All versions of the death of the ex-lead singer of the group “Ivanushki International” in the material “Express newspaper”
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Igor Sorin was born on November 10, 1969 - this year the musician could celebrate his 50th birthday. But “Ivanushka” did not even celebrate his 30th birthday: he passed away on September 4, 1998. Three days before his death, on September 1, Igor was working on recording a solo record - he left the group in the spring. As the musicians from the group “Formation DSM”, with whom Sorin spent the evening in the studio apartment, recall, the young man went out onto the balcony in the morning to rest and freshen up. But he never returned - his friends saw Igor below, lying on the asphalt.
With fractures of the cervical vertebrae and partial paralysis, the artist was taken to the hospital and operated on. The surgical intervention was successful, but his heart could not stand it - after several days in intensive care, Igor died.
The whole truth about “Ivanushki”
“Igor often comes to me in my dreams, we talk. Somehow I dreamed that he lay down next to me and put his head on the pillow. I ask: “Igor, is that you?” - "I". - "Where are you now?" - “They gave me a new job.” - “So are you alive?” - “Of course, he’s alive.” I jump out of bed, run out into the street, I want to shout: “He’s alive, people!” It doesn’t work out: something inside won’t let me in... And I wake up,” says Sorin’s mother. Svetlana Alexandrovna, like Igor’s relatives, friends and admirers, never found the answer: what happened on that terrible night? How did Igor Sorin die?
Depression and suicide
The main version is suicide. After Igor’s fall, a note was found in the apartment with the text “To my family. To mom. To dad. Sashenka. All. But like the crown of poetry, a chick is born. Fly." And his former lover - the same “Sasha” from the note, Alexandra Chernikova - recalls that Igor’s condition was at least alarming.
“Periodically he was euphoric, periodically in a very depressed state. It's hard for me to talk now. At that time, his ideas were one, but the reality was different. He hoped that something important would happen in life right away. And there was a period of silence and calm,” said the girl in the studio of the “Actually” show.
But neither Sorin’s mother - although she also recalls how her son was fading away, temporarily left without work - nor Andrei Grigoriev-Appolonov and his colleagues accept the version of suicide.
Alexandra Chernikova, ex-companion of Sorin. Photo: still from the show
Mother
Svetlana Aleksandrovna Sorina, despite the fact that more than twenty years have passed since Igor’s death, still cannot talk about him without tears and does not believe in any of the versions about the reasons for his last step.
As Svetlana Alexandrovna herself recalls those terrible days, she did not want to live at all. Moreover, literally a year later, Igor’s father left her, at the age of sixty, having found the strength to go to one of his fans.
After some time, Igor Sorin’s mother got into debt and bought her ex-husband an apartment so that she would never see him again. She did not see him for many years, until fate brought them together again on the set of several programs about Igor, after participating in which the ex-husband and wife began to communicate again.
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Despite the fact that since January 2001 Svetlana Alexandrovna has been in a civil marriage with a certain Anatoly, with whom she has been living for eighteen years, she had no more children after Igor. Now Igor Sorin’s mother is already seventy-four, but she doesn’t feel her age at all and is still full of energy.
Accident
“This is some kind of incomprehensible story. A tragic incident. Igor loved life very much. No one in our group believed that it was suicide. This is completely excluded,” echoes Igor’s relatives Kirill Andreev. Everyone who loved Igor wants to believe in an absurd coincidence of circumstances with a fatal outcome. But why did the performer fall from a height? Lost your balance? The balcony railings were high. Did someone unintentionally push him? As the investigation showed, Sorin came out alone and there were no guilty parties. Or did the young man not understand what he was doing, being in an altered state of consciousness?
Personal life
By the way, about love. Even in his first year at the Gnessin School, Igor fell in love with Valentina Smirnova, who studied with him. Subsequently, the girl began to write songs for famous performers, worked as a backing vocalist for Valery Meladze, and starred as an actress in the O.S.P. Studio program and other projects.
