Brodsky believed that Igor Yefimov “continues the great tradition of Russian writers-philosophers, tracing its roots back to Herzen.” And now, after publishing a dozen novels and several philosophical books, Yefimov has written his own version of “Days Gone By.”
From the first volume of his memoirs, the reader learns that his life in Russia ran under the banner of “Don’t believe, don’t fear, don’t ask,” long before this slogan was coined by Solzhenitsyn. Even as a schoolboy, he didn’t believe newspaper and radio propaganda—only Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy. He wasn’t afraid to stand up for a fellow serviceman who faced execution by firing squad. He wasn’t afraid for the persecuted poet—future Nobel Prize laureate. He wasn’t afraid to spread banned literature and publish abroad in those years, when for that up to seven years in camps were given…
Yefimov was lucky—he lived to see his books return to Russia.