University of California Berkeley
Regional Oral History Office University of California
The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California
California-Russian Emigre" Series
Ivan Stenbock-Fermor
MEMOIRS OF LIFE IN OLD RUSSIA,
WORLD WAR I, REVOLUTION, AND IN EMIGRATION
Completed in
Palo Alto, California,
1976
Copyright (cj 1986 by the Regents of the University of California
PREFACE
The Russian-Americans, although numerically a small proportion of the
population, have for long been a conspicuous and picturesque element in the
cosmopolitan make-up of the San Francisco Bay Area. Some came here prior to
the Russian Revolution, but the majority were refugees from the Revolution of
1917 who came to California through Siberia and the Orient. Recognizing the
historical value of preserving the reminiscences of these Russian refugees, in
the spring of 1958 Dr. Richard A. Pierce, author of Russian Central Asia. 1867-
1917, (U.C. Press, Spring 1960) then a research historian at the University
working on the history of the Communist Party in Central Asia, made the following
proposal to Professor Charles Jelavich, chairman of the Center for Slavic Studies;
I would like to start on the Berkeley campus, under the
auspices of the Center for Slavic Studies, an oral
history project to collect and preserve the recollections
of members of the Russian colony of the Bay Region. We
have in this area the second largest community of Russian
refugees in the U.S., some 30,000 in San Francisco alone.
These represent an invaluable and up to now almost entirely
neglected source of historical information concerning life
in Russia before 1917, the February and October Revolutions,
the Civil War of 1918-1921, the Allied intervention in
Siberia, the Soviet period; of the exile communities of
Harbin, Shanghai, Prague, Paris, San Francisco, etc.; and
of the phases in the integration of this minority into
American life.
The proposed series of tape-recorded interviews, as a part of the Regional
Oral History Office of the University of California Library, was begun in
September 1958 under the direction of Professor Jelavich and with the assistance
of Professor Nicholas V. Riasanovsky of the Department of History. To date, the
interviews listed below have been completed in several series. Each interview
lasted a number of sessions, which were transcribed and, if necessary, translated.
Each was edited by the interviewer and the interviewee, and then typed and bound.
An interview by Professor R. A. Pierce with the late Professor Gleb Struve, still
being edited, will constitute a fifth series.
Funding for the California Russian Emigre' Series has come from several
sources. First supported by the General Library, it was in the second and third
series supported by the Center for Slavic and Near Eastern Studies. The fourth
series, begun in 1979, received funding from the L. J. Skaggs and Mary C. Skaggs
Foundation.
In addition to the completed oral histories, other Russian emigre" materials
have been acquired as a result of the interviewing program.
ii
An interview begun with Professor Nicholas T. Mirov was expanded by
Professor Mirov and published as The Road I Came, The Memoirs of a Russian-
American Forester (The Limestone Press, Kingston, Ontario, 1978).
Several manuscripts were donated to Professor Pierce by emigre's who had
already written or dictated their memoirs. These include:
Lialia Andreevna Sharov, Life in Siberia and Manchuria, 1898-1922. 296 pages.
Completed in Los Angeles, California, ca. 1960.
Professor Ivan Stenbock-Fermor, Memoirs of Life in Old Russia, World War
I. Revolution, and in Emigration. 1112 pages. Completed in Palo Alto,
California, 1976.
Professor Alex Albov, Recollections of Pre-Revolutionary Russia, the Russian
Revolution and Civil War, the Balkans in the 1930* s and Service in the Vlasov
Army in World War II. 550 pages. Dictated on tape, transcribed by Professor
Pierce.
These manuscripts will be made a part of the Russian emigre' collection of The
Bancroft Library.
The Regional Oral History Office was established in 1954 to tape record
autobiographical interviews with persons who have contributed to the development
of the West. The Office is under the administrative supervision of Professor
James D. Hart, the director of The Bancroft Library.
Willa K. Baum, Head
Regional Oral History Office
15 April 1986
Regional Oral History Office
The Bancroft Library
University of California
Berkeley, California 94709
MEMOIRS
Of
IVAN
COUNT STENBOCK-FERMOR
r
DEED OF GIFT
The Regents of the University of California
c/o Mr. James D. Hart, Director
The Bancroft Library
University of California
Berkeley, California 94720
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am pleased to present to The Regents of the University
of California, irrevocably and for the use and purposes of
The Bancroft Library all of my right, title and interest to
the following materials:
The memoirs of Count Ivan Stenbock-Fermor.
This gift does not preclude any use which I may want to make
of the memoirs myself nor any use I may authorize other
persons to make.
Sincerely yours,
Professor I. I. Stenbock-Fermor
2315 Columbia
Palo Alto, CA 94306
DATED:
P315 Colu .Ma ;jc.
Palo VI to, C..1. 34306
Joptembcr 12, 1932
L'ra. Uilla Tinum
Regional Oral Iliotory Office
The Da ;crof t Li.-rary
Uni err;ifc. : : o.? Caii:'orni;.; Her.zley
Ucnr Lira* ]3e.iua,
Over a year o.^o I have ^iven all "Au.^or't 1 Kights" to riy
"Me:..oirfl" to ;jy {jranddaaciiter I'ra. Maximilian von Stockiiauaen
(6? 3hu; \7.nn Svraane, GOOO ?ranJ:furt. v;eu\; Gorr.iany. uer huaband ia
an International la\vyer.
I h::.vo , ivcn c^piep to both of :y sons, to tiie Hoover Institution
and to r, ool.Tcrd-uin.
I v;ill be ;jlad if Prof. It. A. fierce v.ould doposit :iia cpy
at tiic Bancroft
oincerely yours,
Ivan otentoilc-Per;. or.
MY CREDO
I can never feel simply as a ruin, a residue from a
time lost forever. On the contrary, the ever-present voice
of the eternal life resonds in me; it calls me daily,
summons me to commit myself to the future (life hereafter)
with all the strength given me, yet to always remain true
to the experience of the past.
To be awake, alive (and thus to affect others) , to
inspire joy, to uproot in myself the ephemeral and un
essential, to let the eternal life resound (peal forth) in
me, and thus to realize in the minutest part which is myself,
the evolution of the whole universe - this is the meaning
of my life, which is bestowed upon me, as a miracle, every
day anew .
Ivan Stenbock-Fermor
Palo Alto, California
May 8, 1976
The lower depths of a human soul are the
same as those of an orangutan, but the heights
of a human soul are heavenly and attain the
eternal dignity. Mankind sways between the two
extremes .
Ivan Stenbock-Fermor
Palo Alto, California
Christmas 1976
TABLE OF CONTENTS
page
MY CREDO i
QUOTATION ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS iii
CHAPTER I, MOTIVATION FOR WRITING 1
CHAPTER II, HISTORY OF ANCESTORS (1560-1860) 3
ANCESTORS 4
CHAPTER III, MY PARENTS AND EARLY CHILDHOOD 25
EARLY FAMILY STORIES 47
SOME TRAVEL MEMORIES 73
MEMORIES ABOUT INTERESTING PEOPLE AND EVENTS 89
CHAPTER IV, WORLD WAR I 122
THE FIRST REVOLUTION ( "Kerenschina" ) 173
THE SECOND REVOLUTION 225
CHAPTER V, LEAVING RUSSIA 483
CHAPTER VI, REFUGE IN YUGOSLAVIA 528
CHAPTER VII, CZECHOSLOVAKIA - THE OCCUPIED
KINGDOM OF HUNGARY 562
SOME INTERESTING PEOPLE I MET IN CZECHO
SLOVAKIA 640
CHAPTER VIII, MOVE TO FRANCE (1931) 671
CHAPTER IX, WORLD WAR II 749
CHAPTER X, USA - A PERMANENT HOME 928
IDLE THOUGHTS OF A "PAPER AMERICAN" 1114
CONCLUSION 1116
ill
CHAPTER I
MOTIVATION FOR WRITING
TO THE MEMORY OF EIGHTY YEARS,
ABOUT WHICH I WANT TO PUT ON PAPER
WHAT I HAPPEN TO REMEMBER
I am writing not for shortlived fame, and not for the
sake of criticism, but rather for entertainment and amuse
ment, for my dear friends, for the memory of past days,
and in the hope that it will also be of interest to my
descendants to know how their forebears lived. There has
always been a chasm between generations, created by differing
perspectives on life. This chasm was described in Russian
literature in Turgenev's novel Fathers and Sons, and in many
others; in American literature there is Life with Father, by
Clarence Day; and in historical documents we find tragedies
between father and son, as it happened with Ivan the
Terrible and later with Peter the Great.
During my life there happened the tragedies of the First
World War, the Revolution, the Civil War, Bolshevism,
Hitlerism, and the Second World War. One can compare these
only to an earthquake of unimaginable, worldwide proportions,
and this earthquake was generated by a great difference in
mutual understanding, feeling, perspectives, and all aspects
of everyday life. As a child, my favorite fairytale was
Koniok-Gorbunok ("The Hunchback Horse"), in which the young
hero, riding his horse "flew over forests, over oceans..."
Now there are no more fairytales. I myself fly, and not
infrequently. Speed - the maximum speed of a frantically
bounding troyka in which the hero of a nineteenth century
novel rushes to "Her" - was 20 kilometers an hour or less.
And now people rush about at speeds faster than sound. This
gulf in the realm of technology is by no means the least of
all chasms separating one generation from another generation.
CHAPTER II
HISTORY OF ANCESTORS
(1560 - 1860)
- 4 -
ANCESTORS
I was born on February 26th, 1897. When this event
occurred, a lady of St. Petersburg society called the new
born infant "The miracle child". In this she was right,
because ray parents had been married in 1881 and through all
those years my poor mother had had many mishaps. Her
children were either stillborn or died two or three days
after birth; it could only have been my mother, with her
strong will and desire to have a child, who could risk it
over and over again. On the above-mentioned date a child
was born, a healthy and strong boy, and that was I. At the
time of writing I am 81 years old and before I start to
write about my long life of over three-quarters of a century,
I want to say something about my ancestors, because their
lives had enormous influence upon mine.
Count Magnus
I had two ancestors who played great roles in world
history. One of them was Count Magnus Stenbock of Sweden
(1664-1717) , who rose to importance in the early 18th
century. The Stenbock family, barons from 1561 and counts
from 1651, played a leading role in Sweden for many
centuries and belonged to the upper level of Swedish
aristocracy. Many members of the family held very important
positions in the Swedish administration, civil and military.
(In Swedish archives of the year 1205 the name Stenbock is
mentioned). In the 16th century Katharina Stenbock, aged 17,
was the third wife of the aging King of Sweden, Gustaf,
founder of the Vasa dynasty. They had no children.
At the very beginning of the 18th century Sweden was
ruled by King Charles XII. He was a great warrior and
under his command the Swedish army earned the reputation
of being invincible. The Swedes fought victorious battles
against the king of Poland and Saxony and after many
victories Charles XII turned his "invincible" army against
Russia. At that time Russia was ruled by Tsar Peter, who
has been called "the Great" because of his genius and his
understanding that land-locked Russia needed an outlet to
the sea. He tried to obtain an outlet to the Black Sea, but
at that time the northern shores of the Black Sea were
nominally under Turkish rule, and fortified. The Black Sea
was a "closed" sea; Constantinople, ex-Byzantium, was the
capital of Turkey, and the straits could be closed at the
Turks' whim. As a result, Peter the Great directed his
attention to the Baltic Sea, the eastern shores of which
were then part of Sweden. The war between Sweden and
Russia, the so-called Northern War, lasted for many years
(1700-1721) , and its first great battle took place at Narva,
in north Russia. At that time, the young, modernized
armies of Peter the Great were no match for the Swedes , who
decisively defeated the Russians and took all their artillery,
Later, in the summer of 1708, Charles XII took his armies
- 6 -
from Poland into southern Russia for winter quarters.
Southern Russia was a very rich country, populated by
people who were ethnically Russian, the so-called Ukrainians
of Greek-Orthodox faith. Their elected leader or "hetman",
Mazepa, was anti-Russian, but the mass of the people did not
follow him in this. The Ukrainians did not trust the
Protestant Swedes, still less the Roman Catholic Poles; they
chose to follow the Greek Orthodox Russians. Charles XII
was misinformed about the possibility of an uprising of the
south Russian population against Moscow, and while in south
Russia the Swedish army was practically cut off from Sweden,
its supply lines extended over thousands of miles, the roads
were covered with dry sand, bottomless mud or impassable
snowdrifts, and the supplies coming from Sweden were ambushed,
destroyed, or taken over by the Russians.
In 1709 there was a battle near the city of Poltava. The
Swedish King Charles XII, who had been slightly wounded in
the leg in a previous skirmish, commanded the Swedish troops
from a stretcher, but his troops were outflanked and out
numbered by the Russians and were practically destroyed.
With a handful of faithfuls Charles XII fled across the
steppes of south Russia and managed to get to Turkey, where
he took refuge. He lived there for years, and his status
was somewhere between that of a political prisoner and an
honored guest.
Before moving deep into south Russia, Charles XII had
appointed a viceroy in Sweden, and this viceroy was a direct
- 7 -
ancestor of mine, Count Magnus Stenbock. After the defeat
at Poltava, when Sweden was without a king and without an
army, the neighboring Danes wanted to profit from this
disaster. They attempted to invade Sweden, but Count Magnus
Stenbock raised a militia and threw the Danes back into the
sea at the city of Helsingborg. Then he made a mistake. He
crossed the very narrow water space and took his army into
Denmark. Of course that made his supply lines very vulnerable.
The Danes were much stronger. Finally, Magnus locked himself
up in a fortified city and was besieged by the Danes. He had
no supplies whatsoever and of course he had to surrender.
He was taken prisoner by the Danes and was held in the castle
of Copenhagen, where he died in captivity.
Many, many years passed and I was on business in Copen
hagen, where there was a discussion of the problems of
writing a Russian grammar book. There were editors who
were interested in it and I got the VIP treatment, a great
dinner at the best restaurant in Copenhagen. The president
at this reception wanted to be very nice to me and he said:
"Sir, please be seated at the head of the table. This is the
very same chair in which, only a few months ago, comrade
Khrushchov from Moscow sat." Well, that president of course
was a fool. He didn't realize the difference of opinions,
mine and Khrushchev's. But I immediately took out my pocket
handkerchief and carefully wiped the chair, to the laughter
of everybody, and only then I sat down in the chair. Then,
this editor made a second mistake. He said, "Sir,
Professor, admire the view from this window, admire the
castle across there." I said, "Why should I admire that
castle? You Danes locked up there my ancestor who died in
your captivity, and you are telling me to admire that
castle?" Shortly after that champagne was served, and we
drank to the memory of my ancestor, and I made up again my
friendship with the Danes.
There now stands an equestrian monument in Helsingborg
which bears the inscription: "Motherland - to Magnus Stenbock.
An artful strategist, a gallant soldier, a generous man.
Great in victory - Greater even in adversity." And at the
base of this monument there are guns that Count Magnus
Stenbock took from Peter the Great at the battle of Narva.
I have a postcard of this monument, as well as a picture of
myself sitting on the ex-Russian guns.
The Stenbock family motto in Latin is "Semper in altis",
which means "Always on the top" . There is also a second
motto, similar in meaning, "Pascitur in altis", or "He grazes
in the heights", to be symbolically understood as an interest
in the highest attainments in craftsmanship, academic
matters, music, etc. Magnus Stenbock composed an opera and
it is still performed in Stockholm under the name of the
"Stenbock-Opera" . A drinking jar he chiseled from an
elephant tusk stands in the Rosenberg castle in Copenhagen.
Today Magnus Stenbock is still remembered as a national
- 9 -
hero. I found this in 1951 while going through the formal
ities of becoming a United States citizen. All aliens have
to pass an examination of sorts to prove that they possess
a basic knowledge of the political and administrative struc
ture of the United States. There is a booklet containing
all the possible questions and correct answers. In 1951 I
studied this booklet, and at a clambake given by a friend of
mine at Cranes Beach, Ipswich, Mass., I asked many of the
guests, mostly lawyers from Boston, some of these questions,
and none of them gave the correct answers. I told them that
they were all prime for deportation. When the day of my
examination came, I was lucky. I stood in front of a small
window while the gentleman on the other side of the partition
was looking through my papers. Then he put them aside, smiled
at me, and said, "Sir, I am of Swedish descend myself, and I
am happy and proud that a Stenbock will be a citizen of the
United States of America". That is all there was to the
" exam" .
Some years later my wife and I were on vacation near
Los Angeles, California. We spent the first night at a motel
but as it was much too noisy we soon left. I spotted a huge,
castle-like hotel on a hill and found out that the cost of a
room was the same as at the motel we had so disliked.
I registered. The receptionist was a strikingly lovely
blonde. I gave her my registration form and she said, "Oh".
She beamed her most bewitching smile at me and said,
- 10 -
"Sir, I am Swedish". This was in 1957. Magnus Stenbock died
in 1717. But the memory of him as a national hero has sur
vived for two and a half centuries and will survive into
eternity.
The Northern War finally ended with victory for the
Russians, who had outnumbered the Swedes by far. The eastern
shores of the Baltic Sea became part of the Russian Empire
and the inhabitants of these Baltic provinces, now known as
the small republics of Estonia and Latvia, became Russian
subjects. Members of the Stenbock family owned vast estates
townhouses, and chateaux there, and there they stayed. The
two older brothers sent their younger brother away to
relatives in Sweden and he became the ancestor of the Swedish
branch of the Stenbock family. My grandchildren, distant
relatives of theirs, visited them in Sweden and were received
with great kindness.
Empress Elizabeth
Empress Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great,
demanded that the population in the newly acquired "Baltic
provinces" should give their oath of allegiance to the Russ
ian throne or else leave for Sweden, so the two brothers
pledged allegiance to the Russian throne and stayed in the
Baltic provinces. Little by little Swedish influence there
declined and was supplanted by the influence of descendants
of the Germanic crusaders. Centuries ago these crusaders
had moved from Prussia eastward, conquered the land,
- 11 -
christianized the population, built fortresses and castles,
and kept large estates. The local population were Ests
and Letts, descendants of pre-historical tribes, who had
lived there since times immemorial. German in this way
became the language of the Stenbock family.
William Fermor
At the end of the 17th century, William Fermor, a
Scottish officer, being in favor of the house of Stuart,
had been forced to leave Great Britain for political reasons.
He found employment as an artillery specialist and military
engineer in Russia and his son, William, also became an
artillerist and military engineer. During the Seven-Year
War, which allied the forces of Russia and Austria against
Prussia under Frederick the Great, William Fermor was for a
time commander- in-chief of the allied armies. He defeated
the Prussians and later in the same war the Russian army was
able to send out a detachment and occupy Berlin.
Commander-in-chief William Fermor was rewarded with a
sword, which he received from the hands of Empress Elizabeth.
On the sabre of the sword there was an inscription in
diamonds, "Award for the conquest of Berlin". In about 1881
this sword was in the possession of Count Sievers who lived
in St. Peterburg and was a friend of our family. My father,
then a pupil at the Imperial Lycee at St. Peterburg, often
visited Count Sievers when he was on leave from school. After
what happened in St. Petersburg during the Revolution and
- 12 -
after the destruction of the city during the Second World
War, the sword vanished and nobody knows what happened to it
later on. I can only say that my greates wish was to wear
that sword in the years 1915-16 during the First World War.
The name Stenbock-Fermor
As a reward for his victories over Frederick the Great,
Commander- in-Chief William Fermor was given the title of
Count of the Roman Empire. Count William Fermor, who was a
Protestant, had an only daughter, Sarah. I still have a
portrait of her as a young girl. She married Count Pontus
Stenbock, and therefore the name Fermor was added to the name
Stenbock.
Much later, when I became a citizen of the United States,
of course I lost the title of Count, and my double name of
Stenbock-Fermor has given me no end of trouble. Once, when
I was in New York City, I asked for a telephone to be
installed in the house that I had just bought. Well, the
telephone was installed and a few days later people from
the telephone company came to install another telephone.
When I asked them what was wrong, I was told that last week
they had installed a telephone for Mr. Stenbock and now
they had come to install one for Mr. Fermor. I had to
explain that it was a misunderstanding, and they left. Then
it occurred to me (I was working at that time for Columbia
University) that it would not be such a bad idea if I could
get paid first as Mr. Stenbock and then again as Mr. Fermor.
- 13 -
But somehow that did not happen.
Ivan Stenbock-Fermor
My great-grandfather Ivan was born in the year 1765. By
that time Germanic culture had taken over in the Baltic lands.
Ivan's family spoke German. All Baltic families of the
landed nobility and all city-dwellers of the merchant class
were Germanized. The city of Dorpat boasted a world-
famous university and all lectures there were given in
German. But the cultured class of the Baltic provinces
would get very angry if somebody were to call them Germans,
and the Germans of Germany proper would never consider the
"Baits" to be Germans. The lower classes spoke Lettish, but
switched to German whenever they managed to rise above the
social level of the local peasantry. They pretended to
belong to the cultured ruling class.
Around 1800 there was a Count Ivan Stenbock-Fermor, whose
Swedish name was Jons. He married early; I cannot remember
his wife's maiden name. She was his only wife and she bore
him four sons and fifteen daughters. The youngest of these
four sons and of all the children was my grandfather
Wilhelm, Count Stenbock-Fermor. His brother Theodore, who
was much older than he, inherited the family's vast lands
and the city mansion in the port of Riga. Theodore's
descendants still exist to this day. They fled to Germany
in 1920 and are quite Germanized. I had the pleasure of
meeting a second cousin of mine from this branch of the
- 14 -
family, Count Theodore Stenbock-Fermor , president of the
University of Aachen, when he came to visit Stanford
University. We had a cosy and touching family reunion at
my house, drinking a bottle of champagne to the health of
all the surviving members of the Stenbock-Fermor family.
Ivan's second son was Jakob. He went to St. Petersburg
and graduated from the Officers' Candidate School as
lieutenant of the cavalry in the regiment of His Majesty's
Horse Guards. He married the only daughter of Count Essen,
and the name of Essen was added to his name by Imperial
order. He had four sons but as a result of the events of
1917 his line became extinct.
The third son, Alexander, followed in Jakob's footsteps.
When he was an officer of the Horse Guards he married a
Russian girl, Nadezda Jakovlev. The Jakovlev family was a
family of merchants and had a huge fortune consisting of
gold mines, melting ovens, and steel plants in the Ural
region, as well as over 200,000 acres of forest. Nadezda
Jakovlev, now the wife of Alexander Stenbock-Fermor, was a
most remarkable lady in many respects. She had an acute
sense of business and multiplied her large fortune many
times over by buying wasteland on the outskirts of what was
in those days the city of St. Petersburg. The city mush
roomed, and within a few decades that wasteland was covered
with cottages and villas and had become a "gold mine" of
sorts.
- 15 -
The main street of St. Petersburg was called "Nevsky
Prospect" (Nevsky Boulevard) . The city is located on the
shores of the River Neva, which is about one verst wide at
the center of the city. Early in the 19th century Nadezda
Stenbock-Fermor managed to buy some old houses on the
Nevsky Prospect. They were torn down and replaced by a
huge building. This building was known to the St. Peters
burg population as the "Passage" . One could walk through the
building to a street paralleling the Nevsky Prospect. In
my days this building housed numerous shops, a movie theater,
and a private drama theater under its roof. There were
probably some apartments in it as well. Again and again
Nadezda Stenbock-Fermor discovered a new "gold mine".
When Nadezda Stenbock-Fermor liked a person, she would
shower him with presents and money, but if she had a quarrel
.with somebody, she would be very disagreeable. She had a
large family and when she became a grandmother she would
open a savings account for every new grandchild, depositing
25,000 gold rubles in that account. She was still living
in 1897. Since I was only a grandnephew of hers, when I was
born she deposited only 10,000 gold rubles in a savings
account in my name.
My grandfather Wilhelm
My grandfather Wilhelm also followed his two older brothers,
Jakob and Alexander to St. Petersburg, the Officers' Candidate
Cavalry School, and the Horse Guards Regiment. He lived in
- 16 -
his brother Alexander's mansion, and due to the 18 years
difference in age between the two brothers, Wilhelm was more
like a son to Alexander than a brother. He led a carefree
life in his brother's family. All the doors of St. Peters
burg society were wide open to a young officer of the Horse
Guards and Grandfather was very popular among his fellow
officers. He was considered the best rider in the regiment,
as well as the best dancer at all of the many balls held
during the brilliant St. Petersburg season. When big court
receptions were given by the Tsar, Nicholas I and later
Alexander II, at the Winter Palace, they were followed by
dancing; it was Grandfather who called the dances. Of
course, he was considered most eligible by many mothers of
marriageable daughters, but he managed to remain a bachelor.
At the age of 36, having acquired the rank of Captain in
command of the 1st squadron of his regiment, Grandfather
became engaged to Miss Barbara Safonov, aged 18. A Grand-
duchess exclaimed, "At last!" Grandfather's nickname in
Petersburg court society was "Wilhelm the Conqueror". My
father, Ivan, was born in 1859. His sister was born a year
later, and soon afterwards Grandmother was expecting her thirc
child.
Now that Grandfather had a home, his family, and his many
house-servants, he started to see that life was no longer as
carefree as it had been during his long years of living as
a bachelor in his brother's home. Grandfather also refused
- 17 -
to consider staying in St. Petersburg if not having the
means to live on the same scale as Alexander.
On a historical day in February 1861, Tsar Alexander II
signed the "Ukaz" (Decree) , the Act of Liberation of the
Russian peasants from serfdom. The Ukaz completely changed
the economic situation in the country. Grandfather decided
to retire from service in the Guards, to leave St. Petersburg,
and to devote himself to managing the many estates of the
Safonov family that now belonged to his wife. Tsar Alex
ander II summoned my grandfather to the Winter Palace and
asked, "Stenbock, why do you not want to be one of my
honorary ADC's?" My grandfather's answer was that he would
be very happy and greatly honored by such a nomination, but
that his family affairs compelled him to retire from service
in the Guards and to live on his estate in south Russia. The
Tsar said, "I understand; I am very sorry", and he embraced
Grandfather as a gesture of farewell. They never met again.
Moving the family was by no means an easy task. The
household consisted of two small children and many servants
and nurses. Father was only three years old and Grandmother
was expecting her third child. Anyone looking at the map of
Russia can see that travelling in a caravan of carriages for
weeks and weeks through absolutely roadless country would be
risky at the least, but a railroad connecting St. Petersburg
with the city of Warsaw in Poland had quite recently been
opened. There was also a railroad connecting Warsaw with
- 18 -
Vienna, Austria, so the whole family travelled to Vienna.
From there they took a riverboat down the Danube to the
Black Sea. Then they boarded a seagoing boat for a
relatively short voyage to the city of Odessa and preceded
from there by carriage to the estate of "Troitskoe-
Saf onov" , a distance of "only" 25O versts (kilometers)
through roadless steppe.
The Safonov Family
Now I must go back to the turn of the 18th century.
History books relate all the facts and also many legends
about the death of Tsar Paul I. This drama deeply affected
a very young officer of the Guards, my Grandmother's father,
Evtikhi Safonov. He retired from service and left
St. Petersburg forever. He sold his mansion that stood
facing the "Summer Garden" in the center of the city. Many
years later when, as a child I was taken for walks in this
"Summer Garden", I admired my great-grandfather's mansion
from a distance, and my young mind worked on plans to make
it mine. But that was not to be. . .
Safonov left the city for his estate in central Russia,
south of Moscow. He started writing his memoirs, and I found
them at Grandmother's house when I was about fifteen. They
were written in French. The first words struck me. They
were: "Now that I am 23 and my life is finished..." I know
that Great-grandfather Safonov was about 7O when he died.
What did he mean by writing "my life is finished" at age 23?
- 19 -
To him and his contemporaries LIFE existed only in the
capital city of St. Petersburg, at the Tsar's court, in the
regiments of the Guards. What about the rest of Russia,
one-sixth of Mother Earth, and all its inhabitants? Yes,
they existed, but it was not LIFE, just existence.
During the first quarter of the 19th century the Russian
government was very eager to repopulate south Russia. The
city and port of Odessa were founded in the last days of
Empress Catharine the Great and the northern shore of the
Black Sea was now firmly in Russian hands. Vast tracts of
steppe were sold for a pittance to landowners and to members
of the nobility who owned serfs, under the condition that
they resettle the land by moving serfs to this empty new area
in the south. Gogol, one of the most famous Russian writers
of the 19th century, describes this process in his novel
Dead Souls.
Grandfather Safonov, an obstinate bachelor, acquired a
sizeable tract of land some 36 kilometers in length and
about 10 kilometers in width. He not only moved some of
his serfs south from his estate in central Russia, but he
went along with them, sharing all the hardships of the end
lessly long and slow move in carts to the south to settle
in empty steppe. No building materials were available;
only clay was to be found under a layer of fertile soil.
This clay was combined with short cut grass. Some fresh
cow manure was also mixed in with it, and the resulting
- 20 -
mixture was formed into bricks and dried throughout the
summer. In the days of my childhood most dwellings and
barns were built in the same way. Safonov's "Manor House",
Troitskoe-Safonovo, was built by his serfs in exactly the
same way as they built their own cottages. A row of cottages
was connected by a door from cottage to cottage, and the
house was shaped like a long sausage. "Troitskoe" comes
from the word "troitsa" , meaning "The Holy Trinity", and
many villages had a church of this name. Up until 1917 our
family estate was called "Troitskoe-Safonovo".
So as not to be lonely among his illiterate serfs,
Safonov invited a fellow officer to live with him. I cannot
remember this officer's name, but I do know from what was
told to me in my childhood that he was married to a Finnish
girl and had two small children. He had nothing but his
very meager pension with which to support a family, but he
was an educated man and the only company Safonov had. This
officer's wife probably supervised the house-servants.
Safonov's "Manor House" was as low as any of the serfs'
cottages. It was still standing when I was a child, and I
could jump up and touch the ceiling. This "Manor House" and
the way it looked led to a funny event in 1917. A revolu
tionary agitator had arrived from the city to foment dis
order among the personnel of our estate and to make them
demand higher wages, less work, land partitioning; in short,
he spouted the classical revolutionary propaganda. At the
- 21 -
time we were absent from the estate. Later the servants
told us that this revolutionary agitator walked back and
forth and around all the farm buildings and in the old park,
and he seemed to be desperately searching for something.
Finally, a servant asked him what he was looking for and
the fellow replied, "But where does the Count live?" The
old servant pointed at our house, and the representative
of the revolution exclaimed in disgust and disbelief, "That
is the Count's house?" and he spat on the ground!
The only heating fuel available in this steppe country
was manure, bricks of sheep manure. The sheep were herded
into a low, long barn for the winter. The sheep did not eat
part of the hay, and the dry grass used as litter mixed with
the sheep manure to form a hard layer on the ground. In
the spring the sheep left the barn to graze on the open
steppe. By the summer this litter had become almost rock
hard. It was then cut into bricks and dried in the empty
barn, exposed to the wind and heat of the summer. In the
fall this was the only fuel that burned slowly, emitting a
light, acrid smell. During a snowstorm, on a pitch-black
winter night, you could smell a village from a mile or more
away. The fire in the stoves of the serfs' cottages or the
Safonov "Manor House" had to be started by burning straw
and then those bricks of sheep manure and it was still done
in this same way during my childhood. In my days coal was
available but it was very expensive and had to be brought by
- 22 -
rail and reloaded into 'carts. Wood was totally lacking. An
old fallen tree and dry twigs from the park gave my mother
the rare luxury of using the open fireplace in the living-
room.
When Safonov settled in the steppe, agriculture was
carried out on a Biblical level. There were many thousands
of sheep and wool was the estate's only marketable product.
Wheat, rye, potatoes, and cabbage were cultivaed exclusively
for local consumption. ' Cattle were used for milk or farm
work and horses were used for transportation. This was the
"wilderness" in which Safonov lived. When he was nearly
6O years old he married a girl almost 40 years his junior.
She was the orphan of his friend, the officer who had lived
with him at Troitskoe. Both of this girl's parents had died.
This orphan girl was my great-grandmother, the mother of our
beloved Granny who married Wilhelm Stenbock-Fermor in 1858.
Her eldest son was my father.
When Safonov died, his two daughters were minors. His
estates and the Odessa house, as well as the upbringing of
the two small girls, was managed by an appointed guardianship,
a group headed by a doctor of medicine, most respectable
but a poor businessman. The young Safonov orphans lived in
the Odessa city house. They had a large household of
servants and were educated at home by governesses. Later,
when the girls were older, they could go occasionally to
society gatherings. All this required ready cash, and so
- 2 3 -
the guardians sold part of the land on the outskirts of the
city that was Odessa in those days. They meant well and
could not have foreseen that Odessa would rapidly grow to
become one of the biggest and richest cities in Russia, and
that the land on the "outskirts" of Odessa in 1850 would
become the most fashionable part of the city in 1900.
When Grandfather Wilhelm left St. Petersburg in 1863
and came via Warsaw, Vienna, the River Danube, and the
Black Sea to Odessa, the family found Safonov's city house
in Odessa, and when he and Granny and their three children
settled in Troitskoe it was the same "wilderness" as in the
days of Safonov. The "Manor House" had not been lived in
for many years. It lacked all comforts. Grandfather had not
the faintest knowledge of how to manage an estate. All he
knew, as a commander of the 1st squadron of His Majesty's
Horse Guards, was that a pound of flour must yield more than
a pound of bread.
It is hard to imagine under what primitive conditions
they lived, but no one was ever hungry. When Father was
fourteen he had three sisters and three brothers, the youngest
one year old. Safonov's Odessa city house was eventually
sold but before it was, the family lived there in the winter.
A curious and rather typical thing for those days once
happened. The family was spending the winter months in Odessa.
An old nurse who had been left behind in Troitskoe sent a
letter addressed in the following manner: "To the Count
- 24 -
himself in his own house. City of Odest" , a misspelling
of Odessa. But to Odessa the letter came, and the post
master looked up the list of all the houseowners in Odessa.
He found that only four houseowners had the noble title of
"Count". This peculiar letter was stamped "Troitskoe-
Saf onovo" , and all Odessa knew that that was my grand
father 's estate. So he got the old nurse's letter.
After the Odessa city mansion was sold in about 1873,
Grandfather bought a small estate about 10O versts north of
Troitskoe. This was Kamenka. He bought it mainly because
of the big and beautiful house on the property, built in the
Empire style: broad terraces descending to a river, white
columns supporting a balcony, many large rooms, two wings,
one to house the kitchen and the servants' quarters and the
other with several rooms for guests. I believe that Grand
father must have been very happy to move into such a great
house for it must have reminded him somewhat of the life he
had left behind in St. Petersburg some ten years before. But
my father was very unhappy at leaving Troitskoe. He had
started to hunt partridge, quail, hares, and most of all
ducks and other water fowl on the shores of a pond about ten
versts from Troitskoe. This pond was to play a very big
role in Father's life and in mine. "Kodyma" was built on the
shores of this pond in 1895/97.
#-' a
ARMY LANGUAGE SCHOC
PRESIDIO OF MONTEREY, CALIFORN
Translation froa I.u.ccian.
MILITARY in STORY
of Count Ivan Sv..^uGK-PII'w.'IOK, 2nd Lieutenant
of the 1st Guard Cuirassier Cavalry
April 50th, 1020.
Established according to testimony of witnesses.
Born February 26, 1397
Hereditary Gentry of the District of Ilerson,
Graduated from the 8-class Gymnasium of tha
St. Petersburg Reformed Church * lilay 27, 1916
Graduated from the accelerated course of Il.il.
"Corps dos Pafjea" Military Academy
with the rank of 1st uiaAs. * ... February 1, 1917
TTpon graduation ccr.2rj.asi one d Junior Lieutenant
to the Horse Guard Re^iaeat with seniority
of October 1, 1916
Detacned to the School of Air-Observation
in Eupatoria * * October 1, 1917
On sick leave i % or 3 month tmc; did uot
return to the School because of the
Bolshevik Revolution ........ December 20, 1917
Attached to t^ie Special Assignment Com
pany of the Unified Guard Regiment . November 50, 1918
Detached to the Squadron of Counted
Scouts of the soao Ketiimeat. ... Deceuber 28, 1918
Promoted 2nd Lieutenant v/ith seniority
of.. June 1, 1917
Transferred to the Squadron i\ : o.2 of the
Unified Cuirassier Re&iinent. .... March 24, 1319
participated in 7AVI from .*..... February 1, 1917
to December 20, 1318
and against Bolsheviks to t.J.s day,
Was not wounded or contucined,
Has no decorations.
Y.'as never submitted to disciplinary punishment nor court-
mar stalls d.
The above military iiietcry of 2nd Lieutenant Count Ivan
STEJ30CK-FEKI.IOR is known to us personally and is correct
in accordance witn resolutions :io,421 of October 19,1919
and Par. 3 of the Regulation Ko,17G 1IQ, of Commander-in-Ciiief
of the Volunteer Aruy ;, : ovcniDer 19, ISIS,
Siened: Colonel KLUCEITAU Colonel Baron FELEISEII
I certify by my signature the exactitude of the translation
of the original Russian document presented to mp oy ilr.lvan
Stenbock-Fcraor, Instructor.
day of April, 195>i?
Subscribed and sworn to before
, . - -.-. -^ 'T^^Trv*' ' < 1- r >lT > *?C l
Mi v_V, . ' I ^ '' ' l..Ji*4ftaW _
11 )' s ijj-s ^l.bi^ry i'uoxio in a.su-^co;
- ^ Stoi-o nf California
- 25 -
CHAPTER III
MY PARENTS AND EARLY CHILDHOOD
- 26 -
My parents - (return to Troitskoye)
My fahter graduated from the Imperial Alexander Lyceum.
During the following year he married my mother, Maria
Illiodorovna Shidlovsky, the sister of Nicholas Shidlovsky,
one of Fahter 's classmates at the Lycee'. The family
delighted in teasing Father about this, claiming that the
only reason he had chosen to marry was to prove how grown-up
he was. The curriculum at the Lycee did not include any
instruction in the actual problems of running an agricultural
enterprise, so my father began, without the benefit of
training or advice, the task that had fallen to him, managing
Troitskoye. He had indeed inherited a great deal of respons
ibility and because of this he and his nineteen year old
bride did not take a wedding trip. Instead, they moved
directly to Troitskoye, to the same estate where Father had
spent his childhood. My father had long dreamed of returning
to the place he loved so deeply.
Upon arriving there, my parents were met at the train
station by Jordan, the old caretaker. A peasant from the
estate was driving an old carriage that had not been in use
since the Crimean War. It was drawn by six mis-matched and
very scrawny horses. In this ancient carriage my parents
travelled through 20 kilometers of mud to reach the house
at Troitskoye. Jordan was not at all happy to see any
members of the family return there. For many years he had
held sole authority and he did not want to lose that. As a
result, he resolved to try to discourage my parents from
- 27 -
remaining there.
When my mother saw that the house was lacking in all but
the barest of necessities, she asked Jordan where all of the
furnishings were stored. Certainly the previous occupants
had had to have linens, dishes, utensils for cooking, eating,
cleaning, etc. In response to her request for linens, Jordan
asked how many acres of flax should be sown to make linen.
Other requests were met in a similarly helpful manner, always
accompanied with a shrug and some remark to the effect that
the late Safonov had preferred simplicity.
My father turned to the business of reorganizing the
management of this and the other family estates. He had to
find a way to generate a larger cash profit from the
estates in order to provide for his wife, his mother, and
several brothers and sisters who were rapidly approaching
maturity. To this end, my father decided to reduce the
scale of sheep farming. Up to this time that had been the
main business of the estate. Once, while visiting sheep
farms in England, a friend of Father's had heard an English
man boast that his farm had four thousand sheep, and so
this friend pointed out to the Englishman that on their
estates in Russia they had that many dogs to look after many
more sheep. Father believed that the cultivation of wheat
on the rich, virgin land of the steppe would be a more
profitable enterprise than sheep farming. Many of his con
temporaries declared that the idea was insane. Some even
- 28 -
suggested that the management of the estate should be
entrusted to someone not subject to these flights of fancy.
Jordan, of course, tried to thwart my father's efforts at
every turn so he was soon retired and young Dmitri, a peasant
boy, became Dmitri Fedorovich, the new caretaker. Instead
of standing at the door waiting for instructions, Dmitri
Fedorovich took his place beside my father's desk and
became his right-hand man. With time Father's sanity was
vindicated and at the beginning of the 20th century this
area of southern Russia became one of the principal sources
of the world's wheat supply.
Move to Kodyma
Life at Troitskoye and Kamenka continued prosperously.
My parents were happy in every respect but one - they had
no children. After several miscarriages they had to
accept the fact that they would probably never have a child.
In the late 1880's my father's brother Vladimir married a
Miss Somov. The newly married couple joined my parents at
Troitskoye. The following year they had a son and my parents
took steps to adjust to this new development. Father ceded
to Uncle Vladimir all claims, as the first born son, to
Troitskoye. Then, with my mother, they took over another part
of land called Kodyma and began the construction of a house
suitable for a childless couple. Mother brought to this
project all of the energy and devotion which she would have
lavished upon a child. Under her supervision houses were
- 29 -
built for the servants, furniture was made, and lovely
formal gardens were laid out. What my mother lacked in
expertise she made up for in energy. Armed only with this
and a firm idea of what she wanted, she coaxed a beautiful
house out of the workmen, whose difficult job it was to
realize her wishes. My father often teased her, in partic
ular about the gardens. According to him, the only place
where he had seen comparable gardens was at Versailles.
Mother's battles with the craftsmen who built the furniture
were also the butt of many family jokes.
Eventually they moved into one of the servants ' houses
and lived there until the main house was completed. The
servant's house was quite small; it had a kitchen, a bed
room, and a sitting room. As was their custom, they spent
nine months of every year in south Russia and during the
cold winter months, when all work stopped on the estates,
they went to St. Petersburg.
One Sunday, late in the spring of 1896, my mother and
father were returning home after a stroll at the site of
the future gardens of Kodyma when on top of the roof of the
new house they saw a cloud of storks. They simply exchanged
glances and said nothing. Neither one of them dared to
express the hope that they felt. One year later, however,
I was born in St. Petersburg.
The household staff at Kodyma
Anna, her last name I do not remember. She was my
- 30 -
mother's personal maid before I was born. She was the
pillar of the establishment at Kodyma in summer and in
winter at St. Petersburg. Never married, she was some
what older than my mother. On some of our trips abroad,
mother took Anna with us. Anna lived at the same hotel as
we did and could order any food she wanted. But Anna hated
being abroad and criticized absolutely everything. But
she was very wise and observant and mentioned, "Well, many
people in Russia think life abroad is better. They, the
silly Russians, should come over and have a close look at
how hard the people in Europe have to work. One person in
Europe does the work that three or more persons do in Russia."
In 1914, general mobilization of the armed forces was
declared in Russia and by decree of the Tsar, the sale of
vodka was forbidden. The purpose of this was that all those
men who were mobilized into the armed forces should not get
drunk and create disturbance and havoc. Everybody con
sidered this as a very wise measure and because of this
measure, the general mobilization of the army reserve
troups succeeded in a very orderly way. But Anna read
about it in the papers, of course, and she said that is
all right but now the plain people, she meant the masses of
the Russian peasantry called to arms, have nothing to drink.
But the gentlemen and the rich people can go on drinking
expensive foreign wine. This situation was considered by
Anna as being unfair.
- 31 -
After the revolution broke out in 1917, Anna could not
get accustomed to addressing my mother in public in the
other way than she was used to. The way of addressing a
titled person was "Your Ladyship" . Anna went on address
ing my mother that way and it was dangerous and might have
eventually created trouble. But fortunately, it did not
create any trouble, and Anna stuck to her pre-revolutionary
ways.
Mother used to go abroad for reasons of her personal
health and to take mineral baths in Austria or France.
Finally, Anna succeeded to persuade my mother (and per
suading mother was a great feat) to have crates of these
mineral salts shipped in summer to Kodyma and Anna prepared
the baths at home in Kodyma only to have mother not go
abroad. And Anna repeatedly said "I hate that Abroad".
Anna, also cooked in season all the jam and 200 pounds
of Anna's jam was sent to St. Petersburg for the winter
season.
At St. Petersburg in winter, we had a butler but he
never came to Kodyma in the summer. He remained in the city
to guard the apartment. The butler's young assistant came
to Kodyma. I remember him as a rather silly and clumsy
young fellow. I remember, once this young fellow almost
dropped the dish of the roast because of a joke that
father told at the dinner table. Anna had the same dinner
as we but in the pantry. At our dinner table, there were
- 32 -
my parents, my tutor and I and occasionally guests. Anna
and the assistant butler were the only servants going back
and forth in summer to Kodyma and winter to St. Petersburg.
I was probably the age of ten when we were at Kodyma
and there was a festive dinner on the occasion of my
grandmother's visiting us and I noticed that the table was
set in an unusual way. I saw different plates than we
usually had. My father explained to me saying: "Vanya,
those plates are older than your grandmother". I immediate
ly replied: "Oh, then those plates must be at least onethous-
and years old" . Grandmother was not very happy about my
remark.
At Kodyma, staff consisted of a cook, Anisim, a peasant
from Troitskoye and the grandson of a serf of Safonov.
Mother trained him as a cook but his talent was rather
limited. Anisim 1 s wife presided over the laundry. That was
quite a procedure and she was assisted by several girls.
Anisim, the cook, had two girls to assist in cooking for us
and all members of the household. The kitchen and the
laundry were in a separate house just across the driveway
and mother's strictest orders were that I never cross that
driveway. When I was fifteen and older, mother caught a
real obsession that some girl would become pregnant and the
culprit would be me. Probably, for this reason, Anna had
help from a girl by the name of Kilinka. Also a peasant
girl from Troitskoye and I remember her because of her
- 33 -
unusual ugliness. Her age was probably twenty or less, she
was tall, strong like a horse, had a blond pigtail the
length of a rat's tail, she was flat as a board, her nose
was almost horizontal to her face and her left eye looked
to the right and her right to the left. No uglier girl could
be found anywhere but she was also dumb as dumb can be.
Under orders from Anna, she worked very well. This girl
Kilinka was never taken to St. Petersburg in the winter.
The first coachman, Vasili, used to lead my pony when
I was riding as a child. This coachman was a very kind
and gentle man. He never smoked and never used bad
language. Only at my age of fifteen, I finally realized
that good old Vasili was physically a weak man and pre
ferred older, quieter horses and was very stingy giving
them oats to avoid too much spirit and go in the horses.
The second coachman, Theodor, was a great giant of a man
and obsequious in his manners. I disliked him. He was
rough on horses. Once we were driving at night to the
railroad station, ten kilometers from the estate, and it
was raining. The road was bottomless mud, the night pitch-
black. On the carriage were two lanterns with candles.
The light from the candles did not help much. Our carriage
was pulled by four horses in a row. Suddenly, the carriage
stopped and in spite of the dark, we saw that the telegraph
pole stood between the two middle horses. So the coachman
got down and he embraced the telegraph pole and started to
- 34 -
rock it back and forth. That was not too difficult because
the ground was very soft due to the heavy rain. After
having rocked that telgraph pole for awhile, the coachman
pulled the telegraph pole out of the earth, dragged it for
a short distance, and left it lying on the ground. He
re-adjusted the harness of the horses and we drove on and
arrived on time to catch the train.
The gardener, Peter, after twenty years of service,
became a Communist in 1917. In April, 1918, his ouster by
me is decribed in another chapter.
The above mentioned people were members of the inner
staff. Besides them, there was a staff on the estate which
consisted of the manager, bookkeeper, a mechanic, a black
smith and several overseers. In summer, a group of season
workers came from the district of Poltava. The region of
Poltava was very densely populated, therefore young men and
girls found work in our region. They had a contract from
Easter until October 1. That group elected their own foremen.
They were paid a lump sum in October and received from the
estate food products and had their own kitchen in the
barrack of the estate. The barrack was large enough for
them to sleep in. Girls in one part, boys in the other
part - usually they preferred to sleep in large straw or
haystacks where they had more room and air. In the summer
season, peasants from Troitskoye and other small villages
were hired by the day. The peasants of Troitskoye
- 35 -
considered themselves our peasants because more than half
a century ago, their fathers and grandfathers were serfs
of my great-grandfather Safonov. It may sound strange, but
the Troitskoye peasants were proud of their fathers' grand
fathers and they still called themselves, and were called
by other peasants, "The Count's peasants". The relationship
of great-grandfather Safonov with his peasants was that of
a great family father and this family relationship remained
as tradition until my days and I owe my life to the help of
some Troitskoye peasants who risked their lives for the
sake of saving mine, my uncle's, my aunt's and my cousin's.
How this happened is described in a chapter under the title
of "I become of age".
My early childhood
My parents were overjoyed to have a son after waiting
so long for a child. In order that I should not be spoiled,
my parents were always very strict, but also very loving.
Indeed, I remember my childhood as an extremely happy one.
My parents were always accessible to me at all hours of the
day, and although I often had no companions of my own age,
I shared much of their adult world. During my youth there
was only one thing with which they failed to provide me -
information about the "facts of life". This subject was
onehundred percent taboo, typically enough for that time.
I never had any brothers or sisters with whom I might have
talked about this taboo subject and the consequences of
- 36 -
this were later to prove sometimes embarassing, sometimes
laughable, and sometimes even dangerous.
As a very young boy I had a nurse who was part gypsy
and who, in spite of my mother's intentions, did manage to
spoil me a bit. In Petersburg we went for a walk every
afternoon, and while walking we got into the habit of
buying a balloon each day. The balloon vendor came to
expect this and usually followed us on our route until we
had made our purchase. When my mother learned of this, she
told my nurse that it had to stop. My nurse protested,
saying that she paid for the balloon out of her own pocket,
but it was all to no avail. My mother was determined that
I should not be spoiled. One day, as we went for our
usual walk, the balloon vendor arrived but my nurse ignored
him. At this I began to shout and cry loudly but it had no
effect. In great anger I tore the hat off my nurse's head
and threw it into the gutter. She brought me, screaming and
sobbing, all the way home, where I received the only
spanking of my life, from Father.
My first nurse was replaced by another woman named Mavra.
To my mother's satisfaction, Mavra was not at all soft with
me. In fact, although she had been raised in an orphanage,
my father swore that her father must have been a colonel of
the gendarmes. Mavra had been trained as a nurse and she
was efficient, strict, and strong-willed. She stayed with
us for several years and during this time we developed a
- 37 -
tremendous mutual affection.
Until I enrolled in school, my parents and I, my nurse,
and the rest of the household regularly spent the winter
months in St. Petersburg and the spring and summer months
at Kodyma in southern Russia. I remember one incident
which took place when I was three years old and while we
were making the trip between Kodyma and Petersburg. By this
time there was a railroad which linked north and south. In
Novy Bug, a small station about ten kilometers from our
estate, we boarded the train which ran from Nicolaev, on
the estuary of two rivers into the Black Sea, to Kharkov.
In Kharkov we transferred to the express train to St. Peters
burg. On this occasion, the train from Nicolaev was an
hour late and it seemed certain that we would miss our
connection to Petersburg. My mother telegraphed her cousin,
Commander Savich, then commander of the troops garrisoned
in Kharkov. In her wire she asked that he delay the express
train until we arrived. In due time we boarded the train
from Nicolaev. On the way, Father decided to stretch his
legs and so wandered into another car in which several
actors from a theater group were sitting. He overheard them
and realized that they were worried about making the same
connection we were to make. One of them reassured the others
saying that he had heard there was some sort of a count on
board and that the train in Kharkov would certainly wait
for the count. Some of the actors expressed resentment at
- 38 -
the special treatment, the bending of regulations which
was accorded only to a few people. Upon hearing this
Father smiled broadly, then laughed and pointed out to
them that the count of whom they spoke, was only three
years old. We arrived, eventually, in Kharkov, and found
that the express train had indeed been delayed. My
mother's cousin met us at the station and, spluttering
angrily, he asked her if she realized that the Sebastopol
express train normally was held up only for the Imperial
Family. She did not respond to this and asked only whether
or not the train was waiting. It was, he said, and so
we boarded the express train and completed the trip to
St. Petersburg.
As usual, the following spring we returned to southern
Russia. In fact, my fondest memories of early childhood are
those of the time spent there on our estates. For several
weeks out of each summer we visited my grandmother at
Kamenka. I looked forward to these visits especially
because Grandmother always had a particular present waiting
for me. It was a papier-mache troika - that is, three
crudely made and decorated cardboard horses, each about the
size of a retriever. I spent many happy summer days play
ing at driving my troika; with the horses in front of my
chair and my dolls behind, I imagined all kinds of wild
drives about the countryside. One summer Grandmother
thought to improve on this gift and ordered a very
- 39 -
elaborate set of toy horses from Odessa. Although they were
fashioned of real leather and horsehair, I had no use for
this luxurious toy. Promptly a coachman was sent to a
neighboring small town to pick up the usual cardboard
troika which was my preference.
But back at Kodyma after our visit with Grandmother, I
was not given such special treatment. Under Mother's watch
ful eye Mavra was an excellent but strict nurse to me. She
was, as I mentioned before, a very determined woman, and
would tolerate no nonsense. My mother's personal maid, Anna
Nicolaevna, was another strong personality in our household.
Between Mavra and Anna Nicolaevna the management of the
household was accomplished smoothly and efficiently. Some
how, though, the two women never clashed. Like two diplomats
each maintained her respective sphere of influence and did
not intrude into the other's.
Our house at Kodyma was a lovely one and modern by
standards of the times. Alcohol lamps provided light
instead of the old-fashioned petroleum lamps. There was
no running water in the house and bathing water had to be
brought from wells and heated over a fire. There were two
water closets with simple holes in the floor and a wooden
armchair over the hole; one of the closets was for my
father and the other was shared by my mother, me, and all
of the house servants. Only when I was thirteen did we
finally install a system to provide running water in an
-40'.-
annex of the house. It was a rather crude arrangement but
it was a luxury for us then. A five-room annex to our house
was built across the road from the original house. In the
annex was a bathroom which had a tub with faucets to carry
hot and cold water. A huge bucket stood outside of the annex
and Nikita was responsible for seeing to it that the bucket
was kept full. Two servant girls had to harness a pair of
oxen to a wagon holding a large vat. They led the oxen to a
pond where they filled the vat with water. Then they returned
with the water and pumped it into the bucket standing outside
the house, and from this huge bucket the hot water was hand-
pumped into the attic into a reservoir. From there the cold
water flowed directly to the bathtub and the water to be heated
flowed into a column which was heated by a woodfire and from
there the water flowed into the bathtub.
Nikita was a long-time fixture at Kodyma. He lived next
to the school and did a variety of jobs on the estate. They
included looking after the school, cleaning lamps, main
taining the boats on the pond, and in addition he was in
charge of hunting and fishing on the estate. Nikita also
replaced the coachman whenever he was too drunk to drive.
When I was old enough he taught me how to hunt. Nikita
was an extremely reliable and knowledgeable man. Before
he came to us, he had been a jail warden. He was married
to a German woman. This woman considered that she had made
a bad match, marrying a Russian peasant. Even then there
was a sentiment among some German people that Germans were
"ttbermenschen" and all others were inferior. Nikita 's wife
- 41 -
believed this; Nikita, though, did not. He belonged to a
sect of the Russian Orthodox Church called the Old
Believers. Many years before, the Church had made a
review of the sacred texts. Most people accepted the
revised texts. The Old Believers, however, did not.
Members of this sect were often persecuted but they con
tinued to cling to their old customs in spite of the
persecution. They never drank or smoked and they were
known to be excellent workers and soldiers because they
were so well disciplined. I certainly admired Nikita and
cared very much for him. In some ways I learned more
from him than from all my tutors. In his spare time,
Nikita often sat on the servants' porch eating watermelons.
For this reason my aut called him "the man who eats water
melons" .
It was Dmitri Federovich's job to oversee the harvest
and all other activities on the estate. In return, he
received 600 rubles a year, a house, his food supplies,
several farm animals, and the right to graze these animals
on our land. Although 600 rubles per year is not a high
figure, Dmitri Federovich lived a very comfortable life.
He eventually built a stone house in Novy Bug. Of his two
sons, one became a veterinarian and the other a lawyer. His
seven daughters went to school and then got married. One
of his daughters married an officer and Dmitri Federovich
often said that her husband was a decent man, in spite of
- 42 -
the fact that he was an officer. Uncle Vladimir suggested
that if Dmitri Federovich had really stolen as much as
people said he had, he ought to be made Minister of Finance
to the Tsar. At harvest time, Dmitri Federovich organized
hundreds of seasonal workers who came from Poltava to
help with the harvest. These people from the Poltava
region were usually tall, sturdy, dark boys and girls.
Some of them were assigned to walk up and down the rows
of wheat, gathering the cut wheat into sheaves which they
then secured by twisting a stalk around the bundle. The
sheaves could then be pitched into the wagon by the other
workers. The girls made quite a pretty sight as they
worked with their skirts tucked up high and their feet bare.
The soles of their feet were so tough that they could move
easily on the sharp stumps of cut wheat. When I was a bit
older, I often rode out to the fields to watch these
girls working bare-legged. The sight was very interesting
to me despite the fact that I remained quite ignorant of
life.
Other workers were occupied with arranging the straw
in great mounds after it had been separated from the grain.
This required a crew of boys and girls working together.
Although the work could be dangerous at times, they often
took the opportunity to play at flirting. In one instance,
one of the girls fell in a moment of flirtation and broke
her leg. Her father demanded of the boy she had been
- 43 -
working with that he either pay 250 rubles or marry her.
He felt this was quite reasonable as it was improbable
that any other man would take as his wife a woman with a
limp. The boy chose to marry the girl and happily enough,
it turned out to be an excellent marriage.
When harvest was finished, much of the rye and wheat was
sold and shipped to Odessa, where it would be taken to other
parts of the country and to Europe. The excess straw was
collected and served as a supplement to the dung which on
cold days and nights heated our house. After the harvest,
in late summer and fall, I delighted in going hunting with
Nikita when my tutor gave me time away from my studies.
I will never forget the first time we went. We drove out
to a field some distance from the house. Nikita left me at
a spot he had chosen and told me to watch in one direction
because I could expect the birds to appear from there. At
the time I did not know how he could be certain that they
would arrive from that particular direction. Later I learned
that his. knowledge of birds and the animals' habits and of
the weather patterns allowed him to anticipate their
behavior. After a time the birds appeared just as Nikita
had said they would, and as they swept overhead, rather low,
I raised my gun and shot. To my dismay, the birds flew on
and disappeared, although I was sure that I had hit one.
I waited for Nikita to arrive but it turned out to be a very
long wait indeed. After several hours, during which time
- 44 -
I grew increasingly frustrated and angry, Nikita came with
the bird I had shot. He explained that the bird's feathers
protected them everywhere except at the tail. In shooting
them one had to aim for the tail, firing just at the moment
when they seemed to pass by. Nikita had followed their
flight until the wounded bird dropped. This led him all the
way over to Uncle Vladimir's estate, Troitskoye. When we
returned home, Uncle Vladimir jokingly claimed the bird as
his own because it had landed on his property. My tutor
at the- time was a medical student and he suggested that we
try to stuff the bird. This was quite a job and we smoked
m
cigars while doing it, but after a day with the odorous
carcass we gave it up.
New technical inventions are imported
I remember in my early childhood when I stood in
admiration before the latest technical invention from the
United States of America. That object was a washstand. My
father brought it back to our estate of Kodyma when he
returned in the year 1894 from the United States, where he
represented the Russian Ministry of Agriculture at the
World Fair in Chicago. This object, the washstand, was
standing in my father's dressing room. At first when you
looked at it, it looked like a cupboard. At the bottom of
the cupboard there was a door that opened in two pieces, and
there was a kind of a receptacle for water that could be
removed from out of there by hand. Then there was at the
- 45 -
proper level a wash basin, but it had a hole in the center
that could be plugged by a cork, which was held in place by
a little chain so that it would never be lost. The top of
the cupboard had a mirror on the outside and you could
shave in front of it. In the back of the mirror, there was
also a kind of a receptacle for water. It was of course
Nikita's job, as with all kinds of unusual jobs at the
estate, who filled that water container in the early
morning with water brought by hand, and removed the dirty
water down below the washbasin. From the top receptacle
there was a kind of a spout, and at the bottom there was a
peddle that you could step on. When you stepped on the
peddle, some kind of a valve opened and that spout released
water. Well, that was running water, a thing unheard of.
Usually it was Nikita's job to pour water out of a jug when
I washed my hands or my face. Now there was running water.
I could wash my hands or my face in that fresh water, with
out Nikita in sight. That was of course the latest
technical invention, brought right from the United States.
The gentry and physical labor
Then we had the visit of a neighbor. The neighbor was
a small landed gentleman, very elderly, born probably be
fore the first half of the nineteenth century, and so was
his manservant, who started serving him even before the
liberation of the serfs. The two were inseparable. So
when this gentleman came visiting us, he always came with
- 46 -
his old manservant. He was shown this latest invention
of the United States, and he found it very interesting.
Then he came closer, and he addressed his manservant:
"Timothy, step on the peddle. I wish to wash my hands."
I am speaking about it because this is so typical.
Stepping on the peddle - that was physical work, and he,
an ancient member of the Russian gentry, was not supposed
to perform any kind of physical work. For that purpose
you had servants.
This same attitude toward servants-, and the situation
of a gentleman who is not supposed to even step on that
little peddle by himself, reoccurred very many years
later when I was in Hungary. One of my fellow emigrant
officers in Hungary was invited to live on the estate of
some very wealthy Hungarian landowners, as were many other
Russian families. The idea was to help them survive for a
couple of years until law and order will be re-established
in Russia. Everybody was convinced that the Bolsheviks
could not exist for long, and then united Europe would
re-establish law and order and return all property to its
lawful owners. My friend was a bit older than I was. He
was a bachelor, and he accepted that invitation. But he
had great trouble to explain to his new-found Hungarian
friends - who went out of their way to be as nice as
possible to him - that under any conditions, a man needs
some cash, be it only for cigarettes or to buy postal stamps
- 47 -
for his correspondence. He cannot exist there in greatest
luxury but not a cent in cash. He wanted to work for cash,
and for those Hungarians, it was quite a great problem;
because their answer was, and I quote: "We can't make a
gentleman work. You are a gentleman, and therefore you are
not supposed to work". But finally a solution was found,
and he became a teacher of French and a teacher of playing
bridge; and he was very good at both. Teaching French and
playing bridge was and could be paid for even to a gentleman.
That, for some reason, was not considered work, it was not a
kind of menial work that a gentleman was not supposed to
do.
EARLY FAMILY STORIES
My father's family
In 1895 my father, his three brothers, and three sisters
all had reached adulthood and, understandably, desired to
be independent. Grandmother Safonov agreed then to
partition the family property among them. It was a law
in Imperial Russia at that time that every daughter had
the right to inherit one-seventh of her family's wealth.
Accordingly, each of the girls received a portion of land,
and in addition each acquired some of the very valuable
Safonov jewelry. The remaining land and property was divided
more or less equally between my father and his brothers,
George, Vladimir, and Nikolas.
- 48 -
My three aunts were great believers in many of the
socialist theories which had gained acceptance within the
intellectual order during the last century. Upon receiving
their share of the estate, they promptly set about selling.
They sold their jewlery in Odessa and then sold much of
their land among the peasants in the area. They received
cash in return for the property but the money was quickly
spent.
One of my aunts had the property adjoining Kodyma and
so my father bought it from her. Shortly afterwards he
began the task of surveying the lands and marking off the
new boundaries. Father had six thousand acres at Kodyma,
Vladimir had six thousand acres at Troitskoye, George
inherited fifteen hundred acres at Kamenka, and Nikolas
received land further south toward Odessa. My father
spent many long days on horseback, riding all over the land,
making careful measurements, and establishing fair boundaries,
Since his childhood, Father had had a deep love for this
land and he came to know every square inch. It became, in
fact, a part of his soul. For this reason he never in his
life considered selling it, although he would have made a
great profit if he had done so. The estate at Kodyma brought
an average annual income of 30,000 rubles. Had my father
sold the land and bought state bonds instead, he would have
had an annual income of 60,OOO rubles - double that from
Kodyma. Yet it angered my father whenever anyone suggested
- 49 -
that alternative to him. In his will, Father stipulated
that, although Kodyma was to belong to Mother during her
lifetime, the law required that she not mortgage or sell.
When she died, Kodyma was to revert to me and I was free
to do as I pleased with it.
Indeed, most people who lived in the steppes came to
love that region. Gogol wrote, "Steppes, Oh steppes, the
devil take you! How beautiful you are". A neighbor of
ours compared his feelings for the land with those which a
seaman must have for the sea, saying, "In the steppe, you
drive and drive, on and on, and see nothing - how beautiful",
It is a land covered by tall grass and it stretches in all
directions - seeming never to end. There are no trees; it
is virtually flat and only the gentlest of slopes relieve
the landscape. Here and there minor rivers and man-made
ponds cut through the earth. In summer, it is dry and
very hot; in winter it is bitterly cold and the land is
frozen. In spring, the rains transform it into a sea of mud,
In all of its extremes it remains an awe-inspiring land.
Our neighbor told us once of an experience he had
fording a river. It was so dangerous, he said, that the
water almost came to his galoshes. . .and he was sitting high
atop his hunting carriage. On another occasion, while
fording the river after a heavy rainstorm our neighbor's
horses lost their footing. The coachman made the sign of
the cross and jumped, and the passenger threw off his
- 50 -
clothes and followed him into the water. When he reached
the shore and had to walk through the village naked, the
first people he met were women and village girls, who
screamed and fled from him. Finally one of the peasants gave
him something with which to cover himself. One winter
evening our neighbor and his coachman were going to
Nikolaev, some fourty kilometers away, when they lost their
way in a snowstorm. They decided that the only thing to do
was to let go of the reins and let the horses find the way
home, trusting in the horses' instinct. All that night they
drove and drove and when morning came they realized that
they had been going round and round in a circle which the
horses had recognized as their old training track.
This neighbor of ours had long been a resident in the
area. His first wife had died when his two daughters were
in their early teens. He soon married for a second time
and his second wife was younger than his daughters. The
situation was an uncomfortable one and he resolved to marry
off his daughters, each of whom had a handsome dowry. He
called upon Joska, an elderly rabbi in the area, to solve
the problem. In return for his matchmaking efforts, Joska
received a commission. Three months later both of the girls
were happily married. The first married an employee of the
Zemstvo; the second married a German baron. Only one and
a half years after his daughters' marriage, our neighbor
had a heart attack and died. My father bought one of his
carriages and some of his horses for me.
- 51 -
As I mentioned, Father's younger brother George inherited
the estate at Kamenka. At twenty, George was tall, blond,
broad-shouldered, and looked just as his Viking ancestors
must have looked. Like my father, George had graduated
from the Russian Imperial Lycee in St. Petersburg. After
that he returned to Kamenka and took over the management of
the estate, where he lived with his mother, his mother's
personal maid, and the rest of the staff. In essence he was
alone, having no wife and no companions of his own age.
Grandmother and her maid had been at Kamenka for years and
were the pillars of the household. As a young girl, the
maid had been called Katerinka, later she was Katya, then
Ekaterina Nikolaevna, and finally, in deference to her age,
Nikolaevna. Ekaterina Nikolaevna dressed in the fashion of
Queen Victoria. She was a stern figure and Grandmother
never dared to contradict her, although Ekaterina Nikolaevna
herself frequently contradicted Grandmother. The two women
presided over the house and so George was left alone and
quite bored. He was an excellent administrator and had
hired an overseer, a Polish man, who was equally competent.
The estate ran very smoothly under their guidance.
Not far from the house, along the river which cut
through Kamenka, there was a great outcrop of granite.
George was able to sell this rock to the railroad company
and the rock was then used to shore up the railroad tracks,
to build bridge abutments, etc. Uncle George made a large
- 52 -
profit for Kamenka from this project. Projects such as
this one, however, could not occupy all of George's time.
He often left the estate in the overseer's hands in order
to travel abroad. At home, he eventually got involved with
a girl. The girl had a son whom George never officially
recognized. It was common knowledge though that the boy was
his. The mother and son remained in the area and the boy
attended school with all of the other children. Fortunately
for all concerned, Uncle George's illegitimate child died
of pneumonia at the age of twenty. Not long afterward,
George finally married.
George was forty when he married Nadya Delaroche. I was
quite young at the time and I remember giggling with my
cousins at the thought of such an old man wanting to get
married. Nadya's paternal grandfather had been born to a
poor French family and it was said that he had been a drummer
in Napoleon's army during the ill-fated invasion of Russia.
He was, in any case, one of the few survivors of that
campaign and stayed in Russia afterwards. Nadya's maternal
grandfather was a man named Haritonenko. He was a peasant
who became quite wealthy when coal was discovered on his
land. Although he never abandoned his rough ways, he gave
his children every thing; he sent them to the best schools
and insured that they would become part of St. Petersburg's
highest society. Most of his daughters married million
aires, all but one that is. Nadya's mother fell in love with
- 53 -
her music teacher, Delaroche, and married him. Nadya
later recalled with amusement the fright that the other
children felt whenever their grandfather came to visit.
At the sight of the ill-dressed, rough-spoken old man, the
children would run to their British governess crying, "A
peasant 1 A peasant!".
After Uncle George and Aunt Nadya were married they left
Kamenka. Nadya did not feel at ease there for two reasons:
first, Grandmother had long been mistress of the house and
Nadya could not expect her to give up that role; and second,
Nadya did not want to live with the legend of George's
bastard child. So George and Nadya took up residence on
Nadya's estate on the Dneiper. They lived there with their
son, Lev. Until their arrival the estate had been badly
mismanaged but under George's expert guidance it soon became
a model estate also. Aunt Nadya was a dedicated member of
the Russian Orthodox Church all of her life. George teased
her occasionally, saying that she was more devout than the
Lord himself. Unfortunately her stubborn dedication was
later to be the source of great grief for Nadya because it
brought about an irreparable quarrel between her and her
only son, Lev.
Father's second brother was my Uncle Vladimir. When he
was a boy and ready to attend school, the family could not
afford to send him to the Russian Imperial Lycee as they had
my father and Uncle George. As a result, Vladimir stayed
- 54 -
in south Russia and attended a school in Odessa. The
curriculum there was more technically oriented; it placed
greater emphasis on mathematics and sciences than on the
humanities. Socially this school was a far cry from the
Imperial Lycee and Vladimir always resented this. Later,
as a private, doing his military service in a remote
fortress at Ochakov on the Black Sea, Uncle Vladimir found
more cause for resentment. This had none of the prestige
of service of the Horse Guards in St. Petersburg, which had
been' the family tradition. For these reasons, Vladimir
became a man with something of a chip on his shoulder. But
he was a successful man, too. He later attended the Moscow
Agricultural Academy and became an agricultural engineer.
When the family property was divided among my father and his
brothers and sisters, Vladimir acquired the property at
Troitskoye. He managed the property very, very well and
never missed an opportunity to tease my father, saying that
he thought my father's estate at Kodyma was being run in a
rather antique fashion. Being an ambitious man, Vladimir
became a member of the Zemstvo, a representative body com
posed of members of the nobility, merchant, and peasant
classes. A member of the nobility was chosen to preside
over the group. This was the law of the land and it was
done to prevent the development of any leftist, socialist
ideas. Vladimir was elected to that position of president
of the local Zemstvo of Kherson. He also became Marshall
- 55 -
of the Kherson nobility. My mother often said that it
would not surprise her if Uncle Vladimir continued to rise
in the administration of Imperial Russia and eventually
become the Tsar's Minister of the Interior or Prime Minister.
The events of 1917 made this impossible however.
Living at Troitskoye with Uncle Vladimir and his wife,
Pasha, was an old spinster aunt. She was a rather comic
figure and much loved by everyone in the family. She had
never married although it was rumored that Turgenev had once
proposed to her and she had refused him. When I knew her,
she was very old and somewhat deaf. On one occasion she
approached my cousins and asked us what we were reading.
We told her that it was Anna Karenina. "Who wrote that?"
she asked. "Tolstoy", we answered in unison. "But which
Tolstoy?" And upon hearing that it was by Lev Tolstoy,
she remarked, "Yes, that Lovushka was always a nasty boy".
Our spinster aunt was also an extremely stubborn woman. So
much so that when she had a toothache she adamantly refused
to make the trip by train to Nikolaev to see a dentist.
The family asked if she were afraid of the train. She said
that she was only afraid of God and the Tsar. She was,
however, a member of the Russian gentry and so refused to
jump like a trained animal at the whistle of the conductor.
She was not opposed to travel though when it suited her.
In fact, once a year in summertime she made her annual visit
to a neighbor of ours of her age. This should not have been
- 56 -
a very long journey except that she insisted that her
carriage be pulled by a pair of oxen, as she considered
horses too unreliable. So each year her old carriage was
brought out, cleaned off, and the oxen were harnessed to it.
She started off at dawn and, at a very leisurely pace which
included frequent stops along the way, she made the trip to
her friend's house, arriving at long last as the sun went
down.
Uncle Nikolas was the youngest of my father's brothers.
He was only ten in 1881 when their father died. He never
attended school and my grandmother taught him at home. He
learned Russian and French from her. The French language
was the language of Russian upper class society of Grand
mother's generation. As a boy, Nikolas 's companions were a
friendly gang of village boys from Kamenka and as a result
he grew up with a deep understanding. and sympathy for the
Russian people. Uncle Nikolas also had a great talent for
training dogs and horses. At thirteen he acquired a set of
bicycle wheels, attached a seat between them, and harnessed
six shepherd dogs to this makeshift carriage. As he drove
all about, the village, he was the envy of all the other boys.
One day while driving in this contraption, a mad dog attacked
Uncle Nikolas 's dogs. Nikolas jumped into the fray and drove
the mad dog away. Then, seeing that his dogs had been
bitten, he sucked their wounds clean. After that, he went
to the blacksmith and burned his own wounds so that he, too,
- 57 -
would not be infected.
When Nikolas was twenty, Uncle Vladimir was twenty- three
and had begun to court Pasha Sumov. Miss Sumov was the
daughter of a highly respected judge in Odessa. The judge
was an extremely ugly man. Pasha herself was one of his
more attractive children. She had another sister, Mary, who
was quite beautiful. Nikolas was very much in love with
Mary. However, Russian law forbade that two brothers marry
two sisters and, since Vladimir was the older and more
eligible of the two brothers, his suit for Pasha took pre
cedence. Nikolas, though was not to be deterred. On the
very same day that Vladimir and Pasha were married in Odessa,
Nikolas eloped with Mary and they were married in a village
church. This done, there was nothing that anyone could do.
Nikolas and Mary moved to the estate he had inherited.
Uncle Nikolas raised trotting horses there. Eventually they
had a family of two girls/ Olga and Marie, and a son, Serge.
After Serge was born, Aunt Mary became quite ill and lost
her sanity. She was put into a sanatorium in Berlin where
she stayed for the next forty years and finally she died
there. The estate was sold to pay Uncle Nikolas 's debts.
The children lived in the winter with Mary's sister, Nadya
Sumov. In the summer they lived with Vladimir and Pasha at
Troitskoye.
After his wife's sickness, Nikolas lived a rather
mysterious life. He was legally married and the church did
- 58 -
not recognize insanity as grounds for divorce. Uncle
Vladimir always thought that Nikolas found it very
convenient to be officially married so that no woman
could expect him to ask for marriage. Living in a small
apartment in St. Petersburg, he had a cook but it was
obvious that their relationship was also very very close.
When on rare occasions I came to visit uncle Nicholas,
this cook of his put on the table marvellous Russian
food and then immediately vanished. He never introduced
us boys to her.
MY YOUTH
My formal education begins
During 1895, the same year in which the family property
was divided amongst the children of William and Varvara
Stenbock-Fermor , my parents' new house at Kodyma was under
construction. They also had a school built there for the
children of the people employed at Kodyma and those from
the neighboring villages. My parents paid the school
teacher's salary. Other than that, the school was super
vised by the Zemstvo. Eventually the school was fninished
and the new teacher arrived to begin classes. After her
arrival, my mother invited the young teacher for luncheon.
On this first visit she barely spoke a word and acted
throughout the lunch as if she were sitting on hot coals.
Mother invited the teacher to come again, and the second
visit was a much less strained one. Just before she left,
- 59 -
the teacher blushed and confessed, "Oh, I feel so comfort
able in your house. I thought that you were a countess
before". My mother replied, "That's silly, you mean you
assumed that all countesses were nothing but stupid old
geese? Why, that's just as if I were to assume that all
school teachers were socialist revolutionaries carrying
bombs in their pockets." After that, Mother enjoyed a
friendly relationship with the school teacher.
After I was nine I had several tutors in succession.
The first was a young man named Ernst von Friedenthal. He
was a German, from the Baltic provinces, and he walked as
if he had swallowed a yardstick. I detested him and once
I went so far as to ask my father for 100 bricks in order
that I might build a wall between the two of us over which
Ernst would never be able to climb. One day when I was
particularly exasperated with Ernst I told him, "Ich mochte
mit dieser Peitsche Dir in die Fratze hauen" (I would love
to hit your snout with this whip"). He was quite insulted
and reported to my mother what I had said. Upon hearing
this she remarked that what German I knew I had learned from
Ernst himself. The next day he left Kodyma. A carriage
of the estate took him to the nearest rail station.
Jules Henri Drouin was another of my tutors. The day
after he arrived at Kodyma my mother asked him at breakfast
whether or not he had slept well. He answered that the
perfect quiet of the country night had disturbed him. He
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missed the sound of street cars to which he had grown
accustomed in the city. I did not find anything amiss in
this and went on to ask him the French names given to
horses. When I realized he did not know, I lost all
respect for him. M. Drouin taught me French literature.
The book he chose, Nana, was by a very famous French writer.
It described the period of 1870. Nana belonged to the
oldest profession in the world; she knew she was sick and
she was proud to contaminate all Germans, considering it to
be her patriotic duty. Mother saw that book and the next
day M. Drouin, confused, suggested that we buy another
book.
Villages around Kodyma
In my youth I loved horses and riding on horseback over
our estate on the steppes. In our stables we had over
twenty horses, only geldings and stallions; some for the
family carriages, some for riding. We had no real neighbors
and the nearest villages were three kilometers or more
distant from us. Some of the villages had been settled by
soldiers who had received land in the area after doing the
required twentyfive years' service. Until 1860 and reforms
by Alexander II which liberated serfs, it was a law that
each landowner should send a number of serfs for military
service. When they had completed their service they were
given land on which to settle. Their villages were usually
named after the church in the village or after the company
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number in which the soldier had served. Other villages in
our area were settled by Jews during the reign of Katherine
the Great. She gave them land and intended for them to
farm it under the guidance of German settlers. Eventually,
though, many of the Jews rented their land to the Germans
and became merchants in the village - they supplied the
farmers with finished goods and left farming to the German
settlers.
Celebrating Name's Day
According to the Russian calendar, June 24th was the
day of John the Baptist. This was an especially important
holiday in our household because it was also my father's
and my name day. It generally coincided with the start of
the rye harvest and the girls from Poltava, there to help
with the harvest, traditionally made a great crown of rye
for my parents and a smaller one for me. On the morning of
the holiday, Dmitri Fedorovich and his wife would arrive
at 10:30, Dmitri Fedorovich wearing his customary long
yellow overcoat. (He always wore it as protection against
drafts.) This was the only day in the year when Dmitri
Fedorovich 1 s wife appeared. She sailed in like a huge
battleship; always the same tall, bosomy woman in the same
green velvet dress trimmed with bits of lace, and she seldom
said a word. Her contribution for the day was also the same
thing year in and year out. It was a heavy cake covered
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with raspberry jam and I always felt that one piece of her
cake seemed to stay with me until the following namesday.
We gathered that Dmitri Fedorovich's wife was a difficult
woman to live with. On one occasion Dmitri Fedorovich fell
ill and Father finally persuaded him to see a doctor in
Kharkov. When he returned my father asked him what the
doctor had found wrong. Dmitri Fedorovich beamed and said
he thought that the doctor was an excellent one. The
doctor's diagnosis was that Dmitri Fedorovich suffered from
a wife with a difficult character.
At eleven that morning we began the traditional
ceremony of the day. It was a reception for the workers
and school children at Kodyma. My parents and I stood on
the main balcony to greet all of the people who gathered
that day. On each step ot the staircase leading up and down
the balcony were bushels of candy. Nikita stood by the
candy wearing a spotless white apron and he thoroughly
enjoyed himself as he distributed candy to all who passed
by.
Later in the day, Uncle Vladimir and his household
arrived for a holiday luncheon. They came in three carriages
in order of rank. The first carriage was drawn by two
German stallions and driven by the coachman, Selifon. My
cousin Andre rode on the box next to Selifon and Uncle
Vladimir and Aunt Pasha were inside the carriage. The second
carriage brought Aunt Pasha's sister Nadya, her nieces Olga
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and Marusya. In the third carriage was their old governess,
a woman of German-Baltic origin named Amalya Androeevna, and
with her was my old tutor Jules Henri Drouin, who now lived
with Uncle Vladimir's household. We all enjoyed lunch, after
which we rested a while. When the noonday heat had sub
sided, many of the younger members of the family played
tennis. Father never played but he did like to watch. Once
a peasant from Troitskoye came to talk with him while he was
watching us and after observing the game the peasant told
Father that if he had to hire someone to do that sort of
work - run about in the hot sun after those little balls -
he would have to pay much money.
After a break for tea we resumed our tennis play. It
was customary that the butler bring us something to drink
during the play. Usually it was a simple, refreshing drink
made of blackberry leaves. One day, though, because it was
a holiday and my namesday, the butler brought us champagne
instead. Between sets we all took long gulps of the drink,
not realizing what it was. That year the finals of the
tennis match was full of surprising effects and misses.
At dusk, Uncle Vladimir would bring out the mysterious
wooden box he had brought with him. It contained all sorts
of fireworks, the most popular one of which was a large
balloon attached to a basket containing cotton soaked in
alcohol. When the cotton was lit, the balloon rose in the
air. I and my cousins Serge and Andre loved to dash after
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the balloon on horseback to see who would be the first to
find it. Whoever brought it home was sure to get a prize.
Once, on my favorite grey, I almost got the balloon, but as
I tried to approach near enough to grab it, the horse shied
away, afraid of the fire. Meanwhile my cousin Serge arrived,
saw what had happened, and dropped from his horse to run up
and snatch the balloon himself. He then disappeared like
a Don Cossack back to the house and his prize.
Many years later, while a refugee in Hungary, I witnessed
a ceremony much like the one on the occasion of my nameday
which I have just described. After the Revolution, my
mother lived for a time on the estate of a Hungarian noblewo
man. The woman herself had no family, but had taken in the
wife and children of her late brother. My mother was
employed there as French tutor to the two boys. Early teen
agers, they called my mother Aunt Marie. The house on the
estate was like a fortified castle, for it had been built
many years ago to withstand the periodic invasions of the
Turks. On St. John's day, Mrs. Boronkay sat at the entrance
to this fortress in a large armchair. A small table was
placed next to the elderly woman. On the table was a cushion
upon which she rested her hand so that the people might
kiss it as they filed past. Her butler stood close by with
a bucket of wine from which he dispensed a jug of wine to
each person.
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Gymnastics group
When I was seven, there was a gymnastics group which met
at our house. I was very young to be in that group and
Nicky Koznakov, who was a good gymnast, bullied me all of
the time. He was one of the Corps des Pages officer
candidates. There was also a girl, about Nicky's age, in
the gymnastics group. Her name was Margaret. She was my
first love because she protected me from the bully.
In later years she became a nun - but beyond that I do
not know what happened to her. Her older brother was a
cavalry officer. In 1914, he was involved in a skirmish
which took place in East Prussia. A German officer was
wounded and Margaret's brother went to him to give him a
drink of cognac. The wounded officer shot him. The Russian
troops saw this and were furious. The German was bayonetted
and clubbed to death. This was just the beginning of the
horrors which took place during those years.
Public Learning Institutions
When I was ten years old, my parents decided that I
should go to a public school, be among children of my own
age. As readers of my memoirs know, I grew up alone amidst
grown-ups, I mean my parents, nurse, several governesses
and then the staff of our household on the country estate
in the summer and city of St. Petersburg in the winter.
I had no playmates of my own age. So in the spring of the
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year 1907, I had to pass an entrance examination to be
accepted as a pupil of the first grade. At that time in
Russia, schools could be compared to todays schools in the
United States. This particular school had two preparatory
schools - ages 8 to 9 for boys - then first grade. In
struction lasted for eight years. Such a school was called
in Russia a "Gymnasium". This same Gymnasium brought about
many misunderstandings for emigrants in the United States.
A friend of mine, my age, studied in a Gymnasium and then
a school of Pages. When he wrote this in his papers in the
United States, people shrugged their shoulders and said
this is not much of an education in a Gymnasium and then a
School of Pages. My friend meant to say he had graduated
from a senior high school plus one year of junior college
and then from an officer candidates school that corresponds
to the West Point in the United States. That was quite a
difference. But because of terminology and different under
standing of words, it brought about a great misunderstanding.
After that my friend graduated from the Russian War School
Academy.
My Gymnasium taught Ancient Latin, Ancient Greek, History
of Antiquity, World History, Russian Hisotry, Mathematics,
Physics, Chemistry, and the French Language. With the
exception of Russian Literature and Russian History, all of
the subjects were taught in German. My school was one of
four parish schools of various and numerous Germans living
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in St. Petersburg. Many such Germans were from the Baltic
lands that had become part of the Russian Empire during the
early 18th century and other children of the school were
the children of German merchants. Tsar Peter the Great and
many rulers of Russia after him had invited many foreigners
into Russia as technicians in various fields of industry,
architecture, medicine, etc.
At the time I was ten, there were four parish schools
teaching in German and preparing their pupils to continue
their studies in the German University in Germany. Each
such school had about 1000 students, boys and girls. But
no co-education God forbid!
The building of my school had one wide entry door and
a huge hall where all the overcoats should be left, boys in
the left part and girls in the right part. On the dividing
line of that hall, there stood an inspector of the boys'
class and a lady inspector of the girls' class. All we
boys dared to do was just to have a glance on the sly
across that dividing line. One of these schools was called
the school of St. Anna. In the middle of the yard stood a
Protestant big church and this church was right across the
street from the house where we lived. This was probably
one of the reasons why my parents chose that school for me.
In the days I am speaking of, there were few universities
in Russia. Many university students were engaged in politics,
demonstrations and protests against the government and their
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studies were often disrupted and the university was closed.
Therefore, my parents planned for me to go to Germany later
and study in a German university. My mother dreamed that
I would become an archaeologist. Archaeology has nothing
to do with politics.
I was led by my mother across the street and put into
the hands of one of the teachers who would examine me for
my entrance into that school. That was seventy years ago,
but I remember very vivivdly the teacher walking upstairs
and I was following him and a crowd of boys of all ages
were descending these stairs in a rush. They were yelling
and pushing. I wonder if the reader of what I am writing
can realize my feelings. The boys were pushing me and I had
never in my life been pushed and never in my life had I
heard such yelling. I was completely stunned. The teacher
led me into a classroom and gave me some assignments in
German, Russian, elementary mathematics, in short, what a
boy entering the school was supposed to know. Actually, I
was well prepared by various teachers at home but as I just
mentioned I was stunned by all the surroundings and so I
flunked everything completely.
I was rejected. Mother led me home and arriving home,
I threw myself on the couch and immediately fell asleep.
Was it sleep or was it a fainting spell? I did not wake
up for five hours. Mother became scared and wanted to call
for a doctor. But after all, I was all right and for the
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rest of the year I continued studying at home with private
teachers. Of course, this could be looked at as sort of a
catastrophe. But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise,
Of course, I was one year late compared to the boys of my
age. Therefore, I finally graduated from the Gymnasium a
year later and because of that, I graduated from the
officers candidates school one year later- and I was gradu
ated to the rank of an officer on February 1, 1917 and did
not take part actively in the First World War. Very possib
ly this saved my life. And then in the same month of
February 1917, the revolution broke out, and I had four
years of Russian civil war instead of having four years of
a university education.
Entering the Gymnasium in St. Petersburg
As stated above, in spite of thorough preparation, I
failed the entrance examination of the German Gymnasium in
St. Petersburg. I can remember that as I entered the
school I was stunned to see so many children all at once.
Furthermore, they all crowded and pushed without taking any
notice of me. I was absolutely flustered by the experience
nothing in my life as an only child had prepared me for
this and as a result I did very poorly on my exams. One
year later I took the exams again and that time I passed
them and entered the Gymnasium. I studied at this German
school rather than at a Russian one that was state-run
because Russian schools were disorganized and subject to
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political influence, particularly the Russian universities.
At the German Gymnasium I was prepared to enter a university
in Germany which was known for its excellence.
There were four German schools in St. Petersburg: an
eight-year Gymnasium for boys and girls, a seven-year Real-
schule, a six-year Commercial Schule, and a two-year prepar
atory school for children. Each of these schools had about
1,000 pupils. At the German Gymnasium all of the courses
were taught in German except for Russian language and
literature. We had eight hours of courses per day and
school was held on Saturdays, too. I was a day student
there.
We only saw the girls in the front entrance as we came
in and left the school. Even then the boys and girls were
kept separate by two inspectors, one man and one woman, who
supervised us. During the week I got up early every morning
to go to school, came home for dinner, did my homework, and
went to bed at ten o'clock. I was only allowed to go out
on weekend nights - Saturday night, that is. My closest
friend at school was named Serge Lipsky. He was an un
usually handsome, gifted, and enthusiastic boy. He had a
brother who was also at our school and he also had a sister
a few years younger than he. Serge's uncle had five
daughters. The oldest of Serge's cousins was married but
his cousin Nina was at the Girls' Gymnasium right
next door to my family's apartment, and I remember spending
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hours watching her when she sat in the window across from
our place. With her long blond braids, I thought she was
very beautiful.
After school in St. Petersburg, I used to make a one-
hour detour on my way home in order to see the girls of my
age as they walked along the banks of the Neva with their
governesses. We never spoke to one another; the most I
could hope for was a smile. Nonetheless, it was well worth
it to me. I had dancing lessons at home. I was a very bad
dancer although my teacher was a good one. Twice during
the season we had dancing parties in the afternoon. When
I was seventeen, in 1914, we had a ball in the evening for
once. It was at the house of Princess Obolensky. Her
governess was especially nice - she knew exactly when to
disappear and when to reappear.
For the most part my years at the Gymnasium in St.
Petersburg were uneventful. The director of the school,
Artur A. Brock, was a wonderful man, beloved by all pupils
in all classes. Brock was very short-sighted and always
wore a double pince-nez. According to regulation, he wore
the uniform of the Ministry of Education. We boys wore
mufti. Whenever one of the boys had a problem or a question,
he saw the Director. Director Brock never asked names -
he knew them all already - and often he knew the problem
beforehand also.
In 1905-1906, during the attempted revolution, there
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had been great disorder in the schools in St. Petersburg.
Gangs of boys tried to close those schools that were still
functioning and one gang tried this at our school. When
they entered, several members of our school took their
hockey sticks and used them. The gang left and Director
Brock called an assembly of all students and teachers. In
the great front hall there was dead silence. Brock stood
in front of us and said, "My dear young friends, if there
is the slightest disturbance in our school, I will resign."
There was no further disturbance in the school.
During the winters in St. Petersburg, skating and
"mountains" were the favorite sports. "Mountains" were
actually wooden scaffolds, two stories high, with a runway.
Blocks of ice were set under the runway and water was
poured over it until it froze. There were many of these
all around St. Petersburg - one was in the garden of the
Taurida Palace. Next to the big lake where we skated, there
was a block house where we changed our boots and skates.
The house had a balcony and on the balcony were three
officials, all muffled up, who watched those skating on
the lake. One was a captain who kept an eye on the cadets,
one was an Inspector who looked after the civilian boys,
and the third was a woman Inspector who watched the girls.
They all had binoculars and would not allow any nonsense.
While skating on the lakes in St. Petersburg, I noticed
that the girls skated more often than we did and were very
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graceful. Still, they fell a great deal of the time. Of
course the boys there would help them to their feet, but
the clumsy girls often prolonged the whole process by
falling again. Finally the inspector on the balcony issued
a decree that the boys were forbidden to help the girls
if they fell. The next day, the girls stopped falling.
While sleigh riding on the hills, though, we were not
watched so closely. Our sleighs were very low and had flat
cushions. I liked to sit on the front of the sleigh,
holding the runners which directed it. Anyuta Obolensky
sat behind me on her knees, holding on tightly as we flew
down the hill. There was another type of sleigh which
was like a large basket on runners. This sleigh could
hold ten girls at a time. After they had all scrambled in,
I climbed on behind and held on. We made a great weight
and went like lightning down the slope. When we got to
flat ground, I liked to make a quick movement right or left
and tip the whole basket over. This was great fun but also
dangerous. There was one accident and the daughter of the
Prime Minister (Stolypin) was badly cut, but happily enough
the boy who was responsible for her cut married her eventu
ally.
SOME TRAVEL MEMORIES
Trip to Austria and France
In 1906, as was our custom every other year, my parents
and I spent the summer abroad. That year we planned to go
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to Karlsbad and my nurse, Mavra, was to stay at Kodyma. She
was upset at this and so was I. She tried in every way she
knew to make my mother change her mind but she was unsuccess
ful; we left and Mavra stayed behind. Father had given
instructions that Mavra could go for a drive whenever she
liked. We later learned that she took far greater liberties
than this. While abroad, we received a telegram saying that
Mavra was driving over the estate and issuing orders to
everyone. By return telegram, my parents told Dmitri
Fedorovich to let her drive anywhere she liked but to ignore
all of Mavra 's orders.
We spent part of that summer in France, in Contrexeville.
We lived in a hotel there and I soon met the daughter of the
hotel manager. She was an attractive, lonely child, but when
she asked me to paly with her, all I could do was run away
to my parents, frightened by the girl. My father only
laughed at the time and remarked that in a very few years
my reaction would be a different one.
I remember that during that summer at Contrexeville
there were many well-known people also staying there. The
Shah of Persia (Iran) and his entourage were in one hotel
and a Russian grandduchess was in another. Although most
people were presumably there for reasons of health, many
devoted a great deal of attention to social and diplomatic
maneuvering as well. On one occasion the Grandduchess was
invited to a reception by the Shah, after which she felt that
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she had to reciprocate, so she arranged for an elaborate
luncheon for the Shah on a Wednesday. The Shah informed
her that he was indisposed on Wednesday but planned to come
for lunch on Thursday. Naturally, this threw all of the
Grandduchess 's careful arrangements into a state of chaos,
to the despair of her secretary, Mr. Paul Etter, a close
friend of my parents. Even the children of the Shah were
rather inconsiderate. I remember that we all waited a very
long time for them to arrive at a Punch and Judy show
before the show could begin. All the French children
started to imitate a cat's "meow" - "Where are the little
cats?"
A short and yet a long trip
In 1907, when I was only ten years old, we were making
our annual visit to Grandmother, the mother of my father,
at Kemenka. This time we came straight from St. Petersburg
by train. The closest railroad station was fifty kilometers
from Kamenka, and those kilometers had to be covered in a
horse-drawn carriage. That was a station where the express
train usually never stopped; the engineer of the train had
to be asked to stop just for long enough to get the passen
gers out of the train with their luggage. When we got off
the train at the station, an ancient, big carriage was
waiting for us, an enclosed carriage drawn by six horses,
four in a row and two ahead. They were driven by the old
coachman, Vasili, who was a great giant. He was very, very
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strong, and had a great family - seven sons and he did not
know how many daughters. He said the girls did not count
anyhow. He was very proud of the seven sons and all seven
sons served in the Russian Infantry Guard Regiment because
of their size. When the train stopped at that little
station, it was late in the evening and most of the fifty
kilometers had to be made after dark. It had rained
heavily and at about the midway point there was a small
narrow valley that would be called in California a "creek".
Sometimes there was little water in the creek and sometimes
there was so much that it could not be forded, but there
was a bridge. Now those Russian bridges had a very great
peculiarity. Everybody on the road tried to avoid the
bridge if possible while crossing the small river or the
dry creek. But when the bridge had to be used, the carriage
stopped and the passengers got out and crossed the bridge
on foot. The servants would walk across the bridge carrying
all the luggage and then of the six horses the side and
front horses would be detached and the empty carriage would
be drawn very, very slowly across the bridge. The old
coachman, Vasili, would take off his cap and make many re
peated signs of the cross before he dared to cross that
rickety bridge riding on that heavy carriage. And besides,
it was pitch dark. Even before arriving at the bridge we
had a little accident. The carriage was slipping right and
left on the dirt road and so were the horses. One of the
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side horses slid into a ditch, all its feet up in the air,
and the horse was upsidedown in the ditch. Well, Vasili,
the coachman, got off the box and approached that horse in
the ditch and grabbed the horse's tail and he lifted that
horse and put it back on its feet. And of course, being
ten years old, I thought he was some kind of a miracle
worker. When we came to that dangerous creek and that
bridge, we were met by six grooms coming from my grandmother's
estate. They had lances; one part of the lance was fixed
to their stirrups and the other part had bags stuffed with
straw and when we approached, those bags, soaked with
kerosene, were lit. Torches, six men with torches on their
lances, surrounded our carriage. My British governess, upon
seeing those torches for the first time in her life, decided
that they were there only to honor her because she represent
ed the British Empire. It was typical of the British.
There was another station, also fifty kilometers from
Kamenka. In full summer, when the roads were dry, a two-
horse carriage was sent to pick up my French tutor, M. Jules
Drouin, whom I have mentioned many times. He rode by
himself in that carriage and the fifty kilometers took about
five hours of driving. The road passed through many villages
and upon arriving Mr. Drouin said that he was really very
touched by the politeness of all the villagers, who took off
their caps as he drove by. He said, "I am convinced that
all the Russian peasants were saluting in me the represent-
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ative of Swiss democracy" . My Uncle Nicholas was there
and he murmured into his beard, "What a darn fool, that
Swissman. The peasants, seeing the horses and carriage
and the livery and coachman of the estate of Kamenka would
take off their caps even if that Swissman would have been
replaced by a bag of potatoes". But M. Drouin kept to
his illusions about democracy and the Russian peasants.
Trip to Vienna
I remember an experience about this same time when we
were leaving Kodyma for a trip abroad. Kodyma was ten kilo
meters distant from the railroad station so there was a
carriage for my parents, drawn by four horses. There was
a second carriage, with four horses, for me and my tutor.
Our luggage was on a cart with four horses and with the
cart there was a driver, a stable boy, and of course, the
indispensible Nikita. For some reason we did not take the
main railroad line, the espress train to Vienna. We took
a second class railroad line where there were no rapid
trains; and we were going leisurely through provincial
Austria in that train when suddenly the conductor of the
train appeared and declared that we must vacate our com
partment and find someplace elsewhere, because this com
partment was needed immediately for an important Austrian
general. But my father got angry and said that he was a
member of the Russian Duma, the Parliament, and he had no
intention of vacating this compartment to anybody.
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Probably the junior officer attached to the general was
over zealous, because about fifteen minutes later the
general himself appeared and presented his apologies to
Father and told Father that he was very sorry about the
incident. But that general - I do not remember his name -
his appearance was obviously Jewish. And at my age of
nine or ten, I was completely flabbergasted. How was it
possible that a Jew might be in the uniform of a general?
Because in the old days in Russia Jews were drafted, usually
for supply units, cobblers and tailors and what have you,
but they were never promoted to officers. That was
politically a great mistake, and it had some disasterous
consequences in 1917.
When we arrived in Vienna, my parents, my tutor, and I,
a porter put all of our luggage onto a little wheelbarrow
and took it out to the street. On that street there was a
covered carriage with only one horse. All four of us
squeezed into that one carriage and all of our luggage was
put on the roof. And so we drove into the city of Vienna,
and my feelings were very hurt. In Russia, there were
twelve horses and five or six men taking us to the station,
and here in Vienna... so I felt bad.
Trip to Karlsbad, Austria
In 1909 we spent some time in Karlsbad, Austria. That
time Father hired carriages in which we traveled about much
of the countryside. I sat on the box with the driver and
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chatted with him in my best German I told him all about
Kodyma and particularly about the twenty horses we had
there. The coachman just shook his head at the thought
of twenty luxury horses. Later I told Father about my
conversation with the coachman and he laughed and said,
"Now I understand why the man barely thanked me when I
gave him a tip of ten kronen" .
At about this same time I was in love with Olga
Izvolskij. She was my age. By coincidence, her father
replaced Obolenski as the curator of the Holy Synod. My
mother and I visited the Izvolskij family in the country
*
south of Moscow. They were great friends of my mother's.
Olga had several older brothers and on the day of our
visit they were all planning to go riding. I was given a
horse too and took off at a gallop with .them all. My
mother was amazed and I was too. That was the day I first
met Olga. Her nickname was Mulya and she was not really
pretty. She was a tomboy with an irresistable charm.
Later, many boys - friends of her brothers - were charmed
by her. In fact, when I was in school I thought that one
way to tell if a boy was a liar was to ask him if he loved
Olga. If he said no, then I was sure he was a liar. It
did not seem to make any difference that she was actually
unattractive.
She treated me like a kid, as she was only interested
in boys five or six years older than herself. She probably
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noticed these feelings of mine and, whether out of annoy
ance or pity, one day she talked with me about a friend of
hers, a girl named Dina. Olga said that Dina was a very
pretty girl and that she danced well. At the next dancing
lesson, I looked for Dina. She was everything that Olga
had said and I fell in love with her and remained faithful
to her until I was twenty-one. At that time, when she was
eighteen, I proposed to Dina. It was in a little town in
south Russia. She said that she liked me and wished to be
a friend of our childhood days. It was a classic answer.
