Chersnovschi Efrosinia

About

Eufrosinia Antonovna Chersnovschi was born on January 8, 1908, in Odesa, into a family of Russian nobles. After the Russian Civil War, her family settled in Bessarabia, where Eufrosinia graduated from gymnasium and veterinary medicine courses, acquiring in-depth knowledge of several foreign languages. In 1940, when the USSR annexed Bessarabia, she and her mother were deported, and Eufrosinia was sent into exile in Siberia. Although she attempted to escape in February 1942, she was captured and initially sentenced to death, a sentence later commuted to 10 years of forced labor. The most significant period of her life unfolded in the Norillag camp in the Russian Federation, where she spent 12 years of her 19 years of captivity. Here, she worked in various positions, from a security guard in the concentration camp to a mining engineer, occupations she carried out with dignity and courage. After her release in 1952, she settled in Norilsk and later in Essentuki, where she worked until her retirement in 1960. Although her work in the mine affected her health, forcing her to use a wheelchair from the 1970s, she found the strength to create a remarkable literary work. Eufrosinia Chersnovschi wrote her memoirs between 1964 and 1968, titling them "How Much is a Person Worth". This exceptional work comprises 2,200,000 characters on the margins of 680 drawings, representing a vivid and meticulous testimony to the horrors of the Gulag. The manuscripts were disseminated through samizdat in 1982, and fragments appeared in the magazines "Ogoniok", "Znamia", and "The Observer" in 1990. The full text of her memoirs was published in six volumes between 2001 and 2002, establishing her as one of the most important memoirists of Soviet repressions. Eufrosinia Chersnovschi passed away on March 8, 1994, in Essentuki, having been rehabilitated shortly before her death.