Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy (74 page)

In Russia, I cannot thank enough Andrei and Tania Golitsyn. They took the time to meet with me on several occasions and did everything possible to help, supplying me with books, offering family documents and photographs, arranging introductions, and critiquing my book in manuscript. I owe them a large debt. Ivan Golitsyn welcomed me to his studio to talk about his family and to show me the items in his personal collection; he has always been ready to answer my many questions. Nikolay Trubetskoy agreed to meet and tell me what he knew of his families’ past and, unknown to us both at the time, gave me the ending to my book. His brother Mikhail Trubetskoy provided many family photographs and the unpublished letters of his grandfather and an unpublished portion of his father’s memoirs, materials that proved to be of great use. Yevdokia Sheremetev, the sole grandchild of Count Pavel Sheremetev, allowed me to visit her on several occasions and told me much about her family. I also wish to acknowledge the generous assistance of Alexandra Olsufiev, Elizabeth Apraxine, Konstantin and Marianna Smirnov, Mikhail Katin-Yartsev, Yekaterina Lansere, and the Pavlinovs—Varvara, Nikolai, and Sergei.

Mikhail Vladimirovich Golitsyn and his wife, Tamara Pavlovna, deserve special acknowledgment. Although surrounded by boxes in anticipation of a big move to a new apartment in Moscow, they invited me to lunch at short notice and welcomed me with a well-laid table. We talked for several hours—and drank perhaps a few too many vodka toasts—and I left feeling amazed by their youthful spirit, despite their advanced age, and by their sense of optimism, despite the hardships they have faced in their lives. It was a day I shall never forget.

Father Boris Mikhailov helped me immensely with both my previous book and now with
Former People
. For years he gathered information on the Sheremetev family while working as a curator at the Ostankino Estate Museum. He had himself intended to write a book on the fate of the family after 1917 but then gave this up to become an Orthodox priest after the collapse of the Soviet Union. When I called him while on a visit to Moscow in 2009 and mentioned the topic of my new book, he asked if we might meet because he had something he wanted to give me. I was shocked when he showed up carrying two large bags full of his research. He handed it to me and asked me to make good use of it, saying he was glad to know the years he had spent gathering the information had not been wasted. I am humbled by his generous gift.

It is a pleasure to thank the many friends and colleagues who have provided assistance during the course of my research and writing: Nikita Sokolov, Tatiana Safronova, Alexander Bobosov, Aleksei Kovalchuk, Elena Campbell, Ekaterina Pravilova, Igor Khristoforov, Bob Edelman, Mark Steinberg, William Husband, Steve A. Smith, Seymour Becker, Richard Robbins, Golfo Alexopoulos, Glennys Young, Michael Biggins, Anatol Shmelev, Carol Leadenham, Catriona Kelly, Sofia Chuikina, Richard Davies, Sean McMeekin, Susanne Fusso, Ruzica Popovitch-Krekic, Stephanie Lock and Gary Hawkey at iocolor, Eric Lohr, Steve Hanson, April Bodman, Ronald Vroon, Frances Welch, John Bowlt, Randy Steiger and the team at Conflare, Tatiana Enikeeva, Ludmila Syagaeva, Olga Novikova, Galina Kalinina, Olga Solomodenko, Mikhail Loukianov, Marina Kovaleva, Lena Marassinova, Alla Krasko, Maxim Smirnov, Tatiana Chvanova-Leto, Varvara Rakina, Tatiana Smirnova, Tanya Chebotarev, Svetlana Dolgova, Marina Sidorova, Boris Dodonov, Galina Korolyova, Marina Chertilina, Iskender Nurbekov, and Gerold Vzdornov.

For help gathering material I am grateful to Veronika Egorova, Yulia Galper, Dmitry and Arina Belozerov, Yury Nikiforov, and especially Natalya Bolotina, Yelena Matveeva, Yelena Mikhailova, and Mariana Markova. David Cain produced beautiful maps and family trees for the book and was a pleasure to work with. Several colleagues read various drafts of the book and gave me excellent advice on how to improve it: Arch Getty, Lisa Kirschenbaum, Willard Sunderland, Geoffrey Hosking, Priscilla Roosevelt, and Peter Pozefsky.

