Sonya the Golden Pen (Blyuvshtein Sofya Ivanovna) - biography. Sonya golden pen Sonya golden pen Vagankovo ​​cemetery where exactly

This woman had a special criminal talent. She played such brilliant combinations that she easily took a lot of money literally from under the noses of the rich and at the same time managed not to leave even the slightest trace. Having no education, she knew 5 languages ​​perfectly. Every man could envy her invincible fortitude and sharpness of mind.

What was she like?

Sheindlya-Sura Solomoniak, and this was the real name of Sofia Ivanovna Bluvshtein, or Sonya - the Golden Hand, was born in 1846 in the town of Powazki, then Warsaw district. Her childhood years were spent among merchants and buyers of stolen goods - usurers, horse dealers and smugglers.

The biography of Sonya - the Golden Handle, the photo of which is posted in this article, was full of many criminal events. According to contemporaries, she was a charming woman, but at the same time she did not shine with beauty. She had an extraordinary inner charm that was impossible to resist.

As you know, Sofya Blyuvshtein did not receive an education as a child. However, over time, the life she led turned her into almost the most enlightened woman of that era. The aristocrats not only of the Russian Empire, but also of many countries of Europe, without the slightest hesitation, mistook her for a lady of their circle. That is why she could freely travel abroad, where she presented herself either as a viscountess, or a baroness, or even a countess. At the same time, no one doubted her belonging to high society.

Criminal Talent

By the way, a prison photo of the real Sonya - Golden Pen, as well as police orientations, according to which they were looking for a criminal, has been preserved. They described a woman who had a height of 1m 53 cm, with a pockmarked face, a wart on her right cheek and a moderate nose with wide nostrils. She was a brunette with curly hair on her forehead, from under which mobile eyes looked out. She usually spoke boldly and arrogantly.

Sonya Zolotaya - Pen, whose biography was always connected with crime, from the very beginning stood out from the large crowd of scammers, as she had a kind of thieving talent. She was a proud, courageous and independent adventurer who was not afraid to pull off even the most risky operations. Sonya never started a new scam without calculating possible development situations ahead.

"Career" thief

I must say that Sheindlya-Sura announced herself quite early in the criminal field. The future queen of the underworld began her "activities" with petty thefts from third-class carriages when she was about 13-14 years old. Along with the rapid construction and development of the railway, her thieves' career was moving uphill. Over time, this talented swindler moved to compartment cars of the 1st class.

The story of Sonya the Golden Handle, whose biography is replete with various scams, was written not only on trains. She also traded in thefts in expensive hotels and luxury jewelry stores not only in Russia, but also in Europe. This always smartly dressed woman, carrying someone else's passport, settled in the best rooms of hotels in Warsaw, St. Petersburg, Moscow and Odessa and carefully studied all the entrances and exits from the building, as well as the location of all corridors and rooms.

Thieves' tricks

Sonya always acted smartly, prudently and cunningly - Golden Pen. Sophia's biography is full of various, invented by her, thieves' "inventions". For example, a method called "guten morgen" or "good morning." This method hotel thefts were carried out in this way: in the early morning, Sonya, wearing soft felt shoes, quietly made her way into one of the rooms, and while his owner was fast asleep, she took all his cash. But if the guest suddenly woke up, he found in his chambers a smartly dressed lady in expensive jewelry. She, pretending not to notice anyone, slowly began to undress. At the same time, the owner had the impression that the woman mistakenly took his apartment for hers. In the end, the thief masterfully feigned embarrassment and sweetly apologized.

As for thefts from jewelry stores, Sonya, the Golden Pen, was able to distinguish herself here too. The biography of the thief knows cases of theft of diamonds right from under the noses of sellers. One day she went into one of the most expensive jewelry stores. Asking to see a large diamond, she allegedly accidentally dropped it on the floor. While the salesman, frightened to death, crawled on his knees, looking for a stone, the "customer" calmly left the store. The fact is that holes filled with resin were made in the heels of her shoes. Thus, by stepping on a diamond that stuck to a viscous substance, she pulled off this brilliant scam.

The biography of Sonya the Golden Handle (photo) also knows such facts when she, walking with her trained hand monkey, went into jewelry stores. Allegedly choosing gems, she quietly gave one of them to the animal. The monkey would either stick it in its cheek or swallow it. Arriving home, Sonya after a while removed this jewel directly from the pot.

fair thief

Sonya - the Golden Pen, whose biography is half composed of various scams, tried never to offend those who are already not rich. She believed that it was not a sin to warm her hands at the expense of very wealthy jewelers, large bankers or spurious merchants.

One of the cases is known when Sonya behaved nobly towards a person who suffered from her so-called activities. One day, she accidentally learned from a newspaper article that the woman she had robbed turned out to be a poor widow of a petty employee. As it turned out, the victim after the death of her husband received an allowance in the amount of 5 thousand rubles. As soon as Sophia recognized her victim in her, she immediately went to the post office and sent to the poor woman a large amount than was stolen. In addition, she accompanied her transfer with a letter in which she apologized for her act and advised her to better hide the money.

Family life

The first time Sheindla-Sura got married when she was 18 years old. Her husband was a grocer Isaac Rosenband. By the way, the act of their marriage is still kept in Warsaw. But family life quickly ended - less than a year and a half later, she, having taken her daughter, fled, taking her husband's money with her.

In 1868, Sonya married again, this time to Shelom Shkolnik, a wealthy old Jew. Soon, having robbed the poor fellow, she left him for some card cheat. But he didn't stay long either. From that year until 1874, the charming thief changed husbands several times until she met the carriage thief and card sharper Michel Bluvshtein. By the way, she will bear his last name for the rest of her life.

Sophia Blueshtein's children

It can be said that most Sonya the Golden Handle spent her life wandering. The biography, in which the children did not fit at all, was decidedly not suitable for a respectable woman and mother. When she gave birth to a daughter, and later another, Sophia did not give up her craft. After Mikhel Bluvshtein was arrested, convicted and sent to serve a term in hard labor, she first thought about her “work”. Sonya finally realized that children are a burden for her.

The girls demanded a lot of love and attention for themselves, and she could not give them any of this. After her husband's arrest, she was forced to constantly move from place to place. Therefore, it was decided: to hand over the children to an orphanage. When they were little, she constantly sent them money.

Some tend to believe that the famous thief had four children: a son and three daughters. There is a version that Mordoch Bluvshtein, born in 1861, was the oldest. Further daughters - Rachel-Mary, Sura-Rivka Rosenband and Tabbu Blueshtein. I must say that the children of Sonya - the Golden Handle are generally very rarely mentioned in publications about her. But still, most often you can read about the last two daughters. It was about them that Sofya Bluvshtein herself spoke to the writer Doroshevich in 1897, already in hard labor. She admitted that she would like to see her two girls, who, according to her, were once operetta actresses. It is believed that the daughters of Sonya - the Golden Handle, whose biography is still unknown, were ashamed of their mother, and when they grew up, they did not want to see her at all.

Most researchers are sure that Sophia had only two daughters, and Mordoch and Rachel-Mary are just impostors. Judge for yourself, if she had given birth to a son in 1861 (by the way, she was only 15 years old then), then his surname was definitely not Bluvshtein, since Sonya married Mikhel much later.

Finding Sonya's children, of course, is no longer possible. But the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the queen of the underworld could remain, who, most likely, do not even know who their grandmother was.

The love story of Sonya - Golden Handles

The thief, who has been very successful so far, unexpectedly fell in love with a young swindler nicknamed Volodya Kochubchik. His real name was Wolf Bromberg. He was a thin, handsome twenty-year-old card sharper with virtuoso hands and lively eyes. Surprisingly, he had some inexplicable power over Sonya. He constantly extorted large sums of money from her, and surprisingly, he received them. All the funds “earned” by his mistress, he lowered by losing at cards.

Luck finally turned away from the Golden Pen. Sophia has changed a lot: she became irritable, greedy, and even stooped to pickpocketing. She now often took unnecessary risks, making mistake after mistake, and finally got caught. There is another version - it was set up and handed over to the police by Volodya Kochubchik himself.

penal servitude

After a sensational trial that took place in Moscow, Sofya Bluvshtein was convicted and exiled to Siberia. But soon the thief managed to escape, and all of Russia started talking about her again. She took up her former craft - robbed rich and careless citizens. After one of the robberies, Sonya got caught again. She was sentenced to hard labor and transferred to Sakhalin. Tried to escape three times, but all attempts ended in failure. After the second escape, she was severely punished - fifteen lashes, and then she was shackled for a long three years.

On Sakhalin, Sonya was a real celebrity. It was visited from time to time by ubiquitous journalists, curious foreigners and famous writers. For a fee, they were allowed to talk to her. I must say that she did not like to talk about herself, she lied a lot and often got confused in her memories.

It even became fashionable to be photographed with the legendary thief in the composition: a blacksmith, a warder and a convict. It was called "Conclusion in the shackles of the notorious Sonya - the Golden Handle." One of these photographs was sent to Chekhov by his Sakhalin acquaintance I. I. Pavlovsky. By the way, this photo of the real Sonya - the Golden Pen is still kept in the archives of the State Literary Museum.

End of the road

After her release, Sophia Bluvshtein was to remain on Sakhalin Island as a free settler. It was even rumored that for some time she kept a café, where she sold alcohol and arranged various entertainment events. She got along with the recidivist Nikolai Bogdanov, but life with him turned out to be worse than in hard labor. Therefore, being extremely emaciated and sick, Sophia made the last attempt to escape in her life. Naturally, she could not go far, and soon the convoy found her. She lived for a few more days, after which she died.

Where Sonya is buried - Golden Handle

There are many legends about the death of the famous thief. There is a version that she did not die in hard labor, but lived safely to a ripe old age in Odessa and died only in 1947. According to other assumptions, her death overtook her in Moscow, in 1920, and she rests at the Vagankovsky cemetery.

