On the eve of the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression, TD remembers Euphrosyne Kersnovskaya, a memoirist, artist, and Gulag prisoner. A meeting dedicated to her took place on December 27, 2009 in the Church of the Martyr Tatiana at Moscow State University. The meeting was attended by people who personally knew Euphrosyne Antonovna, and a film about her life directed by Vladimir Meletin was shown.
Life in the camp
Evfrosiniya Antonovna Kersnovskaya created her “rock painting” in 1963-64 - long before the appearance of “The Gulag Archipelago” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “Steep Route” by Evgenia Ginzburg, and “Kolyma Tales” by Varlam Shalamov. The genre of this narrative is unique - drawings accompanied by detailed comments. At the same time, the discrepancy is obvious: “In style, this is a typical landscape painting of the 19th century, that is, very intimate, lyrical images. And in terms of content, it’s an epic,” says priest Vladimir Vigilyansky, who prepared the first publication about Kersnovskaya in Ogonyok in 1990.
Even more unique is the fate of Euphrosyne Antonovna. This is the view of a person who never lived under Soviet rule: first Euphrosyne lived in non-Soviet Bessarabia, and then was immediately repressed. She did not know Soviet propaganda and had the “luxury” of looking at the world through the eyes of a person who listens first of all to her conscience. “What happiness it is when you do not experience hesitation, listen to the voice of your conscience and obey only its orders!” - written in one of the notebooks. Kersnovskaya, without realizing it, looked a little from the side and from above, and even Solzhenitsyn said that he freed himself from ideological captivity only after several years in the camp. Kersnovskaya was always free.
Kersnovskaya's drawn epic is a huge collection of 1,500 pages of text and about 700 illustrations. She made several copies of the manuscript and distributed them to her friends, promising to keep them in secret until better times came. Euphrosyne Antonovna did not consider herself a writer and artist; “memories” are her only experience of verbal creativity. Nevertheless, their artistic level is quite high. Why? The author’s upbringing and innate culture played a big role. She was a noblewoman (her father was a lawyer, her mother was a teacher of foreign languages). Euphrosyne spoke six languages, knew and loved music... All this helped not to break down in the camp: during interrogations, she spent hours reading poetry to herself, and when she heard music familiar from childhood in the office of the NKVD chief, she gained perseverance. It is significant that the most difficult test for Kersnovskaya was the test of the “scat bucket”, which stood in full view of everyone: “... this was the cause of the most unbearable suffering - worse than hunger, worse than thirst, worse than the cold, worse than the most inhuman fatigue. The most painful, most humiliating feeling for me is shame.” But she didn’t know any other “shame” - pangs of conscience. And not because she was in a state of delight. “Once and for all, I made a decision: never ask myself the question “what benefits me?” and not weigh all the pros and cons when you need to make a decision, but simply ask yourself the question “won’t I be ashamed in front of my father’s memory?” And act as your conscience dictates. ...This gave me strength and strengthened my will: I had no doubts, hesitations, regrets - in a word, everything that “gnaws” at the soul and shakes my nerves.”
It is not surprising that the film, directed by Vladimir Meletin, is called “Euphrosinia Kersnovskaya. Life". The archpriest also developed a sense of Kersnovskaya’s life as a living image_951.jpg)
Maxim Kozlov while watching the film: “This is truly a life, irreducible to specific historical circumstances. When a person cannot break the Commandments, kill the hated sadistic boss from behind his back (and Kersnovskaya had such a temptation - M.H.) - this elevates fate to the level of a patericon. The details, the history, will be forgotten - after all, few now know in detail about the persecutions of Decius and Diocletian. But we know the feat of the first Christians. “The same is Kersnovskaya’s path: this is a story not about the Gulag, but about the human soul.” Priest Vladimir Vigilyansky added that through meeting Kersnovskaya, he reconsidered his attitude to work. “We lived in a Soviet state that was hostile to us,” says Father Vladimir. “We perceived labor for this state as forced. But Evfrosinia Antonovna was not afraid of any work in the camp; she worked not out of fear, but out of conscience. Her favorite job was... the morgue. There she felt like a person useful to others, even if she was already dead.”
“Euphrosinia Kersnovskaya always acted according to her conscience, and her life proved that the consciousness of inner dignity is a much more reliable guarantee of survival than the position of speedy adaptation,” Arseny Roginsky, head of the Memorial Scientific Information and Educational Center, one of the film’s commentators, is convinced . And the film deserves special attention.
Life on screen
Vladimir Meletin directed the film “Euphrosinia Kersnovskaya. Life" for the 100th anniversary of Kersnovskaya in 2007. Daria Chapkovskaya, a sculptor and teacher at Moscow State University (in the last years of Euphrosyne Antonovna’s life, she looked after her), talks about her manuscript; priest Vladimir Vigilyansky; Vitaly Shentalinsky - chairman of the commission of the Union of Writers of Russia on the heritage of repressed writers, author of many books; Arseny Roginsky.
