In the State Museum of the History of Russian Literature named after V.I. Dal opened an exhibition dedicated to the 125th anniversary of his birth, "A soul that knows no limits ...". The main motive of the exhibition is the movement from the habitable space, arranged according to the will of the poet, to the loss of home, solitude, and, finally, a place on earth. The curators of the project lead visitors from Tsvetaeva's childhood in her parents' house in Trekhprudny Lane to youth, sanctified by the warmth of Voloshin's house in Koktebel. Then - start family life in Borisoglebsky lane, with its stairs, attic-cabin. After - leaving for emigration, Prague, Paris, searching for oneself in a new world, but, in the end, returning to the USSR after her husband and daughter, loss of a family and her own corner, death.
The exhibition opens with a model of the Tsvetaevs' house in Trekhprudny Lane. In the windows: miniature rooms of Marina Tsvetaeva, attic on a high staircase, and her sisters. According to Tsvetaeva, from childhood she tried on the masks of tragic heroines. Therefore, portraits of Sarah Bernhardt, two Napoleons (her passion for life) and Maria Bashkirtseva hung on the walls of her room. Bashkirtseva published a diary, which was a breakthrough in revealing the inner essence of a woman, which was very close to Tsvetaeva. These were not love, personal experiences, but discussions about creativity, philosophy, and so on.
When Marina was born, her mother was upset that the first child was not a son. “But he will be a musician,” she decided.
"Evening Album" is Marina's first book, which she published in secret from her father.
Shortly thereafter, a fat man, choking from asthma, climbed into the narrow girl's room - a poet. He asked, "Did you read my review of your book?" Marina replied: “No, I didn’t read it.” A little later, these verses appeared:
Marina Tsvetaeva
Your soul is so joyfully drawn to you!
Oh what grace
From the pages of the Evening Album!
(Why "album" and not "notebook"?)
Why does the black cap hide
A clean forehead, and glasses in front of your eyes?
I noticed only a submissive look
And the infantile oval of the cheek,
Children's mouth and ease of movement,
The connection of calmly modest poses ...
There are so many achievements in your book...
Who are you?
Pardon my question.
I'm lying today - neuralgia,
Pain is like a silent cello...
Your words touch good
And in verse the winged swing of the swing
Lull the pain ... Wanderers,
We live for the thrill of longing...
(Whose coolly caressing fingers
Do they touch my temples in the dark?)
Your book is strangely excited -
It reveals what is hidden,
In it is a country where all paths begin,
But where there is no return.
I remember everything: the dawn, shining sternly,
I long for all earthly roads at once,
All ways... And there was everything... so many!
How long have I crossed the threshold!
Who gave you such clarity of colors?
Who gave you such accuracy of words?
The courage to say everything: from children's caresses
Before spring new moon dreams?
Your book is a message "from there",
Good morning news.
I haven't accepted a miracle for a long time,
But how sweet to hear:
"There is a miracle!"
Friendship with Voloshin was friendship forever, although the fate of Marina threw her far away. Nevertheless, in 1911 she came to Koktebel for the first time.
The exhibition shows the life of Voloshin's house and its guests. Many photographs of Marina Ivanovna. Koktebel played an amazing role in her life. Once she was digging sand next to Max on the seashore, looking for pebbles and said that she would marry the first one who finds a stone that she likes. Soon she was presented with a found carnelian bead by Sergei Efron, who was then 17 years old.
At the exhibition you can see the engagement ring of Sergei Efron. In 1912, when he was 18 years old, he and Marina got married. Engraving inside the ring: "Marina". A towel embroidered for the couple by Elena Ottobaldovna, Voloshin's mother, and Marinina's famous bracelets.
From Marina's personal belongings: beads that were hung on a donkey - her father brought them to her from the expedition. And Marina's ring with carnelian. But this is not the stone that Efron gave her. She wore that bead without taking it off, but it has not been preserved.
The house in Borisoglebsky Lane was rented by Marina and Sergey. It was assumed that a happy childhood of their first daughter Ariadne, Ali, would flow in it. But life decreed otherwise: happiness lasted only three years.
The poetess Sofya Parnok will be the first crack in the marriage of Marina Tsvetaeva and Sergei Efron.
Since the beginning of the Civil War, Sergei Efron went to the front as a nurse. Marina is alone. Without a livelihood, she is forced to give the children to an orphanage, where she was told that the children were being fed with American humanitarian aid. Irina died in the shelter, and Marina took Alya.
Tsvetaeva was considered indifferent to fate youngest daughter, but it's not. She has very candid notes in which she says that this is her cross and that she is to blame.
Despite all the severity, this is a very eventful period in the life of Tsvetaeva. In the same years, she met with Mandelstam. Petersburg, in Kuzmin's apartment. It was a short love affair - love was the breeding ground for Tsvetaeva's creativity.
As Marina writes in her notebooks, Alya lived in her little world, in Seryozha's attic room, among the drawings. Drawings from 1917-1922 are exhibited for the first time. Ariadne will continue to paint in exile.
Marina's personal belongings. Cup of the Czech period. Meat skewer. View from a house in Borisoglebsky.
Sergei Efron leaves Russia. Marina is alone. For several years she has been looking for him: she does not know whether he is alive or dead. Her piercing notes remained that if he is gone, then her life is over.
Despite the fact that all this time she had some short novels, her connection with Efron was inextricable. At the same time, Marina did not hide her love interests from anyone.
Marina instructs Ehrenburg, who lives here and now in Berlin, to look for Efron. Two years later, he finds him in Prague. He entered the University of Prague, did not know anything about the fate of Marina, became interested in Eurasianism, and communication with Russia was lost for him.
Ali's memories have been preserved of how mother and father met at the train station in Berlin. Suddenly a voice: “Marina, Marinochka!” And some A tall man, panting, arms outstretched, runs towards. Alya only guesses that this is dad, because she has not seen him for many years.
Marina will spend a short time in Berlin. He will meet here with and write a memoir "The Captive Spirit".
The emigration of Marina Tsvetaeva lasted 17 years. Life is hard: she said that in Russia she was without books, and in exile - without readers. Emigration did not accept her, because she was the wife of a man who begins to cooperate with the NKVD
But at this time she writes a lot.