The last of the versions is unlikely, judging by where Sonya, the Golden Handle, was serving her sentence. The biography (the monument allegedly erected on her grave belongs to the work of Italian masters) makes one doubt that she rests here. Initially, the monument looked like this: a thin female figure carved from white marble stands under tall forged palm trees. Now only the statue has survived from the whole composition, and even that one with a broken head. It is not known for certain who is buried in this grave, but it is always decorated with fresh flowers and strewn with coins. In addition, the entire pedestal of the monument is literally dotted with inscriptions of a criminal nature.

Sofia Blueshtein lived unusual life. It seemed to be the other way around in her: she dreamed of becoming an actress and playing on stage, but instead arranged “performances” in 1st class cars; there was love, but it did not elevate, but dragged into the pool; constant fear for the future of her daughters, whom she loved, but could not be with them.

Real name - Sheindla-Sura Leibova Solomoniak-Blumstein (1846 -?). Inventive thief, swindler, able to transform into society lady, a nun or a simple maid. She was called "the devil in a skirt", "a demonic beauty whose eyes enchant and hypnotize".

Vlas Doroshevich, a popular journalist at the end of the 19th century, called the legendary adventurer "all-Russian, almost European-famous." And Chekhov paid attention to her in the book "Sakhalin".

Sofya Bluvshtein, nee Sheindla-Sura Leibova Solomoniak, did not live long in the wild - hardly forty years. But as a girl she started with petty thefts, she did not stop until Sakhalin itself. In the game, she reached perfection. And talent, beauty, cunning and absolute immorality made this young provincial a scam genius, a legendary adventurer.

The Golden Pen was mainly engaged in thefts in hotels, jewelry stores, hunted on trains, traveling around Russia and Europe. Smartly dressed, with someone else's passport, she appeared in best hotels Moscow, St. Petersburg, Odessa, Warsaw, carefully studied the location of rooms, entrances, exits, corridors. Sonya invented a method of hotel thefts called "guten morgen". She put on felt shoes on her shoes and, moving silently along the corridors, entered someone else's room early in the morning. Under a strong pre-dawn dream of the owner, she quietly "cleaned out" his cash. If the owner suddenly woke up - a smart lady in expensive jewelry, as if not noticing the "stranger", began to undress, as if mistakenly taking the number for her ... It all ended in masterfully played embarrassment and mutual bowing. This is how Sonya turned out to be in a provincial hotel room. Looking around, she noticed a sleeping youth, pale as a sheet, with an exhausted face. She was struck not so much by the expression of extreme suffering as by the amazing resemblance of the young man to Wolf - whose pointed face could never depict anything close to true moral torment.

On the table lay a revolver and a fan of letters. Sonya read one thing - to her mother. The son wrote about the theft of state money: the loss was discovered, and suicide is the only way to avoid dishonor, the ill-fated Werther informed his mother. Sonya put five hundred rubles on top of the envelopes, pressed them down with a revolver, and just as quietly left the room.

Good deeds were not alien to Sonya's wide nature - if her whimsical thought at that moment turned to those whom she loved. Who, if not her own distant daughters, stood before her eyes when Sonya learned from the newspapers that she had robbed the unfortunate widow, the mother of two girls, outright. These 5,000 stolen rubles were a one-time allowance for the death of her husband, a petty official. Sonya did not hesitate for a long time: she sent five thousand and a small letter to the widow by mail. "Gracious madam! I read in the newspapers about the grief that befell you, which I was the cause of my unbridled passion for money, I send you your 5,000 rubles and advise you to hide your money deeper in the future. Once again I ask your forgiveness, I bow to your poor orphans."

One day, the police found in Sonya's Odessa apartment her original dress, made specifically for shoplifting. It was essentially a sack where even a small roll of Expensive Cloth could be hidden. Sonya demonstrated her special skill in jewelry stores. In the presence of many buyers and with the help of her "agents" who deftly diverted the attention of the clerks, she imperceptibly hid the precious stones under specially grown long nails, replacing the rings with fake diamonds, hid the stolen goods in a flower pot standing on the counter, so that she would come the next day. and take back what was stolen.

A special page in her life is occupied by thefts on trains - separate first-class compartments. The victims of the fraudster were bankers, foreign businessmen, large landowners, even generals - from Frolov, for example, on the Nizhny Novgorod railway, she stole 213,000 rubles.

Exquisitely dressed, Sonya was located in the compartment, playing the role of a marquise, countess or a rich widow. Having arranged for her fellow travelers and pretending to succumb to their courtship, the impostor marquise talked a lot, laughed and flirted, waiting for the victim to begin to fall asleep. However, carried away by the appearance and sexual appeals of the frivolous aristocrat, the rich gentlemen did not fall asleep for a long time. And then Sonya used sleeping pills - intoxicating perfumes with a special substance, opium in wine or tobacco, bottles of chloroform, etc. Sonya stole three hundred thousand rubles from a Siberian merchant (huge money at that time).

She loved to visit the famous Nizhny Novgorod fair, but often traveled to Europe, Paris, Nice, preferred German-speaking countries: Germany, Austria-Hungary, rented luxurious apartments in Vienna, Budapest, Leipzig, Berlin.

Sonya was not distinguished by beauty. She was small in stature, but had an elegant figure, regular features; her eyes radiated a sexually hypnotic attraction. Vlas Doroshevich, who talked with the adventurer on Sakhalin, noted that her eyes were "wonderful, infinitely pretty, soft, velvety ... and they spoke in such a way that they could even lie perfectly well."

Sonya constantly used makeup, false eyebrows, wigs, wore expensive Parisian hats, original fur capes, mantillas, adorned herself with jewelry, for which she had a weakness. She lived in abundance. Her favorite vacation spots were the Crimea, Pyatigorsk and the foreign resort of Marienbad, where she pretended to be a titled person, since she had a set of different business cards. She did not count money, did not save up for a rainy day. So, having arrived in Vienna in the summer of 1872, she pawned some of the things she had stolen in a pawnshop and, having received 15 thousand rubles on bail, she spent it in an instant.

Gradually she got bored of working alone. She put together a gang of relatives, ex-husbands, thief in law Berezin and the Swedish-Norwegian citizen Martin Yakobson. Members of the gang unconditionally obeyed the Golden Pen.

Mikhail Osipovich Dinkevich, the father of the family, venerable gentleman, was dismissed after 25 years of exemplary service as the director of the men's gymnasium in Saratov. Mikhail Osipovich decided, together with his daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren, to move to his homeland, to Moscow. The Dinkeviches sold their house, increased their savings, accumulated 125,000 for a small house in the capital.

Strolling around St. Petersburg, the retired director turned into a confectionery and almost knocked over a smart beauty in the doorway, dropping her umbrella in surprise. Dinkevich involuntarily noted that before him was not just a beauty from St. Petersburg, but a woman of an exceptionally noble breed, dressed with the simplicity that only very expensive tailors achieve. One of her hats was worth the annual salary of a gymnasium teacher.

Ten minutes later they were drinking coffee with cream at the table, the beauty was nibbling on a biscuit, Dinkevich had the courage to take a glass of liquor. When asked about the name, the beautiful stranger replied:

"Exactly".

"Ah, Sofya Ivanovna, if only you knew how you are drawn to Moscow"

And Mikhail Osipovich, having suddenly experienced a surge of confidence, outlined his need to the countess - both about a pension, and about a modest capital, and about a dream about a Moscow mansion, not the most luxurious, but worthy of a good family ...

“Do you know what, my dear Mikhail Osipovich…” the countess decided after several reflections, “after all, my husband and I are looking for a reliable buyer. The count was appointed to Paris as His Majesty’s ambassador…”

"But Countess! I can't even handle your mezzanine! You have a mezzanine, don't you?"

“Yes,” Timrot chuckled. “We have a lot of things. But my husband is the chamberlain of the court. Should we bargain? You, I see, are a noble, educated, experienced person. I wouldn’t want another owner for Bebutov’s nest ... "

"So your father is General Bebutov, a Caucasian hero?!" Dinkevich was alarmed.

"Vasily Osipovich is my grandfather," Sofya Ivanovna modestly corrected and got up from the table. "So when would you like to take a look at the house?"

We agreed to meet in five days on the train where Dinkevich would board in Klin.

Sonya remembered this town well, or rather, a small station, since out of the whole city she knew only the police station. Sonya always remembered her first adventure with pleasure. At that time she was not even twenty, with short stature and gracefully looked sixteen. It was six years later that she began to be called the Golden Pen, when Sheindla Solomoniak, the daughter of a petty moneylender from the Warsaw district, became famous as a think tank and financial god of "raspberries" of international scope. And then she had only talent, irresistible charm and school " family nest", of which she was no less proud than Countess Timroth, of the Nest not of a general, but of a thieves, where she grew up among usurers, buyers of stolen goods, thieves and smugglers. She was on their errands, easily learning their languages: Yiddish, Polish, Russian, German I watched them, and like a true artistic nature, I was imbued with the spirit of adventure and merciless risk.

Well, then, in 1866, she was a modest thief "on trust" on the railroad. By this time, Sonya had already managed, by the way, to escape from her first husband, the merchant Rosenbad, having taken not so much for the path - five hundred rubles. Somewhere "with people" her little daughter grew up.

So, approaching Klin, in the third-class carriage, where she hunted for small things, Sonya spotted a handsome cadet. She sat down, bowed, flattered him with the "colonel" and so innocently stared at his cockade, sparkling boots and suitcase near them with all her eyes (whose strength she already knew well) that the young military man immediately felt the impulse inherent in all men who met on Sonka's path: to protect and take care of this girl with the face of a fallen angel - if possible until the end of her days.

At the Klin station, it cost nothing for her to send a conquered cadet - well, let's say, for lemonade.

