Portrait of V. S. Nalbandov, left Translated from Russian to English By Olga Griminger

VLADIMIR SERGEEVITCH NALBANDOV’S JOURNAL

1924‐54 Comments

When I began translating my grandfather's memoirs of the three generations, I did not know how absorbing this job would become and how interesting as well as touching it is. What really surprised and impressed me was that my Deda wrote all this from memory, without any documents- all the dates, dimensions, names of people and whom they married and even of the parents of the new members of the family! Another thing that impressed me and was most touching was the fact that even though Deda was on crutches (he had polio when he was 11 months old) he was a beloved, functioning and respected member of his family and took part in all activities, discussions, plans and so forth! Even though I had heard the stories of the life in the Crimea which my family had lived, I never realized the sizes of the estates, or the fact that besides fruit the family also grew and produced such a variety of other things such as butter and wine. Most interesting to me was the story of my grandfather's grandparents - how my great-great grandfather came from Trapezund on the Black Sea as the Armenian Sarkis Keshnivian, evidently a very simple, uneducated young man, and rose, through hard work and intelligence, to become a rich and influential member of Simferopol society as Sergei Nalbandian. Unfortunately Deda does not describe how my great-grandfather met my great-grandmother, who herself had quite a history as the daughter of German colonists. In this story my grandfather does not write too many details of his own early life, or the happenings before, during and after the Revolution of 1917-20; he did that in his other writing: "Memoir and letters of Vladimir Sergeevitch Nalbandov, 1874-1954", as did my grandmother in "Memoir of Alexandra Nikolaevna Nalbandov 1920-1947", which I also translated and of which each one of you has a copy. My brother Alexander translated "History of the Russian Revolution in the Crimea, Material, the years 1917 and 1918, by V.S. Nalbandov" of which I have a copy. As in my previous translations, I tried to keep the flavor of my grandfather's writing, even if the sentences often turned out to be unwieldy and not very good in English. I hope that you and your descendants will enjoy reading this story, and will appreciate, as I do, the kindness, honesty, industry, steadfastness and love shown by our forebears.

Map of the Crimea by Maximilian Dörrbecker (Chumwa), courtesy Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_the_Crimea.png

V.S. Nalbandov

Three generations.

Part I

Pages 33-268 and 273-328

The complete disorder of the pages can be explained by the insufficient amount of paper available. I had an old notebook which began with page 33, on hand. There was no beginning, but in its place pages 289-328 should be inserted.

Material for the history of the Nalbandov, Schlee and F.F. Schneider families.

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Of course nobody will ever write such a history anywhere, and there is no reason at all to do so – I am quite aware of this. But perhaps some descendants of our clan, torn by the Revolution from its native base, and scattered all over the world, someday may be interested to find a connection to their relatives. And for this, here are my notes which I am writing during my stay in Bad Tölz in 1944. This work into the past was made easier by the current sad state of affairs and a dark future, which also might explain the occasional superfluous details.

Only three generations! – a smirking person, being used to a multi-generational genealogy, might say. And what came before? “I do not know,” I will answer calmly. There were two peoples, differing in everything, living on two different ends of the earth. And almost at the same time, two representatives of these two peoples came to Simferopol. It seemed that everything was against them. Both of different birth, religious belief, equally lonesome, equally uneducated, only slightly cultured, and hardly knowing the Russian language, they nevertheless found acceptance in Russia, and even success through hard work. They were not told to change their religion, or their names, they received no help but also no hindrances, and that is all that they needed. What they achieved themselves and the following generations, I want to tell you and your descendants.

I am writing this story strictly from memory; there are no documents, no other papers for me to consult. But I am writing this strictly for my descendants, and there will be no time and no paper for rewriting, so please forgive me any oversights.

You will see that all three generations not only lived in Russia, but received from, as well as gave, to their new country. For us, for the close-knit Nalbandov family there was not and could not be another home country. We were not and did not feel like Germans or Armenians, only like Russians. And our feelings of being totally Russian never could nor would ever leave us. Two brothers stayed in Russia, my sister and I left with our families, as so many, many Russians did. But never did we call ourselves anything but

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Russian. Katja, a German through marriage, never called herself anything but Russian even when working with German officers, and even our little Olga recently asked me whether she should have spoken up when she had to attend a meeting in which the leader said that everyone present was German. And if we are told that according to our birth we are not Russian, we must answer with the poet Igor Stevrianin:

It is not enough to be born Russian One must be one – or one must become one!

And with deep and heartfelt conviction I will say that we became Russians, as we were or whole life long and will remain so.

I. Grandfather Sergei Ivanovich

In the southwest corner of the Black Sea near Trapezund, between high mountains and deep valleys, live tens of thousands of Armenians...... If I am not mistaken, they became Christians very early, perhaps in the 6th century. Due to geographical location and wars, many of them moved to Central Asia, and when they returned centuries later, they still obeyed and practiced laws and customs which had been abandoned in the original locations many years ago. When Rome finally began to pay attention to these Armenians, it found that they practiced their own brand of religion and obeyed their own dogmas, and that Rome would have needed to re-christianize these people; Rome decided to send its own representatives to unify the Armenians, but not to baptize them anew. This is how the Armenian-Catholics formed. Having taken this step, the Armenians did not understand or chose to ignore their worsened situation. The

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Armenians – remnants of the formerly strong and militant nation, fighting with Rome and sometimes even winning, having their own culture (I remember once reading a long treatise on Armenian architecture and its influence on the building of the first Russian churches) long ago lost their importance and were consigned to the fate of small nations – provincials,and particularly among their impulsive and fanatical Turkish and Kurdish hosts.

Life for our Armenians in their homeland was difficult. I will not even write about their systematic persecution by the Kurds which was much more common and extreme than I have ever seen described in any newspaper. They mostly lived in villages, with small livelihoods, surrounded by steep mountains, small grain fields and vegetable gardens, and leaving at the slightest possibility – either for a while or forever – for the towns of southwestern Asia and southern Russia to become artisans or business men. How well I remember those young people who had recently come, with their Turkish – type clothing - jackets wide on top and very slim at the bottom, rough mountain shoes. On Sundays they stood in our light-filled church, always in a tight group, on the same, carefully chosen place in the farthest corner of the church and prayed intensely, unmoving; only their lips whispered and occasionally their fingers moved the rosaries. They were bakers or inn keepers; these two professions were particularly popular: they did not require a knowledge of the Russian language, that is, the newcomer was hired by a compatriot who had come some time ago, and thus was able to earn a living. Time passed, and the Turkish clothing vanished, no more tight jackets, and in an European suit a new member of the clan sat in the church, with lips no longer whispering so silently and intensely - his future now depending on his luck and talents. From these beginnings came the European Armenians. My father came from such a sad background. However, I remember one of my most vivid impressions from childhood which influenced me for the rest of my life. There was space in our house for a bakery and a tavern. These were always in the hands of Armenians or Turks, who had, in our Simferopol as well as in most other Crimean cities, almost a monopoly for these establishments. These enterpreneurs stayed with us for years, often passing on the

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business from one generation to the next. There were never any difficulties for us with them, not for my grandfather, nor my father or myself while I was in charge of our ancestral house; there occurred no arguments or problems. Once or twice a year, for some special occasion, the current baker brought monumental cakes to the “aga”, as Turks always called the owner of the property. However, once the situation changed. Ordinarily, the business was run by two or three persons, who worked together in such a way that one travelled to the home country, often for a whole year, and after his return, the other comrade would leave for the same period of time. They travelled across the Black Sea on Turkish vessels, which every Crimean living near a port knows, then came from southwestern Asia bringing wood and salt. And so, as probably a hundred times previously (I was about ten years old) – a baker returning from his vacation brought with him two large packages. When he unwrapped them carefully, it appeared that one contained a small tree, about one meter long, with lemons, there were 3-4 twigs, still half green; in the other package there also was a small tree – hung with small but beautiful orange-colored either mandarins or oranges, I do not remember, but it seems that at that time mandarins were not known to us. For me this was like a fairy tale. Among the polished wood, the fruit shone, and was the hope of my life. I decided then that whenever I would have a house and a garden, I would plant orange and lemon trees. My mother and I would go into the small village where the little saplings had been planted and watch their progress. I do not remember the name of the baker, but he provided me with one of the most beautiful memories of my childhood, an ideal which I realized many years later, when in our garden we admired our first mandarins, even if they were the last ones of my life.

At the very beginning of the 19th century, from the small village or place called Gumysh-chan (Gumusane) situated south of Trapezund, a young man called Sarkis Keshivian, probably walked rather than drove away. Perhaps he was more cultured than the others who left, since he did not live in the village directly; I do not even know whether he knew how to read and write Armenian. From the stories we heard we only know that he went into the trade profession and worked in the Karasu Bazaar for a well-

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situated merchant by the name of Nalbandian. Evidently Sarkis proved to be an intelligent and decent person, and when the Nalbandians decided to open a branch for their son in Simferopol, they made Sarkis something like a partner of the firm and sent him to Simferopol together with the son. In those times the trust for a firm was so important, and Nalbandian, enjoying so much respect and trust, could find no better way to recompense the new partner of the firm than to allow him to carry the name of the entrepreneur. At that time formalities probably did not play a large role, but however that was the case, the name Keshivian disappeared, and in Simferopol there appeared Sarik Nalbandian. I am not cognizant of his further life and situations, but he evidently prospered and married, was widowed and married once again, an orphaned and pretty girl from Karasubazar – Sofia Ivanovna Jazydzhi. He began contracting and building, which at that time was well-paid, because contracts were made for large sums of money. I once incidentally was obliged to look into Grandfather’s affairs. When I served in the Department of Commerce, I was asked to look into some archives of the 1850’s in the Tavrichisky region. To my great surprise I found, in the newspaper “Prikaz”: an order for the “delivery of wood for the hospital by the businessman from Simferopol, S.I. Nalbandov “ ..in the amount of tens of thousands. And the thousands of those days were different from our thousands, and material goods cost much more than now. Therefore, in the hands of our resourceful grandfather the rubles which he earned turned into houses and estates and soon he became a rich man. At that time the Nalbandov family lived in a house bought from some Greeks, on the second floor, and a second attached apartment through whose entry one could only walk bent over, and where there was room also for merchandise. The house stood on the corner of Sevastopol and Fontanka Street across from a small square on which was a “Fountain” -not-badly built with an urn on top and four masks, from each of which gaily and strongly water ran into four granite bowls. Daily, Turks and people who then were called Dangalaki – came and scooped water and distributed it throughout the town. This was the water supply for the town. From this house in Simferopol streets called “Armenian Row” started out, with many stores, whose owners not that long ago also had been Armenians. Across the street was a bazaar, with metal wares, a butcher, and so on, but

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no industrial items. These rows of stores were the length of the Sevastopol, Fontanka, Salter and Kantarsky Streets. There also were storage places on the Kantarsky Street, where the farmers brought wood, hay, fruits, vegetables, milk products, also horses, cows and calves; it was said that this quarter made up almost all of the economy of the rather small, southern town which Simferopol was at that time. In this manner, the “Armenian Row” picked a good spot and caught the people coming from the surrounding villages; from the bazaar, where they sold their various products, they directly came to the stores and thus provided trade for the merchants. Grandfather himself did not have any stores, but had two large properties on Sevastopol Street between Kantarsky and Fontanka Streets and a third one – by then almost already a whole estate – along one side of the Armenian Quarter.

Our old house on the Sev. and Font. Streets, being two and a half stories high, stuck out among the low, one-story stores, and during Grandfather’s time probably was very impressive due to its height, and its two arches; between the arches was the entry into the house. Inside it was very modest; after his marriage, my father remodeled it inside, but the age of the house still was very visible and we were surprised more than once that our grandfather could live on such a small space with the rather large family, and not only live, but to continuously host many guests, who, according to my father, often stayed overnight, because to travel in the evening through the dirty and dark streets was most unpleasant. Grandfather’s family fully kept the customs of the Eastern world – there were no beds, but couches with drawers, and cushions lining the walls. In the drawers bed linens and carpets were kept during the day. In the evenings, the linens were taken out, the pillows put on the couches, carpets spread on the floor, and thus very comfortable and spacious bedrooms were created. Grandfather’s wealth grew, as did his family, and soon the old, happy house became too tight. He decided to build a new one. Whether he was by nature a grandly living person, or whether it was good for his business dealings, or whether he was moved by his pride which is inherent in a person who has moved to a position of “Premier Businessman” in the Armenian society not only in Simferopol but probably in all of the Crimea, one of course cannot

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say, but the house he built was first-class. The land for building which he chose amounted to a whole desjatin (2.7 acres). In line with the public square, he put an unbroken arcade of typical Tatar stores which, as we know, are attached to each other and do not need any exits in the back, no additional rooms, and are a very efficient way for shielding the owner’s lot. The monumental line ended with a very well-proportioned and, for that time, very beautiful gate. Through this gate you entered a huge courtyard, with very beautiful vases and mulberry trees, and having traversed the tree-lined road, came to two stone stairways, through another courtyard, to the huge one-story house situated on a tall foundation.

A gallery of tall glass windows stretched along the whole house, and two large pools were in a mezzanine in the middle of the house. The house was well-proportioned, and the hundreds of glasses of the high windows of the gallery quietly and gaily welcomed you. I saw the house only after it had already been divided into two apartments, but I can easily imagine how nice it was, that house of a rich gentleman. All was built by a good architect who did not need to worry about money or economizing space. The glass gallery was very wide and light flooded it with such free waves that they were quite sufficient to light the rooms which stretched along the whole gallery, especially since the windows were very large and had only a few muntins. From the corridor you entered to the right and to the left through large doors into family rooms. At the end of the corridor was a large hall, divided by an arch into two parts. I never saw the hall when it was still one whole hall, but each of its half far exceeded the dimensions common at that time. The high ceilings were lightly decorated, and the three huge windows in each half faced the garden. These three windows left in me an indelible impression. In my life I have built many things, and I love to build. But I never succeeded in building with, what one may call a full hand – times have changed, life dictated the laws of economy. With its thick and high walls, so well proportioned, with its myriad of windows, this house has remained for me the ideal, unattainable building. Underneath the row of windows there were doors, all decorated, very tall, as was then customary, with one window, and copper handles that were placed so high that I, as a

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small boy, could not reach them. The windows of the hall opened onto the garden. When I saw all this, the splendor of the Nalbandovs had ended already a long time ago. Of the old grandfather’s furniture, simple and bourgeois, only the desk remained. But when the sun shone through the open windows, it seemed to me that everything within the hall was alive with the old life, and looked at us with pity and contempt.

When the new house was finished Grandfather’s family moved in, I unfortunately do not know when. My father had difficult memories connected with that house, he disliked speaking about them. Slowly it became clear that the old happiness did not move to the new house with the family. For a long time everything remained the same. An estate was bought, - Aratuk – not very large but with woods, which was especially valuable in the Crimea. Only the wooden Tatar hut of the former owner existed on the land. The estate was 10-15 versts (6-8 miles) from Simferopol on the Alusjatinsky Road and served as a fitting vacation domicile for the family for a rather long time. Life in the new house became more opulent. In the right half of the yard was a shed for carriages, stables, the kitchen – we were still able to see all of this, even though everything had been changed – the servants’ quarters had become tiny apartments, the stables turned into store rooms. One had adjusted to the requirements of the new times. Where once many cooks worked in the kitchen and the servants brought the food to the dining room, it had seemed natural to remove the kitchen from the main living area to the second part of the house, connected through a short hall way. But when the lady of the house herself had to go to the same kitchen ten times a day, and cold breezes flew through the hall, and she was constantly sick, she did not find enough words directed to the architect, about how “stupidly” the house was built. Guests came more and more frequently, lunches and dinners were more numerous. The children grew older. There were six of them: three sons and three daughters. The oldest, the twins Ivan and Nikita were in highschool, but showed no special success, even though they were in a private school. Then came a daughter, Maria, undoubtedly the most cultured and talented of the daughters, she played the forte piano exceedingly well. Next came the son Sergei and the daughters Anna and Anastasia.

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The generous life and duties of Sergei Ivanovich continued, but some misfortunes appeared. Whether Grandfather himself was not on top of the situation – after all, this was a man who could barely sign his name in Russian – or whether he relied too much on the luck which had held out for so long – or perhaps circumstances had changed – but on the bright horizon clouds appeared. Thus, during the Sevastopol War (1855) he was to make a tremendous and crucial delivery of wood to the troops. For this delivery were hired a whole string of mountain Tatars who cut the wood and brought it to the front themselves. And one of the groups of Tatars unexpectedly came under fire and abandoned the wood and fled. A whole affair developed and cost a lot of money to settle. After the end of the war there was a large accounting concerning the wood which had already been paid for, and a trusted agent of Grandfather furtively slipped him a document for signing, in which he admitted that he took back forty thousand cubic meters of wood instead of four thousand – the agent read a figure with one zero less to Grandfather, etc. Grandfather’s mind was busy with his previous success and his exalted standing in town and undoubtedly about being considered the primary face in the Armenian community. Sergei Ivanovich decided to crown his pursuits by building a special church for the Armenian Catholics. At that time there existed in Simferopol only one church, called the “Polish” Roman Catholic church, a small, insignificant building, whose appointed priests were always Polish, sometimes German. The service was held in Latin, because during the unification of the Armenian and Catholic churches, a concession was made to the effect that old traditions, such as keeping the national language and generally the Eastern manner of Armenian-Catholic worship, would remain. In Katasub there was already a special Armenian Catholic church, and for the governing town it was of course “unseemly” not to have one also, especially since during those times the Simferopol-Armenian society grew freely and unhindered at the expense of the newcomers from Central Asia. Undoubtedly all this influenced the ambitious Grandfather, but considerations of a more personal nature were not foreign to him. He had been a businessman already for a long time, and probably (I do not know this) wore the uniform with an attached golden collar, and a sword, which at that time

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were given to people who were not officials, but who sat in positions of trustees of some school or hospital; anybody in Russia could be a businessman, as long as he paid his guild and carried a merchant’s certificate, but in spite of this, neither he nor his son had a certain “standing” and had to consider themselves as belonging to a lower class of society, and Grandfather could not understand this. No matter how high he stood in Simferopol, of course he definitely had no hope at all to be admitted to the gentry, even though one could sometimes obtain this certain class in Russia at that time through “length of service”. But there was one opportunity for Grandfather and his family to advance into a better standing, one pleasing to the Almighty, not annoying any local people, not causing envy, and falling into the category of special philanthropy and enlightenment, without losing any self respect. This is what Grandfather was aiming for when thinking about building a church. Be that as it may, Grandfather began his new project with his customary zeal and large scale. He bought (and perhaps already previously owned) a huge lot, which may have been one of the best in Simferopol. In the center of town, of the then wide Dvoransky Street, next to the grandiose yard of General Vzmetnev (and which later would belong to F.N. Schneider). On the huge property there was also a building with an apartment for the priest, housing for the caretaker, and a small school, and in the back a large apricot garden. All this was to be donated to the Simferopol Armenian Catholics, for their use in perpetuity. According to Father, a very beautiful plan was drawn up and sent to the administration in St. Petersburg. It was returned from there “corrected.” Evidently the façade was found not fitting, and was drastically simplified. The church retained its simple and pleasing form, the façade with its tall portal and two lateral doors, the entry was to be inlaid with wonderful stones. Above the lectern, hanging from the high and light ceiling were bells, and a countenance of Our Savior and on a piece of cloth that of Saint Veronica. There was no fence in front of the church and along the wide and half-round driveway carriages could arrive for festive occasions comfortably and directly to the entrance.

Undoubtedly, the idea of building the church arose while Grandfather’s affairs progressed so splendidly, so that such a huge expense of building the church did not

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frighten him. But while the whole matter was being formalized, much time passed, and when it came to act on the idea, Grandfather’s heart was probably heavy. But it was too late to step away. Actually, affairs did not go as well as they once did, life necessitated more expenditures, a number of law-suits in the courts – the courts of those times demanded large sums to gain the favor of the judges – everything grew bigger, the two older sons turned out to be unsuccessful while working for their father, without initiative and active assistance in the business; one had to think of dowries for the two growing and pretty daughters ...... but. However, there already were signed commitments in the hands of the authorities and the local government and the very thought that he could get into such a humiliating situation, not even speaking of the fact that such a refusal would be a mortal blow for his business, - at that time there was as yet no “credit” – all that weighed heavily on Grandfather. My father pictured him to me as a deeply realistic person - how else could he have come so far in life? – I can only add that building the church became dear and close to his heart. It seems to me that the chromosome (Andrjuscha will forgive this expression because it is not at all scientific) concerning the realization that the boundary of our personal interest must cede before that of society, which I am convinced always existed in all members of our family, we inherited it from our Nalbandov grandfather. If he would not have had a personal interest in the building of the church, he would not have worked so hard on its completion almost to the time of his death. Father more than once told me: “Father never walked through the house without looking what he could take to the church. The best carpets, the best candlesticks – he brought everything there.” Would he have done this if, in building the church he would not have found personal satisfaction, or was this strictly a business matter? However this was, the building began, and in 1864 the church was consecrated. The consecration was to occur with opulent festivities, the arrival of the bishop was awaited. Later I saw in the possession of I.S.N.’s family a golden snuff box inlaid with an small exquisite clock, which I admired, meant as a present for the bishop. But the bishop did not come – I do not know why. This occurred after the lifetime of Sofia Ivanovna, and probably was the last happy occasion for Sergei Ivanovich. His businesses became more convoluted, as he himself realized. He fell into more debts in

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order to finish building the church, and during that time Grandmother suddenly died. Father, who loved his mother and was in the last year of highschool, became gravely ill, probably with typhus. When the danger had passed, his and Sergei Ivanovich’s name day was approaching, and Grandmother, happily, evidently completely healthy, immersed herself completely in the preparation for this important festival, because at the celebration of two name days there must customarily be many guests, and for all of them pirogues and sweets must be prepared. Father was still in bed and therefore did not know the details of his mother’s death, and it was kept from him as long as it was possible. Everything happened so quickly that the pirogues, which had already been prepared, became funereal ones.

The death of his wife finished the old man. He went into a perpetual depression, almost completely stopped taking care of his businesses, locked himself into his study and did not want to see anyone, not even the servants. He only made an exception for his youngest daughter, his favorite. Father told us: ”we would accompany her to the door of his study, knock on the door and leave. Father would let her in, kiss and caress her and cry. He would cry and say: “I ruined the children, I ruined them.” Then he would let the girl out and lock himself in again.” He did not outlive his wife for long and died in the same year; 1864. Both were buried in the garden of the church. The tombstone on the graves was brought in from Italy, and was considered smart and beautiful in Simferopol at that time. All was done as was customary: eternal flames, a small dome, and bas reliefs of Grandfather and Grandmother (I therefore had the same decorations in my personal library). Curiously enough, these were their only likenesses. Sofia Ivanovna, according to several people, was a pretty and somewhat shapely woman. She probably brought with her the weakness of the heart which later on appeared in many of her descendants. Conversely, Grandfather was of rather short height, a dry little old man with a rather sharp profile, well portrayed in the bas relief, and quite bald. On the relief one could well see the embroidered collar of the uniform dress coat in which Grandfather was buried. It is worthwhile to pause for a while at this embroidered collar and to discuss it. It would be insufficient to see it only as an empty

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part of a uniform which had been bought for money, as a banality of the one who wore the uniform at that time. One must not forget that Grandfather came to Russia as an illiterate stranger from a strange people – I, born, raised and studying in Russia – can imagine the deadly Armenian accent with which he spoke Russian. And none of this, even his Catholic belief, which was clearly expressed with the building of the church, prevented him from obtaining that little bridge, which enabled him and his descendants to enter a new country, to become its citizens with all its rights, as much as one can speak of equal rights in this country at that time at all. How could one oppose that gold- embroidered collar? One can be proud of his tolerance of the dark days of so long ago.

In 1914, when the jubilee of the half-century of our church was celebrated, the graves of our oldsters already began to be in the way of the enterprising leaders of the Armenian mercantile community who wanted to utilize the long neglected apricot garden. And truly they were in the way when next to them heavily laden vehicles constantly drove by to get to the store rooms. And thus, following the recipe of “utile dulci misere” it was decided to celebrate the jubilee of the church by moving the crypt into the church. When the crypt was opened, they saw that the graves were half- crumbled, but shreds of glossy upholstery were still left Due to the destruction of the graves some bones had moved closer together, but on the bones of Grandmother were still scraps of silky material, and near her skull was some hair of beautiful dark chestnut color. And next to Grandfather’s skull there still lay the embroidered collar, but the shine of the gold threads was gone. In this there definitely was a symbolism for the silently observing grandson seeing the bones of his grandfather: even though the glitter of the collar had faded away, he understood perfectly what important role this collar had played in the history of our family – it led us into being free Russian citizens.

Officially it was decided by the highest magistrates to present to Grandfather still during his lifetime and preserved in a golden frame by his oldest son, Ivan Serg.. a framed certificate in which it is noted that the merchant from Simferopol Sarik Ivanov Nalbandov together with his sons Ovanes, Mirtich, and Sergei and his daughters

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rendered outstanding civil services and accomplishments. Again two interesting details: I do not know whether Grandfather himself insisted, or whether administrators decided this themselves, but Grandfather was called Nalbandov, and not Nalbandian. My goodness, how many times later in the national-Armenian society people smiled at the “of ,” how insistently the Nersesov family – the sister of my father – the most “Armenian” of the whole clan – stressed that they were Nersesian, not Nersesov. But it seems to me that Grandfather, whether he had done this through conviction or simple opportunism, acted correctly. It would have been odd to move permanently to a strange land, become its citizen and keep a name that estranged you from your new country. But, someone could say to me, would it then not be right to translate the name Nalbandov (nalbandt is “blacksmith” in Turkish)? However, that is not convincing, for this may be the difference between the former versus the present nationality. Grandfather moved to Russia forever. Here he found a second homeland, where he founded his business and his family. He sincerely wanted to mingle the fate of this family with that of the Russian nation and became a Russian citizen. But not for one minute did he abandon his roots, nor his religious belief; he did not hide them nor was he ashamed of them. Calling himself Kuznetsov would have meant, I believe, to say: please forget that I was once an Armenian, and add me to the list of millions of original Kuznetsovs. By staying with Nalbandov (or Nalbandian) he declared that he and his descendants wanted to swim in the Russian ocean and mingle with other Russians. Grandfather chose (if indeed he had a choice) the middle way and acted correctly, and honestly and presented his offspring with a great service. To this day, none of his offspring moved away from his Armenian blood, with all its good and bad qualities, nor from our religion; his descendants know no home except Russia. This concerns especially our family and is truly expressed by the fact that in a family with three brothers with Armenian names, the oldest son is called Sergei, not Sarkis.

I know little about the character of Grandfather and Grandmother. Grandfather evidently had a temper and was a harsh person. In his presence his sons did not dare to smoke, had to stand up when he entered the room, but perhaps this was only

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customary in those times? He could also be tender: my father always told how tenderly he loved his youngest daughter – she was always called Nastenka. Before the end of his life our energetic grandfather somehow suddenly fell apart under the blows of fate and became melancholic and inactive. But fate kindly cut short his life with a heart attack and saved him from the unescapable indignities of total disintegration. My father always spoke with special love of his mother. Not only was she beautiful, but very kind and tender, a perfect hostess. Father told that his sister Nastenka very much resembled her mother. I knew Aunt Nasta (Mursaev). She truly was a generous, tender and quiet person. She did not speak much, but was graced with such a kind smile that it seemed that she wanted to do something nice for you, but just did not know how and did not dare. From Grandmother she evidently inherited the somewhat dark beauty of the tender face on a large frame, like my sister Sofia and our Katja. During our childhood Father often told us when we lolled in bed in the morning: “my mother always said: only dogs lie there with eyes open; when a person has woken up, he must get up.” A characteristic saying by a great representative of her nation against laziness!

2. The Nalbandov Family

After Grandfather’s death his family remained in a terrible situation. Everyday life continued as before. The grandiose house, carriage and horses, the estate, guests and the cook – everything existed as before, but it was clear that changes had to be made and the situation at home could not continue. Something had to be decided. But how? It was after all a prominent family in the small town, especially among the Armenian society, having just shown its might by building a beautiful church, and counting among the leading land owners and merchants. However, there were mortgages and loans, and not much personal money, so that sometimes, Father said, one had to look where to get a ruble to give the cook who went to the market to buy provisions. And meanwhile the sisters had grown up, they had to be married off and needed dowries, and there was the risk of any curtailment in everyday life being noted publicly – and according to “Armenian pride” not desirable either for the sister brides and also for the

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brothers; expenses could not be reduced even for the Sunday meal: on Sundays the priest of the new church lunched with his patron, as the builder of the church was called, and the title was inherited by his family. One had to suffer on and tighten one’s belt in private. But who should do the tightening? I already wrote that the two older sons – twins – Ivan and Nikita - were not very able people. Grandfather sent all three sons to high school but perhaps noting that life in the family would not encourage them to study, he placed all three into a private boarding school which had opened in Simferopol and was run by high school teachers Karl Vasiljevich Trinkler and Aleksander Konstantinovich Chamarito (I did not know the first one, and therefore forgot his last name, but later on the other one was also my teacher). Undoubtedly the boarding school was a good one – so said my father – and the children of the best families in town were sent there. My father’s fellow student was Al. Christ. Stewen, the son of the Academician Stewen, who was in charge of the Nikitkin Garden. But neither the high school nor the boarding school helped the twins: neither one went farther than the second grade high school and from their German language studies Ivan retained only one sentence: eine kleine Biene flog (a little bee flew) with which he amused us during merry times. The sad thing was that in business matters the twins did not know much more than the bee and turned out to be totally useless for any practical endeavor. They were two very nice, not malicious, well-meaning and totally decent people, but throughout their whole lives they never did anything and achieved nothing. How they would have lived if their father had not left them property which fed them and their families – I definitely do not understand. They did not change anything in their inherited houses – except that Ivan added three rooms in the corner of the yard of his house – but never used them. Overall this was an ideal example for the opponents and defenders of the law of inheritance: the defenders would be in ecstasy about how the efforts of one generation would be sufficient for the lives of descendants, and opponents would talk about how a parasite can live a useless life through the inheritance from a father. But once a year the twins played their role very well. During the Corpus Christie celebration, when the priest carries in a festive procession and with measured steps the star with the body of Christ around the church, custom demands that he be supported

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under the arms by two parishioners. It was essential that this role always fell to the oldest patrons – the twins. One should have seen the proud consciousness of being of the Nalbandov family with which the two old men, dressed identically and resembling each other totally, stepped forward. These few moments probably gave them the feeling of belonging to a society which, for some reason, they never were able to enter and which, by virtue of their name, was due them. The old men with their bald heads, kind faces and grey whiskers, seemed to stand taller and enhanced the beauty of the procession precisely because of their sameness: on both sides of the golden implements of the church stood two totally identical ornaments, and above curled the smoke of the censers. And when the procession slowly wended its way around the church and stopped at various altars built for this occasion, it passed the gravestone of Grandfather, it is said that his profile miraculously followed them. It seemed that he could peacefully sleep in his grave and that his descendants had completed his work. The Armenian society had its church and his children did not perish, as he had feared during the last years of his life. They all climbed out of the depth into which they had fallen and upon the foundation which they had been given, built their own families, all enjoyed success and gave him grandchildren, none of whom would have to be ashamed to face his proud grandfather. The graves were put in the earth of the church underneath the benches which were dedicated to the Nalbandovs, and the bas reliefs and epitaphs which formerly had been on the tombstone were put in the wall. To achieve this, we simply cut the whole top of the tombstones into halves and placed them next to each other, and after 50 years of looking outward, they now faced each other. It seems that luck had smiled on us once more and now they would rest peacefully in the church which they had built. But less than 15 years later, the church itself was destroyed by the new forces, and now there is nothing but an abandoned lot. Perhaps their remains are still underground, but their last images undoubtedly were thrown out together with the pile of stones, as was our completely destroyed family. I received the news of the destruction of our church from Venice, from Father Iosif Markov, who had been living in the monastery on the island of St. Lazar Mechitaristov for many years already. One would assume that there one would know the truth. But

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now Katja met, in New York on October 5, 1950, an Armenian priest who previously had been in Moscow and in Siberia and met – where? – a Nalbandov, probably Gleb. Later he lived in Simferopol for seven years and then left from there with the Germans in 1943. He said that the “Nalbandian Church” was not destroyed, that at first it served as a club, then as apartments, and then again as a church. He spoke Russian well, and there could not have been a misunderstanding. I hope to God! But this probably is not true. He may have confused the Armenian-Catholic church with the Armenian- Gregorian one. I asked Vlad. Aleks. Schlee, and he confirmed that the church was demolished down to the foundation during the difficult years (letter of June 3, 1951).

And so, neither Ivan nor Nikita could take upon themselves the tangled affairs of their father, and, desired or not, this role fell onto the shoulders of the youngest son, Sergei. At that time he was 19 years old and just finishing high school and hoping for further studies. But time did not stand still, something had to be done right now, immediately, he left school - he did not graduate even though he studied well. As he told me, his father did not divulge much about his businesses to his sons, therefore he had no responsibilities and even did not live at home during all those years and thus was completely lost when these new tasks fell onto his head. Creditors demanded money, the various law-suits were already over the time limit; he did not know the history of all the affairs and did not have anyone to ask; Grandfather did not keep notes and had no trustworthy assistants. In addition, all had to be done so as not to harm the reputation of the firm, not to show the insufficiency of funds, and to do everything circumspectly. One more law-suit was added to all the others concerning the time when the new church and the land on which it stood were handed over to the Armenian society; now they demanded a sum of money which would ensure the upkeep of the church. I do not know whether Grandfather was able to obtain the permit to build the church by promising its upkeep, or whether it was only a verbal agreement or a new idea of the Armenians, but it was shameful to demand this when the family was so totally bereft, and this forever damaged Father’s relationship with the Armenian society, and he could never forget and forgive this. Altogether, the travails during this time

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deeply influenced Father’s character and made him reserved and distrustful of people. But new worries arose. Time passed, the younger sisters had to be married off. Gradually the law-suits were resolved, some were lost some were won, the estate went away, also some more real estate, and it became clear that even though heavily mortgaged, three of Nalbandov’s houses could be saved: the new house on the Bazarsky lot, the house on the corner of Kantarsky and Sevastopol Street and (our future house) on the corner of Sevastopol and Fontanka Street. Next to each house was a hostel. In this way each son could inherit a house, but for the daughters there remained nothing. Meanwhile the two older sisters had already married. The money necessary for existence was somehow found through new borrowing, there remained only the real estate. They thought for a long time, and finally decided to divide the estate into three equal parts, and also cut out three pieces from the facades of the row of Sevastopol street houses, enough to build three stores in the Armenian section. Nersesov located in the house on the corner of Kantarsky Street, Uzunov – in our house. When all this was decided, the brothers threw the dice and Ivan got the house on the square, Nikita the one on Kantarsky, and Father the one on Sevast. Street. It must be said that there were no particular quarrels or misunderstandings, but I know that the families all remained displeased with what they received from the inheritance, and their relationship, especially with my father, remained rather cool throughout their lives, and visits between brothers and sisters were rather infrequent. By the way, there were also other reasons for this, not only material ones.

Thus the knot which had kept the families in the grand house of their father finally was unraveled. The sisters had already previously left to be with their husbands, the brothers could move into their own houses, and each family began its own separate life. For all this, many years had been lost. During that time, my father also had succeeded in getting married, and my mother also lived in the grand house for a time, and in the summers in Aratuk. “To live in their house,” my mother complained later, “was not infrequently boring. The rooms were huge, half empty, only long, huge Turkish couches stood against the walls. One was not allowed to make noise, to sing, the old ladies (two

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old aunts still lived in the house) began to grumble and get angry. For holidays the priest always came for dinner. One ate, sat in the corners of the couches and dozed off. I went to my mother and left them to keep sitting there.” Carriages and guests, receptions and holidays – everything has stopped long ago. The large house became too large, the younger generation fell silent, and it was not possible to create a new life there. Finally all the “outsiders” left, and a new owner moved in.

