Nadia Lavrova Shapiro

Nadia Lavrova Shapiro
Born
Nadezhda Lazarevna Shapiro

(1897-10-20)October 20, 1897
Yelisavetgrad, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire
DiedJune 20, 1989(1989-06-20) (aged 91)
Santa Rosa, California, U.S.
Education
Occupations
Writing career
Pen name
  • Nadia Lavrova
  • NL
  • Nadezhda Lavrova
  • Eve Christmas

Nadia Lavrova Shapiro (née Nadezhda Lazarevna Shapiro: October 20, 1897 – June 20, 1989) was a Russian-born American writer, journalist, translator and intelligence agent.

Early life and education

Shapiro was born Nadezhda Lazarevna Shapiro on October 20, 1897 in Yelisavetgrad, Kherson Governorate (present-day Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine) to Lazar Solomonovich Shapiro, an attorney from Minsk, and Fanny Gregorievna Shapiro (died 1957), who was born in Kyiv. One of two sisters, the family moved to the Siberian city of Irkutsk during Shapiro's early childhood. Raised in a middle-class Lutheran household, Shapiro's paternal grandfather had converted to Lutheranism from Judaism.

She went to school in Paris for two years to learn French, learned German and English from other travels. Earning her high school diploma in May 1914, the family later moved to the Siberian city of Blagoveshchensk where Shapiro's father worked as an attorney for the State Bank. Remaining in Blagoveschensk, Shapiro studied in for a elementary school teacher certificate from 1915 to 1916. The following year Shapiro studied at for a year at Moscow Women's College where she earned a teaching credential in 1917.

Career and exile

Shapiro taught English in Siberia for about a year, before she and her family fled the tumult of the Russian Revolution, moving first to China. In Harbin, she worked as an interpreter, newspaper editor, and journalist. She worked in Japan in 1920, and moved to the United States in 1922. She covered Russian exiles and the arts, and wrote book reviews, for the San Francisco Examiner, and sold stories to magazines. In 1923 she earned a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

In the 1930s she worked for the Works Progress Administration in San Francisco. During World War II she was a translator for the U.S. Office of Censorship and the U.S. Office of War Information. Shapiro was a translator for the United Nations Conference on International Organization when it met in San Francisco in 1945. From 1946 to 1953 she worked for the CIA, monitoring Russian-language broadcasts.

Personal life

Shapiro became a United States citizen by naturalization in 1928. Her mother moved to the United States to live with her in 1929. Shapiro died in 1989, at the age of 91, in Santa Rosa, California. Her papers are in the Hoover Institution Library and Archives at Stanford University.

Publications

Notes

  1. ↑ Also cited as Irkutsk.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Nadia L. Shapiro papers; Hoover Institution Library & Archives". Online Archive of California. Retrieved 31 August 2026.
  2. 1 2 Baron, Gaye Le (8 April 1968). "Reserved For". The Press Democrat. p. 7. Retrieved 30 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. 1 2 "Fanny Shapiro". The Press Democrat. 21 July 1957. p. 10. Retrieved 30 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Bogdan, Nina (26 April 2021). "Keeping to the Sober Truth: A Jewish Lutheran White Russian in San Francisco". Journal of Russian-American Studies. 5 (1): 48–64. doi:10.17161/jras.v5i1.15437.
  5. ↑ Lavrova, Nadia (14 February 1926). "Czar's Uncle, in English Exile, Yearns to Join War". The San Francisco Examiner. p. 35. Retrieved 30 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. ↑ Lavrova, Nadia (23 August 1925). "Ten Thousand Russians Become Citizens of China". The San Francisco Examiner. p. 31. Retrieved 30 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. ↑ Andrews, Clarence L. (1938). "The Historical Russian Library of Alaska". The Pacific Northwest Quarterly. 29 (2). University of Washington: 201–204. ISSN 0030-8803.
  8. ↑ Lavrova, Nadia (22 June 1930). "Young Artist is Stanford Graduate". The San Francisco Examiner. p. 48. Retrieved 30 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. ↑ Lavrova, Nadia (13 July 1930). "Paget-Fredericks' Art in Berkeley Museum; Imagination Rules His Creations". The San Francisco Examiner. p. 44. Retrieved 30 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. ↑ Cherny, Robert W. (7 March 2017). Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-09924-3.
  11. ↑ Lavrova, Nadia (26 January 1930). "Foreign Book Shelf". The San Francisco Examiner. p. 56. Retrieved 30 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. 1 2 "Nadia L. Shapiro". The Press Democrat. 28 June 1989. p. 14. Retrieved 30 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. ↑ Lavrova, Nadia (3 March 1929). "Southwest's Best Short Stories". The San Francisco Examiner. p. 60. Retrieved 30 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  14. 1 2 Lavrova, Nadia (September 1923). "The Talisman". Weird Tales. 2 (2): 62–63, 92 – via Internet Archive.
  15. ↑ "WPA Makes Survey of Chinese Theatres". The Southwestern. 1 February 1937. p. 4. Retrieved 30 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. ↑ Lee, Erika (2010). Angel Island : immigrant gateway to America. Internet Archive. Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press. p. 244. ISBN 978-0-19-973408-5 – via Internet Archive.
  17. ↑ Lavrova, Nadia (February 1924). "100 Lyric Poems Composed by Mill Valley (Cal.) Boy". The American Greek Review. 2 (2): 22–23.
  18. ↑ Library of Congress. Copyright Office. (1928). Catalog of Copyright Entries, New Series. Part 1, Group 3: Dramatic Compositions, Motion Pictures 1928: Vol 1 No 1-12. United States Copyright Office. U.S. Govt. Print. Off. p. 125 – via Internet Archive.
  19. ↑ Lavrova, Nadia (March 1929). "Chinese Princess Builds Palace and Holds Court on Mexican Island". The Leatherneck. 12 (3): 6–8, 54.
  20. ↑ Fanning, Peter (1929). Great Crimes of the West. Ed. Barry Company.
  21. ↑ Lavrova, Nadia (24 September 1933). "My Old Home Town was Blagoveschensk". The Los Angeles Times. p. 81. Retrieved 30 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  22. ↑ Cherny, Robert W. (12 November 2024). The Coit Tower Murals: New Deal Art and Political Controversy in San Francisco. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-04756-5.
  23. ↑ Lavrova, Nadia (17 August 1935). "Soviet Art in San Francisco". The Christian Science Monitor. 27 (222): 5 – via Internet Archive.
  24. ↑ Lavrova, Nadia (11 February 1936). "Matisse Show in San Francisco". The Christian Science Monitor. 28 (65): 13 – via Internet Archive.