Then she fell in love with Pasternak's poems and fell in love with their author in absentia. She corresponds with Rilke.
Life in Prague is very expensive - the family lives in different suburbs.
There was an amazing document left, it is not at the exhibition, this is a letter from Sergei to Max Voloshin, who was a kind of confessor for both Marina and Sergei. He knew immediately that something had happened. And what happened in Marina's life was Konstantin Rodzevich, Sergey's friend in Eurasianism. Marina left amazing records about these meetings, saying that he was a lover of lovers, that this is what she lives for. In a letter to Voloshin, Sergei says that a breakup is inevitable, that Marina is exhausted by lies and nightly departures. He tried to leave, but Marina said that she would not survive without him.
The connection with Rodzevich ended rather quickly, and Marina gives birth to her third child - the son of George, Moore, as he was called in the family.
They live hard: they collect cones, mushrooms. Marina without a table, cleans, cooks potatoes, washes, four of us live in one room.
1 /11
This portrait of Tsvetaeva by Boris Fedorovich Chaliapin, son, is exhibited for the second time. On the back is a pencil portrait of Efron. If Marina looks pretty attractive, then Efron in a pencil sketch is already an old man.
In mid-October 1941, 136 people sentenced under the infamous Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the USSR were shot at once in the internal prison of the NKVD in the city of Orel. Among them was a publicist, writer, scout, husband of the famous poetess Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva, Sergei Efron, whose biography formed the basis of this article.
Son of the People's Revolutionaries
Sergey Efron was born on September 26, 1893 in Moscow in a very restless family. His parents belonged to the Narodnaya Volya - that group of youth of the eighties of the XIX century, which considered it their mission to remake the world. The end result of such activity loomed extremely vaguely for them, but they did not doubt the destruction of the existing way of life.
Sergei's mother - Elizaveta Petrovna Durnovo, who came from an old noble family - and father Yakov Konstantinovich - a native of a baptized Jewish family - met and got married while in exile in Marseille.
Philology student
Since Sergei Efron grew up in a family where his parents put the struggle for a bright future in the first place, his father's older sisters and relatives took care of him. Nevertheless, Sergei received a decent education. After successfully graduating from the Polivanov Gymnasium, which was famous at the time, and enrolling in the Faculty of Philology of Moscow University, he began to try his hand at literary and theatrical activities.
He lost his parents early. In 1909, his father died, and the next year in Paris, his mother committed suicide, not having survived the suicide of her youngest son Konstantin. From that time until the age of majority, Sergei was placed under the guardianship of his relatives.
Meeting your destiny
The most important event in his life, which largely determined his entire future fate, was his acquaintance with the young, even then little-known poetess Marina Tsvetaeva. Fate brought them together in 1911 in the Crimea at the dacha of the poet and artist Maximilian Voloshin, which in those years was a kind of Mecca for all Moscow and St. Petersburg bohemia.
As the poetess herself later repeatedly testified, he immediately became her romantic hero both in poetry and in life. Marina Tsvetaeva and Sergei Efron got married in January 1912, and in September their daughter Ariadna was born.
World War I and Revolution
When did the first World War, as a true patriot, he could not stand aside, but due to poor health he did not get to the front, and, recognized as "limited fit", voluntarily enrolled as a brother of mercy on a medical train. It should be noted that this kind of activity required considerable courage, since dying on a train from an infection was no less likely than at the front from bullets.
Soon, taking advantage of the opportunity to complete an accelerated course of the cadet school, and then the ensign school, yesterday's orderly finds himself in the Nizhny Novgorod Infantry Regiment, where he meets the October events of 1917. In the tragedy that split Russia into two warring camps, Sergei Efron unconditionally took the side of the defenders of the former, dying before the eyes of the world.
Member of the White movement
Returning to Moscow in the fall, he became an active participant in the October battles with the Bolsheviks, and when they ended in defeat, he went to Novocherkassk, where at that time the White Volunteer Army was formed by Generals Kornilov and Alekseev. Marina was then expecting her second child. They became the daughter Irina, who lived less than three years and died in the Kuntsevsky orphanage from hunger and abandonment.
Despite his poor health, Efron made a worthy contribution to the White movement. He was among the first two hundred fighters who arrived in 1918 on the Don, and took part in two Kuban campaigns of the Volunteer Army. In the ranks of the legendary Markovsky regiment, Sergei Yakovlevich went through the entire Civil War, knowing the joy of capturing Yekaterinodar and the bitterness of defeat at Perekop.
Later, in exile, Efron wrote memoirs about those battles and campaigns. In them, he frankly admits that along with nobility and manifestations of spiritual greatness, the White movement carried a lot of unjustified cruelty and fratricide. According to him, both the holy defenders of Orthodox Russia and drunken marauders coexisted side by side in it.
In exile
After the defeat at Perekop and the loss of Crimea, a significant part of the White Guards left the country and emigrated to Turkey. Sailed with them on one of the last steamships and Efron. Sergei Yakovlevich lived for some time in Gallipoli, then in Constantinople, and finally moved to the Czech Republic, where in 1921 he became a student at the University of Prague.
The following year, a joyful event took place in his life - Marina, together with her ten-year-old daughter Ariadne (Irina's second daughter was no longer alive), left Russia, and their family was reunited. As follows from the memoirs of his daughter, once in exile, Sergei Yakovlevich was hard to bear the separation from his homeland and rushed back to Russia with all his might.
Thoughts about returning to Russia
In Prague, and then in Paris, where they moved in 1925, immediately after the birth of their son George, Sergei Efron was actively involved in the political and social activities. The range of his activities was very wide - from the creation of the Democratic Union of Russian Students to participation in the Masonic lodge "Gamayun" and the International Eurasian Society.
Acutely experiencing bouts of nostalgia and comprehending the past in a new way, Efron came to the idea of the historical inevitability of what happened in Russia. Deprived of the opportunity to give an objective assessment of what happened in those years in the USSR, he believed that the current system is much more in line with the national character of the people than the one for which he shed blood. The result of such reflections was a firm decision to return to their homeland.