Ivan Sergeevich Nalbandov was born probably in 1838, and died in 1892, was married to Christina Stepanovna Chalubdzid, from nearby Evpatoria. They had three children. The son, Stepan, was born around 1872, studied at the Simferopol highschool, left, I think, in the third grade of high school, later studied in the Moscow Agricultural School, died on January 28, 1929. He was married to Luisa Franzovna Lerich (she died on February 20, 1939). They had two daughters: Henrietta and Valeria, both, (the second one with a husband and possibly children) now moved to Germany. The son Michael was born in 1874, completed the Simferopol high school and Moscow University, jurisprudence. Served in the Simferopol District Court, then became a public notary in Melitopol. Died (heart) in 1911-12. The daughter, Anna, markedly younger, was born in 1880, died in 1936 – was married to a member of the Simferopol District Court, Ledashnev. They did not have children. Ivan Sergeevich was given his father’s grand house. This was the right thing, because he was the eldest in a row. But debts for the house rose, which, I think, was somewhat influenced by the inheritance of his wife, since she came from a prosperous family; the income received from the adjacent houses, but totally separated from it, consisting of an inn and the rent from the former servants’ house, seemed sufficient so that the family could live quite comfortably. But the former splendor of the house died out completely in the hands of the uncle. It was developed into two apartments, the family lived in one, the other one was rented out. They lived a boring but economical life; I remember with pleasure the large hall which they did not enter for weeks at a time; in the winter it was not heated. Perhaps this was necessary – I do not know. I only know that I particularly loved everything in that house – the courtyard with its huge mulberry trees and the garden,

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and the huge rooms and the wide hallway – and I always gladly stayed with my uncle when my parents remained on the estate during the spring and summer. And I could not shake free from a certain sadness because the house did no longer correspond to the life which had been. Only once a year the house shone again. On the second day of Christmas the Armenian church celebrated the name day of St. Stepan. And on that day the distracted uncle remembered that he was the eldest of the line and as such had to mark the name day of his first born and future replacement. At around seven o’clock in the evening we were carefully wrapped up, placed into the carriage, and as he drove directly across the square, Father never forgot to say: “Yawash, chardash -slowly, brother” (almost all the coachmen were Tatars, at that time), because the road truly had so many potholes that the carriage easily could have overturned. The gates of the old house were opened wide, and the hall with all its windows glistened far into the courtyard. The house was full again. All the relatives came together with their children, who were immediately taken to one of the side rooms, but the adults went through the hall into the large and long dining room where they were welcomed with large quantities of various pies. At home we also lived very simply and particularly in the company of relatives, and I involuntarily shrank back when I happened to be in the hall, which was filled with people not known to me – dark and loud who represented Armenian society, who had already happily partaken of glasses –mainly vodka – which were lined up at one end of the table, and in the Eastern tradition, with marmalades and other sweets. Card tables had already been set up – they mainly played a game of chance called Stukalka. Men as well as women played, and among them I – and certainly others also – was particularly impressed by the oldest sister of my father, Maria Sergeevna Nersesova. She was pretty, had a somehow especially white or pale face and from gold-rimmed glasses shone two intelligent and somewhat direct-focusing eyes. With her cultured bearing, she was way above the people surrounding her, and felt again in the old world of her father during his lifetime, and especially after her unfortunate and poor family life – and this animated her and all those around her. Everyone around her card table laughed and talked, the jokes which I did not understand did not stop – they mostly spoke Armenian – and she seemed to me the kindest and most pleasant person

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of all those present. Perhaps also because she was the most “European” among the dark-complexioned crowd whose language I did not understand. All together, during those evenings one could feel how our family was removed from Armenianism. As I already have written, an old Babushka lived in the house of Ivan Sergeevich, and during those evenings a far-removed relative was also present, called Evniza (Evgenia) Jazvedji. All children had to approach these harmless oldsters and kiss their hands and then they very tenderly kissed us and said tender words to us in Armenian –neither one spoke Russian. Basically we could not have anything against this since in our house we only occasionally kissed our mother’s hands, but from the hands of the old ladies arose a spicy smell, and I often dodged this mandatory duty. But once somehow one of the old ladies was astounded about the number of the children who approached her and said: “there are so many of you that you washed my hands.” This was so unappetizing to me that I simply could not force myself and systematically began to oppose this old Armenian customary etiquette. While the adults played cards and talked, the children were left to themselves, and sat in the rear rooms and played school, lotto, domino and cards. We played for nuts and also money. But the money was really pieces of paper – wrappings of various candies and caramels. Perhaps it showed a business acumen, but the wrappings had different values, which had been earnestly decided. I remember a totally white one with the gold lettering “Pomadka” (fruit candy) which became popular but was still rather expensive, while “Statublevka” was rather boring. For Pomadka one got twenty-five rubles, bluish-violet papers of my favorite sour barberry caramels. In Armenian household candies were presented in a strange fashion: on silver platters (on napkins) they were mixed together with nuts, figs, dates, gingerbreads and various cookies. The platters stood on a table, and the guests approached and took what tasted best to them. The platters were brought to the card players and older guests. The lady of the house would inspect the offerings and would add to the platters whatever found the most favor. The same platters were brought to the children’s room, and there began the battle for the most valuable wrappers. When the supply became depleted, we one by one sneaked out of the room and into the hall in order to either grab or else receive from a kind guest a sweet or find a high-value

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wrapper. It was with that money that we played cards or lotto and at the end of the evening – victorious or defeated - reread our sticky wrappers and in view of hygienic necessity, removed them from our dirty hands. Not long before 12 o’clock there was some movement in the hall – the priest was invited to have dinner, because he could not eat after 12 o’clock if he wanted to serve mass the next day. He was escorted to the dining room, but a part of the other guests continued playing. Finally they were called to dinner, the whole long dining room was filled with people, and for us children there was usually not enough space, and we ate in the children’s room, but often many of us were already peacefully sleeping with our heads deep in the cushions of the couches or some clothing which had been thrown onto the corner of the couch. In the dining room they ate and drank fully and long. Because that day economy did not apply, there were many appetizers, and a huge name-day cake was mandatory, a cake whose layers and delicate thinnes Armenian hostesses showed off before one another. But finally dinner came to a close, a servant was sent to collect the coachmen and the sleepy children were taken home. The holiday was ended and the house became silent again for another whole year. The end of grandfather’s structure was sad. Perhaps it is strange to speak, particularly now at the end of a war in which so many undoubtedly more valuable historical buildings were destroyed, of that house, but it was our happy house, and we ourselves destroyed it. After the death of Ivan Sergeevich the family lived for some time in the same apartment, then moved to a second one, smaller, about half the size, then scrambled into an annex and finally, when Stepa married and moved into his wife’s small apartment, they moved out of the house completely. It would be absurd to object to such behavior of the owner of the house, if his material situation would have demanded that he rent out his larger apartment and move into the smaller one. But Stepa kept getting richer. After the death of his brother he inherited also his (brother’s) part of his father’s inheritance, and perhaps one thousand twenty which Misha collected for his duties as notary. The war came, the oppression of the Germans began, and our Stepa, probably with the advice of his brother-in-law Lerich, a very astute person, literally bought for pennies, the equipment of a mill from some German who was forced to sell his property, and built a mill in the courtyard of his inn. He

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worked it himself and, people said, earned enormous sums of money. But the devil of greed pushed him on further, and he decided that the house brought him little income. He decided to remodel it himself, and remodeled it in a way that my heart stopped when I once stepped into the courtyard to look at this alteration. All the glass windows from the gallery had been removed and the gallery turned into an overhang loaded with sacks of mill material. The garden had been uprooted, the huge windows I loved so much were broken down to the floor, and turned into huge doors hung with locks. One of the doors was open. I went up a small wooden staircase and looked inside. Above me was a piece of the painted ceiling of the hall, criss-crossed by wooden beams. In all my life I have never again seen these walls, and am glad otherwise I probably would not have controlled myself and had told him what I thought of him. And later I would have regretted this. When the Bolsheviks came in 1920 he simply lay down in his bed and stayed there for nine years until his death. Anna Lerich wrote to me with horror what his wife and daughter lived through with him during those years. But normally he had been a good and loving father and husband.

Nikita Sergeevich Nalbandov married a Karasubarskii lady, Anna Karpovna Timendjeev. My mother told me that according to the customs of those days, when it became known that the brother of Sergei wanted to get married before his older brothers did, the family was quite perturbed. This did not comply with the customary order, and the family began to search for brides for the older brothers, but still permitted the engagement of Nikita before Sergei’s wedding. However that was, the wife of Nikita was a good one: pretty, healthy, a good housekeeper. But, truthfully, my father chided her for spending more than her husband owned, and she spent mostly on food, but perhaps he was not entirely correct – they did have eight children. I do not know exactly why, but though the house of N.S. was the most lucrative of all three houses, this family always was needy and never had money to pay their debts on time. They lived very modestly, never celebrated any holidays, and occupied four rooms, forming a part of “the numbers” as we called the rooms for undemanding travelers who came to the inn which was adjacent to the house and provided, together with the stores, a good

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income, considering those times. There were many numbers, and according to Southern custom, they were connected by a long corridor which was wooden and attached to the outside wall of the house. The windows of the numbers faced the corridor, and since N.S.’s apartment was at the end of the building and had the same construction, we, the children, often ran around and played in that huge corridor and did not look at the numbers! Perhaps this is the reason that N. S.’s children were the most practical of all of us. N.S. just like I.S. basically did not do anything. I.S. was a member of a club, but Nikita Sergeevich did not go anywhere besides his coffee house (the house of each brother contained a coffee house), due to his character, lack of funds and modest living. He was somewhat softer and more affectionate than his brother Ivan and closer to us children. As I have written before, the twins resembled each other remarkably, both even had the same defect which resembled small bread crumbs in the corner of their eyes, and in my early childhood I sincerely could not understand how they both could have such unsightly crumbs in their eyes and not try to brush them away. As the years passed, however, differences appeared. Ivan became richer and straightened out while Nikita became more and more entangled, could no longer dress identically with his brother, which they always had previously done, and somehow hunched over more and more under the pressure of neediness. But he turned out to be stronger and healthier than his brother and died much later –about 1906-07 – when things had already improved a long time ago thanks to his oldest son. Anna K. outlived him for many years and was still alive when we abandoned Russia. She was a good mother and housekeeper, with all feminine good and not-so-good qualities. She worked hard all her life, almost never had a servant; those responsibilities were carried out by a Gypsy who looked wild, with a mass of black hair tied with ribbons, and a long pipe and who caused me to involuntarily recoil when she came crawling out of the small attic which served as a kitchen for poor Anna Karpovna. But she could cook good dishes. Especially tasty were two typically Armenian sweets. One was called Kutabja. This was a pastry prepared from flower and a large amount of sugar and roasted nuts. They looked like two small cones, and when one of the kutabjas got into your mouth, it crumbled at a slight pressure of the teeth. The other dish was usually prepared only for

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the New Year and was served with good wishes. It also was not complicated as far as ingredients were concerned, but needed much work in order to succeed. There were roasted nuts (as filberts were then called, that is, a garden Near-Asian nut as opposed to a forest nut) in honey, mashed into a white almost-liquid sauce, unusually tasty. I only know that the hostess and her daughters mashed the nuts with their hands on New Year’s Day - there were so many of us now that it seemed an unnecessary treat. It also had a special name but I have forgotten it.

The oldest son Karp perhaps was the most unusual person of us all. He was about two years younger than my father. He was a funny, strong, mischievous boy, but smart –however with his own type of intelligence. He often stayed with us in the village and one incident happened there which we remembered for a long time. My brother Serjezha (Sergei) went into the steppe on horseback. There was no horse for Karpusha but he begged permission from my mother to take one of the work horses and went off to catch Serjezha. But as soon as he had passed the mountain, his horse somehow threw him. Tatars who were near-by caught the horse and our Karpusha suddenly returned home very quickly. He went straight away to my mother and said: “you know, Aunt, I saw how the horse threw a Tatar boy in the steppe. The poor boy probably was hurt very badly, and the horse ran away.” Mother drove with him to see the situation of the poor “Tatar” boy, and how great was her surprise when the Tatars told her the true story. Since then, when someone was suspected of not telling the whole truth, he was asked: “listen, was that not a Tatar boy?” This combination of practicality and fantasy stayed with our dear Karpusha for his whole life. Much in it could be criticized and found wanting, but he always remained at heart a decent, good, life-affirming person and the most beloved of the Nalbandovs. He did not take well to learning. I believe that he finally absolved a term in public school – but even in this I am not certain, and when he was 14-15 years old the question of what to do with him, arose. My father strongly advised to put him into a railroad technician’s school in Sevastopol, but this suggestion did not satisfy the brothers. Because Karpusha was a Nalbandov, and on top of this the oldest son! How could one make him a craftsman? The children of the other brothers

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went to high school, and even though we are poor, we are not worse than, etc. etc. Poor Father became silent, but the insult had already happened and was not forgotten quickly. Karpusha began to have private teachers in order to prepare him for something, but in the end he was sent into a store for iron utensils – a merchant is after all not a common worker – and to everyone’s surprise he was not sent to a factory, which would have been more customary. This was not easy. Just at that time, the old store of I.I. Bazov was transferred into the hands of the energic, young I.N. Lichvenikov, and our poor Karpusha not only had to stand behind the counter, but unload iron bars which lay under the open sky, very cold in the winter and very hot under the Crimean sun, and during some free time he had to stand by the open doors of the store. In the provinces it was still the time when the buyer valued respect, when he was impressed with a bow of the merchant and an invitation to come into the store – and the owners themselves were not embarrassed to stand by the entrance, and the same was demanded from the employees. I myself used to walk past the store on the way to high school, and each time when Lichvenikov saw me, he, I do not know why, would bow to me with a smile and say : “my deference to the future Secretary”. (meaning “Secretary of Commerce, or State, etc.) No doubt this was meant as a pleasantry directed to his good client, my father, but I found it unpleasant and avoided going past that store. I know from later stories from Karpusha that precisely that standing by the doors was very insulting for a proud young man, and he rushed to hide in the store when from afar he saw an aqaintance approaching, especially an Armenian. In this way several years passed, but when the high school students and their peers left for the university, Karpusha also fled to Moscow. There he was able to land in a large general store Mof Lior and Meriliz, and after a short time he became unrecognizable. He worked in a clean, warm space, began to dress well, lived with students from the Crimea, and breathed the air of a large city. Now he had a future. When he now came home for a vacation, he looked down at those same Armenians, was a gastronome, blinded his provinvial relatives with his good clothes and gastronomic assurance and familiarity. But this was when he “went out”. At home he, one might say, rested from his high degree of culture, and more than once I saw him when in the morning, dressed only in

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trousers and slippers without socks, he held a lively conversation standing by the doors of some Armenian-type store with some friendly colleague or doorman. When I embarrassed him about this, he smiled, gaily showed his teeth and said: “well, we are all at home here.” His highest delight in Moscow was: to be a nobleman once a month. He economized a whole month like a student, hungry, nourishing himself mostly with tea and bread with sausage. But once a month he dressed carefully, took a good carriage and with elan drove up to a good restaurant. Doormen hurried to his side, he ordered the best dishes and wines, asked for fruit, did not ask the price, tipped generously and left, accompanied by general bows, and then disappeared for a month. He was so impressed by the titles and attentions given by coachmen and waiters to well-dressed, rich clients : your highness, which was pronounced with a special effect, that students began to call him “prince”, and when someone asked which Nalbandov, they answered “ah, the prince.” All this was of course comical, but he did all this so kindly and without rancor, that nobody even thought to judge him harshly. He became very polished, but made no attempt to learn something or to read and during more serious efforts of discussion only turned his head and said: “well, brother, this is a suite by Grieg “ – for some reason this word “suite” and even by Grieg, seemed to him the height of complexity and difficulty of a problem. He was not only energetic but also very handsome, a somewhat coarse handsomeness with gorgeous clear eyes inherited from his mother. His looks helped him greatly to play the role of a prince, and in general helped him during his life. This was his main calling card. When I left Moscow and later went to Petersburg I only saw him occasionally in the Crimea when our vacations coincided, and know little about his further experiences. I only know that he settled his father’s affairs, began to renovate his house, started to build warehouses, the debts decreased, helped his younger brothers to study at the university and altogether put his family on its feet. He sent for his sister Tanja and married her to a good person, got married himself, moved to Petersburg – I believe already during the war, in the year 1915 –or 1916. I had dinner with him in a resplendid apartment with very good furniture and décor organized by his wife and a far cry from dear Simferopol and our Sevastopol Street which we shared. At the end of the war Karpusha already owned a factory, with

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a paid-off mortgage, where his younger brother Nikolai worked; Nikolai was already a technical engineer. The factory provided a very good income for the owners. But then came the Bolshevik Revolution and having come to Paris in 1920 I found two families: Karpusha’s and Samsonovs’s. According to them, their circumstances were very difficult, but both occupied wonderfully furnished apartments which cost a great deal of money. After the Revolution they fled Petersburg across Finland, but brought with them many things: sheets, clothing and evidently jewelry. Karpusha believed in his favorite saying: “eat straw, but do not lose the ostentation,” held his head high, reconciled with his new circumstances and sought to use his abilities. He received me with a relative’s joy, let me live with them, he and his wife had an apartment with three rooms in Rain, and I ate with them. His wife, Natalija Nikolaevna – I do not know her maiden name; I know that she was an artist, was either a widow or divorced and a first-class cook – first class does not even come close to her abilities – and fed us simply wonderfully. She got up late, began to cook about half an hour before dinnertime, but dinner was always ready on time, always tasty and varied. But according to the custom in Paris, everything was delivered to her already ready, but still one had to know how to cook like Natalija Nikolaevna. She was a hefty lady, had beautiful clothes and knew how to wear them and was a first-class housekeeper. Evidently there was enough money after all, and soon Karpusha decided to open up a vodka factory together with someone called Rotinov, also an Armenian but from the Caucasus, a relative of the famous petroleum expert Mantasimov, who at that time had his own laboratory in the vodka company Petrov, whose brother-in-law Samsonov was a part-owner. The company was run simply and well. They rented a house with the suitable accommodations in Sures, brought in the necessary barrels and utensils, obtained alcohol and bottles after the design by Viktor Nalbandov, and additional bottles fashioned after the bottles in Russia, and began to prepare various vodkas and liquers. Karpusha and Rotinov did not do anything except supervise. They invited me to be the bookkeeper, that is, the buying and selling of alcohol, according to French law, was strictly to be accounted for, and the brothers had just begun to study the French language (except for Viktor), and Viktor and Nikolai did all the light work for the preparation of vodka, but for the heavier tasks and

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as a guard they hired a Russian soldier who was married to a French woman and had stayed on after the war. Little by little the whole manufacture of the vodka and other liquers fell into my hands - after all I had been a chemist a long time ago – and the factory began to function. Our bosses conducted the commercial aspects and distribution of the vodka, which was the most difficult part of the enterprise. They worked energetically, but in my opinion, peculiarly. A bottle of vodka, ¾ of a liter, was set to cost 25 francs. As much as I, acting as the bookkeeper tried to convince the bosses, this price was not appropriate since for 20-25 francs at that time in Paris one could buy one liter of real Benedictine, and after all the expenses were accounted for, one bottle of vodka cost us 3.50-4 francs; they only laughed at me and assured me that I did not have any understanding of business and that one must immediately earn well or else all was for nothing. For several months our business did not do badly, but the greatest demand came from the Russian public; to get the conservative French to buy a new drink and even more so at those prices, was not successful. Our business increased the stock in our warehouse more and more, and the bosses began to wonder; at that time I received a letter from Munich telling me of the serious illnesses of Katja and Andrjusha. I dropped everything and went to Munich. I never saw Karpusha again. Judging from letters, the business grew worse and worse and soon came to a complete halt. Some more time passed – and I received notice of Karpusha’s death. He had some kind of new plans and went to Berlin, where he died totally unexpectedly even for his family, of a heart attack. I told the biography of Karpusha in more detail than I did for other relatives because he was one of the most talented Nalbandovs. He totally repeated, though under completely different circumstances, the story of our grandfather. Almost illiterate he began with the unpleasant role of a youth in a metal store, and if the Revolution had not happened, would have ended his life as a successful rich man. I am quite aware that people sometimes use methods which, to put it mildly, are not always on the up and up, and that Karpusha was not unfamiliar with them, but not everyone manages to go through life totally clean; I must say however, that I do not know of a single foul deed which Karpusha performed. He just was not always squeamish, but are there many people who are not squeamish? For his family he did immeasurably

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more than their father. He practically put all of them on their feet, and always helped his brothers and sisters. To the end of his days he loved being the “prince”, but always was kind and good to everybody. In a moment which was difficult for me, when fate threw me and my family into poverty in Europe, he supported me greatly, providing me with an income from his factory – and I want to say “thank you” to him here.

After Karpusha came Sofia. She was born probably in the year 1872 and went to high school, did not marry. In Paris she lived with the Samsansonovs. Next, in 1874 came Sergei, same age as I, became a lawyer, was a lawyer in Sevastopol, and remained there. According to rumors he died on a street in Simferopol. The next was Christofor, studied in high school, later was a pharmacist in Kazan. He was married to a Gusikov and had children. I do not know what happened to them all, they did not live in the Crimea. Then came Tatjana; she also did not go to highschool. She was very pretty, and Karpusha found a very good husband for her. He was a very intelligent but weak Nikolai Michailovich Samsonov, owner (inheritance from his mother) of the vodka company Petrov, by education a biologist and by nature an intellectual. Earlier he had studied outside of Russia, perhaps in Freiburg, and worked in Paris in the Pasteur Institute. As a wealthy man, he was unable to earn money and when I was in Paris they did not live well. They had one son, Viktor, the same age as Andrjusha.

After Tatjana followed Aleksander, who was born in the year 1880. He was probably the most unsuccessful of all, and again the question of teaching him a trade arose, but again ended with nothing. Somehow much later he graduated from the Odessa University as a lawyer, but at the moment of the Revolution had not had any work yet. He married a Russian nurse whose name and family I do not know – a very nice young woman. She, together with her son and her husband Aleksander’s mother, Anna Karpovna, fled with us from the second wave of Bolsheviks to Sevastopol in our carriage – and I never saw her or her husband again. I heard that Sasha died in Simferopol. Finally, two last ones - Viktor and Nikolai who were born probably in the years 1883 and ‘85 and whom I knew less. Viktor finished law school, but was more

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active with modeling, and later in Paris with small businesses, but Nikolai was a mechanical engineer. In Paris they lived together with the Samsonovs. How did these two old people cope with everything they had experienced in those days in Paris?

Maria Sergeevna Nalbandova was the first one in the family to get married. Her husband was Moiseii Christoforovich Nersesov; the first half of his life he was called ‘Mosekst’ in Armenian and later, I believe under the influence of Armenian patriotism, he became a Nersesov. He had a reputation as an excellent young businessman- manufacturer, very active and intelligent. But travels to Moscow and Nizhgorod fairs with their long duration and entertainments completely ruined him, and I knew him only when he was weak and a run-down alcoholic. In the inheritance of his wife were two - three stores carved from the house of N.S. When I was in high school, the Armenian Row , like an unbroken chain of small manufacturing stores, remained only partially and already contained stores which were neither Armenian nor were involved in manufacturing. In this same way, one of the stores was occupied by a very common beer tavern, and often one could see how the husband of the owner of the store, staggering, exited from there, having payed on credit. But despite this misfortune of the Nersesovs, the family was wonderfully close, intelligent and talented, never turning away from their unpleasant father. I remember seeing how the oldest son, already in the last year of highschool, carefully led his drunken father and one could see nothing except tender care in the face of the son. Unfortunately, monetary misunderstandings about the inheritance so ruined the relations between the Nersesovs and Nalbandovs, that they never improved and we, children, never went to the house of the Nersesovs. But we knew that it was always poor but gay there: they all could play an instrument, sing, and be merry as much as possible.

The oldest son, Emmanuil, completed a degree in history-philosophy, but entered service in the Kazan government and later was head of a department there. He was wonderfully handsome and intelligent in a typically Armenian manner, tall, very musical with a good voice. He organized the choir in our church and for many years was its

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director. Not only its director, but in fact the church’s leader and that of the Armenian society of the entire town. As far as sympathies go, he undoubtedly was an Armenian nationalist, but since he was a government official he could not declare this openly, and he masked this by being the choir director but in reality the leader of the Armenians. An additional situation influenced his behavior. During the Jewish pogrom of 1905 an unfortunate incident occurred – a Jew came to his entrance door, begging to be taken in. Evidently fearing for himself and his family, Emmanuil refused, and the man was killed by the mob which had just come almost to the porch of the house of E. Perhaps they hunted only this particular Jew and may have pulled him out of the apartment of Nersesov, but this happening so affected him that he could not overcome this at all and went to Italy for half a year. Of course his relationship with the Jews of Simferopol became more difficult – they could not forgive him his refusal to help, and he retreated farther into his shell. Nevertheless he remained a member of the duma in the town, and the head of its finance committee. He became very careful in his appearances, and when in the years 1910 or ‘11 a wave of persecution of Armenians swept through the whole South and their church and common properties (this situation only concerned Gregorian Armenians) were given to be governed by a group of specially assigned administrators, I had to appear in the duma. One of these officials in our town was a well-known member of the duma, very Russian and right-wing, but very honest and decent, A.K. Romanson. In order to clarify the situation and to reassure the Armenians who were worried, it was decided to raise the questions about these properties in the duma and to give him the opportunity, since he also was an official of the Governing of Federal Properties – to report on this situation and to state that this was a temporary measure, which the government undertook as a warning for the Armenians in the Caucasus, among whom, ridiculous and uninformed, some separatists were roaming about. This was in connection with an attempt by Turkish Armenians to better their situation in Turkey and hoping for help from England (Dillon!)*. We understood Nersesov’s situation and did not hold his caution against him, but sometimes it crossed the line, and one could only shrug one’s shoulders. He was married to Duna Anushikova, who also sang with a gorgeous voice in the church choir. I believe that

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they had 5 children. I knew their oldest son, Eduard, slightly; he left with his father during the Evacuation, with Wrangel, and then supported his father in Constantinopol by playing the violin. Emmanuil died in K. what happened to Eduard and the rest of the family who stayed in the Crimea, I do not know. The next after Emmanuil was a daughter, Ustina, who had inherited her beautiful facial color from her mother; we were somehow closer with her than with all the other members of that family, and she was more intelligent than the others. Later she married one of my classmates from Moscow University, Lev Robertovich Baum. During Wrangel’s time he was tax inspector in Sevastopol. Their son Sergei was a very pleasant person but quite simple; there was a problem with his education, later he learned bookkeeping and for many years was an assistant to a bookkeeper and bookkeeper for the church.

The next sister, Sofia, I remember only slightly, but she was pretty and gay, and completed the Moscow Conservatory. She married a friend of Emmanuil from high school, Genry, who already was a teacher in a high school. To their wedding, which was celebrated in the house, mostly on the gorgeous stone veranda between two wings of the old Nalbandov house, my brother Serjezha and I were also invited, both of us students at that time. This beautiful Crimean evening, dusk – not yet night, with singing and dancing, playing musical instruments – I remember it still in detail. And at dawn we were given horses, and from the wedding we rolled directly into our Agach-Eli, and never again did I see Sonja, Genry, or their children.

Frosja, same age as I, resembled her mother very much, and with her I also was closer. She limped on one leg, and strangely enough, this made us closer and also more distant. At some time I will stop and write in more detail about this feeling, and now will only say that this deficiency did not prevent this lovely girl from finding a good husband – I believe a marine engineer in Sevastopol.

Finally, the two last ones: the boy Sasha and the girl Christina. I generally know much less about the youngest relatives than about the older ones, because after

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finishing high school in the year 1892, I spent fourteen years away from Simferopol, being there only occasionally, and it was during those years that the younger relatives grew up and established themselves. I know that Christina was married to a good officer, but what became of Sasha – I simply do not know. But about these two children, even though with hesitation, I want to write in more detail. Not about them, but about their behavior. Least of all I would want to “gossip”, but for you, Andrjusha, it seems that it would be of interest – an observation. The old Nesersesov had a brother, Ivan. This person repelled me and frightened me during my young years. Of huge size, with a thick face and hairy cheeks, with rings on his hands and covered with charm bracelets, he laughed and spoke with some unusual voice. I only saw him on Stepa’s estates. He was always the first to sit down at the card table and the last to rise from it, always had luck in the game, and my mother once told me his favorite aphorism: ‘cards, like horses, feel the hand of the coachman.’ Whether this was only a philosophical observation or whether Ivan Christoforovitch simply used the simplicity of his partners, who were far from proficient card players, I cannot judge, but must say that my almost physical aversion to this person rested on purely external reasons, and I do not know of any negative actions by this man. I know that he was some kind of contractor and earned very well with contracts concerning railroads and was a great benefactor for the family of his older brother. Undoubtedly, it could survive and provide an education for the children only due to his assistance. It is therefore not at all unusual to think that M.S. finally preferred this in his own way handsome man, who was unvariably kind to her children, to her and to her at that time already fallen and broken husband. Who would judge her? But nature provided her own mirror. All the older children of M.S., especially the girls had the wonderfully pretty and somehow graceful, fine faces M.S. herself and her sister, Aunt Nasti, our Aunt Sonja and it seemed to me from my father’s stories, our grandmother. Only the two last ones sharply differed from that type of face. They were somehow very large, had heavy faces, were very gay and spoke with the same unusual voices. Unfortunately I did not see them when they were grown up, but in their childhood there was no doubt left. Admit, dear Andrjusha, that the facts are curious, in one set of children the mother’s facial features predominate, in another those

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of the father. Perhaps all this is not news to you, do not be angry about the ‘gossip’ about our family. I can only say that the ‘general opinion’ could not not see the facts, but I never heard words of judgment against M.S. Maybe in the estrangement of my father with that whole family this circumstance, in the end, did not play a role. For him this was a very unpleasant and unclean influence of Ivan Christoforovich.

Anna Sergeevna Nalbandova was a small, round person, constantly puttering around and murmuring something in Armenian. She was married twice. Her first husband, Artem Petrovich Uzunov was a merchant-manufacturer. A.S. received a dowry of a store carved out of our house. On this property her husband built - this was so long ago, that I only remember this store in its present state – a very nice store with decorative doors and, considered at that time large glass windows and an overhang over the whole store; this overhang stood on thin cast iron columns. All this was evidence of his aesthetic necessities, as in the provinces it was not easy to obtain cast iron even in my time. The business of Uzunov was not going badly, but for some reason he became despondent and hanged himself on the post of his bed. Anna Sergevna mourned, and then married Grigory Petrovich Tjutjudzhi – a huge, fat black person without a discernible occupation. We, the children, called him a coachman, and he paid us no attention whatsoever.

Anastasija Sergeevna Nalbandova was the youngest and Father’s favorite sister. I already wrote that she was an unusually reticent and silent woman with a kindly smile on her lips and pretty eyes. She married Egor Ivanovich Murzaev from Karasubazar. The Murzaevs lived there and in Feodosia. They owned a vineyard in Sudak and E.I. was a wine grower and wine merchant. They moved to Simferopol when I was already a student, that is, did not live at home much. Nevertheless, with them we developed a happier relationship than with the other sisters, but the coldness which all the brothers- in-law showed towards my father during the time of the inheritance matter among the young Nalbandovs, was still apparent. Egor Ivanovich was not at all a stupid person and told many interesting things in the realm of wine growing, however, his interests

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always were about the commercial aspects, but we always were only wine producers. Their oldest son Sergeii probably was the contemporary of our Serjozha. He also was in the wine business, more of a wine merchant and was a very pleasant and kind person. Intelligent and educated was Marija – she finished high school in Feodosia and married, I believe, a doctor from Cracow – probably Ivanov. A little older than I was Ivan Egorovich, having finished law school in Moscow. In the beginning we seemed to be sympathetic to each other, but later lost sight of each other. He was an attorney in Melitopol, later moved to Simferopol and during the revolution turned out to be a very active cadet in the left crowd. It was said that he very much loved to speak during party meetings, and his fellow lawyers gave him the nickname ‘Mirabo’. When in the years 1917- 18 the “democratic” local duma was established, I.E. and I sometimes met at the general sessions. I was the only representative of the bourgeoisie, and I.S. was the head of the Cadet party and one of its seven representatives. But all 8 of us drowned in the sea of the 120 or 130 representatives of various shades. The three girls Sofia, Anna and Julia I knew very little. Anna seemed very pleasant to me – the contemporary of our Edja who completed a course in Leoben, in the Mining Institute. What became of all these relatives – I do not know.

3. My father. In old age, I believe my father was more handsome than in his youth. Rather tall – he was taller and more solidly built than both uncles and in general inherited more from his mother than from his father – with large but handsome and straight lines in his face, a high forehead, he stood out in a crowd and involuntarily drew people’s eyes. To a somewhat practiced eye his Armenian origin became evident immediately, but he did not have, so to speak, stark Armenian features. He was not a black-skinned brunet, he was lighter, and when he was already gray-haired – I only remember him when he was already gray – his small beard and his hair beautifully framed his face. He even became bald differently from his brothers. They had what was called billiard balls, but Father’s began on his forehead and only enhanced his height. His eyes were wonderful. There was nothing Eastern about them. They were green-gray, very quiet

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and could be very tender. I do not know if, because there was nothing typically Armenian in him, or because he spent his whole childhood in the same boarding school where his brothers also studied, but his Russian language was totally clear and did not have that characteristic tone in which everyone spoke who had grown up speaking the Armenian language. As I have already written, he did not finish high school, and this left a sad imprint on his whole life. In boarding school he learned to speak German and French well, and even though he had no practice in later years to speak these languages, much later when he began to build a mill in Agach-Eli, he always spoke with Malif, a French flour miller who was supervising the building, in French. He played the piano not badly, but all this was neglected after he left the boarding school and high school. He did not read much. His education was interrupted at the moment when reading serious books was not yet a need, the chores and details of life filled his days for a long time; his surroundings did not only not push him to continue his education, but were totally beneath his intellectual level, and his material situation for a long time did not allow expenses for books. All this he felt much later, but it was already late, the skills for learning were lost and his education ended. But he always spoke about this, and once in a while took a long, serious book to read, but quickly began to brood- and the book remained unfinished. He also was terribly impatient – he always lacked endurance and a system. For this reason I cannot remember that he even once came to help us with our studies. Very dimly I do remember that sometimes in the evening Father came to the children’s room and ‘studied’ with my brother Serjezha. But nothing good came of this, and the experiment was repeated only after a long interruption. I believe that this same impatience hindered him to summon that effort which is always necessary when reading a serious book until its contents truly become interesting to you. All together the tangled circumstances of his youth influenced Father very unpleasantly. They not only ended his education, at 19 years of age they pushed him into the path of dark activities and behind-the-scenes people of those times. It was necessary to somehow end 40 lawsuits without being prepared, without knowledge of the legal matters and cunning and having only the saying as a guide : ‘without a bribe, there is no ride’. Father was a person of wonderful honesty. Looking through all his life

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which is familiar to me – and our family was close, and nothing was hidden from the children – I do not find a single instance where one could accuse my father of a dishonest action. And with great anger he told us those occurences, when during his youth he needed to go against his conscience. They very evidently plagued him and as the only excuse for his behavior he only said one thing: “remember our situation at that time.” But alone the fact that he told us about things which we would not have known about otherwise, and which he easily could have concealed, showed how foreign this would have been to his deep conviction; he justified himself to us, he sought his own justification for himself. And he never made his stories out to be about ‘deals’ with the bravado: look, family, with what cunning I managed this! I remember how the story with the wood ended, about which I have already written. In the formal courts of those days, missing a deadline was final. And so, after a long delay in some office, the lawsuit ended in favor of the accuser, that is, Nalbandov. The opposing side (it was someone named Orlowski, about whom Father never could speak without disdain) could appeal this decision. There was no Orlowski in town, and after a sufficient time had passed there was no appeal. Only a few days remained, and the huge sum of this debt would have fallen from the shoulders of the ruined heirs. But almost at the end of the deadline allowed for the appeal, the brother of O. came to Father and said: I know that this deal is not right. My brother sent me the appeal to give to the court. If you give me (I think) one thousand rubles, I will let the deadline pass. Of course Father gave him the money, but having learned through bitter experience, and clearly feeling that he stepped onto a bad path, he could not calm himself; he was now plagued by a new torment: what if this too was a swindle, and not only the thousand rubles were lost? But the brother of Orlowski turned out to be more honest (!) than Orlowski himself. “I did not feel my legs under me for happiness” Father said upon returning from court, when the judgment about his deceit, because of the passed deadline, became final. I remember one of his stories about his brother Nikita, who once went to the police station to settle some matter or other, but instead quarreled with the official and said a nasty word to him. That one did not let the chance pass to write up a complaint about the insult to an official on duty – before a witness – and it cost Father a lot of trouble and a number of

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silver rubles to hush up the matter. At that time the accounting system was changing over to silver rubles, and to the end of his days Father wrote: ‘100 rb.silver.’ Altogether, bribes were unavoidable, and Father spoke about them with a feeling of deep aversion. And this aversion persisted the remainder of his life. Later I worked with him many times, and never heard him even hinting about the possibility of giving someone a bribe. But during his dark, pre-reform days of his youth, one really could not live without bribes.

Father was married in 1866, when he was 22 years old. When the inheritance matters were finally unscrambled, the children separated and each went to his or her own house, and a question arose for him – what to do next. Despite his young years, there could be no question of further study: one needed something to live on. The houses of the old Nalbandov were acquired so cleverly, that each one turned out to be, even if not gold, then certainly silver and capable of feeding a family. But the houses were burdened with large mortgages and so neglected over time that they needed large restorations. And so Father began to search for work with an income. At one time there arose the nebulous idea of becoming a lawyer – and he began to study while working in a lawyer’s office. At that time there were still not enough certified lawyers, but in the high schools primary jurisprudence was being taught, so that non-lawyer graduates were not that greatly unfamiliar with the law as we were. The hope did not become reality, but the attainment of knowledge helped Father in his life, and brought a new idea: to become an insurance agent. Again the study began, but one could also see beforehand that Father did not have the sharpness and aggressiveness which were prerequisits in such an agency. Even worse were his commercial attempts. Some Armenian convinced him to purchase nuts for resale. He never told us about this himself, but Mother always told about this catastrophy with a smile. A companion was supposed to travel to various Tatar gardens in the spring and hand out a down payment. Father took part in the deal financially and was supposed to provide the warehouse and receive the merchandise. Autumn came. Some of the sellers simply did not bring anything. What was delivered was badly cleaned and not dried. The deal

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which seemed to be simple, demanded knowledge – as a result, the nuts were covered with mold and caused only a deficit. Finally, someone talked Father into buying wool. This was already much later, so that even I remember from my earliest childhood how in one of the sheds in our courtyard the purchased wool was sorted and counted, and Welisha, a huge, dark, and frightful to me Gypsy, worked for hours in a warehouse where the wool was hanging from large beams, to get it ready for shipment to Odessa. Mother helped in the warehouse by sorting the wool and threw away with great disgust large pieces of the dirt it contained and sometimes simply stones, added “for the weight” to the wool which was delivered to my father. And from this enterprise nothing developed, but at this time Father was able (in the year 1879) to buy an estate, and with this his attempts to find financial deals, ended. In my opinion, he found an occupation for himself for the rest of his life and for his well-being. The necessary interruption of his education, the sharp change from wealth to a complete ignorance of what will be tomorrow, a change with difficult tribulations among the uncultured people of a small provincial town undoubtedly often and deeply affected his young pride and self-respect, and this certainly pierced his soul and marked his future life negatively. He was infinitely lonesome, even having his somewhat childish, unable brothers, his two older sisters, who basically sided with their husbands and together with them were only interested to gain more for themselves and their families and totally unable to carry out new efforts to improve their inheritance, nor in the Armenian society and the church which asked for material support even if that meant the destruction of the family. Nowhere did he find a mentor, nowhere a friend. Not even among lawyers. And bit by bit, he slowly distanced himself from people, retreated into a shell and never left it again. He never, even later, had friends or even comrades. He lived only in his immediate family and was close to the large family of our mother. In the winter he often went to the town’s club to read the newspapers, but he remained alone even there. He did not play cards – at that time the greatest means of forming a group, did not play chess or billiards, did not like to dine in restaurants – and returned home around 10 o’clock, as silent, reserved and brooding as he had left two hours earlier. But within him an interest in people and their activities burned brightly. He was a council member in the

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so-called six-member local duma, and after the establishment of a new administration in town remained a council member and always was re-elected. He did not miss meetings and remained the same reserved Sergei Sergeevich of few words whom everyone knew and appreciated. Many dark and unclean circumstances also clouded the new administration’s ‘self-government’ in our only slightly cultured town. I remember for example the war of all decent people in town against a member of the Kazar district. This wily Greek cleverly used the ‘voting right’ and in the moment of the election mobilized a whole horde of Gypsies who lived in a Gypsy settlement and had their huts there. He inscribed them all in the lists of homeowners, fed them chebureki from portable pots and commanded them which candidates would get black and who would get white balls during the election. The election took place and the results were that the duma was such that the Kazaris were again elected for four-year terms and again ruled in town as they wanted, little concerned with the powerless ‘opposition’. At that time I was still a small high school student, but clearly remember how Father often complained and told Mother of the Kazarian doings and the inability of the duma to prevent them. Father was very interested in land legislation, but in the meetings there was so little representation of non-nobles that they seldom could achieve their aims. But in the duma he was not replaced, and there were times when we attended the same meetings: Father as a council member and I as the head of the land department. This did not last for a long time, but I saw that Father enjoyed total respect among the representatives, even though he seldom spoke. However, everyone knew the Sergei Sergeevich will always vote for good, responsible outcomes for all the inhabitants of the town. They also knew that he did not like political outbursts and trivial provincial politics, but always would stand up for the dignity of the local self-government and its representatives. Soon after the death of Father, I was elected into the upper duma (in the inheritance section) and after the election one of the oldest council members, Ch.K. Kelov, approached me and said: “we elected you in place of your father, and hope that you will take his place with the same merit.”