Sorin's feelings turned out to be mutual:
We had one vocal teacher in Gnesinka. I remember going into class, and Igor was singing there. It was absolutely love at first sight,
— Smirnova said in an interview with Sobesednik. They almost immediately began to live together, the romance lasted two years. Then the lovers parted ways: Igor went to Warsaw to work in a musical, Valentina remained in Moscow. She recalls:
The feelings may not have gone away. But the story is over. We had a test for lice: we passed it with dignity. But nevertheless, when so much moral strength is invested, something is lost. We were so close when we visited each other. I remember jumping off the train. And when he returned to Moscow, it turned out that we seemed to be different people.
After breaking up with Valentina, Igor began dating Alexandra Chernikova. They met when the girl was a first-year student at the Gnesinin conducting department, and were together until Igor’s death, although they never officially got married.
Sorin's mother says:
I remember when Igor brought Sasha to our house to meet us, I was amazed: a young 18-year-old lady in a strict suit next to my experienced student son (Igor was in his fourth year at the time) looked like an exemplary Becky Thatcher next to the bully Tom Sawyer.
Drugs
The evil rock of “Ivanushek International”: two ex-soloists and two deaths
Illicit drugs have killed many artists - but none of their loved ones want to talk about it, choosing the less traumatic version. “How many nasty things were written about what happened! And about Igor’s drug addiction and alcoholism. But no drugs or alcohol were found in his blood!” - Svetlana Alexandrovna exclaims.
But there are those around Igor who admit: the young artist did not shy away from drugs. Among them is the producer of “Ivanushki” Igor Matvienko. Why did the man, years later, begin to talk about the deadly addiction of his former ward? So that others never repeat Sorin's mistakes.
Igor Sorin in the group “Ivanushki International”. Photo: Gennadii Usoev/Globallook
Igor Sorin
Igor Raiberg, who became widely known as Igor Sorin, was born on November 10, 1969 in Moscow.
Father - Vladimir Semyonovich Raiberg, design engineer, member of the Russian Writers' Union.
Mother - Svetlana Aleksandrovna Sorina.
After the death of their son, the parents divorced. In his second marriage, Vladimir Raiberg had sons Mark and Milan.
Studied at Moscow school No. 841.
As a child, after going through a big competition, he was selected for the role of Tom Sawyer, but on the eve of filming, Nikita Mikhalkov asked the film crew to take another boy, Fedya Stukov. The director of the film, Stanislav Govorukhin, granted this request. In desperation, Igor jumped from the second floor, but the jump ended successfully.
The administrators of the film crew, frightened by such a reaction from the child, offered him another, small role in the film - one of the boys (Joe Harper), which he played (listed in the credits as Igor Raiberg).
"Ivanushki International"
In his 3rd year, Igor Sorin interrupted his studies to participate in the musical “Metro”, for which he successfully passed the casting conducted by the Warsaw Drama Theater “Minskoff”. After a short rehearsal, the theater went on a foreign tour. But the artists did not have much success in Europe and America. After performing on Broadway, the troupe was advised to study. The only one of the Metro artists who was offered to stay to study in America was the lead singer of the musical Igor Sorin. But he refused. He had neither relatives nor friends in this country. And there were no means to live.
Igor Sorin in America
A remarkable moment of this touring period of Igor Sorin was his acquaintance with Andrei Grigoriev-Appolonov. He was accepted into Metro as a dancer.
After returning from America, Sorin recovered in Gnesinka and continued his studies. At this time he first appeared on the screen. In the popular program “Your Own Director,” the musician tried himself as a co-author of scripts and an actor in the “Finished It” section.
For some time after graduating from college, Igor Sorin worked at the “Scientific Monkey” theater.
The first composition of the group “Ivanushki International”
Deafening fame and incredible popularity fell on Igor Sorin only after his performances as part of the group “Ivanushki International”. Andrei Grigoriev-Apollonov made an offer to Igor to join his joint project with Kirill Andreev in 1994. Sorin agreed. After the first months of rehearsals, it became clear that the group would be a success.
Indeed, from 1995 to 1998, “Ivanushki” traveled all over the republics of the former USSR. The success was enormous. Full stadiums of fans gathered at their concerts. After the release of the 2nd video for the song “Clouds,” the guys woke up as stars.
