Resurrecting the Romanovs

"Well,I hope that I did not bore you with this."

Not at all, Jiri. It reads like something out of a novel.

"I met my Russian grandmother once, during a visit to Czechoslovakia many years ago. She told me Czechs were not good people!"

I guess if she was put in jail she would not have very high opinion of people who put her there-even if they were obviously communists,but still Czechs.

All of this brings various memories of my mother.She was in Czechoslovakia for over twenty five years at my birth and for uncertain reasons her recolection of life in Russia was at the time I was old enough to listen to her stories very dim and incomplete.Perhaps the trauma of losing her parents and being adopted was causing hers memory to withdraw,
However,we all enjoyed what she remembered and told us.
Three things that sticks to my mind was that she was living for while in klaster(cloistery?)under the care of nuns.One day the soldiers came to this klaster and demanded that they(nuns)tell them where she(my mother of youth)is.My mother was hidden behind the heavy curtains of windows and they never found her.
The second event was that she was smuggled inside one of the barrels on horse carriage.She recalled that the soldiers were pounding on the top of barrels with the canes but again they did not find her.We kids found it very exciting and mysterious not realizing that it was very difficult time for our mother.Perhaps that was why she did not talk very much about that
Third event(probably first one chronologically)was her memory of Christmas celebration in big mansion with gigantic christmas tree and many people and man she thought her father welcoming visitors.I think that all her memories were just like a dream to her at that time she was telling about them to us.

Interesting thing-after my mother died in 1984 my older sister told me something nobody else in family knew about.
In 1955 we were living in Marianske Lazne.The only physical memorabilia(besides few pictures) from Russia my mother had at that time was a small religious Icon that I always remembered since I could recall.
Anyway,one day my older sister was playing and took this Icon from the wall.She found that the Icon which was about three quarter of inch thick was hollow and after several minutes of trying she opened this Icon and found inside several sheets of documents written in Russian language.
She took these documents to the school and asked her teacher of Russian language to translate it for her.Teacher took these documents home and never returned them to my sister who was about twelve at that time.When she asked her teacher where those documents are and what they say the teacher become angry and told her that what they said is obvious nonsense and treatened my sister that my mother would go to jail if she told anybody about that.My sister was too afraid to tell anybody about it until she told me several years ago.So these documents are with this teacher who probably would be over eighty years old and would not probably remember nothing about it.That is if she is still alive.The last possibility to find our family history in Russia was lost then.

Well,I hope that I did not bore you with this.I am sure that the others are bored though.

"Unfortunatelly my mother's step-sister Tonca died married to German fellow in bombing of Dresden so I never met her."

Late in the war my mother was told she was required to go to Dresden to work, and but for the intercession of her uncle, would have been there during the bombing. My father, who was working as a forced labourer in a factory in Plauen at the time of the bombing of Dresden, told how he saw a glow in the sky from the direction of Dresden 100 miles away during the bombing.

Just before she slices a new loaf of bread, my mother always turns it over and marks a cross on the bottom with the bread knife, just as she learned form her mother, Russian style. Bread, the staff of life.

I met my Russian grandmother once, during a visit to Czechoslovakia many years ago. She told me Czechs were not good people! I can't recall much else of what she said during my stay there, but that has stuck in my mind. Maybe she said it because they threatened to deport both her and my mother to the USSR soon after the communists come to power. In fact, the threw her in prison from where she could watch as they set about constructing a gallows which she assumed they would use on her and her fellow inmates, but which, thankfully, they never did. Some Czechs were very vengeful indeed during the years after the war.

An acquaintance of mine is of German extraction, from Berlin. He told me once there is some Russian in him. I don't know how much, etc, as I normally don't probe into such matters, but his grandfather died fighting for the Wehrmacht at Stalingrad. A few houses down the road from me lives a German from Slovakia who lost his father in Russia. The influence of Russia has been profound even in my tiny part of the world. Amazing.

Luis, and Helen Mirren is still a beautiful woman. And a pretty good actress. When she plays Queen Elizabeth II in the film The Queen, you have no doubt she IS the Queen. You can't ask for more than that.

Helen Mirren is in fact countess Helena Mironova, her grandfather was military attaché in London during WW1, and they belong to one of the oldest families of Smolensk, close related to the Baraytinsky family as well and almost all the Russian society before 1917, Mrs. Mirren had some seven members of the family murdered or lost in the Gulag.

I have never attended the ballet; so I will assume its more dancing than politics.

"Well Jiri, we have something in common. My grandfather, Oldrich Geitner, was a Czech legionaire in Russia and he married a Russian girl from Kaluga. So my grandmother was Russian."

My step-grandfather(I guess that is what his title would be)brought his new family to Czechoslovakia via Vladivostok by ship(obviously) to Terst in Italy and then to Czechoslovakia.

Us kids,loved Josef Bednar as he was very gentle person who was very fond of us and our mother.
Unfortunatelly my mother's step-sister Tonca died married to German fellow in bombing of Dresden so I never met her.

"The Russian Revolution was a catastrophe for Russia and its empire and the repercussions are still being felt today. So many people died, and left."

Agreed!!
You are probably aware that actor Kirk douglas was actualy a Russian?There are too many people to mention who have Russian blood and are living in the West now.
Well,I guess this is a pattern for many other nationalities too.
I too agree that- besides of their governments- Russian people are at least as relevant as any Western nations.
I have no problem if Russian corporations buy Marianske Lazne,just as I do not have problem if German corporation buy car maker in Mlada Boleslav.