If Father went to the meetings of the duma with interest, then the rare occasions

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when it was necessary to meet with the parish of our church usually ended with Father’s great irritation, and we always feared these meetings. Everything in the past had already been chewed through and forgotten, new cultural forces came to our parish, the first academicians appeared. But time also brought new nationalistic waves, which Father never shared. He spoke Armenian perfectly well, prayed in that language, never was ashamed to speak it in public when he was approached in that language, did not distance himself from Armenian society, but the idea of an independent Armenia was strange to him, and “knowing some contemporary Armenians”, never believed in the possibility of such independence. But he also never fought with the new waves and did not bother them as long as they did not touch the matter of his father’s – our church. But when bit by bit, slowly, all of the income of the church property was to be used for the school and the parish, while in the church the roof leaked and repairs were denied due to the lack of money, Father did not tolerate this and – a fight which lasted many years, began and cost Father many nerves. In the end they reconciled and decided that a certain sum would be used for the upkeep of the church, but the relationship to the church and its administrators was such that Father found it necessary to strengthen the acknowledgement of the contribution of Grandfather and insisted that he be allowed to put a marble tablet with the words in Russian and Armenian: “This [seii] temple was built with the funds and endeavors of Sergei Iv. Nalbandov” at the very entrance of the first courtyard. “Otherwise these boys” as Father called the new young members, “will try to erase from the memory of the members that which my father had done for them,” he told us. I remember that the word “seii” seemed to him as well as to us, very old- fashioned, but the word “this” seemed not venerable and not appropriate to the solemnity of the place.

The years passed. The well-being of the family increased, monetary problems had ceased a long time ago, life healed old wounds, the children grew up and gave no reason to be dissatisfied, but that which I call a spiritual disintegration, did not disappear. Something was missing for Father. Reserved, perfectly well-mannered, polite in a somehow Eastern, old-fashioned way, he could not make peace with the

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people surrounding him. He was very careful, unusually modest in his requirements and simply feared everything that could be called ostentatious. How many times he told us: “one who has been thrown out of a carriage will not sit down in one a second time.” And he did not only say this. When, many years later, doctors advised that Mother should be taken around to the village in a closed carriage during inclement weather, on the insistence of her sister – my brothers and I did not live at home anymore – Father bought a small carriage, and riding in it was torture for him. He consented to do this when he drove to the village with Mother, but he never agreed to drive around town in it either for business or visiting. “I had better take a coachman” he would always say. But he was never cheap or stingy. He built much – renovated the whole house in town, built new features in Agach-Eli – and everything was built first-class, practical and useful. He always bought material of the best kind, and did not look for domestic frugality. I always admired him when he went along on Mother’s shopping expeditions and sat silently by until she would ask for his opinion, and he would turn to the salesperson and smiled and asked: “but is there something better?” But at the same time, once in Petersburg in an antiquarian store, where Mother and I very much liked two electrical lamps in the shape of torches of good bronze and enamel - and we were just searching for two lamp brackets mounted on a wall for the front of the new house – he totally refused to buy them even though they cost only 75 rubles – this already was ostentation and this was foreign to his soul. He did not drink and did not like to drink, could not stand card playing and was always bored in the company of our friends where everybody drank and played cards. Usually he sat down at some table or with some group and quietly smoked or walked among the tables and observed the players. His biggest joy was to listen to his sister’s singing, and in order that he could have that joy, I brought from Petersburg – still in 1900 – a good telephone. We connected Agach-Eli with Kojash and then when his sister went to the piano, she put the receiver on the music stand and Father could listen to her songs during the long autumn evenings, without leaving his seat on the sofa. What happiness a radio would have been for him!

In everyday life he was impractical to the point of helplessness. I simply cannot

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imagine Father with a needle in his hands, sewing on a button, cooking himself an egg or stoking the hearth. In this helplessness probably everything came together – the Eastern custom of drawing a line between work done by men and women, and having spent his youth far from domestic conditions, and being spoiled by his wife who did everything for him including tying his tie. But there was something else. His brothers, for example, again according to the Eastern custom, went to the bazar with their cooks – this was done in all Eastern countries – the husband buys and thus determines the internal business of the family and its permissible expenses, and the wife prepares what has been brought home. But one just cannot imagine Father buying meat or fish or even a melon or watermelon. There was something in him – he sincerely and without any ill will simply did not notice all the details of life. He loved to eat, to eat much and well, but I never heard him savor the food, or that he said to his wife : “cook this or that for me.” He seldom separated from Mother, but, for example, when he went to Marienbad he never mentioned anything about the food, only that he disliked Austrian tobacco and cigarettes. And in this lack of noticing the details, I see the explanation for his coldness towards people, not seeing other people’s misfortunes. To us, his children, he was endlessly kind, but also very quick-tempered. When he was angry, his voice simply thundered throughout the house, and everyone feared him, but the matter abated quickly and he only remained quiet and more melancholy than usual – and I know that his outbursts and often sharp, unjustified words bothered him deeply. Therefore we feared him less than we feared Mother. I did not only love my father, I treasured and treasure him as a person of unusual inner dignity, and it is difficult for me to leave these memories of him. I wanted to understand him and explain him to you, what hindered this person from being happy. I think the cause was his disappointment with life. He was born with a deep and beautiful soul. Life let it develop and strengthen. If he had received a good education, he may perhaps have had a supportive center which gives a person strength and will for action. Due to the circumstances of his upbringing, he did not have the time or the spiritual material which gave us, his children, our years at the university in which we could develop our own spiritual world as well as find our way and to manage life’s battles and the attempt to fashion it in our own way. In addition, people

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deeply offended him in his youth and immediately showed him life from its most unattractive side. And his whole later happiness –because his own family was as happy as ours was – could not heal those wounds. He remained a disappointed person. The little provincial Onegin found his Tatjana, was not afraid of her simplicity and lack of education, and was accepting of his ‘being accustomed’ , did never stop loving her, but all that did not change anything in his soul. “Nothing, nothing pleases me,” he used to tell me during the last years of his life during times of fatherly talks. “I would like to go away somewhere, build myself one room and live in it.” And this was said by a healthy, wealthy man, who was surrounded by a family who loved and treasured him sincerely, and for whom he still represented an authoritative father, even though all his children already stood on their own feet and were fathers themselves. Without a doubt, his children also did not “please” him in his own understanding of this word. For him all of us probably were too noisily active, took life too easily, did not know of its deep inner tragedies, which were clear to him because of his earlier experiences, but he enjoyed the glitter of our successes and happiness. Our dear father, you were right: a few years after your death passed, and life showed us its other face, and threw your children and grandchildren out of the coach again, but without any hope of getting into some other coach, only a streetcar. Your brave warning: do not believe life, not expressed with those words, but laying at the base of your philosophy of life, did not teach any one of us, also did not teach me, even though for me, I believe you had more hope. I remember that once after an argument with Mother, during which he wounded her deeply with some harsh and careless words, I defended her and also told him sharply that he was not right. He suddenly stopped talking, looked at me sadly and said: “even you do not understand me, but I was so hoping that you would understand.....” Throughout the rest of my life I could not forget that phrase, nor the sadness with which he said it, or the look in his eyes. Forgive me, Papa!

4. Grandfather Matvei Ivanovich

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Our German grandfather Schlee was born in Russia in the Klein Blumental Colony in the Melitopolsky District, Tavrichesky region where his grandfather and his wife and ten children were sent, having left Baden in the very beginning of the XIX or the end of the XVIII century. One must admit that the German colonization of the south of Russia was accomplished exemplarily, in any case exemplarily based and envisioned for healthy economic conditions. Perhaps at first it was not easy for the settlers – as was written by Pochiten in his books – but they each were given 60 tithes (192 acres)- and what soil! It was forbidden to divide this acreage into more than two parts, and therefore each farm contained not less than 30 tithes (96) acres. If the same or something similar had been done for the Russian farmers and if then when Germans were brought into Russia, the governmental powers had thought through to the idea of Chichikov (**) to “import” to the South of course not dead, but live Russian souls, much in the history of Russia would have been different. The mother of our grandfather died early, and his father married for the second time. When the second wife bore a son, Mathias understood that he had to leave home; on the donated land only one son could be in charge, but according to German customs, at least with the settlers, after the death of the father the farm went to the youngest son who cared for the mother until her death. This was a rational custom which was later followed by Matvei Ivanovich himself. He moved to Simferopol and began as a worker in a bakery. At that time there was a large Germany colony of settlers in Simferopol and even merchants, so that the existence of a German bakery was common, despite the competition with the Armenians and Turks. Remnants of this colony existed even during my childhood, and in my memory are still the names of some families, but already as well-to-do home owners. (I remember the sign of the coach maker T.I. Brenner, watchmaker Wirt, music store Zachvarov [a strange last name for a German, but he was undoubtedly a German judging by his character and language], coach and iron smith Lutz, the carpenter Ekkert who made my first crutches, the tin smiths Freilich and List, clothier Kuster, baker Wist). I almost forgot the then famous sausage store, where a beautiful sign hung outside said F. Pape. Pape’s son was a small, fat and pale little German like his father; he was my classmate, and when returning home from highschool, we never forgot while passing

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the store, to loudly read the sign: ‘F. Pape – Friedrich Hape’. Why this caused the littly Fred to erupt I do not know, but we never missed the opportunity to tease our comrade. But it must be said that the sausage at F. Pape was always marvelous, and the house which he built on the main street was one of the best houses in town.

Gradually Grandfather also became a house owner. He bought a small house on the corner of the same Grechesky corner on which the same bakery where he began as a worker was, and the so-called Vodouchnaja side street. The little house had a small apartment of the landlord in the yard, an apartment and workroom of the iron smith Lutz and a simple tavern by the gate – a modest house from which later his various successful baby birds flew out into the world. And it must be said that all his nestlings loved him deeply and were drawn to him to the end of his life. This little house also played a role in our, his grandchildren’s, lives, but about this, later. But I must describe in more detail the Vodouchnaja side street. In essence it was a constantly dry ditch, about two meters deep and about four meters across, with steep walls. It extended from the Grechesky Street and its origin was covered with a wooden bridge with railings on both sides. People needed care when crossing it after visiting the tavern in the Schlee house. At the bridge was a kerosin lantern put there for them, and the old man Lust, at that time when I knew him being a constant client of the tavern, but having a certificate for the task of lighting the city, took care that the lantern would shine brightly every night. But the picture changed completely during the almost tropical rainstorms of summer. The waters formed rivers from both sides – from the Sauchirkky Street and from the so-called Gorky - collected at the mouth of the ditch creating real water whirlpools and speeding onward farther downward. Of course the first thing the inhabitants living there did was to throw themselves at the trestles to open the road bed of the ditch. But often the water did not flow into the ditch, the sidewalks were flooded and the water rose almost to the windows of the rather low houses. I remember that once they either forgot or did not have enough time to open the road bed. Water streamed from there and began to rise even on Grechesky Street and to flood Grandmother’s courtyard. My, how much agitation this caused! Sacks with manure

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were lugged outside – there were horse stables in the courtyard where the sons of Grandmother tethered their horses when they came from their estates to visit - covered them with stones and only with difficulty stopped the water from coming farther into the yard and from there into the apartments. But in other buildings the waters rose to the windows and for a long time afterwards decorated the walls with mushrooms formed by the dampness. The beginnings of the Schlee nest began in modest and by far not first- class conditions. And Grandfather decided to return to his original decision: agricultural work. I only know two stages of his life. First, working on leased earth. After the war of Sevastopol, finishing unsuccessfully for Russia, but having nevertheless shown that the Crimea changed into Russian hands forever and permanently, among the Tatar population a wish to settle into Turkey, having the same religion, arose again, and many villages became empty. One of these villages – Uch-Kuju-Tarchan about 10 versts (ca 5 miles) from Agach-Eli, Grandfather rented and took with him his favorite daughter, Varja who was 14 years old, as a housekeeper. Grandfather’s family already was rather large, but the living conditions in the village were too inconvenient for transporting the whole household there, and in addition, some of the children were going to school and had to live in town. And Grandfather’s decision became understandable when listening to Mother’s stories about living there. The name of the village itself showed that there were 3 dwellings (uch – 3 in the Tatar language). This meant that each bucket of water for the animals, the kitchen and for living had to be pulled up and brought home. As in all Crimean prairie villages and so in this one, exlusive of some acacias, there were no woods, no bushes, no trees, cooking and baking was done on a tripod. The dwellings consisted of old, run-down Tatar clay- walled huts which constantly had to be covered and repaired with clay mixed with manure in order to prevent cold from blowing in. The floors were of course of clay, instead of a fireplace and a chimney to the roof, there was a tripod which burned with dried manure.

Grandfather and his daughter lived in one hut, in the other a working Tatar woman, in the next their workers, then the animals, and so forth. And under these

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circumstances they worked so successfully that they did not only support the whole family, but Grandfather was even able to buy a small piece of much more desirable land, in the North of Simferopol –Chuike. The only diversions were trips to Kronental ( that was then the name of the German colony, later it was renamed Bulganak, next to Agach-Eli), where a large number of relatives lived. From Mother’s stories of life in Uch- Kuju-Tarchan I remember a story about a small but very characteristic episode. One of the huts was a store room where milk and a variety of milk products were kept. There was of course no talk even of refrigeration or under-the-earth preservation, and the only defense against spoilage of the products was total cleanliness. And suddenly the milk began to taste bitter. “I felt this immediately,” Mother said, “and began to look for the cause. I washed and re-washed the dishes, towels, checked the cows, again washed the walls of the hut, nothing helped, and the milk stayed bitter and smelled strange. Finally Grandfather also noticed this and asked me: “what is this with you and the milk, Varja?” I told him of my misery. “Let us go to the hut” Father said. We came, everything was clean, on the floor stood the vats with the milk – all covered. Father looked and looked, and suddenly said: “ and what have you there?” and took the broom which was standing in the corner. “Put this away and all will be well.” And so it was! What was the matter? The matter was that in that semi-desert land the brooms were home-produced, and they were made, as they were made even in our presence by village women, from branches of sagebrush. This bright silvery- looking plant, favored by the French and used in the production of the now-forbidden absinthe, for us was a symbol of poor soil. It is truly amazing that it grows in such poor, arid soil where no other plants could have survived. I remember that in our Chadzijevka in the garden of the first apartment on the left, almost at the exit, there were some such bright silvery sagebrushes. They spread doggedly from year to year and flourished when all other plants suffered from the lack of rain. I often stopped by this amazing grass – it smells wonderfully, is very soft and silky and pleased me very much, and I always thought: it all depends on one’s point of view. How can one explain the affinity of these grasses for poor, useless soil? I understand it when stronger plants crowd or altogether inhibit you, then of course you will, in your sorrow, even grow on a stone, but the instinct to move to

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better soil at the first opportunity must exist? And there should exist at least two types of sagebrush – fuller and taller, more aristocratic on the better soil and a more mild- mannered one which was thrown here and there. But the sagebrush continued to grow only where nothing else wanted to grow. Is that the will to be proud once one has been elbowed out onto the poor soil – I no longer want your good one! Or perhaps the acceptance of humiliation? (perhaps this humiliation affected so hotly not only the body but also the soul?) – I had better not go to the good soil – they will push me out again! However this was, in our South, sagebrush even became a saying: ‘where sagebrush grows, a German does not live’. Our southern colonist chose good soil and never minded the money and he gladly paid more than all the other buyers. He never conducted soil analyses, but with his practiced eye he eradicated the sagebrush. Therefore, one could draw two conclusions from Mother’s stories. The first? : never put milk next to strong-smelling and generally exuding absinthe oil sagebrush; the sagebrush did not only transmit its smell to the milk, but also its astonishing heat; second: Grandfather did not stay in Uch-Kujut-Tarchan but escaped farther away to a place where there grew less sagebrush or none at all, and where there was more rain than in our maritime corner.

Matvei Ivanovich probably married young to Marie Sevastianovna Schneider and in that manner exited from the Crimean German settlers and joined the large Schneider family. The Kronental (later Bulganak) Colony in the Simferopol disctrict was founded and settled in the year 1805. This was one of the smaller and undoubtedly less successful colonies. Crammed into the desert, with little water and into a rain-less corner, it consisted of Lutherans and Catholics – and two churches and two schools in the middle of center of the colony almost documented for all time the whole depth of this difference – this colony never achieved the development and did not play the role which many others did. I think that the father of my grandmother, the old Sevastian Schneider was a direct settler who lived a long time and whom I still remember as a very old man. His house still had a thatched roof and a decidedly old-fashioned look compared with his more successful neighbors who had already renovated their dwellings, keeping the

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typical walls and layout of the buildings, but significantly improving their looks and increasing their dimensions. In the large room the dry little old man roamed around, said something very tender to our mother and to us, but in such a Swabian German, that even if we had known more German, we would not have understood him. In the bedroom there stood of course high wooden beds, with such mountains of down covers that they almost reached the ceiling, but they were folded with wonderful precision. All furniture was either the original one from Swabia or fashioned from the old designs, and in all the houses of the settlers one could find nothing else. A great impression was left with me by the huge Grandfather clock, which ticked in a special way: simultaneously and softly and loudly. You will be surprised, my children, but this clock also rang in my soul, and I became calm only when standing clocks appeared in my own study, but they did not tick the same and in their ornamental cases were cupolas, but they served as a memory of my other grandfather.

The following funny thing occurred to our great-grandfather Sevastian Schnaider,*** which characterized the war of that time and its ‘Horror’. Kronental was 40 versts (ca 20 miles) from Sevastopol, but during all of the 11 months which was as long as that war lasted, Kronental did not hear or see anything of it. This situation finally seemed unendurable to our great-grandfather and thus one morning in the summer he got on his horse and rode, as he was, that is, in his shirt and slippers on his bare feet, to look at ‘the war’ a little more closely. I do not know how much closer he rode to ‘the war’, but finally he met an English mounted patrol who took him prisoner. After peace was proclaimed, he returned home very satisfied with everything that he experienced during his imprisonment. This was in 1884.

Sevastian Schnaider had two sons. One, Ivan, was in charge of the estate of an English physician, Hyman, who stayed in the Crimea after the Sevastopol War, married a German woman and bought the Kojash estate. But the Englishman did not endure for very long and left behind as a memory of his stay rather large vineyards, a good wine cellar right on the road along which he had planted acacias and wallnuts all along his

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property. The nuts froze in the winter of the year 1879, but the acacias survived and made all the passers-by happy, but none of us followed the example of the Englishman. The other son, Nikolai Sevastianovich stayed in Kronental and watched over his Wirtschaft (this was the name of his parcel of land, 60 or 30 desjatins – 162 or 81 acres). To the end of his days he lived in his old house, though he improved it, went to the cellar himself in order to bring the guest some wine grown in Kronental, somewhat sour, traveled in the so-called ”Dilizhan” without springs, later in an open cart, very much loved Provencal butter from a can and sardines, which he offered to special guests. Was he so stingy? O no, he was a typical German settler and left to his children five thousand (13,500 acres) desjatins of land, a house in the town, two well- situated farmsteads, and probably much money in the bank. But the sardines were a delicacy for him. My German grandfather and grandmother were not brilliant people. They were honest, modest, hard-working, having begun with nothing, did not aspire to take the light from the sky and probably hoped only to lift and have stand on their own feet their many-membered family, which they achieved. According to Mother’s stories Grandfather enjoyed life and socializing, and was not burdened by life’s blows. But these blows undoubtedly caused much skepticism and he liked to say: “Only that which I ate is mine.” Evidently more than once in his life, possessions which he had already thought were his, disappeared – but he still did not mourn them. Nevertheless he was able to obtain an important position in a town which was strange to him. Mother told that his great friend was the old man Fein –already a very wealthy man at that time. When he came to Simferopol, he stayed with Grandfather. One of these visits left a sharp memory in Mother. Old man Fein once again was buying one of his endless estates. And so, a few days before his arrival a heavily loaded truck arrived in the Schlee’s yard, and heavy sacks were carried from it. The workers emptied the sacks onto the floor of the guest house, and soon there lay a whole mountain of silver rubles. “ Ferdinand and I,” said Mother, “had to build small columns of rubles so that they could be counted and we simply cried.” The money lay around for quite a while, probably in the basement or was buried and covered with the green color of ferric oxide. And I involuntarily remember that in the pages of “Notes from a Decembrist”, Count Volkonsky

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says at one point: “sold his land in the South of Russia to the settler Fein for seventy kopeks per desjatina. Yes, yes, kopeks!” It is true that this probably happened earlier, but the prices could not have risen significantly – and how many desjatins of wonderful land lay in the guesthouse of a small German settler. I think that in those times the relation between the small worth of land in the half-empty South and the value of labor lies the explanation of “getting rich” of our family. Already in 1879 my father paid 29 thousand rubles for Agach-Eli which measured 830 desjatins (2241 thousand acres) – of course with silver.

Matvei Ivanovich died being not very old, and Grandmother outlived him for several years. She died of cancer, when I was about 10 years old, and I clearly remember this kind old woman, of medium height with a rather full face and gray hair which always was covered with a bonnet, either white or black . Unfortunately the fact that we did not speak German prevented our relationship with Grandmother from being more lively and close. In any case, we always were happy to go to see her, and knew that in addition to a warm welcome, during holidays we would receive a tasty piece of cake and a cup of equally tasty coffee. At Grandmother’s house coffee was brewed in a coffee pot, which looked like a small samovar, and therefore always was hot. I do not remember such coffee pots in other houses, but all of her daughters also acquired the same coffee pots and therefore their coffee also always was hot and they even tried to outdo each other in this matter. And to drink coffee at Grandmother’s on Sunday remained a family custom and did not disappear after her death but was transferred to Aunt Julia who went to live in the house where Grandmother lived, and one could meet members of the Schlee family in the afternoons at the coffee hour there. I do not think that Grandmother was the spiritual or intellectual center of the family; this role had been taken over after Grandfather’s death by the two older sons. And this role was not very easy. There were eight children in the family, the youngest was 6 or 8 years old at the time of his death, and the funds were not large. I think that besides the estate, which was not large, and the house, there was also some money, otherwise one could not understand how the daughters could have been given their dowries. In my opinion,

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Grandfather decided very wisely: at their wedding, each daughter was to receive 5 thousand, the estate was not to be sold or divided until that moment when the youngest has completed his education. All this was accomplished without special internal friction (even though there was some grumbling) and the whole family stood on its feet and became stronger.

The Schlee Family

The oldest son, Ferdinand Matveevich was born probably in the year 1842. He studied at the high school and lived in the same boarding school where the brothers Nalbandov also lived and he also did not get far with his studies. It was decided to send him to an apprenticeship on the Fein estate, and there could not have been a better outcome. During the visit of F.M. at Fein’s, the following episode occurred, as told by Mama. At some time F.M. wrote Father a letter, in which he asked him to send him new pants, among other things, and added: ‘I do not, after all, have to buy myself pants with my hard-earned money’. Father only said: “his money is evidently hard-earned money, which mine evidently is not”, but sent him new pants anyway. In our family the difference between ‘hard-earned’ or ‘not hard-earned’ money lived for a long time. A person who was not stupid, F.M. performed perfectly and always was an outstanding and intelligent boss. After his training he remained there to work and later bought an estate –Golgary- about 15 versts (ca 7 miles) from Simferopol in the direction toward Sarabuz. For many years he lived in the village without interruption, managed the business very well, acquired still another estate -Gebotark- near Saki, bought their father’s house from the other remaining heirs, and, tearing down all buildings except the apartment of his mother and Aunt Julia, built a very large and comfortable house (in the year 1892). From that time on he lived in town as a very wealthy man. Lively and sociable, getting along wonderfully with the workers, his greatest pride was a whole colony of houses which he had built for the workers who permanently worked for his family; for many years he was the district and land governors’ representative and enjoyed general respect. He died on June 17, of the year 1904 and was buried on his

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estate. A year ago I met his son Lenja here, and he told me with deep bitterness that in 1920 those same Golgary workers threw all the bones of all members of the Schlee family buried in Golgary out from their graves. Lenja was justified in his indignation: neither F.M. nor even less his children deserved such an outrage.

F.M. was married two times. His first wife was his sister-in-law, Anna Petrovna Schnaider, her father was Petr Petrovich. She died young from consumption. They had five children. They all were not bright and in our large family served as an example against marriages between close relatives. Only the oldest son and the last daughter lived to old age, the three remaining ones died young of tuberculosis.

1.The oldest son, Konstantin, was born in the year 1865. His education led to nothing, and for many years he worked on his father’s estate, and finally his father put Gebotark under his management. He looked sickly and feeble, he turned out to be very steady, was a great lady’s man and arranged his material interests brilliantly. After the death of his father he received a part of Gebotark which at that time changed from a boring and shabby desert estate and, due to the extraction of artesian wells and its nearness to the resort Saki, into a gorgeous, easily approachable estate with wonderful gardens. Following the Schlee example, Kostja bought a large property on the Lazarevsky Street and Gubernatovsky corner in Simferopol, built a very large three- story (at that time a rarity) house there and began to live primarily in town. In the year 1920 he remained in S.; even though he had never taken part or was interested in politics, he nevertheless was arrested – when, I do not know. His daughter Natasha writes me: “he was imprisoned for a long time; he looked terrible: he was almost totally blind, ill, we begged for a visit with him, but he could say almost nothing – through a large partition and a crowd of guards, and most importantly, he cried continuously”. Following much effort by the family, he was sent back to Cherdyn, but never arrived there: on the way during one of the overnight stays, probably in an attic, he fell from there and died from a brain hemorrhage in the year 1930.” He had been married to Juritzina, whose first husband was Shebchenko; she died in 1937. 1.Their daughter

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Raisa was born in 1889, was married to Gregor Panekyn (he died in 1942). Their son Pavel was born in 1913, spent his military service in the Far East in 1938 and remained there. Raisa died in 1914 in childbirth. 2. Daughter Nadezhda was born in 1893 and was killed in Evpatoria in 1920. She was married to the law student and officer of the White Army, Grishin; he died of typhus in 1918. In 1914 a son, Aleksander was born, studied in Leningrad and was planning to be a captain of the Marine but was drafted during the last year of study. In 1918 a daughter, Nona was born – a chemical engineer in Almat; she married a senior student Boris Bitnokov (in 1940); in 1941 they had a daughter, Svetlana. After her death, Nadja’s children went to their grandfather’s family, K.F. 3. A son, Dimitry who was born in 1895 also was killed in Evpatoria in 1920. 4. Daughter Natasha was born in 1897; her first husband, the student Nikolai Choblovski was killed in Evpatoria in 1920. Her second husband, Ivan Borisenko, a bookkeeper, died in 1934. Natasha has two children: daughter Galina, born in 1923 and son, Anatoly, born in 1927; they moved to Germany and live in a refugee camp.

2. The daughter Wilhelmina, was a very pleasant, quiet and silent young girl, learned badly, but had a healthy natural brain. She married her brother-in-law Wendelin Nikolajevich Schnaider, the son of Nikolai Petrovich Sch. - the brother of the mother of Wilhelmina – Anna. It seemed the second marriage of relatives should not have brought anything positive, even more so because Mina herself also died of tuberculosis. They had three children – and all of them were totally good and good-looking people. The oldest daughter Olga married Doctor Strashinin and lived somewhere near Novgorod in the Volynsky area. Natalia was very beautiful, an especially healthy young girl. During the Revolution she fell in love with Filippenko, a singer, who at that time served in the Volunteer Army, and emigrated with him. In 1921 she died in Berlin, poisoned by gas, probably an unfortunate accident. The youngest son, Vladimir (Vova) emigrated as a very young boy, for a while he lived in Munich and enjoyed the great patronage of the somewhat well-known Dr. Scheibner-Richter. Then he moved to Serbia, where he lived till the year ‘42. He again moved to Germany became a chauffeur for the Tada organization and is still working there now. On April 27 1952 Vova and his family came

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to America. He had married the Russian Ekaterina Nikolaevna Klenrukova, and on May 15 of the year 1944 they had a son, Aleksander, on May 26 1946 a son, Georgij, and later a daughter, Olga. 3. Robert, about three years older than I, was killed by an axe. 4. Viktor was one year older than I, was in the same class with me, but left already after the second year. Later he lived with his father in the village and died at the age of fourteen evidently from tuberculosis of the brain. 5. Evgeniya was the same age as I and became ill with childhood paralysis at the same time as I did. With her, the sickness played an even more horrible joke than with me. She had a partially paralyzed hand and leg, and even though she could use them, it was only badly. But even worse was that she was not quite normal mentally, one might say feeble-minded. She lived with Mina for a while, then with Kostja a while longer; she always was useful around the house, and to all the difficulties of her joyless life, only answered with such a sad and pitiful smile that one’s soul contracted and one only wanted to do something to help this helpless and friendly girl. The end of her life she spent with Kostja and his family and there she died in the year 1932, already after his exile. I cite details about the death of Zhenja from a letter from her niece Natasha, only to show how people died at that time...... ”Aunt Zhenja lived in a small apartment in the yard of the house on Domorukovsky Street, where all the others lived. Some young girl, very unpleasant to look at, kept asking Aunt Zhenja to let her live with her in a room. Despite our advice not to take her in, she took her in. After some time, she suddenly started to scream terribly, and died in the morning, all convulsed. Later she was taken for an autopsy, they came and questioned us with whom she was living and whether she had been ill and why she died. For this reason we were suspicious that the girl had done something to her. She left, having taken all of Aunt Zhenja’s things and said that these things belonged to her because she had taken care of Aunt Zhenja.”

After the death of Anna Petrovna, Ferdinand Matveevitch was a widower not for long and soon married a highschool friend of his sister Usunli – Nadezhda Izmailovna Zaiusvetksky. This was the first Russian brought into our family. Very reticent and not

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speaking much, a wonderful musician, she did not fit very well into our noisy, gay and friendly German family. She read much and was only slightly interested in domestic affairs and the family and was not a helpmate to her husband. Therefore she always stood somewhat coldly outside the family of her husband, even though their personal relationship was excellent. She passionately loved flowers, knew how to take care of them and had such beautiful palm trees and various indoor plants that one just had to admire them. She especially established her “winter garden” when F.M. built his new house and later added a huge dining room where the plants grew freely by the big light from the windows, and in the corner stood a gorgeous piano on which N.I. played when nobody except her husband, was listening. However much we begged her, she never agreed to play when outsiders were present. She was herself rich, she owned 1000 desjatins (2,700 acres) near Chebatar, was more than modest in the expenses for herself or the house, even miserly, as people in the family said about her. But after the year 1905, if I am not mistaken, she sold her property to some neighboring farmers who had been renting it, at such a low price that everybody simply said “Ach!!!” But she only smiled her usual smile. After the death of her husband she bought for herself a property near Simelz and built there, it was said, a beautiful dacha (I unfortunately did not see it) and moved to live there permanently. After the Revolution she sold this dacha and bought a very small house, where she lived with two young daughters. But even there fate did not let her rest: as the wife of a grand landowner, she was taken to the Uralski region and there she threw herself into the Ural river. Thus she passed through my life as the most mysterious figure of our whole many-membered relatives. Nadezhda Izmailovna and F.M. had seven children. 1. Leonid was born in the year 1878, finished law school, served shortly as an official of special trials in the Tavr. Government, but soon left and married Lidija Nikolaevna Bondarenka and lived as a rich landowner in Chebatar during the summer where he built a house, but did not have time to move into it; during the winter he lived in the former apartment of his parents on Urecheski Street. They had two children: Ismail and Alekseii.The entire family emigrated to Bulgaria, and from there to Germany. 2. Lidija – a modest and quiet young girl, studied well in high school, died from

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tuberculosis at 18 years of age. She was the contemporary of our Edi. 3. Nikolai was his father’s favorite and resembled him in his quiet manners. He inherited (together with his brother Sergei) Golgary with its abundant equipment and old household objects. He lived modestly but well together with his wife Evgenia Ivanovna in the house which they bought on Gogolevsky Street. During the evacuation he was not able to take his family along – they already had two daughters - and only saw them again in the year 1942 when he came to the Crimea for a short time when he went there for his job with the (German) occupying forces. Evgenia Ivanovna, who had been a pleasant, chubby young lady, had turned into a very simple village woman during the 22 years when she lived with her daughters in Simelz (her family had lived there earlier). This woman was taking water from the fountain, when A.A. Schlee, as the first one getting to Simelz, happened to ask her whether she knew anything about the N.F. Schlee family. He told us that it was difficult to recognize Evgenia Ivanovna in this woman, even after he believed her that it was she herself. While he was in the Crimea, N.F. returned to Golgary with his family (one of the daughters was already married) was given one of the small houses there, which once had been built by his father for the workers, got a horse, a cow, a bird, and began again his life in a small household. But not for long. Once he evacuated again, his family did not want to accompany him and remained in the Crimea. Now N.F. is in Germany again, living somewhere in a camp. Having departed for the university, the other children were very small when I left, and later Life did not lead us together again, and I scarcely know them. 4. Olga – finished high school and married Michail Alexandrovich Trigoni, an aimless young man who died during the evacuation in Konstantinopol. They had three children: Tatjana, born in 1909, Georgij – in 1912, and Irina – in 1914. Irina is now in Germany . This has turned out to be not quite correct. Recently the granddaughter of Ferd. Mat., Irina Trigoni, came to visit us. Small, roundish and talkative, she quickly reminded me of her mother, Olga. She told us much about their fate in Russia and much was different from what I wrote according to the words of Lena. It turns out that Galgarski, the new owners, former workers of F.M., are not that bad at all. After the Revolution, that is, after our flight, Nad.Izm. with Olga and Musja and their children

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moved to Golgor where they settled for a long time. From their former guard they bought the small guard house, received 28 desetin (75.6 acres) of land, obtained a cow, chickens and began to live with this household. When a kolkhoz was established in Golgorach, their land was taken from them, but Olga joined the kolkhoz and became the manager of the clothing department, also the secretary and bookkeeper. At first Musja had fulfilled that role, but she turned out to be too honest and did not give the visiting auditors any rations from the kolkhoz stores. Therefore she was exchanged for the more compliant Olga. The appointed manager of the kolkhoz was some German from a neighboring colony, according to Irina, a very decent person, and the kolkhoz was a success as long as he was managing it. Nad. Izm. was particularly friendly with him, and when he left and went back to his colony, she kept up a very friendly relationship with his whole family, and lived with them for a long time. When the Germans began to be deported to Siberia, she said to her daughters that now her friends were doing badly and she needed to help them and that she would go with them to Siberia. At that time she was already 70 years old! And she really left all her relatives and went to Siberia with a family which was not at all related to her. There they settled down together, but evidently she was not strong enough: she went to town for some business, away from where they had been living, and later, on the banks of the river which she was supposed to cross, they found her dress and overcoat. There was no looting of F.M.’s grave by the administration, as had often been the case during the Revolution – the looting of graves of ‘class enemies’ – but there was the usual hooliganism by 2-3 people, organized by F.M.’s former blacksmith and some others. They were seeking gold, which, according to rumors, had been placed in the grave of the dead estate owner. The looting was done at night, and the looters, in their hurry, forgot their tools, by which they were later recognized – of course without any unpleasant consequences for them. But this portrait still does not give a reason for the pessemistic conclusion by Leni: “I became disgusted with the Russian people after this and never want to return to Russia,” she told me during our only meeting in Munich. Irina’s mother, Olga and another one of her, that is, Irina’s sister and daughter also came to Germany, but found themselves in the zone which was occupied by the

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Russians. Irina rushed to find them, went into the Russian zone, but did not find anybody: they were among the many Russians whom the Bolsheviks sent back, probably to Siberia. The same things threatened to happen to Irina, but she managed to flee to the American zone on time. We listened to her story with tremendous sorrow. How many such stories we had already had to hear, and every time I was impressed by the strength, energy and perseverance of these truly exceptional people. 5. Marija – Musja – also finished highschool, married a doctor Kabosev, a very well- known specialist and professor of eye diseases at the Odessa University. My brother Serjezha spoke of him very positively. In the year 1908 a son, Vadim, was born to them, whose fate I do not know. The Kabosevs separated and Musja lived with her mother in Simelz. 6. Sergei. This was a sickly unlucky person. His education ended with nothing. He refused his military obligation during the war and totally against all expectations and without any clear reason shot himself. 7. Nina – the last, was a somewhat miniature, fragile doll and has thus remained in my memory. Later I did not see her. During the emigration she married the brother of Lid. Nik., Michail Nik. Bonderenka. In the year 1926 a daughter, Galina was born to them. They live in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

2. The daughter, Varvara Matveevna – see page 61 - “my mother”.

3. Franz Matveevich was the pride and joy of the Schlee family. He was the first one, not only in the family but in the German settler society of Simferopol, who finished university (in the law department). Together with his older brother Ferdinand he was authorized to lead the family’s affairs, and his word was law not only for his brothers and sisters, but also for his mother. And he truly was an interesting person. We, the children, feared him. He was tall, thin, with a longish, skinny dark little beard, always reserved and he spoke little; he had something of a Lutheran way about him and with that he starkly differed from his remaining brothers and sisters. He undoubtedly was the most intelligent, smart and educated one in the whole family and this impressed and

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affected them. But besides all that, he was a person of deep honesty and decency, which all of those who knew him acknowledged. Undoubtedly he also had more sense for aesthetics than the others. Mother always told with great joy about the wonderful bouquets Franz brought home after his Sunday walks in the meadows. He was the first to introduce beautiful furniture and finishing touches when the members of the family began to get rich and to acquire houses. – And that same Franz caused the family the biggest moral shock! After finishing the university, he obtained the position of arbitration judge in Yalta, and for many years was elected almost unanimously, that is, he enjoyed a great reputation and great love from the inhabitants. He did not come to Simferopol very often, and his visits were a celebration for the whole family. As before, Franz’s authority was great. But each aesthetic can make a mistake – and I want to tell you a funny incident. During one of these visits Franz said that he knows the recipe for a wonderful pomade. And I remember that one morning they brought Franz a whole mountain of wonderful, white as snow pig lard and our most important Uncle Franz began to add some sweet-smelling spices, and his sisters, that is our mother and her sisters, had to rub the lard together with the spices untill their hands were exhausted. Finally everything was divided into little bottles, and Uncle Franz left. And we had our heads smeared with the mess until our mothers finally convinced themselves that this pomade was only dirtying our heads. What was done with the ruined lard by our thrifty housewives – I do not know. Today we probably would have thrown it out despite its “aroma”. Tempera mutantur!

