Veronika Akopyan
Letter from Ariadna Efron to Boris Pasternak, 05.01.1950
01.01.25 – 31.01.25
About Ariadna Efron
Ariadna Sergeyevna Efron (1912-1975) was a Russian poet, memoirist, artist, art critic, and translator of prose and poetry. Her original poems, except for those written in childhood, were not printed during her lifetime. She was a daughter of poets Sergei Efron and Marina Tsvetaeva.
From 1922 to 1925, Efron lived in Czechoslovakia, and from 1925 to 1937 in France, from where, on 18 March 1937, she was the first of her family to return to the USSR.
On 27 August 1939, Efron was arrested by the NKVD and convicted by the OSO under article 58-6 (espionage) to eight years of forced labor in labor camps. She was tortured and forced to testify against her father. She only learned afterwards about the death of her parents in 1941 (her mother committed suicide in the evacuation in Yelabuga, and her father was shot).
In the spring of 1943, Efron refused to cooperate with the camp leadership and became a "snitch", and she was transferred to a logging camp in the Sevzheldorlag, a penal camp.
Efron was again arrested on 22 February 1949 and sentenced, based on her previous conviction, to life in exile in the Turukhansky District of the Krasnoyarsk Krai. Thanks to her education in France, she was able to work in Turukhansk as an artist-designer in the cultural center of the local district. She produced a series of watercolor sketches about life in exile, some of which were first published only in 1989.
Her common-law husband ("my first and last husband") was Samuil Davidovich Gurevich [ru] (in the family known as Mulya; 1904–1951; he was executed in the Stalinist repressions), a journalist, translator, and editor-in-chief of the journal Za Rubezhom ('Abroad').
About Boris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian poet, novelist, composer, and literary translator. Pasternak was the author of Doctor Zhivago (1957), a novel that takes place between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Second World War. Doctor Zhivago was rejected for publication in the USSR, but the manuscript was smuggled to Italy and was first published there in 1957.
Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958, an event that enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which forced him to decline the prize. In 1989, Pasternak's son Yevgeny finally accepted the award on his father's behalf.
Sources
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.
Biographies: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariadna_Efron / https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Pasternak
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.
