Onegin Gadzhikasimov. From idols of millions to monks...

This very handsome and sad man was fantastically popular in the USSR. He was favored by power, the love of admirers and women, he received incredible fees and easily spent them on all earthly goods and pleasures. He wrote hits that everyone loved: in 1970 alone, the circulation of sold records with songs based on his poems amounted to sixteen million (!!) copies.
The "Oriental Song", which overnight glorified Obodzinsky, was written by this sad Azerbaijani with the strange name Onegin.
He was born in Baku in June 1937, when the whole country celebrated the 100th anniversary of the death of Pushkin, and his mother, a connoisseur of Russian literature, named the newborn in honor of her favorite hero - Eugene Onegin ...
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Years later, a rare name justified itself: a Baku native from a noble family of Iranian aristocrats turned out to be a real Russian lyricist - in all his songs there is a lot of rain, love and that very Russian melancholy that strangers cannot comprehend.
Yellow rain beats on the roofs
On asphalt and on leaves,
I stand in a raincoat and get wet in vain.
Lost two tickets
However, that there are two tickets,
I'm lost tonight...
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And this, one of my favorite songs - “Rain and I”, was also written by Onegin Gadzhikasimov.
And also "Alyoshkina Love", "Layla",
"Call"
"They say I'm ugly", "Road" ...
Muslim Magomaev,
Joseph Kobzon,
Yuri Antonov,
Alla Pugacheva,
Oleg Ukhnalev,
Aida Vedischeva,
Vladimir Mulerman, Valery Obodzinsky, Polad Bul-Bul ogly, Valentina Tolkunova, Tamara Miansarova, Lyudmila Senchina,
Sergei Zakharov - it's hard to say who didn't sing Gadzhikasimov's songs!
But in 1985, at the height of his fame, Onegin disappeared. Without saying anything to anyone, he got on the train and left Moscow.
Leaving at a deaf Belarusian station, he went into an Orthodox church, converted to Orthodoxy and was baptized with the name Oleg.
Then he came as a novice to the monastery of Optina Pustyn, which had just been returned to the Russian Orthodox Church - he carried out the obedience of a gatekeeper, hiding his worldly glory from everyone.
On December 3, 1989, on the eve of the patronal feast of the Entry into the Church of the Most Holy Theotokos, he was accepted into the brethren of the Optina Hermitage. Appointed commandant of the monastery.
Peter the Great in 1989, the abbot of the monastery, Archimandrite Evlogii (Smirnov), was tonsured a cassock with a name in honor of Athanasius of Athos.
In 1991, the abbot of the monastery, Archimandrite Venedikt (Penkov), was tonsured a monk with the name Siluan. Later he was tonsured into the great schema with the name Simon.
Passed away June 30, 2002. He was buried in the cemetery of the village of Lyamtsino, Domodedovo district, Moscow region