So Uncle Franz continued his brilliant career in Yalta and slowly everyone became used to the idea that he would remain a bachelor – he already was 36-37 years old. But suddenly some murmurs began in our family, the adults whispered a lot and shook their shoulders. It turns out that our serious, sensible Franz lost his head, and had fallen in love with a young, too young for him, but truly good Jewess, who had come to Yalta with some Jewish family either as a nanny or something even simpler, and he decided to marry her. Who she was, from where, what her name was – we never found out. She was brought to Simferopol quite secretly, lived for a few days in the house on

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Grechesky Street – Grandmother was no longer alive, - she was christened, - and there a new aunt appeared for us: Ernestina Lvovna Schlee. There was no celebratory wedding, or else it was not held in Simferopol – and for a long time the visits of Uncle Franz ceased. The situation within the family became complicated. The idol of the family had presented it with a difficult problem. The basic and sincere liberalism of the family did not permit open indignation, especially against a beloved and respected brother, but the insurmountable, hereditarily absorbed inner feelings could not make peace with the introduction of a Jewess from whom, more instinctively than realistically, nothing was expected, into the close-knit family, and nothing positive was expected to result. But nothing could be done – one had to make peace with the fact, but Franz’s former charm was destroyed. While the new family lived in Yalta, no difficulties occurred. The adolescents, the youngest brother Matveii, my sister, the young Schnaiders more easily found a common language with the aunt during the infrequent visits, the older people kept themselves on the sidelines. Two children were born, the salary of a judge was not very high, the work of some of these judges was even abolished. F.M. decided to leave his job and moved to Simferopol, where the position of a notary public had become available. And in this position he occupied a very special place and enjoyed great popularity and trust. Soon it became the common opinion that if a deal had been arranged by Notary Schlee, it was impeccable from a judicial as well a moral point of view and his filings caused no disputes even from the most respected, older notaries; he earned a lot of money. In one word, everything would have been excellent, if it had not been for his wife. One has to be objective. Ernestina Lvovna was not a bad person. She was smart enough that, evidently not having received any education or upbringing, she behaved in society in such a manner, that nobody noticed this. She was a good housekeeper, her house (Franz M. soon bought a mid-size house with a large garden on Guvernsky Street) and beautiful carved furniture, ordered from the best furniture maker of that time, Chernetenk, shone with cleanliness; she herself became even prettier with age, knew how to dress well, and in the brilliant resort Yalta had become used to living gaily. In the modest Schlee family she was bored, and she felt that the family had not longed for such a wife for their idol. She also did not

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trouble to hide all these feelings – and bit by bit the family of F.M. and he himself became more and more distant from the remaining family. When the brothers wanted to discuss something with him, they went to his office, and soon the relations became such that the relatives stopped coming to F.M.’s house, nor did he come to theirs. There was no outward quarrel, but the beloved brother was lost. But worse was yet to come. Again I have to excuse myself for telling bad things about close and even already dead people. But I want to give you a history of our family without large gaps, and I see great human-psychological value in what I want to tell you. Basically, everything happened as it should have happened. Still young and full of life, the Jewess existed with her already old, formerly so interesting, husband, and got herself a friend, a young attorney, the Armenian Burnazov. Basically one could not say anything bad about him. He was a typical provincial attorney, tall, good-looking with a dark and somehow underscored look, who earned not much, spoke somehow very loudly and waved about with his hands too boisterously. It is impossible to hide anything in the provinces. Everything was clear, and became even clearer when the Schlee family went abroad for the summer accompanied by Burnazov. This was a new, hefty blow for our family. It must be said that family purity was a given in all the houses of the older generation – and again the blow came from F.M. Everyone had already forgotten that he had brought all this on himself with his imprudent marriage – everyone was hurt for Franz. And only he himself did not see and understand and walked around town with the same equanimity, with his head held high, and without a drop of confusion they walked into a concert or a theater as a threesome, and all of us pretended that we did not notice this. I have often asked myself what he truly felt and from where he obtained the strength to endure this situation so calmly and long – and I could not find an answer. Sometimes I felt that this was the indifference of a tired old man. But now I am myself an old man tired of living, but still cannot understand him. Perhaps an ancient wisdom spoke to him: pay for your mistakes without complaining. That may be so, but it was a harsh punishment. And here is what is interesting. Of course the whole of Simferopol society saw what is going on. But neither Franz’ prestige nor his great popularity as an official and as a human being suffered. People clearly felt the gravity of his situation

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and commiserated with his lot. Our society was after all not too bad! These Schlees had two children: a daughter Emma who married the son of the lawyer Wulf, and a son Nikolai. He was a musician and conductor, and married a Jewess from Yalta, Nadezhda Buchstab. Nikolai somewhat mysteriously perished somewhere in the mountains during the Revolution. I will not undertake to decide about the inclination of these half-Jews toward Jews is happenstance or in their character.

4. Tsetzilija Matveena was a happy and life-loving being, she finished high school, played the piano not badly, and very soon married a young officer in the Lithuanian Regiment which was stationed in Simferopol, Witold Dionlebevitch Karachevsky-Wolk. He was a typical representative of the small, totally poverty-stricken Polish aristocracy with all its good and bad characteristics. He was very proud of his nobility and described to us in detail the difference between Karachevsky-Wolk and no Wolk. And as an officer he was typically provincial, having stopped with what he had been taught in the barracks, and carrying his professional load sincerely but without any interest in his work. Against the grayish background of the Schlee family, he was nevertheless a lively moth, whose worth was soon established as one who not only did not disturb, but instead enlived many family gatherings and evenings. He arranged dances, was the first one to yell “Hurra”, was the first to clap his hands, in other words, “enlivened the crowd”, as could even be expected from a young officer. He did not get far in his service and retired with an increased salary and the rank of colonel or lieutenant- colonel. But in the end, his rank and his whole life were fashioned for him by his wife. She was the only “noble woman” in the family, as her brothers teasingly called her, but also the poorest in the family. Her dowry went to ‘the reverse’****, and it was even then difficult to live on an officer’s salary, and only with the help of her mother and the whole family could Ts. Mat. make ends meet. But she accomplished this astoundingly well. Several years after her marriage they renovated the small house standing on Grechesky Street, finally demolished the blinking tavern sign which for a long time had been a dirty stain on the house, and a clean, pleasant apartment appeared. During that time they were free from ‘the reverse’, and for that money the Karachevskys furnished

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the apartment in which they spent their whole lives and in which both died. Everything was simple and cheap. It was not like it happened later with her brothers – expensive furniture, but everything was done with such care and love, each detail was so thoughtfully done, that everybody who came there felt well and comfortable. Aunt Tsilija herself was an even-tempered person and usually in a good mood. She was not ashamed of her “poverty”, did not try to ignore the difference in the means between her family and the rest of her remaining family, gave what she could, but did this so simply and kindly that nobody even noticed the difference. Probably precisely because of this and because, after the death of Grandmother, she alone stayed in the old Schlee adobe (before the new house of Ferd. Mat. was built) her apartment remained the center where the members of the family met most often. Whether the brothers or sisters-in- law came to town, whenever they had a free evening, they went “down”, as the family called Grecheskaja Street to the little house. All of us went there and did not wonder whether we would arrive at tea time or dinner. When this happened, we just ate and drank without ceremony and in the same way without ceremony Aunt Tsetzilija accepted everything that was brought to her by her brothers and sisters. But she never humbled herself by asking, and I never heard that she ever asked for anything from anybody. Over the years she managed to save a little money, and the income from this was helpful to her. But despite this, when she died –her husband had died much earlier – only pennies were left for the children, and their care was taken on by Aunt Masha. TS. M. died after a long and painful illness – I think cancer, but Aunt Masha never wanted to tell me this outright – a few days after the birth of our Katjusha.

The Karachevsky’s had three children. The oldest son, Witold, died of diphtheria at age 6. He was the same age as our Edja. The second son, Vladimir turned out to be unsuccessful. He finished high school, and the university in Moscow, but war prevented him from further studies. He married (in 1908) Margarita Michailovna Weber. After our flight he returned to Simferopol, and occupied some sort of office and helped Aunt Masha. They had a daughter Elena who married Georgi Arangel. He was arrested (in 1937?) and disappeared. The third son, Aleksander, became an orphan when he was

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still in high school, and from then on lived with Aunt Masha. He was a kind, tender child, very reserved and modest. We became very close to him when he finished university – or when he was still a student – I do not remember. He resigned from an important position in Simferopol and became an officer. He was in love with his sister- in-law, Vera Shembelev and I remember the tender smile with which he showed us a thin, small gold ring and one more trifle which he wanted to present to her. I see before me Aunt Tsetsiliya and the items worth only pennies which shone with the beauty of the love which she put into them. But poor Shurik did not live with his wife very long – he was killed in 1919 in Kertsch by the Reds who attacked the town from Kamenolomen.

5. Ivan Matveevich and his family always somehow stood removed from the others. From his youth on, he lived in the village of Ferd. Mat. in Golgarch, and then for many years managed Chebatark. There he married the daughter of a small landowner-settler, Luiza Jakovlevna Abt. This marriage further estranged the brother who anyway visited only occasionally. Luiza Jakovlena was a typical German girl-settler, but without the one thing that characterized these girls – health. She was sick her whole life with some undefined illnesses, which did not prevent her, however, from living to a ripe old age, so that she probably was only neurasthenic. Having grown up in the steppe, and not pretty but somehow angular physically, and spiritually also – she felt badly in the gay, boisterous family of her husband, who always spoke only Russian, and she always sat alone in a corner bored and almost frightened. Ivan Matveevich was a merry, social person, played the fortepiano not badly (probably self-taught), and there never were serious disagreements between him and the remainder of the family – but a close relationship never developed even when, many years later, I.M. bought a house on the Pushkinsky and (I believe) Tovchianobsky Street opposite the Seminary Garden, and he moved there to live in town permanently. I.M.’s family always was the most German and they only spoke German among themselves. She also leaned more toward the mother than the father.

1. The daughter, Anna, was born March 16. 1881. She married Robert Franzovich

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Lerich, the outstanding businessman and director of the Simferopol City Bank (his sister Luiza married my cousin, Stepja). They had 3 children: Rudolf, born 8. 28, 1903, musician and conductor, Valentin, 12.21. 1907, businessman, and Irina, born 4.4.1914, whose married name was Riefenstal. All were married and had children. In the year 1920 the Lerich family remained in Simferopol, but could not tolerate it very long. Since the father Lerich was born in Chechoslovakia, even before 1920, Lerich obtained a Chechoslovakian passport and around the year 1927 left together with his family for Chechoslovakia and from there to Germany, where the whole family has lived since that time. R.F. Lerich died in the year 1950. 2. The son, Eduard was born 6.21.84. I hardly knew him. Once in the summer I sailed on a ship from Odessa to the Crimea. Suddenly a tall young man approached me, very elegant and said: “permit me to introduce myself – I am your cousin.” That was Edja, returning home from abroad. I do not know very well why, but he studied medicine first in Munich, then in Naples, then, I think, in Bologna. Then he married a Russian – she ended up committing suicide in Munich. From this marriage he had a son, Georgi (born 6.3. 1911). We met again in Simferopol, where he returned with his second wife from Krakow. Now we became closer, and I have the very best memories of him. From his second marriage he had a son, Sergei (born August 1917). Edja remained in the Crimea and in 1922 he died having been infected with typhus. 3. Valentina, born 11.14.1886, (died in the year 1946), was a very merry, energetic, though nervous, young girl and a very nice person. Unfortunately her fate turned out to be unhappy. She also lived for a long time abroad with her brother and first husband Zhadavski; they lived poorly, and if I am not mistaken, Zh. also killed himself. After his death, Valja married a Jew, a teacher in the Simferopol Commercial Institute, and later director of the Sevastopol Commercial Institute, Jos.Nik. Arel. They remained in the Crimea, at first he somehow succeeded during that first administration, later he and his wife sat in prison for a long time. During the last occupation of the Crimea by the Germans, Valja returned from somewhere in the Caucasus, but did not say one word about the fate of her husband. I was only recently informed that he remained alive and hid (as a Jew) in some village in the guise of a worker. I did not know him well, but he

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made a good impression. 4. and 5. The two last children, Viktor (born 1.27.93) and Marija (Musja) born 3.23 96) I hardly knew at all. Viktor committed suicide. Musja married a Jew, Kanzler, if my memory serves me right. After rereading this page, I noted something unpleasant and incompletely expressed in my emphasized words, even two times: ‘married a Jew’. As if this were some sort of crime in my eyes. Of course this is not so, but it is better if I explain myself in this complicated situation. When my youngest brother Edja was still very young, he courted a young Jewess, Fany Schektman. He went to study abroad, as she also did, they met somewhere and for a while this friendship threatened to lead to marriage. I calmy say ‘threatened’ and this prospect did not please anyone in our whole family. And many years later, when Edja had already been married for a long time, I happened to travel to Karlsbad with Alek. Matv. Schlee and his constant companion in his yearly travels to Karlsbad, Schektman, Fany’s father. He was a bread merchant, a very pleasant decent man, owned a house in which Edja and I lived for some time. And I remember that the two of us had breakfast with Schektman in Berlin and the talk turned to that subject. He told me that his daughter had married a Jew from Simferopol, Keilin, and that he was very pleased about this. “Do not think that it was only your family which was concerned about this at that time,” the clever old man said to me suddenly. “For us it would have been the same misfortune if they had married then, as it would have been for your family, in spite of the differences in the circumstances of our families, which I understand quite well. Do not think it is fortunate for us when one says: ‘she married a Christian,’ said Schektman. And of course he was right. The question is not who was disparaged or made happy. The problem is the age-old chasm which divides the Jewish and Christian worlds even without considering the religious aspects. If the question were only about religion, then everything would be simpler, because for whom of our generation did religion play a large role? Look at our family – all kinds of religions are represented, and all of us are equally indifferent to these differences. But under the influence of the Jewish and Christian religions the whole inner outlook of the Christian and Jew has developed all their inconsciously absorbed philosophy – and cannot co-

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exist in the closeness of a marriage. I could cite many examples and evidences, but that is boring. I will only say that the marriages of two of Ivan Matveevich’s daughters to Jews were not happy. I do not know them well, only that both are educated people, and I have heard nothing negative. As I have already said, the I.M. family was the most German, and if one can speak of anything aristocratic in the family of a baker, the most democratic of all our families, and thus the combination of these two traits made that internationalism which erased the distinction between Jew and non-Jew more easily. And this is what it is all about.

6. Marija Matveevna. Our Aunt Masha was a rare soul of a person. Silent and reserved, looking almost severe, she had a soft and kind soul and enjoyed everyone’s respect. She grew up under the unquestionable influence of her brother Franz. Whether it was the healthy instinct of a worker’s family or a sober German thought process, but something kept the young Schlees from becoming too close with national freedom groups of which many representatives came from the South or lived in the Crimea. But the radical views of these groups undoubtedly were known and were partially endorsed by the more educated side of the family. And outwardly Aunt Masha kept her student-time views of those times throughout her whole life, but without the frequent irresoluteness and untidiness of those young radicals, who had neither the time nor the interest to see to their appearance. Having finished highschool, Aunt Masha traveled to Petersburg, then to Bern and there finished her medical studies. Unless I am incorrect, she belonged to the first women graduates who were allowed to study medicine abroad, a right which had just then be granted to Russian women. Soon after her graduation, the Simferopol Council decided to open an ambulatory and first aid station in Kronental (the hospital was built later) and nothing was more natural than that the granddaughter of Sevastian Schnaider obtained that position. The Council rented two or three rooms for her; she lived in one, the other one contained the pharmacy and the reception, the waiting room was outside or in the house of the owners. However primitive all this was, it was truly a good deed for the surrounding inhabitants. This was the third first aid station in the district. Previously, there had been one doctor in the

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whole district – Vysoginsky, who lived in Simferopol and took care of the district. I vividly remember how in the courtyard of Agach-Eli a simple, light carriage arrived with bells on the front, which at that time were necessary, and from the carriage stepped dusty or spattered with mud, depending on the season, the little old Vysoginsky. In the neighboring Tatar village the news of his arrival spread immediately. An elder walked through the village with a bell and informed the inhabitants of the arrival of the doctor. The sick came to him, received their medications from the traveling pharmacy and then had to wait for the next visit. Of course the doctor visited the seriously ill in their homes. When there were three first aid stations, medical help became much more substantial, primarily because each doctor traveled only through one third of the district and secondly, because two of the doctors already lived in the district and it was closer to come to them and the probability to find them at home was much greater than previously. But of course it was difficult for the patients and for the doctor. The ambulatory had to be open every day so that people who had come from afar on often almost inpenetrable roads would not find that the doctor had gone to some other part of his still very large district; but many times one could come on horseback and at least get some advice or ask the doctors to come to them personally. To visit the seriously ill was only possible after the closing of the ambulatory, but winter days were so short and the roads so difficult, and the horses so slow, and the open carriages so uncomfortable.

Marija Matveevna knew what she had taken on and continued for 12 years. Of course things improved with time. They built a hospital with 8-10 beds for her, there were a male and female assistant, a manager for the pharmacy; she bought herself a small closed carriage in which she at least did not get wet, and the district became smaller. In Alma a permanent first aid station was established, taken care of by an assistant. But the work was still difficult, and one needed much love for the work and for people in order to endure it for so many years. Public medicine and our doctors altogether comprise some of the most beautiful pages in the history of one person helping another person and remains forever the pride of Russia and the Russian doctors, and we had many such Marijas but seldom did they persevere as long and with

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such wonderful patience as did our Aunt Masha. She did not refuse to come during the worst weather, drove during the night, several times she was thrown from her carriage – but then she drove again. The Tatar population especially respected the fact that she could heal their women who would never have consented to be seen by a male doctor, but also among the other inhabitants, M.M. enjoyed deep respect and love. When she left and began to practice as a physician in Simferopol, very many of her former patients continued their treatment with her as private patients. During the last 3-4 years of the public position the district granted M.M. a vacation of three months during the summer and during that time she was replaced by a physician who was visiting in Bulganak. M.M. herself, however, went to work in a mud-healing institution, Saki, about 25 versts from Bulganak in the Tavrichesky District. This provided her with a significant addition to her public salary (it was only 100 rubles, with an additional 50 for a maid, per month, however with a free apartment, heat and electricity).

While still a doctor in Bulganak, she married F.O. Lustich. I think it was an old love, stemming from M.M.’s trip to Petersburg before her trip to Switzerland. Now fate brought them together again: F.O. lived as a bachelor on his tiny estate, rather one may call it a vineyard in Kertch, that is in M.M.’s medical district. After the marriage they lived for 3 more years in Bulganak, and during that time we learned to treasure and dearly love Aunt Masha’s husband. But finally, the public service became so tiring for M.M. that she decided to leave and move to Simferopol and begin her private practice. During the years of work, and especially working in Saki, M.M. saved some money – she lived very modestly – the only things she spent money on were books – and with this money Lustich bought a very small parcel of land on Petropavlovsky Square – if I am not mistaken, there where once F.O.’s father had lived and on it built a medium size but very comfortable house. It contained only six medium size rooms – the waiting room, the private office, living room, dining room, bedroom and another small room where later Shura Karachevski lived. Everything was light, simple and very clean. Next to the house was a truly miniature garden. In the house it was so comfortable, the hosts so friendly and simple that all of us who visited there have retained only the best

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and warmest memories of them. And we were there also because Aunt Masha treated us all and especially all the numerous children in the family. I think that also as a physician she was as modest as she was as a person. The huge public practice and living in such a remote area had two consequences for Aunt Masha – she lost her fear of all indispositions, she believed more in the strength of nature and felt she was only helping it along with simple medications, such as castor oil, different types of salts. She subscribed to Russian and German medical journals and books, and read them intensively during the long evenings in the quiet Bulganak, but felt that she herself was removed from life. When she moved to town she decided to refresh her knowledge and moved to Petersburg to take courses by Ks. Elena Pavlovna. Little by little such a practice developed that when something critical happened, M.M. came and prescribed whatever was necessary. But when she felt that the disease developed into a fatally serious one, she recommended to call in another doctor also. If the disease was chronic, the sick person became a patient of a specialist. In this way everything worked out well and crystallized in future years. Of course the medical help was not the only thing. Aunt Masha did not only represent a doctor, but also an endlessly kind and close person, whom one could believe, and whose appearance alone brought, if not relief, then at least a soothing of the spirit. If Aunt Masha began to ‘scold’, then everyone knew that nothing serious was forthcoming. And since our family generally was in good health, then in case of illness Aunt Masha would say: “it will go away” or “give him castor oil, or quinine, or a hot compress – and all will be well.” In serious cases, Aunt Masha was always present and close during times of grief. When Grandmother became ill, Aunt Masha - at that time still a student, I believe – took her for an operation. When the youngest brother Matvei became ill with tuberculosis, she managed to take a leave and went with him to a sanatorium somewhere in Bavaria for several months so that he would not be alone. When the son of Aunt Tzili was dying of diphtheria – she was with him, Aunt Julia died in her arms, Vitja Schlee died in Gomarch – she was there. When our Sonja was one hair away from death during the birth of her first child in Kojash, Aunt Masha did not leave their small house for days, when our Katjusha was born during a difficult birth, she was there, and even though there was an

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additional doctor, Katja owes her life only to her: she was born half suffocated, and I still see the special face of Aunt Masha how she tried to coax breath out of our little girl. Three generations of our family were greatly in her debt. And not only as a physician. She never caressed us, always was reserved, but never forgot even one of the children. When I was in the third year of highschool, she went to Yalta for a few days – and simply took me along, as if it were as simple as buying me an ice cream. A marvelously kind, simple and sincere person!

Her husband, Ferdinand Osipovich Lustich was her equal. He also descended from a settler family, but his forefathers came from Hungary, and his best friend, Aleksander Matveevich jokingly simply called him a Hungarian earl, whose documents were sealed up in the walls of the old Feodosian bridge on whose building his father worked. The only joke consisted in the fact that the old Lustich worked on the bridge as a simple stone mason, but in his family it was evident that it wanted to distance itself from the settler origins, and this was viewed as being full of pride. The older brother of Ferdinand, Wilgelm Osipovich Lustich, had a great reputation in Petersburg, where he was a sworn attorney and for a long time was the representative of the Society of Sworn Attorneys of the district of Petersburg. Ferdinand Osipovich was also in Petersburg, an officer in the army, when the assassination of Emperor Aleksander II (March 1, 1881) happened. He was close to the circle of free nationalists, even though he did not actively take part at all in anything, when the wave of arrests began, a secret, hidden typograph of the party was found in his possession. Despite this relatively small cause, but because he was an officer, he was severely punished, and he sat for 8 years in Kar, then in exile, and only the efforts of his brother, the well-known jurist, helped him to return to the Crimea, first without the right to leave the small vineyard, which it seems his brother had bought for him; after 1905 he received his rights back again. After moving to Simferopol he was elected to the directorship of the Simf. Society District Lending Bank, and after several years, again after his brother’s Wilgelm’s recommendation, Director of the Bank of Simf., Russian division of foreign commerce.

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Our new uncle Fedja quickly became a beloved member of the family. This was a very cultured and educated person, amazingly modest and reserved, always well- meaning, straight and peaceful. By nature it seemed all the Lustichs were taciturn, and even Marija Matveevna who spoke little herself, told with indignation how the brothers Wilgelm and Ferdinand could walk side by side for an hour up and down the dining room without speaking, in Lustich’s house in Kertch. During the years of his lonely imprisonment, F.O. became accustomed to even more silence, and if, only rarely, he spoke much, M.M. would say to him: “look, Fedja, your cheeks will hurt you, you talk so much.” He was much older than we were, but that was hardly felt –we called him “ty” (the familiar form) which was not the case with any other of our uncles – we called all of them “wy”, (polite form). He loved books and bought and read many of them. In exile he had learned the English language, and with a dictionary he could understand what he read, but could not say a single word and did not understand the spoken word. He loved music and owned a mechanical harmonica and many notes of serious music, on which he spent a great deal of money. When his rights were returned to him, he became a non-removable and very accurate member of the city Duma. The difficult experiences of his youth were not noticeable in him. He did not weaken through the loss of his political vision and the lost years, which he suffered without being seriously guilty, and remained a free thinker in his political views, intelligent, far from radical. Essentially, he kept away from any political entity, and even the revolution of the year 1917 did not provoke any particular ecstasy in him, and looked with just as much sorrow as we did on the violent destruction all around us.

With time, the well-being of the Lustichs, increased, especially since F.O. became director of the bank. But they did not alter their lives at all except that they began to go abroad for summer vacations. M.M. had stopped working long ago and no longer served in Saki, but they bought a small automobile with which they drove away Saturdays and Sundays to visit relatives or to their property in Kertch, their vineyard. This same automobile hastened the end of Aunt Masha’s life. They finally decided to build a new house instead of living in the old hut in which Uncle Fedja had spent many

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years of his exile. We discussed its plan for a long time, and chose a picture in one of the journals, I believe ‘Jugend.’ It was a tall, medium-sized German house with a small terrace on the upper floor. They asked me to help with the building, and I was glad to at least pay back Aunt Masha a little bit for the invaluable help I had received from her all my life. In the summer they went abroad, and when they returned, the house was ready and waiting for the new owners. On a brilliant Saturday the three of us went to Kertch, and a new chauffeur drove us for the first time. I right away did not like his driving, and already after 5-6 versts we narrowly missed a ditch when giving way to an oncoming vehicle. Several more versts passed, and again an oncoming vehicle caused our automobile to stand crosswise on the road, go into the ditch and flying out again, stopped. There Aunt Masha protested and we returned to Simferopol. I was clear that the new chauffer did not know how to drive. One or two weeks passed. The Lustichs again decided to drive to Kertch, but I for some reason or other could not go, but went, as usual, home. On that very same evening my sister called on the telephone to tell me that there had been an accident and Aunt Masha was in the hospital. It turned out that the chauffeur convinced Uncle Fedja by explaining his failure with some defect in the steering wheel, and they kept him on. On the road they met a flock of sheep, and the chauffeur stopped so sharply that the automobile – it was a small, short Peugeot – overturned, turned around itself, and again returned to stand on its wheels as if nothing had happened. The chauffeur, Uncle Fedja and Shura Karachevsky who was with them, escaped with a scare, cuts and bruises, but Aunt Masha had both arms and both legs broken. This passed almost without consequences, but the nervous shock did not pass. From then on one could not recognize Aunt Masha. She no longer wanted to hear anything about the automobile, no longer went to Kertch, I do not even know whether she ever saw the new house. In any case, nobody lived in it until the Revolution came. The nervous shock, and perhaps something deeper, led Aunt Masha to forget words, she could not always understand the meaning of words, became distracted and forgetful. But physically she remained healthy. During the evacuation in the year 1920 the Lustichs remained in Simferopol. For a while they kept living in their house, our mother also lived with them after she had been removed from our house. At

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that time Fedja still wrote to me here. What happened later, I do not know. There was talk that they had been expelled, but also that Uncle Fedja died soon, and a grandiose funeral was organized for him, as one of the victims of the damned Tsar. Supposedly Aunt Masha was helped by Volodja Karachevsky who had returned after 1920 to Simferopol from Moscow. Now A.A.. Schlee told me that toward the end of her life Aunt Masha was no longer normal, a Jewish neighbor took her in, and that is where she died. Of course she died destitute.

7. Aleksander Matveevich was born 12.19.1859. I remember him as tall and thin, who came for vacations from Sevastopol, where he finished 6th grade highschool. On one of these visits he brought me a small ship, being about 10.5 inches long, but made with much artistry and love. It was a three-dimensional war brig with much rigging, rope stairs, many pulleys and smaller boats, cannons which looked out of the port holes. I carefully guarded this present, for many years it stood on a special stand on Father’s dresser, and only during the renovation of the old house in 1896 did the little ship disappear from my memory. For a long time Uncle Sasha also disappeared from my memory because, having stopped his high school education, he turned into an agriculturist and for a long time went to the estate of his brother Ferdinand, first to Golchar, and later to the place of Ivan Matveevich as manager of Chebotark. During all that time I probably saw him only seldom, since my memory has not kept anything about him. Then A.M. again began to visit amazingly often during one year in our Agach-Eli, where formerly I never remembered seeing him. The explanation for this was that during that summer my sister was being visited by a friend from the boarding school in Odessa. The young lady was Olga Onufrievna Utochkina, even then a little bit too large, light complexioned, a Russian braid and merry gray eyes, beautiful with a true Russian beauty. In the fall of 1887 they married and lived, again visiting only rarely, in Chebotark. But soon the moment came when the youngest son Matvei finished university and when in accordance with his father’s will, Chuik could be sold. During a family gathering it was decided to cede it to Al. Matveevich, that is all the remaining brothers and sisters had already been standing on their own feet for a long time, and

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Matvei was a jurist and did not need the estate. In this way Aleksander Matveevich became a land owner and now began the most difficult years of the young family. Again years and years disappear from my memory, but also from the life in Simferopol. Since the young couple had little money – I never heard that O.O. had brought with her a significant dowry – the estate was not in good shape and everything had to be started from the beginning. But A.M. was a very clever person, had finished a good agricultural school, and was a wonderful worker. He was truly immersed in his agriculture and I vividly remember, how he looked during one of his later visits, which made it clear that there was no mechanic on the estate and that this work was done by the estate owner himself. He was not only a good owner, conscienciously doing his work, he was also an innovator and was not afraid to entertain new ideas. We in our dry corner strongly stuck to the keeping of sheep, seeing in this a steady even if not large, profit. Al. Matv. also began keeping sheep, but after several years had passed he felt that in his region the sheep had already passed their usefulness and could not compete with grain production –and eliminated the sheep. At that time we began to cover the grape bushes with earth for the winter, and this immediately decreased the upkeep and increased the revenue for the vintners. Al.Mat. decided that if vineyards in the Dnjper region give a good income, the same will be the case in Chuik. First he developed a small vineyard, the years were successful – and in Chuik an excellent vineyard appeared. Then A. Mat. bought a plow and instead of digged deep ditches, without which planting grapes in our stony ground was impossible and which was very expensive, he plowed several desjatins right away and planted them with grapes. But cold years came, and the grapes, still withstanding the winters in our valleys, froze in the open fields of Chuik. Thus we never drank Chuikian wine, but Al. Mat. only laughed good-naturedly about the misfortune of his experiment. The difficult years progressed. Al. Mat. and O.O. seldom appeared in the city and stayed there only when it was necessary. Once, I remember, I came to town and stopped in to see Aunt Tsily “ Olga Onufrievna is here, yesterday a son was born to her“ she greeted me. That was Volodja. She knew how to keep house, also Al. Mat.; his work and thrift had their effect. Gradually a new house was built and when the children grew up and had to be educated, a smallish house was

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bought not far from Grechesky Street and near the residence of the Lustich family on the Gubernatorski corner. Materially A. M. was helped by the fact that he began to manage the estate of Skirmunt. Skirmunt was an almost legendary miser, but the wealthiest owner in the steppes, living completely alone in his corner of the Perekozhny steppes. When he died without a will, his heir appeared to be a young officer in one of the Capital regiments and his two sisters. They had never met the provider of their inheritance and had not the slightest wish to dedicate themselves to agriculture. The young officer immediately resigned, and dedicated himself to other matters. He was a cultured man ‘progressive’ as we said at that time, and enjoyed the idea of serving Russia by publishing good books. For regulating the inheritance and for judicial reasons, he needed a lawyer in the Crimea, and M. M. Schlee was recommended to him. They became great friends, and when Skirmunt began to search for a manager for his estates, M. M. recommended his brother Aleksander to him. Soon both brothers began to see Skirmunt not only as a client, but as a truly good person, who wanted to do a good deed with the money which he so unexpectedly inherited, and they honestly and consciensciously helped him. Farmers lived on Skirmunt’s estates – renters – and the new landlord and his manager began to build houses for them, and a school and began to help them to improve their households. Unfortunately, Skirmunt’s publishing business turned out to be not profitable, that is, the owner did not hunt for profit and published books which did not sell on the market, and the whole business turned into a loss, not tenable for Skirmunt. The brothers Schlee tried to convince S. to shorten his range, but without success, and finally the estates were sold. But this position not only played a material role in the life of A.M. Due to his managerial duties he often had to travel to the Perekopsky region, had to be in Simferopol more often and stay longer, and travel to see Skirmunt in Moscow, where S. lived (during one of those visits he went for 3 days to Petersburg. I was able to get tickets for a concert by Yaltseva, who was in great favor at that time. A.M. sat on the stage and when Yaltseva, after having sung, passed by him, he, in his full height, so convincingly said “bravo”, that she stopped and involuntarily raised her eyes to the so evidently delighted giant). At that time he realized that the estates proceeded so well that they did not require his constant presence, but it

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was clear to us that he already was a little bored and tired of such a small enterprise, and he thought he could do more. And this is where the second, much more interesting part of A.M.’s life and work began. He moved to town and was elected a member of the City Council, which he remained until 1920. He immediately became the director of the business-oriented aspects of his town and market, and into this he poured all his wonderful characteristics: knowledge, honesty, industriousness, steadfastness, and practicality. Every day early in the morning one could see his tall, wide-shouldered figure, walking stick in hand, walking among the crowd, smiling. Everyone knew him, everyone admired him, everyone believed him and everyone feared him when something was wrong. And in a few years our market was not recognizable. The bazaar’s pavement, whose holes caused me so many problems in my childhood and which I described earlier, had been repaired before his tenure, I believe. But all the overhangs, comfortable, light and even pretty, under which huge amounts of apricots, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, other vegetables and watermelons were displayed, were built during his tenure; A.M. was in charge of all matters connected with the market: the routines on the days of deliveries, sales directly from the transports, the altercations with the middle-men who constituted a united evil for the sellers – the farmers – as well as the buyers, overseeing the dairy products, the sanitary supervision of the sale of meats and fishes, fights with cheaters concerning weights and measures, keeping the bazaar and stores clean, and finally, collecting the city’s receipts in all that noisy and turbulent, a variety of languages speaking, ungrammatical, helpless and often sly, multitude. And he accomplished all this masterfully. The merchants knew him, and therefore obeyed him without noise and yelling and disorder. But he also knew and even loved his bazaar clients, was always fair and vigorously protected their interests if the Council ever tried to infringe on their activities. The Council also knew and trusted A M. and they all understood that he had thought about these matters more than any of them, and that they only had to put the stamp of approval on his decisions. Meanwhile A.M.’s business seemed so small and unimportant - the bazaar – turned out to be the main financial nerve in our small and non-mercantile town, and from the receipts the town obtained most of the money which was used to govern the town, and for building a

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school, hospital, etc. And A.M. perfectly understood his role in this, and I will never forget how he once said to me: “you know, you walk and keep thinking, where else could one levy taxes, I think I would tax my own father for everything I could - a bourgeois and capitalist!” Well, after this you can decide did this phrase come from a bloodsucker-bourgeois, estate owner and capitalist or inveterate socialist!

As a person, A.M. is much less clear to me than as a public activist. His natural silence during personal interactions was almost secretive – he never spoke about his plans, we never knew what went on in his soul. Compared to him, Aunt Masha was almost an exhibitionist: whenever something really upset her strongly, she quickly and excitedly became outraged, as we used to say: to scold and to quiet down only when she had enumerated all her indignations. I do not remember a single such outburst from A.M. His maximum expression of displeasure was visible in the astounded look and an involuntary lifting of the shoulders. After that he would somehow helplessly look at the people who were present as if to ask whether they also understood the incorrectness of what was being said or done. He himself did not quarrel, was not loudly outraged but sometimes, later, he would make a venomous remark concerning the difference of opinion which had occurred. And in the council meetings (for many years A.M. was the chairman of the Simferopol region after the death of F.M. Schlee) and in the city duma, he seldom made comments and his reports were of the shortest possible length. In the summer of 1911 we went together to Karlsbad, where A.M.had already gone every year for many years for curing his diabetes, we saw each other every day and the whole day, but this did not bring our souls closer, and I did not get the chance to even look into his soul. I do not know if even his wife Olga Onufrievna knew his soul. She was a wonderfully kind Russian person with all the good and bad attributes. Having received a satisfactory education, she very quickly became a mother and housewife, and this she remained to the end of her life. This is of course not surprising if one imagines the many monotonous years of her life which she spent in a Crimean village in the steppes, especially in Chebatark, far removed from even such a lowly place as Simferopol. There was little money, the children arrived one after the

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other, the servants came from simple and nice but totally untrained villagers who were quite unused to even the simplest household amenities; one of whom, for example, was drying a wine glass and broke its top from its bottom and brought it to the mistress of the house and quite seriously said: “it became unscrewed”. They all had to be trained, and she herself needed to be the cook and the nanny. With a husband such as A.M. she did not even need to enter into the larger business, that is, the dairy business, or to work in the garden; there A.M. himself gave the instructions, and even the simplest villager understood better than the city-bred mistress, and slowly, O.O. used her mind only for the family and the kitchen. She loved the children tenderly, especially the daughter Verochka, and was a first-class housewife. The food in her house was always totally delicious and abundant, so much so that a new guest somehow even would surreptitiously begin to look around the table at all the guests and not understand for whom all the food had been prepared. But we, the guests, did not lack appetite, and especially after the four sons had grown up somewhat, a good half of the prepared food was happily eaten. But I am convinced that if it was not half, then a third was left over. I must add here that in all our families only O.O. kept the old Russian custom of sending food to the prison during holidays to give to the arrested people, and it was her alone whom the monks of the Toplov monastery which lay opposite their house, greeted. O.O. was bored in our midst. Being busier than our other ladies, and not finding anyone as interested in culinary and housewifely matters as she was, she apathetically listened to the talk about political or local themes, or about matters in the ladies’ club, of which she did not want to be a member, and would quietly nod off . Soon, however, it became evident that this nodding off was not healthy and was due to obesity of the heart. Poor O.O. began to fall asleep sitting at the table among noisy guests. In the end she developed leukemia, and in the summer of 16’ she died (8.3.16.) with a quick death that nobody had expected. A.M. had gone to the baths, as usual, only this time to the Caucasus, and his exact address was not known yet. They randomly sent him several telegrams. A.M. came home unexpectedly and without having spoken to anyone, and the first thing he saw was the lid of the coffin.