Crowded halls with thousands of people, storming of hotels where the team stayed, hysterical fans with armfuls of flowers and plush toys - all this pretty tired “Ivanushki”. But Igor Sorin suffered most from this. A polymath who more than once recommended his fans to read classical literature, he was clearly out of his element. He had no time left for writing poetry and philosophical contemplation of the world.
In the spring of 1998, after finishing work on the last album, “Your Letters,” Sorin decided to leave the group and start a solo career.
To take a little break from the hustle and bustle, Igor Sorin went on a short cruise. Upon his return, he took up a solo project. It was created together with the musicians of the group “Formation DSM”. The first recorded composition was called “Mermaid”. This was supposed to be the start of Sorin's solo album.
Igor Sorin’s mother: “I still dream about my son, and every time I ask him the same question”
In the 11 years that have passed since the death of Igor Sorin, it has not been possible to find out the cause of the tragedy. The former lead singer of the group “Ivanushki International” died two months before his 29th birthday, in the midst of work on his solo album. This year Igor would have turned 40 years old. His mother admitted that a fortune teller predicted her son’s death.
“I still don’t know what kept me in this world,” says Svetlana Sorina. – Probably, deep down I still don’t believe in the reality of what happened. My son often comes to me in a dream, we talk, and everything happens as if in reality. Recently I dreamed that he lay down next to me and put his head on the pillow. I ask: “Igor, is that you?” - "I". - "Where are you now?" - “They gave me a new job.” - “So are you alive?” - “Of course, he’s alive.” I jump out of bed, run out into the street, I want to shout: “He’s alive, people!” It doesn’t work out: something inside won’t let me in... I wake up, but I’m in no hurry to open my eyes - I don’t want Igorek to leave. In reality, where I return again and again, my son died long ago. And more than anything else, I want what happened on September 1, 1998 to turn out to be just a nightmare - nothing more...
Don't do that again! – I return home around four o’clock in the afternoon. Approaching the apartment, I hear the phone ringing. It bursts while I open the door, push the latch, run to the machine: “Hello!” This is Sasha, Igor's girlfriend. She tells me incredible, terrible things: Igor jumped from the sixth floor balcony... It takes my breath away. I can barely find the strength to ask: is he alive? - Yes, yes, he’s alive, he’s being prepared for surgery! - Sasha shouts. – I’ll come now, tell me the address. I hang up the phone and slide down the wall onto the floor. Lord, Igorek, what’s wrong with you? I close my eyes for a minute and fall back in time. I already experienced something similar when my son was 10 years old... We saw the advertisement in Pionerskaya Pravda together. The Odessa film studio announced a competition - filmmakers were looking for an actor to play the role of Tom Sawyer. My son and I looked at each other. Just yesterday this mischievous kid brought a mouse into class and released it during class. The girls screamed, the teacher started screaming. He could easily play Tom Sawyer! That same day, my husband and I sent a photograph of Igor to the film studio. And they were not surprised when they received an answer: their son was invited to audition. We went to Odessa. After the audition with Igor and Masha Mironova (Becky Thatcher), the assistant director gathered us in the office on the second floor and announced that Fedya Stukov would play Tom. My son turned pale. He so wanted to act in films! Igor ran to the open window and jumped down... And now I’m experiencing it again. I call my husband, run out of the house, catch a ride and rush to the 71st hospital. On the way, I remember how then, many years ago, the assistant director, making sure that Igor wasn’t even hurt, shouted: “Don’t do that again, boy! I didn’t have time to finish: you will play Tom’s friend, Joe Harper.” On the set, Igorek behaved relaxed, communicated on an equal footing with director Stanislav Govorukhin and Rolan Bykov, who played Matthew Potter. Masha Mironova turned out to be a serious, even a little gloomy girl. When she needed to laugh on camera, Igor was put behind the camera. He made faces and made her laugh...
Mom, kiss me! – I arrive at the hospital in the midst of a medical consultation. The guys from the group DSM are nervously smoking in the yard; it was with them that Igor recorded the song “Rusalka” in the studio. A few days before, my son sang it to me with a guitar:
Mermaid, swim for me. I am an amphibian, but not terrestrial. I'm lonely, swim with me...
