9. The Last of the Mohicans
1926 March 24: Mathilde Kshessinskaya, the former sweetheart of Tsar Nicholas II and prima-ballerina of the Mariinsky Theatre of St. Petersburg, who after the death of her husband, Grand Duke André Vladimirovich Romanoff, lives on the address 38 Villa Molitor, Paris, opens the doors of her school of ballet, 6 Avenue Vion-Whitcomb, on March 6. The school is consecrated by Metropolitan Evlogi.
April 4, 1926: World Conference of Russians in Paris. 420 deputies from 26 countries gather here, headed by chairman Pierre Struve, and they speak about which possibilities the people of Russia have to free themselves from the communist yoke.
May 2, the night of Russian Easter: Grand Duke André Vladimirovich Romanoff and Mathilde Kshessinskaya have invited Serge Diaghilev and his company. Mathilde: `The cars I rented brought all of us to the Cathedral of Nice. After midnight mass we returned to the villa for the ``razgoveni'', the traditional Easter meal with ``pashka's'' and ``kulich'', painted eggs, ham and other tasty dishes. (...) After the meal the guests started to dance. Serge Lifar, who was a little bit tipsy, wanted to court Tamara Karsavina, but Diaghilev was offended and put an end to the flirt by saying, ``Young man, you are obviously a little too merry! It is time to go home!'', and they left together for Monte Carlo.'
May 14: General Vrangel, now the President of the ROVS (Union of Russian Veterans in France) writes, `My labour hasn't been for nothing. By founding the ROVS in 1924, we have brought together all organizations of officers in exile. Today more than 40,000 men are member of the ROVS; what an army! (...) What is the purpose of this organization? To go to battle against the communists who have occupied Russia, without compassion. The Russian people still hope for improvement of the situation. Only the Russian people have the right to determine which form of government Russia will have in the future.'
Galina Pavlova Vishnevskaya is born.
August 22: Alec Ignatieff becomes an engineer and leaves for Sierra Leone. His brothers Nick and Dima Ignatieff leave for Canada.
1927 Paris, April 27: Princess Vera Meshchersky founds the `Russian House', in the Rue de la Cossonerie, Saint-Geneviève-des-Bois. The Russian House is a home where about 250 retired Russian refugees can be accommodated.
Aleksandr Feodorovich Kerensky publishes his book The catastrophe; his own story about the Russian Revolution.
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From Alexandra Rakhmanova's diary: August 22, 1927: A letter from my mother, `Father is arrested and thrown into a dungeon. I don't know why. He hopes it's a misunderstanding.'
August 24: Out of the gatherings of old and young Russian writers in the salon of the writer Dmitri Merezhkovsky and his wife Zinaida Hippius `The Green Lamp' comes into being, a literary circle with a respectable number of members.
Nice, France, September 14: After finishing her book My Life the dancer Isadora Duncan dies, in a car, just like her children Deirdre and Patrick. Her long scarf gets stuck in the spokes of her car, and literally strangles her. Isadora Duncan caused a stirr by appearing on stage barefooted and only dressed in a tunic. In 1922 Isadora married the Russian poet Serge Esenin. They met in February 1921, when Isadora danced with the Bolshoy Theatre in Moscow. From 1921 to 1924 she had a school of dance in Moscow.
December 28: The writer and poet Serge Alexandrovich Esenin (1895-1925), who was married to Isadora Duncan and in Russia is criticized for his shocking statements, commits suicide in Hotel Angleterre in Petrograd (St. Petersburg).
Paris, December 3: The Russian cabaret Shéhérazade, 3 Rue de Liège, opens its doors. (The establishment became world famous by Erich Maria Remarque's novel Arch of Triumph, and the film of the same name of 1948, with Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman in the leading parts.)
1928 January 31: Stalin has ordered Leo Trotsky to leave Alma Ata. Trotsky is bannished to the isle of Prinkipo, in Turkey.
From the beginning of May to August 8 Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanoff lives in the house of her cousin, Grand Duchess Xenia Grigorievna. On May 27, 1928 Xenia states in World magazine, `I am convinced that she is the daughter of Nicholas II. I have often played with Anastasia; she has my age. Mrs Chaikovsky has surprised me completely by arousing the memories of what we did and said in our childhood. I'm absolutely sure of her identity and I'm prepared to put my whole capital at stake to prove that she is Anastasia.' It is of no avail. 44 members of the House of Romanoff are still alive. A family council is held, in which is proposed to sign a statement against Anastasia. 32 members of the family refuse to sign the statement; the 12 who sign it are coincidental the direct heirs when it can be proven that none of the children of the tsar is still alive: Xenia Alexandrovna and her husband Alexander, Olga Alexandrovna and her second husband Nicholas Kulikovsky (1881-1958), the 6 sons of Alexander and Xenia, their daughter Irina and Irina's husband Felix Yussupov. Several million English pounds are at stake.
My informer `Feodor' Romanoff, `I can't tell you too much about it without blowing my cover, but I have known her. Sure, the money had a lot to do with it, but that wasn't all. Noblesse oblige. She was eccentric, broken, mentally ill, and would have been the most important Romanoff of all, once she was acknowledged. Many of my relatives found this absolutely unacceptable. The families of Windsor and Von Hessen-Darmstadt also had an important part in this decision. The lesser gods of the Romanoff clan found the fuss around Anastasia rather amusing. Only one or two were however prepared to support her at the cost of everything. Also important was the role of the Russian-Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, which had canonized the entire Imperial Family, and was in a tight corner when it became clear that Anastasia was still alive and anything but a saint.' Anastasia knew who she was, and that was good enough for her. That, and her confabulations, filling the gap of missing information in the own memory with common known facts or the memories of others, have cooked her goose during the many lawsuits about her identity, because during the years the `facts' changed, and if she `lied' about one thing, she most likely didn't tell the truth about other things.
October 14: Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich Romanoff, who lived in Antibes until July 1923, after which he moved to the Chateau de Choigny in Santeny, near Paris, returns to the Villa Thénard; he is seriously ill, and he wants to be near his brother Peter.
Paris, October 24: Prince Felix Yussupov and his wife Irina found their fashion house Irfé (Irina-Felix), on the second floor of 19 Rue Duphot. (Are they expecting some money, perhaps?) Almost their entire staff consists of Russian refugees. Successively they open branches in Touquet, London and Berlin. The Yussupovs live in the Rue Pierre Guérin. (That house was demolished. Only a green garden door with a door bell and a sign `Chien mechant' is left of the old building.)
Paris, October 25: Maria Solovyov, a daughter of Rasputin, institutes legal proceedings against Prince Felix Yussupov and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich Romanoff. She demands a compensation of 25 million francs, because the gentlemen have murdered her father. The French court however considers itself not cognizant to deal with this case.
London, October 26: Dima Ignatieff returns to England and takes his mother and his brothers Lionel and George with him to Canada. His father Paul stays in Paris.
New York, October 27: Igor Sikorsky becomes an American citizen. His first real American success is the S-38 (Amphibian). The S-38 is so successful, that Sikorsky has to move to Connecticut, where his company is taken over by the United Aircraft Company, in which Sikorsky becomes one of the managers. Successively he works on the development of long-range flying boats.
Copenhagen, November: Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna Romanoff (1847-1928) dies at the age of 72. In 1919 she escaped from Russia with the British warship Marlborough, together with her daughters Xenia and Olga and their families. She returned to Danmark (she was born Princess Dagmar of Danmark), where she since then lived in a wing of the palace of her cousin, the Danish King Christian X. King George V of England granted her a pension of 10,000 pounds per year.
Paris, November 18: Drama critic Lev (Dominique) Aronson opens a Russian restaurant on the address 19 Rue Bréa. The Russian writers who frequent the restaurant Dominique, call themselves `the Dominicans'.
November 19: Count Alexander Buxhoeveden is a real estate agent in Paris, and because his business is doing well he and his family move to Nice.
Alexander Kerensky is a professor in the Hoover Institute of the Stanford University in California. That's where his son Gleb Alexandrovich marries the English Mary Hudson. Gleb and Mary moved to Rugby, England, where he at first works for English Electric and successively for General Electric. Alexander's other son, Oleg Alexandrovich Kerensky, marries the Russian Nathalie Bely, who just like him studies in London.
1929 January 5: Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich Romanoff dies.
January 7: Vera Bunin writes in her diary, `The funeral ceremony lasted almost an hour. Ivan (Bunin) was very touched, especially when the Cossacks in uniform arrived to form the guard of honour Ä he did not hold back his tears. We felt that we were committing old Russia to the ground. Surely we realize that all this will pass, but our wounds are hardly healed, and Nicholas Nikolaevich' death teared them open again, and that hurts, that really hurts.' Paris, February 10: The Théatre Intime Russe, on the address 6bis Rue Campagne-Première, opens with the play Wolves and Sheep, by Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky (1823-1886). The small theatre is headed by D. Kirova, an artist of the former Small Theatre of St. Petersburg.
March 16: Tatiana Souchotin-Tolstoy, the eldest daughter of Lev Tolstoy, opens a Russian art academy in the Rue Jules-Chaplain, on number 11. However, due to a lack of pupils the school has to close down. (Nowadays the ballet school of the Russian Irina Gryebina is resided there.)
May 22: Igor Sikorsky turns back to his first love: the development of the helicopter.
June 5: The composer Serge Sergeevich Prokofyev (1891-1953) moves to the address 5 Rue Valentin- Haüy, Paris, where he will live until 1932. Serge is a child prodigy and already played the piano when he was only three years old. He was a pupil of Glière, Liadov and Rimsky-Korsakov, worked with Diaghilev in London and Paris since 1914, and since 1917 he gave numerous concerts all over Europe, America and Japan.
June 18: Marina Tsvetaeva publishes her essay Natalia Goncharova in the paper Liberté de la Russie. Tsvetaeva met the painters Larionov and Goncharova in Café de Flore, Paris, where she offered to write a story about them.
October 27: Grand Duke Michael Mikhaïlovich Romanoff (1861-1929), brother of Sandro, dies in London, where he used to live during the summers. He was a Colonel of the Caucasian tirailleurs. He lived for a long time in Cannes, in the Villa Kazbek, 18, Avenue du Roi-Albert. Michael Mikhaïlo- vich was married to Countess Sophie de Torby, a granddaughter of Pushkin.
November 2: Tatiana Nikolaevna Masalitinov and her husband Vladimir emigrate from Bulgaria to France. Shortly afterwards the rest of her family joins her in Besan‡on, where Vladimir works at a metallurgical factory. Tatiana Nikolaevna's father dies.
1930 January: General Kutiepov, who since April 1928, after the death of General Vrangel, was the President of the ROVS (Union of Russian Veterans in France), lives on the address 26 Rue Rousselet, Paris. After Kutiepov left his house on January 26, 1930, nobody has seen or heard anything of him. His story, and the one of his successor General De Miller, who was struck by the same unenviable lot, is told in the book Le général meurt à minuit, by Marina Grey, the daughter of General Denikin.
January 9: In London Oleg Olegovich Kerensky, the son of Oleg Alexandrovich and Nathalie, is born. Grandfather Alexander Kerensky comes to visit the new born.
Paris, April 22: Grand Duke Kiril Vladimirovich Romanoff takes the salute of 2,000 former officers of the Imperial Army. The officers shout out Cossack war cries and, `The day of victory is near!'
September 3: Paul Poustochkine and his wife Nathalie have two children: Constantin (Toto), who was born in Crete on September 14, 1910, and Iwan, who was born on February 10, 1918 in The Hague, Holland. Paul Poustochkine knows the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina and her husband Prince Hendrik very well, and Queen Wilhelmina, who always has been proud of the fact that Anna Pavlovna's blood rushes through her vains, makes sure that Constantin and Iwan will be able to go to university. September 28: Gleb and Mary Kerensky, who still live in Rugby, have three children: Katherine, Elizabeth and Stephen.
1931 January 14: In France the Russian School for Cadets `Nicholas II' is founded by Lieutenant-General Vladimir Rimsky-Korsakov, the former director of the School for Cadets in Moscow. The school is resided on the address 71 Rue Gambetta, Villiers-le-Bel (Val-d'Oise). Until his death in 1934 Rimsky- Korsakov stays on as director of the school, after which it is transferred to Versailles, and subsequently to Dieppe.
January 17: Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich Romanoff (1864-1931), a brother of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich and uncle of Tsar Nicholas, dies in Cap d'Antibes, France. Peter Nikolaevich was married to Princess Militsa of Montenegro. He was a Lieutenant-General in the Cavalry and aide-de-camp to Nicholas II.
July 30: The British playwright George Bernard Shaw (74) is an admirer of the Soviet system, like so many `progressive' Western writers. While he visits Moscow, he says, `Tomorrow I leave the land of hope, to return to the Western lands of despair.' Shaw talked for more than two hours with Stalin. The Soviet-Union is also glorified by the famous Dutch writer Henriëtte Roland Holst-Van der Schalk, after whom in Holland streets are named. In her book Foundations and problems of the new culture in Soviet-Russia (1932) she writes, `One wants to create a new, entirely on one principle imbued culture. Such attempts can only succeed in a stage of very strong rationalized thinking. Also it can only be exercised in a society in which the main means of culture (school, press, publishers, bookstores, theatre, film, radio) are controlled by a central authority. (...) This systematically ruled society includes also that the new form of living is much less than before to be found in friendly co-operation, but in a system, cut and dried by the leaders, which is imposed on the subordinates. In this respect the coming culture in Russia is aristocratical. (...) When the children of the farmers now say, ``There is no God,'' then, in a way, they speak the truth. The old Russian God, who was attached to a perished world, a world of random and cruelty, of haughtiness and arrogance, of humility and servility, that old God does no more exist. He was knocked to the ground, together with his earthly representative, the tsar. And with him perished a world of half-mouldered notions, of rigid morality, which had gotten into a groove.' One is tempted to think that Mrs Roland Holst is misled, that she does not know what's she's talking about, but that notion is not correct. When she commits her stalinistic propaganda to paper, she is positively well informed about the abuses, but with her it's the same as with a lot of other European and American armchair revolutionaries: facts are neglected for the sake of ideals. On page 133 she writes, `The health of the working youth is also undermined by night shifts, which is reinstated for large groups of young workers. In the textiles area of Ivanovo-Vosnosensk (in February 1930) out of 1,664 youthful workers 972 worked at night. In lots of plants they have to do night shifts, inter alia in the glass-industry, food-industry and shoe-factories. There's also child labour in branches of industry which are injurious to health. The ``Youth Pravda'' of February 10, 1930, from which we took these data, stated in fact that the health of the children is very bad. In Siberia 4,000 out of less than 6,000 youthful workers had to be treated medically. Most likely the present conditions are still not much improved.' Finally a critical word? My God, no! In page 135, nota bene less than two pages furtheron, she writes, `Almost everyone who visited the Soviet-Union in the last couple of years, no matter what they think of the new form of living, assured us that the Russian youth is happy. We readily believe them.' And another two pages furtheron, in page 137, ``The Russian youth,'' writes Hindus, ``is perhaps the happiest on earth.'' In my opinion he should have left out the word ``perhaps''. Where can a child be happy today, except in Russia?'
Impudent stalinist propagandists like Henriëtte Roland Holst-Van der Schalk make sure that homesick Russian refugees are persuaded into their return to the Soviet-Union, where many commit suicide, or are murdered by Stalin.
August 21: Alexandra (Alya) Rakhmanova's first book Love, Cheka and Death, is published. It becomes a best seller!
1932 April 6: After his sojourn of three years in Paris the composer Serge Prokofyev returns to the Soviet- Union.
March: Famine, especially in the Ukrain, which in the times of the Tsar was the granary of Russia.
May 7: The Union of Russian Cab Drivers and Employees in the Car Industry (9 Rue St.-Charles, Paris) organizes its yearly `Day of the Russian Driver', to line the petty-cash of the union.
Nice, Southern France, June 2: Count Anatol (Alec) Buxhoeveden (1905-), the eldest son of Count Alexander Buxhoeveden, marries Vera Illarionov, daughter of Count Nicholas Illarionov and Countess Natalia Peresviat-Soltan.
June 18: Nobody is willing to donate any more money to the Russian Red Cross, and that's why Paul Ignatieff joins his wife and children in Toronto. However, Paul and Natasha are virtually grown apart.
1933 February 26: Grand Duke Alexander (Sandro) Mikhaïlovich Romanoff (1866-1933), an old friend of Tsar Nicholas, dies in his villa Sainte-Thérèse in Roquebrune, France.
March 21: Lincoln Kirstein brings the famous Russian choreographer George Balanchine from Paris to New York. A couple of months later Balanchine, who since 1928 worked with Igor Strawinsky, founds the New York City Ballet.
June 3: When Prince Alexis Alexeevich Obolensky reaches New York, his mother, Princess Lyubova Obolensky, née Troubetzkoy (1909-1980), who has a real head for business, opens the first of her successful American enterprises, which boom on Park Avenue. As `Princess Obolensky Incorporated' she retails quilts, bed covers and pillows. Later she expands and exhibits her wares in all the social resorts. Prince Alexis himself starts out as a perfume salesman.
August: The archives of the prohibited Scouting Club Ruskii Skautizm were smuggled to Odessa. After the Whites were defeated some loyal scouts hid the archives, but last month they were caught and imprisoned. Nothing was heard of them since. To prevent that the names in the archives can be used to try (former) illegal scouts, the archives are stolen from the secret police and moved to Moscow, by some former scouts, who became officers in the Red Army. They hide the archives in the basements of the Ministry of Defense, of all places. (That's where they still are today, in remembrance of all the murdered scouts.)
August 11: Count Alexander Buxhoeveden and Countess Olga Buxhoeveden, née Olensky, are divorced in Sremsky-Karlovci, Yugoslavia, by the Synod of the Russian-Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.
September: Vladimir Smirnoff has financial difficulties and is forced to sell the Smirnoff brand and the secret vodka formula to the Russian refugee Rudolph Kunnett, who lives in the United States.
Paris, September 24: Count Alexander Buxhoeveden marries Rosine-Marie Vidal (1911-), daughter of engineer Paul Vidal and Germaine-Marie Delvoueuillerie de Costaire.
1934 Nice, Southern France, July 1: Count Theodor Buxhoeveden (1934-1965), Count Alexander's first son out of his marriage to Rosine-Marie Vidal, is born.
Aleksandr Feodorovich Kerensky publishes his book The crucifixion of liberty. September 12: After General Yuri Daniloff dies in Paris, his wife Anna leaves for America, to see after her grandchildren.
Paris, November 21: At 8 p.m., a 25 year old Russian poet falls off the platform on the railway, in the subway-station Pasteur. He is run over and transported to the Necker Hospital, where he succumbs to his wounds at 10 p.m. On account of this accident Tsvetaeva writes a letter to her friend Anne Teskov, `On November 21 Nicholas Gronsky has been run over by a subway-train. When we saw each other for the first time, he fell in love with me instantly; it took some time before I fell in love with him. This love lasted a year, but because I found that my freedom was rather limited by it, and because our ways of life rather differed, we grew apart. In the spring of 1931 we said goodbye for good. In three years time I've only seen him one more time, in a subway-train. I called him, but he didn't come to me. And then I read in the newspapers what had happened on November 21... (...) This young man was a great poet.'
November 23: Igor Strawinsky becomes a French citizen. Until now he lived in Brittany, Garches, Biarritz, Nice and Voreppe, but from now on he will live in Paris, in the chique Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Due to the fact that Russia didn't sign the Bern Convention, Strawinsky can't claim royalties and copyrights. Had he been German, French or American, then he would have been a rich man.
Leningrad, December 1: Serge Kirov, the secretary of the Communist Party in Leningrad, is killed in the Smolny Institute, by Leonid Nikolaev. This way Nikolaev, an embittered communist, wanted to draw attention to the deterioration and officialism of the party.
Moscow/Leningrad, December 6: In connection with the murder of Serge Kirov many people are executed in Moscow and Leningrad. Start of the Big Terror.