In fact, Dina never married anyone. Fifteen years later,
in 1933, I met Dina accidentally while crossing a bridge
over the Seine River in Paris. Dina was a ruin and she
said, "That is what I look - like now".
Last visit abroad
In 1911 we went abroad for the last time. Our first
stop was Homburg. At the time it was not only a famous
Kurort where Mother could take advantage of the new mineral
springs discovered there, but it was also known as the
center of tennis sport. Even the youngest son of Kaiser
Wilhelm was there to play tennis. My parents offered to
give me tennis lessons that summer but I said no. I preferrec
to ride about the countryside on bicycles with my tutor, for
no one took us to be foreigners.
The day that the new mineral spring was opened was a great
occasion. Both Kaiser Wilhelm and King Edward IV of Britain
v
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were there for the opening. The other children and I
stood on the street to watch the parade. Kaiser Wilhelm
passed by wearing the full dress uniform of a British
Admiral, while King Edward wore the full dress uniform of
a German Admiral.
After Homburg we travelled to Luzerne, Switzerland, where
we lived in a hotel for a while. There was another hotel
just across the street from us and one night at dinner time
my mother noticed a young woman changing her clothes in
front of her large window. The blinds were not drawn and
the room was lit up. I soon took the binoculars in order
to get a better look. Unfortunately my tutor quickly
grabbed them from me, exclaiming "Bist du verruckt?"
("Are you crazy"). In Luzerne there was an American family
staying in the hotel, too. They had a twelve year old
daughter who collected stamps just as I did. She wanted to
know the words for Russian stamps. I told her that they
were called kopejka: 1 kopejka, 2 kopejki, 3 kopejki, and
5 kopejek. At this she said, "You Russians - you do have
a hell of a language!" Then she wanted to know the Russian
word for "hell", and I told her. She repeated it after me
and said that it was easy. So she asked, "How do Russians
say 'go to hell 1 ?" I told her that we do not send people
to hell, but rather to the devil, "Idi k chertu" . This
was, in a way, the beginning of my career as an instructor
of Russian. Half a century later I taught hundreds of
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students at Stanford. For this teaching I received a
Certificate of Outstanding Eminence in Teaching and a life
time honorary membership in the California Parent-Teacher
Association.
I also learned gambling from this American girl. It was
legal in Switzerland at the time and the halls of our hotel
had several "one-arm bandits". She taught me to use them.
I got some Swiss coins to use in the machines and the first
time, I doubled my money. The second time I lost it, then
the third time I gained again, and I continued to play like
this for a while. All of a sudden I hit the jackpot and
won seven times my original money. I was elated at this
and ran upstairs to tell my parents about my great luck.
From the threshold of their door I could see my parents
holding newspapers and their faces were distorted by amaze
ment and grief. I knew that something was very wrong. My
parents had just read the news of the assassination of
Stolypin while he was at a theatre performance with the
Tsar in Kiev. Later many Russians said that if Stolypin had
not been assassinated, but rather the Tsar himself, it would
have been less of a tragedy for Russia.
Stolypin was the Tsar's Prime Minister, one of the most
important of the Tsar's administrators. He had come from
nowhere. At one time he had been an obscure member of the
lower gentry, then he had a position as an administrator in
a distant province. In 1905, however, Stolypin quelled the
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revolution which took place that year. He was a great
speaker; when Stolypin spoke, the Duma (Parliament) listened.
Paragraph No. 86 in the Russian Constitution gave the
Prime Minister the authority to take those measures which
were necessary during an emergency. Stolypin used this
authority liberally in 1905. He sent out government troops
to fight the revolutionaries and he instituted courts to
judge, condemn, and hang the revolutionaries. Leftists,
terrorists, and all of their like detested Stolypin. The
Prime Minister's instructions to the Russian soldiers we're:
"The duty of a Russian soldier is to protect the Tsar from
all external and internal enemies." When an illiterate but
well-trained soldier was asked, "Who are externals?", the
soldier replied, "Turks, Japanese, French, and Germans".
When asked who the internal enemies were, the soldier
answered, "Socialists, students, and all other types of
rabble (svoloch)".
During our stay in Luzerne, my tutor and I often took
excursions into the mountains. We took the same route
through the Swiss mountains that the Russian troops had
taken under the command of Souvorov during the 18th century.
Along the way we stopped at an inn for lunch. This inn was
like a museum and had all sorts of things that the Swiss
had found after the campaign of the Russian troops in
Switzerland. The innkeeper had sent some things to the
museum in St. Petersburg, established in memory of Souvorov.
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He had got a reward for this, a portrait of Souvorov him
self and one of Nicholas II and Alexandra. At the time I
was amazed to see these huge portraits in their gilded
frames in a little inn in Switzerland. We had an excellent
meal there. The innkeeper's daughter served it and accepted
our appropriate tip.
It was autumn and the Swiss army was on maneuvers.
There was no regular army but all Swiss men were required
to do a month or so of training. A group of them came into
a railroad station in Luzerne, into the luggage room,
where they left their rifles and hand grenades just like
ordinary baggage. I wondered how the Russian commander of
the Horse Guards would have reacted had he seen that - he
probably would have fainted.
From Luzerne we travelled to St. Moritz. It was then,
as it is now, a very fashionable resort spot. In St. Moritz
we made a trip on the Zahnradbahn, i.e., the mountain train.
We were in the last carriage and during the trip it got
loose from the other cars going up the steep hill. It
looked awfully bad - people panicked and rushed to the doors.
My mother started to jump too, but Father grabbed her and
made all of us stay in the car. Eventually our car came to
a halt. Those who had jumped had been hurt but those who
stayed in the car had not been. Father said, "Never follow
a panicky crowd" .
Our next stop was a place called Tarasp Vulpera, in
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lower Switzerland, right next to Austria. We went by
coach with a driver and six horses and also a bugler. At
every turn on the mountain road the bugler sounded his
horn to let other people on the road know that we were
there. When we arrived in Tarasp Vulpera there was a
festival going on. There was a shooting contest and my
father was the only foreigner to participate. Father won
second prize in the target shooting contest and this was
very .good - the Swiss are known for their marksmanship.
Once, when my tutor and I were taking a walk in the area
we got lost. We came to a highway but we did not know
whether to go right or left. There were some workmen
nearby and we asked them in German for directions. They
did not understand our questions so my tutor tried in
Italian. The workmen were angry at hearing Italian.
Finally I tried Latin - they smiled at that and understood
every word. They were, in fact, Latiners, descendants of
Romans who had been deported to this place. They detested
Germans and Italians. This was one time when my classic
Latin education had a practical use.
Visiting Grandmother at Kamenka
On very many occasions as a young lad, and the last time
as an officer on leave, I visited my grandmother, my father's
mother, on her estate of Kamenka. Kamenka was managed by
an overseer. Grandmother and her maid for many many years
managed the huge house, and all her grandchildren would come
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to visit her during summer vacation. The manager of
that estate, as I have mentioned, was a Pole, a very good
manager, but his wife, a Polish woman, was quite a character.
The house in which the manager lived was almost next to
Grandmother's big house and not far away in the direction
of the village there stood a church. Grandmother, in spite
of her age (she must have been a little younger than I am
now, that means she must have been between 75 and 80) , always
walked leisurely to the church service, which meant for
Grandmother maybe 15 or 20 minutes walking. But the manager's
wife always drove from her house to the church in a carriage
with four horses. Once my Grandmother asked her why she
did that and she answered that being a Polish woman, her
dignity as the wife of the manager did not allow her to come
to church otherwise.
My grandfather Stenbock-Fermor ' s name was Wilhelm, but
since there is no such name in the Russian calendar, all
people who had that name were called Vasili, which means
Basil. And so my Grandfather was Vasili and Grandmother
used to joke and say, "All my life I have been married to
Wilhelm and for some reason all my children are called in
Russian sons of Vasili" . My grandfather had been a Protest
ant all his life and when he was dying, as of course there
was no Protestant clergyman for a hundred or more miles
around, the priest came from the Russian church and gave
him the holy sacraments. On his dying bed, Grandfather
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became Russian Orthodox and he was buried in the enclosure
of that church at Kamenka.
My grandmother went to church very regularly and the
priest of the church was very cultured, which unfortunately
was not always so of the Russian clergy in far away places
in the country. When there came the news in the papers that
Tsar Alexander III had died, Grandmother wanted the priest
to say a funeral mass for the soul of the dead Tsar. The
priest said, "I would like to but I cannot. I cannot until
I get official orders from the center where the Bishop
resides, far away. I cannot consider the Tsar as dead only
on the grounds of what the newspapers wrote. I know it is
so, but I have to wait for official orders and they probably
will not come for a month or more" . So my grandmother
asked, "What are you going to do because at every mass when
the priest comes out of the altar he says a prayer for the
Emperor and the Empress and all the family?" Grandmother
continued, "You cannot sanction a dead man as if he were
still living, so what are you going to do?" The priest
said, "I will pray all night; God will instruct me." The
next day was Sunday, and at mass Grandmother was waiting for
something to happen. When the priest came out with the holy
sacraments and started the prayer for the Imperial family,
he omitted the name of Tsar Alexander III completely as if
he had never existed, then went on mentioning the Empress
and all the members of the Imperial family. And so
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Grandmother said later, actually for over a month there
was no Tsar in Kamenka and we were under the reign of
Empress Mary. The priest was wise, he followed the
regulations and he found a way to turn a difficult sharp
corner.
An aunt of mine told me much later that when she
revisited that place many years after Russia had become
Soviet Russia, neither the house nor the church existed
any more; there was just a clear field with nothing on it.
MEMORIES ABOUT INTERESTING PEOPLE AND EVENTS
Joska
My early infancy and pre-school years ended in 1908.
I was eleven years old then. During that time I spent long
summers on my parents' estate, Kodyma, in south Russia.
"Kodyma" is a Turkish word meaning "military outpost". On
the first day of every month during the summer, a man whom
everybody called Joska would appear at our house. I knew
that Joska was a diminutive of the name Joseph, but I
wondered why everybody used his diminutive name. I was
even upset about it but hid this feeling from everyone.
Joska was old, dignified, and very polite; he had an
impressive long white beard and dressed in a way that seemed
very strange to me, always in black and with a very long
kaftan in spite of the summer heat. He wore an unusual
black felt hat all summer. When Joska "s arrival was
announced to Father, he would order the servants to let
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Joska into his study. He would ask Joska to sit down but
Joska never did, and each time he would say to Father, "Your
lordship, I can also stand". Now this same ceremony
repeated itself for months and months and then for years
and years.
One month Joska asked my father for a loan of 100 rubles
in cash ($50,00 in those days) . The next month he returned
the loan in cash. One month later he asked for the same
amount, then returned the loan, and so on. I wondered
about this and finally asked someone, but not Father. I
asked the manager of our estate, a shrewd and barely
literate old man. His explanation was simple: "Because
of your father's kindness, young sir, Joska has working
capital of 600 rubles a year without having to pay any
interest!"
Joska brought us meat. He was a butcher and a rabbi
and only kosher meat could be depended upon to be good
and fresh. The estate was self-sufficient in poultry and
pigs, but meat had to be obtained from Joska. He lived
miles away from our estate in a place which was neither a
village nor a city. The Russian name for such a place
was "mestechko" , a diminutive form of the word "mesto" ,
meaning "place". This place was by no means little. It
was a very big village and part of it was inhabited by
a Jewish population.
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The Jewish problem in Imperial Russia
So here I am starting to write about "the Jewish
problem" in Imperial Russia. For reasons that I cannot
understand to this day, Jews were restricted in many ways.
They could not be landowners, but they had rented many,
many estates for generations. They were drafted into the
army but could not be officers. Only a token percentage
of Jews were admitted to the universities. I would not use
the modern expression "racism" here, because from the moment
that a person of the Jewish race became a Protestant (Jews
rarely became Greek Orthodox) , he acquired all his rights.
*
I myself knew members of the highest Russian society at
the Court of the Tsar who were of the Jewish race but
professed to be Christians, at least officially. Moevis,
a captain of the artillery of the Imperial Guards, was a
typically handsome Jew. He looked 100 percent Jewish and
it was a rare occurence to find someone like him. He was
an honorary ADC to the Tsar Nicholas II and he married a
Princess Galitsin, a striking beauty and a member of one of
the oldest and most historically notable families of the
Russian nobility. Count D. Tolstoy, director of the
Hermitage in St. Petersburg, was married to a lady of the
Jewish race on her mother's side. The grand old lady
(Count D. Tolstoy's mother-in-law) was 10O percent Jewish
by birth and was the honorary lady-in-waiting to both the
Tsar's wife and to the Dowager Empress, widow of Tsar
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Alexander III.
In the year 1906, there was a general strike all over
Russia. No trains were running and we were stuck in Kodyma
in deep fall weather. It was getting cold. My mother needed
a warm dress; the stuff was there, but the dress had to be
made. So, a tailor was summoned from Novy-Bug, that was
thirteen kilometers away from our estate, to make my
mother's dress. When he appeared, the tailor was Jewish,
as all tailors were. When mother asked him whether he
could make the dress, he was almost offended. He said,
"of course, your Ladyship, I can make a dress for you. Two
years before, I made the slipcovers of the big carriage."
Of course, we laughed very much about the comparison, my
mother and the big carriage. Then, he asked to be paid not
in money, but in ducks, live ducks. We had a poultry farm
on the other side of the pond and there we had white,
so-called Peking ducks, that were very unusual and rare in
those days. And here was the start of bartering, which then
became so commonplace during the war and the days of the
revolution. And this tailor was very proud to have the same
white ducks at his home as we had at Kodyma.
More about Joska
In the autumn of 1905 all railroads and telegraphs
and the postal service in Russia were on strike. It was an
attempt at a revolution, a reaction to the unsuccessful war
in the Far East against Japan. I was eight years old. We
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were stranded at Kodyma. There was no way of getting back
to the city of St. Petersburg as we usually did in the fall.
Gangs of city and village rabble and have-nots roamed the
countryside, looting and burning the estates of the landed
gentry and the well-to-do farmers. These latter and the
clergy were the most hated by the revolutionary rabble and
were often tortured to death. At Kodyma we had no neighbors
who were owners of large estates, but there were many
wealthy farmers. At night we could see huge fires burning
on the horizon.
Our permanent employees, numbering about 20, went to
father asking for weapons with which to protect the estate.
Actually, they wanted to protect their own families and
jobs. So father sent a request for arms to the governor of
Kh tfh
the district of Herson. The city of Herson was about
100 versts from Kodyma. Incidentally, the district of
Kh
Herson was, in square miles, about as big as half of France.
There was no reply to father's request and none to his
second request. The district was officially in a state of
siege. So when Joska came along bringing our meat, he
was asked about the possibility of finding arms. About
ten days later Joska came back, bringing with him in his
cart twenty military rifles and one thousand cartridges.
For each rifle he charged and received one hundred rubles.
Family affairs were handled by Joska, procurement of
illegal arms, as well as every other transaction, be it the
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sale of an estate, a horse, a dog, or what have you. It was
a common joke to ask who had more actual power in the
district, the governor appointed by St. Petersburg, or Joska.
But Joska was not alone or unique. Every district or
sub-district had a "Joska." It was an organization, an
underground, a very effective chain of command that covered
all of south and southwest Russia and had connections in
the big cities like Odessa and even Moscow and St. Peters
burg.
As I mentioned before, Joska was a rabbi.. The Jewish
ethnic group was excluded from making careers in the
military or civil service, but Jews could earn their liveli
hoods in commerce and banking. They took over in these
fields. They also flooded the so-called liberal professions,
such as those of lawyers, doctors and druggists.
Dr. Bardach was a very well-known doctor in Odessa, a
highly respected gentleman, wise, kind, and very wealthy.
A Mr. Gordon was a druggist in St. Petersburg, and all the
drugs for the Tsar and his family came from the Gordon
drugstore. A Mr. Ginsburg was a very rich merchant in coal.
He had international connections and arranged coal deliveries
to the Russian warships sailing from St. Petersburg around
half of the world to the shores of Japan. It ended with a
dramatic sea battle and the sinking of the Russian ships.
But a lot has been written about that.
For many centuries Jews were the managers of large and
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small estates owned by the Russian and, more often, the
Polish gentry in south and southwest Russia, also called
the Ukraina. This word literally means "at the border."
The border of what? - Of "Moskovia," that is, Russia
proper.
Well, the owners of large estates lived on them, but in
the winter months they usually lived in city mansions. And
the management of such estates was, for many centuries,
entrusted to Jewish managers. They could count money and
keep the books, since they were taught to read and write
in synagogue schools, while the general population, ethnic
ally Slavs, remained illiterate.
Such Jewish managers had to collect money from the
peasants who rented land from the big landowners. Collect
ing money never endears the collector to the debtors. They
often have to exercise some kind of pressure in order to
get the money. In past centuries one of these pressures
was to induce or bribe local authorities (the police) to
j_ _
close a church until the peasantry payed up. In those days
religious feelings, whether Roman Catholic or Russian
Orthodox, were much stronger than they are now. The closing
of the churches by non-Christians as a measure of coercion
was violently resented and generated hatred among the
general population, but did not affect the upper class.
Money collectors and money lenders are never beloved and
are often hated. Such hatred remained in the bone-marrow
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of the lower social level of the Russian peasantry for
generation after generation.
At the age of nine or ten I myself remember telling my
nurse that the Holy Virgin Mary, mother of Christ, was of
Jewish race, in short, a Jewgirl. My nurse dashed to the
corner of the nursery where there was an icon, an oil lamp
permanently burning, and a little jar of holy water. My
nurse sprinkled me with holy water. She made me get on my
knees, and she stayed with me and prayed that I would be
forgiven by the Holy Virgin for my blasphemy.
Later my nurse confronted Mother and blamed my behavior
not so much on me, her adored little Vanechka, as on the
influence of my first tutor, Herr Friedenthal, a Bait, a
Protestant, a university student and probably a revolution
ary socialist, a disguised enemy of the Tsar and of all of
holy Russia. My nurse must have made a real big row in
order for me to remember this incident that took place over
a half a century ago!
Considering their status of second class citizens,
deprived of many rights and means of existence, it is a
small wonder that all Jews developed a genius for organi
zation and discipline and had no love for Russians, be they
members of the ruling class or of the general population.
In the year 1917 Russia floundered in chaos. The
Tsar abdicated. The army disintegrated. Civil war began.
Volumes upon volumes have been written about those events.
- 97 -
In the later chapters of my memoirs you will be able to
read about how it all affected me, if you have that much
patience.
At this point I would like to call to your attention
a comment of Lenin's. He was not Jewish. Lenin once said,
"If it had not been for the enthusiastic support of Jews
and their genius for organization, I would never have been
able to make a revolution and make it triumph."
During the period of civil war most leaders on the
Red side, the most important leaders as well as the lesser
ones, were Jewish. They were called "political commissars."
The top man was Leon Trotsky Bronstein.
Means of Transportation
In. 1910, when I was thirteen, Father and I began to ride
daily together from 5 to 7 each afternoon. He had learned
to ride with his father and he was just as strict with me
about my riding as his father had been with him. This
training was later a great advantage for me. Normally,
Father and I never went beyond the boundaries of Kodyma.
One time, I did manage to coax him into a ride through a
forest. It was owned by the government and was a rather
sickly forest. It represented an unsuccessful attempt by
some bureaucrats to reforest the steppes and thereby to
change the dry climate of south Russia. Unless people from
the surrounding villages came twice yearly to clean the
area of grasses, the trees would be edged out by those
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grasses which were natural to the steppes. For a time the
villagers did do this, but during the First World War no
one was available to do it. By 1917 the grasses had killed
all the trees.
Although my father usually rode a horse on the estate,
he was interested in motors when they became available. For
a while he used a motorbike to get around the land. It was
a very heavy, unwieldy machine and thoroughly unsuited for
the roadless Russian provinces, as it tended to sink both
in mud and in dust. Once, when crossing a dam on his motor
bike, Father met a cart full of lumber driven by a peasant.
The horses reared and upset the cart with the lumber and the
peasant was thrown into the bushes. Father went over to see
if the man was hurt. The peasant told, him no, he was
not hurt, but he knew what he would have said if "it were
not his lordship on the motorbike" . Father eventually gave
the motorbike to Nikita. Nikita removed the engine and used
his feet to propel himself about on the bike.
A few years later cars became available in south Russia
and during the summer months when the roads were hard and
dry one could use them. One day when I was sixteen, we were
expecting Uncle Vladimir and his family to visit us. They
planned to make the trip by car. It was a rainy day, though,
and they were late in arriving. Eventually a cousin came
on horseback and told us that their car had got stuck in the
mud on one of the dams. Dmitri Fedorovich sent a team of
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oxen to pull the car out of the mud. The car arrived with
its passengers at our house drawn by oxen, much to the
delight of Dmitri Fedorovich and all of the coachmen.
The Automobile comes to Russia
I was about seven years old, with my parents in the city
of Biarritz, France, also with a cousin of mine who was then
about sixteen or seventeen. My father hired a horseless
carriage, a kind of contraption that started appearing then,
and we went out for a drive in the mountains. On the eve of
that day, my cousin sent a telegram to her mother, who was
then living on her estate in the depths of Russia, in the
Ural region. The telegram said, "Mother, pray for me.
Tomorrow I am going for a ride in a horseless carriage."
So, the horseless carriage appeared in front of our door.
The coachman had huge goggles and a fur coat, the fur out
side; and it was the month of July. We also donned heavy
coats, got into the car, and started for the mountains.
A railroad track ran parallel to the road, and a train was
running on the tracks. My cousin asked the coachman - also
called chauffeur - if he could run the car faster than the
train. It was a challenge. So he accelerated the car to
a neck-breaking speed, an irresponsible rapidity for this
kind of a road, and we were driving thirtyfive kilometers
per hour. Then, mother protested because of the jolts; so
he slowed down to the normal speed of thirty miles per hour.
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When my cousin came back to Petersburg, she coaxed her
mother, Aunt Nadia Tolstoy, into buying a car. So, my aunt
was one of the first persons in Petersburg to have a car.
I remember it as if this car were right now standing in front
of my door. It was an open car, red in color. She used it
to drive in the city of Petersburg, .shopping or visiting;
but driving beyond the city, into the surrounding suburbs
that was rather risky. When you came up to a bridge, it
was safer to get out of the car and cross the bridge on
foot, to make sure that the bridge was sturdy enough to
carry a car. Of course the big bridges in the central part
of the city, crossing the Neva, could carry cars.
One day, I was playing at home with my cousins, when
their Grandmother came up in a horse-drawn carriage, with
beautiful horses. She picked up the two boys, her grand
children, to take them for a drive to the islands in the
estuary of the Neva; but she did not take me. This old
lady was really famous for her unkindness and mean character.
Of course, there was enough room for me, but she just
wanted her own grandsons and nobody else. I was very upset,
and as a very spoiled boy, I started yelling and weeping.
All of a sudden, there drives up Aunt Nadia in her red car.
She came in and asked, "What is the matter with little
Vania?" So I told her. She detested the grand old lady
who had just taken away my cousins. So she said, "All
right, Vania, get into the car, and we are going to drive
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to the islands." So, we drove out to the islands, and there
we met the carriage. The horses got frightened with such
an unusual gadget on the street - they bolted and almost
upset the carriage. My cousins started weeping because I
was in a car; and their grandmother was very much disturbed
and angry. But Aunt Nadia was delighted, and so was I,
because I had outdone my two cousins.
In 1912 there was the first big car show, because the
Russian government, the ministry of war, had decided to buy
some cars for the army. Cars were not produced in Russia.
They were produced in Germany, many of them in France,
some in England, and of course, everyone wanted to sell cars
to the Russian army. At that show, one of the sellers of
Rolls-Roy^ cars stuck to my father like a leach, because my
father was president of the Russian Imperial Aeroclub and
a member of Parliament. Father told him very bluntly that
he was in no case whatsoever a buyer of a Rolls-Royce. The
Rolls-Royce then cost 22,000 rubles in gold. However, he
insisted so much, that in order to get rid of him father
consented to take a ride. Of course, I was with him. We
went to the islands and back again. It was late in the
winter - very early spring maybe - and some of the roads
were still iced. On a very busy corner of the Nyevsky
Prospect, the car had to slow down to let pedestrians pass.
The car stopped - anyhow, it was barely moving - but when
it finally stopped completely, the rear of the car slid a
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little sideways, to the right and the rear of the car
touched - not hit, touched - an elderly man. The chauffeur
driving the car, a British mechanic, did not even feel this.
But the old man slipped, fell backwards, and was dead. We
did not even realize at that moment that our car had killed
a man. Of course there was an investigation, but I do not
remember the result.
One of the Rolls-Royce cars was bought by one of the
tj~\
officers of my regiment, Grand Duke John of the Romanov family
and with it came a British mechanic to drive the car around
Petersburg and vicinity, and they even went as far as Moscow
in that car. As a result of all this, the Rolls-Royce less
than six months later was a total wreck. It was not intended
for Russian roads.
There was great competition between all the car makers,
and so the war minister decided to make an experiment and
have a race of all the cars through Russia. They all had
to start in St. Petersburg and go westward to the city of
Minsk, the region called "White Russia", then all the way
south to Odessa, from there to Poltava, thence to Kharkov,
and Moscow, and back to Petersburg. Which car would make
it faster back to the starting point? Only one of all the
cars competing made it back, all the others were either
wrecked or stuck on their way. The only car that made it
back to Petersburg was a Ford. Then, of course, Fords
were ordered for the army. And during the First World War,
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my cousin, who was a nurse on the front lines, - and they
had some Fords - said that they were the only car that was
actually usable because when a Ford went out of commission,
what happened? A pair of oxen or a team of horses was
harnessed to the Ford, and the journey continued!
One of my cousins could never call a Ford car a car.
He said, "It is not an automobile. It is some kind of a
contraption in which you can drive. It does not deserve
to be called an automobile." They looked like spiders, with
very high wheels - they did not look imposing and refined.
Finally, at that show of cars, my parents decided to buy
a car, and they bought one. This car had a British motor,
a Hotchkiss. This was the motor also used then for the
British field artillery, and they were excellent. The rest
of the car was made in France.
In those- days, all those auto makers always presented
one of their models to the garage of the Imperial Court,
just for the sake of advertising. The cars of the Imperial
Court from the year before were then auctioned and sold.
So the Court always had new cars, actually most of them were
never used by the Emperor in person. At that time I heard
about a last year's car being sold, a Mercedes-Benz. The
carosserie - the body of this car - was built by a very
famous designer of carriages in Berlin. Now he was
designing the car bodies and putting them together with the
motors. And this was a very beautiful piece, and cost the
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same amount as the car my parents bought. The Hotchkiss
was a very good car, but it had no looks - there was no
comparison between it and this Mercedes-Benz built especial
ly for the Tsar of Russia. Of course, I was very eager to
buy that car, but my parents bought the Hotchkiss. Many
years later, when we were all immigrants and reminiscing .
about the years of my youth, I asked my mother, "Why didn't
you and Papa buy that car? I wanted it so much, and it cost
the same as the car you bought?" She calmly replied, "We
did not buy the Tsar's car because of you." "What do you
mean, because of me! Didn't you know that I wanted it so
much?" "Yes, but Father decided that he did not want young
Vania to be so offish and to ride around St. Petersburg in
the Tsar's car. It would not be good for his education."
I meet Sikorsky - My first flight
It was 1912. I was fifteen years old and living with
my parents. I happened to be in the study room of my father
when a servant announced the arrival of the young engineer
Sikorsky. For some reason, he immediately made a great
impression on me. His hair was extremely untidy and long,
and it was not the fashion in those days. And then, his huge
black eyes, that I cannot forget for my whole life; and his
huge black eyes gave him the expression like he was somewhat
crazy. Probably, that was the sign of a genius, because
he proved later really to be a most unusual genius. This
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young engineer came to tell my father that he had blue
prints for a different kind of a flying machine, an aero
plane that instead of having just one motor, had four
motors, and could lift up into the air fifteen or twenty
passengers - a huge machine. When he showed those blue
prints to the Russian War Ministry, the old generals had
one look and said, "We cannot afford to spend the crown
money, the Tsar's money, on some kind of fancy toys." My
father asked him, "Well, according to your calculations,
how much would it cost to build such a plane at a private
plant?" Of course, every single little part for such a
plane would have to be made by hand. Sikorsky said that
such a plane would cost forty thousand gold rubles. Soon,
this sum was raised from private persons, my father con
tributing - he was a member of Parliament - and a private
plant started working on that unusual gadget. Shortly
before Christmas, 1912, Sikorsky reported that that plane
was ready and had been tested. He invited Father to take
part in a flight of that plane. Of course, I held on to
my father's coats for dear life to go along. It was a
wintery day, and snow was falling all over St. Petersburg;
and we had just gotten the news of the death of a distant
relative. So, before going to the racecourt where the plane
stood, because that was the only place where such a gadget
could stand, we went to the cathedral in St. Petersburg for
a Requiem Mass. That was a kind of an omen, we had the
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feeling: wouldn't there be the next day a Requiem Mass for
us because of our attempt to fly on that gadget? Anyhow,
we went to that racecourt, convinced that there would be no
flight in such a snowstorm. When we arrived, the plane was
barely visible at a distance. Sikorsky said that there was
absolutely no reason why we should not fly. It was not a
storm actually, but snow was falling thick and fast. The
plane itself stood on skis. Well, we mounted into that
plane, and Sikorsky went into the engine compartment all by
himself and started the motors. The roar of the motors
was such that one could not hear a word if it was not whisp
ered absolutely so to say from lip to ear. In the passenger
compartment there was a card table, two wicker chairs, a
very narrow corridor went into the tail part of the plane,
and in the tail part of the plane there was a tiny cubicle
with a certain commodity. The plane's motors roaring, snow
flying all around us, we did not realize whether we were
sliding on those skis or whether we were up airborn, not
before we were some twohundred meters above the ground.
Then we realized that we were up in the air. Next to that
racecourt there was a forest of pinetrees, very ancient,
very tall pinetrees; and above those pinetrees there were
all the time lots of crows flying. I admired those pine-
trees and those crows, looking upward at them. Now, I was
looking at them downward, and that impressed me very much.
On we flew, and we flew right over the city of Petersburg.
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All of a sudden, because of the excitement, I felt kind of
uncomfortable in my belly, and I rushed through that narrow
corridor, and I used that cubicle. I am very much afraid
that it was just the moment when we were overflying the
Winter Palace. We flew on, and then Sikorsky came out of
the machine room, and there was nobody in the machine room
any more. He just wanted to show how he trusted his plane,
and how stable it was. We told him that we believed in the
stability, but would he please go back to the machine room.
There were fifteeen aboard: my father, some members of
Parliament, the Chief of Staff of the Russian Guard troops,
the vice-president of the Russian Aeroclub - my father was
the president of it - and some other persons I do not
remember. When we asked Sikorsky to go back to his pilot
cabin, he kind of took offense. Then, without any warning,
when we were about 2,000 feet up in the air, overflying the
summer residence of the Tsar, he switched off the motors,
all four of them. From that roaring, suddenly dead silence.
Then, the plane went gliding down at a sharp angle. I was
sitting in one of the wicker chairs. My father was standing
next to the wicker chair. And because the surface of that
floor, of course, was under a very different angle, my
father fell to one of his knees. I observed the expressions
of other people on that plane for a fraction of a second,
expressions that reflected, "This is the end." But it was
not. And then, Sikorsky came back to the racecourt where
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we started, and our flight was over.
It was a great success. Immediately, several big planes
were ordered and made at the expense of the army. By 1914,
there were maybe six or eight of them, and everybody con
sidered them to be good for bombing. No other country had
any such big planes at that time. But unfortunately, the
army high command did not realize the way how to use those
planes. They could carry a heavy load of bombs, but they
were slow in their flight, and German fighters were very .
rapid in their flight. So, some of the Sikorsky planes
were destroyed in the air. It did not occur to anybody
that those slow, heavy planes should be escorted by Russian
fighter plances for protection. Now, it seems so clear to
any young boy of school age. But in those days, the old
generals just did not know what to do with those planes, not
only the big ones, but even the smaller ones. Each head
quarters of the Army corps had in 1915 small reconnaissance
planes that could carry one or two persons for reconnaissance.
They were attached to the headquarters, but headquarters
did not know when and how to use them. One of my friends
whom I met many years later in San Francisco was an officer
of the generals' staff, and he got orders from his army
commander to deliver a very urgent, very important message
to a neighboring corps commander. He got an order to take
a car - a pool of cars was of course attached to headquarters
and to take that message over, a trip of maybe forty or fifty
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kilometers. The chauffeur of that car said, "Sir, orders
are orders, so let's start. But I cannot guarantee that
we will ever get to our destination, because in springtime
the Russian roads are bottomless mud. We have ninety-
nine percent chance if not all hundred to get stuck some
where on the road, and that urgent message will never reach
its destination." Another young officer, a pilot, overheard
that conversation, and he was bored to death just walking
around his plane doing nothing, and not having any assign
ment whatsoever. He said to my friend, "Sir, if you want
to get into my plane, I will fly you to those headquarters."
That is what he did. Half an hour later, my friend
delivered his message, and another half an hour later, he
was back at his own headquarters. There he ran into the
army commander, and the army commander started yelling at
him, saying, "I have ordered you to deliver an urgent
message to such and such a place, and you are still here!"
Well, my friend saluted smartly and said, "Your Excellency,
I am already back, message delivered."
Well, I think nowadays most young generation Americans
know what a Sikorsky plane is. Sikorsky managed to leave
Soviet Russia to come early enough to the United States to
have a plant here and to continue inventions. He was the
man who invented the so-called "choppers." Without that
Russian engineer Sikorsky, there probably would not have
been any choppers around. So that was one of the very many
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contributions to the United States that gave such a free
asylum to many Russians, and they repaid it as best they
could. In a very small degree, one of them is probably me,
because I have taught Russian, and there are now several of
my former students who are - professors in \^_ American
universities.
Theater - an early part of our social lives
My Aunt Nadya Tolstoy was a granddaughter of Alexander
Stenbock-Fermor and his wife, Nadejda Jakovlev, and she had
the same difficult disposition and character as the legend
ary Aunt Jakovlev. Nadejda Jakovlev died when I was only
three years old. And here was Aunt Nadya, who was the same
age as my mother but by the family tree also was of the
same generation as I was. So, one day she gave me a beauti
ful protrait of herself and on that portrait she wrote:
"To my dear cousin Ivan", and she signed, "Aunt Nadya". She
had a son Alexander, who was born a few months after the
death of his father. Alexander had two sisters much older
than I was and he belonged to the group of my close boy
friends. There were five or six of us.
When Aunt Nadya liked somebody, she liked them very
much and spoiled them, but when she disliked somebody, she
really disliked them! She had what was called "une dame de
companie" , a lady companion, who was half servant and half
friend and who was responsible for the household. She was
of Baltic-German origin, about the same age as Aunt Nadya.
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She spoke Russian rather poorly but she loved good food,
and Aunt Nadya had a wonderful cook. That poor lady said
once or twice, "It is terrible. The food is so good, but
I cannot swallow it because I am so afraid of the Countess
Tolstoy. I just cannot swallow it." Of course we all
laughed at her.
Aunt Nadya had a box at the Imperial Theater in
St. Petersburg which was used for daytime shows of opera
and ballet. Her son loved music, but then he was only ten
years old. I was fourteen and we were in that group of
boys all about the same age, between ten and fourteen.
Every other Sunday we went to the theater to a ballet or
opera performance and it was a great, great treat. One
day we had an extra boy invited, but our box in the theater
would hold only seven people. And of course we boys were
always accompanied by a tutor, and usually it was our French
tutor, Monsieur Jules H. Drouin. As there was no place in
the box for eight people, one place in the front rows was
bought for this extra man, and none of us boys was very
keen to sit there all by himself. So Monsieur Drouin was
delighted to be in this seat below and to enjoy the show
all by himself, while we boys were left alone in the box.
In the entreacts, M. Drouin came up and I remember his face
and his words when he said to us, "Boys oh boys, at your
age you do not realize where you are." And these perform
ances of the Russian Imperial Theater were really quite
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c
outstanding. .. the performance of the famous basso Shalyapin,
or the ballerina Pavlova, and the others, but we boys just
took it for granted. And the theater, drama, or ballet
were a way of life in Russia. Those Imperial theaters
were so called because they were subsidised financially by
the sums of the Russian Imperial Court; it was never just
a commercial enterprise as in other countries. It was
never in the red, because it was always financed by sums
coming from the Imperial Court. The schools, theater and
ballet schools, were also subsidised by the Imperial Court
and so the Russian theater plays and the ballet, even half
a century later, are still welcomed all over the world...
this is perhaps the one and only tradition of Imperial
Russia which has survived in the communist Soviet Union
of today.
Christmas at Aunt Nadya .
Aunt Nadya, when Christmas time came, had in her apart
ment in St. Petersburg a big Christmas tree, set up in the
ballroom, and decorated, and the decorations consisted of
all kinds of little presents for everybody, some quite
valuable, small things in silver, small toys, not just small
plain decorations. The tree was lit up with wax candles,
not electric bulbs, and when the candles burned down, one
of Autn Nadya's guests, Admiral Prince Vyazemsky (who was
in command of all the Imperial Navy as well as of the
personal yacht of the Emperor; he was a rather short,
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broad-shouldered, and very sturdy man) went down on his
knees in front of the Christmas tree, and with one hand
grabbing the tree near the bottom, he tipped it over so it
was lying on the floor. And then came the looting of the
Christmas tree. All of us children were supplied with
scissors and we could loot the tree. We enjoyed it very
much, because probably all Russians have a drop of some
Mongol blood from the Tartars who looted Russia centuries
earlier. The greatest joy for all of us seven or eight
boys was the looting - it is funny', but in that group there
were no little girls our age, there was just that gang of
boys, and after having looted the tree each of us had a
table to himself for all the loot, set up in the next
living room, what was then called a drawing room, or guest
room. And then we went from table to table and bartered
whatever loot we had, and somehow the son of Aunt Nadya,
Alexander, was the greatest barterer of us all, so he had
/
at his table all the best things.
Now I must make a jump of many years, to 1931. I was
in Paris and I was in a very difficult situation, financial
ly and otherwise, and in the process of obtaining a divorce
from my first wife. Alexander, with Aunt Nadya, offered me
room and board. I lived with them in Paris for several
months and they were extremely kind to me and understanding,
So that friendship between us lasted almost half a century.
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A special visit to the theater
At the moment my memory takes me back to the Russian
Imperial Theater, to the ballet. My father loved the ballet
very much. He wrote a text for a ballet and a friend of his
wrote the music for it, and this was the first ballet
presented in the costumes of the epoch which my father
wrote about, and that epoch belonged to antique Rome. The
ballet was called Ernila and it was danced in the costumes
of ancient Rome. A rising young ballerina, Karsavina,
barely out of ballet school, was the prima ballerina. The
whole set-up was arranged by a young artist by the name of
Fokin. It was a great innovation in the ballet, which had
always been danced in the classical ballet tunics.
My father had a reservation - he had a chair in the pit
for all three performances, but as he was a member of the
Russian Parliament, he was sometimes summoned to Parliament
for an extra meeting, and at the last moment he could not
make the ballet. If he had known it a day in advance, he
could have saved his place for one of his friends, but it
so happened on that day that he was summoned to come immedi
ately, just as we were sitting down for dinner. It was too
late for my father to contact anybody. It was the first
year that I sported a tuxedo and, of course,! rushed to my
father and he gave me his ticket. I forgot all about dinner,
donned my tuxedo, took a cab, and rushed to the theater.
The theater was already dark and in the pit the musicians
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were starting to play. I wiggled into the second row and
sat down. Immediately there appeared a very dignified
servant of the theater, who asked me to show him my ticket,
because it was very unusual to see a youngster in such a
place. I showed him my ticket and, bowing slightly, he left.
The play started. There were three plays in all, then the
curtain came down, the theater was illuminated, and I sat
in that second row like a little rabbit. All the other
places were occupied by high dignitaries from the government,
the parliament, the court, all dressed in gala uniforms,
and everybody stared at me. Suddenly I saw a very imposing
general stand up, and coming right up to me, he put his
finger on my chest - of course I stood up in front of him -
and he said to me, "I presume that you are the son of
Count Stenbock-Fermor. " And I said, "Yes, Sir, I am."
Mentioning Karsavina: she later became a great and very
famous ballerina. She married the assistant Consul of
Great Britain and after her marriage she did not dance any
more except for performances for raising money for charity.
She managed to escape from Russia during the Revolution and
gave performances for charity's sake in Bulgaria and then
in Prague in a great and beautiful theater. The tickets
were very expensive and it was completely sold out long
before it started. I came to Prague from the south part
of the country and heard about the performance the next day
from the papers. I realized that I had not the slightest
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chance of getting in.
Invitation to a Wedding
It must have been 1911 or 1912. A few years before the
terrible 1914 when the "good old days" died in the agony
of World War I, and a new world came upon us. An ugly one.
Cruel fighting of neighboring country against neighboring
country. A new world demoralized, disorganized, socialized,
bolshevized, communistic, beastly, egotistic, filled with
greed and betrayal. A new virtue, a world motorized and
airborne, televised and atomized. Ugly and disgusting,
with rare glimpses of a beautiful recent past, gone for
ever. Well, all the coming horrors were unforeseeable in
1911-1912, and an invitation to a grand wedding was very
exciting for me at the age of fifteen. It was the wedding
of Kitty Martens, eldest daughter of Professor Martens of
the Imperial University of St. Petersburg. Kitty was charm
incorporate. Not tall, but smart and vivacious. There was
a joke in St. Petersburg society about how to find out if
a young man was a liar or not. If the young man insisted
that he was not in love with Kitty Martens, it meant he was
a liar.
Well, young Count Sologub was in love, and so was Kitty.
And I was asked to the wedding. Count Sologub was the only
son of the Countess, who was a widow. She was of Baltic-
German origin and was a Protestant, but had taken to the
Russian Orthodox Church years before. When people change
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their faith they often overdo it and become fanatic about
their new faith. This was the case with Countess Sologub.
Her only son was marrying a beautiful girl. It was an ideal
love match. "All Petersburg" rejoiced, except for the mother
of the bridegroom. The Martens family was Protestant.
Countess Sologub was upset, sick with grief. Friends
tried to console her by saying that a basic law of the
Russian Empire required that children of a mixed marriage
be christened into the Russian Orthodox faith. But Countess
Sologub retorted, "I know the laws of the Russian Empire,
but how will a Protestant mother be able to raise my future
grandchildren in the holy Russian Orthodox faith?"
So she went to seek consolation and moral support from
the Metropolitan Platon, then head of the Russian Church in
the St. Pertersburg diocese. He was a highly respected
Archbishop, a very cultured person and a great authority
on all matters of religion.
The Countess talked about her grief, and the Archbishop
answered, "Do not be upset, my daughter. Humans have
different kinds of faith in God, but the different express
ions of faith are but human screens, and their heights do
not attain the height of our Lord."
Well, the wedding was brilliant. The newlyweds were
happy. A ladyfriend of the old Countess Sologub asked her,
"How are your children?", meaning the happy newlyweds.
The Countess Sologub retorted, "Do not ask me about my
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children! I have but one son - and he has a WIFE!!!"
The happy young Count Sologub was a great sportsman
and hunter and, of course, his dear wife went hunting with
him. It was in the late autumn, and a hunt for hares was
under way. Beaters moved through field and bushes. Each
hunter stood on his "number," shotgun on the ready.
While standing on her "number," Kitty Sologub noticed
some movement in a cluster of bushes and, for a fraction of
a second, wondered what kind of hare, if any, could make a
large clump of bushes move so much.
And out of the bushes emerged a big, brown bear. Kitty
calmly unloaded her. shotgun and reloaded it with a single
bullet cartridge that happened to be in her cartridge belt.
And she fired almost point-blank, and the bear fell at
Kitty's dainty feet! She was not even surprised. Even bears
seemed to know the right place to fall!
Father Konstantin
Father Konstantin, a young priest in St. Petersburg, in
1881 officiated at my parents' wedding. I knew him from the
days of my earliest childhood. We always attended the church
where he was priest Sundays, holidays, Christmas, and Easter.
It was also customary for members of the church to go to
confession at least once a year, usually during Lent, the
seven weeks that precede Easter. I was fifteen and to me
he seemed to be a very, very old, agelessly old man. Yet
he was probably younger than I am today.
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Now at age fifteen, I had an accident. I was doing
gymnastics on the rings at home when a heavy iron hook,
placed in the ceiling of my room got loose. I fell to the
floor and the hook fell right on my teeth. Because of this
I had to visit a dentist often for treatment after school.
In the springtime at late afternoon I would walk home from
the dentist's office. I went along the Nevsky Prospekt, the
main thoroughfare of the city then called St. Petersburg.
It was a cold spring and I was wearing a camel's hair coat..
Some young, good-looking girls were walking too. They
giggled and called me "teddy bear" and told one another
(for my benefit) that they would like very much to cuddle
such a nice young "teddy bear". I quickened my steps.
My mother at home knew exactly when school finished and
how long I would then be at the dentist's. She knew how
long it took to get home walking from the dentist's office,
so I would have no way of explaining any time spent else
where. My mother always demanded from me very exact reports,
even later, when I was a Lieutenant of the Horse Guards.
I was bothered and on subsequent days tried to avoid the
Nevsky Prospekt. I took small side streets home and to
my horror I found that this was much worse. On those
side streets many girls were standing in doorways. Some
times they simply grabbed me by the arm, insisting that
they wanted to cuddle.
I was an only child and so had no one to consult about
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this ticklish problem. When I went to confession with old
Father Konstantin, I told him that I was bothered. Father
Konstantin was horrified and he told me that if I so much
as looked twice at one of those girls, my spine would dry
up and my nose would vanish. I was terribly scared.
At home in the morning, I often checked in the mirror
and felt with my fingers to see if I still had a nose. Pro
bably Father Konstantin was wrong because after more than
half a century my spine is O.K. and my nose is still in
place. That was in my early youth, in May, 1912.
Finance Minister Kokovceff negotiates transaction with France
About the year 1912, Russia was negotiating a loan from
France. Bonds were to be issued and France was supposed to
buy many of them to help out Russia financially. Of course
those bonds discussed were very many millions, and the then
Russian minister of finance, M. Kokovceff, was in Paris dis
cussing these loans with the French government. The French
authorities were in agreement with the sums mentioned by
Kokovceff, but there was a sum of 40,000 gold rubles that
somehow interfered with all those calculations and because
of that minor sum that loan could not be finalized. Finally
Kokovceff got rather angry and said to the French, "Now let
us not be ridiculous. We are discussing millions and milli
ons, why do you insist on that sum of 40,000 gold rubles?";
and the French minister said, "We have to put that sum in
there because that is your bribe!" The French could not
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visualize any kind of agreement without, so to say,
"buttering up the palm", this is a translation of the
French expression, the best I can imagine at this moment.
Well, Kokovceff was very eager to conclude this loan, so
he stretched out his palm and said, "Okay, put the butter
on my palm and let us sign the agreement between France
and Imperial Russia." So that was done and the Russian
finance minister, Kokovceff got his bribe. When he returned
having concluded that great financial transaction, he came
with a report about it to Nicholas, the Tsar of Russia, and
he told him, "Your Majesty, I have accepted a bribe." The
Tsar was surprised, and then Kokovceff said, "Here is a check
for the 40,000 gold rubles for the bribe I have taken to con
clude this business, and I gave this check to the curator
of Russian girls' schools for all over Russia." And then
both of them had a good laugh about the French government
who could not conclude business with another country with
out the problem of a bribe. And it was the first time in
history, I believe, that the minister of finance of Imperial
Russia was bribed. And this story is authentic because
Kokovceff later told the story to my father.
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CHAPTER IV
WORLD WAR I
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1914 - World War I
In the spring of 1914, we were living at Kodyma and
planning a trip abroad for the summer. My mother and I
and my tutor were to go, while Father stayed behind to
supervise affairs at Kodyma. In fact, he often got bored
on these trips abroad. Late in June we started off and
our first stop was to be St. Petersburg. Enroute, we
changed trains at Kharkow, where we were to get on the
Sebastopol Express. While waiting we saw boys running
about, waving newspapers and shouting, "Crown Prince of
Austria assassinated in Sarajevo!" My tutor at the time
was a German subject and this news made his future very
uncertain. When we arrived in St. Petersburg we noticed an
unusual amount of activity in the city for that time of year,
Usually the city was very quiet in the summer as that was
the time when many people went on. holiday and the troops
were out on maneuvers. The season in St. Petersburg lasted
from Christmas to Easter, normally. That summer in 1914,
though, there were many people still in the city. My
mother asked to have lunch with the commander of one of the
regiments garrisoned in St. Petersburg, an old friend of
hers. At lunch Mother explained that she did not want to
know any secrets, she just wanted to know what he would say
to his wife and son if they were planning to go abroad at
this time. He smiled and told Mother that he would advise
them to go right back to their estate. Mother took his
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advice. My tutor could not accompany me to Kodyma, so Mother
sent me to her family's estate, the Schedlovskij estate,
where my cousins had a Finnish tutor - Finland at the time
was politically not altogether independent although they
were free to the extent that they could mobilize their army.
Besides the Finnish tutor, there were many other people at
the Schedlovskij estate: my cousins, my aunt and uncle, my
mother's mother, the French governess, the Russian teacher -
in all there were twenty people at the dining table every
day. Almost everyone there was excited at the question of
whether or not Russia would be mobilized and they scarcely
talked of anything else.
Russia mobilizes
Ten versts away from the estate was a small city with
a railroad station. My uncle had had a telephone line put
in between the house and the station. One night when I
was there, the phone rang. My uncle went to answer it and
the voice on the other end said just one word - "Mobilizat
ion" . Everyone at the house was happy and elated at the
news - everyone except for the Finnish tutor and me. They
all thought, "Now we will show them! We will kick Germany
and defend the Balkan Slavs as was done in 1877". The Finn
was very gloomy, though, because he foresaw terrible
consequences. I sensed this and felt the same way and I
was teased because I did not show the same elation as the
others. In fact, most of the country was excited at the
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prospect of this war. The Tsar appeared on the balcony of
the winter palace before a crowd of people who were on
their knees before him, ready to fight at his command, and right
there they sang "God Save the Tsar". All junior and
senior officers were in a huffy to get to the front. This
war would bring glory, medals, and decorations, and no one
wanted to miss out on the chance and be late to get his
share - they assumed the war would be over very quickly.
I do not intend to write in detail about World War I be
cause so many other books have already been written on the
subject. I was seventeen then and I want only to describe
the atmosphere of the time.
The Russians mobilized. By decree of the Tsar, vodka
was not to be sold any more. In the first weeks, the
mobilization went well, but it did take time because Russia
was such a large country. It took approximately twenty days.
The Germans knew it would take this long so they did not
consider Russia a threat for a while anyway; what they did
not know was that the Russian Command was capable of crazy,
suicidal decisions.
At first the Germans ignored Russia and made a concentrat
ed blitzkrieg attack on France in 1914. The Germans soon
arrived at the gates of Paris and the French attaches in
St. Petersburg were on their knees begging for help. So the
Russian troops moved into and occupied East Prussia, even
though they were ill-prepared, ill-trained, and ill-equipped.
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Officials in Berlin were upset and they moved an army corps
from the western front to the defense of East Prussia. This
was a logical move but a mistake nonetheless. The German
General Staff lost their nerve and the French took advantage
of this. They won the battle of the Marne and called it
the "miracle de Marne". In later years, the French Chief
of Staff, Joffre, said in his memoirs, "Let us, the French
people, never forget that it was Russia who saved us in
1914".
As the war continued, the Russians suffered more and more
losses against the Germans. The great Russian general,
Sampsonov, eventually committed suicide because of the
German defeat of the Russians in East Prussia. In St.
Petersburg, the atmosphere changed. Many officers were
being brought home for burial. People began to realize the
tragic difference between maneuvers and a real war. Almost
everyone lost someone, a father, a son, a fiance, or a
friend.
All over Russia people suffered the consequences of this
war. At Kodyma in summertime there was no one to help with
the wheat harvest. The boys who used to come and do the
seasonal labor were all in the army. The girls who used to
come had to stay at home and do the men's chores. It was
very difficult to find help with the harvest. Finally we
arranged to hire people from the Jewish settlement in the
area. They were craftsmen and merchants and the war had
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killed their businesses and they needed work, but they
were totally unaccustomed to such labor. I will never for
get seeing a girl wearing dainty patent leather shoes and
stumbling on the sharp stumps of cut wheat while she tried
to tie up a sheaf. I also saw an elderly man with a large
pot belly wearing a heavy vest in the hot summer sun. He
was trying to gather up the wheat and only got tangled up
in everything. Years later, when I was an emigrant in
Slovakia, I was in a similar situation. I had finally
found a job - a textile company gave me a weaving machine
and supplied the raw materials. I was to weave it into
cloth and they would buy it from me. It seemed a good way
to make money, but when I tried it I got so tangled up in
the threads that my friends needed several pairs of scissors
to cut me loose and away from the machine.
Military Reform
About the year 1860, Tsar Alexander II, grandfather of
the last Tsar Nicholas II, made many many reforms; and
among them was the complete reform of the ministry of war.
Before that reform, every landowner had serfs. Serfdom
was abolished, but before it was abolished, every landowner
was obligated to furnish a certain number of serfs - as
many as he had sown acres of land. The serfs this landowner
had to choose were of course young boys, between twenty and
twenty-five, and had to be in good health and sturdy.
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But at the same time, the landowner had this opportunity to
get rid of certain boys he disliked - if they were drunks
or troublemakers. Of course, there were misuses. If the
landowner liked a servant girl and the poor fellow liked
her too, then he might be dispatched into the army. And the
service in the army in those days was for twenty-five years,
lifetime service. But, the soldiers, after so many years
of service, were made professional soldiers. Their back
ground was of peasants, serfs. The background of the officers
was of quite a different class. They were of the gentry,
the aristocracy. When I was in the military cadet school,
I was not yet an officer. I belonged to the class of soldiers,
Therefore I was as restricted as the other soldiers. I had
no right to go into the higher class restaurants, nor sit in
the Imperial theaters except up- up- up in the gallery; and
there were terrible notices, at the entrances of city parks,
that entry into city parks is prohibited to soldiers and
dogs. And those plates remained in place - of course, they
were overlooked by everybody - but I remember those plates
still standing in the parks. Of course, the revolutionary
people and the Socialists used those in their propaganda.
It was a very unfortunate situation.
Now, there came a new minister of war, General Milutin.
He suggested, and the Tsar agreed, that from now on recruits
would be taken from all over Russia. Every Russian boy, no
matter what class he belonged to, when he reached the age
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of twenty-one would have to serve in the army. Just only
sons of a family were exempted from this duty. And the
army took on a very different aspect: it was very much a
peoples' army. But the attitudes of the officers, belong
ing to the gentry class, and of the soldiers, belonging to
the ex-serfs, remained in their minds for many years after
this reform, even up to the war of 1914.
I clearly remember an officer of my regiment. Here I
must say that some of the guards regiments were extremely
exclusive. Any officer candidate who wanted to join the
regiment had to apply for it - a kind of unofficial rule -
to the Officers' mess, and the officers voted on whether
they wanted this young man to be an officer in their regiment
or not. No matter what grades he had, no matter what he
finished, officially he had the right to be an officer in
that regiment. But the Officers' Mess had this unwritten
law, of voting whether they wanted him or not.
Honor of wearing uniform
Officers in these guard regiments, in peacetime, wore
very many elaborate uniforms for many different occasions ,
and for all those uniforms the officer had to pay out of
his own pocket. An officer was obliged to have, besides
a regimental horse, a horse of his own, and that horse had
to be approved by the senior officers of the regiment. So,
service in these regiments was possible only for officers
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who had sufficient means of their own. An officer never
saw his pay - it all vanished into the Officers' Mess.
Each regiment, besides having a brass band, each Mess had
a singers' choir and an orchestra. In that orchestra there
were often musicians who had studied in the Imperial
conservatory of music - they were students of music, and
they were paid wages. Therefore, the minimum that an
officer of such a regiment - and there were several of
those - had to have in personal income was six thousand
gold rubles every year.
Many years later, I was teaching in the Monterey
military school and my young students in the military
asked me to tell about my days as an officer in the regiment.
I told them - and this was my family regiment, my grand
father had served in this regiment and commanded a squadron,
so there was no question about my joining this regiment -
that just before I joined my father asked the commanding
general of that regiment, "How much must I give my son
Vanya in pocket money, to be an officer in this regiment?"
The general smiled and said, "Well, if Vanya continues
living in his parents' apartment in Petersburg, and if
there is nothing going on a particular day he has his
lunch and dinner at home, and if he does not keep more
private horses than the one which he has to have" - some
officers had many horses which were fed out of their own
pocket, while the one regimental horse was fed by the
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regiment - and then he smiled more broadly and said, "And
if your little Vanya does not entertain a ballerina, because
then there is no limit, Vanya must have six-thousand gold
rubles every year." When I said that, one of my American
GI students jumped out of his chair. He started calculating
something very rapidly, then looked at me and said, "Nowa
days, that amounts to $800 per month". I told him, "I am
not interested in your financial calculations, whether they
are right or not, but just for argument's sake, let us say
that you are right". Then he gasped and said, "Sir, if your
father could afford to give you $8OO per month, why the
hell did you serve?" Of course, this young man could not
understand the moral climate in Russia in those days and
earlier. Looking at the map of Russia, covering one-sixth
of the earth, and you see all the borders, Russia had to have
an army to defend the country. Therefore, the military
officer was the most honorable kind of life, and all the
officers were considered to be at the top of society. There
was even a joke about it: if you want the Russian girls to
love you, become an officer.
In America, I found out to my great surprise that those
roles are very contrary. When a big fundraising party was
to be started in San Francisco, the choir of the army
language school was invited to go there. They were taught
to sing in Russian, and some of them sang very very well and
always made a great impression. Some of the boys asked us,
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the Russian teachers, how they were to dress for this party,
whether it would be very formal or what, and we said that
they were to wear their uniforms. And the boys gasped and
said, "Never! If we appear at that party in soldiers' -
even officers' - uniforms, no girl will want to dance with
us." We replied, "You forget that there will be very many
Russian girls there, brought up in the old tradition, and
you wearing an officers' uniform will be for them an honor
to dance with you." They would not believe us! But finally,
on orders of the commandant, they all wore their uniforms,
and they all danced and sang.
I was always amazed that after their last class in the
afternoon, at four o'clock, all the officers and enlisted
men left the classroom as if the classroom were on fire.
They all rushed to their barracks and homes, and they would
not loose a second in changing from their military uniforms
into mufti. The Russian officer, when he had to go abroad
on private business or as a tourist, had to be in civilian
clothing, and he was miserable. The moment he came back -
he had with him his officer's uniform - the moment he
crossed the border, he was back in uniform.
Corps des Pages
In June, 1916, I graduated from the German Gymnasium and
entered the Corps des Pages - the equivalent of the West
Point Academy in the United States. My military training
was to last eight months. In normal peacetime, an officer's
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training lasted two years, however, because of the war we
were supposed to get the same training in only eight months,
which meant of course that a lot of theory and book learning
was sacrificed.
The first four months as a cadet I spent at a camp in
the vicinity of St. Petersburg. I had no trouble doing the
exercises we were required to do in camp; the riding, hurdles
and maneuvering were all easy for me. I hated the formal
drills and parade marches though, and because I hated all
these formalities they gave me the nickname "Partisan", a
word which at that time referred to untrained, nonregular
fighters against Napoleon's armies in 1812. Cadets had to
study also. We had to know all the regulations on cavalry
maneuvering, garrison rules, etc. After my studies at the
Gymnasium, which included many hours of Latin and Greek,
all this seemed like child's play, but I was very much
interested in the material. I read it carefully and knew
it by heart. As a result I always had top marks as a cadet,
which meant that I would be able to apply for a commission
in a regiment of the Guards. I was also a very good shot,
like my father. But when I first had learned to shoot while
hunting, under the guidance of Nikita, I developed the habit
of closing my right eye, aiming with my left eye, and shoot
ing fern my right shoulder. No one else around me could do
this, and cadets were forbidden to shoot this way. At camp,
my training officer put a kerchief over my left eye and made
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me shoot; I tried and almost shot the training officer in
the attempt. After that they left me alone. When I
graduated, I got second prize in the target shooting
contest and my training officer was dismayed, but happy
for me.
While I was a cadet in the Corps de Pages, my cousins
were also there. My mother and aunts rented a large house
at Tsarskoe Selo, a few miles away, and every Saturday my
mother's car came to our camp and brought us home to that
house for the weekend. There we walked in the Palace
gardens, went to outdoor concerts, etc. Some weekends when
I was on duty and had to stay at camp during the weekend,
other cadets on duty with me often talked about what they
liked to do on free weekends. They frequently went to
St. Petersburg. They had made many trips there before and
talked about visits to "forbidden places", about what they
did and who they saw - it all sounded very interesting to
me, although probably rather expensive. Still I had enough
pocket money - I had had an allowance since I was fifteen.
But it would have been difficult to explain to my mother
what I was doing in St. Petersburg on my own, so although
it sounded fascinating, I never got to go.
As cadets, most of the food we got was soldiers' food.
But in the evening we, being officer candidates, had our
own table where we could have dinner of food we had bought
ourselves. We bought our food from the "Jackals". These
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were people who came to camp at nightfall, selling things
which were not available officially - extra food,
cigarettes; they also had money to lend and could supply
us with both funds and interesting addresses in St. Peters
burg.
Although we were in training to become officers, we
were of course children at heart. One night when my cousin
Serge and I were at the table, we got into a conversation
about what things human beings were capable of eating.
Serge said that human beings were capable of eating any
thing and we made a bet on it. I was to make a mixture of
anything I wanted and he was to eat it. In a bowl I put
two sardines, some yoghurt, chopped melon, two tumblers of
vodka, and boiling water. Serge ate this, and promptly lost
both, his dinner and his bet.
My father dies
One day in July 1916, while visiting at Tsarskoe Selo,
Uncle Vladimir arranged for a group of us to make an
educational trip to a famous planetarium. We filled three
troikas and set off for the planetarium. The horses wore
bells, we had a picnic along the way and returned in great
spirits. When we returned, my uncle stood in front of the
house and waved at us to stop. Then he came to me and
embraced me. That day, July 16, 1916, my father had died
of a heart disease he had had for several months.
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My mother told me that he had had a premonition and called
her to his room. He asked her to open the window and said,
"My soul will fly out like a swallow. Please do not worry
or be upset. Vanya is only nineteen and too young to be
without a father, but the war is as good as won. Vanya
will have only to pick up the laurels." He died with this
impression of Russia in the summer of 1916.
Three days later my father was buried at Tsarskoe Selo
in great pomp. Dmitri Fedorovich came from Kodyma with a
bag of Kodyma earth to put into Father's grave. I got a
leave of absence from camp to go to Kodyma and Kamenka,
where my grandmother lived. Of course a telegram had been
sent to her, but because of the war it did not reach her.
My grandmother learned of Father's death when she read about
it in the St. Petersburg newspaper. She sent my mother a
telegram saying, "I am praying for my son. Don't worry
about me." After a short visit to Kodyma and Kamenka I
returned to camp. In September all cadets had to be in
St. Petersburg for the last four months of our training.
The buildings of the Corps des Pages in St. Petersburg were
too small to accomodate all of the wartime cadets, so I
lived at home during my military training in St. Petersburg.
Around Christmastime that year, I was invited to an
evening performance of the ballet at the Russian Imperial
Theatre. My school friend, Serge Lipsky, invited me and
told me that his cousin Nina would be there also, but when
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I asked my mother if I could go, she said, "What? The
ballet? On a week night?" I was supposed to go out only
on Saturdays and Sundays. So, although I was an officer
candidate, just months from battle, I agreed to stay home.
Half a century later I discussed with my friend Tatiana
this subject. She lives in San Francisco and has a grand
daughter also named Tatiana. The younger Tatiana is
seventeen, and half American. She is good looking, a smart
girl, and goes out quite often in the evening. When her
grandmother asks her what she has been doing, where she
went, whom she sees, the granddaughter says, "Grandma, you
belong to the dumb generation." Things were very different
when we were teenagers .
A secret communist takes a chauffeur job in our household
In 1916 we had a sturdy car and our driver was a man who
had previously been a coachman. He was not in the least
mechanically inclined. One day my mother asked a friend, a
member of the air force, to look over the car's engine.
He told her that the motor was filthy, all it lacked was a
crayfish inside, so Mother dismissed the driver and began
looking for a new chauffeur. She found a young man who
seemed intelligent and knew abaut cars. Part of his job
was to pick me up at the Military School every day at
4:00 p.m. One day he was not there and I took a cab home.
That night when I asked him why he had not been there, he
made up some story about engine trouble. I told him that
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he ought to be ashamed of himself - he was an intelligent
man and should not debase himself in that way. After that
his behavior was exemplary, although once he mentioned
obliquely that those women were very entertaining and great
fun. (I did not pursue the matter with him) .
Later, when the revolution began, there were disturbances
in the streets. Most cars were stopped by rabble or AWOL
soldiers and "requisitioned" to be used by members of
various revolutionary committees. Some chauffeurs actually
sold the cars of their employers and told them that the
car had been requisitioned. Our chauffeur, Berzin, never
did that. By that time I was not at home, having joined the
regiment, and Mother was alone. She did not have much need
for a chauffeur, but my Uncle Serge, who was a vice
president of the Duma, came to live with her and she put
Berzin at Uncle Serge's disposal. Uncle Serge stayed with
my mother in order to be closer to the Parliament offices.
It had become dangerous to be out in the streets after the
Revolution started, but Uncle Serge had to be able to get
to the Duma. So Berzin took him where he needed to go.
Eventually Uncle Serge asked my mother, "What kind of a
chauffeur have you got? There are roadblocks everywhere
and troops in the streets, but he always gets through. He
never has any problems and always has the necessary documents
for every particular roadblock" .
Once, my mother was afraid that gangs of Bolshevik
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emissaries would come and search the house, supposedly
looking for firearms, but as a pretext for looting, a
frequent occurence. So Mother put all the firearms we had
on the table in the dining room. When Berzin saw this he
asked her why, and she explained that she did not want them
to loot and destroy the apartment. Berzin told her to put
everything away and not to worry - there would be no
searches in our flat. And he was right.
Finally my mother had to tell him to sell the car.
Berzin did it and brought the money to my mother. Then he
kissed her hand and departed. That spring, in the carriage
house that had served as a garage, we found behind a pile
of wood stacks of Soviet propaganda literature that Berzin
had left there. Later our chauffeur became a diplomat; he
was the first Attache of the Soviet Embassy in Vienna.
The Sporting Club
In the fall of 1916 I was still in the uniform of the
military school, an officer cadet, and in that fall of 1916
nobody dreamed, of course, that these would be the last
months of Imperial Russia. Nobody expected the Revolution.
There was some political strife, as expected and predictable
in every country, but the thought of a huge explosion was
just considered crazy. Social life in the fall of 1916 was
somewhat dimmed because of the war; there were no big parties
and no big balls as in peacetime, and the teenagers did not
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know quite what to do and how to get together, so there
was organized a so-called sporting club. Some old ladies
grumbled and murmured, "Sporting club indeed. We believe
a better name would be 'flirting club 1 ".
The arrangement of that sporting club was, of course,
the brain child of Anyuta. A sporting club, like any club,
has to have a president, a vice president, a secretary, and
an assistant secretary. Even in those days the young
Russian generation had ideas of equality between men and
women. So if the elected president was a man, the vice
president had to be a girl; if the secretary was a man, the
assistant secretary had to be a girl. Besides, of course,
we were all bachelors and bachelorettes , and no married men
or women were eligible to become members of the club. But
members of the club were allowed, theoretically, to marry
one another. There was a founding session with a secret
ballot and to my great amazement I was unanimously elected
president of this club. And, of course, Anyuta was elected
vice president. A very close friend of mine, Count Nicholas
Pahlen, called Nicky, who was also an officer cadet and
would join the same regiment as I, was elected assistant
secretary, and the elected secretary was Countess Irina
Tolstoy.
Irina was an outstanding beauty. Of course, many
ladies visiting my mother smiled and said to her, "Your
little Vanya's secretary is much too beautiful." Many
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people imagined that I must be deeply in love with Irina
but that was never the case, we were only very good friends.
She was a remarkable secretary, highly efficient, energetic,
and she had the mind of a man. And it was not an easy job:
she had to keep accounts, to have lists of members, to
order railroad cars when we went on outings, to take care
of a villa which was on the outskirts of the city and where
we went, and she had her hands really full. As a secretary
I appreciated her enormously, but as for being in love or
even the slightest flirting, that was totally absent between
us, believe it or not.
At the time of the founding of the sporting club the
political situation in Petersburg was tense; there were
many legal, sometimes illegal, meetings of political clubs,
and my Uncle Nicholas, older brother of my mother, became
anxious and worried and said that if we called ourselves
members of a club, we would have to register this club
officially with the proper authorities, so I went to the
offices of the civilian governor of the city, Count
Sollogub. I presented to him the charter of our club and
its organization, and submitted a list with the names of all
club members. I was then only a candidate officer in the
uniform of a page of His Majesty's military school and I was
nineteen years old. When talking to the governor, I had
the impression that he was making terrible efforts to keep
his face straight, to have an official expression on his
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features and not to laugh about the whole business. Of
course, I got the club registered and all the red tape was
in order, but the fact that the club existed and that I,
a page of nineteen, was elected president made some
impression on society circles. And some people started
predicting for me a fantastically brilliant career in the
future. If at nineteen I was elected president of such a
club, probably before I became forty I would be Prime
Minister of Russia.
As this elected president I became, so to- say, famous.
Many mothers were finding me eventually eligible not only
because of the name Stenbock-Fermor , but also because this
name was always connected in St. Petersburg with the
legendary millions coming from the Ural Mountains to the
Alexander Stenbock-Fermor s. Anyhow, at nineteen a boy
(in spite of legendary millions that actually weren't there)
was not eligible because of his youth. However, one never
knew what might happen later, and so I got many invitations.
One of them came from the family of my high school friend,
Serge Lipsky, with whom I had spent seven years on the same
schoolroom bench. He had a cousin, Nina, about sixteen or
seventeen years old. She was tall and slim but very well
built, and she had two thick blond braids hanging way
below her waist, a peach complexion, and gray-blue eyes
like lakes. I thought that it would have been heavenly
to be drowned in those lakes. When I spoke to my mother in
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such enthusiastic terms about my meeting Nina, Mother
exclaimed suddenly, "Is your chair burning under you?"
But Mother was also upset because Nina belonged to a very
different circle of Petersburg society. She was one of the
daughters of a doctor of medicine. This doctor took care
of all the artists in the Russian Imperial theaters, ballet,
opera, and drama, a highly honorable situation. But to use
an expression that I learned many years later in the United
States, Nina's family did not "belong". That meant she was
not part of the Russian nobility. In my mother's defense,
I must say that she was not a snob.
After the Revolution, and many years later, in the year
1946 or 1947, I was living as an immigrant on Long Island,
New York, in a place called Sea Cliff. There was a colony
in that place that was close to the headquarters of the
United Nations, where many Russians were interpreters. At
a party at Sea Cliff I met a Russian gentleman whose last
name was Vladimirov. He introduced me to his wife, whose
features seemed to me familiar, resembling someone that I
used to know and remember well. She was addressed by every
body as Olga Feodorovna, as it is a custom in Russia to
address people by their first name and the name of their
father. So her father's name, Theodore, and her familiar
features made me ask Mr. Vladimirov if his wife's maiden
name was not Lipsky. This gentleman looked at me in
surprise and said, "Why yes, it is, but how did you know?"
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I smiled and said, "Then your wife must be Nina's sister."
And he told me that I was right. "But where is Nina?" I
was then married already, twice. He told me that Nina and
her husband were living in New York. "Does she ever come
to see you?" I asked. "Oh yes," he answered, "of course,
she comes quite often." Well, my wife and I spent several
months in Sea Cliff and I met this gentleman again many
times, so one day I asked him, "Why does Nina never come;
I see you often but I never see Nina." And then Vladimirov
smiled and said, "Nina does not want to come". And when I
asked him why, he told me that when he had mentioned me to
Nina she said, "I want Vanya to remember me as I was in the
old days." Then Vladimirov explained that Nina, through
out all the passed years, had become unusually stout, and
that nothing remained of the Nina that I had known thirty
years earlier. Probably she was still coquettish and
did not want me to see her so very much changed from the
days of our youth.
We rented a villa for the club, about one hour's rail
road trip toward Finland, and this place, near the village
of Finns called Yukki, became very popular indeed. There
were hillocks, but not very big hills as in Switzerland, and
any poor skier could show his skill without breaking his neck,
For Christmas, 1916, we decided to have at the villa a
Christmas tree and a big party. It was not easy to convince
the mothers of the girls that this would be absolutely proper.
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In those days young girls were never supposed to go any
where without being chaperoned. Every girl of those families,
of the so-called "high society" of St. Petersburg, had a
chaperone, usually an English governess. Anyuta also had
an English governess. This governess seemed to us very
old - she must have been close to forty. She was very
active and sportive and had a lot of tact. She knew when
to be present and when to disappear - never too far away -
and she had a sense of knowing when to reappear again and
whether her reappearance at that moment was wanted or not
did not bother her at all. So she was the one who chaperoned
all the girls at that Christmas party.
Almost bordering Petersburg, not more than twenty miles
away, was the boundary between Russia and Finland. Finland
had belonged to Russia since the beginning of the 19th
century, but Finland was a kind of separate country. The
Tsar's title was "Tsar of Russia and Grand Duke of Finland."
We went right to the border of Finlad, where the population
was already Finnish. It was still Russia, though, and
going across the border into Finland was much too complicated,
tied up with all kinds of red tape as the Americans say.
For the Christmas party it was my idea to go to the
villa not on trains, for once, but in sleighs with the
Russian classical troika, as it was often done in peacetime.
There was in St. Petersburg an organization which hired
horse-drawn carriages, with two horses or with one horse.
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We had such a carriage. Most people rented their carriage
instead of keeping their own horses which they might have
brought from their estates. If one of your hired horses
got lame and you were stuck, then the organization would
replace that horse with another; or, if one coachman was
sick or drunk, you would get another coachman. So I got in
touch with that organization and arranged to have troikas.
The troikas were very festive, with bells all over the
harnesses, and they were decorated with ribbons. So when
those troikas pulled up on the Palace Quay, in front of the
Obolenskys ' house, facing the Neva River, to my surprise
and disgust they were not sleighs, but some kind of boxes
that could hold fifteen to twenty people, of course, on
runners so they could ride on the snow, but harnessed to
those boxes were four horses in a row instead of three. All
the poetical aspect of the troikas with the silver jingle of
bells described so much in Russian literature was absent.
Anyhow, we got into those boxes which, of course, with their
four horses could not go as fast as a troika, and after a
lengthy drive finally arrived at Yukki.
There was a Christmas tree and surrounding it were all
kinds of fine edible things. As president of the club I
had to make a speech of welcome. I made a short speech,
which later in my life I have repeated on many occasions
and at many gatherings; I have repeated it in Russian, in
French, in German, and even in English when I was teaching
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at Stanford, and always with the same great success and
thunderous applause. I stood up and, holding a glass in
my hand, said, "Let us all drink to the girls, because
without them it would be like having a Christmas tree
without the candles."
Before graduating from Cadet School
About a month before graduation, all the officer cadets
had to go on maneuvers, and the maneuvers were held in the
region of Yukki. All the club girls went to the villa to
warm themselves, to change clothes, and to eat. They were
there on a picnic, hoping that some of the pages would some
how get lost during the maneuvers, take a wrong turn, and
find themselves at the villa in Yukki. They expected us to
be part-time deserters. So the maneuvers went on and it so
happened that I did take a wrong turn, and I did become a
part-time deserter. I was the only one to reach the villa
at Yukki and rather late, too. The girls were already
about to leave in great disappointment, so you can imagine
how welcome I was when I arrived. From the villa I had to
get hold of a sleigh and a Finn to drive me back so that I
could suddenly reappear at the headquarters of the maneuvers.
When the maneuvers were over and it was already getting
dark, we entrained to go back to St. Petersburg, the enlisted
men in boxcars while the officers entrained in first class.
There was no possible communication between the cars as the
train rolled on. It was quite a warm December; we were very
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much elated at becoming officers so soon and we had to let
off some steam. Now I insist that there was no alcohol
among us, it was just an elation of youth. We opened the
doors of those boxcars and started shooting salvos. Of
course they were blank cartridges. And as the train rolled
on, we were shooting one salvo after another. The officers
heard the salvos but they could do nothing. In wartime all
the railroad tracks were guarded and our railroad tracks
were guarded, too, by old, bearded reservists who, hearing
the shooting, panicked. They telephoned the commandant of
the garrison in St. Petersburg, saying that there was a
mutiny of some kind by a unit, moving toward the city and
firing salvos right and left out of the train. Well, when
we arrived in one of the central railroad stations of
St. Petersburg, we saw that there was a battalion of army
police waiting for us with machine guns and in full battle
dress, to repulse the invaders and the unit in mutiny. And
who did they see arriving? The cadets of His Majesty's Corps
des Pages. That was a very eventful arrival.
The next day, in the barracks of our officer cadet
school, we were all lined up in formation. The director's
usual greeting to us was "How are you, Pages?" And our
answer was, in free translation, "We wish your Excellency
good health." The director was, of course, a general, and
this time, which will always remain unforgettable, the
general came up to where we stood, not saying a word. He
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paced up and down the ranks, and in his rage he was actually
incapable of uttering a word. Then he addressed our ranks
in a most unusual way by calling us "Mal'chishki" , which
means "youngsters", or small boys in general, but this time
it meant "naughty boys", and this word was not complimentary
but definitely offensive. As this was not a greeting, the
regulations required that we remain mute. Then the general
calmed down a little and said, "Boys, you should be ashamed
of yourselves. In little more than a month from now you are
going to be officers, responsible people, and what did you
do, how did you behave? Probably you did not realize what
you were doing, but you must have been aware that the
general situation in Russia is at present very tense and you
did this silly thing of shooting salvos. Now I command,
those who shot the salvos, two paces forward, march." And
all 360 pages stepped two paces forward. Naturally, the
general could not put all 360 pages under arrest on the eve
of their promotion to officers, so finally the whole incident
had to be hushed somehow and forgotten. But if something
similar had happened in the reign of Emperor Nicholas I,
almost one-hundred years earlier, none of us ever would
have been promoted to officers, but degraded to the ranks
of plain soldiers and sent to some obscure infantry regi
ment fighting somewhere beyond the Caucasus.
I mentioned before that Mother was not a snob, on the
contrary. Because of the official position of her father,
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and later her husband, Mother had the right to go to all the
court receptions given by the Tsar in the Winter Palace;
Mother never once went to any such reception. When asked
why, she always answered, "I do not want to be one of the
crowd." Well when Mother was seventeen she graduated from
a private school for girls, and then she was asked by her
parents, "Now what do you want to do?" She replied, "I want
to go to the University." Her parents were very surprised
by her sudden and unexpected answer, for in those days girls
could not go- to the University but there were courses for
girsl taught by professors from the University and the
course was almost the same. When these girls graduated
they usually became school teachers. Mother got her
diploma when she was nineteen but she never became a
teacher because she married my father. My father had a
court rank; he was Honorary Master of the Imperial Hunt.
This was a purely honorary position and did not bring any
money. On the contrary, it cost him money. He had a very
brilliant court uniform that he had to purchase out of his
own pocket, but having that position of Master of the Hunt,
Father felt that he was obliged to attend the big court
receptions held about three times a year at the Winter
Palace in the presence of the Emperor, the Empress Alexandra,
the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna, all the Imperial
family, the Diplomatic Corps, Statesmen and Court Chamber
lains in gold embroidered coats, generals in brilliant
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uniforms and blazing decorations, officers from the Imperial
Guards in all kinds of full dress uniforms, ladies wearing
gorgeous Court dresses, and ladies of society covered with
precious glittering jewels. Those receptions, with the
bright gleam of women's dresses, the varying uniforms of
blue and green and scarlet, and the dazzle of jewels and
decorations, were a fantastic shifting mass of color, an
unforgettable picture which stunned everybody by its in
comparable beauty and splendor and by the magnificence, which
had a kind of' magic in it.
Now I want to give a description of the Court dresses -
they were copies of a Russian national dress of many
centuries ago and were all made alike (but the "dames du
palais" and the young "demoiselles d'honneur" had different
colors) in the old traditional form of close-fitting bodices,
cut low off the shoulders (which was contrary to the old
times) , and set with jewelled buttons. They were made of
stiffly embroidered satin, the long heavy trains slung from
the shoulders, and soft tulle veils hung from the diadem-
shaped "kokoshnik" , which were always made of the same color
as the dress and the train, sown with pearls and precious
stones. Centuries ago the Russian woman would never have
put on such a low-cut dress with bare arms, because in her
opinion such a dress was a great sin which would bring her
immediately and forever to hell. The trains were extremely
long and heavy and it was a problem to learn how to walk and
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to turn around when wearing those dresses. All the ladies
of the Imperial family wore similar dresses, including the
Empress, and each of them had attached to her a page from
the officer candidates' school. I was never in such a
function because I joined the army during the war, when
there were no court receptions. These specially chosen
pages had to carry the long trains, and when the ladies
turned a corner they had to bend down and quickly make the
long train sweep around the corner so that the lady should
not stumble. I was told that to perform this' thing was
rather difficult because the page could not just grab the
dress and lift it up, showing the shoes of the lady, which
was considered highly indecent. So the pages had to
exercise to do that properly and gracefully in a gallant
way. The colonel, inspector of the school, taught them how
to do it. At school there was a big ballroom where the
colonel used to strut back and forth, having attached to
his spurs a long rag for wiping the floor. He turned
around and around, and the pages had to pretend they were
escorting the Empress or one of the Grand Duchesses and
learn how to carry a train, now represented by a rag.
As I said, my mother never went to any of these court
receptions, but my Aunt Nadya Tolstoy, my favorite aunt, who
was a widow, loved them and always attended, escorted by my
father. My father used to laugh, saying, "It is wonderful
to go to these receptions with Nadya, because if the crowd
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gets somewhere near a little dense, she immediately says,
'Oh, I am fainting, I am fainting,' and then the crowd
makes room for us and we precede unhindered, and because
of Nadya we are always in the front rows of every recept
ion." To behave in such a manner was typical for Aunt
Nadya.
Graduation from Military School
After eight months' training during wartime, we cadets
became officers. That is, we looked like officers, we
marched, dressed, and saluted as was expected. We knew the
regulations as they had been written some fifty years
before, but this training had little in common with the
realities of World War I. Upon graduating, we knew less
than any soldier who had been in the ranks since the
beginning of the war. But we graduated from the Corps des
Pages on February 1, 1917.
In peacetime the Tsar usually came to the school
graduation to congratulate the new officers, and it was a
great event. There was little festivity at my graduation.
An obscure general, the commander of the St. Peterburg
garrison, congratulated us, and there was little more to
the ceremony than that. There was a dinner for all 360 of
us new officers that night at the Hotel Astoria and in
other circumstances we would have gathered afterwards in
small groups of friends to paint St. Petersburg red. But
at that time there was a war, and it was also the eve of a
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great church holiday. As a result, all the Imperial
theaters, the ballet, the opera and drama, and the private
theaters were closed. So some went to disreputable places,
others went to the outskirts of St. Petersburg to listen
to gypsy music, but none of these things appealed to me
or to my friend Nicky Lvov. Nicky decided simply to go
home, and I took him in my car. Nicky's aunt was the
Princess Obolensky, wife of Alexis Obolensky, whose daughter
was Anyuta. When we arrived at the Obolensky "s house,
Nicky's family rushed to meet us, thinking something was
wrong, but they discovered that we had chosen to come home
and they made a feast for us. Prince Obolensky, then
curator of the Holy Synod (the Synod coordinated the affairs
of the Church) , brought champagne and toasted the two new
officers and then we all had supper.
Nicky was a wonderful musician. There was a piano in
the huge dancing hall, which was dark and empty. That night
Nicky played the piano while Anyuta and I danced. Nicky
played for hours and we waltzed and eventually we danced
over to the huge windows which looked out on the Neva.
Behind the heavy drapes Anyuta and I admired the fantastic
view of the frozen river, the gilded dome of the Fortress
of St. Peter and St. Paul, and the blue night sky. Anyuta
was very close to me behind the heavy drapes and the
situation seemed full of promise. But fate decided other
wise. After I left at 2:00 a.m. that morning I never saw
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Anyuta again.
I left to join my regiment the next day. Several days
later, the Revolution began. The upheaval that it caused
changed the course of the world. Event took me to south
Russia and Anyuta stayed in St. Petersburg. She knew a
great deal about art, objets d'art, paintings, etc. During
the course of the Revolution many works of art were con
fiscated and a commissar was put in charge of these things.
His name was Lunacharsky. He was an intelligent man and a
lover of art and he gathered all of these works of art
together and moved them to the Hermitage in order to save
them from looters. Anyuta was his assistant. It was even
rumored that he was in love with her. This did not surprise
me for she had great charm. While working with Lunacharsky,
even though she was not a Bolshevik, she was able to get
jobs for others who needed them. Lunacharsky was eventually
accused of harboring counter-revolutionaries under the
pretext of saving art.
Years later Anyuta married a Swede who was a graduate
of the Imperial Lycee. They went back to Sweden and raised
a family. During World War II when Hitler terrorized Europe,
Anyuta, as a Swede, was able to help many Russians in Germany.
Once, at a party in New York, I met Anyuta 's younger sister.
The last time I had seen her in St. Petersburg, she had been
in a nursery. In New York she was a married lady. She
beamed when she saw me and said that she would write to Anyuta
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to tell her that she had met me. She was sure that Anyuta
would be thrilled.
Finally I am an officer and join my regiment
After my promotion and after one week of visiting friends
and officials, I left by train to join my regiment. We were
seven young men all joining the same regiment, and I was the
senior because I had the best grades at the promotion. Now,
as of today, I am the only one left of those seven young men.
The seven, and I would like to immortalize them here, were
Count Grokholsky, Count Pahlen, two Dovgiello brothers,
Oznobishin, Teplyakov, and myself. On the eve of our
departure, Mother invited all my six comrades for supper at
our house. At that time we had an excellent cook; he was
an old man who had served Mother's father in the days when
my grandfather held great official dinners. While a very
young assistant cook at my grandfather's, Arseniy was sent
to Paris at my grandfather's expense to learn French cooking
and French pastry, and in this art he became a true expert.
When he returned from Paris, he served at my grandfather's
until my grandfather's death, and then he served the ambassa
dor of Turkey as an assistant cook. From the Turkish cooks
he learned all the oriental delicacies and became one of the
most famous cooks in St. Petersburg. One day, Mother was
looking for a cook and there came Arseniy. He was quite a
figure, and he said to my mother, "Your Ladyship, I have
heard that you are looking for a cook." My mother replied,
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"Yes, Arseniy, but I know what kind of a cook you are and
you know the way we live, we don't give big parties and so
on. What would you do in our house?" "In my old days,"
replied Arseniy, "I wish to serve the daughter of my late
master." So he became our cook, and with time was actually
considered as a member of the family.
One day during the war, when the sale of alcohol was
forbidden by decree of the Tsar and was available only on
prescription by a doctor, our doctor, who was a friend of
the family, came to Mother, saying, "Your staff, headed by
your cook, has demanded that I make out a prescription to
the drug store for a bucket of pure alcohol. I am ready to
sign it, but I thought it my duty to tell you about Arseniy
and his ordering this bucket of alcohol" (I think it must
have been roughly five gallons of pure alcohol) . My
mother said, "Very well," and then she called Arseniy and
asked him, "Why do you need such an amount of pure alcohol?"
And in the very familiar way of an old servant, Arseniy asked
my mother if she ever saw him drunk. Mother replied, "Thank
God, no, never, and I do not want to." "Well," Arseniy
said, "and you never will see me drunk, but I do need a glass
of alcohol every day. " He diluted that alcohol with plain
water to the strength of vodka, and so, in his old age, he
drank that amount of alcohol every day. When the Revolution
broke out, prices skyrocketed; many things were unobtainable
and one had to do sometimes almost with nothing. So one day
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Arseniy said to my mother, "I must leave you because I can
not cook in this new revolutionary way." He retired to a
little house of his that he had bought in Finland and I
never saw him again.
But on the eve of my leaving to join the regiment,
Arseniy distinguished himself in preparing that supper for
me and my friends. There was a huge turkey with all the
trimmings. There were all kinds of tidbits, and although
we were not yet adults but officers, we all had a drink
or two of vodka. Then Arseniy produced a dish which he knew
was my favorite: mashed, sweetened chestnuts with a moun
tain of whipped cream in the middle. And to my horror, on
top of the whipped cream was a count's crown made of sugar,
what we called "bird sugar". I did not like it at all be
cause I thought that it looked very snobbish, and of course
my friends smiled though after all, out of seven of us,
three had the title of count. Anyhow, we ate up every
thing that was there and then we departed to join the
regiment.
At that time the regiment was in deep reserve, far
behind the actual front lines. Everybody expected that in
the spring of 1917 Russia would start an offensive, for we
all knew that Germany was almost eshausted and could not
fight much longer.* In order to cover their exhaustion and
* I remember reading the memoirs of Winston Churchill, who
wrote that in the spring of 1917 Russia did not even need to
go over to an offensive. Russia just had to hold the line
and thus make the Germans keep part of their army facing the
Russian lines. That would have been enough.
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fear, the Germans worked hard to bring down the spirit and
the discipline in Russia by fomenting and aiding the
Revolution. Their agents were all over Russia, encouraging
unrest and working hand in hand with Russian intellectuals,
most of them left-leaning Socialists. The Germans wanted
the disintegration of Russia for obvious reasons and to that
pack of Socialists like Kerensky (then an obscure lawyer
and member of the Duma) and many others, victory for
Imperial Russia would be unthinkable, the death knell for
all their propaganda to tear down Tsar ism and Imperial Russia,
There were also many Americans, emigres from Russia, who
were for the success of the Revolution and the downfall of
Imperial Tsarist Russia. All those forces were abetting
the Revolution and exploiting the difficult situation as to
food supplies. Contrary to what people said and heard, food
in Russia was in plenty. The whole problem was in getting
that food to the big cities. Most railroad boxcars were
requisitioned for the transportation of troops. The rail
road tracks had been, since the beginning of the war, in
disrepair, trains rolled slowly, and among the railroad
personnel there were many Socialists who exercised plain
sabotage. All of this created an artificial shortage of
food supplies in the big cities like Moscow and Petersburg.
But in the days of my promotion and joining the regiment,
I knew nothing about all this. I was interested in sport,
in riding, and in waging war against the Germans, charging
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them on my steed, sabre in hand, as described in the novel
"War and Peace", by Tolstoy. However, the methods of war
had changed by this time, but I did not realize it. When
I joined the regiment I had, of course, to report to the
headquarters. The commander of the regiment was a rather
rough man, personally very brave. When I presented myself
to him and stood at attention, surrounded by other officers,
he looked at me and said, "Lieutenant, do you shave your
moustache?" Still standing at attention, I replied, "It
does not yet grow, Your Excellency." This was, of course,
greeted by a roar of laughter from the other officers.
I was assigned to the Third Squadron because a relative
of mine had been in that squadron long before and another
distant relative of mine, also a Stenbock, was in that
squadron, and four months before that, my cousin Andre had
joined the same squadron. So, unofficially, it was never
referred to as the Third Squadron, but was called the
Stenbock-Fermor Squadron. We officers, who were of almost
the same rank and age, were given nicknames by the soldiers
so they could distinguish us. One of my cousins, for heaven
knows what reason, was given the nickname of Chyapkin. This
word is meaningless in Russian, so nobody knows its origin
or meaning, but it became very popular. Once a Corps
Commander visited and inspected our squadron, and each
of the horses in our squadron had to be brought before him.
He wanted to know what state our horses were in because
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fodder was scarce, and a soldier had to stand in front of
him with each horse and report: "So-and-so horse belonging
to such-and-such officer", first giving the name of the
horse and then the name of the officer. Of course next to
the Corps Commander stood the Regimental Commander and all
the high brass, and up walked a soldier leading my cousin's
horse, who was then on leave, and reported in a loud voice:
"Horse so-an-so belonging to Lieutenant Count Chyapkin."
Hearing this name, the Regimental Commnder raored, and
everybody else had a good laugh as well. And naturally,
after that, that name of Chyapkin stuck in the whole division
and sometimes, by mistake, some clerk would put in an
official report, "Officer of the day, Lieutenant Count
Chyapkin. "
The name of this very distant relative was not Stenbock-
Fermor, but just Stenbock, Herman Stenbock. He was my age,
he had finished the same high school as I had one year ahead
of me, and then had gone to the same military school I did.
He graduated a year ahead of me, we both joined the same
regiment, and he was always considered my cousin. The
Stenbock-Fermor family in Petersburg was numerous, and
because of my great Uncle Alexander's branch of the family,
each time the name of Stenbock-Fermor was mentioned it was
connected with the many, many millions of gold rubles that
the other branch had. Everybody knew the name Stenbock-
Fermor and addressed my cousin as Count Stenbock-Fermor, and
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each time he took great offense so that sometimes he even
made himself ridiculous.
My commander, Prince Guedroitz
When I joined the regiment and because it was in deep
reserve, most of the officers were on leave and there was
only my Squadron Commander and myself. The Commander's
name was Prince E. E. Guedroitz. This name was orginally
Lithuanian and the descendants of that name were of the
royal family founded in 840 by a Prince Guedimin.
Of course in a war not only can a soldier be crippled
or even killed, but he loses some of the discipline which
has been trained into him by peacetime parades. So Prince
Gedroitz received a complaint from a very old woman where
our squadron was stationed. It was that a soldier had
stolen from her half a dozen eggs, and he ordered me to
make an investigation. Before I start to tell about the
investigation, I must tell that Prince Gedroitz went to war
with seven pairs of riding boots. He could not visualize
being at war with less than seven pairs of riding boots.
One pair was ordinary riding boots, the second pair was
another pair of ordinary riding boots that he put on to
give time to his orderly to clean those that were dirty.
Then he had a bigger pair of riding boots with stockings
in them in case of cold. Then he had one pair of riding
boots, peacetme riding boots, that were lacquered and shiny
like a mirror. That shows you the kind of man he was.
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Besides that he was very short and all the men of the
regiment were, in peacetime, chosen for their height. And
Prince Gedroitz had recently married a very beautiful girl
and she was taller than he and he resented very much her
vigor and his height, and besides, he was very short
sighted. He was a remarkably well trained drill master in
peacetime but he disliked the sound of explosives or the
sound of rifle fire or machine gun fire too close to where
he happened to be. That is, he was not much of a warrior.
But he knew all the instructions and all the paragraphs of
Army Regulations inside out and backwards and forward.
So he gave me orders to make an investigation. That
was in early Spring and in that part of Russia there was
bottomless mud that stuck to my boots and I had to wade from
the village into each peasant's home where our soldiers were
lodged. I asked and found out all that I could about the
old woman and her half dozen eggs. It was rejected by
Prince Gedroitz because I had not mentioned the origins of
the woman and her background and the background of the
soldier according to paragraph so-and-so of Army Regulations,
So I had to rewrite the report. Once more I presented my
report to Prince Gedroitz and once more it was rejected be
cause I had used regular sized paper and had not left enough
margins on the right and left sides of the text. Well, the
reader can imagine how frustrated and how mad I was with my
commander. I did not know what to do, but finally the
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Master Sergeant of the squadron took pity on me and when I
went to him privately he said to me with a broad smile,
"Your Lordship, why don't you ask the clerk of the squadron
to write the report for you. You will just have to sign it
and you will give the clerk a tip, and I bet the report
will be accepted."
In spite of the mud, we had to exercise the men and the
horses. Outside of the village we found an elevated place
where the squadron could maneuver and the commander rode
away a certain distance with his bugler following him, and
then the bugler played the commands. An officer was
supposed to recognize by that music which commands he should
give. Now from my early childhood, I have been tone-deaf.
As one of my great aunts said, "The nurse did not properly
pay attention and an elephant must have stepped on your
ear." I could not distinguish the music of a waltz from the
music of a polka and therefore at dancing lessons and
children's parties I was always late in asking the girl
I wanted to dance with because I did not know what they
were dancing. And then of course I got the worst looking
girl. Now I stood in front of the squadron and there was
the bugler palying something and I had no idea what it was.
The squadron commander yelled from far away, "Lieutenant,
please, kindly (but he used some rough words) will you
command the squadron?" Well then the Master Sergeant,
required by regulations to be behind the deployed squadron,
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rode out and rode up to me and whispered into my ear what
was being played. The captain immediately yelled, "Master
Sergeant, kindly take your regular place." So the Master
Sergeant had to go behind the squadron again and there I was.
And there again was the bugler, bugling something, and at
random I uttered, at the top of my voice, a command that was
wrong and all the deployed squadron broke out in laughter.
Of course I was mad and Prince Gedroitz realized at that
moment that it was against regulations in this event to
make a young officer a laughing stock in front of the
soldiers, so he came down and took over the command and I
.followed. We came back to our quarters and dismounted and
the commander of the squadron came up to me and in a very
official, dry tone said, "Lieutenant, please note the
commands and study them." And of course I saluted and said,
"Yes, Sir." When he went away I called the bugler and said
to him, "From now on you will give me lessons; of course I
will pay privately for those lessons." So the bugler was
enchanted and asked me, "Sir, when will you order that we
begin?" And I said to him, "Tomorrow morning at five
o'clock in the morning." He blinked and agreed.
We were located, as I mentioned, in a small house. The
hall of that house was two stories high and had big windows.
Behind the hall was a large room where the officers lived,
and behind that large room there was a small room where the
squadron commander lived all by himself. I closed the doors
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and windows of the big hall and I knew the sounds would not
carry far enough to alert the squadron, and when the bugler
came at five o'clock and asked, "what do you command today?"
I told him "Blow the Alarm". And he did. And the resonance
in that closed hall was terrific when the bugler played
the Alarm. Three seconds later Prince Gedroitz, in high
boots and pajamas, jumped out of his little room and yelled,
"What is happening? What is going on?" I stood at attention
and said, "According to your orders, Sir, I am learning the
commands." He was furious and he yelled at me and said,
"Kindly choose another time for learning."
About two years later fate brought us together again
under very different circumstances and a different relation
ship came up between us and we became great good friends.
He was a very educated person and had read many very serious
books, but he really should have been born two centuries
earlier.
I learn about life in the Regiment
The other officers came back after their leaves had
expired and we decided to give a party for the many officers
of other squadrons. At such parties there was a lot of food
and a lot of drinking, and my squadron had the unusual luck
of having among our soldiers a fantastic professional cook.
This man was very dedicated; his name was Samsonov. Before
having been drafted into the Reserves he had been a secret
police agent and a trainer of police dogs. Food was
- 167 -
plentiful because there was a supply center for the whole
division where one could buy delicacies that had been
brought from the city. Otherwise eggs, butter, meat, and
poultry could be bought in some of the local villages. So
with the delicacies from the city, the local food, and the
fantastic cooking of Samsonov, I never ate better than from
the moment I went to war.
There was also a string band made up of soldiers and
they played all kinds of music to entertain the officers.
That was of course a tradition that went back to the days
before the reforms in the army under Tsar Alexander II, when
soldiers were serfs in uniforms and officers were gentlemen
officers. It was customary that the senior officer present,
in this case Prince Gedroitz, should take a glass of vodka
and present it to a junior officer, who then had to drink
it all to the health of the captain of our regiment while
the musicians played a tune for the occasion. But here
came the problem. I knew that our regiment had a reputation
of quite solid drinking and we were getting young officers
drunk, and I was afraid that if I got drank I Might make a
fool of myself, so in advance I had Bade the decision not
to drink a drop of alcohol. There was the Captain and in
his hand a glass of vodka for me, a junior officer, and I
was teHifvy hia, "I am very honored. Sir, but: I never drink
anything." He stood like a fool with the drink and the
did not know what to play and it was a disaster.
- 168 -
But it was, of course, only a party, there was nothing
official about it, so the next day I could not be asked to
appear on regular notice. The next evening two of my
cousins and two other officers in my regiment came up to
me in a very friendly way and said, "Vanya, yesterday you
spoiled for us the whole evening. It is quite impossible,
you cannot do that, you cannot do that." I told them in
good Russian to go to Hell and told them I would like to
see an officer in the Horse Guards transferred to some
other unit in wartime because that officer refused to drink.
Of course it could not be done. Then came the intervention
of the senior colonel, von Wahl. He was a Baltic German and
a very clever man and he was a friend of my family. He had
found a solution, and he said to me quite unofficially,
"Vanya, to avoid any future friction, I am going to appoint
you Officer of the Day each time there is some occasion
where there is some drinking. An Officer of the Day wears
his field outfit and his cap anywhere, outdoors and indoors,
and everyone can see who the Officer of the Day is. He can
drink whatever he likes, but according to the Regulations
nobody dares offer him a drink." So that was a very clever
solution by the colonel.
We were entrained at Easter of that same year (1917) but
the train was standing still and not far from the tracks
there was a little village with a little church where Easter
Mass was being celebrated. Of course none of us dared leave
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the train because we never knew when the train would move
on. All of a sudden there came Samsonov and some soldiers,
all of them carrying trays full of Easter eggs and all the
classical Easter foods and goodies that were a very ancient
and lovely Easter tradition. How and when Samsonov
managed to bake and to cook and put together all this while
on the move, remains to me a mystery.
