УДК: 792.075

DOI: 10.35852/2588-0144-2022-1-79-90

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Family, childhood, early youth. Materials for the biography of A. V. Efros

Abstract

The article tells about the first sixteen years – from 1925 to 1941 – in the life of the great Russian director Anatoly Efros (1925–1987), which largely determined the formation of his creative personality. Meanwhile, the years of Efros’ childhood and early youth are practically not studied, since information about them is very scarce – there are no eyewitness accounts, and the director himself left in his books literally three brief fragments of memories of his own childhood and even less about his school life. Along with these materials, the article uses and for the first time introduces into scientific circulation two documents from the GITIS archive – the autobiography of Efros, written when he entered the theatre Institute, and the so – called Personal Accounting Sheet – a brief information dossier that was given in Soviet times for each student or employee. In addition, the article includes fragments of family stories told by the director’s son D. A. Krymov from the words of relatives in an interview with the author, which also somewhat expands ideas about the early period of Efros’s life. All these few facts and evidence are considered in a broad socio-political and theatre context. Efros was born in Kharkiv and spent there eight years. It was the administrative capital of the Ukrainian SSR then, and therefore the article gives a detailed panorama of the theatre life of the city and tells about the political background of the events that caused the departure of the Efros family to Moscow. The article also examines the Moscow period of the family’s life associated with the Aviapribor factory, where Efros’ father worked, and during the war and evacuation, the future director himself. It also gives a picture of the dynamically changing Stalinist Moscow of those years in the early 1930s with the peculiarities of its urban and theatre life. It also deals with the first aesthetic preferences of young Efros.

Keywords

Anatoly Efros, Soviet theatre, directing, Russian theatre school, national question in the USSR.

For citation

Stepanova A. A. Family, childhood, early youth. Materials for the biography of A. V. Efros. Theatre. Fine Arts. Cinema. Music. 2022, no. 1, pp. 79–90.

DOI: 10.35852/2588-0144-2022-1-79-90

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Received: 15.01.2022

Revised: 12.02.2022

Accepted: 14.02.2022