In the service of the Foreign Department of the OGPU
This desire was taken advantage of by employees of the Soviet special services. After Sergei Yakovlevich turned to the USSR embassy, he was told that as a former White Guard who opposed the current government with weapons in his hands, he must atone for his guilt by cooperating with them and completing a number of tasks.
Recruited in this way, Efron in 1931 became an agent of the Foreign Department of the OGPU in Paris. Over the following years, he took part in a number of operations, the most famous of which is the abduction of General Millir, the founder of the infamous Russian All-Military Union, which then acted on the side of the Germans during the Second World War, and the liquidation of the Soviet agent defector Ignatius Reis ( Poretsky).
Arrest and subsequent execution
In 1939, as a result of the failure, his undercover activities are terminated, and the same Soviet special services organize his transfer to the USSR. Soon, his wife Marina and the children of Sergei Efron, Ariadna and son George, also return to their homeland. However, instead of well-deserved awards and gratitude for completing tasks, a prison cell awaited him here.
Sergei Efron, returning to his homeland, was arrested because, not being a professional intelligence officer, he knew too much about their activities in France. He was doomed and soon realized it. More than a year he was kept in the internal prison of the NKVD in the city of Orel, trying to extract evidence against Marina and Georgy, who remained at large - by that time Ariadna had also been arrested.
Having achieved nothing, he was sentenced to capital punishment and on October 16, 1941 he was shot. A sad fate befell the members of his family. Marina Ivanovna, as you know, voluntarily passed away shortly before the execution of her husband. Daughter Ariadne, having served an eight-year sentence in the camp, spent another six years in exile in the Turukhansk region and was rehabilitated only in 1955. Son George, having reached draft age, went to the front and died in 1944.
Publicist, writer, officer of the White Army, Markovian, pioneer, agent of the NKVD, repressed. Husband of Marina Tsvetaeva.
Sergei Yakovlevich Efron was born into the family of the People's Will of Elizaveta Petrovna Durnovo (1855-1910), from a well-known noble family, and Yakov Konstantinovich (Kalmanovich) Efron (1854-1909), from a baptized Jewish family. Studied at the Faculty of Philology of Moscow University. He wrote stories, tried to play in the theater with Tairov, published magazines, and was also engaged in underground activities.
After the outbreak of the First World War, in 1915 he entered the ambulance train as a brother of mercy; in 1917 he graduated from the cadet school. On February 11, 1917, he was sent to the Peterhof school of ensigns for service. Six months later, he was enrolled in the 56-1 Infantry Reserve Regiment, whose training team was in Nizhny Novgorod.
In October 1917, he took part in battles with the Bolsheviks, then - in the White Movement, in the Officers' Regiment of General Markov, participates in the Ice Campaign and the defense of the Crimea.
In exile
In the autumn of 1920, as part of his unit, he was evacuated to Gallipoli, then moved to Constantinople, to Prague. In 1921-1925 he was a student of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Prague. Member of the Russian student organization, the union of Russian writers and journalists
Soon after emigration, Efron became disillusioned with the white movement, the desire to return to his homeland grew stronger. In Prague, Sergei Yakovlevich organizes the Democratic Union of Russian Students and becomes co-editor of the Union's journal Svoimy Pamy, participates in the development of the Eurasian movement, which has become widespread among the Russian emigration as an alternative to communism. Sergei Yakovlevich belonged to the left part of the movement, which, as the split of Eurasianism deepened, became more and more loyal to the Soviet system.
In 1926-1927, in Paris, Efron worked as co-editor of the Versty magazine close to Eurasianism.
In 1927, Efron starred in the French film Madonna of the Sleeping Cars (directed by Marco de Gastine and Maurice Glaze), where he played the role of a death row inmate in Batumi prison, which lasted only 12 seconds and in many ways anticipated his own future fate. On May 29, 1933, he was a member of the emigrant Masonic Lodge "Gamayun" in Paris. January 22, 1934 raised to the 2nd degree, and November 29, 1934 - to the 3rd degree.
In the 30s. Efron began working in the "Union of Homecoming", as well as cooperating with the Soviet special services - since 1931, Sergei Yakovlevich was an employee of the Foreign Department of the OGPU in Paris. He was used as a group leader and recruiter, personally recruited 24 people from among the Parisian emigrants. From 1935 he lived in Vanves near Paris.
He was involved in the kidnapping of General Miller. According to one version, Sergei Yakovlevich was involved in the murder of Ignatius Reis (Poretsky) (September 1937), a Soviet intelligence officer who refused to return to the USSR.
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In October 1937 he hastily left for Le Havre, from where he went by steamer to Leningrad. Upon return to Soviet Union Efron and his family were given the state dacha of the NKVD in Bolshevo near Moscow. At first, there were no signs of trouble. However, the daughter of Sergei Yakovlevich Ariadna was soon arrested.
Arrested by the NKVD on November 10, 1939. Convicted by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on August 6, 1941 under Art. 58-1-a of the Criminal Code to capital punishment. He was shot in August 1941. Ariadne spent many years in prison and was rehabilitated only in 1955.
This picture of Sergei Efron in military uniform, which is a fragment of a group photo, is quite well known. But not everyone knows what the number 187 on his shoulder straps means. And it means the number of the ambulance train, in which Efron served in the rank of ensign from March to July 1915.
During the First World War, military hospital trains were not only subordinate to the military department, but were also created on a voluntary basis - by private individuals and various organizations. One of these public organizations was the All-Russian Zemstvo Union for Assistance to Sick and Wounded Soldiers, headed by Prince. G.E. Lvov. It was the Union that owned train No. 187, which, from October 1914, made flights from Moscow to Bialystok, Warsaw and other front-line cities. The history of this train is especially noteworthy in that it is associated with the name of the daughter of the great writer, Alexandra Lvovna Tolstaya.
In her memoirs, "Daughter" Alexandra Lvovna tells how at the very beginning of the war she turned with a request to G.E. Lvov to send her to the front. The prince was skeptical of Tolstoy, considering her an impractical person and not suitable for responsible work. The only thing that Alexandra Lvovna managed then was to become a sister of mercy in the sanitary train No. 187, which worked on the North-Western Front.
