One of the most valuable exhibits in the Yesenin Museum in the village of Konstantinovo is a ring with a green stone and the hallmark of the imperial crown.

This gold ring with a chrysoprase (due to the stone’s exceptional brightness and transparency, some historians believe it is an emerald) was presented to Yesenin as a gift in 1916 in Tsarskoye Selo, where the poet was serving as a medic on the Imperial Train and reciting a poem in honor of the princesses.
On July 22, 1916, Sergei Yesenin was invited to recite his poems to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, Tsarevich Alexei, and the Grand Duchesses. The poet presented the Grand Duchesses with his new poem, “To the Young Princesses,” written out on a large sheet of Whatman paper in Slavic script and decorated with ornamentation.
After the Revolution, the poem was banned and was only published in 1960 in a regional newspaper in the city of Kuibyshev (now Samara).

Yesenin wrote in his 1923 autobiography: “At Loman’s request, I once read poetry to the Empress. After reading it, she said that my poems were beautiful, but very sad. I replied that all of Russia was like that.”
The august family was truly touched by the poem’s content. But who would have thought that such a seemingly harmless and heartfelt work would, in fact, carry such a heartbreaking, cruel prediction? One way or another, wittingly or unwittingly, the writer predicted the terrible fate of the young girls.

“In the crimson glow, the sunset is fizzing and foaming.

White birches glow in their crowns.

My verse greets the young princesses.

And the youthful meekness in their tender hearts.

…An irresistible hand draws them ever closer.

Where sorrow leaves its mark on the forehead,

Oh, pray, Saint Magdalene,

For their fate.”

The most common version holds that Sergei Yesenin received the gold ring with a small, but surprisingly bright, grass-colored cabochon as a gift from Empress Alexandra Feodorovna herself. After reading the poem, the Empress was so moved that she removed the ring from her hand and handed it to the young poet. However, Yesenin himself told close friends a story about kissing the Tsar’s daughter on the palace stairs, and how she fed him sour cream and gave him a ring with a green stone.
“It must be said that Yesenin possessed a rich imagination; sometimes, taking a fact from his life as a basis, he would embellish it with such vividness that, as they say, you can’t add or subtract,” says literary historian Sergei Kunyaev.

For four years, Yesenin wore this expensive gift, never parting with it.

But in 1920, while in the village of Konstantinovo, the poet, learning that his second cousin Maria Ivanovna Konotopova was getting married and having no gift for the occasion, took the ring off his finger and presented it to her. Masha was orphaned early and, from the age of nine, lived with Tatyana Feodorovna Yesenina (the poet’s mother). It was, of course, her little room that Sergei Yesenin had in mind when he wrote the poem “The Orphan (Russian Fairy Tale),” which begins, “Masha, the complete orphan…” As Maria herself recalled: “When we were leaving the church after the wedding, Sergei came running toward us. He had just arrived and was worried that there was no gift for the newlyweds, not knowing about the wedding. He took his ring off his hand and put it on mine. We’ve kept that ring to this day.”

Interestingly, Maria Konotopova later tried to give the ring to the poet, knowing how much he treasured the Empress’s gift, but Yesenin refused. After the poet’s death, the ring remained in the Konotopov family’s possession for a long time, and in the early 1950s, his relatives donated it to the museum.