Paris, December 13: Countess Marianna Buxhoeveden (1913-), daughter of Count Alexander, marries the Russian nobleman Vladimir Vassiliev (1907-).
1935 January: Rudolph Kunnett tries to sell his Smirnoff distillery for $ 25,000. John G. Martin pays $ 14,000 for the distellery, the formula and the brand.
Aleksandr Feodorovich Kerensky and Paul Bulygin publish their book The murder of the Romanovs; the authentic account, which is translated from the Russian by Aleksandr's son Gleb.
October 17: In apartment 17bis, above the large Citroën garage in the Rue Barrault, the poet Boris Poplavsky dies of a drug-overdose, accompanied by his also drugged friend Serge Yarko, who has promised to join him on his long trip to the hereafter. Khodassevich puts the blame of Poplavsky's suicide on the atmosphere of decay and doomwatch, which masters the young Russian poets of Montparnasse. They have no more confidence in the world, in themselves and in their work; they are discouraged by their endless exile and the indifference of society.
Just before his tragical death Poplavsky wrote the poem Il neige sur la ville, and the agonizing words:
We leave for the land of sleep, where perhaps another sun will rise, or perhaps is no sun at all.
1936 March 8: The painter Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin, who escaped from Russia in 1920 and became a citizen of the Soviet-Union in 1935, leaves Paris to live in Leningrad.
April 24: Grigori Yevseevich Zinovyev, who in 1919 ordered the execution of a large number of hostages in the Peter and Paul Fortress, among them the Grand Dukes Nicholas Mikhaïlovich Romanoff, George Mikhaïlovich Romanoff, Paul Alexandrovich Romanoff and Dmitri Constantinovich Romanoff, is executed by order of Stalin, by a shot in the neck.
June 4: Paul Ignatieff and his wife become Canadian citizens. Their son George leaves for England, to study in the university of Oxford.
Nice, Southern France, June 29: Count Alexander Alexandrovich Buxhoeveden, Count Alexander's second son out of his second marriage, is born.
Paris, November 10: After a trip to Russia the French writer André Gide sharply criticizes the Soviet Union, in his book Retour de l'URSS. The French communist newspaper L'Humanité and the left wing friends of the writer attack him about his statements, but Trotsky praises him for his `intellectual courage and honesty'. Gide used to be an admirer of the Soviet regime, but since his return in July his opinions are rather changed. In his book he denounces the stranglehold of conformism and censorship in the Soviet Union, the terror, the bad living conditions, and the lack of food. `Stalin's personal rule is in flagrant contradiction to the communist principles,' says Gide.
1937 March 2: in the Conservatoire Serge Rakhmaninov in Paris Marina Tsvetaeva reads from her book My Pushkin, and also some poetry of Pushkin, in remembrance of the fact that the poet died a hundred years ago.
March 29: Alexander Kerensky, who from August to November 1917 was Prime Minister of the Provisional Government, lives in Paris, 9bis Rue Vineuse, while his wife and two sons settled down in London. Just like the tsar, Kerensky loves to walk. A couple of days ago, during his walk, he was watched by a Russian lady and her daughter. The lady said, `Look, look, Tania, that's the man who wracked and ruined Russia!' A friend of him says that Kerensky was completely cut up by this incident, and has been depressed for days. On February 26, March 7 and March 17 Kerensky held a lecture about the tragical fate of the Russian Imperial family, in the Musée Social, 9 Rue Las-Cases.
April 14: Serge Efron, the husband of the poet Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva, who from the beginning of the thirties worked for the Union of Russian Repatriants, 12 Rue de Buci, Paris, escapes to Spain and after that to the Soviet Union, before the French police can arrest him. The legal investigation on the murder of the defected Soviet agent Ignace Reiss shows that through this office agents for the soviets have been recruted. Marina's daughter Ariadna also leaves for the Soviet Union.
Moscow, June 12: Eight high placed military leaders are sentenced to death during a secret trial. All of them admit they are guilty of treason. June 13: The eight officers are executed, just like the thousands other real and latent opponents of Stalin's regime, who during their trials confess to crimes they never could have committed, because they weren't even born then.
1938 Paris, February 16: Leon Sedov, the son of Lev Trotsky, was struck by appendicitis on February 9, and brought to the Mirabeau clinic in the Rue Narcisse-Diaz, because the management and the staff of this hospital are Russian. He was operated on the same night, and the following days his condition improved considerably, in such a way that the doctors were planning to send him home. But during the night of February 13 his condition deteriorated: once more he was operated on, but he died the following day. Although a legal investigation proves that Sedov died from natural causes, Trotsky, who lives in Mexico, states that the death of his son should be blamed on `Russian agents in a Russian hospital in Paris'. Leon Sedov is burried in the Cimetière de Thiais, Val-de-Marne, France (22nd division, row 13, tomb 20). (Every year at August 20 the Trotskyites come to visit this tomb of Lev Trotsky's son, to commemorate the murder on Trotsky, and every year they sing the International.)
Lake Baikal, near Mongolia, March 17: Rudolf Nureyev is born on a train.
André Alexeevich Amalrik is born in Moscow.
March 28: The Buxhoevedens move to Florence, Italy, where Count Alexander Alexandrovich is baptized.
Allassio, Italy, July 16: Countess Rosine-Marie Buxhoeveden (1938-), Count Alexander's first daughter out of his second marriage, is born. She will be called Marie-Rose.
Neuilly, France, October 13: Grand Duke Kiril Vladimirovich Romanoff, who called himself `Tsar of all Russians', dies. His son, Grand Duke Vladimir Kirilovich Romanoff (1917-1992) succeeds him as chief of the Imperial House, but he wisely restricts to the title of Grand Duke.
1939 April: In New York the Tolstoy Foundation is founded by Countess Alexandra Tolstoy, the youngest daughter of the great writer Lev Tolstoy (1828-1910).
June: The writer Marina Tsvetaeva returns to Russia, to join her husband and daughter. However, she couldn't have chosen a worse moment, because Stalin's witches' sabbath is at it's pinnacle. (Stalin had ordered the execution of more than 1,500 talented Russian writers.) She finds out that Efron already has been executed, and that her daughter Ariadna is locked up in a hard labour camp, where she will have to stay until 1956. Marina's work is not published. All her colleague's and friends, also Boris Pasternak, let her down. Pasternak, `We were good friends.' Hypocrite.
July: Nick and Dima Ignatieff enlist in the Canadian army, and are transported to England, where their brothers George and Alec live. Alec works as a manager of a gunpowder factory. Lionel stays in Toronto.
August: Igor Sikorsky presents the prototype of his V-300 helicopter to the American public. Sikorsky, who in the mean time is over fifty, is the test-pilot. After the V-300 he designs the XR-4, the XR-5, the S-55 (Whirlwind), the S-58 (Wessex and the Sikorsky Sea King.
September: Igor Strawinsky emigrates to the United States.
Merano, Italy, October 18: Countess Catherine Geneviève Buxhoeveden (1939-), Count Alexander's second daughter out of his second marriage, is born.
November 30: The Soviet-Union declares war on Finland.
1940 Moscow, April: Stalin orders that 21,000 Polish soldiers, most of them officers, who are imprisoned in Katyn, near Smolensk, are to be murdered and thrown into a mass grave.
The Germans occupy Paris. All Russian papers and magazines move abroad. Their editors escape to America. The nazi's now publish a new Russian newspaper - Paridzhki Vestnik (The Paris Guide).
Alexander Kerensky, who until now alternately lived in California, New York, Prague and Paris, leaves Paris forgood, to join his family in London. Some time later he moves to New York.
Paul Poustochkine is still recorded in the Dutch state directory as, `Paul Poustochkine, charged with the liquidation of the affairs of the former Russian legation'. Paul keeps in touch with the Russian refugees in Paris, and visits the meetings of the Diplomats of Imperial Russia Outside of Russia.
June 20: The Soviet Union captures Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
June 27: The Soviet Union captures Bessarabia and Bukovina (Romania).
Mexico, August 21: Lev Trotsky (64) is murdered by the Spanish communist Ramon Mercader. There's no doubt that Stalin ordered the execution.
1941 The writer Marina Tsvetaeva hangs herself, in the doorway of a hut, in the Russian town of Elabuga.
Prince Alexis Alexeevich Obolensky becomes a foreign intelligence agent for the U.S. government in Palm Beach. `I have to interrogate Latin Americans and sniff out German spies infiltrating from the south.'
Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn (1918-) leaves for the front as an officer in the Russian Red Army.
The Tolstoy Foundation in New York City buys a 70-acre farm in Spring Valley (Rockland County, New York), for the symbolical amount of one dollar.
Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich Romanoff (1891-1941) dies of tuberculosis in Davos, Switzerland.. Dmitri's father, Grand Duke Paul, was bannished from Russia because he, after his wife Alexandra, Princess of Russia, had died, started a relationship with Olga Karnovich (Princess Paley), the wife of Grand Duke Vladimir's adjutant. Paul was determined to marry his beloved Princess Paley, but the Dowager Empress was unrelenting and forced Paul's brothers Serge and Vladimir to choose her side. This was the first scandal in the Romanoff family in which Nicky had to be the arbitrator. Nicholas was forced to evict his uncle Paul from Russia. Paul's son Dmitri and daughter Maria Pavlovna Romanoff (1890-1958) were raised in Russia by Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich and his wife Elisabeth Feodorovna. This couple was childless and loved Dmitri and his little sister Marie as if they were their own.
Later Dmitri was taken into the family of Nicholas II. He was in love with Olga Niko- laevna Romanoff, daughter of Nicholas II, and wanted to marry her, but the Tsar and the Tsaritsa did not agree to it. For a long time Dmitri was an intimate friend of Felix Yussupov. He, Yussupov and Vladimir Purishkevich killed Rasputin. Dmitri was bannished to Persia and in 1926 he married the American Audrey Emery, in Biarritz. For some years Dmitri Pavlovich made a living as a champagne salesman, in Florida. In 1928 their son, Prince Paul Ilyinsky, was born. (Prince Paul Ilyinsky married Mary Prince, but this marriage ended in a divorce. Subsequently he married Angelica Kauffman. Paul has two daughters and two sons, Dmitri Pavlovich Ilyinsky (1953-) and Michael Pavlovich Ilyinsky (1960-).)
Besancon, France: The factories close down, there's no more work. Tatiana Nikolaevna Masalitinov, her husband, her mother and her brother decide to move to Germany and work there. Her two sisters marry and stay in France.
June 22: The Germans attack the Soviet Union. General Von Reeb is on his way to Leningrad; General Von Bock marches towards Minsk; General Von Rundstedt advances against Kiev; Operation Barbarossa has started.
1942 February: The painter Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin and thousands of others die of famine, as a result of the German siege of his new domicile Leningrad. Hamburg burns! After three bombing rugs of the English the city is completely destroyed. Tatiana Nikolaevna Masalitinov, her husband, her mother and her brother move to Silesia, where Vladimir and Tatiana Nikolaevna find a job at a metallurgical factory. It isn't really work: they have to be there on time, and stay all day long, but there's no work at all.
1943 November 12: Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich Romanoff (1877-1943), a grandson of Alexander II, son of Vladimir Alexandrovich, and brother of Kiril Vladimirovich and André Vladimirovich, dies in Paris. He is burried in Contrexeville, in the Vosges, in the Russian-Orthodox chapel, where his mother, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna Romanoff (1854-1920), found her last resting place. Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich Romanoff was married to Zinaida Raevsky.
December 17: Princess Vera (Vicky) Obolensky (1911-1944), who works for the French resistance movement, is arrested by the nazi's and taken to Berlin.
1944 The Soviet armies occupy Eastern Europe. Many Russian emigrants are once more the victims of communism, and numerous people are repatriated against their will. In Paris the communists found pro- Soviet newspapers, like Sovietsky Patriot and Rusky Novosti (Russian News).
The soprano Galina Pavlova Vishnevskaya (1926-) is 18 years old when she marries a sailor, Grigori Vishnevsky, but this marriage doesn't last long. Successively she marries Mark Ilyich Rubin, the director of her operetta company. He is 40, she still is 18. Her father is arrested for `political' reasons, which makes her blackmailable.
Berlin, August 4: Princess Vera Obolensky is executed by the nazi's.
Vasili Vasilievich Kandinsky (Moscow 1866 - Neuilly-sur-Seine 1944) dies. He went to law school in Moscow. In 1901 he founded the artist union Phalanx, which mainly organized exhibitions. Successively he founded the Neue Künstlervereinigung and Der blaue Reiter, in Germany. Until 1909 his style reminded of expressionism, but nowadays he's reckoned among the pioneers of the abstract art. After the Revolution he returned to Russia, but because of the rigid system he left soon afterwards. In 1921 he became teacher in the Bauhaus, Germany, and in 1933 he settled down in France.
Nice, Southern France, December: Countess Elisabeth Buxhoeveden, Count Alexander's first daughter out of his first marriage, marries the Russian nobleman Vladimir Panov (1880-1945).
Gleb Kerensky is in Holland with the Allied Forces, fighting the nazi's. He's a Captain of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.
1945 Budapest, January 17: The Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who rescued thousands of Jews from the nazi's during World War II, is arrested by the Soviets and brought to Moscow. Nobody knows why.
February 1: Patriarch Serge (Serge Vladimirovich Simansky, 1877-1970) succeeds Patriarch Alexis I.
February 14: The Red Army enters Budapest.
February 14: Alexander Solzhenitsyn is arrested in Eastern Prussia because he has written critical words about comrade Stalin in his letters to a school friend.
The Chinese communists `repatriate' the Russian refugees who left for the Caucasus in 1918 and 1919 Ä more than 200,000 people Ä and were routed by the Red Army for thousands of miles, through Kazakhstan, Siberia and Mongolia, to the border of Manchuria. They settled in Harbin and Shanghai. Many of them end up in Soviet Russian hard labour camps and prisons Ä after more than 25 years!
Eastern: Alexandra Rakhmanova's only son Jurka-Alexander is killed outside Vienna, by the Red Army. Alexandra and Arnulf move to Switzerland. Her books are published in more than 20 languages, all over the world.
May 8: Germany is defeated. Tatiana Nikolaevna Masalitinov and her husband are moved to a Displaced Persons Camp in Kempten (Allgäu, Germany). As more and more refugees are joining their DP Camp, they're transferred to a larger camp in Füssen (Bavaria), and successively to Camp Schleissheim, north of Munich, which is founded by the International Refugee Organization (IRO).
Paul Ignatieff dies. His wife Natasha died in 1944. They are burried in the cemetery of the Saint- Andrew's Church in Upper Melbourne, a town south of Montreal.
Their children Alec, Nick, Dima and George return to Canada.
John G. Martin and Jack Morgan invent the `Moscow Mule', which makes Smirnoff vodka world famous. The company is saved!
1946 Fulton, Missouri, March 6: Winston Churchill warns the Western countries for the Iron Curtain and the colonization politics of the Soviets. The Cold War has started.
Just like his grandfather Alexander, Oleg Kerensky's ambition is to go into politics. From Westminster School he goes straight to Christ Church, Oxford, where he becomes both treasurer and librarian of the Union. He is excused national service because of poor eyesight.
Berlin, April 21: Moscow forces the political parties in the Russian zone of Berlin to merge in one party, the SED, which submits itself to the CPSU in Moscow.
Eastern: Almost 30 years after the communists have seized to power, the church bells are allowed to sound in entire Russia. The communists also allow new churches being built. A Russian-Orthodox seminary is opened and the government approves of the election of Patriarch Serge. Patriarch Serge is even welcomed by Stalin. Nevertheless the relation between Church and State remains complicated.
Prague, May 26: The Czechoslowakian Communist Party wins the elections, with substantial financial help of Moscow.
Sofia, October 27: By murdering thousands of opponents and with the help of Moscow the Bulgarian Communists win the elections.
Alexander Alyechin (Moscow 1892 - Estoril 1946) dies. In his tomb are inscripted the following words, `Russian and French grand-master of chess. World-champion of chess from 1927 to 1935 and from 1937 until his death.' Alyechin escaped in 1920 and later became a French citizen. He lost the world- championship to Professor Max Euwe in 1935, but recovered it two years later. He felt that his `deep Russian soul' often was not understood in the West, but he didn't commit suicide, like the Soviet-Russian grand-master Kotov states in his biography of Alyechin.
The Synod of the Russian-Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, which until now often gathered in Sremsky-Karlovci, Yugoslavia, moves to Munich.
1947 Warsaw, January 19: With the help of Moscow and by tampering with the election results, the Polish communists seize the power in their country.
Budapest, June 2: By kidnapping his little son, the Soviet Secret Service forces Prime Minister Ferenc Nagy of Hungaria to resign his office.
July, 17: The Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg is executed in the gulag. Immediately after the prison physician A. Smoltsov has reported that Wallenberg `probably died of a heart attack', the body is cremated, before it can be properly examined.
Bucharest, July 28: By banning the Farmers Party, a large oppositional party, the Romanian communists now hold absolute sway.
Budapest, August 31: The communists seize to power in Hungaria.
Sofia, September 23: The Bulgarian politician Nikola Petkov is hanged. He was the most important opponent to the communists.
The Buxhoevedens emigrate from Italy to the United States. On September 30 their son Count Daniel Paul Buxhoeveden (1947-) is born in Great Neck, New York. The Russian writer/journalist Peter Dmitrievich Ouspensky dies in England.
George Ignatieff's son Michael is born.
1948 Serge Sergeevich Prokofyev's work is criticized sharply by the Soviet regime, and he has to comply to the directives of `socialist realism', which in fact is a Goebbelian realism. Prokofyev wrote symphonies, opera's, ballets, as well as the music for two films.
New York, May 11: Count Alexander Buxhoeveden, who worked as an engineer in Long Island, dies. Countess Vera Buxhoeveden, the wife of Count Anatol (Alec), his eldest son, takes charge of young Alexander, her brother in law. She and father Anthony von Grabbe are instrumental in getting Alexander into the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, New York. Countess Vera organizes the annual ball of the Russian Nobility Association in America.
August 12: Vladimir Kirilovich Romanoff marries Leonida Grigorievna, Princess Bagration-Mukhransky. Vladimir Kirilovich, who in August 1917 saw the light of day in Borga (Finland), studied law and politics in London and Paris. During World War II he was deported by the Germans. Although he is holder of a passport of the Order of Malta, the French government considers him a political refugee. The title of Grand Duke, which was approriated by Kiril Vladimirovich and Vladimir Kirilovich, are not recognized by other members of the Imperial Family, who form The Romanoff Family Association. The same applies to the titles which Kiril and Vladimir granted certain relatives and friends (like Mathilde Kshessinskaya).
Nice, Southern France, December 7: Countess Elisabeth Buxhoeveden, Count Alexander's eldest daughter, dies. Her husband Vladimir Panov died on August 19, 1945, also in Nice. Their marriage didn't even last one year.
Refugees
In 1918, after the October Revolution, most Russian refugees in France were still given extended hospitality, because the bolsheviki were considered criminals. Didn't they betray their allies, by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk? After World War II this attitude changed. Thousands of Soviet Russian soldiers wanted to stay in France, but in June 1945 the Soviet Russian and French government signed a treaty in which was agreed upon that all Soviet citizens who lived in France should be returned to the Soviet-Union. The KGB saw personally to it that this treaty was fulfilled. The resolution was cheered by a large part of the French population, because the communists were the allies of France. Why had these so-called refugees left their country in the first place? One year later the Cold War started, and by then everyone knew why all those thousands didn't want to return to the Soviet-Union, but then it was too late for them. Once the terror of Russian communism was common known, the Russian refugees were once more welcome, particularly the dissidents, people who resisted the Soviet regime, but didn't want to leave their country. Vladimir Bukovsky: `No, I didn't want to leave. The Jews go to Israel, the Germans go to Germany. That is their privilege; the right of every human being to go there, where he likes it best. But where can we Russians go to? There is no other Russia. And why should we have to? Why don't Brezhnev and his likes emigrate?' `Rebellions' like Bukovsky were confined in psychiatric institutions, because their behaviour was supposed to be morbid. The Soviet-Russian psychiatrist Professor Timoféeff: `Oppositional behaviour can be caused by a disease of the brains, in which the pathological process develops very gradually and slowly (sluggish advancing schizophrenia), and other symptoms (like criminal behaviour) are not being noticed. The age of twenty to thirty is characterized by an increased sensibility for conflicts, a strive for self-affirmation, rejection of values, opinions, et cetera, and that's why this behaviour is used to keep alive the myth that some young people, who in reality are suffering from schizophrenia, are unjustified admissioned in mental institutions, and that they are held there just because they think differently about certain matters than all other Russians.'