The director is focused not on the external plot, but on the internal state of the heroine, although she is not physically present in the frame. Diary entries, portraits of commentators. But the film is dominated by drawings, sometimes with elements of animation (which is always very unexpected and impressive: one of the details of a static image suddenly begins to move). This is probably the most successful form for film adaptation of Kersnovskaya’s notes: to show thoughts and drawings as they are. Of course, only part of the picturesque “book” was included in the film - but to feel the taste of the sea, it is enough to taste one drop.
How to defeat the Gulag?
Kersnovskaya_Night_Search5_16.jpg)
“Since childhood, I have been looking for an answer to the question of whether it is possible to defeat the Gulag. And Kersnovskaya’s manuscript convincingly confirmed that it is possible,” says Igor Chapkovsky, the publisher of the manuscript, the man in whose family Euphrosyne Antonovna lived in the last years of her life. — Many people tell me that reading Kersnovskaya’s book or watching a film about her is difficult. But the only way to get rid of the Gulag is not to be afraid to look at it, to know about it.” “The ideology of the Gulag is to prove that it did not exist,” says Igor Moiseevich. “If we forget about him, he will win.”
Priest Vladimir Vigilyansky agrees with Chapkovsky: “Now the topic of Stalin has often begun to be raised, and the era of Stalinism is presented in a positive, positive way. Arguing with these opinions is pointless. But it is necessary to tell the truth about our past.” Archpriest Alexander Borisov, rector of the Church of the Unmercenary Saints Cosmas and Damian in Shubin, of which Euphrosyne Kersnovskaya was a parishioner in the last years of her life, is also concerned that in our country the memory of the victims of the totalitarian regime is in oblivion. Father Alexander gives an example: in Europe, many concentration camps have been turned into museums and memorials, and they are actively visited. Our only memorial is on the site of the Perm camp. “Why did this become possible? Because of division: anyone who does not belong to my community is no longer a person. God saved Euphrosyne Antonovna so that she would tell this.” It is with Christians, according to Archpriest Alexander, that resistance to all sorts of divisions should begin today.
The main thing
Kersnovskaya called her almost voluntary exile to Siberia (there were several opportunities to avoid this fate) “the great tonsure.” Life turned this metaphor into reality: Euphrosyne lived her life as a nun - in non-covetousness, celibacy, obedience to God's will. She was definitely a believer. Her writings are permeated with a genuine Christian spirit, although they do not contain theoretical discussions on the topics of good, evil, mercy and tolerance. This is not a popular print - the author had to go through the strongest temptations: killing a person and killing himself: “... somehow mechanically, already raising my hand with a pistol, keeping my finger on the trigger, I glanced, and... Telegraph wires passed in front of the window and just below, a poplar branch swayed. ... There was heaven. There were clouds. There was a branch — green, fresh. There were also swallows. And all this will happen. Will be!.. And me?.. won’t be?!.. No. No. I’ll be there again!!!”
Inner joy is the core on which the author and main character of Kersnovskaya’s book relies.
No wonder she was called Euphrosyne (from Greek - joy).
1907, December 24 (old style) (new style January 8, 1908). — Born in Odessa into a noble family.
Father - Anton Antonovich Kersnovsky, lawyer (died 1936 (1939?)). Mother - Alexandra Alekseevna Kersnovskaya, nee Caravasili (1878-1964) - teacher of foreign languages, graduated from the Lyceum in Bucharest, and also studied at the conservatory. Brother - Anton Kersnovsky (1905 (?) - June 24, 1944), an outstanding military historian of the Russian Abroad.
Before 1919 - Life in Odessa. Getting home education. Studying at the gymnasium. Father's work as a lawyer-criminologist in the Odessa Court Chamber. Visit to the mother's family estate - the dacha "Froza" - Cahula (last time August 18 - November 19, 1918). Destruction of the Froza dacha by troops fleeing from the front in the fall of 1917.
1919 - Arrest of the father of the Odessa Cheka and his release by miracle. Flight of a family from Russia to Romania by sea on the French cruiser Mirabeau.
1920 - 1930s — Life on the family estate Tsepilovo (Bessarabia).
My mother taught (in 1922-1923) English and French at the male Lyceum of Xenopol and French at the Domnica Ruksanda gymnasium in Soroca.
Graduation from high school with knowledge of many languages. Completion of veterinary courses. Euphrosyne creates a model farm on her estate. Learning this in practice from my neighbor I. Yanevskaya, a farmer and owner of the Dubno estate. Farming and performing all the work on the land (vinegrowing, growing grain, livestock) and at the same time self-education, horseback riding and hiking in the Carpathians, Poland.
A trip to Dijon to visit my brother, who is studying in France.
1936 (1939?), autumn. - Father's death. He is buried in a crypt on the estate.
1940, June 28. — The entry of Soviet troops into the territory of Bessarabia and the establishment of Soviet power there.