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After O.O.’s death troubled years followed. New housekeepers appeared in the house, daughters-in-law, grandchildren. Life seemed to have been renewed. A.M. remained the same, but we, the older generation were home less often. There was only one more very vociferous meeting of the family during the civil war, where the young people already were dominant, and we were lost among them. A.M. left with the Wrangel emigration. He was to go to Bulgaria the next day, with the family of his son Shura, and Vera. We only met once and did not correspond with each other. He died 11.18. 1938 in a nursing home for Russians, in Shipknys, and was buried there. It has remained a constant question for me, how the practical and industrious A.M. and his less talented son, could not have succeeded better in Bulgaria, because they had not so small an amount of money, in German money which at that point had not yet lost its value, with them. When I asked A.A. about this when we met here, he declined to answer. Of course this interested me only from a psychological aspect, and I did not insist further. But according to their stories, for a long time they simply lived in poverty in Bulgaria. A.A. was a simple laborer and A.M. a night watchman.

Children: 1. Volodja was born 7.25.1888. From 1910-1913 he studied at the Engineering Academy in Wiesmar on the Baltic Sea, then was mobilized. Was married in the year 1916 to Nina Mikhailovna Boguslavski; in the year ‘17, July 12 a son, Igor, was born. Volodja and his family stayed in the Crimea and he served in various establishments. After the death of his wife (9.3.38), he married Anna Borisovna Beletskoi ( they had met through her former husband, Tsellarius). In ‘44 he came to Germany with his wife and her daughter. Igor remained in the Crimea, worked as a teacher in a settlement; was married to Nadezhda Demenkov; in March ‘42 had a son, Yuri. 2. Nikolai, was born 12.5. 1889, studied at the Sorbonne, but was called to military service, also remained in the Crimea, and worked there until the year 1930. When he was “cleared out” as a foreign element, he went to Chabarovsk, from there to the Kuban (Armenia), from there to Saratov, where he lived with his wife Tsetsilia Martylovna Schnaider, granddaughter of Nikol. Sevast., the last news from him were in ‘41; he was

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a common laborer, worked in an agricultural union, and his brother Serjezha told me that Kolja was highly appreciated. 3. Aleksander was born 3.7.1892, studied in the Natural Studies department in Moscow but did not finish, that is, he was drafted. He married Aleksandra Mitrofanovna Tich; on 10.22.’17 a son, Georgi was born. He left during the Wrangel evacuation and lived with his father in a village in Bulgaria. In the end he established himself very well and owned a well-attended restaurant. After the beginning of the war with Russia he came to Germany and became a German citizen. From 1943-44 he worked in Melitopolis, now he is working in Nuremberg. 4. Michail was born 2.1.1897, studied at the Imperial Moscow Technical Institute, but did not finish, that is, he was drafted. He finished the Odessa Artillery Institute, was shot to death on 11.20.1920. 5. Vera, was born 9.4.1902, left with her father and brother. In Varna she married a Greek industrialist, Siderakis. Children Olga, Perikl, Angel, Georgi. Lives in Salonika. The son Perikl came to Vienna and is working there. 6. Matveii Matveevich, Matja, as everyone called him, was the youngest member of the Schlee family, and was born, I think, around the year 1862. All Schlees could be divided into two groups: the silent and the talkative ones: Franz, Maria and Aleksander belonged to the first one, Tsetsilia, Ivan and Matvei – to the second group; Ferdinand and our mother stood in the middle, but closer to the first one. To say about Matja that he was talkative was to say too little. He was unusually expansive and full of life; wherever he was, there always was gaiety and noise, he bickered amiably with everyone, especially with Aunt Tsilia; he knew how to tell anecdotes – Jewish or Armenian - , mimicked the Swabian dialect of some rustic relative, sang with a smallish but true tenor some excerpt or other from an opera or love-song or could tell a fresh tale from his own life, so that everybody fell over with laughter. He was smaller and thinner than his brothers, and his hair and beard more brown ( all Schlees were reddish, the men had lighter-colored hair), a hooked nose, and with his liveliness and vivacity he could easily have passed for a Jew. He was aware of this himself and made fun of himself, saying: “and who knows, perhaps we really originate from kikes?” The brothers

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and Aunt Tsilia would answer: “perhaps that is why you have such kikish nerve!” And he himself would almost lose his breath from laughing: “yesterday I was at the train station and was sitting on a bench next to an old Jew, and suddenly he began to tell me something quickly, quickly, in Jewish. Of course I understood nothing; finally I said “wus”? (in jiddish: what?) I think that our grandfatherly comrade traveler constructed my face properly! The old man became more lively and spoke even faster. So I said to him “what do you want from me? I do not understand a single word of what you say.” The old man immediately was dumbfounded, became frightened, looked at me and almost ran away.” Jokes about Jewish origins were constant. But during the time of the American-Spanish war the name of the American Admiral Schlee often began to appear in a laudatory manner in the newspapers. During one of Aunt Tsilia’s afternoon coffees is was unanimously decided that such a famous family could of course be of Jewish origins. – After finishing high school, M.M. began to study law at the university in Moscow. This coincided with the reform and new university regulations in 1884. The courses of M.M. were the last which did not yet have to conform to the new system. M.M. did not belong to the new type of student groups, and then, and also later, was not very interested in politics. But he loved the freedom of student life, had many friends and happily told of his life in Moscow. Of course I was at that time too small to remember his stories, but by chance that loud disgust with which Uncle Matja told his brothers and sisters how angry he was when his name at the university was written as: Matias Matiasovich Schlee, remained in my memory. What kind of Matias Matiasovich am I? I am Matvei Matveevich Schlee - and he immediately went to inform some higher official who sharply answered him that the names were copied from lists, and in the lists of students that is how he was called. I do not know why that episode remained in my memory and I do not remember how this was resolved, and not how the brothers and sisters reacted to this. This would be of interest now, because the contemporary Schlees cannot at all decide whether they are Russians or Germans. Matja spent his summer vacations at his brothers and sisters in turn, and everywhere was a welcomed guest. Only once did they teach him a lesson in guile, when it became evident that he told each sister that her coffee was the best and reminded him of their

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mother’s coffee, that is, our grandmother’s. As it was, all the sisters competed with each other to make the coffee most liked by the family. “We know you, we know you” they said to him when he began to praise one dish or another of the lady of the house. After finishing the university, M.M. was a judge in Sevastopol for quite a long time, and there he caught a cold and became ill with tuberculosis. Maria Matveevna took him to a sanatorium in the mountains, where he stayed for quite a long while, improved but not totally. In Sevastopol he also found his sister-in-law – Maria Ferdinandovna Kist, the niece of Wilgelm and Ferdinanda Osipovna Lustich. This was probably in 1890 or 1891. We became acquainted with her and her younger sister Zhenja/Evgenia in Bulganak at Aunt Masha’s where he came to visit for a few days, and we, my brother Serjezha and I often came to Aunt Masha to help her weigh and turn over quinine powders, etc., which was a big and boring job for her. Soon they married and moved to live in Simferopol, where M. M. worked in the judicial department. This marriage caused great agitation in the close family. M.M.’s tuberculosis was healed, but the danger remained. His bride was so skinny, that this caused many suspicions and also worry about the danger to future progeny. But the young people themselves were happy, merry and without problems. The unquestioned decency of the young lawyer, his kind social character and the good name of his older brothers soon provided him with a good clientele and it seemed to him that life had smiled at him. The young people were able to do well for themselves right away. They rented the lower floor of the large baronial house of the Rudzheviches with a large but neglected garden, which dropped down to the “river” Salgir; they furnished it nicely and waited for clients. That year I was finishing high school and was with them often. I remember a small, comical episode. In that house there was one rarity, and it was used to denote the aristocracy of its owner: bells at the front door. The mechanical bell was defective due to old age, and one had to pay close attention to catch the distinctive ringing of the bell. At one time, in the evening, the bell rang, and automatically everyone thought: a client! And someone really came into the study. He was one of the first, and everyone was understandably excited, because everyone else present was a member of the family. The visit lasted a while – evidently it was a complicated and difficult situation, but also one that promised much. Finally

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M.M., accompanied the client out, and with much laughter burst into the dining room. “Just imagine!”, and with his usual exuberance, Uncle Matja described to us how he, as well as the client did not right away speak of the business, but finally it turned out that the visitor was not a client at all, but a bankrupt young actor who appealed to the “famous attorney, respected by everyone, in his own gorgeous study” in order to ask for help with departing Russia. When the situation on both sides was clarified, the young attorney told him in a friendly way about the difficulty for everyone without exception of obtaining one’s success as a beginner, and the “client” left.

However, the domicile turned out to be not very comfortable, the garden was damp, and the young Schlees took the opportunity to move to a new apartment on Dvoransky Street in the private mansion bought by A.D. Lustich, as soon as possible. At that time I already was at the university, and we saw each other only during vacations. The apartment was smaller, but bright, sunny and comfortable, and in the small room by the entrance sat an amazingly quiet and reticent scribe, a young man with the strange name of “Knigov” and copied letters for hours on end. From this alone one could see that the young lawyer’s business was growing, but there also were other signs of this. And again my memory paints a beautiful summer evening for me. We are peacefully drinking tea in the dining room, and in the small room Knigov is as quietly as a mouse rustling with papers, when suddenly the bell rings: M.M. has returned from Feodosia. He came home happily, but that was not all – he beamed so strongly that even the calmest person could not help but be interested to know what had happened. And very ceremoniously he opened two packages, and took out ...two paintings by Aivazovsky.***** Think of it – two real Aivazovskys, bought from him personally ! To this day I remember the price: 200 rubles for each small picture. Each picture was about half the size of this sheet of paper, and a wide golden frame made it seem larger. Dear, eternally enthusiastic Uncle Matja! I do not know the fate of these pictures, but his shining eyes still appear before me, and that is truly better and worth more than all paintings, even Aivasofsky’s. And that is how he has remained in my memory. I remember how warmly he welcomed me when I had just finished my law studies, how

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often, we debated hotly with each other – I, of course, only theoretically, he already with a large practice, how he urged me to become a lawyer, but also spoke of the unpleasant parts of this profession. His business kept getting better. Soon he obtained an important position and around 1900 or 1901 he built himself a gorgeous 2-story house on the best street (at that time, Lazarevsky). How sincerely happy he was when the façade which he had chosen for the house (a copy, of course), was mentioned in the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Broigaz and Efron among the examples of beautiful houses. He was so happy about this mainly because it was an affirmation of his good taste. But our poor Uncle Matja did not live long in his house. He died in the year 1903 or 04; as all consumptives, he did not suspect his condition. On the day of his death he said to my mother: “cook for me, Varja, gebrannte Mehlsuppe like our mother used to, they do not know how” and even ate one or two spoonfuls.

The health of Maria Ferdinandova turned out to be stronger. Remaining a widow with two children, still very small, she did not falter and took her fate and that of her children into her able hands. It is true that her material position, and being the owner of a beautiful house and co-owner of the best and successful restaurant “Kist” in Sevastopol, was a very good thing, but she still had to take care of the children and raise them. For several years she continued to live in Simferopol, then moved to Petersburg and during the summers managed the restaurant after the death of her brother. We always remained good friends with her and I sincerely loved and love this kind and life-happy person. In 1919 she went to Athens and later we met in Paris and I do not know who had it worse, she or we. When our ship on which we left for Marseille came to Piraeus she came to see us and brought food and some fruit. From Paris she and her son came to America with the Kuznetsovoi Troupe, he as secretary and she as costume designer. At first life was difficult for them, but later they opened a modern boutique – and became fantastically wealthy. I hope that even now Maria Ferdinandova is alive and well.

These Schlees had two children; Georgi and Ksenia. I remember them when they

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were very small, after that we saw little of them in Petersburg, then I saw Ksenia in Anapa – just as thin, but evidently also very strong, as when she carried her son, a boy of 3 or 4 on her back, like her mother, and I thought with horror that any minute this woman will collapse; later I saw George in Sevastopol during the Wrangel time, and finally, in Munich, where he was coming through one day for some American business. It is difficult to write about people about whom you know so little. I can only say that M.F. and Georgi helped us very much when Andre went to and established himself in America. Georgi Matveevich is married, but in an open marriage. He is married to Valentina Nikolaevna Sanin, born May 1, 1904. He has no children. Ksenia’s husband was a marine officer, Anatoly Ivanovich Kalljukin. He died. They had no children.

6. My mother

Our mother belonged to the type of people for whose portrait one did not need oil paints. This was a simple, person, also modest in her looks, and with a character of which God should give us more. Not tall, in middle age leaning to fullness, with dark brown hair which turned gray early and with a very kind straight face with merry, observant gray eyes; she had nothing typically German in her exterior looks. Her health was amazing – she lived to deep old age, and I never remember her being seriously ill; we, all of her children, owe her our own good health, I believe. It is true that she did not jeopardize her health with any experiments. All of us sinned with excesses of various kinds and only limited ourselves when our organisms began to protest and our doctor said: do not eat, do not drink, etc. Mother was somehow organically moderate. Not only did she never drink or smoke, but was also moderate and not demanding when she ate. However tasty this or that dish was, however seldom it appeared, Mama ate only a little. She loved to cook well, but only for others, and never for herself personally. Her favorite food was coffee. It was enough to be home, even if it was only one of us, and

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she would prepare our usual meal for us. When Mother was alone, and the meal was being prepared for the servants, Mama would eat the same thing, or whatever was available – and drank her coffee. But she liked good coffee and did not spare money to buy quality and quantity. With her coffee she liked good cream, butter and cheese. I am writing these details because at that time such moderation among the excesses which occurred in all colonisits’ houses, still seems to me to be a special characteristics of self-control and natural intelligence. Mother somehow felt all the necessities of nutritional hygiene. But at that time Mother’s moderation made us angry, even though she never inflicted her habits even on us, her children. On the contrary, she knew perfectly well what we especially liked, and loved to present each one with the special dish he liked best, and when we asked: “Mama, would you like some?” the answer always was: “no, I am not hungry.” And this was not pedagogy, discipline or laziness – it was the truth and we knew this, and this made us angry. Why did we want to eat and she did not? Mama’s character was astounding. Always even-tempered, she could be energetic, demanding and insistant, but did this softly and quietly. Everything she undertook, she did exemplarily, and demanded the same from others. And here also she seemed to have some kind of internal regulator which directed her endless energy. I still remember a time when we had only one servant and Mama herself had to cook and of course help clean the house, iron and fold the laundry, etc. and even wash the floors. But these daily chores did not lead her to become the usual housewife. She cooked perfectly, tasty and economically, she chose the cuts of meat and no butcher dared to substitute one piece of meat for another! But she was bored when other housewives spoke about recipes or talked about how this or that should be cooked. Our house always was clean, but cleanliness did not become a cult, and not all energy and time was used up for this by the housewife. I remember that once Serjezha, already after his marriage, said to her: “you know, Mama, in their house (his wife’s) there is no dust, not even on the tops of the closets.” These words evidently stung Mama, but she only said: “Not everyone has so much time that they can wipe the dust from the tops of the closets every day.” She of course did not have enough time for this, she had so much work outside the house and she did not hide the fact that these

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little jobs bored her. She did them only as much as necessary. It was unavoidable; she was interested in working in her garden, in the dairy, and for this there were no limits to her energy. She could do all the work herself, instruct others, learned through practice what was new to her, understood perfectly the basics of the problem and then continued with such knowledge and confidence that she instilled total attention and obedience from all the workers. Her advice or directives always were well-considered and practical, people understood this and did not see a commanding owner, but a co-worker who herself did not mind doing the same work when she was able to, but often had more experience and always accepted advice. Her youth, full of hard work, the early years of her marriage without means, developed in her an understanding of physical labor and a working person, which was lacking in Father and in all of us. Therefore she came closer to the workers and understood them better. She strongly saw to cleanliness and order in the laborers’ kitchen and their living quarters, inspected the dishes used for food and harshly scolded the cook if she found them not clean enough, called the worker into the house and gave him a glass of wine or vodka if he worked especially hard, a glass of vodka with pepper if he said that his stomach hurt, she knew what was lacking in this or that family of a permanent worker and remembered them all. When it was necessary, she could scold but she did this so inoffensively and only then, when the person himself understood his misdeed, and nobody ever was offended by her words.

And in addition to all that, she was full of attention and love for us, her children, and again, not with some cloying sentimental love, but actual one, but she also was demanding. I have already said that we feared her more than Father. Father seldom was angry with us, it would have had to be an extraordinary misdeed so that he would have paid attention to it. But then he hollered and became so heated that we became frightened and we would long remember the incident. It was like the eruption of a volcano after which followed a long silence. Mother noticed much more and more often, yelled and sometimes even spanked us, but much more consistently insisted on her demands. The most amazing incidents occurred in the children’s room when it had

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been decided to give us castor oil and this was not seldom the case, because in our house there existed the conviction that the most common and clean childhood disease was definitely caused by the stomach. Nowadays stomachs and children battle much less frequently. Some evil genie convinced Mother that the best way to administer castor oil is in hot coffee. I have met this conviction also in other places, but strenuously dispute it. Hot coffee greatly increases the already repugnant smell of castor oil and I, for example, began to feel nauseous already at that moment, when the cup with the disgusting contents was brought into the room. In addition, the amount of liquid one had to swallow two- or four-fold, one could not do it in one swallow, and the increased amount of hot coffee which one had to swallow clung to the walls of the glass so strongly that one could not get rid of the taste with any jam eaten later, even with the raspberry jam which always followed the procedure. Thus, when the patient was condemned to this horrible drink and Mother went to make the necessary preparations, Father always came and tried to convince the sick child to undergo the procedure without complaint, even saying that he himself could not stand castor oil but that there were moments when it was unavoidable. The poor patient listened to these assertions rather skeptically, already knowing what would happen later. And in the doors of the room Mother appeared, quickly carrying the cup with the terrible hot mixture and behind her someone with the life-saving raspberry jam, and our father almost ran from the room, thinking equally with sympathy of the one condemned to the misery and of his own distaste of castor oil and its smell. Mother would say: “come, my little child,” coming closer to the bed. The “little child” would courageously raise itself up, open its mouth, and often would not be able to control itself and turn away at the same second when the cup was brought close to its mouth. Then Mama became angry, not jokingly – she knew her children’s love for castor oil, and therefore the dish with the raspberry jam needed to be held by somebody else, that is, Mother needed one free hand – she would take the head of the child and angrily shout: “drink, drink immediately!” At this point the unfortunate had no more choice, and shaking with distaste and fright at the same time, he began to swallow the disgusting mixture. Began – but sometimes did not finish, sometimes drank it to the end and even ate the life-saving jam and fell onto the pillow

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with exhaustion, but nevertheless jumped up after a few seconds – Mama made a terrible face, yelled: “do not dare, do not dare!” but nothing helped and the outraged stomach returned everything that had been put into it with so much trouble.....There followed a tragic silence, Father’s suffering face appeared at the door, and the cured patient pleadingly looked at Mother. But she responded with a strict voice: “lie down and rest, and later you will take it again.” And the whole procedure was repeated, and the next day the patient already was well, and that same angry mother, with a face very different from yesterday, would bring him rice soup with chicken in a special small soup bowl, and herself feed yesterday’s suffering child. But childhood diseases did not always progress so turbulently and successfully. Sometimes the castor oil did not help, the temperature did not fall, the doctor would begin to come every day, the head hurt, it was difficult to breathe, at night the patient would turn and wake up often. No matter how many times the child would wake up, Mama was always there, near it. She sat at the foot of his bed, in the dim night light her bed jacket shimmered white, and her head barely rose above her folded hands. It was enough to move, and she came, touched your head, changed the compress, gave you the medicine, a drink or else poured you something with a spoon which made it easier to breathe, and one could go back to sleep again. And all this was done tenderly, heart-felt, knowing all of the patient’s wishes in advance. Mother never lost her head and did not break into complaints and lamentations, nothing was too difficult for her. I remember that once I was brought from the village with a high temperature. The house was totally empty during the summer, and for some reason the two of us were there alone. My head was burning and painful, ice was nowhere to be had – there were such times in Simferopol – and poor Mama kept running downstairs for fresh water, which used to warm up quickly in the hot Crimean summer nights, and changed my compress every five minutes, throwing the wet towels behind the window in order to lower their temperatures even a little bit. I remember how Edja fell ill with typhoid when he was six years old. The case was very severe, for a whole week his temperature stayed above 104 F. degrees, and during his whole illness only a nurse and Mother took care of him. But our Mama was not only an excellent nurse. As a thoughtful and intelligent observer she learned from her patients,

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and the deeply clever manner of the Russian versus the German doctor to explain to the patient and his family the nature of this or that medication and its effect, helped her to gain much important medical knowledge throughout her life. And she developed within herself a sort of instinct but not “premonition” or nervous “foresight” but perhaps this was a result of her knowledge – she summarized the facts of what was known. I believed in this instinct all my life and was very, very glad when she said that this was not terrible, but became anxious when she kept silent and only shook her head, even though the physician reassured us. Many years passed, Serjezha already was a doctor himself, married, I finished the university and lived with them. When Serjezhka was born (9.25.1895) all three of us took care of him. Soon it turned out that the mother did not have enough milk and the baby needed additional food using the “Soislet” method. Nowadays this has been forgotten, but then it was the last word of scientific knowledge, and I was given the task. I fulfilled this duty with all the joy of a young uncle and god- father. I made the mixture with pharmaceutical precision, observed the boiling and sterilizing with astronomical precision, washed the dishes chemically clean. But our Serjezhka gradually began to decline, to scream, to scream until it became unendurable. The doctor was called – my brother was an intern in the clinic and his superior was also the director of the children’s clinic. The doctor examined our procedures and equipment and approved the feeding of the mixture – in other words, everything all was in order, but Serjezhka screamed and screamed. The doctor did not know the cause of this and finally called Professor Filatov – with the same result. All this time our letters home of course expressed our concern and helplessness. One wonderful day, a telegram arrived unexpectedly and after it Mama herself came. She silently listened to all our stories, for a day or two observed our method of nourishing and finally declared: “O you learned fools. Let me feed the baby.” All of our science, the Soislet method, - all was put up-side-down, but after two nights Serjezhka began to gain weight and stopped screaming. He simply had been hungry – evidently all scientific norms had not been written for him, and in later years he demonstrated his ability to eat tremendous amounts of food. Our own children we did not feed by the Soislet method, Andre, like Serjezhka loved to eat. But then he was born and raised in

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the same town where his grandmother lived!

Undoubtedly a great natural mind and observation helped our mother to overcome the complete absence of an education. She was born and raised at a time when her parents could not spend much for an education of the children, and therefore the two oldest: Ferdinand and Varja, went to the German elementary school near the Simferopol Lutheran church. Why Lutheran? Very simple. In Simferopol was a Luth. Church but there was no permanent minister, and how it always was done in minister- less evangelical colonies, there was a permanent teacher who on Sundays read the gospel to the parishioners. Therefore the Lutherans had a school to which German Catholics also went. After he finished school, Ferdinand, as I have already written, was sent to a boarding high school but Varja began housekeeping work – more and more children were born into the family, and therefore what was left for a whole lifetime was what was learned in elementary school, where at that time there were no “Russification” regulations of the year 1872, and children were not taught to read or write in Russian. In this way our poor mother spent her lifespan, without reading and writing Russian and how much anger this caused in her life, and in what self-worth this situation put her! In her youth, when she worked without resting her hands, she probably did not feel this so much, but in our youth, when we all around her were reading and discussing what we had read, when she would have had the leisure for reading, she had to be satisfied with reading German, from which she had spiritually moved away completely. But it would be an exaggeration to say that she longed for literature, for books. She was too lively and vital, her spirit was too full of love for her work and interests in it, for there to develop an emptiness which would have to be filled even with the beautiful and lofty, in the form of literature. Books evidently did not satisfy her as guide in her life – but all gardening books and recipes we, or Father who did not have the patience or real interest, had to read to her. Her inability to write in Russian became especially difficult when we began to travel far away to the university – all correspondence between us was done by Father, and only seldom a little piece of paper on which Mother wrote something in German, was inserted into the envelope. She only wrote little notes about

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household concerns to herself, and even that was a chore for her. My kind, kind Mama! If my archive will ever come to Munich, I will definitely add one of her last little notes, already sent here, in which she almost apologizes that she could not help us with anything, because nothing had been left to her herself, and she had had to sell everything in order not to die of hunger. Her letters were like that all her life.They were not long, spoke of necessary things, of that which was interesting to her and her correspondent, there were not many tender words, but true love and connectedness.

This inner richness of energy and interest in life did lead one not to notice that deficiency of education of our mother. But she herself realized this deficiency better than all of us and therefore she was very reticent about questions where this was noticeable. In our noisy and endless intellectual debates about all kinds of themes, she avoided to take part but listened with interest, but always was quiet, and only when we, at the end of the arguments asked for her thoughts, she quietly would give her opinion. And it was clear that she deliberated perfectly well in our debates, weighed them, considered their merits, and then had her definite opinions. We treasured her opinions very much and I honestly dare say that I did not, during our life together, make a single step in whatever area that was, without discussing it with our simple, so little-read and- educated mother. And these soulful discussions she began with a modest phrase: “I do not know, Volja, what to say to you, but I think...... ” and her eyes looked just as concerned as when she used to sit by our bed during the times of our illnesses.

Was our mother a German? Yes, and it would have never occurred to any one of us to dispute this. But if abroad someone were to ask her what she was, it would not occur to her not to say “Russian”. She was a Russian German. She was abroad twice – in Germany and in Switzerland. Both times she returned enchanted with the sights, but from her stories one could not detect any doubts about where she was at home. Her home was in Russia, over there she was a guest. I remember that one summer a traveling musician – a German - came to our village. Among others, he sang a popular song “Schon ist die Jugend”. Evidently the memories of her youth and childhood

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affected Mama especially strongly, and she simply sat down on the steps and listened to this unmemorable song, obviously quite moved. Later she fed the musician and gave him some money, so that he appeared soon again and sang “Schon ist die Jugend” for her. When in the years 1915 and ’16 we received about 20 Slovakian and Austrian- German prisoners of war, Mother attempted to improve their condition as much as possible, spoke German to those who knew that language and altogether did not hide at all that she was of German origin. But again it did not occur to any one of us to question on which side the sympathy of our mother lay in this war. She was irrevocably Russian, even though she was born to German parents. But she was born – in Russia! Our mother’s character was simple and open. She loved and understood a joke, could laugh merrily, she could be and was strict with the servants, but she was not mean. We had many workers in the garden and among them there were some unpleasant and unintelligent ones, but I do not ever remember a case where Mother would hit or push one of them. In her youth she very much loved to dance and told us that when she arrived at weddings in Bulganak, she danced for 3 days and danced through the soles of her slippers. As opposed to her husband, she loved and knew how to play cards, but not whist, which bored her. During early fall evenings we used to play “65” for hours, and she enjoyed this very much. She sewed all of her underwear and also ours, herself, and mended everything by hand, and did not like any “frills”, and sincerely was perplexed where to put the various scarves and handkerchiefs given to her by her daughters-in-law and later, granddaughters. Before we had the village, she loved indoor flowers, and our glass hallway in the old house was filled with flowers. There one summer passion flower vine bloomed, which, do you remember? –- wound itself around the stairs on the terrace in our winter garden in Chadjijevka and on which these flowers “Passion of Christ” bloomed sometimes ten at one time.

7. Our parents. I. House in the city.

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The marriage of our parents caused great agitation also in the family of the bridegroom, where it was deemed improper for the youngest brother to marry before the oldest one, and in the family of the bride, whose mother attempted to persuade her daughter not to enter into the family spoiled by wealth but then impecunious, and in the Armenian circles, hurt by the fact that one of its most prominent members would marry a German, as if there were not enough Armenian girls, something which had never happened in Armenian circles before. But the young people stood their ground, and on April 4, 1866 was their wedding. Of course the bride’s mother had been right: the groom’s family had been for a long time and now was completely broke, but all the more festively and expensively the wedding of the son of Sergei Ivanovich Nalbandov had to be celebrated. The carriage still existed, and it was hitched for this celebration, the road from the entry to the steps of the church was decorated with red boughs, and a watchman stood in front of the church during the festive occasion. The groom wore a top hat – I am totally convinced that he himself would never have gone to such a degree of “good etiquette”, because during any other occasions of life he never wore a top hat again, and the said top hat stayed in a green box with the French name of the manufacturer on it, on Father’s dresser, and was later moved to the closet where we put older clothes, but we enjoyed looking at the elegant top hat before putting it back into its box. Of course the whole wedding was celebrated in the style of the top hat, due to which the mood of the young husband, who was in charge of the family’s finances, was not particularly happy. But – noblesse oblige – so said and thought his close relatives. After all, he was a Nalbandov.

As I have written before, during the first year, before the division,the young people lived in the large house, in the summers they went to Aratuk. The division occurred in the year 1867, and it was decided to move to the house inherited from the father. But it was in a very unsavory condition. From the corner of Fontansky Street up to Sevastopolsky Street were low Tatar-type buildings, which housed: bakers, a cheap eating place, and a coffee house. Behind the gate rose a 2 ½ story house with an exit

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to the second story in the middle and two smallish stores, one on each side of the side of the exit. In the first store, still before my father’s birth, was the leather business of David Artemovich Zakiev, in the second was the manufacturing store of Sharobero which was the beginning of the Armenian Row. The huge courtyard behind this front of the building was an abandoned lot at the back of which was the fowl and sheep bath. The dirt and smell of these were nearly unbearable my mother told me, and in the summer millions of flies plagued the lives of people. But the former “nest” of the Nalbandovs, Grandfather’s apartment, left much to be desired. It was a row of rooms, and it was difficult to understand how the numerous members of Grandfather’s family did not only live there, but constantly entertained guests. It is true that there was a “hall” and a study, but in Grandfather’s time instead of a dining room were three rooms, and instead of a children’s room there was a kitchen and more little rooms. I do not know whether our parents began a renovation even before they moved in, or if they lived in the old apartment in the beginning, but in any case they quickly remodeled it, and included an addition. Father added a new part to the house which contained the kitchen, new stairs to the yard, a new glass hallway which was not heated. Then on the side a bathroom was attached, of course unheated and without running water and how unpleasant it was, especially in cold weather and in the evenings, to run there through the cold hallway. This was also the only way to have contact with the kitchen and many times poor Mama, if she had stood at the hot stove for a long time, caught a cold after she walked that long way. Wood and water also had to be brought from below on steep, dark stairs and it was only later that a pump was installed, but it froze not that infrequently because the passage was so cold.

Under such condition the value of the house could not be large, Father’s enterprises, as I have written before, were not very successful, and the young couple understood that their property had to be put in order by any means whatsoever. The land around the house was very busy and it had to be developed. And all their energy now centered on that. The yard was paved, along its whole width horse stalls and several rooms for travelers and several warehouses were added, and a Crimean

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hostelry arose. Of great help were the five thousand – inheritance of Mother – “when it was very difficult I went to my mother and asked her to give me what she could from my inheritance” Mother told us. Every penny spent of course increased the income, and living was not expensive. Life nevertheless was difficult. One year after the wedding, on March 10, 1867, a daughter was born, and again a little after a year, August 26, 1868 – a son. “We only had one servant – an Estonian girl, Tonja” Mama remembered. “ I had to carry water and fire wood myself, go to the market, cook and look after the children. When Serjezha was born, I was so thin that the doctors were afraid that I will end up with tuberculosis, and demanded that I do not nurse the boy myself. But I could not decide to give him to a wet nurse and continued to nurse him myself. Well, somehow all this worked out, and I improved.” Several years passed. The family’s situation improved so much that Father decided on a larger building – to build a one- story house on the Fontansky Street – and this became the Crimean hostelry. During its building, an unpleasant incident occurred: Father quarreled with someone, - and brought some stones inside himself, and strained himself. This pain tortured him for the rest of his life. Eleven months passed – and a new misfortune developed: after childhood paralysis, both of my legs remained paralyzed. How much worry and anxiety, how many efforts and expenses this illness caused it is not difficult to understand. No matter how many doctors, how many measures were tried – all was in vain. The Turkish war was near, and the doctors suggested to take the boy to Petersburg and show him to a specialist. “We put you onto a train, and in one station had to let the Emperor’s train pass; the Emperor was going to Kishinev to declare war” – my father told me. Petersburg also did not help, neither did healing waters. One had to make peace with the sad fact.

More years passed. The material situation kept improving, and evidently Father could not get used to the fact that he had no personal work and income. I am judging this by the fact that his last enterprise, the buying of wool for export to Odessa, and from there overseas, was done during the time I can remember – not before the year ’78 or ’79. But all further attempts did not succeed, when, suddenly the possibility arose to

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sharply change the conditions of one’s life and to finally find for oneself a real job, and not only for oneself, but also for one’s very energetic wife who was very clearly languishing in her petty surroundings, and perhaps also for the children.

But first I will finish telling about the old house and its fate. How did our family live in it? Why, just like the other families in the provincial cities in the South of Russia. On June 24, 1880, one more son was born – the last one, Eduard, the healthiest, best looking one of the three of us. All children were born healthy, and suffered the usual childhood diseases, but without complications. In the mornings Mother was usually the first one to get up and went to wake us up. If we were unable to finish something in the evening, or if we felt that we had to review something once more, we asked Mama to wake us earlier, and at the agreed-upon time she would come with a candle in her hand, in the same woolen dress which she had thrown over her nightgown, and would say: “well, child, get up.” Then she would sit next to the table and knit while we studied. When we came into the dining room, the samovar was already merrily boiling, and everything was ready for tea. In the mornings Mother always gave us something to eat: a little piece of cold meat, sausage or cheese with the obligatory roll with butter and a glass of tea with milk. When there was nothing, then she cooked an egg in the samovar. During one of these preparations for tea, I carried out an experiment about which I was teased for a long time. I was terribly interested to know the temperature of the steam which came out of the samovar so energetically – and having been left alone in the room, took a medical thermometer which had been laying there and stuck it into the opening from which the steam came. A slight cracking could be heard, and in my hand I held a thermometer with a snapped-off end. While I looked at it with consternation, Mother entered. I was in great trouble, but not too much so, evidently my interest in the science of the investigation was taken into consideration, but I had to go to school without tea, because the water had to be taken out of the samovar which had to be cleaned and the water needed to be boiled anew. At seven thirty we went to school having been given a breakfast or 5 kopeks. For two kopeks one could buy half a white roll (franzoli), but for 5 kopeks the school provided a “buffet” for the students, 3

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paper-thin slices of sausage. How they so slyly managed to cut the sausage so thin remains their secret. At exactly 2 o’clock school ended, and we went home to have lunch. Lunch always was tasty and filling, usually with meat, but dessert was not usual. After lunch Mama went to the sideboard and from the right-hand drawer took out and gave us a sweet or brought us an apple or pear from the cold-storage room – but she only gave us one or two at a time. During the plentiful time of the year – in fall – there were grapes, melons and watermelons on the table. During our childhood there never was wine or vodka on the table, and for whom would they have been put there: neither Father nor Mother drank anything. After lunch Father did not permit us to study or read right away – this was considered detrimental, and one should not work mentally for at least one half hour. He himself usually took a nap, something Mother almost never did. After lunch we prepared our homework, music lessons, sometimes a walk, and in the evening at 7:30 tea with a snack – there never were hot dinners – and at 9, we went to sleep. We lived a very secluded life – outside the family, which was very numerous, nobody came to see us. I do not know the reason for this. Was Father by nature unsociable, which was caused by his youthful experiences, was it the sharp decline from wealth to a more modest existence where there was not much money for entertaining, and not enough hands to serve the guests, finally, the difference in social circles between Father and Mother – it is difficult to judge, probably all these reasons combined. But that is how it remained forever, when the reason already had disappeared. In the earliest years of my childhood, even before my schooling, I remember two categories of people visiting my father, equally unpleasant to me. These evidently were business visits, that is, they occurred usually in the morning. Tall black people came, spoke a language which was strange to me, and very loudly, but were dressed in city clothes, and would take their coats off. At other times, people with heavy faces came, obviously village people in high, coarse shoes and in furs of sheep skin and the same type of caps, who also spoke in an non-understandable language. These and the other groups were unpleasant for me, and I, sitting on a rug on the floor or on the couch (until I was 5 years old I could not move around by myself) and playing with my toys, waited impatiently when they would finally leave and our usual comfort, which

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these people ruined for me, would return. They with their loud, guttural talk, the others with their coarse shoes and sheep skin coats. But what probably bothered me was that they did not speak Russian. Because there were other visitors but curiously, they did not bother me. They were Dimitri Petrovich and Maria Egorovna Nogaev. D.P. was a simple farmer, a former serf of General Ershov, who had managed to become the leader of the 150-200 families in the village of Beki-Eli in the Northwest of Simferopol. A rather tall, already gray-haired old man with a gray beard and also always wearing a sheep skin coat, with heavy shoes and a tall sheep skin hat, but this did not shock me at all. But truly Uncle Mitri, as we, the children, called him, came more often, knew our names, tenderly spoke to us and always laughed in a friendly, a little sly way. Little by little this acqaintance– Father helped Nogaev in his agricultural matters - turned into a friendship, especially with his wife. Maria Egorovna was Nogaev’s second wife. This was a tall, well-built, already graying but very pretty woman with a peaceful, iconic face. She also had been a serf, and we, children, pieced together from the talk of the adults, that something had happened to her – something voluntary or involuntary, who could decide this during the serfdom laws – which had forced her to marry a much older widower with four unpleasant children. That “something” evidently had left a large weight on her soul, and we only knew her as a devout and deeply religious woman, traveling to Jerusalem for worship at the tomb of God, always wearing black clothing and a white scarf on her head at home, and a black one for going outside. When Maria Egorovna came to town to fast, she lived with us and slept in the dining room on a couch – we had not other place for her. During Lent she fasted seriously – her main food was weak tea or black coffee with bread and halva. Sometimes she slept in the children’s room, and more than once I saw her praying.. Of course I could never wait for the end of her prayers, I woke and woke again – and all that time she stood before the icon and paid obeisance so deeply and slowly, even if it was night and everyone else was already asleep. We, the children, became so used to her appearance and presence with us, that we never noted her visits, but, not withstanding her quiet religiosity, there was something that transferred from her to us and to the servants – a feeling of obedience. Therefore our parents left the house to her without disquiet; when

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they went away for a while, they wrote to M.E. to her village, Beki Eli, to come, and she managed the household during their absence.