The Tsar abdicates
^MMMM^H^HMMHM^^MB^H^MM^M^H^M
Some of the officers returning from Petersburg mentioned
that the situation there was very tense; there were rumors
of disorders in the factories, of demonstrations, and of a
lack of food supplies, especially bread. It came out later
that this lack of supplies was quite artificial. It was
created by the revolutionaries, the socialists, and all those
who wanted to provoke disorders and to make the Russian army
weak and unfit to continue the war. German secret agents
were all over and in the factories they allied themselves
with the working class. There were many intellectual
Russians who were socialists and for them Russia's
winning the war would be a disaster. They did all they
could to subvert and poison the army, especially the reserve
battalions that were stationed in Petersburg, and they
succeeded.
I do not intend now to rewrite or to talk about all the
events of the Russian Revolution of 1917 because so many
books have been written about it, great scholarly books by
- 170 -
people who knew more than I did at the time. I was only
twenty, so what could I know about the general situation
in the country and in politics. But the disintegration
after the abdication of the Tsar went on rapidly. Two
weeks before the abdication everybody expected big up
heavals in the capitol city. There were rumors that our
Guard Division would be entrained and brought back to
St. Petersburg for the support of law and order but if the
Tsar gave such orders to his Chief of Staff, General Gurko,
he never followed up the orders. I do not know whether
they were formal orders or a suggestion of the Tsar or just
a wish that it would be a good idea. Instead of an order
calling the Guards back to Petersburg, a very unusual order
came that all junior officers from all regiments of the
Guards' cavalry should be sent individually, followed by
their orderlies, to inspect roads in the westward region,
the region that had been taken back from the Austrian armies
not so long ago. That order was, of course, absolutely
idiotic, because the roads were quagmires, some of them were
still covered with snow, and the rivers were impossible to
cross.
It was clear to everybody that this order had come from
Headquarters for the purpose of making our Guard Division,
all four Regiments, helpless because all junior officers
were somewhere in the backwoods and could not even be
summoned back before they had completed their jobs. We were
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given two weeks to complete the job. On the route where I
stopped with my orderly to have some food, I can remember
the great pine trees and the tables in the open air where
Red Cross girls were helping out with the food, and I can
remember that there was a radio receiver connected to the
outside world and that evening we heard the news that the
Tsar had abdicated. When I told it to my orderly, he
started weeping. At the same table was sitting an old, gray-
haired army colonel, and when he heard the tragic news, he
started sobbing and he said, "Now that the Tsar has abandoned
us I am going to serve the Sultan of Turkey." That old
colonel had been brought up with the notion that he had to
serve a master, and his master was the Tsar, who held his
power by the Grace of God and was annointed in the Moscow
Cathedral in a great, great ceremony. For that colonel, the
Tsar's word was God's word, and he reigned and he ordered by
the Grace of God. And now this old colonel was deprived of
the Tsar that he loved, and so sobbing and weeping he
decalred that he would go to the Turks, the arch enemy of
V I
all Russia, and serve the Sultan. You have to really
comprehend the state of mind of an old Russian line officer
to understand the tragic meaning of what he was saying.
Well anyhow, orders being orders, the next morning we
preceded to our task, but of course there was no question
of mapping the roads. I rode, my horse stumbling in the mud,
and I found trenches not so long ago occupied by Austrian
- 172 -
infantry. Some of the trenches were of course knocked into
a state of total destruction by Russian artillery, but some
that the Austrians had left in panic after they were sur
rounded were in perfect order. I marvelled at those
trenches. The floors and the sides were made out of birch
wood. Birches were growing there all over the place - there
was no end to birch trees. All the connections were laid
out with birch pavements and there were signs saying, "to
Company so-and-so", "To Headquarters Regiment", all
typically German. The trenches looked like some sort of
fairyland for children playing in the woods.
I bungled my job of mapping, letting my fancy play
around with where roads ought to be, and after three days
in the woods I came to a road that was in good condition
and started back to where I expected to join the Headquarters
of my Regiment. On that road I accidentally ran into a car
that my regimental commander was driving. Now commanders in
those days were not supposed to have cars but this man was
extremely wealthy and had this old car in the regiment at
his own expense. He ordered me to get into the car and
said that my orderly would bring the horses back to the
squadron, and then he gave me all the details that he knew
about the happenings in Petersburg and the abdication of the
Tsar; again, those events have been described in so many
books that I am not going to repeat them, only I was very
very happy that we had left Petersburg almost on the eve of
- 173 -
those events, because when those events did take place in
Petersburg there was fighting in the streets and many
officers were murdered by the mob just because they were
officers.
THE FIRST REVOLUTION
("Kerenschina" , first days of March 1917)
Early days of the revolution
In early 1917, under the government of Kerensky, receiv
ing a commission as an officer was as good as receiving one's
death sentence. A person in uniform, with golden epaulettes
on his shoulders indicating his rank and unit, was in real
danger of being shot. Hatred of officers was widespread at
the time I was promoted to the rank of officer and I wonder
ed why that was so. I came to some conclusions after
Captain Wadim Kushelev told me about an incident that had
occurred in 1914 at the very beginning of World War I.
He was on a reconnaissance mission with the first squad
ron of the Horse Guard Regiment and they were approaching a
group of houses in East Prussia that were occupied by
German infantry. Kushelev ordered his men to dismount.
One out of every three soldiers took a horse and two other
horses belonging to the soldiers next to him and moved out
of the firing range. The remaining soldiers, roughly 120
of them, moved or crawled under fire toward the houses.
When Kushelev considered that they were close enough to
charge on foot, he yelled, "Hurrah! Horse Guards follow me!"
- 174 -
and holding his sabre high above his head he charged just
as he had learned in military school when on summer maneuvers.
Kushelev was tall and an excellent athlete. He ran quickly
toward the houses and when he got there he dropped to the
ground and opened fire with his rifle. When he looked
around him, he saw that only the master sergeant and about
a dozen soldiers were with him. The rest of his men were
lying on the ground far behind him, still firing. He and
the few men who had followed him found themselves caught
in the crossfire. Kushelev managed to crawl back and the
skirmish ended when the Germans fled under fire of a
Russian artillery unit.
This little skirmish taught Captain Kushelev a lesson
that he remembered for the rest of the war. After this,
when his cavalry squadron approached on foot, Kushelev took
his position a few paces behind his men and instead of his
sabre he carried a pistol with which he drove his men to
attack. The incident had occurred just at the beginning of
1914 in a crack unit of the Guard Regiment. Two years
later only a few remnants of such "elite" units existed.
Whole divisions now consisted of reservists, elderly soldiers
or green recruits, all commanded by young men who had been
made officers after six months' training. In the opinion of
an old professional military man, it was not a regular
army but an armed crowd. Many of these men, young and old,
were individually very brave men. However, as a group they
- 175 -
were ill-trained and disgruntled at being torn from their
families, their jobs, and their civilian lives. Such a
group had very little fighting spirit.
In about mid-1917, my squadron of the Horse Guards was
in a small provincial village, Korosten, in the region of
the Ukraine, northwest of Kiev. Discipline had not yet
completely disintegrated, mostly because of the friendly
relations of officers to soldiers and the soldiers' trust
ing us, particularly my friend who had the nickname of
Jojo. He never, so to say, fraternized with the soldiers,
but he knew how to talk to them and how to act and how to
establish a friendly relationship. This kind of relation
ship existed among his men and us officers - we were then
four or five in that squadron. Of course, one exception was
the squadron commander, Prince Gedroitz, with whom I had
many troubles. And who did not have any troubles with him?
There was a kind of a feast planned in Korosten. I
believe it was June 24th, St. lan's Day, a great feast all
over Russia since days immemorial. There were speeches to
be made in the main market place by representatives of the
local population. One of them was the revolutionary
commissar, who acted as the governor used to act in pre-
revolutionary days. This new authority, the revolutionary
commissar, was quite comic. He was rather stout. He was
a veterinarian and therefore was exempt from being drafted
into the fighting units. Politically, he was just starting
- 176 -
toward what he thought he could make a great career. He
was a revolutionary socialist, leaning somewhat toward
Communism, and he was also a great Ukrainian. Just to
enhance his authority and his prestige, he wanted to appear
at that rally on horseback, so he came to our squadron and
asked for a horse. He warned us that he had never ridden
in his life, so the quietest horse we had, one that was
used only for carts, was saddled. Four of our soldiers
lifted that revolutionary commissar up and put him onto
the saddle. He was wearing a semi-military kind of uniform
and on his left shoulder he had a huge red ribbon, a
revolutionary ribbon. On his other shoulder he had the
colors of the Ukraine, yellow and bright blue. Both sides
would be content.
Finally that rally started. There was a sort of podium
hastily nailed together for the speech makers. The first
who came to that podium was our commander, Prince Gedroitz.
He did not deign to mount that podium but he spoke from
horseback on his beautiful horse imported from Ireland, a
beautiful enormous jumper. He made a short patriotic
speech, reminding everybody that we were still at war with
Germany and that every Russian should be on the line de
fending the country against the Germans. Well, his speech
was really short and even some of our soldiers and some of
the Cossack Fourth Don Regiment who were also located in
Korosten cheered our commander. Then came another speaker,
- 177 -
a Russian priest in his robes, a big cross on his breast.
He spoke about religion and all the woes and all the dis
order due to the fact that fewer young people went to mass.
Their forefathers had believed in God, believed in the Holy
Russian Orthodox Church, defended their country under the
sign of the Cross, therefore Russia had become an enormous,
wealthy, stong country. A few cheers came from the
Cossacks. Then came the next speaker, also on horseback,
our new superior authority, the revolutionary commissar.
He repeated as a zombie all the sentences that everybody
knew in those days by heart, revolutionary sentences
encouraging the soldiers to leave the front lines and to
rush back into the interior and to hurry and grab the land
from all those who had more than they had, especially to
grab the land of the gentry. Then, after his inflamatory
speech, there came the local rabbi. The local rabbi was
clad as all the rabbis were, in very special attire. He was
a poor speaker and he really did not know what to say. All
of a sudden from out of the listening crowd there was a
stir, giggles and yells, and especially the Cossacks start
ed heckling him. If it were not for our still more or less
disciplined squadron, that poor rabbi would have been drag
ged down from the podium, and only God knows what might
have happened to him. But fortunately we foresaw that it
might happen, and without any special command, we had our
soldiers posted as close to the speakers as possible. So
- 178 -
the rabbi descended under jeers and yells of the population,
especially the Cossacks. But the population of that little
city of Korestin was about eighty percent Jewish, and I was
amazed that all the younger ones, obviously Jewish, jeered
and yelled and heckled the rabbi.
Well, after this was all over, towards the evening the
crowd dispersed. There was a kind of a runway and there
was hurdle riding by officers of our squadron and the Don
Cossacks. The riding of the Cossacks differed very greatly
from the riding of the regular troops. They had very
different saddles and very different ways of riding. They
just stormed ahead whereas our riding was inspired by
instructors of the British Cavalry. Our heavy horses galloped
at a speed as if they were just walking; it was a very, very
short gallop. And when the horse approached the hurdle at a
short gallop, all of a sudden the heavy horse jumped across
the highest possible hurdle without upsetting it. The
Cossacks were amazed and also kind of disgusted. What kind
of riding is that? We Cossacks, we are going to show you
Horse Guard Cavalry what real riding is. They formed a
group of Cossacks rather far away from the obstacles. Then
one of the Cossacks used his whip on the horse and started
full-speed storming against the obstacle. And right in front
of the obstacle, of course, his horse veered outright. The
Cossack standing in the stirrups used his whip on the horse's
neck and on the horse's head, making the horse go straight.
- 179 -
But the horse just knifed into the surrounding crowd, eighty
percent Jewish. The Cossack was mad, and he just used his
whip on the horse and all the bystanders. So that riding
contest, fortunately, was over before it started.
While we were still stationed in Korosten, all regulat
ions were strictly adhered to. The banner of the Horse
Guard Regiment was always carried by my third squadron. The
banner stood in the room next to the room occupied by the
commander of the squadron, and day and night two soldiers
were on guard, right and left of the banner.
Later two officers took that banner to a cathedral in
St. Petersburg, the cathedral that was the cathedral of
our regiment, right next to the barracks of the regiment
and only two or three blocks away from the Winter Palace.
They hid that banner in the altar of that church. Years
later the Bolshevik government in St. Petersburg decided
to enlarge the city, to build an electric tram way across
that place. The church was torn down completely, as were
many other churches during that anti-religious movement that
swept all over Russia, of course organized by Communists
and non-believers. Communists would not admit that some
body could be believing in anything other than the Communist
doctrine. Believing in Christianity and the churches just
could not be according to the party line. All the churches
had to be torn down, and going to church was very dangerous
for those who continued to do so. Fortunately, some big
- 180 -
churches, some big cathedrals were turned into anti-
religious museums and centers fo anti-religious propaganda.
Anyhow, by this unusual way the buildings were saved and are
now admired by so many tourists that go visiting those
cities. As our cathedral was totally destroyed to its very
foundation, nobody could say what had happened to the
banner. Very many years later, one of my fellow officers
who was later a great businessman managed somehow to get
himself documents that said he was a Finnish citizen. As
a Finnish citizen he could freely travel all throughout the
Soviet Union. Part of his business was in Finland, part of
it was in Paris, France. And in Paris he met many officers
of my regiment, immigrants, whom he had not seen for years
and years. There at a reunion he told us a wonderful
story. He as a Finnish citizen was visiting the Winter
Palace as a tourist and also the Hermitage Museum adjoining
the Winter Palace. All of a sudden, in the Hermitage
Museum on a high pedestal, he saw the two-headed eagle.
This eagle used to be above our sacred banner. And under
that pedestal, just under the glass cover over that eagle,
there was an inscription in Russian: "This eagle is from
the banner of the Imperial Horse Guard Regiment." For
somebody it was just an object of art, and somehow by the
grace of God this object was found standing in the Hermitage,
My friend asked the guide leading that group of tourists,
"May I take a picture of this object of art?" Of course, he
- 181 -
did not mention that he was an officer of the Horse Guards
and that it was the banner of his regiment. He just asked
the guide if he could take a picture of the wonderful
object of art. And the guide, of course, did not have any
objections.
Provisional Government takes over
The last order of the Tsar before his abdication was
that all his subjects should obey the Provisional Government
as they would obey him. This was a very patriotic gesture
from the Tsar but very unrealistic because the Provisional
Government was a group of self-appointed people. Among
f
them was a lawyer who was a great speaker, an actor, and he
could talk to the mob, that knew nothing about anything,
into everything that he wanted to talk them into. And this
lawyer was Alexander Kerensky.
It was customary in church during the liturgy to sing
a hymn to the Tsar, "Long live the Tsar" and "Many years
to the reign of the Tsar". Now there was no Tsar, so the
church choirs and priests sang, "Long live the Provisional
Government," which of course was absurd and sounded
ridiculous. The Provisional Government was an anonymous
group of people that played at democracy. They played at
elections with a majority that changed from day to day and
their duties changed accordingly. Kerensky became Minister
of Justice but no one actually knew who was Minister of what,
- 182 -
and chaos from St. Petersburg spread all over the country.
Soldiers of the reserve battalions, factory workers, just
plain street rabble stormed a great building in St. Peters
burg in which a girls' school was located and they drove
the girls from the building. It was called Smolny and once
upon a time had been a monastery. It had been built
centuries ago, The workers, the soldiers, and the alleged
representatives of the peasants were armed and they were
the only ones that represented an armed force. This lot
was taken over and directed by Lenin and his henchmen, among
them Trotsky, whose real name was Bronstein. He was Jewish
and he had a genius for organizing. Somewhere in his
memoirs Lenin mentions that without the organization talent
of Trotsky the Revolution would have floundered in the first
days.
The military force desintegrates
The word "soviet" means "council". The Ministers of the
Provisional Government could talk and talk about the very
best intentions of democracy but they had no power to
implement any suggestions. The power belonged to the
Soviets and this balance between the Provisional Government
and the Soviets lasted throughout 1917 until the Second
Revolution in October 1917. All through 1917 the Soviets
were established in Moscow and in all large cities after
much opposition and much fighting and much bloodshed. The
Soviets sent out their Commissars into every Army corps,
- 183 -
every regiment, every squadron. I recall that the
revolutionaries did not trust the officers and were
afraid of an uprising, a counterrevolution by the officers.
But the officers and generals were not politicians. They
knew that the last order of the day of the Tsar had been
to obey the orders of the Provisional Government. Besides,
we were still at war with Germany so the officer corps was
advised that the war had to be continued and the country
defended against the Germans. Therefore officers continued
to do the officers' tasks and it became more and more
difficult because every order had to be okayed by the
Revolutionary Commissar. Some of my fellow officers in
the trenches during a German attack knew that the best
defense would be a counterattack, but according to the new
Democratic Socialist Regulations all the soldiers had to
vote: could we counterattack or could we not. Under
such conditions waging war became impossible and officers
who tried to do something and uphold some discipline were
quite often murdered by their own soldiers. The Germans
were very sly. They saw that the Russian lines were dis
integrating totally so they did not attack on a great scale.
Why risk the lives of our own German soldiers? Why risk our
supplies and ammunition? They conserved all this for the
Western Front against the French and the British and the
now-coming-on Americans and let the Russian army dis
integrate and vanish by itself. All the soldiers now were
- 184 -
eager to go home because for them the war was over.
They had been trained for generations to wage war for
Holy Russia and they had also allegiance to the Tsar, the
Russian Orthodox faith, and the Motherland. Now they
considered themselves free from all allegiance and were
really eager to rush home. There were rumors that big
estates that belonged to big landowners would be divided
equally among the peasantry and all of the soldiers were
afraid they might be too late to grab the best parcels of
land. They stormed into army trains and they were sitting
in the cars and clinging outside the cars and sitting on the
roofs of the cars. When the trains came to great station
junctions there were attempts to stop the flight of the
Tsarist soldiers and to lead them back to the front, and
for this purpose some of the stations were occupied by regi
ments that had conserved discipline. One of them was my
regiment of Horse Guards. This was actually police duty
and we officers and all of our men resented the assignment
very much. It was an absolutely hopeless job because the
soldiers anticipated being checked and they just got off
the trains before they reached the city and went around the
city on foot, and two or three days later they would board
a new train.
The contact of our soldiers with this constant mob
deserting from the front had also its effect on our soldiers,
We were very happy to be relieved and just before being
relieved we were told that a regiment of machine gunners,
- 185 -
about 2,000 men, was in mutiny and occupying the city of
Rovno. The officers of that regiment had fled to save
their lives but some of them did not succede and were
murdered. So our regiment got orders to quell that mutiny.
We were a cavalry regiment of nearly 400 men and we were
armed only with rifles and we were to oppose a regiment of
2,000 soldiers in mutiny. They had more than 200 machine
guns and had occupied a barracks. We marched up to the
barracks and sent an ultimatum to the mutineers to come
out of the barracks unarmed, to line up, and then we would
escort them to the railroad station. When they saw us
marching in order led by officers with their gold epaulettes
showing their rank and our men singing classical soldiers'
songs, all 2,000 men came out of the barracks unarmed and
lined up in front of us. There was not a single shot fired.
We escorted them to the train and the train went off and
then we came back to where we were located, outside of the
city. That shows that if there had been some leaders
willing to risk something, relying on still disciplined
troops, the Revolution might have been quelled. But no
body had the pluck or courage to act on his own and what
could I do as a junior lieutenant?
In mid-June a replacement squadron came to Rovno from
St. Petersburg. We saw it coming and it was led by a non-
com officer, and on his banner was an inscription in gold
letters. And I insist that the banner was silk and the
- 186 -
inscription was in gold letters because after all the men
were there as replacement of a regiment of Imperial Horse
Guards, and they were very proud of it in spite of the
Revolution. On that banner of the replacement squadron
were the words: "First Replacement Revolutionary
Squadron of Russian Imperial Horse Guards." What a mess
in the heads and minds of those poor men!
Uncle Nicholas escapes the mob
In 1917 when the Revolution began, Uncle Nicholas was
living in St. Petersburg. Crowds of people roamed the
streets looking for wealthy people and homes to loot. They
came to Uncle Nicholas's very modest apartment, discovered
that he was a count, and wanted to loot the place and arrest
and shoot him. But when they dragged him out onto the
street, all the women on the block rushed out and drove the
mob away. "No one will touch our count!" they cried. Uncle
Nicholas had a knack for befriending people without losing
his dignity.
After the Revolution he moved to Moscow where he got a
job in films. He played the stereotype of the people's
enemy - a member of the upper class bourgeoisie. Once
while he was standing in a bread line, people recognized
him from the movies. They said: "Aha - now you, too, have
to stand in this line as we do. You used to have servants to
bring you coffee or chocolate in bed and now see how it is!"
- 187 -
He replied: "Oh, no - I never drank that for breakfast -"
"What did you have then?" they asked. "A cup of proletarian
blood every morning," he answered. They all laughed at this
and Nicholas was the victor. With his cool, assured
appearance, Nicholas could get away with things like that.
Uncle Nicholas shared an apartment in Moscow with his
sister Katherine. She had a Swedish sort of beauty and a
most difficult character. She had married twice - her second
husband was Prince Kudashev and she had a son with him who
was about my age. When I was younger Prince Kudashev came
to our house once in a while for lunch or dinner. I always
thought he was a bit strange; I could not believe that he
was a real prince for he had no estate and no job with the
government. To me this was quite suspicious. He was an
engineer - an inventor, I think. I do not know what happened
to him in later years.
After the Revolution Katherine "s son, Serge', lived in
Moscow. He had to marry the daughter of his landlord and
they had a baby and named him Serge". Soon after, my cousin
Serge died of typhoid. The baby was left with Aunt Katherine
and Serge's wife went back to her native Switzerland in order
to work and earn money for the baby's support. This Swiss
girl was rather ugly but very clever. She became the
secretary to the famous writer, Remain Rolland (he was
known to be a leftist sympathizer) . Eventually she became
Mme. Rolland.
- 188 -
After they were married, M. Holland wrote to the
Soviet government and said that he was very interested in
this new progressive state. He wanted to come to see it
and to live for a while in Moscow. The Soviet government
answered politely, saying that he was welcome to come but
only after six months because they were still in the
process of repairing houses and could only guarantee him
housing after six months. This was really a trick. The
government officials realized that they could not put him
in the poor district of town nor could they lodge him in an
old aristocratic palace. In six months' time they carried
out a crash building program. The apartments they built
were simple but comfortable. In them they housed workers
and members of the Tcheka. When the Hollands came they
were given a place there.
Mme. Holland went to see her son (4 or 5 years old
then) , who was living with her ex-mother-in-law, Katherine
and Uncle Nicholas. Nicholas was older and very active
in the defense of the Russian Orthodox Church; he had been
imprisoned for this thirteen times. Often they gave him
salt herring without water, trying to get a confession out
of him, but Nicholas never ate the herring and never con
fessed.
Mme. Holland was very happy to see her son Serge and
very grateful for all that Aunt Katherine had done for him,
but she believed that the kind of education he was getting
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was too oldfashioned and too sheltered. She thought that
he ought to learn with the people the realities of the
world around him. Aunt Katherine said, "You are his
mother, it is your decision", so the boy was allowed in the
street any time and soon began playing with all the other
boys on the street. One day not long after that, Mme.
Holland asked her son what he wanted for his birthday. He
told her, "money, of course", so on his birthday, with
Uncle Nicholas and Aunt Katherine there, Mme. Holland gave
Serge three rubles. He loo'ked at the money and said to
his mother, "Only three rubles! Fuck you, Mother!" Uncle
Nicholas laughed and Mme. Holland decided that perhaps
Katherine's way of educating the boy was a better way.
Eventually young Serge became a pilot and flew with the
Air Force in World War II. He was probably killed in battle.
But to continue with the Hollands 1 visit in Moscow,
one day they received an official invitation to dinner at
the Kremlin. Among the guests were many distinguished
foreign visitors. At the time, Lenin was the leader of the
country and Stalin was the party secretary. Litvinov was
the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The Hollands accepted the
invitation.
While at dinner, one of the guests asked Litvinov:
"Is it true that Russian citizens here have difficulties in
obtaining visas to go abroad?" Litvinov answered: "Who
says such nonsense? That is just nonsense." Mme. Holland
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then entered the conversation and asked, "If that is so,
why then is there no visa for my uncle? My uncle has waited
a long time for a visa to go abroad." Litvinov turned to
her. "Who is your uncle?" "Count Nicholas Stenbock-Fermor , "
she told him. "And why does he want to go abroad?"
Litvninov asked. Mme. Holland explained, "His two daughters
now live in Paris. They are married to officers of the
White Army and so they have settled in Paris and he would
like very much to see them." Thus in the midst of this
dinner at the Kremlin, the room was full of rumors of
scandals. Litvinov explained that it must be a misunder
standing. He told Mme. Holland that she should tell her
uncle that he would personally take care of the matter.
After dinner, Mme. Holland rushed to Uncle Nicholas to tell
him what had happened. The next morning Nicholas went to
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and told the porter at the
door that he was there on the personal orders of Minister
Litvinov. The porter gasped and let him in. Nicholas
sat and waited for two hours before an orderly appeared
carrying on a tray all the necessary papers and a passport.
Within 48 hours Nicholas left the country.
He arrived in Paris and went to his daughter Olga.
Olga's husband worked as a cab driver while she herself
took in laundry and did babysitting. It was a terrible
situation financially but they were all very happy. Olga
was delighted to see her father.
- 191 -
When Nicholas arrived in Paris he wore typical Russian
clothing - riding boots, wide blue pants, a black shirt,
and a big black military cap. In July in Paris his costume
was rather unusual. While taking a stroll, school children
surrounded him and jeered at him. Nicholas stopped and
turned to them, saying in perfect French, "Children, do you
know who I am?" "No, monsieur," they replied. Nicholas
said, "I am Father Christmas - I am here in Paris for my
summer vacation." After that the children simply bowed and
said, "Bon jour, monsieur."
The Revolution touches Kodyma
In June of 1917, three months after the Revolution, it
was my turn to go on leave for 21 days. It was almost a
year after my father had died. I went to my estate, Kodyma,
where my mother was staying along with a British lady,
formerly a governess in a Russian family. Because of the
money shortage after the Revolution, this Russian family
had been unable to keep her, and because of the war con
ditions she could not return to Great Britain, so she
was very happy to act as companion to my mother on our
estate.
I arrived in my officer's uniform and found conditions
at Kodyma almost as normal as before. The events in
Petersburg, the contagion of the Revolution, had not yet
reached that far. I stayed at Kodyma and enjoyed my
horses and my dogs just as if nothing had ever happened,
- 192 -
but soon left to visit my grandmother at Kemenka so that she
could see me in the uniform of the Horse Guards. Shortly
after I left my mother, a Revolutionary Committee arrived.
Three men, a Jew, a sailor with a rifle, and a soldier
comprised the committee. They demanded that all wages
paid to workers on the estate be raised one hundred per
cent. Mohter calmly explained to them that she did not
want to deceive them - she could sign her name agreeing
to meet their demands, but her signature would be meaning-
less without the approval of the trustees of the estate, who
were in Kherson. I was not twenty-one yet and the trustees
of the estate supervised affairs with my mother until I
should come of age. These young revolutionaries were
awkward and unsure of themselves. In the face of my
mother's calm demeanor they were very polite, addressed
my mother as "Ladyship", and left. The next day my mother
went to Kherson and told the story to the trustees, and
after hearing about it, they said that they were surprised
that she was still alive. Had I been there in my officer's
uniform, we would certainly have been killed the way many
others like us were.
In 1917 our gardener also became a determined Bolshevik,
After twenty years of service with us, he began to try to
rouse people against us. When I turned twenty-one I con
sulted with Volkof and then decided to fill all of our
contractual obligations to him and then dismiss him. Six
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months' worth of produce, money, a house, and his salary
were given to him and he was ordered to leave. I think
many were surprised to see "the young Count" take such
drastic action. This was happening later, in the summer of l!
Last Visit with Grandmother
The distance from Kodyma to Kamenka was one hundred
kilometers as the crow flies. Years and years ago, as a
young man, my father rode on horseback from Kodyma to
Kamenka, but that would have taken too much time, too
much for me, so I took a train. It took me more than
24 hours to get to Kamenka, that with a detour and changing
trains twice. And though I came closer to Kamenka, I still
had to cover about 50 kilometers in a horse drawn carriage.
When I arrived at Kamenka I was very proud to show myself
in my uniform with the coveted white and red cap of the
Horse Guards, the same regiment in which my grandfather had
served almost half a century earlier during the reign of
Tsar Alexander II. I stayed a few days at Kemenka and
enjoyed it, but because of the Revolution supplies were
very difficult to obtain. Of course there was no electric
ity in such a remote place and the huge house at Kemenka
was usually lit with kerosene. Now, kerosene and ordinary
candles were not available and the only light that could be
had was that of church candles. The priest of Kamenka
gave them to my grandmother every Sunday and they were
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precious. Every person moving from one room to another
had to carry his church candle. I must say that this was
rather depressing. I could stay only a few days and then
left because I had to go back to the regiment. At that
time Mother and her personal maid, Anna Nikolaevna, went to
Kiev in order to be nearer to me. Kiev, however, was full
of marauding Bolsheviks and members of the Tcheka.
Grandmother dies - Destruction of Kamenka
Several months later the contagion of the Revolution
spread all over the country. The inhabitants of two small
cities about 10 kilometers away from Kamenka, excited by
revolutionary ideas and following the new slogans aimed
at destroying the upper class, came to Kamenka for looting.
Dedicated old servants at the last minute led my grand
mother, who was then close to eighty, out of the house and
hid her in the fields in a haystack, where she spent all
night. While she was in the haystack, those looters ran
sacked the whole house, destroying or carrying things away.
In all this destruction there also perished a volume of
memoirs of my ancestor, her father, Safonov, who had
retired from the army after the assassination of Tsar Paul I
in 1801 and gone to the country to live there.
In the morning, after the house had been looted and
poor grandmother had remained all night in the haystack, a
servant took her to the city of Elizavetgrad (now Kirovograd) ,
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fifty kilometers away, where the railroad junction was.
There she came to the house of a priest whom she knew and
a few weeks later, at the home of that priest, my grand
mother died. Of course all that anxiety and the night
spent in the haystack had been too much for her at her age.
When Grandmother died, the local communist authorities
denied permission for her burial. They denied it because
she was, in their understanding, an ex-countess, a member
of the Russian aristocracy, which had no rights any more,
not even the right to be buried. Fortunately the new
authorities overlooked something: they did not know that
every church had a cellar and this cellar was used for
keeping the coffins of the dead that for some reason could
not be buried as was the rule on the third day after death;
sometimes the weather did not permit it, the ground would
be hard frozen, one could not dig. Therefore these
coffins were kept in the cellar and that is where the local
priest put the coffin of my grandmother when she was denied
burial, and there her coffin stayed for a number of years.
As the years passed and the situation in Russia became less
acute, one of my grandmother's daughters travelled all the
way from Moscow to Kirovograd for the purpose of finally
taking her mother's coffin to the cemetery. The church still
existed, but churches were being torn down everywhere and
what would have happened to Grandmother's coffin if the turn
of this church had come? So her youngest daughter, my aunt
- 196 -
Katharine, travelled all the way from Moscow and she
succeeded in burying her mother in the cemetery.
My aunt, who all her life had loved luxury of any
kind, was a very favorite aunt of mine and had been a
striking beauty. In 1916, when my father died and she
came to the funeral (she was about 50 at that time) she was
still a beauty and full of pep and adventure. After
burying her mother she hired a peasant cart and drove to
another station, where she took a train back to Moscow.
She knew that in that cart she would have to pass through
Kamenka and she wanted just a look at that place where
she had been born. She did not dare to stop the cart and
take a walk because she was afraid of being recognized by
local people, and who knows what might have happened. But
she saw that the house did not exist any more. It had been
a very, very big house and had been built by the pupil of
a great architect. That beautiful house had vast cellars
and two stories above them. The new Communist authorities
spent several days blowing that house to bits and pieces
with dynamite. And why did they go to all that trouble?
Well, there was a belief spread by communist propaganda
that if the houses of the former landowners remained
standing, the day would come when the rightful owners would
return and take over their homes. That big house might
have been used for a school or just for a warehouse, or
for some other purpose. But no, it had to be destroyed with
- 197 -
dynamite and they went to all that great trouble to do it.
That makes me think of the fate of my parents ' house
at Kodyma. After the Revolution, in 1918, this estate was
looted, as were others, and it was abandoned by the people
who were employed on it. There it stood, a no man's land.
People from surrounding villages came and helped themselves
to bricks, and boards, and furniture, and all that was there.
This reminds me of what I used to do as an early teenager.
I had a little rifle and with it shot crows. Then I put
those crows on an anthill and the next morning only the
clean white skeletons of the crows were there. The ants
had taken away feathers, flesh, everything, and this is
what the surrounding villagers did to Kodyma.
During the German occupation of France (1940-1944) when
I worked in France as an interpreter in a shipyard, one of
the German soldiers on duty there was transferred to Russia,
to the region where Kodyma used to be. From there he wrote
me a postcard which he sent through the German army post
services, saying that "the place you mentioned, called
Kodyma, could not be located; you would never know that it
had been there; it is just clean prairie, clean steppes, as
it used to be before. And besides, the climate of the
country has changed .very much and I am sure the new climate
would not be very good for your health." Well, I understood
what that clever German meant by the word "climate".
So that was the fate of Kamenka and Kodyma and the fate
of my grandmother.
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A convicted criminal becomes revolutionary hero
Back in the year 1915 there arose a sudden crisis in
the means of transportation of goods and ammunition to the
front fighting lines. In peacetime, the superior army
command did not realize the amount of supplies of all kinds
that would have to be moved in wartime. The army suddenly
lacked means of transportation, that is, horse-drawn carts,
that had to take everything from the railroad stations up
to the front lines. Therefore, the governor of Herson
issued orders to all landowners to send to the army three
horse-drawn carriages with three coachmen. According to
the amount of land my father owned, he had to send five
such carriages or carts. The order of the governor mention
ed carts, good horses, harnesses, and coachmen. To that
my father replied in a letter to the governor, rather
sarcastically, that if the army needed transportation he was
ready and willing to give to the army all the carts and all
the horses of our estate, but the governor must remember
that serfdom had been abolished more than half a century
ago and therefore my father could not appoint anyone from
the staff of the estate to be coachmen. Well,, the governor,
of course, had made a great mistake and in order to get
out of this dilemma he ordered the local regional chief of
police to mobilize coachmen. Because the whole region was
on a wartime footing, there was almost a total dictator
ship, so the chief of police of our region mobilized as
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coachmen a sickly boy, son of the local drugstore owner,
and two young boys who were sons of the owner of the local
lumber yard. All of them were very wealthy Jews and of
course most unfit to drive carts and to handle horses, so the
local policeman took bribes to relieve those boys from
being mobilized, 15,000 rubles from one of them and 25,000
rubles from the lumberyard owner. This all came to light
thanks to the research of Uncle Vladimir, then president of
the local Zemstvo. The police officer was demoted, arrested,
judged, and condemned to 50 years of hard labor in the
mines of Siberia. That was 1915.
In 1917, the Revolution broke out. Imperial Russia
was no more. There was a Provisional Government in St.
Petersburg. The Minister of Justice, an obscure lawyer
before that but a member of the Duma, a fellow by the name
of Alexander Kerensky, immediately gave orders that all
those deported to Siberia under the rule of Imperial Russia
should be freed, whether they were political deportees or
common- law deportees. Everybody had to be freed because
they were victims of Tsarism. So this police officer who
had taken those bribes became a victim of Tsarism and a hero
\t \
of the Revolution. He came back to the region of Herson
in his official capacity as a revolutionary commissar
.
representing the new powers ruling Russia. And of course
he began saying right and left that he would get the hide
of my Uncle Vladimir. But fortunately he did not succeed.
- 200 -
What happened to him later as commissar I do not know, and
who was appointed to be coachmen of those carts in the long
run is not important. But this little story is very typical
of that period in the first months of the Revolution.
The impending coup (Kornilov Revolt)
In August of 1917 I was in St. Petersburg, joining a
group of officers of my regiment. There were rumors of a
political coup to take power into the hands of a military
dicatator instead of the Kerensky government. Of course I
was only nineteen, a junior officer, and knew nothing about
politics or what was going on. I just had to follow the
orders of the colonel of my regiment, and these orders were
to meet every evening in the officer's mess of the Horse
Guard Regiment, which was only a few blocks from the Winter
Palace. In the daytime I was free to do what I wanted and
I used to walk in the streets of St. Petersburg and look at
the houses. The best blocks of the city, including the
house where I had lived on the shore of the River Neva,
and the houses of my friends were all in an awful state.
During the first days of the uprising, the so-called
February Revolution, almost all the houses were decorated
with the red flags of the victorious Revolution, but now
they were dirty, tattered and torn rags that nobody bothered
to take away, and the only clean houses were those of the
foreign embassies. Of course the streets were not cleaned;
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those beautiful streets were piled with firewood that had
come down the river on barges. The whole city of St.
Petersburg was in those days using wood for stoves, and
it is hard to imagine how many thousands of cubic yards
of birch wood were burned for the purpose of heating the
city.
I used to go to have my hair arranged by a hair
dresser, a Frenchman named Mallet. His shop was not far
from the barracks of my regiment and he was not just an
ordinary kind of a hairdresser. M. Mallet had about fifty
patrons of his own choice and he would trim a beard or
moustache only if his client was a general or a member of
the Council of the Empire. M. Mallet knew absolutely every
thing that was going on in St. Petersburg, officially and
unofficially. While I was sitting there, only a junior
lieutenant, many clients looked askance at me but of course .
they said nothing as this youngster was wearing the uniform
of the Horse Guards. So everything went smoothly, but I
was astounded that all these people were talking exclusively
about the impending political coup. Conspiracy? But what
kind of conspiracy was it? Once when I went to have lunch
in one of the restaurants, also French, all the people I met
there were also discussing the details of the same conspiracy
And although I was very young, I was wondering, because the
restaurant had a number of servants and who knew who they
were? They might have been socialists, spies, or some
- 202 -
politically-minded people who wanted information. This plot
and the impending coup seemed to me very childish, and
childish it was. Many books have been written about that
period by historians, and they all stress that the well-
intended generals were personally very brave but quite
incompetent in all political matters.
As I mentioned before, about August 15th, 1917 - I do
not remember the exact date - I arrived in St. Petersburg
and reported to my regimental barracks. I was quite
surprised to meet there in the officers' mess many of our
officers, a group of about 15 of them. At the head of them
was Colonel Count Pahlen and Colonel Count Benigsen. Other
names I do not remember - they were junior officers like me.
Those two colonels were direct decendents of those - their
grandfathers or great-grandfathers - who played a great role
in the death of the Russian Emperor Paul the First. This
event, which I believe occurred in 1801, is history and
described in many books, so I will not go into details.
Anyhow, Pahlen and Benigsen instructed us junior officers
to meet there every evening and await further instructions -
and that they could be, for us to penetrate into the Winter
Palace, because most of our officers knew the Palace very
well, which was a labyrinth of corridors and doors and you
could be very easily lost wandering in the Palace. The pur
pose of our penetrating the Palace would be to arrest the
provisional government, which was then headed by Kerensky,
- 203 -
who proclaimed himself head of the government and minister
of war. He was under great pressure from the Soviet,
and actually, Russia and the front, the army, were dis
integrating because of his orders and actions. There was
a conspiracy to overthrow him and to institute a military
dictatorship under General Kornilov, who was then commander
in chief of all the Russian armed forces. But he was with
his staff in the city of Mogileff , and by direct wire con
versations went back and forth between Kerensky and Kornilov.
The main object was to get rid of, chase away, the self-
appointed Soviets; but Kerensky vacillated. He was a
socialist. Once, allegedly, he said, "Long live the
revolution. I care only for the revolution. The revolution
has to succeed, and Russia be damned (as a country)." Of
course that irked very much all Russian patriots, officers -
and Kerensky had the feeling that should this military coup
succeed, he would have no place any more in any ministry,
his role would be finished and he could consider himself
happy if he had gotten away alive.
General Kornilov was a national hero because he had
managed to escape from prison in Austria, when his troups
had been surrounded and he was taken prisoner a year earlier.
He escaped and came back, and was considered to be a national
hero. He was a very brave man, a perfect commander of
troops ; but he was absolutely childish in every other respect
about politics and conspiracy. And so were the other general;
- 204 -
They did not understand a thing about conspiracy. The
va^cillating Kerensky was frightened, and finally he
declared Kornilov to be a traitor. That brought about
chaos and the start of the Civil War. A division of cavalry
that was approaching St. Petersburg under orders of
Kornilov was entrained - the trains were side-tracked by
railroad employees, many of whom were Bolsheviks and
socialist, and the troups never arrived. A deputy of
Kornilov, the general whom he sent to talk to Kerensky,
allegedly commited suicide in St. Petersburg. The whole
conspiracy and the military coup was a flop. This is all
described in great detail in the book White Against Red/
by Dimitry Lehovich, edited in New York (W.W. Norton & Co.,
Inc., New York) which is not a novel, but a scholarly
research book. I am not going to repeat in my own words the
context of what is in that book, that I recommend vary , very,
much to anyone interested in knowing all the tragic details
of that period.
My cousin Mika helps me escape from the chaos in
Sj:. Petersburg
At the last meeting at our barracks, Count Pahlen and
Count Benigsen gave us orders to leave St. Petersburg
immediately, by any means we could. I was very lucky to be
living at that time in St. Petersburg in the apartment of
my cousin Mika Fredericks. Poor Mika was somewhat crippled
since his birth. He limped, and he had a very, very
- 205 -
difficult disposition - he was embittered against every
body, all his close relatives. As friends he had people
of a different social and financial group, where they
kind of made a hero of him, first because as Fredericks
he was a distant relative of the minister of the court, and
besides that, he had very much money from his estates. He
had many so-to-say suspicious friends. He was a bit older
than I was, and he was very eager to marry - most impossible
girls. He came once to my father - this was before my
father died in 1916 - and he said, "Uncle Vania, she is such
a nice girl." My father said "Of course she is nice,
because you are in love with her, but that nice girl has so
many undesirable relatives." And my father smiled and said,
"What if you have a son, and the son happens to be one of
the undesirable relatives?" Well, at the time I lived with
Mika, he was not yet married, but he had many friends -
I would even dare say, in the underground of St. Petersburg -
and he had friends among the railroad employees. So he
managed to get me the very same evening tickets for the train
leaving St. Petersburg for Kiev. In those days it was very
difficult to obtain a ticket so rapidly, because all the
trains were overcrowded. But I left St. Petersburg in style,
first class carriage, sleeping carriage with attendant for
the carriage as in peacetime, white linen pillows, and so
forth. This happened to be the last of such kind of train
leaving St. Petersburg for Kiev. After that, the chaos of
- 206 -
of the revolution broke communication between St. Peters
burg and the south, communications with Kiev were cut.
1917 back to Kiev - a short time of care-free life
In Autust of 1917, after the attempt of General Kornilov
to become a military dictator of all Russia and get rid of
Kerenski, I was told to leave the city of St. Petersburg and
I was very lucky to get into the last luxury train leaving
for Kiev. My mother was living in Kiev and life in Kiev
was not completely disturbed by events - I mean, life of
society. Many Polish people had left Poland and settled in
Kiev. They were very nice, gay people and loved gatherings
and dining parties. I was invited quite often and I never
had similar parties in St. Petersburg because I was too
young. I was only an officers candidate and was not con
sidered to be a grownup at the age of nineteen but only a
school boy. Now in Kiev, I was a junior officer of the
Horse Guards. Besides, our estate was deep in South Russia
and we were still having income money sent to Kiev by the
estate manager. At these parties, poker games were played
and other card games. I had never played cards before.
So I had beginners luck. When I told mother about my
beginners luck and the money I had won, Mother became very
upset. She told me that I could also have lost and that her
conviction was that playing cards was a sin anyhow, even if
you win.
- 207 -
I apply for a transfer from cavalry to aviation
So, I came back to Kiev, to the apartment where my
mother was still living. I had asked before for a transfer
from the cavalry unit to the then just beginning Russian
air force. My demand to be transferred to the airforce had
to go through channels, and more channels, and more channels;
and finally get to the headquarters of the army in Mogileff .
I waited and waited, and nothing happened. My only document
stating who I was - that I was an officer on leave - was
expired for many many months. In those days, patrols in the
city stopped people on the street, officers even if they were
civilians, who had to identify themselves, because there
were orders to search for those people who preferred to
remain in the big cities, who were in no hurry to go back
to their units on the front lines, units that were rapidly
disintegrating, giving officers nothing to do, and if an
officer attempted to instill some new discipline, quite
often he was murdered by his own soldiers. Anhow, my
document was officially invalid. I risked to be arrested,
so I decided to go personally to Mogileff to try and
accelerate my transfer. This city had been chosen, even
before the revolution as the principle headquarters from
where Tsar Nicholas could send out his orders.
After the abdication of the Tsar, the headquarters
automatically continued their paper work. Among the
mountains of such paper work was my request for transfer.
- 208 -
So I went to Mogileff to try to accelerate the process of
my transfer. The city's railroad station was about two miles
from the city proper. At the railroad station there were
many cars standing beside the railroad tracks and those
cars became living quarters for officers who had some
business at headquarters. So I got a ticket giving me
permission to live on one of those cars for six weeks and
to have my breakfast and my noontime dinner at the officers'
mess which was located in one of the cars. The problem was,
getting from that railroad station to headquarters. Two
miles walking on a dusty road or a bottomless road after a
rain was very disagreeable. Cars in those days were
available only to colonels and generals. So private enter
prise saved the situation and this private enterprise was
organized by local Jews. For some reason, horse-drawn
cabs had always Jewish drivers and a cab could hold no more
than four passengers. The traffic was very intense. To my
surprise, those Jewish drivers found in some local estate
two vehicles that had not been used since the days of
Katherine the Great. The name for those vehicles was
Lineyka, which means in English a ruler. These vehicles
were long and one sat on them sideways back to back with
another fellow passenger and this way a cab would carry
twenty passengers. The coachman's seat had some tresses of
gold, gilded centuries ago. It was a very fancy vehicle
and on that gilded box sat the Jewish driver, in his typical
- 209 -
attire, he always wore a long black coat and black hat no
matter how hot it was in the summer. Two skinny horses
were pulling that vehicle and it took more than a half hour
to cover the distance of two miles for a very moderate
fee. That was the only way of transportation to general
headquarters for all the Russian armies. A very antique
way of transportation.
All my documents were in the hands of different
clerks of different departments; the headquarters of the
army, the airforce, some of them on each table. The clerks
discussed politics and did not do their jobs as clerks,
with all those documents. I somehow succeeded in finding
out on whose table my documents lay. And besides, many
of the clerks were Russian intellectuals, very socialist
if not communist-minded, and they disliked a document
belonging to an officer of the Horse Guards, and besides
having a title of Count to his hame, and they would not
process it. So I had a little talk with the clerk. I
slipped him, I believe, 100 rubles, and my documents were
suddenly on the top of the heap, instead of being on the
bottom. The process went on and on.
I do not know exactly why and how, but I had cash, so
I went in the evenings to a restaurant to kill time, and
from there every evening, for about five weeks which I
spent in MOgileff , I went to the operetta theatre, where
they played all kinds of Austrian classical operettas -
- 210 -
just to kill time.
I return to Kiev without my transfer papers
And then, documents permitting me to stay in Mogileff
ran out, so I had to leave Mogileff empty-handed. I came
back to Kiev and told my mother, "I cannot stay in Kiev,
risking to be arrested, or locking myself up in my room
with this document that I have. I must return to my
regiment, still somewhere on the front lines, the regiment
or whatever was left of it, and I have not the faintest
idea of events going on at the regiment." And so I went
with my mother to the railroad station in a hired carriage,
and I said to my mother, "Please do not accompany me."
But she insisted. So I said, "All right, but promise me
that you are not to get out of that carriage. You will
stay in the carriage, I will leave to board the train.
You know that the railroad station is in chaos, and crowds
go back and forth. If somebody goes there and has a date
to find his own brother, he probably would never find him
in all that crowd." So, we drove up to the station, and
keeping her promise, my mother stayed in the carriage.
While I mounted the very broad stairs that led to the
entrance of the station, she told the coachman to stay where
he was, because she wanted to have a very last glimpse
of me as long as she could see me in the crowd.
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A fateful reunion - I finally receive my transfer papers
When mounting those stairs at the railroad station in
Kiev, all of a sudden I meet face to face with one of the
officers of my regiment, whom I had not seen for quite a
while. We just bumped into each other. He tells me,
"Where are you going?" I said to him, "Well, I am going
back to the regiment." He said, "You are crazy. I just
saved myself from there. If you go back to the regiment,
and it is known that you were in Petersburg participating
in the attempted coup, you would be immediately arrested
and imprisoned, court-mar tialled - the kangaroo court of
soldiers would certainly condemn you to be shot." So,
I turned around. He was there exactly as a guardian angel
with a flaming sword, to prevent me from going back to the
regiment. This was unexpected and fantastic luck that we
just bumped into each other. So, I went back to mother's
apartment with mother, in that carriage which was still
waiting. And upon arriving at my apartment, what do I see
on my desk? A huge package from Mogileff headquarters,
with all the documents of my transfer to the airforce. I
almost missed it by an hour or two.
At that time in Kiev, there was a French airforce unit
that France had sent over to Russia as a gesture of good
allies. Russia had sent, at about the same time or before,
two army corps, all around Scandinavia, to Great Britain
and then to Marseilles. And those two Russian army corps
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were fighting on the French side, and of course that im
pressed the French very much, and also the Germans. When
some German unit met Russian troops on the French front,
that had very much of an impact on the German morale, how
they were surrounded and how helpless they were. And there
was that French airforce unit in Kiev, under the command of
Prince Napoleon Murat. He was married to a Russian lady and
was a great gentleman. Murat was one of the most dashing
cavalry leaders in the days of Napoleon. And this Napoleon
Murat was of course a great friend of my father, who was
always interested in aviation and in ballet, and so was
Murat. And when I came to present myself to Prince Murat
and told him of my situation, he opened his arms to me and
said that as of today he has a position for me on his staff.
But, plans were in the making for this French unit to leave
Russia, because it was hopeless to fight on the Russian
front, and they were anxcious not to be captured by the
advancing German troops, which could advance and later did
advance without any resistance as far as Kiev. The French
were eager to leave before that happened. I thought about
the consequences if I accept the offer of Prince Murat and
I would leave with the French unit, what would then become
of Mother? I could not take her along with the French unit;
she would have to stay in Kiev, and obviously we would be
separated completely for God knows how many years, maybe
forever. Besides, I was anxcious to get to the Crimea,
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where the Russian airforce was exercising and so-to-say
was being born. And I was also eager to get to the Crimea
because I had some vague information that somewhere on the
Crimea, probably in Yalta, I would meet Dina. So, I had
very personal reasons for going to the school of flying
observation officers, located on the Crimea, in the coast
city of Eupatoria. Prince Murat said that the course there
was a course of six months for observation officers, and
if after six months they were still there he would welcome
me to their unit. He wished me good luck and we parted
and never saw each other again - and I left for Eupatoria.
From Kiev, my mother followed to Eupatoria. There were
some Russian friends there, and we found a rather large
house to rent and lived there. I started the course for
flying observation officers.
We flew our planes - Wilbur Wright planes, they were
actually bicycles with wings. The school lasted until the
November days when there was an uprising in St. Petersburg
and Moscow, and Kerensky fled and disappeared - after
attempting to resist a little bit, he had nobody to
support him anymore. Then Lenin came to power.
Down south in Eupatoria, the events of St. Petersburg
trickled in slowly. All the officers from the school were,
of course, anti-Lenin, except the commander of the school,
a colonel on the general staff, who had changed his name -
it used to be Hammer, which sounded too German, so he
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changed his name to Molotov, which means hammer in Russian.
And that shows the kind of fellow he was. Exercises at the
school went on more or less. There was mutiny in Sevastopol,
the base on the Russian Black Sea, horrible mutiny. Many
officers were dragged by their sailors, and there were
heavy weights, shells, tied to their feet, and they were
thrown overboard, living. Of course, all of them drowned,
hundreds of them.
I remember once, later, when Sevastopol was occupied
by Russian troops, the port of Sevastopol sent a Russian
diver into that water. And divers usually have some kind
of a wire and a bell to raise them up again when they have
finished their job. Well, the diver went down, and in a
minute, maybe two, the bell rang to take him up again. And
he was quite crazy. After he recovered and had a couple of
vodkas to help his recovery, he was questioned, "Why did
you come up so rapidly without having done anything?".
He said, "I just could not stand what I saw. There was a
forest of corpses, officers in their uniforms, and what
they had on their feet - the shells - held them down. And
the corpses stood upright, and the movement of the water
made their hands and hair wave as if they were still alive.
It was such a horrible sight that ..." That shows you
what was going on in Sevastopol.
In Eupatoria our officers' school was a pain in the
neck for the Bolsheviks in Sevastopol. Of course, they
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were absolutely certain - and they were right - that this
group was counter-revolutionary. So they sent two
destroyers, manned by sailors only, to Eupatoria, and the
destroyers threw anchor outside of Eupatoria Bay that was
too shallow for them to approach very closely. They
threatened to bombard the school and the city of Eupatoria.
Two of our planes went up into the air and circled above
those two destroyers. In those days, planes were so new,
and so unpredictable as to what a plane could achieve,
that those sailors on those destroyers panicked about being
bombed from the air, and they immediately took off, back to
sea, disappeared, and nothing happened to Eupatoria. That
was psychology.
But anyhow, the school in Eupatoria was falling apart.
Many officers were leaving. When I was still exercising my
bombing from the air, and making maps and photographs from
the air, I told the soldier who was actually the pilot of
my plane - and I the observer - to fly the plane over
Eupatoria and to circle three times the house where my
mother and her friends were living. This, of course, drew
everybody's attention. My mother realized that this plane
was circling this particular house because of me. When I
came back, she said to me, "I know you are flying, that it
is in your line of duty, but while you are flying somewhere
I can only pray to God. But when you are flying right over
my house, it makes my heart beat too much - don't do it again.
- 216 -
Some of our experiences at Eupatoria
The military airforce school was on the coast of the
Black Sea and there was a beautiful sandy beach with very
shallow water. One had to walk in the water for at least
twenty minutes before one could really begin to swim. The
weather was very fine and the days were very hot. My
friends and I had a flat-bottomed boat and we spent our
Sundays in it sunning ourselves, jumping into the water,
then climbing back out again. It was really great fun,
but the second day my temperature rose, my body looked like
a raw steak, and I could not even get a shirt on for two
days, so I had to report sick to the aviation school. My
mother, in spite of the difficulties of travelling, had, as
mentioned earlier, joined me in Eupatoria. She shared a
house belonging to the family of her old friends by the
name of Romanov. This name was very common in Russia and
it had nothing to do with the Romanov dynasty or the
Imperial family. There were many persons in the nobility
who had that name, as well as innumerable peasants all over
Russia. Mother's friend, Mrs. Romanov, had a daughter
who was married to the colonel of my regiment. The
colonel and his wife were also in Eupatoria and they had
a niece called Dina, who had quite a sense of humor and
knew all about me, always teasing me and calling herself
the "wrong" Dina. Where the real Dina was at that time
I had no idea. I was hoping to find her in Eupatoria; she
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had been there for a very short time but then had departed
to the Crimea and I could not find out where.
While I was on military duty there, morale, as in all
the rest of the armed forces, started disintegrating after
Lenin and his henchmen took over the power in Russia. But
as this was an officers' school and very counter-revolution
ary-minded, there arose a great concern lest the sailors
from the Black Sea Fleet, who were the worst kind of
Bolsheviks, would come and raid Eupatoria. Preparations
were made to defend the town against such an invasion but
we had only our small arms and no artillery, so the colonel
and I proposed that we should get rifles from some kind of
a depot. These rifles had last been used in the Crimean War
half a century earlier, and actually belonged in a museum.
The assignment that the two of us got was a stretch of beach
on the Black Sea, a stretch of one kilometer between the
two os us, and we were to repel the landing of the Black
Sea Fleet. So that shows you what the situation really was.
My colonel's wife was not young, at least in my eyes;
she must have been somewhere between thirty and forty, and
she was expecting a child. Electricity in Eupatoria was
very unreliable and at the advice of my mother everyone in
the house had to bring two or three candles home from church.
Mother was very wise, because the child was born at night
by candlelight. There was no doctor but there was a so-
called wise woman who helped, and the child was born quite
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normally. My mother became the godmother of this child.
Later, when the colonel and his family left Eupatoria, I
lost sight of them, but we met many many years later as
immigrants in Europe.
A second cousin of mine, Alexis Orlov, was an officer
in the Hussar Guard Regiment and also stationed in Eupatoria.
His mother was nee Stenbock-Fermor , the granddaughter of
Alexander Stenbock-Fermor, and she also lived in Eupatoria
together with his grandmother on his father's side. This
old lady Orlov was constantly asking her grandson, "Why
are we stuck in this city? It is early November and I want
to go back as usual to St. Petersburg. Why don't you take
me back to St. Petersburg?" And Alexis replied to his grand
mother, "Dear Granny, when you think of St. Petersburg you
think of your horse-drawn carriage, your favorite coachman
with a man servant sitting next to him, who descended to
open the door of the carriage for you and to announce when
you arrived at the homes of your friends. This St. Peters
burg does not exist anymore. You would not recognize the
city if you went there." But of course my second cousin's
Granny was too old to realize the serious situation in
St. Petersburg. I think she died peacefully in her house
in Eupatoria.
Alexis Orlov must have been about twenty five. He was
of medium height, very slim, and remarkably well built. He
had a peach-colored baby face and very beautiful eyes. He
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always used to say about himself, "I know I am not hand
some but I have much charm." Fortunately for me, I had
left Eupatoria before the Bolsheviks took over the city.
The school had completely disintegrated and ceased to
exist. There was a house-to-house search by Bolsheviks,
with the intention of arresting anyone who was an officer.
Alexis Orlov was in danger of being arrested but it was
avoided by putting him to bed. He lay flat on his back,
holding a big cushion on his belly and had a blanket
pulled up to his chin. When the Bolsheviks came to
arrest him, they were told that a girl, one of the family
members, was expecting a baby at any moment. They tiptoed
into the room where Orlov was lying in bed, saw his peach-
colored face and a mound covered with a blanket, and they
tiptoed out of the room again. Well, in those days Bolshe
viks were also in their infancy. Later, in the Stalin days,
that would never have occurred.
The maiden name of old Mrs. Romanov was Baroness Meller
and the Meller family had great holdings in the Urals,
similar to those of the Stenbock-Fermor family. In the
Urals, the melting ovens and goldmines were run by a
director whose name was Kabanov, which means "wild boar" in
Russian, and everybody joked because he really looked like
a wild boar. He had no manners whatsoever, but he was a
very good manager. He rose to the rank of manager from the
lowest working class in the mines, so he really knew that
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business inside out. In the days before the Revolution he
lived in Eupatoria with his wife and he had some money there,
Mrs. Kabanov resembled her husband very much in weight and
size. She looked like a plain peasant woman and she spoke
the rural Russian of an uneducated woman, and she had a
wonderful talent for baking pies. She got the stuff to
make those pies because all the market women liked her ways
very much and she could speak to them in their own language.
Mr. Kabanov liked to play the gentleman and he gave many
parties. An uncle of my first wife r who became a wonderful
uncle to my boys many years later, also lived in Eupatoria.
He was a diplomat in the foreign ministry of Imperial
Russia, a bachelor, and above everything else he loved to
eat well. He also joined parties given by St. Petersburg
society who happened to be in Eupatoria, all of them my
contemporaries. He was then probably fifteen or twenty
years older than we were and never thought about it, but
we did, though he never noticed the fun we made of him.
He also visited the Kabanov family and he always enjoyed
their food, but the manners and speech of Mrs. Kabanov upset
him very much. The pies, however, were so good that he
managed not to notice anything.
When I was living in Eupatoria, there was a family of
General Lomachevsky. He was a retired Hetman of the Ural
Cossacks and he was a living symbol of the 19th or even of
the 18th century. He was extremely tall, broad-shouldered,
- 221 -
and very good looking. He had a wonderful white beard
almost down to his waist, which he combed to both sides
because around his neck he wore a decoration, the Cross
of St. John of Jerusalem. The Cross of St. John of Jerus
alem was an idea of Tsar Paul I who, for some historical
reasons mentioned in many books, detested his mother,
Catherine the Great, accusing her of having been in a
conspiracy to murder his father, Peter III. Therefore
everything that the Empress Catherine did, her only son
and heir detested. Catherine the Great had instituted the
Order of St. George the Victor. It was given to officers
and soldiers for successful bravery in battle. In the days
of Catherine the Great and up to 1917, it was the most
popular decoration in all of Russia. Of course, Paul I did
not want to award this order to anyone because it had been
founded by his mother, and so he invented the Order of
St. John. Since the reign of Paul I was very short, only
a few people were awarded this order, which was inherited
by the sons and sometimes the daughters of the man so
decorated. General Lomachevsky had inherited the Order of
St. John from his father, who had distinguished himself
during the short period of Emperor Paul I's reign. After
Paul I's death, Alexander I reinstituted the Order of St.
George and the Order of St. John ceased to exist and became
very rare.
Usually the lining of a general's coat was scarlet, but
- 222 -
the gray coat of General Lomachevsky had a yellow lining
because that was the color of the Ural Cossacks. When he
walked around Eupatoria with his coat open because of warm
weather, the Cross of St. John around his neck, and his
long white beard, he was quite an impressive sight. He had
a daughter about my age named Marianna. She was very
beautiful and at our parties she was somehow always quite
close to me, and she detested it when I mentioned the name
of the "real" Dina.
How the Lomachevsky family got away from Eupatoria
during the period of occupation I do not know, but more than
thirty years later and quite by chance I met Marianna in
Sea Cliff. She was a doctor of chemistry and she had
married a Russian ex-officer of the Guards who was also a
retired professor of chemistry. I renewed our friendship
and very much later I heard that Marianna's husband had
died. I asked her what had happened to the Cross of
St. John of Jerusalem that her father used to wear and she
replied that the Cross was in one of the vaults of a New
York bank. When I left for California I lost sight of
Marianna. On one of my stops in New York on my way to
Europe, my brother-in-law gave a party and I asked him to
invite Marianna to his party. When she came I was startled
because her good looks were totally gone. She looked ill
and had to be helped out of her chair. I appreciated very
much her taking all the trouble and her courage in coming
from some other part of New York to that party only for the
- 223 -
purpose of meeting me again. As of now I do not know whether
she is still living. I doubt it because she never answered
a letter that I wrote to her, trying to find out about that
unique Cross of St. John of Jerusalem and what happened to
it, because in my opinion it belongs in the museum of the
Hoover Institute.
Aunt Nadya in the "People's Court"
In the years 1917-18, when the revolution broke out,
many people of high society went to the Crimea, where they
had their summer houses. Aunt Nadya Tolstoy and Alexander
were in the Crimea living in a hotel. At that time the
Crimea was under the rule of the Bolshevik communists.
Knowing that Yalta was full of the bourgeoisie and that
they had with them many of their valuables and jewels,
the communists passed a decree that all the jewels in
private hands belonged to "the People" and had to be
surrendered to the leaders of the Bolsheviks. Aunt Nadya,
hearing of that decree, started sewing her many jewels
into the bottom of her skirt because she hoped that if
somebody should search her they would not find them in her
skirt. But a maid in the hotel noticed what Aunt Nadya
was doing and reported it to the Bolsheviks in the city of
Yalta. Aunt Nadya was promptly arrested and imprisoned.
But the Bolsheviks wanted all the outward appearance of
justice, so they had a "People's Court" (the American
expression is "Kangeroo Court"), which meant that if you
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belonged to the upper class you were of course condemned in
advance. But above all they wanted appearances, so there
was a hearing and representatives of the "people", or so to
say a kind of jury, were impanelled. And, as a member of
the jury, there appeared a butler of Aunt Nadya's cousin
who had worked for the family. The butler's name was Cyril.
He was an old man, very tall, sporting a beautiful white
beard, so he looked like the classical butler of the early
nineteenth century, and he was a very dedicated servant of
the family. But the Bolsheviks made a mistake in calling
him for the jury. When he was asked what he knew about the
accused Countess Tolstoy, he declared in a loud voice, "The
Countess is the kindest, best woman ever. On the great
holiday of the resurrection of our Jesus Christ," - he
made a big cross in the air as he mentioned Christ - "the
Countess always presented me with a coin of ten rubles in
gold. " And of course the Bolsheviks gasped and many people
in the audience were laughing at what this man, the
representative of the "people", said, and what he represented
did not suit in any way what the Communists wanted to hear.
So they were stuck. A few days later, German troops,
advancing and occupying all of south Russia, entered Yalta
without any resistance, and the leaders of the Communists
fled, so everyone in the prisons was saved by the fact of
the Germans' entering Yalta.
- 225 -
THE SECOND REVOLUTION (November 1917)
CIVIL WAR STARTS IN RUSSIA
Special assignment to rejoin cavalry regiment
I had to do something, so I left the flying school and
reported to a cavalry regiment. This cavalry regiment
was a very unusual regiment, not a Russian guard regiment,
but a regiment of local Crimean Tatars. There were not
enough educated Tatars to give that regiment enough officers,
the amount prescribed by regulations, though some
intellectual Tatars were officers in that regiment. But
all the other officers were just Russian officers. The
Tatars knew enough Russian to understand Russian commands.
And this regiment in peacetime was located in the center of
the Crimea in a city that was roughly sixty miles from
Yalta, on the coast of the Crimea that had a climate like
the southern coast of France. Here the Imperial Family
stayed for many months, and therefore that regiment had
many opportunities of carrying out security duties around
the palaces and to get personal contact with members of the
Imperial Family. Of course, that was many times very use
ful for promoting their future career.
This Tatar regiment was now developed into two regi
ments. They were extremely anti-Communist. They were
Moslems, and counter-revolutionary-minded, officers and
soldiers .
Barely had I achieved to be accepted into that regiment,
- 226 -
when I received orders to go north to the region beyond the
Crimean peninsula and further, and to requisition horses.
Those regions were rich, very many rich peasants and many
rich colonies, descendants of Germans that were brought
into that region years and years ago under the reign of
Catherine the Great. They all became very wealthy farmers
and had very fine horses. So, I left the Crimea by train.
I went to the station from the barracks by carriage - it was
quite a distance - driven by an elderly Jew. For some
reason, all the transportation business was in the hands of
Jews. Probably this transportation and communication helped
their knowledge of how business was going on here and there,
as they travelled. And I paid for it. The distance was
rather great, and that driver refused to take me there,
complaining that his horses were too tired and too weak.
But I had to get there. I offered him a sizeable amount of
money, and besides that, I took out my Colt revolver. So,
the coachman agreed. And he was right about the horses.
When we got to the railroad station, the horses were barely,
barely moving. But the train was there. I managed to get
into one of the boxcars - they were overfilled with people
and soldiers - and almost immediately after that the train
left for the north. Later I was told that that very same
day, two trains from Sevastopol, armored and with crews of
sailors, one hundred percent revolutionary and excellent
fighters and soldiers as they were, they came to fight the
- 227 -
Tatars. Of course, those two cavalry regiments of Tatars,
with rifles and a few machine guns, were no match for the
two armored trains and the Black Sea sailors, marines.
The Tatars scattered and saved their lives by hiding in
the mountains of the Crimea. And the Tatar regiments were
wiped out with scarcely a fight. I just got away from that
a few hours before.
I realized that travelling all by myself, in boxcars
filled with all kinds of people, mostly deserters and
soldiers, and travelling there in the uniform of an officer
was very, very risky. So I had my shoulder epaulettes,
showing my rank, detached from my coat. It was an officers'
coat lined with sheepskin that every officer was wearing,
and many soldiers had stolen or requisitioned similar coats,
and they were all undisciplined - just a crowd and all
staring at me, try ing to guess who I might be. Some suggested
that I might be an officer and if so, I should be immediately
thrown out of the freight car while the train was moving.
I had on my head not a military cap but very fortunately a
lady's felt hat with a tail of a deer - very fashionable
in Tyrol, Austria. All that rabble in my freight car had
never seen anything like it and it threw them completely
off balance as to who I could be. They stared and I
stared back. They tried to talk to me but I never uttered
a word nor made a gesture.
Those fellows got out and got some hot water and they
- 228 -
made some tea, and one of them handed even to me a mug of
tea, which was most welcome in the cold weather. But I did
not say a word. I accepted the tea, I drank it, and then
I just smiled slightly and nodded my head, without saying
a word.
I arrived finally at my destination, or rather at the
place where I had to change trains, a city on the Dnepr
river, the city of Alexandrovsk. This city had two rail
road stations, and to get to the other station to get a
train in the direction of Nikol^ev I had to cross the city,
and I stopped in a hotel in the city. And barely had I
undressed and was in the process of going to bed when there
was a knock on the door, and a group of fellows with machine
guns and revolvers came in and declared that I had to be
questioned. The city was occupied, I found out, by
Bolsheviks calling themselves anarchist communists. They
intended to question me, and we went to the dining room of
the hotel. I did not realize the danger. Therefore, I
managed to keep one hundred percent cool. Those anarchists
were talking for hours and got all dry throats, so I called
the waiter and I ordered tea at my expense. And I asked the
waiter if he had a supply of rum left. He produced a bottle
of rum, and the anarchists started looking at me like a
friend. They questioned me from where an whence I came,
where I was going, and I told them all kinds of fairytales
that I invented here and there, just to keep the discussion
- 229 -
going. Then, they released me and said that they were
satisfied with my documents and my intentions. I went
back to my room and went to bed. I was scarcely asleep
when I heard a knock at the door. And I said to myself,
"Oh hell, there they are again." But it was only a servant
of the hotel, a young fellow in civilian clothes, but I
noticed that he had several ribbons of the order of St.
George, soldier's decorations for bravery in battle. This
fellow addressed me, "Sir, officer, those fellows are still
in the dining room discussing whether they should arrest
you or not. They might. So, you better leave, disappear
from this hotel." And I followed his advice, left the
hotel - it was barely dawn - and spent the rest of the time
in a city park.
A coincidence reunites me with Dina
Then, I do not exactly remember from whom or how, but
from someone in this very small city of Alexandrovsk, I
learned that Dina and her parents were living in Alexandrovsk
They had a great estate not far from that city that I had
visited in the year 1915; and now they were living in a
house they had rented in Alexandrovsk, because living on the
estate was much too dangerous. They had a general manager
of their estates, a Russian of peasant origin but that had
become educated, and his name was Dybenko. It was a rather
plain name. And one of the most prominent and most cruel
leaders of the anarchist communists had also the name
- 230 -
Dybenko. So, when this very dedicated manager of the
estates of Dina's parents took measures to protect them, to
find food for them, he came as Dybenko and made a very
great impression on all the new Bolshevik soviet authorities
when he was asked, "Are you a relative of the famous
Dybenko?", he immediately said, "Of course, he is a cousin
of mine, and we spent all our childhood together," and
immediately he became a great person in the eyes of all
those fools. He was very clever, very honest, very dedicat
ed to the parents of Dina.
Of course, I got their address and came to pay them a
visit. They were very kind to me, and they said to me in
the presence of Dybenko, that it was very dangerous for me
to live in a hotel in the city, and I should live in their
house. Under the same roof with Dina! And in that back
yard they had a little house that was empty. Both their
sons, who were much older than Dina, were somewhere -
nobody knew where exactly - and this back house in the
yard was unobtrusive, so I could live there. Actually, I
had no other place to go to. The neighbors on one side
were small landowners who had also fled to the city. They
had two daughters, the eldest the same age as Dina, maybe
a little younger, so sometimes there was company. I was
not alone face to face with Dina. Those girls were all
the time present. We played the piano, sang songs, played
chess, passed the time as best we could. Right across the
- 231 -
street was a house that had been requisitioned, and that
house was the headquarters of the anarchist communists.
And above the house they had a huge black flag, and on that
flag was a big human skull and two crossed bones. That
was their symbol, and they were our neighbors just across
the street. I had to register with them and the seal of
this gang was stamped on my document that mentioned that
I am "Count Ivan Stenbock-Fermor , Lieutenant of the
Imperial Horse Guard Regiment, on leave for 21 days." This
document was given me in June 1917. It later also was
stamped by the Ukrainian seal of Hetman Petlura and later
by the Kaiser lich Deutsche Komandatur. Quite a document!
The fate of Universities and the Free Press under Lenin
After Lenin declared that his government was the legal
government, his first step was to forbid the free press.
Lenin declared, "We are not so dumb as to give to our
opponents the great power that the press has over the
masses." There was no censorship, oh no, they found
something much better: all paper was requisitioned and
all plants that produced paper were requisitioned by the
one and only Communist Party. So all those who wanted to
write something had to get paper from the Communist Party
and they were refused paper if they wrote anything that
was not in the Party line. It was as simple as that.
Besides, they wanted to create a new ruling class;
they did not trust the old ruling class. In order to get
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rid of that old ruling class - of course they could not
physically destory that many people - the first move was
to forbid the right to go to school to the children of all
civil servants, military officers, and soldiers of the
Russian Empire, all children of the clergy, and all children
of landowners. They wanted a nation of unskilled workers.
Those who would become skilled workers had to prove their
proletarian origins. They had to prove that they were the
children of peasants whose grandfathers had been serfs, of
peasants who had no ownership of land, or of unskilled
factory workers. Only those children had the right to go
to school; and not only had they the right, they were
ordered to go to school. If the small kids went to school,
well, they started from scratch, but many proletarian
people of university age were ordered to go to the university.
If they were in no way prepared for university study it
was completely disregarded. About all that was required was
that they could read and write.
Michael, a friend of mine and one of the officers of
my regiment, was stuck in Russia and so he "mixed with the
crowd" . He got some papers stating that he was of proletar
ian origin even though he was from a very ancient aristocratic
family, descendants from the Tatars centuries ago and Michael
looked exactly like a Tatar peasant from any village on the
Volga. Nobody would ever recognized in him and in his
features an officer of the Horse Guards. That helped Michael
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a lot. He was a very, very talented person, so he went to
the university. In those days there was no way of taking
pictures, so the documents stating that he was a student at
that university did not have a picture of him. Making
fingerprints was unknown in those days and that document
stated only his name. Together with him were those new
unfortunate boys belonging to the Communist Party and
ordered to go to the university. Study or else! We need
doctors and engineers that have been brought up with
Communist ideals. Those poor young students did not know
what to do. They could not grasp the university studies,
being so ill-prepared. They were formed into groups of
ten and one who was bright enough (one of these of course
was my friend Michael) was put in charge of that group.
He had to coach them and help them in their studies. He
was given total power over his group. He could beat them
up, he could make them stay hungry; he was a dictator, a
total dictator over his group of ten. And then the exams
came around. Of course my friend Michael passed the exams
brilliantly but he was credited only if the ten students of
his group also passed. (Many, many years later I was talk
ing about that system at Stanford and suggested that the same
methods be adopted there, but my suggestions were turned
down ! )
Now I just want to mention why my friend Michael led
such an unusual life. He graduated from the Corps des Pages
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at the same time I did. He was in the front lines while
I was in the rear and therefore he participated actively in
battling the Germans. He got a decoration, the Cross of
Stanislav with crossed swords. It was a minor decoration
for a junior officer for bravery. Then he was stuck in the
Soviet Union and because he so brilliantly finished at the
university he became a junior member of the Moscow Academy
of Science and a reserve officer in the Red Army. At the
beginning of the Second World War he was called to duty as
a reserve officer. He was one of the first parachutists
and he was decorated with the Silver Star of Lenin. Then
during the war he managed to surrender to the Germans. His
dream, of course, had always been to get away from the
Soviet Union, and with many many thousands of others he
surrendered to the Germans. The Germans immediately
recognized in Michael a very talented young man and officer
so they put him to a test. They offered him an opportunity
to join a German Military Academy. He could speak German
as well as he could speak Russian. If he refused, he would
be locked up in a camp and starved to death. So Michael
graduated during the war from an accelerated course at the
General Staff Officers' Academy. Then he was appointed
to be regiment commander of some Russians, mostly Cossacks,
who had decided to fight on the side of the Germans because
they wanted to fight Communists. If they had to be on the
side of the devil, or the Germans, they did not care. They
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wanted to fight the Communists. That was it. And while
fighting the Communists, Michael, the German commander, was
decorated with the German Iron Cross of Hitler.
The Tcheka visits my aunt
"Open the coffins and sell the tails!" That was the
text of a telegram sent in early 1918 from Yalta in the Crime*
to my aunt, who was still living in St. Petersburg, by her
brother. In my aunt's family the "coffins" was jokingly
the name of long and narrow boxes in which the very elaborate
gold embroidered court dresses of my aunt and her daughters
were kept. At court receptions and grand balls all ladies
used to wear dresses with very long trains, heavily em
broidered with gold. The gold on such dresses represented
a value on the black market of St. Petersburg in the very
early period of the Revolution, 1918.
But all telegrams were controlled by the Tcheka. This
dreaded word appeared in the Russian vocabulary in 1918. It
stood for a special power committee which was to eliminate
all counter-revolutionary activity and illegal black
marketing; it was the insturment of the new and self-
appointed government and its role was to terrorize everybody
into obedience. Members of the Tcheka had unlimited powers
to suspect, spy, arrest, search, interrogate, jail, judge,
condemn, and execute. There was no recourse possible
against them.
-t
"Tcheka" if put in Russian words, it is an abbreviation
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of a name "Extraordinary power commission to fight against
counter-revolution and black-marketeering. " It was
created by an order of Lenin. This red terror organization
changed its official name to befuddle the "Western
Democracies." It is to this day the pillar of the USSR
interior politics with all due respect to all theorititians
of "Human Rights" or in plainer language, fools and cowards.
Stanford University has a picture of Lenin in a place of
honor - as an image of a Great Humanitarian.
Members of this committee came to my aunt's house to
investigate about "coffins to be opened and tails to be
sold." In early 1918 there were among members of the Tcheka
some former employees of the secret police of the defunct
Tsar's government. They were turncoats, fellows with no
allegiance to any ideals, and they just served the hand
that fed them.
In those days all of the population of St. Petersburg
was in a desperate situation for lack of cash. Bank
accounts and savings were all "requisitioned." Those who
served the new authority got wages in cash, or still
better, in food products or fuel. Food and fuel were
becoming scarcer by the day and winter had just started.
Anyone interested in knowing in more detail about everyday
life in St. Petersburg or Moscow during the winter of 1918
should read "Pilgrimage through Hell", by Mrs. Mary Avinov.
She lived in those days in Moscow and has described everyday
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life with a talent that I sadly lack.
During the search of my aunt's house, one of these
"turncoats" mentioned that his organization needed a typist
who knew English, and my cousin Mary realized that by
taking such a position she would be able to feed her
parents and her sister. At that time she did not realize
the functions of the Tcheka. Cousin Mary was abnormally
samll and felt that to be a family disaster in spite of the
family's trying, perhaps too hard, not to let her feel that
way. Mary was 24 but looked 15. What she lacked in height
she made up in brains and pluck.
My cousin Mary becomes a typist for the Tcheka in Petersburg
During her work as an English typist, Cousin Mary
overheard that my mother ' s vacant apartment (Mother was
then in the south of Russia) would be given to a person
employed in the new government. This person happened to
be an ex-general of the Tsar, now working as a scribe in
one of the numerous government offices. He moved into the
apartment along with his brother, an ex-army Corps Commander,
now a cobbler. But before they moved in, cousin Mary
succeeded in storing all of Mother's belongings and some
furniture in two rooms, and she sealed the doors of these
two rooms with the seal of the Tcheka. She had had the pluck
to steal this seal one evening from the desk of her boss
and she put it back the next morning. These two rooms
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remained sealed for four years. People dreaded even to
glance at those seals and dreaded still more calling
attention to themselves by asking the Tcheka to remove
them.
In those early days of 1918, some employees of the
Tcheka believed and probably even hoped that the new ways
would not last and that it might be wise to have friends
among the former high-ranking families. With the help of
such people, Cousin Mary succeeded in getting herself, her
parents, and her sister out of Russia. With such help and
at the right time, they crossed in a sleigh the frozen
Finnish Bay and escaped to Finland. During the crossing,
by night of course, the sleigh and even the horses were
covered with white bed sheets to protect them from being
detected by searchlights of the Kronstadt sea fortress,
constantly sweeping the frozen waters of the bay and
opening fire on anything that moved. Such a way of escaping
Soviet Russia was not unusual in those days. It was an
escape route for many families. This escape occurred in
1919.
My cousin Alexander
With his family, my cousin Alexander fled from the
Baltic area where they lived when the conflict between
Russia and Germany began during World War I. As a young
man, Alexander worked in the industries located in the
- 239 -
Ruhr region in Germany. He came to know the workers there
and from his experiences wrote a book called Coal. It was
published by a leftist publisher in Switzerland. This
publisher had a daughter who also had leftist sympathies.
Alexander married her. His next book, Germany from Below,
described his experiences with the jobless and poor
fighting Hitlerism in the early 1930's. This book was
banned when Hitler came to power. A German navy engineer
managed to get a copy and gave it to me while I was living
in Biarritz. Alexander's third book, Per Rote Graf , was
published after his death. This described further his fight
against Hitler. While Hitler was in power, Alexander had
to go into hiding. The best way was for him to enter
Hitler's army, which he did, and at the age of forty became
an infantry private. Because he was older, he became in
fact a "reserve uncle". When the war ended and Germany was
occupied by the Soviets, Alexander was taken by Russian
troops and brought to an officer of the KGB. The officer
was surprised that this man in a German uniform spoke
perfect Russian and seemed a very intelligent man. The
KGB officer asked about this. Alexander told him, "I am
a descendant of Kropotkin. " (Kropotkin was a well-known
Marxist who lived during the time of Nicholas I.) On
hearing this, the KGB officer hugged Alexander and wel
comed him. Eventually Alexander was appointed mayor and
administrator of a German city.
- 240 -
General P. Wrangel saved by his wife
As I described earlier, nightmarish events were
happening in Sebastopol on the Crimea, the base of the
Black Sea Russian fleet. This fleet was in mutiny and
one or two destroyers (all officers on them murdered and
thrown overboard) sailed in to the harbor of Yalta. This
resort city was crowded with refuges from St. Petersburg,
Moscow and other cities from the north and many had been
very, very wealthy and had priceless jewelry with them.
The crew of the two destroyers landed and started
arresting all officers in sight or in the homes, moving from
house to house. In the nick of time many officers escaped
leaving the city for the mountains near Yalta. They found
refuge in the villages of local Tatars. The Tatars were
all Moslems and vehemently opposed the revolution and
Communism. They gladly accepted to hide and help the
Russian officers, many of them belonging to the highest
Russian aristocracy.
But a division commander, General Baron Peter Wrangel
did not escape in time and was arrested for the only reason
that he was a general and to make this worse, he had the
title of a baron. He was draged aboard the destroyers,
"courtmartialled" and his fate would have been to be
murdered and thrown overboard with a heavy shell tied to
his feet. But it was not to be. His wife, Baroness Olga
Wrangel, her maiden name was Ivanenko, intervened on his
- 241 -
behalf. I knew her very closely and admired her as one of
the greatest woman I ever knew. The Ivanenko family many
generations ago was of peasant stock and became very
wealthy in the second part of the 19th century when coal
was discovered on their land. They became members of
the St. Petersburg society. Her brother graduated from
the Corps des Pages and as a very young junior officer he
was an internationally famous hurdle rider, rewarded with
many prizes.
His sister Olga (Baroness Wrangel) had the great
wisdom and also the figure of a Russian, stout and plain
Russian middleaged woman and she managed to get aboard
the destroyer where the Baron was a prisoner. She had
with her all her jewels. The general was released - but
it was not the jewels that did it, Olga's personality and
legendary charm did it. She found the proper words that
changed the minds of a crew in mutiny. After all the
crew members were Russian sailors and Olga was a Russian
wife of her husband.
At that time the mutinous sailors little realized
that they had let go not just one of so many generals or
admirals, but Peter Baron Wrangel, the man that would become
two years later the commander in chief and legendary hero
of all anti-communist Russians, even after his much to early
death in 1928 in Belgium.
- 242 -
I become of age (1918)
I became of age on February 26, 1918. I was living
with my Uncle Vladimir and his wife and my cousin Andre,
about six months my junior, on my uncle's estate, Troitskoye,
in south Russia. Ten kilometers away from this estate
was my estate of Kodyma. In those days my mother was stuck
on the Crimea, where she had followed me when I was attached
to the aviation officers' school. That school had fallen
apart because of the Bolshevik Revolution and then I had
joined a Tatar cavalry regiment and left the Crimea on the
pretext of mobilizing horses for that regiment. I was very
lucky to have been sent north of the Crimea because the very
next day the Crimea was taken over by the Red Army and
sailors of the Black Sea Fleet, after their mutiny and the
assassination of many officers. I barely got out of the
Crimea on time. Then I came to Kodyma and Uncle Vladimir
suggested that I not live alone there but that I live with
them. A carriage from my estate came over to pick me up if
I wanted to go to my home and then took me back in the
evening, and that was a kind of established routine that
lasted for some six weeks.
On the evening of February 26, 1918, when I became 21,
there was a dinner, extra-elaborate if I may say so, as
elaborate as times permitted. There was absolutely no
communication whatsoever with the outside world. Trains
had long ago stopped running; the Post did not function;
- 243 -
there were no telegrams; telephones were nonexistent. We
knew what was going on, more or less, ten kilometers away
from us, but those were only rumors. There was a rumor of
a gang, one of many gangs that then marauded all over the
country, living on the people of the country, looting, and
raping. One of those gangs was a remnant of a line cavalry
regiment. Many of the soldiers had left the regiment on
their own to go home as best they could, but there remained
roughly some 200 who did not want to go, for reasons of
their own, back to the place where they had come from; and,
practically, they did not know where to go and how to
exist. They were no longer supplied with food or anything
else but they still had their rifles and hand grenades and
some amount of ammunition so they became marauders.
Maruska-Gang ravages the region
One of those gangs in south Russia came under the
influence and leadership of Maruska. Maruska was a girl,
she was an intellectual. I never met her because if I had,
I would not be here writing my memoirs. But she was a
very unusual woman. It was said about her that she was
very literate and very smart and beautiful, roughly between
twenty and twenty-five. Out of the gang of soldiers she
took a lover and when she was tired of that lover she
shot him, then took another lover and shot him also, and
the members of the gang took all this as something quite
normal. Maruska probably had lots of guts and maybe even
- 244 -
some kind of occult influence on those people. Of course
the soldiers in that gang were half-literate peasants and
could very easily be influenced by such a leader as Maruska.
Maruska was taking revenge on society. She had been a
quite famous prostitute in the city of Nikolaeff and she
took revenge on the life and society that had made her what
she was. Therefore she especially attacked, at the head of
her band, the wealthy peasantry and some landed proprietors
of the gentry that had not yet fled. In every village
where she came if she found a priest, she arrested him, made
him smoke and dance - which were sins in the eyes of the
priesthood - and made him do all kinds of most awful,
disgraceful acts. The priest's wife and daughters, no
matter their age, were all raped many times over right in
front of him before he was tortured to death. That was
for Maruska a kind of system.
At that dinner in honor of my coming of age, a retired
butler served, a relic of a very distant past. When he was
a boy about fifteen or sixteen, he was given - and I insist
on the word given, because in those days he was a young serf
of my great grandfather - to my great grandfather's daughter,
my granny, mother of my father, when she married at the age
of eighteen. And this Andre was in those days a sixteen
year old errand boy. He stayed in the family for many
generations. For him, the young master was my grandfather.
And when my father was a boy between seven and ten and came
- 245 -
to the dining room where he was not supposed to come,
Andre" took a wet towel and chased the kid - my father - away.
So, for Andre, my cousin and I were of course just little
nobodies. He was very, very dedicated to the family and he
had to serve on great occasions. Telling him that he was
too old, that he could not do it, would have been a great
offense. Nobody would dare tell him that. When he took a
heavy dish with a goose or a turkey, the whole dish trembled
in his hands, and for us it was very exciting: would he
drop it or would he not? But before taking the dish,
champagne was uncorked and served, of course, by old Andre,
and he poured himself the first glass before serving us.
Then, raising that glass, he drank it bottoms up, to the
health, in this case, of me on the occasion of my becoming
of age. After that, for a short time, his hands trembled
less and nothing happened.
Well, of course that evening when we dined, the four
of us, we did not realize that that was the very last day
of so-called Old Holy Russia. The next morning we became
displaced persons, actually emigrants. But we did not
realize it immediately. It came about when the next
morning, in my carriage, I was driving back to Kodyma
with my coachman. First we had to descend for about a
kilometer down to a dry river bed. In that river bed
there stood a building built by Uncle Vladimir, and the
building had a pump. It was a stone building and it
- 246 -
pumped underground water for the irrigation of the gardens
of Troitskoye. This building played a great role a few
days later. When we were mounting up from that river bed,
of course, the horizon was very limited, and therefore I
found myself face to face with a mounted group of villains.
I recognized from their tattered uniforms the regiment that
they belonged to. They immediately surrounded my carriage
and one of them shouted, "Maybe he is a White Guard officer
on reconnaissance." That meant that I would have to be shot
there and then. I cried back, keeping my cool, and said,
"It looks to me that all of you are soldiers. And who
is the idiot that suggested that I am on reconnaissance?
Who would go on reconnaissance in a horse-drawn carriage
with a liveried coachman on the box? It is absolutely
ridiculous." So the whole gang started laughing, and that
was a good sign of course. But nevertheless, they surround
ed me and made me turn around and go back to Troitskoye.
So I arrived at Uncle Vladimir's house with a good honorary
escort. Then they dismounted and immediately demanded
lodgings in the house.
The house was very unusual. It was built by the serfs
of my great grandfather. It was a row of peasant huts, very
low and just stuck together. The whole house looked like a
long sausage with a corridor, a very wide one, in the
middle - that was the library. The corridor ended with a
double door. It was a glass door and the glass was painted
- 247 -
so you could not see through it from either side.
The gang was lodged in an anteroom bejond that glass, so
my cousin and I crept up from the corridor side and listened
to what they were talking about. From their talking we
gathered that they were some kind of an avant-garde of a
bigger gang led by Maruska. We had already heard enough
about her, so we knew what to expect. This avant-garde
was just waiting, doing nothing to us, but they expected
towards late evening the arrival of Maruska and the rest
of the gang.
Hiding from the Maruska-Gang
We decided that we had to leave, but where could we go?
My. aunt was a sickly person. Uncle Vladimir all of a sudden
declared that he would not go anywhere, that he had been
born in this very same house and if it were his fate to die,
he wanted to die in the same house where he had been born.
I was very cool and I said, "OK, Uncle, but keep in mind
that before you are tortured to death, Aunt Pasha and your
son Andre will be tortured right in front of your eyes. I
am going to leave anyhow." We all decided to leave. The
three of us, my uncle, my cousin, and I were armed. We
had our officers' revolvers and we had light German Mauser
rifles. Towards evening we left the house. We could not
carry any food with us, just what my aunt could gather in
the pantry, because we did not want anybody to get the idea
that we were leaving. Our idea was to leave the house and
- 248 -
to walk for about a kilometer to that pumping station, which
as I have said was a stone building with narrow windows.
There was water therein any amount, and three armed men could
a
resist the assault of that gang, especially because all
those gangsters were never very eager to risk their lives.
That punping station stood in the middle of a wide, open
field. They could not rush it or they would be under our
fire, and before they got at us many of them would certainly
be killed or heavily wounded. We could sustain a siege in
that place for a number of days. We had heard rumors that
German troops were moving into south Russia, and where the
German troops came the Communists and Bolsheviks fled and
some kind of order was established; and then there was no
more looting and murder would not be tolerated, so we could
hope for our eventual escape.
We walked, having left the house in the evening. It
was not very dark and we noticed that a night-watch had seen
us leaving. As incredible as it may seem, that night-watch
was a Hungarian POW attached to farming, as many POW's were,
for lack of Russian farmers not yet back from war. We did
not know what that Hungarian POW would do. Would he alert
the Maruska gang or say nothing? But anyhow, we were at his
mercy. We went through an old park. Then, climbing over a
ditch, we had to walk through a wide-open field, and we
were about a quarter through when we heard the sound of
running horses. We said, "Well, that is it. That gang is
- 249 -
on horseback and is after us. We are in a wide-open field
full of moonshine. So we will open fire and kill as many
of the gang as we can, each of us reserving the very last
bullet for himself, so that under no conditions will we fall
alive into their hands." Then the sound of the hooves came
closer, and what did we see? It was a two-horse carriage,
driven by our old coachman, Selifon.
This old, dedicated coachman, Selifon, took us away to
a remote little village where he had a friend that he could
trust, where we could go into hiding at least for a short
time. Selifon was drving a very high, open carriage. My
uncle and aunt were sitting in the back seats, so they had
the icy wind right in their faces, while my cousin Andre
and I were in officers' winter coats, lined with sheepskin
and we were much warmer. We decided to change places in
that carriage, not losing any time. Therefore, I got out
of the carriage and stood on the steps and my uncle and
aunt switched places with their son, Andrei I was standing
on those steps and the horses were running as fast as they
could when my foot slipped and I fell to the ground. My
finger got caught by a hook that was there to hold the big
apron (this apron was used when the front seats were not
occupied) , and this hook got under the ring that I had on
my finger (it was a coat of arms ring) and that ring cut
into my finger to the bone. Of course there was not much
blood in such a place. As to the pain, I did not even feel
- 250 -
it in all the stress and excitement of that moment. So we
drove on and the coachman deposited us at a remote cluster
of peasant dwellings and immediately he drove back to the
estate and put the horses back in their stables. That old
man, who was very famous for never smoking or drinking, got
himself on purpose dead drunk so he could not be questioned.
While we were in hiding in that remote place, events
continued to develop at the estate. I heard all the stories
when I came back about five or six months later after that
part of the country had come under German and Austrian
occupation. When Maruska arrived, they searched the house
for us and we were not there, we had just evaporated. Then
they went down to the cellar and in the cellar there were
many, many boxes of champagne, French champagne that my
uncle loved and used at big parties as a marshall of the
local nobility. My aunt had always been a sickly person
(she died at the age of ninety-two as an immigrant in France,
so she probably was not that sick) and she always sent for
some kind of a cure, and she had mineral waters from Austria,
from a very famous cure place called Karlsbad. This was
actually a kind of purgative. Maruska and her gang were
too drunk to distinguish horses from mutton. A bottle is
a bottle and a liquid is a liquid, so actually they drank
half and half, the purgative from Karlsbad and my uncle's
champagne. And after that one can imagine what kind of a
condition they were in. They were in no condition to search
- 251 -
any more, or to pursue. They were flat on the floor and
went no place for at least two or three days. When they
had recovered, some went away but part of them stayed.
Of course they were all very much interested in horses.
In the stables there were our carriage horses which they
requisitioned, not to say looted, and there were also
riding horses. Those riding horses were very expensive,
they were great jumpers, and they were all imported from
Ireland. They were called Irish Hunters. They were big,
strong, heavy, but they had never been harnessed. Maruska's
fellows harnessed those Irish Hunters to a cart and then
eight fellows got into that cart. The Irish Hunters were
very well trained and as they did not know what was expected
of them, they just stood calmly. Then one of the drunken
soldiers, one of the deserters, took a big whip and lashed
away at those Irish Hunters. A minute later the cart was
upside down and there were many broken legs and arms. The
soldiers immediately decided that the Hunters were performing
sabotage and the Hunters were shot there in the yard in front
of the stables.
We were more or less safe in the remote little village
but gangs sent out from the master gang were all over the
countryside. Rumors started that we were in hiding there
and we had to get away, further away. I made an attempt to
go on foot for about ten miles to Kodyma to get horses and
a carriage. I arrived at Kodyma and all the shepherd dogs
- 252 -
greeted me, wagging their tails, and the many- times
mentioned Nikita gasped when he saw me. The first thing
I ordered was a hot bath. He prepared it and then I asked
the cook to give me a good lunch, and the lunch was pre
pared. Both Nikita and the cook, who was a grandson of a
serf of my grandfather from the village of Troitskoye,
warned me that I would be very much in danger if I went to
my stables to get some of my carriage horses. These elderly
people would not refuse me anything but their sons had just
deserted from the Black Sea Fleet and they were obviously
one hundred percent Communists and Bolsheviks and probably
had with them rifles and hand grenades. They would not let
me have horses. They would not dare, the two of them, to
attack me, but they had already sent a rider to the small
city about thirteen miles from our estate for reinforcement
to take me and probably shoot me on the spot. Well, I
calculated how much time it would take for that rider to
ride those thirteen miles, alert thei.r people there, and how
much time it would take to ride those thirteen miles back.
I had at least four hours' time. So again on foot I walked
back to the remote little village where my uncle, my aunt,
and my cousin were waiting for me. I had to walk in the
daytime. It was the month of March but the sun was very
hot and my officer's heavy coat was very warm. I realized
it was the only warm object that I had and I did not dare
drop it and leave it in the middle of the fields so I had
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to keep it on me. I walked and walked,- and when I arrived
at the village I saw my uncle and aunt and cousin Andre
sitting in a cart with horses, driven by a young peasant
from Troitskoye. This fellow was one of the many sons of
a certain peasant in Troitskoye and he had sent his horses,
his cart, and his son to save us and drive us further on.
And that is what he did.
We drove on to the city of Nikolaeff and when we were
close to the city, only a couple of miles away, we heard
rapid artillery shooting. Earlier Nikolaeff had been
occupied by Austrian troops but the Bosheviks had managed
to throw the Austrians out of the city. Then German ground
reinforcements came and placed their artillery on the other
shore of a very wide river. On the left shore was located
the city of Nikolaeff and the German artillery was on the
right shore. The Germans had the plan of the city and they
knew from scouts which houses the Bosheviks had used when
they shot at the Austrians. Precisely those houses were
destroyed by German artillery fire, with German absolute
precision. The Germans were throwing the Bolsheviks out of
the city and of course there was street fighting, and that
was not the proper moment for us to drive into the city.
Our driver knew of a safe place and he turned off the main
road and after going a couple of miles we arrived at a water
mill. The owner of the water mill was an extremely old man.
He greeted us in the most friendly way and invited us into
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his house. He said that the horses would be taken care of
and he gave us milk, cottage cheese, lard, homemade bread,
and whatever he could find in his pantry, assisted by his
very old wife. Uncle Vladimir and Aunt Pasha were
absolutely exhausted, but the old man turned toward me and
/
my cousin Andre and said to us in the proper old soldiers'
way, "Gentlemen Officers, I have something to show you."
We followed him and he opened a very big door. We proceeded
after him and gasped in astonishment. We had before us a
big ballroom that could have been in any palace and obvious
ly was never used. The ballroom had beautiful parquet floors
that were shining like a mirror. The walls were decorated
with huge painted copies of portraits of Tsar Nicholas I,
Tsar Alexander II, Tsar Alexander III, and the last Tsar,
Nicholas II, all in full dress uniform, life-sized, bigger
than life-sized portraits of the four Tsars in big, gilded
frames. Suddenly the old man started sobbing and crying,
and through his sobbing and tears he said to us, "Young
Gentlemen Officers, I have served as a soldier to four
Tsars, I gained this Cross of Saint George for bravery in
the Crimean War." At that time, that had been more than
fifty years ago. Then he started sobbing again and saying,
"What are they doing now to our Holy Russia?"
We escape the Maruska-gang and reach Nikolaeff
We stayed at the water mill for a day or two, and when
the fighting in Nikolaeff was over, we drove into the city.
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On the borders of that city, on the high road, stood a Ger
man patrol under the command of a corporal. To us "young
gentlemen officers" who had been at war with Germany for
four years, seeing those soldiers was quite a shock. But
at the same time we realized that from this moment, and
thanks to those Germans, we were safe. The German corporal
was very correct and asked us, "Are you officers?" As I
spoke German fluently, I answered him in that language, say
ing, "Yes, we are." He saluted immediately and asked again,
"Do you have arms on you?" I said, "Yes." We had Mausers
and pocket revolvers. Then the German corporal said to us,
"Sirs, I am obliged to ask you to surrender your arms to
me." We did it, of course, immediately, and the corporal
added, "Tomorrow, if you come to the Commandantur (the Ger
man headquarters was on the main street of the city of
Nikolaeff , across from the Hotel London) , you will probably
get your arms back."
We drove into Nikolaeff to a friend of my uncle's.
