Veronika Akopyan
Letter from Esfir Grigorievna Prigozhina to her family, 1936 or 1937
01.04.25 – 30.04.25
About Esfir Grigorievna Prigozhina
Esfir Grigorievna Prigozhina was born in 1906 in Smolensk. She worked as a researcher at the Museum of the Revolution in Leningrad and defended a Ph.D. In September 1936 she was arrested on charges of participation in a "counter-revolutionary Trotskyist-Zinoviev terrorist organisation". Her daughter Natasha was 9 years old at that time, her son Sasha was 2 years old. In December the sentence was announced - 8 years imprisonment in Solovki. Only in the late 1950s it became known that on 14 October 1937 Esfir Prigozhina was again sentenced to execution. She was executed on 1 November 1937 in the Sandormokh tract. In a little over a month after her execution, she would have been 32 years old..
Sources
Letter: https://sand.mapofmemory.org/anketa-daet-40-litrov-moloka-v-den/
Translation to English by activists of Feminist Antiwar Resistance (cell Berlin). Feminist Anti-War Resistance (FAR) is a group of Russian feminists founded in February 2022 to protest against the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Bio: https://bessmertnybarak.ru/Prigozhina_Esfir_Grigorevna/
About Letters from the Silenced
Letters from the Silenced, a project by Veronika Akopyan, sheds light on activists and political prisoners from the USSR and modern Russia who have faced state repression for their civil and anti-war stances. Inspired by The Return of Names, an annual remembrance organized by the human rights group "Memorial," this project preserves stories of defiance and hope.
Through monthly comics for KIOSK, Akopyan shares powerful biographies and letters, honoring the ongoing struggle for justice and fostering solidarity against oppression.
About Veronika Akopyan
Veronika Akopyan is an illustrator and graphic designer based in Ghent, Belgium. She holds a specialist degree in Graphic Art and Illustration from the Moscow Stroganov Art and Design Academy and a master’s in Graphic Design from KASK School of Arts in Ghent (2023).
Her work, blending storytelling with visual artistry, has been exhibited internationally, from London to Tokyo, and has earned numerous awards. These include the “Image of the Book” awards (2021, 2022), the Grand Prix for Fazil Iskander illustrations (2021), and multiple honors from the American Art Awards. With a passion for storytelling and a fondness for visual expression, she crafts narratives that engage the mind and spark the imagination.
