8 August 1901 year
В St. Petersburg I was born Nina Berberova — poet and documentary filmmaker. "Iron Woman." "Miss Silver Age."
His father was an official at the Ministry of Finance, and his mother was from a family of Tver landowners.
Studied at Rostov-on-Don, but dropped out of school and returned to Petrograd. She entered poetry circles and studied with Gumilev. Already at 14 I met Akhmatova и Block.
At 22, she emigrated from Bolshevik Russia with her husband, a poet. Vladislav Khodasevich.
I say: I am not in exile, I do not seek earthly paths. I am not in exile, I am in a message, It's easy for me to live among people
She worked for the émigré publications Poslednie Novosti and Russkaya Mysl.
During the war, she lived in a village near Paris occupied by the Germans. For this, she was accused of collaboration. She admitted to briefly sympathizing with Hitler, but her illusions were shattered after her ex-husband's second wife was sent to a death camp. Olga Margolina-Khodasevich.
At 49, she moved to the United States with two suitcases and $75. She worked in an archive and published the almanac "Commonwealth" about Russian intellectuals. She also wrote several novels about émigrés.
After the publication of her autobiography, “Italics mine,” 68-year-old Berberova was accused of subjectivity.
I'm writing a saga about my life, about myself, in which I'm free to do what I want. To reveal secrets and keep them to myself. To talk about myself, to talk about others, to talk about nothing.
At 80, she mastered the computer and wrote "The Iron Woman," a biography of the baroness and OGPU triple agent Maria Budberg. She considered it her best book.
She gained access to secret archives and at 85 wrote the book “People and Lodges” about Russian Freemasons of the 20th century.
The archives were breathtaking. When I opened them, I was completely speechless. Kerensky and all the Soviet ministers, with the exception of Milyukov, were French Masons!
She came to the USSR during perestroika for her 88th birthday – 67 years after emigrating.
I'm neither enchanted nor disappointed. I just want to see something I haven't seen in so long. To hear Russian spoken.
She died in Philadelphia at 92. She ordered that the lights in her house be kept on for a year after her death.