Nikolaeff was crowded with refugees who were trying to save
their lives from the Communists. Well, this gentleman, my
uncle's friend, had a very large house, but all he could
offer us was his ballroom. So cots were arranged in that
ballroom for all of us and the next day we went to the
German headquarters. When we entered that building we saw
the German Commandant of the city of Nikolaeff sitting in
the hall and he was an exact copy of Kaiser Wilhelm,
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mustache and all. As we came to his table he addressed
us in German, and I answered because my cousin knew little
German. The first question from the General was, "Are you
officers?" I replied, "Yes, Your Excellency." Then the
General asked his next question, rather sternly, "What is
your regiment?" I answered, "We are officers of His
Majesty's Horse Guard Regiment." The General immediately
jumped to his feet and saluted. He offered us a seat,
addressed me by my title of Count, and offered me a cigar,
which I declined, saying that I never had smoked. Then, Of
course, a few minutes later we had our arms back and we had
all the passes we needed to go anywhere in the city of
Nikolaeff at any time of day or night. After that, the
conversation with the General became friendly and he asked
us our opinion of the general situation. I told him that
all the German units of occupation forces in south Russia
had, naturally, interpreters. Most of those interpreters
were Jewish because the Jewish jargon, Yiddish, is very
similar to German for some historical reason that I am
ignorant of to this day. But the Jewish population in south
Russia could understand the Germans much better than the
Russian peasants could. At that time, most of the Jewish
population was very much pro-Bolshevik and pro-Communist
for a reason I will speak about in much detail later; by no
means all of them (I do not want to make any kind of general
ization) , but very many of them were, especially the younger
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ones propagandized the German occupation troops little
by little. I told the German general that I believed that
in six months, or maybe more, the German army would revolt
and fall apart, just as the Russian Imperial Army had,
sapped by propaganda. The general said, "Oh No! Never in
the world. Our German soldiers are loyal to our Kaiser...",
and so forth and so on.
Well, I did not stay long in Nikolaeff , but I came
back to the city in the late fall of the year 1918, when
the Germans had surrendered and collapsed. In Nikolaeff
I saw drunken rebel soldiers with big red ribbons on their
shoulders, riding around in all sorts of carriages with
the worst kinds of girls on their laps. But the Comman-
dantur was still there, and as I entered the building I
saw the very same general. He was half lying in an arm
chair and sobbing like a baby. And that was the last I
saw of His Excellency General Gillhausen. But I will al
ways remember him.
When I was in Nikolaeff during the German occupation,
I did not live for long with my Uncle Vladimir, Aunt Pasha,
and my cousin Andre, for I rented a room in a girls'
school (the girls were absent) .
I also happened to discover, that in the city of Niko
laeff there was a bank, the name of which I do not remember.
But I remember the name of the director of that bank, a
Mr. Dekiriko. He was a Greek and I met him socially somewhere
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I was introduced to him and he said to me, "Young man,
do you know that you have a bank account at my bank?"
I said, "Really? Do I?" It was all the money that was
taken from the sale of wheat, cattle and so forth from
our estate of Kodyma and that money was deposited in
Nikolaeff in this bank. And I had very little knowledge
of business and money affairs in those days in spite of
being twenty-one. So the next day I went to the bank to
Mr. Dekiriko's office and he told me, "Your bank account
now has 80,000 rubles." Eighty thousand rubles in peace
time before the war was worth forty thousand American gold
dollars. How much that would be on this day of my
speaking, who knows? Anyhow it was a sizeable sum of money.
In peacetime before the first war the estate of Kodyma
had an income of roughly forty thousand rubles. Now, on
that account there was eighty thousand rubles, but of
course in the year 1918 the ruble was not worth what it
used to be in gold. Anyhow, Mr. Dekiriko asked me, "How
much do you need?" My pockets were almost totally empty,
and he gave me a slip of paper and I signed the slip of
paper not knowing that that paper was called a check. He
gave me on a tray which a bank clerk held, five thousand
rubles in cash.
Travel to Eupatoria to find mother
Early in April, 1918, after my escape from the clutches
of the Maruska gang to the city of Nikolaeff, I thought of
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going from Nikolaeff to the Crimea, where my mother had
been left in Eupatoria. There was no reason for her to
stay there anymore and I wanted her back in Nikolaeff, maybe
Kodyma, or wherever she wanted to go. But travelling was
not easy. Regular trains did not exist and only occasional
ly did trains run and nobody knew when or where they were
going and where they would stop. So I managed to leave
Nikolaeff with a military convoy of German troops, thanks
to my knowing the German language, and I got with them as
far as the city of Alexandrovsk on the Dnepr River, where
Dina and her family were living. I was back in Dina's home
again. There, the Germans stopped for some reason and
did not proceed toward the Crimea. I did not ask any
questions about their military plans, of course, but there
I was, stuck.
Russian Easter came around. The Russian custom at
Easter mass, when the priest says, "Christ is risen" and
everybody answers, "Indeed, He is risen", demands that all
Russians kiss each other three times. And I was wondering
what would happen when I said to Dina, "Indeed He is risen."
Would she kiss me three times, with all that kissing going
on right in church? But somehow when the moment came, she
wiggled behind some girl friends and the momentum was lost.
Well, I considered it a rather good sign, because kissing
for Easter three times only means kissing anybody. There
wasn't any different meaning to that kiss, but the fact that
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she had avoided kissing me, that did have some kind of a
meaning.
At that time, the city of Alexandrovsk was occupied
by an Austrian infantry division. Easter passed, and one
day a car stopped in front of the house where Dina's
parents were staying. An Austrian general descended and
asked if Dina's father would receive him. It was no
pleasure, but he had to be received. The general said
that the commander was giving a party and that he had come
in the name of the commander to ask that Dina's family be
present at that party. Dina's old father refused. Obvious
ly he had been invited because he was a very prominent
political person in the days of Imperial Russia, but of
course he would not want to go to a party with an
Austrian commander. Dina, aged 18, was crazy to go dancing,
of course, no matter with whom, but as she did not want to
go there unescorted, she asked me to come with her. I told
her that if she could get me a civilian suit of some kind,
I would escort her, but that I was not going to escort her
wearing the uniform of a Russian officer. So she did get
ahold of some kind of a civilian suit that fitted me rather
nicely and with her mother and I as escorts, we went to that
party.
There was a huge dinner table and at the center of the
table sat the commander, surrounded by his staff officers,
typical Austrian officers of Vienna. Farther around the
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table were quite a different sort of crowd sitting, not
even looking like officers. I was surprised by the
appearance of the Divisional Commander. He was, of course,
in full dress uniform, and wore all the decorations of
the Austrian Empire. He looked to be thirty or a little
older, an unusually young age for a Divisional Commander.
I sat almost opposite to him on the other side of the
table. My neighbor was an Austrian major who was very
happy to talk German with me. Pointing with my eyes at
the Commander, I whispered into his ear, "Who is he?"
The Austrian major giggled and whispered back into my ear,
"But that is the Herzog, Grand Duke Wilhelm of Hapsburg."
He was there as a Divisional Commander under the name of
Vasiliy Vishnevany. This, of course, was a fictitious
name, and this young member of the Austrian Imperial family
was being groomed by the Austrian General Staff to become
king of the independent Ukraine, in other words, all of
south Russia. During that dinner, the people sitting at
the far end of the table stood up and started singing. The
Austrian Grand Duke stood up, so everybody else stood up
too, I whispered into my neighbor's ear, "What are they
singing?" I barely understood anything of the words but it
was definitely not German. He giggled back into my ear and
said, "That is the Ukrainian National Anthem."
After a few days I found out that some German military
trains were moving south toward the Crimea, and boarding one
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of them I finally arrived once more at Eupatoria. A few
days later, Mother and I started our journey back, but
again, as I have said, travelling was a problem. Eupatoria
was the end station of a small railroad, and after about an
hour or so of travel we came to Simpheropol, where we had
to change trains. It was the main city on the Crimea and
it was on the main railroad line from Sebatopol to Peters
burg. Actually, this railroad was the backbone of the
European part of Russia. The train at Simpheropol came from
Sebastopol and the cars were already filled to capacity,
people mostly sitting on each other, on the roofs of the
cars, even on the bumpers. Getting into such a train was
a problem. The windows of the cars were all broken, but it
was springtime and warm and this gave some aeration to
the crowd. We were accompanied by some friends, Tatar
soldiers. When the train stopped, we were just facing
one of the broken windows of the car. At that minute
my mother, aged 56, was grabbed under her arms by two
Tatar soldiers, two other soldiers grabbed her legs, and
she was rammed through the window of that overfilled car.
And she actually dropped on the knees and the heads of the
people that were already inside. That was the only way to
get into the train. My two suitcases were thrown through
the same window on top of my mother. Because of my
mother's age, a girl rose and sat on the floor of the car
so that Mother could have a seat. I managed to be like a
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monkey and got hold of the steps of that car, which was
already moving, and then I wiggled inside to be a little
safer. Thus we travelled to Alexandrovsk. Probably it
took us four or five hours.
Alexandrovsk was a big junction and there many people
got off the train, including us. We went to the house
occupied by Dina's parents and again they were very kind to
us and very considerate. But Dina was very panicky when
she saw my mother, because of course it was no secret to
anybody that I had asked Dina to marry me and she had
answered, "No, let us remain old friends from the days of
our childhood." So that created of course a difficult
climate all around, because getting into another train
and leaving Alexandrovsk by a different railroad in order
to go back to Nikolaeff depended on when there would be
another train. Finally, the estate manager of Dina's
parents, Dubenka, told us that probably this evening there
would be a train leaving for Nikolaeff. He accompanied
Mother and me to the railroad station and there the old
porters all had keys to cars parked far away from the
station, on side tracks. For a good tip, a porter led
Mother and me, with some other porters carrying our few
suitcases, and told us that for sure this particular car,
now locked and empty, would be part of the train leaving
for Nikolaeff. So he unlocked the car and we were inside
an empty car. But we were not alone for long, because
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many other porters did the same thing. We were sitting
in that car for almost ten hours before it was pushed by
a little local engine and the train was formed. Fortunate
ly we had some food with us and water in bottles. After
travelling for about 24 hours we arrived in the city of
Nikolaeff, where Mother had a room that I had rented for
her in the same school where I was living.
Some historical background
Now I might as well explain some of the history of
Russia, and I advise anyone interested in the situation to
have in front of him a map of Russia. On that map you will
find Warsaw, the capitol of Poland. From that point draw
a line eastward so that the line goes right through
Moscow, and then further east as far as the Urals and on
into the vastness of nowhere, called Siberia. Now draw
a line from Moscow southward to the tip of the Crimean
peninsula. Following that line from Moscow sothward, you
will see several cities: Tula, very famous for its
factories of ammunition and samovars, then the city of
Orel, farther south the city of Kursk, and south of Kursk
the city of Belgorod, which was fortified to repel Mongol
invaders from the south Russian steppes where they lived.
Belgorod was the last fortified city to protect Moscovia.
This word Moscovia meant, of course, Moscow and the
surroundings: south as far as Belgorod, west as far as
the city of Smolensk, to the north into dense forests
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inhabited by some tribes of unknown descent, and to the
east Moscovia went as far as the city of Kazan on the
Volga River. Kazan was the capitol of a Tatar chieftain
and was captured in the early days of the reign of Tsar
Ivan the Terrible. This country, Moscovia, described very
roughly by me, had no access to the sea, it was land
locked. It had to fight against the Tatars in the east,
against the encroaching Swedes in the north, the Poles
in the west, and those migrating hordes of Mongols in the
south. Those were the days of Ivan the Terrible and of
Boris Godunov, the last name made famous by the opera of
Mussorgski and the poem of Pushkin. The south border of
this Moscovia was never firmly established. The region south
of this border of Belgorod was "at the border" of Moscovia.
In Russian, "at the border" is rendered by two words:
"U Kraya" . "At the border" was a very vast region. In the
west of that region was the River Dnepr with the beautiful
city of Kiev. Many centuries ago, Kiev was the political
and commercial center of the Slavs. The country was known
as Rus ' .
When south Russia, also called Ukraine, was no-man's
land, emptied by an onslaught of Mongols, and when the
Mongols retired, Kiev was completely destroyed, abandoned
by its population and was, for many many years, in ruins.
The population of Kiev was Slavic. They fled north into
the dense forests, and somewhere in the forest, on a little
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river called Moscva (it flowed then into the upper
reaches of the Volga) , was a fortified village that has
now become Moscow. The Tatars could not venture into the
dense forests because they were horsemen and did combat
only with lances. In the forests every big tree was a
fortress by itself, and besides there was no grass to
feed the Tatar horses, so the dense forest saved whatever
was left of the population of Kiev that had fled north
ward. The emptiness of south Russia in later years was
resettled by the same people that had once fled to Moscow,'
so they were practically Russians. It was also, to some
degree, settled by Poles in the west. Mostly those Poles
obtained large tracts of land and were wealthy landowners
and Roman Catholics. But most of the population coming from
the north and resettling that region were of Russian
Orthodox faith. That, of course, produced frictions. The.
most western part of south Russia came under the influence
of Austria, but those in the area did not want to be
Germanized, and as they lost all contact with Russia and
did not want to be Poles or Roman Catholics either, a new
word came up: they became "Ukrainians." And centuries
later, all through the nineteenth century, the daydream
of the Austrian General Staff in Vienna was to support
Ukrainians, to help them regain the southern part of Russia,
and to create a new state under Austrian influence. So the
Ukraine state became the brainchild of the Austrian General
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Staff.
All winter of the year 1917-1918 was a period of total
chaos in south Russia. The Soviets in Moscow called for
an armistice and in March 1918, the Soviet government
signed a peace treaty with the Germans, thus abandoning
the alliance with France and England and prolonging the
First World War for over a year. The entering of the
United States of America into the western war partly
replaced the Russian manpower but the Russian armistice
gave the Germans the chance to transfer most of their
troops to the western front to fight the English, the
French, and the newly arriving Americans. That peace
treaty between Imperial Germany and the Soviet govern
ment in Moscow was actually dictated by the Germans.
The Russians, that is to say the Bolsheviks, in Moscow
were represented by Trotsky, whose real name was Bronstein.
He tried to talk to the Germans but that did not last very
long and some German general, I believe it was General
Ludendorf, hit the table with his fist and said, "You sign
this peace treaty as we have set it up or else...." And
the Moscow side understood that the "or else" was alluding
to an advance of German troops right into Moscow and the
upsetting of the present government. That was the last
thing the Bolsheviks wanted and so they signed away all of
south Russia, then called by the fictitious name of
"Ukrainia", which really means "at the border." The
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Ukrainian government that also signed that treaty was
Socialist, if not outright Communist, but at least it was
some kind of "national" government.
First the Germans and the Austrians recognized as
the leader of this new country a man named Petlyura. He
was a socialist. There was a joke: Petlyura and his
so-called government lived in a railroad car and the joke
went that "the government is the railroad car and the
territory is under the railroad car." Over all the rest
of the country he had no authority whatsoever; it was in
chaos and could not deliver the goods that the Germans
wanted. When Petlyura could not manage, the Germans and
Austrians arranged a meeting with some very wealthy
Ukrainian landowners, mostly Russian dignitaries from
St. Petersburg. One of them was General Skoropadsky, who
had been commander of my regiment of the Horse Guards in
1914 when the war started. He took over under the title
of "Hetman", because that was an ancient word used in
south Russia. When Moscovia was weak, the Hetman in the
south played a great political role, almost as a king, but
he was an elected person.
General Skoropadsky was an extremely wealthy land
owner in south Russia and he had been a page in his youth
at the Corps des Pages from which I had graduated in 1917.
He was a great gentleman, an ex-officer of the Imperial
Guards. So he was by no means a Socialist or a Communist;
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he was, from a certain point of view, the very greatest
representative of the extreme Rightist reaction. But his
distant ancestors in the Ukraine had been elected Hetmen
of the Ukraine, which actually was never an independent
state, as it is generally understood, but was balanced
centuries ago between Moscow and Poland. The population of
the Ukraine was of Russian-Greek Orthodox faith; part of
the gentry and others were Roman Catholics. This period of
Skoropadsky ' s rule in south Russia under the protection of
the German bayonets gave the Germans an opportunity to
requisition or buy whatever foodstuffs they wanted.
I become a civilian 1918 in Kiev
Kiev was called "The Mother of Russian Cities", and that
was a pain in the neck to all those Ukrainians who wanted
to consider theirs an independent state. The capital of
the place was unquestionably Kiev and that did not suit
the Ukrainians at all. In Kiev there was a very famous
university, so when I got my papers of demobilization and
became a civilian, legally demobilized according to all
regulations in the old Russian days, I was given a passport,
and I still have it, and I love that passport because it
says that I am a student, that I am twenty- two, and a
bachelor. I went to the university to listen to lectures
about political economy; I went to that university twice.
The lecture hall was overflowing with students and probably
with some non-students. The lecturer was a very famous
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professor and I met him again much much later as an
immigrant when I was living in Monterey, California.
During that lecture, next to me sat a woman and during that
lecture she was breast-feeding her child. Well, I saw
many things at Stanford when I was teaching there much later,
but not that. At least not yet. And on the other side
next to me there sat another girl and she was devouring a
huge loaf of black bread and some very smelly herring.
That was the atmosphere of the University of Kiev in 1918.
1918 - Life in Kiev
The period of the new Hetman under the protection of
the Germans lasted in Kiev from April to October , 1918. The
railroad junctions and lines were protected but otherwise
in the country gangs similar to Maruska's were roaming
around and doing whatever they wanted, terrorizing the
population. The Germans did not have enough manpower,
obviously, to occupy all the villages and all the small
towns in that vast country which was almost as large as all
of France. But this period was a breather, especially for
people living in Kiev. Many wise people even imagined that
somehow things would be rearranged and life would come
back to normal and the war would be ended by some kind of
an arrangement between Germany and the Allies in the west,
who must realize that the Germans now had so many raw
materials to help them.
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While this breather lasted there was some kind of a
social life in Kiev. There was a group of people about my
age, some of them escaped from St. Petersburg and the
Bolshevik part of Russia under the pretext that they had
been born in south Russia or had some property in the south.
According to the arrangements of the peace treaty, under
such conditions they were eligible for repatriation so now
they were enabled to come from the north back to the south
and therefore their lives were saved.
Almost every week at my mother's apartment there was
a knock on the door and there stood a bum, dirty and in
rags, and said to my mother when she opened the door, "I
am Niki so-and-so", or "I am Ivan so-and-so", and one
time it was a nephew of my mother's and he had just escaped
from Bolshevik Russia in an illegal way, disguised and
dirty and with his clothes full of lice. These escapees,
and there were many of them, started the lice plague.
Lice became everywhere present.
One of my cousins that had gone to high school with me
and then graudated with me from the Corps des Pages appeared
in Kiev and was washed and fed. The next day I gave him
some of my clothes and we went for a walk through the city.
As we were walking together, suddenly I noticed that he
was not next to me anymore. He had vanished and I wondered
what had ahppened. I turned around and there he was, half
a block behind me, in front of a delicatessen that was full
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of goodies and he was frozen in front of that window and
he just could not tear his eyes away from there because he
had just been through a period of extreme hunger in
Petrograd. In those days in Kiev, there were private
theatres and there was a comedy going on, the main theme of
which was the hunger of people escaping to Kiev, and all
of a sudden my cousin stood up and said, "I cannot see
that anymore. I have to leave the theater. I just can't.
I went through all that personally, myself. Here it is a
show you can laugh at, a comedy, and there it was sheer,
extreme suffering."
There was a big garden in Kiev called the Merchant's
Park. It was on the high border of the Dnepr, with a
fantastic view. In that park was a kind of podium on
which musicians played on weekends. Our group of young
people went often to those evening concerts. Among that
group of young people was Helen Leuchtenberg. She had an
immense charm and all the boys were very much under this
charm of hers, including me. For the time being, Dina
was forgotten, I did not even know where she was. At one
of the concerts in that park it started raining, kind of
a drizzle. Helen opened her umbrella, which was not too
big, but somehow both of us found protection under that
umbrella. I did not listen too much to the music. Then,
another day, there was an outing and one of my friends, a
former Russian officer of my regiment and now in the
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service of the Hetman, got a big motor boat and enough
gasoline for an excursion up the Dnepr River to the
famous monastery. Late in the evening we went aboard
that boat again for the purpose of returning to Kiev, and
then something went wrong with the motor and the boat had
no power. When a boat has no power, the steering becomes
impossible. The -boat was just carried by the current of
the river. It could have carried us to one of the shores
or a shallow place, and there we would have been stuck
for who knows how long. But barges with lumber were also
descending the river, so we called to the men aboard the
barges and the men yelled back to us many very typical
expressions of Russian people, which fortunately the
society girls did not understand. Finally the men threw
a rope and started towing us back. It started to drizzle
again. They pulled our boat quite close to the barges so
that some of us could get off the boat and aboard the
barges for shelter. I climbed over to the barges and so
did Helen. I was wearing a Caucasian long cape of sheep
wool, a typical cape of the Caucasus mountaineers, and it
covered a person from the shoulders right down to his feet.
You could wrap yourself up and lie even on snow or ice
without feeling cold. So that cape served me very well.
And both, Helen and I, were wrapped in one and the same
cape. That made one of the girls look askance at us and
ask, "I wonder what they are doing inside that cape?" But
if a kiss was exchanged that was all. We reached the city
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of Kiev only next morning, and of course all the families
of the girls who were with us were in a great panic.
Whatever had happened? In those days the girls spending
the night, God knows where, was a most unusual situation.
There was lots of talk about that excursion of ours.
When the German troops broke down and were leaving
Kiev, Helen and her father (the rest of her family was
stuck in St. Petersburg) got out, thanks to the help of
German troops, to Germany, where the family had a big
estate and a castle in Bavaria. The rest of the family
escaped too, and lived on in that castle for a few years
just as if nothing had happened and there had been no
Revolution. As a result of this, the day came when the
castle and all its historical furnishings, pictures and
everything, had to be sold to cover the debts of the
family. Helen married a Russian musician and now lives
in Paris, where we once met again. It was a wonderful
meeting and it was nice to remember the good old days when
we were young and bachelors. The poor Duke, Helen's father,
had to move into a small apartment as a very sick and
broken man. He died about a year later and that was a
blessing for him because he belonged completely to a world
that did not exist anymore.
At that time in Kiev, in summer 1918, there were big
parties, and they were my first big parties because while
in St. Petersburg, I was an officer candidate until the
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Revolution, not a full-fledged member of society, more or
less considered a kid in spite of my 19 years. But now,
in Kiev, I was a junior lieutenant of the Horse Guards and
a full-fledged member of society. Besides, I was a young
man with money. At such parties usually somebody was
invited to entertain the guests, an artist, a singer, a
story-teller. A very popular Gypsy singer of that period
was Nura, who was then maybe twenty and married to a
Russian officer of the cavalry. His situation was rather
uncomfortable from a social .point of view; he was invited
to those parties as a guest because he was Nura's husband,
but he had to stay in the background because of course
everybody courted that beautiful Gypsy girl very ardently.
Well, somehow he managed that difficult situation very well
and the Gypsy girl managed very well all those who attempted
to court her. I was one of them. At one big party she sang.
During an intermission I was sitting on a couch, and some
how the place right next to me was empty. Nura came and
sat down right next to me, very close, although there was
plenty of space on that couch. Of course that closeness
excited me and amused Nura very much. She moved even closer.
Then she took her shawl off her shoulders. Now I must say
that all Gypsy girls always have a shawl around their
shoulders, and while singing or dancing they sometimes take
it off and wave it around to the music. It is part of their
performance. I cannot imagine any Gypsy girl without her
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shawl. Nura took her shawl from her shoulders and threw
it in my lap. And she, sitting in her evening dress,
very lowcut, did not decrease my excitement. Very fortunate
ly, the host, Count Uvarov, a newly married friend of mine,
who had married a beautiful Greek girl - he was a charming
man, huge in size, very tactful, always smiling, but
carefully watching the goings-on at his party, - noticed
my predicament on that couch with Nura. He came up,
smiling broadly, and offered Nura his hand, saying, "Won't
you please come to the piano and sing something again?" Of
course, Nura had no choice but to accept his hand and to
get away from the couch, leaving me to regain my senses.
A year later, on leave in Yalta, I was again at a
very large party, a fund-raising event for needy refugees,
wounded volunteers, soldiers of the White Army; and of
course, the greatest entertainer at that big party was the
Gypsy, Nura. The party lasted up to about eleven in the
evening but then it broke up into smaller groups. Touchkov,
one of the officers of my regiment was living in Yalta with
his family and he had the idea of going home with a group
of his close friends. For some reason, he asked me to go
over and ask Nura to come along with us. When I approached
her, she was talking with an officer, Captain Baron Laudon,
and when I intervened he took it very badly and in a rather
loud voice he said to me, "Lieutenant, I dislike anybody
speaking to a lady while I am speaking to that lady." And
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I responded, "I do not care what you like. When I want
to talk to a lady, I will talk to her whether you like it
or not." Well, a crowd gathered around us and according
to old traditions that smacked of a duel, shooting it out
next morning. Somehow, friends in the crowd positioned
themselves between Baron Laudon and me. Nura, almost in
tears, declared that she would go right home if we did not
stop that quarrel and make up immediately, so we were more
or less forced to shake hands, Baron Laudon and myself.
That incident was like a cold shower on all members of the
party. The party disintegrated. Nura asked my friend
Touchkov to escort her to her home and he agreed immediately
and the whole party broke up. We followed Touchkov to his
home and when we got there we discovered that Nura was also
there. Touchkov had been very, very smart. Then, in
Touchkov 's home - he was newly married and had a little
baby son - Nura sang for a small group of us until the sun
rose above the horizon.
I never saw Nura again, but I was told by friends that
she had emigrated to Paris. She was getting older and
gypsies in Paris were not so sought after as in the old
days in Russia. I heard also that Nura died in extreme
poverty in a French hospital for destitute people. A very
tragic end for beautiful Nura.
But I will say again, this year was a breather for many,
and a group of us played tennis and went on outings, and it
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was a kind of social life all over again and everybody was
hoping that finally the Bosheviks in Moscow would be crushed
and life would be as it used to be before 1917. That, of
course, was a lot of wishful thinking but very experienced
and serious people indulged in that wishful thinking. One
of them was a great friend of my late father. He was a very
outstanding person, ex-governor of a province, and before
the Revolution he was considered one of the candidates for
Prime Minister of Russia. But now he was indulging in that
wishful thinking and he said to me, "My dear Vania, the
war is now over, peacetime is back again. Go and study at
the University." But towards the fall, in spite of
strictest censorship, news drifted through that the Germans
were exhausted on the West Front and new manpower from the
United States and supplies from the United States were
continuing the war. That was too much because Germany
was exhausted and Germany was down.
The first condition of the Armistice imposed by the
allies upon Germany was that they withdraw all their troops
from the Ukraine. Of course everybody realized that that
would mean a renewal of chaos. Petlyura would probably
reappear and life in Kiev would become impossible. The
Germans did start to pull out and immediately there were
self-appointed Commissars in Kiev waiting for the last
Germans to leave. At that time, Mother had lunch with a
friend of the family, Baron Peter Wrangel. A few years later
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he was Commander-in-Chief of the White Armies on the Crimea
and I was an officer in his personal bodyguard. But at
that lunch in our home, Wrangel was discussing the
situation that he had just talked over for a long time
with a German general, Count Alvensleben, who was in
command of all German troops in the Ukraine, and Wrangel
was telling him that a brigade of German troops should be
put on trains and those trains should roll to Moscow, which
meant roughly twenty-four hours of riding. And the
respect and fear that everybody in Moscow had when seeing
the German uniforms was still such that they would arrive
in the city unopposed and they would overthrow the Moscow
Bolsheviks and Moscow would have a new government, a
Russian government of the Germans' choice, and that even
having a government of German choice would be better than
having the Bolsheviks in Moscow. But somehow for some
reason the government in Berlin, in the last days of
Kai'ser Wilhelm's reign, had decided against such an action.
And Wrangel said, "If that action does not take place
within a month's time, later it will be too late."
I heard later that General Wrangel had left Kiev and
that he had gone to the Don Region. In Kiev, in spite of
German censorship, there were vague rumors that in the
Don region Russian people, mostly officers, were gathering
to re-create a fighting force, an "Army", and that was the
beginning, the infancy, of Whites against Reds, that Civil
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War in Russia. So I decided to follow in the steps of
General Wrangel, and from November, 1918, to November,
1920, I was in that Civil War. I do not intend to write
a new history of the Civil War, but I will mention certain
events of that period that happened to me personally. If
someone is interested in this period, I recommend a book
called "White Against Red, the Life of General Anton
Denikin" , by Dmitry V. Lehovich, published by W. W. Norton
& Co. , Inc. , New York.
Of course Mother realized that she would have to stay
in Kiev no matter what, and just to quiet her a little, I
thought up a story and I said I had to leave Kiev to avoid
the blood-bath that would come after the last Germans left,
and then when things quiet down I could come back. Mean
while, I would go to Odessa and from there I would go to our
estate of Kodyma to see how things were going there and to
see what I could get in money and maybe other things.
During the period of quiet in 1918, from Kodyma we had
been sent large boxes of food that had become scarce in
Kiev. They had sent us mostly butter, buckets of slightly
salted butter, and my mother's maid had to go to the railway
station and pick up those buckets. Once one of the buckets
arrived and it was weighed right in front of Anna Nikolaevna,
and it was the very exact weight recorded on the accompany
ing papers. So Anna Nikolaevna procured, not without
difficulty, some kind of a cab and brought that bucket home.
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When the bucket was opened there was no trace of butter in
it but there were just broken up bricks. So somebody had
taken great pains to open that bucket, take all the butter,
and put back very carefully the exact weight in bricks.
This could have been done only by some railroad employee
and it was very characteristic and descriptive of the
general atmosphere, of the people in the region, and what
was going on.
Just before leaving the city of Kiev, on October 1,
Mother took me to the Cathedral, Saint Sophie. In very
ancient times, before the Mongolian invasion had destroyed
Kiev completely and driven all the inhabitants northward,
a cathedral had been built. After the Mongol destruction,
only a single wall of this cathedral remained, and this
wall was decorated in mosaic, representing the Holy Virgin
and Child; this was called "The Indestructible Wall".
Around this wall was built a new cathedral, the Cathedral
of Saint Sophie, which was Byzantine in style. Now in
front of that "Indestructible Wall" there was a service for
my safety and safe return to my mother again, and the next
day I took the train to leave Kiev.
I leave Kiev to join the White Army
There were still Germans around and Austrians and
trains, luxury trains, were running between Kiev and Odessa,
It was a night's journey and I had a berth in a sleeping
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car, first class; I had the top berth and a gentleman I
did not know at all had the lower berth. We started from
Kiev and I fell asleep on my top berth. And then I dreamed
that I was on horseback and my horse was galloping at such
a pace that I could hardly remain sitting in my saddle.
When I woke up I felt that I was being projected in dark
ness, total darkness, right into space. So by instinct I
shot out a hand and grasped a net and a railing above the
berth where I had my luggage, and I held onto it so as not
to fall into nowhere. At that same second, my fellow
traveller lit a cigarette lighter and I looked around and
realized that my car was lying on its side. The entrance
door to my compartment was right above my head and the voice
from the lower berth asked me, "Are you alive?" I said,
"Yes, I am." And at the same time there was the sound of
broken glass and of something crashing, and yells and
moans, and I opened the door above my head, crawled through
the open door, and found myself sitting on the side of my
car. The cars were in a heap and moans and cries came from
that heap, and the engine was also lying on its side, and
my first idea was, "Now that engine is going to explode,
any second." But fortunately the engineer had at the last
moment the presence of mind to let out all the steam. The
cars behind my car were standing on the rails and some of
them were transporting Austrian soldiers, and immediately
those Austrian soldiers jumped out of the cars and surrounded
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the wreck. This gave me the safe feeling that we were at
the moment under military protection and that some gang,
Maruska style, would not attack us. This all happened
about half an hour after the train had left Kiev. In
between Kiev and another railroad station, there was a
railroad knot, many tracks converging at that station
from other parts of Russia. And from this big station
eventually a train came out to our wreck to pick up the
wounded and the dead and the passengers that were still
alive, and took us to that big railroad station. And from
there I immediately went to the telegraph and sent Mother
a telegram saying that I was okay. The next morning my
telegram was in Mother's hands before she got the local
newspaper, which had banner headlines about that wreck.
Mother was quite astonished and she said later to me, "I was
really surprised that my little Vania was such a good boy
that after being only one hour away from Mama he sends her
a telegram that he is okay." And when she opened the
morning papers she understood why I had sent her that tele
gram.
Now, we were a group of young men in civilian clothes,
all of us officers in our twenties, and we were all having
in mind to go to Odessa and from there to go by boat on the
Black Sea to join the White Armies and General Wrangel.
The German and Austrian official authorities were against
the White Armies and against the policies of General Denikin,
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who was pro-western and continued to consider the Germans
as enemies. In those days in Russian society there was
a great split and great discord about this policy of being
allied and pro-German or pro-Western Allies.
Well, we were holed up in that station barely two
hours' drive from Kiev and we had to find some kind of
transportation to get to Odessa. We heard that there
was a train heading for Odessa and that the train was
over-filled with some civilian passengers and a great number
of Austrian soldiers in great disarray, and actually at war
with the large crowds that were trying to get to the coal
mines. It was very difficult to get a place on that train.
Then we met a group of Austrian officers, young fellows
of the same rank as we were, and they were in uniform and
very neat. They yelled at their soldiers, using very strong
language, and ordered those soldiers to clear out a compart
ment for us. Those soldiers were still somewhat disciplined, so
they cleared out everyone, and we had a compartment, maybe
two compartments, for us, a group of about fifteen. So we
thanked them and I was the speaker because I knew German
better than anybody else in that group. The train stood
in that station and stood and nobody knew when we would
actually start moving. And what did we see coming from
the building of the station? We saw those Austrian
officers coming back again and with them some Austrian
soldiers carrying four large wooden boxes. And they came
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to our compartment and one of them said, "I presume you are
Russian officers." And I said, "Yes, we are." "And you
are travelling to Odessa and then from Odessa on for the
purpose of joining the White Armies in the Don region?"
(This was against the official Austrian-German government.)
I said, "Yes, we are," because it was so obvious. And then
the Austrian officer said, "Gentlemen Officers, here are some
provisions for your journey. Here are the four boxes."
We immediately opened one of them and there were a dozen
champagne bottles. That was the attitude of officers and
the spirit of officers in the old days of my wearing that
uniform. Of course we thanked those officers and with their
help we emptied the whole case of champagne and the train
eventually started.
Return to Troitskoye and Kodyma
On my way to Odessa I got out at the station that was
closest to our estate. There I hired a cart. I had with
me a friend who was also going to Odessa and from there to
join the White Armies then beginning to fight in the
Caucasus. I was 21 years old and so was my friend. When
we came to Troitskoye we saw that my uncle's estate had
been looted. All the books of his enormous library were
strewn all over the house, partly torn, because there was
a belief that people having money put it inside books to
keep it from being stolen. But that was only a legend; very
few were silly enough to do that. Nevertheless, all looters
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were first of all after the books. Our library at Kodyma
was also completely in ruins.
At that time Troitskoye could hardly be called a
village. Since my great grandfather Safonov founded
Troitskoye more than a century ago, it had developed quite
a bit. The so-called village had five elementary schools
and two higher schools. The inspector of schools was
living in Troitskoye and he was a great friend of my
uncle's, a very decent man and an excellent teacher. So
that shows you how large that so-called village was in 1918.
When I arrived in Troitskoye I called on the elder of
the village. The elder was an official, elected by the
villagers, and he had certain powers to keep law and order.
This elder who stood before me was a very nice, decent,
and quite wealthy peasant. I ordered him to call a gather
ing for the next day. Gatherings were called for elections
of the local village authorities and gatherings decided
what had to be done for this or that. Many years later in
America, when I was in school, I remember that there were
often rallies and the school children liked them very much.
Instead of listening to my business of Russian grammar, a
rally was much more fun. So, this was a rally of sorts.
I do not remember exactly, but I think there was a huge
crowd. Obviously, I had no loudspeaker then, nor did I have
a bullhorn. I stood on a large bucket and addressed the
crowd. I have no idea how many of them could hear what I
- 287 -
was saying and I did not realize the great danger I was
in. With me was only one person, my friend, and we were
facing an enormous crowd. But as there were no Austrians
and no Germans around Troitskoye for miles and miles and
no officials of the so-called Ukrainian police, it was no
doubt a psychological moment. Nobody knew what was
happening; the peasants of Troitskoye had no idea whether
there were any police or any troops in the area. When they
saw me alone, talking to them as I did, they imagined that
a huge armed force was just a few miles away. And I told
them the following: "My friends, I spent my childhood here
and I know that my late father was popular with you, also
my uncle and my grandfather. And my great grandfather
brought you from central Russia, where people still live
in poverty in small villages, but you are a very wealthy
village and a large one. And sometimes during my childhood
many of you rented acres of land from our estate at Kodyma.
In 1917, when the Revolution broke out, you did not loot
our estate as some outsiders did but you took over all the
cattle, all the machinery, and all the supplies of Kodyma.
You placed the cattle in your own yards as if it were your
own property. You know the rental price of an acre and I
consider it to be as if you had rented all of Kodyma for
one year. Now I demand that you bring me the money owed
to me for having rented all of Kodyma for one year and I
demand that this money be collected overnight and be
- 288 -
brought to my room tomorrow morning at daybreak." After
that I told them good-bye and left.
The next morning my friend and I had a cart ready
with a pair of the best horses I could get out of the
stables, and at daybreak a long line of peasants was coming
up to the house carrying bags stuffed with money. There
were old paper rubles of Imperial Russia, 25, 50, 100, even
500 ruble notes; there were Ukrainian paper rubles of the
Hetman, worth nominally 50 rubles; there was money issued
during the days of the Provisional Government of Kerensky,
looking more like large postage stamps, and their value was
20 or 40 rubles. So those bags and even some milk cans
were stuffed with all kinds of that paper money. I did
not bother to count it all, it would have taken all day and
the psychological moment of the situation would have been
lost. So I just put all the bags, including the milk cans,
into the cart and we drove off to the city of Nikolaeff ,
100 kilometers away.
It was already quite dark when we arrived in Nikolaeff,
and the horses were barely moving. I drove into the yard
of the girls' school and covered the cart with some sort
of tarpaulin that I found. I was very tired and went to
sleep leaving that huge amount of money outside in the cart.
Early next day, the horses had rested, and together with
my friend I drove up, still in that cart, to the bank in
Nikolaeff that did business with the estate at Kodyma.
- 289 -
As mentioned earlier, I had an account in the bank and at
an earlier visit was very glad that the director of this
bank had brought this fact to my attention. At that point
I was penniless and the access to this account was a most
appreciated rescue. Now, when I brought the director all the
bags and the milk cans, he almost collapsed. He called in
a few clerks and they started counting. There was about
one million rubles in paper. Of course, that million
rubles could not by any stretch of the imagination be
compared with one million gold rubles in the days of the
Imperial Russian Empire but anyhow, it was money. After
that I went on to Odessa.
A short stop in Odessa
That was in October 1918. In Odessa I had relatives-:
my Aunt Somov, her two nieces, and her nephew Serge, later
killed during the Civil War. And lots of youngsters were
coming and going in that house, which was overcrowded with
refugees from the north. In her big livingroom were six
or seven cots. It was a kind of dormitory and we officers
slept there.
An incredible rescue mission
Uncle George had an estate about 30 miles north of
Alexandrovsk. When the Revolution began, Uncle George,
Aunt Nadya, and their son, Lev, fled from the estate and
went to Ekaterinoslav. Many landowners did the same.
- 290 -
Ekaterinoslav was terribly crowded and all the hotels there
were jammed. When the Bolsheviks took over Ekaterinoslav
they were pleased to find so many landowners all in one or
two hotels. Uncle George was arrested and put into jail.
Somehow, because of a bribe perhaps, he coaxed his captors
into putting him in the hospital. It was clear that his
eventual destination was before the firing squad. George's
brother-in-law Delaroche was a Hussar Captain. He knew all
of the worst places and people in the city and he was much
loved by these people.' They treated him as a sort of Robin
Hood. He organized his own group of "communists" and led
the gang himself into the jail hospital. Making a great
row, he burst into that jail, brandishing his revolver and
saying that it was a scandal that Count George was in the
hospital and not in jail, like everybody else, and that he
would make the jailers responsible for it. He himself would
immediately grab this so-and-so count and take him out and
shoot him right around the next corner. He made such a row
that the jailers were impressed and terrorized and Delaroche
got Uncle George out of that jail and saved him.
A young British girl outwits the revolutionaries
In 1918 when Uncle George and his family escaped to
Ekaterinoslav, Aunt Nadya's niece's British governess stayed
on the estate. The British governess said it was exciting
to see a country in a time of revolution. She put up a
British Union Jack and the Red flag of the Revolution side
- 291 -
by side outside her room, then she declared herself to be
a representative of the British "people". As "one of the
people" she deserved her share, too. The governess knew
where all the family jewels and furs were kept and she took
them all as if for herself. The revolutionaries were
awed by her pluck and left her alone. They did burn down
the estate, though.
In 1920 Uncle George escaped with his family to Istan
bul. That year the British governess arrived in Istanbul
also, with all of the family property she had managed to
save. She really was a smart girl. She gave the property
to Uncle George and then looked for a job. Eventually she
found one as executive secretary of the Headquarters of
the British Occupation Forces. (At that time Istanbul was
occupied by British, French, and Italian troops.) A few
months later she married a British colonel who was head of
the British military police there. She returned to Britain
later and kept in touch with the family for several years.
Uncle George's descendants
George's son Lev was five or six years younger than I.
He had no part in the Civil War as he was too young. As a
teenager he escaped with his parents to Turkey and later to
Yugoslavia, and attended high school there. There were
many Russian emigre's in Yugoslavia to whom King Alexander
gave asylum because he was grateful for Russian aid during
World War I. Lev went to Belgium when he had finished his
- 292 -
studies in Yugoslavia and with the help of a Roman Catholic
Bishop there he eventually became an engineer. He married
a Belgian woman and they had a son and daughter. Lev's
children were baptised Roman Catholics to the despair and
horror of his mother. Aunt Nadya was a devout Russian
Orthodox and was very unhappy that her grandchildren had
become Roman Catholics and there opened up a great rift
between mother and son and they ignored each other for the
rest of their lives. Uncle Vladimir wrote to Nadya trying
to comfort her, saying, "All of the Stenbocks are of
Swedish descent - before they were Lutherans they had been
Roman Catholics." Nadya replied to this, saying, "My dear
Vladimir, I know you are a historian and that you are right
about the Stenbocks. But you could go further and find
that they had all been heathens."
Cousin Lev got a job in the Belgian Congo as an
engineer. He never saw or corresponded with his mother.
Friends of the family who knew of him in the Congo said
that Levushka and his wife were divorced. These friends
did not think much of his first wife. She re-married -
a Belgian man - and Lev's children became Belgians. Today
his son is a doctor and his daughter is married to an
Englishman.
While in the Congo, Lev fell in love with the Princess
of Uganda Urundi, a black woman, but her father refused to
allow them to marry. He did not believe that a Princess
- 293 -
should marry a Belgian engineer. In order to persuade her
father to change his mind, Lev wrote to friends in Belgium
asking for information about his family background. They
found that in the 160O's, in Sweden, Gustav Adolph of the
Vasa Dynasty married Karin Stenbock. Their picture is in
the museum in Stockholm. So the Princess's father gave his
consent and they were married. She had been educated in
the Belgian Congo in a French convent, she spoke perfect
French, and had exquisite manners. She and Lev had two
daughters and a son. These children were quite black,
although Lev himself was as blond as a Viking. My sons
met their black cousins in Europe. The girls are now about
25 and their brother is a few years older. I learned
from my boy in France that Lev died a few years ago. I have
always wondered what would happen if I brought the two
black countesses Stenbock-Fermor to visit at Harvard in
Cambridge.
Cousin Lev lost his second wife and married again,
a cousin of hers. She had two children by her first
husband who was black. Lev adopted them and had more
children. He died in 1976 but possibly now the world has
more black counts Stenbock-Fermor than whites in the
generation of my grandchildren.
One of my fellow officers
At the same time as uncle George was in Ekaterinoslav,
there was a man named Andrew, called Andrusha, there. He
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had been one year ahead of me in the Corps des Pages. His
father had died some years ago and his mother had spoiled
him. His sister was a large, broad-shouldered, ugly woman.
Andrusha looked just like her. He was a nice person but
awfully stupid. His head was very small compared to his
body and we often asked where he kept his brains. His only
interest was girls - girls of a certain profession. They
all crowded around him because he was so rich and so kind.
When he fled from St. Petersburg and came to Ekaterinoslav,
the girls in Ekaterinoslav surrounded him there too. When
the Bolsheviks came to Ekaterinoslav and began arresting
members of the nobility, one of the persons they arrested
was Prince Andrew Kozlovski - Andrusha. Now many of Andrusha 1 s
girl friends were also friends of these Commissars. They
told the Commissars that if Andrusha were harmed they would
have nothing more to do with the Commissars. So Andrusha
was saved. A few years later Andrusha joined the White
Army. Eventually, in 1919, he was shot during a cavalry
charge between Reds and Whites.
During World War I Andrusha had been an officer in my
regiment. He was one year my senior and we were on the
Russian-German front in the trenches. One of his duties
was to survey the trenches. He and a few soldiers were
supposed to walk through them. But not Andrusha - he in
sisted on walking outside the trenches because they were
too narrow and too dirty. When the Germans saw this huge
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man walking outside the trenches they opened fire. Andrusha
did not care. He never even got a scratch. He got a severe
reprimand from the Regiment Commander though. The Commander
said, "If you want to expose yourself to such danger, if you
want to commit suicide - stupid Andrusha - that is your
business... But you have no right to expose the other men
to that danger. Those soldiers following you could have
been killed."
In Odessa - refugees from the North
At that time most people had no money. My cousin Olga,
then 22 or 23 and full of energy, fed 20 or 25 mouths every
day in the house of her aunt and mine. She managed to do
that by going to the market, and since she was very popular
among the market women she could get some food from some
of the villages surrounding Odessa. But of course that food
was usually millet, a kind of cereal, and sometimes in that
cooked cereal there were some little bits of lard, but not
every day. Then she cooked a kind of Russian vegetable soup
and on great occasions, on Sundays, there was even a piece
of meat in that soup. We were not hungry but it was rather
tedious.
There was a club in Odessa. Members of very fashion
able Petersburg clubs, dignitaries of the Imperial Russian
Empire, very wealthy merchants who had managed to escape
from Moscow re-established it and called it the United Club.
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This club had a very good cook and the lunches were
excellent. (It is a wonder how the cook managed to get
all that food.) But the price of that lunch was 50 rubles
in Ukrainian money. Normally, in peacetime, in the best
restaurants in Petersburg and Moscow an excellent lunch
would cost either three and a half rubles or five if you
had some fancy entrees and caviar. I went many times to
that club and became one of the most junior members of it
because the club could not refuse admission to a young
officer of the Horse Guards regiment. But my Aunt Nadya
considered having lunch at that club a sin and she did
not approve of my going there.
I had to get out of Odessa by one of the few passenger
boats (the only possible way of leaving Odessa) that
occasionally sailed to the Crimea and Yalta. The Crimea
was still occupied by Germans who were reluctantly leaving,
so they did not prevent people in general from boarding
those boats. They knew very well, however, that the boats
would go further, as far as the city of Novorossisk, and
that all the young men who were trying to board those boats
were doing so in order to get to the Don region to join
General Denikin, who was so dedicated to the western allies,
the enemies of Germany. And the Germans and Austrians in
Odessa did not want those Denikin forces to be reinforced,
so all kinds of tricks had to be used to get aboard those
boats to leave Odessa. And that took time. Meanwhile, I
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lived at the home of my Aunt Somov, whose sister was married
to my Uncle Vladimir and whose other sister was married to
my other uncle, Nicholas, whom I have already mentioned in
my memoirs. While we lived there, a group of young people
and girls often came to Aunt Nadya's to play tennis and to
enjoy her hospitality and her parties. It was at one of
those parties that I met a girl by the name of Elizabeth
Sevastopoulo, called Ely, and at first we did not even notice
each other. She told me later that she had noticed me just
the same because she was very friendly with my two cousins,
Mary and Olga, who were a little Oder than Ely, and that she
did notice a new cousin of her girl-friends' - that was I,
and that was all. It happened in 1918. And when we met
again in 1932, this time we did notice each other. She
explained that she had known by hearsay that I had been very
much in love for the past seven years with a girl by the name
of Dina. Well, everybody had known it, and that was that.
Eventually I boarded a boat and left Odessa together
with my cousin, Andre''. We stopped at the port of Yalta and
an officer of my regiment who lived in Yalta with his
mother as a refugee from the north came aboard and told us
that we had to disembark in Yalta and not to proceed to
Novorossisk because detachments of Denikin's White units
were coming very soon to Yalta to join a very small formation
consisting mostly of officers, about one hundred men in all.
This formation was protecting the outskirts of Yalta and
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the Imperial Palace. No one lived in that palace, but some
of the other palaces were still occupied by close relatives
of the Russian Imperial Family.
I join the volunteer army
In the last days of December 1918, an order of the day
of the Commander in Chief of the so-called Volunteer Army
came, and it said that all the officers belonging to the
First Cavalry Division of the Imperial Guard might now
reconstitute their regiments. Of course, all of us young
men of those Guard regiments were great patriots. Our
average age was between 20 and 25, with a few Colonels close
to 40. We were politically very naive, not to say childish,
and the reconstitution of those regiments was just a
childish day-dream of people who did not have the slightest
notion of what was going on in Russia and the whole world.
About one hundred of us officers in those four regiments
gathered on the Crimea. Then we entrained to go north of
the Crimea to the steppes lying between the Crimea and
the city of Alexandrovsk on the Dnepr River. There we
took over the estate of a very wealthy German descendant
of the colonists that were brought into that no-man's-land
in the days of Catherine the Great. The estate was really
very big and very, very fine in every respect. My first
look was at the stables, of course, and my eyes popped
because they looked like a palace if compared to our stables
at Kodyma. Also, the big house would hold all of us
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officers, roughly 100 in number. Every officer was very
partial to his own regiment and everyone was wearing the
colors of his regiment. Actually, this number corresponded
to about two squads of a peacetime regiment. At the head
of us was Colonel Danilov, who was a great gentleman if there
ever was one. He was personally extremely brave under fire
but he was also very careful and never rushed into situations
from which he eventually would not be able to escape. He
was very wise and tactful. Huge in size, he looked like a
bear and had the character of a lamb. We all adored him.
He was the real classic type of regiment commander. In the
old days he would have been called Father Commander by all
the soldiers of his regiment. He belonged to a regiment of
the Second Brigade, and about 50 percent of the officers
present had belonged to his regiment before the war of
1914 started. My regiment of the Horse Guards was in the
minority. It was represented only by one junior lieutenant,
and that was I. The reason for this was that many officers
of the Horse Guards were at that time fighting in the
Caucasus under the command of General Wrangel, commanding
units of Caucasian Moslem mountaineers who were very
strongly anti-Bolshevik but who did not have enough men
trained and educated to be officers.
The first assignment of the officers here, our first
job, was to expand, to find volunteers willing to serve as
privates. So every officer representing one of these four
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regiments had a cart with two horses, one cart per regiment,
because we did not have more horses than that. The whole
future First Division of the Imperial Guard had at that
time sixteen horses! And so, we drove around the country
to look for volunteers. It was January-February, 1919, and
in that region the cold was bitter but there was no snow.
The roads were covered with a layer of thick dust and our
officers' coats, lined with sheepskin, were full of dust.
That was worse than if there had been a lot of snow around.
To the amazement of all the other officers, my activity in
getting volunteers was 100 percent successful because I
knew German even better than I now know English, and I drove
around the so-called colonies of German settlers.
These Germans had been there since the days of Catherine
the Great, more than a century, yet they were still Germans.
Their villages were typical German villages. Most of them
were Protestants and the pastor of the Protestant Church
was their leader. I addressed them in perfect German and
the fact that a Russian officer could speak just as they
could, made a great impression on them. They were very
wealthy landowners; they had perfect cattle and excellent
horses that we requisitioned according to Army Regulations
of the past. For the requisition of the horses and the
cattle they got a slip of paper, signed by me and stamped.
They realized, of course, at the bottoms of their hearts,
that those receipts were not worth very much. In the old
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days , they could have presented those receipts to the
Russian authorities of Imperial Russia and they would have
been paid. Now, who would pay for those receipts? That
was a very problematic question. But, as I said, they
were very much against the Bolsheviks, and the Bolsheviks
in those days were just gangs like the famous Maruska
gang. They lived off the country and they looted the very
wealthy colonies of the Germans.
But not all the country was just German colonies.
Next to the German colonies there 'were big villages of
Russian peasants. They were the Germans' neighbors, and
I was amazed that there was a kind of iron curtain between
those two groups living next door to each other. The
Russian villages were mostly primitive, not to say dirty.
Their cattle were skinny and there was good reason for
this: the Russian peasants were not individually full owners
of their land. Back in the days of Tsar Alexander II, when
he abolished by decree serfdom (1861) , some of the lands of
the local nobility were taken over by the administration and
paid for at a token price with bonds issued by the govern
ment to compensate for the land that was to become the
peasants' land. Now it belonged to the villages and it
was distributed to the heads of families for the duration
of seven years. After seven years the families of the
village were recounted. Sometimes there were fewer, but
sometimes there were more, and the land which belonged to
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the village as a whole was redistributed again among the
villagers. So any villager knew he had his plot of land for
only seven years and naturally he was not interested in
making any improvements, like digging ditches or putting
manure into the land. He just tried to get out of the
land as much as he could with the least possible effort,
because any improvements he might make would just be passed
on to somebody else. Sometimes, of course, the plots were
many kilometers away from his house in the village, and to
get to his plot to work would take a half -day's driving;
Sometimes he had to build a makeshift dwelling on his plot
to protect himself from a cloudburst, rain, or wind.
Therefore, agriculture was stagnating. Actually, those
Russian villages were communes. It could be said that it
was Communism under the rule of a distant Tsar somewhere -
in Petersburg or Moscow - whom the peasants never saw. .
Therefore, these Russian peasants were not anti-Bolshevik*
On the contrary, these peasants were being promised by the
Bolsheviks a final redistribution of the land belonging to
the colonists and to the gentry, and they were told that
this land would be their own. This had been their dream
for many, many centuries, and therefore the propaganda of
Bolshevism had a powerful effect on them. Some of the
Russian peasants had noticed the success of the Germans
and they imitated them as well as they could. They saved
money, they bought land from those of the gentry who were
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eager to sell the land in order to take up some job in the
government and live in the city. These peasants who did
imitate the Germans, rapidly became just as prosperous as
the German colonists, and extremely anti-Bolshevik, and
their sons were eager to join the regiments which were
being formed to fight Bolshevism. They also joined my
volunteers. So starting with myself and a volunteer that
another regiment had "loaned" to me, my squadron grew
faster than the others, to the amazement of everyone. My
squadron soon numbered about twenty , and we marched and '
exercised, and this Russian Volunteer Squadron of the
White Army was marching and singing battle songs in German.
Besides me, there was another officer of the Horse
Guards with us, named Prince Obolensky. He had been the
last Adjutant of my regiment before the collapse of 1917.
He was an excellent Adjutant; he did all the paper work
very well and he was very tactful, greatly beloved by all
the officers, and his role had not been easy at all. So
Colonel Danilov took Prince Obolensky as his Adjutant
because otherwise the headquarters of our Volunteer
Regiment would have been staffed only by officers of Danilov 's
regiment and that would have produced some friction and
envy. But that left me alone to represent the Horse Guards.
Then a group of our officers made a raid on Ascania
Nova, the great estate of a German descendant. From that
estate they requisitioned 100 horses. There was a big
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stud on that farm. These horses were about four years
old and were used to grazing on the steppes. In winter,
they were lodged in a big barn where they were free to
move around. They were not tied. Immediately we called them
mustangs, and they were driven into a big enclosure made up
of a mixture of old hay or straw and manure. It formed a
wall around the enclosure high enough so that no horse in
the world could have jumped over it. These horses were dri
ven into that enclosure and then they had to be distributed
among us. Of course every officer wanted the best horse,
his choice. We were all sitting around that enclosure on
the high wall and there came Colonel Danilov, who said,
"Gentlemen Officers, the glorious regiment of the Horse
Guards is here represented by one officer only, and this
officer is the lowest rank of a Junior Lieutenant." Then
he turned to me in a fatherly way and said, "Dear Ivan, you
have the first choice. Go and choose any horse you want."
That was typically Colonel Danilov, a grand gentleman. But
imagine my situation in front of all those officers, eager
to watch, thinking, "Now let us see what that junior
officer of the Horse Guards can do!" But, as I have said,
I had a soldier "loaned" to me from one of the other
regiments. He had been put into the uniform of the Horse
Guards. Like many of that period he was the rascal of all
rascals and had not the slightest idea of discipline, but
he was a go-getter and he was very proud at that time to be
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the only soldier of the Horse Guards. So the two of us
moved into the enclosure. I took a bridle in ray hand with
two long cords attached to it. We moved inside the
enclosure and spotted a fine horse, black of course, as all
horses had to be in my regiment, and we maneuvered that
horse little by little until we got it into one of the
corners of the enclosure. The horse was backing away from
us and when he got into the corner his tail was tight up
against the wall. We were approaching the horse and at
that moment the horse counter-attacked us. It just charged
against us, as any animal will do that is cornered and
gets a kind of feeling of despair. At the moment that the
horse charged, my soldier challenged him and like a monkey
the next mement he was hanging with hands and feet around
the neck of the horse, from below. Of course that compelled
the horse to lower its head and in that instant I put the
bridle on him. The horse reared, but we had both ends of
the cords of the bridle, and we led out that rearing horse
to the thunderous applause of all the other officers. Well,
the Horse Guards were still Horse Guards!
Then the other officers went to get their horses. The
horses had to be tamed, saddled, and trained, but that was
not too difficult and about a week or so later we had the
horses under control, more or less. During that time more
volunteers arrived and soon there was not enough room for
everybody, so we moved to a village, a colony of German
settlers, Eichenfeld. That colony had roughly 100 houses
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and a big school that could be used for the headquarters of
the regiment. There, the training of the horses continued.
Still more officers came to join us, more volunteers.
Officers of my regiment were detached from their assignment
in the Wr angel army and came over to join me. They were
all in senior rank except one who had just come from Yalta,
a mere boy of nineteen. Obolensky took over the command of
the growing squadron, which now had about 100 volunteers
and seven officers.
My squadron encounters the Bolshevik sailors
from the Baltic Sea Fleet
In February 1919, we were told by the German colonists
that a rather numerous Bolshevik gang was in the vicinity,
looting, burning, raping. Our first battle assignment was
to get hold of and liquidate that gang. We were very eager,
of course, to go into battle, but part of our volunteers
were not ready. As Colonel Danilov joked, they had no idea
whether a bridle should be put on the head of a horse or on
its tail. The trained group consisted of 20 men or so and
the squad of men still in training had to be left behind -
they could not be taken into battle not knowing how to use
weapons or how to ride. Someone had to stay with them. The
question arose: which of the officers would be left behind?
Of course, all seven of us wanted to go. Obolensky gathered
us all together in a quite unofficial manner and said,
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"Dear friends, being the senior among you I took over the
command of the squadron. Naturally, I am not going to be
the one to stay behind. We cannot leave behind the youngest
of all the officers because he is not trained enough him
self to be training others, besides that would be unfair
toward the youngest. So we will pick someone from the
middle." Then he turned to me and said in an official
manner, "Lieutenant Count Ivan Stenbok-Fermor , you take
over the training unit. You stay behind." Naturally I was
furious but I could not talk back under regulations of
discipline, so that was it. And out they went, together
with the other squadrons.
I was training my squad late one afternoon when I saw
that squadron coming back. An officer rode up to me with
tears in his eyes and said, "Stenbock, I must report to you
that your squadron has suffered a terrible disaster." When
they had come in touch with that gang, the officer told me,
they did not realize that this was not just a local gang of
peasants. That gang consisted of the Baltic Sea Fleet
Bolshevik sailors, the most Bolshevik, the most dedicated
Communists ever. They had among them some peasants, but
they were in command of the group and they were soldiers,
very well trained for battle, and very enthusiastic
Communists. They were occupying a village surrounded by
open country. At a rather large distance from the village,
a colonel of one of our regiments found nothing wiser to do
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than to order the men to charge, like in the old days of
Napoleon. And, of course, they charged, crossing open
country under fire, and when they came in contact their
horses were almost exhausted. The Bolsheviks, in spite of
being sailors, abandoned their positions and started to
run, leaving behind one of their machine guns. But then,
turning around, they saw that our side had suffered losses
and were not as numerous as their first impression had been,
so they promptly came back to their machine gun and
started shooting. Their rifles were stuck on fences so
they could really choose their marks, and they chose to
shoot at short distances at the officers leading the
squadron. In all this fighting, Prince Obolensky's horse
was killed. It fell and he found himself under the horse.
Before he could release himself from that position, the
sailors were on top of him and he was sabred to death.
Four other officers of our regiment were killed in that
skirmish; one came back, leading the remnants of our
squadron. This one, a friend, is still living in New York.
He then bacame the senior officer of the remnants of the
squadron.
The village where the skirmish took place was called
Blagodatnoe ("full of grace") - it sounded like a tragic joke,
We were still able to joke because we were so young, and it
was whispered around that the remaining officer was wounded
by a stray bullet which hit his forehead, and that the
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bullet which hit him was flattened by the impact but that
nothing had happened to Captain T's forehead. This was
partly true: it was a bullet coming from a great distance
and it had no penetrating power. It just scratched his
forehead, but at a closer distance he would have been
dead. He became, for the rest of the year 1919 and 1920,
the commander of our squadron. He had joined the regiment
in the spring of 1914 as a private, just for the sake of
his military service. He never had planned any kind of
military career. He was promoted to officer's rank and
remained in the regiment because of the war.
There were at that time other officers that belonged
to the regiment but they were too old for battle duty.
It is worthwhile remembering and noting down a few memories
of my good friend and officer, Colonel Count Beningsen of
the Horse Guards. During the civil war for a period of
time, he was commanding my regiment. He describes a
cavalry attack at the end of 1919; and before that, he
mentions a soldier that was attached personally to him
to take care of the colonel's horse. He was a volunteer,
recently from senior high school, a lad, enthusiastic to
fight communism. Well, this young lad did not know, accord
ing to Beningsen, whether the halter should be put on the
horse's head or on its tail. Anyhow, the horses of the
squadron at the end of 1919 were mostly unshoed. Nowadays,
the horse and buggy age has passed into history, and
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probably many people of the younger generation do not
realize the difference between a horse that is shoed and
one that is unshoed. Horses hoofs have to have metal, so
to say, shoes. Then those shoes have short nails that grip
into the ground, especially if the ground is iced and
slippery, and the horse does not fall. Those horses have
to be carefully shoed by blacksmiths, and a blacksmith can
take care of so many horses a day, because he has to proceed
very carefully so as not to hurt the sensitive part of the
horse's hoofs, or the horse will go lame for a long time.
The squadron was never in one place for a long enough time
to take care of the horses; and this squadron was mounted,
as I mentioned, on horses that were not shoed. The ground
was frozen and icy. The horses were slipping, and there
fore they could not move fast. A classical cavalry charge
has to go fullspeed together against the enemy. This time,
the squadron was deployed, and the pace was a slow walking
pace against the enemy - a most unusual charge. But all
along the line, the voice of "Hurrah" was thunderous,
in spite of the horses walking at a slow pace. And the Red
units against us preferred to retreat. So the result of that
charge was good, and there were no losses. It was very
typical of that period of the so-called civil war.
Most of the officers of the Volunteer Squadron of the
Horse Guards were very young men, not to say boys like me,
who had joined the regiment during the First World War.
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The middle generation of the officers of the Horse Guards
had suffered great losses during the First World War. Many
of them who were of Baltic origin were in northern Russia
and very few of them were in southern Russia. This all
explains the reason for the great disparity in age of our
officers.
The sailors of the Baltic Fleet who were responsible
for that disaster were the most dedicated of Communists and
they had come from the north to give support to the amateur
gangs of Bolsheviks in southern Russia and to transform
those gangs from plain looters into fighting units. This
was one of the first occasions where they proved that they
had done a good job, and a disastrous one for us.
There were funeral services for the dead officers and
the coffins had to be taken to their burial place in the
city of Yalta because their families were living there.
I was assigned the sad task of accompanying the bodies of
these officers and of representing the regiment at the
funeral services in Yalta. Besides that, I was ordered to
find some way to reach from there the city of Odessa. In
the city and region of Odessa, formation of White units
was in progress and at the head of this formation was
General Biskupski, who had begun his career in the regiment
of the Horse Guards.
I have orders to reach Odessa
At that time Odessa was full of all sorts of military
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supplies and had great depots of arms and whatever was
necessary for soldiers. Because I was a young officer of
the Horse Guards, it was believed that Biskupski would
meet me as a fellow officer and give us the necessary supplies
which could then be shipped to the Crimea. But Biskupski, in
the rank of Army General when I reported to him, met me very
coldly and I remember his words for they startled me very
much. He said, "Go back to the Crimea. Tell all of them
there to move over to Odessa under my command and then you
will have all the supplies available. But I am not going
to give anything to that Crimean group." That was very
typical of him, very nasty. He wanted to be the boss.
Being an Army General, he did not want to give supplies
to some colonels attempting formations north of the Crimea.
Jealousy, rivalry among Army Generals did a lot of harm
all through the First World War. This unfortunate rivalry
among high-ranking generals was typical not only in the
Russian Imperial Army but in the German army also, and
during the Second World War also in Hitler's army and in
the French army. Every general wanted to be the big boss
in spite of disastrous consequences for the war he was
fighting.
So I was stuck in Odessa. French troops had landed
there in December, after the Armistice. The Austrians
were gone. Small groups of Russian officers were there
attempting formation of anti-Bolshevik units, but all the
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rabble of Odessa was very strongly pro-Bolshevik and sporadic
fighting occurred every day. The French troops came from
a French army that had landed earlier in the city of Salonica,
in Greece. The French had come to Salonica to reinforce the
Greek armies who were on the side of the Allies against the
Bulgarians who were supported by the Germans. Of course,
the French High Command did not send to Salonica the best
divisions that France had - this was natural. The divisions
sent to Salonica, and this was no secret to anybody in France,
were the most unreliable and the worst France had as far as
fighting spirit and morale were concerned, and the French
commander in Salonica chose to send to Odessa the worst and
most undisciplined division he had, and was glad to get
rid of it.
They disembarked at Odessa with their heavy artillery
dragged by huge mules. They deployed outside the city some
twenty kilometers distant, in the steppe or prairies surround
ing Odessa. They deployed against nobody and they started
digging trenches as if they were trying to construct a new
fortified city of Verdun. (That was a fortress that the
Germans tried to take, and after terrible losses on both
sides they never succeeded.) Well, the French soldiers
deploying and digging in the empty steppe had interpreters,
Russian officers. One of these interpreters was a Russian
Air Force officer - there were a few Russian planes - and
he was overflying those French trenches and taking notes.
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He came back to French Headquarters and there he met the
French colonel who was reporting to the French Commander-
in-Chief that the positions of his trenches were untenable.
The French had seen somewhere on the horizon of these
prairies some riders. These were of course a few Bolshevik
scouts. Now the French colonel was reporting to the high
command in Odessa that his positions in the trenches were
untenable against the pressure of the enemy. The Russian
Air Force officer got mad when he heard it. He could speak
French very, very well, and he interrupted the colonel and
said to the Commander- in-Chief of the French troops, "If
the French abandon those trenches and retreat, I with my
ground crew of the Air Force will occupy and hold the
trenches." Well, the general took the words of the Russian
officer as an insult to the honor of the French armies and
yelled back at him and there was a great quarrel, one of
the first between the Russians and the French in Odessa.
My present-day brother-in-law, who can speak French
perfectly, was attached to headquarters of the French armies
in Odessa, so he knew very well everything that was going
on. One of my other friends, an officer of the Guard
Cavalry Division, happened to be in Odessa and instead of
joining the group north of the Crimea, he stayed in Odessa
and became an interpreter for the French battalion occypy-
ing those trenches, manned by French soldiers with artillery
and machine guns and facing the emptiness of the steppes.
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Finally some groups of Bolsheviks really did attempt
to attack those trenches. The French immediately retreated
in great disorder. They had to cross a small bridge over
a river. They were not retreating soldiers, they were a
mob trying to get over that bridge, everyone for himself.
My friend, the Russian Guard officer, got mad. I must say
that he was a huge man, like a bear on his hind legs. He
told me himself the story, that he got so mad that he did
not give a damn about an thing. He had a good Cossack whip
in his hands and he closed his eyes and started whipping the
French right and left, whether enlisted men or officers, he
just did not give a damn. Some order was restored, and
the French battalion regrouped and continued to retreat in
better order. My Russian friend was convinced that he would
be seized, taken to French headquarters, court-mar tialled,
and shot. Well, he was actually invited to French head
quarters and the French commanding general pinned the
decoration of the Legion d'Honneur, the French Legion of
Honor, to his chest for having stopped a retreating unit.
Years later, that same friend of mine was a taxi driver
in Paris, as were many Russian officers at that time. And
when he was wearing his driver's uniform he always had the
decoration of the Legion d'Honneur on his taxi-driver's
coat. He told me that this decoration on his coat in Paris
produced bigger, more generous tips.
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I am to be court-martialled
After we had requisitioned the one hundred horses from
the estate of Ascania Nova, in May 1919, the owner of that
estate made out against me an accusation that I had looted
his estate. That accusation went through many channels,
reached the headquarters of General Denikin, and I was
court-martialled. That is, I was to be court-martialled
but nothing ever happened because military and political
events overtook all the red tape involved. Two days after
driving those horses back to the Crimea to our reserve
squadron, we got orders to entrain. We had quite a difficult
time with those wild horses but we managed. By train we went
north to the vincinity of the city of Poltava.
Poltava was a very historical place because of the battle
many years earlier (1709) between the Russians and the
Swedes where the Swedes were destroyed. For the first time,
Russia had drawn attention from all the Western countries
as being a great military power. Besides, that region of
black, very fertile earth was famous for being the richest
part of all Russia. When we were there most of the riches
had been looted by the retreating Reds, but by the time of
our arrival the first British supplies were beginning to
come in very small quantities. We were expecting to get arms,
cartridges, and shells as the British had promised; instead
we got chocolate and powdered milk, and that powdered milk
I will never forget. Maybe we did not know how to use it
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in the proper proportion, but having tea with that powdered
milk was awful.
From Poltava we moved north to a great junction called
Sinelnikovo. This was a great railroad junction and also
a big village. While we stayed in that village I was again
detached to go back to the city of Odessa. Why, of all
officers, it was I again had its reason in the fact that
I was no stranger in Odessa. I had relatives there where
I could live. My assignment there was to try to get supplies
from the huge army depots in Odessa. Besides, I was
interested in crossing to the right bank of the River Dnepr
to the city. of Ekaterinoslav. This city was founded in
the days of Catherine the Great, and the name means
"Glory to Catherine". I was eager to reach that city because
I knew that Dina's family had a great house there and I hoped
that the family might be there. This city had been occupied
by White cavalry just a few days earlier and the cavalry
had moved a little to the north, maybe ten miles. Holding
such a large industrial city, where many factory workers
were very much pro-Communist, was difficult for only a few
regiments of cavalry. The railroad bridge crossing the
River Dnepr had been blown up but I saw a fisherman with a
small boat and I suggested that he take me across. He did
not want to but finally he agreed, seeing money in my left
hand and a pistol in my right. Actually, I did not realize
the danger I was risking. This fellow had an assistant with
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him, and the two of them together could have easily thrown
me overboard right into the river. Then there would be
no writing of memoirs now. But probably they were afraid
to risk their own hides and they landed me on the outskirts
of Ekaterinoslav. It was late in the afternoon. I walked
into the city and to Dina's family's great house and I
started banging at the gates leading into the yard. After
long banging I saw a man, an old figure, cautiously
crossing the yard and coming up to the gate. He opened the
gate and I recognized in him the family footman. I remember
ed him so well in all his gala uniform, sitting next to the
coachman on the box. He stared at me as if I were a ghost.
He let me in and then he said that two days earlier the
family had left. He did not know, or did not want to say,
he was so scared, where they had gone. He told me that they
had not been living in this house, it was much too danger
ous, but for the last few months they had lived on the out
skirts of the city with a family of an officer's widow. It
was quite late and getting dark, so he let me into the big
house and arranged a bed for me and I spent the night there
all by myself. In the morning he managed to bring me a cup
of tea and even a slice of bread with some lard, and he gave
me the address of the widow on the outskirts of the city.
He also asked me to leave the house because he was much
too scared.
So I went and found that widow, who was a very, very
nice lady, and she explained to me that Dina's family had
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left a few days ago for the south, not actually knowing
where they were going. The general in charge of the troops
occupying the city had told them that the city probably
could not be held against the eventual attack by the Reds
and that his cavalry would have to leave the city. He
managed to put at the family's disposal a truck, and with
that truck they had left. She saw that I was almost
exhausted, physically and otherwise, and she suggested that
I stay in her home and have a rest. I was very happy to
accept. She was right, for the next day I had a very high
fever and was knocked out by an attack of malaria. I stayed
with her, recuperating for almost three weeks before I was
strong enough to go to Odessa.
Recruiting volunteers in Odessa
As I have said, while in Odessa, my assignment was to
get some supplies and to get also more volunteers. Among
my friends in Odessa I discovered a young artist. He was
a painter of pictures and I gave him an idea for making a
huge propaganda poster for the White armies. He did his
best and his poster was huge, more than life-size. It
represented a horrible red dragon crawling along the bushes ,
and above the dragon was a rearing stallion, of course a
white stallion, and astride the stallion was an officer in
full dress uniform of the Horse Guards. It was a very
impressive poster, inspired by an ancient icon of St. George
and the dragon, the red dragon. This poster was put into
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one of the big windows on the main street of Odessa, asking
volunteers to join, and I gave my address at my aunt's,
where they could be conscripted into my squadron.
My aunt had been a great idealist since her youth, and
idealistically leaning to the left. It was murmured in the
family that once upon a time she had been in love with a
student who had been caught in some kind of a socialist
conspiracy and deported to Siberia. Therefore her nick
name among us was "The Red Aunt" because of her convictions.
Besides, she was employed by the City of Odessa and most of
the employees of Odessa City Hall were left-leaning liberals
and socialists. They saw my dragon in the window on the main
street of Odessa, and when my aunt came to the city hall,
they all rushed up to her, asking if she had gone mad. Why
did that reactionary poster of St. George and the dragon in
the window give her address? My aunt knew nothing about this
picture and she was quite flabbergasted, and when she came
home she told me what she thought of me. Anyhow, it was
impossible to have a quarrel with that dear aunt. Volunteers
started pouring in and I changed the address in order to be
closer to the center of the city. I gathered about 20 or 30
volunteers.
But getting supplies was another task. As usual, the
supply officers demanded a formal requisition slip and proper
forms, and those forms had to be signed and countersigned
by headquarters and other headquarters and third headquarters,
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and so on. One of my volunteers happened to be a very
smart and very good-looking fellow around 2O, and it was
common knowledge that the young wife of the elderly senior
officer had a very tender heart, especially toward boys
not over 20. My volunteer, in the exercise of his first
military duties, won the heart of that lady, and not only
the heart. He also managed to win the keys to the supply
dumps. Thanks to this, that night we entered the supply
dumps, bribing the sentinels with vodka and money. We got
cloth, badly needed to put our volunteers into uniforms,
and as a bonus we even managed to get from that supply
dump two heavy machine guns and a large amount of ammunition.
This was all loaded at the main railroad station in Odessa,
officially, and with two cars of volunteers and those supplies
we were hooked onto a train which took us to the city of
Kiev. I could not get those cars to my reserve squadron
immediately because the bridges across the river Dnepr
were all blown up, and Kiev was on the right shore while
my reserve squadron was on the left shore. After arriving
in Kiev, I continued to call for volunteers. About ten or
twenty young men volunteered. Most of those volunteers
were just out of high school; they were very enthusiastic
young boys, very anti-Communist, some of them belonging to
very prominent families of the Russian nobility, but they
were by no stretch of the imagination trained soldiers.
I had to rejoin my regiment, to bring them those
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volunteers and the supplies. Mother remained in Kiev,
occupied by very small, number ically weak units of the
White Army. What happened to Mother later will be in
a later chapter. But when I rejoined the reserve squadron,
we had to dress up all the volunteers. We had the cloth
and other stuff to make them shirts. The worst problem
was boots. But the place where we were then located
was a small provincial town, and it was very famous for
the profession of tailors. Ninety percent of that town
was inhabited by a minority - I mean Jews - and most of
them were professional tailors. One night we made a search
of that small town, and we arrested every Jew who was a
tailor - this was a procedure of civil war, of course, it
was not foreseen by any regulation of the Imperial Army.
Of course, the Jews were panicky, and expected to be
executed. But we told them, "We are not members of the
Red Tcheka. All we want from you is your skill as tailors.
Here is the stuff." We had them rounded up and locked up
in a school, and we told them, "You are going to stay
here to make uniforms from the cloth that we give you,
and you are going to stay here until our squadron is
fully dressed. And your wifes, sisters or daughters can
every day bring you your kosher food, because we are not
going to feed you." Sentinels were posted around that
school, and the tailors were told, "Do not ever try to
run away, or it will be your fault if a bullet reaches you."
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After such drastic measures with the tailors, ten days
later we were all in new uniforms which replaced the old
tattered ones and also the tattered civilian clothes. We
really looked like a military unit. The volunteer boys
were trained for only two weeks, and then a squadron was
formed to join the squadron north of us that was in the
fighting lines.
After I returned from Odessa with the supplies and
volunteers, the officers of the first squadron went on
leave. My second squadron joined the first one and a
group of officers replaced those who were on leave. We
proceeded northward without encountering any real resistance
from the Reds. Of course, we realized that ten miles to
the east or ten miles to the west of the road we followed,
there was nobody. Eventually, there were some small
communist gangs that avoided our advance, that were left
there for the purpose of attacking our rears, destroying
our communication lines or attacking small units going back
south. Everybody who went on leave south could not risk
going alone, but only in a small armed group. And we went
northwards through wooded country, very sandy roads,
some marshes, the worst possible terrain for cavalry units.
Proceeding northward we reached the city of Gluchov. This
was a very ancient Russian city. It used to be a fortified
city back in the days of Tsar Ivan the Terrible and even
before. It was intended as a trading post, and it had the
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buildings - they were stone buildings - that represented a
quadrangle. There was a well in the middle of that
quadrangle. And that quadrangle was known by the name
Kreml. This word Kreml is well known to all tourists who
now visit Moscow. But the word is a very ancient Russian
word which used to mean in the very old days just plain
"fortress." It could resist the onslaught of the Tatar
hordes. To me, it used to remind me of some decorations,
some setups I used to see in the theater when operas were
given. The famous opera Boris Godunov had in the back
ground a picture of just this kind of an ancient forti
fication.
Of course, the city of Gluchov had grown and had
surrounded that ancient fortification. We had nice living
quarters. Personally we lived in a requisitioned school,
and we made friends with some teachers, lady teachers. One
of the elderly lady teachers offered us tea in the evening
and discussed the present military and political situation.
And she told us, "For the population, and for me personally,
what is the difference between the Red armies and the White
armies? Of course, there is a great political, moral, and
psychological difference. But," she said, "practically,
there is only one difference" that she could see. She said
"You Whites, you hang your opposition. And the Reds, they
shoot." Of course, the words of this elderly school
teacher were a great shock to us. If that was the only
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difference, then what was this all about, all our fighting?
Once again in Odessa in search of supplies
In spring of 1919 I was again detached from my unit
on the Crimea to the city of Odessa for the purpose of
getting supplies. At that time Odessa was occupied by
French troops. I was living in the home of my Aunt Nadya
Somov and the house was full of refugees. Among them were
two brothers who were planning to go back to their estates
to fetch their families and to try to escape to Rumania.
Therefore, in Odessa, they managed to have quite a large
amount of Rumanian money. The banks could not exchange
money legally, but in Odessa anyghing could be obtained in
a round about way. Then the two brothers, for reasons I
do not know, changed their minds and decided to go back to
their families and to try to somehow survive in the chaos
of that region of south Russia and so they did not need
those Rumanian liras any more. I was dead set on leaving
Odessa because I knew that the French would be leaving
very soon and that the only way out would be through Rumania,
I still had a sizeable amount of money from the last income
from Kodyma, so I made an exchange with those two gentlemen
and I took their Rumanian liras and gave them all the money
I had from that last income. There was Soviet money and
old Tsarist money and they would be able to have the use of
it where they were going. Incidentally, when they left to
go to their families they never arrived; on their way they
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were murdered by some gangs and years later their families
managed to escape and I will talk later about their escape.
So I had the Rumanian money. I was actually a stranger
in Odessa because I had never lived there until after the
s
Revolution. But my cousin Serge Stenbock-Fermor lived in
Odessa. He had finished school there and after that he
had finished at the artillery academy in Odessa and he knew
the city inside out and had great friends in all social
groups of the city. One day he rushed into Aunt Nadya's
home in great excitement, telling me that the last French
troops were evacuating and leaving Odessa the next day.
Part of them were being shipped back on French military
ships, transport ships, but there were not enough ships and
part of the French troops were marching to the Rumanian
border about a ten days' march from Odessa. He said that
we had to leave Odessa to join those French troops.
Besides the French troops in Odessa, there was a so-
called Russian Volunteer Brigade mostly composed of officers.
I doubt very much that this brigade had more than two
thousand men in it. Junior officers were just plain infantry
men, squads were commanded by colonels. They were armed
only with rifles and small arms and only a few machine
guns, and of course, they were in no shape to hold the
great city of Odessa even against that rabble. The
Communist rabble, the underground of any such big city, was
only waiting for the French to leave so they could grab
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Odessa. Besides, they would of course be joined from the
outside from the north by stronger Communist forces. So
that small brigade of General Tymanovsky had to leave
Odessa with the French. Tymanovsky was a typical person
for those times. He had graduated from high school in
Odessa in 1912 and had joined the Russian Army as a
volunteer private in the fall of 1914. Now in the early
days of 1919 he was a general, I could almost say, a general
of his own making and promotion. He was a hero in the early
days of the volunteer army. He participated in the so-
called cold, windy, ice movement of the small Russian
White units that had to leave Rostov and go into the steppes.
Of course, Tymanovsky was a hero, an idealist, and in
manners he was a young Russian bear. He had a convoy that
consisted of about one hundred men. He knew my counsin
Serge very well because he had gone to high school with
Serge's older sister, Olga, who also planned to leave
Odessa with us as a nurse with the Red Cross. So we joined
the body guard of Tymanovsky but for us cavalrymen marching
away on foot was a nightmare.
When Serge burst into the room telling that the French
were leaving, he also said in great excitement that at
this very moment a race course and the stables of the race
horses, that were not far away from where we lived, were
being looted by soldiers of a Polish Legion. This Polish
Legion was a fighting unit composed of officers and enlisted
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men of Polish origin. They had re-grouped and their idea
was to fight their way back to Poland and to help Poland
become an independent, sovereign country. This Polish
Legion was composed of real fighting men; they were command
ed by Polish officers, very many of whom had served before
that in the Russian Imperial Army. They had discipline
among them and they had a call to regain and to reconstruct
their beloved Poland. Now they were taking away all the
thoroughbred horses from the race tracks of Odessa. So
Serge and I rushed to those race tracks and to the stables.
I entered one of the stables, my big British colt revolver
in my hand, and I put my colt right under the nose of one
of the Polish legioneers who was attempting to enter the
same stable and the legioneer "evaporated", vanished,
probably due to the influence of my colt. That stable had
in it a horse and a saddle. Saddling a horse was no problem
for me and I led the horse out and I was on horseback. The
s
same thing happened to my cousin Serge and when we joined
the Tymanovsky group of bodyguards we felt much better.
Other soldiers of the Tymanovsky bodyguard got horses by
just grabbing in the middle of the streets local coachmen
that one could hire and taking the horses, deharnessing
them from the carriages, and driving the coachman away and
getting astride of those horses - saddles were available.
And this particular group of the bodyguard of General
Tymanovsky had just two ways of moving, either to walk or
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gallop full speed because there were those carriage horses
and our racing horses. I felt that I was astride a really
good horse.
Move toward Rumanian border
So we left Odessa, toward the Rumanian border and with
an endless column of soldiers and officers, belonging to no
unit whatsoever, carts with refugees, and some carts with
Red Cross nurses, including my cousin Olga. While we were
moving toward the border, a well-dressed eldarly gentleman
approached me while I was waiting for my turn to cross a
bridge and addressed me very politely and said, "Sir
Officer, may I please ask you a question?" I said, "Of
course, go ahead." He said to me, "Sir Officer, do you
happen to know what horse you are riding?" I said,
"I have not the faintest idea. As you probably know, I
took it under certain circumstances when the Polish Legion
was looting the stables." The well-dressed gentleman
said, "Allow me to present myself to you. I am the manager
of the racing studs of Mr. Lazarev. " Now the name of
Lazarev was that of the greatest,, most famous Russian racing
studs. And he said, "Sir Officer, you are astride of a
five year old mare, Fantasia. And that mare has won the
Russian Imperial Derby and a prize just before the Revolut
ion, a prize of two hundred thousand gold rubles. It was
the greatest prize in all of Russia." Well, I had felt I
was astride a good horse because I knew something about
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horses. I immediately fell in love with my horse and
started taking great care of it. Fodder was very scarce
but somehow I managed to ride to the encampment of the
French supply units which were very poorly guarded by
French black troops, most undisciplined, and I got hold of
a sack of oats to feed my Fantasia. And then grass was
growing along the roads but that new, fresh grass is not
good fodder. Anyhow, I was in possession of Fantasia for
about a week.
And then we came up to a sandbank of Burgaz. This
sandbank was the border between Russian territory and
Rumanian territory and crossing the river there was a
railroad bridge. We expected the Rumanians, who had been
allies of Russia in the First World War, to receive us,
to give us an opportunity to re-arm and re-form and fight
back against the Bolsheviks. Rumanians were practically
under the command of the French troops who were in Rumania,
also our old allies, but their mentality had become very
different from what we had expected. They did not want to
get into any trouble with Soviet Communist Russia and there
fore they refused to let us pass through the Rumanian
border. We were on the sandbank without fodder for the
horses, without food for ourselves and the refugees. Never
theless we attempted to cross that railroad bridge. There
were railroad tracks but the wood-ties under the tracks
had been mostly taken away by the Rumanians. So we
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dismounted and led our horses and my Fantasia stepped ginger
ly from one tie across empty space to another tie, never
losing her footing. At that moment the Rumanians sent a
railroad engine to meet us and that railroad engine was
of course managed by an engineer, a Rumanian. He stepped
full speed on the throttle and jumped off the engine, and
the engine rushed against us as we tried to bring our horses
across. Well, some of those who were in front of me had
the presence of mind to throw some hand grenades at the
engine and the engine fell off the side of the bridge and
into the river. But part of the bridge was also destroyed
because of those hand grenades, so we just had to lead our
horses back.
Then came orders from the French commander (besides
the French troops he was in charge of us and the Polish
Legion, in fact everyone who was in the group) saying that
French landing boats would take us aboard the next day, but
that we would have to leave all of our guns, heavy armaments,
and all the thoroughbred horses must be surrendered to the
French command. All the rest of the horses would be taken
by the Polish Legion. Of course we had some private
luggage and suitcases in the carts. My cousin Olga, in her
Red Cross dress, penetrated during the evening into the
encampment of the French supply units. She was carrying a
bottle of vodka and she managed to trade that bottle of vodka
with the black French troops for a very strong mule, a pack
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animal, with all his pack equipment. She led the animal
back to our encampment and that big, strong mule was
immediately called by all of us, "Anselm" , which was the
last name of the French Commander. We wanted to honor
him. The mule came in very handy. Then the Polish Legion
contacted us (as I said, many of the officers were ex-
Russian officers) and they said to us, "Listen, fellow
officers, if you surrender your thoroughbred horses to
the French, they will take them to France and you will never
see them again. Give those thoroughbred horses to us Poles.
We will take them to Poland and then when all this chaos
is over they will be safe and they will be surrendered back
to the non-communist Russian forces, because Poland and
Russia are neighbors." Well, that sounded very nice and I
was put in charge by General Tymanovsky, because of my
knowledge of French, of going to the French Headquarters
of General Anselm and reporting to him that his orders were
not going to be followed, a rather nasty thing to have to
report. I was confronted by General Anselm in person and
I said to him in my excellent French, "Mon General...
and so forth and so on." He was jumping mad and he yelled
at me that he was going to immediately give orders that I
be hanged and my General Tymanovsky along with me. Well,
I saluted and left and another order of General Anselm was
never implemented because I am still here. The next day my
Fantasia was taken over by the Poles. I parted with her
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with tears in my eyes and I do not know whatever happened
to her later.
The French landing ships did come but they could not
approach the sandbank because the water was much too
shallow, so we were taken to the ships in rowboats. The
rowboats were very low, the rails of the ships were very
high, and only cord ladders were hanging down the sides
of the ships to the small boats. Everyone who wanted to
get aboard had to climb those ladders. I started climbing
like a monkey, holding to the ladder with my right hand,
and in my left hand I had my suitcase with all my belongings,
It was rather heavy and my strength started leaving me.
As I mounted and mounted I was confronted for a few seconds
with the question: should I let go of that suitcase with
all my belongings and get aboard? If I did not let go of
it I probably would not be able to get aboard. But I was
almost up, and very fortunately somebody's hand grabbed
me by my collar like a puppy and pulled me aboard and I
had not let go of my suitcase, so I and my suitcase were
aboard. Of course, those ships were overcrowded with
refugees and Russian volunteers and on the ship General
Tymanovsky had his headquarters. I was suddenly in the
role of private in spite of my officer's rank, for as I
have said before, squads were commanded by colonels and I
was only a junior Lieutenant.
That day, before the ships left for Rumania, my turn
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came to be on duty guarding headquarters and the big money
box. How much money was in that box I do not know - I doubt
there was much - but the money box always played a great
role in all regiments. Next to the money box, even in peace
time, there stood the banner of the regiment and a guard
went on duty every four hours and was supposed to stand at
attention, guarding that box. I was rather tired and I was
not sure of being relieved four hours later, so after about
three hours of standing there I just put my rifle on the
top of the box and sat next to it. There came around a
senior officer, an officer of some obscure line regiment,
and when he saw me sitting on that official box he almost
fainted and then there was a big row. What liberties those
junior lieutenants of the Imperial Horse Guards were taking!
Well, what can you expect from the officers of the Imperial
Guards? Of course, from his point of view it was a scandal,
almost worse than the Revolution itself. To make things
worse, I kept my cool and I told that excited colonel that
if I sat on the box I would be able to guard it all night,
but if I had to stand at attention according to all the
regulations, I would have to be relieved every four hours.
So he insulted me and called me a partisan - a partisan was
a not-very-regular officer. Well, that scandal finally
blew over.
We enter Rumania
The French landing ships moved and they took us up an
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estuary of the Danube River which separated Rumania from
Bulgaria. We came to the little provincial city of Tulcha,
in which the inhabitants did not really know who they were,
Rumanians or Bulgarians. At that moment they were
Rumanians and the place was occupied and supervised by the
French High Command and by French African black troops.
There was a problem with lodging for the refugees and the
Russian military units and this problem was in the hands
of a Rumanian colonel, the commandant of the city of Tulcha.
Those diplomatic relations, conversations with Rumanian or
French authorities, had to be handled by someone who knew
foreign languages. In all that so-called brigade there
were only four of us: myself, my cousin Serge, my friend
Rodzevich, who was a graduate from St. Petersburg Law
School, and a professor candidate Zimmerman, a candidate of
international law. So Zimmerman headed the little group of
the four of us and jokingly we were called the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs. Professor Zimmerman was a very, very
handsome man and he really imagined himself to be a kind of
Minister of Foreign Affairs which was reflected in his tone
and in his speeches with the local authorities. I was
assigned to the Rumanian Commandant Colonel of the city of
Tulcha.
The refugees were standing in the streets waiting to
get some kind of lodgings and when I came to his office late
in the afternoon, the Rumanian Colonel Commandant was in no
- 336 -
hurry. That made me very mad. Our conversation was in
French and I was so mad that I yelled at that Colonel that
if measures were not taken immediately to find lodgings for
all those waiting people and they had to spend the night
in the open street, I would immediately call some of them
off the streets and into his office and have them grab him
and his helpers and dump them into the Danube. Well, he
could have shot me or he could have reported me to the French
High Command but he gave in, seeing that I was so mad and
using such strong language. The result was that all the
troops and refugees were lodged in barracks and houses that
very same evening. That was the only way to talk to
Rumanians .
Supplies were given to us by the French. We were given
cans of French corned beef that came from Madagascar, an
island then under French command. Our soldiers and many
Russians were convinced that it was not beef, that it was
some kind of monkey or orangutan meat and they called it
"du cinge" - cinge means monkey in French. So there were
those cans and I cannot quite remember how much, but I think
there was a can for two persons per day. And then they
gave us chocolate and that was all. Fortunately I still
had those Rumanian liras with me so I could go into the
city market in Tulcha and there, for a very token price in
Rumanian liras, I could buy ground corn and ground millet,
so I became the cook for our Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
- 337 -
A Rumanian villa had been requisitioned for us and there we
lived. I cooked millet or ground corn and then I dumped
into that porridge the contents of that can of so-called
monkey meat and then I stirred it. It was very nourishing.
For dessert I boiled a new portion of ground millet and I
stuck into that boiling millet or corn the chocolate that
the French had given us. And that was our ration every day
all day. We did not go hungry and it was very nourishing
but it was very tedious. Of course, very good coffee could
be bought in Rumanian taverns, cups of excellent coffee that
we had missed for so long and we indulged in that coffee to
such an extent that despite the average age of 20 to 25 years
we noticed that we were drinking too much strong coffee.
Of course, the French also gave us some wine, because no
Frenchman can live a day without wine. The French saying
is that a day without wine is like a day without sunshine.
I agree with this.
The French High Command decided to have a party and to
invite General Tymanovsky, his staff officers, and us so-
to-say diplomats. Well, I conveyed that invitation to
General Tymanovsky and his response was, "I am not disposed
to go to them this coming Wednesday. Tell them that I will
come on Thursday." That was poor diplomacy and poor manners
and, of course, the relationship between the French High
Command and Tymanovsky and persons on his staff was a great
problem for us .
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Going back and forth between the French High Command
and the Rumanians, I was the first one to get the news, the
very welcome news, that the Russian White Armies were
having success and that they were sending Russian troop
ships, escorted by a Russian cruiser (one of the few still
left on the Black Sea in good shape) and that we would be
able to leave Tulcha, where we were something between
prisoners and unwelcome guests. We were to be shipped
back to Russia to join the Russian White Armies. At that
time in Tulcha on one of the shady streets there were shops,
a kind of stock exchange, and those shops were all in
Jewish hands. They paid Ukrainian money at a low liras-rate.
We had a large amount of Rumanian money and I knew that
Ukrainian money, once we arrived in Russia, could be ex
changed ruble for ruble for the money that was worth
something in south Russia. So I went into one of those
Jewish shops in my officer's uniform with liras in my hand
and I asked to buy that Ukrainian money. That old Jewish
man gasped and stared at me but he could not refuse, and
I bought some of that Ukrainian money for the very low
exchange rate then existing in the city of Tulcha. From
there I went next door and I did the same. That whole
business lasted maybe ten minutes. When I went to the third
shop I was told that the stock exchange for today in Tulcha
was closed. They were dumbfounded by the fact that an
officer in uniform was giving away those Rumanian liras for
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the purpose of buying the almost worthless Ukrainian money.
Of course, through the back door a boy had rushed from
shop to shop and said in Jewish jargon that something was
wrong, something unusual was going on, that there was an
officer buying that worthless money and giving up liras for
it. There was a panic in Tulcha on the Jewish stock exchange,
a panic created by me. I was very happy and had a good laugh
with my good friends. And that was the only time I succeeded
in creating a panic on a stock exchange anywhere in the
world.
Across the Black Sea - back to Russia and the war goes on
A few days later the Russian varship arrived. It was
flying a Russian National flag, white blue and red, and was
escorted by a cruiser decorated with the Russian Navy
battle flag. That was quite a sight! We all cheered and
we noticed that the Rumanians changed their attitude toward
us, apparently feeling that, well, Russia is still alive.
We boarded those ships, very happy to get away from Tulcha,
and those ships took us from west to east, across the entire
Black Sea. We could not enter the ports of the Crimea be
cause they were then occupied by the Red armies. Aboard
those ships I questioned the Russian Navy officers about
what had been going on in general, because while we were
in Tulcha we knew absolutely nothing of what was happening
outside. From them I learned that my unit was now on the
Crimea. They had retreated back into the Crimea and then
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eastward toward the city of Kerch, which was separated
from Crimea proper by a very narrow strip of land maybe
twenty kilometers wide. On one side of that land was the
Black Sea, on the other side was an inland sea, called
the Azov Sea, which was very shallow. On that narrow piece
of land the Russian White volunteers dug in and resisted the
Red advance, defending the city of Kerch. It was a sort of
stalemate because the defendants of that narrow strip were
supported by British warships; destroyers that could go
into the shallow water stood in the Azov Sea and heavy
British warships stood in the Black Sea, and when on both
sides they opened fire, there was a kind of fire curtain.
That curtain was so strong that the Bolsheviks did not
dare move and attack the trenches which the men of my unit
were occupying.
I landed in the city of Novorossisk and in the couple
of days that I spent in Novorossisk I rushed around the city
meeting lots of friends and trying to find out from them if
they knew the whereabouts of Dina and her parents. Well,
nobody knew anything about them. I met there my ex-secretary
of the sporting club, irina Tolstoy, and her friends, but
not Dina. Finally I joined the reserve units of the regiment
located east of Kerch across a narrow strip of water, and
for some time I was in that reserve unit that was training
volunteers and preparing an offensive while the fighting
unit was in the trenches defending the city of Kerch.
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The city of Kerch had a very unusual feature. It was
a very ancient city founded centuries ago by Greek merchants.
All of the houses were built of stone and that stone had
been dug out of the earth, forming great caverns under and
very near to the city. They were very deep and had corridors.
It was like an underground city and it was full of Communists
and Bolsheviks. There were many entrances, some in orchards,
some in houses. But who could know what houses or what
orchards? The Reds came out at night and stabbed our
sentinels and there was a danger of their coming out in
numbers and attacking our trenches from the rear, and no fire
of the British fleet could help us in such a case. So the
British sent help in a different form: British specialists
in gas arrived. Wherever a hole was found that might be an
entrance to those caves, that hole was closed with stone and
cement, and into those holes that remained open they put gas
under pressure. The heavy gas went into the caverns and all
those who were in them had the choice of being suffocated or
fighting their way out. The moment they appeared, half
conscious, they were bayonetted or clubbed because our soldiers
were so incensed at having lost so many of their friends to
those rascals. Well, my friend Captain Jo jo was in command
of gassing one of those holes. He was an excellent officer
and a very kind man and he was shocked at what our soldiers
were doing. He prevented them as best he could but it was a
difficult task to manage those enraged soldiers. One fellow
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appeared out of a hole, very dizzy, barely standing on his
feet, and the moment he appeared Captain Jo jo grasped him in
his arms and thus prevented him from being bayonetted or
clubbed and when this fellow, now breathing fresh air, came
to his senses, my Captain Jo jo immediately ordered him to
become a volunteer of our unit. He was enlisted then and
there as a volunteer. It turned out that he had been a work
man in a St. Petersburg armaments factory and he was a
specialist, a mechanic, a genius of a mechanic. He had been
a specialist in keeping all kinds of arms, the smallest,
most complicated arms, in good shape. He joined us for good
in thankfulness that his life had been saved and he became a
treasure of a man in our squadron. Finally, when the White
momvement was over (he was in the bodyguard of General
Wrangell) he became an emigrant, and of course as an excellent
mechanic he got a very good job long before we officers could
dream of getting any kind of work at all.
Finally the advance of the Russian Whites started in
what must have been early June 1919, and from the reserve unit
I had to cross the channel by ferry to get into Kerch. My
unit consisted of four four-wheel carriages with four horses
each, and each carriage had a heavy machine gun. Those
machine guns on four-wheel carriages were the ancestors of the
tanks of the future. The problem was how to have the greatest
and fastest mobility combined with the greatest fire power.
I had to join the group in Akmanai and when I got there I heard
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that that group had already advanced, fighting and penetrat
ing back into- the Crimea. And they had moved just twenty-
four hours before my arrival in Kerch. So I moved to follow
them, intending to catch up with them.
Chinese fight on the Reds' side
In midsummer of 1919 the White Army units were approach
ing a very important railroad junction, the junction of
Bahmach and a small provincial town of the same name.
Apparently the Reds had plans to defend it stubbornly and
they did not destroy the railroad lines. This gave our
armored trains an opportunity to move and occupy the main
railroad station. The Reds panicked and fled but then ordered
that the station be re-captured and our armored trains destroyed
regardless of losses. Hords of drunk and drugged Chinese
attacked our armored trains blindly. In spite of our point-
blank fire they. crawled on the trains, on the roofs of the cars,
attempting to blow holes with hand grenades or to penetrate
into the cars through the car windows. Those Chinese climbed
over layers of bodies of other Chinese, like ants. It was
an unimaginable, nightmarish fight. When our cavalry reached
the station of Bahmach, no Chinese were alive. The trains
were as if painted red. Pieces of human flesh were sticking
to the walls of the cars and the windows were covered with
human brains and pieces of skulls.
Why Chinese in the Comunist Red Army? Well, in 1915
as a result of general mobilization a lack of unskilled
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labor force occurred, especially for maintenance of the rail
roads. For this reason many working battalions were im
ported from over-populated China. They were excellent and
cheap labor.