1940, July. — Eviction of daughter and mother from their own home. Complete confiscation of property. Searching for housing. Help E.Ya. Gnanch-Dobrovolskaya in providing housing in Soroca. Eviction from the house of the father's younger brother - Boris Antonovich Kersnovsky - with a large family. Their departure to Romania. Setting up a working technical and agronomic school on a farm.
1940, autumn. — Work in the vineyards.
1940-1941, winter. — Work in the “Mikhailovsky forest.”
1941, June 13-21. — NKVD officers came for E. Kersnovskaya in her absence. Refusal to hide, go into hiding and voluntarily join the NKVD. Delivery to Floresti station. Placement in the "Stolypin" carriage. Link stage. Transportation conditions. Placement in a punishment cell.
1941, June 22 - December 2. — News of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Arrival in Kuzedeevo (Kuzbass). Work in haymaking. Confiscation of passport. Taking a receipt that she is “exiled for life.” Stage to Novosibirsk, then by barge to the village of Suiga. Delivery to a logging point on the banks of the Anga River. Living conditions of exiles. Transfer to Ust-Tyarm.
1941, December 3 - February 25. — Speech at a meeting at the club regarding inflated production standards. Conflict with the head of the Suiginsky forestry enterprise Dmitry Alekseevich Khokhrin. Writing denunciations against Kersnovskaya. Heading to Suigu. Work on timber rafting. Famine due to Khokhrin's withdrawal from allowance.
1942, March - August 23. — Wandering around Siberia (about 1500 km). One-time job. Helping poor people. Meetings with exiled Bessarabians.
1942, August 24 - autumn. — Arrest near Rubtsovsk. Consequence. Charged with espionage. Staying in a pre-trial detention cell (CPC). Prisoners. A week's stay in solitary confinement at a military tribunal in Barnaul. Transfer to an internal NKVD prison. Night interrogations. Investigators Sokolov, Lykhin, Stepan Titov. Refusal to admit one's "guilt". Transfer to the first suburban prison in Barnaul. Stage. Transfer prison in Novosibirsk.
1942, autumn - 1943, March. — Delivery under escort to the motor ship "Voroshilov". Stage along the Ob to Narym. The death of children of the Azerbaijani stage from hunger and dysentery. Staying all winter in an unheated pre-trial detention cell in Narym. The fate of prisoners. Familiarization with the investigation material at the prosecutor's office. Refusal to subscribe to the false fabrications of investigators. Interrogation in the office of the head of the local NKVD Nikolai Saltymakov.
1943, February 24. - Court. Bringing charges under Article 58-10, Part II. Sentence: execution. Refusal to write a petition for pardon. Replacement of sentence to 10 years in labor camp. Walking stage to Tomsk.
1943, from spring to September. — Stay at the Mezhaninovka camp. Work in the cooperage shop, in the burning room. Mass death of people from hunger and vitamin deficiency. Pellagra. Death of children who survived the siege from Leningrad. Ended up in a punishment cell on May 1st. Stay in the camp hospital. Help from doctor Sarra Abramovna Gordon. Stage to lagot department No. 4 at Eltsovka station near Novosibirsk. Work on the night shift in a brigade repairing hats brought from the front, during the day - on a subsidiary farm. Transfer to a brigade for the construction of the Chkalov aircraft plant near Novosibirsk.
1943, October - 1944, April. — Transfer by a veterinarian to a camp pig farm. Nursing and rescuing sick pigs. Baptism of E.A. Kersnovskaya, son of Vera Leonidovna Tankova (from the family of admirals Nevelsky) Dmitry. Statements about anti-religious Soviet poetry by former pig farm veterinarian Irma Melman. Transfer to the construction of the Komsomol club.
1944, April 14 - June 24. - Put under investigation. Placement in a camp underground prison. Cellmates. Help for imprisoned Moldovan Zemfira Pop. Interrogations. Court verdict: 10 years of labor camp and 5 years of loss of rights (Article 58-10).
1944, June - 1947, May. — Transfer to a high-security barracks (BUR) with repeat offenders. Laundry work. Stage from Zlobin near Krasnoyarsk along the Yenisei to Norilsk. Rescue of Professor N.M. Fedorovsky from the bullying of criminals. Arrival in Norilsk (August 1944). Work in cordon No. 13 in Gorstroy. Illness, placement in the camp's Central Hospital (CBL). Recovery and work as a nurse in the Central Clinical Hospital, in the morgue. Completing therapeutic practice under the guidance of prisoner doctor L.B. Mardna.
1947, June - 1951. - Transfer to work in a mine at his own request. Settlement in the Nagorny camp. Repeated placement in a punishment cell. Work at mine 13/15 as a bulk breaker, rope operator, scraper-miner. Keeping records of stay in exile, escape, camps. The “black notebook” with notes got to the head of the camp, Lieutenant Amosov.
