Ok google who was Sonya golden pen. Sonya the Golden Pen (Sofya Blueshtein) - biography, information, personal life. The great swindler of Russia - "Sonka - the Golden Pen"

Sonya the Golden Hand (Sofya Ivanovna Bluvshtein)

Sofia Ivanovna Bluvshtein (nee Sheindla-Sura Leibovna Solomoniak). Born April 1, 1846 in the village. Powazki in the suburbs of Warsaw - died in 1902 at the post of Aleksandrovsky (now Aleksandrovsk-Sakhalinsky) on Sakhalin Island. The famous Russian criminal, swindler. Gained fame under the nickname Sonya the Golden Hand.

Sofya Solomoniak, who became widely known as Sonya the Golden Hand, was born on April 1, 1846 (the real date of birth is sometimes questioned) in the village of Powazki in the suburbs of Warsaw (since 1916 - a city microdistrict in Warsaw).

It’s worth mentioning right away that there is absolutely no exact information about the time or place of her birth. The information is based on the data that Sonya herself provided when she was arrested by the police. However, she herself was prone to misleading others (and even more so the police). Therefore, almost all researchers of her biography indicate that the information she provides about her origin can be falsified. For example, some court documents indicate that she was born in 1846. But during the baptism according to the Orthodox rite (which took place shortly before her death, in 1899), she indicated the date of her birth in 1951, and the place - Warsaw.

Born from the second marriage of her mother Rivka-Leya, she was recorded in her father's surname as Sheindla-Sura Leibovna Solomoniak.

She received a good education, knew six languages, played music well, had a good voice. In addition, she had an innate acting talent and the gift of reincarnation. She had good taste and was trained in social manners.

Regarding the origin of the nickname Sonya the Golden Hand, then, according to her own stories, she came from childhood. The music teacher, with whom young Sophia studied, constantly praised her, saying: "You, girl, have golden hands." Later, when she took up the criminal trade, she herself was already proud of her dexterous hands, which brought her a considerable income and truly became "golden" for her. This was also recognized in the criminal community.

The growth of Sophia Blueshtein (Sonka the Golden Handle): 153 centimeters.

Personal life of Sophia Blyuvshtein (Sonya the Golden Handle):

She was married several times.

In one of her first marriages with Isaac Rosenbad in 1865 she gave birth to a daughter - Sura-Rivka Isaakovna Rosenbad. She left the girl in the care of her father in Powazki, Warsaw province. Her fate is unknown.

In police reports, she was known by the names Rubinstein, Shkolnik, Brenner - perhaps they (or some of them also belonged to her husbands).

Her last official husband is known - Mikhail (Mikhel) Yakovlevich Bluvshtein, a card sharper. Two daughters were born in the marriage: Tabba Mikhailovna Bluvshtein (born 1875) and Mikhelina Mikhailovna Bluvshtein (born 1879), both became operetta artists and performed in Moscow theaters.

The appearance of Sophia Blyuvshtein (Sonka the Golden Handle):

Contemporaries described Sonya in different ways - some as a beauty, others as an ordinary woman who did not have a particularly spectacular appearance. However, everyone noted that she had a certain charm, in addition, she masterfully knew how to use makeup, wigs, false eyelashes, etc.

This is how the police described her: “Height is 1 m 53 cm, pockmarked face, moderate nose with wide nostrils, a wart on her right cheek, brunette, curly hair on her forehead, mobile eyes, bold and talkative.”

According to one version, at the age of 17, having taken her father's money, she fled abroad with a young handsome Greek. But then the money ran out, and the passion cooled down. He returned home. Sonya took up criminal business.

She was involved in the organization of large-scale scams and thefts, which gained fame due to the adventurous component and the penchant for mystification.

In the 1860s and 70s, she was engaged in criminal activities in large Russian cities and in Europe. Repeatedly detained by the police of different states, but without serious consequences.

The first time Sonya was detained for theft in Klin on April 14, 1866, but was released. Then 5 times tried in Warsaw.

In 1871, the Leipzig police interrupted the foreign voyage of an already experienced thief and returned her to her homeland - under the supervision of the Russian police. At the same time, a whole chest of jewelry was confiscated from Sonya.

Then she formed a family gang of thieves, which included her ex-husbands, and even a certain subject of Sweden and Norway. She has always worked big. So, at the Nizhny Novgorod fair, she stole 213,000 rubles from General Frolov.

Each of her cases looked like a well-directed performance. Sonya Zolotaya Ruchka invented an original way to steal from hotels on Guten Morgen (thieves still use this method). Entering the rooms early in the morning, she cleaned the wallets of the guests, and if they accidentally woke up, she immediately began to undress and was terribly embarrassed, pretending to have the wrong number. In the same way, she worked in first and second class cars on trains.

For thefts in jewelry stores, she sewed a special bag dress that could hold kilograms of booty. She also hid especially precious stones under her well-groomed, specially grown nails. Sometimes she went to work with a trained monkey. While the hostess was bargaining, the monkey quietly grabbed the stones and hid them behind her cheek or swallowed them. At home, Sonya gave her friend an enema.

In 1880, in Odessa, she was arrested for major fraud and transferred to Moscow. After a trial in the Moscow district court on December 10-19 of the same year, she was exiled to a settlement in the most remote places of Siberia. The deaf village of Luzhki in the Irkutsk province was determined as the place of exile.

Prior to her arrest in 1885, she committed a number of major property crimes in the provincial cities of Russia. In 1885, in Smolensk, she was captured by the police.

From a criminal case filed in 1885: "Sofya 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 the collection , which consisted of jewelry in the amount of 22 thousand 300 rubles.When the jewelry was packed and the paper was given to this lady for calculation, 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 reported to the police station. regiment of Mr. Ch.".

For major theft and fraud, she was sentenced to three years of hard labor (hard labor was served at the discretion of the court in hard labor prisons in the European part of the Russian Empire until 1893) and fifty lashes. On June 30, 1886, she escaped from the Smolensk prison, using the services of a warden in love with her.

Four months later, “volya” was arrested in Nizhny Novgorod, and now for escaping from hard labor and new crimes she was again convicted and sent in 1888 from Odessa by steamboat to hard labor in the post of Aleksandrovsky, Tymovsky District, on Sakhalin Island (now Aleksandrovsk-Sakhalinsky, Sakhalin Region). ), where, after two escape attempts, she was shackled. In total, she made three attempts to escape from Sakhalin penal servitude. Subjected to corporal punishment by the decision of the prison administration.

In 1890, the famous writer met her, who left a description of the convict Sofya Blyuvshtein in his book “Sakhalin Island”: “This is a small, thin, already graying woman with a wrinkled, old woman’s face. She has shackles on her hands: on the bunk there is only a fur coat made of gray sheepskin, which serves her both as warm clothes and a bed. 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 expression is mouse-like. Looking at her, one cannot believe that until recently she was beautiful to such an extent that she charmed her jailers.

After her release in 1898, Sonya Zolotaya Ruchka remained in a settlement in Iman (now Dalnerechensk) in the Primorsky Territory. But already in 1899 she left for Khabarovsk, and then returned to Sakhalin Island to the Alexandrovsky post.

In July 1899, she was baptized according to the Orthodox rite, named Maria.

