Ariadna Sergeevna Efron
Autobiography. November 7, 1963
I, Ariadna Sergeevna Èfron, was born on September 5/18, 1912, in Moscow. Parents - Sergey Yakovlevich Èfron, literary worker, art critic. Mother - poet Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva.
In 1922 I went abroad with my parents. From 1922 to 1925 I lived in Czechoslovakia, from 1926 to 1937 - in France, where I graduated from the Art Publicite school of arts and crafts in Paris (book design, engraving, lithography) and the Ecole du Louvre school at the Louvre Museum - the history of fine arts. Having started working, I collaborated in the French magazines “Russia Today” (“Russie d'Aujourd'hui”), "France-USSR" (“France-URSS”), “Pour-Vu” (“Pour-Vous”), as well as in the Russian-language magazine “Our Union”, published in Paris by the Soviet embassy (articles, essays, translations, illustrations).
In that time, I translated Mayakovsky, Bezymensky and other Soviet poets into French. I returned to the USSR in March 1937, worked in the editorial office of the Revue de Moscou magazine (in French), published by Zhurgaz (Magazine and Newspaper Association); authored articles, essays, reports; made illustrations and translations.
In 1939, I was arrested (together with my father who had returned to the USSR) by the NKVD (Secret Police or People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) and have been convicted to 8 years in labor camps according to Article 58-6 by a Special Council.
In the release in 1947, I worked as a graphic teacher at the Art School in Ryazan, where was arrested again in early 1949 and sentenced, as previously convicted, to transportation for life in the Turukhansky district of the Krasnoyarsk region; in Turukhansk I worked as an artist at the district town hall.
I was rehabilitated in 1955 due to the lack of evidence. I returned to Moscow, prepared for publication the first posthumous edition of my mother's works. I have worked and am still working on poetry translations.
I am now preparing for publication a collection of lyrics, poems, plays by Marina Tsvetaeva for the Large Series of the Poet's Library.
Mother, Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva, who returned to the USSR in 1939 with her son George, died on August 31, 1941, in the city of Yelabuga on the Kama, where she was evacuated.
Brother, Georgy Sergeevich Èfron, died at the front in 1944.
Father, Sergei Yakovlevich Èfron, was shot in 1941 under sentence of the Military Tribunal. Rehabilitated posthumously due to the lack of evidence.