As I wrote before, soon after his marriage, Father reconstructed his house. I am adding here a schematic plan of all reconstructions which he undertook between the years 1866 and 1898. The pink plan – that is the area of Grandfather’s house, but with the interior outlay (the kitchen and children’s room) how they were rebuilt by Father. The room where the parents slept, and where all of us were born, the hall and study remained the same as they were in Grandfather’s time. The house remained in the same shape (of course with the addition of the kitchen and the hallway) until the year 1886. In the middle of the children’s room stood a table, and between it and a wall two parallel, polished, thick railings were fastened, on which I was practicing walking with crutches (dotted line on the drawing). In 1886 my sister was finishing boarding school in Odessa and had to return home, where for four years she had only been during summer vacations. One had to think where to put the young lady, already an adult, and the whole house needed to be cleaned anyway. And again the renovation began, this time of Grandfather’s personal rooms; actually they were quite decrepit. The study with the small oven, where the coffee was kept warm, and where, standing next to the couch, I cooked apples and nuts on play dishes, never understandintg at all why they never cooked through as they did in the kitchen, but only got warm, was demolished. Grandfather’s upholstered easy chair which stood next to the window, and where I had spent much time during my necessarily sedentary young life on the lap of my father or mother, disappeared forever into the village. The floors of the hall , on which my toy cars raced up and down so effortlessly, were also broken up. Out of three rooms, they made two, the parents moved to live in the children’s room, Edja remained with them, and my brother and I received a special room, which formerly had a special entrance from the courtyard, but now had an entry from the back stairs. This room somewhat comically was between the floors – I will write about this room if and when I succeed to write about my life.

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Again, for many years, the house plunged into a peaceful state. My sister married, Serjezha went away to university, after him I also left, and Edja remained alone in our room. The parents moved their bedroom into my sister’s room, the children’s room stood empty – the center of life had moved to the village a long time ago. But time did not only age the house – in time it turned the old buildings on Sevastopolski Street into such a state that it could no longer be tolerated. In the year 1896 Father decided to mortgage the estate in the bank, and for the money to rebuild the front of our house on Sevastopolsky Street. The fate of our grandfather’s house was decided.

In the very beginning of the year 1896, totally unexpectedly, Father came to visit us in Moscow on the way to Petersburg. In our family such a trip was so unprecedented, that we awaited an explanation with the greatest interest. The following occurred: in every Russian town there existed a so-called “The highest approved plan”. It consisted thus: a grid of red lines, so to speak, was placed on the existing plan of the town, which showed each change and improvement which was deemed positive to be made in the placement or improvement of streets due to the re-building of already existing structures. This plan became a local law. When the plan was put together with the new buildings marked by my father, it became clear that the old little stores from the corner to the gates of the house were 2 or 3 arshin (56 or 84 inches) removed from the imperative red line, and had to be moved forward. This of course was only pleasant for the homeowner, but this rather small platform by which his property was increased, was considered owned by the town, as was the whole sidewalk, and one had to pay for it to the town. Of course Father was not objecting to this, but the city government and also the duma decided an a totally unrealistic payment which he had to make. He became heated, said a few unpleasantries about which he himself was sorry, but did not want to give in. We understood totally. Evidently one of the administrators tried to get even for an old matter – Father often was in opposition to the uncultured and sometimes less than decent officials of that time– and Father was angry and felt himself to have been unjustly treated by an old member of the duma. Of course this was not about the money; the sum was rather small, about one thousand rubles, but the

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approval of the plan was delayed. A way out had to be found, and he went to the Ministry of Internal Affairs with a complaint and a compromise solution was finally found. I am writing this unimportant episode to characterize our father: God forbid if his feeling of honor or justice was offended. Undoubtedly, all these unpleasantnesses and the need to complain to the Ministry about the very representatives of the duma of which he had been a member for so many years, in the end even the expenses of the trip were by far greater than the sum that was demanded from him – but that is how he was. He proved that the actions in this matter were unjust!

When in the beginning of the year 1896, I, after the end of the graduation examinations was forced to return to the homeland because of ‘culpable testimony’ and came back to Simferopol, instead of the old stores, there stretched a marvelous white wall. I did not even have the right to travel from Simferopol to the village, in my soul it was gray, and even my excellent diploma gave me little joy, and I began to help Father as best as II could. Toward Fall we completed the building, and in January resplendid, high and light accommodations opened: a bakery, a coffee shop, a barber shop, a cheap eating place, and the second story was enriched by a Crimean restaurant offering new items. I still did not have permission to leave Simferopol and myself was so immersed in the building work, became so interested in it and would not have left even if I could have, without finishing our apartment. The plan for it was drawn by the town architect Vlad. Zaionkovski at the same time as the planfor the first building, but together with Mother we revolted and achieved many changes, primarily the enlargement of the footprint of the apartment by moving the kitchen and second stairway to the addition.

(For the drawing see addendum)

I will not describe the process of building, I will only say that I poured all my newly acquired knowledge and all my thoughts and feelings during the year of the work into it. Father did not hinder me, and even though he did not agree with me many times about

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“the luxury”, but seeing the joy which it gave to Mother and me, did not object. Actually, our desires were very modest, but according to the standards of those days and of the Simferopol society, they widely exceeded those of the average apartment. The floors were parquet, all ceilings were painted with oil paint but did not offensively shine like bathrooms or hospitals, but were of a non-glare waxy color. The doors and windows were much thicker than the usual ones, and therefore did not knock about with each gust of wind, but softly moved on three hinges. Their handles were of carved red copper and had been made especially in Odessa, with Father’s initials. The stairs to the entrance, instead of the usual stone steps, were made of iron, but were faced with polished oak. How modest all this seems now, and how different it was at that time from the usual apartments! But my ideal at that time – Grandfather’s large house – remained unattainable. No interior embellishments could equal the sweep of the stately house, the huge windows and doors would be ridiculous and absurd in a bourgeois apartment. It remained only to do what was possible and appropriate. Thus the youngest son of Sergei Ivanovich, and, I immodestly say, his grandson stopped halfway: out of the modest original apartment of 1568 square feet they built a 3430 square one, but stayed far away from Grandfather’s palaces which they saw as his ruin and downfall. The son, having learned from experience, stayed far away from those luxuries and always strove to stand firmly on his feet, the grandson would gladly have walked in his grandfather’s footsteps, but did not have his creative talent and therefore kept to his father’s tactics, but all three were moved aside by fate: one – personally, and the others – en masse.

We began to tear down the old house very early – in February, so that we could move into the new house before winter – given the Crimean climate this was possible and do-able. The old house was uncomfortable and altogether had outlived its time, but when I walked through it after all the windows and doors had been removed, the roof was being dismantled above, and the wind rattled the remaining spaces, my soul was saddened. It is difficult to see any death, and here, because of our desire, a building was dying which still could have lived much longer, and which had honestly served our

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family, and which had guarded its peace and happiness; in the old house there was not a single death during our residence there. For me the destruction of the old house was very educational. It was said that it had been built by some Greeks, and it was clear that it was built by people who feared earthquakes and knew how to best guard the building against them. The house was disproportionally tall due to the special mid-story, and was very carefully connected by thick oak boards placed into the walls, the wedges tightly tied together lengthwise. In this manner, the whole house was kept together as if in a frame, in several rows, and this of course was to help the stone surface in the case of lateral blows during an earthquake. In our time, earthquakes had been forgotten and not thought about by the people in the Crimea, but the year1927 definitely reminded them of earthquakes. I heard that especially on the southern shore many buildings were ruined. Our house survived. It was whole and occupied by some German troops even in the year 1943. Did the following storms spare it? I do not know.

The house was completed in November of the year 1897, it contained only the parents’ apartment and the store of Zapiev – the son of D.A. Zapiev who had had a store there before the year 1844. I went away to Petersburg and soon received a telegram from almost all our relatives who were present at its religious dedication. When I returned in the year 1906 to Simferopol, Father and I tore down the old storehouses and granaries which he had built deep into the courtyard, and rebuilt them with new ones. After Father’s death, the descendants built a 2-story house with stores on the bottom and apartments on the upper floor, on the Fontansky Street. That is the house which we left in the year 1920.

II Agach-Eli

It probably was Kottaire de Hell, a French geologist, who, upon visiting the Crimea, still under the rule of Czarina Ekaterina II, was the first to leave a wonderful essay about its geology, and very observantly compared its geological structure to that of a thin book

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standing and falling over in the lower shelf of a bookcase.The first book, the biggest and fattest, is standing with its spine on top. This - Jaila –Katyrdatch with its elongation on the right side, long ago slid into the sea and so deeply, that there was never a good beach on the southern shore. But the remaining side is so solid and strong that it withstands the weight of the second book, which is no longer standing, but is lying down. On this second book, lies a book that is partly leaning, then a fourth, and the last, lying almost flat, passes into the endless steppe, and with its not-so-high clay walls ends in the far-away shining ring of the sea. Along the collapse of the individual books, gaily and quickly, and always from East to West, run the small Crimean rivers: Belbek, Katcha, Alma and Bulganak, one cannot call them rivers – in the summer, when their waters are important for the watering of gardens and vineyards, one can cross each one of them without wetting one’s feet. But if these three little rivers are fed from the medium-high Crimean mountains, then our poor Bulganak did not even have this meager support and practically was a brook about 1 meter across, totally dry in summer and only sometimes flowing with murky water which collected from groundwater. Hills and mountains which divide Crimea’s main plains are covered with forests or bushes, but the covers of the last sections are dry and joyless steppes. Their foundations were deep clay deposits from the 4th period, colored brown by a poor amount of humus which had been growing there for centuries. This swells during the rainy season and provides untold amounts of dirt on the surface but does not let water pass through to the surface - and it runs aimlessly into the sea, without even providing groundwater. The subsoil is often made up of a weak conglamorate of marl which, if it is removed by plowing, easily falls apart, or, during the wild north-west winds, will turn into small pieces among which only a forest or small bushes can grow and provides no elevation whatsoever, not even a small forest, against which the waves, full of moisture from the sea, could break. And rain falls only near Simferopol, not on the dried-out steppe. In this joyless region lay our Agach-Eli. Simferopol lies in the hollow between two low mountains. If you leave it and go straight north, difficult during sunsets - you must rise above a low ridge of limestone, consisting of several small mountains, whose left halves appeared as having been torn off and are starkly white among the plants covering them, low Crimean oaks, and the

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left halves softly descend to the foot of the next precipice. The same Kottaire de Hell very aptly called this chain “small teeth of dust” and they actually appeared like a body with gigantic teeth especially if you look at them while driving into Simferopol. But if you transverse this chain from the side of the Budke estate, there was the end of the mountains and you rolled down to the very sea. Therefore the horses, and their owners, more easily came from town than drive into town! Really, on the way there were two more so-called “mountains”, but the first one was only a “beam” as we said in the South, across which it was rather sharp and steep, to which the entrance and exit were also steep and difficult until, many years later, the township straightened them and made them into a highway. The second one also was not a mountain, but a descent into the valley, also quite steep and usually washed out by the rains. This descent cost one old woman her life, and cost me a broken collarbone when the coach overturned, but the old woman had been driven by her drunk husband, and I fell out at night , and probably therefore we did not get around to building a decent descent on this “mountain”. The first mountain was called a large or deep beam, and lay exactly between Simferopol and Kronental, the second was the Kolumbetelski Mountain. From the top of this “mountain” the view to the far-away Bulganaksky valley opened up, including Kronental, which lay about 7 versts (ca11.6 miles) below. In my youth you would not see a single domicile, a single tree from the Budke estate to the valley – you transverse the steppe. But you became acquainted with the entire valley immediately: at that time a small Tatar village- Kolushber-Eli - lay at the descent, with a pond of standing water, behind it Bodrak, the estate of Kovalevsky, then Kojash, then the property of Dr. Geiman (after Numan), then the Tatar village Agach-Eli and finally Kronental. In this part of the valley the Bulganak flowed even during the summer, and therefore its shores were, even though with large interruptions, home to the pussy willows, those pretty, modest plants, so useful in the household. Here and there, sometimes singly or in gardens, groups of vineyards or wild woods of tall poplars; along the Kojashsky road rows of acacias, planted by Numan, stretched, but the only large objects, visible from everywhere, were huge black poplars from Agach-Eli, then already measuring two spans in circumference. They probably gave the estate its name, in the

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Tatar language “agach” means “wood” and “eli” is the usual designation of a village or settlement. Such was the view from the Kolumbetelski Mountain in the year 1880. How much it had changed by 1920 – you know yourselves.

Agach-Eli, according to some stories, belonged to someone called Murz, on whose land there spread out a village of the same name. Through a sale or some way or another, the land went from Murz to a brigadier general Trigani. One can imagine his housekeeping by looking at the buildings which existed during his ownership. The road to the estate was through a side street which separated the estate from the village. Sharply turning to the right at the spot where there later was an iron gate, the coach rolled to a circular driveway to the general’s house. Having let out the riders, the coach continued further, skirted the house and came to the courtyard, where the horsestalls and coach sheds were. During our time, both of these buildings remained in the same condition as they were during Trigani’s time. Besides them and on the same land there were later a winter room and all buildings No.3, and there stood a not very large building where the gardeners and workers lived – and that was all. There also was a relatively small animal shed with overhangs, covered with straw (on the same place where the pear garden was later) and a half-ruined shed where tobacco was dried (on the land of the shed and forge). Evidently the whole household was centered on the garden and on wine making, that is, in the coach shed stood a large Tarapan made of one piece and brought from Bodrak (on the Alma river, where there were famous limestone deposits) with great difficulty, and also a very good grape press. The Tarapan, you may remember it, because later we lugged it to the wine producing area – was a rectangular tub measuring 4 arshin (112”) long 3 (78”) wide and 2 (56”)deep into which we poured the harvested grapes and then pressed them with our feet. There was no field work, or else it was totally negligible. Evidently some tobacco was grown, that is, I still remember the tobacconist Bekir, who was still there during my father’s time. The tobacco occupied the whole courtyard beginning with the entrance up to the ditch. Thus was the general’s household. But his house was very fine. It was not large – it only contained 6 rooms – the interior was of raw brick (kalyb in the Tartar language) –

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but of very good proportions and somehow very homey. Trigani was married to the daughter of Admiral Stansokovich, commander of the Black Sea Fleet. In Sevastopol this fleet had naval workshops and the doors and windows of the house were made there. They were made of Crimean birch (kar-agacha, that is, black wood, in Tatar) and then polished and covered with lacquer.

After the death of the general, his wife and three sons were his heirs. The oldest one of them was Michail Nikolaevich Trigani, later gaining such notoriety during the trial of “Government for the people” members after the murder of Czar Aleksander II. As I have already explained, at that time the Crimea contained more than a few hotheads, about whose beneficial or harmful role in the history of Russia one can debate endlessly. But neither the general’s wife nor his sons were interested in the rather small and remote estate; the oldest son, a student, was busy in Petersburg with his comrades, and it was decided to sell the estate. The buyer lived next door and for a long time already had been waiting for the moment when the ruined Triganis would have to sell their estate. It was Nikolaii Sevastjanovich Schnaider – the natural uncle of my mother. He already was so rich that he could put down enough personal money to cover the whole sum, but totally unexpectedly the young Trigani balked. He hated his neighbors – colonials from Kronental totally, especially Nikolaii Sevastjanovich, and categorically refused to sell him the estate. My parents could not hope to compete with the rich uncle, but Trigani himself, having found out that Father would have liked to buy the estate, and eager to conclude the sale, offered him to buy Agach-Eli with a very lengthy time for payments. I already wrote how eagerly Father looked for an occupation. Now he could obtain it, and the parents’ hesitation did not last long. They gathered what they could, borrowed as much as was possible, and the remainder Trigani was willing to receive gradually. Getting ahead of myself, I will say that Father rather quickly paid the whole amount, and throughout his life he talked about how quickly and without great formalities this sale by Trigani took place.

And thus in the winter of the year 1879-80, during one of those especially cold

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winters which occur every thirty years, and truly occurred during my life in 1916 and 1942 – my parents totally unexpectedly became land owners. Their new and hard life began. They had bought the estate – but it was in such a state! There was almost no livestock- or farm equipment, the buildings were neglected. The formerly varnished windows barely hung on broken hinges, most of the glass was broken, and the frames were in such a state that a part of them had to be renewed , and the remaining ones were not revarnished but simply painted. In the middle of the dining room stood a stage coach, which “the young gentlemen”, as they were called by the gardener Afanasi working there, lugged into the house in order to repaint it whenever they felt like it. There was no kitchen at all in the house, the food for the master and mistress was cooked in the servants’ kitchen and brought over for them through the courtyard.The poor new owners did not know what to tackle first, and there was no money because they had used all their resources in order to buy the estate. There was no lack of worries, and Nikolai Sevastjanovich did not lose hope that the new owners would also burn through their money and that his beloved Agach-Eli would change hands again soon. But Father was already accustomed to battles throughout many years, the city house brought a sizable profit, and next to him stood Mother, who already had shown herself as a hard worker in the village. And the first thing they had to do was battle with the German neighbors. Between Agach-Eli and Kronental was a country road which was not noted on the Agach-Eli map. Therefore it had cut through the land of the colonists, and they were the only ones who needed it. But according to Russian laws of adjacent lands, the boundary consisted of two furrows somewhat distant from each other, and usually the road would go between them. Probably this was also the case here. However, our dear neighbors, making use of the neglect of the owners of A. gradually moved the road ever closer to the Triganis’ land, and since the dividing furrows were erased long ago, they also plowed the land up to the road. During the first year, however, Father summoned the land surveyor in order to clarify the borders, and when the latter dug up the furrows on the original plan, he set new boundaries which turned out to be on the usurped land and many desjatins (acres) of it could have been claimed by Father right away. Of course he did not do this, but nevertheless the whole

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colony hated the new neighbor. And this battle lasted forever. The only rescue from these “aggressors” (at that time we still did not know this word that is so modern now) was to systematically plow the land in front of the boundary – even the Germans did not dare drive on land planted with wheat. But in total they were disgusting neighbors. Exactly today is Kirchweih – the kind, gentle fall festival, for which the Germans prepared way in advance. Our neighbors also prepared for it, but not only they, but also our family, though not German, each in their own way. The young people of the colony wanted to gather as much money as possible for drinking, and we had, 2-3 weeks previously, ordered the shepherds not to let the animals graze near the German border, and to always be careful. The thing was, that two times during the first years, the Germans, riding on horses, chased our sheep onto their steppes and from there into the colony, and then claimed that our sheep were on their steppe and that we had to pay for damages. The amount of money which we had to pay was not very high, since at that time not much grass grew on the Crimean steppe, but for the whole herd it came to 50- 60 rubles. The main thing was that the Germans were on horseback and chased the sheep with intolerable speed, and the result was a high loss. And only such measures of carefulness could save the herds from the predatory neighbors and they slowly stopped using this method to drink at the expense of their neighbors. But our relations with our neighbors never were friendly. Just the opposite, other and closer neighbors – Tatars, were impeccable. The first hut in the village stood about one hundred feet from an iron gate about which I have already spoken, and the whole village lay beyond that, and never did we have the smallest misunderstanding, not one quarrel about economics, or about the garden, the vegetable garden, even though the road to our mill went along our garden, and it was never fenced in nor guarded by a wall, but only by the Bulganak, which the old and the young could cross with one jump. When Father bought the estate there was not a single well with drinking water, and there was only a deep and uncomfortable well in front of the terrace and its water had a mineral taste and it was only used for washing and for watering the horses and livestock. Water had to be taken from a well located on land which was eliminated from the estate after the survey dividing Trigani’s land and that of the Tatars. Our Agach-Eli had an unwritten

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arrangement allowing us to take water from this well, and for many years we used this arrangement and this never caused any difficulties or arguments. They were good, honest neighbors, and even the Revolution of the year 1917 did not ruin them. Everybody grabbed our houses, but only the Tatars did not.

It would be boring for you if I were to describe step by step the work our parents did to create our Agach-Eli. I write “our” because not many traces were left from the Murzi and Trigani years. But our parents had more youthful energy and desire to work than knowledge of agriculture. Both were born and raised in a city, and even though Mother spent several years in a village with her father, they relied more on the advice of others and on learning from their mistakes. First we had to somehow settle into our personal accommodations and to renovate the house and the other two buildings sufficiently so that we could live in them; they began to “keep house”. They reduced their needs to the utmost. In the room next to the hall, where there was an entrance to the basement, they installed a small iron stove and Mother cooked on this so that a cook did not need to be hired. The room on the other side of the hall, where during your time there was the study of Uncle Edi, was converted into a storage room for flour, salt, baked bread and all other items necessary for feeding the workers and Mother could give out the essentials without having to go outside the house. It became clear that first of all one had to devise something which would make it possible for the estate to have some income. Sheep, cows, horses and all necessary utensils needed to be bought, but there was no room for any of them. So Father built a shed for the sheep. But he built in a manner in which then, and even now, nobody ever had built it – tall, with a roof of solid beams and rafters. Later he spoke to me of this building. “We only had one pair of horses and we had to haul lumber from town ourselves. And so I arrive with the coachman, in the back they load the lumber, and the coachman sits in the front. And I do not have the heart to sit on the beams myself, and therefore I walk from town on foot and only afte the town I go and sit on the lumber and drive home. The walk from town until the ride on the coach was truly not easy!” But the shed turned out well, and Father loved this, his building. Later it became a cow barn and in the end it was Peter’s (N.)

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room. Parallel with this, Father built a new facility on the same space (this is, in the pear garden) where an old one had been, but it was covered with straw and quite evidently was a new structure. The first-bought livestock was housed there. And here Father searched for something especially good. At that time he more than anything else needed oxen for work; working oxen was a gray Ukrainian breed, large with tall legs and therefore taking large steps. Father went to Sheichlar’s estate which at that time belonged to the mother of Nad. Iza Schlee, Anastasia Efimovna Kobez, and was famous for its exemplary household, and bought about 12 oxen and cows. These were marvelous animals with huge horns and very handsome despite their enormity. But here also failure awaited him. A plague attacking horned livestock killed a large part of the new herd, and soon the parents lost the desire to raise pedigreed livestock.

(For a diagram of the buildings see addendum).

In the course of several years Father constructed a granary for the bakery and flour, a good kitchen, Grandmother’s pantry and a laundry, and on top, bins for grain (N.4), a new kitchen for the workers (N.3) on the same spot where the same buildings had stood during the Trigani time. Later this building was restored for winter visits, a room for Kristina, an apartment for the gardener and a dairy. At the same time a small hen house was built (N.5), and later changed to a pantry. Later an ice house was added, a rock had been found underneath, so they just had to dig a hole and walls were put up only on the upper floor. The problem of where to obtain ice was solved by building a temporary dam on the small river so that the water would widely spill onto the meadow and when it froze, all the workers stopped all other work and quickly cut the ice and put it into the ice house. But during some years the ice did not develop and then they filled the ice house with snow. The mill was also included in the buildings of the early years. In those years the water in the Bulganak was still sufficient for four entities: the Kojash, the Tatars, our Agach-Eli and Kronental – they all could work with the water. All the water could not be used for watering the gardens, or else the livestock would have remained without drinking water. However, the old mill refused to function, and to

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renovate it was totally impossible. Father turned to the Frenchman, Malifo,a technician who lived in one of the existing mills near town, and he worked out a magnificent plan which increased the diameter of the water wheel to 9 arshin (252”), that is almost twice that of the previous one. In this way, even during a minimal amount of water in our little river, it could move two grinding stones, one for ordinary grinding, and one for coarse grinding. Equipment for the preparation of millet was also installed, but it was almost never used because this grass was seldom planted in our region. The mill was not only built well and practically, but I am tempted to say, with love: the master did not spare the expense or wood, the straps of silk, were bought in Odessa – first class - Malifo furnished excellent drawings and they were executed by the miller Grigorii Lysakov who worked cleanly and diligently. From early childhood on I enjoyed watching masters at work, and here I could not tear myself away from the disks which later were turned into moving pulleys. The mill became well-known and it was used by people from all over the region. The miller was the same old one still from Trigani times, Jakov Dvorzhak, an old Czech with a huge family. We built a new house for him, and it began to look like a separate farmstead with its own vegetable garden, trees, ducks, chickens and pigs. The yard was always full of ground items, and for a long time was the object of our outings. It was also the source of income for our estate, and all was well until old Jakov died, and his place was taken by his son Franz who loved to drink. The reputation of the mill still held, but gradually there was less water, one had to wait for the grinding longer and longer, and therefore small steam mills began to appear which received their power from locomobiles during steam shortages. Franz also died, the mill became neglected, Dvorzhak’s brother-in-law who worked on the mill, Timofeii Sdanko, was an adroit and clever fellow who at the end married one of Franz’s sisters; with Father’s permission, he himself installed a locomobile, did not pay attention and the whole second floor of our mill burned down. It was renovated, but without any kind of love, that is, it became clear that soon the mill would only work for the estate itself and the closest villages. We were already debating whether it could be used to obtain electrical energy, but the revolution decreed otherwise.

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For a while the building activities of my father stopped, and arose anew after the building of the town house. After this second period, during which I no longer took an active part, the following were built: a winemaking site with a very good wine cellar underneath, strengthened with iron beams (after a plan by A.V. Konrady), (N.11) a new poultry house, (N.7), a fully rebuilt ice house; a long hall with a kitchen and bathroom at the end was added to the house, the wooden terrace was rebuilt with stone and columns which were brought from the ruins of Grandfather’s house in Simferopol, and finally, a new barracks(N.9). I forgot to also mention a new barn for the working horses (N.14). To the building work one must add 6 wells which were dug in various locations and which were outfitted with a variety of water-carrying machinery and ways to bring water into the house and dairy and a separating faucet to serve in the workers’ kitchen, the pig- and poultry houses. From the old Trigani well (N.22) water also flowed into and old trough (N.23), in the summer only for the horses in our stable, and in the winter for all livestock. A water pipe to the dairy was also built for the cement basin in the pear garden (N.23), for watering the dwarf pears which were planted there. The same pipes also fed a fountain in the basin, (N.21).

Field crop farming always was the weakest side on our estate. I already wrote about the poor soil, and the lack of rain in our areas. But this was not all. Agach-Eli was 830 desjatin (2,241 acres). But the Bulganak cut across the estate in such a way that 130 desjatin (351 acres) lay on one side of the little river and were of such a steep elevation that they could not be plowed but it was only possible to ride to it after we built a special road in a serpentine fashion on the steepest incline. In this manner, it was very difficult to plow and sow on that land, and totally unprofitable since so much time had to be spent going there and back. Further excluding the land occupied by the slope and the right bank, also not suitable for planting, only about 600 desjatin (1,620 acres) of workable land remained. But working it continuously meant to quickly turn the whole estate into mush (above I wrote why) and therefore the land was cultivated only 3 or 4 years and we alternated in this way: land lies fallow, wheat, barley, oats – and then 8- 10 years of rest. The plowing was not much – 60-70 desjatin (162-189 acres), seldom

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produced more than 60-80 puds (2160-2880 lb) per desjatin, and therefore the profit, with the exclusion for the pay and keep of the laborers, was such that one could not even talk about it seriously. Basically, the farming was done in order to feed and pay the workers and the working animals who were mostly occupied in other areas of the household. So little by little this was looked upon in this way, and only brother Edja, when he began to manage Agach-Eli after Father’s death, was still hoping to achieve something else, but for him there was no more time for this. In reality, an old worker was in charge of all this, and Father did not even ride out to the steppes every day during cultivating times. Of course you remember the old worker Michail (I think Schweiger was his last name), who worked for us about twenty years and who lived with his family in the single home (N.16). A part of the land – very small- was rented out to Agach-Elian Tatars.

Sheep always were a debated question in our household. We all agreed that sheep trample everything in our dry climate and cause great harm to the steppe. But there were many reasons why we decided not to destroy them. As I wrote already, a part of the estate lay in such a manner that it was only possible to exploit it by letting the sheep graze there. After destroying the sheep, one would have to increase the planting, but the difficulty of reaching that land was also clear to us. After all, the sheep provided a profit through the sale of the lambs, the wool and milk which we disposed of to be made into sheep cheese, the expense of hiring a shepherd. And finally, they provided meat for the workers. If there were no sheep, one would have to send to town for meat, that is, 2-3 times a week meat was obligatory. And therefore Father did not destroy the sheep but only decreased their number when, after a few especially dry years we had to rent a ‘dacha’ – that is, chase the sheep during the summer to a rather distant rented land, while one’s own land rested and again covered itself with grass instead of dust. As I wrote before, Father built a magnificent shed for them (N.13) but the sheep began to die in it for an unknown reason. Later, when we began to understand more about agricultural matters, it became clear to us that it was simply an epidemic of anthrax, but at that time everyone thought it was too hot for the sheep in the magnificent shed, and

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then we built a new, common shed with straw roofs – and the dying stopped. But something that will interest you –according to an age-old custom, a good shepherd will never let it die quietly – and if he sees that it hesitates and does not eat, he simply cuts its throat, cuts off its hide, and brings the meat into the household, but if there is much dying and the meat is not needed, he cuts the carcass into two halves lengthwise, salts them heavily and hangs them out into the sun. We had a Tatar name for this: “kokatch”, and these dried kokatch hung in the sun on crossbeams of the roof until a buyer came and took them away. When we as children wanted to eat something at an unusual time, we would sneak into the shed and cut for ourselves as much of this wonderfully salty and very fat meat, which had been hanging in the sun, as we wanted. And never once did any of us become ill from this horrible anthrax! Hello to science but also hello to disinfection by sunlight, and healthy childish appétit that was not destroyed by too much knowledge. I must admit that during discussions about the pro and contra of sheep, I always took their side. This of course is not very cultured, but if I could relive a mild, warm evening in May in Agach-Eli, where approaching from the road, one could see from afar the wonderful hides of the old females with their beautiful black or white little lambs and hear the varied -voiced choir of the lost sheep – mothers and lambs searching for each other - then I would gladly give away a large chunk, a very large chunk of all my not-so-large culture.

It is quite clear that the dairy business could not be especially profitable for us under our conditions. In the beginning during the period of gray cows and random purchasing – of course nobody would sell a good cow – there was so little milk that all of it was used for the household, and to preserve it in any way at all, not having an ice house, was not possible during the summer heat. After the ice house was built, pitchers stood in rows on shelves, and Mother herself would go down the stairs which sometimes were covered with ice, and gather some cream. In looks and taste the milk resembled what is nowadays called “Magermilch” (skim milk) and was used by us or the workers for kasha, from the cream they made sour cream and from this they churned butter. A definite break in the whole dairy business happened in 1894. I remember this affair so

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well because at that time I was in Moscow for my second year at the university and Brother Serjezha was in his fourth, and our parents decided to spend Christmas with us. Our sister and her husband came with them. We settled all of them in furnished rooms – Borchester near the Nikitski gates, and this Christmas remained among our best memories. During that time there was a meeting of naturalists and physicians in Moscow, and Father registered as a member of the meeting and enjoyed going to various sessions. During the sessions a variety of trips were organized, and among them was a trip near Moscow to the farm of the famous dairy merchant Bereshchagin. And then our mother and Franz decided to also travel there, and returned simply enchanted. First of all, they saw a well-managed farm, good livestock, separators and butter churns of a new type, good and convenient utensils. Right there at Bereshchagin’s they bought and ordered what they could, and returned home with totally new ideas about dairy farming. And in our farm and in Kojash, appeared new dairies with cement floors, running water, steam boilers in which the new utensils were boiled, and mainly, a separator and new butter churn. The whole bothersome process with the cream fell away now, and the just-extracted milk went to the separator, and the butter no longer came from the sour cream but from the cream. Everything became simple and clean. The only item remaining was to obtain more milk, and this proved to be more difficult, of course. At that time the provincial and local assemblies began to take measures to increase livestock, stud bulls were provided. May God judge the assemblies and all their agronomists and zoological technicians and us, the land owners and activists, for all the dumb things we undertook in this matter. Only now, having lived in the various places from which we received our Simmentalers, Schweitzers and Algauers (breeds of cows) with enthusiasm, and having seen local pastures and – especially last year in Kempten – the care taken with these pastures, thanks to which they provide endless grass and hay, I understood how inept the idea was to improve our cows who grazed on the dried-out steppes, chasing every green leaf, already dried out into ready-to-eat hay, with the aristocratic cows grazing on those raw and always rainy and fertilized pastures. The livestock undoubtedly improved in its external appearance, obtaining black, gray or chestnut spots from its aristocratic

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fathers, but there was nowhere from which to increase milk. And of course we also understood this and began feverishly to plant feed beets, to order and cook potatoes, plant more pumpkins, corn, and hoped to make silage of them together with the ears – in “the American manner”, but we could not produce rain or fresh grass; in some cases, our half-breed Holland and Schweitzer cows still remained within the sphere of profit like the “German” cows did. “German” cows were considered the local breed, usually dark brick-red, which were bred by the Menotite colonists in the Melitopol region for milking. These cows gave a rather decent amount of milk , but it contained a very low percentage of fat. We probably should have started out with these already acclimatized cows, and not be entranced by the Simmentalers. I do not know why, but Uncle Franz as well as Mother stopped at the Hollandese breed (white-black-chestnut), and Franz was not satisfied with only breeding, but imported several pure-blooded cows of that type and in that way improved his herd immediately. The matter moved on an altogether satisfying path, but already before our collapse it became evident that a large percentage of the Kojash herd suffered a tubercular reaction.

Of course it was not possible to compare Agach-Eli with Kojash regarding the number of livestock, the expenses for food for the livestock, and not for the opportunities for riches, but nevertheless Mama achieved marvelous results not in quantity, but in quality. The separator and new utensils made it easier for her to keep the most pedantic cleanliness in the dairy operation, and in the dairy one could never find not only no dirt but also no dust. The windows were covered with screens against the flies, the containers, washed and steamed, also stood on boards and were covered with curtains. We enlarged the ice house significantly and changed its construction in a way that divided it into two unequal parts, perpendicular with the wall that had two large windows covered tightly with brick. The large part was loaded full of ice during the winter and then closed tightly. In the smaller part was a comfortable stairway (brought from the old town house), by which the milk, butter, cream, etc were brought down into the cellar and put onto shelves. Under such conditions, the ice remained till autumn, and the storage was enough for the produce to keep fresh indefinitely. All together this

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and Mother’s untiring supervision led to the fact that Agach-Eli butter became famous, and was bought up immediatey. It was not even sold out, but given out, that is, in Shikiman’s store was a list of clients who subscribed in advance for “Nalbandov’s butter. One must readily admit that Mama’s butter kept its fresh flavor much longer than any other butter.” This was so evident that everyone gladly paid for it more, and according to an agreement between Mother and Shikiman, she always got 5 kopeks more per pound than the market price. Everybody talked about this, everyone wanted to find out her secret about preparing butter, but she only laughed gaily and slyly, and assured everybody that she had no secret at all. And truly, even during winter months, when, as is well known, butter loses its yellow color because of the absence of green feed, and a harmless yellow color or carrot juice usually is added to the butter, Mother never did this, and her white butter was considered fancier than the yellow one. And then one summer day, early in the morning, the senior specialist of food science, K.V. Dal arrived in Agach-Eli - such a knowledgable man who enjoyed our admiration – and asked Mother to permit him to be present during the preparation of butter. Mother of course agreed gladly. In Dal’s presence, the evening and morning cream was brought from the ice house, poured into the butter churn and then the usual process was carried out, including the washing of the butter. The butter seemed the same as usual and Mother brought a large piece of it to Dal for analysis. What this analysis showed did not interest us, because we knew that there really was no secret, and everything was due to Mother’s tireless cleanliness. In this manner, on the face of it, culturally the dairy was a success, but if one carefully added up the expenses of planting feed beets and corn, the feeding of the cows with fresh grass and the tireless work, there remained no noticeable profit from the dairy – so small was the amount of milk from our cows. And here I only speak of additional feed, and do not touch the question of sheds, hay and the bedding, which was used mainly for the cows.

Already during the last few years during which I spent very little time in Agach-Eli, Mother wanted to build a new cow shed, definitely with her own money, and it actually was built according to the design by Edi. The shed stood behind the old shed, turned

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out very well and comfortable, but somehow did not remain in my memory, and I cannot reproduce it on my drawing. At that time my head was filled with other things.

Garden. During Trigani’s time the garden took up the same space as it did in our time, that is, the whole plain which was watered by the diversion of water from the Bulganak from the plains to the mill, measuring a little more than 8 desjatin (21.6 acres). Like the whole estate, the garden was in a very neglected state, with many bare areas, and the hard winter of 1879-80 also brought much devastation, because for many years after that, fallen branches and tree trunks served as heating material; I remember apple and pear tree trunks from the devasted trees. As with everything else, here too it was necessary to start almost from scratch, and in an area about which neither Father nor Mother knew anything and where they had to rely on a gardener for everything. As it already occurred in earlier years, they happened upon a person, who in essence created our garden. This was Ivan Semenovich Kabzev. I now believe that he also did not distinguish himself with a particularly deep knowledge, but he loved his work, was a very decent person and not stupid. He served about fifteen years with us, we grew up along side this man, and knew his story well. He descended from Kantonists, that is, children of soldiers, whom one tried to separate from their parents in order to raise them in boarding schools of the military type, and then to have more sergeants and corporals who are removed from ordinary life and have nobody in the whole world. As you can see, the story repeats itself and there is nothing new under the moon. He told us many things about such a school, about maneuvers and pretend battles, where children even shot out of guns loaded with sand and sometimes shot out each other’s eyes. So he grew up lonely, then learned for a short time in the Nikitits garden near Yalta, became a gardener, got married, separated from his wife, and then came to us where he remained until his death. He was a capable person, blasted rocks with gunpowder which he produced himself, and during the winter, with the help of a Tatar from Agach-Eli, he prepared stones for Father’s buildings and fences. He himself built the serpentine road which I described earlier, and fervently searched for sources of water in the environs. One thing was a sadness: he was an alcoholic. During normal times he did not speak

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much and was even somewhat stern, but when he was tipsy he was funny and told us much about himself and his always fantastic dreams. But when he drank, he drank for several days and was simply disgusting. Fortunately this did not happen often, so that he was a good worker, but one could not give him the keyes to the carriage shed, where at that time our wine casks stood before they were sold, and the procedures necessary with the wine he always had to accomplish in Mother’s presence, but even so he managed to slyly get soundly drunk.

