Childhood
Evgenia (or Zhenya for short) Berkovich was born in Leningrad on 29 April 1985 into the family of poet and novelist Boris Berkovich and philologist and journalist Elena Efros.
Her paternal great-grandfather, Lev Mayzelis, was sentenced to be executed in 1938 for “participating in a military conspiracy”. He was rehabilitated in the year the Stalin personality cult was debunked — in 1956. Lev’s daughter Galina, a teacher of Russian language and literature, had a lot of impact on Zhenya and her older sister Maria.