This was the first and last time that Sonya was caught red-handed. But even then she managed to get out. At the station, she burst into tears, and everyone, including Misha Gorozhansky, who was cheated and left behind the train, believed that the girl had taken her companion's suitcase by mistake, confusing it with her own. Moreover, in the protocol there was a statement from "Sima Rubinshtein" about the loss of three hundred rubles from her.

A few years later, Sonya went to the Maly Theater. And in the brilliant Glumov she suddenly recognized her Klin "client". Mikhail Gorozhansky, in full accordance with the pseudonym - Reshimov - threw military career for the sake of the theater and became the leading actor of the Maly. Sonya bought a huge bouquet of roses, put a witty note in there: "To a great actor from his first teacher" - and was about to send the premiere. But on the way, she could not resist and added a gold watch from a nearby pocket to the offering. The still young Mikhail Reshimov never understood who played him and why on the cover of the expensive souvenir was engraved: "General-anshefu N for special services to the fatherland on the day of his seventieth birthday."

But back to the "Countess" Sophia Timroth. In Moscow, she was greeted, as expected, by a chic exit: a coachman all in white, a gig with gleaming patent leather and lush coats of arms, and a classic pair of chestnuts. We stopped by the Dinkevich family on the Arbat - and soon the buyers, as if not daring to enter, crowded at the cast-iron gate, behind which rose the palace on a stone plinth with the promised mezzanine.

With bated breath, the Dinkeviches examined bronze lamps, Pavlovian armchairs, mahogany, a priceless library, carpets, oak panels, Venetian windows... The house was sold with furnishings, a garden, outbuildings, a pond - and for only 125,000, including mirror carps! Dinkevich's daughter was on the verge of fainting. Mikhail Osipovich himself was ready to kiss the hands not only of the countess, but also of the monumental butler in a powdered wig, as if specially designed to complete the moral defeat of the provincials.

The maid with a bow handed over to the countess a telegram on a silver tray, and she, narrowing myopic eyes, asked Dinkevich to read it aloud: "In the coming days, present the presentation of credentials to the king, according to the protocol, together with your wife, period, urgently sell the house, move out period, I look forward to Wednesday Gregory."

"Countess" and the buyer went to the notary's office on Lenivka. When Dinkevich, following Sonya, stepped into the darkish waiting room, the obliging fat man briskly jumped up to meet them, opening his arms.

It was Itzka Rosenbad, Sonya's first husband and father of her daughter. Now he was a buyer of stolen goods and specialized in stones and watches. Cheerful Itska adored ringing braguets and always had two of his favorite Bure with him: gold, with an engraved hunting scene on the lid, and platinum, with a portrait of the emperor in an enamel medallion. At that time, Itzka beat the inexperienced Kishinev pimp by almost three hundred rubles. To celebrate, he kept both breguetes for himself and liked to open them at the same time, checking the time and listening to the gentle dissonance of the ringing. Rosenbad did not hold a grudge against Sonya, he forgave her five hundred rubles a long time ago, especially since, on her tips, he had already received a hundred times more. He paid generously to the woman who raised his girl and visited his daughter often, unlike Sonya (Although later, having already two daughters, Sonya became the most tender mother, did not skimp on their upbringing and education - neither in Russia, nor later in France. However, her adult daughters disowned her.)

Having met two years after the escape of the young wife, the former spouses began to "work" together. Itska, with his cheerful disposition and artistic Warsaw chic, often provided Sonya with invaluable help.

So, the notary, aka Itzka, losing his glasses rushed to Sonya. "Countess!" he cried. "What an honor! Such a star in my miserable establishment!"

Five minutes later the young notary's assistant drew up the bill of sale in elegant handwriting. The retired director handed over to Countess Timroth, nee Bebutova, every penny of the accumulation of her respectable life. 125 thousand rubles. And two weeks later, two tanned gentlemen came to the Dinkeviches, stunned with happiness. They were the Artemiev brothers, fashionable architects who rented out their house for the duration of their trip to Italy. Dinkevich hanged himself in cheap rooms..

Sonya's main assistants in this matter were captured a couple of years later. Itska Rosenbad and Mikhel Blyuvshtein (butler) went to the prison companies, Khunya Goldshtein (coachman) went to prison for three years, and then went abroad "with a ban on returning to the Russian state." Sonya loved to work with her relatives and ex-husbands. All three were not exceptions: not only the Varsovian Itska, but also both "Romanian subjects" were at one time legally married to "mother".

She came across more than once Sonya was tried in Warsaw, St. Petersburg, Kyiv, Kharkov, but she always managed to either deftly slip out of the police station or get an acquittal. However, the police hunted her in many cities Western Europe. For example, in Budapest, by order of the Royal Court of Justice, all her belongings were arrested; the Leipzig police in 1871 transferred Sonya under the supervision of the Russian embassy. She slipped away this time as well, but was soon detained by the Viennese police, who confiscated the chest containing the stolen items from her.

Thus began a losing streak, her name often appeared in the press, her photographs were posted in police stations. It became more and more difficult for Sonya to dissolve in the crowd, to maintain freedom with the help of bribes.

She shone in her happy times stellar career in Europe, but Odessa was the city of luck and love for her...

Wolf Bromberg, a twenty-year-old cheater and raider, nicknamed Vladimir Kochubchik, had an inexplicable power over Sonya. He extorted large sums of money from her. Sonya, more often than before, took unjustified risks, became greedy, irritable, and even stooped to pickpocketing. Not too handsome, from the category of "pretty" men with shaved mustaches, narrow in bone, with lively eyes and virtuoso hands - he was the only one who dared to frame Sonya. On the day of her angel, September 30, Wolf decorated the neck of his mistress with velvet with a blue diamond , which was taken on bail from one Odessa jeweler. The mortgage was a mortgage on a part of the house on Lanzheron. The cost of the house was four thousand more than the cost of the stone - and the jeweler paid the difference in cash. A day later, Wolf unexpectedly returned the diamond, announcing that the gift did not please the lady. Half an hour later, the jeweler discovered a fake, and an hour later he established that there was no house on Lanzheron and never was. When he broke into Bromberg's rooms on Moldavanka, Wolf "confessed" that Sonya gave him a copy of the stone and she concocted a fake mortgage. The jeweler went to Sonya not alone, but with a constable.

Her trial went on from December 10 to December 19, 1880 in the Moscow District Court. Playing out noble indignation, Sonya fought desperately with the judicial officials, not recognizing either the accusation or the presented material Evidence. Despite the fact that witnesses identified her from a photograph, Sonya stated that the Golden Pen was a completely different woman, and she lived at the expense of her husband, familiar fans, Sonya was especially outraged by the revolutionary proclamations planted in her apartment by the police. In a word, she behaved in such a way that subsequently the jury Attorney A Shmakov, recalling this process, called her a woman capable of "plugging a good hundred men in her belt."

And yet, by court decision, she received a harsh sentence: "The Warsaw bourgeois Sheindlyu-Sura Leibova Rosenbad, she is Rubinstein, she is Shkolnik, Brenner and Bluvshtein, nee Solomoniak, depriving all the rights of the state, exiled to a settlement in the most remote places of Siberia."

The place of exile was the remote village of Luzhki in the Irkutsk province, from where Sonya escaped in the summer of 1885, but was captured by the police five months later. For escaping from Siberia, she was sentenced to three years hard labor and 40 lashes. However, in prison, Sonya did not waste time in vain "she fell in love with a tall prison guard with a magnificent mustache, non-commissioned officer Mikhailov. He gave his passion a civilian dress and on the night of June 30, 1886, brought her to freedom. But only four months Sonya enjoyed After a new arrest, she ended up in the Nizhny Novgorod prison castle.Now she had to serve a hard labor term on Sakhalin.

Without a man, she could not do anything, and even at the stage she got along with a friend in hard labor, a brave, burned out elderly thief and murderer Flea.

On Sakhalin, Sonya, like all women, at first lived as a free resident. Accustomed to expensive European-class "suites", to thin linen and chilled champagne, Sonya slipped a penny to the guard soldier to let her into the dark barracks, where she met with Flea . During these brief dates, Sonya and her hardened roommate developed an escape plan.

I must say that escaping from Sakhalin was not such a difficult task. It was not the first time Bloch had fled, and he knew that from the taiga, where three dozen people work under the supervision of one soldier, to make his way among the hills to the north, to the narrowest point of the Tatar Strait between Capes Pogobi and Lazarev, is worthless. And there - deserted, you can put together a raft and move to the mainland. But Sonya, who did not get rid of her passion for theatrical adventures here, and was also afraid of many days of hunger, came up with her own version. They will follow the well-worn and lived-in path, but they won’t hide, but will play hard labor: Sonya in a soldier’s dress will “escort Bloch. The recidivist killed the guard, Sonya changed into his clothes.

Bloch was the first to be caught. Sonya, who continued on her way alone, got lost and went to the cordon. But this time she was lucky. The doctors of the Alexander infirmary insisted on the removal of corporal punishment from the Golden Handle: she turned out to be pregnant. Bloch received forty lashes and was shackled in hand and foot shackles. When they flogged him, he shouted: "For the cause of me, your high nobility For the cause! That's what I need!"

Sonya Golden Hand's pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. Her further Sakhalin imprisonment resembled a delusional dream. Sonya was accused of fraud, she was involved - as a leader - in the case of the murder of a settler-shopkeeper Nikitin.

Finally, in 1891, for a second escape, she was handed over to the terrible Sakhalin executioner Komlev. Stripped naked, surrounded by hundreds of prisoners, under their encouraging hooting, the executioner inflicted fifteen lashes on her. No sound uttered Sonya Golden Hand crawled to her room and fell on the bunk. For two years and eight months Sonya wore hand shackles and was kept in a damp solitary cell with a dim tiny a window covered with bars.

Chekhov described her in the book "Sakhalin" in this way, "a small, thin, already graying woman with a crumpled old woman's face ... She walks around her cell from corner to corner, and it seems that she is constantly sniffing the air, like a mouse in a mousetrap, and her facial expression is mousy." By the time of the events described by Chekhov, that is, in 1891, Sofya Bluvshtein was only forty-five years old ...