The train made its first flight from 6 to 21 October (old style) 1914 along the route: Moscow - Bialystok - Grodno - Vilna - Dvinsk - Rezhitsa - Moscow. Then 453 people became his patients. During October - November 1914, several more flights were made to East Prussia, during which not only Russian soldiers were evacuated, but also captured Germans who needed medical attention.
A. L. Tolstaya at the ambulance train No. 187.
Doctor M. A. Abakumova-Savvinykh, A. L. Tolstaya and brother of mercy Emilio Ferraris,
Italian subject, teacher Italian at the Moscow Conservatory.
Bialystok, 10 October 1914
Our train brought the wounded and sick from the front to Bialystok to the sanitary station, where they were bandaged and evacuated further.
The appearance of our senior doctor, Maria Alexandrovna Savinykh, did not at all fit, in my opinion, to her profession. She was very beautiful. Correct facial features, black eyebrows, lively brown eyes, a young face and ... completely white hair. We all respected and loved her. She was a wonderful comrade - cheerful, sociable, but she was a bad and inexperienced doctor. She was afraid of severe cases of injury, she was lost when it was necessary to take emergency measures, to perform an operation in order to save the wounded or sick.
The wounded were brought directly from the battlefield, and there were severe cases of wounds in the stomach, in the head, sometimes they died right there during the dressing.
I will never forget one wounded man. Both buttocks were almost torn off by a shell. Apparently, he was not immediately picked up from the battlefield. There was a terrible stench from the wounds. Instead of buttocks, two grey-dirty huge wounds gaped. Something was stirring in them, and, bending down, I saw ... worms! Fat, plump white worms! To wash the wounds and kill the worms, it was necessary to wash them with a strong solution of sublimate. While I was doing this, the wounded lay on his stomach. He did not moan, did not complain, only his teeth clenched from the terrible pain creaked. Bandaging these wounds to keep the bandage in place and keep the anus free was not an easy task ... I don’t know if I coped with this task ...
I only know that I was inexperienced, that I had to go through even more training in order to learn not to get upset, to forget about the terrible open wounds with white fat worms, so that this would not prevent me from eating and sleeping normally ...
I remember another case: at a dressing station in Bialystok, I was dressing a soldier who had been wounded in the leg. He was a cheerful guy, and although his leg hurt a lot, he was glad that he was being evacuated: “I'll go home, to my wife, to the guys. They must have missed me." Opposite the merry soldier sat a German on a chair. The arm is bandaged somehow, blood seeped through the gauze as a dark brown spot.
- Hey, dumbass! the cheerful soldier suddenly yelled at the top of his voice, “no gut, no gut, why did you shoot me in the leg, you German muzzle?” BUT? and points to the wound.
— Jawohl! the German agrees, showing his hand. [And you shot me in the arm too.]
“Well, okay, nemchura, war, there’s nothing to be done ...” the soldier said, as if apologizing. Both of them smiled cheerfully and affectionately at each other.
(A.L. Tolstaya. "Daughter")
M. A. Abakumova-Savvinykh
Doctor Maria Alexandrovna Abakumova-Savvinykh, who shared with A.L. Tolstoy was one compartment, there was a Siberian woman from the city of Krasnoyarsk, the widow of the gold miner Savvins, whose name she added to her maiden name. Maria Alexandrovna's inexperience in the first months of the war was explained by the fact that she had not previously held leadership positions - in Krasnoyarsk she was engaged in private practice for women's diseases, as well as teaching. Over time, experience came, and in the spring of 1916 Tolstaya invited her friend to her sanitary detachment, which operated under the auspices of the same All-Russian Zemstvo Union. In 1923, Savvinykh moved to Yasnaya Polyana, where she worked as a doctor. She died in Moscow in 1935.
Currently, in the Museum-estate of L.N. Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana, her photo album dedicated to the life of hospital train No. 187 is kept. rare photographs of her husband Marina Tsvetaeva.
Sister of Mercy Zoya Ryazanova
Senior doctor M.A. Abakumova-Savvinykh (center) with sisters of mercy and orderlies.
The orderlies were Mennonite Germans, who were not allowed by religion to take up arms.
In the dressing room. Second from the left - M. A. Savvinykh.
Like many students in 1915, Sergei Efron could not calmly sit down with books at a time when others were at war. He decided to follow the example of his sister Vera, who became a sister of mercy in the sanitary train No. 182 of the All-Russian Zemstvo Union.
...Getting ready to see Asya off[Vasilisa Zhukovskaya] and Seryozha. He bought himself a yellow jacket, epaulettes, boots, and heroically froze in this outfit during a desperate blizzard, so that in the end he didn’t get a tooth on a tooth.
On March 25, 1915, Sergei wrote to Vera that he was on duty in the Union every day, waiting for an appointment. Soon the appointment was received: he was to become a brother of mercy on train No. 187. Efron was not destined to meet Alexandra Tolstaya: by that time she had already left the service on the train, having gone to the Turkish front.
March 28, 1915 friends accompanied Sergei to the station. Vasilisa Alexandrovna (Asya) Zhukovskaya, the niece of the book publisher D.E., went with him as a sister of mercy. Zhukovsky, married to the poetess Adelaide Gertsyk, with whom the sisters Marina and Anastasia Tsvetaeva were friends. Feldstein, in a letter to Vera Efron dated March 30, 1915, describes these wires as follows:
Asya and Serezha left two days ago in train No. 187. I accompanied them to the Nizhny Novgorod station. The train looks very nice and the staff doesn't seem bad. Asya in a jacket, a bandage and with a cross is such an embodiment of the sanctity of the duties assumed that the heart of every true patriot should tremble with joy ... Seryozha was yellow, tired, very sad and led to unhappy thoughts. Frankly, I don't like him. This is how people look who are oppressed by something besides any ill health. Seeing off Marina, Asya [Anastasia Tsvetaeva] and next to her some submissive red-haired Jewess[M.A. Mintz], apparently a new suicide candidate. He humbly carried five copies of The Royal Meditations, Ashina's latest fantasy. Asya Zhukovskaya and Seryozha did not manage to get settled together right away. In the Union, they were mistaken for lovers and did not want to contribute to the weakening of morals by sending them on the same train.