The musicians talk confusingly about what happened, but I have a growing suspicion that they are not telling me something. In the midst of the rehearsal, Igor took off his headphones, moved the microphone away: “Stop, let's rest, have a smoke break!” The studio is located in a one-room apartment on the sixth floor of an ordinary Moscow 12-story building on Veresaeva Street. It was very stuffy that day. The guys heard Igor flick a lighter in the kitchen and then open the door to the balcony. About five minutes later the sound engineer came out after him and did not find Igor. I looked down... The guys rushed out into the street. The son was lying on the lawn. He was conscious, smiled through force, reassuring them: “Everything is fine, don’t worry.” They called an ambulance, and then the police arrived. At the hospital, no alcohol or drugs were found in my son’s blood... “Svetlana Alexandrovna,” the doctor tells me. – We are preparing your son for surgery. The situation is difficult. His cervical vertebrae were broken. If he survives, he will most likely remain paralyzed.” I no longer have the strength to hold back, tears are streaming down my cheeks. But before entering the room, I wipe my face and gather my strength. I see my son and am surprised: no bruises, no contusions, his face is clean. Igorek lies very calm. Seeing me, he smiles. Then he asks: “Mom, kiss me!” I lean over and touch my lips to his cheek, lips, forehead. I carefully stroke his head. He looks up and says with difficulty: “Where is Sasha?” I look out into the corridor, call the girl and leave them alone. I understand: my son is saying goodbye to us. I spoke to Igor for the last time. Then there was an operation, it lasted six hours. After her, I only saw my son sleeping. The doctors asked him not to disturb him. But a day after the operation, my husband and I arrived at the hospital and saw a group of TV crews with cameras coming out of Igor’s room! Who let them in? Why? That same evening there was a report on television: the son was lying motionless, only blinking his eyes very often, and tears flowing. He couldn’t kick the reporters out and cried from powerlessness. I started crying too. The next day the doctors did not allow me to see Igor. They turned around on the threshold: “Come in the evening. By the way, bring some broth and we’ll try to feed him.” By evening the son died.
Going to a concert is like going to hard labor - My husband and I didn’t understand how to live. It was as if Igor was our connecting thread, a necessary element of happiness. A year after Igor’s death, my husband left me. The husband had the idea to have another child. I offered to adopt some unfortunate baby. But he only wanted to nurse his own child. After breaking up with me, Vladimir married one of Igor’s fans. Now two sons are growing up in his new family. I fell in love with walking the streets - I couldn’t sit at home. If she noticed someone similar to Igor, she caught up and looked into his face. And I was disappointedly convinced: not him! I walked and remembered how hard it was for me once: I gave birth to him for four days! I was brought to the hospital on November 6, 1969, on the eve of the holiday. And almost all the doctors went on weekends for several days to celebrate the next anniversary of the Great October Revolution. But I just couldn’t give birth, I suffered terribly! Then, finally, the holiday ended, everyone returned to work, and on the night of November 9-10 I found myself on the operating table. They didn’t give me a son right away; it wasn’t accepted then. I took him in my arms only a week later. For the first few months, Igorek hardly slept and screamed all the time. Even then he couldn’t stand to sleep. In kindergarten he will be stubborn: I don’t want to! And do whatever you want with it... Walking the streets helped me control myself. My son was with me, in my thoughts and memories. Despite the fact that I buried him and tried to forget that terrible day. I paid the funeral agents $2,000 for a place at the Kuzminskoye cemetery. I thought they would find a decent site so that people could visit my son. And when I came to look, I was upset: the place turned out to be somewhere on the outskirts. I went to the director: how is it possible, I paid so much money! And he replied: they say, he didn’t receive any money, he doesn’t know who Sorin is, and in general, say thank you for that too. I have come to terms with it. This world didn’t care that Igor was no more... I remember when my son started singing in the group “Ivanushki International”, he was so inspired! The first year I worked with joy, wrote songs that became hits: “Sunflower”, “Somewhere”, “I’m looking for her”... And then, apparently, I got tired and disappointed. He wanted creativity, but what he got was constant tours and live performances. The race is scary! And so on for four years. Igor complained: “Mom, no one needs my voice, I can’t whisper into the microphone! What should I do?" He began to experience nervous exhaustion. Popularity and recognition weighed heavily on him. Igor dreamed of performing serious music. He said that he was suffocating in the group, going to every concert was like going to hard labor. Finally, I got the idea to release a solo album.