Sonya the Golden Handle was visited by writers, journalists, foreigners. For a fee, they were allowed to talk to her. She did not like to talk, she lied a lot, she was confused in her memories. Exotic lovers took pictures with her in the composition: a convict, a blacksmith, a warden - this was called "Shackling the famous Sonya the Golden Hand into hand shackles." One of these photographs, sent to Chekhov by Innokenty Ignatievich Pavlovsky, a Sakhalin photographer, is kept in the State Literary Museum.

After serving his term, Sonya was supposed to stay on Sakhalin as a free settler. She became the mistress of the local "chantan cafe", where she brewed kvass, sold vodka from under the floor and arranged fun evenings with dances. Then she got along with the cruel recidivist Nikolai Bogdanov, but life with him was worse than hard labor. The patient, hardened, she decided on a new escape and left Aleksandrovsk. She walked about two miles and, having lost her strength, fell down. The guards found her. A few days later, the Golden Pen died.

And on Sakhalin, legends bred one after another. Many believed that the real Sonya ran away along the road, and her "replacement" got to hard labor. Anton Chekhov and Vlas Doroshevich, who talked with Sonya on Sakhalin, noticed an age discrepancy between the legendary Sonya Bluvshtein and "a person who is in hard labor." They also talked about the philistine mentality of the prisoner. And, as we remember, Sonya was very smart and educated even for high society.

In the 1920s, Nepmen used to scare each other with it. But at that time, numerous followers acted under the name of Sonya, more often acting simply as gunners. They were far from Sonya's talents. Yes, it was a different time. Odessans claim that the Golden Handle under a different name lived in Odessa on Prokhorovskaya Street and died only in 1947.

And in Moscow at the Vagankovsky cemetery there is a monument to Sonya. Female figure in full growth from a piece of white marble walks in the shade of forged palms. This sculpture was specially ordered from a Milanese master, and then brought to Russia (they say that this was done by Odessa, Neapolitan and London swindlers). There are also many mysteries around this grave. It always has fresh flowers and placers of coins. There are often inscriptions from "grateful thieves". True, over the past 20 years, only one of the three palm trees has remained. Yes, and the sculpture - without a head. They say that during a drunken fight, Sonya was dropped and her head was taken away.

The true name of Sonya the Golden Handle is Sheindl-Sura Leibova Solomoshak-Bluvshtein. An inventive swindler, an adventurer, able to turn into a secular woman, a nun or an elementary servant. She was called "the devil in a skirt", "a demonic beauty whose eyes will captivate and hypnotize."

The famous correspondent at the end of the 19th century, Vlas Doroshevich, called the famous swindler "all-Russian, almost European-famous." And Chekhov gave her interest in the book "Sakhalin".

She did not live very long in the wild - only about 40 years old. Only as she started while still a little girl with a little theft - she did not stop until the end of her life. In the game, she reached perfection. And abilities, attractiveness, cunning and unconditional immorality made this young girl a great swindler, a famous swindler.

Sonya hunted mainly by thefts in hotels, jewelry stores, she was engaged in this business on trains, traveling around the country and Europe. Luxuriously dressed, with foreign documents, she appeared in the best hotels of the Capital, St. Petersburg, Odessa, Warsaw, painstakingly examined the placement of rooms, entrances, exits, corridors. The golden pen came up with a method of hotel theft called "guten morgen". She put on felt shoes on her own shoes and, silently moving along the corridors, early in the morning penetrated into an outside room.

Under a strong pre-dawn dream of the owner, his cash was silently “purged”. If the owner suddenly woke up, a dressed-up woman in precious jewelry, as if not noticing the “outsider”, began to undress, as if mistakenly taking the number for her own ... Everything ended with professionally played embarrassment and mutual apologies. This is how I ended up in a provincial hotel room. Looking around, she saw a dozing young man, pale as a sheet, with an exhausted face. She was struck not so much by the idea of ​​​​the last torment, as by the unusual resemblance of the young man to Wolf - whose sharp face could never draw anything close to real highly moral torture.

On the table rested a pistol and a fan of messages. Sonya Golden Hand read the title - to the mother. The offspring wrote about the theft of official money: the loss was found, and suicide is the only way to avoid dishonor, the ill-fated Werther informed his mother. put 500 rubles on top of the envelopes, pressed them down with a pistol, and just as silently left the room.

Good deeds were in no way alien to Sonya's wide nature - if her fastidious idea at these moments turned to those whom she adored. Who, if not her own distant daughters, stood before her eyes when Sonya the Golden Hand found out from the printed publications that she had completely robbed a poor widow, mother of 2 girls. Data 5000 stolen rubles. were a simultaneous allowance for the death of her husband, a small civil servant. The Golden Pen did not think for a long time: she sent the widow 5 thousand by mail and small letter. "Dear Empress! I have read in printed publications about the misfortune that befell you, which I was the cause of my intemperate craving for cash, I send you your 5000 rubles. and recommend from this second deeper means to hide. Once again I ask you for mercy, I send my regards to your poor orphans.

One day, the police found in the Odessa living space of Sonya the Golden Hand her extraordinary dress, deliberately sewn for shoplifting. It, in fact, was a bag where even a small roll of Expensive fabric could be hidden. The Golden Handle showed special skill in jewelry stores. In the presence of almost all the clients and with the support of her own "agents", who deftly diverted the attention of the clerks, she imperceptibly hid valuable pebbles under deliberately grown long nails, replacing the rings with fake diamonds, hid the stolen in a flower pot standing on the counter, so that the next day come and collect the stolen goods.

An unusual page in her life is occupied by thefts on trains - separate first-class compartments. Bankers, foreign businessmen, big landowners, including generals, became victims of the swindler - from Frolov, for example, on the Nizhny Novgorod railway, she stole 213,000 rubles ..

Luxuriously dressed, Sonya the Golden Handle was placed in a compartment, playing the role of a marquise, countess or a wealthy widow. Having arranged for her fellow travelers and pretending to succumb to their courtship, the pseudo-marquise talked a lot, laughed and flirted, waiting for the victim to begin to be sent to sleep soon. But, carried away by the appearance and sexy appeals of a reckless aristocrat, wealthy owners did not fall asleep for a long time. And then Sonya Golden Hand used sleeping pills - intoxicating perfumes with a special drug, opium in wine or tobacco, bottles of chloroform, etc. Sonya stole 300 thousand rubles from the 1st Siberian merchant. (large funds in those days).

She loved to visit the famous Nizhny Novgorod fair, but often traveled to Europe, Paris, Nice, loved the German-speaking powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, rented luxurious living spaces in Vienna, Budapest, Leipzig, Berlin.

Wasn't attractive. She was small in stature, but beautiful figure, true facial features; her eyes exuded a sexy-hypnotic gravity. Vlas Doroshevich, who was talking to a swindler on Sakhalin, saw that her eyes were "wonderful, infinitely beautiful, soft, velvety ... and they talked like that, as if they had the opportunity, among other things, to lie unsurpassedly."

Sonka the Goldhand.

Sonya constantly used makeup, false eyebrows, wigs, wore expensive Parisian hats, unique fur capes, mantillas, brightened herself up with jewelry, for which she had a weakness. She lived in abundance. Her favorite places of rest were the Crimea, Pyatigorsk and the foreign resort of Marienbad, in which place she pretended to be a titled person, since she had a set of various business cards. She did not count the funds, did not save up for a dark day. So, having arrived in Vienna in the summer of 1872, she pawned some of the things she had stolen into a pawnshop and, having received a deposit of 15 thousand rubles, spent it in an instant.

Gradually she got tired of acting alone. She put together a gang of family members, former spouses. The gang also included Berezin and the Swedish-Norwegian citizen Martin Jacobson. The members of the gang undeniably obeyed Sonya the Golden Handle.

... Misha Osipovich Dinkevich, the founder of the clan, the honorary sovereign, after 25 years of exemplary service as the head of the men's gymnasium in Saratov, was expelled. Misha Osipovich decided together with his daughter, son-in-law and 3 grandchildren to move to their homeland, to the capital. The Dinkeviches sold the house, increased their savings, accumulated 125 thousand for a small house in the city of Moscow.

Walking around St. Petersburg, the retired director turned into a confectionery _ and at the door almost knocked over a dressed-up cutie, who suddenly dropped her umbrella. Dinkevich involuntarily noted that before him was not an elementary Petersburg beauty, but a lady of only respectable breed, dressed with the simplicity that only very expensive tailors achieve. Her hat was worth the annual salary of a gymnasium teacher.

After 10 min. they drank coffee with cream at the table, the cutie ate a biscuit, Dinkevich had the courage to take a glass of liquor. When asked about the name, the beautiful stranger answered:

"Countess Timroth, Sofia Ivanovna"

“Oh, what a name! You're from the capital's Timrots, aren't you?"

"Exactly".

“Ah, Sofya Ivanovna, if only you knew how someone drags you to the Capital”

And Misha Osipovich, having suddenly experienced a surge of confidence, laid out his poverty to the countess - both about the pension, and about the shy fixed capital, and about the dream of the capital's not the most luxurious, but worthy of a good family mansion ...

“Do you know what, dear Mikhail Osipovich…” the Countess ventured after much thought, “after all, my husband and I are looking for a reliable client. The count was appointed to Paris, the ambassador of His Majesty ... "

“However, Countess! Yes, I can’t master your mezzanine in any way! Do you have a mezzanine?”

“There is,” Timrot chuckled. - We have a lot of stuff. However, my husband is the chamberlain of the court. Should we bargain? You, I see, are a respectable, intelligent, most experienced person. I wouldn’t want any other owner for Bebut’s nest…”

“So your father is General Bebutov, a Caucasian hero?!” Dinkevich was alarmed.