At the beginning of the 20th century, versions were circulated about her successful escape and about a figurehead who served hard labor for her. Already in Soviet times, the aged Sonya the Golden Hand was allegedly seen either in Odessa or in Moscow.

According to some reports, shortly before her death, Sophia met and cohabited with a certain Nikolai Bogdanov, who also previously served sentences for various crimes, they claimed that he severely beat her and she tried to run away from him into the forest.

Sofya Blyuvshtein died of a cold in 1902, as evidenced by a message from the prison authorities, and was buried at the local cemetery in the Aleksandrovsky post.

At the same time, a number of researchers are inclined to believe that she died in the 1920s in Moscow, where she lived after hard labor with her daughters, who in every possible way concealed who their mother was.

In Moscow, there is a grave attributed to Sonya the Golden Hand, every year different people, mostly criminals, bring flowers and coins to it, trying in this way to show respect for the famous thief and get her intercession and patronage. There are many inscriptions on the monument with a request to Sonya to help in the thieves' trade, protect them from arrest, etc.

The guides say that either an Italian dancer who died of tuberculosis, or the Russian wife of the Italian ambassador, rests on this place.

In Odessa, there is a version that Sonya the Golden Hand, after hard labor under an assumed name, returned to Odessa, where she died only in 1947.

Sonya Zolotaya Ruchka became one of the most famous figures in the domestic criminal world, turned into a legend in which it became difficult to distinguish truth from fiction.

The image of Sonya Golden Handle in the movie:

1915 - "The Adventures of the famous adventurer Sofia Blueshtein" - a silent film directed by Vladimir Kasyanov and Yuri Yuryevsky. Of the 8 episodes, 4 have been preserved. The negative is stored in the State Film Fund of Russia. The role of Sonya the Golden Handle was played by Nina Hoffman;
2007 - Sonya - Golden Pen - series. The role of Sonya the Golden Handle was played;
2010 - Sonya. Continuation of the legend - the continuation of the series directed by Viktor Merezhko. The role of Sonya the Golden Handle was played by Anastasia Mikulchina;
2013 - Loop of time - series directed by Georgy Ilyin.

In 1908, Roman Antropov's story "The Golden Pen" was written about Sonya (from the series "The Genius of the Russian Detective I. D. Putilin").

The image is used in the detective novel "Jack of Spades".

The singer performs a song called "Sonka" to the words of Viktor Merezhko and the music of Dmitry Smirnov.

The undisputed queen of the criminal world of St. Petersburg in the second half of the 19th century was the famous Sonya - the Golden Pen. Sophia Blueshtein (Sheindla-Sura Leibova Solomoniak) was born in the town of Powazki, Warsaw district. The family was the same - they bought stolen goods, they were engaged in smuggling. Her older sister Feiga was also a thief who had succeeded three husbands, but she, of course, was far from Sonya.

The first victim can be considered a certain Rosenbad: in 1864, Sheindla married him in Warsaw, gave birth to his daughter Sura-Rivka and immediately left her husband, robbing him goodbye. With a certain recruit Rubinstein, she flees to Russia, where her dizzying adventures begin. In January 1866, for the first time, the police of the city of Klin grab her for the first time on charges of stealing a suitcase from the cadet Gorozhansky, whom she met on the train. Sonya got out, saying that she had taken the suitcase by mistake, and went to St. Petersburg, where she cleaned the dachas of aristocrats with her lover Michel Brener.

Apparently, it was in St. Petersburg that the famous method of hotel thefts, called "guten morgen", was invented. The method was simple - beautifully dressed, elegant Sonya stayed in the best hotels in the city, carefully studied the plans of rooms, looked at the guests ... Having outlined the victim, she entered his room early in the morning, putting on felt shoes, began to look for money and jewelry. If the guest woke up, Sheindla pretended to have the wrong number, was embarrassed, blushed, used her sexual charms - for business she could sleep with the victim, and she did it sincerely and naturally, as they say with fiction and a twinkle ... The stolen jewelry came true jeweler Mikhailovsky, who remade them and sold them.
Subsequently, in St. Petersburg, the method of stealing with the distraction of the victim for sex will become widespread - this method will be called "hypes" - "hypes" usually worked in pairs - a woman brought the client to her room and indulged him in bed, and her partner ("cat", watching for the interests of his "cat") rummaged through the pockets of clothes left somewhere in the hallway. "Cats" - hippies often made a lot of money. The famous St. Petersburg hipster Marfushka managed to accumulate a solid capital of 90,000 rubles by the beginning of the 20th century, her colleague Sonya-Sinichka, who "worked" at about the same time, settled on the amount of 25,000 and opened a fashion workshop. The beauty-hypes Petrushkina brought a fresh stream to the method - she used trained dogs to bark signals to her "cat". There were "hypes" usually because of quarrels at the time of dividing the booty - "cats" offended by their partners with purely female logic often "knocked" on their accomplices to the police.
In 1868, Sonya briefly leaves for Dinaburg, where she marries an old rich Jew, Shelom Shkolnik, but soon leaves him. In 1870, Sonya fell asleep heavily in St. Petersburg and barely managed to escape from the reception room of the Foundry, leaving the seized things and money to the police. Realizing that she has already become familiar in the capital, the Golden Pen goes on a big "international tour".

Sophia did not like small things and impromptu. I prepared carefully, tried to predict the accidents. For her, there were no high walls, no state borders. She spoke five languages, perfectly mastered secular manners, and after a successful "case" she preferred to relax in Marienbad on the forged documents of some baroness. Surprisingly, at the same time, Sonya remained an "aristocrat" of the criminal world. She was proud of her nickname as a court title, her lovers were the most famous St. Petersburg swindlers. Preferring to act alone, she nevertheless created her own gang together with Levit Sandanovich, and even became a member of the prestigious criminal club in Moscow "Jacks of Hearts".

In 1871, she married the famous railway thief Mikhel Bluvshtein, a Romanian citizen whose parents lived in Odessa. From this marriage, a daughter, Tabba, was born to Golden Handle, and the marriage itself soon fell apart, because Bluvshtein constantly caught his wife with some kind of baron, then with a count, or even just with a beggar officer who liked him, from whom there was nothing to take which especially annoyed her husband.
It is strange that for all the intensity of her adventures, Sonya kept away from the police - later, when she was tried at the end of 1880 in Moscow, the testimony of one witness flashed during the trial, in which he said that at one time Sheindla was recruited as an informer, paying off from the police by the fact that they "surrendered" their competitors in the craft, but it is not known how reliable this information is. The popularity of the Golden Pen among the people was so great that in the era of the absence of television news, it was recognized on the street; at first, such popularity even helped her - several times the enthusiastic public pushed the police back from her, giving her the opportunity to hide, but this could not continue for a long time ... When Sonya Zolotaya Ruchka first appeared in the dock, all Russian newspapers reported about it.

