayakovsky met Russian émigré Tatyana Yakovleva,<ref name="timeline"/> a 22-year-old model working for the Chanel fashion house, and niece of painter [[Alexandre Jacovleff]]. He fell in love madly and wrote two poems dedicated to her, "Letter to Comrade Kostrov on the Essence of Love" and "Letter to Tatiana Yakovleva". Some argued that, since it was Elsa Triolet (Lilya's sister) who acquainted them, the liaison might have been the result of Brik's intrigue, aimed at stopping the poet from getting closer to Elli Jones and especially daughter Patricia, but the power of this passion apparently caught her by surprise.<ref name="ru_bio"/>

Mayakovsky tried to persuade Tatyana to return to Russia but she refused. In late 1929, he made an attempt to travel to Paris in order to marry his lover but was refused a visa for the first time, again, as many believed, due to Lilya's making full use of her numerous "connections". It became known that she "accidentally" read out a letter from Paris to Mayakovsky, alleging that Tatiana was getting married, even though, as it turned out soon, the latter's wedding was not on the agenda at that very moment.{{citation needed|date=December 2020}} [[Lydia Chukovskaya]] insisted it was the "ever-powerful [[Yakov Agranov]], another one of Lilya's lovers" who prevented Mayakovsky obtaining a visa, upon her request.<ref>Chukovskaya, Lydia. ''Notes on Akhmatova''. 1957–1967. P. 547</ref>

In the late 1920s, Mayakovsky had two more affairs, with student (later ''[[Goslitizdat]]'' editor) Natalya Bryukhanenko (1905–1984) and with Veronika Polonskaya (1908–1994), a young [[Moscow Art Theatre|MAT]] actress, then the wife of actor [[Mikhail Yanshin]].<ref name="sovremennitsy">
{{cite web 
| url=http://az.lib.ru/m/majakowskij_w_w/text_0220.shtml 
| title=Mayakovsky Remembered by Women Friends. Compiled, edited by Vasily Katanyan.
| publisher=Druzhba Narodov| access-date=13 January 2015
}}
</ref>

It was Veronika's unwillingness to divorce the latter that resulted in her rows with Mayakovsky, the last of which preceded the poet's suicide.<ref>"The Very Veronika Polonskaya". ''Sovetsky Ekran'' (Soviet Screen) magazine interview, No. 13, 1990</ref> Yet, according to Natalya Bryukhanenko, it was not Polonskaya but Yakovleva whom he was pining for. "In January 1929 Mayakovsky [told me] he … would put a bullet to his brain if he didn't see that woman any time soon", she later remembered. Which, on 14 April 1930, he did.{{citation needed|date=December 2020}}