Did Tsarevich Alexis really die in 1918?
Although Radzinsky doubts that Anna Anderson was the real Anastasia, he reproduces testimonies which make it plausible that Tsarevich Alexis was alive and kicking a very long time after 1918. From a letter of psychiatrist Dr D. Kaufman from Petrozavodsk, to Edvard Radzinsky:
This will be about a man who for a time was treated in a psychiatric hospital in Petrozavodsk, where I worked on staff from September 1946 to October 1949, after graduating from the Second Leningrad Medical Institute.
(...) our patient load consisted of both civilians and prisoners, whom we were sent during those years for treatment or for legal- psychiatric examination. (...) In 1947 or 1948 in the wintertime another prisoner came to us as a patient. He was suffering from severe psychosis of the type we call hysterical psychogenic reaction. His mind was not clear, he was disorientated, and had did not understand where he was. (...) He waved his arms and tried to run off. (...) Amid incoherent utterances in a mass of other expressive exclamations the name `Beloborodov' flashed by two or three times. At first we paid no attention to it, since the name didn't mean anything to us. From his accompanying documents we found out he had been in several camps for a long time and that his psychosis had developed suddenly, when he had attempted to defend a woman (prisoner) from being beaten by a guard. He was tied up and, naturally, `worked over', although as far as I recall no visible bodily injuries were noted when he entered the hospital. His file indicated his date of birth as 1904; as for his first and last names I can't remember them exactly. The variations I recall are the following: Semyon Grigorievich Filippov or Filip Grigorievich Semyonov. After two or three days, as usually happens in these cases, the manifestation of severe psychosis had disappeared completely. The patient became calm, in full contact. Clear awareness and proper behaviour were maintained from then on for his entire stay at the hospital. His appearance, as far as I can say, was like this: a rather tall man, somewhat stout, sloping shoulders, slightly round-shouldered, a long pale face, blue or grey, slightly bulging eyes, a high forehead receding into a balding head, the remaining hair chestnut with grey. (...) So it became known to us that he was the heir to the crown, that during the hasty execution in Ekaterinburg his father had hugged him and pressed his face to him so that he wouldn't see the rifle barrels aimed at him. In my opinion, he had not even realised that something terrible was going on since the commands to fire were uttered unexpectedly, and he didn't hear the sentence read. All he remembered was the name Beloborodov. (...) Shots rang out, he was wounded in the buttocks, he lost consciousness, and he collapsed on a common heap of bodies. When he woke up he found he had been saved, someone had dragged him out of the cellar, carried him out and ministered him for a long time. (...) Gradually we began to look at him with other eyes. The persistent haematuria he suffered from found an explanation: the heir had had haemophilia. On the patient's buttock was an old cross-shaped scar. (...) Finally we realised who the patient's appearance reminded us of: the famous portraits of Nicholas I and II. (...) At that time consultants used to come to us from Leningrad for two or three months at a time. (...) Professor S.I. Gendelevich, the best psychiatric practitioner I ever met, was consulting with us then, and naturally we showed him our patient. (...) For two or three hours he `pursued' him with questions we could not have asked, since we were not conversant, but it turned out who he was. So, for example, the consultant knew the names and titles of all the members of the tsar's family, the branched network of the dynasty, all the court positions, the layout and use of every room in the Winter Palace and the country residences in the early part of the century, and so on. He even knew the accepted protocol for all the court ceremonies and rituals as well as the dates of the various name days in the tsar's family and other ceremonies marked in the Romanoff family circle. To all these questions the patient responded utterly accurately and without the slightest thought. For him it was as elementary as a primer. (...) From a few answers it was clear that he possessed wider knowledge in this sphere. His behaviour was as always: calm and dignified. Then the consultant asked the women to leave and he examined the patient below the waist, front and back. When we walked in (the patient had been dismissed), the consultant was blatantly dismayed. It turned out the patient had a cryptorchidism (one testicle had not descended), which the consultant knew had been noted in the dead heir Alexis. (...) The consultant explained the situation to us: there was a dilemma and we needed to make a joint decision - either put a diagnosis of `paranoia' in a stage of good remission with the possibility of employing the patient in his former occupations at his place of confinement, or consider the case unresolved and in need of additional observation in the hospital. In that case, however, we would be obliged to motivate our decision carefully for the organs of produratorial oversight, which would inevitably send a special investigator from Moscow. (...) Having weighed these possibilities, we considered it to the patient's good to give him a definite diagnosis of paranoia, of which we were not entirely certain, and return him to camp. (...) The patient agreed with our decision about returning to camp (naturally he was not told his diagnosis) and we parted as friends.
Radzinsky wanted to hear more sides and approached the psychiatric hospital. A letter from the deputy chief physician, Dr V.J. Kiviniemi, verified Dr Kaufman's story:
In my hands is medical history no. 64 for F.G. Semyonov, born 1904, admitted to psychiatric hospital January 14, 1949. Noted in red pencil `prisoner'. (...) The patient was released from the hospital April 22, 1949 to ITK (Corrective Labour Camp) No. 1. Semyonov was admitted to the hospital from the ITK clinic. The doctor's order describes the patient's acute psychotic condition and indicates that Semyonov kept `cursing someone named Beloborodov'. He entered the psychiatric hospital in a weakened physical condition, but without acute signs of psychosis. (...) From the moment he entered he was polite, sociable, behaved with dignity and modesty, neat. In his medical file a doctor notes that in conversation he did not conceal his origins. `His manners, tone and conviction speak to the fact that he was familiar with the life of high society before 1917.' F.G. Semyonov told how he was tutored at home, that he was the son of the former tsar, that he had been rescued during the time when the family perished, was taken to Leningrad, where he lived for a certain period, served in the Red Army as a cavalryman, studied at an economics institute (evidently in Baku), after graduating worked as an economist in Central Asia, was married, his wife's name was Asya, and then said that Beloborodov knew his secret and was blackmailing him. (...) In February 1949 he was examined by a psychiatrist from Leningrad, Gendelevich, to whom Semyonov declared that he had nothing to gain from approriating someone else's name, that he was not expecting any privileges, since he understood that various anti-Soviet elements might gather around his name and so as not to cause any trouble he was always prepared to leave this life. In April 1949 Semyonov underwent a forensic psychiatric examination and was declared emotionally ill and in need of placement in an Internal Affairs Ministry psychiatric hospital. This last must be regarded as a humanitarian act towards Semyonov for that time, since there is a difference between a camp and a hospital. Semyonov himself regarded it positively.
A short while later Radzinsky received a telephone call from an old man, a former prisoner, who knew the mysterious `Semyonov'. He told that all the prisoners called him `the Tsar's son', and they all believed it absolutely. One thing is remarkable: the name of Beloborodov. If this Alexis was just an imposter, who only had learned all the facts by heart, then something doesn't quite fit. For a long time it was common knowledge who took part in the murder of the Romanoffs: Yurovsky, Medvedev, Nikulin, Ermakov and some lower Cheka agents. Until the end of their lives they boasted about having executed the Romanoffs. But Beloborodov wasn't one of them! When Semyonov was an imposter, he would have stuck to the known `facts' of those days, and he would have mentioned Yurovsky, Medvedev, Nikulin or Ermakov. But that's not what he did. Nobody knew why he cursed Alexander Beloborodov when he was under severe pressure, because in those years nobody could know that Beloborodov had been part of the execution! It was a top secret. Summers and Mangold have a statement from Poul Ree, who in 1918 was the Danish vice-consul in the city of Perm. After Ekaterinburg had fallen into the hands of the Whites, the Red commanders withdrew to Perm. Ree stated that he spoke to `one of the men who sentenced the tsar to death'. After this conversation Ree was convinced that the tsar was shot after he got out of the car of the `regional commissionary'. And that was Beloborodov. In July 1918 the Pravda wrote, `On the morning of July 16 the ex-tsar was transferred from his prison to a parade ground outside of the city of Ekaterinburg, where ten soldiers of the Red Guard were waiting for him. The chairman of the Soviet read the death sentence, after which the ex-tsar asked permission to say a few last words to his wife and children before he was executed. This request was turned down. Without any resistance and completely poised the tsar stood in front of the firing squad; the execution was carried out. His body was taken away by car.' Is it possible that the Pravda told the truth this time? If so, then the murder didn't take place in the House of Ipatiev at all, and then the story of Poul Ree makes sence. Moreover this explains why Alexis, who adored his father, screamed `Beloborodov!' Was Filip Grigorievich Semyonov Tsarevich Alexis Nikolaevich Romanoff? I am inclined to fully endorse this, but I have to admit that I'm a hopeless romantic.
1949 Munich, Germany: The DP Camp Schleissheim has become a real town. Thanks to donations out of America there are schools, a hospital, a theatre, et cetera.
A friend of Vladimir Masalitinov, who has served with him in the White Army, and lives in Sao Paulo, sends them an affidavit and Tatiana Nikolaevna, her husband and her brother move to Brazil, where Vladimir is going to work in a large Brazilian company, binding books of the company's files.
The Synod of the Russian-Orthodox Church Outside of Russia moves from Munich to New York.
December 17: Princess Vera Meshchersky, who founded the Russian House in Saint-Geneviève-des-Bois, and wielded the sceptre there until she became ill a few weeks ago, dies.
1950 All Russian refugees want to leave Germany as soon as possible. My uncle Alexander Ivanov and his wife decide to meet the first consul who comes to `invite' emigrants to his country, and this consul just happens to be the Brazilian one; they're accepted.
1951 Paris, February 8: I am born.
1952 Prince Serge Mikhaïlovich Obolensky (1906-1952), my father, is murdered in a Moscow prison, because my mother, Princess Marina Vladimirovna Obolensky, née Ivanova (1924-1952), has managed to escape to France. A couple of months later she dies in a car accident in the Champs élysées in Paris, in front of the Café Fouquets. Her brother, Nikolai Ivanov, a Russian painter who lives in Paris, takes care of me.
Galina Pavlova Vishnevskaya starts to worked with the Bolshoy-opera.
Oleg Alexandrovich Kerensky, Alexander's son, has become a very meritorious motorway engineer, who is mentioned in the Dictionary of National Biography. After Oxford Alexander's grandson, Oleg Olegovich Kerensky, joins the BBC Worldservice, to combine his political interests with his second love, journalism. The need to conceal his homosexuality makes his life miserable, and that's why he decides to abandon his political ambitions. Journalism offers a happier life.
1953 January 15: The `Physicians' Conspiracy'. Start of full-scale anti-Semitic purges in the Soviet Union.
Moscow, March 6: Josif Stalin dies.
Paris, November 3: The writer Ivan Bunin dies in the arms of his wife Vera, in his apartment on the corner of Rue Jacques-Offenbach (nr.1) and Rue des Bauches. He lived there since 1922.
1954 Anna Frolov-Davidoff, General Davidoff's wife, dies in the United States. Her son Serge Davidoff has her urn added in the columbarium of the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, but he forgets to renew the five-yearly contract, so in 1960 her ashes are scattered into a nameless grave.
1955 Paris, February 2: Grand Duke Gavril Constantinovich Romanoff (1887-1955) dies. He was a great- grandson of Nicholas I and Major of the Imperial Guard Regiment of Hussars. In 1939 Grand Duke Vladimir Kirilovich granted him the title of `Grand Duke'. His brothers Ivan, Constantin and George were murdered in a mine, together with Elisabeth Feodorovna, while his brother Dmitri died a couple of months later in the Peter and Paul Fortress. On the way from his cell to the place of execution Dmitri kept saying, `Oche! Prosti jim, ibo nye znayut, chto dyelayut.' (Father, forgive them, because they know not what they're doing.)
Galina Pavlova Vishnevskaya meets the cellist Mstislav (Slava) Rostropovich. He is a friend of Prokofyev. My uncle Alexander Ivanov and his wife live in Brazil. Their daughter Irma Ivanova is born. Her godmother is Tatiana Nikolaevna Masalitinov.
1956 Moscow, February 26: During the 20st Congress of the CPSU Nikita Khrushchev criticizes Josif Stalin. He says that Stalin deported entire peoples from their motherland, and that he has the blood of millions of Soviet citizens on his hands. About 30 members of the Congress faint; some even become a heart-attack. Khrushchev himself weeps.
The cellist Mstislav (Slava) Rostropovich goes for the first time on tour through England. His wife Galina Pavlova Vishnevskaya stays at home because she is pregnant. March 18: their daughter Olga is born, in the Pirogov hospital in Moscow. Slava once more goes on tour, this time to America, and when he comes back, he tells her all about cultural life in the United States. Galina can't believe that almost every American family has a car, and sometimes even two, and that there are TV sets with dozens of channels in every hotel room.
Tokyo, September 1: Count Theodor Buxhoeveden, Count Alexander's first son out of his second marriage, who is now working as an engineer for the UNO, marries Akiko Sasaoka.
New York, September 10: Dowager-Countess Rosine-Marie Buxhoeveden, née Vidal, Theodor's mother, marries the private teacher Hans Kessler (1899-).
New York, September 17: Count Anatol (Alec) Buxhoeveden, Count Alexander's eldest son, divorces his wife, Countess Vera Buxhoeveden, née Illarionov.
November 4: Soviet troops occupy Budapest, to crush the opposition against the communist regime.
1957 Oleg Olegovich Kerensky becomes a dance critic at the Daily Mail.
1958 June 22: Slava and Galina have a second daughter: Elena.
August: Nikolai Ivanov, my uncle, and I move from Paris to Amsterdam.
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Het Binnenhof of September 18, 1958:
Tomorrow morning at 11.30 the former chargé d'affaires of the Imperial Russia in The Hague, Mr. P. Poustochkine, who passed away last Tuesday in the age of 72 years, is burried in the General Cemetery `Westduin' in Loosduinen.
Mr. Poustochkine was born in Napels in 1886, where his father was Consul-General of the Russian Empire. Just like his father he went into diplomatic service. His first office was Vice-Consul on the isle of Crete, from 1910 to 1912. In 1913 he came to the Netherlands, as Secretary of the Russian Imperial legation in The Hague. After the Revolution in Russia, as the Dutch government still not recognized the Soviet regime, Mr Poustochkine became chargé d'affaires, charged with the liquidation of the affairs of the former Imperial legation. He held this office from about 1920, until the German occupation in May 1940 closed the legation down. Mr Poustochkine retired after World War II, when the Soviet government was recognized by our country.
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Stockholm, October 25: The Soviet-Russian writer Boris L. Pasternak is nominated for the Nobel Literature prize.
Moscow, October 29: Pasternak refuses the Nobel prize and writes a letter to Khrushchev, in which he begs him not to ban him from the Soviet Union.
1959 New York, April 21: Count Anatol (Alec) Buxhoeveden marries Miss Roberta (Bobby) Montague Rose (1907). Miss Rose was born in London, as a daughter of the banker Archibald Adolph Rose and Francis Lake Montague. She is the widow of publisher Thomas Leaman (1904-1951), whom she married in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, on January 3, 1933.
Galina Pavlova Vishnevskaya goes to the United States, on tour with the Russian State Symphony Orchestra. On December 31 she arrives in New York.
1960 Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna Romanoff (1875-1960) dies. She was the daughter of Maria Feodorovna and the sister of Nicholas II. In 1919 she escaped from Russia with the Marlborough. In summer she and her husband Alexander (Sandro) Mikhaïlovich Romanoff lived in a palace in Hampton Court, London, which belongs to the English Royal Family, and in winter they lived in Southern France, in the village of Roquebrune-Cap Martin, where both of them were burried.
Grand Duke Olga Alexandrovna Romanoff (1882-1960) dies. She was the daughter of Maria Feodorovna and sister of Nicholas II. First she married Prince Peter (Petia) Alexandrovich von Oldenburg (1868- 1924), and later Nicholas Kulikovsky (1881-1958). Until 1948 she led a secluded life in Danmark. After that she left for Canada, where she lived for years in a small farmhouse near Toronto. Her neighbours were rather surprised when she was invited for lunch with Queen Elisabeth and Prince Philip in 1959, aboard the Royal yacht Britannia. A couple of months ago, at the age of 78, she moved in with a Russian couple, who lived above a hairdresser's shop in a poor quarter of Toronto. There she died.
Tatiana Nikolaevna Masalitinov's husband Vladimir dies in Brazil. Her sister, who lives in the United States, sends an affidavit to Tatiana and her brother, and they join their sister in New York, where Tatiana finds work as a textile designer.
Mstislav Rostropovich is appointed professor of violoncello in the conservatories of Leningrad and Moscow.
1961 The Russian Lyceum, which was founded by the Society for Assistance to Children of Russian Emigrants, has closed down. From 1921 till 1928 the lyceum resided on the address 7 Rue du Docteur-Blanche, Paris. The rectress was Maria Maklakov, the Russian Ambassador's wife. In 1926 the lyceum had 228 pupils, and in 1928 it moved to Boulogne-Bilancourt (6 Boulevard d'Auteil), in which building also was put up the `Union of Zemstvo Members Outside of Russia'.
Paris, Airport Le Bourget, June 16, 9 a.m.: The Kirov Ballet is waiting for the plane from London, which will take them back to Moscow. Pierre Lacotte waits for the young dancer Rudolf Nureyev, to say goodbye, but Nureyev hasn't arrived yet. The place is full of KGB-agents and officials of the Russian Embassy in Paris. Clara Saint enters the airport and walks directly towards Lacotte. She whispers in his ear, `If you see Rudolf, tell him to throw himself into the arms of the man behind me. He's a policeman.' 9.20 a.m.: Rudolf Nureyev enters the airport, accompanied by KGB-agents. Lacotte walks towards him. One of the agents says, `Sorry, we have no time to loose,' but that doesn't stop Lacotte to take Rudolf in his arms. He says, `Rudolf, it's time for us to say goodbye,' and whispers Clara Saint's message in the dancer's ear. Then he says, `Don't forget to say goodbye to Clara.' Without hesitating Rudolf runs towards the man behind Clara, throws himself in his arms, and shouts, `I want to be free!' Immediately the two men are surrounded by other policemen in civilian clothes. Rudolf once more shouts, `I want to be free!' The policemen take him away, Clara Saint and Pierre Lacotte follow them, leaving the KGB- agents behind dumbfounded. Rudolf Nureyev has defected to the West.
Aleksandr Feodorovich Kerensky and Robert Paul Browder publish their book The Russian Provisional Government, 1917: documents.
1962 Noroton, Connecticut, September 29: Countess Catherine Geneviève Buxhoeveden, Count Alexander's second daughter out of his second marriage, marries the author, composer and parapsychologist Hans Holzer, from Vienna, Austria. Countess Catherine Geneviève is a well known painter.
In 1961 Igor Strawinsky was officially invited to the Soviet-Union, but he hesitates a long time before he accepts the invitation. At the end of 1962 Strawinsky sets foot on native soil. He is welcomed by Nikita Khrushchev and gives concerts in Leningrad and Moscow. Dmitri Shostakovich, `Strawinsky looked quite foreign when he visited us. (...) The invitation of Strawinsky had a highly political background. The top had decided to make Strawinsky National Composer Number One, but Strawinsky didn't want to play the game. He hadn't forgotten that they had called him a ``lackey of American imperialism'' and ``bootlicker of the Roman-Catholic Church''. He didn't make the same mistake as Prokofyev, who ended like the chicken in the soup.'