For several days spent in the Smolensk prison, Sonya charmed the guards - she read poetry to them in different languages, poisoned stories about life in distant lands ... In general, one gendarme arranged an escape and fled with her. After he was caught and tried, Sonya continued her work. In 1871, she was caught by the police in Leipzig and transferred under the supervision of the Russian embassy, ​​but Russia tried to get rid of her as soon as possible by deporting her abroad. In 1876, she is caught in Vienna with her lover Elias Weniger, she is accused of stealing 20 thousand thallers in Leipzig, but Sonya again, charming the policemen, slips away, pawning four stolen diamonds in the capital of Austria-Hungary ... prison, she manages to rob her own lawyer, who, despite this, did not refuse to defend her, but still gets a ridiculous term - 12 days in prison ...
Little by little, she was getting old, luck was beginning to change her, besides, her next romance with the eighteen-year-old handsome marviher thief Volodya Kochubchik (in the world - Wolf Bromberg, known for starting his thieving career at the age of 8, managing to rob fellow profession) was not very successful - Kochubchik himself quit stealing, but mercilessly exploited Sonya, who fell in love with him without memory, demanded money from her, becoming a capricious and irritable gigolo, losing everything Sonya "earned" at cards. She was forced to take more and more risks, she was nervous, and shattered nerves always very quickly affect the success of people in such professions. Considering herself an aristocrat of the underworld, Sonya nevertheless sank even to pickpocketing.

In September 1880, Wolf adorned the neck of his mistress with a velvet piece with a blue diamond, which was taken on bail from an 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 his lady did not like the gift. 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 admitted that Sonya had given him a copy of the stone and she had 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, not admitting either the accusations or the evidence presented. Despite the fact that witnesses identified her from a photograph, Sonya stated that the Golden Pen was a completely different woman, and she lived on the means 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 attorney at law A. Shmakov, recalling this process, called her a woman capable of "plugging a good hundred men into her belt", and also noted that "Sofya Blyuvshtein is an outstanding example of what she can put on the criminal scene of Jewry". The verdict read: "The Warsaw petty bourgeois Sheindlu-Sura Leibova Rosenbad, she is Rubinstein, she is also Shkolnik, Brenner and Bluvshtein, nee Solomoniak, depriving of all the rights of the state, exiled to a settlement in the most remote places of Siberia." And her young lover, having escaped with 6 months of a "working house", became a wealthy landowner in southern Russia. The place of exile for Sonya was the remote village of Luzhki, Irkutsk province. Soon she managed to escape from there, and again all of Russia started talking about Sonya.
In May 1883, a charming client appeared in von Mehl's shop. A young lady, secular and wealthy, cutely grazing, introduced herself as the wife of the famous psychiatrist L., chose products of French masters for thirty thousand rubles, wrote out an invoice and arranged a meeting at her home. At the appointed hour, a jeweler with a collection of diamonds entered the doctor's waiting room. The hospitable hostess met him, took the box to try on the treasures for an evening dress, and invited him to her husband's office. When the jeweler insistently demanded that the psychiatrist pay the bills or return the diamonds, the orderlies tied him up and took him to the hospital. As it turned out in the evening, the beauty introduced herself to the doctor as von Mehl's wife, said that her husband had gone crazy on "pebbles", and paid for his treatment in advance. Of course, the swindlers have caught a trace ...
Soon, incredible fame began to seriously interfere with Sonya's scams. In addition, over the years, Sofya Bluvshtein became sentimental. She returned 5,000 rubles to a widow who had been robbed by her and had two daughters. The actor of the Maly Theater in a fit of feelings sent to the stage a gold watch, taken in the hall of a neighbor. Seeing a sleeping young man in the hotel room, next to whom lay a revolver and a letter to his mother confessing to the waste of 300 rubles given for the treatment of his sister, Sonya took out a 500-ruble banknote and slipped out of the room. In addition, she spent a lot of money on the education of her daughters, who, having inherited their mother's artistic talent, later performed on the operetta stage, but carefully concealed their origin.

The Golden Pen had its own "trademarks". Under specially grown long nails, she hid precious stones, for thefts in shops she had a bag dress in which a whole roll of fabric could hide. She went to work with a monkey - while the hostess was bargaining, the animal swallowed stones, and at home was freed from them with an enema.
In October 1884, in the Fanconi cafe in Odessa, a certain banker met Madame Sophia San Donato. During conversations, she asked to change her annuity of a thousand rubles. It soon became clear that the lovely lady was leaving for Moscow by the evening train, the same one as Mr. Dogmarov. The banker offered himself as a companion. In the compartment they chatted amiably and ate chocolates. In the morning, the businessman, having slept soundly, did not find either money or securities in the amount of 43 thousand rubles.
In August 1885, the store manager T. recommended a collection of jewelry worth 22,300 rubles to the Courland baroness Sofya Buxgevden. When the jewels were packed, the respectable lady remembered that she had left the money at home. She, along with the diamonds, hurriedly left for cash, leaving as a pledge the relatives accompanying her - her father, whitened with gray hair, and a female baby along with a bonne. When they called the police station two hours later, it turned out that these "relatives" had been hired at Khitrovka on the basis of an advertisement in the newspaper.

In 1881, the Golden Pen was in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, but in the summer of 1885 she fled from Siberia. However, she did not walk in the wild for long - in December of the same year, she was again arrested in Smolensk and tried. But on June 30, 1886, she escapes from the Smolensk prison together with the warder Mikhailov, who fell in love with her ... After 4 months, she was caught again ... In the summer of 1888, she was sent by steamer from Odessa to Sakhalin to Aleksandrovsk-on-Sakhalin, from where she again trying to escape - through the taiga, disguised as a soldier ... She was caught the very next day, flogged with rods in the Alexander Prison ... For two years and eight months she wore hand shackles and was kept in solitary confinement (this was the first chained woman in the history of penal servitude!) . In 1890, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov visited Sakhalin and even looked into the cell to the "Golden Pen": "From those sitting in solitary confinement, the famous Sofya Blyuvshtein, the Golden Pen, who was sentenced for escaping from Siberia to hard labor for three years, especially attracts attention. This she was a small, thin, already graying woman with a crumpled old woman's face, she had shackles on her hands, and on the bunk beds there was only a gray sheepskin coat, which serves as both warm clothing and bedding. she sniffs the air all the time, like a mouse in a mousetrap, and her expression is mouse-like. Looking at her, one cannot believe that until recently she was beautiful to such an extent that she charmed her jailers ... ".

However, the funny thing is that in fact, even the authorities of the penal servitude were not sure that it was Sofya Blyuvshtein who was serving the term, and not a figurehead. Especially after a series of thefts swept across Europe in the late nineties, very familiar in handwriting. It is not surprising that they were attributed to Sonya the Golden Pen. Imagine the surprise of the Russian police when a sensational announcement appeared in all the newspapers of the world that the famous Sonya, the Golden Pen, had been seized by the police of one of the countries. She introduced herself as the wife of the Archduke, and in the police she called herself Sophia Beck. But it was not possible to find out anything - the fraudster escaped from under the convoy, charming one of the guards ... According to other sources, these crimes were committed by another adventurer - Olga von Stein, who copied Sonya's handwriting.
In Odessa, they say that Sonya lived incognito on Prokhorovskaya Street. In 1921, she was allegedly seen on Deribasovskaya, driving in a car and scattering money "for the wake of her husband" - her last lover, who was shot by the Cheka. The last days of her life, again according to rumors, the Golden Handle lived out in Moscow with her daughters, secretly, because the daughters did not want to spoil their reputation with such family ties.
The grave at the Vagankovsky cemetery in Moscow, where, according to legend, the great adventurer was secretly buried, is a place of pilgrimage for people with a criminal present. The monument (a female figure made of chic white marble under huge black palm trees) is covered with admiring admirers of her talent. The pedestal of the monument is covered with inscriptions like: “Sonya, teach me how to live”, “Solntsevskaya lads will not forget you”, “Mother, give happiness to Zhigan”. The tombstone was ordered with the money of Odessa, Neapolitan, London, St. Petersburg and other swindlers. The monument was damaged a few years ago, when dashing guys from the Urals, drunk, climbed to kiss him and accidentally tore off the head of the statue. According to some guides, the grave was built either for fun, or for worship, but in fact it is empty, while others argue that the grave is real and the brightest star of the thieves' world of the late 19th century, Sonya Golden Hand, found peace in it.