“Vasily Osipovich is my grandfather,” Sofya Ivanovna timidly corrected and got up from the table. “So how soon will you deign to look at the house?”

We came to an agreement to meet in 5 days on the train where Dinkevich would board in Klin.

Sonya perfectly remembered this village, or rather, a small station, since from the whole town she knew only the police station. Sonya constantly mentioned her first adventure with pleasure. At that time, she was not even 20, with a small stature and grace, she looked at sixteen. It was after 6 years that she began to be called Sonya the Golden Hand, when Sheindla Solomoniak, the daughter of a small moneylender from the Warsaw district, became famous as a think tank and money lord of the "raspberry" of international scope. And then she had only the ability, irresistible attractiveness and the secondary educational institution of the "family nest", of which she was no less proud than Countess Timroth, the nest is not a general's, but a thieves' one, in which place she grew up among usurers, buyers of stolen goods, robbers and smugglers . She ran errands for them, simply learning their languages: Yiddish, Lyash, Russian, German. Followed them. And like a real acting nature, it was saturated with the spirit of adventure and ruthless risk.

Well, then, in 1866, she was a shy thief "on trust" on the railroad. By this time, by the way, she had already managed to escape from her own first husband, the merchant Rosenbad, having taken not so much for the path - 500 rubles .. Somewhere "with people" her little daughter was growing up.

Finally, approaching Klin, in a third-class carriage, in which place she hunted for small things, Sonya spotted a handsome cadet. She sat down, bowed, flattered him with the “colonel” and so artlessly with all her eyes (whose power she already knew perfectly) examined his cockade, shining leggings and a suitcase near them, that the young military man immediately felt an impulse characteristic of all the representatives of the stronger sex who met on Sonka’s path : to defend and patronize this girl with the face of a fallen angel - if possible until the end of her own days.

At Klin station, it cost nothing for her to send the conquered cadet - well, let's say, for lemonade.

It was probably the first and last time that Sonya was caught red-handed. However, even here she was able to scratch out. At the station, she burst into tears, and everyone, including Misha Gorozhansky, who had been scammed and lagged behind the train, believed that the woman had taken the companion's luggage by mistake, confusing it with her own. Moreover, the statement of "Sima Rubinstein" about the loss of three hundred rubles from her remained in the protocol.

After a number of years, Sonya went to the Maly Theater. And in the magnificent Glumov I suddenly recognized my Klin "client". Misha Gorozhansky, in full accordance with the pseudonym - Reshimov - threw an army career because of the theater and became the leading artist of the Maly Theater. Sonya bought a large bouquet of roses, put a clever note in there: "To a great artist from his 1st teacher" - and was about to send the premiere. However, she could not resist on the way and added a gold watch from a nearby pocket to the offering. The still young Misha Reshimov never figured out who played him and why on the lid of the precious souvenir was engraved: "General-anshefu N for special services to the fatherland on the day of his seventieth birthday."

However, let us return to the "Countess" Sophia Timroth. In the Capital, as expected, she was greeted by a luxurious departure: a coachman all in snow-white, a gig, shining with lacquered skin and magnificent signs, and a traditional pair of bay. We stopped by the Dinkevich family on the Arbat - and soon the clients, as if not daring to come in, crowded at the cast-iron gate, behind which rose the palace on a stone plinth with the promised mezzanine.

With bated breath, the Dinkeviches surveyed bronze lamps, Pavlovian armchairs, mahogany, an invaluable library, carpets, oak panels, Venetian windows ... The house was sold with furnishings, a garden, home structures, a pond - and for only 125 thousand, including mirror carps! Dinkevich's daughter was on the verge of fainting. Misha Osipovich himself was ready to smack the hands not only of the countess, but also of the monumental butler in a powdered wig, as if deliberately called upon to complete the moral destruction of the provincials.

The maid with a bow handed over to the countess a telegram on a silver tray, and she, narrowing myopic eyes, asked Dinkevich to read it aloud: “In the coming days, present the presentation of credentials to the king, in accordance with the protocol, jointly by the wife, period, immediately sell the house, move out period, I look forward to Wednesday, Gregory.”

The "countess" and the client went to the notary's office on Lenivka. When Dinkevich, following Sonya Golden Hand, stepped into the darkish waiting room, the obsequious fat man quickly jumped up to meet them, opening his arms.

It was Itzka Rosenbad, Sonya's first husband and father of her daughter. Now he was a buyer of stolen goods and specialized in stones and watches. The joyful Itska loved ringing breguetes and always had two adorable Bure with him: a gold one with an engraved hunting scene on the lid, and a platinum one with a portrait of the emperor in an enamel medallion. On this watch, Itzka at one time beat the inexperienced Chisinau plucker by almost three hundred rubles.

Sonya even had real estate scams

To celebrate, he kept both breguetes for himself and loved to open them at the same time, comparing time and listening to the gentle dissonance of ringing. Rosenbad did not hold a grudge against Sonya, 500 rubles. I forgave her a long time ago, especially since, according to her tips, I have already received more than 100 times. He generously paid the lady, who raised his daughter, and visited his daughter often, unlike Sonya (Although later, having already 2 daughters, Sonya became the most affectionate mother, did not skimp on their education and upbringing - neither in Russia, nor later in France, but her mature daughters abandoned her.)

Having met in 2 years after the escape of the young wife, the former wives began to "act" together. Itska, with his joyful temper and artistic Warsaw glamor, often provided Sonya with invaluable assistance.

So, the notary, who is the first husband of Sonya the Golden Hand of Itska, losing his glasses, rushed to Sonya. "Countess! he cried. - What an honor! Such a star in my miserable establishment!”

After 5 min. the young notary's assistant drew up the bill of sale in beautiful handwriting. The retired director handed over to Countess Timroth, nee Bebutova, every penny of the accumulation of his own decent life. 125 thousand rubles .. And after 2 weeks, two tanned citizens came to the Dinkeviches, stunned with happiness. They were the Artemyev brothers, prestigious architects who had passed own house hire for a trip to Italy. Dinkevich hanged himself in cheap rooms.

Sonya's main assistants in this case were caught after a couple of years. Itska Rosenbad and Mikhel Bluvshtein (manager) went to the prison companies, Khunya Goldshtein (coachman) - for 3 years in prison, and then - abroad "with a ban on returning to the borders of the Russian country." Sonya loved to act with relatives and former spouses. All 3 were no exceptions: not only the Varsovian Itska, but also a couple of “Romanian subjects” were at one time legally married to Sonya.

She came across many times. Sonya was tried in Warsaw, St. Petersburg, Kyiv, Kharkov, but she constantly managed to either quickly slip away from the police station or get an apology. In general, the police of almost all megacities of Western Europe hunted for her. For example, in Budapest, in accordance with the decision of the Royal Court of Justice, all her belongings were detained; Leipzig police in 1871 handed Sonya the Golden Hand under the supervision of the Russian embassy. She slipped away this time as well, but was soon arrested by the Viennese police, who confiscated her crate of stolen items.

Thus began a streak of failures. Her name often appeared in the press, her photos were posted in police stations. It became more and more difficult for Sonya to dissolve in the mass, to keep her freedom with the help of bribes.

She sparkled in the happy eras of her own stellar career in Europe, but Odessa was the metropolis of fortune and love for her ...

Wolf Bromberg, a twenty-year-old cheater and gopnik, nicknamed Vladimir Kochubchik, had an inexplicable power over Sonya. He extorted large sums of money from her. Sonya, more often than before, took unjustified risks, became greedy, irritable, and even descended to pickpocketing. Not very handsome, from a number of “pretty” guys with shaved mustaches, narrow in bones, with lively eyes and masterful hands - he alone risked once setting up Sonya. On her birthday, September 30, Wolf adorned the neck of his mistress with a velvet piece with a blue diamond, which was taken on a deposit from the 1st Odessa jeweler.

The deposit was considered a mortgage on part of the building on Langeron. The price of the building was 4,000 more than the price of the stone, and the jeweler paid the difference in cash. A day later, Wolf unexpectedly returned the diamond, stating that the woman did not like the present. Thirty minutes later, the jeweler found a fake, and an hour later he established that there was no building on Lanzheron and never was. When he broke into the upper rooms of Bromberg on Moldavanka, Wolf "confessed" that Sonya Golden Hand gave him a copy of the stone and she also concocted a fake mortgage. The jeweler did not go to Sonya alone, but with a constable.

Her trial went on from December 10 to December 19, 1880 in the Moscow District Court. Acting out a noble anger, Sonya fought hard with the judicial civil servants, in no way recognizing either the complaints or the exhibited material evidence. Despite the fact that eyewitnesses identified her from a photo, Sonya Zolotaya Ruchka announced that Zolotaya Ruchka was a completely different lady, and she lived at the expense of her husband, friends, and admirers. In particular, Sonya was outraged by the revolutionary proclamations planted on her living space by the police. In a word, she behaved in such a way that later attorney at law A Shmakov, mindful of this process, called her a lady capable of “outshine a good hundred of guys by the belt.”

And yet, in accordance with the decision of the court, she received a harsh verdict: “The Warsaw bourgeoisie Sheindlu-Sura Leibova Rosenbad, she is Rubinstein, she is also Shkolnik, Brenner and Blueshtein, nee Solomoniak, depriving all the rights of the state, to send to a settlement in the most remote places of Siberia.”

The place of exile was the remote village of Luzhki, Irkutsk province, from where Sonya escaped in the summer of 1885, but after 5 months she was caught by the police. For escaping from Siberia, she was sentenced to 3 years hard labor and 40 lashes. But even in prison, she did not waste any time in vain, she fell in love with a tall prison guard with a lush mustache, non-commissioned officer Mikhailov. He handed over to his passion a civilian dress and on the night of June 30, 1886 brought her to freedom. However, Sonya enjoyed her freedom only for 4 months. After a new arrest, she ended up in the Nizhny Novgorod prison castle. Now she was about to serve a hard labor term on Sakhalin.

