Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a Time Paperback – January 29, 2026
by Elisa Rolle
Queer Places
Smolensky Cemetery
Saint Petersburg, Saint Petersburg Federal City, Russia
Vsevolod Gavrilovich Knyazev (January 25, 1891 - April 5, 1913) was an hussar poet and lover of Mikhail Kuzmin (1872-1936).
Kuzmin was 38 when he met the 19 years old Knyazev on May 2, 1910. Knyazev started a relationship with both Kuzmin and the actress Pallada. The relationship lasted until September 1912.
Knyazev committed suicide in 1913 by shooting himself in the chest. Anna Akhmatova wrote "Poem Without a Hero". The embryo of a plot can be reduced to the traditional love triangle, beyond which can be seen the real drama of the young poet and officer, Knyazev. Rumor tied this suicide to Knyazev's unrequited love for Akhmatova's friend, the dancer Olga Glebova-Sudeikina. Knyazev's lucky rival was said to be the poet Alexander Blok. At her son's funeral, Knyazev's mother lashed out at Olga. "God will punish those who made him suffer." Knyazev, his poetry, and the tragic story of his love were buried by World War I and the revolution; they seemed destined to oblivion. The death in 1945 of Olga Glebova-Sudeikina from consumption in Paris also went unnoticed. But Blok remained popular after the rev-olution, and his untimely death in August 1921 only added to his mys-tique and made him one of the most revered poets in the history of Russian literature.
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Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a Time Paperback – January 29, 2026 by Elisa Rolle |
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