After the
October Revolution of 1917, his stepfather brought the young Eisner to the
Princes' Islands. Thus began a life in exile. Eisner graduated from the Grand Duke Constantine Constantinovich Russian Cadets Corps in
Sarajevo. He remained in Europe where he made a living washing windows and working at construction sites. He started writing poetry and met with many famous
Russian émigrés such as
Georgy Adamovich,
Marina Tsvetaeva and her husband
Sergei Efron. His poem "Looming Autumn, Yellow Bushes ..." was published in 1932 and became a textbook and was very popular in literary émigré circles. The line "Man begins with grief ..." from this poem is often cited. Eisner joined the literary association of Russian émigrés in
Prague. In the late 1920s, he sought to return to the
Soviet Union and in 1934 he joined the "Homecoming Union". In 1936, he joined the
XII International Brigade which fought on the side of the
Republicans during the
Spanish Civil War. He was an adjutant to
Máté Zalka, the Hungarian writer who served as a general under the name of Lukács (General Lukács). At the end of the Civil War, he reportedly ran into
Ernest Hemingway who wrote him a blank cheque that Hemingway ensured him he could draw upon should he choose to visit Hemingway in the United States. Eisner returned to the Soviet Union in January 1940 without cashing the cheque. Four months later, his was searched by the
secret police, who found the blank cheque signed by Ernest Hemingway. He was arrested and sentenced under Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the USSR to 8 years of hard labour in the
Vorkutlag camp. After completion of this period he was sent for "perpetual exile" to the
Karaganda region in Kazakhstan. In 1956 he was rehabilitated and was permitted to return to Moscow where he was active as a translator and journalist. He wrote several books and published memoirs on General Lukács, Haji Mamsurov (who fought in Spain under the name of Colonel Xanthi),
Ilya Ehrenburg and Ernest Hemingway. ==Footnotes==