Without a man, she could not do anything, and even at the stage she agreed with a friend in hard labor, a brave, hardened elderly thief and murderer Flea.

On Sakhalin, Sonya, like all ladies, first lived as a free inhabitant. Accustomed to precious euro-class suites, to thin linen and chilled champagne, Sonya slipped a pretty penny to the guard soldier to let her into the dark barracks hallway, in which place she met with Flea. During these short dates, Sonya and her strong owner designed an escape plan

It must be said that escaping Sakhalin was not such a difficult task. It was not the first time that Bloch had run and knew that from the taiga, in which place 3 dozen people work under the supervision of the 1st fighter, to get through the middle of the hills to the north, to the narrowest place of the Tatar Strait between Capes Pogobi and Lazarev - nothing costs. And after that - desertion, you can put together a raft and move to the mainland. However, Sonya, who even here did not get rid of her own attraction to theatrical scams, and was also afraid of many days of hunger, invented her own version of escape. They will follow the well-worn and lived-in path, but they will not hide, but will play hard labor assignment: Sonya in a soldier's dress will “guard” Bloch. The recidivist killed the sentry, Sonya changed into his clothes.

Bloch was the first to be caught. Sonya, who continued on her way alone, got lost and went to the cordon. However, this time she was lucky. The doctors of the Alexander infirmary insisted on the removal of corporal punishment from the Golden Handle: she turned out to be pregnant. Bloch, on the other hand, received 40 lashes and was chained in hand and foot shackles. When they flogged him, he yelled: “For my cause, your honor! For business! That's what I need!"

Sonya Golden Hand's pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. Her impending imprisonment in Sakhalin was like a crazy dream. Sonya was accused of a scam, she was involved - as a leader - in a lesson about the murder of a settler-merchant Nikitin.

In the end, in 1891, for a second escape, she was handed over to the terrible Sakhalin executioner Komlev. Stripped naked, surrounded by hundreds of prisoners, under their encouraging hooting, the executioner gave her fifteen lashes. Didn't make a sound . She crawled to her own room and fell on the bunk. For 2 years and 8 months, Sonya wore hand fetters and was in a damp solitary cell with a dim tiny window covered with a frequent grill.

Chekhov described her in the book Sakhalin in this way, “a small, thin, already graying woman with a crumpled old woman’s face ... She walks around her cell from corner to corner, and it seems that she is constantly sniffing the air, like a mouse in a mousetrap, and the expression she has a mousy face..” By the time of the events described by Chekhov, that is, in 1891, Sofya Bluvshtein was only 45 years old ...

Sonya Zolotaya Ruchka was visited by writers, correspondents, and residents of other countries. For a fee, you were allowed to talk to her. She did not like to talk, she lied a lot, she was confused in her memories. Adherents of the exotic took pictures with her in the composition: a convict, a blacksmith, a warder - this was called "Forging the famous Sonya Golden Hand into hand fetters." One of these photographs, sent to Chekhov by Innokenty Ignatievich Pavlovsky, a Sakhalin photographer, is preserved in the State Literary Museum.

After serving his term, Sonya was obliged to remain on Sakhalin as a free settler. She became the mistress of the local “chantan cafe”, where she prepared kvass, traded vodka from under the floor and organized merry evenings with dancing.

Then she got along with the bitter recidivist Nikolai Bogdanov, but life with him was worse than hard labor.

Unhealthy, hardened, she ventured on a new escape and left Alexandrovsk. She walked about 2 versts and, having lost her strength, fell down. The guards found her.

A few days later Sonya Zolotaya Ruchka died.

At the Vagankovsky cemetery there is a monument to "Sonka - the Golden Pen". This monument, with a broken head and all covered with inscriptions, is a real mecca for representatives of the criminal world. People come to this monument to ask for protection in a criminal case or protection from law enforcement officers. Who actually rests in the grave, over which the monument stands, is not known for certain. A lot of myths are also connected with this, up to the fact that not someone's body lies in the grave, but the loot is hidden. According to other versions, the daughter of some philanthropist is buried here; Indian mistress of a Moscow rich man; unknown, who committed suicide from unhappy love; unknown Russian ballerina and so on. It was not possible to establish the truth due to the fact that the archives of the Vagankovsky cemetery were destroyed.

A life-size female figure from a single piece of once chic white marble under the shadow of forged black palm trees, self made. On the grave there are always fresh flowers and coins - in bulk.

The entire foot of the monument is dotted with inscriptions: “The Solntsevo lads will not forget you”, “Yerevan bandits mourn”, “Rostov remembers everything”, “Vagabonds from Siberia bow”. And - “Help, Sonya, we are going to work”, “Mother, give happiness to Zhigan”, “Give us success in business”, “Help me avoid prison”, “Sonya, teach me how to live”.

Eternal peace found here, at the Vagankovsky cemetery, Sofia Ivanovna Bluvshtein, Sonya the Golden Handle. Beautiful legends were written about her daring scams. In 1913-1915, the silent cinema devoted a whole series of films to her. And in modern times, her adventures have inspired the popular writer Sidney Sheldon to write the world bestseller If Tomorrow Comes. But the true evidence of the vicissitudes of life of this outstanding "lady of the demi-monde" had to be collected bit by bit.

SOFIA BLUEVSTEIN (HER maiden name STENDEL) was born in 1859 in a small Ukrainian town in a large family of a hairdresser. She lost her mother at the age of four. The father, having remarried, moved the family to Odessa, where the stepmother had a small grocery store.

Evdokia Gershkova disliked her stepdaughter, often beat her, forced her to work in the shop on the sidelines, and after the death of her father, the girl's life turned into a living hell.

At seventeen Sonya falls in love with a young Greek. But his family, who owned a chain of colonial goods stores, did not like his son's new acquaintance. Then, seized with passion, the young, taking a decent amount of money, run away from home. Love, however, did not last long ... The cooled Greek returns behind the counter of his store, and Sonya ...

She did not return to her family. And soon she met on the way the famous Odessa swindler and card sharper Bluvshtein, and she married him. His parents fell in love with his daughter-in-law for her cheerful disposition and positive influence on their son. From this marriage two daughters were born. They will inherit their mother's talent for disguise and later become professional actresses...

Due to the specific occupations of Mr. Bluvshtein, the family with money was either thick or empty. Sometimes they were simply sorely lacking. Sonya tried to interfere in her husband's "work", to point out the mistakes made, but he stubbornly avoided her recommendations and ended up in prison. And the children had to be fed. And Sonya decided to do it herself " family business". Her natural prudence and sophistication of thought made it possible to conduct business at the proper level.

FROM THE CRIMINAL CASE "THE ROBERT OF KARL VON MEHL".

As the owner of a jewelry store, I was approached by a woman who identified herself as the wife of the famous psychiatrist L., with a request to choose for her latest collection diamonds. I was offered a necklace, rings and a brooch by Parisian jewelers. The total purchase amount was 30 thousand rubles. Mrs. Sofya Andreevna L. left her business card, took the bill and asked her to come to her husband's house for settlements at the time she had appointed. Upon arrival at Dr. L., I was met by the doctor's wife, who was already familiar to me. She asked permission to try on a collection of diamonds for evening dress and took me to my husband's office. When I realized that the doctor was not going to pay me back, I demanded that the diamonds be returned. Instead, I was escorted by three orderlies to the hospital room. A few hours later I had a conversation with Mr. L., where I told him everything in detail about the purchase of a collection of diamonds by his wife. And the doctor told me that this lady introduced herself as my wife and made me an appointment with him, referring to my mental illness. She paid for my treatment in advance...

SONKA DIDN'T LIKE SMALL CASES and impromptu. Each new crime she thought over in detail, weighed everything, took into account all sorts of surprises and accidents. A brave thief, a clever swindler, she "worked" almost always alone, in rare cases she took assistants for herself. Contemporaries testify that for her there were neither high walls nor state borders. Attractive appearance, the ability to make acquaintances, to keep up the conversation made an impression on people. She was readily accepted in society.

FROM THE CRIMINAL CASE "THE ROBBING OF THE BANKER DOGMAROV".

OCTOBER 1884

This photo titled "Golden Pen Chaining Scene" went around the world

I met Sophia San Donato in the Fanconi cafe, because of the need, the above-named lady, to exchange rent for cash. I invited Madame San Donato to my table and exchanged an annuity for 1,000 rubles. In a conversation, this lady said that today, by an eight-hour train, she was leaving for Moscow. This train and I departed from Odessa to Moscow today. I asked permission to accompany her on the road. The lady agreed. We agreed to meet at the wagon. At the appointed time, I was waiting for Mrs. San Donato with a box of chocolates. Already in the carriage, Madame San Donato asked me to buy a Benedictine from the buffet. I went out and instructed the employee. I have memories up to the moment when I ate some sweets. What happened next, I do not remember, because of a sound sleep. From my traveling bag was stolen: cash and securities for a total amount of 43 thousand rubles.
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SHE WAS EXCELLENT IN THE ART OF REINcarnation. And the police lost track of her even when she was under covert surveillance. As soon as Moscow calmed down, agitated by another robbery of a jeweler, the newspapers shouted about the clever scam of the Golden Hand in Tiflis, and three days later - about the theft of a large sum from an artel worker in Astrakhan. After successful deeds, Sonya rested. Usually in Marienbad, where she lived under forged documents of some baroness or countess.

Finally, in Smolensk, after robbing several jewelry stores, Sonya was detained. All the newspapers of the Russian Empire reported on the successful arrest. The Smolensk detective police received congratulations - after all, its detectives managed to do what the police in other cities of Russia and even Europe could not do. Just in case, the invited artist captured the image of the swindler, the portrait was reproduced in order to later be sent to the provincial departments - you never know. Although, of course, they were sure that this time the clever thief would not escape responsibility.