1963 Mstislav Rostropovich signs a contract as a solo performer with the English Chamber Orchestra. He keeps living in the Soviet Union. Jack Brymer writes about him, `Rostropovich is a fantastic cellist, who looks like an office clerk, but plays like an angel.'
André Alexeevich Amalrik is expelled from the university of Moscow, because of his `non-confor- mistic' thesis about Rurik in Kievian Russia.
Oleg Kerensky, Alexander's grandson, who works for the BBC Worldservice, becomes deputy editor of The Listener.
My uncle Nikolai and I attend the funeral of Tristan Tzara, who used to visit us.
1964 Moscow, October 15: Nikita Khrushchev has to resign his office. He is succeeded by Leonid Brezhnev.
1965 André Amalrik is bannished to Siberia, where he will have to stay until 1968. There he writes his book Undesired trip to Siberia and Will the Soviet-Union last till 1984?.
Aleksandr Feodorovich Kerensky publishes his book Russia and history's turning point.
1967 Uncle Nikolai and I return to Paris to attend the funeral of Ossip Zadkine. When I was a little kid and we were living in Paris, Mr. Zadkine worked nearby, in Rue de la Grande Chaumière, where he taught his students how to sculpture, and where I admired the most beautiful girls in the world, who came to model for his class - naked! His studio was in Rue Delambre, and it was a mess. Mr. Zadkine once told me that he could use a guy like me. True, my uncle's studio was always tidy. I loved it when the place was clean, when his six huge identical easels were standing next to each other in line, ready for action, and when the brushes were standing clean and dry in vegetable tins, cat's tongues with cat's tongues, stipplers with stipplers, and pencils with pencils. My uncle was proud of me.
1968 January: I move from Amsterdam to Paris, to study in the école des Beaux Arts. My uncle Paul Obolensky invites me to live with him and his wife Jacqueline.
May: Students organize demonstrations in the French capital. My girlfriend Marie-Claire, also a student, and I were there.
May 3: The students occupy the Sorbonne.
May 6: More than four hundred people are wounded in a struggle with the police.
May 11: Fierce fights between the students and the police; we are in the middle of it, on Place St. Michel. Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Jean-Paul Sartre hold speeches in the Sorbonne. We want De Gaulle to step down.
May 13: We occupy the Odéon Theatre.
May 22: New fights. Daniel Cohn-Bendit isn't allowed to return to France, after his return from Germany. All over Europe students follow our example. June: The state of emergency was proclaimed in Berkeley, California. In France we are called `les enragés' (the wild ones). We protest against `bourgeois' society, the American actions in Vietnam, the military regime in Greece and General Franco's dictatorship in Spain. We, the students, demand more (sexual and personal) freedom and modern education, and we challenge the legitimacy of the authorities' power. The professors express their solidarity with us.
August 28: Marie-Claire's and my son is born. We call him Dimitri. I'm 17 and not at all ready for fatherhood. Marie-Claire understands and returns to her parents in Vichy. I leave for Hamburg, Germany, to stay with my uncle Theodore Ivanov.
Tatiana Nikolaevna Masalitinov retires, and moves to Santa Barbara, California.
Czechoslowakia, August 21: The Red Army occupies Prague, to crush the so-called Prague Spring. The Czechoslowakian leaders of this progressive movement are arrested and deported to the Ukrain.
Maurice Ashley, the editor of the BBC program The Listener, retires and Oleg Kerensky, the deputy editor, does not get the editorship. He leaves the BBC to become a freelance with the New Statesman. The rest of his life he will write about his chief interests, the performing arts: above all ballet, but also opera, plays, musicals and concerts. As a dance critic Oleg works for several newspapers. When his father leaves his mother, Nathalie Bely, Oleg remains closer to her. Oleg's great virtue as a reviewer is his ability to communicate his enthousiasm and enjoyment.
September: My friend Mike, a street artist from Santa Barbara, and I are innocently locked up in a prison in Duesseldorf-Derendorf, Germany. Three months later there's a trial, after which we are released immediately. I'm going to live with my uncle Michael Obolensky and his wife Vera, in their summer residence in Forio d'Ischia, Italy.
1969 April 28: President De Gaulle resigns his post.
The Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who stayed in Russian hard labour camps for many years, has been thrown out of the Writers Union.
Galina Pavlova Vishnevskaya tours with the Bolshoy Theatre through Western Europe and the United States. It will be the last time she's permitted to perform in the United States.
December 12: Jack McPherson, one of my uncle Alexis's `associates', takes me from the isle of Ischia to New York. I can't do anything against it, because I'm still a minor and he is my guardian. Moreover, this former intelligence officer he's made me an American citizen, also against my will.
1970 Grand Duchess Irina Alexandrovna Romanoff (1895-1970) dies. She was the daughter of Xenia Alexandrovna and Alexander (Sandro) Mikhaïlovich Romanoff, and married to Prince Felix Yussupov. They mainly lived in Paris, where their generosity towards other Russian refugees became legendary.
Oleg Olegovich Kerensky publishes his lively and well informed book Ballet Scene, which is published in the United States under the title The world of ballet, supplemented by two new chapters and further references to American ballet.
The parents of my niece Irma Ivanova's pass away in Brazil. Irma emigrates to the United States, where she finds a job in New York as a bilingual executive secretary.
The Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn becomes the Nobel Literature prize.
The historian and writer André Alexeevich Amalrik is convicted once more, on account of the fact that he wrote two critical books about the Soviet Union, and once more he will have to spend three years in prison.
Jerusalem: Count Alexander Alexandrovich Buxhoeveden, Count Alexander's second son out of his second marriagewho was a lay brother in the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, New York, for seven years, before he last year went to Jerusalem with father Anthony von Grabbe, is forced to return to New York, due to a terrible accident.
Aleksandr Feodorovich Kerensky, former Prime Minister of Russia, dies.
1971 April 6: Igor Strawinsky dies in New York. His mortal remains are taken to Venice, Italy, where Strawinsky is burried in the cemetery San Michele.
Oleg Olegovich Kerensky becomes the ballet critic of the International Herald Tribune.
1972 October: Igor Sikorsky dies at the age of 84, knowing that his invention, the helicopter, already has saved more than a million people's lives. He is burried in Connecticut, near the spot where his dream of vertical flying came through.
Igor Sikorsky retired in 1957, but he kept designing helicopters. His aim was improving the lifting capacity of the helicopter. He designed the S-60 and the S-64 (Skycrane). Until 1972 Sikorsky worked as an advisor for the United Aircraft Company, but the Skycrane, with a lifting capacity of ten tons, was the last large project that he worked on.
1973 Galina Pavlova Vishnevskaya and her husband Mstislav (Slava) Rostropovich aren't allowed to leave the Soviet-Union, because of the fact that they openly supported their friend Alexander Solzhenitsyn. They also aren't allowed to show their faces in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Oleg Kerensky has published several books about the ballet and the theatre. This year he publishes another biography: Anna Pavlova, his most important book, which shows that he is capable of patient research.
1974 February 13: Alexander Solzhenitsyn is bannished from the Soviet Union, because of his book The Gulag Archipelago. After arriving on the airport of Frankfurt, Germany, where he is welcomed by the German writer Heinrich Boell, he leaves for Switzerland.
When the boycott of Galina Pavlova Vishnevskaya and Mstislav Rostropovich increases, Slava writes a letter to Brezhnev, in which he asks permission for the whole family to go abroad for two years. The state machinery works remarkably fast this time, but it would have ended very badly, hadn't Senator Kennedy and Leonard Bernstein intervened. After Brezhnev gives his permission, Slava leaves immediately. He isn't allowed to take anything with him. Galina and the children leave some weeks later, in July. Galina, `We were in Sheremetyevo Airport. Someone opened a bottle of champagne. ``Galina Pavlovna, one for the road! Come back as soon as you can! We can't miss you!'' I see the sad faces of my fans. Time to leave... Passport control. If they only let me go! ``Go on.'' Thank God! Faster! Faster! We're in the aeroplane. O my God, why doesn't it move? I know they're coming to get us. I can't stand it anymore. I close my eyes and count the seconds, the minutes... Finally the doors are closing. No, it is still to early to cheer, they can easely open the doors and arrest us. But now we're moving to the runway. My heart beats wildly. The plane goes faster and finally we're in the air. Tears come to my eyes.'
1976 July 15: The historian and writer André Alexeevich Amalrik (37) `emigrates' to the West, together with his wife Gyuzel, who is also bannished from the Soviet Union. They are welcomed in Amsterdam by a crowd of sympathizers.
December 9: The Soviet-Russian scientist André Sakharov becomes the Nobel Peace prize. The Soviet Union doesn't allow him to leave the country, so Sakharov's wife Elena Bonner accepts the prize in the name of her husband. The official Soviet press calls Sakharov an `anti-patriot' and a `laboratory rat'.
1977 Mstislav Rostropovich is appointed artistic director of the English Aldeburgh Festival.
Oleg Olegovich Kerensky publishes his The New British Drama; fourteen playwrights since Osborne and Pinter, a study of postwar British playwrights. He also contributes to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
1978 Rotterdam, Holland, January 3: Gynaecologist Iwan Poustochkine, who rocked the cradle of jazz music in Holland, together with his brother Toto, dies. From Jazz/Press no. 48 of February 1, 1978:
In memoriam: Iwan Poustochkine. Iwan Poustochkine was one of the pioneers of Dutch jazz music. In the thirties, when Holland was introduced to the new music of the Northern American negroes, many people found it barbarian and thought it would blow over. Iwan Poustochkine, at the time a medical student and stimulated by his brother Toto Poustochkine, formed an orchestra called `Swing Papa's'. That was the beginning of a jazz tradition in The Hague, the city which until long afterwards remained the Dutch center of many jazz activities.'
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Alexander Solzhenitsyn settles down in the United States.
Oleg Kerensky's parents have passed away in London. Oleg moves to an apartment in Greenwich Village, New York, where he finds the life both congenial and economical. He keeps his British nationality and supplements his income with writing for British papers and magazines, including The Times and The Stage.
The Izvestia of March 16 states that Galina Pavlova Vishnevskaya and Mstislav Rostropovich lost their citizenship of the Soviet-Union by an ukase of the Supreme Soviet.
Moscow, July 13: The Soviet authorities send three Russian dissidents to jail. Anatoli Shtsharan- sky: 13 years; Alexander Ginsburg: 8 years; Viktoras Piatkus: 15 years. All they want is that the Soviet Union complies with the Helsinki Agreement. By these punishments the Soviet regime hopes to discourage the dissenters movement.
1979 Countess Alexandra Tolstoy, the founder of the Tolstoy Foundation in New York, dies, and is burried in the Russian cemetery of Spring Valley, New York.
Sonia Delaunay, née Terk (Gorodishche 1885 - Paris 1979) dies in Paris. She was a painter and decorator, who graduated from the academy of arts of St. Petersburg in 1905, and settled down in France in 1910. At first Sonia was influenced by Gauguin. She designed textile fabrics, décors and costumes for Diaghilev, illustrated work of Apollinaire, and has contributed much to the development of the abstract art after 1945. She was married to the painter Robert Delaunay (1885-1941), who became famous by his development of a new, abstracting cubist style, which was characterized by the turnover of colors and iridescence, as a result of which depth and movement were created (orphism).
1980 Moscow, July 19: Boycott of the 22nd Olympic Summer Games in Moscow, due to the Soviet-Russian occupation of Afghanistan.
Tatiana Metternich (1914-), a daughter of Prince Ilarion (Lari) Vasilchikov and Princess Lydia (Dinka) Viatzemsky, publishes the diaries of her mother.
Thursday, August 21: a message in the society column of The Paris Post-Intelligencer, a Paris, Tennessee newspaper:
Miss Porter Weds In New York City. Announcement has been received here of the marriage in New York City of Miss Emy Louise Porter and Alexander Buxhoeveden at the Russian-Orthodox Cathedral of the Protection of the Holy Virgin on Aug. 12, Saint Alexander Nevsky Day. The Rev. Benedict DeSocio officiated with the exchange of rings and the traditional double crown wedding ceremony of the Orthodox Church. Bible reading and prayers were in both English and Russian. A full a capella Russian choir accompanied the service, the cathedral being filled with lighted candles, vigil lamps and icons in accordance with the Eastern rites. Miss Porter chose a 96-year-old wedding ring from Paris inscribed with the initials M.B. and the year 1884, which had belonged to Myrtle Beattles, mother of the late Mary Farabough Blakemore of Paris and San Francisco.
The bride is the daughter of the late Will Burgess Porter and Beulah Dumas Porter, and the granddaughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Don Dumas Sr. and Dr. and Mrs. Felix F. Porter, pioneer families of Henry County. Mr. Buxhoeveden, a native of Nice, France, is the son of the late Count Alexander Buxhoeveden of St. Petersburg (Leningrad) Russia.
After her marriage to Alexander Emy-Louise is baptized a Russian-Orthodox, after which her saint's name is Maria. Like most descendants of Russian refugees Alexander doesn't have any pictures, documents or objects of the Russian period of his ancestors. The only things Count Alexander and Countess Maria have of the Buxhoeveden heirlooms are a plate on their wall, one of a set that Catharina the Great gave to an ancestor, and a tiny icon of Alexander Nevsky. They live near Washington Square Park, New York City, in a neighborhood which especially in summer has a Parisian atmosphere. I am proud to be able to say that the Count and Countess Buxhoeveden belong to my best and dearest friends.
1981 Tsar Nicholas II, Tsaritsa Alexandra Feodorovna, their five children and the Tsaritsa's sister Elisabeth Feodorovna are canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. The Moscow patriarchate utters sharp protests.
Oleg Olegovich Kerensky publishes The Guinness Guide to Ballet, a popular exposition of the dance world.
1982 Moscow, November 10: Leonid Brezhnev dies. He is succeeded by Yuri Andropov (68), who headed the KGB for fifteen years.
1983 Tuesday, May 3: George Balanchine, who wrote 149 ballets, of which 27 to the music of Igor Strawinsky, died on Saturday April 30, at 4 p.m.. Today a memorial service was held in the Russian-Orthodox Cathedral `Our Lady of the Sign' in New York, on the corner of Park Avenue and East 93rd Street. George Balanchine is burried in Sag Harbor, Long Island. His widow and all his ex-wives were present to throw white roses into the grave: Tamara Geva, Alexandra Danilova, Maria Tallchief, Tanaquil Le Clerq, Allgra Kent, Suzanne Farrell, Karin von Aroldingen and Natalie Molostwoff. Balanchine's friends, the piano players Robert Fizdale and Arthur Gold, who live near the cemetery, prepared a traditional `Balanchine-lunch' for the mourning, with caviar, vodka, smoked ham and toast.
Oleg Olegovich Kerensky is delighted to play the role of his grandfather Alexander in the film Reds, next to Jerzy Kosinski, Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty, who also directed and produced the film.
1984 Moscow, February 9: Yuri Andropov dies. He is succeeded by Constantin Chernenko (72).
Charlottesville, February 12: Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanoff dies. (I own three encyclopaedias. All three of them say, `Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, 1901-1984.' After having read James Blair Lovell's beautiful book Anastasia, the lost daughter of the Tsar I am absolutely convinced: Anna Anderson (1901-1984) was Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova (1901-1984).)
1985 March: Chernenko dies and is succeeded by Michael Gorbachev. Start of the perestroyka.
1986 February 8: My uncle Prince Alexis Alexeevich Obolensky (1914-1986), also known as `Mr. Backgam- mon', dies. He was married three times. In 1939 he married Jane Wheeler (1914-) from New Orleans, in 1952 Catherine Pearce (1919-) from Memphis Tennessee and in 1966 Jaqueline Stedman (1939-) from New York, whom he divorced in 1971. Since then he was looking for a fourth spouse. Tall, gallant and gaunt `Obi' was the last of the great Russian raconteurs and a dashing sportsman. His life style made him the enfant terrible of the Russian high-society in Manhattan. In the society columns of the New York press he was called a playboy, a professional gambler and a professed woman chaser, and the last years of his life he was living in a bachelor flat off Fifth Avenue. He didn't make a secret of the fact that he was an adventurer. `My father, Alexis Obolensky, was a fine basso profundo, who sang with Nelly Melba all over the world. Right after our escape from St. Petersburg in 1917 my father earned money by giving concerts in Constantinopel and other places in Turkey, where a lot of White Russians were waiting for the revolution to blow over. Our Turkish gardener has taught me how to play backgammon. The backgammon developed by itself. There had always been a certain number of people who played in small tournaments, for one dollar a point, but when gambling started in the Bahamas in 1964 a friend with a new hotel offered me $ 10,000 to gather a jet-set backgammon crowd, and fly them down for the opening. I lined up a tournament, and though the rest of the people in the hotel looked at us as if we were from Mars with all those checkerboards, that is how big backgammon in the Western hemisphere was born. The whole thing snowballed from there. We organized a backgammon association, we put out a newspaper, and I wrote a book teaching the five-thousand-year-old game; it sold 800,000 copies, with royalties still coming in.' The children from his first marriage are: Anna (1939-), who runs a public relations-firm in Palm Beach, Florida, and divorced from her first husband, Antonio Piedrabuena, in 1970, after which she married the concert piano player Christopher Czaya Sager (1941-); Alexis (1944-), real estate broker in Aspen, Colorado; Maria (1946-1986), who was married to the London hotel-owner Anthony Underwood.
Although Serge and Michael Daniloff settled down in the United States and even became American citizens, they never thought of themselves as Americans. Michael Daniloff dies in 1986. His ashes are scattered by Nicholas Daniloff, Serge's son.
August 30: Nicholas Daniloff, since 1981 correspondent of the U.S. News and World Report in Moscow, is arrested by the KGB, on suspicion of espionage.
September 13: After two weeks of imprisonment and interrogation in the Lefortovo prison, Nicholas Daniloff is deported from the country, because the KGB can't prove anything. The misery started when a KGB agent asked him, `Are you a relative of General Yuri Daniloff?' and Nicholas answered, `I am his grandson.' Michael Sergeevich Gorbachev has been General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet- Union for more than a year, and the Soviet-Union already is considered a civilized country.
After been married for 10 years Grand Duchess and claimant to the throne Maria Vladimirovna Romanoff (23-12-1953 -), the daughter of Vladimir Kirilovich, divorces Prince Franz-Wilhelm of Prussia (1943-), who was converted to Russian-Orthodoxy and adopted the name of Michael Pavlovich. An ukase of Vladimir Kirilovich granted his son in law and his descendants the title of Grand Duke and the last name of Romanoff. Maria Vladimirovna grew up in Madrid and studied for three years Russian, French and Spanish in the university of Oxford. The ecclesiastical marriage was celebrated in the Russian-Orthodox church in Madrid, and attended by King Juan Carlos and Queen Sophie of Spain. Juan Carlos is a first cousin of Maria Vladimirovna, while Queen Sophie is a first cousin of Michael Pavlovich. In 1981 their son (at present Tsarevich) Grigori Mikhaïlovich Romanoff was born.
Film director André Tarkovsky (Zavroe 1932 - Paris 1986) dies in Paris. Tarkovsky studied under Michael Romm in the film academy of Moscow, and made his first appearance in 1962, with the feature film Ivan's Youth, for which he was awarded the Golden Lion on the Venice film festival. Abroad he became especially famous by his film Solaris (1971). In Russia he wasn't appreciated, in view of his social and political criticism on the Soviet system. During the shooting of his last film, Le sacrifice, Tarkovsky already suffered from an uncurable type of cancer. His father, the poet Arseni Tarkovsky, said, `Don't be afraid, my boy, death doesn't exist. Fear for death does exist though, and that fear is horrifying. (...) but everything changes, and one fine day we will even be extricated from fear for death.'