In Moscow, at the Vagankovsky cemetery, there is an amazing monument brought from Italy - a female figure made of chic white marble under huge black palm trees. There are always fresh flowers and scatterings of coins on the grave, and the pedestal of the monument is covered with inscriptions like: "Sonya, teach me how to live", "Solntsevskaya lads will not forget you" or "Mother, give happiness to Zhigan". Lies under the tombstone (ordered with the money of Odessa, Neapolitan, London, St. Petersburg and other scammers) Sonya the Golden Handle, unforgettable to this day. Or not lying...

Sonya the Golden Pen (Sheindla-Sura Leibova Solomoniak, as well as Sofya Ivanovna Bluvshtein) is a legend. They loved her, worshiped her, fawned over her. Books have been written about her and movies made. The most brilliant houses of Europe opened their doors before her ... So who is she, Sofya Ivanovna Bluvshtein, Sonya - the Golden Pen, the legendary queen of the thieves' world?

Like any legend, it is overgrown with conjectures, exaggerations, just lies. But nevertheless, you begin to admire her involuntarily, although you realize that the image of "Sonya - the golden pen" was largely created by rumor.

The whole life of this woman was surrounded by secrets and mysteries, in the emergence of which she herself was largely involved. Sonya lived by deceit, so after more than 100 years we know almost nothing about her for sure. What was not said about her! And she allegedly lived in a Turkish harem, and opened a school of robbers in London, and had an uncountable number of lovers. And in the thieves' business, she simply had no equal. Somehow she managed to commit crimes in all parts of the world at the same time. And the victims swore that it was she, the daring, beautiful, magnificent Sonya.

According to one version, Sonya was born in 1859 in a large family of a poor Jewish barber Shtendel in Berdichev. After the death of her mother, and later her father, four-year-old Sonya was taken to Odessa, where she was raised by her unloved stepmother. Having escaped from her stepmother at the age of twelve, the smart and pretty Sonya fell into the service of the famous actress Yulia Pastrana.

The brilliance and luxury surrounding Yulia gave rise to envy and a thirst for enrichment in the soul of the future scammer, which served as the impetus for the start of a dizzying thieving career ... At 17, Sonya ran away with a young Greek, the son of a well-known shopkeeper in Odessa, taking a Greek father from one of the shops decent amount of money. However, the money did not last long, and along with the money, love also evaporated. The failed lover returned to the family hearth, but Sonya ... Sonya was left alone, then she married the Odessa cheater Bluvshtein, and when he ended up in prison, she herself took up the "family business" in order to feed the children. And she also went to prison because of a man - she took the blame of a young lover. (Whether it is or not, Odessa has always been a city of luck and love for Sonya...)

In general, not life, but a burning melodrama. The thieves' world loves romantic stories, but according to the documents, it was not like that.

Another version is considered closest to reality, compiled by various historians according to the surviving metrics, materials of criminal cases and the memories of eyewitnesses.

In the documents of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Sofya Ivanovna (!) Blyuvshtein, nee Sheindla-Sura Leibova Solomoniak, was described as a “Warsaw petty bourgeois”. She was born in 1846 in the family of a small merchant in the town of Powazki, Warsaw district. The family was the same - they bought stolen goods, they were engaged in smuggling. Feiga's older sister was also a talented thief, but Sheindla (the girl came up with the name "Sofya" herself) outran everyone. And Sonya honed her skills, rotating among the best shtetl thieves.

Her "way up" was lined with ripped-off men. The first victim can be considered the venerable grocer Isaac Rosenbad, whom the eighteen-year-old Sheindlya successfully married in 1864. At first, she diligently tried to play the role of a good wife and even gave birth to Rosenbad's daughter, Sura-Rivka, but the patience did not last long: after a year and a half of family life, Sophia Rosenbad, having taken 500 rubles from her husband's grocery store, disappeared in an unknown direction.

Sonya the Golden Hand returns Larisa REZNIKOVA. Moskovsky Komsomolets from 04/20/2007 Viktor Merezhko made a film about the legendary swindler Screenwriter and director Viktor Merezhko, who went down in cinema history with his scripts about the heroes of our time (“Flying in a dream and in reality”, “Forgive me”), turned to history. On Monday, at 21.15, a new large-scale series “Sonka the Golden Hand” starts on the Rossiya channel, in which Merezhko acted as a screenwriter, director and even played one of the roles. To master the intricacies of the underworld, he invited the stars - Dmitry Nagiyev, Bogdan Stupka, Irina Alferova, Oleg Basilashvili. Sonya the Golden Hand was played by debutante Anastasia Mikulchina. There are still many legends about the queen of the underworld, the brilliant swindler of the 19th century, Sonya the Golden Hand. Before the banal cleaning of pockets, Sonya never stooped. The release of their "clients" from money and jewelry turned into a performance with many clever tricks and tricks. And Sonya herself, despite the fact that she was born in a poor family, was very educated: she knew six foreign languages, played the piano brilliantly. And she got her famous nickname Golden Pen for her musical talent, and much earlier than she ascended the criminal Olympus. Merezhko entrusted the main role to a recent graduate of the St. Petersburg Theater Academy, Anastasia Mikulchina. The director was looking for Sonya for a long time. After all, this role requires a young beautiful actress who can play a heroine from 16 to 40 years old. It didn't take long to talk to the director. I was quickly approved for the main role, - Nastya told MK. - It turned out that Merezhko had seen 70 applicants before me ... At first, of course, I was delighted that I would play Sonya. But with the approach of filming, I was very worried, suddenly I couldn’t cope, the role was too multifaceted. It was also frightening that very little is known about Sonya, mostly legends and rumors appear. According to Mikulchina, there will be no real thieves' tricks in the series, it is too difficult to film them. Special cinematic tricks were invented for the picture. One of them Anastasia even came up with herself. In the scene of the ball in Odessa, the actress decided to joke and pulled off the pin from the tie of one of the actors. Merezhko saw and asked to repeat on camera. The series turned out to be large-scale and complex. For Sonya alone, 50 dresses were sewn. As Mikulchina said, she felt most comfortable in the heroine's children's dresses. Since they are very simple, without crinolines and corsets. The young actress did not immediately get used to the latter. The shooting itself took place in the homeland of the heroine, in Odessa and in Karelia. Most of the time fell on St. Petersburg, where Sonya lived the longest. It's funny that Merezhko also shot many Moscow scenes in the Northern capital. And the old Moscow, in my opinion, can only be found in St. Petersburg! The most difficult thing was in Karelia, where we filmed hard labor scenes, - Viktor Merezhko shared with MK. - We found an old, abandoned, windswept village, rebuilt it into barracks for prisoners and settled 50 people from the extras in them ... For me, the final scenes turned out to be the most difficult, - Mikulchina continued the conversation. - When Sonya decided to return to her daughters, they abandoned her. I don’t have any children of my own, and I know only by hearsay what betrayal of loved ones is. One of the roles - the head of the Jack of Hearts criminal society - was played by Viktor Merezhko himself. Thanks not only to this role, but also to work on the series in general, I have changed in many ways. Now it's hard to fool me. Moreover, I consulted with several consultants on crime. They even promised me the best barn in a real prison - in case I get there! - Victor Ivanovich laughs. By the way, both Mikulchin and Merezhko at one time became victims of swindlers. But if the actress's mobile phone was simply stolen in a bowling alley, then the director suffered very seriously. For the sake of a man whom he considered his friend, he took a large loan from a bank. And the one with the money disappeared ...