In the summer of 1917, under the government of Kerensky,
havoc spread all over Russia like a rapid brushfire. The
Chinese "Labor Battalions" were forgotten, unfed, unhoused
and they went wild serving the hand that fed them.
In 1918 they became cannon fodder for units of the
Communist Red Army, not having any notion what they were
fighting for, with whom and against whom.
One of my fellow officers picked up on the side of the
road a Chinese young fellow, dying of hunger. My friend
picked him up, fed him, took him to his estate and entrusted
him with the care of the horses. Shortly after this estate
was looted as all others. My friend was absent. But the
Chinese boy was murdered by peasants while he was defending
the horses of his master. Chinese loyalty to the hand that
feeds them.
General Shkuro and his "Brigade"
While the main forces of the White Armies had been moving
northward along the Sevastopol-Moscow-St. Petersburg railroad
and had advanced as far as Kursk, other units were moving in
the same direction along the banks of the Dnepr. But to the
west the region between Ekaterinoslav, Odessa, and Nikolaev
was still in the hands of the Reds. If one looks at the map
- 345 -
one realizes that all that region on the right bank of the
Dnepr, a region equal in square miles to more than half of
France, was being cut off from the north by the White
Armies; inside that region there was only the brigade of
Shkuro, 2000 men, to fight the Reds and keep law and order.
Of course this was an absolutely impossible task. The
stretch of land that Shkuro and his men controlled could be
at the utmost 20 to 30 km wide, and right and left of it
reigned total chaos. Small and large bands of Reds were
living there off the population, terrorizing it, and
disrupting all the supply lines of the White Armies.
Some of the Reds, to avoid being encircled in Nikolaev,
left the city in panic and disorder and moved northward
along the railroad lines connecting Nikolaev with Poltava,
which was already in the hands of the Whites. They went as
far as the station of Novy-Bug, about 100 km north of Nikolaev.
Shkuro 's brigade was moving southward along that same rail
road line. General Shkuro 's train got stuck some 40 miles
north of Novy-Bug. There was a stalemate along the railway
lines because the Reds coming from Nikolaev were extremely
well armed. They even had heavy guns mounted on railroad
flat-cars. On the other hand, General Shkuro and his men could
not attack trenches that were defended by machine guns and
even heavy artillery. So what did Shkuro do? Shkuro himself,
with his hundred-men personal bodyguard and a brass band
mounted on horses, rode for about 50 km around fortified
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Novy-Bug through the emptiness of the steppes, and at the
break of dawn he galloped into the city of Nikolaev at the
head of his personal bodyguard, his brass band playing the
Russian national anthem, and the Russian national flag
flying from the lance of one of his men.
No matter how well armed a unit is, if it is panicky it
is not a fighting unit any more. The appearance of Shkuro
made such an impression on the Reds still in Nikolaev that
they fled north to Novy-Bug as fast as they could and when the
Reds heard what had happened they, too, abandoned their
entrenched lines and all their heavy guns and fled on foot
or in carts, thus leaving the whole railroad line free for
the Whites. The Reds fled to the west and the north to get
out of a presumed encirclement by Shkuro, an encirclement
that in fact did not exist. It was only the dashing
maneuver of Shkuro, riding on horseback through the city
with his brass band, that did it.
The whole brigade of Shkuro moved now into the city of
Nikolaev. There was a great parade. The clergy of the city
in all their glistening robes met Shkuro on the main square.
A church service of thanksgiving for the liberation of
Nikolaev from the Red terror was held, and when Shkuro rode
through the crowd, many women tried to reach his horse and to
kiss his boot or his stirrup. It was something quite medieval.
Just to finish the life story of this dashing General
Shkuro: he emigrated after the collapse of the White Armies.
He lived in France and from there he continued to send messages,
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secret messages of course, into Russia and to his native
region of Kuban. Kuban was a vast and rich region. It bears
the name of the river flowing through it. Some of his
messengers were caught by the Reds and the Reds protested
officially to the government of France that an emigre,
living in Paris was attempting to make anti-Soviet propaganda.
In those days, the 1930 's, France was trying to make friends
with the emerging power of Soviet Russia, so the French
officials were very much annoyed and Shkuro was expelled from
France. He left for Germany and then for Yugoslavia. In
Yugoslavia, a large French engineering company was building
dams on the Danube to prevent the river from overflowing its
banks in early spring and also for the purpose of turning the
marshes into productive land. Shkuro organized a workers' union
of Cossacks who did this building work. I met Shkuro (In 1933
in July, General Shkuro was at my wedding in Beograd,
Yugoslavia, as a guest of honor) in those days in Yugoslavia
and he was commanding those workers just as if he were a
Division Commander. He said to me, "I know very well my
so-and-so Cossacks. The moment they get paid they go to some
local pub (in Serbian: Kafana) , and there they spend most of
their earnings. When winter comes and there is no work, they
have nothing left and they are hungry. So when they are paid
through me, I deduct 50% of their pay and I keep it for them
so that in winter they shall have something.
Once a great party was organized for the inauguration of
- 348 -
one of those dams. All the French engineers came to that
party as well as all the Cossacks who had worked on it, and
of course there was a band. Somehow, Shkuro managed to get
instruments out of nowhere. It was a big Cossack brass band.
They had learned to play the French national anthem and many
Cossack songs. Shkuro was a man of foresight and psychology.
He had set apart a group of Cossacks who were forbidden to
drink a drop of vodka, ordered to be sober at the end of the
party, and to have stretchers ready. The stretchers came in
very handy because when the party was over those sober
Cossacks carried away the French engineers on those stretchers.
When World War II broke out, all those Cossacks, in spite
of being advanced in age, were still good fighting men and
they wanted to fight the Communists. They were ready to be
the allies of the devil himself, or Hitler, or anyone who
would fight the Communists. They became fighting units on
the German side, fighting Stalin's Reds. They were excellent
fighters and they gave great trouble to Stalin's troops.
But when Germany collapsed there was the infamous agreement
in Yalta, made between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill,
that all Cossack troops in Germany be rounded up by United
States and British troops and delivered to Stalin as traitors
to their country. By some kind of subterfuge and lies by
the British authorities, Shkuro was one of the generals that
the British military authorities in Germany delivered (like
on a platter) to the Red Army. Shkuro was then taken to
- 349 -
Moscow with some other Cossack generals. There was a sham
trial and he was sentenced to death by hanging and he was
hung in the central prison of Moscow, but he was not hung
by a rope. He was hung by butcher hooks that were stuck
into his ribs and he was left hanging there by his ribs.
He lived for more than twenty-four hours, suffering the death
of a martyr. In those days President Roosevelt was dead
and the new President, Truman, was speaking of Stalin in terms
of "our good Uncle Joe." However, it is officially known
that on June.l, 1945, in a small town in Austria called Enns,
near Linz, 37 Cossack generals, 2,605 officers, and 29,000
other ranks were treacherously delivered to Stalin by the
British military authorities. ("Keelhole operation", all
documents about it are at the Hoover Institute at Stanford
University, Stanford, California) .
When Shkuro's armored train had got stuck north of
Novy-Bug I got off because this was the station closest to
Kodyma. Only one soldier went with me. I found a peasant cart
and we travelled 30 km through a kind of no-man' s- land. Of
course at that time I had no idea of the overall military
situation and I did not realize that the station of Novy-Bug,
only ten kilometers to the west of Kodyma, was the center of
the resistance line of the Reds. Then I went on to Nikolaev
with some carts from Kodyma and from there I went to Odessa.
When I finally reached Odessa it was just a few days after the
city had been occupied by White Armies. Other units of the
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White Armies were north of Odessa and the Reds occupying
Odessa had been scared of having their roads of retreat to
the north cut, so they left the city and small units of
officers came out of hiding in Odessa, but altogether their
number would barely represent one regiment in peacetime.
It was a very small unit to try to keep some semblance of
order in such a big city as Odessa.
Again I lived with my Aunt Somov. I managed to hire a
carriage to take me from the railroad to her home on the
outskirts. Any other forms of commuting, such as electric
trams, were not functioning. When I drove up to the house
(it was about July, 1919) in an open window of the house, I
saw my cousin Mary sitting on the window sill. When she saw
the carriage, which was quite an unusual sight, and when she
saw me in the carriage, she just jumped out of the window
into the garden and ran to come and greet me.
My last visit to Kodyma
All through the year of 1919 during the Civil War, the
war was waged mostly along railroad lines. Scouts went
right and left of the railroad lines, sometimes twenty
kilometers, sometimes more, for food and fodder, but other
wise all that huge region between the city of Ekaterinoslav
and the city of Odessa - looking at the map and realizing the
square kilometers of that region and comparing it with a map
of France, that region was bigger than half of France.
Between the city of Ekaterinoslav and Odessa, there was a
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cavalry brigade of roughly two thousand Cossacks. How much
of the territory was really occupied or ruled by them would
be hard to say. It was only a little strip of land that we
went through. Right and left of that strip there was no-man's
land of thousands and thousands of square miles infested with
irregular small or large bands of looters. And armored trains
played a great role on the railroad lines. An armored train
was some kind of a makeshift contraption built of materials
that happened to be on hand. Usually there was a railroad
steam engine. In front of that engine there was a flatcar
and on that flatcar a gun of the field artillery protected by
bags of sand. Then came the engine, then came the car full
of coal to keep the engine running, then came a passenger car
for the personnel of that train and it was protected with
plates of metal to somehow hold off the .fire of the enemy.
The engine was also protected, especially the boiler room of
the engine. That was the most vulnerable part of the so-called
armored trains. If the boiler got shot at, the water ran out
and the train was out of commission. In the back of the
train there were flatcars with rails and tools to repair rails
that were sometimes broken some miles in front of the train
or behind it. These trains were highly vulnerable of course.
The passenger cars were armed with machine guns and the
effect of such a train was felt as far as the machine guns
and the artillery gun could shoot. But if shot at, it was
a sitting duck. Once the train was immobilized, it was almost
defenseless. The Red side had such trains; the White side
- 352 -
had such trains. Once our side was very bothered by a Red
train that was shelling our positions and preventing our
cavalry to deploy an attack. Our field artillery came to
help us, led by one of my artillery officer friends who was
a born genius of artillery. Just as there are great artists
of the past and their pictures are in the museum because
they had a kind of super talent by the grace of God, this
artillery officer was an artillery officer by the grace of
God. He could judge a distance and point the guns and when
he opened fire after the first shot of the guns, the second
shot landed right into the chimney of the Red armored train.
And of course that had such an effect on our troops that
they started really worshipping that artillery officer.
Besides when we advanced, dismounted and advanced as infantry,
his artillery guns were right in our lines, shooting point
blank at the enemy. Sometimes when we retreated, he remained
with his guns and covered our retreat, his guns not being
protected by anybody. When we were leaving, during the
general retreat that started in late fall of 1919, we were
leaving the city of Gluchov under no pressure from the Reds.
Then after leaving the city there were a few skirmishes and
a few Red soldiers were taken prisoner and we asked them
then, "Why did you let us go, leave that city without any
pressure? We were completely outnumbered by you?" And then
they said, "Well, we knew that on the main road north of
Gluchov stood a battery of artillery guns under the command
of Colonel Logodovsky and he was famous, not among you
- 353 -
Whites, he was famous among us Reds.. And we knew that the
guns of Colonel Logodovsky could shoot in all four directions
at the same time!" Well, later, fortunately that Colonel
escaped to France and had a great garage of taxi cars that
he had organized. He died not so long ago; he was one of
the greatest heros of the White Army.
When I was sick with malaria in July, 1919, in the city
of Ekaterinoslav, I spent there about three weeks and then I
had to proceed onward to Odessa because my orders were to go
to Odessa to try and get some supplies for our squadron. In
peacetime travelling by passenger train to the city of
Odessa from Ekaterinoslav took about twenty-four hours. But
in 1919 that was quite a different story. There were no
trains moving. And I fortunately saw an armored train that
had orders to go to Odessa. This armored train belonged to
a cavalry brigade and had been supporting the brigade with
its heavy guns. The cavalry brigade ocnsisted of Cossacks
and Moslem mountaineers of the Caucasus. They were savage
fighters, especially on horseback. And whereever they
appeared, the Red troops fled. And they were now moving in
the direction of Odessa from the northeast. The Reds in
Odessa and the vicinity, same as in the vicinity of
Nikolaev, were very unhappy and afraid of having their roads
of retreat to the north cut from the north and the whole
region of Nikolaev-Odessa would be as if in a bag. So they
started hastily to retreat; they left Odessa. In Odessa,
354 -
small units of local officers appeared. There were many
different units. Some officers were politically minded as
socialists, some were monarchists, some did not know them
selves what actually politically they were. But anyway, they
were militarily weak, ill-led and could not hold such a huge
city as Odessa when there was so much underground rabble,
very Bolshevist-minded, and a local uprising could errupt
any moment. But units of the White Army from the Crimea
came by ship to Odessa and landed. The small local Odessa
units joined them and Odessa and the vicinity of the city
about twenty miles inland was in the hands of the White
Army once again and the Reds were fleeing north.
Now my armored train, on which I was a guest, was moving
to Odessa from the north, so there was bound to be a clash
with the Reds heading northward and the Whites coming from
the northeast southward. Looking at a map you will see the
railroad line Nikolaev, Poltava and north of it, Herkov. That
was the railroad line that we travelled twice a year in
peacetime and in my infancy. I knew and I think I still know
by heart the railroad stations along that line. My armored
train where I was a guest, as I said, went slowly, stopping
at many stations because the cavalry regiments that the train
was supporting were also moving cautiously and slowly. I was
slightly bored having nothing to do on that train, but I will
never forget the moment when being in one of the compartments
of that train I felt something tickling my hand. When I had
a close look, I discovered lice. The whole country, everything
- 355 -
was infested with lice that later produced typhoid fever and
typhoid fever took a greater toll of Whites and Reds than
the real fighting. And there was no medicine, or scarcely
any to combat that epidemic. So I knew that sooner or later
I would have typhus, because I had lice. And the train
rolled southward and stopped finally at a station that was
only thirty kilometers from my estate of Kodyma. On that
train I was not alone; I had a volunteer private who had
joined me in the city of Ekaterioslav.- There were two of us.
He was about the same age as I was. And I could not resist
the temptation of leaving this armored train to get a cart
and to drive the thirty kilometers to Kodyma. Well, I
persuaded a driver, a local peasant, to drive me in his cart.
The methods of persuasion in those days were only two:
money in one hand and a revolver in the other. The peasant
agreed to drive me. And of course I did not realize the
crazy danger that I was putting myself in, because that country
was no-man's land, infested with all kinds of bands and
what was in Kodyma, who was in Kodyma? I had not the faintest
idea. Anyhow, I drove right in to the astonishment of the
whole staff that was still there. I entered the house that
had been thoroughly looted. And the looters always imagined
that those who had cash money hid it in books. And therefore
wherever there was a library, their first gesture was to
ransack the library, to tear up all the books, looking for
money and usually finding none. So when I entered the study
- 356 -
of my late father, I saw all the books lying in a heap on the
floor, the bookshelves, the book cupboards smashed to pieces,
his desk also. But on the desk there stood a miniature picture
made by some artist in the mid-nineteenth century representing
my Grandfather in the uniform of the Horse Guards and on the
other half in that way was my Grandmother dressed in mid-
Victorian style, a very very thin waist and a very ample skirt.
Of course, I knew my Grandmother and she looked very different
from the days when I knew her. And for some reason I did not
take that miniature picture with me. I was of course very
excited about the whole situation and I still am sorry that
I did not take it, though probably I would have lost it any
how. Much later, in Paris, I found a photograph of that
miniature picture and I still have it. And standing next to
that heap of torn books , I suddenly noticed lying right at
my feet a thin metal needle. And it was one of the gadgets
that you could look for for days and days and never find it,
and here it was right at my feet. It suddenly dawned on me
that this needle was used by my father to open the very
/
intricate locks of the safe that was standing on the wall.
Next to me was the manager and he had witnessed all the
looting while it was going on and he told me that the looters
tried with all kinds of gadgets to break open that safe but
could not. The safe was still standing there. I remembered
the combination of numbers and letters that had to be turned
around and when that was done there appeared a very very small
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hole. That needle had to be introduced into the hole and
pressed. And then it opened up. So that is what I did. It
was very good that I remembered all the combination of
numbers and letters. Just for amusement I opened, as a
child and a young man, that safe many many times. It con
tained nothing particularly valuable - lots of medals and
prizes for cattle shown in big shows and also I discovered
there a box with about twenty or thirty gold coins, German
marks from peacetime and Austrian crowns. Well, gold is
gold no matter what. So this was the only really valuable
thing I found in that safe and of course it came in very handy,
So I immediately put the gold into a small bag and put it
into my pocket. So I decided to leave Kodyma the next morning,
I went and had again a hot bath, which was a great luxury
after many months.
Early next morning the cook re-appeared. He had fled
during that looting and had actually participated in the
looting. He explained in front of me on his knees - I immedi
ately grabbed him and made him stand up - the old man was
crazy with fear. And he said to me that he was not a looter
but that he had attempted to save the cellar and all the wine
that was in the cellar. Therefore he loaded it onto his cart
and the cart of a friend and drove it into the village and
put it in his home. Well I pretended to believe him. "And
now" he said, "the two carts are just outside where I have
brought all that wine back again." He was afraid of having
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that wine with some of his neighbors in the village knowing
that it was wine, so he washed all the lables off the bottles
so nobody could know what was contained in them. Of course
we could not take those two carts along with us, but we could
take at least a dozen or more. My volunteer and I, both
aged twenty- two, decided that the only way to proceed was to
open all the bottles and to taste what was in them. And we
started opening the bottles just as they stood and tasting
whatever was in them. Sometimes we recognized the bottles
of vodka by their peculiar shape, and we knew it was vodka
but we just did not taste it - we took just a few with us
later. It was mostly red and white wine. Then there was
just one bottle that had a very peculiar shape. It was un
corked and my volunteer tasted and the liquor in it was rather
thick and I said to him, "What do you think it is?" He reported
to me, "Sir, I believe it must be kerosene." "Well, it is
only one bottle anyhow and if you think it is kerosene, then
I prefer not to taste it." So we corked it up and took the
bottle with us along with a dozen or more of the other bottles.
And finally, after travelling two or three days with some
volunteers from Odessa, I reached the city of Kiev, where I
found my mother. I will later speak about my Mother living
in Kiev and going through all the horrors of the occupation
of Kiev by the Reds. Now Kiev was liberated by the White
Armies, but they were very weak numerically. They stood
twenty or thirty kilometers to the north of Kiev. But if the
Reds would have exercised some pressure, there were too few
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of them to resist and keep Kiev in the hands of the White
Annies. Well, the Red army did take Kiev but that happened
two or three months later.
My mother lives through the terror of the Red occupation
of Kiev
When in Kiev, I found my mother. She had lived through
the occupation of Kiev by Ukrainians. Later, for a short time,
the Ukrainians were thrown out by regular Reds, Communists
coming from Moscow, and during that time there were horrors
and arrests through the city day and night. In mid-summer
of the year 1919, the White Armies were rapidly advancing
from the north and we surrounded the great city of Kiev,
still occupied by the Reds. The only escape for the Reds was
up the River Dnepr on barges. I did not participate in the
battles around Kiev because I was on the other sector.
Mother had lived in Kiev throughout the occupation of the
city by the Reds, and she knew of and saw all the Red terror.
She lived in the apartment house of a Russian lady and an
English lady who was with her because she could not return
to England. Not far from her apartment house was the
governor's mansion of the region of Kiev, and the latest
governor of that region had been Mother's cousin. So in
other times Mother had visited that house very often and she
knew that house as if it were her own. During the Red
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occupation that house was occupied by the Red organization of
the Red secret police. There were cellars, and those cellars
were used for the purpose of executing the enemies of Communism.
And some of those terrorists, or if I can say, employees,
lived in Mother's apartment. They went to "work" in the
evening and late in the morning came back somewhat drunk or
under the influence of some drugs and they immediately
stretched out and went to sleep, so they did not represent
any danger at that moment. In the evening they vanished
again.
When the city of Kiev was surrounded they had to
escape at the last moment; they were panicky and they grabbed
anything close at hand and threw it into bundles , things of
value or not, they threw it all into curtain bundles and took
them to the barges to escape. One of them grabbed a coffee
pot. Now that coffee pot was the favorite pot of Anna, who
had been lady's maid to my mother since before my birth,
and this Anna was quite a character. When he grabbed the
coffee pot Anna threw herself at that terrorist and put
her hands around his neck and said, "If you want to take
me, okay, but I will not let you take my coffee pot!"
Well, the coffee pot remained in the kitchen, and so did
Anna!
When they were gone and the Whites were beginning to
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enter the city in very small numbers, my mother decided to
take a walk and she went to the governor's mansion and
descended into the cellar. Later she told me she could not
remember how whe got out of the cellar into the street
because she was so stunned and shocked, and those expressions
were much too mild to describe what my mother saw in that
cellar.
The floor of the cellar was strewn with corpses and
it was obvious that the victims had been tortured; the
walls and the floor of that cellar were splattered with blood
and human brains and bones.
The cellar had been used almost every night by members
of the Tcheka for executions for almost a year for all those
who were allegedly siding with the Whites and eventual
enemies of the Red rulers. "Tcheka" stands, in English
translation, for Extraordinary Commission Against
Speculation and Counterrevolution. This unit had the right
to suspect anyone, to spy, to intrude, to search, to
arrest, to judge, to condemn, and to execute - all in
one. Most of those Tcheka fellows were sadists. They
were clad in leather coats and leather pants, and if some
one was seen dressed up like that, all the population knew
immediately what he was.
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Well, I came to the house and of course Mother and Anna
were delighted to see me. Anna prepared one of the luxurious
rooms with a luxurious bed and covers so that little Vanya,
as she called me in spite of my rank as captain, should have
a good rest. When I went to bed I could not fall asleep,
so in the middle of the night I got up and got my collapsible
bed (it was called a caterpillar) and a very thin mattress
was stretched on it, and there I immediately fell asleep and
had a very good night's rest. About eleven in the morning
Anna came into the room to wake me up and found the empty bed
and me sleeping on that caterpillar, and poor Anna almost
fainted!
We gathered some food and invited a few friends still
living in Kiev. My volunteers and I brought in wine boxes
that I had found at Kodyma and we had some good red and
white wine. We also uncorked a bottle of vodka. And then
I produced one bottle that tasted like kerosene, but
obviously kerosene would never have been poured into such an
elaborate bottle and such a bottle would not have been kept
in our wine cellar. Mother started laughing and she said
that years and years ago, when I was but a child, they had had
a housekeeper who gathered roses in the garden, where there
was a long, long alley full of wild roses. With the petals
of those roses that housekeeper, who had died years ago, had
made liqueur of roses. It was thick and it smelled of roses,
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of perfume. That same kind of liqueur was also made in
Odessa in my wife's family; they were of Greek origin and it
was a Greek recipe. When the French were occupying Odessa
my mother-in-law offered some of that liqueur to a French
officer. He tasted it and then very politely said, "Madame,
this is not drink, it is cosmetic." Well, toward the end
of the dinner old Anna produced some real coffee that she
had kept for an unusual occasion because coffee, of course,
was absolutely unobtainable, not even for its weight in gold.
And with that good coffee, that bottle of liqueur became
empty that very same day.
Mother has to leave Kiev
I stayed in Kiev for only a few days because I had to
return to my unit. Mother stayed on in Kiev because there was
a lot of wishful thinking about the rapid success of the
White Army. I do not think they actually realized how few we
were. Because of the significance of Kiev, it being a big
city and a railroad junction, the Reds decided to take it
back. They concentrated their troops and Kiev was attacked
and the Whites could not hold it so they had to abandon the
city rapidly. When it was first known that Kiev was being
abandoned by the Whites, trains of refugees from Kiev began
to move southeast toward the region of the Don River and
Mother decided not to stay.
Anna decided that she wanted to go back to St. Peters
burg, which had not yet been disgraced by the name of Leningrad.
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Anna had a sister there and the sister had two children, and
all of Anna's personal, private life had been an effort to
assist her sister and to bring up those two girls. Of course
Anna had no idea what was going on in St. Petersburg. We never
saw her again, and probably if she ever reached St. Petersburg
she probably died of hunger there as thousands of others did.
With the help of friends in Kiev, my mother managed to
board one of the refugee trains and it took her to
Novocherkask, which was the biggest city in the Don Region.
It was populated by Cossacks and it was the moral center, the
soul of the resistance against the Reds. But when she got
there, taking all that she could carry at her age and scarcely
any money, by good fortune she met a good friend with whom
she had been friends from time immemorial, the inspector of
a girls' school of St. Petersburg. That school had been
very famous since the days of Catherine the Great, and it was
located in a once-upon-a-time monastery, and this monastery
for very good reasons was called Smolny. When the revolution
started in St. Petersburg the Red battalions and all the
rabble just broke into that school and chased away all the
girls and established their headquarters there. It was an
ancient building, very large, and actually was like a
fortified castle where any attack could be resisted. Later
the school had been re-established in Novocherkask. Because
of the influence of that lady inspector, my mother was able
to live with her in the school and my mother became an
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English teacher at that school. The Reds were attacking and
it was known that the city must be vacated and surrendered,
but some schools were left and the school, where my mother
was, remained in use. A lot of fighting noise was going on
around and then all of a sudden the noise stopped and there
was silence and everybody knew the battle was over. The
Whites had gone, the Reds were in the city. What was going
to happen now to the school and the sixty girls? Of course
the old inspector was very upset and she imagined that
Communist troops would burst into that school and murder her
and my mother and the other teachers and rape all the girls.
In the big hall in the school was a big outside double door,
and they all sat there and prayed for their fates. Then on
the threshold there appeared Communist authorities in Red
attire and with ammunition around their necks and hand
grenades on their belts. They stopped in the doorway and
at that moment all the girls stood up like one person and
without saying a word made a deep curtsey. That was the
way in the old days of greeting the arrival of the Russian
empress, and when the empress entered, the girls would all
say in one voice, "I have the pleasure to greet your Imperial
Majesty!". That had been done for almost two centuries. And
here were those fellows with hand grenades on their belts and
they retreated immediately, closing the door as fast as they
could. They had decided they must have burst into a lunatic
asylum, and the girls were saved.
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Then Mother and the inspector were ordered to do something
else, they were ordered to make fuel. All day long Mother had
to make little bricks which consisted of glue and coal dust.
They had to make a certain quota of bricks and in relation
ship to that quota they got tickets for food. If you do not
make enough bricks, you do not get any food. Also, Mother had
to walk around the city with a big placard in her hand with
some kinds of sentences to the glory of Lenin. Such demonstrat
ions and strikes and counter-strikes were well organized by
the Reds. And there were elections, just to show the United
States and Europe that the Soviet Union was a decent country.
In those elections there was only one candidate to be elected,
and before the electoral votes were counted the winner was
declared. Well, while making those bricks, Mother hurt her
finger and this finger became infected and she was in danger
of having blood poinsoning, so she was put into the hospital.
That was in the month of December, and inside the hospital the
water in the glass was frozen, for there was no heat. Fortun
ately, the hospital was run by a real doctor, a surgeon, and
he was a good surgeon and he also knew who my mother was, so
he operated on that finger and she had to stay in that hospital
for quite a time. There were nurses in the hospital, though
most of the nurses were in the White army. These nurses were
jokingly called consolation nurses. Their job was to sit on
the bed of the wounded who were recuperating and to console
them and to keep them happy, and they behaved in any way that
you can imagine. So you can guess what went on, especially
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at night time, and even in the middle of the day. Mother had
managed to keep with her a little book of the Holy Scriptures.
These nurses, the girl friends of the Communists, asked her,
"What are you reading?" Mother told them and the girls
replied, "Oh, do you still believe in all those fairytales
and that nonsense?" And Mother said, "I do, and nobody can
be made to believe or not to believe!" So she had quite a
relationship with those girls and they said, "Granny, when
you die we are not going to leave you on the surface." That
meant that burying was a problem, especially when the ground
was so hard-frozen. Well, they did not have to keep their
promise.
Mother is being moved to Moscow
Then with the help of that real doctor she got a place
in a railroad car, and that railroad car had a special
assignment to take insane persons to Moscow, where there were
better hospitals. The time to Moscow by train was ordinarily
36 hours, but that particular journey lasted two weeks. On
the third day of the journey she started to realize that most
of the people on that car were just as "insane" as she was
herself. It was a trick of the kind doctor to get them to
Moscow.
My uncle Leo, the Commissar of Sanitation
Finally they arrived in Moscow, and there it was a
different story. There, the head Commissar of Sanitation, a
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professor of biology and a very grand Commissar, was my uncle!
In the days when he was a student in Odessa and studying biology
he had to travel to a lot of places and he came to my grand
mother's estate, Kemenka. He spent the summer there and lived
in the house and Father's sister, my aunt, fell in love with
that young student and they got married, and it was a very
happy marriage. That young student was very involved in
politics and he was in danger of being arrested by the
Imperial police and being deported to Siberia. Well, Father
and his brothers intervened and the deportation was modified
into an exile to Paris. This was some difference, not Siberia,
but Paris! In Paris, where he was exiled for many years, he
was the right-hand of the famous Professor Pasteur. As soon as
the Revolution occurred in March, 1917, and there was not yet
Communism or Bolshevism, my Uncle Leo came back to Moscow
University. He was appointed Head Commissar of Sanitation of
all the Soviet Union, and he was given somebody's estate
where he had to keep all kinds of animals. Of course he also
had the responsibility of hiring people to keep that estate
in shape, and by doing so, he saved and helped very many
people. When my mother arrived they immediately embraced
and she lived with him quite a while.
There was a meeting of all the Commissars in Moscow and
Uncle Leo declared that the great mortality in Russia in those
years was due not only to the anti-sanitary conditions
because of the war and the Civil War, but also because of the
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moral depression of the population. Those words "moral
depression" , caused him to be sentenced to prison for one
year because it was considered an attack against Communism.
After a year he was released and came back as head Commissar
of Sanitation. Why? Because Uncle Leo was a famous
professor, and when scientists came to Moscow he was the only
one who could talk science with them, so the Communists
wanted to show off that they had science at the same level as
any other country.
Many years had passed after the war and we were refugees
in Paris, we read in the paper that there had been a convention
of scientists and the Soviet Union had been represented by
Uncle Leo. A few days later we got a postcard that said,
"Dear Masha," which was my mother, Mary, "please do not make
any attempt to see me. I perfectly well know that I have two
shadows. Your loving Leo." And we understood what he meant.
Somehow we got in touch with a taxi driver who would be on
such and such a corner, at such and such an hour, and Uncle
Leo was passing by and he hailed that particular taxi. The
taxi driver was the husband of his niece, and this Russian
ex-White officer drove around and around Paris for hours,
and there they could talk, He told them of the way of life in
Moscow in those days, not propaganda but the real thing. Then
again we read in the paper a few days later that at a gathering
of scientists in Western Germany, in Dresden, this great
Russian professor committed suicide by jumping out of the
- 370 -
window of his hotel from the fifth floor. And Mother said,
"I have known Leo all my life, and he was not a man to jump
out of a window like some kind of teenager who was desperately
in love with a girl who did not want him!" He was 70, or close
to 80 at that time. "And he would not jump out of a window,
he was pushed out!" Somehow they must have found out that he
had talked too much. But on the other hand, it was possible
that he did jump because he saw how things were in Dresden in
those days, and in comparing life and the attitudes of the
people he was completely disillusioned. Probably he was
reminded of his young days and probably he was sorry for his
activity, which had been geared to the overthrow of the
existing order in Russia, and overthrown it was, and when he
saw and realized the results of that overthrow, he did not want
to live any longer. And that was the end of one of my most
favorite uncles.
Battle on the outskirts of Rostov
In the late fall of 1918, many officers of different units
had managed to escape from north Russia, from the region of
Kiev, and even from Odessa, all to the city of Rostov, lying
in the estuary of the Don River.
Now, somebody interested in the situation must have a
look at the map of Russia, finding the main railroad connecting
the north, St. Petersburg, Moscow, and then way south to
Sebastopol on the Black Sea. This railroad was, so-to-say,
the backbone of European Russia. The fighting of the White
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units moved northward mainly along this line. That was the
center of the advance of the so-called White front. To the
east of this line there was the Don River region, of the
Cossacks who were mostly cavalry. When they fought the Reds,
they fought like lions, as long as they were liberating their
Don region from the Communists. But when they reached the
border of their own region, the border with Russia proper,
the region that used to be called Moscovia ages ago, those
Cossacks felt that they were in enemy territory. Therefore,
they acted accordingly. The local population suffered from
this quite a lot. West of the Cossack region lay this main
railroad line, and the crack regiments of the White army.
There were three of them, that had names of officers who
actually gave birth to those regiments when the front against
Germany was disintegrating. Those officers then were fleeing
from all over Russia, chased by Communists.
Rostov was a big industrial city and the region just
beyond that city was the region of the Don Cossacks. The
Don Cossacks were very anti-communist. Those officers in
the city of Rostov formed units and regiments to fight
Communism and to restore national Russia. That group of
heroes and enthusiasts had no money, no supplies, nothing but
burning patriotism and enthusiasm. Politically they were
not more developed than junior Boy Scouts since politics was
completely out of any army life in Imperial Russia. Even the
best generals were just plain naive children when it concerned
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politics such as running the civilian administration part
of the country and even more so, when it came to foreign
politics, of which they had no idea. And all those regiments
that were not numerically larger than peacetime battalions
were named after the generals who led them. The commander of
all the regiments was General Kornilov. Another regiment
was named Markov, and a third Drozdovsky. At the outbreak
of the Revolution Drozdovsky was only a captain in an
artillery unit that was then on the front at the border of
Romania. Most of Romania was overrun by German troops. In
that part of Romania where there were Romanian troops and
Russian troops to support them, there was much friction
between the Romanians and the Russians and eventually
Drozdovsky made an appeal to all those who wanted to follow
him from the Romanian front all the way across south Russia
to the Don region. He got about a battalion-sized unit
and they marched, fighting Communist gangs all across south
Russia, to join those in Rostov.
There was a day when those units in Rostov were fighting
against superior forces of the Red Army to the north of the
city and they were retreating, outnumbered and outgunned by
the Reds. The situation was very difficult and quite
desperate. Right on the border of the Don region, in the
Ukraine, there stood a German cavalry regiment of real
regimental size. They looked on through binoculars at the
then losing battle of the Whites and they offered their
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support to the Whites against the Communists. But the
Commander- in-Chief of the White Army, then General Denikin,
had a short-sighted, foolish, and naive policy that he must
be absolutely loyal to the far-away allies, the French and
British, and to consider the Germans as enemies and not to
have any kind of contact with them, let alone accepting their
help. So the help of the German regiment was declined. The
retreating White units all of a sudden noticed that the Reds,
who were obviously gaining success, also started to retreat
and retreated very rapidly, almost in panic. The White
side could not figure out any reason for the Reds' retreat
when they were obviously winning, but anyhow they were
happy for this event and they too retreated, carrying their
wounded and some of their dead with them. When they were
passing very close to the German cavalry unit, a German
mounted brass band was standing in front of the regiment
playing the Russian national anthem, and in front of the
band was the commander of the regiment with his sword drawn.
Many German officers were great gentlemen and followed
the ancient traditions of the medieval knights. I am
reminded of a similar event that occurred much later. One
of my regimental comrades was a Russian German from the
Baltic provinces, as they were called. This young man
left Soviet Russia for Germany, became a German citizen, and
then was mobilized into the reserve of the German Army.
And the reserves of the German Army had to go on maneuvres.
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This was a year or two before Hitler took over in Germany.
While they were on maneuvres, my ex-Horse Guard officer,
who was in German uniform as a junior officer, was somewhere
in the rear of the column of his regiment. All of a sudden
a rider came up to him and by order of the commanding
general of the regiment he was told to bypass the whole
regiment at a gallop and to join right next to the regiment
commander. My friend was very scared - he thought he had
done something wrong. But he did as he had been ordered,
put his horse to a gallop, and rode up alongside of the
General. The General said to him, "Ride next to me. I have
a little surprise for you." This unit was going back to
barracks through the city of Berlin, and when they reached
the Triumphal Arch in the center of the city, the regimental
band started palying the Russian national anthem in honor of
the ex-Horse Guard officer in their ranks. Again, another
example of rare German chivalry.
Now I have to go back to that battle on the outskirts
of Rostov. When the winning side, the Reds, retreated all
of a sudden, the Whites had no idea why they did it but
later they found out the reason. It was the Drozdovsky
unit who, having marched all through south Russia, had
gained the vicinity of the city of Rostov and found them
selves on the rear of the Reds who were attacking Rostov.
Their coming was quite unexpected and the Reds, discovering
quite a large fighting unit of the White Army in their rear,
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panicked and retreated.
But the city of Rostov was a very big city, populated
by many factory workers who were very much pro-Bolshevik.
This small group realized that they could not hold such a
big city so they had to leave it, mostly on foot. There
were few carts, few supplies, and they went out into the
steppes without knowing exactly where they were going. But
General Kornilov was leading that group of Martyrs. It was
late fall, and in the steppes they were overtaken by snow
storms and severe frost. When they reached a village
occupied by Red Army soldiers they had a choice: either
storm that village and get into some warm houses or perish
in the snow of cold and hunger. So they stormed. They
stormed through small rivers of water up to their necks.
When they got out, they went on storming again, and the
water froze and their uniforms became as hard as steel. Of
course they had losses, but as I said, they had no choice.
This was called the "Ice Campaign." All of the participants
were heroes and martyrs and they succeeded in waking up
many people to the idea of saving Russia from the Reds, from
the international gang now in power in Moscow.
Later these regiments grew in numbers, and now they were
on that railroad line after having chased the Reds out of
south Russia. They were on the borderline of the region
called Moscovia years ago. But those regiments were larger
in numbers, but very very different in spirit, because the
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heroes and martyrs, most of them, were dead. Some still living
were wounded. Very few of them were still in the ranks of
those regiments. The bulk of the regiments consisted of
mobilized south Russian people, mobilized men of military
age but not of the same spirit. Besides, headquarters of
the regiment commanders made the mistake of relying on
numbers and not on battle quality. For the sake of numbers,
war prisoners taken by their advance from surrounded Red
army units were a few days later put into the ranks of their
own regiments. So, a fellow who was two weeks ago or less
a soldier in the Red army, now found himself to be a soldier
in the White crack regiments. And those PWs , some of them,
a very few, were quite sincere, and at the bottom of their
hearts they were against the Reds. There were others that
vacillated. Depending on the success of a skirmish of battle
in process, they again changed sides. When the White regi
ments were in a difficult situation, the mobilized Reds,
abandoning arms or even taking their arms with them, they
would again rejoin the Reds. In so doing, for good measure,
they would shoot the White officers who were in command of
a whole company. The whole company consisted of recent ex-
Reds led by a few officers of the White army. So, that is
why the momentum of the movement of the White armies was
gone. There was a kind of stalemate. And the last city
along that railroad line that the White armies occupied was
the city of Kursk and north of it for a very short period
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the city of Orel.
Now, my dear reader, imagine that you are standing in
Kursk, looking northward towards a few cities, and beyond
that, some 200 miles to the north, Moscow. But the drive
of the White armies was blunted, and winter was coming.
Conditions of fighting in the winter were of course much
harder, and the spirit of the advancing White armies was
almost exhausted. Their supplies rarely reached them,
because in the south, communist gangs became more and more
numerous, grabbing the roads and grabbing the supplies.
Now, looking north, my unit was far more west. We were then
in the city of Gluchov, and there was also a stalemate. North
of Gluchov was a village, a very large village, Berezovka.
That name means willow, and there were very many willow trees
in that region. It was an enormous village, occupied on and
off by Red units, on and off by our reconnaissance units.
It changed hands many times. We attacked Berezovka and then
the Reds fled, dropping their arms, jumping out of their
trenches, even taking off their boots to run faster. In one
of those attacks, my squadron managed to take two machine
guns abandoned by the Reds. And then, back we went
to Gluchov and just stayed there waiting for something to
happen.
The city of Gluchov had outposts for security's sake.
I was in command of one of those outposts. Among my
soldiers, I had three very unusual fellows. One was a
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Moslem from the Caucasus, another one was a German colonist,
and the third one was a high school boy. They were the ones
who went out to search for fodder and supplies. That Moslem
came up to me and said to me, "Captain, we are bored, doing
nothing. So, let us go as scouts into Berezovka, and we will
get some supplies." I said, "All right, but be careful,
because we do not know. Red forces may be occupying Berezovka."
That afternoon, that trio left. Late in the evening they came
back, bringing some supplies. We had a nice supper, and I
asked them whether they saw the Reds. They said, "Oh yes,
while we were there we saw about two squadrons of Red cavalry
approaching Berezovka." So I asked them, "What did you do?"
They said, "We deployed our forces (there were three of them)
and we counterattacked the two Red squadrons." And, what
happened? "Well, the two Red squadrons retreated, and so,
here we are." After that, I thanked them for bravery, we
had a good supper as I mentioned, and then, without undressing
of course, I lay down on the couch and fell into a kind of
slumber. Then, through my slumber I heard a terrible noise
outside the house I was in. I woke up, and in came the
commanding colonel of our regiment with two squadrons of
cavalry and horse-drawn artillery. And he started yelling
at me that I am not watching, I am lying here sleeping.
Reports came to headquarters that Red cavalry was attacking
Berezovka. Two squadrons from another regiment were sent
out, and then they retreated under attack by Red cavalry.
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I kept my cool, and the Colonel changed his tone. Then I
asked, "Sir, may I ask when was the exact time that those
two squadrons retreated under attack?" Well, he told me,
and it was the exact time when my scouts were there. So I
told about the report of my Moslem scout, that the three of
them deployed and attacked the two squadrons that were our
squadrons from a different regiment. The Colonel beamed.
He was delighted, and immediately ordered me to follow him
to the headquarters of the division. Headquarters of the
division were lit up all night. Staff officers were study
ing maps on the wall, and we barged in, and also the
commander of the other regiment. Then it was established
what exactly had happened, to the great confusion of the
commander of the other regiment who had retreated when
attacked by my three scouts. That incident looks like a
joke, like an anecdote, but the meaning of it was much deeper.
It shows the spirit of some White units. There were two
squadrons deploying to enter the city of Berezovka. They
saw three riders that they took for Red cavalry, and that
was enough for them to retreat. That was the poor spirit of
many exhausted White units.
Once again we were ordered to attack Berezovka. Infantry
entrenched in front of Berezovka. Snow had fallen, rather
deep snow. And at a later date I will tell of this last
attack in which I just barely missed being killed, due to
some kind of a miracle, probably the prayers of my mother
- 380 -
somewhere in Kiev.
Vladimir Rudin
In the month of August 1919, during the Civil War, the
Whites were successfully advancing in the general direction
of Moscow, but they were still quite far from attaining the
city, in fact we never attained it. But during August we
occupied a fairly calm sector of the front. A river separated
our lines from the Red lines. Our field artillery exchanged
rather lazy fire with the Red field artillery on the other
side and then that was over and calm reigned. I had my
quarters in a peasant house. I was having some tea when an
artillery officer, a cousin of mine, came in. I offered him
some tea and he said that he had something to tell me. My
cousin reported to me that one of my non-com officers had
come strolling into his positions and started making some
observations about their fire. I listened, knowing very well
that my cousin was not a genius in artillery matters, and
that probably his firing was missing the target. "Anyhow",
said my cousin, "it is against discipline for a cavalry
non-com officer to come strolling into our positions and
making remarks about our shooting." We had tea together and
shortly afterward my cousin left. The next morning I called
my non-com officer, by the name of Vladimir Rudin. I told
him about the strolling into that artillery position and
about his act of poor discipline in making remarks about the
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shooting. Then I made him sit down, offered him some tea,
and told him quite frankly that he was not just a cavalry
volunteer but a man trained in artillery as well. Rudin said,
"Yes, Sir. I have been a captain of field artillery since
the beginning of the war in 1914," (and we were in the year
1919.) So in great astonishment I asked him what he, as a
captain, was doing in my squadron, serving as a non-com
officer. I knew that he was an excellent squad commander
but that was not his real profession. Then Rudin said to
me, "Sir, will you please look at my rifle?" I gave him my
consent and he brought the rifle saying, "Sir, look at the
rifle butt." I looked at the rifle butt and saw scratches,
many rather deep scratches. And Rudin said to me, "As an
officer I could not do what I am doing on my own free time.
Each scratch meanst a shot Jew." Hearing this, I jumped to
my feet and said to Rudin, "You do not look like a crazy man,
but what you are doing is something most unusual, to put it
mildly." Then Rudin said to me, "Sir, I like you very much.
You are younger as an officer but I have great sympathy with
you and I would like to tell you what happened in my life."
I replied, "Well, if you want to, go ahead. I am not going
to tell it to anybody and I am very touched that you have
so much confidence in me. Obviously you want to unburden
something that weighs heavily on your mind." Rudin said,
"Yes, it does, Sir. As a young artillery officer, back in
1917, I came home on leave. My father had a modest estate in
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the vicinity of St. Petersburg. We belonged to the Russian
nobility but not to the very wealthy top-notch aristocracy
of Russia. We are of an impoverished but very ancient and
noble family. My father served all his life in the army and
was a retired general, too old to participate in the war of
1914. He lived in that home of ours with my mother, my
sister, and my fiancee, who was visiting them when I came on
leave. And then, out of the blue, came the Revolution. I
know that you were somewhere out in the provinces with the
regiment. You were not in Petersburg and the horrors of the
Revolution reached you gradually. But to us who were there
it came as a big blow out of nowhere. A few trucks full of
drunk sailors, led by several Jewish youths of St. Petersburg,
seized my father and shot him outright. They tied me to a
tree with ropes so that I could not move at all. They put
a gag in my mouth and then in front of me that gang raped my
sister and fiancee and then they shot them both, as well as
my mother. They looted and smashed everything in the house
but for some reason that I do not understand, they forgot
all about me. Finally that gang drove off, probably to do
the same thing to our neighbors. Terrorized local people and
servants came out of their hiding and they untied me. Of
course I was as much as crazy. They made me swallow a large
amount of vodka and then they forcibly stuck me in a tub of
cold water to bring me to my senses. Well, as you can see,
Sir, I revived. The memory of that day is with me day and
- 383 -
night and my only purpose in life is to take my revenge on
the Jews . "
Some time after this massacre Rudin went back to the
front lines. As I was saying, the front lines had disintegrated
and he had nowhere to go, but by a bit of luck he was able to
join my squadron as a volunteer. As a soldier and officer
Rudin was an exemplary man. In every battle, in every
skirmish, and in every hand-to-hand fighting he was always
right in the thick of it, and it was quite obvious that he
was seeking death. In cavalry charges and attacks he was
always way in front of the rest, having a very good horse.
As I said, he was seeking death, and throughout more than
three years of Civil War he never had a scratch.
Well, in 1920, a few months before the end of the
Civil War, my squadron was ordered by General Wrangell, who
had started his career as an officer of our regiment, to be
his personal bodyguard. Rudin declared that he did not want
to serve as a bodyguard in the rear, he wanted to go on fight
ing as long as the fighting lasted, so he was detached to
another unit. At that time the agony of the White Army cannot
be described. Outnumbered and outgunned about twenty to one,
the army could not fight any longer, so General Wrangell
ordered an evacuation of the Crimea and he ordered all of the
White troops that remained to retreat to the ports of the
Crimea. So Rudin retreated with them. All those who wanted
to be shipped were shipped and eventually Vladimir Rudin came
_ 384 _
to Constantinople as an emigre. From Constantinople he went
to Yugoslavia, to the city of Beograd, as a civilian. During
those early days many soldiers who had been demobilized found
jobs in Yugoslavia and some of them went to other countries.
I was in Yugoslavia then for about a year and a half, but
there were about fifty of our soldiers that were unemployed.
Rudin became a cabinet maker. He was remarkably skillful
with his hands and as a cabinet maker he made a sizeable
amount of money, actually more money than those officers of
my squadron who were employed in banks as clerks. Finally
Rudin took over command of the remaining unemployed fifty.
He started finding all sorts of employment for them, digging
ditches and so forth. He found somewhere on the outskirts
of the city discarded tram cars. He got permission from the
city fathers to occupy those tram cars. He restored them
with materials that he got, God knows where, and made them
liveable, and he put in some heat. In the mornings, before
he started his work as a cabinet maker, he went to the cattle
market where the butchers slaughtered the cattle, and where
the remainder of the cattle, the lungs and other unuseable
remnants could be had for free. He took this food to his
cars, where he had constructed some kind of an oven, and he
boiled it with some vegetables and this became the Russian
soldiers' soup. And with this soup he fed his unemployed
comrades .
Some time later a chapel, a copy of a very venerated
- 385 ~
chapel in Moscow, was built in the graveyard where many
Russians were buried. Next to it there was also a house
built for a guardian, and Rudin became the guardian. He
cleaned the chapel after services and he dug graves for those
who could not afford to pay grave diggers. One of our very
aged officers and his wife also lived in the city. They had
lost their only son in the war and now they lived on a small
pension that the government of Yugoslavia was giving to aged
officers of the ex- Imperial Russian Army. The old couple
lived on the second or third floor of a house. The colonel
was an invalid and his wife had a serious heart condition,
and every other day Rudin visited that couple and brought
firewood up to their apartment. And every day Rudin polished
the boots of the old colonel until they shone like a mirror.
He actually became the colonel's volunteer servant. In short,
Rudin acted like a saint.
Besides all his self-imposed duties, Rudin managed to
have an official letterhead printed. The heading was
"Volunteer Squadron of the Horse Guard Regiment." And on
this paper he wrote letters to embassies and governments in
France and many other countries, asking for visas and pass
ports for his men. He signed those letters "Non-Corn Officer
of the Horse Guards, Rudin." And these official papers
worked magic but they upset very much our ambassador in
Beograd, who was still recognized as the Russian Ambassador.
Rudin went right over his head to obtain passports for his
- 386 -
men. A most unusual situation for the Ambassador!
I lost sight of Rudin when I left Yugoslavia and many
years after the Second World War, when Yugoslavia was
occupied by Soviet troops, many Russian emigres left there
because they did not want to remain under the rule of the
Communists. As an emigre and a displaced person, Rudin
finally came to southern France. By that time he was in an
enfeebled condition, aged and sick. He had tuberculosis and
other very nasty and incurable ailments. He lived in a
home for the elderly and penniless refugees in Nice. A friend
of mine who was one of the assistants of the director of that
place had great sympathy for that old warrior, but she
realized that physically and mentally he was a complete ruin.
Sometimes when he had a few francs in his pocket he spent
them on red wine, but in his state of health the red wine
was not good for him. However, it was his last pleasure and
when he had had a glass or two he became excited and talked
about the most extraordinary events he had been through
during the days of the Civil War. Then came a letter from
that friend of mine in Nice, addressed to me at Stanford,
where I was teaching. And the letter said that Rudin was
dead. I think that it was a blessing for him, because
living as an invalid probably was very painful and distressing
to him. A big envelope, found in his room, was sent over
to me, too. I thought at first that there might be some
interesting memoirs, but as I opened the envelope I saw that
- 387 -
it contained letters from people /mostly thanking him for
what he had done for them, and then there were some old
receipts for utilities from the time when he was living on
his own in Beograd, a whole bunch of them. I do not know
why he kept all those receipts in such perfect order, as I
never knew him to be an accountant. But apparently it was
fairly typical for him to keep every little scrap of
official paper. I heard later that he had been buried in
a Russian cemetary in Nice, called "Caucade." And so, the
life of Vladimir Rudin came to an end. He became a
martyr due to the events, he was a great soldier, a
terrorist, and a saint, all in one. It is strange how a war
and even more so a civil war, produces quite often good or
bad qualities of mind and acharacter.
War atrocities
Our Twentieth Century has seen two world wars, and
revolution, and by now every child all over the world knows
that war is something very, very horrible. And the more
sophisticated it gets, the more horrible it is. But nothing
can be compared with the horrors of civil war, where many
people become wild beasts or worse. For history's sake,
I wish to mention two horrible events which occurred during
the civil war in Russia in the years 1918 and 1920.
Horrors were committed by both sides. I was fighting
on the White side, the enemies were the Reds, the Communists.
- 387a -
Acts of bravery were performed on both sides, and I have
great respect for bravery, no matter who performs the act of
bravery. By no means do I wish to imply that all those
adversaries of ours on the Red side were one hundred percent
devils and murderers. Among them there were just some very
brave Russian fellows. The same, exactly the same, applies
to my side, the White side. There were acts of great bravery
and there were also acts of horror. So, I will mention two
incidents, one caused by the White side, and the other one
by the Reds, so that the scales of history can stand even.
And I am mentioning it only for history's sake, and not for
the sake of making out of it a horror film that can be seen
now almost every day on any television program, unfortunately.
Well, the first incident happened when the Russian armies
disintegrated south of the Caucasus mountain chain. Again,
my reader must absolutely have a map to find that the Caucasus
chain stretches from the Black Sea eastward to the Caspian
Sea, and south of the range lies the city of Tifles. South
of the city, battle lines were drawn between Russians and
Turks in 1917. When the Russian armies disintegrated, the
Turks were too weak to pursue and advance. But the Russian
mob of soldiers that had once been an army had now an urge
to return to their homeland in Russia proper, as fast as
possible, because the Red propaganda was telling them that
they have to hurry to grab land from the wealthy, rich, grand
land proprietors, the aristocracy, and to become owners of
- 387b -
the big plants, and so forth and so on. The half-literate
soldiers believed them. And this armed mob rushed northward.
They had to cover a very, very long distance, living on the
country, plundering and sacking villages. The villages were
inhabited by wealthy Russian peasants, so-called Cossacks.
Cossack regiments were still mostly on the European front
facing Germany and Austria. They were also disintegrating,
but they were not yet back home. So those villages had only
older men and women, and they were defenseless against the
hordes of deserters that were passing through. It was mostly
wine country. Every village had its own reserves of wine,
and the passing deserters got drunk. Once drunk, they molested
all the femal population, from really young girls to quite
elderly women. The older Cossacks, to avoid being murdered,
fled and hid in the marshes and the reeds of the river. One
night, when the deserters were very tired from drinking and
molesting all the women, and they were fast asleep, the
old Cossacks with some very young Cossack boys rushed into
the village, slaughtering every Russian soldier they saw, in
their sleep. Some woke up in time to flee, and about 200
were taken prisoners alive. Then the old elected head of the
Cossacks of that village ordered those 200 prisoners to be
tied against the fence in the main square of the village.
They were tied with their backs to the fence and stripped
naked. Then the village chief let it be known to the women
to come and inspect those prisoners, and to bring with them
- 387c -
very, very sharp knives. And if the women recognized one of
the deserters who had molested them, they were ordered to
use the very sharp knives and to cut away from the tied man,
you-know-what. That is what happened to those 200 prisoners,
every single one of them. Some of them fainted right away.
Some of them did not, and they could look on as dogs, hungry
village dogs, gobbled up what was cut away from them. Of
course, a few hours later, all of those tied to the fence were
dead from bleeding to death. It was, of course, atrocious.
On another occasion, the Reds had stormed into a village
occupied by a small detachment of Whites. Some of the Whites
were wounded and could not get away, and some were captured.
The wounded and the captured were all driven into an enclosure,
and they were made to dig foxholes. A foxhole is a very
narrow dugout, just wide enough for a normal grownup person
to hide in it; and those foxholes were very useful during
battle situations to save yourself from splinters of
shrapnel or some enemy fire. In this case, those foxholes
were dug, the White officers - prisoners of the Reds - were
tied with their hands behind their backs, and each one of
them was then thrust into his own foxhole. Then, the fox
holes were filled with earth, stamped down, and the living
man was buried, but just so deep that his head stuck out of
that foxhole. Then a bunch of very hungry pigs was driven
into that enclosure. All that those unfortunate martyrs
- 387d -
could do was to yell, but that yelling did not drive away the
pigs. And when, a few days later, that village was re
captured by the Whites, they could only have a priest say a
funeral mass for those that were little by little beheaded
by the pigs who ate them away while they were stuck alive in
the foxholes. Again, an unimagineable atrocity.
Of course, such events were the cause for revenge, and
revenge calls for revenge, and therefore civil war is so
atrocious that it is hard to describe and uncanny to remember,
even decades later. But it happened, and believe it or not,
but it did happen; therefore, I wanted to put it on paper for
future generations that I hope will never be so inhuman as
what was my fate to witness.
An incident in the city of Rostov
In the late fall of 1919, the city of Rostov on the
estuary of the Don River was full of stray soldiers in great
turmoil because of the retreat of the White Armies. A friend
of mine, a young officer in those days, was crossing one of
the squares of the city when he saw a very old man being
heckled and pursued and molested by a gang of young, uniformed
Cossacks that had become quite undisciplined. My friend was
not a Cossak officer, but he was just angry that an old man
was being heckled by a gang of youngsters, so he took out
his revolver and yelled at those young Cossack soldiers in
- 388 -
such a manner that they fled, leaving the old man alone. The
old man came up to him, profusely thanking him in the most
poetical, elaborate words for having helped him. And my
friend just said to the oldster, "I do not want all those
thanks of yours, just scram, get away from here, because I am
going my way and those youngsters might return and molest
you worse." But the old man said to the officer, "Young gentle
man officer, I see that you are very, very young and that
you are a great gentleman, so please take this little slip of
paper as thanks for what you have done for me. And he rapidly
wrote something on a small slip of paper and thrust it into
the hands of my friend. Mechanically, automatically, my
friend stuffed that little piece of paper into his military
overcoat and went his way.
Two years later, this friend of mine was a refugee, an
emigre, in Yugoslavia. He had no job. He lived by selling
his last belongings on the flea market but by now they were
all sold, and the only thing he found at the bottom of his
suitcase was the old military overcoat. So he thought, why
not take this coat to the flea market? Maybe I will get a
pound or two of bread in exchange. And mechanically he
searched the pockets of his overcoat and there at the bottom
he found a slip of paper with some writing on it that he could
not decipher. And he wondered, where did that paper come from,
and what might the scribbled message be? And then it dawned
on him, that it might be Jewish Hebrew script. Oh yes, he
- 389 -
remembered that incident of two years ago when he met an old
Jew that was being persecuted by a gang of youngsters. That
must be it. And having nothing to do, he took that paper and
went to the local synagogue in the city of Novy-sad on the
borders of the Danube River. It was a very wealthy city, a
commercial center, and almost ninety percent of that city was
Jewish. He came to the synagogue and showed somebody that
slip of paper. The fellow who looked at the paper said, "Sir,
will you please come again tomorrow at such-and-such an hour?"
My friend shrugged his shoulders and said, "All right.
I have nothing to do anyhow." The next day he came to the
synagogue and there was a gathering of elderly Jewish people.
They asked him very ceremoniously to sit down and then they
explained to him that the heads of the Jewish synagogue in
Novy-sad had made a decision that he would receive a pension
of two thousand dinars per month and that a room in a nice
hotel would be at his disposal for life. My friend was so
astonished that he could not believe he heard correctly, and
they had to repeat what they had just said. A pension of
two-thousand dinars was in those days equal to about three
hundred dollars. He could live very well on that, a single
man especially, considering that his room would be paid for
life. He than asked those Jewish synagogue men, "Why? What
is this all about?" And they told him, "Sir, this little
slip that you gave us yesterday tells us that you saved the
life of the chief rabbi of Russia."
- 390 -
I re-join the squadron
After I left Odessa and re-joined the squadron, we had
to dress all the volunteers. We had the cloth and other stuff
to make them shirts but the worst problem was boots. The
place where we were then located was a small provincial town
and it was very famous for its tailors; ninety percent of
that town was inhabited by a minority - I mean Jews - and
most of them were professional tailors. One night we made a
search of that small town and we arrested every Jew who was
a tailor - this was a procedure of Civil War, of course, it
was not foreseen by any regulation of the Imperial Army.
Of course the Jews were panicky and expected to be executed,
but we told them, "We are not members of the Red Tcheka, all
we want from you is your skill as tailors. Here is the
stuff." We locked them up in a school and we told them,
"You are going to stay here to make uniforms from the cloth
that we give you and you are going to stay here until our
squadron is fully dressed. And your wives, sisters or
daughters can every day bring you your kosher food, because
we are not going to feed you." Sentinels were posted around
that school and the tailors were told, "Do not ever try to
run away or it will be your fault if a bullet reaches you."
After such drastic measures with the tailors, in ten days
we were all in new uniforms which replaced the old tattered
ones and also the tattered civilian clothes. We really looked
like a military unit. The volunteer boys were trained for
- 391 -
only two weeks, and then a squadron was formed to join the
squadron north of us that was in the fighting lines.
The officers of the first squadron went on leave. My
second squadron joined the first one and a group of officers
replaced those who were on leave. We proceeded northward
without encountering any real resistance from the Reds. Of
course we realized that ten miles to the east or ten miles
to the west of the road we followed there was nobody. Eventual
ly there were some small Communist gangs that avoided our
advance. They had been left there for the purpose of attack
ing our rear, destroying our communication lines, or attack
ing small units going back south; one who went on leave south
could not risk going alone, but only in a small armed group.
We went northwards through wooded country, very sandy roads,
some marshes, the worst possible terrain for cavalry units.
Proceeding northward we reached the city of Gulchov.
Now somebody interested in the situation must have an
other look at the map of Russia. He must find the main rail
road connecting the north, St. Petersburg, Moscow, and then
way south to Sebastopol on the Black Sea. This railroad was,
so to say, the backbone of European Russia. The fighting
of the White units moved northward mainly along this line.
That was the center of the advance of the so-called White
Front. To the east of this line there was the Don River region
of the Cossacks, who were mostly cavalry. West of the Cossack
region lay this main railroad line, and the crack regiments
- 392. -
of the White Army.
The main movement of these White forces was along the rail
road line Sevastopol-Moscow-St. Petersburg. The goal of the
Whites was to move as far as Moscow, to chase away the
Communists, and to take power. This was a naive dream. No
matter how brave, how dedicated, how ready to be martyrs to
their cause, the Whites were outnumbered by the Reds by
twnety to one. The Reds had their hands on that part of
Russia where all the military depots were concentrated; they
had plenty of ammunition and through threat and terror they
could mobilize the population. The unfortunate officers of
the Imperial Army could not get out of the territory occupied
by the Reds because the Reds had their families under arrest,
and those families were hostages. They were threatened by
execution and torture if the officers did not join and even
lead the Red units. Some army officers were bachelors and
had nobody to care for or to leave in the hands of the Reds:
they crossed over to the Whites on many occasions. But others
of them could not do it because their families were under
threat by the Reds, but they did what they could. I
remember an incident in which I participated. We were then
dismounted for lack of horses, and for a cavalry man to be on
foot is not only a disgrace, it also gives a most uncomfort
able feeling. Besides, we were under attack by Red cavalry.
For a cavalryman on foot to be attacked by enemy cavalry -
that sounds simply awful. The Red cavalry was still off at a
- 393 -
certain distance. We had, just a few days before, been
supplied with new British rifles because our shortage of
rifles had been simply disasterous. Well, the British rifles
could shoot eleven times without being reloaded and this
was something new to us. If we were going to use those
British rifles, our men had to be re-trained and even ourselves,
and we had just one night to do so before going into battle.
When we opened fire at a long distance against the
approaching Red cavalry, the British rifles would not work.
They were stuck. That was a really nasty situation. The
British rifles had been intended by the British to be sent
to India and therefore they were greased with a very thick
grease and that grease got thicker and thicker because of
the low temperature in the late autumn in Russia. So there
we were. The Red cavalry was advancing toward us and we
formed a so-called quadrangle to receive the Reds with our
bayonets, the only weapons that we had. Then we saw a real
miracle happening. Probably the Red artillery had the task
of supporting the Red attack and softening our quadrangle by
shelling us before the Red cavalry charged, but instead of
shelling us they shelled their own cavalry. And instead of
attacking us the Red cavalry scattered in all directions and
disappeared under shell fire of their own artillery. We were,
of course, very happy about that event, and I still suspect
that that Red artillery might have been under the command of
an old artillery officer of the Imperial Army. An artillery
- 394 -
officer can always misjudge a distance and fire too close
or too far but I still believe that this time the Red artillery
shelled their own cavalry on purpose. And the artillery
officer probably got away with it because he could always
make a mistake.
The three infantry regiments of Markov, Kornilov, and
Drozdovsky were moving northward along the main railroad line.
Looking north along the line, to the right of this main thrust
was the Don region and the Don Cossacks. They were tradition
ally excellent fighters and fought like lions as long as they
were liberating their Don region from Communists. But when
it was liberated and they were in Russia, these Don Cossacks
did not want to go on fighting. They wanted to go home and
protect their own region. Because they were not interested
in going further northward they became quite unreliable on
the right flank of the main column in the thrust toward
Moscow. My units were on the left flank of this main thrust,
and we moved into the city of Glukhov. Still more west of
us there were very weak infantry units of the White Armies
and many small and large bands of Communists, local people
that were more interested in looting than in fighting.
Speaking about the main thrust of the White regiments,
I must say that those regiments now were more numerous, because
during the thrust northward, they mobilized local people of
military age. They also put into their ranks POW's from the
Red army, taken prisoners just a few days earlier. Few of
- 395 -
those heroes that had started the White movement were still
in the fighting line. Many of those martyrs were dead or
heavy invalids. Only a few of them were still in the ranks
of the regiments, making the thrust toward Moscow. Those
regiments had their historical names of Markov, Kornilov,
Drozdovsky, but the spirit of those troops was not the same.
They were more numerous, but far less reliable for obvious
reasons. The POW s of the Red army, drafted into those elite
regiments of the White army, were unreliable of course. If
we were advancing and having success, they came along. If
the situation became difficult, or the Red fire too heavy,
they just broke and ran. That, of course, also obliged the
rest to retreat, sometimes even in great disorder. Worse
things happened. There were companies in those elite
regiments which consisted exclusively of mobilized, or
recent Red POW's, taken by us with just a few officers lead
ing them. Those officers were shot by their own men. And
the whole company of those elite regiments went over,
crossed back to the Reds. Besides, the winter was coming
on, a very severe, early, and unexpectedly cold winter. The
White armies were ill-prepared, ill-equipped for fighting
a winter campaign. And the resistance of the Reds grew from day
to day, because they were really scared that the Whites would
succeed to thrust as far as Moscow. So they threw into
battle against the Whites everything they had. Old officers
of the Russian Imperial army, that had been all through the
- 396 -
First World War, were telling me that they had never experi
enced during that war such heavy artillery barrages as the
Reds were then firing against the Whites. And the Whites
had only few heavy guns, and scarcely any shells to reply
in kind. So the Whites retreated.
This retreat forced us, occupying Glukhov, also to
retreat, and we retreated to the city of Rylsk. On the march
from Glukhov to Rylsk we faced no resistance from the Reds,
but we faced a snowstorm. Snow icicles were blowing right
in our faces'. We made very slow progress, the cavalry in
deep snow. But before the retreat to Rylsk, there was a last
attempt to move forward; and from Glukhov we attacked a
village, lying about ten kilometers north. The ground was
covered with snow. I was at the head of my squadron, and
the cavalry group, including my squadron was charging that
village. Coming quite close, I noticed a machine gun mounted
on a peasant sleigh, and I pointed out to my men that
machine gun. At the same instant, I found myself sitting on
the snow, my horse somewhere deep under me. My first idea
was that my horse had been killed. But my horse was still
trying hard to get out of that snowdrift; and being a very
good, strong horse, requisitioned by me a year ago in Ascania
Nova, the horse took me out forward, and I realized that
there was a deep ditch in front of that village. The ditch
had been completely covered with snow, and most of my
squadron was in that snow, fighting, trying to get out of
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the ditch on the other side. Only the strongest horses
managed to do so. So, on the other side of the ditch there
was no longer any squadron, there were maybe fifteen or
twenty riders, including me. When the Red infantry saw the
situation, they turned around from their attempt to run, came
back and started shooting almost point-blank at us. I will
remember all my life a very tall young fellow, with a big
blond mustache, in a gray civilian coat with a so-called
Finnish cap on his head, and a rifle in his hands, who was
pointing the rifle right at me at a distance of probably
less than fifty feet. I was on horseback. I took out my
German revolver and started aiming at him, but the revolver
was stuck. I was so mad that I cursed my revolver and threw
it at the man. Of course, the revolver never reached him.
But for some reason, I saw him move his rifle slightly, and
shoot and kill one of the men of my squadron that was right
next to me, instead of me. It all lasted a minute or two.
And then my soldiers were there, and they struck that man
with their lances. He fell to the ground, and was probably
trampled by the horses and killed. But that figure in the
gray coat, aiming his rifle right at me, remains an unforget
table vision for all my life.
Well, our attack was a flop, but the Res also retreated.
We came back to the city of Glukhov for a few more days, and
then we were ordered to retreat southward; because the main
troops of the thrust in the direction of Moscow, were retreating
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south, so as not to be encircled. Our group also had to
retreat, without any pressure from the Reds.
Moving through that horrible snowstorm, we reached the
city of Rylsk, which reminded me of the theatrical set piece
that I saw as a boy when I went to the Imperial theater to
see the opera Boris Godunov. Rylsk was a very ancient Russian
city, a trading point. Stone buildings two stories high were
built as a quadrangle, inside which there was a well. Those
buildings were like a medieval fortress. They had heavy,
thick wooden gates, reinforced with iron, and those gates
most certainly had repulsed many invasions of Tatars in the
days of Ivan the Terrible and before him. That was the
center, or - I want to use the modern expression "downtown"
of the city of Rylsk. Around that fortified city - it was
called Kreml, just as the Kreml in Moscow - because the
word Kreml in Russian means fortress. We were lodged in
Rylsk in a school. We met two school teachers, an elederly
woman and a young one. They greeted us almost in tears,
saying: "How wonderful, how miraculous to see humans again.
You are humans. Those who were here before you were just
wild beasts." That schoolhouse was very well built. There
was a rest room inside the house, a very rare thing. But
going to the outhouse in a snowstorm was not fun. And this
particular place was the warmest place in the house, because
the pipes from the stoves and from the open fireplace ran
through the walls of this place. I spent in there more time
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than was strictly necessary, just because it was the warmest
place in the house. But most unfortunately, our stay in
Rylsk did not last. Our security units patrolling outside
of Rylsk reported numerous Red troops gathering, and we were
under orders to retreat southward without battle or resistance
against the numerous advancing Reds.
Many suffer frostbite
Again, we had to move through mountains of snow and
bitter cold. Most of us, me included, had received British
army boots. The boots were laced, they were not Russian boots,
which covered the legs up to the knees with one piece of
leather. The lacing looked very fine, but the snow got in
side it, thawed because of body heat, and then froze again.
The boots became icicles on our feet. Besides, on the
bottom of the boots were big pieces of metal, probably for
British soldiers walking somewhere in the mountains of India.
Because of that iron in the boots, they were no protection
against frost. So, if I was on horseback, my legs would
freeze. If I dismounted, I had to fight my way through a
snowstorm and through heaps of snow, sometimes up to my waist.
In the column where I was, I dismounted from my horse. I
took the tail of the horse in my hand and the horse pulled
me through snowdrifts, and I was moving my legs as fast as
I could to get warm. Actually, I was dragged by my horse,
holding the horse's tail in my hand. This was never fore
seen by any cavalry regulations.
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After marching all night, we reached a hamlet and in
that hamlet we were billeted, if I may use that word in such
a case, in one hut that had to hold about a hundred and
fifty men. Horses remained outside. Normally that hut would
hold about 20 men. So the men took turns staying half an
hour in the hut and then they had to go outside into the cold
to make a place for others. When my turn came, I took off
my boots, and inside my boots there was a layer of ice and
my right leg inside was slightly frostbitten. Because of
this, rumors had reached Moscow where I had many relatives.
It is hard to believe even on this day, when I am talking
here in Palo Alto, that during the time of the Civil War
there were no communications whatsoever. Try to imagine no
newspapers, no telegrams, of course no telephones. In short,
there were only rumors which somehow crossed the fighting
lines. The rumors in Moscow were that both my legs were
amputated.
Fortunately for my mother, she knew that this was not
true. When my mother came to Moscow, as described by me in
another chapter, of course, she met all her close relatives.
Mother was very surprised that they spoke with her about
everything except me - her only son. They were afraid of
mentioning me because of the rumor that had reached them.
Finally Mother asked them bluntly, "Why don't you mention
Vanja?" Then they were very happy that the rumor about my
legs was greatly exaggerated.
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I was one of the luckier ones because more than half of
our men were very heavily frostbitten, and they were not
battle-fit. They had to be transported as invalids even
though they were not wounded, but frostbite is a terrible
thing. If it is very severe and not treated in time, then
it turns into gangrene, and gangrene produces blood poison
ing and rapid death.
Then our retreat continued southeastward until we
finally hit the main railroad line connecting the south of
Russia, Sevastopol on the Black Sea, St. Petersburg on the
north, passing through Moscow. That railroad line was
occupied by trains standing one after the other. (Nowadays,
comparing it with traffic in the United States, I want to
say that the trains were bumper to bumper) .
In those days, of course, steam engines moved the trains.
The steam engine was to be continually supplied with coal and
water. If the coal is lacking and the water freezes, then
the engine is out of commission because the boilers burst.
And if there is no water to replenish the contents of the
boilers, the engine is worse than useless. There was a
scramble for engines that would still work. Every unit that
had a train and a working engine had to protect that engine
and have armed guards around the engine or a flat-car in
front of the engine and sacks of sand on the flat-car and
behind those sacks a machine gun to protect our engine from
being stolen or sabotaged by somebody.
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The cars of those train columns have to be explained to
those who have never seen or heard about them. They were just
wooden boxes used for transporting goods or cattle, and in
wartime - troops. Every such car could officially hold forty
soldiers or eight horses. It was written on every car -
40 men, 8 horses. There was an army joke that when recruits
complained that the car was too small to hold all forty of
them, some old master sergeant pointed out to those who had
complained, "You see, eight horses have to come in besides
you people." Well, of course, that was a joke.
Now in some of those cars, usually in the center of the
car (the car opened on both sides by a big sliding door) there
stood a cast-iron belly stove. (Such stoves can be found now
even in Palo Alto in antique shops) . They could burn any
thing - bits of wood or whatever the soldiers could pick up
along the railroad lines, or you could steal some coal from
the engine. This warm car was called in Russian "Teplushka,"
because the word, "teplo," is the word for warmth, and
"teplushka" was to say the source of warmth. Some translater
translating the works in the novel of Dr. Zhivago describing
this kind of a warm car, describes it as being a pullman, a
luxury pullman car. Well, there is a very big difference
between this and what that fellow understood, not knowing what
he was talking about.
A painful injury
The car I was riding in, or the "teplushka", was being
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heated and the stove was usually red-hot. The chimney stuck
out direct through the roof of the car. When we reached our
train that had such warm cars, I came to that car on some
kind of business and I stood, my back turned to this oven
and at that minute the train started with a jerk. Quite
instinctively I made a gesture with my hand and put my hand
flat on the red-hot iron stove. Well, I still feel the pain
of it and the surprise of it. There was no oil at hand
whatsoever, so I just had to bite my lips. But it happened
to be a blessing in disguise. Another painful blessing
because, of course, after the first pain subsided, some ice
and snow was put on my hand. That was one of the worst things
to do. I had a huge blister on the entire surface of my
palm and I could not wear a glove. Because I could not wear
a glove, I could not be on horseback. Holding the reins in
this wounded hand without a glove in that freezing weather
was out of the question. So I was relieved of the command
of my squadron by another officer and I mounted into a vehicle,
something between a cart and a carriage.
And here again, I will describe this vehicle which played
such a huge role in the Civil War. It was a "tachanka."
Imagine a four-wheel, high carriage (I think in English they
could be considered a hunting carriage) . It had no roof at
all and it was rather wide - three men could be seated in the
back seat, two men in the front seat, and three men on the
box. It was drawn by two very strong horses or mostly by
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four horses in a row. Sometimes two other horses were in
front of the four - one of them was saddled and had a very
young, light rider. And on those carts - let us call them
carts - there was a machine gun. Those carts were the
ancestors of nowaday modern tanks. The idea of today's tanks
and those carts carrying machine guns was the same - fire
power and rapidity of movement. Rapidity of maneuvering and
opening fire from the most unexpected places. Of course,
all this contraption of this cart and the men on it, managing
the machine gun with four horses, if not six, they were
extremely vulnerable. It sufficed for one of the horses to
be heavily wounded or killed and the whole thing stopped and
the killed horse had to be deharnessed and dragged away and
replaced or to just go on with less horses. But this was a
very, very potent weapon in those days in flat country, and
also used for transporting sick or wounded.
I was one of the injured. I was neither wounded nor
sick, but I was injured with that hand, and that huge blister
grew and grew. As we moved southward, the weather changed
and the conditions of the roads changed. From where we
were, northward in the vicinity of Gluchov there was snow
on the ground and our supplies moved on sleighs or on a cart.
If we could move ten kilometers per day, that was considered
a good achievement. The roads were so bad and so bumpy that
once, driving through a small little city on that mud road,
the cart that I was in, with another wounded fellow officer,
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overturned and was lying on its side. We were thrown out of
it into the mud. While travelling in that cart, which was
in very bad shape and in need of repair, there was some kind
of a rusty nail sticking out somewhere and that rusty nail
tore open the palm of my hand and broke my blister. Of course
that did not help the condition of my hand and I had to stay
on that Red Cross train, which I was put on and which moved
very slowly southward.
The whole railroad line for miles and miles and miles
was nothing but trains moving slowly. Sometimes there was
a station that had several tracks and useless engines were
pushed away from the side of the track to allow other trains
to move on. But every day at daybreak or when the sun went
down, Red riders came up to those railroad lines and from a
rather big distance, they opened fire from their rifles,
galloping alongside the tracks. Of course, they aimed at no
body in particular, they just aimed at those cars and trains.
Sometimes a bullet would wound an already sick or wounded
White soldier or a nurse or a doctor working on that train.
Those riders could not stop us but they were a great nuisance.
Those who had rifles on the trains, they shot back from the
open windows of the cars. Most of the windows of those cars
were smashed and open since they had no glass anyhow. Some
times our sharpshooters were lucky to hit one of those
riders and his empty saddled horse galloped away. That was
a kind of a revenge. I think both sides looked at it as some
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kind of sport and even considered it fun in the dull, slow
movement of trains. Well, it was a fun of sorts.
Finally the train that had our supplies for my unit
for some reason switched to the line that took our supply
train back to the Crimea. By that time my hand had healed,
and I had rejoined my fighting unit. The fighting unit
had orders to move more eastward in the direction of the city
of Rostov. The idea was that the city of Rostov and the
River Don could be a basis for a new line of resistance. A
line of resistance against the Reds could be established
and was established, but did not hold very long.
I contract thyphus and barely survive
When we were just outside the city of Rostov, orders
came from headquarters of the so-called division for a con
sultation. When we looked around, the senior officer of the
then united cavalry guards - the ex-four regiments that had
dwindled, were united into one squadron - and all the officers
were sick with typhoid, and I found myself to be the senior
officer. So I went to the headquarters of the division, where
some generals and elderly colonels were gathered. The general
who was then in charge of all the cavalry units looked up at
me and growled, "Couldn't you find among you a younger one?"
Well, after that general's joke I took my orders and rode
back to my unit. And while riding, I felt very queasy and
I had to make an effort to remain in the saddle. When I got
as far as my squadron, I called an assistant communications
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officer and said to him, "Take my temperature." I had a
very high temperature and I understood then that it was
typhus, that it was my turn to be sick, and that I would be
unconscious maybe in a few minutes. I gave the strictest
order that whatever happened to me, I must never be sent to
the Red Cross unit or to a hospital, but must be kept in the
ranks of the fighting squadron on a cart or a stretcher, as
I did not want to be away from my fighting squadron. And
after that I passed out.
As I have, said, I realized that I had typhus, for typhus
was raging on both sides, White and Red. Red Cross units
were subject to raids by the Red cavalry and the hospitals
were just plain hell. The large hospital that had been
built before the war of 1914 was overcrowded with wounded
and sick people; they were lying in the corridors and all
over the place. You could not move without stepping across
a sick man or a man already dead who had not been noticed
for a day or two. When the White Armies left Rostov, the
Reds stormed that huge hospital and the sick and wounded
White officers and volunteers were bayonetted or shot point-
blank in their beds. And those who were killed outright,
were the lucky ones because then the whole hospital was
poured over with gasoline and set afire. All those who had
not died before, perished in the fire and the hospital was
burned down to its foundations. Doctors, nurses, wounded
and sick were all burned to death. That was one of the many
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nightmares of the Civil War.
When I fell sick we were still north of Rostov and the
Whites were attempting to establish a new line of resistance.
The sick and wounded had to be evacuated southward toward
the region of Kuban. There many wealthy Cossacks lived in
the ir " s tani tsa ", which in the local language means a village
and each "s tani tsa" had an elder. A column of carts with
sick and wounded and an open four-wheeled carriage with me
in it and my fellow regiment officer, Captain Taptykov, who
was also sick with typhus, crossed the wide Don River. The
only bridge, a railroad bridge, was hopeless because the bridge
and all its approaches were clogged by trains full of wounded
and sick people and many engines were out of order because
the boilers had frozen and burst. Some of the engines had
been sabotaged and some had been unhooked from their cars
and used on other cars. The engines had to be protected by
the military. Next to us was a train that had, fortunately,
a very powerful engine that had been used to run express
trains in peacetime from Sevastopol to St. Petersburg. This
powerful engine pushed a row of cars in front of it and
behind the engine there were many other cars, so that column
of cars finally got across the bridge. But our column of
carts had no chance whatsoever. Finally the colonel who was
leading that column decided to cross the river on the ice.
It was very late fall. The question was whether the ice was
thick enough to carry a column of carts or whether it would
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break under such a load and we would all drown. But we just
had to take that chance. Drowning in the river was less
terrible than falling into the hands of the advancing Reds.
In spite of my being sick with typhus and having attacks
of very high fever and unconsciousness , I was at other
moments conscious of what was going on around me. I can
still see that frozen river and our column of carts crossing
it, and our carriage somewhere in the middle of that river
of ice. Would the ice break or not? Well, the ice held.
I remember very well that the driver of our carriage was a
volunteer from the German colonies who had joined us more
than a year ago. The other driver was my orderly who had
been taken prisoner by us from a Red unit. Maybe at the bottom
of his heart he was a Bolshevik, but at that time he stuck
it out with us and was very helpful and took good care of us
sick officers. If he had wanted to, he could have thrown us
out of that carriage at any time but he just did not. Finally
our column reached the other side of the Don river and
entered the "stanitsa." We were supposed to be given quarters
in that Cossack village but the elder of the village and some
of his assistants got the idea of treating us like war
prisoners. They decided to exchange us all as soon as the
Red cavalry had gained the "stanitsa." It was clear to every
body that this might happen in a weak, maybe two. Those
Cossacks had participated in fighting the Reds on our side;
now they wanted to make a great gift of so many sick officers
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to the Reds in order to gain pardon for having fought against
them. We were all too weak to defend ourselves but one of
the officers accompanying the column was in good health and
he was quite a bright man. I cannot remember his name, but
he went to the post office of that "stanitsa" and sent a
telegram to the headquarters of General Denikin about our hope
less, defenseless situation. When his telegram reached
headquarters, and probably it never reached General Denikin
in person, someone at headquarters had the very bright idea
of sending back a telegram to the elder of the "stanitsa"
which read, "Immediately supply the column of sick White
officers with everything that is necessary, and after having
given them a good rest and care, let them proceed on their
way. If you do not obey my orders, I will move toward your
"stanitsa" with a detachment of my Cossacks for reprisals
against you." The telegram was signed, General Shkuro.
Now many years later I knew this General Shkuro personally
when he was an emigre in Paris. He was a very unusual person,
a typical product of those years. He was a Cossack himself
and had been a junior officer at the beginning of the war of
1914. He was a born leader and his Cossacks believed in him
as a miracle worker and followed him anywhere he led them,
and his name was feared by everybody. If at any moment
General Shkuro 's whereabouts was unknown, you could be sure
that he was fighting back the Reds somewhere. He knew
nothing of the telegram and he knew nothing of our being stuck
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in that village, but just his name was enough to make the
Cossacks change their minds.
It was already getting dark, and while we were waiting,
an elderly Cossack came up to the carriage. Taptykov was
unconscious and I was only half-conscious. The Cossack told
the driver to follow him. He walked ahead and brought us to
his house and I immediately realized that he was a very
wealthy man. Our driver and his helper carried the unconsci
ous Taptykov into a room and I followed them on my own, barely
able to stand on my feet. Our host said to me, "Mr. Officer,
follow me, I want to show you something." I followed him
because I wanted to be polite to that old man. He led me
through one room of his house, then through another, and
finally he opened a large door and I saw a beautiful room
with a huge glass cupboard in it. In that cupboard I saw
a dress uniform of the Cossack bodyguard of the Tsar which
they used to wear before 1914. Then the old Cossack broke
out into tears and said, "This is the uniform of my late
grandfather, this is my father's uniform, and it was my
uniform too. Three generations of us have served in the
personal bodyguard of four Russian Tsars." Well, it was
our luck to be in the house of such a man. After a few days
in that house, Taptykov was getting worse and worse. He
was delirious. We were in a room that was in the second story
of the house. Taptykov 1 s face was red and pink and blue,
and he stammered something in his delirium. Outside the house
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was deep snow and frost. All of a sudden Taptykov jumped up
from the couch, tore off his pajamas, and completely nude
he rushed to the window and opend it. His orderly and our
driver were also in that room but they were struck with
sudden surprise and terror, and just for a few seconds did
not dare to grab their nude, sick senior officer. And those
few seconds were enough for Taptykov to jump out of the
window right into a deep snowdrift. Before we realized what
was happening, many minutes passed. I could not do anything
because I was much too weak. I yelled at the two men, "Go
and fetch him! Bring him back. Get him out of the snowdrift."
At last they obeyed and carried him back to the room. Mean
while a doctor had been called and when the doctor had had
a look at my friend he said, "There is nothing more that
I can do. Hurry and send for a priest." Well, ray friend
Taptykov later lived on the outskirts of New York and he
passed away in 1977 in New York.
Some time after the above described incident a doctor
explained that probably the shock of jumping into the snowdrift
had reacted against Taptykov 's high fever, but of course he
must have had a remarkably strong heart. Only three years
ago he lost his wife and remarried. Taptykov was one of
my greatest friends and to the time- of his death we correspond
ed with each other. As I said, he lived near New York for
many years and he was a grandfather.
We left that "stanitsa" and moved toward the city of
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Ekaterinoslav and headquarters of the dwindling White Army.
I was still very weak and Taptykov could move just a little.
Of course the city was absolutely overcrowded and we decided
to attempt to reach the port of Novorossisk because it was
clear that the Reds would soon overrun all of the country that
we still occupied. There were high mountains between
Novorossisk and us but a railroad connection still existed,
so we decided to reach Novorossisk by train. Trains were
running on that line as we would say now of American cars,
bumper to bumper, day and night. Sometimes they were stuck,
not moving at all, and the average speed was about ten miles
per hour or less. We were joined in our attempt by Doctor
Rousseau, who had been a veterinary surgeon in our regiment
before the 1914 war. He was older than we and he was beloved
by everybody in the regiment. We mounted a freight car at
the railway station and, for some reason that I will never
understand, that freight car was empty. There was some straw
in that car, probably used for bedding. All the other cars
were overcrowded but this car, standing on the side tracks,
was empty. It had an iron stove in the middle with a chimney
sticking through the roof, but no fuel whatsoever. It was
bitterly cold and in order to be able to light a fire in the
stove, we had to move as well as we could around the tracks,
picking up scarce sticks of wood and whatever else we could
find that would burn. Taptykov was too weak and he just lay
on the straw. Dr. Rousseau and I started to light a fire in
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the stove just in time, because the train had begun to move.
But we had very little fuel and realized that we would never
keep the stove going and that we were in danger of freezing
to death inside that car. Suddenly the car stopped, and
opening the door, we looked around. We noticed a telegraph
pole was lying next to the place where our car was standing.
So we, the two of us, got out of the car and we managed
somehow (because despair gives a terrific strength to a
person for. a few moments) to lift that telegraph pole and
to put one end of it into the car and shove it, little by
little, inside the car. The tip of that pole we shoved into
the stove since we had nothing with which to break it into
pieces. Little by little we succeeded in shoving the pole
into the stove and the other end was sticking out of the door.
Anyhow, that glowing iron stove took away most of the frost
inside the car which otherwise would have certainly killed
us.
Thus we finally arrived at Novorossisk and there we
reported to the local authorities. The city was overcrowded
and there was no place available anywhere in any house, but
we accidentally met an elderly gentleman, Colonel Count
Bennigsen, who at one time had been an officer of the Horse
Guards, and he told us that he had a requisitioned room and
that he would take us in. It was the living room of a local
small merchant. I do not remember the family of the merchant;
they must have been in the house somewhere. But we had one
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room, the living room. And when I say "we" I must explain
that I mean "many". We shared that room with the Colonel
and his wife, their three teenaged children, and the un
married sister of his wife. Then came Taptykov, Dr. Rous
seau, and myself. When it was necessary, it was impossible
to move from one door to the other without stepping across
several people in that room. I do not really remember how
we were fed and what we did eat in those days. Probably
Countess Bennigsen, who was not sick and who was a woman of
great energy, managed to get somewhere some kind of food and
to cook it for us. When I got somewhat stronger, I ventured
out into the city. I was still wearing the British army
boots and under those boots were nails to consolidate those
boots, and because of those nails I was mostly skating
instead of walking on those icy streets. Besides, I was
wearing a cape, very popular among the Cossacks, which
enveloped all of my figure from my neck down to my boots and
kept me warm, and I wore that cape day and night. As there
was no question of changing linen or undressing in the room
which we were occupying with the Bennigsen family, lice were
all over us.
The city of Novorossisk was surrounded by high mountains,
There was a pass in those mountains and down the mountains
and through the pass there comes a wind. Sometimes that wind
in Novorossisk became a storm or something that is now
called a hurricane. It upset people and carts and one day I
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was seized by the wind because of my cape and I could not stop,
all I could do was to stay upright. And besides the storm,
a heavy snow was falling, so I could not see what was ahead
of me, but suddenly I saw some kind of a shape and I just
embraced that shape. It was a solid shape, standing sturdily
on its feet, and while embracing it and having a very close
look, I realized that it was a British officer. At that time
the British had a mission in Novorossisk and they were
helping with supplies and foodstuffs. Realizing that it was
not a lantern post that I was embracing but a British officer,
I held him tight and spoke to him in English. He had, of
course, not the faintest idea who I was, but he was delighted
to hear me speaking English. And then with me still embrac
ing him in the middle of the street, he invited me to come
and have supper with him. He said that obviously I needed
to get stronger.
He took me to a nightclub, the one and only nightclub
still functioning in the city of Novorossisk. This night
club, as I well remember, was called "Slon", which in English
means "elephant". The restaurant occupied not too big a
room, maybe ten tables or so, but it was the only place where
the best possible food was abundant. How the owner of the
restaurant managed it will always remain unknown to me, but
the prices were astronomic. But what did the British officer
care? Pounds were standing sky-high in exchange for Russian
money and printed paper by the authorities of the White Army
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was getting worthless by the day, even by the hour. Every
one was trying to get British pounds or French francs or some
kind of foreign exchange that would be very useful if ever
they succeeded in getting out of Russia. I had a glance at
the bill which the British officer paid in huge amounts of
that worthless paper money, and I realized that the cost of
our elaborate supper, plus vodka and wine, was roughly half
a million rubles in local paper money. That was really a
fantastic rate of exchange.
Speaking of exchange and worthless paper money, in those
days the paper money of the Communists was just as worthless
as any other money. I remember hearing how, two years later,
when Mother was still stuck in St. Petersburg, she went to
buy some firewood for her stove. She paid for that fire
wood in Soviet money of those days two million rubles and,
at the age of sixty-five, she picked up the wood. and carried
it home. So how much wood did she get for her two million
rubles?
To come back to those days in Novorossisk, the situation
politically and militarily was very tense. The army had
lost trust and confidence in the High Command and in General
Denikin himself, who had earlier been considered by many as
a hero. A hero he was as concerns his personal bravery under
any circumstances, he never cared for his life, but when it
came to problems of international relations or civilian rule
of a country, he was like a baby, he knew nothing about it.
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He had very stubborn ideas of his own; he stuck to the idea
of remaining faithful to the allies of the First World War,
the French and British, and he was hoping against hope, and
even convinced, that they would come with great numbers of
fighting men, supplies, and what not. That was his dream
and his wishful thinking. A small trickle of supplies did
come and a small unit did land in the city of Odessa but then
left again.
Disagreement between Denikin and Wrangell
The ways of Denikin were very severely criticized by
General Wrangell. General Wrangell, at the beginning of the
war of 1914, was the best captain in the Horse Guards. He
led a very brilliant attack and took a German artillery unit.
He was a born leader of men and he was a leader by the grace
of God. His tall figure, his good looks, his waist (envied
by many ladies) , and his Cossack dress, his dagger and his
decoration of the Cross of St. George for bravery under fire,
made the picture of a hero, and men followed him through
thick and thin anywhere he led them. He was a cavalryman to
the bone and with his units he succeeded, during the Civil
War, in occupying a large industrial city, which was a miracle
in itself. The name of Wrangell was on the lips of every
body and he was everybody's hope to produce some kind of
miracle and to stop the Reds. He made a report to his direct
superior, Denikin, which was very critical of Denikin in the
strongest possible terms. Somehow this report leaked into
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the ranks of the army and of course General Denikin was offend
ed and wanted to court-martial Wrangell for lack of discipline.
Anyhow, Denikin relieved General Wrangell of all of his
command duties and suggested (not to say ordered) that he
leave the territory. A Russian boat, a destroyer, was in the
port of Novorossisk, and this destroyer was to take Wrangell
to Constantinople and remove him completely. Now, on this
destroyer Wrangell still had his personal bodyguard, fanatic
ally dedicated to him. The situation was so tense that
Wrangell expected that at any moment a detachment under
Denikin 1 s command would come and arrest him. If so, it was
quite clear that Wrangell 's bodyguard would resist his arrest
and that there would be shooting between two units of Whites.
Well, Denikin was clever enough not to attempt an arrest of
Wrangell because that would have meant a rebellion of all of
what remained of Denikin 's army. Probably some units would
have arrested, if not shot, Denikin himself.
Leaving Novorossisk for the Crimea
It was a custom among us officers of the Horse Guards
that whenever we were somewhere in the presence of a senior
officer of our regiment (and in this case that would have
been General Wrangell) we would report to him our presence.
In other words, in civilian language, we would pay him a
visit and pay him our respects. Taptykov was strong enough
to walk, and of course we went walking (there was no other way)
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through the city to the port. We went aboard the destroyer
and Wrangell received us with open arms and asked, "Where
is your fighting unit now? You two in Novorossisk are, so
to say, up in the air. Where is your fighting unit?" Nobody
had any idea then where any fighting unit was. Some fighting
units had retreated to the mountains, to the Caucasus, and
there was a last battle which I will describe later. But
Wrangell told us that our reserve unit was now in the Crimea
and if we stayed aboard the destroyer, he would land us in
the city of Kerch in the Crimea, and there we could join our
reserve unit and have a rest before leaving for somewhere
else. It seemed that he did not know himself what was going
to happen. Well, for us that was an unusual bit of luck
because we left Novorossisk some six weeks before the disaster-
ous catastrophe of the evacuation of that city started. This
evacuation of Novorossisk has been described by many historians
and witnesses who participated in it, so I shall leave it out,
as I am speaking in my memoirs only about what happened to
me personally. I was very fortunate to be in the Crimea,
avoiding that disaster and avoiding the last cavalry battle
of four thousand White cavalrymen against twelve thousand
cavalrymen of the Red Army. After that battle very few men
from the White cavalry were left alive to get out of Russia
over the Caucasus Mountains or to the Crimea or as refugees
to Constantinople. I was in Kerch when some ships came from
Novorossisk bringing more troops to the Crimea. The evacuation
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of Novorossisk was completely disorganized, not foreseen by
the High Command of General Denikin, and no measures what
soever were taken to organize this evacuation or to use force
of arms if needed to get everybody aboard the ships and to
take them towards the Crimea.
Now I want to tell a story about one of my volunteers
who now lives in Santa Barbara, California. When I knew him,
he was a young boy and he was in a hospital just barely
recuperating from typhus. He realized that if he remained
in that hospital and if the Reds took over the city, he
would be killed, so he decided to leave the hospital. While
nobody watched, he crawled out of the hospital, half crawl
ing and half walking. When he was out of the hospital, he
had the feeling that he was walking on sand or frozen snow,
because under his feet he heard the sound of crush, crush,
crush. Looking down he saw that the earth beneath him was
moving with a layer of lice, and that his crushing of the lice
produced the sound of crush, crush, crush. Such a thing may
seem incredible, but it was no exaggeration. Finally, on all
fours, he came as far as a cordon of British soldiers in the
port of Novorossisk. There also stood a British Red Cross
ship evacuating a British military mission and also units of
a British flying Air Force squadron, and my young friend
(he was then barely eighteen) crawled up and was lying at the
feet of a British soldier from that cordon. The instructions
of the British cordon were, of course, not to let pass anyone
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aboard their ship. Well, this young boy could speak English
and that saved him. He just begged the soldier to let him
pass and the soldier took pity on that young boy and said,
"Go ahead, I am looking the other way." So my friend
crawled further, reached the planks of the ship, and while he
crawled along the planks he was picked up by Red Cross
personnel. Maybe they even took him for an Englishman. The
boy was taken by that ship to Egypt, where he recuperated,
and he is now living in Santa Barbara as a retired gardener.
When the ships from Novorossisk arrived in Kerch on the
Crimea, they were carrying tattered soldiers and part of our
fighting squadron. These fighting men came on shore and then
joined our reserve squadron, which was reorganizing and
recuperating. The Crimean Peninsula was connected to the
mainland by a narrow strip of land, maybe twenty miles wide,
called"Perekop" , which means "dig through" in English, because
all across that strip of land there was a very deep and very
wide ditch dug centuries ago when the Crimea was still in the
hands of Tatars and under the rule of the Turkish Sultan.
This ditch in those days was used as fortification against
the advancing Russians from the north, while the Crimean
Tatars periodically raided south Russia, and only in the days
of Catherine the Great were the Tatars finally subdued.
Now this narrow space was occupied by a White Army unit,
a rather weak unit. But fortunately the Red High Command
somewhere in Moscow, then headed by Trotsky, was so eager to
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push the White Armies into the sea at Novorossisk and to
destroy the main forces of the armies under Denikin that
they completely overlooked that small unit defending the
Crimea. There was a moment when they could have rushed in
and occupied all of the Crimea with very few losses on
their side, but they missed that opportunity. Whatever
remained of Denikin 's army on the Crimea was concentrated
little by little in that narrow place. East of "Perekop"
there was a wide space of swamps and saltwater marshes, and
east of that was a narrow piece of land and railroad tracks
connecting the Crimea with the rest of Russia to the north,
tracks that carried famous trains, express trains, and the
Tsar's trains from the Crimea to the mainland; that was the
only link the Crimea had with the mainland. It was not so
difficult to fortify those spots against the Reds, so for the
time being at least the Crimea was safe. Denikin sent his
family (he had married very late in his life a girl that
could have been his daughter) away to Constantinople, which
had a very demoralizing effect on the troops, and he came
with the remnants of his army to the Crimea. He was aware
that he had lost all respect and all faith in him and had to
abandon his High Command, but to whom? The tradition of
the Russian Imperial Army did not permit any kind of elections
A group of colonels and generals could not elect a Commander-
in-Chief because that would be against tradition. If an
elected new commander could be voted for in parliamentary
- 424 -
fashion, he could just as well be voted out, and discipline
would be destroyed by this voting system.
Finally, Denikin was talked into the only thing that he
could do, to give up his command to General Wrangell, who was
in Constantinople. That was a very bitter thing for Denikin
to have to do, for he hated even the name of Wrangell and
Wrangell responded in kind. But finally Denikin made the
decision and issued an army order stating that because of his
ill health and a nervous breakdown he was ordering, order ing
General Wrangell to take over command of the army. But
Wrangell was not there, he was in Constantinople as a private
person. There was no wireless connection, so that order of
Denikin 1 s was brought to Constantinople by a British destroyer
and handed over to the British Admiral in command of the
British Navy in the Black Sea. This admiral went to see
Wrangell and gave him Denikin 's order (not that the British
Admiral could order Wrangell to do anything; he could only
hand the order to Wrangell) and Wrangell said, "I refuse to
take over command because I know, as a military man, that the
situation on the Crimea with those tattered units, without
arms and without artillery, is completely hopeless." Then
the Admiral replied, "General Wrangell, Sir, you are complete
ly right, and it is worse than hopeless because to my great
sorrow and to my great shame, His Majesty's government in
London has made the decision to stop all supplies to the
White units on the Crimea." And Wrangell stood up and said,
- 425 -
"In such a case, I take over command." Wrangell was at heart
a knight such as there used to be in the Middle Ages and he
said again, "All I can do is to save people that are still on
the Crimea, and save the honor of the Russian Army." So
Wrangell departed from Constantinople and landed in the port
of Sevastopol. There were crowds of people, not many units,
but many scattered officers and soldiers, and all this numer
ous crowd greeted him enthusiastically with cheers. He was
the Miracle Worker who had come to save them. And Wrangell
did perform a miracle. He addressed all units with his
first order of the day: he warned them that he was not a
miracle worker and not to expect that, but everybody should
do what he could and he expected every soldier, every officer,
every civilian on the Crimea to do his duty as a Russian
patriot. The mood of the population changed from one day to
the next. The formerly undisciplined units of the army from
Novorossisk became perfect military units, disciplined and
well-dressed. They went to the north and they reinforced the
position at "Perekop", and the spirits of the units was resur
rected just by the appearance of General Wrangell. Then the
fighting (it was in April of 1920 that Wrangell took over the
command) went very successfully and even the Reds north of
"Perekop" were attacked. The purpose of this attack was to
enlarge the territory, to get food from those fresh regions,
and eventually more men. But that was wishful thinking of
that group of forty thousand fighting men, no matter how
- 426 -
enthusiastic. Lacking supplies and artillery, they could not
be victorious over the Red Army that had an unlimited supply
of everything: manpower, artillery, food, and had as their
hinterland all of Russia, while the Whites only had the small
Crimean Peninsula that could barely feed its local population,
and no reinforcements of manpower. So the situation remained
desperate all the time and everyone realized it. But in spite
of everything, Wrangell attacked (I was in the attack) the
territory that was about twice as large as the Crimean
Peninsula, by November of 1920. The Red High Command under
Trotsky was absolutely flabbergasted at the spirit of the
Whites, for they believed that spirit had been lost in
Novorossisk but it suddenly rose again with their victorious
advance. Then, at the end of 1920, the Red side concentrated
immense forces against us and the resistance could only fight
back as much as we could, and then retreat fighting. The last
three months of that fighting, autumn through early winter
of 1920, ended with the complete evacuation from all the ports
of the Crimea.