Chernobyl, April 26, 01.23 a.m.: The reactor of the nuclear plant explodes.
Moscow, May 15: President Michael Gorbachev informs his people and the rest of the world about the nuclear explosion in Chernobyl.
1987 At first Count Alexander and Countess Maria Buxhoeveden mingled with other Russian aristocrats in New York, but since some years this relationship is watered down. I very well understand the reasons for this; the modesty, the unpretentiousness, the helpfulness and the cordiality of the Buxhoevedens is very un-American. Most Russian aristocrats in New York belong to the jetset of Manhattan - millionairs and real snobs, who think that Noblesse Oblige means, `Nobility is obligatory to be hoity-toity'. It's obvious that the Buxhoevedens don't belong in this category. I like style and class, but most people don't seem to realize that you can't judge style, class or the absence of it by ones looks, clothes or possessions. Class and style are inner things, and have nothing to do with heredity, status or ostentation.
1988 Oleg Kerensky learns that he is HIV positive and knows from now on that he will have his life cut short.
1989 Princess Ekaterina Meshcherskaya (she and her mother stayed in Russia) celebrates her 85th birthday in Moscow. (I don't know if she's still alive; all my letters to Russia and the Ukrain seem to disappear in thin air.)
Michael Ignatieff, who describes himself as `a displaced Canadian writer, married to an Englishwoman, with a house near a park in Northern London, overlooking a cluster of plane-trees,' receives the Royal Society of Literature Award for his beautiful book, The Russia Album, in which he tells about his search for his Russian origin. Michael Ignatieff is the compère and compiler of the BBC-program The Late Show.
In Russia freedom of religion is regulated by law. Russia witnesses a religious revival.
Moscow, May: The Russian weekly Ogonyok (weekly 3,200,000 copies) organizes the `Week of the Conscience', to commemorate the 98 million victims of the Stalin administration, a genocide unique in human history.
1991 Moscow, August 19: The Soviet press agency TASS announces that president Michael Gorbachev is replaced by vice president Gennadi Yanaev.
Washington, August 20: The American president George Bush refuses to recognize the new government.
Moscow, August 21: The coup d'état is over. Michael Gorbachev returns from his datcha in the Crimea.
Grand Duke Vladimir Kirilovich Romanoff, who lived many years in Madrid and later in the United States, visits Russia for the first and last time. He talks to Boris Yeltsin and Anatoli Sobchak, the mayor of St. Petersburg. In Germany he presents his book Das Zarenreich, a such-and-such book about the rise and fall of the Russian Empire.
In Moscow a statue is put up to Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna Romanoff, who was murdered by the bolsheviks in 1918.
Moscow, December 8: The USSR ceases to exist. Michael Gorbachev is no longer president of the Soviet Union. The leading figure is now Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Federation.
1992 April: Grand Duke Vladimir Kirilovich Romanoff dies in Miami of a heart attack. He is interred in a crypt in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, where other Romanoffs found their last resting places. His daughter, Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, succeeds him as a claimant to the throne, while her son Grigori Mikhaïlovich is the new Tsarevich. The Romanoff Family Association however doesn't share this point of view.
April 4: The Moscow Patriarchate canonizes Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna Romanoff.
May 10: The Sunday Times publishes a story which says that a thorough examination shows that the remains of all five children of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsaritsa Alexandra were found, and that Anna Anderson was a phoney.
September: Oleg Kerensky begins to lose his appetite. His doctor put him on AZT and his appetite problem improves. He has a melanoma skin cancer surgically removed.
November: The Saint-Nicholas Cathedral, 15 East 97th Street, New York, celebrates its 90th anniversary.
1993 Paris, January 6: Rudolf Nureyev dies of AIDS. I attend his funeral.
May: Oleg Kerensky feels ill and a second melanoma skin cancer is removed; he never recovers from this operation, as the cancer has metasticized and is all through his body. Oleg knows death is imminent.
London, July 7: In Aldermaston scientists of the Home Office state that the bones which were found in a grave near Ekaterinburg, belong to Tsar Nicholas II, the Tsaritsa and three of their four daughters. The scientists compared the DNA of the bones to the DNA of Prince Philip. His grandmother was Princess Alice Von Hessen, one of the Tsaritsa's sisters. The remains of the Tsarevich and Anastasia were not identified. One of the scientists, Dr Thompson, says that the Aldermaston laboratory possesses hairs of Anna Anderson, so her DNA can also be compared to that of Prince Philip, to make sure if she was Anastasia or not, but that he's not permitted to perform these tests. How strange...
Moscow, September 21: President Yeltsin sends the Supreme Soviet home and announces parliamentary elections on December 11 and December 12.
Moscow, September 22: The dissolved Supreme Soviet proclaims Alexander Ruchkoy president of Russia.
Moscow, October 3: Ruchkoy orders the people to capture the Moscow city hall and the Ostakino television tower.
Moscow, October 4: President Yeltsin restores the peace with the help of the army. Khasbulatov and Ruchkoy are brought to the Lefortovo prison.
New York, October 6, 3 a.m.: Oleg Olegovich Kerensky, aged 63, dies of AIDS. He is fully awake when he dies. He is cremated and his ashes are returned to his cousins in England, for internment in the family plot in Putney Vale. A memorial service is held in London. The Times publishes a three column obituary on Oleg. He loved to travel, yet he never managed to visit Russia, the homeland of his grandfather. When I met him for the first time, he didn't know anything about my Russian and aristocratic origin, and he highly blamed me for reminding him of his Russian origin. `I spent most of my life trying to escape my Russian inheritance,' he said to my astonishment. `Why?' `I'm just not interested in mixing with Russians. Never had the urge to do so.' `Can you explain what's the reason for that?' `No, I haven't got the time for it, and moreover I'm absolutely not in the mood for it.' Some weeks later we met again. I discovered that since our last meeting a strange thing had happened, which I since witnessed with many other descendants of Russian refugees: a sudden interest in their Russian origin, as if I had awoken something in them. This time Oleg was very accessible, but he still didn't want to go into my question why he always had avoided other Russians abroad. He did however tell me everything he knew about his family, and years later he helped me with my search for the `last of the Mohicans'. Some weeks before he died we met once more. `If democracy survives there, I am thinking of making my first visit to Russia before too long,' my friend said hesitating, as if he should be ashamed of this sudden interest in the country of his ancestors. In the mean time my informer `Feodor' Romanoff, who has the same age as Oleg, had told me why the Kerensky's and lots of other Russian refugees were at daggers drawn. `By many Russian refugees, particularly by the Russian nobility, Alexander Kerensky was considered the man who bartered away Russia to the bolsheviki. Of course this was absolutely unjustified, because if Lenin had not been helped by Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, Kerensky's Provisional Government would have founded a democratic Russia, and nobody would have had to flight. Alexander Kerensky, Oleg's grandfather, was often denigrated, particularly by Nina Berberova and her likes, and unfortunately today someone with the name of Kerensky still wouldn't be welcome in certain Russian circles. I can imagine very well why Oleg doesn't feel like justifying the fancied misbehaviour of his grandfather, and why he doesn't feel like socializing with a group of the population so ignorant and intolerant.' There was another reason, though. Oleg's cousin Stephen Kerensky told me, `We had very little contact with other Russians; my mother is English and I do not speak or read Russian with any fluency, although I'm learning. Both Oleg and a family friend, daughter of one of my father Gleb's colleagues, spoke Russian until they dropped it within weeks of going to English schools, so no serious attempt was made to teach me or my elder sister Katherine. We did celebrate our saint's days as lesser birthdays when we were children and we continue to make kulich and pashka at Easter. Oleg's parents were both Russian, and the actually resented all things Russian very much when he was a child. He wanted to be English and, even more than me, became so at Westminster, Christ Church and the BBC. However, he developed a great affection for Russia through his love of ballet and always refused to stand for the Soviet anthem at performances by their ballet companies. He also came to knowledge that much of his character stemmed from a Slavic warmth and sociability. I also felt a certain alienation from what I saw as the strangeness of Russian relations. Society in all countries demands a degree of conformity, and being called `Russian spy' at school was not exactly fun, even if it didn't last very long as a nickname. After 30 years when I considered myself to be completely English, my most direct feelings of being Russian come from my style of argument and my attitudes to friendship. We always had terrific political arguments at home, conducted with a vehemence that the English find intimidating. My father Gleb fought all his life against the prejudiced ideas of pre-revolutionary Russia, the distorted histories of 1917 that are still current and I have taken op the cudgels to some extent, because I believe quite strongly that a many ills of the 20th century derive from Lenin. However, not a few also stem from the commercialism of the USA, and that country's bizarre notions of religion, truth, decency and freedom, as ridiculed by Mark Twain, Tom Lehrer, Lenny Bruce and Frank Zappa.' Oleg considered to return to London forgood. His uncle Gleb had passed away, but his aunt Mary still lived in Rugby, just like her son Stephen. Daughter Katherine Walker lived in Farnham, Surrey. Her eldest daughter studied Russian in the university of Durham, and called herself Tanya Kerensky Walker. Daughter Elizabeth Hudson lived in Titley, Herefordshire. Knowing he was dying Oleg wanted to send me photographs of him and his grandfather, he wanted to visit Russia, and he wanted to leave New York to join his relatives in England. He didn't make it. In the last seven years he lost a large portion of his closest friends, some quite young, to AIDS, the disease that eventually struck him down as well. Before he died he completed his autobiography, but Oleg's friend, Arthur G. Lambert Jr., thinks it's unlikely that it will ever be published. That would be a pity. Oleg, I raise a glass of vodka to you, my friend, and I hope that you'll be happier up there than you ever were down here.
Moscow, October 9: Michael Gorbachev announces in the Komsomolskaya Pravda that he is willing to `set everything aside to save Russia.'
Washington, October 14: Michael Gorbachev announces in the Washington Post that he considers to be a candidate in the Russian presidential elections next year.
December 13, Black Monday: The fascist Vladimir Zhirinovsky has won the elections. Zhirinovsky is an anti-Semite, a Pugachov, a man who solves international problems with bombs and national problems with cheap vodka. If Zhirinovsky really comes to power, I foresee a second Russian diaspora, because if Yeltsin can change the constitution, so can Zhirinovsky. Alexei Triumfov of Novosti Publishers in Moscow calls me: `Your Excellency, we think you're a bit pessimistic. After the collapse of communism Russia indeed has been going through a difficult time trying to find its feet again. We are sure it will pull through in the end.' I don't know. In 1917 Ekaterina Meshtsherskaya was also very assured that everything would be just fine...
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What happened to my leading characters?
Tatiana Nikolaevna Masalitinov still lives in Santa Barbara. She's almost blind, but still very lucid. She says, `I left Russia when I was nineteen years old, and now I'm ninety-two. There are almost no survivors from the Russian White Army. I consider myself as one of the last Mohicans!' Tatiana's godchild, my niece Irma Ivanova, is out of work; she's looking for a new job. She also thinks that her godmother's voice starts to sound weaker...
New York, February: The ninety-five years old Evgenia Demidova, another last of the Mohicans, has to go to the hospital. I fear for her life, but ten days later I'm glad to hear that she's allowed to go home. Her daughter, Nathalie Vorhaus, takes care of her. She's fine now, but daughter Nathalie is also in her seventies, and every time I hear from her my heart is heavy. Evgenia, `We belong to the hundreds of thousands of nameless refugees. No nobility, no capitals, no popularity Ä just working and learning hard, in Russia, in France and afterwards in the United States. We would have liked to stay in Russia, but the repressive administration made this impossible. We have always lived our life abroad in exile; never have we become Americans; we have always longed for our native country.'
Count Alexander Buxhoeveden found a job at the World Trade Center in New York. He likes his job and doesn't see any other Russian aristocrats. Countess Maria is now recuperating at home, but in August it looked as though she was going to make a trip to see Saint Peter. I'm happy that she's feeling well again. The countess asked me, `What exactly is the feeling of the Russian spirit?' I answered, `That's a difficult question, my dear Louise, but I'll try to answer it. Perhaps the Russian spirit is a web, in which one can be caught. One thing's for sure: the Russian spirit is a cultural thing, and it cannot be inherited by blood alone. A Russian who is born in an African jungle and raised like any other African, will never know what the Russian spirit is, unless he will search for it, experience it. Michael Ignatieff's grandfather was the last Minister of Education under the Tsar. Michael was born in Canada. Count Pavel, his grandfather, died there. Michael grew up as a Canadian kid, a non-believer. Recently he came to the Ukrain, to visit the Orthodox church his great-grandfather built. At the grave of his great-grandfather, in church, (during the famine the grave was used as a butcher's block), Michael said, `Your home is where your graves are.' A few hours later he was completely overwhelmed by the beautiful Orthodox singing in the church, and that was the first time in all his life he experienced the Russian spirit. He was caught in the web, in the endless catacombs of what we call the `Russian spirit'. Mind you, I love to be there, but you have to realize you can never leave. Most important: entering the Russian spirit is a quest for the inner man or woman. You may not like what you will find there, but once confronted with it, you have to deal with it. The Russian spirit knows high mountains and deep valleys, higher and deeper than any European or American spirit. Sure, melancholy is a part of the Russian spirit, but so is joy and laughter; they keep each other in balance, like yin and yang. A Russian is inclined to let himself being dragged down by his emotions, and so am I, but what is wrong with that, if those emotions are pure and straight from the heart? In our society one can only hear too often, `Control yourself, don't get carried away.' Why not? Because this way the outer world will see the inner man? What's wrong with that? So once more: what is the Russian spirit? For you it's Alexander's photo in front of the Novodichi Convent in Moscow, but it probably wouldn't be if you hadn't been there yourself to experience it. For Michael Ignatieff it was his visit to the church of his great-grandfather in the Ukrain. For me it's my $ 1,95 icon of the Mother of God of Kazan, combined with the sound of Orthodox hymns. Whatever it is, it's a quest for the inner man. Keep searching, and you will find it.'
Olga Alexandrovna Davidoff Dax (1928-), a descendant of Vasili Lvovich Davidoff, the Decembrist, came into possession of beautiful drawings and diaries of her great-aunt Mariamna, which she turned into a beautiful book: On the Estate: Memoirs of Russia before the Revolution, London 1986.
One of the great-granddaughters of Princess Hélène Obolensky, who was brutally murdered by her own godson in 1918, is my niece Princess Nina Anna Obolensky (1961-). Nina married the American James Prudden, and is very busy, because she is writing a doctoral dissertation for her degree in Clinical Psychology. She knows very little about the history of her ancestors and regrets this. Her only direct connection to Russia was her paternal grandfather. She also knows that Prince Felix Yussupov was a cousin, but that's about all. Nina, `Just like you I know very little about my ancestors, which is sad, unfortunate, but true. The only Russian I knew was my grandfather, Prince Michael Alexeevich Obolensky, who died shortly after my birth. My father did not keep up his Russian heritage, as he did not have the opportunity to know his own father because his parents were divorced when he was a child. Everything I know, I read in history books. In really am a very American woman and grew up as a typical American girl. Perhaps the only unusual thing about me is that I have often been involved in animal rescue operations.'
Alexis Czetwertinsky, the son of Peter Czetwertinsky and the grandson of Alexis Czetwertinsky and Princess Tatiana Dolgorouky, lives and works in Paris. He's a computer expert.
Igor Sikorsky was succeeded by his son, who still is a director of the United Aircraft Company.
Nicholas Daniloff is alive and healthy. He and his wife Ruth live in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Paul Ivanovich Poustochkine, the grandson of the last representative of Imperial Russia in Holland, was born in 1951. He went to law school in Rotterdam, worked as a jurist for the Dutch State Council and nowadays is a judge in The Hague. Paul may consider himself lucky, because his grandfather retained all photographs, invitations, letters and other documents, which contain a treasure of information. I'm very sure that almost every descendant of Russian emigré's is jealous of this sympathetic companion in adversity, because most refugees couldn't take anything with them, and if this was possible at all, then the large, heavy photo albums didn't have highest priority. But Paul Constantinovich Poustochkine came to Holland in 1913; the World War would only break a year later, and it would still take more than four years before the October Revolution took place. He was able to move his personal property out of Russia in peace and quiet. The Poustochkines very soon integrated in Dutch society, most likely because there wasn't a large Russian community in Holland, unlike Paris, Berlin and New York.
Michael Ignatieff, the grandson of Paul Ignatieff, the last Minister of Education under the Tsar, just finished a documentary series called `Blood and Belonging', about rising nationalism in Europe, for BBC- Wales, and he wrote a book about it.
Even today the patriarchate of Moscow refuses to recognize the Synod of the Russian-Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, while the Synod in turn does not wish to recognize the election of Patriarch Serge and his successors, nor takes any notice of the interdicts which are published by Moscow. Patriarch, Alexis II, tries to arbitrate in the dispute between Boris Jeltsin and his opponents Ruchkoy and Khasbulatov, with no effect whatsoever. There are more than 9,000 registered religious organizations in Russia, of which only a small part are Orthodox. The Russian-Orthodox Church of Russia claims the rights it had in 1917, to be able to dominate the Russian religious market as before.
The story of a survivor
Much to my surprise I learned that a cousin of mine, Prince Vladimir Nikolaevich Obolensky, was still alive and lived in Moscow. I wrote him a letter and sent him the manuscript of this book. His reaction speaks for itself:
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Moscow, Russia, 1 February 1994
Dear Prince Valerian!
I received your letter and book in the middle of January. So as you I was very glad to receive your letter and to know of your existence, and I hope you are in good health. I am very thankful Mr. Triumfov (head of foreign rights Novosti Publishers Moscow, VSO) for his help.
For an irony of fate you don't speak Russian and I don't speak English. So excuse me for my English: my wife translated your letter and now she is translating your manuscript; we acquaint with several parts of it. Your fate was very hard and cruel, and so was mine. Of course it must have been horrible for you to become an orphan at the age of one. I became an orphan when I was twelve. You are right believing that the communists killed many Obolensky's and other aristocrats. They physically murdered millions of Russians. But you underestimate the unique lineage of Obolensky; the family consists of innumerable people, who have many talents and a strong background. In emigration you can easily calculate and restore all blanks and all Obolensky's names, because they were not killed there. It's more difficult to do it in Russia, sometimes one spends all his life searching for parents and greatparents, and even then there are people who cannot find their relatives. Many of our people chose other family names to save themselves and their children from shooting and concentration camps. It was a terrible and bloody experience. Before I will tell you about myself, I'd like to inform you: today I live in Moscow. I have organized and I am head of the Council of Noble Societies `Crown'. In Moscow and the rest of Russia are many organizations of nobles, unfortunately they live and associate with each other worse than before 1917, that is frequently not friendly and even hostile. Mainly they are nobles' descendants with deformed lives and sovietic habits. But there are many good men among them. There are agents of the KGB among them too, so our life is hard and not simple.
My main profession is writer (playwright, critic) and journalist. I am a member of the editorial board of the newspaper The press of Russia. I am author of the books Russia once more in the mist and The death of Cornet Obolensky, which are published in Russia, and of many plays and a few tv films and telecasts. I am a leader of the broadcast `Russian's estates' on Radio Ostankino I. I have graduated from Moscow University and literary seminar (studio). Thank you for your efforts in searching of my background.
Presumably version number 2 written by you (2. You're a son of Prince Nikolai Alexandrovich Obolensky. Your father was born in 1916 and died in the war, between 1941 and 1945. In that case your father had two brothers (Yuri and Michael) and one sister (Olga), and in that case your grandfather Alexander and my grandfather Michael were brothers. VSO) may be right, because some documents I received after many years, from archives of the KGB, after August 1991, and also from the Prosecutor's Office of the USSR indicate this.