The second time, in 1868, Sheindla married the old rich Jew Shelom Shkolnik (whom she also left without money), and the third time she married the railway thief Mikhel Bluvshtein, under his last name she appears in all court cases. The marriage gave her a daughter, Tabba, but quickly fell apart, because her husband was furious when Sonya solved her affairs with the help of sexual charms.

She married repeatedly, having visited Sophia Rubinstein, and Sophia Shkolnik, and Sophia Brener, and Sophia Blueshtein ... At the same time, she managed to maintain not only good relations with her ex-husbands, but also to subordinate them to herself. In several cases developed by Sonya, two or three of her ex-husbands were involved. So, in the case of Dinkevich, whom Sonya "shod" for 127 thousand rubles, Itzka Rosenbad played the role of a notary, Mikhel Bluvshtein - a butler, Khunya Goldstein - a coachman ... Well, just an amazing woman!

Sonya generally enjoyed incredible success with men, although, according to eyewitnesses, she was not a beauty. “Height 153 cm, pockmarked face, nose with wide nostrils, thin lips, a wart on the right cheek” - this is how Sofya Bluvshtein is described in the surviving police descriptions-orientations.

But seductive women do not need catchy beauty, they have their own magic, their own tricks. Here, not only artistry and the gift of reincarnation, they instinctively feel how to make any person obedient. Sofya Bluvshtein possessed this natural gift beyond measure, and in the game she reached perfection. And talent, cunning and absolute immorality made this young provincial a scam genius, a legendary adventurer, the queen of the underworld. Vlas Doroshevich, a popular journalist at the end of the 19th century, who spoke 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."

For the first time, Sonya was arrested on April 14, 1866 in a hotel in the city of Klin - then she was a modest thief "on trust" on the railway. She was accused of stealing a suitcase from the cadet Gorozhansky, whom she met on the train. This was the first and last time Sonya was caught red-handed. But Sonya was not convicted, since everyone, including Misha Gorozhansky, 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. After this incident, Sonya became cautious ...

After the Klin failure, Sonya moved to St. Petersburg, where, together with Michel Brener, she carried out a series of thefts. She did not like small things and impromptu. I prepared carefully, tried to predict the accidents. She was mainly engaged in thefts in hotels, jewelry stores, hunted on trains, traveling around Russia and Europe. She spoke five languages, perfectly mastered secular manners, and at the same time Sonya remained an "aristocrat" of the criminal world. She was proud of her nickname as a court title, her lovers were the most famous St. Petersburg swindlers.

Preferring to act alone, she created her own gang in the same place, in St. Petersburg, inviting the famous thief Levit Sandanovich. Later, her group included the thief in law Berezin and the Swedish-Norwegian citizen Martin Jacobson.

Sonya was an extremely resourceful criminal. She had her own “crown” tricks: she hid precious stones under specially grown long nails, shoes with special heels, to which jewelry stuck “on time”, for shoplifting she had a bag dress in which a whole roll of fabric could hide. She went to work with a monkey - while the hostess was bargaining, the animal swallowed stones, and at home was freed from them with an enema. She constantly used makeup, false eyebrows, wigs, wore expensive Parisian hats, original fur capes, mantillas, adorned herself with jewelry, for which she had a weakness. But the main thing in her arsenal of all sorts of tricks was undoubtedly acting talent, which helped her get out of any situation.

Apparently it was during this period that she invented a new method of hotel thefts, called "Guten Morgen". The method was as simple as it was ingenious: elegantly dressed, impeccable Sonya entered the victim's room and began to look for money and jewelry. If she was caught "hot" she was embarrassed, apologized, pretended to have the wrong number. Sonya never left the room without prey, if necessary, she could even sleep with the victim and did not see anything shameful in this. This method was worked out by her to the smallest detail, and she practically did not know failures.

A special page in her life is occupied by thefts on trains - separate first-class compartments. 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. From one Siberian merchant, Sonya stole three hundred thousand rubles (huge money at that time), from General Frolov on Nizhny Novgorod railway - 213,000 rubles.

Good deeds were not alien to Sonya's wide nature.

One morning, Sonya, on business, ended up in a provincial hotel room, where she saw a sleeping young man, with a pale and exhausted face. On the table lay a revolver and letters. Sonya read one thing - to her mother. The son wrote about the theft of government money: the loss was discovered, and suicide is the only way to avoid dishonor. Sonya put five hundred rubles on top of the envelopes, pressed them down with a revolver, and just as quietly left the room.

Once, from the newspapers, Sonya learned that she had robbed an unfortunate widow, the mother of two girls, from whom she had stolen 5,000 rubles on the train. This money was a one-time allowance for the death of her husband, a petty official. Sonya mailed five thousand to the widow and a small letter. "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."

And Sonya did not forget about her daughters, who were brought up in strangers, regularly sending money.

Sonya's reputation in the underworld grew every day. In 1872, Sofya Blyuvshtein received an offer to enter the largest club of Russian swindlers " Jacks of Hearts", and a few years later she headed it. The activity of the club extended to the whole territory of Russia.

Realizing that in St. Petersburg she had become somewhat familiar (and the scope was not the same!), Sonya, together with her accomplices, went to Europe. Warsaw, Vienna, Paris, Leipzig - the geography of Sonya's crimes knew no bounds. Despite her lack of education, she possessed a sharp mind and strong intuition. In addition, over the years of her stormy activity, Sofya Bluvshtein perfectly mastered the languages ​​​​- German, French, Polish. The fraudster easily posed as a Russian aristocrat traveling abroad. The doors to the best houses of high society were opened before her ...

The wave of crimes that swept across Europe made the whole world talk about Sonya.

Sonya lived on a grand scale. 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.

She came across many times. Sonya was tried in Warsaw, St. Petersburg, Kiev, Kharkov, but she always managed to either deftly slip out of the police station or get an acquittal. However, the police hunted for her in many cities of 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 too.

In 1876, she was detained by the Viennese police, who confiscated a chest with stolen things from her, but she manages to escape from custody with the help of a warder in love with her ... Having fallen into the hands of the Krakow police, Sonya manages to rob her (!) Lawyer, who, despite this, did not refuse to defend her, and Sonya got off with only a two-week term ...

The audience was delighted with Sony's antics. We have so much fun watching others get scammed until we ourselves become the victims.