In addition to patriotic motives, the departure of Sergei Efron also had personal reasons: he was greatly oppressed by Marina's stormy romance with Sofia Parnok. Feeling out of place in this love triangle, he decided it would be wiser to retire for a while.
Vasilisa Zhukovskaya (standing on the left) and Sergei Efron at the door of the train.
My dear Lilenka, it's evening now, there's no one in my compartment and it's easy to write. Outside the window are endless rows of siding rails, and behind them is the road to Sedlec, near which we are standing. The whistles of locomotives are heard all the time, ambulance trains fly past, military echelons - the war is close.
Today, with two train comrades, I set off on a bicycle around Sedlec. I wanted to drink. We went into a little house by the road and asked an old, old Polish woman who was sitting in the kitchen for water. Seeing us, she began to fuss and invited us to the front rooms. There we were met by a young Polish woman with a sweet, sad face. When we drank, she looked at us and she apparently wanted to talk. Finally she made up her mind and turned to me:
“Oh, why is sir so miserable?” [haggard, haggard - Polish] Pan injured?
- No, I'm fine.
- No, no, the pan is so boring (I'm just tired) and scanty (in Russian it sounds insulting, but in Polish it's completely different). Pan needs to eat more, drink milk and eggs.
We left soon. And now I am not an officer and not wounded, and her words had an unusually strong effect on me. If I had been a really wounded officer, they would have turned my whole soul upside down.
There is a photo taken on the day of this bike ride.
Sergei Efron with a bicycle (left). Zoya Ryazanova sits on the far right.
Sedlec, 4 April 1915
Sergei Efron and Maria Savvinykh (lying on the left) with the sisters of mercy.
Behind Efron Zhukovskaya.
Personnel of ambulance train No. 187. Photo taken in Siedlce (now Siedlce in Poland) in the spring or early summer of 1915.
In the center sit the head of the train (with the rank of second lieutenant) and senior doctor M.A. Abakumova-Savvinykh, second to the right of the Savvinykhs -
Zoya Ryazanova (in a white headscarf). To her right in the second row are three ensigns, including Sergei Efron (sitting in profile).
Vasilisa Zhukovskaya is far left in the second row.
Sergei Efron (right) at the train.
May 1, 1915 at the Bagrationovskaya station. Sergei Efron with a saber in his hand.
On the same day on Bagrationovskaya. A scene from some theatrical performance.
A fragment of this photograph, inserted into the medallion, was presented by Efron to Marina Tsvetaeva.
Now the medallion is kept in the House-Museum of M. Tsvetaeva in Moscow.
Today or tomorrow we are being sent to Moscow for repairs - before that we brought the wounded and gassed from positions to Warsaw. The work is very easy - since there were almost no dressings to do. We saw a lot, but you can’t write about it - censorship won’t let you through.
Bombs were thrown at us several times from airplanes - one of them fell five paces from Asya and fifteen from me, but did not explode (actually, not a bomb, but an incendiary projectile).
After Moscow, it seems that we will be transferred to the southwestern front - Verin's train has already been transferred there.
I am terribly drawn to the war as a soldier or officer, and there was a moment when I almost left and would have left if the deadline for entering the university had not been missed by two days. military school. I feel unbearably awkward from my miserable brotherhood - but there are so many unsolvable difficulties on my way.
I know perfectly well that I will be a fearless officer, that I will not be at all afraid of death. Murder in the war does not frighten me at all now, despite the fact that I see both the dying and the wounded every day. And if it does not scare, then it is impossible to remain inactive. I have not left yet for two reasons - the first is fear for Marina, and the second is the moments of terrible fatigue that I have, and then I want such peace, so nothing, nothing is needed, that the war goes into the tenth plan.
Here, in such proximity to the war, everything is thought differently, experienced differently than in Moscow — I would very much like to talk to you right now and tell you a lot.
The soldiers I see are touching and beautiful. I remember what you said about courting the soldiers - that you have no feeling for them, that they are strangers to you and the like. How would everything turn upside down for you here and these words would seem like complete absurdity.
One feeling does not leave me here: I give them too little, because I am not in the right place. Some simple "non-intelligent" sisterhood gives the soldier a hundred times more. I'm not talking about care, but about warmth and love. All the brothers, in the place of the authorities, I would have taken to the soldiers, like parasites. Ah, it's all there to see! Enough about the war.
- Asya is a very touching, good and significant person - we are great friends with her. I now have that pity for her that I lacked before.
Sergei Efron and Vasilisa Zhukovskaya in the train window (left).
Sergei Efron with a camera.
On July 1, 1915, Vera Efron decided to quit the hospital train No. 182 in order to enter the Tairov Chamber Theater as an actress. The day before, on June 30, Sergei wrote to her:
Dear Verochka, near Moscow itself - I caught a glimpse of your train on the go - what an insult!
This flight of ours will probably be short, and if you don't leave Moscow, we'll see each other soon...
From the Soyuz, a sister from our train Tatyana Lvovna Mazurova will ask for your place - you can safely recommend her as a wonderful person and worker. Although your train must have already left.
Now a short stop in Minsk. Where we are going is unknown.
The previous flight was extremely interesting - we brought the wounded from Zhirardov and Teremno.
Dear Lilenka, I was in Moscow again and found Vera there. She was so tender, affectionate, touching and beautiful as I have never seen her. We spent a wonderful day together...
To leave us with Asya [Zhukovskaya] I really didn't want to, but I had to, and now we are already rushing (as you know we are rushing) to Warsaw.
AT recent times a lot of work - fights broke out and we were not kept in Moscow for more than a day ...
After this flight, I dream of leaving the service for a while and settling with Vera in the country. Rest is necessary for me - summer is already ending, and what will happen in winter is unknown.
Don't be surprised at the paralyzed handwriting - the car is rocking mercilessly.
Dear Lilyonka, I am not writing to you because I am wound up to death.
Now we have a nightmare flight. Details later. I think that after this flight I will have a long rest or quit my job altogether. You can't even imagine a tenth of this nightmare.
By the end of July 1915, Efron left his job on the hospital train. He went to rest in Koktebel to Voloshin, and then returned to study at Moscow University.