My grandfather Alexander Feodorovich Obolensky was shot in 1937 on sentence of the `troika' (three members) of an extraordinary committee of the former KGB. I was told that he was a prince, that he had innumerous relatives, that his sons were Nikolai and Mikhail, and his great-grandfather was the Decembrist Evgeni Petrovich Obolensky, and his mother was called Teplova, a granddaughter of the Decembrist Annenkov. I was born in 1939. My mother, Princess Zinaida Nikolaevna Obolensky, died in 1951 during the last Stalin repressions. As she told me in her family there were Princes Obolensky and they lived in Moscow near the Polytechnical Museum, near Maroseika Street. She knew three foreign languages.
In 1951, when I became an orphan, I was put in a special boarding school for children of `the people's enemies', where I stayed until 1955. It was in fact a children's concentration camp. Thanks to Nikita Khrushchev I survived and came back to Moscow. Rehabilitation of political prisoners began. But I had to start my life all over again, without family and relatives, without dwelling and a profession. I got over many difficulties and came through many circles of communist hell, before I became what I am now, having some `status' and respect in society. We live however very modestly.
My only daughter Kristina Obolensky is 14 years old. She is studying flute in the Central Musical School of the conservatoire. She is the daughter from my first marriage; I love her very much. We were in Paris twice on a festival of gifted children. I believe that God has kept us alive.
Peter Obolensky from Princeton is now in Moscow. He found me and soon we'll meet. He is 18 years old and is learning Russian in Moscow.
Our life today is a constant struggle! Russia is now going through a tragedy not less than in 1917! As for your book Russians in Exile, I think it is very interesting, especially your style. Of course I'll show your book to publishing houses; I have already spoken with one publisher. But take into consideration the fact that many publishing houses in Russia are bankrupt.
You can see the friend in me. I know all Princes Obolensky are from one progenitor - Rurik - and Saint Michael Chernigovsky.
Write me on my home address, it's on the envelope.
With sympathy, sincerely yours,
Vladimir Obolensky
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A self made manThe originally Italian lineage of Cassini was since the 17th century occupied with astronomy and the geodesy. Four successive generations of Cassini's were engaged at the Paris astronomical observatory. Other relatives settled down for good in Russia, during the administration of Peter the Great. The parents of Oleg Cassini (1917-) could only take with them a couple of suitcases, as they escaped from Russia to France, in 1920. Oleg was only three years old. After they had lived for some years in Paris, the Cassini's left for Italy. When Oleg was old enough to take care of himself, he left for America, with only 25 dollars in his pocket. At present he owns a large fashion house in New York. Among his top- models were Jacky Kennedy and Grace Kelly, with whom he was engaged to be married. Oleg Cassini was married several times, inter alia with Jean Harland. He is active as a jockey, extremely rich, and besides as a couturier he has a great reputation as the manufacturer of the Cassini perfumes, the Cassini shoes, Cassini sun-glasses and Cassini bathing suits.
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The four hundred Russian aristocrats of ManhattanThe succes story of Oleg Cassini is no exception to the rule. Prince Serge Leonidovich Ourusoff, vice- president of Morgan Guaranty Trust, `My father's first job in America was for the Washington Gaslight Company. When he became a U.S. citizen, the New York Post ran a picture of him, wearing a bow tie and carrying his tools.' Many Russian emigrants, also the most proud aristocrats, earned, at least at first, a living by working as cab drivers or waitresses, and worked their way up. Today most of them are retired bankers, lawyers, corporate executives, educators or engineers. Their aristocratic titles are only known to a few. In daily life they are `Mr. Obolensky' instead of `His Highness Prince Obolensky', `Mrs. Romanoff' instead of `Her Imperial Majesty Grand Duchess Marina Constantinovna'. Prince Serge Ourusoff, `A title is not good for business in Manhattan.' However, during the annual Petrushka-ball, the ball Blanc, and the ball of the Russian Nobility Association in America, at the Starlight Roof of the Waldorf-Astoria, in the heart of Manhattan, the Russian aristocrats put out all the stops. Professor Prince Alexis Shcherbatov, a professor of Russian language in the University of New York, `The protocol may not be as strict as it was at the Imperial court, but titles are reminders to us that our ancestors were people of consequence and that old Russia was beautiful.' Alexis Shcherbatov lives in East 81th Street and passes several hours each day as chairman of the Russian Nobility Association, on the corner of First Avenue and 53rd Street, which was founded in 1938. One of the tasks of the Russian Nobility Association is unmasking phony bluebloods. The annual subscription is only ten dollars, but the members are supposed to contribute to the fund raising parties of Russian charitative institutions.
Not everyone with the name of Romanoff is a relative of the former Russian Imperial family, and not every Romanoff stems from a noble family. The name of Romanoff is quite common in Russia, and in the Manhattan telephone directory are several Romanoffs enlisted. However, the real relatives of the last tsar have an ex-directory telephone number, to protect their privacy. Some of them have taken up their residence in a large apartment house in East 96th Street, which they call `Nevsky Prospect'. In East 95th Street is the `House of Rurik', where many Princes and Princesses Obolensky, Troubetzkoy, Wolkonsky and Shcherbatov clannishly cluster together. In the 1920s the apartments in the East Nineties were very inexpensive, thus one family called another every time a vacancy appeared, and soon the building was filled with Russians. Today the East Nineties and Carnegie Hill section of upper Manhattan are very fashionable, and the prices went through the roof.
Count Nicholas Bobrinskoy is a great-great-great-grandson of Catherina the Great; the founder of the Bobrinskoy line, her son by Prince Grigori Orlov, was half-brother to her son Tsar Paul I. His father, Count Alexei Alexandrovich Bobrinskoy, was born in 1852 and was forced to leave everything behind when he and his wife fled. The estate of his family in the Ukrain was equal in size to the state of New Hampshire, and the Bobrinskoys were extremely rich. Count Nicholas was born in 1921, in Nice, France. He went to Paris to live the starving artist life for a while, and in 1954 he came to New York, where he found a job in a factory. His wife, Countess Tatiana Nikolaevna Bobrinskoy, née Timashev, was born in Berlin. They married in the 1950s in New York, where her father, Professor Timashev, taught sociology. They started Zina Studios, a small fabric design and production firm of wallpaper and draperies, and still own and operate it in Mt. Vernon, north of the Bronx.
One day the German magazine Geo wanted photos of the exiled nobility in New York. They asked the Countess to wear her jeweled tiara for the occasion, but she told them she didn't have one. Okay then, they replied, just wear your diamand necklace. She didn't have that either. Well, at least wear some of your jeweled eardrops, they insisted. She didn't have those either, so she went to Woolworth's and purchased a pair of plastic pearl eardrops for a few dollars. The photographer assumed they were real, because she was, after all, a countess. Count Bobrinskoy is chairman and founder of the Orthodox Order of St. John (or Knights of Malta), which came to being in New York in 1973 and received the sanction and blessing of Patriarch Alexis II in November 1992, at the Orthodox cathedral in Garfield, New Jersey. The Knights (about 300 of them) help mankind suffering from any type of cataclysm no matter where in the world, regardless of their faith. They helped with the tremendous earthquake in Friuli, Italy, in 1976, and they do similar charity work, on a modest scale, for victims of natural catastrophes in Southern Italy, Armenia, Mexico and elsewhere. The Countess: `Russians are constantly writing us to ask us to write down our memories. We are already the second generation in exile. They are trying to reconstruct the historical threads that in 1917 were cut off.' What about her offspring? `We have a son and a daughter. Our daughter is married and our son is a struggling actor, off-off-off-Broadway. He's 27, and all he wants to do right now is act. He doesn't seem to have the time for the Russian renaissance. Both our children have told us, ``I am a first class American. I can become the president of the United States, and you can't.'' They are Americanized and not really interested. The Russians better hurry up, because the second generation is getting older, and the third generation knows much less. Already we don't know a lot. And there's almost nobody left after 75 years. Those that are left are so old.'
Prince Vladimir Galitzine is a banker. He was born in Belgrade, where the Yugoslavian Royal Family offered protection to Russian aristocrats who had settled there after the October Revolution. In 1945 the Galitzine's wound up in the American zone in Germany, and successively they travelled to America, on a troop ship, as part of the Displaced Persons Program. They started in a cold-water flat in Brooklyn. Prince Galitzine, `My parents were divorced, and I owe everything to my mother. She bought an old sowing machine and took in sewing. Besides that she scrubbed and did odd jobs, so I could go to Hartford, a small boarding school, where I got rid of my Brooklyn accent and won scholarships to college.'
The old struggle between the Petersburg and Moscow nobility continues in New York, with unflagging fierceness. The Petersburg aristocrats compare themselves to champagne, while they consider the Moscovite nobility home-brewed vodka. `Feodor' Romanoff, `I can tell you things about today's Russian nobility, which would make your hair stand on end.' `Like what?' `Two Russian Princesses grew up together in New York. They were school-friends. When the both of them were married for years, one of them read in a history book that there once had been a quarrel of long standing between their families. The friendship was determined instantly, and the quarrel was resumed. Finally one of them, the one who resumed the quarrel, used the almighty gossip circuit to make sure that the husband of her former friend was fired from his job. And what about the fine Russian nobleman, with high religious and social standards, who has been reviled by the Russian nobility abroad, all his life, because he didn't care for their pomp and circumstance, and who's been neglected ever since he married a woman 20 years older, in stead of 20 years younger than he?'
There is no real Russian community. Prince Galitzine, `That's impossible. We are not organized the way other countries are, like Italy or Holland. Russia isn't a country, but a continent. When you say Russia, you mean Moslems, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants, you mean Georgians, Russians, Eskimo's, Tatars, Armenians et cetera. Not to mention political conflicts and differences.'
Prince Constantin Sidamon-Eristoff, a Princeton graduate, is a leading New York lawyer with a hand in politics. In 1978 he founded the law firm `Sidamon-Eristoff, Morrison, Warren & Ecker'. Prince Eristoff is married to Anne Phipps, and tries hard to live up to the expectations of Russian nobility in a new geographical setting. `But a count without a bank account is of no account, and it's useless being a penniless prince.' When Constantin's father and his cousins Pierre and Dmitri escaped to America, neither of them spoke a word of English. However the Georgian network had already spread in the U.S. and Norman Whitehouse, who was married to Princess Tamara Bagration-Moukhransky, had placed each. Prince Eristoff's father was sent to the Huntington Tracy place to be a chauffeur, which was unfortunate, because he could only ride a horse. He was met at the station by Miss Ann Huntington Tracy, who eventually became his wife.
Prince Eristoff, `When I entried into New York politics, I found out that a name like Constantin Sidamon-Eristoff was an advantage. The Jews thought I was Jewish, the Italians thought I was Italian. Being half Protestant and half Orthodox simply means I tend to move about peacefully and unobtrusively. In any case I'm I Georgian, and nobody dislikes Georgians!'
Princess Janet Romanoff is proud of the achievements of Russians in the United States. `Russian nobility always, that is: since the end of the 19th century, walked hand in hand with intellectuals, scientists and artists. Today, over three hundred American colleges and universities offer courses in Russian studies. More than twelve important Russian periodicals are published in the United States, and there are numerous Russian organizations across the nation. World-famous Russian composers Serge Rakhmaninov, Serge Prokofyev and Igor Strawinsky became U.S. citizens, as did dancers George Balanchine, Igor Youskevich, Michael Fokine and Alexandra Danilova. And who can forget the genius of Vladimir Zworykin in electronics, of Igor Sikorsky in aeronautics, of Vladimir Nabokov in literature, of Pitrim Sorokin in sociology, of Vasili Leontief in economics, and Serge Semenenko, the innovative financier from Odessa, who became president of the First National Bank of Boston.'
In April 1939 the Tolstoy Foundation was founded by Countess Alexandra Tolstoy, the youngest daughter of the great writer Lev Tolstoy (1828-1910). With her friend Tatiana Schaufuss, she gathered a group of concerned Americans and prominent Russian expatriates. In 1941 the Tolstoy Foundation `bought' a seventy-acre farm in Spring Valley (Rockland County, New York), for the symbolical amount of one dollar. From that moment the Tolstoy Foundation made history in the field of refugee assistance. Alexandra Tolstoy died in 1979 and is burried in the Russian cemetery of Spring Valley, New York.
The headquarters of the Tolstoy Foundation are resided in New York City, in Park Avenue, from which a world wide program of aid to refugees and exiles, regardless of race, religion, ethnic background or country of origin, is coordinated. Chairman is Prince Alexis S. Troubetzkoy, who is related to the Obolenskys.
Countess Sophia Galinitchev-Koutouzov, nowadays Mrs Sophia Koutouzov Winkelhorn, was born in St. Petersburg. She can remember the first years of her exile well, `After the Revolution many of our men and women had to fend for themselves in the hardest possible way. Grand Duchesses were scrubbing floors; Grand Dukes were digging roads. Other European aristocrats were better off than we. In France was a restoration and the French still have a claimant to the throne, living peacefully on native soil. The German and Austrian aristocrats continued to have their castles and estates. The Italian King just went away, and the Italian nobility have much of the land they had for centuries. The Russian aristocrats who survived the Revolution had nothing but their own will to continue. I am desperately proud of the White Russian colony in New York, because we stuck together and we shared our bread, because our children and grandchildren maintain our heritage. At least among ourselves, we will never be the forgotten Russian Four Hundred.'
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Little Russia in New York
The Russian aristocracy is only a very small part of the total Russian population of New York. The majority of the Russian emigrants and their descendants go out every morning with their lunch-boxes, to the office or the plant. Of course their history is not less sad than the one of the aristocracy.
The first Russian emigrants wave of this century was in the early 1920s. After the October Revolution of 1917 more than a million people escaped from Russia. Many of them did not go to America directly, but stayed some years in Europe first, particularly in France. This first wave brought the Russian culture to New York. Some remains of this community can still be found between East 60th and East 96th Street, but probably not for long.
The second Russian emigrants wave arrived in the United States towards the end of the 1940s, mainly from Germany, where many of them had been in Displaced Persons camps. Especially for elderly people it was very hard to start their lives in a new country, with a completely different language. Most of them worked as maids, cleaning women and mill hands, in other words: where there was no need to speak good English. The younger generation went to school and later they worked in offices, or, if their parents could afford it, continued studying in universities, pursuing higher education. The computer field is very popular among this generation. Some Russians were welcomed with open arms by the American government, in view of certain knowledge they had of communist society, and others worked for the anti-communist radio station `The Voice of America', which broadcasted in Eastern Europe, but many had to take odd jobs. The second Russian emigrants wave mainly settled down in and Glen Cove, Long Island, which since has developed as a real Russian enclave. Besides the Cathedral of the Ascension, in Old Tappan Road, there are some smaller Russian-Orthodox churches, which have been build by the emigrants themselves. On the streets almost everyone speaks Russian, and everywhere around you can see Russian stores, people reading Russian newspapers, et cetera. Nearby, in Roslyn, is a Russian cemetery.
Recently, after everywhere in Europe the walls of the communist prison had been demolished, a lot of Russians came to the States, mainly to New York. This third Russian emigrants wave, which consists of many Russian Jews and in the mean time has grown to over 60,000 people, settled in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, where they are very active. Since the third Russian emigrants wave many Russian restaurants and Russian cabarets were opened, not only in Brighton Beach, but everywhere in New York.
In the 1940s the most famous Russian restaurant of New York was The Russian Bear, but this establishment closed down some years ago. Nowadays it is the Russian Tea Room, 150 West 57th Street, beside Carnegie Hall, which is very fashionable. I don't understand why, because there's nothing Russian about the place. The prices are sky-high and the only reason to visit it, is to gaze at celebrities, if that's what you like. Another well known Russian restaurant is the Samovar, 256 West 52nd Street, which has a pleasant atmosphere, with two or three nights per week nice music and singing. Russian is the new trend and means money, because no week passes by without a new Russian restaurant being opened in Manhattan.
Russian books, magazines and newspapers are bought at Victor Kamkin's, 149 Fifth Avenue, and Russian House Ltd., 253 Fifth Avenue.
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Russian organizations in AmericaThe Congress of Russian Americans (CRA) consists of the following Russian-American organizations: Alexander Nevsky Foundation Inc.; Alliance of Don, Kuban and Terek Cossacks; American Russian Aid Association Inc.; American Russian Heritage Association; A.S. Pushkin Literary Association in America; Association of Gallipoli in U.S.A.; Association of Russian American Engineers; Association of Russian Cadets Inc.; Association of Russian Explorers; Association of Russian Imperial Naval Officers in U.S.A.; Cappella; Federated Russian Orthodox Clubs (FROC); Kharkov Institute Alumnae; Mariinsky Donskoy Institute; National Alliance of Russian Solidarists; North Shore Chapter of Congress of Russian Americans; Orthodox Action; Otrada Inc., the Society of Russian Americans; Rodina American Russian Welfare Society Inc.; ROVS; Russian American Professionals Club; Russian American Scholars in U.S.A. Theological Fund Inc.; Russian Children's Welfare Society Inc.; Russian Serbian Gymnasium Association; Ruthenia Student Corporation; School Council; Slavic American Cultural Association Inc.; St. George Pathfinders of America; St. Seraphim Foundation; The Order of Imperial Union of America and the Tolstoy Foundation.
On the corner of 86th Street and Riverside Drive is the House of Free Russia, in which several social organizations are accommodated.
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Romanoffs
Many Romanoffs in exile had children and grandchildren. Little is known about their life. For obvious reasons my informer `Feodor' Romanoff wanted to stay anonymous. He only wanted to say that he was born between 1925 and 1935, is married and lived in Brittany and the United States. A mutual friend introduced us in Paris. We met three times. The first two times he interviewed me, in stead of the other way around, while he didn't reveal anything at all. The third time he suggested not to dine in the Café de Flore, but somewhere in the Latin Quarter. On the corner of my Parisian pied-à-terre is a very nice alley with lots of small Greek restaurants, and we decided to meet in one of them.
`Why do you want me to call you ``Feodor''?' `I'm a looser, a traitor, a layabout...' As he speaks, he leans back, while he smiles nervously. `Why?' `If only because I'm talking to you?' `Thank you very much for this compliment.' `You're welcome.' `I don't get it; you travel around the world, so you can't be a complete failure.' `Businesslike perhaps not, but personally...' `What do you mean? As a Romanoff, as a Russian, as a husband, as a father?' `I am not an ideal husband and not at all an ideal father.' I hesitate to ask more questions. `Do you like retsina? I don't.' `We could share a bottle of Monte Nero.' `Right. Red wine with mutton, no problem.' `It's a disease that runs in the family.' `What is?' `My aberration.' `Which aberration?' `I love boys.' `Ah...' I study the menu. Perhaps I take icecream for dessert. Shit! I wasn't waiting for this! Should I continue the interview? Obviously he's dying to get it off his chest, but do I need this? I say, `Just like Felix Yussupov and Tchaikovsky.' I can't think of a less stupid reaction on such a short notice. `Yes, and just like Dmitri Pavlovich, Serge Alexandrovich, Constantin Constantinovich, Dmitri Constantinovich, Oleg Constantinovich and so on.' `All homosexual?' `Yes, and all decently married.' `Gee...' `Why don't you write this down?' `Because I already knew, who doesn't? Moreover I don't think it's important; it has little news value. We live in 1993, what's so special about being gay?' `Are you married?' `Yes, and I have also children, just like you.' `What would your son think if he saw his father in a New York faggot's bar?' `Why? Did that happen to you?' `Feodor' nods his head and takes a sip of wine. `So it's a family disease after all,' I blurt out, and I burst out laughing. `Feodor' nearly chokes and I'm afraid I messed things up for good. But I'm wrong. As soon as he's recovered he also starts laughing; the ice is broken, thank God the subject's off. We talk about dead and living Romanoffs, that is: he talks while I take notes. I ask him why so little about the present Romanoffs is published. `Despite the impression I have given you, most of my relatives lead an absolutely normal life; they have worked their way up in business. Now and then something is published in the gutter press, but the truth calibre of these stories is usually very low. Only few Romanoffs are keen on publicity.'