But soon luck turned away from her. A streak of bad luck began - her name often appeared in the press, her photographs were posted in police stations. The popularity of the Golden Pen among the people was so great that in the era of the absence of television news, it was recognized on the street. It became more and more difficult for Sonya to dissolve in the crowd, she became too famous, and this is simply harmful in her "profession".

When Sonya Zolotaya Ruchka first appeared in the dock, all Russian newspapers reported about it.

She was framed by her new lover, Wolf Bromberg, a twenty-year-old Odessa cheat and raider, nicknamed Vladimir Kochubchik. Probably Sonya really loved Kochubchik, who extorted from her and lost large sums of money, and Sonya more often than before took unjustified risks, became greedy, irritable, even stooped to pickpocketing.

On the day of her angel, September 30, 1880, Wolf decorated the neck of his mistress with velvet with a blue diamond, which was taken on bail from an 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 his lady did not like the gift. 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 admitted that Sonya had given him a copy of the stone and she had 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, not admitting either the accusations or the evidence presented. Despite the fact that witnesses identified her from a photograph, Sonya stated that the Golden Pen was a completely different woman, and she lived on the means 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 attorney at law A. Shmakov, recalling this process, called her a woman capable of "plugging a good hundred men into her belt", and also noted that "Sofya Blyuvshtein is an outstanding example of what she can put on the criminal scene of Jewry". The verdict read: "The Warsaw petty bourgeois Sheindlu-Sura Leibova Rosenbad, she is Rubinstein, she is also Shkolnik, Brenner and Bluvshtein, nee Solomoniak, depriving of all the rights of the state, exiled to a settlement in the most remote places of Siberia."

And her young lover, having escaped with 6 months of a "working house", became a wealthy landowner in southern Russia.

In May 1883, a charming client appeared in the shop of the jeweler Carl von Mehl. A young lady, secular and wealthy, cutely grazing, introduced herself as the wife of the famous psychiatrist L., chose products of French masters for thirty thousand rubles, wrote out an invoice and arranged a meeting at her home. At the appointed hour, a jeweler with a collection of diamonds entered the doctor's waiting room. The hospitable hostess met him, took the box to try on the treasures for an evening dress, and invited him to her husband's office. When the jeweler insistently demanded that the psychiatrist pay the bills or return the diamonds, the orderlies tied him up and took him to the hospital. As it turned out in the evening, the beauty introduced herself to the doctor as von Mehl's wife, said that her husband had gone crazy on "pebbles", and paid for his treatment in advance. Of course, the swindlers have caught a trace ...

In October 1884, in the Odessa cafe Fanconi, the banker Dogmarov met Mrs. Sophia San Donato. During conversations, she asked to change her annuity of a thousand rubles. It soon became clear that the lovely lady was leaving for Moscow by the evening train, the same one as Mr. Dogmarov. The banker offered himself as a companion. In the compartment they chatted amiably and ate chocolates. In the morning, the businessman, having slept soundly, did not find either money or securities in the amount of 43 thousand rubles.

In August 1885, the manager of the Khlebnikov jewelry store on Petrovka recommended a collection of jewelry worth 22,300 rubles to the Baroness of Courland Sofya Buxgevden. When the jewels were packed, the respectable lady remembered that she had left the money at home. She, along with the diamonds, hurriedly left for cash, leaving as a pledge the relatives accompanying her - her father, whitened with gray hair, and a female baby along with a bonne. When they called the police station two hours later, it turned out that these "relatives" had been hired at Khitrovka on the basis of an advertisement in the newspaper.

But in the same year, 1885, luck again betrayed Sonya, this time completely. After robbing several large jewelry stores, she was captured and sentenced to three years hard labor and 40 lashes. However, even in prison, Sonya did not waste time in vain - she fell in love with the prison guard, non-commissioned officer Mikhailov. He gave his passion a civilian dress and on the night of June 30, 1886 brought her to freedom. But Sonya enjoyed freedom for only four months. After a new arrest, she ended up in the Nizhny Novgorod prison castle. Now she had to serve a hard labor term on Sakhalin.

At least three times Sonya tried to escape from Sakhalin, where at first, like all women, she lived as a free citizen.

Even at the stage, she got along with a fellow prisoner, a brave, burnt-out elderly thief and murderer Flea. 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.

Escape from Sakhalin was not such a difficult task - it was not the first time that Bloch had fled and 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 Pogobi and Lazarev capes - 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 besides, she was afraid of many days of hunger, came up with her own version - they would not hide, but would play hard labor: Sonya in a soldier's dress would "escort" Bloch.

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, on the other hand, received forty lashes and was shackled in hand and foot shackles. When they flogged him, he shouted: "For the cause of me, your honor, 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 and theft of 56,000 rubles from a Jewish settler Yurkovsky, she was involved in the murder of a settler shopkeeper Nikitin.

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, after which Sonya was shackled in hand shackles and placed in solitary confinement, where she spent almost three years. There was a rumor that it was no longer Sonya, but a "shifter", a figurehead.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, having seen the famous adventurer during a trip to Sakhalin, 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 sniffs the air all the time, like a mouse in a mousetrap, and her expression is that of a mouse..." By the time of the events described by Chekhov, that is, in 1891, Sophia Blyuvshtein was only forty-five years old... By the way, Sakhalin photographer Innokenty Ignatievich Pavlovsky sent Chekhov a picture of "Shackling the famous Sonya the Golden Hand", which is now kept in the State Literary Museum.

Vlas Mikhailovich Doroshevich, a talented reporter of his time, who met her during his trip to Sakhalin in 1905, when Sofya Ivanovna was already living in a settlement with her roommate Bogdanov, an exiled settler, wrote in more detail about "Sonya the Golden Pen". According to camp terminology, she was considered a "peasant from the exiles," but the All-Russian, almost European celebrity Sonya was in the center of attention on Sakhalin as well. Sophia's roommate - Bogdanov - spoke about her to Doroshevich: "Now Sofya Ivanovna is sick and does not do anything."

Doroshevich was looking forward to meeting Mephistopheles, Rocambole in a skirt, with a powerful criminal nature, which was not broken by hard labor, solitary confinement, or heavy hand shackles.

And finally, the long-awaited meeting took place. Before the eyes of the famous journalist and reporter stood a small, fragile old woman with traces of a bygone youth, with a rouged, wrinkled face, like a baked apple, in an old hood. "Really," Doroshevich thought, "was it She?" By her manner of speaking, she was a simple Odessa bourgeois woman, a shopkeeper who knew Yiddish and German. An excellent connoisseur of human characters, Doroshevich could not understand how her victims could mistake the "Golden Pen" for a famous artist or an aristocratic widow?

In fact, even the authorities of the penal servitude were not sure that it was Sofya Blyuvshtein who was serving the term. Especially after a series of crimes similar in handwriting to Sonkin swept across Europe in the late nineties.

Sakhalin officials, who learned that Doroshevich had seen and remembered photographs of the Golden Pen taken before the trial, asked him: "Well, is she the same one?" To which the journalist, who had an excellent professional memory, replied: "Yes, but only the remnants of that Sonya."

