Sergei Efron
Sergei Yakovlevich Efron (Russian: Сергей Яковлевич Эфрон; 8 October 1893 – 11 September 1941) was a Russian poet, White Army officer, and the husband of fellow poet Marina Tsvetaeva. While in exile, he was recruited by the Soviet NKVD.[1] After returning to the USSR from France, he was executed.
Family life
Sergei was born in
Efron contracted tuberculosis as a teenager and his mental and physical health was strained further upon learning of his mother's death. After becoming a student at Moscow University, Sergei volunteered for the military as a male nurse. Due to his poor health, though, he was unable to serve in that capacity. Instead, he enrolled in the officer cadet academy.[5]
When Efron was a 17-year-old cadet in the officers' academy, he met 19-year-old Marina Tsvetaeva on 5 May 1911 at
Tsvetaeva and her husband spent summers in the Crimea until the revolution. They had two daughters:
Russian Revolution and civil war
Efron volunteered for the military in 1914 and by 1917 he was an officer stationed in Moscow with the 56th Reserve.[6] In October 1917, he participated in the battles with the Bolsheviks in Moscow, then he joined the White Army and participated in the Ice March and defense of the Crimea,[9] while Marina returned to Moscow hoping to be reunited with her husband.[7] During that time, though, the relationship between Efron and Tsvetaeva was severely strained with very little communication between the two. Efron was particularly disenchanted with what he felt was a revolution largely unsupported by the Russian people, the expression of which inspired Tsvetaeva's Daybreak on the Rails.[5]
She was trapped in Moscow for five years, where there was a
Post civil war
At the end of the civil war, Efron emigrated to Berlin.[10] There, in May 1922, Efron was reunited in Berlin with his wife, Tsvetaeva, and daughter Ariadna who had left the Soviet Union.[11] In August 1922, the family moved to Prague. Living in unremitting poverty, unable to afford living accommodation in Prague itself, with Efron studying politics and sociology at the Charles University and living in hostels, Tsvetaeva and Ariadna found rooms in a village outside the city. She writes "we are devoured by coal, gas, the milkman, the baker... the only meat we eat is horse-meat".[8]
In summer 1924, Efron and Tsvetaeva left Prague for the suburbs, living for a while in Jíloviště, before moving on to Všenory, where Tsvetaeva conceived their son, Georgy, whom she was to later nickname 'Mur'.[8] He was a difficult child but Tsetaeva loved him obsessively. With Efron now rarely free from tuberculosis, their daughter Ariadna was relegated to the role of the mother's helper and confidante, and consequently felt robbed of much of her childhood.[8]
In 1925, the family settled in Paris, where they would live for the next 14 years. During this time Tsvetaeva contracted tuberculosis.[11]
While residing in Prague, Efron became associated with the Eurasianists and became one of their leaders. In 1926 he and his family moved to Paris where he edited the journal of the Eurasianists and became one of the representatives of the "left Eurasianist" trend which was openly sympathetic to the Soviet Union. In 1929, the Eurasianists were divided and their journal ceased to be published.[12]
NKVD agent
While still in Paris, Efron was homesick for Russia.
After defecting and then criticizing Stalin and
Efron was allegedly in the car with the two assassins.[11] He was also named to be an NKVD spymaster and to be running a "Union for Repatriation" office as a cover for recruiting NKVD operatives from within the Russian community in Paris. A police search of both the office and Efron's flat, however, yielded no evidence.[13]
After Efron fled Paris, the police interrogated Tsvetaeva[11] at the Paris Surete Nationale headquarters on 22 October 1937.[20] She was confused by their questions, answered incoherently, but is quoted as saying that in September he had been fighting in Spain and that "His trust might have been abused—my trust in him remains unchanged." The French police concluded that she was deranged and knew nothing of the murder.[11][20] In fact, Efron had returned to Moscow under NKVD orders and was held under house arrest in a dacha until he was arrested on 10 December 1937.[20]
Tsvetaeva may not even have known that her husband was a Soviet spy, or the extent to which he was compromised.[11]
Return to the Soviet Union
In 1939, Tsvetaeva and son Georgy returned to Moscow, unaware of the reception she would receive.[11] In Stalin's USSR, anyone who had lived abroad was a suspect, as was anyone who had been among the intelligentsia before the Revolution.
Efron and Alya were arrested for espionage. Alya's fiancé was actually an NKVD agent who had been assigned to spy on the family. Under torture Efron was pressed to give evidence against Tsvetaeva, but he refused to testify against her or anyone else.[21] His daughter, however, confessed under beatings that her father was a Trotskyite spy, which led to his execution.[5] Efron was shot in 1941; Alya served over eight years in prison.[11] Both were exonerated after Stalin's death.
In 1941, Tsvetaeva and her son were evacuated to Yelabuga. On 31 August 1941, while living in Yelabuga (Elabuga), Tsvetaeva hanged herself.[22]
References
- ^ Schwartz, Stephen (24 January 1988). "Intellecturals and Assassins - Annals of Stalin's Killerati". New York Times. Retrieved 6 August 2012.
- ISBN 978-0-8101-2589-6.
- ^ ISBN 0-521-25582-1.
- ISBN 0822314827.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8101-2589-6.
- ^ a b Who's Who in the Twentieth Century. "Tsvetaeva, Marina Ivanovna". Oxford University Press, 1999.
- ^ ISBN 0-19-211803-X
- ^ ISBN 0-19-211803-X
- ISBN 978-5-367-00387-1.
- ^ a b Haven, Cynthia (5 January 2003). "A Living Soul in a Dead Noose". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 6 August 2011.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j "Tsvetaeva, Marina Ivanovna" The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Edited by Dinah Birch. Oxford University Press Inc.
- ^ "Статья Ю.Коваленко "Знала ли Марина Цветаева, что ее муж — агент НКВД?»". www.synnegoria.com. Retrieved 18 May 2022.
- ^ a b Brossat, Alain. "The Tragedy of the Bronstein Family". Marxists.org. Retrieved 6 August 2012.
- ^ Reiss, Elsa, Ignace Reiss: In Memoriam, New International, Vol.4 No.9, September 1938, pp.276-278.
- ^ a b Poretsky, Elisabeth K. (1969). Our Own People: A Memoir of "Ignace Reiss" and His Friends. London: Oxford University Press. pp. 243–270.
- LCCN 52005149.
- ISBN 0-465-00312-5(1999), pp. 78-79.
- ^ Rosmer, Alfred, Serge, Victor, and Wullens, Maurice, L'Assassinat d'Ignace Reiss, Les Humbles, April 1938: Reiss was found with five bullets in the head and seven in the body
- ISBN 978-1-4067-4207-7
- ^ a b c Kelly, Catriona. (21 November 2004 ). Coded confessions. The Times Literary Supplement, posted online at Powells.com. Retrieved 6 August 2012. Archived 31 January 2013 at archive.today
- YouTube, Channel one
- ^ Cooke, Belinda. "Marina Tsvetaeva, Poet of the extreme". Retrieved 21 April 2009.