Sergey Efron: biography and bibliography

The writer and publicist Sergei Efron is best known as the husband of Marina Tsvetaeva. He was a notable figure in the Russian emigration. One of the most controversial moments of the writer's biography was his collaboration with Soviet special services.

Childhood and youth

Sergei was born on October 16, 1893. The parents of the child were Narodnaya Volya and died when he was very young. Despite family dramas, the orphan graduated from the famous and popular Polivan High School in Moscow. After that, the young man entered the philological faculty of Moscow State University. It was there that Sergei Efron approached the revolutionaries and became a member of the underground himself.

In 1911 in Crimean Koktebel he met Marina Tsvetaeva. The couple got into an affair. In January 1912 they played a wedding, and a few months later they had a daughter Ariadna.

World War I

Dimensional and quiet life Efron ended with the onset of the First World War. Like many peers, he wanted to go to the front. In the first year of the war there was a stormy patriotic mood in the country, which blocked even the dislike of the "progressive public" for Tsar Nikolai.

First, Sergei Efron was enlisted as a brother of charity in a medical train. However, it would be wrong to think that he dreamed of a medical career. In 1917, a young man graduated from the Junker School. By that time, the February revolution had already taken place, and a Bolshevik coup was on its way. The army, fighting at the front against Germany, was demoralized. Against this background, Sergei Efron stayed in Moscow.

In the "white" movement

From the very beginning of the Civil War, Efron was against the Bolsheviks. Being in Moscow, he found an armed insurrection of supporters of the "reds." In early November, the city was in the hands of the Soviets. Opponents of the Communists had to flee to other regions. Efron Sergei went to the south, where he joined the newly formed armed forces of the South of Russia (VSYUR).

The newly-minted officer did not leave the trenches for three years. He was twice wounded, but remained in the ranks. Efron Sergey Yakovlevich participated in the Ice Hike, which became one of the most glorious pages in the history of the "white" movement. The writer struggled with the Bolsheviks to the end, until the retreat to the Crimea. From there, Efron was evacuated first to Constantinople, and then to Prague.

Marina Tsvetaeva moves there. The spouses did not see each other for more than three years while the Civil War was going on. They left for Paris, where they began active literary activity. Tsvetaeva continued to publish collections of poems. Efron in Europe wrote bright and detailed memoirs of "Notes of a Volunteer."

In the emigration

Having assessed all of its past, the former adversary of the Soviet government was disillusioned with the "white" movement. Sergei Efron's letters of that time show the evolution of his views. In the mid-1920s he joined a circle of Eurasianists. This was a young philosophical trend, formed among the Russian emigration of the first wave.

Supporters of Eurasianism believed that Russia in the cultural and civilizational plan is the heir of the steppe hordes of the East (primarily Mongolian nomads). This point of view has become extremely popular among the intelligentsia in exile. The disappointment was felt both in the old tsarist regime and in the new Soviet regime.

Officer of the NKVD

Much of his time in exile, Efron earned his living by publishing in the newspapers. In the early 30-ies he joined the Masonic lodge. Even more important was his cooperation with the "Union of Return to Homeland." Such organizations were created by the Soviet authorities in order to establish contact with emigrants who wanted to return to their native country.

It was then, according to biographers and historians, the writer became an agent of the NKVD. The Soviet secret services had many recruiters in different countries. One of them was Sergei Efron. Photo in his personal file in the NKVD had the signature "Andreev". This was his operative pseudonym.

During several years of cooperation with the NKVD, Efron helped convert dozens of members of the "white" movement in exile. Some of them became murderers of undesirable persons for the USSR in Europe. During the Civil War in Spain, Efron was engaged in the transfer for the Pyrenees of Soviet agents, who then joined the international brigade.

Homecoming

Almost for all the "whites" who began to cooperate with the USSR, this decision turned out to be fatal. Sergei Efron was no exception. The biography of the publicist is full of episodes when he was on the hook of the French police. In the end, he was suspected of involvement in the political assassination of Ignatius Reiss. This man was a former agent of the Soviet special services and a professional intelligence officer. In the 1930s he escaped from the NKVD, became a defector in France and openly criticized Stalinism. Law enforcement authorities suspected Efron of organizing the murder of this man.

So, in 1937 Efron had to flee Europe. He returned to the Soviet Union, where he was received with demonstrative hospitality - issued a state-owned apartment and paid a salary. Soon Marina Tsvetaeva returned to Efron from exile. There are still disputes whether she knew about her husband's double life. In none of her letters did she mention her suspicions. However, it's hard to believe that people who lived side by side for many years did not really understand each other's lives.

It should be noted that after the assassination of Reiss, Tsvetaeva was also under investigation. However, the French police could not find any evidence proving her participation in the murder. This allowed the poetess to return quietly to the Soviet Union to her husband.

Arrest and execution

At the end of the 1930s, the Great Terror was in full swing in the USSR, when NKVD victims became everything from imaginary traitors in special services and army officers to random citizens on whom the denunciation was written. Therefore, the fate of Efron, who had an ambiguous biography, was sealed on the day he returned from Europe to Leningrad by ferry.

The first was arrested his daughter Ariadne (she will survive). Next in the dungeons was the head of the family himself. This happened in 1939. The investigation was going on for quite some time. Perhaps, the authorities kept him in prison until better times, when it would be necessary to execute orders on executions. In the summer of 1941, Efron was sentenced to death. He was shot on October 16. In those days, Moscow experienced a hasty evacuation due to the approach of the Nazi troops.

Marina Tsvetaeva as a well-known writer was transported to Yelabuga (to Tatarstan). There on August 31 (before the shooting of her husband) she committed suicide.

The literary heritage of Efron (letters, memoirs, fiction) was published already after the collapse of the Soviet Union. His books have become a vivid example of a complex and contradictory era.