It was the same Ivan Semenovich who planted our whole garden, lay the canalization for irrigating (this was not such a simple job, because at that time nobody had thought that there was such a thing as a level in the world, all was done by eye) and totally covered the so-called upper ditch with a ring of poplars and in this way created a very efficient defense for the garden against the north-east winds. You probably remember that wall of tall, straight poplars along the whole garden? The parents also made many mistakes in their choice of types of apples which they planted; the nursery person often warned them, and willingly or unwillingly sold them seedling material but not of the type they wanted, and often the trees had to be changed to a new type and years and years were lost, but at that time gardening just began to develop and these mistakes were inevitable. Other misfortunes were worse. Already during one of the early years our beautiful and garden that was in full blossom suddenly – and truly suddenly – was covered with small spiders- and within a few days everything had been eaten away. The trees stood dark, as if it were winter, and only silky spider webs glistened on them, enveloping empty branches, but millions of pupas of the well- known apple spiders (Hypomenta malinella) lived in the spider webs. You remember that nice-looking rather small, elegant dull butterfly with silky white wings and black markings? By then we already knew how to fight it, but formerly we were still helpless against it. And it was not only our new-generation gardeners, - the parents and their gardeners, having come from Yalta where apple orchards did not exist, and also more experienced people were affected. The only remedy which helped sometimes was spraying the trees with a strong tobacco solution. Of course, having learned from this

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experience, the parents bought a huge cast-iron kettle and, using black poplars, began to cook a low-grade tobacco together with ordinary tobacco. But the spraying had to be undertaken at a specific moment: when the pupas emerged from their eggs and began to eat the young leaves. When you were late, the work was in vain, if you did it a little early – the same would happen because the tobacco solution did not remain on the leaves long, if after spraying there was even a little rain, it washed away the tobacco from the leaves, and the pupa ate them in peace. Therefore the cure succeeded sometimes, sometimes it did not and the garden was either partially or totally eaten by caterpillars. And that was horrible. This always happened in May. The trees, now full of sap, having been left without leaves, began to develop the buds of the coming year, and toward June-July the garden began to be green again, but the whole system of the plants’ existence was ruined, one could not even think of the right development of the trees for the coming year, the ruin was not only of this year but also of the next one, the trees grew weak and the weakest ones simply perished. I remember that at one time the Agach-Eli Tatars brought a “hadji” to my father, (that is a person who had been to Mecca) and after he had left, there appeared a small bottle with a cork hanging from a string from a branch of the large apricot tree which at that time stood opposite the large terrace: the hadji had given it (probably had sold it) to them and it contained a miraculous object against worms. Father was a correctly thinking person, but anybody who ever saw the black garden could even accept a miraculous bottle.

I could tell you much, very much about our garden, of this beloved attempt by Mother. How she the first thing in the early morning, went to the garden and while we prepared ourselves for tea, had already gone all the way to the mill, looking everywhere to see what was going on, where and what was being watered- and returned refreshed, happy and enlivened, carrying something in her hands from the vegetable garden which was needed in the kitchen or some especially large berry for Father. In the garden nothing was done without her and sometimes after lunch she would disappear for half an hour or so. And when we asked her where she had been, it turned out that she stood and watered some trees, because Peter, her favorite worker in the garden – had

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been told by her to do something else. She spent whole days in the garden during the spraying. And this occurred often. Gardening evolved very quickly in the Crimea, and not less quickly the battle with a variety of harmful pests. The tobacco solution was soon followed by the so-called Parisian greenery with lime solution. This solution quickly dried on the leaves and did not so easily get washed away by rain, and therefore truly turned out to be a wonderful item in the battle against the moths: 40 zolotniks (1 zolotnik = 1/6th of an ounce in each of the buckets) for 40 buckets of water, but it had to be mixed thoroughly so that in each of the 40 buckets were specks of dust from the greenery: if there was too little, the leaf would not be protected, if there was too much, the leaf would be burned, and it would lose weight. And so in the evenings our mother would sit and on apothecary scales would weigh out little cone-shaped bags of exactly 40 zolotniks and when it was just barely light, she would run with these bags into the garden and herself would lower one into the bucket full of water and would mix the solution or else would keep watch when the mixing was done by an assistant maid. And the spraying was not done only once. Just when the garden had succeeded in blooming it was sprayed against moths. When the trees had “cleaned’ themselves, that is, shed the unviable fruit, we sprayed again against worms - do you remember those disgusting worms which in the Crimea can propogate for five generations during the summer? After that we sprayed with “bordossky” solution, that is, copper sulfate, in order to save the tender shoots of various types especially the Saffrons and Rennets (*****), from the black mushrooms ‘Fusicladium.’ Altogether, the Crimean garden resembled more some disinfection chamber – that is, the trees were constantly covered with white and green spots and with the solutions of various mixtures with lime, and the trunks were encircled with rings in order to catch the worms which were seeking a good little space where they could stay peacefully, and the branches often were covered with carbolineum when there was a suspicion that, like white snow, plant lice might appear. Yes, it was not easy for the owners of the gardens to obtain the famous Crimean apples! And this whole effort Mama bore without complaint and fatigue.

But even before the appearance of such pests, a fundamental enemy that left the

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owner with all the work and expense, but without any profit, might arrive: spring frost. Famous in Germany as the “Ice Saints”, they also appeared in our garden and we feared it and attempted to fight against it. In our literature there is a wonderful description of battles in which Father Frost helped by covering the garden with smoke. This is the “Black Monk” by Chekhov. But it is one thing to read such a description and another thing entirely during a clear spring night to walk in clouds of hot smoke, to stumble in the dark in the canals for the water and to feel how more and more ice forms on the bottom of your pants legs from the wet grass; but all this is below. At eye level and higher, thousands of pink-white flowers appear out of the darkness, almost poignant in their battle against death. The first time I simply did not believe my eyes, when, bending down to the branch, I saw that it easily broke in half as if it were made of glass or porcelain and that it was not a soft living petal. It became clear that I was not surrounded by living branches but frozen little cadavers whose innards were already torn up by ice which had formed from their juices. My soul became cold at the thought that the crops which had been expected for a whole year were ruined in one night, not even one night, but during several pre-dawn hours and only the weak hope remained that only the branches closest to the ground had frozen and the higher ones had survived. There were several outcomes: sometimes we were successful in saving a large part of the crops, but sometimes all was lost. And then the following day was terrible. The clear sun rose as always over the almost milky-colored trees, but only a few hours later we felt that today the sun brought its children not life, but death, and the next day there was no white garden: disgustingly dirty yellow wrinkled tatters covered the trees, and one wanted to run away without looking back from this portrait of death and destruction. On one of such mornings, already in Chadjijevka, I walked up to a young little pear tree – Bere-Aleksander,-a long time already without flowers and covered with marvelous young pears the size of a small thimble. They were so fresh and shone so brightly as if their skin had be lacquered, that I involuntarily thought: well, at least they remained. But when I cut into one of them, I found that in the place where the future seeds would be, there already were black spots. Everything had been destroyed by the frost, and all the pears fell down in a short time. This was difficult not

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only materially: the fists involuntarily clenched from the feeling of offence and injustice at this senseless and random destruction for us, for the gardeners, and these living and shiny beings – flowers and buds.

During the second half of April and the beginning of May (in the old calendar) the gardener slept badly when the sky was clear in the evening. Every hour he ran outside to see what the thermometer showed and when it went down to 4Celsius or 3C degrees (39.2 or 37.4Fahrenheit) there was no more thought of sleep and he would consider – should one light the bonfire or not and will there be frost? Therefore it was a great relief when the meteorologists explained to us that there was a method that would to a certain degree allow us to predict whether there would be frost at night. It depends on the degree of humidity in the air. If there is much humidity, then with the cooling of the earth which occurs nightly, then even before the thermometer falls to zero, fog will form and cover the earth and a further lowering of the temperature would stop – there could be no frost. If the air was dry then frost would be probable. In order to predict this, one needed two accurate, adjusted and co-ordinated thermometers one of which was left dry, but on the little ball at one end of the other one we tied a thin rag which was lowered into a glass of water. In the evening, having checked the degrees shown on both thermometers one could, consulting a chart, find the temperature at which fog begins to develop, and if that temperature was higher than zero, one could go to sleep peacefully – there would be no frost, if it was lower than zero – one had to be on guard and watch the further movement of temperature. I brought thermometers and set up the whole intricate apparatus, for Mother alone, but who would occupy himself with it when Mother was absent? With her unwillingness of giving her work to others, it was difficult to allow someone else to do this very responsible job with the charts, but she learned quickly and would notify me in Petersburg about the results of her observations.

Finally all problems ended. The garden bloomed successfully, the mites, due to the systematic yearly spraying, deserted the blooms and one could take a breath and await the fruit. The sun burned brighter every day and soon the trees began to cry: water,

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water – almost loudly. They needed to be watered. When there was only our garden and a few vegetable gardens in the whole Bulganak plain, even poor Bulganak provided enough for watering, that is, our garden was still young and did not demand much water. But with the passing of time, the number of gardens and vegetables increased many times over. In Bodrak V.N. Schnaider planted a completely new garden, the Kojash garden in the hands of my sister grew to about 30 desjatin (81 acres), the whole meadow of the Tatar village where, during my time they were selling horses and calves, turned into a plant and vegetable garden, and even in Kronental where the Bulganak flowed so deeply that it was impossible to get water with a container lowered into it, small gardens developed which needed water for irrigation from the stream. In Agach- Eli the areas of the gardens stayed the same, but the trees grew, the bowls dug around them became much larger, and more water for irrigation was needed. I already wrote that under Trigani there was not a single well with potable water, and during our first years the water was brought in barrels from the well in the Tatar village. Imagine what a pain every bucket of water was - needed for drinking by people, for cooking food, for washing and the laundry, even if it was brought from not that far away. Early in the morning a pair of oxen was harnessed, and two people rode to the well: one was drawing the water, the other one, standing on the vehicle, poured, it bucket by bucket into the barrel through an enormous wooden funnel. When it arrived at the house, a long line of people with buckets stretched from it, and by lunch it was empty. Again they drove for water. But the Crimean summer sun, during those few hours when the barrel was only half full, managed to dry out the upper staves of the barrel. A long wait was necessary until the staves were ready again, and this second time the barrel was only ¾ full. But at night the barrel had to be filled again, so that in case of a fire there was at least a little bit of water. And this situation lasted for a long time. But we finally arrived at the thought that if the Tatars had water, why could we not have any ourselves, and we began to dig a well under the ditch. Of course there was water present and even rather plentiful when the well was 8 arshin (18.6 ft) deep. Matters began to pick up. Water was available at home – available 500 feet from the courtyard. From this well we later had running water, at first with a hand crank, then with a horse-powered delivery,

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and finally a motorized system. The barrel disappeared from the courtyard. When it became apparent that one had to seek additional water for irrigating the garden, the thoughts went to wells again, and a second one was dug – in our little woods. About these woods I also have to say a few words. Our meadow was not very wide, and specifically in Agach-Eli it was narrow. There were two parts: the talweg along whose both sides flowed, on the left, the channel of the Bulganak and on the right, the so- called upper ditch, and between them lay the irrigated section of the garden, but the inclines to the talweg could only be irrigated if the water would rise. These inclines never were occupied by cultivated grain, but were plowed nevertheless. And therefore we decided that a large piece of the incline which could be cultivated and which began right after the ice house, would be planted with trees. Usually it was seeded with ordinary barley, but the hens managed to eat all the grain so thoroughly, although it already was laid in stacks, that it was almost not worthwhile to grind the grain. So in that barley field one thousand holes were dug and in them one thousand small twigs which had been ordered from Odessa, I believe from the Rot nursery, were planted. How large these plantings were can best be seen from the fact that during the next summer, when all the fields which lay fallow were covered with tall weeds, Brother Serjezha went to help cut down the weeds and having totally forgotten about “the woods”, managed to cut down a not very small part until a gardener working next to him reminded him about “the woods”. However, the twigs were not allowed to perish, they were even watered from the barrel twice during the summer, and soon the whole barley field turned green with acacias, birches and even beeches. Their background was a whole wall of tall poplars growing along the whole upper ditch and it shielded the young trees from the sun’s rays from the South. And what was interesting: the soil beneath the wood followed the incline toward the ditch, and the difference between the upper and lower sections was 2-3 arshin (4.6-7 feet). The upper trees were horizontal, or even leaning into the opposite direction - and grew so much better the closer they stood to the shade. The birches, being close to the well and drinking their fill were simply huge compared to all the other trees in the woods. Yes, water – it was everything for us!

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In these same woods water was found at the same depth as the other one – 8 arshin (18.6 feet) but it was less potable. A horse-powered water system was established, and in the center of the woods Father built a gorgeous cement pool 6 sazhen (42 feet) in diameter and 1 sazhen (7 feet) deep, which contained 20,000.00 buckets of water. And as usual, when he undertook something, he did not mind spending the money: the pool was built of French Lafarge cement (at that time there was no Russian cement in the South, or it was of poor quality) which never had cracks and held the water wonderfully up to the end of our presence there. Water in this pool was added three times a day from the ice house and to the brim once a week. Then the water was released into the upper ditch and watered the right half of the garden, where the water from the Bulganak reached it only with difficulty and very slowly. Since we so happily bathed in the huge pool, the water was cleaned after each release and so the story went from early in the spring to late in autumn. Later, when we put a motor onto the first well and added a third one next to the first one (this is the well in which Andre almost drowned, having been brought to the spot by my dear brothers and companions) water was also brought into the pool from that well, and it filled to the top in three days.

Years passed unnoticed, the young trees (the whole garden was planned anew and Trigoni’s old trees stood mainly next to the young ones) grew taller and finally began to bear fruit. This took many years, it is not for nothing that a Tatar saying says: plant your vineyard yourself, but an orchard you should inherit from your father. It is true that French sort of apples ripen much earlier than the Crimean ? Nevertheless only a 12-15- year old tree begins to produce its buds correctly and keeps them tightly.

In our time, Crimean gardeners sold fruit while it was still on the trees, and usually these sales occurred in May-June. There were many reasons – and to list them all would be boring for you. It was difficult to hire guards to encircle the garden and who could at the same time put in supports, that is, put in numerous (sometimes there were more than 100 trees) “gatali”, which are long sticks which were thicker at the ends and

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which needed to be found in the woods. Needed were pickers, people to put the fruit into boxes, needed were packers, people to accompany the merchandise – sometimes there was already frost in the North – to Moscow or Petersburg, there had to be basements at the ready, one had to have connections with merchants otherwise it was easy to be swindled. But there were also considerations of a different sort. Between a successful bloom and a rich delivery there was a long time and the possibility of losing a large part of the harvest was great. Hail could destroy or damage the fruit so much that it lost its value totally, in the autumn a North-easter could throw off all of the fruit in spite of the large number of “gatali’ within 2-3 days. And the great value of ripe fruit – many tens of thousands rubles were paid for ripe fruit from the large gardens. In one year one hundred thousand rubles were paid for the Shishiman garden in Karshch Bazaar; all this could turn into nothing. Therefore many owners of gardens preferred to ensure themselves and sold their gardens in their early stages, knowing that they were receiving a far smaller sum than they could have obtained if they fruit would have been ripe. Of course for such a small garden as Agach-Eli was and in addition in such inexperienced hands of people as those of our parents, it would be better to act early. But who among the merchants knew that in the distant Bulganak plain previously unknown to them, there appeared a garden worthy of the attention of Moscow or Petersburg wholesalers? And it was decided to organize a sale. A notice was put into the local newspaper about the sale. Occasionally, while walking through the bazaar, one would see a carriage with one horse, and you would wonder what such an empty vehicle was doing in the bazaar among people and loaded carts. And suddenly the carriage would stop and a man with a copper badge on his chest would appear in it and would yell something in Tatar and Russian. This was the “telal”, the town crier who spoke in a specific style. The telal was indispensable during sales, because he chose the day of the sale in such a manner that it would not coincide with other sales. And so on the day of the sale beginning in the morning, one after the other buyers came accompanied by their experts and advisers, and sometimes simply with their good friends, and enjoyed the pleasant affair. Each group individually went to the garden and walked through it from end to end, unless someone in their group had gone to see it

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previously. Finally, at around 11 o’clock the viewing stopped and everyone gathered on our large terrace around tables which were prepared for lunch. The offerings were not refined – appetizer, something hot, coffee, tea – but plentiful. In addition: wine, beer, water were also served. When everyone was full, the telal began his business. For us, everything was totally new, and of course there was no end to our interest and agitation. But our Ivan Semenovich was especially agitated. Already dressed as for a parade in the morning, and already somewhat “talkative’, he was proud of his “child” and worried about it. “Today our garden is like a bride, and all those are grooms” he repeated to everyone, and one could feel that this was not a phrase for him but a formula in which he poured out his love for the garden. By common consent, a base sum was agreed upon, and the sale began. The telal turned out to be a rather good auctioneer, he threw in some comments, mainly of course in the Tatar language; he himself was Crimean and the majority of the people present were Tatars or people who knew the Tatar language perfectly well; he winked at some, went up to one or the other of the tradesmen – the usual picture at all auctions. The garden was sold for a sum which nobody had expected – eight thousand rubles, and it was bought by D.V. Kapustin – at that time one of the most prominent traders from Moscow, famous because he bought only good merchandise. Our garden immediately received a “reputation”, was included in the ranks of prominent gardens and we no longer needed to arrange sales: the buyers came even without arranged sales.

After the sale of the fruit, the care of the garden, that is the watering of the trees, the spraying, care of the bowls around the trees – were the responsibility of the owner, finding and putting up the number of gatali needed, and of course the picking of the fruits were the obligations of the leaseholder. The garden immediately seemed more invigorated. In its center stood the so-called “carnival booth”, that is, a crude rather large straw –covered hut around which flowers were always planted, and on a pole a gay, large lantern shone in the evenings and a smoky summer stove on which the food for the Tatar guards was cooked; in various corners of the orchard were smaller huts where the guards slept close to the areas for which they were responsible, and

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sometimes one could hear them softly singing their Tatar songs, probably to ward off sleep. In this manner, the summers passed. In August wagons with boards arrived, a carpenter’s bench was prepared in the garden and two or three carpenters began to build boxes according to strict measurements: one pud (36 pounds) for pears, two puds for French-type apples, and four puds for ordinary, small Sinaps (******). Come September, gradually the harvest of the crop began. Everything that was necessary for this job was expedient and distinctive in the Crimea. The ladder on which the picker climbed up the tree had wooden planks and slats without sharp edges which easily parted the branches and protected the pickers and the trees from injury during picking. Everything was made with care not to harm the trees and the pods for the following year. Whoever saw how carefully the picker took the fruit from the branch, not by tearing but gently turning, and how carefully the Tatar did not throw but lay the fruit into the basket, will be impressed how carefully the fruit was handled, at least here. Probably one has to grow up under a fruit tree and develop a connection of the soul with it in order to do everything in the manner in which our Tatars worked then. Basket after basket was filled and lowered gently to the ground. An apple which had accidently fallen from the hands to the ground never was placed with the collected ones –almost certainly a dark spot would appear on it, and so it went into the trash. The workers carried the baskets to the “carnival hut” and there another special worker equally carefully, and I would say lovingly, lay the apples in a heap together with those of the same type. Soon we had to build two more such receiving stations, so-called platforms – on stone poles for the apples. This was an unforgettable sight. The first one was about 10 sazhen (70 feet) in length and 6 sazhen (42 feet) in width, and apples of the same type stretched in an unbroken line from one end to the other, one arshin (28 inches) or more in height. The second platform was even longer. And a knowledgable worker- an old man - poured out the apples so skillfully that they landed in almost perfect rows. Along the edges of the platforms were straight strips of wood holding up another row of pink, yellow, and white ordinary apples without end, and one more beautiful and fresh than the next. One could not help but fall in love with this picture. And even if a color photograph could convey all of this beauty and tenderness it still

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would not be able to provide the aroma which one could smell from afar when nearing the platforms.

Two or three weeks passed. The pyramids of apples on the platforms grew and improved. They improved because the apples, picked from the trees, lay in the fresh air and lost their greenish color and their skin took on color when they were ripe. The inside of the platforms gradually resembled colorful carpets. The basic mass of our orchard consisted of English and Canadian Rennets . These were gorgeous types; the trees grew healthy and spread wide, the fruit clung well to the branches and was very large – a Canadian one which was as large as a cup in diameter was not a rarity. Their taste was very good during autumn months – October, November. But later than that they began to “smell” and their flesh turned sweet and mushy. These types began to be called “hospital” apples because they were cooked easily and provided a wonderful sauce. Later they were out of fashion and they were no longer planted. Next to this “spinal cord “ of the platform with pyramids of pale colored fruit stretching along the whole length, were golden sorts of winter apples nestled with their red stripes on deep yellow backgrounds, which is why they were called “Saffron”. They served as a bridge to the red Saffrons which is what we called the French “reine des ranettes” sort. This was a first-class apple, not large, very beautifully adorned with bright dots on an orange- red rich, rosy skin. This apple was prized above all other types and was favored by us because in our dry plain it suffered less from a fungus, Molinia, and most important, did not split so easily as it occurred in more moist regions. The taste of this apple was truly astonishing – sweet with a barely noticeable refreshing acidity and a wonderful spicy smell. This was a true dessert apple. More highly prized was only the white “Kalvil”.***** This aristocrat among apples also grew in our orchard – and not only in ours, but everywhere – badly. The trees ailed constantly; their branches dried out easily and without any obvious reason, various parasites attacked them before any other trees, especially blood lice. The fruit was always pretty and seemed tender and tasty. Bright yellow with a somewhat dull waxy skin, and as it ripened, a somewhat rosy tone. It is no wonder that it was sent to Petersburg wrapped in cotton and sold for one ruble or

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more per piece. These apples succeeded only in a few places and needed to grow as dwarf trees. The brother of the white Kalvil, the red Kalvil resembled it in the firmness of the fruit, but in other aspects was more democratic. It was so deep wine-colored that even the flesh often was pink-to-red. In the fruit carpet of the platforms it was a folksy dark spot, but its price was middling: it also had the tendency to “smell”. The greenish white colored “Tirolean Rosmarines” with their slight acidic, wine taste were another type. The skin of this common apple was so clean as if it had been polished and at the same time so thin, that when biting into it one always had the impression that one was demolishing a piece of art. This same thin skin, but when mature, white without spots and a tender flesh, was the “Champagne Ranst” called “paper apple” on the market. This also was a gorgeous sort: the tree grew gladly and strongly, was more resistant to parasites, the fruit sat strongly and kept very well in storage. Their main value lay in the fact that they did not ripen well enough for eating until January, February, and therefore they could be stored in the basement for a long time. Occasionally these apples met with the new crop, of course with early-ripening apples. They had a very tender taste, but some people did not like their slightly acidic aftertaste. I am afraid to bore you, but I would like so very much to tell you about the poor green succulent “Ranst” which I more or less foisted on my parents from some nursery or other; they grew into magnificent trees but not one merchant wanted to buy their fruit, and like orphans they had to wait until finally a Jew bought them and brought them to his place where they were eagerly bought to be used in tea instead of lemons; about the brown “Ranet” whose fruit with its pleasant yellowish colored flesh and wonderful aroma I consider first-class and which was not able to break through to the large market because of its green-brown and ugly thick skin; about the great golden “Semech”****** which was small like a toy but truly looked like gold and tasted so wonderful. This apple -but poisoned - was the one given to the Czarina by her stepmother. I would also like to tell you about many of my old apple friends of various origins: “Tatar koza, French belle-fleur, German Kostlichster” which for some unknown reason was at the same time the “French Napoleon”, and again about the Tatar small “Cheleb”. But enough. Only a few more words about “Sinap” and “Kandil”. They were ancient Tatar Crimean varieties, and known as the

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Russian apples. As you may know, a lover of apples would not say: give me an apple, just as a wine lover would not say: give me some wine. One has to know for what reason you want an apple: do you need it sweet or sour, with or without aroma, dry or one that gets brown even when applying a little bit of pressure, not even with the teeth but just with the tongue, do you wish to feel a refreshing tang on your tongue or do you want a dessert apple which is served at the end of dinner. But if you want to feel something wonderfully invigorating and fresh, slightly aromatic with a clean apple smell, crunchy under your teeth, take the “Sinap” apple, and you will involuntarily reach for a second and third. “Kandil-sinap” has been elevated to the aristocracy of sinapas. Everything in this tree is noble. The tree itself, especially during the first 10-15 years of its life is a beauty. It grows in a pyramid shape, like a poplar, very even all around and keeps its shape without pruning. When it begins to produce large fruit it spreads somewhat, but then it is decorated with fruit of such beauty that one does not see the loss of its former symmetry. In Tatar, “Kandil” means icon lamp. And now imagine a straight tree with dark green leaves seemingly lit all over with small lanterns ending in totally straight tips - it was a living Christmas tree. The ripe fruit was of a light yellow color shining brightly, and had soft flesh. Therefore it could not be stored for as long as the Sinap, because its beautiful, shiny skin began to be covered with wrinkles. One thing was negative with the Kandil-sinap: it held on to its fruit badly, and even with a relatively slight wind - and you remember how the North-Eastern winds blew sometimes in the autumn – half of its fruit lay on the ground, despite all the supports and gatalis. Therefore it could be planted only in areas of the orchard which were well- protected from the wind. But nevertheless the Kandil-sinap was one of the most interesting trees of the Crimea and it would be sad to lose this tree or simply forget it.

There were not many pears in our orchard, and we did not plant new ones. In our place they grew badly, and their fruit was not first-class. Due to the famously good soil many pears grew especially well, but there were a large number of so-called stony fruit, that is, an accumulation of knots in the usual sweet flesh of the pear. We never sold pears and saved all of them for ourselves. And you certainly remember the magnificent

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“Marie-Luise” and “Bere-Aleksander”, which Babushka prepared for you in the evenings.

One beautiful day, next to Mikhail’s cottage, one or two carriages with young girls arrived in our peaceful Agach-Eli with noise and singing. They were the sorters and packers. This time they were Russian girls from the outskirts of Mazayn, Sabel or Kurz – three large villages which were once settled by Russian serfs and probably represent the oldest pure Great-Russian settlements in the Crimea. It became gay and loud in the orchard. The sorters inspected one apple after another, removed the ones which were damaged or which would not withstand a long storage, and sorted the fruit by size. The so-called heads (“golovka”) went into a separate box- they were the ones which would be in the first, front row of each box. This innocent attempt to embellish the merchandise was so well-known that nobody was lured by it into buying and the future buyer would have to be a total newcomer or inept if he would judge the whole box of apples by its top row. And this was the only instance of hoodwinking. Never was spoiled fruit put into the boxes. From the sorters the apples went into the hands of packers and they wrapped the apples in paper, but sometimes put them into boxes directly; the boxes were outfitted with cotton wool and the full boxes were carried to the side, covered with paper and then with stalks which had not gone through the threshing machine and therefore were resilient, then with small rags, and lastly with three hoops of moistened walnut wood. All this was done quickly, well and accurately. Then the boxes were affixed with stencils: on one side the firm of the exporter and the name of the contents: English Rennet – and on the other side: Agach-Eli S.S. Nalbandov. This is how we entered the market! With this the long year of the orchard ended. The group worked quickly – they had to hurry into the next orchard, and after 2-3 days only 2 or 3 guards remained; they had to clean up and put into one heap all of the many thousands of gatali which were needed for the following year; they had to return the same number of gatali to us as they had received from us in the spring. The gatali which we had newly acquired during the year were added to the inventory for the coming year. Finally this job was also finished, the huts were cleaned and nailed shut with boards for the winter, the last boxes were hung up, the guards left – and right away it became empty

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and silent in the orchard. I loved to stroll through the garden during that time. Everything still reminded me of the former work - the tearing of papers, the heaps of cotton wool, the little branches broken off by the wind and the leaves under the trees, their fruit, and those thrown away during the sorting. The trees were unexpectedly somehow empty and unusually disheveled as if they were freeing themselves of the corsets which had held them and they no longer knew how to hold their branches. But they were also tired from carrying the masses of fruit and now felt their freedom, and slowly began to lift their branches again and sway even in the lightest wind. And as if they were begging: leave us in peace, give us some rest from your worries about us and your tortures.

Vineyard. The vineyard was the only thing left in somewhat good shape by the Triganis. It was situated between the upper ditch and the road which at that time passed through much lower than during your time. I think the vineyard was about 13.5 acres of land. When Father bought Agach-Eli he moved the road much higher, along the plain and in this way turned the whole land reclaimed from the steppe into one large vineyard. But the quality of the wine was not high, and on the advice of someone whom I do not know, the parents decided to plant a whole new vineyard. From the point of view of usage, this was a perfectly correct decision, as it was situated toward the North, as this was also done this way in Kronental. There was so little rain and so much sun in our area and it seemed to me that the very last drops of moisture fell on our northern slope. On the northern slope the autumn grapes became mature earlier and therefore there was less danger of frost damage (and sometimes the vines were damaged by frost when the fresh shoots had already grown to 1/4th of their necessary length). The parents decided that the new vineyard must be first-class, and through F.M. Schlee who lived in Yalta, ordered twigs from the Nikitalev gardens: red and white muscatel, aligot, and so forth. But this proved to be a mistake. Our grapes were marvelous: sweet and aromatic, but these varieties, especially in our dry conditions, produced so little wine that it was not profitable. The red and white grapes were thrown together into one heap and then used to produce wine; a connoisseur of wine, and even somebody who did not

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know much about wine would realize immediately that our wine sat, so to speak, between two chairs: it was not a liqueur and it was too perfumed and strong for a good wine, that is, for a good table wine. But wine was only a small part of our household, and its mistakes did not bother us greatly. Later we added one more area to the vineyard and planted only two varieties: black and white burgundy. However this changed nothing in our vineyard business. In general, there was so little wine that there was no possibility to manufacture it at home and then to bottle it, especially since none of us had any knowledge of making wine. All that remained was to sell the wine in a raw or partially raw condition, that is, immediately after its harvesting, or one or two years later. After the death of Ivan Semenovich the new gardeners understood little about grapes, and there always was the possibility that the wine would turn sour or be spoiled in some way. Mother of course played a major role in this also, and her cleanliness and accuracy did not allow such an unpleasant possibility. But whether we kept the wine one year or more, we did not receive more than two rubles per bucket. Something had to change in the winemaking; one could not produce the wine and keep it in buckets in the carriage house with a straw floor and next to the stables. Therefore Father decided to establish a wine cellar and above it a wine producing area. The project was drawn up by the mining engineer A.V. Konradi, at that time a great friend of Franz, and constantly staying with him in Kojash, owner of gardens, an interesting, smart and lively person, who was strongly interested in Crimean horticulture. He built the first large reservoir dam in the Crimea in the garden of Dr. Betling in Alm. Dr. Nik. Nik. Betling was an outstanding surgeon and a passionate gardener and played a large role in developing horticulture in the Crimea.

We built a good cellar, deep and with iron beams, and above it a large wine making area with a cement floor and an oven, in case the grapes would be cut and the first shaking of the wine would occur during cold weather. Now we began to keep the wine at home and since grapes were cut late, that is, when they had ripened well, the varieties were good, everything was kept clean, and the wine turned out well, that is, strong, aromatic and healthy. Slowly, Nalbandov wine also became famous in very

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definite circles. Next to ours, the Kronental wines were of a somewhat fluid sourness, because their varieties were very simple, and they were cut early, not allowing the grapes to ripen sufficiently. One of the colonists, Weiss, a wine merchant, began to buy our wine, at first aged, but later new wine and then added the acidity which he had in his wine in Kronental. And he only sold to acquaintances – of course for a different price – to wine lovers, a few buckets of “real Nalbandovian “ wine, not ruining it by additions of Kronental wine. In good years, Mother saved a cask of good new white wine for us, let it age, added old reserves, and then poured it into bottles for our use. All of the other wine was poured from the presses directly into Weiss’ buckets and traveled to him in Bulganak, and we received our two rubles for a bucket of new wine. From the squeezed-out skins we made a beverage which we served the workers on holidays.

It is unnecessary to speak of bird- and beekeeping, there was so little of it. You yourselves will remember our small bird house with the pigeon coop – the only one I know which one could enter on ordinary steps in order to clean the floor and nests, and the pig sty in which there were 4 – 6 pigs which provided lard and such good sausages which we never again ate anywhere else. And this was also Mother’s achievement. The sticking of the pigs and the making of sausages in the whole area was done by the butcher of Bulganak, and in our place Mother was present and oversaw how and what he put into the sausage. And this “what” were the items which made our sausages so good that everyone ate them with pleasure. Mother loved her ducks, white Pekings, very much, and it was truly pretty to see them when they purposefully, in a white chain, walked along the upper ditch where some water was always provided for them, and then they sat like white spots in the green grass, hiding their heads under their wings. For them Mother herself always cut the rinds of watermelons and melons into small pieces after dinner, and a special bucket was brought to her chair for them.

We had few bees – it was too dry, and blooming ended early because of the dryness, but nevertheless the honey always was our own.

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If you have read so far, you will say that I have told you about our gardens and orchards and about Agach-Eli, but I had wanted to tell you about my parents and their lives. Where is that? They had no life besides their children and work. Outside of these two spheres they had no other interests, especially Mama. I wrote already that after his marriage Father was looking for work for a few years, and stopped this search only after buying land. But I have no doub that internally all this bustling and difficult work did not satisfy him. He conscientiously tried to get used to this work; he supervised the workers, did not mind to spend time and money in order to do and make everything better and reasonable, but he was not successful in the unavoidable trifles of housekeeping and they tired him. A deep and burning love which did not notice the problems and their constancy, which Mother had, he did not have. He always searched for something larger, something more worthy of spending one’s life for. How many times did I observe him when, having come into town, he, sometimes still in his coat, and with an unaccustomed speed, would take some newspapers and quickly, quickly look through them. Only much later did I realize that this was a small expression of the hunger of the soul which he experienced while living in our remote corner. It probably seemed to him that somewhere were more important tasks, that the world was moving on – and that he was not only not taking part in this movement but also knew nothing about it. And he always looked for paths into that world, finding his own world not interesting enough, not using all of his spiritual strengths and abilities......

With Mother it was totally different. She truly lived for her work and her interests. For her there was no important or unimportant work – when she was doing something, she was immersed in her work and did not analyze whether it was important or unimportant – it was important that the job was done well, but sometimes things did not succeed with her presence as they would not have even without her. She had a invaluable quality – very rare among people, especially Russian people: when working, she thought only of the task she was doing at that minute. She lived her life bound together with her work, and since she was a clever and contemplative person, the work usually turned out successfully. And the inner regulator about which I wrote previously,

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did not allow her to drown in trifles and to get tangled up in details; she studied every task, understood its basic meaning and sense, and also knew all the details toward its completion. She also could explain and demonstrate, to order something done or do it herself, could quietly learn from someone else something she did not know herself. I repeat: she lived for her work and work lived in her hands. This was, I believe, the only person whom I knew to whom the famous Russian saying: “laziness was born before we were” – did not apply. And it is not surprising that she was the center around whom all of our lives turned – Agach-Eli and all its inhabitants!

Life in Agach-Eli now appears to me like a magical dream. It was not a life of Oblomov (sluggish, lethargic), nor was it like the one of old-fashioned land owners, but there were a few strains of both of those. It contained so much effort and energy, so much knowledge, that a description and even a not-so-short story about it was earned and deserved by its owners.

The old Trigani house was wonderfully comfortable. Not high, without stairs, totally surrounded by trees which knocked on its windows with their branches during stormy weather, it was cool in the summer and warm in the winter. It was heated by a fireplace, especially in autumn when, with much trouble, wood from the apple- and pear trees would be thrown into it, and it would burn slowly for twenty-four hours. When a long, glass corridor was added to the house, and we no longer entered through the front door, it became especially warm and comfortable. In that corridor and the dining room with the iron stove, our whole lives were concentrated, but in the summer we only ate dinner there. We drank our morning tea on the garden terrace, which had been greatly enlarged. You remember those sunny, bright mornings when the morning dew still hung in the garden. Do you also remember the evening tea and dinner on the terrace during the wonderful summer evenings, when hundreds of butterflies and moths flew towards the candles in the glass sticks. We ate dinner at 8 o’clock, and at 10 watermelons and melons were brought from the ice house, or Mother herself brought a basket of peaches, pears or grapes from her pantry – they all were fresh, not tired out

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from laying in a store. It was time to go to sleep, but the moon shone so brightly, the night was so velvety, so warm that it was difficult to leave the terrace and go to our room.

And the Agach-Elian dinners? Everything was simple, but how tasty it was! We ate much, honestly, too much. Brother Serjezha would come to the village with his whole family for a vacation and always scolded Mother for cooking so well and amply. He particularly attacked the greasy, wonderful sauces and threatened us that we all will die from eating too much. Mother only smiled, we listened and kept eating, and finally Serjezha waved with his hand, sat down next to us and ate and praised the food. We all understood the correctness of his indignation, but did we not also have to have a vice? And how could we deprive ourselves of all this tastiness? Georgeous chibureki, soup with dumplings, the mousaka which was famous in all of the Crimea; sauce of fried eggplants layered with hamburger which was famous because some mullah, according to legend, swallowed his own tongue while eating this (“imam bayaldy” – was another name for this dish) – all of these Eastern dishes obtained a finer taste under Mama’s Western hands – and it was difficult to stop eating them. On the other hand, the Sunday “Nudelsuppe” with the cooked chicken and rice, slightly flavored with lemon and with Hollondaise sauce following it, was loved by the children; egg yolks were added to the sauce as well as some of the famous Agach-Elian butter. And Babushka’s well-known young pigeons in cream? And the young fried ducks with apples - not the ordinary apples but the baked “hospital” English Renets, slightly infused with aromatic duck grease? And finally, Babushka’s famous ice cream, of which one could never prepare enough the demand for it was so great among the small and big people. All this and many more items were wonderful – we ate much and with pleasure, but we never were gluttons. And in my whole life I never heard Father say to Mother: “Varja, could you cook this or that?” Such words were never possible in our house. We ate richly and well, but we never ate up our profits nor our capital, just as we did not drink them away and did not lose them at cards. We put everything into the same earth which toiled for us. We used the fruit of our labor, without being embarrassed about

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this, but we also knew about the effort and knew how to work. We owned an estate, but we did not gad about abroad and did not rent out our place or entrust it to managers, but from early morning to late at night we were at our place and took care of our large responsibilities every minute. We were that which I in an open letter, addressed to all land owners in the Tavrichesky region, wrote in 1906 called “working estate owners”, and where I invited them to unite for the coming elections of members for the second Federal Duma. There was much derision during discussions and in the newspapers concerning my use of that term, but I did not and do not take it back. My parents were such working estate owners, as was my brother-in-law, my uncle Schlee and many, many others.

