The writer and publicist Sergei Efron is best known as the husband of Marina Tsvetaeva. He was a prominent figure in the Russian emigration. One of the most controversial moments in the writer's biography was his collaboration with the Soviet secret services.
Childhood and youth
Sergey 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 finished his studies at the famous and popular Polivanovskaya gymnasium in Moscow. After that, the young man entered the philological faculty of Moscow State University. It was there that Sergei Efron became close to the revolutionaries and himself became a member of the underground.
In 1911, in the Crimean Koktebel, he met with Marina Tsvetaeva. The couple began an affair. In January 1912, they played a wedding, and a few months later they had a daughter, Ariadne.
World War I
Efron’s measured and calm life ended with the onset of World War I. Like many peers, he wanted to go to the front. In the first year of the war, there was a stormy surge of patriotic sentiments in the country, which even blocked the dislike of the "progressive public" towards Tsar Nikolai.
First, Sergei Efron was enrolled as a brother of mercy on a medical train. However, it would be wrong to think that he dreamed of a medical career. In 1917, the young man graduated from the cadet school. By that time, the February revolution had already taken place, and a Bolshevik coup was coming. The army fighting at the front against Germany was demoralized. Against this background, Sergei Efron remained in Moscow.
In the "white" movement
From the very beginning of the Civil War, Efron was against the Bolsheviks. While in Moscow, he found an armed uprising 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 Sergey went south, where he joined the Armed Forces of the South of Russia (VSYUR), which had just begun to form.
The newly made officer did not leave the trenches for three years. He was injured twice, but remained in service. Efron Sergey Yakovlevich participated in the Ice Campaign, which became one of the most glorious pages in the history of the "white" movement. The writer fought with the Bolsheviks to the end, until the retreat to the Crimea. From there, Efron was evacuated first to Constantinople, and then to Prague.
There, Marina Tsvetaeva moves to him. The couple did not see each other for more than three years while the Civil War was on. They left for Paris, where they engaged in active literary activities. Tsvetaeva continued to publish collections of poems. Efron in Europe wrote vivid and detailed memoirs “Notes of a volunteer”.
In exile
Having appreciated all his past, the former enemy of the Soviet regime was disappointed in the “white” movement. Sergei Efron’s letters of that time show the evolution of his views. In the mid-1920s, he joined the Eurasian circle. This was a young philosophical movement, formed in the midst of Russian emigration of the first wave.
Proponents of Eurasianism believed that Russia in the cultural and civilizational sense is the heiress of the steppe hordes of the East (primarily Mongol nomads). This point of view has become extremely popular among the intelligentsia in exile. Disillusionment affected both the old tsarist regime and the new Soviet regime.
NKVD officer
Most of his time in exile, Efron made his living by publishing in newspapers. In the early 30s, he joined the Masonic lodge. More important was his collaboration with the Union Homecoming. Such organizations were created by the Soviet government in order to establish contact with emigrants who wanted to return to their native country.
It was then, as biographers and historians believe, that the writer became an agent of the NKVD. The Soviet special services had many recruiters in different countries. One of them was Sergey Efron. The photo in his personal file in the NKVD was signed by Andreev. That was his operational alias.
Over several years of cooperation with the NKVD, Efron helped recruit dozens of members of the "white" movement in exile. Some of them became killers of people undesirable for the USSR in Europe. During the Spanish Civil War, Efron was engaged in the transfer of Soviet agents beyond the Pyrenees, who later joined international brigades.
Homecoming
For almost all the "whites" who began to cooperate with the USSR, this decision turned out to be fatal. Sergey Efron was no exception. The biography of a publicist is full of episodes when he was hooked by the French police. In the end, he was suspected of involvement in the political assassination of Ignatius Reiss. This man was a former Soviet intelligence agent and professional intelligence officer. In the 30s he fled 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 - he was given a state-owned apartment and given a salary. Soon, Marina Tsvetaeva's wife returned to Efron from exile. There is still debate whether she knew about her husband’s double life. In none of her letters did she mention her suspicions. However, it is difficult to believe that people who lived for many years side by side, poorly imagined each other's life.
It should be noted that after the assassination of Reiss, Tsvetaeva was also under investigation. However, the French police failed to find any evidence proving her involvement in the murder. This allowed the poetess calmly return to the Soviet Union to her husband.
Arrest and execution
In the late 30s, the Great Terror was in full swing in the USSR, when the NKVD became victims of everything, from imaginary traitors in the secret services and army officers to random citizens on whom the denunciation was written. Therefore, the fate of Efron, who had an ambiguous biography, was a foregone conclusion on the day when he returned by ferry from Europe to Leningrad.
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 took quite a while. Perhaps the authorities kept him in captivity until better times, when it would become necessary to carry out orders for 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 Nazi troops.
Marina Tsvetaeva as a famous writer was transported to Yelabuga (in Tatarstan). There, on August 31 (even before her husband was shot), she committed suicide.
Efron's literary heritage (letters, memoirs, fiction) was published after the collapse of the Soviet Union. His books have become a vivid evidence of a complex and controversial era.