After him, his friend from Moscow University, Vsevolod Bogengardt, came to serve on train No. 187, about whom there will be a separate story.
Marina Knight
Genius personalities recognized by mankind, great poets, writers, generals and peacemakers in their earthly, physical life, as a rule, are in close contact with "ordinary" people. Geniuses often draw inspiration from the reality around them, from close people, without whom, perhaps, not a single brilliant creation would have taken place, scientific discovery or decisive battle.
These people sometimes play too important and sometimes tragic role in the personal fate of the "chosen ones of mankind"...
At the mention of Napoleon Bonaparte, the name of Empress Josephine immediately pops up in the memory, Rembrandt - Saskia, I. S. Turgenev - his tragic passion for Pauline Viardot. Talking about the work of A.S. Pushkin, it is impossible to ignore Natalia Nikolaevna Goncharova. Many Pushkin researchers are still inclined to blame the beautiful wife for the death of the great national Poet.
Sergei Efron and Marina Tsvetaeva
Sergei Yakovlevich Efron went down in history forever as the husband of another, perhaps equivalent to Pushkin, the great Russian Poet - Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva, the genius of the poetic "silver" age ...
S. Ya. Efron was born on September 26, 1893 in Moscow, in the family of the Narodnaya Volya Elizaveta Petrovna Durnovo (1855-1910), from a well-known noble family, and Yakov Konstantinovich (Kalmanovich) Efron (1854-1909), who came from a baptized Jewish family. Seryozha Efron lost his parents early. His upbringing was carried out by older sisters and relatives of his father, who were close to the revolutionary movement. However, the guardians tried to give the boy a good education. He successfully graduated from the famous Polivanov Gymnasium, studied at the Faculty of Philology of Moscow University, wrote stories, tried to play in the theater with Tairov, published student magazines, and was also engaged in underground activities.
With Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva, the daughter of a famous Moscow professor and still little known Great Poet, Sergei met in 1911.
Young people first met in Koktebel, at the famous dacha of the artist and poet Maximilian Voloshin, where almost all of St. Petersburg and Moscow bohemia visited. Until the end of his life, Max remained the closest friend for Sergei and Marina, and sometimes acted as a large and comfortable “vest”, into which the young spouses alternately “cried” during frequent family conflicts.
On the Koktebel beach, Marina Ivanovna once jokingly told Voloshin that she would marry a man who would guess what her favorite stone was.
"Marina! Max told her. Lovers are known to be stupid. And when the one you love brings you a cobblestone, you will believe that it is your favorite stone!”
"Max! I'm smart about everything! Even out of love! Marina replied.
On the same day, Sergei found and brought her a Genoese carnelian bead. Marina Tsvetaeva always carried this stone with her.
Sergei Yakovlevich was a year younger than Marina. Just like Tsvetaeva herself, in early childhood he lost his mother, and besides, he did not differ in good health. The families of Marina and Sergey were not similar and close to each other neither in spirit nor in convictions, but Tsvetaeva, at the first stage of their acquaintance, sincerely admired Efron.
“If you knew what a fiery, generous, deep young man he is! - she wrote in a letter to the famous critic and philosopher V.V. Rozanov. “We will never part. Our meeting is a miracle!”
He seemed to her an ideal, a phenomenon of another age, an impeccable knight. Contemporaries spoke of his nobility, undoubted decency, human dignity and impeccable upbringing. However, many researchers of the life and work of M.I. Tsvetaeva, on the contrary, considered Efron a weak, weak-willed, not too smart and mediocre amateur, an early orphaned boy who was simply flattered by the attention of a girl like Marina. Such a person could never become her husband and support in the traditional sense of the word. Another thing is that the Great Poet, since he was born a woman, in principle, could not have anything “ordinary” and “traditional”! She expected miracles from him. Do not deceive this expectation - it became the main motto and goal of Sergey Efron's life for many years.
Efron immediately becomes the romantic hero of Tsvetaeva's poetry. More than twenty poems are associated with him and dedicated to him, which, in the opinion of literary critics and researchers, are absolutely devoid of eroticism. This is not a love lyric at all, even, as it were, not a lyric dedicated to a woman's beloved man.
“It was not you, O young one, who disenchanted her…” Sofya Parnok ironically throws Efron in one of her works. The “girlfriend” was right: the relationship between Tsvetaeva and Efron was always built on the kinship of souls, not bodies.
I defiantly wear his ring! - Yes, in Eternity - a wife, Not on paper! – Excessively narrow his face Like a sword. ... In his face, I am faithful to chivalry, - To all of you. Who lived and died without fear! - Such - in fatal times - Compose stanzas - and go to the chopping block.
Being the husband of the Great Poet is not only a feat, but also hard work. Sergey Yakovlevich Efron fully experienced this on himself already in the first years of his life with Marina.
Alas! Sergei was not a warrior by vocation, but he had to become one. Poor health did not allow Efron to immediately take part in the First World War. Due to a lung disease, he was only deemed "partially fit" to military service. In 1915, the student Efron voluntarily entered the ambulance train as a brother of mercy, then he completed the "crash course" of the cadet school. On February 11, 1917, he was sent to the Peterhof School of Ensigns to serve. Six months later, he was enrolled in the 56th Infantry Reserve Regiment, whose training team was in Nizhny Novgorod.
In the fall of 1917, Ensign Efron arrived in Moscow. Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva, already pregnant with her second daughter, Irina, inspired him to take part in the October battles with the Bolsheviks. Since the "fatal times" had already come, her lyrical hero did not have the moral right to sit at home!
In exile, again at the suggestion of his wife, Sergei wrote brief memoirs about these events. To this day, his Notes of a Volunteer is perhaps the only true story about the Moscow uprising of 1917.
Ilya Ehrenburg, who knew Marina and Sergei from their youth, who helped them find each other after the Civil War, in his conversations with biographers and researchers of Tsvetaeva’s work, said more than once that it was Marina who “sculpted” her husband as a person. She built his life, made decisions for him, guided and supported, as a loving mother supports her teenage son in a difficult life path. For her it was an urgent need, for him - a serious responsibility.