Allegedly, after serving her term in solitary confinement and being transferred to a settlement, she became the keeper of kvass at the Alexander Post. She organized an orchestra of four settlers, built a carousel, found a vagabond magician, staged performances, dances, copying Odessa cafes dear to her heart with all her might. She traded vodka under the counter, which was strictly prohibited on Sakhalin, opened a gambling house-hut. And although this was widely known, no searches revealed the manufacturer of the "green serpent". Only empty bottles of kvass were found by law enforcement officers. According to rumors, Sonya sold and bought stolen items, but the police could not detect the stolen goods.

Thus, she "fought for life", dreaming of returning to Russia again. She bombarded the metropolitan reporter with questions about the city of her childhood - Odessa. During one of the meetings, Sonya told Doroshevich that she had two daughters left in Odessa, who performed as pages in the operetta. She begged to be informed of their fate, as she had not received any news from them for a long time. As Doroshevich wrote about this story, "Rocambole was no more in a skirt." An old woman, the mother of her children, about whose fate she knew nothing for a long time, sobbed in front of the capital's reporter.

It is not known for certain about the last days of the life of the famous Sonya the Golden Pen. Allegedly, she, sick and hardened, decided on a new escape and left Aleksandrovsk. She walked about two miles and, having lost strength, fell. The escorts found her, and a few days later the Golden Handle died.

Nevertheless, popular rumor claimed that Sonya did not die at all in Sakhalin penal servitude.

Odessans claimed that Sonya lived incognito on Prokhorovskaya Street. And in 1921, when the Cheka shot her last lover, she was driving in a car along Deribasovskaya and scattered money "for her husband's wake." They also said that the last days of the Golden Pen lived out in Moscow with daughters who hid their unlucky mother from people, therefore, here, on Vagankovsky, she was buried ...

They say a lot, but no one knows how it really was.

By the way, in Odessa, allegedly, the ghost of Sonya still walks in Shevchenko Park: residents of neighboring houses often notice a gloomy woman dressed in 19th century outfits - with her head down, she walks along the alley towards the port. Just under a century ago, Sofya Bluvshtein was taken along this route through the park to the harbor, from where she was sent to execution in Sakhalin.

The ghost of Sonya is naughty in other places of Odessa-mother.

There is a legend among taxi drivers that once a mysterious woman dressed in the old fashion got into a taxi car. “The stranger gave the address, and when the car drove up, and it was time to pay, she took out a small gem from under her fingernail, gave it to the driver, got out and hurriedly left. Later it turned out that Sonya Golden Handle had a habit of hiding jewelry under her nails. Seeing the portrait of the legendary criminal, the taxi driver could not come to his senses for a long time, the similarity was obvious.

When, at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, a wave of crimes swept across Europe again, strikingly reminiscent of the famous swindler in handwriting, they were attributed to Sonya the Golden Pen. Imagine the surprise of the Russian police when a sensational announcement appeared in all the newspapers of the world that the famous Sonya, the Golden Pen, had been seized by the police of one of the countries. She introduced herself as the wife of the Archduke, and in the police she called herself Sophia Beck. But it was not possible to find out anything - the swindler escaped from under the convoy, charming one of the guards ...

However, these crimes were allegedly committed by another adventurer, Olga von Stein. At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, "Sonka - the golden pen" became a symbol of the superstar of the criminal world. At a time when the real Sophia was serving a link to Sakhalin, her name hovered around the cities and towns of Russia. It is quite natural that Olga von Stein, who copied Sonya's handwriting and "worked" until 1912, "by inheritance" received the famous thief's nickname.

It is so crowded only on Vagankovsky. Of course, many come to this cemetery not to visit their relatives, but rather on an excursion to the graves of famous actors, athletes, politicians. The cemetery is divided into small sectors, to which alleys lead. If you follow the Shchurovsky trail, it will lead you to a white stone marble monument depicting a woman standing under three palm trees.

Waving of the Golden Pen

Over time, the statue lost its arms and head, and only one of the three palm trees remained. According to one of the legends, it was installed by order of St. Petersburg and Odessa thieves, since it was here that Sonya the Golden Hand was reburied. They say that the sculpture was ordered from a Milanese master, alas, the name of the author remains unknown. Time did not spare either the sculpture of a young slender girl, or the forged fence, which is destroyed by seasonal rainfall and lack of proper care. Worship of the monument began in the 90s of the XX century. The entire sculpture, almost to the toe, is covered with various inscriptions of the following content: “Sonya, dear, help me get rich!”, “Give me health, happiness, love” or “Help me become good thieves. Gang from St. Petersburg”, “Sonechka, rest in peace to you! From the Belarusian brotherhood. Near the marble slab, which goes deep into the ground, there are flowers, at the foot of the statue, someone left an inverted faceted glass, a lot of sweets and other food. Everything shows that people often visit this grave, where, according to thieves, shnifers and pluckers, Sonya was buried at one time.

Cemetery worker Denis Asanov explains the absence of a head and limbs from the statue by the fact that they were sawn off and stolen by ordinary thieves as good luck charms. According to Denis Borisovich, the information that Sonya the Golden Hand was allegedly reburied at Vagankovsky is just a myth.

Was it Sonya?

There is another legend in the administration of the cemetery, says Denis, which was told to them by a woman who has been visiting this grave for many years. According to the organizer of the ritual, this statue was installed at the burial site of a young girl, and not the well-known adventurer and swindler Sonya. This girl belonged to a very rich and noble family, her father was a merchant and philanthropist. The girl's life could have turned out quite differently, but it turned out that she fell in love with a tenor who had come from Italy and became pregnant. The girl's father was against her marriage to a man who had neither a stake nor a yard. In response to the decision of the father, the daughter decides to commit suicide. In those days, it was forbidden to bury suicides in the cemetery, and it is simply unbelievable that the girl's father was able to obtain permission to bury his daughter in accordance with all the canons. If you carefully examine the ornament at the foot of the statue, on the marble slab on which the statue was installed, you can see intricate crosses. Denis Asanov reads that these drawings have nothing to do with the culture of our country, they capture the technique and tradition of European masters. Once upon a time there was also a small sculpture of a stork near the monument of a young girl, but it has long been destroyed, the palm trees that are installed behind the statue were also brought from abroad. No matter how hard the employees try to explain to the visitors of the cemetery that in fact Sonya is not buried on Vagankovsky, everything is unsuccessful, many people come to bow and ask for help from the Golden Handle every day. All of them sincerely believe in the legend that it is the well-known fraudster who is buried under the marble slab, says Denis Borisovich. There are many myths about Sonya's life and death, but if you imagine that she did die on Sakhalin in a prison infirmary, it's hard to believe that her body was reburied in Moscow. However, the legend must remain a legend. It is almost impossible to find out exactly who is buried at site No. 1. Myths about Sonya the Golden Hand and legends about the daughter of a merchant who died because of unhappy love have their right to exist. That's why they are myths.

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 rubles and a small letter by mail. "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 had a beautiful figure, true features of her face; 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 lush 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 the 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 the telegram to the countess on a silver tray, and she, narrowing myopic eyes, asked Dinkevich to read it aloud: “In the coming days, presentation of credentials to the king, according to the protocol, jointly by the wife, stop immediately, sell the house, move out, stop, 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 rented out their own house while traveling through 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, Kiev, 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 Bluvshtein, nee Solomoniak, depriving all the rights of the state, 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. Bloch ran not for the first time 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.