I want to say, and I will explain in detail later, that
Wrangell immediately realized that the last move would be a
total evacuation of the Crimea. So realizing that, he took
wide measures in advance that this evacuation should proceed
in perfect order and not look like the catastrophe that had
occurred in Novorossisk. And all through that period I was
in the fighting units and later, in the last month or so, in
- 427 -
the personal bodyguard of General Wrangell, so I can truly
speak for what happened during that period, and personally
to me.
Retreat towards Crimea
Let me go back to early June of 1920 and describe how
this re-born White Army broke out from the Crimea, northward
and gained the shores of the Dnepr River. It was a very large
river and our side, the left side -of the river was low and
swampy and covered with bushes and trees. The other side
was elevated and from there the Red Army could observe any
movement on our bank. There were lots of Red artillery,
including heavy guns on railraod flatcars that were on the
right bank. We had scarcely any artillery; we had some
heavy guns brought in by the British. We had some shells,
and we had some French artillery guns with French shells.
And we also had a few Russian guns with Russian shells. And,
of course, those shells only fit those guns they were made
for. So having the proper shells for the proper guns was
sometimes quite a problem and sometimes left us with un-
useable artillery because we had the wrong shells and they
would not fit our guns. And along the Dnepr there was a kind
of stalemate. Artillery fire was exchanged and we moved up
to the very shores of the Dnepr River and we were entrenched
in those marshes, in the weeds and the bushes and the Reds
began to cross the river from a ridge just across from us.
There was no bridge but they made rafts and got some, they
had lots of boats, and they opened what used to be called
- 428 -
"drum fire" - that means non-stop fire with all their artillery,
But they aimed above our heads; they wanted to cover the
open ground so that the troops that were entrenched along the
water line could not get any supplies, reinforcements or
buckets of water. That was in July 1920. Drinking water
was the worst shortage. Buckets of water drawn by horses
were supposed to come from the rear, but they had to cross
that artillery fire. There were some direct hits, some
buckets just turned around and we did not have water. But
we had the polluted marshes right under our feet. The water
was green, infested with frogs, mosquitos, all kinds of
vermin. And that was the water we started drinking. I
started drinking the water myself. It was quite clear to us
that drinking it would mean immediate typhus. By some kind
of a miracle that I cannot explain, although the events I am
talking about happened sixty years ago, we did not have one
single man sick in the squadron because of drinking that
stagnating water. Well, under that fire, the command at
headquarters ordered all units on the left bank of the Dnepr
River to retreat towards the Crimea. We felt pretty safe
on that waterfront because all those heavy shells thundered
through the air over our heads and we had no losses whatso
ever. And just behind us there lay an old big cemetary.
Probably the Reds were of the opinion that we were entrenched
somewhere in the cemetary, where the old grave stones would
give us some shelter. And that was a mistake the Reds made.
- 429 -
They fired at that cemetary with their guns; they actually
ploughed up that cemetary with direct hits. Just looking
over our shoulders, backwards at the cemetary, we saw graves
split open and pieces of the boards flying through the air
as well as whole skeletons. That was a ghastly sight, of
course. But we felt safe and I must say that each man
realized that in a minute or an hour he could become a
skeleton himself. And nobody gave a damn, excuse my express
ion. And the Reds attempted to cross the river supposing
that the left bank was empty. We saw them coming on rafts
and many, many boats. They were expecting to land not finding
any resistance. When they came quite close, we opened point
blank fire from all the rifles and machine guns we had. That
was a great surprise for the Reds. Panic broke out on the
boats and the rafts. Most of them were upset and the
occupants of the boats drowned in the Dnepr River and some
of them - very few - reached the bank they came from. Then
they opened heavy artillery fire, but again, mistakenly, they
fired over our heads. So we were quite happy, if the word
"happy" suits that situation. Then we realized that to the
right of us, up the river and to the left of us, down the
river, all units of Whites had retreated under orders from
headquarters. But we had no orders to retreat, so we stayed
where we were. And when we realized that we were alone,
roughly one hundred and fifty men, and the Reds now knew we
were there, that we also had to retreat. The Reds would
- 430 -
surround us and take us prisoners. They could land up
stream and downstream from where we were. So we had to
retreat.
This retreat was one of the nastiest hours of my life
because we had to cross that open space and the Red artillery
saw our small unit retreating, walking, for about an hour to
get outside of the range of those heavy guns. And there
were direct hits and one of my fellow officers, a boy younger
than I was , was walking about one hundred to one hundred and
fifty feet ahead, and I saw the earth rising up in the very
spot where he was. And I thought, "Oh dear, oh dear, my dear
frined Dima has been blown up to pieces." But when that earth
fell down again, I saw Dima walking quietly on. I had the
uncanny feeling of seeing the ghost of Dima; he could not
have survived a direct hit. I felt quite queer and I
questioned myself whether I was alright in the head. Well,
finally when we walked out of the range of the heavy guns, we
were back in a proper formation and there came the division
commander on horseback with officers of headquarters and he
rode up to our unit and he said in a loud voice, "All those
so-and-so Horse Guards ... I have sent seven times an order
for them to retreat, but probably the commanding officer of
the Horse Guards did not have a dictionary in his pocket and
the Horse Guards do not know what the word 'retreat' means,
even in Russian." So, of course, we felt very proud.
That spirit and tradition of the Horse Guards throughout
- 431 -
two hundred years of course were very important for us, but
at that time the situation was that all those seven orders
of the commander to retreat were sent to us by riders because
there was no other way to get to us. And the riders had to
cross that open space under heavy fire. Some riders were
killed, some just turned away and galloped back and no orders
ever reached us. Had an order reached us, of course, we
would have retreated long before. But to retreat on our own,
well that was not our way. When we had had a rest in the
shade of an old haystack, there was my friend Dima and he had
not a scratch. He was a bit shaken up but not more than that.
And later we questioned artillery men: how could that be?
And they explained to us that if a big shell hits a certain
spot, the explosion goes upward in all directions, but from
the very spot of the hit there is a co-called dead space.
And Dima, a man as tall as me, happened to be in that space
on the spot. If he had been a few feet to the left or right
of that spot, he would have been blown to pieces by the debris
of the shell. Of course he was under shock of the air that
such a shell produces when it explodes, and that was noticed
a few days later when we were moving already on horseback far
away from the fire zone at a slow walking pace and young Dima,
who was a very good rider, all of a sudden slipped off his
horse and fell to the ground. And he was unconscious. That
was the effect of the air shock that he experienced. Well,
he was picked up and sent for recuperation on the Crimea, to
- 432 -
Yalta, of course. And shell shock is sometimes worse than an
actual wound. All his system, all his nerves were shaken up
and it took a long time for him to recuperate. His re
cuperation in Yalta was being helped by a charming young
widow. And it came to the point where Dima wanted to marry
her. But that charming young lady who also fell in love with
Dima, who was a very, very handsome man, said, "My dear, I
cannot marry you, I do not know if I am a widow or not."
A year before, her husband had been reported missing in action
and nobody knew what had happened to him. He could be a POW
with the Reds, he could have fallen sick with typhus and
recuperated. He could have been somewhere. There were many,
many cases in those days where young women did not know
whether they were a widow or not. So Dima had to wait and
wait and they waited for a whole year and then there was a
basic law of the church of Russia that if the husband was
missing and it was impossible to find out his whereabouts,
he was supposed to be dead and his wife was supposed to be a
widow and she could re-marry. So that is what happened to
this young lady and Dima and they did get married and they
spent a very, very nice life, had children, and Dima had a
sporting lodge in Canada. And maybe only two years ago I
learned that he forgot that he was not that young anymore,
and he climbed on the roof of his home because there was too
much snow on the roof and he started removing that snow and
his foot slipped and he fell. He had a brain concussion and
- 433 -
a few days later, he died. He was one of my best, closest
friends. He had a German-sounding name, and as I said, he
was a very handsome man, and when we were stationed in the
German colonies, his German-sounding name, and his German
title of Duke of Leuchtenberg impressed the old German wives
of the colonists. They had special respect for him. And
one of the wives, the wife of an old colonist was saying
one evening, "Isn't that terrible, terrible! Those young
officers in the evening after supper and some drinks, they
start singing. And sometimes they sing terrible songs.
Terrible songs! And my, oh my, that young handsome Duke,
he sings with them."
The second part of August of 1920 saw our squadron mounted
but there were not enough horses for all men, so only half
the squadron was on horseback and half were foot soldiers.
We were in reserve somewhere behind the actual fighting lines,
some thirty kilometers behind, stationed in a rustic little
village and everybody was bored to death. We had learned the
lesson that having more than two officers in a squadron at
any time, was more than enough and an undersized squadron of
men with six or seven officers was much too much to command
them and it only exposed officers to being killed uselessly.
So at the moment I am speaking of, the officers were on leave
in Yalta, and with the squadron there was my cousin Andre
and myself. I was about six months older in age, but Andre x
was four months my senior, having graduated from military
- 434 -
school before me. So he was the senior in command. And
when headquarters sent us orders to join the fighting units
thirty kilometers north of us, I was very happy. And not
being bored anymore, I was ready to start northward with
half the mounted squadron that was under my command, to join
the bulk of the regiment. And I saw Andre writing to head
quarters a report that he was taking over the mounted squadron
and I was to remain in that village with the other soldiers
that had no horses yet. Of course I got mad at him and as
two cousins, we had a verbal fight. But he had four months
of seniority as an officer. So he wrote a report to head
quarters that he was taking over the mounted squadron and
I was being ordered to remain there with the men on foot.
There was nothing that I could do. I could tell my cousin
all the nasty words I knew, but I could not change anything
officially. The next morning, disgusted and furious, I stayed
in that little village and my cousin Andre went north to join
the regiment. Less than a week later, rumors reached me that
my cousin Andre' was killed point blank during a charge of
our mounted regiment against Red infantry. Well, fate is
fate. His body was brought back, placed in a metal, sealed
coffin, and it had to be taken back for burial in Yalta,
where there was the burial ground for officers of our units.
And I was ordered to accompany the cart with his coffin on
horseback. It was a very sad journey. We reached the Crimea
junction from which we had to proceed to Yalta by horse-drawn
- 435 -
cart. And at that junction station, there stood the train
of the Commander in Chief, General Wrangell. And by tradition
wherever there was a senior officer of the Horse Guards,
the younger ones had to report to him and pay him their
respects. So I went to that train of the Commander in Chief
and I was introduced into the car where Wrangell was and I
found him all by himself. And he embraced me and said how
sorry he was about the death of my cousin. And then he took
off his table a blank of the Commander in Chief of the White
Armies and in his own hand he wrote on that blank that
Captain Ivan - that was me - was under orders to accompany
the coffin of his cousin to Yalta and to remain in the city
of Yalta as long as he would not receive other orders from
the Commander in Chief. Then he called his Chief of Staff
and said, "Countersign my signature." The seals of the
Commander in Chief were put on that blank. It was a unique
document written in longhand by the Commander in Chief himself,
Then I proceeded to Yalta; there was the burial of my cousin.
So, I had to stay in Yalta according to orders. But
there was a problem of where to live in Yalta. Yalta was
overcrowded. Yalta was full of refugees and officers. There
was a huge hotel called Hotel Russia; it was overflowing with
refugees. There were no rooms. One of our older officers,
too old to be in a fighting unit, had requisitioned the bath
room. And being senior colonel, he slept in the bathtub and
the officers who shared the bathroom slept on the floor and
- 436 -
they were lucky if they could get hold of a mattress. Well,
I stayed in Yalta and I visited everyday the family of Prince
and Princess Scherbatov and their many children; and the
mother-in-law of Prince Paul was Princess Bariatinsky and her
maiden name was Stenbock-Fermor . She was a cousin of my
father. So I felt quite at home in that place. And the
eldest granddaughter was named Nadejda also and she had just
graduated from high school at the age of seventeen. That
was in 1920. When we immigrated to Constantinople in 1921,
the two of us were married. Well, while I was staying in Yalta,
I had a meeting with the commandant of Yalta who had the duty
of checking officers on leave and checking whether their
papers were still valid and to find officers that had to
rejoin their units and ask them why they were still in Yalta
with documents that were not valid anymore, that were in fact
overdue. So he called me into his office and asked in a rather
rough tone, "Captain, will you please explain your prolonged
presence in Yalta?" I took out that Wrangell document and
I said, "Sir, kindly read that document." Well, he became
red in his face, then white and green, handed me that
document back almost with a bow in spite of being higher in
rank. And I decided that some orders probably did not reach
me. And I left Yalta on my own and I got as far as the
junction station where Wrangell had given me that document
two months before, and I found the commandant of that station
and I reported to him. "I am here to rejoin my unit. Has
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there been some communication where that unit is now?"
And he said to me, "I have not the faintest idea where any
unit is anymore because just north of the Crimea there is
total chaos and the last agony of the White cavalry. They
are outnumbered twenty to one by the Reds. The Reds are just
chasing the White units out of the north." So they were all,
what is left of them, on the Crimea. He looked at Wrangell's
orders and ordered me to go back to Yalta and stay there
until I got the proper orders. So that is what I did.
Selbilar, the home of Nadejda's family
I have to talk somewhat about geography. The Crimean
Peninsula is cut from west to east by a range of high mountains;
sometimes, once in ten years maybe, the tips of those mountains
are even covered with snow. Those mountains protect a strip
going from east to west on the shore of the Black Sea from
the icy winds and snowstorms that cover all the rest of Russia
in winter. Actually, this strip - not more than twelve or
fifteen miles deep and sixty or seventy miles long - is
climatically not at all part of Russia. Climatically, it
reminds one very much of the famous strip in France, Monte
Carlo with its gambling casinos, the city of Nice, and other
cities which have become so popular with British, and later
American tourists. But this strip of the Crimea and the port
of Yalta were inaccessible before a railroad was built - the
railroad that linked St. Petersburg, the capital of Russia,
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with Moscow to the south and farther south with Sebastopol,
which became a fortified port and the base of the Russian
Black Sea Fleet. When that railroad was finally built, one
had access by rail as far as Sebastopol or a junction city
north of Sebastopol, a big city that used to be the capital
of the Crimea when the Crimea was a semi-independent Tatar
state, centuries ago. From either Sebastopol or that other
city, Yalta could be reached only by horse-drawn carriage.
As I remember, one had to stop for the night half-way through,
have a rest, feed the horses, and then one could proceed
onward to Yalta. From those days on, Yalta began to be very
popular, especially after Emperor Alexander III had a palace
constructed just outside the city. The Imperial Family
spent much time in that new palace and many of the Russian
nobility and many wealthy merchants of St. Petersburg and
Moscow came to Yalta and constructed their own houses and
palaces all along the coast.
One such estate on the very outskirts of Yalta was called
Selbilar, probably a Tatar name. This Selbilar belonged to
Princess Bariatinsky. Her maiden name was Stenbock-Fermor
and she was the daughter of Alexander Stenbock-Fermor, the
elder brother of my grandfather. So Nadejda Princess
Bariatinsky was a cousin of my father and her children were
all my second cousins. The eldest girl of the three of them
married Prince Scherbatov and in 1921 he became my father-in-
law and his wife, Anna, my second cousin, was my mother-in-
law.
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Prince Scherbatov was a one-hundred percent gentleman
if there ever was one. He was a carbon copy of his ancestors,
who many centuries earlier had been the ruling Princes of
y
part of Russia and had descended from the legendary Scandinav
ian Prince and founder of the Russian dynasty. Prince
Scherbatov in his youth was an officer of the Hussar Guard
regiment. He was very broad-shouldered and very strongly
built. His eyes were absolutely remarkable. There is a say
ing that the human eyes are the mirrors of the soul; the eyes
of Prince Paul reflected unlimited, boundless kindness. He
was always in good humor, in spite of difficult times. He
was a very brave man. During the days of the first Revolution
of 1905, there was a mutiny in a fortress lying just outside
St. Petersburg. This fortress was at the base of the Baltic
Sea. Part of the garrison of that fortress remained true to
the Tsar but the greater part was in mutiny. Orders had to
be given to quell that mutiny and there was no other way of
sending those orders except by hand. Prince Paul was in
structed by Grand Duke Nicholas, Commander-in-Chief of all
the Guard troops, to take those orders personally to that
fortress in mutiny. To reach the fortress he had to be dis
guised and go in by rowboat from the shores of Finland. That
is what he did, risking his life in the exercise of his duty.
In 1917, when the family decided to leave St. Petersburg
and to go south to Yalta, for some reason they did not want
to take with them the jewels that his mother-in-law, Princess
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Bariatinsky, and also the Scherbatov Family, had. The jewels
were really priceless, equal almost to the personal jewels
of the Tsar's family. So in order to leave the jewels safely,
and a bank would not have been safe for there they could be
requisitioned or stolen, Prince Paul personally made a hole
in one of the thick walls of his mother-in-law's home and
put the jewels in that hole and plastered it over. Probably
some of the servants knew what he was doing but they were
very faithful people. No one else knew that the jewels -were
in that wall. Then later, in the year 1918, they wanted to
get the jewels out because the income from the estates that
they had all over Russia had become zero, and the jewels
would be very helpful in feeding that very numerous family
of eight children. Prince Paul travelled in disguise as a
proletarian factory worker north to St. Petersburg. He was
not the only one to make such a trip in disguise and in those
days some gentlemen disguised as proletarian factory workers
were caught because of their hands. Their hands were much
too clean, uncalloused, had no broken fingernails; they were
not proletarian hands, they were hands of an aristocrat.
In order to change the hands of an aristocrat into the hands
of a proletarian worker, it takes time and technique. The
technique consists of holding your hands in the warm ashes
of the fireplace, not too hot, just warm enough to change the
pigment of your skin. Then you have to artificially do some
thing to get your hands calloused. And you never wash your
hands. Thus he reached St. Petersburg and came back carrying
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on his person all the jewels. It was really the feat of a
hero.
There was a family legend that when Prince Paul was
engaged to be married and his fiancee and her mother were
visiting one of the Scherbatov estates in central Russia,
he wanted to show off his strength. When a carriage with a
troika - three horses - was standing at the door and his
fiancee with her mother was already in it, Prince Paul
seized the wheel of the carriage with both hands and kept
it from turning, so that the troika could not start. Well,
that was of course a good exercise. But his brother-in-law,
Count Apraksin, sarcastically said after hearing that story
many times over that the old faithful coachman of the
Scherbatov estates got a very handsome tip for not having
urged his horses forward too much. Prince Paul got very
angry at such sarcasm. Sometimes he could get angry even
about nothing. He could flare up like a pot of milk, but
that never lasted. As soon as he had cooled down he was
sorry. Then, to make up, he would permit something he had
been dead-set not to permit half an hour earlier. As I have
said, kindness was a very basic trait of his personality.
When my father was very young and just a student at the
Imperial Lycee at St. Petersburg, he spent much time during
vacations ,which were too short to go all the way south to his
mother, visiting his cousin Princess Bariatinsky. That became
quite a tradition and when I was about fifteen, Father took
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me with him. I loved to accompany Father on such visits.
The grandchildren of Princess Bariatinsky were in those years
in the nursery. Her oldest grandchild, Nadejda, was then
twelve or thirteen years old, and I rarely met her - maybe
once or twice - and of course it did not dawn on anybody
that years later, in 1921, she would become my wife. Maybe
grandmother Bariatinsky did have such an idea somewhere in
the back of her mind; anyway, she would have been and later
was very happy that her oldest granddaughter would carry the
same name that she had had before she married Bariatinsky.
Now this estate in Yalta, Selbilar, was not just a summer
cottage. It was a huge house with many buildings surrounding
it and I do not remember how much acreage of vineyards and
orchards. All those vineyards and orchards were leased to
local Tatars who paid in money or in kind. They said, "Please
tell all your grandchildren not to climb in the peach trees.
We will bring to you all the best peaches we have. But
children taking down the peaches on their own will break
branches and destroy the peach trees." Well, eating peaches
was fine but taking them down from the trees, of course, was
great fun. So, just on the sly, we did take some peaches
ourselves.
When my father married in 1881, his cousin Princess
Bariatinsky acted as Father's mother, who could not come all
the way from south Russia on account of ill health. So the
relationship between us and Princess Bariatinsky, with all
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her daughters and their children, was really very close.
During the Civil War when I came to Yalta, I went to Selbilar
to present my respects to the old Princess Nadejda Bariatinsky.
When I got there, she was living on the ground floor of that
big house and the upper rooms were crowded with all the
Scherbatov family. In other buildings was the Apraksin
family with many children, the eldest girl about thirteen and
promising to become an outstanding beauty - she kept her
promise later. The other children were just small kids and
'they had a nurse.
At the time I first came to Selbilar, three families,
the families of all the three daughters of Princess Bariatinsky,
were living on that estate. Counting the three daughters,
their husbands, and their numerous children, I come up with
around twenty persons. Of course the big house and surround
ing buildings were full of servants from the old days and the
servants just could not leave, did not want to leave, and
had no place to go to anyhow. There must have been at least
fifteen or twenty of them, and their families. So Selbilar,
with all its inhabitants, could be considered just as one big
family, not to say tribe.
I begin to court Nadejda
Of course I came to Selbilar each time I was in Yalta.
I felt very much at home there; I "belonged" to that family.
The eldest granddaughter had just graduated from the Gymnasium,
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(equivalent of a senior High School in the USA) and she began
some courses at the local hospital to become a Red Cross nurse.
There is an old French saying that I will try to render in
English: that cousinship (cousinage) may develop into a
dangerous neighborhood. Young Nadejda Scherbatov was the
oldest of many, many children, but she was not quite eighteen.
Red Cross regulations demanded that such a person be at least
eighteen years old but in her case this was overlooked.
After she had completed those Red Cross courses, she had
the right to wear the Red Cross nurses' uniform with a big
red cross, a red cross on a white dress. That inspired me
to go to a flower shop in Yalta - Yalta was, of course,
overfilled with flowers at all seasons - and I bought up
bunches and bunches of lillies of the valley, which are white,
and I bought an amount of red roses. I had a large box and
it was stuffed with lillies of the valley, and in between were
stuck red roses, making a red cross. I came to Selbilar,
carrying that box, and I presented it to young Nadejda. At
that moment I noticed that her parents, uncles and aunts
looked at each other and winked. They got suddenly a feeling
that the cousinship was becoming rather dangerous.
All during the last part of the Civil War, in 1920, each
time I came to Yalta I visited Selbilar. It was, so to say,
a last little splinter of Holy Russia as I had known it
through all my childhood - family life, dedicated servants.
Selbilar lived its own life as if the Revolution had never
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occurred, and I loved the atmosphere of all that place, which
I considered almost as home. All the people living there
considered me as a member of the family long before I actually
fell in love with young Nadejda. One of my fellow officers
that I had known since my childhood teased me, saying, "You
are not in love with a girl. You are in love with all the
atmosphere of the whole family." For the time being, at least
in the beginning, he might have been right.
Recuperating in Yalta
Anyhow, when I came from the northern part of the Crimea,
where I had been recuperating from my second attack of typhus,"
I was sent for further recuperation to Yalta. For many officers
who could occasionally obtain leave from the front lines, Yalta
was the place to go. But that was also not always a great
blessing, because while we were on the front lines the army
supplied us with food and lodging. Sometimes the lodging was
just a haystack, some place in the middle of nowhere. But
when we came to Yalta we had to have lodgings which were
requisitioned for officers on leave. The greatest hotel in
Yalta was the Hotel Russia. It was a brand new building, a
huge modern hotel, but it was crammed full of people who
were there by requisition or who still had some means to rent
rooms. And when I arrived there were no rooms available.
We junior officers slept on the floor of a bathroom. Those
were our living quarters. Sleeping bags as they are known
today did not exist, so we just wrapped ourselves in blankets,
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or maybe we got hold of a mattress. To get around in that
bathroom we had to step over one another. The colonel, who
lived with us, managed to have a little table and on that
table was a gadget, called a primus, a burner of sorts.
The bottom of the burner was filled with kerosene and a
little cup on the top of the burner had to be filled with
alcohol. This burning alcohol developed a high temperature
and then the gas of the kerosene rose up and burned. It was
not the kerosene burning, it was the emanation of the
kerosene burning in that burner. It was very, very popular
in those days. It could be carried around anywhere and fit
on the smallest table and it served for cooking, because
going to any local restaurant in Yalta was impossible, beyond
the means of the officers on leave, who had scarcely any
money at all. But they managed to buy something at the
market and then cook a meal on that gadget in the bathroom.
Evacuation of the Crimea
Very soon after the collapse of Germany and Turkey, the
straits of Constantinople were open, and the British and the
French fleet sailed into the Black Sea. The British govern
ment sent a man-of-war to anchor off Yalta. The Admiral
conveyed an invitation to the Dowager Empress, the widow of
Tsar Alexander III, and members of the Romanov family to
board that British man-of-war that would take them to safety
in England. The Dowager Empress said that she was very, very
touched, but that she would not leave Yalta unless some of
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her friends could be taken out also. So the government of
Great Britain gave permission to the Admiral to take all
people according to a list that he would receive from the
Dowager Empress. It was a very good opportunity for many
families to seek safety abroad, because otherwise they would
never have gotten out. They had no means to pay their
passage on ships. Anyhow, there were no passenger ships.
Very many families that I knew in Yalta left on the ship with
the Dowager Empress.
So, when I arrived in Yalta, I found Yalta, so to say,
empty. Of course, Yalta was over-crowded, but when I say
empty, I mean Yalta was empty of families I used to know in
my teenage period in St. Petersburg. The only friends that
I knew since then were my relatives, living in Selbilar, who
had decided to remain there. A year later, when the Crimea
was evacuated by order of General Wrangell, everybody left,
except one of the daughers of Princess Bariatinsky, who remained
This daughter and her husband and old Princess Bariatinsky
were murdered. I will describe that tragic event later.
Let me refer back now to the time when I returned to
overcrowded Yalta. At that time my visiting Selbilar became
a daily occurance and I always remained there for dinner.
That was served in a big entrance hall because the main
diningroom had been turned into a bedroom for some of the
inhabitants. How my future mother-in-law, Princess Scherbatov,
managed all that household - she had to feed roughly forty
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persons every day - was to me a miracle. Of course, through
some of the servants there were connections with the Tatars
renting the orchards and vineyards, and occasionally they
brought from the mountains where they were living some meat,
vegetables when available, and fruit, a huge amount of grapes
in season. Grapes and peaches were not just delicacies, like
dessert, but were food. The worst and most difficult was the
question of bread. The Tatars had their water mills in the
mountains; they brought a sack or two of flour and bread
was made at home. Somehow, all this great family, or as I
said, tribe, managed not to go hungry. The Tatars in the
mountains had a lot of sheep which produced cheese in season,
and this sheep's cheese is very popular in the south. It is
very rich and it is a food locally produced, so there is
plenty of it on the market. That was the main staple of
the officers on leave.
There was a restaurant in Yalta, run by a very famous
cook by the name of Korniloff, allegedly one of the cooks of
the Imperial Family. Later, when he managed to emigrate, he
had a luxury restaurant in Paris. Now, when I came from the
northern part of the Crimea I brought a bucket of butter,
slightly salted. I brought some hams and eggs, because there
was plenty of all of that in the so-called German colonies,
villages of Germans that had come down there in the days of
Catherine the Great. They became extremely wealthy farmers
and they had no outlet for their produce because of the lack
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of any transportation. So we had all those luxury items:
chickens, geese, ducks, ham, eggs, milk, and so on. And it
was delicious because usually there was no variety. I remem
ber an incident: Once I was walking in the streets of Yalta,
probably in the company of my friends, officers, and my
future fiancee. I was telling about my life in the reserve
squadron in a rather loud voice, and I mentioned that I was
sick and tired of eating ham and eggs, butter, lard, and fowl.
Suddenly I was stopped by. an elderly gentleman, and very
politely lifting his hat, he said to me, "Sir, officer, may
I ask you a question?" I said, "Go ahead." He asked, "Will
you please tell me where you come from?" It sounded to him
like paradise. Well, I explained the situation. Now, when
I brought all the goodies from there, I brought them all, of
course, to Selbilar, and my future mother-in-law was delighted.
I was happy because I could reciprocate for all the frequent
dinners that I had enjoyed there. And I also brought several
sacks of sugar and two cases of vodka. I gave one sack of
sugar to my future mother-in-law but I never mentioned to her
a word about having two cases of vodka. I brought that stuff
down to the restaurant of Kornilov and I said to him, "Listen,
to estimate the money value of this stuff today is quite
impossible because money does not have any value at all, it is
worth less and less every day. But I offer the following
arrangement: You take over that stuff and you give me tickets
for so and so many dinners at your place. So when I come to
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have dinner at your place, alone or with a friend, I can
pay with these tickets." He was delighted.
A few days later I was having dinner in that restaurant
with my officer friends, my future fiancee, and two or three
of her girl friends at a rather large table. All of a sudden
I saw a very scared look on the face of my yet unofficial
fiancee. I said to her, "What is the matter, what is wrong?"
She said, "Oh, in that corner over there, sitting at that
little table, is Uncle Peter Apraksin." It is hard to under
stand nowadays, but for a girl of eighteen to have supper at
that restaurant with a group of young officers, unescorted
by her mother or a .governess, was not at all in the Selbilar
tradition. My future fiancee was scared that her Uncle Peter
would report it to her parents and she would be scolded very
thoroughly. But Uncle Peter was at that table with a lady,
and that lady was not his wife. All of a sudden, Uncle Peter
came sheepishly up to our table, and addressing his niece,
he said, "Dearest Nadejda, I have not seen you this evening
and you have not seen me." After that, the authority of Uncle
Peter became zero.
Count Peter Apraksin - as the children called him,
Uncle Peter - sported a typical Russian beard and he had
been the personal secretary to Empress Alexandra, the wife
of Tsar Nicholas. When the Tsar abdicated and lived under
house arrest, and later was deported to Siberia and murdered
with all his family, when those tragic days started, Uncle
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Peter reported sick. That was a sort of diplomatic sickness
and plain cowardice. He did not want to risk his precious
hide and be deported or eventually shot. That was very much
held against him by very many Russians, including his two
brothers-in-law.
Besides that restaurant, there was also a night spot,
the only one in Yalta. Of course I visited that night spot
once or twice. There was a very characteristic figure
there, and as I heard he came every evening. He was the
military commandant of the city of Yalta, a retired Hussar
general by the name of Zykov. He was in his general's uniform,
a very stout man, completely bald, sporting a beautiful white
moustache. He sat in that night spot at a table with champagne
bottles and a chorus girl on each of his knees. Everybody
knew where they could always find General Zykov if they had
some official business with him as Commandant of Yalta. He
would never be found in his office. The office was run very
thoroughly by some well-trained military clerks and he had
full confidence in them. Occasionally he came to the office
to sign some papers, never reading them. He was a figure of
the distant past. What happened to him later I do not know.
I hope, for his sake, that he passed away before the Crimea
was overrun by the Reds.
We requisition food supplies
Now I must explain how I managed to have those sacks of
sugar and those cases of vodka. I have to go back to the
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fall of 1919, when the White armies were rapidly retreating.
We were in a large village south of the city of Harkov and
there was a sugar factory there. The suagar factory belonged
to the family of a young boy who was a volunteer in my
squadron, but he was then somewhere in the rear in training.
This sugar factory produced sugar and it also distilled
vodka. I ordered my men to requisition, by force if necessary,
as many carts as they could find and I believe they got some
thirty horsedrawn carts. The owners, local peasants, drove
the horses, in the hope of someday managing to come back to
their homes. Some of those carts were loaded with sacks of
sugar. The manager of the factory was there, and he just
asked me to sign a paper that I had requisitioned so and so
many sacks of sugar. He wanted to be covered, not accused
eventually of having himself robbed the factory for which he
was responsible. That was quite a normal demand, so I
signed away. Then we went down to the basement of that huge
establishment. It was a cellar, but a huge cellar that could
hold maybe two or three modern swimming pools. Many soldiers
from all kinds of units were carrying out vodka and at the
same time drinking it, getting drunk, falling into that
cellar that was maybe three feet deep in vodka, and they
drowned in that vodka. The corpses of the drowned were
swimming around the whole cellar. Other soldiers were stand
ing on all fours, lapping up vodka and pushing away the corpses
of those who were already drowned. That was a ghastly sight.
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My men were carrying out cases of vodka and they were also
drinking. I realized that if we stayed there ten or fifteen
minutes more, my men would not be able to leave, they would
be just as drunk as all the mob that was already drunk and
drowning in that pool. So I said to my master sergeant,
who was an old soldier and a very disciplined man, "Stop,
that is enough! We are going to start out right away." He
talked back to me and said, "Sir Captain, there is still some
room on those carts." He himself was not very steady on his
feet. Then I took out my Colt revolver and I held it right
under the nose of my own master sergeant and I said, "Out we
go!" in such a tone that he got sober. He ordered his men,
who fortunately were not too drunk, and we left, having many
cases of vodka on our carts. After we were maybe three or
four kilometers away from that plant the whole big plant went
up in flames. Some one of those drunks had thrown a match
into that swimming pool of vodka and all of the drunks and
the dead and the half -drunks were burned in the flames of
that big plant. That fire was followed by two very strong
explosions .
That is how I got hold of so much sugar and so much
vodka. Then I was accused of having looted the place. A
report of my actions got as far as the headquarters of
General Denikin and he ordered me to stand before a court
martial for looting. Well, that court martial never took
place because events overtook it. But that was very typical
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of those headquarters. They did not realize that if I had
not taken as much sugar and vodka as I could, two days
later when the whole region fell into the hands of the Reds
they would have taken whatever they wanted. Headquarters
followed the regulations of yesteryear. To draw a line
between lawful requisitioning and plain looting was very,
very difficult. But my loot, so to say, helped us very much.
When we were retreating, we exchanged some vodka with the
local peasants for fodder for. our horses. During that retreat
we made an average of fifty miles a day on horseback, every
day. Of course the horses were exhausted and there was
little fodder, but we sprinkled a little sugar on what we
had and they ate it very well and the sugar gave them a lot
of energy. And we exchanged vodka for our food. During the
whole campaign of the White armies, the front-line soldiers
and officers never got any pay and never got any food supplies.
They had to live on what they could find among the local
people and requisitioning it, and requisitioning sometimes
degenerated into plain looting. But that could not be other
wise. Therefore, it was considered quite normal that an
officer going on leave and not having received any pay for
a whole year would consider two or three cases of vodka and
two or three sacks of sugar as compensation for the wages he
would have gotten in normal times. That is the explanation
of how I managed to get as far as Yalta with that vodka and
that sugar.
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But getting from that German village, that colony in the
northern part of the Crimea, to Yalta was a problem. There
was no railroad connection from Sebastopol or any other place
to Yalta in those days and Yalta could be reached only by
horse-drawn carriages or carts, as I have already mentioned.
But there was a group of Tatars who had formed a kind of union
of teamsters; they had no trucks but they had very large carts
and very, very strong, large horses that I envied and admired
because those Tatar horses were stronger and looked much
better than the horses that we had' before the Revolution at
our estate in Kodyma. I managed to talk one of those Tatars
into giving me a lift. I sat on those boxes of vodka and the
sugar was covered with a tarpaulin. We drove slowly, crossing
the mountain ridge to get to Yalta. At the half-way point,
having already crossed the mountain ridge and at the shore
of the Black Sea, we stopped at a little village. It was
rather late in the evening. There was an inn full of people.
I was in the uniform of an officer. My intention was to stay
with my cart there at that inn overnight. My Tatar coach
man, in broken Russian, explained to me, "Sir Officer, that
inn is full of all kinds of people, maybe many deserters, may
be some Communists among them. They are all drinking heavily.
When they see you, the only officer in uniform among them,
you might get into real trouble. I advise you to walk two
or three miles ahead and I know of a little inn there that
is practically empty. When I drive by at the break of dawn
- 456 -
I will pick you up again." That was very decent of him and
I realized that maybe he had saved my life. So I walked and
I found that inn, which was a very small place, and practical
ly empty. I even managed to have a nap, not undressing, and
of course having my Colt right next to me on the ready. In
the morning, at the break of dawn, that Tatar and his cart
really drove up to me and stopped and picked me up again.
We reached Yalta, where I could get ahold of a carriage for
hire and unload my stuff and bring it - part of it - to
Selbilar and part of it to that little Russian restaurant.
I felt as if I were the king of all Yalta, having all those
goodies for my friends.
Nowadays it is hard to realize all those unusual
situations of sixty years ago in the Civil War in Russia.
Nadejda and I become engaged
On September the seventeenth - that was a very unusual
day in Russia - it was the namesday for four girls' names:
the name of my unofficial fiancee, Nadejda, which means hope
and the other name was Vera, which in Russian means faith,
and the other girl's name was love in Russian. And they were
saints of the Russian church for centuries. The mother of
those three girls, martyrs of the early Christian era, was
wisdom, Sophia. Very popular names for girls and all four
had their namesday on that very particular day, September
seventeenth. And that was the day that the parents of Nadejda
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finally allowed us to be officially engaged. Our betrothal
took place and the priest of the family came to celebrate a
te-deum, a short church service to the health of the two of
us. It very closely ressembled almost a wedding. But it
was not. We were still officially fiancees. And on that
very same day I got a wire order from Sebastopol from the
headquarters of General Wrangell to report to him in Sebasto
pol. So the very day of the betrothal, I left.
When we were still on the Crimea in Yalta, Nadejda was
so to say the only girl of her kind, which means we belonged
to the same society in St. Petersburg and had the same back
ground and we were cousins besides. So, Nadejda or no
Nadejda, I had a home in Selbilar. She had in Yalta four
girlfriends. Two of them were sisters. They were daughters
of a very renowned general of a Russian Guard regiment. He was
a division commander and a great and very kind gentleman. Some
how it never occurred to me to court those two girls, for a
reason that I do not know to this day. Another girlfriend of
hers was the daughter of the mayor of the city of Yalta. He
was of Greek origin. The girl was very nice, she was even
good-looking, always in good spirits, but her father was
simply horrible. He was horrible even to all his family.
They were living half hungry while he was spending money in
the nightclub in Yalta. On his rare visits to Selbilar he
also came to pay his respects to Princess Bariatinsky or
Nadejda' s mother. On these occasions he was so obsequious
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and it was so evident that he felt so flattered to be
received at Selbilar that his attitude was very sickening.
I was very, very sorry for his older daughter, whose nick
name was "Baby" even though she was in her late teens. She
had also some brothers, four young boys who were promissing
to be as disgusting as the father. So all this means that
in those days Nadejda in Yalta had practically no competition.
In 1920, everybody's hero was Commander- in-Chief , General
Wrangell. I was one of the officers of his bodyguard. Some
waves of hero worship could also be reflected on my modest
person as a junior officer. Also, what eighteen year old
girl would not be somehow flattered by an obvious courtship
by an officer five years older? Nadejda accepted courtship
slightly ironically, as any girl her age would. When rumors
reached Yalta that a Stenbock was killed in battle on the
front lines - three of us were on the front fighting line -
nobody knew which of the three Stenbock cousins was killed.
When I arrived in Yalta with the coffin of my cousin Andre,
Nadejda suddenly told me of her feeling of relief that it
was not me who was killed. That was all she mentioned, but
I immediately concluded that she cared for me, that she was
in love with me. For a boy of twenty-three, it is such a
nice conclusion that a girl is in love with him. But on my
part this was wishful thinking, and such wishful thinking of
mine went on and on for almost ten years before and after
our marriage in 1921. Nadejda never hid her feelings, and
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it was obvious to all that she was not in love as a fiancee
nor as my wife. As I said before, I was a member of the
family anyhow. The fact of my name, the same as her grand
mother's, had a lot of meaning for her and her late grand
mother and brothers and sisters. They are all my cousins and
good friends, in spite of our divorce and separtation, up
to this day, being close relatives as we are, having the same
background and childhood, later being kind and deeply sorry
for us when we were penniless immigrants - as hundreds of
thousands of others - and later when I was working at a barely
subsistant salary. But this was certainly a rickety basis
for a marriage.
As I said, all through those unhappy years of my life
I got a nickname from my friends, when we were living in
Beograd, Yugoslavia, and later in Budapest. They gave me the
nickname, the "Yellow Martyr" - that was me. I was blind,
I was stubborn and would not admit that our marriage was on
the rocks, to use a modern expression. And on the rocks it
stayed and lasted as long as it did only because fate put us
in a golden cage. I mean the estate of Count Louie Karolyi.
We were like in a railroad car that was put on some distant
side track of a big railroad junction. There was no contact
with life that was going on in big centers like Berlin or
Paris, where thousands and thousands of Russian immigrants
were. And there was no comparison. Physically, we had every
thing we needed, even more so. Life in Hungary was like a
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fairytale from this point of view. We were isolated from
reality. Such isolation could be understood by reading my
chapter, "Life in Hungary."
Our very young age and forces of nature made us parents
of two boys. The years of isolation and latent unhappiness
for both of us were worth my suffering through, because now,
divorced long ago and having had stormy years, both of us
are happy and proud, thanks to the two boys and our five
grandchildren.
I have to return to my unit
As mentioned before, on the day of our betrothal, I had
to leave Nadejda to report back to my unit. Getting to
Sebastopol was a great problem. Sebastopol was connected by
a road from Yalta, but that road was very dangerous. In the
mountains through which that road went, there were small
pockets of Reds, and especially at night they were likely to
attack small groups and of course a single officer. But just
by chance a British destroyer was standing in the port. I
had friends among the British officers where in the evenings
I had supper with them in Yalta. And I walked up to one of
the officers and asked him, "When are you leaving for Sebasto
pol?" And he said, "Oh, we are leaving in half an hour."
"Will you take me back to Sebastopol? I have orders to report
to the Commander- in-Chief ." And of course the captain said,
"Of course, come aboard." That was a great coincidence. I
barely had time to telephone to my fiancee that I was leaving.
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And the sea in autumn sometimes is very, very rough and I
was always a very poor sailor. So, when the destroyer went
out to sea, the waves were very, very huge and they came
right over the sides of the destroyer. I became quite sea
sick and I suppose I was standing on that deck as they say
"feeding the fish" in the Black Sea and there came a minute
where I did not quite realize where I was. I was up to my
waist in water. I did not realize whether it was waves
coming over the edge of the destroyer or whether I had been
washed overboard. At that instant I felt a very strong hand
on the back of my neck and a sturdy British sailor was hold
ing me up in the air like a newborn puppy, and putting me
back on my feet on deck. And then he pushed and dragged me
below to the cabins of the destroyer. Well, finally we did
reach Sebastopol. The captain said to me, "You are in no
condition to report to the Commander- in-Chief right away.
But you will undergo a cure." This cure of his consisted of
I do not know how many drinks of whiskey. After having di
gested the captain's cure, I reported to our Commander-in-
Chief. And I found that our squadron was called back from
the front lines to join the Commander-in-Chief 's personal
bodyguard. Some of them were in the city of Sebastopol, not
in the fighting units anymore. And we were one of the units
in the personal bodyguard of General Wrangell. And that
lasted about two months. When the general, total evacuation
of the Crimea was ordered by General Wrangell, we realized
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the situation was untenable. Whole remnants of the Whites
and the population had to be saved from the bloodbath and
leave the last little spot of Russian territory to the
advancing Reds. About that evacuation I will speak later.
My squadron joins the personal bodyguard of General Wrangell
So, on September 17, 1920, I was back in Sebastopol,
coming from Yalta on a British destroyer, and I had a reunion
with my fellow officers, with our fighting squadron that were
just ordered back to Sebastopol from the front lines to join
the personal bodyguard of General Wrangell. It was a happy
reunion. Of course, everyone of us, including most of the
enlisted men, at the bottom of their hearts, realized that
the situation of the Whites on the Crimea was hopeless. It
was the beginning of the end. Ant it was a great relief for
everyone to be back in Sebastopol and not anymore on the
fighting lines north of the Crimea, where the situation was
hopeless and everybody understood it, but nobody ever spoke
of it or even mentioned it.
But being back in the city of Sebastopol had also its
shady, uncomfortable results. Being in a city, there was
still some semblance of social life, and that demanded cash
in every officer's pocket. And that was just not there. The
official wages that we received could cover maybe one outing,
a very little one, at one of the restaurants that still
existed in Sebastopol. We realized rapidly that officers,
as long as they were still on the front fighting lines, were
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heros. We, back at the rear, were penniless, undesirable
paupers. The situation was really tragic, even more so
because back in the rear there were men, in civilian clothes -
God knows who they were, they were obviously of the age to be
drafted - and those fellows had any amount of money in their
pockets, and could give parties, entertain many girls; and
we were occasionally invited to such parties as, so-to-say,
very poor relatives. And poor relatives are always distant
relatives.
Now, our squadron was located in barracks outside the
outskirts of the city of Sebastopol. For the first time, our
unit was being sent on duty to guard the Governor's Palace,
occupied by the commander-in-chief , General Wrangell. I was
assigned to be the first one to lead that unit to the Palace
and take over the guard duties for twenty-four hours.
General Wrangell invited to his lunch table the officer
of the guard every day. This time, it happened to be me.
I sat at the far end of the table, presided over by General
Wrangell. The commander of all his bodyguard, composed
mostly of Cossack units, was Colonel Upornikov. Upornikov
had just reported our safe arrival to Sebastopol, our
location in those barracks, and in the words of the report
from Upornikov to General Wrangell, everything was fine,
completely in order and nothing but roses and high spirit.
And at the table during lunch, Wrangell addressed me across
the table in a rather fatherly way - because he was a senior
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officer of the Horse Guards years ago - and he said to me,
"Well, now, how are you, and how do you feel in Sebastopol?"
And I started with the words, "Your Excellency, the beds in
the barracks have no mattresses, not even straw. The soldiers
are sitting or lying on naked boards. The windows, most of
them, have no glass in them, and the wind whistles through
our barracks."
Colonel Drisen, attached to Wrangell - and he knew me
since my childhood - was looking with terrible eyes at me.
Upornikov was shaking his beard, not knowing where to look.
At that moment, Wrangell stood up, hit the table with his
fist, and yelled, "Bring up a car, bring up my car! I will
investigate the situation in person right now." That was
typical of General Wrangell. And he did; and he came, unexpect
ed, to the barracks, and he found out that what I was saying
in my young ignorance of policies and diplomacy, that I was
right. That very same evening, all men had mattresses; and
glass was found somewhere, and everything was put in order.
But, of course, Upornikov hated me with all his might.
Wrangell had a bodyguard of Cossacks since the days he
was commanding the cavalry army on the Volga that consisted
mostly of Cossacks and units of the Caucasus Moslem mountaineers.
They were always envious about any units of the Imperial Guard
regiments. But they decided to be diplomatic, and they
arranged a bang party - officers only - and invited all of
us officers to that party. One of my fellow officers,
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nicknamed Jo jo, was once ago attached to those Moslem
mountaineer units, and they had the habit, when the party
progressed and much vodka was consumed, to enliven the party
by drawing their pistols and starting to shoot into the
ceiling. That replaced music for them. Of course, this
could eventually be a disaster, somebody shooting not in the
ceiling but hitting one of his fellow officers. It had
happened before, and it was strictly forbidden by General
Wrangell - and when he forbid something, he really meant it.
I knew the habit of my good friend Jo jo, to imitate those
Moslem mountaineers. And in the progress of the party, I
noticed that Jojo was already in the mood of imitating the
Moslem mountaineers. That would be a scandal, a disaster.
It would get reported to Wrangell, and Wrangell might even
demote him from his officer's rank, if not worse. So, I
stood up, and I wiggled back to the chair of my friend Jojo,
who had his heavy Colt in his scabbard. From the Colt there
was a leather string to the belt, so that all officers could
not drop eventually during hand to hand fighting their
revolver and loose it. So I took a sharp knife and I cut that
leather, and very gingerly I removed the Colt from the scab
bard of Jojo, and hid it in an adjacent room. Minutes later,
Jojo was completely in the mood and grabbed his Colt to start
shooting at the ceiling, and the Colt was not there. He was
furious. Who had dared be a saboteur and remove the pistol
from an officer's scabbard? But it was gone, and that was that
- 466 -
Then, the party continued, and the spirits became very, very
high. I was then a few days ago declared officially as being
fiance of Nadejda Scherbatov who lived in Yalta with her
parents, and I was in the mood of being a very good boy. So,
I did not want to continue that rough party, and I slipped
away to one of the adjacent rooms, where officers' cots stood
and where all officers of my squadron slept. I lay down
without undressing on my cot, and I almost fell asleep. But
my absence was suddenly noticed in the big dining room where
the party became more and more loud. Everybody was indignant
that I left the party, and they went in search of me. They
found me on my cot, and they demanded that I immediately re
join the party. I did not want to. They insisted, and then
I got mad, as I rarely, rarely do. Just over my cot, there
was my Cossack whip. I grabbed my Cossack whip, I pretended
to be completely drunk, not knowing what I was doing, I
closed my eyes, and I started hitting with my Cossack whip,
right and left, regardless of who I was hitting. All the
officers of the Wrangell bodyguard fled from me and left me
alone.
Now, as in all armies, every day there is a new password,
and a counter-password that is given to those who are supposed
to enter the Palace occupied by the commander-in-chief of the
headquarters. I was the officer on duty one day when one of
my men came up to me and reported that outside at the gates
of the Palace in the street there is a figure dressed up as
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a general in the Cossack uniform. He does not know the pass
word, and our sentinels will not let him pass, and he is
there in the street swearing and completely furious. What
should be done? So I went to the gates, and I recognized in
that person General Artifeksoff , head quartermaster of
Wrangell's general staff. I knew him personally, so of course
I recognized who he was. So I ordered my sentinels to let
him pass. According to regulations, a sentinel could accept
orders only from the commanding officer on duty - that was
me - or from General Wrangell in person. No other officer,
or general, had the right to give orders to a sentinel. So,
this general passed. And at lunch, where I was also present,
he complained to Wrangell about that sentinel not letting him
pass. Wrangell had a good laugh, and said to his general,
who was a personal friend of his, "Serves you right. Who
has to know that password, if it is not the General of the
headquarters? That sentinel and young Captain Stenbock were
completely right. You got what you deserve." So, I was very
happy to hear that.
We were getting some supplies, food and ammunition, from
the French, not any more from the British. And it became
known that a French Navy squadron would be visiting Sebastopol.
It so happened that that day when that squadron was expected,
I was again on duty. It was signaled that a squadron was close
and approaching. A Navy squadron, according to international
tradition, salutes a squadron of another nation by so-and-so
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many shots, blanks, of its cannons. A squadron salutes a
fortress, if it visits a fortress of another nation; and it
salutes the Head-of-State - in the old days, the Tsar - with
101 shots from a cannon. Now the squadron was out at sea,
we could see it on the horizon. It was led by a French heavy
dreadnaught of the French Admiral, the Admiral's flag was
waving, and approaching, and then the salute started. It was
very typical of Wrangell to want to see the squadron as soon
\
as possible, so he did not stay on the balcony of his head
quarters, but he climbed up on the roof of the palace. And
he stood there next to the chimney, and I stood right next
to him. The squadron started, boom, boom, the salute one
after the other; and Wrangell was counting the salutes. Would
there be the salute to the Russian Navy, to the fortress of
Sebastopol, or would there be a salute to the Head-of-State?
This was very, very important. It was not just for the ego
of General Wrangell. If there were the 101 salute for the
Head-of-State, that meant that France was recognizing him,
and all of us on the Crimea, as a sovereign state, and there
fore supplies would flow, and all questions of finances and
so on would be handled accordingly. Wrangell was counting
the salutes; and when he heard the one-hundred-and-f irst,
and last, salute, he beamed - not because he was so proud of
himself, but because that meant so much for all of us on the
Crimea.
That French squadron, led by that heavy French cruiser,
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called also dreadnaught, was under the command of the French
Admiral Dumesnil. He was married to a much younger woman,
and her maiden name was Fermor. She was a distant relative
of the Stenbock-Fermor family, and when the Admiral des
cended in Sebastopol from the ship, to pay his official
visit to Wrangell, his wife, Vera, wanted to know whether
a cousin of hers with the name of Fermor was there. There
was such a cousin among the officers of the White Army. And
of course, Wrangell immediately ordered some research to find
where that officer was, and some officers mixed up the names,
Fermor and Stenbock-Fermor, and I was found out and was told
that the. French Admiral of the fleet wants to see me. I was
mighty astonished, and I could not guess what it was all about.
Well, later I found out that there was a mixup of the names.
In Russia, there was a family of the Count Stenbock. Then,
there was a family of the Count Stenbock-Fermor. And in
addition to this there was the name of Fermor only. Of
course, there was a distant relationship between all those
families, and some of the members did not even know each other.
But once, while Rostov, the city, was still in the White Army's
hands, it happened that there was a lunch in one of the
restaurants of Rostov, and at that lunch there were present:
one Stenbock, two Stenbock-Fermor, and one Fermor. That was
quite an historical event, with all those names being re
presented at the same table.
As I mentioned, being in the bodyguard of Wrangell in
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Sebastopol was a blessing, because we realized that we were
completely safe, for the moment at least; but it was a mixed
blessing, because city life was going on, more or less, and
we had no finances to participate in that city life.
Everybody realized that that would not last very long. Winter
was upon us, and it so happened that winter came very early,
and with a big bang of icy winds and severe frost. Clothing
supplied to us by France, and before that also by England,
was intended for use by the French colonial troops in Africa
or the British in India. It was quite unsuitable for fighting
in the severe Russian winter.
The fighting line defending the Crimea ran along a narrow
strip of land. Then, to the east of that land, about twenty
miles long, there were marshes or swamps; and east of those
marshes there was a dam, the railroad tracks, and then a very
shallow Sea of Azov. Those marshes were supposed to be
impassable, but that was evidently not quite so. After a very
dry summer, the water in those marshes was low. There were
sandbanks, with a few bushes on them. Local people knew very
well the situation of the sandbanks, and it was possible to
wade, zig-zagging through those marshes from one sandbank to
another, eventually sometimes in water up to your shoulders;
but actually, they were passable for very small units. The
local people led Red scouting units, sometimes armed even
with machine guns that they were carrying in water-tight bags,
and they appeared unexpectedly on the Crimea and created a lot
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of trouble. That was the situation of those marshes in the
late fall of 1920. And when the sudden frost hit, that low
water in the marshes froze very rapidly, sometimes right to
the bottom of the marshes. The marshes became passable,
not only for infantry, but also for cavalry and even light
artillery. And so, the defense line of the Crimea, instead
of being twenty miles, became four or five times longer. It
was, so-to-say, fortified. I saw those fortifications. They
were very impressive along that little strip of land. But
otherwise, along the south border of those marshes, they were
rickety posts. There was barbed wire strung on those posts.
In places, the posts were simply lying on the ground. Anybody
could step over that barbed wire. By no stretch of the imagin
ation could that be called a fortified line of resistance.
Cossack cavalry units were patrolling the border of those
marshes, and they were rather negligent. By early November,
Red Army units were concentrated along our front lines, out
numbering us by more than twenty to one. They had the support
of all they could find to mobilize and bring down against the
Crimea; and they had the back supply possibilities all over
the Soviet Union. They could mobilize any amount of man
power and .have any amount of reserve units. We had no
reserve units whatsoever. Our fighting men numbered roughly
40,000. That would be in peacetime one infantry division.
So, it was realized by Wrangell - actually it was
realized long before, already in April when he took over the
command from General Denikin, and he mentioned already then
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that there was no chance for victory, but he could only
promise to save the honor of the Russian national flag and
all those who fled into the Crimea, help them escape from
Red terror. And long ahead of time, his plans were made.
All boats of the Russian Navy, and merchant boats, were order
ed and had a code to come immediately to all the ports of the
Crimea where that coded order would be given, so that the
troops could be embarked, and every civilian person who
wanted to leave with the troops could also be embarked. And
from the moment of the embarkation, Wrangell put in his order,
"I promise you absolutely nothing. We have no money, and we
go out to sea. We do not know which country, which port, will
accept us to land, and where that will be. We are leaving
into emptiness, just for the sake of saving lives of the last
White fighting units and of the population."
At Wrangell 's headquarters in Sebastopol, there were
regular meetings of the High Command, Wrangell 's assistant
generals, staff officers, and so on; and that happened about
once a week or even more often. I happened to be again officer
on duty that day at the palace with my men of the Horse Guard
squadron, and I knew that there had to be a meeting at
Wrangell 's headquarters, as so often happened before. Then,
to my great astonishment, I saw the two Archbishops living in
Sebastopol were invited to that meeting, and they arrived.
My sentinels saluted with their swords according to the
regulations of the Russian Imperial Army, that generals and
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high ranking people, including the clergy, had to be saluted.
But in my mind I had a thought. It was most unusual to
invite to a military council Archbishops, so the fact that
both Archbishops were invited meant something. I realized
that this was the beginning of the end. Archbishops had
also to have some instructions about evacuating themselves
and all the church believers, and maybe even some valuable
church belongings.
That was the last meeting at general headquarters of
Wrangell. The order of evacuation was being written down
and had to be published the next day. When I was relieved
of duty by another officer, I immediately went to the central
telephone-telegraph station of Sebastopol. Of course, I was
excited. I was surpassing my authority, but the situation
was such that I did not care. I came to the telephone
station, and bursting inside I said to the astonished people
there that I was an officer of Wrangell 's personal bodyguard.
And of course, they were scared. They sensed that some
thing very unusual was going to happen in the city. I demanded
that I be immediately given the direct telephone lines to
Yalta, and I got them. It was completely against all regulat
ions. And having the direct telephone lines of Yalta, I
demanded the telephone of the Scherbatov house, Selbilar.
I got it. On the other end of the telephone line, there was
my future father-in-law, Prince Paul Scherbatov. Of course,
I could not tell him directly, "Tomorrow all the Crimea will
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be evacuated." The official order was not yet published.
But I hinted at it very broadly. And, as was typical of him,
he did not want to understand what I was telling him. He
refused to grasp the tragedy of the moment. Fortunately,
his eldest daughter, my fiancee, understood perfectly well
what I was talking about.
At the time of this conversation, the commandant of
Yalta was Colonel Kolotinsky. Many years later, I met this
colonel in New York, where we were both emigres, and we
reminisced about the days in Yalta; and he confessed to me
that he was listening in to all the telephone conversations
between Sebastopol and Yalta. Well, that might have been in
the line of duty. And when he heard me, he knew who I was.
He knew I was in the bodyguard of Wrangell, he knew Paul
Scherbatov very well; and from my conversation with Selbilar
with my fiancee, he gathered that the Crimea was to be evacuated.
And he immediately started taking appropriate measures for the
evacuation. The official order of evacuation from headquarters
came to him only 48 hours later, but measures were being taken
on the basis of my conversation with my fiancee.
The troops had orders to retreat, fighting back as much
as possible to delay the advance of the Reds. Some regiments
were ordered to Sebastopol to be shipped out; other units were
ordered to other ports. About two days later, the troops were
in Sebastopol. Of course, I could not go to Yalta to help to
evacuate the Scherbatov family. I was on duty those days almost
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around the clock, with everybody else. When the units in
Sebastopol started boarding ships for evacuation, the French
Navy squadron under Admiral Dumesnil opened fire with all
the heavy guns of the French fleet anchored just outside
Sebastopol, and it was a sort of fire curtain protecting our
evacuation. White troops boarding ships ceased to be fighting
units, and the powerful fire of the French Navy made a kind
of a screen to prevent the Red hoards from rushing into Sebasto
pol, so-to-say, right on our heels. So, that was a. great help.
Tragedy at Selbilar
Serge Maltzov, second son-in-law of Princess Bariatinsky,
was a retired navy officer, the most handsome gentleman that
I ever met, and the nicest person ever. Unfortunately, he
was a hen-pecked husband and he could not talk back to his
wife. This fact produced a great drama when Yalta was being
evacuated. His wife had once been evacuated to Malta but she
did not like it there. She was abroad all right, but her means
were very restricted and maybe some British authorities did
not handle her as she was accustomed to, so the family came
back to the Crimea. When Yalta was being evacuated, she
decided to stay, not realizing the danger. She was very
idealistic and she said, "Well, the Communists and Bolsheviks
are also Russians. They would not harm us and our children."
At the moment of the evacuation, all the Scherbatov family
left, the Apraksin family left, but the Maltzov family stayed.
Therefore, the grandmother, my father's cousin, said "If one
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of my daughters stays, I will also stay." And because she
stayed, all the jewels belonging to her also remained with
her. When Yalta was overrun by the Reds, Maltzov and his
wife and old Princess Bariatinsky were shot point blank on
the balcony of their big home at Selbilar. Old Princess
Nadejda Bariatinsky was in a wheel chair, and she was bless
ing - that is, making the sign of the cross - in the direction
of her executioners. They decided that she had lost her mind
and was just senile. That was just- plain murder.
The house was looted, all the jewels seized, mostly
by the local prostitutes that accompanied the Communists.
They strutted around the streets of Yalta. The nurse that I
mentioned, stayed also and saved the three older Maltzov
children by hiding them and pretending that they were the
children of local servants, and then she managed to get them
out of Soviet Russia. I met her later and she told me that
it made her sick to see those prostitutes strutting around
the streets of Yalta wearing all those priceless jewels,
not even realizing the value of what they were wearing.
But probably somebody did realize, and those jewels vanished
forever.
One of the granddaughters of Princess Bariatinsky,
Helen, married many years later a very wealthy sugar industri
alist in Belgium. They travelled to many places and they
also went to Yalta. She asked to visit a house that used to
be called Selbilar. The agent of Intourist asked why she
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was interested in this particular house, which is now a home
for minor children. She said, "Because that house used to
belong to my grandmother and I grew up there." She got the
permission and she had a nice reception by the young doctor
and the nurses. They were all very much interested in the
past of this house. Stepping out on the balcony, Helen said,
"Here my grandmother, my uncle, and his wife were shot."
The doctor exclaimed, "What a tragedy! We heard about it.
Who shot them, the Whites or the Reds?" Helen's husband was
attempting to pull her skirt to hint that she should not be
too talkative for it might endanger them, but Helen was never
a girl to be stopped. She said, "Doctor, I am surprised at
your poor knowledge of the history of the Soviet Union. "
Naturally, the doctor jumped at such an accusation. He said,
"What do you mean?" To that, Helen said, "You should have
known that in the year 1921 there were no more Whites in all
of the Crimea." The doctor understood and changed the topic
of their conversation.
There was in Yalta a beautiful cathedral. The cathedral
was open and church services went on as before the Revolution,
in spite of the official anti-religion propaganda. Helen
went to this church, told the young priest who she was, and
asked if there could be a memorial service for her grand
mother and her aunt and uncle. The priest said, "Of course.
After the liturgy tomorrow there will be a memorial service
as you ask." There was a service, and during that service
- 478 -
the deacon of the church proclaimed in a thunderous voice,
"Let us pray for the peace of the souls of the assassinated
martyrs, Princess Nadejda and her relatives." That was the
official text used during a memorial service, but that it was
used in a cathedral in Yalta, now in the Soviet Union, was
rather unusual and remarkable, definitely an anti-party
line. Nothing happened to that priest.
We leave Russia
There was in the port of Sebastopol a Greek large merchant
ship, under a Greek flag; and the purpose of that ship was to
load barley for a Greek merchant, because the Crimea had a
great surplus of barley and the Reds would take it anyhow.
So, that merchant bought that barley for a song, and wanted
to put it on his ship. And he refused bluntly to take any
soldiers , refugees, that wanted to be evacuated, because he
realized that coming into Constantinople with refugees aboard,
he would have to go into quarantine. Under quarantine, the
ships have yellow flags, and nobody can leave the ships for
reasons of health security. That would take a long time, and
that Greek merchant would be loosing money. Wrangell very
politely invited that Greek merchant to lunch, with his wife.
Aboard that Greek ship were also the children of that Greek
merchant. And after lunch, Wrangell said to the Greek
merchant, "You are now under arrest, in my headquarters."
The fellow tried to wave his Greek flag, and tried to have
consideration taken that he was a foreigner under a sovereign
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flag of Greece. Wrangell said, "I do not care about any
flag now, I care only about the evacuation of the remnants
of my army and all the refugees. You are going to stay here
with your wife - and your children are aboard - and you
will not return until all Russian refugees and army men are
taken aboard your ship. You will be the last man to return
to your Greek ship." That was typically Wrangell. For being
such a leader, and such a father to everybody, in spite of
the evacuation, he was greeted by cheering crowds, cheering
soldiers, wherever he appeared. He went aboard the one and
only Russian cruiser that remained from the large Russian
Black Sea fleet, and he went from port to port. There were
five ports of evacuation, Sebastopol, Yalta, and three others;
and every single unit knew the ship it had to board. It was
a great difference from the chaotic and traumatic evacuation
of Novorssisk.
At the time of the evacuation, part of Wrangell 's body
guard was mounted and detached to chase big units of deserters
and to chase Red army units that were in the mountains of the
Crimea. And so, at the moment of the evacuation, Wrangell 1 s
bodyguard had only just our Horse Guard squadron. As I said,
Wrangell was aboard the cruiser, and he was cruising from
port to port to supervise the evacuation. In one of the ports,
there was some confusion. Some units got panicky and un
ruly and attempted to board the ships out of turn. It was a
dangerous situation, and it reminded many of the tragedy of
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the evacuation of Novorossisk. But the cruiser entered the
port and Wrangell was standing in all his height, in his
Cossack uniform, at the prow of the ship with a bull-horn.
He addressed the crowd in the port. Probably very few in
the crowd could hear him or understand his words. But just
his appearance there quieted everybody down, and order was
restored.
Half of our squadron was with General Wrangell on that
cruiser. The other half was still in the palace under my
command. I was the last one to leave the palace. The day
before, I was in the palace at night. Of course, I was all
dressed for any eventual happening. Quiet reigned in the
palace. Then I heard upstairs some terrible crashing and
terrible noise. So, I rushed upstairs. The noise came from
the once-upon-a-time ballroom of the palace. I wondered,
what could be happening now, at night, in the ballroom? Well,
all the floor of the ballroom was covered by a relief map
of the Crimea which had been made by some engineers in the
Wrangell units. On all that floor was just that relief map,
with lines of resistance, where the units were located, and
so forth. And what did I see? The ballroom was empty
except for one person, and that person was Wrangell. He was
walking on the relief map, and with his feet trampling that
map to pieces. So, that was the noise; and again, a very
typical gesture from such a personality as Wrangell.
Next day, I left the palace with about sixty men and three
- 481 -
officers. Our orders were to go to the port and to board a
transport ship that was waiting, not just for us, but for a
mass of other units. On my way to the port, I was marching
along the street along a supply depot that was being abandoned,
and looting of the supply depot had already started by city
rabble of Sebastopol. Well, anyhow, we could not take that
depot with us; but somehow, the fact of the looting angered
me. And I stopped there with my men and drove away the looters
It was a supply of mostly cigarettes. And of course, all my
men, having driven the looters away, stuffed as many cigarettes
in their pockets as they could. That lasted for at least a
half-hour, or a whole hour - I do not remember - and when we
came to the port, all ships were gone, including the one that
we had to board. There was not a single ship in the port
left, and the Red Army was moving into the city of Sebastopol.
So, we were in a rather uncomfortable situation. We had to
leave, to go to sea. So, revolver in hand, we requisitioned
six fisherman boats that could hold about fifteen men each.
With us we had two heavy machine guns. And we went out to
sea in those row-boats. We heard rumors that to the east of
Sebastopol, at a little seaside resort, called Balaklava, some
ships were still anchored. I became seasick. And I vaguely
saw a British destroyer going full speed out to sea; and I
thought, "Well, if the British destroyers are leaving full-
speed, probably we will find the shores of Balaklava empty."
But, when we finally reached that place, I saw a British
- 482 -
destroyer still anchored at the shores of Balaklava; and with
our requisitioned rowboats we rowed up to that destroyer.
- 483 -
CHAPTER V
LEAVING RUSSIA
- 484 -
Last retreat - the war comes to an end for me
Now my memory brings me back to the moment when the
Whites were abandoning their last foothold on the Crimea.
We went out to sea in rowboats and our rowboats were lying
alongside the British destroyer "Seraph". When I reported
to the Captain, whom I had met before in Yalta, and I had
had many nice evenings with him during which he had learned
to appreciate Gypsy songs, the Captain recognized me
immediately and told me, my three officers, and all of our
men to get aboard with all the arms we had. The deck of
"Seraph" represented a most unusual sight: there were crowds
of civilians, men, women, and children, and laidies ' elegant
handbags were hanging on all the guns. Captain McNab invited
me to his cabin and showed me the text of the orders from
the British Admirality, ordering him to take aboard exclusive
ly British subjects. Showing me these orders, he said,
"Now look at my deck," and he added, "I would like to find
a single officer in all the British Navy who would accuse me
for doing what I have done." He was just saving everybody
he could save. Then he told me that my half-squadron had to
be disarmed. Naturally you cannot keep a Russian cavalry
squadron armed aboard a British destroyer, but Captain McNab
was a gentleman if there ever was one, a chivalrous officer.
He told me, "All your men's arms will be put in a certain
place on the deck of my destroyer and there will be one of my
sailors to guard them and there will be one of your men, in
- 485 -
full uniform and armed, to guard your arms together with my
British sailor." That was a really grand gesture of Captain
McNab. The destroyer then left for Constantinople, crossing
the Black Sea at full speed. Captain McNab attempted some
consolation; he said he realized how he would be feeling if
he were leaving the last shores of his homeland, headed for
nowhere. He tried to comfort me with large amounts of whiskey
and gin, or whatever it was. However, I was in such a
strained nervous condition that no amount of alcohol could
affect me, I remained absolutely sober.
In the early hours of dawn, when we were approaching
the Straits of Bosporus, Captain McNab told me that it was
a beautiful sight, especially at the break of dawn. He invited
me up to his command bridge and there we stood together. As
I have said, the destroyer was going full speed and lots of
water was churning at its prow. The land was quite close and
all of a sudden the destroyer began to tremble, like a man
in a high fever, because there had been given the command,
"Full speed back." It was no wonder that with such a change
the destroyer was trembling all over. What had happened?
Well, the navigating officer had made a mistake. He took
one of the bays of the shore for the entrance to the Bosporus
and he almost landed his destroyer on the rocks near that
entrance. Well, full speed back, then return, and we were
really entering the Bosporus at a careful low speed.
At the entrance there was a French gunboat. We were
- 486 -
passing quite close to it and the French Navy officer called
out in French, "Where are you going?" Captain McNab, from
his command post, called back in English that he was going
to his Admiral to report. The French officer called out again,
"Go to the Bay of Moda." This was a large bay in the Straits
where all ships carrying refugees had to drop anchor, a
measure to prevent disease from spreading to the port and the
city. This was quite normal and natural in peacetime, but
McNab repeated, "I am going to report to my Admiral." And
the commander of the little French gunboat yelled back,
"Go to Moda or I am going to sink you." It was like a little
pup barking at a great dane. Captain McNab did not answer
but he took his pipe out of his mouth and he spat overboard
in the direction of the French gunboat. I was quite amazed
at such friendly relations between allies. So we went right
up into the harbor and the destroyer anchored in the civilian
part of it. Enormous British battleships were at anchor in
the Straits of Bosporus under the flag of a British Admiral
whose name I have forgotten. But that can be very easily
established by research. I am not a historian and I am not
doing any research, I am just recounting what I remember.
Having come back from reporting to the Admiral, Captain
McNab declared that I could go ashore with all my men and all
our arms. We were the first unit of the Wrangell army to
reach Constantinople. The fleet of refugees, a great many
ships, was moving very slowly because they were overloaded
- 487 -
and therefore very low in the water. Fortunately, I would
say miraculously for that time of the year, the Black Sea
was as calm as a lake. If there had been a storm all those
ships would have gone down. Wrangell's cruiser was
accompanying the ships, also at very low speed. They
arrived in Constantinople about two days later.
So I was the first from that army to land in Constantin
ople. In my naivete I was thinking that we Russians, represent
ing, as it were, Imperial Russia, were allies and had equal
rights with the French and the British. That was my mistake.
Anyhow, the moment we landed I called out into the crowd
in Russian, "Who is there who can speak Russian?" An elederly
Greek came forward and I asked him, "Do you know the way to
the Russian Embassy through all these crooked streets?" And
he said, "Yes, Sir, of course." So I said, "Well, then lead
us to the Embassy." My men were in formation, dragging be
hind them two heavy machine guns , and at the head of the
formation there were a couple of singers (most Russian
soldiers were wonderful singers) , and they began singing
Russian songs. And so we started marching through the streeets
of Constantinople.
We had gone for about two blocks or so when I saw a
column of French covered trucks coming in our direction. On
the runningboard of the front truck stood a Russian general,
the military attache of the Russian Embassy, waving his hands
excitedly and from far ahead yelling to me, "Captain, Captain,
- 488 -
what are you doing?" Well, I came up to him, keeping cool,
saluted according to regulation, and I said to him, "Your
Excellency, I am leading to the Embassy the half -squadron
of the personal bodyguard of General Wrangell." He kept
yelling excitedly that the French occupation authorities,
the Italian occupation authorities, the Greeks, and anyone
who represented occupation authorities, were officially
protesting against the fact that a Russian armed unit was
marching through Constantinople. I realized then that we
were no longer considered allies with equal rights. Not
everyone had the mind and the traditions of Captain McNab.
We were then pushed into those French covered trucks and
driven through the city up to the Embassy.
The Russian Embassy represented a whole complex of very
large buildings. There was the main building of the Embassy;
the ballroom in that building had been converted into a
hospital and it was overcrowded; there was a cast-iron fence
all around that complex. The yard and gardens of the Embassy
were filled with an indescribable crowd of refugees: civilians,
officers, and soldiers, and God only knows who might have been
among them. Quite recently, after General Denikin had left
the Crimea and handed over the command to Wrangell, he had
lodged at the Embassy with his chief of staff, who was very
unpopular and had been accused of being the main culprit of
the disaster of the White Armies. It was even rumored that
he had contcts with the Reds, but that was never proven.
- 489 -
Anyhow, there was a very excited officer, probably more or
less out of his mind, who, on the grounds of the Embassy shot
this general, the head of Denikin's headquarters, point blank.
After that the British authorities moved Denikin and his
family away aboard one of the British battleships anchored
in Constantinople in order to avoid further murders and
political unrest.
The first thing I did with my sixty men was to post guards at
the entrance of the Embassy and to clear the yard and the
garden of that nondescript crowd, letting in only people who
had some real business. Two days later Wrangell disembarked
in Constantinople with the other half of his Horse Guards
and came to the Embassy. The Ambassador offered him part of
his own apartment but Wrangell, with his wife and three small
children, preferred to live aboard a small yacht that in the
old days had been the yacht of the Port Commander of Sevasto
pol and was never intended to cross the Black Sea. Anything
that could swim had been used to get people out. There was
also a contraption used to clear the bottom of the port (I
think it was called a dredge) and even that, overloaded with
civilian refugees and troops managed to cross all of the Black
Sea.
I do not know the exact figures. They can be found in
many libraries including, of course, the Hoover Library, but
as well as I remember the number of refugees was roughly
300,000 people and among that number there was a so-called
- 490 -
army of 40,000 men who still had small arms and machine guns.
Of course horses and heavy arms had been left behind. The
time it took all those ships to cross the Black Sea was ex
tremely trying. The rest rooms were in use all the time,
day and night. People stood in long lines to get a chance
to use them and quite often the time for them was too long.
So you can imagine the conditions and despair on board all
those ships. There was a shortage of drinking water and
people had no water to drink for two days. This was the worst
and most difficult to bear. The first thing the French and
British boats did was to come alongside the refugee ships
anchored in Moda and supply them with drinking water. There
were many old people and many children among these refugees.
Well, I was one of the officers guarding the Embassy with
my squadron. We were considered extremely lucky by all the
rest because we were in the center of the city, we were
supplied with food, and each of us officers got one Turkish
pound per day in cash because we had sometimes to go out into
the city. One Turkish pound in those days, to us refugees,
was probably worth more than a million dollars to Rockefeller
today. Nobody had any cash whatsoever. The infantry troops
of the White Army were brought to a small peninsula along
the Dardanelles, called Gallipoli. It was a large sandbank
with a half-ruined little Turkish city in the middle of it.
There the camp of what remained of the White Army was established.
That camp and the time spent there have been described in many
memoirs of both Russians and foreigners. I am not going to
- 491 -
describe it and besides, I was never in Gallipoli myself.
I was one of the lucky ones stationed at the Embassy in
Constantinople.
All the Cossack troops were disembarked on an island in
the Aegean Sea, Lemnos. Disembarking the Cossacks on an
island was a wise measure of precaution because it made it
impossible for them to leave singly or in groups. All of
these men were in despair; they had no future. They got
rations, sometimes only half -rations, from the supplies of
the French Army and the French considered all these men,
including the civilian refugees, a great nuisance and a pain
in the neck. What to do with them and where to send them?
They could not keep on feeding them there forever. Opposition
toward them grew in the French Parliament. Why was French
tax money wasted on those refugees and remnants of the White
Army? Now, from the French point of view they were completely
useless. Great pressure was exerted, especially on the Cossacks
to make them return to their home country. None of them knew
any foreign language of course and what would they do, where
would they gain a living in the future? Why not go back?
Many agitators were paid to talk them into going back.
Several hundreds of those Cossacks did decide to go back.
The French were very happy and gave them extra rations for
the journey. They boarded an Italian freighter and the
freighter started moving northward through the Straits of
Bosporus. But General Wrangell's yacht was lying in the
- 492 -
Straits and the Italian freighter passed very close to it.
Wrangell stood on the command bridge of the yacht and
through a bullhorn he addressed the Cossacks, telling them
that they were making the mistake of their lives. Hundreds
of those Cossacks jumped overboard to get off the freighter
and swam ashore in spite of the strong current of the
Bosporus, only because they had seen Wrangell and heard his
voice. That made a terrific impression on the British High
Command. Even the French scratched their heads and said,
"We wish we had a general in France like him." It also made
a great impression on the American Red Cross, which was
supplying us at that time with food and medicine in large
amounts .
Among the troops camping on that empty, barren Gallipoli
sandbank in tents, there were some hotheads who planned to
storm and sack Constantinople. There were only a few of them
but they could have provoked a catastrophy. 40,000 desperate
men with only small arms could march in less than a day to
the city of Constantinople and the French black African troops
that the French still had in the city would have been no
match for those desperate 40,000 Russians. And what could
the British Navy's heavy guns do? Of course they could fire
point blank into Constantinople and make rubble out of the
whole city in no time, but that would not be a wise measure.
In fact, the French and British realized that they were power
less to stop the eventual danger of 40,000 men getting
- 493 -
completely out of hand and going berserk.
Fortunately, there was General Wrangell, who managed to
be as popular as ever, and at his right hand was another
general who was with the troops at Gallipoli and handled them
exactly as if this camp were somewhere on the outskirts of
St. Petersburg in the days of the Russian Empire: exercises,
drills, even parades were going on all the time. This general's
name was Kutepov and he had a personality not less than
Wrangell himself. Later, when he was in Paris, the Soviet
secret police kidnapped him.
All ships of the Russian flag that left the Crimea, were
directed to a French port in the Mediterranean, and they
represented a certain value. The French took them over, and
instead of paying for them, they just fed that White army.
Personally, General Wrangell was in Constantinople in
the Russian Embassy, where I was one of the officers of the
squadron of the Horse Guards that protected the territory of
the embassy that was considered sovereign Russian territory.
The French went into all kinds of tricks to prevent General
Wrangell from joining the troops in Gallipoli, because they
knew his popularity and what might have happened.
Then, one day, they decided to undermine the prestige
of General Wrangell, and to disarm the guard, our Horse Guard
squadron, and to disarm, maybe physically, Wrangell himself.
But they did not reckon with the personality and the character
of General Peter Wrangell. I was officer of the day when
- 494 -
French troops appeared on the streets outside the gates of
the embassy. Wrangell gave me personal orders: "If the
French troops break in and enter the territory of the embassy,
I order fire." All we had was about sixty men armed with
rifles and four heavy machine guns. Two machine guns were
positioned at the main entry of the embassy, and two on the
other side near where there was the embassy garden, just in
case. I was in the court of that embassy, ready to execute
the orders of General Wrangell. It was quite a strenuous
moment, a moment that lasted maybe four hours. Finally, the
French troops on the other side of the gate of the embassy
yard left, quiet was restored, and our machine guns were
removed. The French understood. -
As to my arrival in Constantinople aboard the destroyer
"Seraph", it had repercussions in the British Parliament.
The opposition of His Majesty's government questioned the
First Lord of the Admiralty, then Winston Churchill, as to
how it was that a British destroyer had brought to Constan
tinople an armed unit that was not British and so many
refugees besides? Winston Churchill replied with a speech,
saying that indeed Captain McNab, the commander of that
destroyer, had grossly exceeded his authority and had not
followed the orders of the Admiralty and therefore he was now
demoted from the command of the destroyer "Seraph". The
opposition accepted this and was satisfied. A week later
Captain McNab was promoted to the rank of Admiral and given
- 495 -
command of a heavy cruiser. That was very typical of Winston
i
Churchill.
Istambul (Turkey) 1920-21
Embassies (usually big buildings) and the grounds they
occupy were considered as the territory of the country they
represented. The diplomatic word was "exterritorial". So
the large building with all its annexes, gardens, front yard,
the church in the embassy building was considered as being
Russian territory. This idea was applied in all countries
to all embassies of other countries. I have described in
another chapter that upon disembarking in Istambul from
the British destroyer "Seraph" under the command of Captain
McNab, I led about 60 men and 3 officers, armed with rifles and
heavy machine guns to the Russian Embassy, directed through
the streets of Istambul by a local Greek man that volunteered
to show us the way. We were met by a column of French army
trucks and standing in one of them was General Chertkoff ,
senior military attache to the embassy. He was nervously
gesticulating and yelling at me, "What are you doing,
Captain, what are you doing?!" I duly reported that I was
leading part of General Wrangell's bodyguard to the embassy.
All other White Army units and General Wrangell himself were
still aboard ships. I was the first to land in Istambul,
thanks to the rapid voyage of the destroyer "Seraph".
Upon orders of General Chertkoff my small unit was
tucked away in the French trucks, tarpaulin covers drawn
- 496 -
tight so that nobody could see that a Russian armed unit
was in Istambul. I was surprised at all this nervousness
of Gneral Chertkoff. I was very naive and considered
that a Russian unit had every same right as our allies, the
French, the British and the Italians.
Well, we got out of the French trucks in the yard of
our embassy. Here we did have the right to be. It was
"de jure" exteritorial, that is, in theory Russian ground
and all diplomatic qualms of General Chertkoff calmed down.
My soldiers were lodged in half underground cellars , hastily
arranged for habitation and a field kitchen started working
and food was brought, which was bought with money advanced
by the embassy. It was all most unusual and the embassador
never expected to have a "garrison" i n the embassy. But he
was very soon realizing that the embassy grounds needed
armed protection from more and more growing crowds of refugees.
General Wrangell arrived and lived on a small yacht, anchored
in the Bosporus. This yacht was "accidentally" rammed and
sunk by an Italian freighter. A young navy officer in command
of this yacht remained at his command post and sank with his
ship, according to old imperial Russian navy tradition. His
young wife became the widow of a hero although she was in a
process of divorce to marry a very rich American businessman.
Black suited her very well and she soon left for the U.S.A. !
General Wrangell lost all his personal belongings and files
of his headquarters of commander of the White Army. Fortunately
- 497 -
when "the accident" took place, General Wrangell and his
family happened to be at the embassy. That is where he now
remained in part of the large apartment of the embassador.
The huge ballroom of the embassy was converted into a ward
for wounded soldiers. Many wounded found excellent care,
thanks to the American Red Cross.
In Paris a change of the government came about and the
new French government decided to disperse the remnants of
the White Army by all means. They considered it a nuisance
and even a danger. Disarming this "Army" of roughly 40,000
men was planned, also disarming the bodyguard of Wrangell
at the embassy. General Wrangell refused and added that he
considers any attempt at disarming his bodyguard as a
personal insult! The day came when French colonial troops -
Algerians - commanded by French officers stood on the main
street "Pera" just outside the huge iron double gates to the
embassy.
I was officer of the day and Wrangell ordered: "If the
French pass or break down the gates, I order - fire!" We had
our machine guns, protected by sandbags, positioned at the
front door to the embassy and my gunmen had a finger on the
trigger. The distance from us to the French was about 100
yards. We would have mowed them down. But they were many
and would have overrun us and a short hand to hand battle
would have occurred. But the French remained outside for
some time and then returned to their barracks.
- 498 -
Two or three months later most of the White Army left
for Serbia and Bulgaria with their arms and became border
guards in Serbia. General Wrangell also left.
We are refugees in Constantinople
Constantinople was overflowing with refugees, all of
them absolutely penniless, and finding a job was completely
hopeless. Fortunately the American Red Cross had organized
feeding points where anyone who had a document certifying
that he was a Russian refugee, either civilian or military,
could get a hearty meal once a day. One meal a day kept them
from dying of starvation. And the Turkish population, to the
great surprise of everybody, felt great sympathy for the
Russians, but I cannot say the same about most of the Greek
population. They could have been expected to be kind because
Russians and Greeks had the same religion but the Greeks were
often extremely greedy. On the first day, boatloads of
Greeks came up to the ships in Moda Bay and the food they
brought was raised on board with strings. They demanded
jewels in exchange for bread. If one had no jewels they
even took gold wedding rings for loaves of bread.
I knew somewhere in Moda Bay there would be ships which
had come from Yalta and that on one of those ships there would
be my fiancee's family, the Scherbatovs. I finally found them
on one of those ships.
When Yalta was evacuated, Prince Paul evacuated in grand
style. I think that among the millions who left Russia in
- 499 -
those days he was the only one who left with his wife, eight
children, an English governess, three maids, a butler, and a
huge amount of heavy trunks, not to mention small handbags.
This was indeed a princely evacuation, in princely style.
I had a motorboat, belonging to the Embassy; how I managed
to get it I do not remember. It was just my luck, or my
energy, or my desire to find that family. Aboard that
motorboat I was going from one ship to another seeking the
Scherbatov family. Finally I came alongside a ship and right
at the edge of the deck I saw the second brother of my
fiancee, who was then a boy of about thirteen. He was lying
there, probably very hungry, and without even moving he said
in a very calm voice, "Oh, and so Vanya has arrived," as if
it were the most natural thing, my arriving alongside that
refugee ship in the Embassy's motorboat. He would have said
the same thing if I had entered any day his parents' house.
But it produced a sensation.
As I had decided to find them and take them off the ship,
I had to have some place for them to live. All the houses
were overcrowded and there was no room, no house, nothing at
all in the whole city for rent, so I went to the Moslem part
of Istanbul. There, by chance, I found a house that belonged
to a Turkish doctor. He was a young man who had studied in
Paris and could speak some broken French. I explained to him
who I was. Probably the name, the title, and the fact that
I was an officer coming from the Russian Embassy to look for
- 500 -
a house for the family of a Russian Princess impressed that
young doctor. He agreed to rent his whole house. It was a
three-story house and the rent was quite reasonable. "Only,"
the doctor said, "I will rent my house on one condition. I
know that many of these Russian families have very large
trunks and the trunks of a prince are probably extremely
large. The trunks have to stay on the ground floor because
the house cannot stand such heavy trunks being carried up
stairs." So you can imagine what kind of a house it was.
In America I would call it a shack, a three-story shack of
boards , but there was no choice and I accepted the condition
about the trunks .
Then I went back in the motorboat to take the family off
the ship, but the ships were under quarantine and leaving
the ship could be done only by persuasion, which meant a bribe.
The captain of the ship was very happy to receive a bribe and
get rid of some passengers from his overloaded vessel. The
more of those undesirable passengers he got off the ship the
better for him.
But how to board my boat? It was dancing on the waves
of the Bosporus and the only way to get off the ship was by
a rope ladder. The children, including my fiancee, came
down that rope ladder like monkeys and even their old English
governess made it. She was over eighty, but being English
and seeing all the British fleet there, she was so overjoyed
that she did not hesitate to climb down the ladder in spite
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of her age. Only the prince and his wife remained on board
the ship. She was holding in her arms their youngest daughter,
barely one year old. Obviously, being a lady of around
forty, she could not descend that ladder holding the baby in
her arms, she would have surely fallen down into the water
and the child with her. There was a moment of hesitation and
all of a sudden one of the Turkish sailors on that ship
dashed up to my future mother-in-law and literally tore the
baby away from her and, holding the baby, he jumped overboard.
He did it like a cat, and landed straight in my boat. Those
Turkish sailors had their own ways and skills at handling
any situation involving boats and ships; he was absolutely
sure of what he was doing. I had seen such landings done
in the Caucasus. Fortunately, my future mother-in-law did
not faint. Seeing her baby down there in the boat gave her
courage to go down that ladder herself. Then the Prince came
down and we started for Constantinople.
The whole family settled in the house I had rented for
them. There were four rooms on each of the three floors and
in the middle was a so-called hall. From that hall there
was a discreet door leading to a place indispensable for
mankind but that place was a Turkish one. There was just a
hole in the floor and next to that hole there stood a big
jug of water that you could use to wash down everything that
needed washing down. It was not very comfortable and of
course rather unusual for people not accustomed to Turkish
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houses. Besides, we discovered the same evening that the
house was infested with vermin, bedbugs. Every house in
Constantinople was infested with these bugs, there were
crowds of them. When you went to bed and the light was out,
they started to attack you. There were so many that you could
kill any amount of them and still more came. Finally all of
us got used to falling asleep with those bugs prowling and
biting all over us. The poor one year old baby suffered
most because her delicate skin was . very much appreciated by
those bugs. The poor child looked like one big bite. At that
time there were no disinfecting sprays available and even if
the house were somehow disinfected, the bugs would immediately
reappear from the neighboring houses. How much DDT, if it
had existed then, would have been required to rid all of
Constantinople from bedbugs? Even the American Red Cross
could not manage that situation.
.
The job-situation is hopeless
In the years 1920-1921, Constantinople was overcrowded
with refugees after the White Army had left the Crimea and
many, many thousands of civilians had flooded the city. It
was nearly impossible to find a job. One of my cousins,
who knew English very well, found a job with the British
military police. These policemen went around hunting mostly
for drug pushers and this was a very dangerous job because,
of course, they were in permanent contact with the worst and
lowest kind of people. This cousin was very clever at finding
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drugs hidden anywhere. He had a kind of instinct like a good
hunting dog which smells a pheasant or partridge somewhere
in the bushes. Wherever some drugs were hidden, he almost
could smell the stuff at a distance. When the drug was
confiscated, of course, he was rewarded by a certain percent
age in cash, British or Turkish pounds, but alas also in some
amount of those drugs. That was his undoing because he
became an addict himself to such an extent that he had to be
relieved of his duties. Later I lost sight of him but I
heard that he finished his life in North Africa, being killed
in some kind of a drug raid.
Therefore, my future mother-in-law was dead set against
my accepting any kind of a job with the British military
police in Constantinople. I think it was my new friend, the
Greek, who had first led me through the city and who had
kept in touch with me and been very helpful, who told me
eventually that he had a job for me in a night club. It was
a place where all kinds of people gathered and spent their
time eating and playing bingo. Some of these people were
probably very disreputable. I was to lead the bingo and I
was very happy to be one of the very few people who had any
job at all. Bingo was not as it is now with all those
electric gadgets. I stood up in that club from eight in the
evening until two at night, with a little break of half an
hour for a free meal. In front of me I had a stack of big
cards with numbers on them and I had to pick one of those
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cards, hold it high to show the number, and call out the
number in Russian, English, French, Greek, and Turkish. I
can still remember some numbers in all those languages. For
that job I was paid one Turkish pound each night, the
equivalent of one American dollar, but my job did not last
very long because that night club, like most night clubs,
went broke.
There were other kinds of so-called self employment.
Two officers of the Russian General Staff went into that kind
of business. They were good psychologists and realized
that many people, Russians, Turks, even French, English, and
Americans, would want to hear, out of curiosity what their
fate would be in the nearest future. So one of those
colonels obtained somehow and from soemwhere a coffin. They
rented a sleazy room in the European part of Constantinople,
and one of the officers lay down inside the coffin. He made
a small breathing hole and the coffin was closed. Three
candles were burning at the head of the coffin. The other
colonel sat at the door of the room and sold tickets for small
change in Turkish money. Hundreds and hundreds of customers
bought tickets to enter that room and to listen to a deep
voice out of the coffin telling them their futures. The
colonel in the coffin got quite hoarse and completely
exhausted by having to use his imagination all the time,
but they made money .
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Pirofessor Whitimore helps young students
I have had the good fortune throughout my life to meet
several great humans, professors from different countries.
One of them was the American, Professor Whitimore, from Boston.
His field was archeology and he came to the city of
Constantinople, which centuries ago was Byzantium, to study
archeology. One of the greatest miracles of construction was
the cathedral built in the sixth century. The cathedral was
huge. I was in it many times and how, in the sixth century,
the builders managed to erect that one big dome, covering all
of the cathedral, was a miracle maybe even for today. In the
sixth century they did not have all the heavy equipment that
we use now, ladders, cranes, and what not to lift things up
into the air. How they succeeded nobody knows. Legend from
the sixth century says that angels came flying down from the
heavens carrying the big dome, the cupola, and put it down
on the building of that church. That is, of course, a legend
but by the grace of God Almighty the builders succeeded in
building that cathedral and it has stood for ages and ages.
In those days the inside of that cathedral was decorated
by little pieces of all colors, mosaic, and a copy of that
kind of design exists today in the Stanford University Chapel.
It was copied from the mosaics of the Cathedral of Saint
Sophie, which had once been the center of Christianity. When
the Turks stormed Constantinople, the last defenders, led by
the emperor of Byzantium, took refuge in that cathedral, and
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they all were slaughtered by the invaders. I, myself, have
seen the imprint of a hand high up on one of the white columns.
The legend is that the leader of the Turks rode into that
cathedral, his horse walking on a thick layer of slaughtered
people, and he put his hand on that white column and his hand
was bloody from slaughtering; the imprint of the Turk's bloody
hand has remained for centuries. The Moslem religion does
not allow the representation of human features so something
had to be done about those beautiful mosaic works with all
the saints and angels and Jesus Christ. When the Turks turned
the cathedral into a mosque, they covered all that mosaic work
with a layer of white plaster, and thus inadvertently preserv
ed them for future generations.
When in 1920 Constantinople was under occupation by the
British, the French, and the Italians, this Professor Whiti-
more came from Boston to study those mosaics. The mosque had
been turned into a museum of sorts and though the Moslems
were allowed inside to worship just as they used to, all
members of the occupation forces could go into that cathedral
any day. In front of the door of that mosque there was a
guard which consisted of Moslem soldiers, two of them, who
belonged to the personal bodyguard of the Sultan. The Sultan
in those days had nothing to say because of the occupation
forces, so that was the only place where two armed Moslem
soldiers stood and they just saluted as men in uniform went
in. If somebody in civilian clothes wanted to go in, they
- 507 -
checked their documents and those with Russian documents
received kind smiles from the Turks and were allowed to pass,
but those two Moslem soldiers took great care not to let
into that place any Greek. The animosity, essentially
old animosity, between the Christian Greeks and the Moslem
Turks remained in spite of all the events throughout so many
centuries. The Greeks did not even attempt to enter that
mosque because they knew they would not be allowed in.
Professor Whitimore started his scientific work. He
carefully removed the plaster to find the beautiful mosaics
of the sixth century. He had, of course, many helpers and
workers, and while working there of course he noticed a
multitude of Russian refugees whose lives were in a hopeless
situation. He also realized that most of them belonged to
the upper, educated class of Russia, and that those between
the years of eighteen and thirty had no chance whatsoever of
continuing their studies. Their only chance was to go to
Bulgaria or Yugoslavia for manual work, maybe in the coal
mines. He decided that this intellectual elite should be
saved and educated for intellectual work and then their
skills and their knowledge would belong to all countries, so
he started raising money in Boston.
America in those days was very, very wealthy because
she had supplied all countries that were in fighting Europe.
Nothing had been burned or destroyed; on the contrary, many
factories flourished and money was rolling all over in America,
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Many Americans were eager to help ruined Europe and so
Professor Whitimore gathered very large sums of money, and
he used that money for paying tuition for those Russians who
could go to school in Europe. In those days Yugoslavia and
Germany were considered suitable for such educational purposes
because they were inexpensive to live in.
It so happened that Professor Whitimore 's chief
secretary was my aunt, Nadja Somov. All her life she had
been, as we call it now, a social worker. She had had
great experience in handling all the red tape of such an
action. She was then quite an elderly spinster and she knew
perfect English, and she was known by many, many persons for
her work when she was working in the city hall in Odessa.
Now Professor Whitimore in those days was an elderly man.
All his upbringing and studies had taken place in the nine
teenth century and in those days the idea of a student being
married, a student being the father of a young family, was
unthinkable, totally unthinkable and impossible, so when
he started helping the Russians, it was only the bachelors
or bachelorettes who were enabled to go on studying.
Educating a married couple was out because he thought they
would be too busy with each other and eventually with children
to concentrate their time and efforts on study. Since then,
as we all know today, that concept has changed. In the past
ten years at Stanford, the university has constructed huge
buildings for married couples both studying at Stanford.
- 509 -
And the conclusion is that those married students are usually
better students, more serious about their studies than other
students who are spending some of their time running after
each other instead of studying. But every rule has an
exception and there was one exception made through the
request of my aunt, and that concerned a niece of hers, Mary
Stenbock-Fermor, who had actually been brought up by Aunt
Nadja Somov. She was the daughter of my Uncle Nicholas and
she had just married a Russian officer who had dropped out
of the univeristy to join the war, and of course under
pressure of my aunt the Professor made an exception and they
got the necessary aid to continue their studies in Berlin.
If at that time Aunt Nadja had asked one more exception for
me probably he would not have refused her, but she did not
like exceptions anyhow and the exception that she has asked
for her niece was understandable because Mary was to her like
a daughter.
I had been married to Nadejda Scherbatov quite recently
and in all the years before in Russia, my Aunt Nadja had been
very idealistic politically, a left-leaning person, and the
Scherbatov family were on a different pole from Aunt Nadja
and she was not happy with my marriage, and of course in those
days I did not realize that she was actually right. Anyhow,
I had no chance to obtain any kind of financial aid for my
studies. We were married and Professor Whitimore would not
hear of any married couple going back to school as students.
- 510 -
Well those events or mishaps were in 1921 but life goes
on and on for decades and decades taking sometimes quite
unexpected and trange twists. And very many years later
I met my Aunt Nadja Somov in Paris and she was the one,
thanks to whom I met the family of my present wife. I do
not want to jump back and forth, so that will come later.
Now back to those students. With the help of Professor
Whitimore many of them became students, some in Berlin and
very many of them at the university of Prague.
Unexpected help from a kind American officer
As I mentioned earlier, I had an accident when I was a
teenager, about fourteen. The accident occurred in the
apartment when I lived there with my parents. I was exercis
ing on rings which were hanging down from two heavy iron bolts
screwed into the ceiling between the large double doors. I
was exercising on those rings, and those big iron bolts
somehow got loose, little by little. Finally, they got
completely loose, and of course, I fell smack on the ground.
And those bolts, very heavy ones, fell right on my face, on my
mouth. There was a lot of yelling and crying, and my mouth
was full of plaster, and a little piece of one of my teeth
was broken off. Of course, Mother was scared, and I was
immediately taken to a dentist, the most famous dentist in
St. Petersburg. I believed that he was a great dentist, because
at the entry of his luxurious apartment, going upstairs, on
each side of those wide stairs, there were three big bears
- 511 -
standing upright. Those were the bears that the dentist had
shot in the north Russian forests. So, if he could shoot
bears, obviously he must be a great man and a great dentist.
The dentist had one look, and he disregarded the little piece
of my broken tooth, and he said that at my age then absolutely
nothing could be done, but that the roots of my teeth were
badly shaken. Some years later I would lose my teeth one by
one, and then I would have to come back to him. He was a
prophet, and I started losing my upper teeth, one by one, in
the year 1919. The accident happened some six years before.