1952, January - July. — Transfer to general work. The answer to an insult to the foreman is placement in a punishment cell alone in handcuffs. Hunger strike in response to beatings by the deputy head of the camp, Kirpichenko. Help from civilian Antonina Kazimirovna Petkun. Call to the head of the 7th department, Captain Bloch. Transfer by a loader to a transshipment and food base (PPT). Earning credits.
1952, August - 1957. - Liberation from the camp. Training in courses for mining masters (1953). Work as a civilian in mine No. 15 as a mining foreman, assistant site manager, and driller. Completion of courses for masters of drilling and blasting operations.
1957, summer. — A trip from the Arctic on vacation to Moldova to visit my father’s grave. Meeting with a friend of E.G.’s mother. Smolinskaya. Receiving news that the mother lives in Romania. Returning from a hiking trip through the Caucasus to Norilsk. Transfer to work as a mine blaster. Correspondence with mother. View these KGB letters.
1958, summer - 1959. - Meeting with mother in Odessa. Return to Norilsk, get a separate room.
1960, March. — A failed attempt to dismiss Kersnovskaya from the mine based on the conclusion of the medical commission. Call to the KGB. Interrogation by Colonel Koshkin.
1960. - Friendly trial of Kersnovskaya in the club (April 4). The team's decision to leave her in her previous position. The management's decision to remove her from the mine. Work as a timber loader. Publication in the newspaper "Zapolyarnaya Pravda" of articles written at the request of the KGB and discrediting the honor and dignity of Kersnovskaya and her parents (April 17 and May 11).
1960-1964. — Receiving a miner's pension of 120 rubles. Purchase of half a house in Essentuki. Living there with a mother who came from Romania, who renounced Romanian citizenship and a Romanian pension.
1964-1970s, beginning. — Writing in Essentuki 12 notebooks of memories (she did not give a name) about her stay in the Gulag, illustrated with 680 drawings. Creation of a work that is the same in plot, but different in form - albums of drawings with captions. Their illegal storage by different people. Extensive correspondence with friends. Writing illustrated diaries “Nature and Weather”, with the heading “In the Country and in the World”. Gardening and floriculture not only on your site, but also on your street and even in your neighborhood.
1980s — The appearance of E. Kersnovskaya’s memoirs in samizdat in the form of several volumes of typescript with the author’s illustrations.
1987. - Stroke. Care and care for E. Kersnovskaya family members I.M. Chapkovsky from Moscow and their friends.
1990. - Publication of Kersnovskaya’s drawings and articles about her in the magazine “Ogonyok” (Nos. 3,4) and part of the memoirs in the magazine “Znamya” (Nos. 3, 4, 5). The editors received more than 150 responses. Publication of drawings and an essay about Kersnovskaya in the English magazine “Observer” (June).
1991. - Release of albums by E. Kersnovskaya under the title “Rock Painting” in Russian and German. Publication of drawings in German magazines “Art” and “Stern”.
The publication of an essay and notes in the newspaper “Zapolyarnaya Pravda” with an apology from Kersnovskaya for the slanderous articles of 1960.
1990-1991. — Rehabilitation of illegal deportation in Moldova and two investigative cases in Russia.
1994, April. — Release of Kersnovskaya’s album “Cupable de rien” (“Innocent of anything”) in France.
2000-2001. — Publication of the complete test of the work, in 6 volumes. Creation of a website for the work of E. Kersnovskaya http://www.gulag.su.
2000 - Release of the documentary film “Euphrosyne’s Album”, which received Russian and international prizes.
2005. — In Moscow, at the Andrei Sakharov Museum, an exhibition-installation “Notebooks of Euphrosyne Kersnovskaya” took place.
2006. — On the occasion of Kersnovskaya’s centenary, her text and visual work “How Much is a Man Worth” was published in full, with all the drawings.
* information beyond the scope of memories is in italics
Euphrosinia Kersnovskaya - writer, artist, Bessarabian landowner. A Gulag prisoner exiled in 1941 to Siberia for forced labor. Author of 2,200 handwritten pages of memoirs, accompanied by 700 drawings. This article will present a brief biography of the landowner.
Childhood
Kersnovskaya Evfrosiniya Antonovna was born in Odessa in 1908. The girl's father worked as a criminologist lawyer. Frosya grew up as a gentle and thoughtful girl until the Civil War began. In 1919, all the tsarist lawyers, including her father, were arrested. It was only by a miracle that he escaped execution. In the middle of the night, the Kersnovsky family was awakened by the clanging of rifle butts and the sound of boots. All that the father managed to do was bless his children and his wife, who were sobbing in fear, with the icon. Then he was immediately taken away.
Later, Kersnovsky told his daughter about that terrible night. All the lawyers arrested around the city (712 people) were brought to the gloomy Odessa Cheka, located on Catherine Square. The building was fenced with barbed wire. People around were noisy and jostling. Car engines roared, running without a muffler. Latvians and Chinese were walking everywhere. Those who arrived were marked on lists and taken out in groups of 2-4 people.
