4 Something lightweight

The poet Mandelstam did not like the poet Mayakovsky for his straightforwardness, and the politician Stalin for his narrow chest, making a sarcastic remark about the latter's possession of the "broad chest of an Ossetian." And he was right. Mayakovsky was unable to adapt to socialist realism, and Stalin was unable to expand his chest to the size of an average Ossetian.

Mayakovsky got himself a cane to fight off enemies with it when necessary, and generally to conduct with it when reading his own poems on the street. Passers-by quickly got tired of the poems, and they took the cane away from the resisting Mayakovsky and beat him with it, noting that it would be better if he read the poems of Yesenin or Blok. Having learned about this incident, Yesenin advised Mayakovsky to read his poems not on the street, but from the stage, so that if it is necessary he could run backstage.

Mayakovsky loved to go to the billiard room, and invited Yesenin to play there with him, and Yesenin persuaded Mayakovsky to have a drink with him in a pub. So they did not agree on their opinions, and wrote poems separately - one in the billiard room, the other in the pub, which is why Yesenin was soon banned, and Mayakovsky, out of boredom, went to play billiards first in Paris, then in the States, then in Mexico, and in the end, he, having returned to Moscow in vain, was either shot or he shot himself - it is still not clear.