I am grateful to a number of archives, museums, and libraries and their staffs: the Bakhmeteff Archive at Columbia University; the London Library; the British Library; the University of Washington Libraries; the Russian State Library; the Russian National Library; the Russian State Historical Archive; the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art; the Central State Archive of the Moscow Oblast; the Literary Museum of Moscow; the Kuskovo Estate Museum, the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts; the State Archive of the Russian Federation; the Russian State Archive of Documentary Films and Photographs; the Hoover Institution Archives; and the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre.

I benefited from the opportunity to present some of the material in
Former People
at Columbia and Oxford universities. At Columbia, I am especially grateful to Timothy Frye, director of the Harriman Institute, and to Alla Rachkov and Masha Udensiva-Brenner. Cynthia Whittaker, Richard Wortman, and Hilde Hoogenboom attended my talk and offered insightful comments on my research. At Oxford, I would like to thank Andrei and Irina Zorin for their assistance and friendship. Andrew Kahn, also of Oxford University, has been a marvelous source of information and the perfect guide to all things Russian (and English) for a long time.

I would like to thank Melissa Chinchillo, Christy Fletcher, and the employees of Fletcher and Company for their hard work and commitment over the years. I have been exceedingly fortunate to have had Eric Chinski as my editor and am grateful to him for all his encouragement, insight, and enthusiasm. I would like to thank Jonathan Galassi and everyone I have worked with at FSG, especially Eugenie Cha, Gabriella Doob, Jeff Seroy, Kathy Daneman, Katie Freeman, Abby Kagan, Marion Duvert, and Devon Mazzone. Georgina Morley, my U.K. editor at Macmillan, has not only been wonderful to work with but a welcoming friend. I wrote this book at a window overlooking the house where nearly two hundred years ago Thomas Carlyle wrote his famous history of the French Revolution. A historian could hardly ask for better company, although this is just what I was fortunate to receive from so many wonderful friends (too many to name) in London.

While working on this book, I have been constantly reminded of the importance of family. I wish to thank my loving parents, Bill and Annette Smith, Michael and Merdice Ellis, Allyson and Todd Aldrich, Graham Smith, Angela Ellis, Emma Bankhead, Emily and Robert Aldrich, Tara and Elana Smith, and especially Emma and Andrew—my children—to whom
Former People
is dedicated. As always, my greatest debt is to my wife, Stephanie, for her patience, wisdom, and love.

ENDNOTES

1
. Although
Former People
explores the fate of the entire nobility (
dvoriánstvo
, in Russian), since so much of the book follows the aristocratic Sheremetev and Golitsyn families, I have chosen “aristocracy” for my subtitle.

2
. Patriarch Hermogen, Kuzma Minin, and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky helped rally Russians during the so-called Time of Troubles in the early seventeenth century. “Mikhails” refers to the first Romanov ruler elected to the throne in 1613.

3
. The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre refers to the mass killing of French Huguenots (Protestants) by Catholics in Paris in 1572 during the French Wars of Religion. Rumors and fear of another such massacre based not on religion but on class were common in Russia during the revolution and the later civil war. Such rumors persisted into the 1930s.

4
. Created at the Second Congress of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies on October 25, 1917, along with the
Sovnarkóm
, it functioned with the latter as the executive wing of the new state.

5
. Th e Petrovichy (from the Russian Christian name Pyotr) were the children of the late Count Pyotr Sheremetev.

6
. Anna and Mikhail’s elder son.

7
. Mikhail Kalinin, titular head of the new Bolshevik state.

8
. Ninety-six miles.

9
. Nikolai Lopukhin.

10
. A reference to Alexander Pushkin’s dramatic work “A Feast During the Plague” (1830), later the basis for César Cui’s 1900 opera of the same name.

11
. The great warriors of the medieval Russian epic poems.

12
. The mayor and his son Vladimir Vladimirovich.

13
. Georgy was thirty-six; Lina, twenty-nine.

14
. Fifth, if one counts the Winter War (1939–40) against Finland.

15
. A village in Poltava Province.