After the defeat of the white performance in Moscow, Sergei Yakovlevich again had to correspond to the heroic image created in the imagination of the Poet. The wife herself gathered and escorted her "hero" to Novocherkassk, where the White movement was born under the command of Generals Kornilov and Alekseev.
The thought involuntarily comes to mind that, if not for Marina Tsvetaeva, the place of S.Ya. Efron in the outbreak of civil strife, most likely, would have been on the other side of the barricades. According to their upbringing, origin, prevailing family traditions, he was in no way suitable for the role of the White Warrior and the White Swan from the "Swan Camp", "Separation", "Craft" ...
Nevertheless, Sergey arrived at the Don one of the first two hundred people. He took part in the 1st and 2nd Kuban campaigns of the Volunteer Army. As part of the famous Markovsky regiment, and then the division, he went through the entire Civil War: from the capture of Yekaterinodar by the whites, to the last, tragic battle for the Perekop fortifications in the Crimea. For all Volunteering (from December 1917 to November 1920), officer Efron was continuously in the ranks, never served in rear units or at headquarters. He was wounded twice, but did not bow to the bullets and did not hide behind the soldiers' backs.
“In Volunteering, he saw the salvation of Russia and the truth,” Marina Tsvetaeva wrote for Efron twenty years later. And it was true.
The “Way of the Cross” for the White Cause, committed by a person who by nature did not have either good health or combat experience, did not see in himself any qualities corresponding to the title of a warrior or fighter, cannot but arouse respect. Marina and her blessing on the path of a "volunteer" made Sergei the White Knight and became everything to him.
On your dagger: Marina - You inscribed, standing up for the Fatherland. I was the first and only In your magnificent life. I remember the night and the bright face In the hell of a soldier's car. I drive my hair in the wind, I keep shoulder straps in a chest ...
In the autumn of 1920, as part of his unit, Efron was evacuated to Gallipoli, then moved to Constantinople, from there to Prague. In 1921 he became a student at the University of Prague. Like many young soldiers of the White armies, Sergei Yakovlevich needed to complete his education. But even here, in the difficult conditions of emigration, he remains true to himself. Instead of choosing some profession more compatible with life, Efron enters the Faculty of Philosophy, becomes a member of the Russian student organization, then the union of Russian writers and journalists in Prague.
Marina Tsvetaeva, staying in Moscow, knew nothing about her husband's fate for more than two years. She considered Sergei dead, she herself was on the verge of despair because of the loss of their youngest daughter Irina, who died in 1920. Only in the summer of 1921, a mutual friend of Tsvetaeva and Efron, I. Ehrenburg, found a way to inform Marina that her husband was alive and in Constantinople. In May 1922, Tsvetaeva and her daughter Ariadna went to him.
Ariadne and Irina Efron, 1919
In biographical studies of the life of Marina Tsvetaeva, the version often appears that the meeting of the spouses after a long separation was not so joyful and happy. The effect was that behind the “young veteran” now lay the experience of defeat, disappointment, loss of homeland and the usual way of life. In addition, Sergei was again a half-educated student and could not devote much time to his family. Marina and her daughter settled in the suburbs of Prague (they could not afford to live in the city). Efron lived in a student hostel and visited his wife only on short visits. When Tsvetaeva was passing through Berlin, then the capital of Russian publishing, she stayed there for more than a month. On the way to her husband, the famous Poet broke out and quickly burned out a very scandalous romance with the editor of the Helikon publishing house A.G. Vishniak. Rumors in exile spread quickly, and the husband could not help but know about it.
However, according to the recollections of the Poet's daughter Ariadna Efron, several years in the Czech Republic were the happiest time for their reunited family. The living conditions of the Czech countryside, of course, left much to be desired. I had to do almost everything with my own hands: cut firewood, heat the stove, carry water from the well, tidy up the house ...
Under the influence of Marina, S.Ya. Efron started writing again. In Prague, he organizes the Democratic Union of Russian Students and becomes a co-editor of the Union's journal Svoimy Pamy, and participates in the development of the Eurasian movement, which has become widespread among the Russian emigration as an alternative to communism. Over time, politics became the main interest of the "young veteran's" life. S. Ya. Efron joined the left part of the Eurasian movement, which, as the split of Eurasianism deepened, became more and more loyal to the Soviet system.
In 1923, Tsvetaeva again had a short but stormy romance, now with a close acquaintance S.Ya. Efron in Constantinople, K.B. Rodzevich. The poet needed to draw inspiration from the surrounding nature, from the surrounding people, from the current life. Sergei could no longer give it to her. The time of the "romantic hero" has passed. He himself was fully aware of his position, but to get himself and Marina out of the vicious circle - surpassed his mental strength.
In one of the letters to Maximilian Voloshin, Sergei Yakovlevich decided to express everything that had accumulated in his soul:
“Marina is a man of passions. Surrendering headlong to her hurricane has become a necessity for her, the air of her life. Who is the causative agent of this hurricane now is not important... Everything is built on self-deception... A huge stove, for which firewood, firewood and firewood is needed to heat up. Unnecessary ash is thrown away, and the quality of firewood is not so important ... Needless to say, I have not been good for kindling for a long time ... "
In a long and desperate confession letter, Efron sometimes appears before a distant addressee in the guise of a selfish boy who only requires attention and participation in himself, accusing Marina of past and present betrayals:
“On the day of my departure (from Moscow to Novocherkassk in 1917 - E.Sh.), when I looked at everything“ with the last eyes ”, Marina divided time between me and another, whom she now calls with a laugh a fool and a scoundrel ... "
“Marina is eager for death. Life has long since passed from under her feet. She talks about it continuously ... I am both a lifeline and a millstone around my neck. You can’t free yourself from the millstone without tearing out the last straw that she clings to ... "
Efron says that he would have made a decision and left if he was sure that Marina would be happy as a woman, or at least find in her next “hobby” a person close to her in spirit. But he knew Konstantin Rodzevich much better than Tsvetaeva herself. Unlike her, Efron had no illusions about him. Therefore, when offering his wife a divorce, Sergey, as before, did not take real steps for a final break. He again granted Marina, as a loving mother, not so much the right as the duty to decide everything for him. And Tsvetaeva decided.
