She was born on October 12 (old calendar), 1903 in Dvinsk, into the family of a physician Grigory Moiseevich Gershtein (1870-1943) and Isabella Evseevna Group (1874-1961).

She graduated from the Dvina gymnasium (1920), entered the philosophy department of Moscow University, listened to lectures by Nikolai Berdyaev, Ivan Ilyin, and Alexandre Kiesewetter.

She worked at the newspaper "For Industrialization" (За индустриализацию, 1926-1927), and was a clerk in the Utilsyryo trust (Утильсырьё, 1927-1928).

She graduated from typing courses (1929), and worked as the personal secretary of Olga Kameneva, in the "Krestyanskaya Gazeta".

In 1928, in the Uzkoye sanatorium near Moscow, she became closely acquainted with Nadezhda and Osip Mandelstam, and, after a while, with almost all the unofficial creative intelligentsia of that period, such as Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak, Maria Petrovykh, as well as with other writers and scientists.