16
. Dmitry, Ira, and their younger children were then in Cannes.

17
. TsEKUBU—the Central Commission for the Improvement of Scholars’ Life—had been created by the
Sovnarkóm
in 1921 to help the country’s educated elite, barely alive following the civil war, by providing food rations, small monetary grants, firewood, clothing, pen and ink, and lightbulbs. It was closed in 1931.

INDEX

Abbe, James,
ref1

ABC of Communism, The
(Bukharin and Preobrazhensky),
ref1

Achinsk,
ref1

Afanasy, Father,
ref1
,
ref2

Affair of the Slavicists,
ref1

agriculture, collectivization of,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3
,
ref4
,
ref5

Aid to Political Prisoners (POMPOLIT),
ref1

Aksakov-Sivers, Tatiana,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3
,
ref4
,
ref5
; Operation Former People and,
ref1
,
ref2

Alapaevsk,
ref1

Alexander II, Tsar,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3
,
ref4
,
ref5
; assassination of,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3

Alexander III, Tsar,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3
,
ref4
,
ref5
,
ref6
,
ref7
,
ref8
,
ref9
,
ref10
,
ref11
,
ref12
; death of,
ref1

Alexander Mikhailovich, Grand Duke,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3
,
ref4
,
ref5

Alexandra, Empress,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3
,
ref4
,
ref5
,
ref6
,
ref7
,
ref8
; murder of,
ref1
; Rasputin and,
ref1
,
ref2
; in Tobolsk,
ref1
,
ref2

Alexeev, Mikhail,
ref1

Alexei Mikhailovich, Tsar,
ref1
,
ref2

Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich,
ref1
,
ref2

Alliluyeva, Svetlana,
ref1

All-Russian Central Executive Committee,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3
,
ref4
,
ref5
,
ref6
,
ref7

All-Russian Congress of Peasant Soviets,
ref1

All-Russian Union of Landowners,
ref1

All-Russian Union of Writers,
ref1

Almedingen, Marta,
ref1
,
ref2

American Relief Administration (ARA),
ref1

Andijan,
ref1
,
ref2

Andronievsky Monastery,
ref1

Ankudinov, Dmitry,
ref1

Antonov, Alexander,
ref1

Arctic and Antarctic Scientific Research Institute,
ref1

aristocrats,
ref1
,
ref2
; false,
ref1
;
see also
nobility

Article 58,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3
,
ref4
,
ref5

Astronomical Institute,
ref1

Atarbekov, Georgy,
ref1

Atheists’ House,
ref1

Austro-Hungarian Army,
ref1

Austro-Hungarian Empire,
ref1

Azbukin, Vsevolod,
ref1

Bagázh: Memoirs of a Russian Cosmopolitan
(Nabokov),
ref1

Bagration-Mukhransky, Alexander,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3

Bagration-Mukhransky, Princess,
ref1

Bakunin, Mikhail,
ref1

Bakunin family,
ref1

Balakirev, Mily,
ref1

Balanda,
ref1
,
ref2

Baldwin, Alexandra “Alka” (née Bobrinsky),
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3
; marriage of,
ref1

Baldwin, Philip,
ref1
,
ref2

balls: Sheremetev,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3
,
ref4
; at Winter Palace,
ref1

banishment sentences,
ref1

Bank for Foreign Trade,
ref1
,
ref2

banks,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3
; safe-deposit boxes in,
ref1

Baryatinsky, Nadezhda,
ref1

Baryatinsky family,
ref1

Bashkiroff, Zenaide,
ref1

Belbaltlag,
ref1
,
ref2

Benkendorff, Maria,
ref1

Beria, Lavrenty,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3
,
ref4

Bermudian
, SS,
ref1

Beseda,
ref1

Bismarck, Otto von,
ref1

Black Army,
ref1

Black Hand,
ref1

Black Hundreds,
ref1

Bloody Sunday,
ref1

Bobrinsky, Alexandra “Alka,”
see
Baldwin, Alexandra “Alka”

Bobrinsky, Alexei (son of Catherine the Great),
ref1

Bobrinsky, Alexei (son of Lev and Vera),
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3
,
ref4
; arrest of,
ref1