Yury Trifonov - Childhood and Family

Childhood and Family

Trifonov was born in the luxurious apartments on the Arbat Street and, with a two-year interval in Tashkent, spent his whole life in Moscow. His father, Valentin Trifonov (1888–1938), was of Don Cossack descent. A Red Army veteran who commanded Cossacks in the Don during the civil war and later served as a Soviet official, he was arrested on 21/22 June 1937 and shot on 15 March 1938. He was rehabilitated on 3 November 1955.

Trifonov's mother, Evgeniya Abramovna Lurie (1904–1975), an engineer and accountant, was of half Russian and of half Jewish descent. She spent eight years in a labour camp for not denouncing her husband. She was released in 1945, and returned to Moscow in 1946. Later in life, she worked in a school library, and wrote children's books under the name E. Tayurina. She was rehabilitated in 1955. During their mother's imprisonment, Trifonov and his sister were raised by their maternal grandmother, Tatyana Aleksandrovna Lurie (née Slovatinskaya, 1879—1957), who had been a professional revolutionary and took part in the Russian Civil War. Trifonov's maternal grandfather, Abram Pavlovich Lurie (1875—1924), had been a member of an underground Menshevik group, and a cousin of Aaron Soltz. After the purge, Trifonov's family moved from the famous House on the Embankment (just across the river from the Kremlin), into a kommunalka.

At school, Trifonov edited class newspapers, composed poetry and wrote short stories. He spent 1941 and 1942 in Tashkent, capital of the Uzbek SSR. During the war, in 1942–45, he worked as a fitter in a factory in Moscow. In 1945, he edited the factory's newspaper.