George Efron
In February 1925, she gave birth to another, more beloved son, George, who was called Moore in the family. Tsvetaeva dissolved in love for her adored child and her work. Efron, who did not have the lifeline of poetry, as well as the clear confidence that he, too, had become a parent, had to survive alone.
In 1926 the family moved from the Czech Republic to Paris. Sergei Yakovlevich never acquired any necessary profession. For the sake of earning, he goes to work at one of the Renault factories. At the same time, he works as a co-editor of the Parisian magazine Versta. In 1927, Efron starred in the French film Madonna of the Sleeping Cars (directed by Marco de Gastine and Maurice Glaze), where he played the role of a death row inmate in Batumi prison. These 12 seconds on the screen, one might say, anticipated his own future fate.
In the 1930s, Sergei Yakovlevich began working in the Homecoming Union, as well as cooperating with the Soviet special services. Since 1931, he was an employee of the Foreign Department of the OGPU in Paris. He was used as a group leader and recruiter, personally recruited 24 people from among the Parisian emigrants. Since May 29, 1933 - a member of the emigrant Masonic lodge "Gamayun". January 22, 1934 raised to the 2nd degree, and November 29, 1934 - to the 3rd degree.
The question still remains open: did Marina Tsvetaeva know that her White Knight and hero Perekop was a Soviet agent? Most likely, she guessed about it, but was afraid to admit her grave suspicions even to herself.
Sergey, whom she “sculpted” all her life and led through life, suddenly cheated on her. He cheated not with a woman, not with a “body” (Marina would easily forgive such a betrayal). He betrayed the most precious thing that she loved in him: he became an "ideological" and spiritual traitor to everything that was dear to both of them. Everything that connected them for many years.
The psychological breakdown that accompanied Tsvetaeva's further relationship with her husband was smoothed out only by creative dedication. Perhaps Marina, resigned to the inevitability, simply hid her head in the sand: after all, what does the Poet, the celestial being and the interlocutor of the Muses, care about dirty political intrigues?
But intrigue touched the most expensive. real Civil War broke out within the Tsvetaeva-Efron family already in the early 30s. Marina Ivanovna fully tasted the "charms" of life under the Bolsheviks. She never shared her husband's Eurasian views, but to his political activity and the ideas of "return" were very skeptical. For many years, Tsvetaeva unsuccessfully tried to counteract Sergei Efron's attempts to drag their children into politics. Father - an experienced recruiter - very quickly attracted Ariadne to his side, who in many ways sympathized with his views. The young girl sincerely wanted to return to her homeland, where, it seemed, great prospects could open up before her. Tsvetaeva managed to defend only Moore.
In 1937, agent S.Ya. Efron, together with General Skoblin, also an NKVD agent and a former "pioneer" of the White movement, was involved in the kidnapping of the chairman of the ROVS (Russian All-Military Union), General E.K. Miller.
According to one version, Sergei Yakovlevich Efron was also involved in the murder of Ignatius Reis (Poretsky), a Soviet intelligence officer who refused to return to the USSR. In October 1937, the "failed" agent Efron was taken to Le Havre, from where he was taken by steamer to Leningrad. Following him, his family was taken to the USSR.
Ariadna Efron left a little earlier and voluntarily, while Marina Ivanovna and Mura, who at any moment could become victims of both the NKVD and White émigré "activism", had no other choice. Of course, Tsvetaeva could have turned to the French authorities and asked for their help, but there was no hope for something real. The emigrant community would gladly accept back the author of Swan Camp and Perekop, but they would never forgive the wife of a Soviet spy and traitor. It was unthinkable for Tsvetaeva to renounce a person who was in trouble. In 1938, Marina Ivanovna decided to follow her husband.
Upon returning to the Soviet Union, Efron and his family were given the state dacha of the NKVD in Bolshevo, near Moscow. Soon after returning, the daughter of Sergei Yakovlevich Ariadna was arrested. She spent ten years in prison and Kolyma camps, was rehabilitated only in 1955.
Efron himself was arrested on November 10, 1939. He was convicted by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on August 6, 1941 under Art. 58-1-a of the Criminal Code, sentenced to capital punishment. He was shot in August 1941.
On August 31, 1941, in Yelabuga, Marina Tsvetaeva, the great Russian national poet, took her own life.
Her son Georgy Sergeevich Efron (Mur) died during the Great Patriotic War.
S.Ya. Efron, of course, played a fatal role in the fate of Marina Tsvetaeva, as well as in the fate of his entire family. The White Knight flew off forever from the high pedestal erected to him by the brilliant verses of the Great Poet. From the volunteer and the "pioneer", as from a traitor to the White Cause, all yesterday's comrades-in-arms disowned. The Soviet secret services rewarded their agent with repression and execution.
Perhaps only Tsvetaeva could truly understand what moved her White Swan when he, breaking away from her, tried on someone else's, so unnecessary to him, the role of an agent of the OGPU-NKVD. She knew that Sergei Yakovlevich, her Seryozha, never did anything for evil, that he was by no means a weak, confused person, as many historians of the White movement and M. Tsvetaeva's biographers are trying to explain today.
Sergei Yakovlevich, like many emigrants, really wanted to return to his homeland. He wanted to be useful to his country again, dreamed of realizing his spiritual and intellectual potential, changing better life his growing children and, perhaps, to regain the main thing that was in his life - Marina. And finally, against all odds, he succeeded.
In 1941, on the thirtieth anniversary of their first meeting, Tsvetaeva literally shouted her 1920 poem to Sergei into eternity:
I wrote on a slate board, And on the leaves of faded fans, And on river and sea sand, With skates on ice, and with a ring on glass, And on trunks that have hundreds of winters, And, finally - so that everyone knows! - What you love! love! love! love!- Signed - a rainbow of heaven. How I wanted everyone to bloom For centuries with me! under my fingers! And how then, bowing her forehead on the table, crossed out crosswise - the name ... But you, in the hand of a corrupt scribe Clamped! you, that sting my heart! Unsold by me! inside the ring! You will survive on the tablets.
She survived Efron by only a few days. A loving heart does not need to be told that a part of it is dead. It stops beating and dies...
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