But trial was not included in the plans of the Golden Pen. For several days spent in prison, she literally charmed the guards. I recited poems to them in Russian, German and French, talked about my life in Odessa, Vienna, Paris. And it is not known what else she said and promised, but only one of the guards not only helped her escape, but he himself fled with her. The unfortunate guy was arrested in Odessa and put on trial. And Sonya returned to her usual “work”.

FROM THE CRIMINAL CASE "THE ROBBERY OF KHLEBNIKOV'S JEWELERY SHOP ON PETROVKA".

AUGUST 1885

Sofia Eduardovna Buksgevden, Baroness, arrived in Moscow from Courland. Accompanied by father Eduard Karlovich, a female infant and mother, she visited Khlebnikov's jewelry store in order to buy diamond jewelry. Store manager T. recommended a collection of jewelry worth 22,300 rubles. When the jewelry was packed and paper was given to this lady for payment, the latter, referring to the forgotten money on the fireplace portal, took a package with diamonds and left for cash, leaving the above-mentioned persons as collateral. Two hours later it was announced to the station.

It has been established that the child was taken for use from an inhabitant of the Khitrov market, known by the thieves' name Mashka the Roller. The petty bourgeois N. was hired into the service, as a mother, according to an advertisement in the newspaper. Baron Buksgevden - retired headquarters captain of the N regiment, Mr. Ch.

IN NOVEMBER 1885 THE GOLDEN PEN HAS BEEN TAKEN, caught in several thefts of jewelry for a large amount. It was now guarded by the most staunch guards.

The case of Sophia Blyuvshtein caused a great stir. The hall where the court session was held could not accommodate everyone who wanted to attend. People crowded the street. Eyewitnesses recalled that during the process, the table of material evidence was on fire from a pile of diamonds.

- Witness, - the chairman of the court turned to one of the victims, - indicate what things are yours here.

The lady with a completely shocked face came up to the table and with trembling hands began to sort out rings, bracelets, necklaces ...

And then a mocking female voice was heard from the dock:

“Madame, don’t worry so much. These diamonds are fake.

The lady collapsed unconscious...
Sonya's sentence was strict - penal servitude on Sakhalin.

THE STEAMSHIP OF THE VOLUNTARY FLEET "YAROSLAVL" was specially adapted for the transportation of convicts to the island of Sakhalin. It was called the floating prison. Two huge decks with long narrow corridors, on both sides rows of cages with thick bars and a whole system of special steam pipes - in case of a riot. Each cage has several two-story beds. There were no tables or benches, the convicts received food in special tanks and sat down directly on the floor to eat.

Shortly before the departure, it became known in the city that with the last batch of female convicts, Sonya Zolotaya Ruchka would "go".

And now this day has come. The entire embankment of the Quarantine Mole was packed with people - Odessans came to say goodbye to the famous countrywoman. About noon the prison train arrived. Convicts began to emerge from the carriages in pairs.

The receiver from the escort team, who made the roll call, called the prisoners alphabetically.

“Blyuvshtein Sofya,” he shouted out loudly.

A short woman in a prisoner's dress with a small bundle in her hand separated from the crowd of convicts, bowed to the crowd on the shore with the grace of a theatrical actress, and quickly climbed the gangway to the deck of the steamer.

On the deck among the officials of the administration were the Odessa mayor P.A. Green, the captain of the Odessa port V.P. Perlishin and police chief Colonel Bunin. Distinguished guests wanted to take a closer look at the famous thief. After asking a couple of questions, the mayor of Zelenoy wished Sonya a happy journey and took pity on the Sakhalin authorities. Touched by such attention, Sonya decided to make a farewell gift and handed the mayor a gold pocket watch with a double-headed eagle overlaid on the lid.

“Thank you,” Zelenoy was about to thank Sonya, not realizing that he was accepting his own watch as a gift - an empty chain dangled on his stomach. To the merry laughter of the sailors, the mayor hastened to go ashore.

Exactly at four o'clock the steamer slowly moved away from the pier.

IN THE AUTUMN OF 1886, SOFIA BLUEVSTEIN ARRIVED TO SAKHALIN. At first, like all the women sent here, she lived outside the prison, in a free apartment. And then, looking around a little, she began to prepare for an escape. The first attempt was unsuccessful due to poor preparation and ignorance of the area. In addition, supervision was assigned to Sonya, and she was quickly missed. For escaping, she was supposed to receive ten lashes, which was a severe punishment for a woman. But Sonya was not punished. Why?

From the documents of the Far Eastern archive we learn that in October 1887, the doctors of the Alexander infirmary, Surminsky and Perlin, considered it necessary to release the Golden Handle from corporal punishment, since she ... was expecting a child. Which was complete fiction. Sonya sent another woman for examination instead of herself.

Sonkin's indefatigable character did not allow her to live without a "case". Obviously, not without her participation, several high-profile and mysterious crimes were committed on Sakhalin, all the evidence indicated that Sonya was their organizer and inspirer, but there was no evidence.

One of the last autographs

A year later, she was accused of fraud, and in March 1889, the head of the Aleksandrovsky district, Taskin, reported to the head of Sakhalin Island, Major General Kononovich V.O., that Bluvshtein was involved in the case of the murder of the settler Nikitin. “There are reasons,” Taskin wrote, “to suspect her of being involved in other cases.” Former caretaker of the Alexander Prison A.S. Feldman categorically declared the participation of Sofya Blyuvshtein in the attempt on the family of the merchant Nikitin, even moreover, he claimed that she was the leader in this matter (Odessky Leaflet. 1893. No. 189. June 22). Chernoshey, Kinzhalov, Marina and Pazukhin, accused of murdering the shopkeeper Nikitin, were sentenced to death by the court. Pazukhin was pardoned before the execution, replacing the punishment - one hundred lashes and chained to a wheelbarrow. The crime was committed on November 13, 1888. The execution took place on March 27, 1889. Sonya was not touched.
On May 20, 1889, the loudest robbery in the entire existence of hard labor was committed. A certain Leiba Yurovsky was exiled to Sakhalin "for false papers." Here, in the Alexander post, his wife, Sima Yurovskaya, was engaged in trade. 56,200 rubles were stolen from her from a chest under the bed. It was a huge amount. For such money it was possible to hire a whole ship. All the evidence again pointed to Sonya, but, as before, there was no evidence. The crime remained unsolved.

IN MAY 1891 SONKA THE GOLDEN HAND MADE A SECOND ESCAPE. Legendary in its own way.

Her absence was noticed immediately. Two platoons of soldiers were thrown in pursuit: one combed the forest, the other lay down on the edge. The search continued for several days. Finally, a figure in soldier's uniform ran out of the woods to the edge, right on the chain that was lying down. The officer commanded: "Pli." But the figure, a moment before the salvo, fell to the ground. Thirty bullets whistled over her head.

- Do not shoot! I give up, - there was a desperate female cry.

In June, Sonya received fifteen lashes for this escape (according to official documents). The Sakhalin executioner Komlev claimed that there were twenty blows, "because he himself counted."

They punished her in the Alexander Prison for "corrections". At least three hundred people crowded into the cell, designed for a hundred people. The prisoners did not like Sonya. They envied her impunity and elusiveness. But as much as they hated, so much they feared.

Under the screams and cynical jokes of the prisoners, the virtuoso of his craft, Komlev, “put the rod in the rod”, so that blood spatters flew from under the rod in all directions. Sonya lost consciousness. The paramedic brought her to her senses - and the punishment continued. By the way, after Sonya on Sakhalin, not a single woman was subjected to corporal punishment.

A month later, for the peace of mind of the Sakhalin authorities, Sonya was transferred to solitary confinement. Sentenced to hard labor for three years and shackled. She wore shackles for two years and eight months. They weighed between five and five and a half pounds. In the entire history of penal servitude, only Sonya was chained among women.

A.P. Chekhov, who visited the Alexander Prison in the fall of 1891, recalled: “This is a small, thin, already graying woman ... She has shackles on her hands; on the bunks there is only a fur coat made of gray sheepskin, which serves her and warm clothes and bed. She walks around the cell from corner to corner, and it seems that she is constantly sniffing the air, like a mouse in a mousetrap, and her expression is mouse-like.

In the Chekhov archives, questionnaire cards with a description of the appearance and character of the convicts have been preserved. Sonya's Golden Pen card, one of the few, is considered missing.

Even in solitary confinement, Sonya did not know peace.

- Only, it happens, you calm down, they demand: Sonya the Golden Hand! Think again. No. Take a photo. They tormented me with these photographs, ”Bluvshtein herself recalled.

It turns out that the local photographer, who made a fortune by selling photographs of the famous thief, was worried.

Sonya was taken to the prison yard. They put it near the anvil, blacksmiths with hammers and overseers were right there - and the scene of shackling the Golden Handle was filmed.

These photographs were sold on all ships that called at Sakhalin. The photography was especially popular in Europe. They well remembered the "tour" of the Odessa swindler.
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AT THE END OF 1894 SONKA WENT TO THE SETTLEMENT and began to be listed as a peasant woman from the exiles. Identified in cohabitation with Stepan Bogdanov, who was exiled to Sakhalin for murder. Bogdanov, the most ferocious among the convicts, was feared by the whole island. He could kill for two kopecks. Sonya knew him from old cases. He was her bodyguard. Together with Bogdanov, she undertakes another escape from the island. Third in a row. But health is already undermined by hard labor. From the long wearing of shackles, she practically ceased to own her left hand. Bogdanov carried Sonya in his arms for several miles, and when his strength was exhausted, the soldiers overtook them. There was no punishment. But supervision was established more than strict.

It seems that Sonya resigned herself to the fact that she would end her life on Sakhalin. Officially, she began to be listed as the keeper of kvass. By the way, she brewed excellent kvass, built a carousel, organized an orchestra of four settlers, found a magician among the tramps, staged performances, dances, festivities, copying Odessa cafes in everything. Unofficially traded vodka, bought and resold stolen goods, opened a gambling house. The police officers complained that they searched her place three times a week, day and night, but they did not find out how and where she managed to store vodka. They even opened the floor and walls - to no avail.

