A number of researchers, based on the memoirs of Nikolai Kashkin, a professor at the Moscow Conservatory, suggest that in 1877, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky made an unsuccessful suicide attempt and attribute it to the composer's stay in Moscow between September 11 (September 23) and September 24 (October 6), 1877. He went into the cold water of the Moskva river with the firm intention of falling ill with a severe cold or pneumonia. The circumstances of this event are described in the memoirs of Nikolai Kashkin, the composer's colleague and friend, which were written shortly after the composer's death. The publication of their journal version in the Russkoye Obozreniye began in September 1894 and was completed in December 1895 (issues 29-36). In 1920, in the collection The Past of Russian Music. Materials and Studies, Nikolai Kashkin's article From Memories of P. I. Tchaikovsky was published. In it, he described in detail the circumstances under which Tchaikovsky himself, according to Kashkin's assertion, described the circumstances of a failed attempted suicide.
Kashkin's story attracted the attention of several publicists. The scene of the composer's failed suicide attempt appears in the two-part feature film Tchaikovsky, directed by Soviet director Igor Talankin in 1969, and in British director Ken Russell's 1971 film The Music Lovers.