My search for other Romanoffs didn't lead to much. `Feodor' preferred not to talk about it, which I could understand. I contacted the editor of the Echos de Russie, who would try to get me in touch with `la Grande Duchesse de Russie', that is: Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna Romanoff, the present claimant to the throne. The Grand Duchess promised the editor to contact me, and after nine months she responded. I was surprised that she spoke Russian so well. She told me about her visits to Russia, in English and Spanish, and we seemed to have a mutual friend, Anatoli Sobchak, the mayor of St. Petersburg. I don't know if the Grand Duchess is imperial material, but she's certainly a nice lady.
Princess Vera Romanoff, daughter of Grand Duke Constantin Constantinovich Romanoff, great- granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I, died in the Russian nursery home in Spring Valley, New York.
After 1918 many Romanoffs settled down in New York. Many of them still live in a large appartement building in East 96th Street, which they call `Nevsky Prospect'.
The eldest living great-nephew of Tsar Nicholas II is Nikita Romanoff and lives in Upper East Side, New York. He is a great-grandson of Alexander III and was born in London. Prince Nikita grew up in England and in 1949 he emigrated to the United States. He was a student in the University of California in Berkeley, became a historian, and wrote biographies, like Ivan the Terrible's. He went to the Soviet Union, for research purposes, and to his surprise the Soviet government didn't put the slightest obstacle in his way, although they knew exactly who he was. Nikita's uncle, His Highness Prince Vasili Alexandrovich Romanoff, lives in California and is chairman of The Romanoff Family Association, the organization which was founded to look after the interests of the former Russian Imperial House. Princess Marina Romanoff, a second cousin of the Tsar, also lives in New York and married the well known art collector William L. Beadleston. Her niece, Ekaterina Ivanovna Romanova, whistles her way through as the Marquise Farace di Villa Foresta.
I visited Romanoffs in Paris, Berlin, London, New York, Chicago, and even in Woodside, California, but I promised not to publish anything about them. I want to keep that promise. I can only say that most of them don't speak Russian at all, and that they all are nice, hard working people.
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ObolenskysPrince Serge Obolensky-Neledinsky-Meletzky (1890-1978) preferred to be called `Colonel Obolensky', a title he earned as a parachutist in the U.S. Army during World War II. In 1916 he married Princess Catharina Yuryevsky (1878-1959), a concert singer, in Yalta. In 1924 he married Alice Astor (1902-1956), and although they divorced in 1932, he remained a close friend of her brother Vincent, who put Colonel Serge in charge of public relations for his famous St. Regis Sheraton Hotel on Fifth Avenue. Later the Colonel went to the Sherry Netherland Hotel, also on Fifth Avenue, where he founded the famous Russian nightclub downstairs. Nowadays the Doubles Club is resided there. On June 3, 1976 the Colonel married Marylin Fraser-Wall (1929-). Prince Ivan Obolensky-Neledinsky-Meletzky (1925-), the son of Colonel Serge from his second marriage, is a banker and was vice-president of Sterling Grace & Co. Inc., in New York and New Jersey. He also married several times. His youngest son David (1953-) is a stock broker in Nashville, Tennessee.
Prince Alexander Petrovich Obolensky (1915-) was a prominent multilingual Ph.D., professor of Slavonic languages in the university of Albany, New York and president of the Association of Russian American Scholars in the U.S.A. His wife, Helene Reza-Bek (1919-), daughter of the Russian khan Ali Heidar Reza-Bek, has been a fashion editor. Their son Michael (1944-) also is a Ph. D. In 1974 he married the teacher Hetty Huising (1945-), daughter of Willem Cornelis Huising and Erika Maria Strompfe. Michael and Hetty live in New Bedford, Massachusetts and have three children: Dmitri (1976-), Nicholas (1979-) and Natalia (1982-).
The Obolenskys who stayed in Paris had a different evolution. The American Obolenskys find their Russian aristocratic origin rather interesting, but don't pay much attention to it in daily life. The Parisian Obolenskys - of which I stem from - find their history less important than their present aristocratic status and appearance. Prince Serge Sergeevich Obolensky (1918-) is an engineer and a retired major in the French National Reserve. He was born in Essentuki, in the Caucasus, on February 9, 1918. On April 28, 1946 he married the Russian emigré Elisabeth Voytechovich (1923-), in Grenoble. She was born in Bulgaria. The couple had six children. Olga (1947-) is a translator and married Jean de Lantivy. Michael (1948-) is a physician and married Elena Gliniasti. Elisabeth (1951-) married Prince Leonid Nikolaevich Obolensky. Hélène (1953-) is an executive secretary and married Alexis Mikhaïlovich Ivangin (1951-), professor in the Paris Conservatory. Tatiana (1955-) is a biologist and married the engineer Nicholas Yurievich Sokolov. The youngest, Catharina (1963), married a Frenchman called Marc Lureault. Prince Serge is the president of Soyuz Dvoryan, l'Union de la Noblesse Russe. He signs his letters with, `Le Président, Pr. S. Obolensky.' He keeps calling me `Monsieur le Prince', and deals with my interest in his and my ancestors as follows, `No Sir, I don't have a family tree and I don't feel like investigating it. The Obolensky's you mention I don't know. Moreover, most people you mention are already dead for a long time. Why are you interested in them?' (I myself don't like to be called `Prince'. I am a Prince because my father was one; I didn't have to do anything to become one.) Before I approached this Prince Serge Obolensky, my relationship with the Russian nobility in Paris was rather good, as long as I didn't forget addressing everyone as `Your Royal Highness'. That was difficult for me, because I'm used to call my American Russian princes and princesses, counts and countesses `Nina', `Christian', `Alexander', `Paul' or `Maria'. When I gave Prince Serge Obolensky the inkling that this sky-wide cultural difference astonished me, he became inhibited. Suddenly he didn't remember where and when he was born, who his parents were and if he ever had any brothers or sisters. One day later the doors of the Russian nobility in Paris stayed closed for me, and three days later an initial good contact with the Russian Nobility Association in America was terminated without a single reason. Fortunately most Russian aristocrats in America ignored the boycott, so I could continue my investigation as if nothing had happened. `Feodor' Romanoff, `On the one hand you must not forget that the Russian nobility is reviled by the whole world. People like Prince Serge Obolensky have no doubt been double-crossed by journalists numerous times. Perhaps their suspicion is not justified, but it's imaginable. On the other hand it is a well known fact that the Visky-Nikolskoe-branch, to which Prince Serge belongs, is one of the least spectacular branches of the lineage of Obolensky. Serge Petrovich, the progenitor of this branch, was nothing but a captain in the cavalry. Prince Serge Sergeevich' grandfather, Alexander, was a small government official. Serge Alexandrovich, Prince Serge's father, was a lieutenant in the Imperial Guard, the lowest officer's rank. Because he was quite a nice chap, they made him the marshall of nobility of the Bronnitza district, but this branch has really gone to pot, and the Prince may call himself ``président'' of the Union de la Noblesse Russe, but when it comes to his origin, he has nothing to be proud of, and I think it's rather logical that he prefers not to bragg about his ancestors. By the way, the same applies to almost all Russian aristocrats in France: they don't like really critical investigators, for the same reasons as Prince Serge, because they are afraid that their personal esteem might be damaged by certain facts out of a distant past. Pitiful, isn't it?' Yes it is. And I also find it a bit disturbing that a stranger like `Feodor' Romanoff knows much more about my relatives than I do.
The only branch of the lineage of Obolensky which culturally and politically is more insignificant than the Visky-Nikolskoe-branch, is the Yeskino-branch of progenitor Prince Nicholas Petrovich Obolensky (1775-1820). Although Prince Nicholas produced five sons and two daughters, this line ran out inglorious during the Red Terror. The offshoots of the Yeskino-branch never seemed to be interested in other cultures abroad, and while most Obolenskys after the October Revolution seeked safety in their flight to the West, the Yeskino's stayed behind, hoping that communism would blow over. After the revolution nothing was heard from them; the Soviet government has always refused to show birth- and death certificates of these Obolenskys. But even today every official in Moscow, Kiev and Novgorod refuses to reveal anything, no matter what I try. The worst may be feared.
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Orlovs
Christian Orlov's progenitor was Feodor Grigorievich Orlov, a brother of the famous (notorious?) Alexis and Grigori Orlov. Feodor fathered one illegitimate child after another, and Catharina the Great allowed them all to call themselves `Orlov'. Some of these Orlovs moved to the United States in the 19th century, and Christian is one of their offspring. Christian is a genealogist and for years he tried to recover the history of his ancestors, but without any success. The Soviet authorities never even bothered to answer his letters. Christian seeks the company of the aristocratic Russian community in Manhattan and is proud of his origin. His ex-friend was the ex-friend of Rudolf Nureyev, who he knew personally - and in that capacity. Never have I in the United Stated (qua life style, not qua origin) met a more aristocratic Russian than Christian Orlov, an outstanding and amiable man.
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The world of theatre, music and ballet
Since the beginning of this century many Russian ballet dancers and musicians went abroad. Some did this entirely out of their own free will, but most escaped because the new situation forced them to. Others left Russia before the communists came to power, and after the October Revolution they realized that they would never again be able to visit their motherland as free Russian citizens.
After the umpteenth flight of Soviet Russian ballet dancers, people in Moscow used to say, `Do you know what the Malyj (small) Theatre is? That's the Bolshoy (grand) Theatre after a foreign tour.' Many celebrities in the theatre, the music and the ballet, escaped and built a new existence in the free world.
Léon Nikolaevich Bakst was the pseudonym of Léon Nikolaevich Rosenberg (1866-1924). He was a Russian painter and a famous costume- and stage designer, who worked particularly for the Ballets Russes. Bakst was burried in Paris, in the Cimetière des Batignolles.
Michael (Misha) Baryshnikov (1948-) is a Russian dancer. From 1969 to 1974 Baryshnikov danced in the Kirov Ballet (the later Mariinsky Ballet) in Leningrad. He's a classical dancer, but also did modern dances. Because of his virtuosity he is widely considered Nureyev's successor. Michael Baryshnikov works since 1974 at the American Ballet Theatre, since 1980 as artistic director.
Olga Khoklova (1891-1955) was a dancer of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. She married Pablo Picasso on July 12, 1918, and was burried in Cannes.
Serge Diaghilev (1872-1929) was leader of the Ballets Russes for twenty years, without ever having been a dancer or choreographer himself. He also organized exhibitions of paintings and concerts in St. Petersburg and Paris. Together with his compatriots Léon Bakst and Alexandre Benois he founded The world of the art (Mir Iskustva), a trend-setting magazine for plastic art, which was published from 1899 to 1904. In 1895 he wrote to his foster mother, `First of all I'm a charlatan, but a rather brilliant one; second I'm a great charmer; third I'm not afraid of anything; fourth I'm a man with logical insight and few scruples; fifth I seem to have no real talents. Yet I think I have found my destiny; to be a maecenas. I have everything one needs for that, except money, but that will come in time.' As leader of the Ballets Russes Diaghilev gathered the top people of the Imperial Russian Ballet of Moscow and St. Petersburg, like Fokine, Nijinsky, Karsavina and Pavlova. Diaghilev was called `Nijinsky's lover, father and teacher'. His first great musical success in the West was the performance of Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov, with the famous bass singer Feodor Chaliapine in the title role. Diaghilev's death meant the end of the Ballets Russes. Diaghilev died of diabetes and is burried in Venice, in the cemetery San Michele, where he rests besides Igor Strawinsky.
Michael Fokine (1880-1942) was a Russian balletdancer and choreographer. For Anna Pavlova he created The Dying Swan (1907), in which he was inspired by Isadora Duncan, who he saw dancing in 1905 in St. Petersburg. As house choreographer of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes he wrote famous ballets: Les sylphides (1909), The Firebird (1910), Le spectre de la rose (1911) and of course Petrushka (1911), the artistic success of the duo Fokine-Strawinsky. Petrushka is considered the antipole of Goncharov's Oblomov, a symbol of the Russians who refuse to be anyone's slave. Fokine developed to be the first great renewer of the classical ballet tradition and counts as the father of the ballet expressionism of the 20th century. Since 1923 he worked in New York. When he died 17 ballet groups all over the world performed Les sylphides, as an homage to the choreographer.
Vladimir Horowitz (1904-1989) was a famous Russian-American piano player. Horowitz studied in the conservatory of Kiev, but the Russian Revolution forced him to interrupt his study. His American debut was in 1928, after which he decided to stay. In 1933 he married Toscanini's daughter. Horowitz had unparalleled successes in Paris, Berlin and the United States, particularly with his interpretation of the music of Chopin, Liszt, Brahms and his idol Rakhmaninov. At the age of 80 he still gave a series of remarkable recitals, one of them in Moscow.
Tamara Karsavina (1885-1978) was Diaghilev's most famous ballet dancer, the first modern ballerina. She often danced with Nijinsky and worked at the same time for the Ballets Russes in Paris and the Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg. In 1918 she escaped to London, after which she only did guest performances with the Ballets Russes. In the 1960s Karsavina was a member of the board of the British Royal Dance Academy, and as a teacher of mime she played an important role in the development of British ballet.
André Kostelanetz (1901-1980) was a Russian-American conductor. In 1922 he escaped to the United States. In 1930 he became conductor of the radio-orchestra of CBS. Kostelanetz made his name in light music, and was married to the soprano Lily Pons.
Mathilde Kshessinskaya (1872-1971) was a brilliant ballet dancer. She was the last ballerina of the Imperial Ballet who became the title of prima-ballerina. Moreover, she and Galina Ulanova were the only ballet dancers who ever became the rank of prima ballerina assoluta. At first Mathilde Kshessinskaya was the mistress of Tsarevich Nicholas, subsequently of Grand Duke Serge Mikha&i- uml;lovich Romanoff and from 1890 of Grand Duke André Vladimirovich Romanoff (1879-1956), whom she married in Paris. From 1929 she headed her own ballet school in Paris. One of her pupils was Tatiana Riabushinska, who later married David Lichine. Her brother in law, Grand Duke Kiril Vladimirovich Romanoff, entitled her in 1935 the right to call herself Princess Maria Feliksovna Romanovsky- Krassinsky. The Princess is burried in that capacity in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois.
David Lichine was the pseudonym of David Liechtenstein (1910-1972), a Russian-American dancer and choreographer. Since 1956 Lichine was an American citizen. He was trained in Paris, where he married the dancer Tatiana Riabushinska (1917-), a pupil of Mathilde Kshessinskaya. From 1932 to 1941 they danced with the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, after which she opened a ballet studio in Los Angeles, where they trained generations of dancers until the late 1980s.
Serge Lifar (1905-1986), a famous Russian dancer and choreographer, was discovered by George Balanchine. He studied in Kiev with Bronislava Nijinsky. Lifar came in 1923 to Paris and was from 1925 solo performer at Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. From 1929 to 1945 and from 1947 to 1958 he was director of the Paris Opera Ballet. Serge Lifar has carried through important reforms, like renewing the repertoire, and had a great influence on the development of modern French ballet. This admired dancer and choreographer founded the Choreographical Institute in 1947, and in 1957 the University of Dance. Serge Lifar de Kiev was burried in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois.
Leonid Feodorovich Massine (1896-1979) was a Russian-American dancer and choreographer. While dancing with the Moscow Bolshoy Ballet he was discovered by Serge Diaghilev, and he joined the Ballets Russes in 1913. Very much against Diaghilev's will he married the British dancer Vera Savina in 1921, but he and Diaghilev reconciled in 1925. After 1960 he organized great plays in revue style. His son Lorca used to work for Balanchine as a choreographer.
Bronislava Fominichna Nijinska (1891-1972) was a Russian dancer and the first influential choreographer in the history of the academical ballet. She was the sister of Viachlav Nijinsky. Until 1925 she danced for Diaghilev in Paris, after which she worked as a choreographer for Diaghilev, Ida Rubinstein, De Basil and the Markova-Dolin Ballet. In 1938 she did guest performances with different American ballet groups, after which she became a ballet teacher.
Viachlav Nijinsky (1890-1950) was a Russian dancer and choreographer, from Polish parents. He was called Le dieu de la dance, and if I don't count Rudolf Nureyev he was the greatest male ballet solo performer of all times. Nijinsky worked for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes since 1909, and became world famous in Carnaval, Le spectre de la rose, Shéhérazade, Swan Lake, Giselle and Petrushka. As an interpreter of the romantic repertoire he was the favourite dance partner of prima-ballerina's like Mathilde Kshessinskaya, Anna Pavlova and Olga Preobrazhenskaya. Thanks to Diaghilev, who was in love with him, he made the choreography of L'après midi d'un faune (1912), Jeux (1913) and Le sacre du printemps (1913). Since 1919 he was often admissioned in a mental institution. His wife, the dancer Romola de Pulszky, published his diary in 1953. This Journal de Nijinsky was translated into English in 1963, and can be summarized as `ten years of growth, ten years of training, ten years of bloom and thirty years of darkness'. Nijinsky: `Diaghilev does not like to be called an impresario, as all impresarios are supposed to be thieves. Diaghilev wants to be called ``a patron of art'', he wants to get into history. Diaghilev cheats people and thinks that no one sees through him. He dyes his hair in order to look young. Diaghilev's hair is white. He buys black dyes and rubs them in. I have seen this dye on Diaghilev's cushions Ä his pillowcase is blackened by it. I hate dirty linen and therefore was disgusted by this sight. Diaghilev has two false front teeth. When he is nervous he passes his tongue over them. Diaghilev reminds me of an angry old woman, when he moves with his false teeth. His front lock is dyed white. He wants it to be noticed. Lately this lock had grown yellow, because he has bought bad dye. In Russia it looked better.' Viachlav Nijinsky died in London and was burried in the Cimetière Montmartre in Paris. He concluded his diary with the following words, `God is in me. I am in God. I want Him, I seek Him. I want my manuscripts to be published so that everybody can read them. I hope to improve myself. I do not know how to, but I feel that God will help all those who seek Him. I am a seeker, for I can feel God. God seeks me and therefore we will find each other. GOD AND NIJINSKY, Sankt Moritz (Dorf), Villa Guardamunt, February 27th, 1919.'
Rudolf Hametovich Nureyev (1938-1993), the most famous Russian dancer and choreographer, was born on March 17, 1938 in a train, as the son of a Siberian military man. In 1961 he asked and became political asylum in Paris, after he left the Kirov Ballet and the Soviets tried to force him to return to the Soviet-Union. He was solo performer with the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuévas and from 1962 he danced as a guest performer with the British Royal Ballet, often being the dance partner of Margot Fonteyn. Nureyev was a classical dancer with a virtuous technique, who's jumps and pirouettes were breathtaking. Besides that he had a rare magnetic personality. In 1965 he made his debut as a choreographer with the Vienna State Opera, with an own version of Swan Lake. Also famous were his versions of The Sleeping Beauty (1966) and Nutcracker (1967). He danced Giselle over a thousand times. He also appeared in some films, like as Rudolph Valentino in Ken Russell's Valentino (1977). In 1979 he made the choreography of Manfred, and in 1982 of The Storm, both ballets to the music of P.I. Chaikovsky. Film roles: Exposed (1982). In 1982 Nureyev became the Austrian nationality and in 1983 he became a director of the Paris Opéra Ballet. In 1987 he visited his homeland for the first time in 26 years. He went to see his mother. When journalists asked him about this trip, he said that his heart was in Paris and New York. `That's where you can be well known, notorious and anonymous, all at the same time,' he said. On Wednesday January 6, 1993 Rudolf Nureyev died, at the age of 54, of AIDS. He was unique, charming, aristocratic and captivating, but also boyish, inconstant, arrogant and rude. My good friend Christian Orlov has known Nureyev well. Christian, `He was very particular when it came to photographs of himself. One day I sat next to him, when he after a performance auditioned in his dressing-room in the Metropolitan. While he took off his make-up, he received his fans, who were waiting for their turn in a long file in the corridor. An elderly man, who did not conceive that he admired Rudolf, showed him a series of photographs of Rudolf, which he had taken from the auditorium. Nervous, like an insecure child before his school teacher, he showed the photographs one by one, and Rudolf tore them to little pieces, one photo after another Ä which he threw into the waist-basket. The man was very disappointed. Sure, it was Nureyev's second performance that evening, and later, at a reception in a nightclub, there would be a third and a fourth performance, but I thought it was rather cruel.' Rudolf Nureyev's death covered almost every front page. Newsweek, `Aids and the arts Ä a lost generation. Rudolf Nureyev 1938-1993.' Paris Match, `NOUREEV POUR L'ETERNITE Ä Le prince charmant du Kirov refugié a l'ouest etait devenue le Tsar mondiale de la dance.' Le Point, `Noureev: une étoile s'éteint.' USA Today, `GIANT OF THE ARTS - Rudolf Nureyev 1938-1993. He brought grace to the stage and glitz to the world of ballet.' The funeral procession left from the Opéra Garnier, on January 12, 1993, and attracted a great deal of attention. Among the interested were Prince Aga Khan, Jack Lang, Rudi van Dantzig, Flemming Flindt, John Taras, Carla Fraci, Hugues Gall, Bob Wilson, Jane Hermann, Yoko Morishita, Lynn Seymour, Zizi Jeanmaire, Pierre Lacotte, Nina Vyrubova, Marika Bersobrassova, Serge Golovine, Dominique Khalfouni, Cyril Atanasoff, Stavros and Victoria Niarkos, Baron and Baroness Guy de Rotschild, Count and Countess Guy and Marina de Brantes, Baron Alexis de Redé, Pier Luigi Pizzi, Briony Brind and Ivan Nagy. Rudolf Nureyev was burried in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, tomb 8328, plan III, about a hundred feet from his artistic predecessor Serge Lifar de Kiev.
