39. The Sheremetevs and Obolenskys at the Naprudny Tower to celebrate Vasily’s name day, January 14, 1937. Seated, left to right: Yelizaveta Obolensky, Nikolai Obolensky, Vladimir Obolensky, Andrei Obolensky, Pavel Sheremetev. Standing, left to right: Varvara Obolensky (b. Gudovich), Olga Prutchenko, Maria Gudovich (b. Sheremetev), Yevfimiya Obolensky, Vasily Sheremetev, Praskovya Sheremetev. Shortly after this photograph was taken, Varvara and Vladimir Obolensky were arrested and never seen again. (Courtesy of Russian State Archive of Literature and Art)
40. Vladimir and Yelena Golitsyn with their children—Illarion, Mikhail, and Yelena—in Dmitrov, ca. 1930. (Courtesy of Andrei Golitsyn)
41. The mayor and his granddaughter Irina Trubetskoy, late 1920s. (Courtesy of Mikhail Trubetskoy)
42. Maria Golitsyn, her mother, Anna, and her grandfather Vladimir Golitsyn (the mayor) in Dmitrov shortly before his death. (Courtesy of Alexandre Galitzine)
The nobility mocked in the pages of the Soviet press
43. Count Naryshkin shown sucking up to Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra. The caption reads: “FROM THE BIOGRAPHY OF A GOLD CHASER IN HIDING . . . AND NOW UNDER THE SOVIET REGIME—WITHOUT ANY REGULAR OCCUPATION.” (
Leningradskaia Pravda
, March 24, 1935)
44. Another cartoon from
Leningradskaia Pravda
during the Operation Former People campaign of 1935. Published together with a collection of articles under the headline WE WILL CLEAN THE CITY OF LENIN OF THE TSARS’ REMAINING MEN AND THE LANDOWNING AND CAPITALIST RABBLE, THE CAPTION READS: “CLEANING UP THE CITY.” (
Leningradskaia
Pravda,
March 22, 1935)
45. The nobleman as dirty layabout. The caption is a play on words that means both “on noble mattresses” and “on noble layabouts.” Quoting Mikhail Kalinin’s “Report on Communist Education” and Ivan Goncharov’s classic novel
Oblomov
, the cartoon suggests that despite their books and learning, former nobles are indolent, uncultured, and filthy, perfectly content to live in apartments swarming with bedbugs and too foul even for cats.
(Komsomolskaia Pravda
, November 2, 1940)
The Saburov children, 1935
After several years of exile and imprisonment, the Saburov family—Anna, Xenia, Boris, and Yuri—were reunited in Vladimir in 1932. Several months after these photographs were taken, Boris and Yuri were arrested for the last time. “The time of the vultures is at hand,” Anna wrote. “Soon the land, every home, the waters, everything will have to give up its corpses.”
46. Xenia, aged thirty-five. (Author’s collection)
47. Boris, aged thirty-eight. (Author’s collection)
48. Yuri, aged thirty-one. (Author’s collection)
49. The actor Alexander Golitsyn was arrested in Tomsk during the Great Terror and shot on July 11, 1938. The charges against him included portraying Soviet heroes onstage in a “perverse light.” (Courtesy of Alexandre Galitzine)
50. Alexander’s sister Olga was arrested in Tomsk on New Year’s Eve, 1937, a week after her husband, Pyotr Urusov. Charged with spreading “defeatist” and monarchist propaganda, she was shot on March 5, 1938. She was twenty-six. (Courtesy of Alexandre Galitzine)
