Galina Benislavskaya was a journalist, literary worker and devoted friend of Sergey Yesenin. She recalled a memorable meeting with the poet: ‘Yana and I are walking past a shop on Nikitskaya street. We passed it. Yana, looking out the window, saw that there is Yesenin without a hat, in a suit. Unintentionally I look back in the street: behind us is Esenin, walking without a hat, with a bundle of books. We hadn’t seen him for days. He did not recognize Yana. We had to make a second introduction: ‘Well, how are you, what are you up to? ’ And, probably out of embarrassment, I replied: ‘Nothing, we go to buy tickets for concerts…’ Sergei was very interested in articles about literature in foreign newspapers. Yana promised to get it for him. Most of all he was interested in articles about himself and the Imagineers in general. So Yana and I got him a lot of newspapers. I got them from the information bureau of Cheka… And from that day on my cheeks were always poppy-red at the ‘Barn’. It is winter, people are freezing, but I could use a fan. And from that evening the fairy tale began. It lasted until June 1925. Despite all the worries that were so heavy on my shoulders, despite all the wounds and all the pain, it was still a fairy tale. Still, it was the kind of thing one might not encounter not only in a short life but in a very long and very fortunate life… I did not care where I went, where I was going. Just as long as I followed him. <…> From that evening until the autumn of 1922 (for two years) I went to sleep thinking of him, and when I woke up, my first thought was of S., just as in childhood one’s first thought is: “Is there any sun today?”.

Soon after the described party, the girl joined the warm circle of the poet’s acquaintances. In 1923 after the foreign travel of Yesenin that ended by painful estrangement with Isadora Duncan, the poet took up quarters with Benislavskaya. ‘Three of us (me, Katya, and Sergei Alexandrovich) had to live there in one small room and starting from autumn of 1924 there came the fourth one — Shurka’, — she remembered.

Till 1925 Benislavskaya was his assistant in publishing activity, as well as the prop and stay in his life. Many writers of memoirs noted the self-sacrificing nature of the character of Benislavskaya and her beneficial impact on the poet: ‘The period of common-law marriage of Esenin and Benislavskaya is the most sober and rewarding from the standpoint of creativity’, — said poet Rodion Berezov.

Esenin also highly appreciated the attention of Benislavskaya: ‘May be everything in the world is nothing but illusion and we only seem to each other. For God’s sake, do not be the illusion. This is my last stake and in fact the deepest one’. However, their life together was rather short. In summer of 1925 Esenin broke up with Galina and got married to Sophia Tolstaya. The poet had passed away half a year later. In another year Galina Benislavskaya committed a suicide on the grave of Esenin at the Vagankovsky cemetery and left note: “3 December 1926. I took my own life here, though I know that thereafter they would call Esenin more names… But it does not matter for either him or me. There is everything most precious to me in this grave…”.