Moving
Soon the father was released, and the Kersnovsky family moved to Bessarabia (in those years - part of Romania). They settled on a family estate located in the village of Tsepilovo. Another Kersnovsky estate was destroyed in 1917 by soldiers fleeing from the front.
Studies
Despite daily worries, the parents paid enough attention to raising their daughter. Euphrosyne Kersnovskaya received an excellent education. The girl was instilled with a love of languages, painting, music and literature. After high school, Frosya decided to take veterinary courses and successfully completed them. Living conditions were constantly changing, so she needed to acquire useful skills.
Job
My father was not at all interested in farming. Everything fell on the shoulders of Euphrosyne, because the Kersnovskys had no servants or hired workers. The future artist regularly worked in the fields, took care of livestock and cleaned the house. In addition, the girl had to regularly prove to her neighbors that at that age (20 years old) she could easily cope with everything.
On 40 hectares of land, Kersnovskaya Euphrosyne grew grain and grapes. Soon the father died. To feed her family, the girl had to start growing grain for export and supply. And in rare hours of rest, she loved to go with her cousins and brothers to the sea or ride horses.
Repression
In the summer of 1940, Bessarabia was included in the Soviet Union and transformed into Mass repressions began immediately. Frosya and her relatives were evicted from their home and their property was confiscated. The last thing Kersnovskaya remembered from her peaceful life was her mother on the porch of the house, a raspberry sieve for dumplings and sunlight in the garden foliage.
Soon Euphrosyne’s uncle also lost his property. He immediately left with his family for Romania. Frosya herself remained in her homeland, but sent her mother to Bucharest for security reasons. This was a clear manifestation of patriotism, because the girl could easily leave in the first months of the occupation. But she decided to share the grief with her people. This attitude towards the Motherland was instilled in her from childhood. In addition, Kersnovskaya hoped that soon all the troubles would end and it would be possible to return home. But she was wrong.
Tests
As a “former landowner,” Euphrosyne Kersnovskaya was completely infringed on her rights. The same applied to work activities. The girl found it difficult to get a job as a seasonal worker on the farm of the agronomy school. And after that, she generally had to hire herself out to different people and do not exactly women’s work: preparing firewood, uprooting stumps. Without citizenship, Frosya “was subject to isolation from normal society,” so the girl had to spend the night on the street. She was given a Soviet passport on the eve of the elections in January 1941. After reviewing the list of candidates, Kersnovskaya crossed out the entire ballot. She did this because she saw in it the name of a woman who “worked” as a prostitute before the advent of Soviet power.
Soon, NKVD officers came to Euphrosyne’s home, but she was not there. The girl did not feel guilty for her action and was not afraid of anything, so she went to the Cheka herself. It’s unlikely that she could have guessed what would happen to her. And the following happened - Frosya was exiled to Siberia. Besides her, other Bessarabians were sent there.
Link
But even in the harsh conditions of Siberia, the future artist Euphrosyne Kersnovskaya did not want to put up with injustice. She tried to seek the truth and constantly stood up for the weak. One day a girl took pity on an unknown old man and shared a piece of sugar with him. In response, he advised her never to share with anyone or show her own weakness. In a wolf pack, these are usually finished off. Fortunately, Frosya did not heed the advice. However, she did not turn into a beast and was able to survive.
One day, a scene played out before her eyes: a woman working at a logging site fell from powerlessness and asked the camp director for a short break. He replied that if she could not work, then she would rather die. After that, the chief turned around and went to the guardhouse. Euphrosyne was overcome with rage. She grabbed an ax and ran after him with the intention of killing him. On the threshold, the woman stopped only because the boss was sitting with his back to her. Kersnovskaya realized that if she hits now, she will be no different from him.
The escape
The punishment was severe - the woman was completely deprived of rations. Thus, Frosya was doomed to a painful and long death of starvation. She had no choice but to run. Kersnovskaya still put up with living in inhuman conditions, but dying like an animal was unacceptable for her. The weakened woman had to walk one and a half thousand kilometers through the taiga. In the future, many moments of this “journey” will be reflected in drawings published in albums called “Rock Painting” (Evfrosinia Kersnovskaya will publish them in 1991).
New sentence
But in the end it was all in vain. A few months later, Frosya will be arrested in the village where she wandered from the taiga, and sentenced to capital punishment. During the interrogation, Tchaikovsky’s Italian Capriccio, familiar to Kersnovskaya from childhood, was heard from the loudspeaker. Before the woman’s eyes stood a garden, a house, a mother, and a father sitting in a rocking chair. Torture by memories was much worse than physical torture. After the verdict was announced, the judge invited Euphrosyne to file a petition for clemency, but she refused. However, Kersnovskaya's death penalty was replaced with five years of exile and ten years in the camps. In 1944, another 10 years were added to her sentence for “counter-revolutionary agitation.” Frosya received the status of an incorrigible criminal, and such people were kept only in a high-security barracks (BUR).
