Larisa Bravitskaya: I will say a word about a poor artist

The public repentance that Misha made prompted me to break my silence.

Knowing Misha, I was sure that having experienced a severe shock, he would certainly utter it with simple, human words.

Larisa Bravitskaya, actress, screenwriter

For the first time, I saw Misha Yefremov as an eleven-year-old boy, at the Moscow Art Theater, where he came to his great father and where he played in the play “Look back, while leaving!” A polite, smiling boy, he confidently and talented, on equal terms, existed in a brilliant ensemble Mkhatovsky luminaries.

Then, we met in the Youth Section of the WTO with the wonderful Lucy Chernovskaya. And then, Misha appeared in the Mayak club, a cult institution of the 90s, becoming a regular and a loyal admirer.

About Misha and his talented “arts” in the Lighthouse, I can talk endlessly. And all these stories usually cause homeric laughter among listeners. But today I want to analyze the whole path of Mikhail Yefremov to this fatal line.

Misha was born in the family of the famous director and actor Oleg Nikolayevich Efremov and the beautiful actress Alla Borisovna Pokrovskaya. Misha's grandfather, Boris Alexandrovich Pokrovsky, a famous opera director.

“Here it is, a happy lottery ticket,” - so those of you who don’t know what it means to be born in a well-known family and be a carrier of an outstanding family name will think so.

This is the greatest test, an unbearable burden - the “last name”, when you constantly need to prove that you also have the right to do what you love, you also have talent. And still, the townsfolk will constantly compare “fathers-children”, often in an insulting form and almost always not in favor of the children. I do not know of any offspring who have passed this cup, with all the sinful inclinations and vices resulting from it.

Oleg Nikolaevich Efremov, brilliant, bright, possessing incredible charm and magnetism, was not just far from family life. He never hid that family, children, all routine life interfere with him and are alien. The whole life of Oleg Nikolaevich belonged to His Majesty's Theater and Creativity, to which he devoted his whole life, unreservedly.

Without a strong fatherly hand, Misha grew and formed in an atmosphere of bohemia and permissiveness.

Looking at Misha, even in his most distracting periods, he reminded me of a wounded animal, a lonely disliked child who, all his life, unconsciously, had been looking for love and could not find it.

Oleg Nikolaevich drank hard. Together with the talent gene, he passed the genes of charm and drunkenness to his son. And genetics, as you know, is a great science. Misha started drinking at the age of 13. And of course, Alla Borisovna could not cope with her out-of-hand son.

Sober Misha - sincere, kind, sympathetic, absolutely devoid of any manifestation of stardom, easy to communicate with anyone who fell in his way. I will not list now all the cases whom Misha helped in the most seemingly hopeless situations. Among those whom he really helped, there were often people whom he did not know personally. Neither mean nor petty Bear was ever.

And yet, he is very decent, honest and incredibly humane. It was these qualities of his — kindness and humanity — that were felt by those around him, even when he “came out of the shores”. This is the reason why everyone, always and everywhere forgave him, including traffic cops.

When Misha got drunk, he turned into a rampant element. Stopping Misha is like turning the river back, putting out the volcano, facing the hurricane and tsunami. There was some kind of anguish in his drunkenness, dignity, as if every time he challenged fate. And fate was incredibly favorable to Misha.

Misha's peers have long since passed away before they reach the age of forty. There is no Seryozha Shkalikova, Tolya Krupnov in the world anymore... The list of untimely departed will be very long. All of them are united not only by creativity, not only by alcohol and other addictions. They quietly crossed that line when their life turned from the creative creation into self-destruction, which led to the tragic end.

And Misha God is the shore. With the life that he led so many years - this is incredible and there is no explanation for this. Yes, it is not necessary, an explanation. Everything related to God's Providence is incomprehensible and does not need explanation.

There is a lot of mysticism in this accident for me. And even the fact that it was precisely the good-natured guy from Ryazan who died, a hard worker with an open face and radiant eyes - this also has an incomprehensible Providence. As St. Nicholas Serbsky said, "There are no random bullets, every bullet goes right on the target". And there are no any victims in vain and accidental. And every sacrifice is for the salvation.

Misha will not ask for leniency, evade punishment, use his connections. He won’t. Having reached the fatal line, sliding down into the abyss, reaching the bottom, Misha’s life did not end. He already found the courage to publicly repent. He did this first, most difficult step. Sincere, piercing repentance is only the beginning of his difficult Way of the Cross.