The Altai prosecutor’s office announced that it was checking media publications that the first wife of the writer and actor Vasily Shukshin, Maria Shumskaya, died on January 7 after being denied hospitalization.
Olga Volosovtseva, a deputy of the Altai State Assembly, announced the death of a school teacher Shumskoy. According to her, the pensioner “could not stand her heart.” She noted that last summer the woman celebrated her 90th birthday “and did not plan to die.”
Local media reported on the problems the woman allegedly experienced when seeking medical help. So, with reference to her guardian Vladimir Kovalev, it was stated that Shumskoy was called an ambulance several times, but the doctors refused to hospitalize her. In particular, the Listok newspaper reported that the pensioner was allegedly refused to be taken to the hospital, citing her advanced age and lack of beds.
Shumskaya was a fellow villager of Shukshin, the young people got married in 1955, when the 26-year-old VGIK student came from the capital for the first vacation.
It is believed that his wife was scared to follow him to Moscow and she stayed to wait for him at home, and after a while her husband sent a letter in which he said that he had met another woman. There were rumors that the couple allegedly never officially divorced: Shukshin seemed to have lost his passport and in 1963 he married again with a new document. Shumskaya, as far as is known, never started a new family and lived alone all her life.
Shukshin’s second marriage with Victoria Sofronova, the daughter of the writer Anatoly Sofronov, lasted less than a year, they had a daughter, Ekaterina. Already in 1964, the writer married actress Lydia Alexandrova (better known as Lydia Chashchina, by the name of her second husband), but in the same year he met his future fourth wife, actress Lydia Fedoseeva. For another three years after that, he did not dissolve the marriage with his third wife: it is believed that Shukshin could not decide for a long time with which of his beloved he should stay. In alliance with Fedoseeva, two daughters were later born.
See also: “Alibasov officially divorced Fedoseeva-Shukshina: the fault is the apartment”