L the legendary Sonya - the Golden Pen a hundred years ago was famous in the underworld.
Her full name and surname is Sofia Ivanovna (Sheindlya-Sura Leibovna) Bluvshtein (nee Solomoniak). She was born far from the Neva coast, but the first "glory" came to her in our city.

Her biography is extremely confused, since she largely falsified her own biography.
According to official court documents, Sonya was born in the town of Powazki, Warsaw province, in 1846. However, when she was baptized according to the Orthodox rite in 1899, she indicated the city of Warsaw, 1851, as the place and date of birth.

She received an education (according to other sources, she did not receive it at all and learned everything herself), she knew several foreign languages. She had the gift of artistry and theatrical transformation.

Having escaped from her stepmother at the age of twelve, the smart and pretty Sonya fell into the service of the famous actress Yulia Pastrana. At the same time, her childhood years were spent among merchants and buyers of stolen goods - usurers, speculators and smugglers. At a young age, she "bombed" trains.

Among the surnames she used throughout her life were Rosenbad, Rubinstein, Shkolnik and Briner (or Brener) - the surnames of her husbands. She was married several times, the last official husband was a card cheat Mikhail (Mikhel) Yakovlevich Bluvshtein, from whom she had two daughters.

She was involved in the organization of large-scale thefts, gaining fame in the criminal world due to her adventurous component, her penchant for mystification, theatrical change of appearance and the talent to get "dry" out of the most "wet" situations. Even abroad, she was repeatedly detained, but always released and often with apologies.

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.

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.

A prison photo of the real Sonya, the Golden Pen, has been preserved, as well as police orientations, according to which they were looking for a criminal. 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 never started a new scam without considering the possible development of the situation in advance.

In St. Petersburg, the Golden Pen invented a new method of hotel theft, which later became very popular. It was called as a radio program - "Good morning!" and consisted of the following: elegantly dressed Sonya stayed in one of the best hotels, carefully studied the plans of the rooms, looked at the guests, and then in the early morning, putting on soft slippers, entered the victim’s room and took money and jewelry.

If the guest suddenly woke up, he found in his chambers a smartly dressed lady in expensive jewelry. She, pretending not to notice anyone, began to slowly 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 portrayed horror, shame and embarrassment and blushed sweetly apologetically, and easily charmed the rich dupe. She sold the stolen jewelry to a friend, the jeweler Mikhailovsky, who remade and sold them.

Sonya acted brazenly, successfully, with ruthless professionalism, but she was not alien to compassion. Entering one day at dawn into someone else's hotel room, Golden Hand was surprised to see a young man sleeping right in his clothes, next to whom lay a revolver and a letter to his mother. The young man wrote that he had spent the state 300 rubles and asked no one to blame for his death. According to legend, touched by Sonya, she took out a 500-ruble banknote from her reticule, put it next to the revolver and quietly left.

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 the poor woman a larger 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.

In 1880, in Odessa for a major fraud, Sonya was arrested and transferred to Moscow. After a trial in the Moscow district court on December 10-19 of the same year, she was exiled to a settlement in the most remote places of Siberia. The deaf village of Luzhki in the Irkutsk province was determined as the place of exile. In the summer of 1881, she escaped from her place of exile.

Prior to her arrest in 1885, she committed a number of major property crimes in the provincial cities of Russia. In 1885, in Smolensk, she was captured by the police. For major theft and fraud, she was sentenced to 3 years of hard labor (hard labor was served at the discretion of the court in hard labor prisons in the European part of the Russian Empire until 1893) and 50 lashes. On June 30, 1886, she escaped from the Smolensk prison, using the services of a warden in love with her.

They say she had very beautiful eyes - wonderful, infinitely pretty, velvety, which "spoke" in such a way that they could lie perfectly well.

After four months of “freedom”, she was arrested in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, and now she was again convicted for escaping from hard labor and new crimes, and in 1888 she was sent from Odessa by steamboat to hard labor in the post of Aleksandrovsky Tymovsky District on Sakhalin Island (now Aleksandrovsk-Sakhalinsky, Sakhalin Region), where, after two escape attempts, she was shackled.

Shackling "Sonya the Golden Hand" into shackles, 1888

In total, she made three attempts to escape from Sakhalin penal servitude, for which she was subjected to corporal punishment by the decision of the prison administration.

In 1890, Anton Chekhov met her, who left a description of the convict Sofya Blyuvshtein in the book "Sakhalin Island":
“This is a small, thin, already graying woman with a wrinkled, old woman's face. She has shackles on her hands: on the bunk there is only a fur coat made of gray sheepskin, which serves her both as warm clothes and a bed. 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 expression is mouse-like. Looking at her, one cannot believe that until recently she was beautiful to such an extent that she charmed her jailers ... "

But the famous "old woman"-convict at that time was only 40 years old.

Sonya's Golden Pen signature.

After her release in 1898, Sonya Zolotaya Ruchka remained in a settlement in the city of Iman (now the city of Dalnerechensk) in the Primorsky Territory. But already in 1899 she left for Khabarovsk, and then returned to Sakhalin Island to the Alexandrovsky post.

In July 1899, she was baptized according to the Orthodox rite, named Maria. Priest Alexei Kukolnikov performed the rite of the sacrament over Sonya.

About 5 million rubles - about the same amount the famous adventurer earned on her frauds (known to the police). But in real life, of course, much more.

At the beginning of the 20th century, versions were circulated about her successful escape and about a figurehead who served hard labor for her. Already in Soviet times, the aged Sonya the Golden Hand was allegedly seen either in Odessa or in Moscow.

It is known about three daughters of Sophia Blueshtein:

Sura-Rivka Isaakovna (nee Rosenbad) (born 1865) - abandoned by her mother, remained in the care of her father, Isaac Rosenbad, in the town of Powazki, Warsaw province, fate is unknown.
Tabba Mikhailovna (née Bluvshtein) (born 1875) is an operetta actress in Moscow.
Mikhelina Mikhailovna (née Bluvshtein) (born 1879) is an operetta actress in Moscow.

Sofya Blyuvshtein died of a cold in 1902, as evidenced by a message from the prison authorities, and was buried at the local cemetery in the Aleksandrovsky post. Initially, the monument looked like this: a thin female figure carved from white marble stands under tall forged palm trees. In 2015, only the statue survived from the entire 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. There is a strange belief that even after death Sonya helps and brings thieves' luck to those who ask for it...

Quotes by Sophia Blyuvshtein:

"My dear mommy ... I'm so lonely, it's so hard without you. Dad lives with a rude and uncouth Evdokia, who doesn't understand where it came from on our heads. For this redneck, the main thing is that dad steals more."

"I think He rewarded me ... I take risks. But this is the kind of life that drags me forward with such force that my head is spinning all the time."

"- What did you steal? - Gold, or what? - Not only, more diamonds. - This is not theft. Pampering. - What is theft? - Theft is when souls are stolen."

Recently in Russia there was a series about her. The portrait resemblance of the actress playing the main role is simply amazing.

The thieves' name Sonya the Golden Hand in the 20th century went to another criminal - Olga von Stein. In popular rumor, the crimes of these two thieves merged together. And the legendary collective image turned out ...

The basis of information and photos (C) SYL.ru, http://fb.ru/article, etc. The first photos (according to the owner) belong to Sonya and (most likely) to one of her husbands. (C) Sergeyich.