Well Jiri, we have something in common. My grandfather, Oldrich Geitner, was a Czech legionaire in Russia and he married a Russian girl from Kaluga. So my grandmother was Russian.

The Russian Revolution was a catastrophe for Russia and its empire and the repercussions are still being felt today. So many people died, and left. During one particular period here I came across three English migrants who had a Russian grandparent, English! And of course, there is the the English actress, Helen Mirren, who is half Russian.

Russian people, unlike their regime, always had a good name in our home.

"Jiri, ja se vam klonim!"

Karel,I am happy that you are having fun.

Ja ponimaju po Rusky ocen malenko.Only as much as we had to learn at school during communist run government.And it was very long time ago.We never spoke Russian in our household.
My mother spoke fluently German and some French,she forgot her Russian language as it was never in use until after WWII in Czechoslovakia.
I consider myself Czech Canadian although there is obviously Russian blood in me.

Jiri, ja se vam klonim!

So, you are half Russian? Ponemayete pa russki tovarich?

"Jiri the age is not the relevant point about this "ballet", which means a total lack of taste and respect for all those who still have ties with the Imperial Family from Russia"

You may be right that it is not tasteful.But then,it is how people amuse themselves in these days.
In fact,there is nothing sacrosanct and you can't expect anything different for your special cases.
I sort of understand your frustration.While "nobility" and their systems of government are a thing of past,some people cling to belief that people who were monarchs,counts,barons,etc. considered themselves noble. Of course in fact they are not different from average human beings.I think,that you yourself would agree to that,would you not?

Just to persuade you that I am telling this from open mind belief,I will tell you this story that may surprise you.

In year 1917-1919 a young Czech legionaire named Josef Bednar was in Russian city Yekateringburg as a part of Czech Legion that fought bolsheviks.
While there,he married Russian widowed busineswoman named Nadezda Vochminova who had two daughters named Tonca and Anna.As this legionaire wrote to me many years later,Anna was (supposedly) adopted by Nadezda and was related to Czar family.
Anna was my mother.For years our family believed that it was true(and we will never know)however we know that chronology is not right for my mother to be Anastazia as her birthday certificate-issued in 1918 but stating that she was born in 1910-was clearly forged.
We do accept that she was adopted to protect her from bolsheviks but we do not know who her parents were.That will be a mystery for our family for ever.(Under this circumstances should I consider myself a noble in the sense you see it?I think not!)
The only reason,why I am telling this is that while I believe that monarchy system is gone for good,I also think that the method the bolsheviks used to get their way is pervading in all their activities everywhere.

Jiri but as far as I know nobody organize a "ballet" or show, or even something in a theater about the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, I lived in Boston for five yerars and through friends (one was a Czech) I met once and saw twice John Jr. and he told me that the whole family felt the anguish of all all Americans not only for the President's death but for Bobby as well. I was in Boston when John Jr. perished in his plane accident near Martha's Vd. People were extremely sad and mourn the young Kennedy as a son.

Louis, your argument is not without merit.

You talk of taste and respect. In this age in which we live you can easily watch Zapruder's film of President Kennedy having part of his head blown away. You can watch whilst sitting on the toilet or on your way to work sitting on a train, every day. You can use the photo of his lifeless, mutilated body, brains hanging out of his head, propped up against the wall at Parkland Hospital in Dallas as a screensaver on your pc.

All resistance is useless.

Jiri the age is not the relevant point about this "ballet", which means a total lack of taste and respect for all those who still have ties with the Imperial Family from Russia, a real tragedy occured only 90 years ago, shouldn't be subject for a ballet or anything like that.

"Her Imperial Highness was born on June 5th of 1901 at the Aleksandrovskii Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, so when she was murdered with her sisters Olga, Tatiana, and Maria, her youngest brother Aleksey Nikolaevich, her parents, Dr. Botkin the physician of Aleksey and five other people, she was 17 years old not 10."

I think that you misunderstood the ages(ten versus seventeen).When the article mentions the age of Anastazia as ten ,it is in the context of "flashback" to the earlier years.

I am shocked with a ballet about "the assassination" of the entire Russian Imperial family on July 17, 1918 in Yekaterinburg, the very same day of the murder of other six members of the Romanov dynasty in Alapaevsk, just 50 km away from that city, amongst them Grand Duchess Saint Elisabeth Feodorovna sister of the Empress the abbess of the Convent of Saint Martha in Moscow, and godmother of the young Grand Duchess Anastasia Feodorovna the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra, geb. Prinzessin von Hesse-Darmstadt und Rhein. Her Imperial Highness was born on June 5th of 1901 at the Aleksandrovskii Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, so when she was murdered with her sisters Olga, Tatiana, and Maria, her youngest brother Aleksey Nikolaevich, her parents, Dr. Botkin the physician of Aleksey and five other people, she was 17 years old not 10. But my point is that you cannot use such horrendous crime for a "ballet" or a "soap opera", is a total lack of respect for their relatives, including the Queen of England and her husband Prince Philip, the Queen of Denmark, the King and Queen of Greece and Juan Carlos I King of Spain whose grandmother Queen Victoria Eugenia was a first cousin to the Empress and to the Tsar as well. Some Russian friends told me that this is a total lack of consideration to millions of Russians who still remember with love to their martyr sovereigns and family.