The death was predicted by a fortune teller - Even before his son began singing in the group “Ivanushki International”, he lived in Warsaw for a year and a half. Played in a musical. And when he arrived home, he told with a laugh how in Warsaw a fortune teller on the street warned him: “Don’t return to your homeland, you will die there!” Those words turned out to be prophetic. But was it possible to believe in them then? My son fell in love with singing a long time ago, back in college. He had to leave school because it was boring. Academic performance was poor. And when the teachers started talking about vocational school, I chose radio-mechanical technical school for Igor. I thought: if I have to join the army, the specialty of radio mechanics might come in handy. But, of course, all this was not his. For the test, he somehow assembled a model of the receiver and, not knowing which wire to connect to which contact correctly, intertwined the wires and attached them with plasticine - you couldn’t immediately figure out what was what. Naturally, the device was turned on, but it did not work. The son made a surprised face: “Wow, only recently everything was normal! Something must have become disconnected while I was on the subway.” The teachers laughed: what an artist! And they gave him credit. By the way, while studying at the technical school, we changed Igor’s last name: until the age of 16, he was Rayberg, like his father. But then I thought that with a Jewish surname it would be more difficult for him in life, and he received a passport using mine. The only thing my son really liked about the technical school was the ensemble that the guys organized. Igor fell in love with singing so much that, after graduating from college, he went to enroll in the vocal department of the Gnessin Music College. There they told him: “Yes, there is a voice.” But they didn’t take it. We got Igor a job as a stage worker at the Ermolova Theater, and the next year he ended up at Gnesinka in the musical comedy department with teacher Alexander Kanevsky.
At first sight - In his first year, Igor fell in love with Valya Smirnova (today she is a famous composer, among her songs is “I’ll send him to ...”, performed by Lolita). They had true love. Igor moved into Valya's dorm. “Everything, as usually happens, began at first sight,” Valentina recalls in the book “Invitation to Life.” – I went to preparatory courses at the Gnessin School and one day I saw him during a vocal lesson. I can’t say that I was killed or struck down. No, I had the opposite reaction to him: “How can you hire such a small guy, screaming with a high voice, as an artist.” But after class, when we went home, I couldn’t forget this guy. The same thing happened to him. And then something inexplicable happened. We attended courses without missing a single class, just to see each other. We sat together. He made me laugh all the time, and every time I was kicked out of the audience.”
We parted as human beings - My son studied at Gnesinka for two and a half years, and then passed a competition to participate in the international musical “Metro” and went to rehearse it at the Warsaw Musical and Drama Theater. All this time, Igor went to Valya, and she went to him. My son went to New York to Broadway with the musical “Metro,” says Svetlana Alexandrovna. – When the tour ended, Igor was offered to stay in America: they gave him a residence permit and invited him to study at the opera studio. But he decided to return to Warsaw and continued to play in the musical. They lived there poorly, earning extra money by playing and singing in the streets. But he had a lot of fun. And when Igor returned home, he recovered in Gnesinka. Together with Valya, he moved into my mother’s apartment, next door to us. I don’t know what happened to the guys then. At some point they began to quarrel and torment each other. “We parted without a scandal, humanly, with words of love,” Valentina wrote. “We gave each other everything we could, we’ve already exchanged everything.” I left his house and moved back into the hostel. He often called, sometimes came in, brought money in an envelope, supported as best he could. Until I got another guy. And he has Sasha.”