Anna Pavlova (1881-1931) was the legendary prima-ballerina of the Imperial Russian Mariinsky Ballet (1906), who later danced with the Ballets Russes of Diaghilev. Pavlova resigned with Diaghilev because she thought he was too progressive. In 1910 she left for the United States, where she performed in the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. In 1912 she married the Englishman Victor Sandré and went to live in London, and in 1913 she left the Mariinsky Ballet. In 1914 she founded her own company and did many international tours. The legendary Anna Pavlova was without any doubt the greatest dancer of her time. In 1973 Oleg Kerensky wrote her biography. She died of pneumonia on January 23, 1931 in Hotel des Indes in The Hague, Holland, and was cremated in London. The urn with her ashes was added in the gardens of the Golders Green Crematorium, not far from her beloved Ivy House, where she lived from 1912 and kept many animals, including swans.
Gregor Piatigorsky (1903-1976) was a Russian-American cellist. He and Horowitz gave concerts all over the world. Prokofyev and others wrote cello concerts for him.
Georges Pitoëff (1884-1939) was a Russian-French actor and director. He was one of the most influential French actors after World War I, who in 1919 founded his own company. In 1922 the `Compagnie Pitoëff' moved into the theatre Comédie des Champs-Elysées. He played renewing works of playwriters like Anouilh, Claudel, Cocteau and introduced the French public to the work of Russian playwriters like Chekhov.
Ludmilla Pitoëff, née Smanov (1895-1951) was a Russian-French actress and the spouse of Georges. They married on July 14, 1915 in the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Paris. After his death she took charge of the company.
Olga Preobrazhenskaya (1871-1962) was a famous ballet dancer and dance teacher. In 1900 she was promoted prima-ballerina in the Mariinsky Ballet. From 1914 she taught in the ballet school of the Mariinsky Theatre and in 1923 she opened her ballet studio in Paris, where she trained numerous dancers until 1960. Two of her pupils, Irina Baranova and Tamara Tumanova, were discovered by George Balanchine. Olga Preobrazhenskaya was burried in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois.
Serge Rakhmaninov (1873-1943) was a famous Russian composer, piano player and conductor. He was opera conductor in Moscow for a while. Rakhmaninov left Russia in 1917, lived in Switzerland and the United States since 1919, and became an American citizen shortly before he died. He composed symphonies, opera's, chamber music and piano pieces, and was one of the greatest piano virtuoso's of his time.
Ida Rubinstein (1885-1960) was a Russian dancer who danced leading parts with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes from 1909 to 1911, but she became especially famous by her performance in Ravel's Boléro and Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade, in which she danced with Nijinsky. She was the protégé of Léon Bakst. Fokine wrote for her the choreography of Salomé's dance with the seven veils (1908) and The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian (1911). Ida Rubinstein was burried in Vence, near Monaco.
Tamara Tumanova (1919-) is a Russian ballerina who was trained by Olga Preobrazhenskaya. She worked with the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo for years and danced numerous guest performances in America and Europe. She worked with directors like Gene Kelly, Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder.
Nicholas Nikolaevich Cherepnin (1873-1945) was a Russian composer and conductor. He accompanied the Ballets Russes of Diaghilev on their tours and from 1925 to 1929 and from 1938 to 1945 he was director of the Russian conservatory Rakhmaninov in Paris. Work: opera's, ballets, orchestra- and choirwork, which at first were inspired by Rimsky-Korsakov. Father of Alexander Nikolaevich Cherepnin (1899-1977), American composer and piano player, professor of music in Paris and Chicago.
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Writers and poetsThe Librairie Russe in Paris doesn't exist anymore. From 1924 to 1990 this publishing-house/book-store in the Rue éperon was the haunt of Russian writers and poets. Michael Kaplan was born in 1894 in Odessa, where he also went to high school. In 1916 he came to France as an ordinary soldier, through Murmansk, to fight in the Russian expeditionary force against the Germans. After the October Revolution he and most of his comrades-in-arms did not want to return to Russia. In 1924 Michael Kaplan founded the Librairie Russe, and at first he only published Russian books. Later he risked publishing French books as well. Michael's son, Boris Delorme, has seen many celebrities in his parental house, not just writers and poets, but also ballet dancers, choreographers, musicians and politicians, who had written their autobiographies or wanted to disseminate their professional knowledge. Although he was born and raised in Paris, Boris spoke, wrote en read Russian most of his life. He grew up between Russian artists in exile and knows the pain and the homesickness of the Russian refugees like no other. He could tell endless stories about it, if he wouldn't be so moderate. Since the book-store and the publishing-house have closed down, he has all the time in the world to write of his memoirs, which I await anxiously. `Don't rush me,' he recently told me, `I'm not dead yet.' Mark Aldanov was the pseudonym of Mark Alexeevich Landau (1889-1957), a Russian writer and essayist who after the Revolution escaped to France. He's also called the Russian Anatole France. Aldanov wrote acute, authentic essays, which belong to the best non-fiction of Russian literature. His main themes were the Russian Revolution and the irony of fate.
André Alexeevich Amalrik (1938-1980) was a Russian writer and historian. In university he had the guts to write a thesis about Rurik's Vikings in Kievian Russia, and from that moment on he was a dissident. Due to his criticizing the regime he was bannished to Siberia 1965. Two years after he was convicted once more. In 1976 he went to the West. André Amalrik died in the neighborhood of Guadalaya- ra, Spain, and is burried in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois.
A. Anatol was the pseudonym of Anatoli Vasilievich Kuznetsov (1929-1979), a Russian writer who `emigrated' to England in 1969.
Constantin Dmitrievich Balmont (1867-1943) was a poet of the first generation of Russian symbolists, who in the beginning of this century were very popular with the Russian youth. He escaped to Paris after the October Revolution.
Yurgis Kazimirovich Baltrushaytis (1873-1944) was a lithuanian poet, who also wrote in Russian and belonged to the Russian symbolists. He wrote in the style of Alexander Blok. After the October Revolution he was the Ambassador of Lithuania to Russia, until 1939. When Lithuania was annexed by the Soviet-Union he escaped to Paris.
Nicholas Alexandrovich Berdiaev (1874-1948) was a Russian philosopher. Initially he was a marxist, but gradually he developed in the direction of an idealistic, religious philosophy. In 1922 Berdiaev was bannished from Russia, after which he settled down in Paris.
Vladimir Constantinovich Bukovsky (1942-) is Russian poet, who since 1963 was imprisoned several times due to his opposition against the Soviet regime. In 1976 he `emigrated' to Western Europe.
Ivan Alexeevich Bunin (1870-1953) was a Russian writer and prosaist. He belonged to Maxim Gorki's writers' group Znanie (Knowledge), and escaped to Paris in 1920. In 1922 he married Vera Muromtsev, with whom he lived together since 1907. His poetry is of a high standard, but he became famous by his prose, which had a somewhat conservative character. In 1933 he became the Nobel Literature prize, very much against the will of the Soviet Russian critics, who considered Bunin an aristocratical, non-realistic poet.
Vladislav Felitsianovich Khodassevich (1886-1939) was a Russian poet and literature critic of Polish origin. In 1922 he escaped via Berlin to Paris. Ilya Grigorievich Ehrenburg (1891-1967). At first he rejected communism, and that's why I mention him, but later he bowed to it, and in 1924 he returned to Russia, where he called himself a `Soviet citizen with the Jewish nationality'. For years his work had a strong propagandistic character, and he was widely considered a camp follower. Only after Stalin's death he carefully tried to stimulate a liberalization of the Soviet literature. Most of his works are translated into English.
Boris Andreevich Filippov (1905-) is the pseudonym of Boris Andreevich Filistinsky, a Russian poet and literature critic. As immigrants in the United States he and Gleb Stroeve published books of Russian writers whose work wasn't allowed to be published in Russia.
Zinaida Hippius was the pseudonym of Anton Krayni (1869-1945), a Russian poet and writer. She was the spouse of Dmitri Merezhkovsky (1865-1941). Her Petersburg salon was the center of a literary circle of friends. In 1919 she escaped via Warsaw to Paris. She was the most important poet of Russian symbolism. Zinaida Hippius was a passionate, impulsive woman. Trotsky called her a `witch'.
My great-uncle Grigori Vladimirovich Ivanov (1894-1958) was a Russian poet. After the October Revolution he escaped to Paris. He is considered the best poet of the Russian emigration. Every time great-uncle George came from Hyères, where he lived in poverty in an old folks home, to Paris, he visited us, and the next morning when he was gone I had to tidy up far more bottles than usual. One day my uncle Nikolai received a letter from the old folks home in Hyères, where great-uncle George was `imprisoned', like he used to say. The letter said that Monsieur Georges Ivanov had died. I have never seen uncle Nikolai cry like that. We didn't attend the funeral though, and neither did great-uncle George's `best friend', Nina Berberova. Some years later, when uncle Nikolai had sold one of his paintings, he had great-uncle George's mortal remains reburried in Paris.
Dmitri Sergeevich Merezhkovsky (1865-1941) was a Russian philosopher and writer. He was the husband of Zinaida Hippius, and is considered the father of Russian symbolism. In human history he saw a continuing struggle between the flesh and the mind, which he worked out in the novel trilogy The Antichrist, consisting of: Yulyanus Apostata (1893), Leonardo da Vinci (1896) and Peter and Alexis (1902). The Merezhkovsky's are burried in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1899-1977) was a Russian-American writer. His father was a member of the first Duma and escaped in 1919. From 1919 to 1922 Vladimir studied zoology and French literature in the university of Cambridge. He married a Jewess and lived in Berlin until 1937. In that year he emigrated to Paris and in 1940 he and his wife managed to reach the United States. In 1945 he became an American citizen. Vladimir Nabokov translated Pushkin's Evgeni Onegin into English.
André Donatovich Siniavsky (1925-) is a Soviet Russian writer who used the pseudonym `Abram Terts'. He married Maria Rosanova. Because of his book What is socialist realism? (1959) he was put in a hard labour camp from 1966 to 1971. In 1973 he escaped to Paris, where he founded the literary paper Syntaxis in 1978.
Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn (1918-) is a Russian writer who in 1970 became the Nobel Literature prize. Solzhenitsyn grew up in Rostov on the Don, where he started studying mathematics in 1936. In 1941 he left to the front as an officer. Early 1945 he was arrested in Eastern Prussia because in his letters to a school friend he had written critical words about comrade Stalin. He stayed many years in Russian hard labour camps. In 1969 Solzhenitsyn was thrown out of the Writers Union, and in 1974 he left for Switzerland. In 1976 he settled down in the United States, and in 1994 he returned to Russia, setting himself up as the Messiah.
Gleb Petrovich Stroeve (1898-) is a Russian historian of literature. He escaped to the United States, where he and Boris Filippov published books of writers like Achmatova, Gumilyov, Mandelstam and Pasternak. Stroeve wrote the standard work History of Soviet Literature.
Alexis Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1882-1945) was a Russian novelist, poet, playwriter and journalist. During the Civil War he worked for Denikin's `White propaganda'. Escaped to Paris in 1919, where he wrote fierce pamphlets against communism. Later he returned to the Soviet-Union, where the `Red Count' was welcomed with open arms. He became one of the most obedient Stalinist writers.
Plastic artists
Georges Annenkov (1890-1974) was a Russian-French painter and illustrator. He settled down in Paris in 1911; exhibited inter alia in the Salon des Indépendants. He returned to the Soviet-Union but escaped in 1925 once more to Paris. In 1945 he definitive restricted to abstract art.
Alexandre Benois (1870-1960) was the pseudonym of Alexander Nikolaevich Benua, a Russian painter and art historian, who since the 19th century contributed much to the development of Russian art. Benois settled down in Paris, where he worked for years with people like Serge Diaghilev, Strawinsky and Léon Bakst.
Marc Chagall (1887-1985) was a Russian-French painter, sculptor, stained-glass artist, lithograp- her, etcher and ceramic artist. From 1910 to 1914 he lived and worked in Paris. After the Revolution he was director of the Academy of Arts in Vitebsk and a theatrical designer in Moscow. From 1922 he lived permanently in Paris, except during World War II, when he stayed in the United States, in view of his Jewish background. His wife died in New York. Chagall became famous with his bible illustrations, his fantastic colours, and his intuitive feeling for rhythm and harmony. He made stained-glass windows for a synagogue in Jerusalem, the ceiling paintings of the Opéra in Paris and a glass plate for the secretariate of the United Nations in Paris. He illustrated Gogol's Dead Souls and even made wall hangings. His symbolism is based on Jewish folklore and he developed a characteristic mixture of Christian and traditional Jewish iconography. Since 1973 the work of this versatile artist is exhibitioned in the Chagall Museum in Cimiez (Nice). He died in 1985 and is burried in Saint-Paul-de-Vence.
Naum Gabo was the pseudonym of Naum Pevsner (1890-1977), a Russian-American sculptor. He was a brother of Antoine Pevsner, and one of the most important representatives of constructivism. After the publication of the Realistic Manifesto, which he wrote with Antoine, he was forced to leave Russia. He had a preference for abstract-geometrical constructions of metal, glass, synthetics, gold wire and nylon yarn.
My uncle Nikolai Ivanov (1920-1984), who took care of me after my mother died, was a well known painter in the Parisian artists scene. Our house was frequented by famous painters and sculptors like Tristan Tzara and Ossip Zadkine. In 1958 we moved from Paris to Amsterdam, where he found a job as a restorer. He worked for several European museums.
Vassily Vasilievich Kandinsky (1866-1944) was a Russian painter and graphic artist. Since 1896 he worked in Munich. In 1901 Kandinsky founded the artists' union `Phalanx' and in 1909 the Neue Künstlervereinigung. From 1922 to 1933 he was a teacher at the Bauhaus in Weimar, after which he went to France. Since 1939 Kandinsky was a French citizen. Because of his Erstes abstraktes Aquarell (1910) he is considered one of the founders of the abstract art of painting. He and Franz Marc founded Der Blaue Reiter in 1911. His work belongs to the most important artworks of the first half of this century. In 1911 he wrote the book über das Geistige in der Kunst.
Antoine Pevsner (1884-1962) was a Russian-French sculptor. He and Naum Gabo were brothers. Antoine studied in the Academy of Arts in Kiev and St. Petersburg. He left for Paris in 1911, where he and his brother were influenced by cubism. In 1917 they returned to Russia, but in 1923 Antoine once more showed up in Paris. He worked a lot with plastic materials, but also with copper and bronze. He was burried in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois.
Ossip Zadkine (1890-1967) was a famous Russian-French sculptor, who was born in Smolensk. His first work is characterized by cubistic constructions, in which he respects the singularity of his materials (tree- trunks, blocks of stone). After 1940 his work became more loose, because since then he abandoned his closed forms. Zadkine also made gouaches and watercolours, and was a teacher of art in Paris. Much of his work is in the United States and France. He was burried in Paris, in the cimetière du Montparnasse. In 1909 and 1910 Zadkine worked in the studio d'Injalbert, of the école des Beaux-Arts, 14 Rue de Bonaparte, after which he left for La Ruche. Until his death he lived in France, except for the period of 1941-1945, when he, in view of the war, lived in the United States. For a long time he worked and taught in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, 14 Rue de la Grande Chaumière. From André Maurois' Women of Paris (1956), `Every Monday morning, Rue de la Grande Chaumière, market of models. In the world of art Montparnasse remains the seat of the école de Paris, and the studio's of la Grande Chaumière are the vivid center of Montparnasse. From the outside la Grande Chaumière only looks a small building, however on the inside one finds numerous holes and corners, skillfully used, so that there is room for several studio's of painters, sculptors and draughtsmen. Othon Friesz teaches there, and also Picart le Doux, Aujame, Auricoste, McAvoy and Zadkine.'
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Other well known emigrés
Paul Borisovich Akselrod (1850-1928) was a Russian politician. At first he was a follower of Bakunin, but later he became a marxist. He and Plekhanov founded the `Union for the Liberation of the Working class'. Subsequently he became a menshevik, and after the October Revolution he escaped abroad.
Nicholas Alexandrovich Berdiaev (1874-1948) was a Russian philosopher, who during the October Revolution was appointed professor of philosophy in the university of Moscow. He was the founder of the Religionsphilosofische Akademie in Berlin (1922) and Paris (1924).
Efim Dmitrievich Bogolyubov (1889-1952) was a Russian-German chess grand-master, who worked out several theoretical systems. For several times he was chess champion of Germany. From 1925 to 1929 he was the world champion. One day a press photographer made a picture of Bogolyubov and some of his less famous opponents. The next day a beautiful picture was published in the newspapers, only... Bogolyubov, the principal person, wasn't in it! It seemed to be a misunderstanding, `The stout gentleman in the corner with a glass of milk in his hand? I cut him off. I thought he wasn't one of them.' George Gamow (1904-1968) was a famous Russian-American nuclear physicist, who also wrote and illustrated non-specialist literature.
Georges Gurvich (1894-1965) was a Russian-French sociologist and philosopher, who worked as a professor in Paris. Gurvich tried to create a depth sociology and engaged with the philosophical problems of sociology. In 1946 he founded the Cahères internationaux de sociologie.
Vladimir Yabotinsky (1880-1940) was a Russian-Jewish writer, journalist and politician. He was the founder and leader of the Hagana, the corps of Jewish volunteers which in World War I fought at the Palestinian front against the Turks. In 1925 he founded the Revisionist Party, and in 1935 the New Zionist Organization.
Wassily Leontief (1906-) is a Russian-American economist, who worked as a professor in Harvard University. He became world famous with his input-output analysis (specification of the relation between production and production factors) and in 1973 he received the Nobel Economy Prize.
Michael Rostovzeff (1870-1952) was a Russian-American historian and archeologist. After the Russian Revolution he escaped to the United States. Rostovzeff was a professor in St. Petersburg, Madison and New Haven, and published a lot of specialist literature.
Paul Vinogradov (1854-1925) was a Russian-English legal historian and professor in Moscow and Oxford. He was an authority in the field of English feudal law.
Serge Voronoff (1866-1957) was a Russian-French surgeon who tried to reach rejuvenation by transplanting glandular tissue of apes into the human body. Although the theory didn't work, it opened new perspectives for surgical science.