Liberation
The conditions there were simply inhumane. Kersnovskaya more than once had to stand barefoot on the stone floor all day to dry her washed clothes. Frosya was saved by camp doctors. They achieved the transfer of the future writer to the medical unit. The heroine of this article worked as a nurse in a clinic for two years, and in a morgue for a year. Afterwards, Kersnovskaya demanded to be transferred to the mine. There she hoped to find inner freedom, because, in her words, “scoundrels do not go underground.” This is how the first woman miner appeared in Norilsk. In 1957, Euphrosyne was finally released, but still continued to work there.
Soon, Kersnovskaya, a full-fledged citizen, received leave and fulfilled her cherished dream. The woman went to her native Tsepilovo to visit her father’s grave. There, pleasant news awaited her - an old friend of her mother told her that she still lived in Romania, and gave her address.
Last years
After her retirement, Euphrosyne Kersnovskaya bought a dilapidated house with a garden in Essentuki. She immediately moved her mother there, from whom she had been separated for 20 years. In subsequent years, Frosya looked after her and talked a lot about the events she experienced. But, feeling sorry for her mother, she kept silent about the horrors of the camp. After her death alone, she wrote 2,200 pages of memoirs. The woman also drew 700 illustrations for them.
1994 is the year when Euphrosyne Kersnovskaya died. The writer's books were published during her lifetime. In 1982, the memoirs were distributed through samizdat, and in 1990 they were published in the British newspaper Observer and the Soviet magazines Znamya and Ogonyok. Also during her lifetime, Kersnovskaya received complete rehabilitation.
Why are people who went through war or camps given such a long life? Maybe so that they could at least a little forget what they experienced and take a break from it? Most likely no! The life of Euphrosyne Antonovna shows that she survived to tell her descendants about the trials that befell her and teach them courage. This woman never deviated from her principles and always remained human!
- Euphrosyne Kersnovskaya, whose biography is presented above, knew Italian, Spanish and English quite well. The artist was also fluent in German, Romanian and spoke French perfectly.
- When going into exile, Kersnovskaya did not take any winter clothes with her, thinking that she would buy everything on the spot. But practically nothing was sold in Siberian stores. And the exiles could purchase goods only with the permission of their superiors. As a result, Euphrosyne was allowed to buy a padded jacket and felt boots only when the frosts reached forty degrees.
- On December 3, 1941, Kersnovskaya, while in exile, attended a club meeting where lecturer Khokhrin told how the United States was helping the USSR. The girl asked the speaker whether America would run into a war with Japan because of this (she meant. Only many months later, Euphrosyne Kersnovskaya learned that Khokhrin had written a denunciation against her, considering the question asked “a vile slander against a peace-loving Asian country.” Five days after the incident, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
- Few people know that Kersnovskaya had an older brother named Anton. He went to Europe in the mid-1920s to obtain an education. In the end, Anton remained to live in Paris and received the profession of “military historian”. In 1940, due to the outbreak of war, he was drafted into the French army. A few months later, Euphrosyne received a death notice. In fact, Anton did not die, but was seriously wounded. He would die only in 1944 from tuberculosis. His works and articles on the history of the Russian army will soon receive worldwide recognition. But in Russia they will be published only after the collapse of the USSR.
- Based on the diaries of the heroine of this article, two full-length documentaries were shot: “Euphrosyne Kersnovskaya. Life" (V. Meletin) and "Album" (G. Ilugdin).
This story is about how a person can overcome anything, even if he is humiliated and beaten; about the fact that you can remain human, regardless of whether they are aiming at you or you are being targeted; about how life becomes living...
On January 8, 1908, in Odessa, a girl was born into the family of criminologist lawyer Anton Kersnovsky, who was named Frosya, a cute and even funny name for our ears - Euphrosyne. Her paternal ancestor, a Pole, was knighted with the motto “Loyal and Brave.” Apparently, the girl’s courage was inherited.
A serene childhood usually has a short period, and the children of the revolution practically did not have it. The gentle, thoughtful girl disappeared when in 1919, at the height of the Civil War, her father, along with other tsarist lawyers, was arrested and was only miraculously not shot. In the middle of the night, the family was awakened by the sound of boots and the clanging of rifle butts. The father only managed to bless his wife and children, who were crying with fear, with the icon, and he was taken away. Frosya and his brother ran after the convoy in their nightgowns. Mom could no longer run. She stood in the middle of a dark empty street and just screamed completely meaningless and therefore even more scary-sounding words: “Tonya, come back! Come back! ..
Left: Kersnovsky family - 1911. Right: Euphrosyne Antonovna Kersnovskaya in 1958.
From the words of her father, Euphrosyne recalled: “All the lawyers, the entire “catch” of that night - they say there were 712 of them - were herded into the building on Catherine Square, where this gloomy institution was located - the Odessa Cheka. Barbed wire fence. A statue of Catherine the Great, wrapped in matting, with a red cap on her head. Noise. Crowd. The roar of car engines running without a muffler. And there are Chinese everywhere. And Latvians. Those who arrived were shouted out according to some lists and taken out in small groups of two, three or four people.”