In that year I just mentioned, 1919, I was in civil war
in south Russia, moving almost daily with my squadron from .
one place to another, and there was no dentist for one
hundred miles around. So I lost my upper teeth. And when
the civil war was over and I was an immigrant in Constantinople
and a fiance to my first wife, I was toothless, which is a
very bad situation for a young officer of the Horse Guards
and in addition a fiance. I lived there with one of my
fellow comrades who was married for a short time, and his
wife Marusa was employed by the American Red Cross because
she knew English fluently. And one of the top officers of
the American Red Cross became very friendly with all that
family, and he was leaving for the United States. At the
home of my comrade, there was a party of farewell for him.
There was a lot of singing, quite a lot of vodka which that
American Red Cross officer liked very much. Then he left.
- 512 -
And in the morning, Marusa brought me an envelope, a letter
for me from that gentleman, whose name unfortunately I have
forgotten. I was very amazed, and said, "Well, we said good
bye yesterday evening. We embraced, we kissed and so forth
and so on, in quite the Russian manner, and what could he
want to write to me?" I opened that letter, and there were
some very nice words: "My dear young friend, I have noticed
the condition of your teeth. I know it was an accident when
you were a teenager. That should be now repaired. Here is
my card. Go to that dentist - he is an American Red Cross
dentist in Constantinople - and he will do everything that
is necessary. And whatever he will do is paid for in advance."
He was not the only American to do anything of that kind.
The endless American empathy - and I must use that word I
heard over and over yesterday on the television, when the
future president was making his speech - the word compassion.
Compassion - he repeated it I do not know haw many times.
Probably it is a favorite word with Americans, and very many
i
of them showed that compassion, so many decades ago. So,
I went to that American dentist, and he said that my roots
of the teeth I lost have to be all removed, and then I will
have a bridge. Removing those teeth was of course very pain
ful, but he injected some kind of a stuff so that I did not
feel any pain whatsoever. But the aftereffects of that stuff
were very strong. I barely came back to the home of the
Scherbatov family, to my fiancee, and I immediately needed
- 513 -
to stretch out; and they cured me with real strong coffee.
Then all the thing was over, and I told the dentist, "I feel
there is still a splinter of something in my mouth after you
have removed all the teeth." He even got angry and said,
"Everything is absolutely OK, and I know what I am doing.
It is your imagination." But my mother-in-law insisted very
much that I go and see another dentist.
In Constantinople there was a Russian dentist. This
Russian dentist was a dentist of a very small south Russian
provincial city, located on the railroad line from Sebastopol
to St. Petersburg. And it so happened that all of a sudden,
travelling on that road in his car, Tsar Nicholas the Second
had an acute toothache. Of course, on that train there was
no doctor-dentist. There was a doctor-sergeant who always
accompanied the Tsar, but he was not a dentist. The Tsar
ordered the train to be stopped and to look around for the
nearest dentist available. So this dentist was brought into
the Tsar's car, and he did whatever necessary to alleviate
the toothache of Tsar Nicholas the Second. He had a very
gentle touch to the hand; and whatever he did, the Tsar liked
it so much that he told the dentist, "Why don't you come
and establish your practice in Tsarskoe Selo?" That was a sub
urb of St. Petersburg and the permanent residence of the Tsar's
family. So this obscure dentist all of a sudden became the
personal dentist of Tsar Nicholas the Second. So you can
imagine how many people after that decided that he was a real
- 514 -
good dentist, and he really was. He had then clients from
all over the high society of St. Petersburg and became very
famous. Then he emigrated to Constantinople and he worked
there as a dentist; so my mother-in-law insisted that I go
and see him. That is what I did. And he said that I was
quite right, that I have a splinter, overlooked by the
American dentist. "And besides," he said to me, "if we
were now still in Imperial Russia in the years before the
revolution, I would have accused that American dentist, and
his license for being a dentist would be taken away from him,
because if you would have come to me two days later, you
would have had a blood infection in the mouth, and probably
you would have died." So, that was the story of my teeth,
the kindness of that officer of the American Red Cross, and
that American dentist.
Carrying on the traditions
In 1921, we were as refugees in Constantinople. By "we"
I mean about a dozen officers of the late Horse Guard
Regiment. March 25th was a big church holiday of the
Annunciation; and on this holiday was our regimental day,
because in St. Petersburg the church of our regiment was
consecrated on that holiday of Annunciation. It was custom
ary in the old days that on that day the whole regiment in
full dress uniforms rode twenty-five kilometers from St.
Petersburg to the residence of the Tsar to parade and attend
- 515 -
a luxury dinner. All officers were invited to dine with the
Tsar and his family. So this was a great day for all of us
who have ever served in the Horse Guards. In Constantinople
we decided to have a little feast. Some of us somehow had
some Turkish pounds, but very little. We went, all of us,
to a reataurant; and we had a very ample dinner. Of course
we had hors d'oeuvres and vodka - not too much of it - and
after dessert and coffee there came the bill. And all of a
sudden, we realized that the total of the bill was more than
all of us together had in our pockets. So, according to
tradition of the regiment, if the regiment is surrounded by
enemy, Swedes or Turks, or Germans, the command is: "Charge!"
and "break through!" So charge we did. We ordered immediate
ly more wine, and one of us - it was my cousin Herman - stood
up and pretended that he had to go to the restroom. Instead,
he rushed to the Russian Embassy and told about that situation.
Of course, to avoid a scandal, some secret sums, - it might
have been five or ten Turkish pounds - were found somewhere.
Herman returned and the whole business was quietly settled
without any kind of a row.
There was another custom in the old days. Many crowned
monarchs, like the King of Spain or the King of Sweden or any
German Prince, were so to say declared honorary colonels of
this or that regiment. This meant that on the day of the
regiment, that honorary colonel would send a present, sometimes
a dinner set, sometimes a horse or something of that kind,
- 516 -
some luxury present. And the regiment would respond with a
luxury present to their honorary colonel. One of the
cavalry line regiments had for an honorary colonel the King
of Spain, Alfonso XIII. Now the regimental day of that
particular regiment came around. There were seven officers
of that regiment in Constantinople, two of them in their
thirties, the other five older. One of them had just managed
to sell his golden cigarette case; therefore they had some
money in their pockets for a feast. At that feast they had
hors d'oeuvres, vodka, wine. They started discussing what
to do next. They were penniless, there was no hope of
getting any job. Their situation was desperate and they
knew it. And under the influence of desperation plus vodka
and wine, one of them came up with a suggestion: "Let us
send a telegram to our colonel, the King of Spain, not to
ask him for anything that was not honorable, but just to
congratulate the King of Spain on the holiday of the regiment
to which he belongs as an honorary colonel." And immediately
in very high spirits, - spirits can be also alcohol spirits -
they composed a telegram using very high, fine expressions
to their honorary colonel; and they called a waiter and gave
him some money and the text. Some five minutes later they
forgot all about it. And when the next morning they were
all sober, none of them remembered the fact of sending any
kind of telegram.
To their great amazement, about two weeks later the
- 517 -
eldest of those officers, who signed the telegram for all of
them, was asked to come to the Spanish Consulate in Constantin
ople. And he was almost swept off his feet by the Consul,
who told them that by order of the King all of them had
received visas for Spain. Also, very tactfully he suggested
that they probably needed some pocket money for the trip from
Constantinople to Spain. Well, they needed it indeed. And
they boarded that ship, and when that ship approached a port
in the Mediterranean, a very large port, they stood in their
tattered moufti aboard that ship and looked at the port and
saw a very unusual crowd and a lot of movement in that port.
When they were allowed to descend from that boat, they saw
a cavalry regiment with a brass band, and the regiment was
under the command of King Alfonse in person. The brass band
played the Russian National Anthem, then their Russian
regimental march. That was, of course, a great honor. Not
one of them could keep back his tears. And after that, by
order of the King, they all got officers' rank in the Spanish
Army, and officers' wages. They did not know a word of
Spanish, but they learned Spanish as fast as they could.
Years later, there was a revolution in Spain. Franco was
fighting against the Communists. Of course, all seven
joined the Franco movement. Two of them were killed in that
movement. The other five were retired because of their
advanced age and they lived in Spain on their officers'
pension. This, of course, reminds one of what officers were
- 518 -
in those days. And King Alfonse XIII was a knight like those
in the Middle Ages.
Nadejda and I get married
I mentioned before that our wedding day was in April
1921. The church ceremony took place in the chapel of the
Russian Embassy in Constantinople. The Russian Embassy is
like all embassies in all countries; wherever an embassy is,
it is considered to be the territory of the country it
represents. The expression is that embassies are ex
territorial; that means that they are under the laws of the
country that, they represent. And this turned out many years
later to be of the greatest importance for us, at the time
of all the proceedings of our divorce that I will speak about
later. It was customary that after the church ceremony
there would be a reception for all the friends, offered by
the bride's parents. And at this moment the father of
Nadejda, Prince Paul Scherbatov, all of a sudden seemed to
have forgotten his status as an immigrant. They had some
jewels, some of which belonged to Nadejda. They sold them
and gave a big reception and many friends or so to say friends
just enjoyed it. Nadejda 1 s sister, Helen, (I will mention
her a lot later) was then only fourteen or fifteen, but she
was conscious of being an immigrant. She studied in school
there, in a sort of gymnasium (senior high school) where there
were boys and girls, a situation unheard of before the
.
revolution; and being in contact with many boys and girls of
- 519 -
the immigrants, she knew better than her parents what the
immigration really meant and the many difficulties every
body had. She mentioned that her father should not have
given such a reception, because the money it all cost would
have come in very, very handy very soon for her sister and
Vania. And of course she was right.
Well, after our wedding we went to live in a sultan's
palace. That sounds very, very grand, but the Sultan of
Constantinople had many palaces and he had no money to keep
them all up. They were in great disrepair.
The Shah of Persia, Iran nowadays, was forced to leave
his country because of an uprising. He was practically remov
ed by the grandfather of the present Shah of Iran, who was
one of his body guards, just a stable boy. He founded the
new dynasty that strives to prove that they are the most
ancient dynasty in the world nowadays. But anyhow, the then
old Shah of Iran was forced to leave, but there was practical
ly no bloodshed, and the deposed old Shah got a pension from
the new government, a pension of two hundred thousand
British pounds per year. That was a very, very sizeable sum.
But, of course, he left with a retinue; and he had to help
all those who left with him, who were still faithful to him.
The condition was that he would get that penison if he did
not get mixed up in the new politics of Iran. And so, not
to lose the pension, he was very careful to stay out of
politics. But the sizeable penison he got was not enough.
- 520 -
So he asked for some help from the Sultan of Turkey. They
were both leading Moslems. The Sultan of Turkey allegedly
said to him, "My dear friend, I am in money trouble myself.
Constantinople is now occupied by joint forces of Great
Britain, France and Italy, and I can barely make ends meet.
I cannot give you any money. But I can give you as a living
place one of my palaces." Which he did. The palace was
huge, and so the deposed Shah suggested to one of his guards,
who was also a Moslem in the service of the Russian Army,
with the rank of general, to occupy part of the palace and
to do. .with it whatever he pleased.
That Moslem Russian general was very sly and practical
and a great gentleman. He found a Russian immigrant engineer,
and they somehow repaired his part of the Shah's palace and
opened up there a hotel, mostly of course for Russians who
had some money to pay. So that is where we moved into after
our wedding. That palace stood at the shore of the straits.
The gardens went up, up, up into the hills and were partitioned
all the length by a very, very high wall. One side of the
wall belonged to the newly established hotel, and the other
side belonged to the Shah. When we lived upstairs in that
palace, we and our guests always tried to look across that
wall, imagining to see the harem of the Shah. Harem was a
magic word. And we did see the harem. It consisted of three
very old, doubled up, bent women, all in black. Their only
job was to look after about three or four dozen cats of all
- 521 -
f
descriptions that were roaming in the Shah's garden.' So,
looking for the harem was a total frustration.
Living up there became for us very difficult for many
reasons. So we moved into some kind of a smaller house some
where up in the garden, where in the old days the servants
of the Shah probably lived. Selling jewelry was not always
that easy and there were moments when we had to wait and
those times were penniless moments. There was no possibility
of us paying every week for the rooms we occupied and the food
we enjoyed in that place, and that Russian engineer started
to become quite nasty and rude towards us. Fortunately his
companion, the Moslem general, took our defense. He said to
that nasty Russian engineer in front of everybody, "I under
stand that it is very disagreable for you not to be paid on
the day you expect, but believe me, that young couple is
even more upset at not being able to pay on the dot than you
are at not receiving it." The general was really a great
and gallant gentleman.
A narrow escape
As I have mentioned before, Nadejda and I moved into
our own living quarters after our wedding. In order to
visit my parents-in-law and the rest of Nadejda 's family
we had to use public transportation. All along the streets
ran an electric tram up to a certain hour, I think it was
midnight or maybe one o'clock. We often visited the parents
of my wife, had supper and spent the evening with them.
- 522 -
Somehow it happened that we did not notice how time passed
and we just very barely got the last tram.
We took the tram to get to the place where we lived -
about half an hour. The tram was empty, and on its way it
stopped at one of the stations. The conductor went off
(probably to have a cup of coffee) and some youngsters got
into his place and started pushing buttons and gadgets - and
the tram moved. The youngsters, panicking, jumped off that
moving tram, and the tram went on with nobody in front at the
controls - we were the only ones on it. The tram moved
faster and faster and finally so fast I was afraid the tram
would jump out of its tracks on a curve. Nadejda was also
panicky and rushed to the door to jump out. At that speed
she would have been lucky to stay alive, maybe with a broken
leg or arm, if not worse. So I forcibly prevented her from
jumping out and calmed her down. Then I moved to the front
place where the conductor should have been. At random I just
started manipulating one gadget after another. At first it
did not help, the speed even accelerated. But finally one
of the last gadgets I pulled (and I pulled as hard as I could)
were probably the brakes, and finally the tram stopped. We
got out of it and we were maybe ten minutes walking from the
place where we lived. So all is well that ends well. That
makes me say to my future readers or grandchildren - never
get panicky, never react as the crowd does.
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There was another similar occasion when I was a boy with
my parents in Switzerland. It was not a real railroad, but
it was something similar to the cars that go up-hill in
San Francisco. There were about five or six cars rather full
of people. When they were going uphill, the end car in
which were my mother, father, my tutor and myself somehow got
loose from the rest of the train. It started backwards down
hill. We expected another train coming uphill and there would
be a terrible crash. The passengers on that car were panicky,
they rushed to the doors to jump. My father forcibly pre
vented my mother from following the crowd. Finally, we stayed
in the car alone going the wrong direction. Then for some
reason, the electricity wires disconnected or whatever
happened and the car stopped. We calmly got off. Well that
was a very long time ago; I was then only fourteen. It was
my last journey abroad to Switzerland.
From a place in Switzerland that was very famous, it
was called St. Moritz, we went down the valley to another
place that could be reached only by a horse-drawn coach
(that was in the days of British Queen Victoria) . The coach
was about as big as today's city buses, and three pairs of
horses - two, two, and two - in front of it. On the high box
there was a coachman with a very long whip and his helper with
a horn. Of course, I managed to climb on the box and squeeze
between the coachman and the horn blower. The whole run with
a few stops lasted for about six hours. It was the last
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horse-drawn connection in Switzerland. A few years later,
I read in the papers that now an electric tram replaced it
and that now all the charm of the old place was gone.
Some refugees move to Yugoslavia
The problem of the Russian refugees lasted for months
until finally a solution was found. The government of King
Alexander of Yugoslavia declared itself ready to accept the
bulk of the Russian refugees and troops, disarmed, of course,
and employ them as workers or as frontier guards in Yugo
slavia.
Yugoslavia was at that time a new country. It was a
combination born out of the Versailles treaty and consisted
of many parts, diverse as to culture, religion, and traditions
There was Serbia, a Slavic country, with all the population
of Greek Orthodox faith; in the west, in the mountains, the
population was mostly Moslem; and the northern territory had
before the war belonged to Austria and Hungary. The people
there were Roman Catholics. The ex-Austrian part was
strongly Germanized; the language of the upper class and
their culture were German but the peasant population was of
Slavic descent - Croatian. All these different ethnic
groups, not to mention the Moslems, hated each other like
hell, yet they had been suddenly united politically in what
was called the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. This situation was
created by the well-meaning fools at Versailles, the greatest
of them President Wilson of the United States, who was
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absolutely sure that he was representing our Lord in Heaven
and that he, Wilson, was His omnipotent deputy to create
peace in Europe, while he had not the faintest idea of all
the intricacies of Europe and its history. Because of this
that treaty laid all the foundations for the Second World
War.
In Yugoslavia, King Alexander was really a knight in
shining armor. He was beloved by the Serbians and even by
others. He had been brought up in Russia and spoke Russian
fluently. He had graduated from law school and also from
the Corps des Pages from which I had graduated. He was the
greatest gentleman ever, and he understood the situation.
It was said that at a reception for the diplomatic corps at
his palace he asked one of the foreign ambassadors, "Your
Excellency, do you know how many Yugoslavs there are in my
kingdom?" The ambassador was quite confused and said, "Your
Majesty, I will ask my first secretary and tomorrow you will
have his report." Alexander smiled and said, "Don't go to
all that trouble. I will tell you how many there are: there
is just one, and that is myself." King Alexander was murdered
in the port of Marseilles by a Croatian terrorist.
Russian emigres, who came to Yugoslavia, were very lucky
because that country lacked well educated civil servants.
One did not trust- the intellectuals of Croatian and Hungarian
origin who had been forcibly annexed to Yugoslavia and hated
it. Russian intellectuals were needed and among the refugees
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in Yugoslavia there was an elderly and very famous Russian
doctor who specialized in gynaecology and obstetrics. He
was just one of the refugees in the city. When King Alexander
got married and his young wife was expecting a child, she
did not trust the Yugoslav doctors, so this Russian professor
was asked to come to the palace for a consultation. He
refused, saying, "I am very sorry but I cannot come. I have
no license to practice medicine in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia."
The next day, a general attached to the person of King
Alexander came to see the professor, bringing with him a license
for the professor to practice medicine in Yugoslavia. The
professor said, "I am very sorry but my Russian license is
just as good as any other Russian license, held by many
other Russian doctors, yet they have no right to practice in
Yugoslavia. If my license is good enough then the other
licenses are just as good as mine." There was a meeting of
Parliament at night, and after that meeting all Russian Imperial
licenses were declared good for practicing in Yugoslavia.
Our regimental doctor was assigned by the authorities
to a large, very prosperous Yugoslav village. There he rented
a hut and made a sign in Russian and in Serbo-Croatian that
this was the headquarters of the Russian doctor. Then he
locked himself in that hut from the inside and he sent out
a paper saying that anyone who wanted a consultation with him
had to push through the slot in the door 100 dinars. This
was quite a sizeable amount of money at that time. (I believe
-. 527 -
that nowadays, as of my writing, it would amount to about
$50.-). Even for wealthy Serbian peasants that was a lot
of money. They had it but they were very stringy. When
they read the doctor's notice, they decided that he must be
a very great physician and scholar because he dared to put
out a notice that he would not even open his door to a
patient unless he got 100 dinars in advance. It is true that
our regimental doctor was an excellent physician and he
turned out to be a great psychologist besides.
- 528
CHAPTER VI
REFUGE IN YUGOSLAVIA
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We move to Yugoslavia
By the end of 1920 and 1921, Constantinople, otherwise
Istanbul, was full of refugees. Now they call them displaced
persons. Official figures given were three hundred thousand,
but maybe there were more. Of course, all that crowd was
absolutely penniless. Very many of them were military,
without any special training or skill in anything. All the
papers they had were of the most varied kinds, some of them
real, some of them fake, and all of them issued a long time
before and invalid at that time. This had to be put in some
kind of order.
In Europe there existed a so-called League of Nations.
It was a forerunner of the present day United Nations, and
this League of Nations was based in Holland. The government
of Holland did not recognize the Soviet government in Moscow
as being the legal government of Russia. The League of
Nations was headed by a Norwegian scientist by the name of
Nansen. His seal and signature was fixed on new passports.
The passports were issued on blanks of the Netherlands. The
Netherlands spread their diplomatic protection over all the
refugees. That big sheet of paper, the blank of the Nether
lands, looked very impressive, but it was almost totally use
less for any practical purpose because in those days, Europe
was scrambling back on its feet, economically speaking, after
the first World War, which had barely ended. Every country
had crowds of refugees and displaced persons and unemployed
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persons. Under such conditions, nobody wanted to have more
unemployed people, more refugees from Russia. In order to
travel anywhere, you had to have on that Nansen passport an
entry visa from the country where you were going, and on top
of that, all the visas from all the countries you would be
travelling through. Obtaining such an entry visa to some
country was a dream of the hungry, jobless refugees in
Constantinople.
Little by little, things did get settled. Especially
countries on the Balkan Peninsula, particularly Serbia and
Bulgaria, accepted and received the remnants of the White
Army - displaced, unskilled workers - mostly in the coal
mines of Bulgaria or Serbia. Serbia before the first World
War was a small country, mostly agricultural. The specialty
of the small farmers was raising pigs and cows, and they
supplied Germany. Then that market was lost because of the
war. Serbia was completely occupied by German forces. Rem
nants of the Serbian army had been taken over to the island
of Korfu by British and French navy, and when Germany
collapsed, those forces came back to Serbia. Some units of
the French army were in Serbia and Serbian territory. And
Serbia got a new name: it was called Yugoslavia.
Big chunks of territory formerly belonging to Austria
or Hungary were added now to Serbia. Those regions had a
very different culture and religion, and of course that made
lots of trouble. The Serbian government did not have much
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faith in the loyalty of the former civil servants of the
annexed territories, so there were openings for civil servants
that were Russians in the army and in all other branches of
service in Yugoslavia. The aim of most Russians, including
me, was to get a visa to leave Constantinople, where the
situation was completely hopeless as far as jobs were con
cerned, and to get to Yugoslavia. We made our proper applicat
ion with hundreds and hundreds of others. Those applications
had to be processed in Serbia, and that was a very, very slow
process.'
Meanwhile, when Easter came in 1921, my Uncle George,
whom I described when describing my days of infancy and child
hood, came to Constantinople from Serbia. How he managed to
get with his family to Serbia, I do not remember. But all
during the war Uncle George was a leading figure in the
Russian Red Cross, where he was very well known by high
ranking Serbian officials. He had some influence among them,
and even some close personal friends. So, when he left
Constantinople to go back to Serbia, he said the proper words
to the proper people and all of a sudden, the Serbian
consulate in Constantinople notified me that I had a visa to
go to Serbia. That was about two or three months after my
marriage in 1921.
So now, my nineteen year old wife and I had to leave.
But of course, people who had obtained visas to travel, just
as we, had no money to do so, just as we. To buy tickets
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normally and to leave was beyond the dreams of anybody in
Constantinople. Well, the American Red Cross in Constantin
ople found a solution. Under their influence, a freight car,
an empty freight car, would be attached twice a week to the
luxury Orient Express that again started moving all through
Europe as far as Paris. This freight car would be attached
to the train and detached in Beograd. In this car, thirty
refugees could find a place to travel without paying anything,
just sitting in that car on their luggage. And that was the
solution. There was a waiting list and finally the day came
when it was our turn to board that freight car. The freight
car was full of people we did not know. But when a difficult
situation arises with people that do not know each other,
some kind of friendship immediately develops among the
Russian people, and everybody helps everybody else as best
they can. There was a very nice, friendly spirit among the
strangers in that car. We managed to get into the corner of
the car, sitting on our not-too-large suitcases.
Just before that train began to start, we saw six men
coming up to the freight car, carrying, with some difficulty,
a huge wicker basket. That was the luggage of one of the
men who had a visa to go to Serbia. That basket was pushed
into the freight car, the doors were closed, and the train
started. The owner of that wicker basket sat on it. Then
he opened a little bag of his and spread a napkin on that
basket, put on the napkin sandwiches, produced bottles of
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wine, and very nicely invited us to have some lunch. Every
body had something to eat for the journey, which was supposed
to last thirtysix hours, maybe forty-eight, I do not remember .
The express was an express train by name only. It could not
travel at the normal speed of an express train, because the
rail tracks in Turkey and Bulgaria that we had to cross, and
in Serbia itself after the war, were in no shape to carry a
big, fast express train. Well, we had some wine and sand
wiches, the surface of the basket was cleared, and the basket
was opened. Out of the basket came a gentleman. He was close
to forty, very well dressed, very jolly, and he introduced
himself to all present as a Mr. Tarasevitch, one of the senior
officers in the Russian Imperial Secret Police. Now he was
travelling to Yugoslavia, where he hoped to get a job in his
specialty. He had no visa, so he used methods of the secret
police. He said he represented in his person his own baggage.
He entertained us with all kinds of stories about his activi
ties in those days when he was still serving in Russia. When
the train was rolling, everything was alright. When the
train stopped at a station, down he went into the basket,
sandwiches and bottles were put on top of the basket itself,
and it looked like a dining table. When we came as far as
the territory of Serbia, at the very last station, he got
out of the basket; and when the train started slowly moving
again, he jumped outright onto the tracks without hurting
himself and he vanished into the bushes surrounding the tracks,
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A week or so later, I had to visit the city administration
of the capitol city of Yugoslavia, Beograd, and there was
Mr. Tarasevitch, occupying a very important official
function. Because the sister of my father in the prior
generation was married to a professor at Moscow University
by the name of Tarasevitch, this Tarasevitch considered me
as being a kind of distant cousin of his; and that was very
helpful, because later I did have some troubles because of
the loss of a passport. And that was the way for some people
to get to Yugoslavia.
We came to Yugoslavia in June - I think it was on June
tenth - and that particular day has a national meaning for
that country the same way the fourth of July has a meaning
for the United States. Everybody was extremely festive and
they congratulated us for arriving on such a lucky day.
Finally we find employment
But now, there was the problem of finding a job in
Yugoslavia. There were many, many people in Beograd who
were Russian and looking for a job. There was a population
census being taken by the government of Yugoslavia, and there
were heaps and heaps of questionaires and papers that had to
be processed about the local population all over the country.
Most of those jobs were given to Russians. They were old
ladies, generals some of them, corps commanders, youngsters
as I was in those days, and it was barely paid. But anyhow,
that kind of a job allowed one not to go hungry. My wife,
- 535 -
who spoke English very fluently and could type, got a job in
a bank as one of their foreign correspondents. That was the
best-paid job available in those days, because there were
practically no Serbians who could type in a foreign language;
and this particular bank did business with France and England.
So, my wife very quickly learned all the technical bank
expressions, not only in English and French, because she had
no idea of them, but also in Serbian.
The Serbian language, a Slavic language, had the same
script as the Russian language, and many roots of words were
the same as in Russian. But sometimes the meaning of those
words changed very, very drastically. Sometimes the Russians,
wanting to use the Serbian language to say what they would
have said in Russian, put themselves in the most awkward,
embarrassing situations. Well, all this was usually covered
by jolly laughter by everyone.
My work in that census business was, of course, very,
very dull. But I remember once a document on the table in
front of me about a Serbian man. The name was completely
meaningless. Then came a column for "occupation," and that
column was filled in with "robber, highwayman," because that
was his official occupation. Then came "address," and it was
filled in with "in the mountains, in the woods." That was
very typical of Yugoslavia in those days. Many, many years
later, I mentioned that story to a Yugoslav gentleman, now
a professor at the Hoover Institution, and he had a good laugh
- 536 -
and said, "When you were taking that census, I was only two
years old." When he was two years old, his father was
Minister of the Interior of Yugoslavia and was murdered by
Bolsheviks and communists that were then in Yugoslavia.
Land distribution in Yugoslavia
The territory annexed to Yugoslavia, originally Austrian
or Hungarian territory, had huge estates which belonged to
the Austrian or Hungarian aristocracy. Of course, those
lands were confiscated by the Serbian government. The main
house and a small piece of land, the orchard, and the garden
and park were left to the owners; and all the rest of the
land, the inventory, the cattle, everything, was requisitioned.
They got some kind of bonds that would be someday, eventually,
paid by the Yugoslavian government. That was very close to
what was happening in Russia when the Bolsheviks took over
the land in Russia. The big land owners were just murdered
on their estates. Very few of them managed to get away with
their lives and whatever they were wearing the day they fled.
So, the difference was still very, very great.
On those confiscated estates, the land and cattle were
distributed among Serbian veterans. Serbian peasants that
had served in the war in the army now gained their reward.
At most, it was a political move. The Serbian government
had to supervise it; and as supervisors, they sent some
Russian refugees. But the refugees were hand-picked and had
to be in the former days in Russia at least a governor of a
- 537 -
region or a very high-ranking official. That was just the
Serbian way to give to those people, to whom Serbia owed so
much, its very being: they wanted to reward those people.
Those people got per month one thousand dinars, that was
normal pay for a minor Serbian official employee. Besides
that, they got the use of that big house of the estate and
the use of the orchard, the vegetable garden which they could
work whenever, if and how they wanted. People with large
families, for them it was a blessing to live in a beautiful
house. The furniture was still there. They had to oversee
the proceedings but had no power at all and could give no
orders. Among the Serbian veterans, there was somebody who
ran the show. Those Serbian veterans were supposed to get
land, and they got it. But the idea was that they would
settle on that land, so that the population of the annexed
land would have an authentic Serbian population, at least in
part. Well, actually, the population was Hungarian or
Germanized Croatian who were really Slavic but completely
Germanized Roman Catholics, and their attitude toward the
Serbians was not friendly at all. The Serbians coming from
the so to say "real" Serbia had no intention of settling in
a new land. They just leased or sold the parcels of land
that they got to the local Jewish population, because they
were the only ones who had cash, as usual. They sold to them
the cattle which was sometimes priceless meat or milk cattle.
The cattle were slaughtered and the Serbian settlers, veterans,
- 538 -
feasted and drank and filled up and spent their money. They
had never dreamt of having so much cash in their hands. When
they had spent all the cash they had, they demanded to be
returned to their native Serbian villages. They had no money
left to go there. So, the Serbian government had to give out
funds to transport the repatriated Serbian veterans back to
where they came from. The whole thing was a total flop.
One of those so-called commissars - the Russian governors
were called commissars, and in the Russian mind in those
days, a commissar had to be both a Bolshevik and a communist,
so the ex-Imperial governors and high ranking officials did
not like to be called commissars - one of them was an uncle
of my wife and we visited him. We never addressed him
otherwise than "Mr. Commissar," just for the sake of teasing
him. He occupied a beautiful mansion, half empty, with
remnants of furniture.
For some Paris offered an alternative
Another friend of mine, also a relative, was a bachelor.
He also became a commissar on one of those aristocratic
estates of a Hungarian family. The family had stayed on
what was left to them of that estate, not wanting to go to
Hungary for many reasons. Hungary was defeated, almost
partitioned, and overfilled with Hungarian refugees that fled
from the land that was being given to neighbors. They were
very nice, very educated people. They spoke many languages -
so did my cousin - and very soon my cousin discovered how
- 539 -
nice those Hungarian aristocrats were and they discovered
that the dreaded Serbian commissar was a great Russian
gentleman of the Russian titled nobility. The Hungarian
aristocrats and the Serbian commissars actually belonged to
the same class of people. The Serbian settlers, so to say,
belonged to a very different class. My cousin became a friend
of the family. They furnished his almost empty rooms with
very nice furniture, a carpet, and even a big piano, because
my cousin was a great musician. This did not pass unnoticed
by the Serbian settlers, and they took it very badly. They
wrote all sorts of nasty notes that the so-called commissar
was taking sides with the remaining Hungarians. And to get
him out of trouble, my cousin was recalled to Beograd. He
was given some kind of a job somewhere, but he was so dis
gusted with Yugoslavia that he managed to leave for Paris.
In Paris, getting a job was almost impossible. Only
the lucky ones who could become taxi drivers in Paris were
happy and earned sizeable amounts of money. France lacked
manpower because so many French were killed in the first
World War. The French wanted manpower, yes, but they
wanted it on the decaying farms and in the coal mines and in
the plants. France had no need at all for the people belong
ing to the intellectual workers. They had enough French
intellectuals that were jobless.
So, my cousin had a very hard time to exist in Paris.
He was then over forty and rather stout, and taxi driving was
- 540 -
not for him. One day he was crossing one of the boulevards
of Paris, probably absent-minded, thinking about what the
next day would bring to him, and he was over-run, hit by a
car or a truck - fortunately, nothing too serious. Anyhow,
he went to a French lawyer, and the lawyer said that he
would take the case. But my cousin said, "I have no money
whatsoever to pay you." The lawyer said that it could be
arranged. "You sign that paper," he said, "and I will re
present you without pay. I will win for such and such
a sum, and the more the sum, the better for both of us. I
will take fifty percent of the sum, and you will take fifty
percent of the sum." He must have been a very smart lawyer,
because he won in court. My cousin got his share, and that
was forty thousand francs. In those days, a dollar was worth
twenty francs, so forty thousand francs was quite a sum of
money. He took a vacation, and then he married a French
woman. It was rumored that that French woman - she was not
so young anymore, neither was he - belonged in her younger
days to the oldest profession in the world. She had saved
some money also. To our great astonishment, it was not only
a happy marriage, but it also cured my cousin, who was on
the way to becoming an alcoholic. Under the influence of his
French wife, he was completely cured and lived out his life
normally; and she took great care of him until he died. It
was a legend in France - it sounded funny to us - but French
men tried to tell us that they knew of very many happy
- 541 -
marriages of men who were not so young anymore to women who
had belonged to the above mentioned profession. Of course,
those girls knew how to handle a man in any situation. And
they themselves were sick and tired of that old profession
and just wanted to live somewhere in a small French village
or town in peace and quiet. Some of those marriages produced
children that became quite well-educated and well-mannered.
Our daily life in Yugoslavia
Now back to Yugoslavia. My job barely, barely covered
the rent of the room. The earnings of my wife at the bank
had to cover all food and the other necessities of life such
as clothing and going out occasionally. We could not go out
in the circles of the diplomatic corps in Beograd and those
few Serbians that were on the level of the so to say high-
ranking social life. We had neither the money nor the means
nor the clothing. Financially we were almoust on the lowest
step of Serbian society. And that Serbian society with all
its ways and manners and interests was absolutely alien to
us. So, the only society that we met that we sometimes
joined were Russian refugees. In Beograd, Russian refugees
actually lived in a kind of closed circle, not to say the
word "ghetto." The reason for it was mostly financial and
the very different upbringing and interests that we had from
the Serbians: they were very primitive in many respects.
The problem was of having our home close to the place
where we worked. Climate in Beograd in the winter was just
- 542 -
as bad as in Russia - severe cold and snow and torrential
rains in the summer. So we rented a room in the apartment
of an officer of the general staff. It was an apartment
building just across the street from the palace of the King.
The King was then very aged, King Peter, but he was merely
a figurehead; his son Alexander actually ruled the country.
King Peter was a very popular grandf atherly figure. He
walked around Beograd on foot. Every passerby knew who he
was, of course, and saluted him. He was quite paternalistic,
almost as out of the Middle Ages. Now, this old King Peter
crossed the street, came to the apartment of that officer of
the general staff that we rented a room from, just to have
a cup of coffee. So, that colonel was really a high-ranking
colonel on the general staff. He was honored by a visit
from the old King. And he was very civilized, in the
European sense of the word civilized, a gentleman, which
was quite rare among the Serbians.
One day, early in the morning, he met me, and he said
to me that he would prefer that we found another room. Well,
I kept my cool and said, "Very well, Sir, you want us to leave,
And of course, we will do our best as soon as we can, but
I would like to ask you a question: why?" Then he blurted
out, "Because you have a degrading influence on my wife."
I was so to say newly married, and I met that lady just by
accident a few times and scarcely remember even talking to
her. I was amazed at such an assertion, and I asked the
- 543 -
colonel, "Whatever do you mean?" Well, he was very confused,
almost ashamed of himself, and he said to me, "I know you
Russians have a different attitude toward your wives than
we Serbs. My wife notices that in the morning you get up
before your wife does; and you make coffee, you prepare
breakfast, and you polish the shoes of your wife. And she
starts nagging me, 'See, you see how Russian husbands are!'
And that upsets our marriage." I tried to explain, "You
know I work, so does my wife. So I find it only fair to do
something to ease her work at home, because we both work.
You are on the general staff, you have somebody who comes to
help in the daytime, and your wife does not work, she stays
home." "Well, yes, I know all that," he said, "but ..."
So there was nothing else for us to do but look for another
room.
We found another room. It was cheaper, it was a bit
further away, and it was unfurnished. We got the idea of buy
ing little by little the necessary furniture and then finally
find an unfurnished apartment. The first thing we had to buy
were some chairs, a table, and a bed. The bed was for one
person only, and it was very warm. We were much too hot with
two persons in that bed. So I took the mattress of the bed
off and put it on the floor. My wife slept on that mattress,
and I slept on the springs covered with blankets. Turning
round and round, I felt the springs, but that was not so
very bad. Two days later, the bed collapsed. But then we
- 544 -
discovered that the wooden frame was infested with bugs.
All houses in Constantinople and Istanbul were infested
with bugs, and we lived there almost eight months, so we
knew the ways of bugs. They are almost indestructible,
no matter what.
Besides, the old Serbian woman protested to us that we
had spent last Sunday in our room. I said, "What do you mean?"
She said, "I rented you the bedroom, and the bedroom is
supposed to be slept in. You are not to spend Sundays in
your room. It is a bedroom to spend the night in." I asked
her, "Where are we supposed to go to pass our time on Sundays?"
And she immediately responded, "In the cafana." Well, cafana
meant coffee house. Beograd was full of huge coffee houses;
and actually, the Serbians and their wives spent Sundays
sitting in those cafanas, sipping their coffee. Buying
a small black cup of coffee, the Serbians could sit and sip
one cup all day long, because they did not want to spend money
on a second cup. Well, that was very typical of the Serbians.
Many Russian refugees were spread all over Serbia. Some
were lucky to serve in the Russian border guard or even in
some army or administration units of provincial Serbia. Those
provincial Russians who knew no foreign languages became very
close to the provincial Serbians. They found some kind of
common language and a common way of life. But in the city
of Beograd, the people used in the old days to big cities,
who had a kind of social life in society - we could not get
- 545 -
into those Serbian circles, for many reasons mentioned above.
After serving in that census bureau, I was presented to
a very, very active Russian lady who was rather aged, and her
husband in the nineteenth century had served in the Horse
Guards regiment. Because of that, this old lady - she was
a widow; her husband had occupied a very prominent position
in Russian government - was known to very many high-ranking
people in the Serbian government. She had some influence
there, and she was full of energy and wanted to help Russians.
Finally she talked somebody into giving me a job in an
insurance company.
This insurance company was called the Insurance Company
of Rossia, which means Russia, and had offices all over
Russia and abroad. One of the offices of this huge insur
ance company, that was practically a Russian insurance company,
had an office also in Beograd. Now that Russia was out,
this insurance office in Beograd became an insurance company
in its own right; and the head of that company was an elderly
Serb. As a young man, he had started his career as an
insurance specialist in Russia. There were several Russians
employed in that company. Since my childhood, I hated any
kind of figures and handling figures. I loved history and
languages, but figures were my arch enemies since my days in
junior high school. And here I was very unhappy, having
nothing but columns and columns of figures; and somehow, I
managed to get the wrong figures in the wrong columns most
- 546 -
of the time .
After having sold that bed at a loss, after cleaning the
bugs out of it, I went looking for another room, and I
happened to find one that was just around the corner from the
insurance company where I worked. It was a very nice room.
The owner of that house was an elderly Greek lady, and she
spoke some Russian. Somehow she took a real liking to us,
probably because the room was very expensive. My earnings
at the insurance company were barely enough to cover that
room. But anyhow, we could spend in that room any time we
wished, whether it was Sunday or not. And we could cook in
that room on a gadget, called primus that I have already
described, and that was much less expensive than getting our
meals in a restaurant.
There was a very popular restaurant across the main
street from the company where I worked. The restaurant was
called "The Family" - it was, of course, called "Family" in
Russian. There were many Russians who had their meals there
occasionally. It was not overly expensive, it was not a
fancy place, but nevertheless, it was expensive. It was out
of the question for us to go there, the two of us. It was
customary there to have a break at noontime that lasted two
hours, to have dinner. Right at noontime, I went to that
restaurant and I took out meals and brought them home. They
were warmed up and the portions in that place were so big
that I usually took one portion of this and one portion of
- 547 -
that, and then we split them while warming them up in our
room. That was plenty, and besides, while picking up that
food, I could buy a shot of peppered vodka that I loved and
that gave me courage and energy. I was doing work I hated,
and our relationship was not very happy. There was a
certain strain growing and growing.
There was a big and amazing party at one of the greatest
hotels in Beograd. Going there, the two of us, was out of the
question, because I had no money to pay for the entrance fee
or the supper that would be served or the tuxedo which would
have to be worn for such an occasion. I could not even
visualize a tuxedo for me in my dreams. Somehow it was summer
time and my wife managed - she was very clever at it always -
to make a dress for herself, a summer dress to dance in.
Material does not cost much. She and her friends were very
clever at it and she had the dress. Some friend who was in
the Russian embassy volunteered to escort her because she
was just dying to go to a dance. What young woman of barely
twenty would not be dying to go dancing? So they went. That
huge hotel had windows, and the curtains were not drawn, and
I was outside with my nose against the window. There was
quite a crowd of people who wanted to see the dance through
the window. I stood there looking at my wife enjoying her
self, dancing with many people, because she was a very good
dancer and could be very charming when she wanted to be. And
I was outside, and it was barely over a year that we were
- 548 -
married. So, I can leave to anybody's imagination the feel
ings that I had. I was feeling, of course, that she did not
care at all and did not even think about how the situation
was affecting me. My ego was damaged. Well, I do not
remember when she came back and I came back, but a little
crack was now in the wall. I came to the conclusion over the
many years that I lived later, that no matter how small a
crack, it can very, very rarely be plastered over, and
any next little jolt can widen the crack.
Now vacation time came, and the bank gave my wife a
vacation. Taking a vacation for both of us at the same time
was impossible financially. So my wife decided to take a
vacation and go to Bulgaria. That was a nice journey. I
think her vacation was about one month, and she went to
Bulgaria and I stayed in Beograd. I did not want to go on
paying that expensive room, so I moved out and I was
offered a little room in an apartment of a very aged colonel
in the Horse Guards whose son would have been my age, but
he was killed in the civil war. The colonel and his wife
offered to share their apartment with me - they had a little
spare room - for free. So I set aside some money. After that,
my wife came back from Bulgaria, and I noticed quite a change
in her attitude, probably due to her mother who had a great
influence on her. Probably her mother had noticed a strain
and had talked to her eldest daughter. Now her mother was
an extremely religious woman, and her upbringing was extremely
- 549 -
Victorian, nineteenth century; and certainly under that
influence, I noticed a different attitude toward me.
We rented a very small room, and we were expecting the
arrival of my mother. She had managed to escape Soviet
Russia - how she escaped is a chapter in itself which will
follow shortly. She was due to arrive; and I found a room
for her in the neighboring apartment where we were renting
a room, so she would be very close. A month or so before
the arrival of my mother, we found out that my wife was
expecting a child.
My mother arrived, and she brought with her some small
jewels. She had nice jewels in the old days. When the
revolution started, she put them all in a vault in a bank.
Nobody could imagine in those days that the vaults in a bank
would not be a safe place. When the Bolsheviks arrived, all
the vaults were requisitioned and emptied into the pockets
of the new rulers of Russia, Lenin and company. They
declared that this belonged to "the People." And who are
the people in the first place? Lenin and his henchmen. But
my mother had some little jewels at home. She was in Kiev,
where all throughout the civil war there were searches day
and night; and my mother stuck the small jewels in a wet
sponge. That wet sponge was always lying on her toilet table
and not even the experienced henchmen of the Soviet secret
police got the idea of looking for jewels in a wet sponge on
the toilet table. That is how my mother saved those jewels.
- 550 -
So, she came and she brought with her her toilet bag, and in
that toilet bag was the famous wet sponge. In case of a
search, no one thought to look inside her wet sponge. My
mother was smart.
Then those jewels were sold. My mother wanted to help
us find an apartment and to arrange our life better. Anyhow,
it was obvious that in a few months my wife would not be
working any more at the bank. I did find an apartment in one
of the newest ho.uses, European style houses, that were
sprouting up in Beograd like mushrooms. It consisted of three
bedrooms and a hall. Next to the hall was a small room
barely big enough for a person, and it was designed by the
engineers for a servant room. No person in the Balkans
could imagine a family living in an apartment like that and
not having a servant. Of course, there was a European style
bathroom and kitchen. So we moved into this apartment and
bought some furniture, beginning with what was necessary.
My mother lived in the so-called servant's room. We had a
bedroom for us. The hall was used for the dining room.
There were two other rooms we intended to rent, because there
was always a big demand for rooms to rent, especially in a
new house where there would be no bugs. The renting of those
two rooms was supposed to cover the rent I had to pay for the
apartment.
By that time, my wife had to drop out of her job. One
of the major jewels was bought by the director of that bank,
- 551 -
who was a cultured Serbian. He appreciated very much the
work of his foreign correspondent; and he had heard our story
and knew about our situation and wanted to be helpful in a
very tactful way. So he bought Mother's jewel for a very hand
some sum of money. No jeweler would have ever given us that
amount. It was his very gallant, tactful way of helping us.
At the same time, he was not giving us the feeling that we
were beggars. He was invited a couple of times to share our
meals. And I went on working in that hated insurance
company. It was absolutely clear to us that that could not
go on, that our apartment was much too expensive whether the
rooms were rented or not. So, we had to find some kind of
drastic solution.
Before I continue, however, let me go back and relate
the story of how my mother was able to leave Russia and join
us in Yugoslavia.
Mother applies for a passport to leave Russia
When my mother returned to St. Petersburg in 1922, she
found the two ex-generals and their families living crowded
into her apartment and two of the rooms still sealed with
the seal of the dreaded Tcheka. But in 1922 a different
political climate prevailed in St. Petersburg. Lenin had
found himself forced to proclaim the "NEP" - new economic
policy. This he was forced to do to save the whole of the
country from starvation, especially in the big cities of
- 552 -
St. Petersburg and Moscow. The reason was a total break
down of the railroads and any and all means of supply of food
products and all other necessities of everyday life. This
catastrophic situation was blamed upon the years of World War I
and the Civil War that anti-Communist elements had waged in
many parts of Russia against Lenin's terror rule. Now
Lenin was forced to declare the temporary right of citizens
to show private initiative, even to acquire private property
and to work for private profit. Of course this was heresy
according to the gospel of pure Communism, but Lenin had to
resort to heresy in order to avoid the extinction of the
cities ' populations as a result of hunger and thus to avoid
losing his own precious hide. Some grumbling super-
orthodox Communists were discretely reminded that Lenin's
word was law, and the Tcheka was still around to enforce the
law although with far more discrete methods of terror than
in 1918.
So the seals on the doors of the two rooms were simply
removed without any formality and Mother was allowed to live
in these two rooms and be the lawful owner of her own
belongings left behind almost five years earlier.
Laws of the period allowed citizens of the Soviet Union
above the age of 50 to apply for passports for the purpose
of leaving the Soviet Union. Allegedly, Lenin's words were
"building a new society, we have no need for old trash".
Mother was very happy to find herself in the category of old
- 553 -
trash. By that time, she already knew that I had not been
killed nor had I lost both legs from frostbite as a persist
ent rumor would have it. This rumor appeared in one of the
newspapers and Mother kept this clipping in her prayerbook,
and many times it helped her to silence Communist Commissars
when they tried to accuse her of having a son, an officer in
the White Army.
In 1922 in St. Petersburg, the Soviet money had no value
and bartering assumed huge proportions. Mother applied for
a passport but she knew that it would be months before she
got one, if ever. Through old friends experienced in the new
ways of life, she was put in touch with some shady people,
NEP-men - the new political enconomy businessmen. These men
were crooks of every shade and color and knew how to pull the
right strings at the right time. Their pockets were stuffed
with money, real money, United States of America dollars,
British pounds, Dutch and Swedish kroners.
Any and all new transactions in foreign currency were
strictly illegal, but in those days only one thing was legal -
it was dying of starvation or freezing to death. When the
cupboards in Mother's two rooms were opened, the first objects
that struck awe and surprise on all present, were the gala
dress uniforms of the court that had belonged to Father. They
seemed to be the very symbol of counter-revolution. To this
day I do not know what use the sharks of the black market
of 1922 could have had for such merchandise, but they paid
- 554 -
for Father's court uniforms in foreign currency. Next came
all of Father's decorations. For Father's decorations
these NEP-men handed Mother a much larger sum than s.he had
expected. Actually, they could have offered whatever they
fancied, but they were "honest" black market sharks. When
my mother voiced her surprise at the sum of money for
Father's decorations, one of the buyers said, "Countess, you
are probably unaware that the late Count had been decorated
by the Shah of Persia with the Star of the Seventailed Lion.
This Star is of pure gold." I remember my childish glee when
Father got that Persian Star on the occasion of the Shah's
state visit to Imperial Russia.
This visit was not without some exciting moments.
Russian government structure was explained to the Shah and
he was taken to a session of the Duma. It was impressed
upon him that in spite of the Duma, the Tsar was the
absolute ruler of Russia. In the evening the Shah was enter
tained at a gala performance of a ballet in the Imperial
Marinsky Theatre. Sitting in the Tsar's lodge, the Shah
spotted one of the ballerinas on the stage and took a fancy
to the girl. He demanded that the Tsar sell that girl to
him. The Minister of the Court and the Minister for Foreign
Affairs did their best to convince the Shah that this was
impssible but the Shah remained unconvinced and said, "What
were you telling me about the Russian Tsar being an autocrat
if he cannot even sell one of the dancing girls?"
- 555 -
The next day there was a review of the cavalry guards.
The Tsar and the Shah, on horseback and accompanied by members
of the Tsar's family, rode along the line of the assembled
troops. It was customary that the Tsar should ride at a
very short gallop. The Shah's horse took up the same short
gallop. At home, in Persia, the Shah had never been on a
galloping horse. His horse was usually led at a walk and he
just sat in the saddle as if on a couch. Fortunately, the
Tsar's attention was drawn to the plight of the Shah gallop
ing desperately in his saddle. The Tsar put his horse to a
walk and a disastrous incident was avoided, for had the Shah
fallen from his horse in front of the Russian Guard Troops
it would have been construed as an ill omen for diplomatic
relations between Russia and Persia; it would have delighted
only the British ambassador, who would not have failed to
insinuate that such an incident was deliberately planned
and provoked by Russia.
Among other things Mother was selling in St. Petersburg
in 1922 was all of my father's wardrobe. One of the buyers
tried on Father's civilian wardrobe and strutted around the
room, saying that the late Count had exactly his figure.
Mother had to muster all her self-control to keep her face
straight and continue to be polite to these individuals. The
two NEP-men were always respectful and polite to Mother. Who
they were, where they came from and later vanished to, will
remain an unsolved mystery. But they definitely knew a lady
- 556 -
when they met one and felt honored by a lady's treating them
as gentlemen of her own class.
One day the doorbell rang and Mother opened the door to
a young, elegant, or should I say over-dressed, woman. This
girl entered and immediately kissed Mother's hand as devoted
peasants used to do a generation before. Mother was not only
taken aback, she was outright frightened by such an unexpected
gesture from the young woman. And the woman was saying,
"Your ladyship does not seem to recognize me. I am Dunka,
the daughter of your former kitchen-maid. Now I am the civil
wife of the District Commissar. I have been told that your
ladyship is selling things and I would like to buy the sofa
and the mirror-cupboard." And she bought them, paying in
British pounds and again kissing Mother's hand when she left.
Some of Mother's own wardrobe, unused for almost five
years, was in need of alteration and adjustment. In the
telephone book Mother found the name of the French seamstress
who used to work for her before the Revolution. When Mother
came to that seamstress, the lady rushed and embraced Mother
as if she were the closest of relatives. She refused to
charge anything for the alterations she was asked to make
and told Mother that she now had a lot of work but alas,
dear Countess, it is not any more among our society.
Mother leaves Russia
The day came when Mother received her passport to go
abroad and with dismay she saw that the exit permit was valid
- 557 -
for three days only. Although for a month she had been pre
paring herself to go, this short notice upset her and she
went to the passport office to ask that the day of departure
be reset for a later date. Mother filled out the request
form for this purpose and handed it and her passport to
an employee through a small opening in the partition
separating employees from the public. The woman on the other
side of the small window gently pushed Mother's request and
passport back to Mother and without .raising her eyes, mumbled,
"Take it, but take it - I thought they would never allow you
to leave." Mother grabbed her passport and rushed home\
The only way to leave St. Petersburg for the closest
border was by train. The then free Republic of Estonia and
its capitol, the city of Reval, were just a night's journey
from St. Petersburg but a great problem was how to get to
the rail station and on the train. Any kind of transportation
in the city of St. Petersburg in 1922 was non-existent. If
some streetcars did occasionally run, a lady of 55 with
several suitcases had not the slightest chance of boarding
a streetcar. Among Mother's younger friends was a young
employee of the State Museum, the famous Hermitage. As a
student he used to tutor me in Latin. He and some of his
friends packed Mother's suitcases on a toboggan and dragged
it through most of the city, Mother walking behind them in
the slush. This Baltic rail station I well remember from
my childhood. It took more than half an hour to drive from
- 558 -
this station to our house and we drove in a closed carriage,
drawn by huge black horses, and I never understood why I was
not allowed to sit next to the coachman as I used to do when
driving in the country. Now Mother walked all this distance
and finally arrived at the Baltic station, but getting on
the train was a problem that can hardly be imagined.
The repairing of railroad cars and locomotives had been
neglected throughout the war years and few cars were still
in condition to roll. A schedule of train departures was
hanging in the station but actually trains departed when
they were ready to do so. The convoy of cars was formed
on some distant track and when the train pulled up to the
passenger loading platform, the cars were almost full of
people that had illegally boarded the train on the outlying
tracks. So when the train pulled up, it was stormed by a
crowd of would-be passengers, a crowd much larger than the
train could take. It was a question of brute force as to who
would manage to get on the train. One of Mother's young
escorts plowed through the crowd like an ice-breaker in
half-frozen water, two other escorts grabbed Mother under her
arms and dragged her along, and two others dragged her suit
cases. After such a free-for-all struggle, Mother found her
self inside a railroad car. Her suitcases were there and
the brave escorts had wished her a lucky journey and departed.
After the first bewilderment had passed, Mother realized
that she was alone in this car. It was dimly lit by a candle,
- 559 -
which was normal for railroad cars in those days. Other cars
were overfilled and passengers were clinging to car bumpers
and car steps and even lying on the roofs of cars.
As the train started moving, an elderly well-dressed
man in an overcoat with a fur collar and an astrakan fur cap
appeared in Mother's car and said, "How did you get here?"
Mother explained how she had been dragged through the crowd
and thrust into this car, adding that she could move out
but could not move her luggage. Magnanimously, the man
declared, "All right, once you are here, stay here." The
train was gently floating along through the winter night and
then suddenly the man asked Mother, "Are you not afraid?"
Mother responded that she was not afraid and had nothing to
be afraid of, having lived so long. "Well, you know I am
straight from hard labor in Siberia." "Probably you have been
a political deportee," said Mother. This seemed to flatter
the man and he started telling of his work to bring about the
Revolution and how he was a terrorist and how many Tsarist
governors and police officers he had murdered, and Mother
argued with him that he should not have murdered people who
were exercising their duty to the Tsar. And so they argued
through the night until the train stopped at the border of
Soviet Russia and Estonia.
Lots of hair-raising horror tales were whispered around
in St. Petersburg about the severeness of the border custom
guards when they physically searched people leaving Soviet
- 560 -
Russia. The search was for valuables, foreign currency, and
books. Knowing this, my mother had nothing in her luggage.
A pearl and a diamond were sewn into a sponge and the moist
sponge was in a rubber bag on the very top of a handbag
with other toilet objects. Nobody came into the car to open
Mother's luggage. She was not even asked to remove her gloves
and could have had precious rings on each finger up to her
nails.
Finally the train stopped on the Estonian side of the
border at the main railroad station of the city of Reval.
Stairs covered with red carpet were pushed up to Mother's
car, and on both sides of the stairs stood an armed honor
guard of Estonian and Soviet border guards. Soviet custom
guards carried Mother's luggage out of the car and put it
down inside the station. Mother's traveling companion left
the car and Mother followed, assisted on the steps by a
gallant Soviet Secret Police officer. At a distance a crowd
of Estonians was watching and was held back by a cordon of
Estonian police. Then Mother's traveling companion wished
her luck, thanked her for an interesting conversation, and
walked to his car and drove away and with him went all the
official persons. The cordon of Estonian police left also
and out of the crowd of watchers rushed Mother's brother
Serge, screaming, "Masha, how did you travel? Did you know
with whom you travelled?" "Well," said Mother, "the main
thing is that I am here and I am happy to see you." Uncle
- 561 -
Serge explained to her that she had been travelling in a
reserved car and in the company of the newly appointed
Soviet Ambassador to the Republic of Estonia. That was
how Mother left the Soviet Union.
After staying a few weeks with her brother's family,
Mother left for Berlin. Germany had recognized the Soviet
Union and Mother's Soviet passport was valid in Germany.
Mother's intention was to go on to the city of Beograd in
Yugoslavia, where she knew that she would find me, but the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia did not recognize the Soviet Union
and a Yugoslav entry visa could not be stamped on a Soviet
passport. Mother had to change her status of a Soviet
citizen to that of an immigrant, which required much red
tape and time. Fortunately, the old Russian Tsarist embassy
was still functioning, located in a private apartment of the
former ambassador, Mr. Botkin, who was very popular and
greatly respected by German officialdom. With his help,
Mother received a so-called Nanson passport, which was given
to all immigrants by the Royal Government of the Netherlands.
After obtaining transit visas to travel through Czechoslovakia
and Hungary, Mother arrived in July 1922 and found me in
Beograd; we had last seen each other almost three years
earlier in Kiev.
- 562 -
CHAPTER VII
CZECHOSLOVAKIA - THE OCCUPIED KINGDOM OF HUNGARY
- 563 -
We move to Hungary
In early spring, 1923, we were in Beograd and my wife
could not go on working at the bank, as I have explained
earlier, because she was expecting a baby. My work at the
insurance company was not enough to make a living. Mother
had recently arrived and had sold her small jewels that
she had brought out of Soviet Russia and this money permitted
us to move and to rearrange our lives.
I was trying to get a visa to travel to Hungary and I
visited the Hungarian Embassy many times. During one visit,
when I asked if there was a visa for so-and-so Stenbock-
Fermor they looked and then politely said, "No." I said,
"Are you sure? Will you please look again?" They looked
again and then they said, "Oh, we have a visa for a Mr.
Stenbock-Ferenc. " I jumped up and said, "That is my visa."
and they replied, "We are very sorry but you are Ivan Stenbock
and in Hungarian you should be Stenbock, Ivan, and this visa
is for Stenbock-Ferenc." I replied, "Well, there is no such
man and I believe that that visa is for me." Finally I
convinced them that there was some kind of clerical mistake
and they assured me that they would request an explanation
from Budapest.
In those days Hungary was the only country that had
experienced Communist Bolshevism. In 1918 there had been
a Communist Bolshevik uprising all over Hungary and many
members of the Hungarian aristocracy were arrested and tried
- 564 -
in some kind of a kangaroo court. Some of them were shot.
But Hungary was, as territory goes, a very small country,
and the victorious Allies, the British, French, Italians, and
the departing Americans, were scared about the takeover of
little Hungary by Bolshevik Communists. That happening in
Russia a year ago - well, Moscow was far away. In those
days the Allies did not realize the danger of letting such
a huge country as Russia, with all its resources, fall into
the hands of the Marxist Communists. But having them right
in the geographical center of Europe, in Budapest, was
frightening, even though it was a very minor scale model
of what had gone on in Russia. All of Hungary was in chaos,
with deserters all over the country. This was changed by
Hungary's neighbors.
Czechoslovakia had been just barely created by the
disasterous Treaty of Versailles which ended the first World
War and laid all the future reasons and milestones for the
next war that occurred twenty years later. The Czechs in
the north had been formerly under Austrian rule; the Slovaks
in the south had been formerly under Hungarian rule. The
Czechs and the Slovaks are ethnically Slavs but for many
centuries those two Slav groups had developed their ways
under very different influences. Some of the Czechs were
Roman Catholics but mostly they had belonged for centuries
to some kind of a Protestant sect that mixed up national
aspirations with religious ideas, but most of the Slovaks
- 565 -
were dedicated Roman Catholics, and that was really a great
difference. Besides, the Czechs were mostly industrialists
and the Slovaks were mostly farmers. There was also a great
difference between those two Slavic languages. When I came
to Slovakia I could open up a Slovak paper and read it with
out a dictionary. I could understand the general meaning.
If I picked up a Czech newspaper I could not understand a
single line.
That new country, Czechoslovakia, was very happy to
annex portions of Hungary that were populated by Slovaks and
Hungarians. Drawing any kind of geographical border was
absolutely impossible. For reasons that go back centuries
the population was so mixed, Hungarians and Slovaks, that
one village would be populated by Slovaks and the next would
be all Hungarians. In Slovakia under Hungarian rule, of
course the official language had been Hungarian, but the
Slovak peasants spoke Slovak amongst themselves. As soon as
a Slovak peasant received some kind of schooling, not to
mention university study, he would speak only Hungarian, the
language of the ruling class. Slovak was the language of
the lowest peasant class.
During my stay in Czechoslovakia I befriended a Slovak
gentleman who had a very Slovak-sounding name. He was a mem
ber of Parliament and he was a very famous lawyer and a great
friend of all Russians. When once I asked this gentleman
"How many cultured Slovaks are there in Czechoslovakia?"
- 566 -
(by cultured I meant people who had graduated from a university)
he said, shrugging his shoulders, "Well, probably a little
less than a dozen." Well, he was right, so you can see the
level in that coutry.
The Czechs moved into Slovakia and they took over a part
of that country that had been part of Hungary. The Hungarians
never mentioned it as Czechoslovakia by name, they spoke of
the occupied Kingdom of Hungary. The neighbors of Hungary
on the south were Rumanians. About the Rumanians - I think
I have talked about what kind of people they were, and it
was a common joke that Rumania is not a country, it is a
profession. Those Rumanians were all too happy to move into
Hungary and grab as much Hungarian land as they could. What
they took was very valuable forest land. In order to stop
the Bolsheviks, the French moved some French army troops into
what was left of Hungary and the British moved some British
gunboats all the way up the Danube River as far as the city
of Budapest.
Hungarian money went down, down, down, and was worth
almost nothing. It was common knowledge that a sailor on
one of those British gunboats was paid in British pounds and
his pay, if converted into Hungarian money, would equal
the pay of the Hungarian Minister of War. The Hungarian
situation was very desperate. Austria-Hungary had some big
navy ships on the Adriatic Sea but of course they were no
match for the British navy plus the French navy and the
- 567 -
Italian navy. They had stayed in port most of the time
during the first World War. Then there came mutiny aboard
those ships. They were all under the command of Admiral
Horthy, and Admiral Horthy was a very resolute man so when
the mutiny broke out on his ships at anchor he ordered coast
artillery to open their heavy guns on his own ships. Some
of the ships went down and the others surrendered, and the
mutiny was stopped right away. He had energy and guts, that
Admiral Horthy. Then he headed a Hungarian volunteer army
in a small Hungarian village, and all the officers of this
so-called army of maybe three thousand men were Hungarians.
They would save the Hungarian national flag, the Hungarian
honor, and that national honor meant a great deal to any
Hungarian no matter what his social standing. Well, that
volunteer army could never have conquered the Bolshevik
forces, but the Rumanians who occupied part of Hungary were
against Bolshevism and Communism and so were the Czechs.
Therefore, the Bolshevik leaders fled to Soviet Russia, where
they were greeted with open arms and placed in responsible
positions. Bolshevism and Communism were over in Hungary.
At about this same time the Hungarian nobility realized very
well the essence of their short experience with Communism
and they made up a new slogan, "Victims of Communism Unite!"
and they started inviting Russian refugee families to their
country homes for a stay as guests, and the Hungarians were
the only people who made that gesture in all of Europe. Of
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course this Hungarian movement and the Russians' acceptance
of it were based on wishful thinking. We all imagined that
Europe would intervene to throw out Lenin and his henchmen
and help Russia become again a country as it had been when
the old order was accepted all over Europe. Being guests in
a Hungarian home for a year, maybe two years, would be a
great help and well, why not? But then it turned out that
there would be no way to return to Russia for it became
recognized by all of Western Europe except Holland, and far
away overseas the United States would also not recognize
the Communist government of Russia for many years.
We meet old friends and_make new ones
Now in that part of Hungary which was occupied by the
Czechs there was the estate of Count Ludwig Karolyi, and this
estate had a very good manager, a Mr. Hegedush. He was a very
nice man; I knew him very well later on. He was terribly
short-sighted but that refers only to his eyes - in every
other respect he was just the opposite. While the owner and
his family were still in hiding, Mr. Hegedush learned that
rabble from the surrounding villages was ready to loot the
estate. This rabble was composed of Slovak and Hungarian
deserters who had come back from Russia, and Mr. Hegedush
knew every single man of that group and he also knew the
psychology of the rabble. He invited them all into his
office and he appointed those cut-throats as guards on the
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estate and the castle with its ninety-six rooms full of
priceless antiques and priceless paintings. He put all those
men into some kind of fancy uniforms with monograms of the
owners of the estate on those uniforms and buttons, and he
gave them hats with plumes and armed them all. Nobody dared
touch that estate throughout all the time of that turmoil.
Well, of course, that was a brilliant move. When the
turmoil was over the family came back. New regulations came
from Prague, which was full of Socialists. They introduced
new labor laws and the day of labor was to last eight hours.
Eight hours of labor per day in offices and in plants, that is
possible, but you have to take in the sugar beet roots when
they are ripe and weather conditions allow. You cannot stop
at five o'clock in the afternoon because your labor day is
finished. Cows have to be milked on Sundays, on Christmas,
and on New Year's Day, and paying overtime for those hours
would make the financial situation totally impossible. Count
Karolyi could not continue farming those estates so he
rented them out to the local sugar factory, which was run by
an anonymous Jewish company. The whole country produced
sugar, which they called "white gold," and therefore the
labor rules were amended so that the plants could be run
reasonably and with some kind of profit. Many of Count
Karolyi 's estates were rented to that sugar factory but not
his mansion of ninety-six rooms nor the stables nor the big
park, and the renters had to supply him with fodder for his
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horses and everything that was needed to provide for the big
retinue that took care of that castle.
In Budapest I had a very good friend. She had been a
member of my Yuki sporting club and we were great, great
friends. Her father had begun his career in the Horse Guards
so she also belonged to the family of Horse Guards. She wrote
us a letter and invited us to come over to Budapest to share
her house on the outskirts of the city. The place was called
Allag. Her husband was Mr. Ivanenko and he had graduated
from the same military school as I had but six years earlier,
and he had become a world famous gentleman rider. In Budapest
he became an instructor at the Hungarian Officers' Riding
Academy. That was very unusual because Hungarians were
excellent cavalrymen and some did not like a Russian instructor
of cavalry in their school in Budapest. Anyhow, we were
delighted to accept the invitation and went to Budapest where
we shared the house with my friend Vera Trepov Ivanenko for
a very short time.
My dear friend Vera was a great beauty and she was very
popular in Budapest high society. She was, so to say, under
the protection of a very elderly gentleman, Count Laszlo
Karolyi, and she was a friend of Count Laszlo 's daughters.
They lived some fifty kilometers from the center of the
city of Budapest on a beautiful estate, called Fogt. While
we were sharing the house with Vera, she told many of her
Hungarian friends about us and they were all very eager to
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help, especially because they all knew that my wife was ex
pecting a baby very soon.
Finally, when the birth was expected almost any time,
old Count Laszlo Karolyi suggested that my wife go to the
hospital. The hospital was on Count Karolyi 's territory, as
were many many plants and factories; as many people jokingly
said, almost half of Budapest was on his land. His fortune
was limitless in spite of all the losses after the first
World War. A room was assigned in that hospital for my wife
and then something happened that was very typical for the
Hungarian mentality: Count Laszlo Karolyi decided that that
room harboring my wife, Russian Countess so-and-so, born
Princess so-and-so and therefore of the same class as old
Count Laszlo himself, was to be all furnished with furniture tha
was brought from Count Laszlo 's castle. That sounds like a
real fairy tale 1 Besides, of course, the food at the hospital
was intended for the working class and was not suitable for
somebody from the topmost class, so Count Laszlo ordered one
of his servants to bring food from his own kitchen every day,
a ride of about 15 kilometers but fortunately there was an
electric railroad running from his estate to the hospital.
Our son Ivan finally arrives
The expected birth was already overdue. My mother was
also at the hospital. Through some friends she had been
offered a job as a French teacher for two boys on a Hungarian
estate. But this Hungarian estate was now located outside
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of the borders of Hungary, on territory occupied and annexed
by the northern neighbors, Czechoslovakia. My mother postponed
her departure, expecting her grandchild any day, but after
all she could not wait forever, so she left. The surgeon who
headed that hospital was not a specialist for aiding in child
birth and he became quite worried about the situation, about
the child being so late, so he reported his worries to Count
Karolyi and he asked for a very great Hungarian specialist
in this field. Count Karolyi got into his car, drove over
to Budapest to the apartment of this great Hungarian professor,
and asked him if he could come for a consultation. The very
fact that Count Karolyi had come to ask that professor for
help and consultation was an event that all Budapest was
talking about. The professor immediately stepped into the
car with Count Karolyi and both of them went to the hospital.
While Count Karolyi was waiting downstairs, the professor
came into the room and so did my son, Ivan. The professor
merely stepped into the room when he was most necessary, at
the most psychological moment. He took the newborn baby by
one leg and held the baby up. That was a doctors' trick
because a newborn baby has to start breathing air, and the
fact that he held that baby up made the baby breathe. Then
he declared, "That one is going to be a great general in
Russia."
On the very same day of my son's birth I had a good tip
from a British trainer of racing horses. Allag was next to
the great racing tracks of Budapest and many British trainers
- 573 -
lived in Allag. They were delighted to talk with me in
English and I became friendly with those trainers. One of
the elderly trainers said, "If, that particular day, it is
going to rain heavily, then in the very last race you bet on
such and such a horse." That is what I had intended to do,
but I was summoned by phone to the hospital to get acquainted
with my son and of course I rushed to the hospital. Earlier
that day I had spent some time there and then the nurses
and the doctor had said I was of no use there and that I had
better leave. It had been raining heavily all day. Of
course, with the emotion of meeting my son and rushing to the
hospital and so forth and so on, I was tired. It was still
raining slightly. I looked at my watch and I calculated that
I still had time to catch the last race, and then I thought,
oh, the hell with it. Maybe the trainer was wrong and I am
really tired and it is again raining, so I went home. The
next day I read in the paper that that horse had won the last
race and that the odds were one to eighty. Since then I have
always teased my son that I lost a lot of money because of
him. He never repaid me.
A nurse for our son
Meanwhile, all the Scherbatov family had moved from
Constantinople to Bulgaria. Bulgaria accepted many Russian
refugees, and life there was much cheaper.
So, my mother-in-law arrived. She could not stay in
Budapest for any length of time, but she brought along the
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nurse that I mentioned before, that was called the Maltzoff
family nurse. She had managed to leave Soviet Russia with
the two Maltzoff girls, with the help of the International
Red Cross. In those years it was possible, for money, for
women or children to be allowed to leave the Soviet Union
to rejoin their relatives who were immigrants abroad. So,
this nurse came to help Nadejda, to nurse the newborn child.
Then my mother-in-law left; and then, about three weeks
later, this nurse unexpectedly declared that she was also
leaving, going back to Bulgaria. When I asked her why she
had to leave, she bluntly said that she could not stand the
attitude that Nadejda had toward her husband - that was me.
The old nurse's conception of a husband was as the head of
the family, and that he had to be treated accordingly. When
she realized the everyday situation between us, she just
firmly declared that she could not tolerate it, and that she
was leaving.
I find employment
Through Count Karolyi I became acquainted with one of
his younger cousins, who must have been a gentleman of about
fifty. He had his palace in Budapest and he had an enormous
estate also, beyond the border, now in Czechoslovakia. He
offered his hospitality to us and the newborn baby but I
told him that I felt too young to just enjoy his hospitality
and be doing nothing. Besides hospitality, board and living
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quarters, every person needs at least some money for minor
expenses, even stamps, and the baby needs baby food and the
baby would need clothing, and so forth and so on. Then Count
Ludwig Karolyi said, "Oh, that is perfect, because my estate
is rented to a company, a sugar factory, and of course if I
ask them to give you a job there as a minor clerk or something
they cannot possibly refuse. They will pay you wages and
you will live and be our guests in our castle. Besides, we
do not live in that castle ourselves. We spend there a short
time in the summer and then a week in November and a week in
December for hunting. We live in another castle which is
much closer to Vienna." I was very happy to accept that
hospitality.
But now came the problem of crossing the border between
Budapest and Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia was a republic
run by a government that was very socialistic and very left-
leaning and they disliked the idea of giving permanent visas
of residence to somebody coming from Budapest, sponsored by
a Hungarian aristocrat, his name utterly un-Slavic like mine,
and besides also a titled one. That went completely against
the grain. My request for a visa was pushed aside somewhere.
They did not refuse, but they did not give it either. And
this went on and on. Our situation in Hungary became more
and more difficult. Money was running out and I had to have
a job.
There was a big depot in Budapest that sold everything
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that was necessary in a Hungarian peasant household. It was
quite a concern, and the majority of it of course belonged
to Count Laszlo Karolyi. I got a job as packer in the perfume
department. That perfume department sent out every day huge
boxes of perfume made up to the taste of the Hungarian
peasantry. The first day of my work there ended up with my
having a terrible headache from that perfume. I was paid then,
per week 250,000 krones. The krone normally is a unit, the
same as the dollar is a unit. A ticket for the city electric
railroad car to get there from the main station cost
20,000 krones one way. That was inflation! When I think
of inflation now in 1978 I really cannot complain too much:
a ticket on the Muni bus in San Francisco does not cost, at
least not yet, 20,000 dollars one way. Besides that heap of
money, I received a box of dried herring and a small bag of
flour. This flour and that box of dried herring were
actually more valuable than the money I received in those
days.
The head of my department, a Hungarian of course, could
speak a little German. Once he called me into his office
and he asked me, "It has come to my notice - is it right? -
that downstairs in the loading department there are two
Russians working as loaders and that they are officers of the
Russian Imperial Guard." I said, "Yes, that is quite true.
I know them personally. They are two brothers Maximov. They
are about my age." At this minute the head of the perfume
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department banged his fist on the table and started yelling,
"Why didn't you tell me that before? That is no place for
Russian Guard officers to work, down there in that dirty
yard. I should have known this before." "Well," I said,
"I did not think about it before. We now take any work that
we can get." The very next day both brothers were transferred
to my perfume department only because they were officers of
the Russian Imperial Guard. That was only two or three years
after the war between Russia and Hungary was over. Every ,
Saturday we were paid and one Saturday the teller stuck his
head out of the window and said in broken German, "Will you
workers, who are foreigners, please stay here after every
body else has left?" We had just received our pay, so we
looked at each other, the two brothers Maximov and I, and said,
"Well, this is it. We are going to be fired because we are
foreigners." The labor problem was very, very difficult, and
Budapest was full of refugees from territories that had been
taken away from Hungary by all their neighbors, Rumania,
Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. The natives had fled to
Budapest and were unemployed.
After all the other workers had left I went up to that
teller's window because I was the only one who could speak
German. Without a word the teller paid us wages, the same
amount that we had received half an hour earlier. I was so
surprised that I told him, "We just received our wages and
this second payment must be a mistake." He smiled back at
- 578 -
me and said, "No mistake at all. We know perfectly well that
the standard of life for ex-Russian Guard officers cannot be
the same as that of our Hungarian unskilled workers." Well,
I was so surprised that I hardly knew what to say. Later,
many, many years later when I was in Paris and many of my
friends were working in car-building plants (Citroen and
Renault) there were thousands of Russians employed there and
I suggested to the French that they adopt the same attitude
towards ex-Russian officers and double the wages that the
French got. Well, my suggestions were not successful.
In that store where I was employed, packing perfume
with my friends, one day we received a sudden procession:
the head of the entire plant, a very outstanding Hungarian
gentleman, followed by his assistants, his aides, and his
secretaries, all proper and ceremonial, and next to him walked
a Russian gentleman, Prince Obolensky, a very elderly general
and the father of the younger Obolensky who was killed at
the beginning of the Civil War. The head of the department
was holding a chair and he put the chair in the hall exit
that was used only in case of fire. But there was a suspicion
that some of the workers might use that fire escape to carry
away on the sly some of the perfume. As the head of the
department put the chair at the exit he turned to Prince
Obolensky, bowed, and said, "Prince, Your Lordship, please
sit in that chair and for goodness sake do not do anything.
That is your job." This old Prince Obolensky was living with
- 579 -
his second wife and little boy on one of the estates in
Hungary. It was a very fine living on that estate with room
and board, but everybody needs a little cash also.
We dine with Archduke Joseph, the caretaker of
the royal palace
I came to Budapest, as I have said, in early 1923 and I
left in November of the same year, so I was actually in
Hungary for about six or seven months. At that time there
was no King and what little of Hungary there was left after
the disasterous Treaty of Versailles, was being ruled by a
dictator, an Admiral Hoarty. He was, so to say, the care
taker of the kingdom. Theoretically he represented the King;
theoretically it was the Kingdom of Hungary. All those regions
that had been grabbed by the neighbors were always spoken of
as the occupied regions of the Kingdom of Hungary. While I
was there I was present at a Russian Red Cross fund raising
event that took place in the King's Palace in the city of
Budapest. In this palace there lived a Field Marshall,
Archduke Joseph, a member of the previously reigning dynasty
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Archduke Joseph was a man
of about fifty. He had commanded the armies of Austria-
Hungary but he had been a rather unsuccessful commander. His
many regiments of Slovak origin had surrendered to the
Russians. Hungarians were excellent soldiers and the Archduke
was very, very popular among not only the upper classes but
among the crowd and the peasantry. He did not look as an
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Archduke should. He was short, stout, ugly in his features,
and as a Hungarian landlady once told me, if he were in
civilian clothes anybody could mistake him for the owner of
a small Jewish shop in a Jewish ghetto. But that saved his
life. When he was on one of his big estates and the estate
was being looted by the local rabble he went to the stables
and took a pitchfork and started cleaning out the manure in
the stables, pretending to be one of the old stableboys.
Of course all his staff and all the grooms of his stable knew
who that old stableboy was but none of them gave him away.
If he had been discovered, he would have been killed there
and then but he was very popular among all the people.
When I went to that palace it was used by invitation by an old
Russian poet and writer named Prince Galitsen. His appearance
was very impressive, he really looked like a prince; nobody
would ever overlook him or would not know that he was a
one-hundred percent aristocrat. His French was somewhat
antiquated but very beautiful and very fluent and he knew
what he was talking about. On my arrival I was very astonish
ed: downstairs in the hall I saw Archduke Joseph in full
dress uniform of a Field Marshall, with all his decorations,
and attended by some generals of his staff and his aides.
They were standing there in the hall and they were awaiting
Admiral Hoarty, not as a person, but as Caretaker of the
Kingdom. They stood there for about half an hour before
Admiral Hoarty arrived. Then Prince Galitsen 1 s speech about
- 581 -
Pushkin started and he spoke for more than an hour. Re
freshments were served afterwards, a light Hungarian wine
and biscuits, carried around by servants in court uniform.
It was quite an impressive event.
Finally it was all over and my two friends, the brothers
Maximov, and I descended the great stairs of the palace to
leave. Suddenly a voice came from above and a Hungarian
general called to us in German, "Are you officers of the
Russian Imperial Guard?" The Maximovs did not speak German
so I said to him, "Yes, we are." "Oh, I am glad I caught you
because the Archduke has given orders to invite you to have
supper with him." We were very surprised. We went with him
upstairs and were ushered into a diningroom and seated.
Because I could speak German I was seated to the right of
the Archduke, who presided over the table. We were not
numerous; there were not more than fifteen men, all of them
in officers' uniforms, and we in our barely tidy mufti, but
everybody overlooked that as gentlemen would. Five minutes
later I felt as comfortable and at home as if I were in the
officers' mess in my own regiment of the Horse Guards. We
spoke in the most friendly way about all kinds of events and
compared notes about the war between us that had ended barely
five years earlier. We spoke about military situations and
finally the Archduke spoke also about the political situation
of yesteryear.
Almost one hundred years ago there had been formed a
- 582 -
so-called Union of the Three Emperors: the Emperor of Russia
(in those days Nicholas I) , the Emperor of Austria-Hungary,
and the Emperor of Germany. This Union decided never to wage
war, and this bloc of three countries was, of course,
invincible. But unfortunately the Union did not last very
long. The French got panicky when they realized that this
Union freed Germany to handle France as they cared. The
British would be uncomfortable because Germany was safe on
the east and in the south and could start concentrating on
building a great navy that might one day equal the British
navy. The attitude of the British toward their navy reminds
me of an incident from my childhood. My Uncle Vladimir gave
a party for children and movies were something new but it
was out of the question to take children to a movie so the
movie had to be shown in Uncle Vladimir's house. Something
went wrong and the specialists , sent to show that movie,
could not get it started and it was beginning to get late.
All the children were there with their governesses and most
of the governesses, and there were at least seven or eight
of them, were British and they were all saying that it was
time to leave. We were all very upset. Then the movie
man had the idea of a genius and finally was able to get the
movie started. It was supposed to be about a dog saving the
life of someone somewhere in the Alps. Instead, that genius
of a movie man put on a reel of the British Home Fleet and
of course all the governesses stayed! Maybe two or three
- 583 -
years later when we were teenagers and times were changing,
my aunt took all of us to a movie. This movie was about
the work of the Russian Red Cross. The work of preparing
gas masks was being done by ladies of the society in the
halls of the Winter Palace and all those ladies of high
society were grandmothers. The movie man made a mistake
and he made the reel go too fast and all those ladies
looked as if they had cast off their dignity because they
rushed from one place to another up and down the staircase
of the Palace as if they were schoolgirls. We laughed till
tears rolled down. Then that reel was over and a new movie
started. It was called "The Hotel of Mr. Dumbell" and this
Mr. Dumbell was a young man and he kept making the worst
mistakes and once he went into the wrong room at the wrong
time and all of a sudden my aunt stood up and we were all
escorted out of the movie.
We move to Czechoslovakia
Several times I visited the Embassy of the Republic of
Czechoslovakia in Budapest and could not get further than
the entrance hall and the doorman, who was always saying that
the Embassy was too busy and no one could receive me. Then
I found out through some Hungarian friends, that the French
Ambassador in Budapest in those days was Count Derobien, who
had been second or third secretary of the French Embassy years
ago in Russia. I remembered his name because Father had
- 584 -
spoken about him since he loved the Russian ballet just as
Father did, so I decided to pay a visit to Count Derrobien.
I sent up my card and he received me and told me that he
remembered my late father very well and that he was glad to
see me. Then he asked if there was any way that he could be
helpful. So I told my story about wanting to get to Czecho
slovakia as fast as possible. Right in front of me he
picked up the phone standing on his desk and called up the
Czech Embassy. I remember his words to the Czech Ambassador:
"My friend" - and he mentioned me - "will be in your office
in about half an hour. My car will drive him up. My friend
desires to get a visa to Czechoslovakia. Good bye, Sir."
That was the French Ambassador. Of course then Czechoslovakia
had been barely created by France during the disasterous
peace treaty of Versailles. Anyhow, I came driving up to the
Czech Embassy in the French Ambassador's car, with the French
tricolor flying on the car. The doorman bowed low and I was
ushered in, and ten minutes later a girl brought me my pass
port and a visa. It is quite true, the saying that it does
not matter what you know, it matters who you know.
We were planning to leave Budapest in a few days. I went
to say good-bye to the representative of the Russian Red Cross
in Budapest, Prince Wolkonsky, and he said to me, "I am sorry
you are leaving but I know that you have to. The representative
of the Russian Red Cross in Prague is a close friend of mine.
Will you please take my letter to him and deliver it to him
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in person?" That letter was on the letterhead of the diplom
atic corps of the International Red Cross.
We boarded the train for Czechoslovakia - it was in
those days a ride of barely four or five hours - and of course
our documents were checked when we crossed the border. I
showed my passport and also Wolkonsky's letter and everybody
started saluting me and taking me for an official diplomatic
courier. That helped a lot. Then our baggage had to be
checked and the man checking the baggage was a Czechoslovak
official who had spent most of the first World War in Siberia
as a POW and he could speak Russian, and when he discovered
that I was a diplomatic courier for the Russian Red Cross,
he just stamped our luggage without opening it.
Life on the estate of Count Louie
Thus we came to Czechoslovakia. We left the train at
a station called Nove Zamky, a small city some ten kilometers
away from the estate of Count Louie, where we were expected.
It was November. I was quite surprised and shocked by the
carriage that was awaiting us at the station. It was some
kind of a very antique carriage that obviously had not been
used in many, many years. Some ugly working horses were
harnessed and the driver of this contraption was just a plain
working man in rather dirty clothes. This was not at all the
style that I had expected from the estate of the Count Karolyi
that I knew. I knew that the house we were supposed to live
in had 96 rooms and I was surprised by that carriage because
- 586 -
since the days of Russia, and also in Hungary, the kind of
carriage usually corresponded more or less with the kind of
guests that were expected. I had expected a four-in-hand
with a liveried coachman with plumes on his hat, and instead
there was that ugly carriage. But it was roomy for the
three of us and all our luggage and we drove on quite leisure
ly through muddy or sandy roads and finally we came to the
castle. Later, in order to explain that strange carriage,
Count Louie told me that he was sorry to have had to send
that one but it was just the week of the hunting season for
hares and the castle was full of his friends. Usually there
were twelve gentlemen of about his age, his personal friends,
and their wives and servants. They had to drive out to the
fields every day and all the carriages, of course, were very
busy - there were not enough for all the guests.
That was the most famous hunt in Europe. About 2,000
beaters were hired from the nearby villages and they surrounded
a huge area of the estate. They were young men and young boys
and old women and young girls, and sometimes they were gypsies.
Everybody had in his hands something to make as much noise
as possible. The circle narrowed and narrowed and narrowed,
and in one part of that circle were posted the gentlemen
hunters. Finally, all the hares were in that narrow circle.
I was invited to participate, not as a hunter but just to
look on with all the ladies who always went there at lunch-
time and I said that I did not think of it as a sport, much
- 587 -
to their chagrin. I stood next to one of those Hungarian
gentlemen who long ago had been a secretary of the Hungarian
Embassy in Petersburg, and it was quite unbelievable. The
hares were just rushing around him. He had a gun in his hands
that he fired at the hares and then he literally dropped the
gun. At that moment his servant, standing on his left,
threww up another gun that he caught up in the air and he
fired again and dropped it, and another servant standing on
his right threw up another gun which he again caught in the
air and fired. He shot from three guns because he had no
time to reload. Finally, while he was firing almost point
balnk at all those hares rushing around him, one of the hares
escaped by running away between his spread legs.
I could never understand that kind of hunting and how
the Hungarians, great gentlemen that they were, could enjoy
that kind of slaughter, but it was a tradition of many, many
generations, and sacrosanct. In late December the same sort
of shooting took place again, but this time of pheasants.
They were so plentiful that they were just flying over the
heads of the hunters. In shooting pheasants they had to
walk from early morning until dark, walk through fields and
brush, and because of that those gentlemen had to be quite
sturdy and good sportsmen and had to be used to that kind of
hunting. One year, for political reasons, the Italian
Ambassador from Budapest was there. But he was an Italian
hunter, not a Hungarian one. After the hunt was supposedly
- 588 -
over a bugle was sounded, and all the hunters had to come to
the place where carriages and ladies were waiting for them.
They knew where to go by the sound of the bugle. Nobody was
supposed to shoot after the bugle had sounded. They were all
coming close to the carriages - the bugle had sounded maybe
ten or fifteen minutes earler - when everybody heard BOOM!
A shot. Everybody was quite frightened. An accident? What
had happened? Well, the Italian Ambassador had shot very few
pheasants. Then, coming back, he saw a scared pheasant perched
on the branch of a tree. Of course shooting a sitting pheasant
was a crime, but he was an Italian so what could be expected?
He shot that sitting pheasant and scared everybody. All the
ladies and Hungarian gentlemen made terrible diplomatic efforts
not to laugh. When they finally came home, into the great
hall of the castle, that Italian sportsman was totally exhausted.
He just made it into the hall, and inside the hall he collapsed
and was carried to his room. That was a diplomatic disaster
for the honor of the Kingdom of Italy!
After the hunt - it ended roughly at four o'clock and it
was getting dark - everybody changed rapidly into something
else and tea was served. That tea did not last too long
because everybody had to get ready for the big dinner, and
between five and eight those twelve gentlemen and their wives
all wanted hot baths before changing into their gala dinner
clothes. Although the castle had 96 rooms, it had only two
bathrooms. The bath water had to be heated with wood and a
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hot tub could be ready roughly every two hours. So how could
about 25 people have hot baths? That was very hard to explain
in later years to Americans when talking about conditions of
life and the luxury of Hungary. Luxury has many aspects.
Speaking about luxury, I have to mention the great dinner
after the hunt. The two of us, my wife and I, were invited
to most of those dinners and at the first dinner that we
took part in I had no tuxedo. Having a tuxedo was beyond any
dream on account of my financial situation. I was a minor
clerk on that estate which was leased to a sugar factory that
was run by Jewish people. They gave me half -pay, reasoning
that I had other benefits as a guest of the Karolyis. So I
had to do 100% of the work for 50% of the normal pay. There
was no choice. All of those Hungarian gentlemen and their
wives were very nice, very cultured people. All of them of
course spoke German and I could speak German very well. Many
of them could also speak English and French and did so because
my wife did not know German. They were gentlemen in the
highest and best sense of this word. They understood very
well that because of Communism and Bolshevism the Russians
had lost their estates and their fortunes and owned practical
ly nothing, but they just could not understand that a Russian
refugee had no tuxedo. That was beyond them.
Now this dinner was really an event, something from a
fairy tale. There was a big diningroom with a table that
could seat forty to fifty people. On one of the walls of the
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diningroom was one huge window and behind that window was a
palm garden, full of the most exotic plants and trees. There
was electritcity in all the castle except the big diningroom
and it was lit by candelabras with wax candles, just as 100
or more years ago. Behind every lady's chair there stood a
manservant dressed in national Hungarian dress, just to move
the lady's chair. All those persons sitting at that huge
table were served by I do not know how many footmen under the
command of a butler who was an Austrian from Vienna. When
he served he looked like some ancient Egyptian priest, he was
so grand in every move he made. Those dinners were a fairy
tale, but for us a very mixed blessing. I understood our
hosts and their guests wanted to be and really were as nice
to us as they could be, but conversation with each year
became more and more difficult. We discussed, the first
year, our flight from Russia, particularly the last years of
the Russian Empire. Soon that was exhausted. Discussing the
businesses of that farm was not suitable. We could speak
about children. But the conversations were very very difficult
as the years went on and on. Besides, finally I had a tuxedo.
The mother of Count Louie was an aged beauty. Her hus
band had been the head of the diplomatic corps in Berlin back
in the year 1877. He had been very much older than she and
he was by age and rank the oldest in the diplomatic corps in
Berlin in those days. She, very much younger and a beauty
in her time, sat as first lady of the diplomatic corps at
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official dinners between Bismark and the Chief of Staff,
General Moltke. Now she was very old and infirm, always in
a wheelchair, but she had a very, very clear mind and talking
to her was sometimes more interesting than talking to the
younger generation. She spent all summer on that estate and
she wanted us very often to have lunch with her. One time,
using all her almost age-old diplomacy and tact, for the
grand lady that she was , she mentioned that her brother had
passed away a year ago. Of course he left very good suits
behind and he was exactly my size, my figure. Very diplomat
ically and kindly she suggested, asked, whether I would be so
kind as to accept some of his wardrobe. That was a very, very
kind idea, and a great blessing for me. So now I had nice
suits and I finally had a tuxedo. It was sort of old
fashioned but it fit me very well without necessitating any
alterations.
In later years when the situation of the family started
slipping because huge estates in Romania were being confiscated
without any pay at all - and there were forests, lumber, and
all that was lost - Count Karolyi decided to rent his partridge
hunt. He would sooner have shot himself than rent his hare
and pheasant hunts, but partridge, all right. He rented it
to a very wealthy group consisting partly of British and
parly of Americans. The Americans arrived two days before
the British came and the Count received them on the threshold
of the castle and left, asking me to help out because I was
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the only person around that could speak English. When they
arrived they were very nice to me and that very same evening
I was invited to have dinner. At the dinner I got panicky
because I could not understand those Americans. I had known
English since my childhood - that was the Queen's English.
Those Americans were very, very nice, and tried to switch to
French with me but I knew well that that would make things
worse. Two days later the British arrived and I could under
stand them immediately. That first night at dinner of course
all the servants were there, the table was loaded with antique
family silver and decorated with flowers, and the wax candles
were burning. My neighbor at the table was a very good look
ing young American lady and when she saw all that and the
Hungarian servant in Hungarian dress, there just to push her
chair, she got quite excited. She told me in a most excited
voice, "It is a fairy tale, it is simply wonderful. It is
just like Hollywood!" That was the greatest thing that an
American girl could say.
On those big Hungarian estates all the servants were
so-to-say members of the family; they represented an
aristocracy of sorts. There was one servant who came back
from the war in Russia. He was young and clever and could
manage any small job, repairing electricity and what-not.
Once when this estate was rented to a group of Americans and
British who had come to hunt the best partridge in all of
Europe, one of those American gentlemen came to me and said
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that he had noticed that manservant and how clever he was.
He said, "Probably you do not know how difficult the question
of servants is in our United States. Upon seeing that very
good servant I will offer him a job as my servant." I do not
remember his name but he said to me, and I was quite young
then, "I am the King of Electricity in New York." I do not
know whether he meant it or not, but anyhow, he was a
millionaire, a really big millionaire. "And besides," he
said, "if you ever come to the United States just walk into
my office and you have a job." In those days I was not
even thinking of going to the United States. Well, I related
to that manservant what the wealthy gentleman had told me and
he said, "That is very nice of him. I have to talk it over
with my wife." He had a little boy the same age as my boy
was then, five years old. The next day he came and said,
"Well, we talked it over. Please tell that American gentle
man that I cannot come." The offer of the American had been
fantastic. He was ready to pay, of course, for the journey,
and to take over the education of that little five-year-old
boy. He had said, "I am going to make a gentleman out of
that boy." Anyhow, when the servant said that he could not
accept the offer I said to him, "Well, that is up to you,
but if that American gentleman asks me why, what do you want
me to tell him?" The servant got quite excited and he said
to me, "Sir, I have been serving in this house now for the
past ten years. My father served the Count and his father
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and my grandfather worked here all his life for the grandfather
of the present owner." So there were several generations of
servants in that castle, and it was a kind of aristocracy of
servants. It was very, very hard to explain that to an
American gentleman.
My work assignment
My employment and my work for that society that was
renting Count Louie's estate was by no means a bed of roses.
I was assigned to supervise their dairy farm. They had lots
of cattle and milk cows, and they also produced mainly sugar
beets on that farm. Now I do not want to talk much about
farming methods, but I was quite involved in it, and I learned
that producing sugar beets was the only reason for farming
because sugar was the main staple of export for Czechoslovakia.
Also there was a plant in northern Czechoslovakia that produced
arms and it was almost as large and as important as the famous
German production of arms by Krupp. So the Czechs sold sugar
and they sold arms. Well, we had to do with sugar. In
order to produce sugar beets you had to put a lot of dung on
the field every year; in order to produce dung you have to
have cattle and you have to have straw. Therefore the wheat
and rye fields were cultivated not for the grain - of course
that was sold but it was a minor product - but the straw was
very important in producing dung. The cows were milked and
young steers were fattened and sold for meat, but the income
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from all this was just the dung, that was the most important
income .
I was assigned to supervise that cattle business. When
the steers were heavy enough they had to be weighed, usually
every winter when the roads were either frozen or very muddy.
There was a weighing platform and the steer were lead onto
that weighing platform, and of course on the feet of those
steers there was a lot of mud. Now there was a buyer and a
seller of those steer and I was in between, just taking notes
on the weight of every steer. But the weight of the steer
had to be guessed by the buyer or the seller and I had nothing
to do with that but I was present, and I enjoyed myself,
because the buyer was Jewish and the seller was Jewish. They
discussed the weight of the mud and of course they quarreled,
and they insulted each other (they spoke German so I could
understand them) in a way that I had never heard before. I
will now have to use words that are unprintable. The mildest
thing that one of those two fellows could say to the other
one was, "I am going to shit on your head." And things worse.
Finally they did agree and after it was all over, having
insulted each other with the most impossible expressions, the
two of them went arm in arm to the closest little village
inn and enjoyed beer together as the best of friends. That
was very funny to me.
The cow business was more complicated. There I worked
alone. The milkman, having milked a cow, had to pour the milk
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out into a huge measuring glass in front of me and I had to
keep a record of how much milk every cow had given every
particular day. The cows that produced more milk got more
corn and other "strong food," as it was called, than the cows
that had less milk. Then the cows were periodically weighed
and when a cow was giving less than a certain amount of milk,
it was transferred to the fattening stables and was fattened
up for the butcher. So every cow was individually milked
and every cow was registered by me, and the total amount of
milk given every day, of course, had to be equal to the sum of
the amounts registered for the individual cows. There were
columns of figures, and as I always hated figures, the end
figure on the bottom right corner of my big sheet, never
balanced. So I had to rearrange a cow or two for more milk
or less milk each particular day. Then, when the milking
was over, there was a line of the families, employed on the
estate permanently, and their wives or their children were
waiting outside in that line for their portion of the milk,
and I had to measure it out. All those barns and the office
of the estate were at least twenty minutes' walking from the
castle where I lived. The milking of the cows was done three
times in 24 hours. It began at six o'clock in the morning.
Every day, including Sundays and Holidays, at six o'clock in
the morning I had to be in that barn checking the milking of
the cows and I had to go there in any kind of weather, rain,
snow, frozen ground, or bottomless mud. Going back and forth
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at least six times, in the morning to the barn, back for
breakfast at the castle, back to the farm, back for lunch,
back there in the evening, and again back to the castle.
That was a lot of walking. Fortunately I was very young.
Now again, the Hungarian host of ours was all the time
as nice as could be. A special maid was assigned permanently
to do our rooms. Usually that castle was empty most of the
year, but a housekeeper, an elderly spinster, lived in one
of the wings of the castle. She had her apartment there and
she had a cook and she had a maid to serve her alone. And
that cook was supposed to do the cooking for us under the
supervision of that housekeeper and a special maid was
assigned to serve the food to us and to make up our rooms.
After making the rooms, she drove out a perambulator with my
young baby into the 360-acre park. We lived in the opposite
wing of that castle so that our windows were facing the
housekeeper's windows and in between lay the inner court of
the two-story castle. It had a huge hall and on the other
side of the hall a large double door led to a big livingroom
and that was the livingroom that was usually used when the
owners were there. All the length of that huge castle there
was a very large corridor and on the right and left were the
rooms. Then stairs went up to the upper story where there
were numerous other bedrooms and a small diningroom for when
the family lived alone in the house. And all these numerous
rooms, of course, necessitated a numerous staff of servants.
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My wife had nothing to do in that house. She did not
have to bother with cooking or buying food as everything was
served to us on a platter. Day after day, month after month,
year after year we were there in physically the best con
ditions imagineable but with scarcely any cash worth speaking
of. We could not move anywhere. It was a golden cage, but
a cage it was, and the longer we stayed, the more we felt it.
Of course my wife, being in those days in her early twenties,
was absolutely bored. What could she do? We could not buy
books. There was a library in the castle but the latest
book in that library was a naughty French book of fifty years
ago. Most of the other books in the castle library were bound
in heavy leather and the texts were in Latin. That was not
much entertainment. The hunts were entertainment of sorts
but of course I had a tuxedo, and for a woman there was the
problem of dress. Naturally she wanted to be dressed more
or less as the other ladies, but how could she afford it?
Throughout the eight years we lived in that castle, making
up a dress that looked new from something that was old, was
a great problem but somehow my wife managed. But my wife was
never conscious of time; that was a hereditary defect in her
family. In the old days many jokes were made about it. When
the dinner was for eight o'clock, she was never ready, and
of course all those Hungarian gentlemen and ladies would not
sit down at the table if one of them was missing. She was
not late five or ten minutes, somehow she managed to be half
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an hour or even more. Her excuse always was that she had
to do something for the baby, but there was the maid who
would take care of the baby. That put me each time in a
very awkward, difficult position, and I appreciated very
much the spirit of my host and his guests, very great, grand
gentlemen and ladies, always managing, pretending not to
notice her perennial lateness.
I become a Czech citizen
Throughout the roughly eight years that I spent in
Hungary, which politically in those days was occupied by Czechs
and belonged to the new country of Czechoslovakia, the
closest big city on the Danube had four names: in Slovak it
was called Bratislava, in Hungarian it was called Pojony and
centuries ago had been the capital city of the Kingdom of
Hungary because Budapest was in Turkish hands, in German it
was called Pressburg, and in Czech the same city was called
Preshporek. Every village, every smaller town in that
region had four names because of the ethnic groups that were
mixed up in that region, so you could not by any stretch of
the imagination draw any kind of a border line and say this
belongs to this country and that belongs to that coutry. One
village would be one hundred percent Hungarian, the next one
hundred percent Slavic, and the third would be a city of
Germans, and every nook and corner was full of Jewish people.