Those who promised to help disappeared - When Igor brought Sasha to our house to meet us, I was amazed: a young 18-year-old lady in a strict suit next to my experienced student son (Igor was in his fourth year at the time) looked like an exemplary Becky Thatcher near the bully Tom Sawyer. And... she was terribly embarrassed when he cast loving glances at her. “Everything around him is interesting to me,” Sasha later recalled. “I started feeling dizzy, and then I lost it completely.” With Igor I was not afraid of anything. I was completely immersed in love, in him. She became free - like him, began to think - like him, dress - like him, and was accepted into his acting environment. And what a thrill it was to wear his clothes, torn jeans and wide T-shirts! I shocked my fellow students and teachers with my appearance. I learned to fly. I have such energy, such happiness, such feelings!” – For some reason, my son thought that Moscow directors would come to the state exams at Gnesinka. And perhaps they will notice him, so musical and flexible, and invite him to their place. For example, Konstantin Raikin - in Satyricon. Why not? But there were no directors at the exams; no one invited me anywhere. Igor got a job at the Scientist Monkey theater. And since he still wanted to seriously study vocals, together with his friend Anton Derov, they covered several popular classic blues compositions. They were brought to Larisa Dolina for trial. She listened and said: “This is not a format, it won’t work on the stage.” But Igor dreamed of the stage. And at that moment, in 1994, Andrei Grigoriev-Appolonov arrived in Moscow, who studied in absentia at GITIS. He and Igor met back in Warsaw - Andrei danced in the musical “Metro”. He knew producer Igor Matvienko, and he just decided to create the group “Ivanushki International”. Andrey invited Igor to try out... Four years later, having matured into a solo project, his son left the group. In March 1998, I traveled around the country with “Ivanushki” for the last time - I was finishing up work under a contract. There were people who promised to help with money and were encouraging. After leaving Ivanushki, Igor relaxed and enjoyed everything that was happening around him. And then... I became sad. Those who were going to help disappeared, turned away, and forgot. Igor locked himself in his apartment and lay in the dark. I was very afraid for him then. In the summer, Igor went to Russian cities on a cruise dedicated to the 200th anniversary of Pushkin’s birth, reading poems by Alexander Sergeevich. For example, he knew the poem “Count Nulin” by heart in its entirety. On a cruise, someone offered him to play the role of Pushkin in a movie, to sing in the rock opera “Eugene Onegin”. But all this remained at the level of talk. Then the son went on another cruise - in the Mediterranean Sea and met producer Mikhail Maslov: he was eager to invest money in recording Igor’s album. The son returned reassured. I started working in the studio with Maslov’s group DSM, spending days and nights there. And then something happened that to this day no one can solve, and I also can’t find the answer.
I let go of my son’s soul - Coming to me in a dream, he never answered the question: what happened to him. Sometimes I think it was a tragic accident. That day, Igor arrived at the studio by car and left it under the windows. The son treated her very carefully, the interior was always in order. When the police arrived at the house, they examined the car and found a mess, as if they were looking for something inside. So I thought: perhaps Igor went out onto the balcony and saw someone rummaging through his car. Mechanically he leaned forward. And I couldn’t resist... I don’t know. There were many rumors, each more false than the other. But my son definitely had no intention of taking his own life. After his death, I went to the cemetery every day and talked with Igor for a long time. After all, for a mother, children do not die. They don't leave. I don’t feel him physically, I can’t hug him, but there is a spiritual connection between us. A few years ago, I once again went to see Igor and met some grandmother not far from the grave. She said: “Don’t keep your son’s soul here, he’s worked so hard, let him go!” He has his own tasks, and you do everything here so that he doesn’t feel pain for you there!” At that moment it struck me like lightning. I realized: I need to continue to live in such a way that my son can be proud of me. So that he doesn’t see me unkempt and in a bad mood. Knowing this may have helped me survive. I changed my job, now I run a theater studio in one of the district libraries. I go to the pool and play sports. I try to smile more often. Eight years ago I met Anatoly, who fell in love with me, now we live together. Together with my son’s friends, I published two collections of Igor’s poems and a book of memories about him. We organize evenings in his memory. When we remember him, he seems to come to life - the way I remember him: cheerful and full of hope.
Day or night will pass, Son or daughter will leave, I don’t know who can help them. Lead them with you like a lonely star, illuminating their way in the night. (From Igor Sorin’s poem “Mama”)
Oleg PERANOV, Telenedelya LLC, Moscow (especially for ZN), photo by Vitaly Fedorov, from the personal archive of Svetlana Sorina