When the father was finally released, the family managed to leave for Bessarabia (at that time part of Romania) and settle on a family estate in the village of Tsepilovo, closer to other relatives. Another of their estates had already been destroyed by soldiers fleeing from the front in 1917...
In their daily worries, parents did not forget about their children’s education. Euphrosyne and her brother received a good upbringing (elder brother Anton went to study in Europe in the mid-1920s and settled in Paris, subsequently becoming a famous military historian in the Russian diaspora). Frose was instilled with a love of literature, music, and painting; she mastered the French language perfectly, Romanian and German well, and spoke English, Spanish, and Italian quite well. True, they did not contain such words as NKVD, Cheka, BUR, GULAG... But who would have imagined that in the future a young lady from an intelligent family would find them useful.
After high school, Euphrosyne also completed veterinary courses. Living conditions had changed, it was necessary to acquire as many truly useful skills as possible. Since the father was not at all interested in farming, Euphrosyne began to do it. Then it was constant work in the field, one’s own land, one’s own livestock, one’s own house, which had to be maintained without the help of hired workers, much less servants. Moreover, she had to constantly prove to her neighbors that in her early 20s she could cope with everything on her own, despite envious glances and evil tongues.
Drawing by E. Kersnovskaya
Euphrosyne grew grapes and grain on 40 hectares, and after her father’s death, in order to pay off his creditors, she had to start growing grain for export. “When my father, whom I idolized, died,” she recalled, “I had no time for tears: I had to save my mother, who almost died of grief. To save not only her life, but also her sanity, which she almost lost - so great was her grief...” And in her rare free hours, she loved to ride horses or go to the sea with her cousins.
In the summer of 1940, Bessarabia became part of the USSR and was transformed into the Moldavian SSR. Mass repressions immediately began, and already in July Euphrosyne and her mother were evicted from their house with complete confiscation of property. Sunlight in the foliage of the garden, a raspberry sieve for dumplings and a mother in worn-out slippers on the porch of the house - the last thing the girl remembered from her peaceful life. Neither the garden, nor the house, nor this porch hot from the sun belonged to her anymore. What a happiness it is when your mother just comes out to meet you and the glare of the sun blinds her eyes... In ordinary life you don’t appreciate this at all.
Drawing by E. Kersnovskaya
When Euphrosyne’s uncle, also deprived of property, left for Romania with his large family, she, wanting to protect her mother, sent her to Bucharest, while she stayed and began looking for work in order to somehow support her. Patriotism is a mysterious phenomenon, especially now it is not at all fashionable. Euphrosyne explained the decision not to leave this way: “I had every opportunity to leave in the first months of the occupation. But I am Russian, although I have Polish blood from my father and Greek blood from my mother. And I had to share his fate with my people...” Apparently, at that time, such an attitude was instilled in the Motherland from childhood - her famous peer wrote years later: “I was then with my people, where my people, unfortunately, were.” And besides, Euphrosyne hoped that all the troubles would not last long and that over time it would be possible to prove herself well before the new government and return to her home.
Drawing by E. Kersnovskaya
But as a “former landowner” she was infringed on all rights, including the right to work, and only as a seasonal worker was she able to get a job on the farm of the technical and agronomic school. And then she hired herself out to different people: to uproot stumps, to prepare firewood. She spent the night on the street because, not having Soviet citizenship, she was “subject to isolation from society,” and only for the winter was she sheltered by a friend of her mother’s. On the eve of the elections on January 1, 1941, she was finally given a Soviet passport. And in the elections, she was the only one who crossed out the entire ballot, because among the candidates she saw the name of a woman who, before the establishment of Soviet power, “worked” as a prostitute.
Shortly before the arrest
It is not surprising that very soon NKVD officers came for Euphrosyne, but she was not at home. Having learned about this, she said: “Those who are guilty are running, and the cowards are hiding!” - and went to the Cheka voluntarily, so as not to be humiliated and dragged under escort. Most likely, she had no idea what would happen to her after this. And then there was exile to Siberia along with other Bessarabians. And do you know what is worse than hunger and thirst in a crowded carriage? Humiliation and shame of using a homemade “outhouse” in front of everyone.
Even in Siberia, at a logging site, not wanting to put up with injustice, Euphrosyne tries to seek the truth and stands up for the weak. One day she shared her last piece of sugar with an old man she didn’t know, to which she heard the advice: “Never give up anything. Hide pain and fear - they make you weak. And the weak are finished off - this is the law of the wolf pack.” Fortunately, Euphrosyne did not follow this advice, did not turn into a beast - and survived.
One day, before her eyes, a woman who had fallen from powerlessness asked the head of the camp to give her a rest. To which he calmly replied: “If you can’t work, die,” he turned away and left. Not realizing what she was doing, Euphrosyne grabbed an ax and ran after him to the guardhouse to kill him, because it seemed unbearable to endure the bullying any longer. She stopped on the threshold - the boss was sitting with his back to her. You see, even on the verge of a clouded consciousness, she firmly knew: you can’t hit in the back! Because otherwise how will she be different from him?