When Count Karolyi's estate was rented to a group of American
gentlemen for hunting partridge (I have already told about
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that event) one of those gentlemen came up to me. He was
interested in the economic situation of Central Europe, and
he said to me quite seriously, "I cannot understand how the
post office can work in this country where every little
village has four names." But the post office worked really
well. You could put as the address on your letter any of
those four names and it would reach its destination. Every
person whose culture was above the junior high school level
in those days could speak three and write at least two of
those languages, and quite often more. The general language
in which everybody did business was German because all the
businesses and banks were in the hands of the Jewish populat
ion. They spoke German and their culture was really Germanized.
They had their own culture based on their religious beliefs
and in the synagogues classes were taught in the classic
Jewish language, Hebrew, but otherwise they spoke German and
Slovak and most of them also spoke Hungarian. Every village
had an elected group of villagers, a village council, but the
secretary of each village council was a Czech employee sent
by the government in Prague or sometimes a Slovak coming
from Bratislava. The policy was, of course, to get more and
more control over the country and take away the influence
of the landowners, who were mostly Hungarians.
The secretary of the village that adjoined the estate
of Count Karolyi was quite a young man and he was an enthusi
ast and a Slavophile. For him as a Slav, his feelings were
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anti-German and even more anti-Hungarian, and the great
Slavic Empire of Russia of the old days had grown in his
imagination as being a paradise for Slavs and one day the
Russians would move and annex all Slavic countries and then
he would make a great career in his life. Of course that
was a phantasy dream of his, but that served me very, very
well. He became a close friend of mine and he started
telling me that I should become a citizen of the Czechoslovak
Republic and not remain all my life an emigre with an unusual
passport. The Nansen passports, named for a great Norwegian
scientist who presided over an international organization,
based in Holland, were issued to all refugees, and those
passports were practically worthless. Travelling with them
and getting a visa was almost impossible. I knew from my
own experience that there had been months and months of waiting
before I could travel from Yugoslavia to Hungary and from
there to Czechoslovakia.
In order to become a Czech citizen the local village
council had to elect me and acknowledge me as belonging to
their village, and I had to be a member of the village
population by being elected by the villagers. The villagers
were mostly Slovaks but some were Hungarians. The Slovaks
had sympathy for me as a Russian and the Hungarians had great
respect for me because I was living in the castle of Count
Karolyi and there I was treated by a Hungarian Count as being
his equal. So the villagers did elect me to become a villager
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of that little place and from then on there was a lot of red
tape and going through channels before my application
reached Prague. There, a friend of my mother's whom I
mentioned before and who was still close to President
Masaryk, put her good word of recommendation on my applicat
ion which stated that from now on I would be a dedicated
Czechoslovak. So it was settled in Prague and I expected a
new passport to come any day. That was in the late fall of
1925.
Our marital relationship deteriorates
That same fall Nadejda was expecting a second child and
she was not happy about it. Actually she was furious, but
I insisted that she never do again what she had once done
when she was expecting a child. She had done it on the
advice of the elderly wife of a retired estate manager, and
of course it had been a great moral and physical shock. She
had done it with the help of that woman and behind my back.
Of course I had been very upset at not having been consulted
and that created more of a crack than was already there in
our relationship. And now she was expecting again and she
was furious but did not want to repeat her previous actions.
She was so nervous that everybody realized it. My host and
his wife, Countess Karolyi, said that Nadejda should have a
trip to Bulgaria to visit her family and her mother, that it
would be good for her nerves and spare both of us a very
difficult situation. Going to Bulgaria was of course a question
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of money, but Nadejda still possessed a beautiful bracelet
that had belonged to her grandmother. It was a wide gold
bracelet that consisted of small pieces of gold and had been
made by a famous jeweler of the 19th century. On that
bracelet, in small diamonds, there was an inscription that
I translate into English with the words, "God Bless You."
It was a very fine piece of jewelry and we thought of pawning
it for the money which she would use for her trip to Bulgaria,
but Count Karolyi intervened. He said, "Do not take it to
a pawn shop. It might get lost or you might not be able
to retrieve it in time. We will act as a pawn shop. We will
put away the bracelet and give you the cash." That was done
in a most nice, friendly but delicate manner and it just shows
the mentality of the Karolyi family and what great gentlemen
they were. And so going to Bulgaria was taken care of, but
the passport had to come from Prague and that seemed to
take forever.
Travelling with a Czechoslovak passport was very, very
easy. Those countries recognized each other politically and
no visas were required to go with a Czechoslovak passport,
not even to Great Britain. One could travel to Yugoslavia
or Bulgaria or wherever you wanted, but you had to have that
passport. The days dragged on and the situation was getting
more and more nervous. Finally I got a letter from the
authorities stating that a passport had arrived and was being
held by the governor of a nearby town. I had just to go there
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and fetch it. I decided to go immediately and I told the old
coachman that I wanted to go to the city to fetch my passport,
Well, the coachman was quite a good friend of mine. He was
quite a character. He was the only person in all that
estate who could talk back to Count Karolyi and when they
were choosing the horses for the carriages and the Count
decided to take this or that horse, the coachman would yell
back at him a different choice, and it was always the coach
man's choice over the Count's. So this coachman was always
very nice and friendly to me and he said to me that to his
great regret, under orders from the company which was now
leasing the estate, he was not allowed to give rides to any
one without orders from the manager of the estate. He would
be very happy to drive me but he was under orders. And that
made me so mad - probably I was on the verge of a nervous
breakdown myself - that I said, "Damn the carriage, damn
everything," and I just went out and walked. And I walked
the ten kilometers. I did not go to the railway station
that was only three kilometers away because I knew that the
next train would not be there for five or six hours, so I
just walked all the way, ten kilometers, and of course this
walk was very, very good for calming my nervous system. And
I came to the governor of the place and I got the passport,
and then I came back by train. It was only a half hour's
ride by train, and I arrived at the castle, passport in hand.
A few days later Nadejda departed, leaving me in that
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castle with our little boy Ivan and a maid who was attached
to our service. Nadejda stayed in Bulgaria for quite a while
and then she came back much calmer, probably under the
influence of her mother, who was adored by all her children
and thus had great influence on all of them.
Our son Ivan is very ill
Before the birth of Andre, two-year-old Ivan had some
kind of intestinal trouble. He could not digest his food
and he had some kind of permanent diarrhea. He was getting
weak. The local doctor, a very young man from Prague, was
inexperienced and Jewish and his official business was to
take care of the local population. Well, that young doctor
could not help my son because he had secret orders from the
health authorities and was not allowed to prescribe anything
but aspirin or castor oil. We knew that in the city, about
three hours' distance by train, the city on the Danube with
four names, there was a children's hospital at the head of
which was a very famous Czech professor who specialized in
the care of small children. He had a reputation of being
almost a miracle worker with small children. I could not take
the child that far by train, it was too dangerous, but I just
took some of the linen that had been dirtied by that little
boy and asked the professor if he could not analyze it and
find some kind of microbe or whatever and then prescribe
some kind of medicine. I went to Bratislava, I saw that
doctor, and he inspected the linens and he said, "I will see
- 606 -
what I can do." I took the train back again and I arrived
at the castle very tired and I went to sleep. And I slept
late. It was after nine when I woke up to the sound of an
auto car horn blowing under the window. Now I knew very well
that there were only two cars on the estate. The car of
Count Karolyi, who was absent, and the car of the manager of
the estate, who had no business under our windows. So
rapidly I ran out, half dressed, and there was that professor
from Bratislava himself. He had come down the very next day
in his car in the early morning about 80 or 90 kilometers.
Well, he was ushered in, he saw my boy, and immediately his
arrival caused an earthquake- like sensation and the local
doctor came running, breathless, for this great occasion.
The professor prescribed an entirely different treatment and
medicines, some of which he had brought with him. When he
was leaving I went up to him and said, "It is absolutely
ridiculous to ask you what I owe you for tending my sick
child. Such a visit has never happened in the history of the
country." He smiled and said to me, "My dear young friend,
you owe me absolutely nothing. I studied medicine in Imperial
Russia and all the expenses of my studies were covered by the
personal fortune of the Russian Tsar, Nicholas II. I repay
now my debts to Imperial Russia." He was not only a great
professor, he was a great human being and a rare one.
One of the directors of the company that ran the estate
had a girl of about ten and she was sick. He asked the
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professor to come down and see his daughter, and the professor
came and he looked over that girl. She was rapidly recover
ing and the director of the estate got a bill for that visit.
The bill was twenty thousand crowns. It is hard to say how
much those crowns would represent nowadays but in those days
the normal pay of an employee in a bank was one thousand
crowns per month. The professor knew very well that the
director of that sugar factory was a very, very wealthy man
and that he could pay a bill of twenty thousand crowns more
easily than I could pay one hundred crowns.
Andre', our second son is born
In early spring, 1926, my second child was being expected
quite soon. Our hosts, the family of Count Karolyi, decided
that we had to have help and a nurse for the coming baby.
In spite of the fact that all of our meals were being taken
care of and served on a platter to us by a maid, they decided
that taking care of a second child would be too much of a
burden for my wife. She had no problems pertaining to cooking,
she had no problems pertaining to keeping in shape the three
rooms that we were occupying, she had no problems pertaining
to taking care of the older boy, who was at this time three
years old. Of course, nowadays this might seem strange for
any young American mother but it was considered in those days
to be too much, so we had to have a nurse for that newborn
child.
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A_young Russian girl is hired as nurse for Andre
We looked for that nurse in Prague among girl students
who were studying medicine. Those girls and boys of Russian
origin studied in Prague thanks to the help of the American
organization of Professor Whittmore. They received every
month a small amount of money and free tuition. This money
helped them to barely survive and go on with their studies,
but when summer came around this financial help was stopped
and they had to find some kind of a job to survive until the
next semester started. So one of those girls was very happy
when she was asked to come down and be a nurse, and she was
fully qualified to be one. But when our hostess, Countess
Karolyi, learned that this nurse was the daughter of a late
Cossack colonel, poor Countess Anna was scared and asked
almost seriously, "But wouldn't that girl devour the newborn
child?" That was of course a great exaggeration, but I mention
it just for the sake of mentioning the reputation that Cossack
troops had in Austria and Hungary after the first World War.
During that war, when no Cossacks were on the horizon, just
somebody yelling in the trenches of the Austrian troops,
"Cossacks are coming!" - that was enough for the Austrian
troops to jump out of their trenches, drop their arms, take
off their boots to run faster.
Anyhow, that girl came, and she was really quite a fine
and charming personality. Somehow, the relationship between
her and my wife was and always remained purely official, and
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no feeling of friendliness developed between her and my
wife, who were both Russian but of very, very different
backgrounds and social class.
Russian students find ways of supporting themselves
This makes me think about other students who were looking
for jobs during the summer. A group of those boys got in
touch with a very wealthy Czech farmer who loaned, or maybe
sold on credit, horses to those boys. The boys were a group
of about twelve or fifteen and all were the sons of Cossacks.
It is a mystery to me how they managed to feed those horses
and to train them the way Cossack horses were trained. Any
how, when summer vacation started they formed a group of
riders. They made for themselves, strictly following the
regulations, Cossack uniforms. They got hold of some
Cossack saddles and a Russian national banner, white, blue,
and red, was on one of their lances. They travelled on horse
back from place to place through all the country. On week
days they came to some farmers and it was harvest time, and
at harvest time any farmer is glad to have help and addition
al horses to work all his machines. For their help on those
farms those young boys were very well fed and the horses got
all the fodder they needed. Travelling from place to place,
they finally came down to the little city that was ten kilo
meters from the estate where I worked. That little city was
basically Hungarian and all the shops and banks were under
- 610 -
the control of the local Jewish merchants. My mother lived
there, renting a room and giving some French lessons to some
Jewish girls. One day, walking through the city, my mother
thought that she was having hallucinations. In the middle
of that Hungarian city she saw a group of mounted Cossacks
with the Russian national flag, a picture of the distant and
different past. So she came up to one of them and spoke
Russian to him and asked who they were. They explained their
situation and that evening when my mother had barely finished
her lonely supper, one of them knocked on her door and said,
"Tomorrow we are giving a performance and we hope to see you
watching us." My mother of course said, "I will be very happy
to. How much is the ticket?" And the Cossack straightened
up and said, "Countess, here is your honor ticket. It will
be a great honor for us if you come."
The next day, on a big football field, there was a crowd
of people in the grandstands and the Cossacks on horseback
were lined up at the other end of the field. The performance
had to start. All of a sudden, the head of that Cossack
group put his horse from a standing position to a dashing
gallop and he dashed up to the place where my mother was
sitting, stopping his horse barely a few feet in front of
her place, saluted, and loudly reported to my mother, "Your
Ladyship, will you permit the performance to start?" Well,
my mother laughed and answered, "What are you thinking? Do
you imagine that I am the Empress?" But of course this tactic
- 611 -
had a huge impact on the crowd present and the very next day
the number of girls wanting to learn French or Russian from
my mother more than doubled.
Those performances consisted of age-old riding tricks.
I will mention two. A coin was thrown on the ground and a
Cossack, dashing at full gallop, had to bend down from his
horse and pick up that coin, never missing it. That is
what they did. Then two of those young men rode on one horse.
One was sitting on the horse's neck and the other was
sitting behind the saddle. The saddle served them as a card
table, and at full gallop they were playing cards without
ever dropping or losing a single card. Many other tricks
impressed the population immensely.
After that Russian girl nurse had to go back to Prague
to continue her studies there was a local Hungarian girl, the
daughter of a local carpenter, who replaced her to take care
of my young son, Andre". She was there when those Cossacks
came riding and showing their performance. They came
visiting us at the estate and that girl put my elder boy,
then three years old, on horseback. He started yelling and
crying and had to be taken off the horse immediately. Then
that girl put on the horse my second boy, who was by that time
a little over one year old, and he enjoyed it. This girl
belonged to a young local group that engaged in all kinds of
performances of physical training and she was quite sturdy
and very sure of herself. She used to throw that one-year-old
- 612 -
boy up in the air as high as she could throw him and then
catch him back, never failing to catch him. He enjoyed this
performance immensely and it developed in the boy a total
lack of fear. Fearing something was for him something unknown.
He never had any kind of knowledge of fear and this was so
strong that it lasted all his life. This boy I am talking
about has just become fifty, and he spent four of his years
as a volunteer GI in the United States Army. The sense of
fear was totally alien to him for all his life, and it
continues to be so.
To get back to those Russian students, I like to mention
still another way for them to earn money during the summer.
One group of them formed a travelling theatre. The head of
that theatre was an elderly gentleman, an actor in a private
theatre in the days of Imperial Russia in the city of Peters
burg, and so was his wife. They had a grown up daughter, a
girl maybe a bit over twenty. Besides, they had seven or eight
young men, students that had been trained by that professional
artist. They played little comic sketches. They came down
to the city, and they heard about the estate where I worked
and heard that I was Russian, so they came down to that estate.
That village had a rather large building and part of that
building was a theatre. It had been built in the days when
the mother of the present owner was running that estate
because her son was a minor. She had that building made for
the villagers, and also an artesian well because other wells
- 613 -
supplied only ground water and they were not at all deep,
and the water was not so healthy. This little group of
travelling artists, as fate would have it, came to that
estatet just at the right time. It was the week of the
great hunt for hares. The castle was filled with guests,
friends of Count Karolyi, a top group of the Hungarian
aristocracy with their wives and some daughters. Actually,
evenings they had nothing to do and they were bored. On
hearing about that Russian theatrical group they decided to
go and see it. Count Karolyi bought up the first two rows
of the theatre for his guests for a handsome amount of money
because that was his way of helping Russian emigres. Of
course that little theatre, meant for peasants, had never
before been visited by Count Karolyi, much less by his friends,
and news that the guests of that estate would be there spread
all over the countryside like fire. All the managers of the
different farms and their families, and anybody that was
somebody, considered that it was his duty to be there if the
so-called Counts themselves would be attending the performance.
So the little theatre had, as Americans say, standing room
only.
In this village there was the usual secretary of the
village council, appointed by the government in Prague. This
man was a great Slavophile. He was the one who had helped
me initially to become later a citizen of Czechoslovakia.
Now this young, enthusiastic Slavophile opened that memorable
- 614 -
evening by making a speech. He spoke, fortunately, in Slovak,
which most of Count Karolyi's guests did not understand, but
I was sitting there trembling and perspiring because his
speech was a great patriotic speech praising Russia for her
help in liberating them from the yoke of the Hungarians, and
Hungarians were making up all the first two rows. Then, the
head of that group, the professional artist, came out and
responded with another speech. He spoke in German. He was
a good comedian and on purpose he spoke in a very funny broken
German, praising the friendship of the people who had come
for his show. Of course the first two rows understood the
German and laughed about his broken German, and he practically
saved the situation and wiped out anything that might have
been understood from the other speech of that enthusiastic
but tactless fellow. The performance was very good. They
did those sketches, mostly funny ones, and then the daughter
of the two professional artists came out. She was a dancer.
She was dressed in an imitation of a Russian national court
dress. In that court dress, the ancient Russian dancing was
almost motionless, the dancer had to slide along the floor
and all her movements were in her shoulders. But to my horror,
this girl in her very long and elaborate robe drew up her
skirts well above her knees and started to dance the French
Cancan and the Russian dance for boys only, almost sitting on
the floor and kicking in all directions. Right next to me
was sitting a girl in her late teens, the daughter of our hosts,
- 615 -
and I hurried to explain to her that this was just a
caricature of Russian dancing. She agreed with me and I
kind of wiped out the false impression that she might have
had.
That reminds me of a writer, an American writer, who
wrote about life in the old days in Russia. He probably had
never been in Russia himself. He described a very great
ball in high Russian society in the days before the Revolution.
He hinted indirectly that this ball was in the presence of
the Imperial Family. He described the house where that ball
took place - it was a very famous house and it belonged to
the family of an officer of my own regiment, the Horse Guards,
who is now living in the vicinity of Boston. Anyhow, the
description of the ball by that American writer told about
how at midnight the menservants of the house, holding bottles
of champagne in their hands, danced that Russian national
dance almost sitting on the floor and kicking in all directions,
That was the way that American writer chose to represent
Russian high society in Petersburg. I went to my friend and
I asked him without blinking, "Is it true that in your father's
house your menservants at midnight danced that way?" And he
really became very disturbed and angry and said, "Are you
crazy? What are you trying to tell me?" I said, "Well, I
am just telling you what I have read in a book by an American
who describes life in the old days in Russia."
Now everybody knows what a cranberry bush is, and many
- 616 -
people nowadays in America know what the classical Russian
big brass teapot is. It was invented in order to have water
simmering all the time because the Russians love to drink
tea all evening and the tea has to be hot, so that water has
to be held simmering, not boiling, but simmering. That
gadget in Russian is called "samovar." Here comes a descript
ion of Russian life by a French writer: He writes that he
was enjoying his stay in Russia, sitting in the shade of a
century-old cranberry bush, eating succulent slices of samovar.
And this nonsense has become a classical example of the
nonsense which foreigners can sometimes write about life in
a country that they have no idea about whatsoever.
In Prague there lived an outstanding Czech industrialist,
Dr. Kramarz. He was one of the richest persons in Czechoslov
akia. He was then quite old. Before the first World War he
had been a member of the Austro-Hungarian Parliament, represent
ing the population of the big city of Prague. As a member of
the Parliament he made speeches in favor of the Slavic part
of the population of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and when the
war started he remained a Slavophile and spoke out for a
separate peace with Russia. He was accused of high treason
by a court of Austria-Hungary during the war and was condemned
to death, but he was a very, very outstanding man in every
respect so neutral countries intervened on his behalf and
saved his life. He was put in prison for the duration of
the first World War.
'
- 617 -
Years later I met Dr. Karel Kramarz in Prague, where he
had a city home that could be called a castle right in the
middle of the city. His wife was Russian - she had been
married before in Russia and then he fell in love with her
and they eloped, and afterwards they got married. They had
no children and when I met them they were both quite elderly
and it was obvious that both of them were in love as they
had been the day they met. That was quite touching and
quite rare. As I have said, when Russian students came
finally to Prague they could join the university without any
exams if they had some documents that showed that they had
been students in Russia before the war started. Of course
they were practically in rags. I went to Dr. Kramarz 's quite
often because he was very close also to my mother's friend
who lived in Prague.
One Christmas eve I went to visit Dr. Kramarz and his
wife was so used to being asked for some favor that she asked
me when I came in, "What do you want?" I was angered but I
kept my cool and said, "All I want is to have tea with you
today." After that I could have asked for almost anything.
They were making up huge parcels, all the rooms were full of
parcels, and I asked her secretary, "What is that?" And she
said, "Well, that is going under the Christmas tree. On
Christmas day we are having a Christinas party and Dr. Kramarz
has invited all four-hundred students who have come to study
in Prague." Well, that was quite a party and each of those
- 618 -
students got a huge parcel and in each parcel were outfits,
an appropriate working dress for the girls or a civilian out
fit for the boys. Three pairs of linen, even pocket hand
kerchiefs were not forgotten, and in an envelope there was
a sum of money. After it was all distributed all those
students were speechless. How could they thank Dr. Kramarz
for giving presents of this magnitude to four-hundred of
them? They stuttered, thanking him, and he said to them,
"Do not drink vodka with the money you find in the envelope,
only buy shoes, promise me to buy shoes. I could not put
shoes in your parcels because I do not know the size of the
feet of each of you." After that everybody laughed.
Recuperating in the Carpathian Mountains
During that summer I got seriously sick with jaundice, a
disease of the liver. People say that sometimes they get
jaundice because they are having a hard time or are very much
disturbed or because they cannot "stomach" something. Well,
probably the last reason I mentioned was why I got jaundice.
The local doctor explained to me that he was under the rules
of the country's medicare, established by the government in
Prague, and this medicare was by no means meant to help sick
people. It was meant to police all the population on the
pretext of giving them some medical help. Deductions were
made from all the income from everybody for the supposed
medicare and of course amounted to millions and millions, and
- 619 -
what happened to all those millions? They went into the till
of the Czech socialist party.
The head of the Czech socialist party was Mr. Benes. He
later became the president of the country, the second and last
president before the country was gobbled up by Hitler. Anyhow,
this fellow Benes, before the war of 1914, was a nobody,
living in Paris in exile, political exile. He was a junior
employee in a French bank, but besides that he was a secret
agent of the French military intelligence service. Of course
that was well-paid. Now, at the time I am speaking of, Benes
was in Prague. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs of
Czechoslovakia, second ranking after the President himself.
Now all this medicare money amounted to many millions, as I
mentioned. In big cities, Prague first of all, and then other
large cities, modern apartment houses were built with that
money and those apartments were rented at a rather low price,
but only to those who belonged to the Czech socialist party.
So, when I got sick with that jaundice, something had
to be done. I had the right to be sent to a sanatorium in
the Carpathian Mountains, a resort in the high mountains, for
recuperation and rest, but the local doctor was afraid to
prescribe for me that kind of a cure because it was contrary
to the secret directives that he had. In order to get out
of that impass, he sent me for a checkup to a hospital in the
city of Bratislava, and that hospital reminded me of the
famous classical work of centuries ago, Dante's "Inferno".
- 620 -
Because I had been recommended by another very important
doctor in that city, I was a lucky fellow and was in bed
alone. The hall where the bed stood was crammed and very
many beds had two occupants. There were beds also in the
corridors of the hospital. After the doctors made their
rounds in the evening, only nurses remained, and then more
nurses came in the night only for the purpose of entertaining
the sick who were not that sick, not so sick that they did
not need some kind of entertainment. What kind of enter
tainment it was I leave to the imagination of my readers.
Besides that, my bed stood right against a double door. The
door was closed but not absolutely hermetically, and on the
other side of the door was a special hall for all those who
were sick with tuberculosis. The coughing never stopped, day
or night, on the other side of that door against which my bed
stood. So the situation was really nightmarish.
I asked one of the nurses for paper and pencil and then
I wrote a letter to that very famous surgeon who had recommended
me. I told him about the conditions of the so-called hospital
and what I thought of it. I used very strong expressions in
my letter and was not bashful in telling him what I really
thought, and the letter produced the effect of a bomb. The
situation could not be ignored any longer and to get out of
it they promptly established that I needed immediate transfer
to that sanatorium in the mountains. After about twelve hours'
travel by train I arrived there and it was very nice there,
- 621 -
a very beautiful place. I had some kind of a supper in a
big hall with the other people who were convalescent. Then
I was shown my bed, again in a big hall with about thirty or
forty beds. Being very tired, I retired to my bed and fell
asleep. It must have been about ten in the evening when I
woke up because of many voices and lots of laughter and
giggling, little screams. Those same waitresses that had
served dinner down in the restaurant were entertaining -
again, the same story of what you call "entertainment." I
had a letter to the director of that sanatorium on a subject
that had nothing to do with health.
One of the retired managers of the estate of Count
Karolyi had a little property up there in the Carpathian
Mountains and he wanted to sell that property. He had given
me a letter to the director of that sanatorium, mentioning
the question, and asking whether he was interested in buying
it. That letter was written in Hungarian and I had no idea
exactly what the manager said to the director, but the next
morning that director of the sanatorium came almost running
to the building where I was, letter in hand, and invited me
to come to his private villa. When we got there, he introduced
me to his young wife and her sister who was in her late teens.
The introduction was made in German and with great excitement
he said, "My dear, can you imagine, we have here a patient in
our sanatorium and he is a Count incognito."
I have spoken before of "the Counts" and of the great
- 622 -
reverence toward them of the Hungarian middle class. They
were considered to be beings somewhere between the plain
people, so to say, and the gods - I use gods in the plural
as the ancient heathens used to. That went back almost to
prehistoric times. But that feeling was still very much
in the mind of Hungarians, and as I said before, in those
days Hungary was kind of a little splinter that somehow
remained in its thinking and feeling as if it belonged in
the Middle Ages. The situation was funny and there was
also some good in it. But anyhow, there I was, a "Count
incognito." Therefore I was invited by the director of
the sanatorium to move immediately to his private villa, where
he had a spare room for me. That was all very fine but after
a few days I had the uncomfortable feeling that not only his
wife but also her teen-age sister were becoming interested
in the Count incognito. I do not pretend to be saintly, but
I was a married man and I had two small children. And
although it was not a happy marriage and there was a great
strain, nevertheless this lady and her sister had no success.
Probably they just did not appeal to me. Fortunately they
had planned beforehand a trip to Paris, so they left for about
three weeks and I recuperated in peace and quiet. When my
time was over I left for the Karolyi castle and returned to
my family.
I become a landowner aga.in
After the Czechs occupied the northern part of Hungary
- 623 -
in accordance with terms of the Treaty of Versailles, they
adopted a government policy of land reform. In that way they
hoped to ruin the landed gentry that was Hungarian and to
distribute the land to the Czechs. As a first move, they
assessed for very, very large sums of money the land belong
ing to the nobility and to the gentry. This was supposed to
be a one-time tax. With a few exceptions, none of them had
that much cash. One of the exceptions was Count Karolyi.
After having assessed that land at a very high price, one or
two years later they made a new assessment at a ridiculously
low price and started conficating that land from the owners.
They were paying for that requisitioned land but at the new
assessed low value. The land was confiscated and paid for,
if you please! - they were not Bolsheviks or Communists, at
least they pretended not to be. They paid for it but the
owners still owed them money because of the high assessment
in the first place. That was plain robbery but, as I called
it, robbery in velvet gloves. It was made to look nice and
legal for the eyes of the western world. In Russia the
Bolsheviks and Communists had done things in a simpler way:
the land was confiscated and if the owners were still there
they were simply shot. That was rapid and simple. The Czechs
took great pains to do the same thing but to make it look
legal, and this gave Count Karolyi an opportunity to protest,
to go to court. First in Prague, and of course that had no
results, and then in an International Court in The Hague, in
- 624 -
Holland. Count Karolyi had the means to have an army of
lawyers seeking loopholes and numerous meetings took place
all over Czechoslovakia, and even in Holland. All this
lasted year after year, after year, for almost eight years.
Once when I asked him why he was going to all that trouble
and why he was letting the lawyers make fortunes for them
selves, he said, "It is still worthwhile. As long as the
land is not confiscated I am getting the income from it, and
I do not have to spend- it all on the lawyers and courts. I
know that it will not last forever but I want it to last as
long as possible."
Well, as I have said, for nearly eight years this
argument went back and forth, but then the day came when
surveyors arrived to cut to pieces that land of Count Karolyi.
It was not only just an estate like so many people of the
minor gentry had. Besides the castle of 96 rooms and the
adjoining park of 360 acres, there were nine farms. Each
farm had about 300 milking cows and about as many steers for
fattening. Each farm had a manager and an assistant. It was
almost like a little kingdom. When the surveyors came from
Prague, to my amazement there were thirteen of them and twelve
out of the thirteen were Russian. They were emigre boys that
in those years had had an opportunity to study and become
professionals, and now they were surveyors. That one Czech
boy among them was outnumbered and they made him run for
newspapers and cigarettes. The head of this group was also
- 625 -
Russian.
This estate was on the eve of being dismembered and all
employees and all workers would be thrown out of their jobs.
The permanent all-year-round workers had earned a small amount
of pay but they had houses for their families and each had
an acre or two that he could cultivate on Sundays . They
received milk and all other products from the farm so that
each could raise a pig. Anyhow, from a peasant point of view
they had had total security at their jobs from generation to
generation. As one of my friends remarked, they were
practically slaves but it was a mild slavery. They never
intended to leave to go anywhere. Theoretically they could
go wherever they pleased, but they realized that nowhere would
they find that security that they had working on those farms.
The other employees were in a different situation, they were
pensioned off in cash in accordance with the number of years
they had worked. Of course that cash was not enough to put
into the bank and then live on the income. I was caught in
the middle. I had six or seven years of service but I was a
minor employee and the cash sum that I would have received
was very, very small, so I had the choice of accepting the
cash or demanding a slice of the land and a building. A slice
of land and a building on part of one of those many farms
was called a rest estate. To have a rest estate, a piece of
land of 150 acres, of course one had to be a Czech and
reliable politically from the Czech point of view.
- 626 -
When my request came it created amazement among the
Czech ruling people in Prague. Here was somebody allegedly
Russian, but the name was not Russian and it was hyphenated,
and besides that, to make things worse from the Czech point
of view, that hyphenated name of mine had also the title of
Count. That was anathema to the socialist Czechs. Besides,
everybody knew that I had lived there for eight years as a
permanent guest of Count Karolyi. The Czechs did not believe
that I would make a good Czech socialist settler and of-
course they were right, but just my asking it was so unusual
that it created quite an uproar on the highest governmental
levels in Prague. I was summoned to Prague to explain the
situation.
There in Prague I met an old lady. She was a Russian
aristocrat. She had gone to school long long ago with my
mother and they had been friends all their lives. This lady
had lost her only son, assassinated by the Bolsheviks in Kiev,
when she was one of the leading ladies of Kiev society before
the first World War started. At that same time there lived
in Kiev a Czech, an emigre, a runaway professor of politics
by the name of Doctor Masaryk. Now, after so many world
events, this Doctor Masaryk was the President of the new
Czechoslovak Republic. He was one of the rare, very decent
Czechs. He had said to my mother's friend, "Whenever you want
anything just walk into my office unannounced." That is what
she did, and she told him about my situation, about my family,
- 627 -
and about my request to create a new living as a kind of a
dirt farmer on that small parcel of land and building that
I was asking for. Massryk smiled and said, "Well, all rules
have exceptions and no rule is a really good rule if it
does not have some kind of an exception." So Massryk exercised
some kind of pressure on the offices which were empowered
in that land reform. At one of the meetings the Minister of
Agriculture asked me - it was, incidentally, quite unusual
that I was summoned to attend a meeting of the top leaders -
"Well, you are asking for that piece of land here. But I am
curious, - could you please tell me how many acres of land
your family possessed in Russia before the Revolution?"
I promptly answered him, "Sir Minister, in Russia we did not
count acres. As far as I can remember the estate of my
grandfather was twelve kilometers wide and thirty-six kilo
meters long." Of course they raised their hands to the
ceiling and everybody started laughing. The result of it all
was that I did get that parcel of land that I had been asking
for.
I took possession of my land in 1929, and besides the
land I got a cow barn that could hold 350 or 400 cows. Next
to the cow barn there was a deep well, and on the top of the
cow barn there was a huge container for water that was pumped
from the well by a horse going around and around. Having that
container up on the building gave me the possibility of having
water under pressure. There was a Czech building company,
- 628 -
subsidized by the government, which was created for building
houses for the settlers. The engineer, a Germanized Jew
from Prague, was a very nice, decent man, and he said,
"Instead of building a house I will just modify for you part
of that barn. It is only a question of making partitions
inside. The walls are so sturdy and so thick that even heavy
artillery could not have upset those ancient thick walls of
the barn.
But being a dirt farmer was quite a difficult job,
especially with a total lack of funds in cash. I was supposed,
as every other person obtaining that land, to pay it off in
so-and-so many years. All those calculations had been made
by bureaucrats in Prague, and on paper it looked fine, but
none of them had ever worked on that land, none of them
realized that sometimes the yield of the land is excellent
and another year it might be zero. The first year, while
that barn was still being changed, I continued to live in
the castle.
All of the workers on the estate had been deprived of
their security of course, but they had been given independence,
houses, and some land. But many of those people were not
really farmers. Some of them were smiths, some were carpenters,
some had worked at the repair plant for all the agricultural
instruments that were used on that huge estate. They had no
idea of tilling the land and had not even the equipment to
do so, and when they moved into those brand new houses they
- 629 -
could not even keep a cow. They were not able to raise enough
food for themselves or to keep a pig or chickens. They were
on the verge of starvation and then I witnessed a very un
usual occurrence. A crowd came to the castle, having heard
that Count Karolyi had come back for a very short time. The
castle and the surrounding park and one of the farms had
been left in his possession. All those people came to him
seeking work. There was a long-standing tradition that
when those people were in trouble, the estate owner was
responsible for their well-being. And now I witnessed and
heard the speech that Count Karolyi made to those people.
He could speak quite fluently in Slovak and Hungarian of
course, and that crowd understood both languages. Count
Karolyi said, "Well, you have been asking for it. You have
been voting now on this new free plan and you have sent your
representatives to the Parliament in Prague and they have put
in this situation, and now you come and you complain to me,
to me from whom the land was taken, and I have been almost
ruined. You come for help to me. My advice to you is that
you go to Prague and find the representatives that you voted
for and tell them about the result of their efforts to intro
duce freedom by making you independent from me. If the
Parliament changes the rules back to what they used to be and
if they give back all my estates, I promise and I guarantee
that you and all your children will have the same security
that you had before."
- 630 -
,
My wife and I separate
It was out of the question for my wife to be the wife
of a dirt farmer, by no stretch of the imagination could any
one imagine her in so unusual and difficult a role. Besides,
the two of us, in spite of having those two young boys, were
not happy. Some kind of solution had to be found because we
had the feeling, and we were not the only ones, that we were
outliving our welcome on that estate. We were young and
obviously we could not continue living there indefinitely.
Anyhow, the question or problem of future schools for the boys
came up. So my wife decided to leave for Paris and to get a
job there, but leaving for Paris and looking for a job just
when I was becoming that farmer were insurmountable difficult
ies because of the total absence of cash. One day Count
Karolyi, who was then fifty or over (I was thirty two) in a
fatherly way said to me, "We have known you now for so many
years and all of us realize that you are an unhappy couple.
Besides, the children are growing and they have to go to some
kind of school. I do not quite visualize your children going
to the village school of Tothmegyer. I was acting Godfather
for your younger boy Andre when he was christened. He was
born under the roof of my castle. I replaced your old Uncle
Vladimir who could not come on account of his age, so I con
sider myself as kind of a Godfather of Andre', and in my will
I have made arrangements for him to receive a certain sum of
money. But I have no intention whatsoever of dying soon, so
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why should you expect or hope that I die as soon as pssible?
I suggest that I hand over that sum to you during my life,
and that will enable you to rearrange your young life in a
new way, and so long as you are still young enough to re
arrange and start a new life I hope it will bring some
happiness to both of you. Why continue to drag on and on
when both are unhappy?" Well, that shows how kind that man
was and how very wise, and a real friend. So I accepted that
because practically I had no choice whatsoever. That gave
me the possibility of moving, attempting to start to be a
dirt farmer, for which role I later found that I had neither .
the experience nor the stamina, nor enough just plain
physical strength.
I become a dirt- farmer
My first year as a farmer was successful. The piece of
land that I received was lying right next to the railroad
tracks running from Budapest to Prague. All express trains
went along those lines, and anybody looking out through the
window of the car could see my land. Part of it was sandy
and the other part of it was low- lying and muddy, and
underground water in all that area was only a few feet below
the surface. In certain years after much snow or rain the
ground water rose and flooded the land. In such years that
was a disaster, as it killed all the vegetation on the
flooded surface. But the other part was high and sandy, and
as I said, anybody could see it out of a railroad car.
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Having no money to hire any help, I made an arrangement
that was rather common in those days , to work the land half
and half. That meant that a local peasant would come and
he would raise tobacco. He would work the field. I had to
give him living quarters. Then, half of the tobacco was his
in late autumn and half was mine. That was the only
arrangement I could make, having no working capital. So I
made arrangements with a local Hungarian peasant for the
high part of the sandy land I possessed, and instead of
tobacco he raised there watermelons , a whole field of
watermelons. That was very unusual and everybody was scared
about what we were doing. It turned out to be a move of
genius because one day an enterprising merchant of fruit
was travelling from Budapest to Prague, and through the
window he saw my field of melons and he grasped that those
melons were now ripe, long before any ripe melons would be
sold in Prague. He came out from the railroad station - it
was only two kilometers distant from my new home - and he
said to me, "I am buying your whole field of melons for cash,
You must order railroad cars at the station and you must
deliver those melons and put them in the cars. The cars
full of melons will be weighed at the station officially,
and at so-and-so much per net weight I am going to pay you
cash." So I had to hire some carts, with their men, and
they took those melons and took them to the railroad cars.
Three or four men formed a chain from the cart to the
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railroad car and threw the melons to each other and finally
into the car. Then the carload of melons was weighed and I
got the cash. So that was a saver for the moment.
A memorable reunion^in Paris
The next year there was a very unusual event in Paris,
where there were very many ex-Horse Guard officers. One of
them was the Russian Grand Duke Dmitri, who was married to a
very wealthy, very beautiful young American girl. That was
the year of the bicentennial of the founding of our regiment
and Grand Duke Dmitri decided to have a grand feast in the
Imperial style. He had all the dollars needed for sponsoring
such an event. He invited all the officers of the Horse
Guards who were scattered all over the world and he really
tactfully said that if any could not come to Paris for financ
ial reasons, transportation and the stay in Paris to celebrate
with him would be all covered by him. I have right in this
room a picture of our celebration. Of course there were
people there of all ages. At my age then of thirty-three I
was one of the juniors. There was one gentleman there who
had been adjutant of my regiment in the year that I was born.
I accepted the invitation and the financial help of the Grand
Duke and it was a great reunion. That was, as much as I can
remember, April, 1931. That festive dinner was in one of the
biggest, most fashionable restaurants in Paris. Black ties
for everybody, and an orchestra. Of course that restaurant
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had everything except the small tumblers for one gulp of vodka
that were usually used by the Russians. That restaurant had
small glasses for desert wine, the smallest they had but in
size equal to two Russian tumblers. All the festivities were
arranged by one of my fellow officers who lived there
permanently and we got everything except those small tumblers.
Now the old Horse Guard regiment officers, and some of them
were over 80 or close to it, decided that upon such an occasion
they could allow themselves to have a tumbler, or maybe two
of vodka. And when the Grand Duke opened that festive dinner
with an appropriate speech -.and drank his glass of vodka, every
body did the same. That meant that everybody had the equiva
lent of two tumblers of vodka. The orchestra played the
regimental march, as instructed by my fellow officer, the
Master of Ceremonies. Then the last regiment commander stood
up, according to protocol, and made his speech, but the Master
of Ceremonies had omitted telling the orchestra what to play
after the speech of the last regiment commander, so the orchestra
all of a sudden started some kind of a tune of tralala or
tootootoo and the regiment commander roared as if he were
commanding a cavalry corps, "The Regimental March!" The
orchestra - it was French - repeated the regimental march and
after that they were so scared that during the whole evening
they played nothing but the regimental march, for hours and
hours. But after the speech of the regimental commander, of
course, he toasted the Grand Duke with a tumbler of vodka and
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everybody had a tumbler of vodka. And that meant that the
elderly gentlemen had the equivalent of four tumblers of
vodka, and on some of them it became noticeable.
Anyhow, that was a great occasion for me to have a look
at Paris and to see some of my relatives there and to see my
boys, who were then with their mother living in Paris. Of
course finding work in Paris was almost impossible. First of
all, France now had a regulation that any foreigner had to have
a document of identity, -and that document of identity exluded
him from any paid work because there were many unemployed among
the French. There were other cards of identity that allowed
foreigners to work as hired hands on French farms or down in
the French coal mines, and at that time those were the only
kinds of work that a Russian could obtain. That was 1931.
Ten years earlier there had been in Paris a lack of manpower
because of the French losses during the war, and those who
came to Paris early enough all became taxi drivers. There
was an army general taxi driver, there was a corps commander
taxi driver, and those two while they were still in the
Russian Imperial Army had received, for diplomatic and politic
al reasons, the great French Cross of the Legion of Honor, a
decoration since the days of Napoleon. When they came to the
city hall of Paris, speaking good French and helping those
taxi drivers who knew no French at all, they wore their uni
form of brown overalls and they wore their Crosses of the
Legion of Honor around their necks. The employees of the
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city hall did not know whether they should jump up and stand
at attention or not. But anyhow, they were very impressed
and it was very helpful for all those taxi drivers who
could not speak French.
My financial situation did not allow me to use taxis, but
I was in a great hurry once and I could not afford to be late.
The distance was not so very far but it was too far for walk
ing, and it would have been too complicated to go there by
the underground railway for I would have had to change stations,
so I just signalled with my hand to a passing taxi, jumped into
it, gave the address, and I knew that it would cost me six
francs, plus a tip of one franc, seven francs altogether.
And leaving the taxi without looking around I just stretched
my hand backwards and gave the driver my seven francs. As I
left the car I heard a thunderous voice, "Captain Ivan Stenbock-
Fermor, you do not recognize your division commander?" That
taxi driver who got a tip of one franc was my division
commander. Well, speaking about Parisian taxi drivers, or
writing about them, could fill out a whole volume. Maybe
someday I will do it.
I was shocked and amazed to find out that my wife - I
have to call her my wife although we had been separated for
quite a length of time but were not yet divorced - was almost
penniless. She was most inexperienced in handling money.
Spending money is easy, but handling money wisely is very
difficult. After spending so many years all alone in
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Tothmegyer, cut off from the rest of the world and all the
friends that she knew, when she came to Paris with a size
able amount of money she kind of lost her balance and did
not realize prices and the value of money. Besides, being
very popular among the Russian colony in Paris, she met some
friends that turned out to be false friends. They gave her
bad advice and she put some of her money into some businesses
that were unsafe but had promised to double the money in
three months or less. Believing that advice resulted in 'her
losing some of her money. Also, she lived on a footing as
if she had a lot of capital. With the money she had it would
have been possible for her to live modestly even without a
job for more than one year, but within a short time after
coming to Paris she was already almost out of money. She
had rented a whole villa. She had in that villa a manservant.
When I came, that manservant, realizing her money situation
and not having been paid probably for the last month, became
quite rude, maybe even dangerous for her and the children in
that very old house, so I found out that this fellow had a
criminal record and was sought by the French police. In the
few days that I could stay in Paris, at least I did one thing,
I called that man and I told him bluntly that I knew he was
being sought and that he had a criminal record. I advised
him to go that very same day and join as a volunteer the
French Foreign Legion. That fellow was scared. First he
tried to be quite fresh with me, trying to tell me that it
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was no business of mine, but finally he found out that I
meant business. Two days later he showed me some documents
that said the next day he was departing for the Foreign
Legion. And I went back to Czechoslovakia to continue my job
as a dirt farmer.
I give up farming and plan to move to Paris
That summer of 1931 was disasterous because of the rainy
weather and the flooding of more than half of my land. The
tobacco on the other half was now ripe and had to be delivered
to a representative of the government who bought up all the
tobacco since that was a monopoly for the state. Delivering
the tobacco was quite a job. The tobacco was packed in big
squares and he had to look at the squares , stick his hand into
them, and say whether it was first, second, or third class
tobacco. The price was accordingly high or low or almost
nothing. But that Czech who had to appraise my tobacco had
been almost all during the first World War a POW somewhere in
Siberia. All Czechs had surrendered to the Russian troops,
since they did not want to fight Russia, and in Siberia they
had a good time. There they formed a Czech national military
legion and in one of the cities on the Volga that Czech legion
got ahold of part of the Russian gold treasure. There were
many railroad cars loaded with gold bricks and the Czechs grabbed
those cars and they brought them from the Volga all through
Siberia. When they came to Prague, having all that gold with
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them and having had good treatment in Russia, they were very
much pro-Russian and kind to all Russian emigres who happened
to be in Czechoslovakia. When this appraiser realized that
I was a Russian, and we talked together in Russian, he
appraised all of my tobacco as being first class, to the
amazement of my Hungarian peasant companion, who knew very
well what class our tobacco was. How that appraiser managed
later I do not know, but anyhow I was paid in cash for my
exclusively first class tobacco.
Half of that cash of course belonged to my Hungarian
companion, and I quickly realized that my share was by very,
very far not enough to live on for a whole year on that dirt
farm that I owned, not enough to pay taxes and buy food and
support my mother, who had come to live with me. That money
would not last until the next year and then who knew what
kind of weather we would have. In fact, I realized that I was
100% broke and could not continue my job as a dirt farmer.
I did not want to just leave everything and run, so I contacted
in the city of Bratislava a lawyer who was at the same time
a member of the Czech Parliament and a very great gentleman
and a very great friend of all Russians. I said to him,
"Here is the situation. Now I want to return to the government
the piece of land, the dirt farm, that I got, because I cannot
manage it financially. I have debts on it. This requires a
lot of red tape and will you take care of it, because I am
leaving Czechoslovakia and I am going to Paris." He was very
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kind and very understanding. He said, "Well, that will take
a lot of paper, but I will do it all for you and I am not
going to charge you a penny for doing it. I think the best
thing for you would be to abandon that enterprise which is
beyond your financial and your physical means and try to
start a new life in Paris where your sons are." So he took
over and I left for Paris. My mother left to stay temporarily
on an estate with her Hungarian friends where she had spent
many years as a French governess.
I liquidated everything I had in Czechoslovakia and when
I arrived in Paris I had a small amount of cash that nowadays
would roughly equal $500. That was all my fortune. Ten
years earlier I had left the Crimea with less than that, so
ten years of my efforts at creating a family and some modest
way of life were practically wiped out. The French authorities
gave me a card of identity stamped "No right to work."
SOME INTERESTING PEOPLE I MET IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Prince Windishgraetz
During the years I was in Czechoslovakia I had occasion
to meet Prince Windishgraetz. He was the very classical type
of aristocrat and was then about thirty and very much used to
spending a lot of money for his own pleasure. Hungary had
been torn apart and many Hungarians had lost their fortunes,
and he was one of them. He found a new way to live the life
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he was used to by making false French francs. Because of
his relationships he had access to the Hungarian money
printing presses. Hungarian money was very elaborate. It
had watermarks and was very difficult to imitate, but Hungary
had all the machines and all the proper colors and all the
proper engraving plates. Somehow he got hold of the engraving
plate of French 1,000 franc notes. French francs stood very
high then, so he began printing those papers of 1,000 francs
each.
Then there came the problem of spending those false
French francs, so he had agents all over Europe, even in
France. But one of his agents in Belgium was clumsy. He
lived in grand style in Brussels. He was very popular and
one time he invited many friends of all nationalities to
a party in one of the most expensive restaurants, and he paid
for all of them with a French 1,000 francs note. It was
accepted and change in Belgian francs was given to him.
His entertainment continued and he paid again 1,000 French
francs, and a third time in the same evening he paid 1,000
French francs. The waiter was quite astonished that that
fellow, having obviously a lot of change in Belgian francs,
was all the time pulling out brand new bills of 1,000 French
francs. The next morning the cashier brought those bills to
the Belgian bank, where they were very closely examined, even
through a microscope, and it was established that they were
false.
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Prince Windishgraetz heard about it in due time and fled
back to Budapest, but according to international law this kind
of procedure was illegal and in Budapest the authorities had
to arrest him. He was convicted of making false money and
was imprisoned. But society in Hungary and Budapest never
considered him a criminal but more as a national hero. Food
from the best restaurants was brought to his prison. Hungarian
women brought flowers to him. He was really a hero who had
taken revenge against those so-and-so French who had crippled
Hungary by the Treaty of Versailles. Well, what a strange
way to become a national hero. I do not know what he did later
after he was released from prison.
Princess Mizzi Baltatzy
In those days I also met Princess Mizzi Baltatzy. Here,
for the sake of historians, I must say that the title of
Prince was non-existent in the Hungarian aristocracy. The
Hungarian aristocracy had the title of Count. The title of
Baron had become rather degraded because the Hapsburg imperial
dynasty in Vienna had given that title to many people of Jewish
origin if they were wealthy enough to have helped out financi
ally, for the Austrian financial ministry was in constant need
of money. However, the title of Prince was given by the Pope
of Rome. The Pope of Rome had theoretically his territory,
the Vatican, no matter how many acres or how few acres; he was
considered to be a reigning prince or a reigning monarch, and
he had the right to give titles of nobility. Mostly it was
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sufficient to buy some kind of a small estate in Italy and
supply the Vatican with great funds for charity, and then the
Pope of Rome would declare the donor Prince of some place in
Italy. Anyhow, it gave some income to the Pope in Rome.
Now this Mizzi Baltatzy whom I met was elderly, at
least in those days she seemed elderly to me. Her very dis
respectful grand-nephews loved her very much but they said
of her that looking from behind she is a college girl
because she is so slim and rapid in her movements but looking
at the front, she is a museum. And she was another one who
had lost a lot of her fortune because of the first World War
and just continued to live as before.
She made in her life one mistake. When she had all of
her fortune before the first World War and she was married,
she invited a destitute cousin of hers, much younger, to be
her lady companion because she was childless. The result was
that her elderly husband eloped with her lady companion.
Well, for the Roman Catholics there is no divorce, but from
that day on Mizzi Baltatzy was single and tried to comfort
herself by spending money by the bushel. Because she was a
single lady, according to Hungarian law, she had to have a
guardian and her guardian was a cousin of hers, Count Louis
Karolyi. He told me a story, that one day he told his cousin
Mizzi, "My dear, you cannot go on living the way you do."
Before the war she had had racing stables, a stud of thorough
bred horses, and a yacht on the Mediterranean. "But now,"
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said her cousin, "you must live in a different way because
you are living on the capital. You must live on the income
of the capital." And she retorted, "Dear Louie, do not bother
me with your calculations. When there is no more capital
any more then I will start living on the income." Well,
that was a reasoning that went against any financial
calculation, but she just despised any financial calculations.
When I left Hungary I lost sight of her. She must have been
dead for many years now.
An ex-cossack officer now in Komarno, Hungary
About fifty kilometers from Count Karolyi's estate, on
the border of the Danube there was a city called Komarno. When
I knew it, it was almost a ghost town, but about one hundred
years earlier it had been a place where there was a bridge,
one of the few bridges across the Danube, and Komarno had
been the location of the Hungarian army corps. There were many
barracks and there was a palace for the corps commander. In
my days Komarno was very different. One hundred years ago
Komarno was inhabited by Serbs and Slavs, just as many other
parts of Hungary. Officially they were Hungarian subjects,
but they were not Roman Catholics. Those Serbs belonged to
the Greek Orthodox Russian Church, and in those days they
built a very elaborate church. Now it was closed because, for
many political and economic reasons, the population of
Komarno had changed. As I said, Komarno became a ghost town.
- 645 -
But the church of Komarno was still there and so was the
palace of the corps commander of the first half of the 19th
cnetury or earlier.
This palace of the corps commander had been remodeled to
house officers of the Czech army. The Czech army had to be
and was very much democratic, so that palace was changed into
numerous apartments for officers. An officer was entitled
to two bedrooms, a livingroom, and of course a bathroom, and
that was it. An ex-Cossack officer who was now serving with
the Czech army and a great friend of mine had such an apart
ment, cut out of that corps commander's palace, and it so
happened that his apartment was cut out of the ex-ballroom
of the palace. Therefore, he had beautiful parquet floors
and they were very slippery. He had a parquet floor even in
the bathroom. Besides the parquet floors, the ceilings were
sculptured with all kinds of legendary subjects and angels
and saints and all very nicely colored. He also had a colored,
sculptured ceiling in his bathroom. He was very proud of it
and showed me around. Of course it was the most unusual
bathroom I ever saw or used.
An old Gentleman who had outlived his time
Besides such unusual situations and unusual people, there
was a neighbor of that estate of Karolyi's. This neighbor was
a very old gentleman. His estate was small and he lived very
modestly with his sister and a nephew, who actually ran the
estate. This old gentleman invited me to visit him and to
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bring my son with me. My son was then about six or seven years
old. We went there by horse-drawn carriage from the stables
of Count Carolyi and when we came up to that estate I saw a
rather large hut, almost dug into the ground and covered with
straw as in the ancient times. Other farm buildings stood
around and those buildings were modern and very beautiful,
but that hut covered with straw was the house of the owner
*
of the estate and it dated from days immemorial. Inside,
the rooms were very small, but each object in each of those
rooms was a museum piece. Well, his cousin, the old lady,
took care of my boy and he took me around his home, and he
took me to his study, the master's room. It was almost empty.
There was a big desk and above the desk there were heavy
chains, handcuffs and shackles, as in the old days. He
showed them to me, pointed at them with his finger, and said,
"Those are the chains in which you Russians put my grand
father." That had been back in 1848, when there was an up
rising of the Hungarians against the Austrians, and Russian
troops intervened and the uprising of the Hungarians was
crushed. It was one of the silliest things the Russian Tsar
Nicholas I ever did, because having as neighbors two divided
countries, Austria and Hungary, was much safer for Russia
than a united Austro-Hungarian empire. Well, that is history,
and it has been described many times. But when that gentleman
pointed at those chains I was at a loss. What should I do?
Should I express my condolences? Should I make the sign of
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the cross and go and kiss those chains? So I was just frozen
on the ground. But he was so very nice, and then we left.
He took us through the farm, and the first place my boy wanted
to go to was the stables, exactly as I would have at his age
spent all the time I could in the stable. They were really
very beautiful and very modern. Going through the stables,
all of a sudden my boy, who spoke Hungarian fluently,
addressed the old gentleman and said, "Why is that horse
bridle lying on the ground?" Well, of course it should not
have been lying on the ground, so immediately the old gentle
man himself bent down, picked the bridle up, and hung it on
a nail where it should have been. But that was not enough for
my seven-year-old boy, so he looked at that bridle hanging
on the nail and said to the gentleman in perfect Hungarian,
"And why is there some dust left on that bridle?" The old
gentleman was absolutely delighted and he said, "Congratulat
ions my dear friend. Your young boy in later years will be
the perfect commander of a cavalry squadron." Then we left
that place. Later I heard from another Hungarian that those
old people had to flee from the invading Soviet Russian
armies some years later and they just died somewhere on the
road - a very tragic end for those nice old people who
unfortunately had outlived their times.
Count Karolyi's daughter marries
I think it was in 1927 or 1928 that the wedding of the
daughter of Count Karolyi was celebrated in Budapest. She
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married a very nice Austrian aristocrat and the only trouble
with him was that he could not speak Hungarian. But all
Hungarians spoke German and English so that was no obstacle
and anyhow, it was a love marriage in every sense and the
two of them really were a beautiful couple. The wedding took
place in Budapest in great pomp and after that, in the palace
of Count Karolyi in Budapest there was a great dinner. Two
hundred fifty guests were seated at that dinner, flowers at
all the tables, and I leave it to your imagination how much
family silver was there and how many servants went around to
serve all those guests. That was, as many people said, the
last gasp of the Middle Ages in Hungary. Nowhere in the world
could such dinners be served except maybe in Hollywood.
I kept on corresponding with Count Karolyi even after
I was in America many years later. I still have somewhere
his last letter. We corresponded in German. He wrote to
me that when I was living in their home and I was telling them
about our flight from the Bolshevik gang, the Maruska gang,
they had listened with great interest, politely, but thinking
all the time, "Well, we believe what young Ivan Stenbock is
telling us but, well, in Russia anything can happen. So we
believed him, and then what happened? We fled from our estate
on the border of the Danube to Vienna exactly, absolutely
exactly, the way you told us you had fled so many years
earlier. The Soviet armies were invading Hungary. All the
gas for the cars had been requisitioned and our cars had
- 649 -
been requisitioned. We had nothing but our carriages, our
horses, and our dedicated coachman, just as you had your
dedicated coachman to haul you away in the nick of time.
And our coachman drove us eighty miles across the border of
Austria. Vienna had been partly occupied by British and
American troops, so in Vienna we were safe. We abandoned
everything we had. We became refugees." Then he wrote
"When you became refugees, right after the first World War,
Europe was still more or less standing on its feet in spite
of its heavy losses. But still, we could help and we were
happy to help some destitute Russians like you. But after
the second World War, Europe, all of it, was totally -and
absolutely ruined." And then he added, "I am now completely
and totally ruined. I have only one million Swiss francs
left in a Swiss bank."
Dr. Bartha,-the dentist
Dr. Bartha was a dentist. I knew him in the small
privincial town of Nove Zamky (in Slovak) otherwise
Erzekyivar (in Hungarian) during the years 1925 to 1929.
That town was about ten kilometers from Count Karolyi's
estate. Dr. Bartha had just completed his studies at a
school of dentistry in early 1914 when, one month later, the
first World War broke out. As a dentist, Bartha was attached
to the headquarters of an Austro-Hungarian division and in
late 1914 this division was encircled by Russian troops, it
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surrendered, and Bartha became a prisoner of war in a huge
POW camp in eastern Siberia.
Bartha took care, as best he could, of the needs of
many POWs and his fame as a clever dentist spread beyond
the barbed wire of the POW camp. This camp was located in
the vicinity of a rather large city in eastern Siberia. This
city was a center of fur trade and gold mining and many very
rich people of the merchant class lived there. The only
Russian dentist had been drafted into the Russian army.
Imagine a city of about 100,000 inhabitants without a dentist.
Well, that was Siberia, 1914. When the fame of a POW dentist
reached this city, Dr. Bartha was allowed to come and go from
POW barracks to the city as he pleased. His status as a POW
promptly changed to that of a very popular man and he could
charge his clients whatever he wanted - cash, furs, or gold
nuggets. In three years he managed to become a very wealthy
POW indeed! Then came 1917-1918 and the repatriation of all
POWs back to Austria-Hungary. Dr. Bartha could not avoid
repatriation, so in the port of Vladivostok he had to board
a transport ship that was sailing for Europe. On one of its
stops in an Indian port, Dr. Bartha decided to leave the
ship. He resolved to try his luck in India instead of
returning to Austria-Hungary, a ruined country in the throes
of revolution and chaos.
Dr. Bartha 's English was quite good and he had enough
money to start a dentistry practice. Rapidly he became known
- 651 -
and one day he was visited by three Hindu officials. They
told him that his reputation as a European doctor had reached
the palace of their Maharaja, who was very sick. They
demanded that Dr. Bartha follow them immediately. Dr. Bartha
realized that this was an order - or else! When he was
ushered to the bedside of the sick Maharaja he was told that
if the man should die, according to local custom the doctor
would be beheaded, and if the cure were successful the doctor
would receive gold rupees, many times over his weight in
kilograms. Dr. Bartha had no choice and he also had nothing
but a sharp knife, tweezers, a small bottle of iodine, and
a sewing needle with some twine. He examined the sick
Maharaja and found that he had an acute inflamation of the
appendix and was on the verge of peritonitis, but he was
only thirty years old and looked very sturdy.
Dr. Bartha had never performed any operation of this sort,
but during his studies he had learned the general theory
and structure of the human body. Bartha was up against a wall
do or die - in the most literal meaning of the words. He
rubbed the belly of his patient with iodine and then, using
his razor, he cut open his patient's belly, found the
appendix, and cut it off. He sewed up the inner wound and
then emptied all of the remaining iodine into the belly of
the patient and sewed him up. No anesthetics were at hand
but eight strong Hindus held the Maharaja motionless and he
yelled so loudly that the palace windows rattled.
- 652 -
The Maharaja recovered rapidly and kept his promise. He
rewarded his famous European surgeon royally. Dr. Bartha
boarded a British luxury liner as a first class passenger.
This was a very nice change from his voyage from Vladivostok
to India in the hold of a navy transport ship as one of many
thousands of Austrian POWs being repatriated to Austria. He
landed in Trieste, travelled by train in a Pullman sleeping
car to his native city of Nove Zamky, and met the sweetheart
of his school days. They were married and had a daughter
and Dr. Bartha bought the estate of a ruined Hungarian
aristocrat. A castle stood on the grounds and was furnished
with 18th century antiques. I met Dr. Bartha as he sat on
the veranda of his chateau and grumbled. It was 1926. He was
saying, "Those so-and-so Hungarian aristocrats have nothing
but debts which they will never be able to repay but they
just go on enjoying life. I have everything that money can
buy and I am bored to death just sitting here on the veranda
of this chateau and staring into the deer park. This bore
dom will drive me insane."
Very soon Dr. Bartha sold his land to local farmers and
auctioned off all that was in the chateau. He went on a trip
to Germany and bought all of the most modern dentistry
equipment, brought it back to Nove Zamky and started a practice
again. He did not have to work for a living but he needed an
occupation to save himself from boredom.
- 653 -
Of course his dentistry practice flourished. His
reputation spread far beyond the town of Nove Zamky, and at
last Dr. Bartha was active in his field and very happy.
Some Russian emigres lived in Nove Zamky and were employed
in the town administration or on military duty. Dr. Bartha
treated those Russians (including me) and never charged a
cent. He told me it was his way of thanking those who
showered him with kindness when he was a POW dentist in
Siberia. It was a treat for me to have met such a fine
gentleman.
Count Laszlo Hunyadyi
Hungary was unique in Europe. The basic idea for many
Haungarian families accepting so to say as permanent guests
in their homes, to help certain Russian families, was based
on the idea that in a year or two the Bolsheviks and
Communists in Moscow would crumble, that the western powers
Great Britain and France would not tolerate what was going on
in Russia and would help Russia to become what it used to be.
That was very wishful thinking, very noble thinking, childish
ly naive; but it helped many Russians to survive a difficult
period. On the other hand, as I mentioned before, it
was like living in a golden cage or a luxury railroad car
somewhere, forgotten on the side tracks. And as the years
went on, I lived a double life so to say, as a minor clerk and
as a Russian aristocrat that the Hungarian aristocrats were
helping because of a class feeling.
- 654 -
*
This class feeling in Hungary was quite medieval. There
were the topmost aristocratic Hungarian families, maybe two
dozen and probably less, and each of those families had the
title of count. So the lower class always thought about
them as "the counts". In prior times the counts would be
diplomats. The father of Count Louis was for many, many
years the head of the diplomatic corps in London. Count
Louis' upbringing was practically British, because he spent
his youth in Great Britain being the son of the ambassador
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He spoke English as an
Englishman would. And the counts, as I will repeatedly
refer to this group, were regarded by the gentry who were a
step lower, not to mention all the peasantry and intellectuals,
as some kind of super beings. They were supposed to serve
in the military, but the small little Hungary after the
Versailles Peace Treaty had practically no army. And they
were supposed to serve in the diplomatic corps. They were
supposed to hunt all year round in the mountains, on the plains
or in the forests - this was supposed to be their main
occupation, so to say. They were not supposed to serve in
any kind of commercial enterprise, or God forbid, as clerks
in a bank, because that was mostly the place for the Jewish
population of Hungary.
The Jewish population had a very, very privileged situ
ation in Hungary. They were accepted by society. Very often
a Jewish girl became Protestant on paper and then she married
- 655 -
a Hungarian aristocrat and some sharp tongues coined the
expression "regilding the coat of arms of the family."
The Karolyi estate had neighbors, Hungarian aristocrats,
Count Nemesh. Old Count Nemesh looked not like a Hungarian
aristocrat; one could not find in his features a trace of a
so-to-say thoroughbred aristocrat. He looked exactly like a
rabbi and for good reasons. His mother was Jewish. She was
an elderly, very kind, very nice lady; but the sons of that
couple from a certain point of view were a disaster because
of their looks. They looked as if they were right out of a
magazine that printed caricatures of Jewish boys. But they
had the title of Count Nemesh; and that was not the only case
in Hungary in those days.
I was leading, as I said, a double life. There was a
little wicker gate between the park surrounding the castle
and the farms and the employers of that company who were
running the estate. And through that wicker gate back and
forth I went at least six times a day, stepping from one world
into a very different kind of world. I realized that this
could not go on for ever and ever. Besides, I had half pay,
because that Jewish company said that I had board and room;
so they cut my wages in half. Of course they did not need
me at all. They accepted me only because Count Karolyi wanted
it and they could not refuse him. But the little money I had,
barely covered all our daily needs. A child has to be clad,
one has to have stamps, and occasionally one has to dress up.
- 656 -
The worst were those big dinners where everybody was in
evening dress. My wife could not think of wearing the same
evening dress year after year and making a new evening dress
was a problem in spite of ray wife being very clever at
arranging dresses. Later that became her career.
Besides beet root fields, that estate had vineyards, and
those vineyards and the little farm next to them were about
thirty miles away from the estate. When the season came, a
company in Prague bought up all the produce from the vineyards.
The grapes were crushed by a special machine, and they did not
buy the grape juice by the gallon or the bucket but by a
certain percentage of sugar in that grape juice. That was a
kind of technique that I know nothing about. There was a
kind of a gadget that everyday measured the contents and the
percentage of sugar. I was sent to those vineyards to
supervise that machine that measured and took down the sugar
contents every day. The company that bought it sent their
representative, a very nice Jewish gentleman from Prague. He
could speak a little bit of German, so could I, and I very
happily became friends with him. We exchanged many adventures
that both of us had had. The fact that I was in the vine
yards was for me a very, very welcome vacation from being so-
to-say "at home" and under the "Alp-druck" , the pressure of
mountains, so-to-speak, of everyday worries and frictions.
I was delighted to go out there and to spend roughly a month.
- 657 -
The day we arrived we went all around the vineyards, we
ate our fill of grapes, as much as we could, and they were
delicious. And so did the other workers. Then in the
evening - it was late October and so it was dark early -
we talked, and we had some books that we were reading, and
all of a sudden out of the dark I heared Russian gypsy
music. I thought I was dreaming. But there were gypsies
in Hungary, actually two kinds of gypsies. There were
civilized gypsies and there were gypsies that were absolutely
uncivilized and who lived almost like wild animals in the
swamps or in the forests. But those were civilized gypsies,
whom I heard playing that night. All of them were violin
players and through their imigration back and forth they
knew everything that was going on. Of course, they knew that
I was supervising that vineyard. And they knew that I was
Russian, and they came at night under the windows and started
playing gypsy music. So of course they were invited in.
There were buckets and buckets of fermenting grape juice that
tasted like lemonade but was very potent. All those harvest
ing boys and girls came to hear the music, and that dancing
party lasted all night. So that was a really fine occasion.
Then, a few days later, I was walking through the vineyarc
and all of a sudden I saw a picture of the distant past. I
thought I had a hallucination. The picture was a beautiful
girl on horse back, side riding of course, followed by a
liveried groom like back in the days of Victoria. That young
- 658 -
girl waved to me and said to me in English, "I presume that
you are Count Ivan Stenbock-Fermor . " I said, "Yes, I am."
And she said, "My parents would be very, very happy to invite
you to supper this evening at our castle two kilometers away.
Please come." I said to her, "I would be delighted. But I
have a gentleman who works with me - he is Jewish - and we
have become good friends. I would just hate to leave him
behind all by himself." Immediately the girl said, "My
parents would be delighted if he came too." I conveyed that
invitation to my Jewish friend, and he very tactfully refused.
He said, "Count, you must realize that the two of us are very
friendly, but actually we belong to two different worlds.
My presence in that castle would make me feel uncomfortable,
and I am sure that feeling uncomfortable would also be
reflected in the attitudes of others in that castle." Well,
I thought that he was really wise and clever and tactful.
I just said, "Well, I am very, very sorry not to be with you
this evening. But I will go."
I went, and when I arrived, they were very, very nice.
They were sitting in their living room. All the walls were
decorated with the heads of all kinds of wild animals. Of
course, the owner was a great hunter, as most aristocrats in
Hungary, and he travelled all over the world to hunt. The
girl had two younger sisters. Then came from somewhere a
very old lady that everybody called Mademoiselle. She was,
since time immemorial, a French governess. She was their
- 659 -
governess. In her younger days she had been a French governess
in St. Petersburg. Of course, she knew of our name, Stenbock-
Fermor, and probably the descendants of Alexander, the "right"
Stenbocks with their background of gold mines in the Urals
and immeasurable forests. You can imagine the life they
led in St. Petersburg, and what that old lady could have told
my hosts about the Stenbock-Fermors , I do not know! But
anyhow, we all went to dinner, the Count, the Countess, the
three girls, Mademoiselle and me. There were four liveried
servants there serving us, and all the plates were silver.
Then, on a silver platter, the servant served something covered
with a big napkin. He served the Countess first, of course,
and I looked and there were baked potatoes in a big silver
dish. Well, I love baked potatoes, it is fine with dinner,
so why not have baked potatoes? But the potatoes looked quite
strange to me; they were kind of very bumpy, they were not
smooth potatoes. When he served me, I took two or three of
those potatoes. They were not very large, about half the size
of my fist. All of a sudden it dawned on me that they were
not potatoes, they were truffles, a big dish of baked truffles
almost the size of half my fist. Of course, there was
marvellous wine. After that supper we went back to the
sitting room. The host talked about his hunting. Of course,
we talked about wine, and I had the misfortune of telling
him that a very popular wine in Russia was Hungarian Tokai.
But in those days in St. Petersburg I was too young to have
- 660 -
any Tokai so I knew it only by name. At that the host stood
up - there was no electricity in the whole castle - and took
a chandelier, and he said, "I will be back in a few minutes."
He personally descended into the cellar of the castle and
brought back two bottles covered with moss and dust - and
that was old Tokai. It was a kind of dessert wine, sweet,
delicious and it had a very unusual effect on people. You
could drink a glass or two of Tokai and your head would be
perfectly clear; only you could not get out of your chair.
Your feet were like butter.
After having spent all the evening in the company of
Count Laszlo Hunyadyi at his castle with his wife and
daughter, the two younger daughters who were just teenagers
were sent to bed early, and we enjoyed the Hungarian Tokai
that he had brought from his cellar, I had kind of a feeling
that my head was quite clear but I should better not try to
get out of my armchair and stand on my own two feet. I
listened with the greatest interest to all the hunting stories
that my host was telling me. He went hunting mostly in
India and Africa and it was for big game. That was of course
a hobby for a very wealthy man but Count Laszlo Hunyadyi had
nothing but debts and everybody knew it. His estate was
rented to a sugar producing factory run by a firm, a Jewish
company. But the Count was a man of such unusual charm.
He was an aristocrat to the marrow of his bones. And every
body loved and respected him, even the company that had rented
- 661 -
the estate and lands for producing sugar beet root. They
advanced him money for future crops of beet root. People
never received payment for debts , but they gave him new
credit, and this was only because of his personality and
his quite unusual charm. After having had some Tokai he
ordered his butler to bring us a bottle of Rhine wine. I
declined having that wine on top of what I had already had.
And sitting across from me in his armchair by the fire,
Count Hunyadyi emptied the whole bottle by himself. And it
was absolutely unnoticeable that he had had perhaps a bit
too much to drink. Menawhile his wife and older daughter
wished us goodnight and retired. It was getting very late,
and my host suggested that I stay overnight at his castle.
At first I said, "Oh no, thank you very much anyhow. I have
to return to the vineyards where I have to be at dawn tomorrow
when work begins." But the Count insisted and said, "You
know on those small little paths in the dark in the hillocks
and vineyards your foot might slip and you might get hurt.
So you should better stay." I said, "Thank you very much for
your kind hospitality. I accept. But please give orders that
I will be awakened tomorrow at six in the morning. And please
no breakfast, no fuss; I will just leave quietly. I am so
happy to have spent this charming evening in your company."
So the Count said, "All right, all right. All proper orders
will be given. Goodnight my young friend." I went upstairs,
he followed me carrying a candle because as I said, there
- 662 -
was no electricity in that castle. I was ushered into a
huge bedroom, a huge postered bed was awaiting me. We said
goodnight to eachother and I rapidly fell asleep and I slept
soundly. Then I heard knocking at the door so I woke up.
And I realized it was six o'clock. Two elederly liveried men,
two servants entered into the room carrying together a huge
object covered with a big thick towel. Well I was just half
awake and did not realize what that might be. The two
servants left but returned immediately carrying a very large
high object also covered with thick towels. Then the two men
left. So I jumped out of bed and took the towels off and I
saw that it was a tub, a big tub made entirely of sterling
silver. Under the towels were two high jugs, also of silver,
one filled with very hot water and the other with cold water.
So once in my life I had the opportunity of taking a bath in
a silver tub. That never happened to me again. But that
shows you the style of that castle.
In the morning I found my way back to the vineyards again.
Very soon after that my vacation so-to-say in the vineyards
was over. I returned to the big castle and to my everyday
duties and my young family. Now I must tell you about the
fate of Count Laszlo Hunyadyi. When I knew him he was a
gentleman of about fifty. In his castle was a picture gallery
of his ancestors throughout centuries when the Hungarian
aristocrats led their men against the invading Turks. And he
- 663 -
looked exactly like one of his great great grandfathers in
one of those portraits. I met him once again visiting the
estate where I worked. It was on the eve of leaving for his
every year trip to Africa to hunt lions. He said that it
was very exciting hunting in the marshes and the reeds on both
sides of the Nile. He had some kind of a barge with a few
local Egyptian dark servants that handled that barge. He
was alone, a white gentleman hunting lions and he said he
never knew who was hunting whom, whether you were hunting the
lion or the lion was just behind you following in your steps
stalking you. Then he said that lions were really very sly,
nasty animals. A wounded lion somehow realizes that he is
mortally wounded and he pretends to be dead. When somebody
comes too close the so-to-say dead lion would jump up and
attack and then fall dead for good. Well, Count Laszlo
seemed to be a very, very experienced hunter. And the last
parting words of Count Karolyi to Count Laszlo were, "Now
look out friend, and do not let yourself be gobbled up by
a lion." And Count Laszlo just laughed and said, "I know
those beasts well." Some two weeks later a telegram came
from Cairo that said, while hunting lions, Count Laszlo was
killed by one of those lions. Well anyhow it was a gentle
man's and a hunter's death and a blessing in disguise for
Count Laszlo. It was a drama for his family, his daughters
and the widow, but for Count Laszlo it was a blessing in
disguise. I just simply cannot imagine Count Laszlo living
- 664 -
through the years that were to come so soon, and him being
finally completely and totally ruined and deprived of his
castle and living somewhere as a pauper. The Lord in heaven
was kind to Count Laszlo by sending him a gentleman's and a
hunter's death. And then it came out how it all happened.
He did shoot and did kill, or so he thought, a lion somewhere
on the borders of the Nile River. He had told me that when
the lion lies there dead you have to come up - not too close -
and shoot the dead lion in the head. For some reason he
did not follow his own rules. He came too close and the
supposedly dead lion jumped up and hit with his paw Count
Laszlow's shoulder. And the blow was so strong that the gun
in his hand was twisted. The twisted gun was then brought
back to Cairo. Count Laszlo was not killed outright. He was
scratched and the clothes were torn off his shoulder and the
shoulder was badly scratched. And probably that lion had
been eating some kind of a dead animal and an infection was
on those claws. Count Laszlo was infected by the worst kind
of poison that exists. He was unconscious and was brought back
to Cairo. But it was too late to do anything for him and in
that American hospital in Cairo he died a few days later of
blood poisoning. Well that was the end of a grand gentleman.
Professor Kalitinsky
During the years of my stay at Count Karolyi's great
estate, I had to go many times to the city of Prague, which
could be reached by overnight train that arrived at six in
- 665 -
the morning. Of course that was much too early to bother
my friends who were so kind as to receive me and have me
stay in their home, so I had to sit in the Prague railroad
station drinking beer until a more appropriate hour. One
such early morning I opened the newspaper and there in great
headlines was the news that the famous Professor Kalitinsky
had been arrested for immoral conduct the evening before.
Professor Kalitinsky was a professor of Byzantology and he
had been a friend of my family since my childhood. He was
a great admirer of the Russian Church and a practising
Christian who went to Holy Mass every Sunday. He was working
on a very scholarly book, the history of the images of icons
of the Holy Virgin since the first days of Christianity. He
was married and his wife was a very famous Russian actress,
playing in Paris in those days. They had a teenaged boy
studying in Switzerland who later became a very famous
chemist and a specialist in atomic energy and earned a lot
of money of course.
And here were those headlines about that man being
arrested for immoral conduct in a public place. Then there
followed in smaller print what had happened. In a restaurant
he had openly made advances to a young boy, and so he had been
arrested. At the police station he lectured and explained
why he had done it. He said that he was convinced that
humanity nowadays was in the clutches of the evil one and he
had to fight the evil one in order to save humanity. To fight
- 666 -
the evil one, one must gain his friendship and his trust, and
to do this one must sell him one's soul, and in order to sell
one's soul to the evil one, one must commit a henious sin.
So he had gone out and attempted to commit this sin.
When the police officers heard that lecture they
immediately transferred Kalitinsky from the police station
to a sanatorium. A telegram was sent to his wife, and as
she had great connections all over Europe she and friends
came by car to Prague and drove her husband to Paris.
In Paris there lived a very famous professor of psychology
and brain surgery, Agadjenian, of Armanian origin, and he was
famous for performing miracles. Agadjenian established that
Kalitinsky had a growth on the inside of his skull. (I had
a uncle who, when I was a boy, had no hair on his head and
he had a kind of growth the size of my finger sticking out
and we found it very funny. We said, "Uncle Andrew is growing
a horn!" Now, "growing a horn" meant that the man's wife was
unfaithful to him. There is the same saying in France.)
Anyhow, Kalitinsky's growth was not on the outside of his
skull but it was on the inside, and therefore it exerted
pressure on his brain. As a result his brain did not function
normally. Somehow, by massage, Agadjenian managed little by
little to make that growth dissolve completely and vanish.
The pressure on his brain ceased and he recovered. He never
remembered any details about this experience with the Czech
police, he had only an impression that he had had a nightmare.
- 667 -
When he was back to normal he became an assistant to a member
of the Russian Imperial Family who was writing a history of
Imperial Russia, so that shows that Kalitinsky's brain again
worked absolutely normally for many, many years.
City gypsies and nomad gypsies
While I was living in Hungary there were two very differ
ent kinds of gypsies. There were the "city gypsies" and the
"nomad gypsies". They despised and hated eachother and they
were very, very different in 'their ways of life. City
gypsies had through generations adapted to city life and some
sort of culture, although in small cities they had a block of
the city set aside just for them. They were very famous
horse traders and they knew all the tricks of selling a horse
worth nothing for a good price to a buyer who was unaware.
They used to soak oats in alcohol and feed it to the horse,
then that horse was led out prancing on its hind legs and
barely two men could hold it. The buyer was elated to have
such a steed for that very small price, but when the next day
he looked at his steed it could hardly stand on its four legs.
Now those nomad gypsies were something very different.
They really looked like creatures from centuries and
centuries ago. They lived in tents or shacks made of branches
and reeds and they camped in the most remote places. Then,
in the evening they would raid small villages and small cattle
and mostly chickens or small pigs would vanish. There was a
new law and a census of the whole population was ordered and
- 668 -
every person in Czechoslovakia had to have his identity card.
So some ex-veterans of the army, now gendarmes, armed with
rifles and revolvers, went out to check a small gypsy camp
that was somewhere outside the village and near the estate
of Count Karolyi. Later one of them told me what had
happened. Of course the gypsies knew what was going on
everywhere around their camp for miles and miles and they
knew that the gendarmes were coming. They did not want to
have identity cards, so when the gendarmes came the camp
was absolutely empty except for old women, very small
children, and just one gypsy girl, rather a beautiful girl.
Now those gendarmes, finding the camp empty, tried to become
a little fresh with that beautiful gypsy girl. She just
laughed and then she said in her gypsy language some words
that the gendarmes did not understand, and she addressed a
thin, skinny old horse grazing next to the shack. All of a
sudden that horse raised itself on its hind legs and went
right at the gendarmes like a big dog, hitting them with its
front hoofs and trying to bite them. The gendarmes had to
defend themselves using their rifle butts, and finally they
fled. So the gypsies had their own ways of talking to animals
and making them do what they wanted them to do.
One of Count Karolyi 's big farms specialized in raising
pigs. I believe there were close to a thousand pigs on that
farm, and they were mostly fed with remnants of beet root and
whatever remained after the sugar plant was processed. Now,
- 669 -
an epidemic broke out on that farm. That was a catastrophe.
Pigs died every day by the hundreds. There was a deep ravine
not far from the farm and there a huge ditch was hastily
made by workers and those dead pigs were thrown into that
deep ditch and then a layer of quicklime was put on top
of those dead pigs for disinfectant. Two days later more
dead pigs were brought to that place and to everybody's
surprise it was discovered that the quicklime had been
removed and some dead pigs had been taken out by those roaming
gypsies. That was, of course, a very unusual situation, and
a very dangerous one, because that disease could spread all
over the country through the gypsies, even to humans. So the
next dead pigs were again thrown into that ravine and more
quicklime was poured over them, and for about ten days a post
of several armed gendarmes stood over that ravine day and
night to prevent the gypsies from taking out pigs and using
them for food. But not a single gypsy died.
In winter, driving close to that gypsy encampment - snow
was lying on the ground and the frost was rather severe - I
saw a boy about three years old, completely naked, sitting
in that snow and playing with some sticks or whatever he
had in his hand. This gypsy boy was actually a representative
of health, the best of health that you could imagine. His
cheeks were like apples. He was a very beautiful boy of three,
and completely naked in that snow. Of course that was the
reason why only the sturdiest of all gypsies, the sturdiest
- 670 -
of gypsy kids, survived. It was survival of the fittest.
Any sickly kid, even a gypsy kid, would have died of
pneumonia.
- 671 -
CHAPTER VIII
MOVE TO FRANCE (1931)
- 672 -
Hoping for a new start in Paris
When I arrived in Paris shortly before Christinas, 1931,
my cousin, Alexander Tolstoy, a very, very distant nameskae
of the famous Russian writer, asked me to stay with him. We
had been friendly when we were boys back in Russia and now he
had been living in Paris for many years and he was a minor
clerk in one of the most famous banks there. His mother,
Aunt Nadya was at that time absent because in the winter she
went to southern France, so he had a spare room for me and
he told me that I could occupy that room and if there were
enough food for one there would always be enough food for two.
That was of course very, very kind and very typical of him.
I felt that in Paris there was on one hand all the glitter
and the beauty and the luxury that surprised anybody who comes
as a tourist, but there was also a side of the city that
could be very cruel to mankind. And I saw it. It was in
early spring and there was a thunder shower and in the very
center of Paris, in the most fashionable part, water was
rushing around the gutters carrying with it papers and there
were many horse-drawn carriages in those days and the water
was polluted. I saw coming towards me a handsome, tall man
in rags. It was humid and very, very warm, and that man was
probably very thirsty because right in front of me he went down
on all fours and started lapping up that water as if he were
a dog. He probably did not have a single centime and he did
not dare ask at any restaurant for a glass of plain water
- 673 -
because he would have to pay for it.
In spite of living with my cousin and sharing his meals
(he was a very good cook) , looking for some kind of a job
and seeing friends was a problem that was becoming quite
acute. I had to buy tickets for the underground, the metro,
and that was some cash outlay, and the money that I still
had was dwindling. If I did not use the underground and had
nothing to do, I could walk for many blocks because I was
barely thirty-five. But there arose a problem: if I walked
too much, I would use up the soles of my shoes. What would
be wiser, using up my shoes, knowing that I had no money to
replace them or buying a ticket for the underground? This
problem was acute and very characteristic of the situation I
was in at that time.
There was a kind of promised land for immigrants seeking
jobs and that promised land was in northern Africa: Morocco
or the Belgian Congo. But that had been the promised land
ten years earlier and I had come to Paris ten years too late.
Very many of my relatives and friends had moved to Morocco
or moved to the Belgian Congo or had used all those years
that I was holed up in Hungary to get some kind of diploma
specializing in construction or agricultural engineering.
Some of them served as bank clerks because they knew several
languages. But for me getting to Africa was a question of
travel money, and my only hope of getting a very minimal loan
was from my regimental officer, the Grand Duke Dmitri.
- 674 -
I had never served in the regiment at the same time as this
Grand Duke. He was only a few years older than I but when
I came to the regiment he had been sent away as an officer
attache to the headquarters of a corps of the army in order
to get him out of the actual firing lines. He had been sent
to the army fighting the Turks in the Caucasus and that was
a blessing for him as he was not present in Moscow or
St. Petersburg when the Revolution started. When the army
collapsed in the Caucasus he had managed to get to England
and from there to France. So, as I said, there was absolutely
no personal relationship between him and myself and when
some of my older comrades mentioned tq him my situation and
suggested that he help me, their suggestions fell on deaf
ears. Besides, he was in the same social circles of Russians
in Paris as my wife. He knew about the situation between us
and all he knew about me was very much one-sided. There is
an old saying that anybody absent is almost always wrong. A
person who is absent cannot defend himself, cannot represent
the situation from his own point of view, so all the so-
called Russian Parisians, a very large group of Russian society,
knew only one side of the story. They were very sorry for a
young woman in the process of divorce from an absentee husband
who was struggling as a dirt farmer, which sounded absolutely
ridiculous. Her situation was not that bad from any point of
view but her own. She had one of the best paid jobs as a
mannequin. She was very popular among many Russian and French
- 675 -
friends. Her great problem was that she had not the faintest
idea of how to handle money. She was the greatest spend
thrift of all. She wanted only the best of the best and the
most expensive of the best. Sometimes our little children
were overloaded with luxury toys and they were dressed in the
best clothes from the most expensive shops. But as I have
said, she was very popular and she always found friends who
were rich and eager to help out a young woman with two
children. For them it was easy to spend very large sums of
money for charity purposes, especially if it were given to the
most popular, most beautiful mannequin in Paris. Naturally
such a situation could not last forever.
My wife is a famous high society fashion model
Paris was the world center of fashion and dressmaking and
many dressmakers had a world-wide reputation. One of those
ladies, a French woman, was "Koko" Chanel. She had a dress
making business and she was considered to be the best and
most important dressmaker and the most expensive one. These
elaborate and expensive dresses had to be made and had to be
shown, and showing those dresses became a profession. In Frenc
the word was "mannequin" , and add to that "high society
mannequin" . Chanel did not want to use French girls that
were uneducated and had no proper lady-like manners and con
versations, so she gave the job of showing off her dresses
to Russian ladies of society. Those ladies looked like ladies
- 676 -
in anything that they were wearing. They were very, very
well paid, but the job of being a high society mannequin was
not a 100% blessing. Their big pay had to be used to main
tain a fashionable style of life: fashionable hairdressers,
makeup, taxis, and above all being seen in the most fashion
able places. And of course wherever they went they had to be
escorted. Most of them were divorced but many were married
and of those their poor Russian emigre husbands were quite
unable to foot all the bills in the places where those ladies
had to appear to show off their dresses.
Well, there was no lack of escorts. Every elderly gentle
man is always happy to appear in public and is very flattered
to be there with a very young, very good-looking, and very
well-dressed lady. Most of them were bachelors, and an
American expression not known in those days can be applied
to them, that expression is "playboy". If a playboy escorted
a certain lady again and again, naturally there started
gossip all over Paris. Sometimes there was a grain of truth
in that gossip and it created frictions if that lady was
married. If she was only in the process of being divorced,
that was most comfortable, and such ladies were searched for
by the so-called playboys, because a lady in the process of
being divorced is still theoretically a married lady and can
not expect that her escort should ask her to marry him. The
escorts felt very safe when they escorted a high society
mannequin who was neither a widow nor a divorced lady but in
- 677 -
the process of being divorced. That was a kind of safety
valve, and the playboys were by no means eager that the divorce
would be implemented and made official too soon.
I knew of one high society Russian girl who was an out
standing beauty and she was married to a handsome young
Russian who worked for the only Russian language newspaper in
Paris, and they were deeply in love with each other all the
time. The funny thing was that this girl was the daughter of
a Colonel in my regiment who looked just like a bum even on
great days when he was in the full dress uniform of the Horse
Guard regiment. He was married to a Russian lady who was far
from beautifyl, in fact there were jokes about her figure:
it was said that it was one big ball and that was her body,
and there was a small tennis ball put on the top and that was
her head. Those two ugly people had a daughter who was an
outstanding beauty, and besides being a beauty she had brains.
She was a high society mannequin but she understood very
rapidly that there was no long-term sort of future in that
business, so she studied the business and she became a seller
and a very successful seller. A drama occurred in the days
of the second World War, the German occupation of Paris, and
then the liberation. Her husband, working in the Russian
newspaper, was an idealist. He did not actually realize the
political situation in Europe and he sincerely believed that
all that movement of Hitler into Russia was a kind of crusade
to liberate Russia from the yoke of Communism. Therefore he
- 678 -
praised that action of Germany in Russia. When the Germans
were defeated and fled from Paris, the French authorities
questioned him about his writings during the occupation and
he died under their questioning. Well, that was one of the
many dramas in that terrible time. But his widow continued
to live in Paris and established a little dressmaking
business of her own. I lost sight of her when I came over
to the United States.
Beginning in late 1930 my wife became one of the most
famous high society mannequins in Paris, as I mentioned before,
and she was working for the establishment of Koko Chanel.
Then there came a young gentleman, one of the very well known
playboys around Paris, a French aristocrat about two years
younger than my wife. Both of them fell in love, but our
divorce was not yet final and that finalization dragged on
for quite a long time. The family of that young gentleman
was of course dead set against the idea of their son
marrying a Russian girl, a high society mannequin, a divorced
woman, the mother of two boys. They did everything they could
to dissuade their son from marrying. The two of them had a
daughter and the father recognized that illegitimate child as
his own and gave the child his name, which had the title of
French Count. But after the birth of the child he did not
want to marry the mother of his child, who by that time was
a divorced woman. One reason might have been the difficult
and capricious character of my first wife, inherited from her
- 679 -
great grandmother Jakovlev: she did want to marry that man
but quite often she treated him quite roughly and finally
he could not stand her caprices. The situation finally came
to the French court. The decision of the court was that
the father had to take care of the child financially and in
accordance with his very great fortune, and that this money
for taking care of the child would be at the disposal of the
child's mother. That child was brought up by her mother.
She was actually a half-sister to my boys and in later years
they all became very friendly.
Zoya Ottovna cares for my sons
Now I have to go back many, many years to 1914, when the
first World War started. German armies invaded Russian
territory in the west provinces and all the population,
especially all the local authorities , were ordered to move
eastward to avoid being taken by the Germans. One of them
was a local judge and his family. They were not young when
that happened. They had a son and a daughter, both in their
late teens. In all the excitement of their sudden flight
the elderly judge passed away and the widow with those two
children was helpless and homeless. She was invited by the
parents of my first wife, the Scherbatov family, to live on
one of their estates until times could change for the better.
Her role was something between housekeeper and governess
and of course she was very grateful for that help. Her young
daughter and my wife, roughly the same age, became quite close
- 680 -
friends and the friendship between those two girls lasted
many, many years.
This lady's name was Zoya and her father's name had been
Otto, so in Russian she was Zoya Ottovna. That is what she
was called by everybody, and I cannot remember her last name.
Last names in Russia are sometimes quite unimportant. Now
this lady escaped from Soviet Russia, when and how I do not
know, and she turned up in Paris. Her son had joined the
White, anti-Bolshevik, armies and then was reported missing,
as thousands of others, and he has been "missing" for the past
more than fifty years. That was a great tragedy for the mother
and it took years and years for her to realize and accept the
fact that her son was not any more among the living. But she
came to Paris with her daughter. The daughter eventually
married a French scientist, and Zoya, at a very advanced age,
met my first wife and became her helper, her cook, her house
keeper, her maid, her everything, just out of a feeling of
gratitude for what the family had done for her years back in
1914. She had known my wife for so long that she took upon
herself the role of grandmother and scolded her for spending
money unwisely, and when my two boys were in Paris in the care
of their mother, Zoya Ottovna was practically for them not
only a great-grandmother but a guardian angel, and when I was
in Paris, unemployed and homeless and worried to death about
my boys, it was a great comfort to know that Zoya Ottovna was
around. No matter what, she would always take proper care of
- 681 -
them. I kept in touch with her and when I knew that I would
not meet my wife I visited Zoya Ottovna just to see my boys.
Staying with Aunt Nadya
Well, those were psychologically and physically very
difficult days for me, living with my cousin Alexander and
hoping beyond reason that maybe I would find some way of
getting to northern Africa and that I might find even ten
years too late some kind of a new way of life. I spent my
time just walking around in Paris. I found 'an office of the
Christian Science Church and I walked in and found interesting
papers. All the rooms were very comfortable and of course a
lady walked up to me because she saw that my face was new to
her and we talked about Christian Science, and she told me
some stories about it and introduced me to a Russian lady there
who told me how Christian Science had helped her to leave the
Soviet Union. Well, money can do anything, even in the Soviet
Union, but when this lady told me that she had had a broken
leg that had been healed not by any doctor but just by
Christian Science and concentrating and wishing that the leg
would mend, I doubted it. But they were very nice and it
was comfortable and warm in there and there was interesting
reading and it was a nice place to spend the hours that I
had plenty of on my hands. Then one day two cousins, the
sisters of my cousin Serge who had been killed while in the
White Armies, came to me and said that their aunt, Miss
- 682 -
Nadya Soraov, the sister of my Aunt Pasha, and who was earlier
the secretary of Professor Whittimore in Constantinople, now
had a little pension . She had rented a little old-fashioned
home on a very respected and fashionable block in Paris and
she was trying to make it into a kind of home for girls,
especially for American girls whose parents did not want them
to stay in a hotel or rent a room from people that nobody knew,
They went to live with Miss Somov, who knew many American
ladies because of her work with Professor Whittimore. My
cousins told me that Aunt Nadya was sick and they were afraid
that she had an ailing heart and that she could die at any
time, at any moment. They did not think she should be living
all by herself in that house and they thought I should go
and live there instead of living with my cousin Alexander.
I might be useful and I could call a doctor if something
happened. My two cousins, being married and having children,
could not move in with her and they were happy when I agreed.
It did not matter to me where I lived and of course Aunt
Nadya had always been very, very kind to me. She realized
my difficult situation and she knew how to encourage me not
to lose hope for better days.
One day Aunt Nadya said to me, "Vanya, today I am
feeling much better. I would like to pay a visit to an old
lady friend of mine that I have known for many years, since
we both lived in Odessa. This lady lives just a few blocks
from here. We could walk over but I am afraid of walking
- 683 -
alone. Will you please escort me?" Well, I had no reason to
refuse her but at the bottom of my heart I felt, Oh dear,
od hear, what a nuisance to escort my old aunt visiting some
kind of an old friend of hers. But we went and when we came
up to the door of the apartment we rang the bell. There was
no response, nobody was at home. How lucky I was! I was
just delighted at having gotten off so easy, but Aunt Nadya
said to me, "Probably, Vanya, you still have an old Russian
visiting card." I had one and my aunt wrote a short note
saying that she was sorry to have missed her old friend. Two
days later I received a letter from that old lady and she
addressed me quite officially, "Dear Count Ivan, I am very
sorry to have missed you two visitors. I knew so many
Stenbock-Fermors and I have heard, of course, so much about
you. I would like to meet you and would you please come and
have dinner with us?" She lived with her daughter, who was
working as a private secretary to a lady who was running a
finishing school for girls and directing a very important
charity organization for Russian refugees. Well, having
received that invitation for dinner from an old lady
acquainted with my relatives , why should I not accept? So
I wrote back saying I would be delighted to have dinner with
them.
A dinner invitation and love at first sight
Well, I came, but not at the appointed time. For some
reason I had not calculated the distance that I had to walk
- 684 -
and I arrived at half past six although I had been invited
for seven o'clock. The lady was at home all by herself and
it was no problem finding some kind of conversation. She
was quite talkative and I listened about the Stenbocks she
used to know and all I had to do was listen and sometimes
interject a word or so out of politeness. Then I heard
somebody come into the outer room. There was an open door
and I had a glimpse of a figure rapidly crossing into the
other room. It was the daughter of that lady and she had
just come back from work. She was perfectly mad at this
intruder that had come half an hour earlier than he had been
expected. She was furious. She went into her room to
freshen up a little since she had just come back from work.
Well, I must say that this family, the lady and her daughter
had a very unusual friend. He was a Spanish nobleman by
his father and American by his mother. He was not so young
anymore. He was an opera singer and had a beautiful voice,
and in his younger days he had sung in the most famous
European theater, the La Scala in Italy. He had a manservant
that had become deaf during the first World War due to an
explosion. And this friend whom they always called the
Marquis was ruined because he had married an American lady
who had squandered the last money he had and then had asked
for a divorce even though they had a little boy. So the poor
Marquis was very miserable. And of course he could not pay
his deaf manservant. But in French apartment houses there
- 685 -
was usually in the attic a servant's room and since nobody
was using it, this deaf manservant was given that room up
stairs and sometimes he came down to cook dinner. He
happened to be an excellent cook and when he went buying in
the open market of Paris, he would usually take vegetables,
or a hen, or whatever, and turn it back and forth to see if
it was really something good, and of course the French
women of the market yelled at him and cursed him and got mad
at him but that did not bother him since he could not hear.
So he always could choose the very best and cheapest food.
He had been asked to prepare the dinner that I was invited to.
And then the daughter of the lady came into the living-
room and at that instant something snapped in me. I could
not remember her from Odessa although she remembered that when
she was a teenager in Odessa, and I was an officer very much ii
love with Dina (and everybody knew it, of course, that I was
in love with Dina) , we had been at a party together. She knew
that I was one of the Stenbock boys but I do not remember
having seen her at that party in 1918. Now we were at the
beginning of the year 1932, so that makes it roughly fourteen
years that had passed since then.
At this point I would like to blend back and briefly
mention that after 1918, all through 1919 and 1920 I searched
for Dina and never found her. But in 1932 accidentally I
met her on a bridge in Paris. She never got married and she
is still in France, living in a home for old destitute
- 686 -
Russians, as I found out from mutual friends.
As I stated earlier, something snapped when I saw the
daughter of my hostess that evening. I noticed her - more
than that! There is an expression "love at first sight".
This expression has been often used and misused but I will
mention it just because it exists. Anyhow, at dinner there
were the four of us, the Marquis, Ely, Ely's mother and myself.
The Marquis was as entertaining as usual and everybody spoke
about this and that as usually happens at such dinners. No
matter what kind of nice tasting dinner, no matter how much
I had eaten, I always had the habit of taking a little piece
of bread crust and finishing off the meal with a little
bit of bread. Twenty years later I discovered that my
second son has the same habit - probably he observed Papa many
times. At dinner that day, before we left the dining table
I picked up a crust and ate it. Many months later my second
wife said that she had been amazed and upset. She had ordered
such a good, abundant dinner and this man, this guest, was
still hungry! And this has been a joke between us ever since.
Now, as I mentioned, this family was living just a few
blocks from the house where I was living with my aunt. I read
many books, killing time, and Aunt Nadya's old lady friend
also had many books and so I visited them often to get new
books and to return the books that I had read, and then once
Aunt Nadya remarked, "Well, it is very strange. I know Ely
is very busy working and I have not seen her often, but lately
- 687 -
she comes rather often bringing books or taking books back."
Once Ely came for dinner at Aunt Nadya's and after dinner of
course we did not want to leave all the dishes to my old aunt
and so Ely took the dishes into the kitchen and placed them
into the sink to wash them, a very usual thing. Of course I
stood next to the sink wiping the dishes dry as she washed
them, and for some reason which I cannot explain, I still
know exactly the kind of blouse that she was wearing that
day while washing dishes. And washing dishes and wiping them
dry does not sound very romantic, but in spite of this again
something clicked. Then I invited her to a lecture. There
was some kind of French professor lecturing about the works
of the great German poet, Goethe. I wanted to impress her
with my outstanding knowledge of literature and show her that
I was a seriously minded young gentleman. We went to that
lecture on Goethe and discussed it and I found out that she
was very, very well read and knew everything about all kinds
of literature, much better than I did. I barely, barely
managed not to go under water so to speak.
During that time I had befriended a Russian gentleman who
was an agronomic engineer, an engineer of agriculture. He
could speak French and he helped very many Russian peasants
and Cossacks who hated any kind of a job in the big city.
They were used to working land. Many French 
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