KATORGA - FROM ADMINISTRATION TO PRISONERS - SONKA IS PROUD OF THE GOLDEN HANDLE. They didn’t like it, but they treated it with respect: “Baba is the head.” It has become the main attraction. Well, to think - a woman, and neither a solitary prison, nor shackles, nor bullets, nor rods broke her. On Sakhalin, legends were composed about her. At one time, it was even believed that it was not Sonya at all, but a "shifter", a figurehead serving a sentence, while the real Golden Pen was hunting in rich Europe.

Even the high Sakhalin authorities were not sure that the real Sofya Blyuvshtein was serving a sentence in hard labor. Everyone who met her in the wild or on the mainland, saw portraits painted from her, was asked in detail: is she the one or not? Opinions almost never coincided. Foreigners traveling around Sakhalin spoke with extraordinary enthusiasm about their excellent education (knowledge of literature and foreign languages) and the secular gloss of Blueshtein. Vlas Doroshevich, a well-known Russian journalist and writer at that time, argued the opposite: “I don’t think that the pronunciation “ben floor” instead of “bel floor” spoke of Sophia Blyuvshtein’s education. According to the manner of speaking, this is a simple bourgeois, a small shopkeeper. And, really, it’s a mystery to me how her victims could take the Golden Pen - either for a famous actress, or for an aristocratic widow.

But in this case, Sonya would certainly have been seen through by the jewelers whom she robbed. Already they, having excellent command of physiognomy and psychology, could, by the slightest sign, determine who was in front of them. It was almost impossible to fool them. It is for this reason that criminals preferred a raid to a scam. The scam is top notch.

And further. Chekhov and Doroshevich, who saw a convict on Sakhalin, noted the age discrepancy between the legendary Sonya Bluvshtein and "a person in hard labor." The difference was ten years, at least.

Fifty-six thousand stolen from Yurovsky were never found. It is hard to believe that Sonya did not use them, especially since her accomplices were executed. So whether Sonya served her last years of hard labor or not remains a mystery.

True, in the early 90s, a wave of mysterious robberies swept across Europe. And the prime suspect was a woman. The handwriting of the crimes and the description of the criminal resembled our heroine. But she was in prison!

At the end of November 1921, Sonya's last lover and friend, who worked in the Odessa port, was shot by the Cheka. Eyewitnesses recalled that Sonya was driving along Deribasovskaya on a foreman, crying inconsolably and scattering paper and metal money, saying: “For the wake of her husband. At the wake of her husband.

In recent years, the Golden Pen lived with her daughters in Moscow (they were ashamed of the scandalous popularity of their mother). Age and health undermined by hard labor did not allow her to actively engage in the old craft. But the Moscow police faced strange, mysterious robberies: a small monkey in jewelry stores jumped on a visitor picking up a ring or a diamond for herself, snatched jewelry from her hands, swallowed them and ran away. They said that Sonya brought this monkey from Odessa.

Sofia Ivanovna Bluvshtein died at an advanced age. She was buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery, plot number 1. After her death, a monument to the Milanese sculptor was ordered with the money of Odessa, Neapolitan and London scammers ...

The spelling and style of the documents are preserved.

In 1868, the famous queen of thieves arrived in Dinaburg, where she married a local rich man, an old Jew, Shelom Shkolnik.

How did the nickname "Sonka the Golden Pen" come about?

Queen of the underworld Sonka the Goldhand she never offended those who were poorer, but she believed that it was a sin not to profit at the expense of large bankers, jewelers and merchants who were on a spree.
Her thieving career unfolded simultaneously with the development railways. Starting with petty thefts in third-class carriages, the talented thief moved to classy compartment carriages. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the fact that Sonya the Golden Pen ended up in Dinaburg. Here, in 1868, she married an old wealthy Jew, Shelom Shkolnik, who was destined to briefly become her second husband. Having robbed the poor fellow, the charming swindler leaves her Dinaburg husband for the sake of a card sharper, whom she soon exchanged for the famous railway thief Mikhel Bluvshtein. However, she did not wear these marriage shackles for long. The husband, who regularly found either the military or the aristocrats on the marriage bed, could not stand it and filed for divorce.

Your nickname "Sonka the Goldhand" the thief received for crazy luck and charming hands with sleek fingers, humiliated with fingers. Under her long nails, she hid precious stones stolen from jewelry stores. Under a bag-style dress, Sonya managed to carry entire rolls of fabric out of the shops. She owns the invention original way hotel burglaries, called "guten morgen", or simply "good morning." Dressed in elegant outfits, Sonya moved into decent hotels and carefully studied the guests, noticing the rich and careless. Having outlined the victim, in the early morning she calmly entered the rooms in silent felt shoes and carried out all the most valuable things. If the guest woke up, the thief pretended to have the wrong number, blushed, flirted - for business, she could have slept with the victim. Moreover, Sonya did it so sincerely and naturally that it was impossible to resist her.

It can be said that her life path was lined with ripped-off men.

Sonya-Golden Pen-creator of the thieves' common fund

According to eyewitnesses, Sonya the Golden Pen was far from being a beauty. This is how she was described in police documents: “Thin, height 1 m 53 cm, pockmarked face, moderate nose with wide nostrils, a wart on her right cheek, blond, curly hair on her forehead, brown eyes, mobile, impudent, talkative.”

Nevertheless, Sonya enjoyed great success with men. Her charm was akin to witchcraft. Having no education, Sonya easily spoke five languages. Traveling around Europe, she presented herself first as a countess, then as a baroness, and no one had a shadow of doubt.

The right to be considered the birthplace of the famous swindler is claimed by Odessa-mother, gangster Petersburg and the town of Powazki, Warsaw district. Her real name, given at birth, was Sheindla-Sura Leibova Solomoniak. Sonechka's family, let's face it, was still the same: buying up stolen goods, smuggling, selling counterfeit money were commonplace. Her elder sister Feiga, who succeeded three husbands, was also a thief, but she was far from her younger sister.

At the age of 18, in Warsaw, Sonya married a certain Rosenbad, gave birth to a daughter, Sura-Rivka, from him, and immediately left her husband, robbing him goodbye. With a certain recruit Rubinstein, she fled to Russia, where her crazy thieving career began. In January 1866, for the first time, she was detained by the police on charges of stealing a suitcase, but Sonya deftly got out that she had taken the suitcase by mistake. It was at this time that Sonya the Golden Pen made the first attempt to create a bandit brigade in St. Petersburg, for which she brought the famous thief Levit Sandanovich to the city. It is believed that the idea of ​​​​the first thieves' common fund and helping comrades in trouble with money collected in a clubbing belongs to Sonya herself. Sonya the Golden Pen also maintained schools for juvenile thieves in Odessa and London.

Sonya always acted alone, disdained to deal with petty matters, and, despite the fact that she was a master at impersonation, she could not stand impromptu. She carefully prepared and considered each case.

A charming thief invented a method of stealing with the victim's distraction for sex - this method later became known as "hipes". "Hippers" usually worked in pairs - the woman brought the client to her rooms and pleasured him in bed, and her partner ("the cat" who followed the interests of his "cat") cleaned the pockets of the unlucky lover's clothes. The swindler worked inventively and artistically. It was simply impossible to suspect a lady dressed in chic furs and gold jewelry. Sometimes, Sonya went into jewelry stores with a trained monkey. Pretending to choose diamonds, she quietly gave a pebble to the animal. The monkey obediently swallowed it or put it on its cheek, and at home the jewel was removed from the pot. Once a rich lady went into a jewelry store. Looking at the most expensive diamond, she accidentally dropped it on the floor. While the salesman, sweating from exertion, crawled on all fours, looking for a stone, the customer left the store. There was a hole in the heel of her shoe filled with resin. So simply, stepping on a diamond, Sonya turned her next business.

Volodya Kochubchik

But soon luck turned away from her - Sonya fell in love. The young handsome thief Volodya Kochubchik (in the world Wolf Bromberg, who began to steal at the age of eight) quickly adapted to live at the expense of his mistress. He lost everything Sonya "earned" in cards, but she had to be nervous, take risks, make mistakes, until in the end she got caught. Although there is a version that Volodya Kochubchik himself sold and handed over Sonya to the police.

After a high-profile trial in Moscow, the Golden Pen was convicted and deported to Siberia. The thief fled, and again all of Russia started talking about her. Sonya continued to rob rich fools. After several high-profile robberies of jewelers, she was sentenced to hard labor, from where she tried to escape three times and unsuccessfully three times. After the second time, she was caught, punished with fifteen lashes (women had never been punished so cruelly in hard labor) and shackled, which she carried for three whole years.

And Volodya Kochubchik, who had betrayed her, was released six months after the trial and left for Bessarabia, where he invested the treasures stolen by Sonya in houses and vineyards very profitably.

Monument from the lads of white marble

There are many legends about Sonya's death. Her life in hard labor, allegedly, did not end, and she died in 1947 in Odessa as a very old woman. According to another version, she died in 1920 in Moscow and was buried at the famous Vagankovsky cemetery.

On her grave, with the money of Rostov, Odessa, St. Petersburg and even London thieves, an unusual monument was erected by Italian masters: a female figurine made of white marble stands near high forged palm trees. True, over the past twenty years, out of three palm trees, only one has remained, and Sonya is without a head. It is said that during a drunken brawl the statue was dropped and the severed head was carried away.

Fresh flowers are always lying on the grave and coins are scattered, and the pedestal of the monument is covered with inscriptions: “The Solntsevo lads will not forget you”, “Yerevan bandits mourn”, “Rostov remembers everything”. There are also such: “Sonya, teach me how to live”, “Mother, give happiness to Zhigan”, “Help, Sonya, we are going to work” ...