As punishment, Euphrosyne was deprived of rations, thereby dooming her to a long and painful death of starvation. Then she decides to escape. Because living in inhuman conditions is humiliating, but dying like a beast is unacceptable, and she will not give the overseers this pleasure. A weakened woman walked one and a half thousand kilometers through the winter taiga. It makes no sense for us today to imagine what it is like to die of hunger and eat raw carrion - yes, the kind that you accidentally stumble upon in the forest.
But it was all in vain: in the village where Euphrosyne wandered a few months later, she was arrested and, after long interrogations, sentenced to capital punishment for escape. During the next interrogation, Tchaikovsky’s Italian Capriccio suddenly sounded from the loudspeaker, and before Euphrosyne’s eyes a house, a garden, and her father in a rocking chair appeared. This torture by memories was worse than the physical ones. After the verdict was announced, she was asked to file a petition for clemency. Instead, Euphrosyne wrote: “I can’t demand justice, I don’t want to ask for mercy.”
Nevertheless, Kersnovskaya’s death penalty was nevertheless replaced by 10 years in the camps and five years in exile. And in 1944, another 10 years were added for “counter-revolutionary agitation.” Then she learned another new word - BUR, a high-security barracks for incorrigible criminals.
Drawing by E. Kersnovskaya
“To get 400 grams of bread, it was necessary to wash 300 pairs of bloody linen per day, dried into a lump until it was hard as iron, or two thousand - yes, two thousand! - a cap, or a hundred camouflage robes. For all this they were given a bottle of liquid soap. These robes were especially terrible. Once wet, they became hard, like sheet iron, and you could cut out the dried blood with an ax (...) I had to stand in the water all day on the stone floor, barefoot, almost naked, in only shorts, because there was nowhere to dry my clothes, and I had to take them off to dry them, impossible: there is such a shaman in the barracks that they could steal the last footcloth.”
Drawings by E. Kersnovskaya
The camp doctors saved the woman and got her transferred to the medical unit. She worked as a nurse in a hospital for two years and in a morgue for a year. And after that she demanded that she be transferred to work in a mine. There she felt internally freer - “scoundrels don’t go underground.” And she became the first woman miner in Norilsk. Even after the final liberation in 1957, Euphrosyne remained to work there. The biggest mystery of those years was her photograph (see photo at the beginning of the article). On it she... smiles provocatively - having experienced something that is hard to read about!
Having received leave, already as a full citizen, Euphrosyne fulfilled her cherished dream, which had long seemed unrealistic - she came to her native Tsepilovo and visited her father’s grave. Another miracle awaited her there: her mother’s friend told her that she still lived in Romania and that she could even write her a letter.
Soon Evfrosinia Antonovna retired, bought a dilapidated house with a garden in Essentuki and after 20 years of separation brought her mother there. For several years she looked after her, talked about her experiences, but, despite her requests, not about the camps, but about what happened before and after. She spared her mother and carried the burden of memories of the terrible prison time alone.
Evfrosiniya Antonovna with her mother
Finally, they could enjoy their own home, garden and favorite music together: “...After all, you loved music so much! You lived it! You needed her like you needed air... It was not without reason that on the eve of your death, when you clearly lacked air, you asked to play a record with “Ivan Susanin.” You didn’t have enough strength to sing along to your favorite arias, but you continued to conduct with your already weakening hand: “...You rise, my last dawn.
And only after the death of her mother, Evfrosinia Antonovna began to write down her memories of the camps, but in an unusual form - captions to her own drawings, which eventually amounted to almost 700 pieces: “And you asked me for one more thing: to write down, at least in general terms, the history those years - the terrible, sad years of my “universities”... Although in some ways Dante was ahead of me, describing the nine circles of hell.” In 1982, the memoirs were distributed through samizdat, and in 1990 they were published in the magazines Ogonyok, Znamya and the British The Observer.
Evfrosiniya Antonovna Kersnovskaya in 1990
Evfrosiniya Antonovna lived to a ripe old age and waited not only for the publication of her books, but also for complete rehabilitation. Former prisoners of camps or those who have gone through war are often given a very long life - perhaps so that they can at least take a little rest from their experiences? Or does the body become more resilient during trials? Or in order to tell what happened to them, to teach their descendants courage:
All life is a chain of “temptations”. Give in once - goodbye forever, peace of mind! And you will be pitiful, like a crushed worm. No! I don’t need such a fate: I am a human being.
Drawing by E. Kersnovskaya
The memoirs of Euphrosyne Kersnovskaya are on a par with the works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Varlam Shalamov, Evgenia Ginzburg, Anastasia Tsvetaeva, Alexei Artsybushev. But it seems to me that reading her memories requires more effort - drawings in their simplicity and frankness are sometimes much worse than words...