If in 1920, before parting with our Bulganak plain forever, you would have given it a parting glance from the same Kolumbstal mountain on which our parents stood 40 years ago, you would see a very different picture. The village Kolumber-Eli with its few huts which stood in a circle – had disappeared. The ground on which it stood had been plowed up to the road, but to the left of the road, a little to the side, stood a clean new farmstead with a smallish garden and a good aviary which belonged to Petr Nikolaevich Schnaider. Looking down along the plain, you would not see the mighty poplars of Agach-Eli, because they, together with the entire plain, drowned in greenery, so young, fresh and so rich that it seemed unbroken and only the distant white church of Kronental would assure you that you were standing on the same place where you stood forty years ago. On the right side you would not see the house of Kovalsky, because it was blocked by the new house of Franz Nik. Schnaider, also with a small garden decorated with its own mountain spring. Far away on the left side on a little hill you would have seen the totally new country estate of the third brother, Wendelin Nikolayevich Schnaider, with a large young garden. Even farther on the right side, instead of the neglected land of a tobacco plantation and the half-ruined drying sheds, in the thick of the park, gradually turning into the forests of the mountain slopes, there, on a high hill, with its white walls and even white roof, stood the house with its marvelous terrace, marble columns, two-stories and with stairs leading to the park. This green kingdom

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was not impressive when seen from the right side of the plain – sporting a young vineyard; it stretched on the left side with a large newly planted orchard. And only a line of acacias along the road, totally lost in all the greenery, and the old cellars of the Numanavsky vineyards would let you know that you are in Kojash – the estate of our Franz and Sonja. Further on the left you again see the young orchard from which the tall silver-gray roof of our small Chadijevka is visible. The small and poor Tatar village of 40 years ago also has grown stronger and larger, and its empty meadows have turned into young small orchards and gardens. And here is Agach-Eli. You have already noticed the old familiar black poplars, but now they do not reach out to the sky and looking like a light-green island in the midst of the green sea of the young garden through a long and high tree-lined row of poplars and a young forest, you see more than ten tile roofs of various heights, and trees, separating the wine-making house, and lower, the white chimney of the threshing shed with a straw roof, and more closely, small pools glistened in the sun like small round mirrors. These views attested to the fact that the estates were healthy and well-kept. Such was the Bulganak plain in the year 1920, and all this was done by us, small and large, hard-working estate owners.

Our father and mother were very healthy people. During their whole life I do not remember that they were seriously ill. With the years, signs of obesity became evident in my father’s heart, and I believe in 1895, Doctor Minat sent him to Marienbad. He returned very thin and refreshed, and afterwards returned to Marienbad 2-3 more times. In 1903 or the next year, he underwent an operation in Odessa to remove a polyp in the urinary tract, and he recovered so quickly and well that it was clear that his heart was in good condition. Therefore his death in January 1909 was totally unexpected for us. That evening all of us were Edi’s guests, who at that time lived in a wing of the neighboring Schektman house. It was one of our usual evening gatherings in which all our close relatives took part. The evening passed as usual, we played cards, my sister sang, Father was in a wonderful mood, went from room to room, stopped at one then the other group of guests, softly sang along with my sister. We ate dinner late, after dinner sat around for a long time. Mother was not feeling well, and

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when she was bundled up so she would not catch cold, we went home in a carriage. It came into my head that it would be difficult for her to exit from the carriage in the large scarf which had been thrown over her head, and I said to Edi: “perhaps you can accompany Mama”. But Father, in an evidently annoyed voice answered: “what else have you imagined again” and we went on. Already during the ride Father did not feel well, but unlocked the exit door with a small English key, began to take out some money to pay the coachman in the light of the lamp, and suddenly sat down on the lowest step of the stairs. Mother, thinking that he felt faint, quickly went upstairs to get some water, but when she returned, he was already dead.

He lay in the grave just as quiet and handsome as he had been in life. We buried him not far from the side gates of the cemetery – I do not know whether his grave has survived. On it stood a white marble cross, made in Florence, rising from a block of marble and wound around with white marble lilies. Behind the cross was a trellis with live roses. Next to him we planted four pyramid yews which were to represent the four of us. Around the grave was an iron fence of a garland of oak leaves, simple and straight. The death of our father was the first true disaster which hit our extensive family. It paralyzed all of us with its suddenness. Having come from Odessa for the funeral, Serjezha cried like a child. Mother cried silently, but was totally destroyed and unusually apathetic. Her silence increased, but as much as we tried to persuade her, she went to the cemetery in her small carriage.

I, more than the others, had to stay with him during those last days which he spent with us. I stood next to him, and despite all my horror, thought and spoke with him. For the first time, death was that close to me, for the first time it stopped being an abstract problem but became a large, very large fact. And I thought: either there is a God, and a soul, and then death is only a break in our life together, an exit of someone who was born before me, and, strictly speaking, used up his body before me and having nothing to do with our love and soul, or there is no God, no soul – and then life is such an absurd and unnecessary happenstance, such a million-year-long joke on our mind and

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being, that it is not permissible to grieve about the death of a person, one must almost be happy that this undignified comedy of life in which a person is not different from a leaf that falls from a tree, has ended for him and one must only think how to end this comedy for oneself more quickly. My whole soul, then and now, only accepted the first decision, and since then and not now I no longer fear death not only for myself, but also for those close to me. And in the cemetery I almost calmly kissed my father’s cold forehead and in my thoughts said to him: “ we will see each other again, Papa.”

After the death of my father, Mother went abroad with the Schnaiders who had already previously planned to travel, and stayed for about two months. She returned calmer. Father had left no will. All of us already stood on our own feet, nobody needed an inheritance desparately, and together we decided that while Mama was alive, things would remain as they were during Father’s life. I was to manage the house in town; Edja, together with Mother, - the estate. Once a year the heirs checked the books and made major decisions: to do this or that building, pay debts, and so forth. Any profits were divided into five equal parts. And life went on without there being any disagreements or quarrels. As previously, Mama remained in charge of everything in Agach-Eli, and Edja took care of the field work, which he loved and knew very well. Nine years passed in this manner. In 1918 during the first Bolsheviks, Mama was in the village and was taken to town by an ordinary stagecoach between the arrival of the Bolsheviks in Simferopol and the destruction of our houses on the estates. I still see her – a poor, exhausted little old woman, dressed in her warm, dress - green with red stripes- in the door between the dining room and living room: she arrived totally unexpectedly; all connection between us and the telephone in Kojash had been broken. In 1919 we went to Anapa together. In October 1920 she again was in the village when the evacuation came. I could not leave Sevastopol and as much as Shura tried to convince her to come with us, she did not agree. Of course a large part of her decision was the fact that Edja and Tamara decided to stay. If they had left, she probably would have left also. After our flight she – I do not know whether of her own will or by force – left our house and lived at Aunt Masha’s. Later, again I do not know why, she lived with

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the Lerichs and slept on a couch in the hallway. Edja went into hiding, Tamara was arrested. Soon everything that she had was used up, and she simply starved. Knowing how little she needed, I can judge how difficult it was to obtain food, but, to tell the truth, to the end of my days I will not understand that the Lerichs did not have enough food for her. Finally Serjezha could get to Simferopol. “I did not recognize Mama” he wrote to me, “she was so thin and exhausted.” He transferred her to Odessa, but she did not live much longer. My brother did not write to me about her death, and I found out about it from his son, Serjezha, who lived in England. She evidently became so weak, that her heart quietly stopped. My brother bent over her and asked whether she could hear him. She did not answer him but only weakly pressed his hand. They buried her in Odessa, I believe in the fenced-in area of her daughter-in-law’s family.

8. The four of us.

We had a good, bright childhood. A simple one, without nannies and governesses. Father always regretted that we did not study foreign languages during our childhood and almost asked our forgiveness and said: “you know, that there would have been no room for a governess.” And there truly was no room, but I only bless those tight quarters which prevented a governess from separating us from our parents and one from another. I later observed many governesses and educators, Russian and non- Russian, - there were some in our small family – but fortunately not for long, but if I were to start life over, I never would have them. Here is not the place to start a discussion about the meaning of family, but whoever treasures a family not only from the point of view of comfort or personal satisfaction, must not bring a wedge into it in the form of a governess. Our father was very concerned about our upbringing, and he often repeated a phrase which he loved: upbringing is more important than education. In spite of this, I do not remember at all that we were brought up. We simply lived as a tight, friendly family and did what our parents did. And knowing nothing about Pestalozzi (*******), our parents instinctively fulfilled its famous requirement that pedagogy consist of two things: love and decency. Nobody told us in any language to stand straight, to speak only

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when you are asked; they had no prescription for a good upbringing, we were only stopped when we veered from the limits of the permissible: tried to eat with our fingers or stuck our finger into our nose. You will ask what the difference was. A very large one. We did not grow up among many people, and never felt at home in fancy parlors. But during our childhood years we felt free in our behavior, while we were also responsible for it. It would have seemed wild to us to call our father or mother “wy” (you-polite form), or while sitting at table with them that we should not turn to them with a question or not to answer them. We were little people with total rights, who were not allowed to do this or that, sometimes with an explanation, sometimes without one, the parents only saying vaguely: you will not understand this, but these are the rules which govern in our small family circle. In our family there was an air of freedom, and we were never silenced or told: this is not your business. Father always said: “I am ready to listen to advice even from a child,” and it would never enter our heads to think that this or that occurence in our house did not concern us or warrant our opinion. That is how it always was, and I remember that once, I believe during the division of the inheritance, Mama felt herself offended by her older brothers, and a temporary tiff developed between the Schlee and our household, our parents were reproached because all of us were aware of the situation. We were not that small anymore, I already was in high school; nobody complained to us or involved us in the quarrel, but nothing was hidden from us. This “spirit” in our house was connected to the fact that we lived a quite self- contained life, we had almost no close friends and moved mostly among the numerous relatives of our mother and father, and this had the effect that we experienced not only the usual love between us and the parents, and between the four of us, but we also experienced friendship. Therefore we were a truly friendly family. Looking back on my life of many years within my family, I cannot remember a single moment of not only a quarrel in our family, but even of a tiff. When we all were married and four outsiders of very different characters entered the family, the relations between us did not cool, and we just as closely were interested in each other’s fates, also we did not hide anything from each other, trusted each other, as we had been used to do since childhood. We had a very lively correspondence and I regret unendingly those hundreds of letters

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which I accumulated during the long years of my absence from the Crimea. Each stage of life, each new attempt, new plans – everything was reported, everything was debated and critiqued – and always with kindness. I can only say once again: it was a good, bright, friendly childhood.

I already wrote that we were raised simply. We never had special dress clothes, during our highschool time we had two shirts: one new, the other an everyday one, if one got torn, a new one was bought, and we grew up in the same undemanding manner such as we have stayed throughout our lives. I remember that in his 8th grade, my brother’s uniform jacket fell apart totally, but he did not want a new one sewn for him because it was not worth it for one last year, and so spent the whole Crimean winter in his summer coat. And I want to emphasize once again: it was not stinginess of my brother or my parents. It was an economical way of life which was present in everybody who worked and knew the value of money and work. That is how it was with everything. You will find it comical, but for you it is not a secret that to this day I cannot calmly see the unnecessary spilling of water. It would seem that after so many years of tap water one would abandon this silly bagatelle, but it is stronger than I: the many years during which each bucket of water had to be brought in by Mother or a servant and in the village had to be delivered by a special carrier, carved into my psyche such deep furrows that even the richest tap water cannot erase them. We always ate well, and sufficiently, but always modestly. For breakfast we were given a five-kopek piece so that we could buy a bun at the high school, but never so much that we could buy some fruit or grapes from the Tatar Ivan – I do not know why everybody called him Ivan – who was famous throughout town for cheating and who sold fruit to the high school students as a sideline. I remember that during my childhood Sonja and Serjezha sometimes spoke about how fortunate other children were, especially the Schnaider children, who lived above the restaurant “Petersburg” and could eat from the menu whatever they wanted and received some sweets every day. In our house sweets were given far from every day, and Mother would give us candy from a box which always was locked and stood on the buffet. And in my mind, when I see the eager expectation in our faces

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when Mother unlocked the box, and compare them with the bored faces of our children, especially the Schnaider children, who listlessly rooted through the bowl filled with sweets and which always stood on the buffet, I definitely and emphatically prefer our box.

I do not know how our childhood and youth would have developed if we had lived only in town, but Agach-Eli was bought before Edja was born, when I was six and Serjezha and Sonja were 12 and 14. From that moment on, the village became to play the major role in our lives, and town became a place for study. But during our time even this was more modest and difficult. Even in our sleep we did not envision frequent trips from here and there, and drove to the village only for Easter and summer vacations. But with how much enthusiasm did we await that move! For these family trips we had a special German van – later it stood in our carriage shed for a long time, but I do not know whether you ever rode in it because it so totally stopped being used. Essentially this was an excellent carriage on high wheels and therefore light, very roomy – 6 to 8 people could occupy it comfortably, totally enclosed from the wind and rain, its back was often heated from the coachman’s area with a special pipe and had a barrier of a folded partition between the coachman’s and our area. In our yard you of course never saw such German vans – in them all substantial German villagers came to town in full force in the fall when they bought all the necessities for the whole family: dresses, hats, shoes, and so forth. One thing was bad in that carriage: it was so high that it swayed during the voyage and little by little it made the passengers seasick, especially when it was cold or windy, and the side and front windows were closed. Therefore, when it finally came to a stop, we stepped down from it with a feeling of relief and a little stupor. But all this was trifling when compared to the coming joy: we are traveling to the village for two weeks of Easter vacation! Already in the morning the packing of the things we would take along, began. In the early years in Agach-Eli the whole household had to be taken along and many, many things had to be brought from town and then taken back to town. But there was a lot of room in the van for many things, that is, the seats were in the form of drawers on which cushions were laid. And then, after we finally got settled

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inside, many items were handed up and all these things had to be stored in the drawers and shoved into corners or else held on one’s lap. Finally everything was accomplished and we were on our way. During the first years we went without Mama, because there was no good baking oven in the village for baking kulich (Easter cakes). Later this also was accomplished, and the whole procedure for preparing for Easter would be done in the village. I remember well the first disappointment. From the previous fall, we kept in our memory the village and the road as a green carpet, but now, especially when Easter was late, even though the grass and some small plants were already green, all the bushes and particularly the oak woods in Budkin still were black and dried out, here and there even still with the dried leaves from last year. And this disappointed us greatly – the village appeared to be somewhat unreal, not promising its former pleasures. But soon enough masses of young green bushes with their magnificent red and yellow buds, and sometimes even already with single flowers appeared on the Budkin mountain. And every time I looked at the small yellow bushes with special interest – we did not have them at home – and I always wanted to dig some up and transfer them to us in order to correct this mistake of Nature, but there never seemed to be enough time, and there also was no shovel. I had to leave correcting Nature’s mistake until the next year. The road sometimes was still dirty, and then the trip was long, but finally we were at the Kumbetelsky decline. Father and Mother did not feel easy – the van was very wobbly and along the edges of the road there were so many deep potholes that if the horses could not, for any reason, hold the carriage, it would not be good. Everyone is a little on edge, but little Edja, not understanding the danger of the situation, loudly pronounces: “here is where Baba was killed”. But fortunately the most dangerous descent has already ended, the horses are given free rein and the van, wobbly, gaily swayed into our plain. At that time a few small village huts still existed, and from their chimneys smoke rose, and it smelled of that particular, sharp smell of hot Kizjak (dried manure) which one can distinguish from all other smokes of the world. And with delight we breathed in this unquestionable proof of the village and one of us, already older and more learned, said without fail: “the smoke of our homeland is sweet and pleasant for us.” But the greatest delight for all of us was the sight of the black and white lambs,

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who uneasily crowded near their mother, greedily eating the young grass, surrounded by the huts of the orchards. From now on, everything went quickly and gaily. We flew past the strangely growing heap of the disintegrating Bodrok mosque, which during the summer is hidden by overgrown lilacs, gaily ran around the fountain of Kojash at that time not yet captured into pipes, again it smelled of the Kisjakan smoke of the Agach- Elian Tatars, and our van, turning as if on a kopek before the gate, swings into our yard and accompanied by the barking of the unkempt dogs, rolls to the wooden corridor of our dear house. We enter – and again there is a feeling of strangeness – the house is the same, all washed and cleaned, but it is still filled with an unusual winter coldness, it almost seems it is not happy to see us or it has forgotten us. You quickly go to the stone terrace and to the tenderly shining sun, the tulips in the flower beds here and there, and the opening buds of the lilacs on the southern side – all this moves you with its warm greeting, and you immediately feel: you are home. And on the highest visible branch sits a starling and chirps and whistles, and enjoys with you the warmth and the sun. He preens and shines in the sun, his little throat trembles and puffs up and shines green and blue under the bright rays of the sun, he bends and beats his wings and trembles with his whole body and does not see or hear anything around him in his total joy.

After dinner the stoves were heated up again, but despite this, laying in bed, you would feel an unusual raw coldness, and you wouldpull up the lap robes and blankets which had been brought from town, but the cold also penetrates from below, and you do not fall asleep immediately; this does not at all hinder the feeling of happiness about the fact that you are in the village, that you are surrounded by such uncustomary silence, and that tomorrow you will wake up again - in the village. Easter comes and passes with all its delights, and the question which worries the whole house is answered, whether the kulich and especially their resemblance to each other were successful this year – the especially light dough needed a wild amount of egg yolks – were they sweet enough, did they have holes, did they rise sufficiently and were they well-baked? If Easter was later – in the second half of April – it coincided with the

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blooming of the garden, and this gave Easter an even greater holiday- and festive look. Our gardens could be seen from the mountain top, and this view was unforgettable. This was truly a white sea of flowers or bouquets, standing straight along all the length of the garden and edging the flowing Bulganak with tender green pussy willows and the poplars on the upper ditch. And only when you descended again from the mountain and you were embraced on all sides by hundreds of blooming trees, you would see that what resembled a white sea in truth were masses of various blossoms. The dull white blossoms of the pears were already cradled by tender unfolding leaves, the flowers of the apples, white on top and lightly pink underneath, sat on bare branches. You would come closer and would find that one could already see the color of the future bud by looking at the color of the blossom: the pink cheeks of the Sinap in the lightly pink underside of the leaves, the dull palesness of the paper Ranet or Rosmarin in its white, thin coloring of the leaves. And so you simply cannot but stop and admire, so unbelievably beautiful are the large, single stars of the blossoms of the quince, laying cradled in the thick skin of the already opened leaves.

On the second day of Easter we sometimes drove to Kronental. Usually on that day the priest came from the Simferopol Roman Catholic church and conducted a mass. After mass there was a peculiar tournament. Beginning at the church and for another long stretch, even to the road leading to Agach-Eli, rows of colored eggs were laid out equidistant from each other, on the street of the colony. Driving on that street was forbidden during that time, or was directed to neighboring streets. These eggs had been collected long before Easter and were so-called scrambled, that is, they lay under the hens but for whatever reason no chicks developed; they were just as brightly colored as the good eggs. When all the preparations were finished, two young men whose caps and jackets were richly decorated with ribbons and flowers, came out. They shook hands, demonstratively kissed each other, and the contest began. One of them had to run to the boundary to Agach-Eli, pass a check point, turn around and run back. The other fellow had to pick up, one by one, all the eggs laid out on the street and break them. Of course the highlight was the meeting of the two protagonists. If the

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runner managed to return while eggs were still on the street, he would pick them up and throw them in the direction of the enemy; if, on the other hand, the other one managed to break most of the eggs before the return, he would take the last ones and run with them toward the other contestant and break them on that fellow. Since all those eggs were rotten, the loser took an a dismal and very unaromatic look and shamefacedly ran home to wash and put on fresh clothes. This ritual disappeared with the years: perhaps the participants understood its light aesthetics, or the supply of rotten eggs diminished and people turned toward the Simferopol bazaar with the help of its constantly increasing number of merchants coming from Kronental. But I must say that the look of the long line of bright eggs on the dark earth was nevertheless pretty. The days passed quickly, we had to return to town and our studies again, and even though the van was filled with all kinds of good things, we sat down in it with very different feelings and were totally convinced that the town, the school and the homework were invented by a people-disliking person. And the way to town went up the mountain, and the horses themselves did not go so willingly on that road.

The estate and its management involved the parents ever more deeply; their presence there was imperative and the question what to do with us arose more frequently. The question concerned the time between Easter and summer vacation, and the time between August 15 and October 1. It was decided quite unusually, and depended on the number of children in school. After our sister returned from boarding school and until her marriage she lived in town with us. Until then Serjezha and I lived sometimes with Grandmother, sometimes I lived with Uncle Ivan Sergeevich, sometimes Maria Igorovna lived with us. After our sister married, Serjezha was already at the university and I was already in the 6th ( 10th) grade and mature enough so that I was left in the house alone. Finally, after I finished, Edja was left alone, and a room was rented for him where he was also fed, and the house was closed up. It was not a happy picture to see the house totally empty, sad, dusty and apparently forgotten. Only during the time of the renovation special servants were kept there, and that is how it went until the end.

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In our time summer vacations began June 7th and lasted until the 7th or 15th of August. This was a true and long happiness. The van appeared again but we often managed without it, since the examinations occurred at different times in the older classes, and we traveled one by one, and a wagon with a cushioned seat was used, or else a light, open two-seater (tachanka). The village welcomed us with its summery splendor, and at that time I made two phenological observations: currants and gooseberries on June 7th, and grapes on August 7th, were still not quite ripe. And this was not totally unimportant, because the bushes of the currants and gooseberries lined both sides of the road beginning at the bridge across the upper ditch up to the mill, and there were so many berries on them that not only we but anybody walking along could eat them without worry. And one more observation: during the growing season of these berries, there were no flaws or diseases on them. Beginning in 1907 we began our household in Chadijevka, until 1920, and I never saw a ripe gooseberry - they all fell off due to mealy mushrooms. In Agach-Eli and Kojash it was not better. Undoubtedly these mushrooms spread so far and became so acclimatized that even spraying with a vitriol solution did not help much. The same thing, but this time with apricots, happened but on another farm. You remember that the whole top, beginning at the terrace to the upper ditch was completely planted with apricots. In good years we did not know anymore where to put them, even the workers did not want to eat them anymore; we sold them, dried them, cooked them, gave them to the pigs. But during the last years – seven years in a row! – we had no apricots – everything froze during blooming time or else after budding. I love apricots very much – this marvelous fruit – when it is picked ripe and one eats it without transporting it, but I never planted a single apricot tree, I was so angry at the frosts.

In the village we enjoyed total freedom, and one must say, we were totally idle. We arose late, just in time for tea, and often the bell which called the workers to lunch, would wake us. We “studied during the whole winter” and faithfully took examinations – and therefore had the right to a rest. The parents never forced us into any work and this

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went so far that our sister never learned to cook. It is true that Serjezha and Edja rode into the steppe when hay or wheat was harvested, but this was done more from the love of horseback riding than any other considerations. We also did not read much: our own books we had already read and we could not get new ones from anywhere. But still our time was somehow or other always filled, and this was a happiness which we only noticed later when there was no more of it. Father also did not drive to the fields every day and his excursions carried a so-called ‘inspection feeling’ and occurred at all different times. We especially loved going with him after midday. It was no longer so miserably hot on the steppe as it was during the day. Horse flies and gadflies did not bother the horses because they willingly ran at full trot along the smooth but unpaved roads of the steppe. From afar one already could see the harvesting machines; the grain was only cut by hand with a scythe when it was laying very low or was entangled in weeds – and the rows of men gathering the stacks and the youngsters raking up the traces. At the end of the row walked two rakers who raked the fields completely and the spaces between the stacks for the last time. We watched the workers but soon abandoned Father and went to the Gypsy encampment where smoke had been rising for a while already and in the kettles standing in holes dug in the earth for cooking, and water for dumplings was boiling and the ground was coverd with a coarse clean cloth. Since forever this has been a typical Russian food which the Great-Russian workers ate with little joy, but we always enjoyed it very much. The cook would take the dough into her left hand and tear off pieces and throw them into the boiling water with her right hand; when the dough had cooked enough to her satisfaction, she would add some pieces of bacon and onion which had been fried beforehand, to the water – salt it – and dinner was ready. We patiently awaited this moment; we ate from a wooden dish and with such great appetite that at home we were no longer expected for dinner. And the sun was already setting and the workers approached the encampment with the rakes and scythes over their shoulders, the harvesters were silent and the oxen and horses were given to eat. Everyone washed hands in the buckets with the water which had just been delivered fresh from the estate, with a supply for tomorrow added, and when Father had finished speaking with the head workman, everyone sat down in a circle,

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took out his “match” on which he would catch one huge dumpling after another, and a spoon for getting at the sharp dumpling water. It is getting dark, the harnessed horses are bored, snort and stamp their feet – and again we quickly travel through the steppe, sometimes illuminated by moonlight, the moon majestically rising in the endless steppe. The horses’ hoofs make a strange sound on the road and one would like to travel for a long, long time. We were young, healthy, satiated; everything in our lives seemed so certain – that the next day would be the same, would be good - why would we be worried? We were happy.

Autumn neared, highschool started. Back then we were educated differently, and, according to my conviction, the conviction of a person who has seen the education of three generations, much better than now. Undoubtedly, our education was aristocratic: it assumed an ideal of what at that time was considered an education and mercilessly pushed aside everything and everybody who did not wish or was unable to subject themselves to this ideal. Much has been written about the evil of classical education, as if it deliberately held children back from obtaining a way to an education. There were undoubtedly many children, not stupid but able, who got tangled up in the verbs and grammar of the Greek language, but I boldly affirm that only a classical education provides that luster of education and intrinsic ease of logical and beautiful thought, which distinguishes the twentieth century and its intellectualism. But of course all of it demanded effort, and we worked much, much more than was expected later, and very differently – deeper and more carefully thought out. The center of study rested on the work of the student, and this gave him a feeling of responsibility. One could not be a somewhat decent student and graduate from high school without working at home, and we spent much time preparing homework. But perhaps our generation, even in old age, has not forgotten everything we had learned, and are appalled at the lack of grammar of our children and grandchildren. And if I could, I would even cry from my grave: “back to classical education especially in our Russia with its rich gifts, accompanied, however, with no less desire for systematic thought.”

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“Children, come to drink your tea!” my brother Serjezha and I heard a voice from above, and ran from our room down the cold staircase and further along the cold hall to the dining room of the old house, where the samovar gaily hissed and boiled already, and where the window glasses and the glass in the door leading to the hall were so covered with steam that one could draw faces with terrible teeth and huge ears on them. Warm, light and cozy. Our whole family was there because we seldom went out in the evening, and our parents as well. The dining room was small, the table was squeezed between the divan which stood against the exterior wall and the square column which supported the ceiling - the dining room had been fashioned out of three of Grandfather’s rooms. The column was therefore in the middle of one side of the table and Serjezha’s and my seats were along each of the sides, so that we never saw each other when at table. But this of course did not bother us, we felt free and could eat freely, and altogether the evening tea lasted until it was time to go to sleep. There was no end of talk and story-telling. After tea, our sister would often go to the piano and sing for us. Our whole family was depressingly untalented, not one of us could draw the simplest picture and generally we showed no talent with our hands, but we were rather musical and had a good ear for music. Therefore we all studied music, but only our sister had a voice which was good enough to truly sing. Edja played the violin well enough, but Serjezha’s violin- and my pianoforte playing did not get far and Father often would shake is head and would say: “and for what have I spent so much money on this for you!” But we all sang, we sang rather decently, we knew all the romantic songs my sister sang well and correctly, we knew and sang all folk songs, caught parts of operas – and in general, music and song were not in short supply in our house. For a while Serjezha sang in the highschool church choir and I learned many prayers of the Orthodox church from him. He also sang in the choir of the Armenian church and there together we tried to catch the sounds of the to us totally unknown Armenian language. But when our sister sang, we did not bother her and only very quietly accompanied her, Father with his soft bass and Serjezha and I with something in the middle, between a bass and a tenor. Our hearing was developed to such a degree that sometimes one of us would sing and the other one would accompany him. Thanks to this domestic music

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making, we arrived at the universities in different towns so well prepared that operas and concerts were for us not something totally new, and, returning home for vacations, we added much new, interesting material to our domestic repertoire.

In this way we grew up modestly, peacefully and confidently, and together our friendship with each other and with our parents, grew. One after the other left the family, started his own family, but our reciprocal bonds did not at all weaken because of this. Each one of us had, or could have, his own house, but “house” meant our old house, and when we returned to it or to Agach-Eli, we all felt as close to each other as we used to back then, when we lived there together. We had kept no secrets from each other, we confided to each other all our plans, hopes and expectations. Whatever heated, lengthy and passionate arguments arose between us concerning some plan or deed, we all were young and expansive, did not spare words and spoke openly, and the arguments never reached some hurtful or prolonged point. We sincerely loved each other, and each believed in the other, and to us dishonest and dirty intentions were foreign and therefore all the arguments were basically attempts to clarify a mistake or a statement which had not been thought through by one side or the other. How many such arguments our comfortable terrace in Agach-Eli heard during warm summer nights! The candles in their holders had longed ago burned down, the moon had already risen, until Mother would finally rise from her favorite armchair and would say: “Let us go to bed, I have to get up tomorrow morning” and we, tired and hoarse, but still not having exhausted all our arguments, would part like young cockerels who were prevented from fighting.

I could still tell much, much more you about our childhood. About people whose hands fashioned our estate, about the progenitor of all our farm dogs – our best guards – Kudl and her daughter Arapka, about our horses, the last of which, our gray Sultan, who transported you so many times in the cabriolet, you may remember, about our favorite children’s books which slowly constituted a small library – but you would not have the patience to read all that, and there is no time left for grandfatherly memories: I

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described everything at such length, that during that time we all had already grown up and decided to marry. Not all at once, of course, but all, one might say, married out of love. It is clear, of course, that from such romantics between 30 and 40 years old as we basically were, one could expect nothing else. It seems to me, however, that we contrived to develop a somewhat unusual view of marriage in our family. I titled this chapter: the four of us. But basically, relative to that time, when all of us began to get married, one should say: the six of us. Bit by bit we caught up with our parents, later began to overtake them in our intellectual growth, but this not only did not diminish our attachment to each other, but gave our parents the ability to give us total freedom to develop and to stay close to us even more as we grew older, and the difference between the two generations gently washed away, enabled the six of us to become true friends. And so, when one after the other we began to introduce new people into our family, our strong friendship underwent quite a trial – these new elements were so very diverse. But, jumping ahead, I will say that our friendship withstood the test. Each time there was an addition, I must say, the whole family was not very happy about the up- coming “event”. In our society happy tears and hot wishes for a future happiness were not customary. “You have decided to marry” the family would say almost reticently. “Oh well, we have lived quite happily without this until now, but if you want this, due to our love for you we will accept your future half.” And since each of us thought the same, we did not demand anything from each other and understood that it was not difficult to come into the family, but to become the seventh, eighth, and so on, friend, was not done so easily. In this manner, the friendship of the six remained and was not ruined, and the new member of the family entered it with various degrees of closeness to the others. For many years I used to say to Franz “wy” (you– the polite form), and changed over to “ty” (familiar form) only when we truly became friends. With Serjezha’s wife I used “ty” right away, and with Edja’s wife I always was with “wy”. My wife used “ty” with Franz and with my sister “wy”. With this complicated mechanism it meant that we did not obligate each other to a compulsatory spiritual closeness with our chosen ones and did not feel slighted at all because not everyone in the family was equally delighted by this or that choice. A feeling of honesty, tact and simple good will regulated all these

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nuances even during our everyday joint lives, and in this way the friendship of our original family remained unassailed until the end, and I knew very well that if I tell my brother something for which I need his counsel or his help, it did not at all mean that his wife would necessarily know about this. And my wife never opened letters addressed to me from my relatives, just as she did not open my letters from friends. And with our wives we lived no less well and in friendship despite the fact that she may be friendlier with one brother than with the other one. Thus, love did not impede friendship, and friendship made peace with the rights of love.

9. Azra

“In the evenings the young daughter of the Sultan would go for walks” so gaily and even somewhat frivolously began the novel by Rubenstein “Azra”, a verse of which my sister often sang. “Every day she went to the fountain, shining with her beauty” the novel continued. But it turned out that every day she met a slave who, of course, only looked at her from afar. And the princess could not tolerate this and went up close to him and quite awkwardly and agitated, asked him: “tell me your name and where you appeared from?” “Zavus Mahomet, from Zemek, I am from the house of poor Azras, once we have loved, we die!” That is all. It has remained in my memory for the following reason. One summer a good friend of Serjezha was our guest, a pleasant person, smart, an excellent worker – a physician, Petr Nikolaevich Diatrontov, in charge of the Bacteriological Department in Odessa. Somehow I remember that sitting on the terrace, the talk turned to family life, as always in our house, it was noisy and boisterous. The usually quiet Diatrontov, smoking without pause, declared: “what are you talking about, you all are Azras”. This was so unexpected that the discussion stopped immediately in the midst of laughter, but the word Azra remained in our family’s dictionary for a long time, because in the poisonous remark of P.N. was a grain of truth. Of course it did not occur to any of us to die of love, all of us approached the question of marriage with a clean soul and a loving heart and thought only to obtain inner harmony,

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not harboring any other aims. Whether this was stupid or smart, I will not judge, I will only say that all four couples lived their lives in a friendly way, and peacefully, lived in wealth and poverty, and in our families not only were no big quarrels or disagreements, but it was simply difficult to imagine our couples separating or having any special personal interests. And it was especially interesting and humorous because such unions occurred in all four families alike. And although all four of us were people of the same type, our partners were of totally different characters, and as it seems to me, for example, my wife did not share a single character trait with my brother Edja’s wife. One could of course simply say that all four of us where under the thumb of our halves, and then the facts would be easily explained. But then we would necessarily have had to argue with each other – our partners were so different in all aspects. And until the day when we parted and never saw each other again, there was not one large quarrel in our family! I write all this in order to explain why I can describe and imagine the fate of each one of us only together with their partners, from the day on which that pair appeared.

I. Sofia and Franz.

I have had to overcome a great reluctance to decide to write about these two people, so unendingly close to me, so noble, kind and, in the beginning, so happy and later the most miserable of us all. It is so painful to write about my sister, not knowing whether she is still alive, whether she is suffering from cold and hunger, or if she has died, then after what torments? And this is the closest and dearest person to me of my generation, whom I cannot help with anything. But if I do not write about them, then nobody will ever tell you about them and what sort of people they both were. And only for that reason I will write about them what I can, but I know beforehand that my story will be tormented and painful: one cannot write well about that which is too close to one.

Sister Sonja – during our childhood we called her Sofie - received her name in honor of Grandmother Sofia Ivanovna, and in her appearance and soul resembled her. So our father who loved her more than any of us, always said. She was born March 10

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of the year 1867 and Mother, speaking of the unstable Crimean weather always said: “on the day when Sofie was born, Ferdinand went to Golgar in the morning but had to turn back while on the way because there arose such a snow storm.” I remember nothing about her childhood, only something like a shadow, the figure of a little girl in the brown uniform of a high school student, in our children’s room. And only one funny but characteristic episode clearly stands in front of my eyes. I am laying in bed but am not yet asleep. Along the wall is a small table brightly illuminated by a lamp with a green shade. My brother and sister sit at the table and do their homework. Suddenly one could hear Father’s steps. And my sister jumps up, quickly picks up a book laying before her, puts it on the chair and sits down on it. It was only much later that I understood what had happened. In high school my sister performed so badly that Father had to go there sometimes, and as I heard later, my sister was only partially at fault. The director of the school at that time was Mundt – I remember that last name because she was so often mentioned in our family. For some reason she disliked my sister –there was some sort of sharp collision between her and Father – I do not know the reason, was the collision before the dislike or did the dislike follow this collision – but the whole situation ended when it was decided to take my sister out of the highschool. At that time there were no other educational institutions in our town and therefore Father took my sister to Odessa and placed her into a private boarding school - Gauenlieb- Klark. This was not such an easy decision; at that time it cost the parents dearly, it was far and she was never allowed to travel alone, and Father brought her and took her back. In the end all these worries and expenses were worth it. My sister quickly became one of the best students in her school, learned the French and German languages, and upon graduation received a certificate for teaching, the same as was given by the public highschool, but in addition also an excellent upbringing and a more cultured circle of friends in our town. Father, as always in such cases, did not mind the money, and Sister took piano and singing lessons, and her clear and deep contralto was a joy for the whole family throughout our whole lives. She only came home for summer vacations because crossing the stormy Black Sea in November was of so little pleasure for her and for Father. A real day of celebration was her return home after a

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brilliant graduation from the boarding school in 1886. Instead of the barely successful student of the high school came a highly accomplished young woman with excellent grades and accompanied by the love of all the students of the boarding school – teachers and girlfriends, who gave her an album with a silver remembrance name plate on the cover, and with photographs of all her friends, large and small. My sister was not pretty but was a charming young lady. Of medium height, she had inherited the Nalbandov tendency toward corpulence, had the kind and tender face of her grandmother, with soft gray eyes and a charming smile and hair of a pretty chestnut color, quiet and gay but not loud - she always was the center and idol of our whole family. As I have written before, for her homecoming we remodeled the house in town, and in the village we renovated a room next to the bedroom of our parents where later Gleb lived during your time. With her arrival our house immediately became invigorated, became fuller and more interesting. All three of us brothers adored our dear sister, and there was a reason for this. Always even-tempered and tender, she was a good comrade and friend, and one could come to her with everything and always, knowing one would not get a sharp response or bored attention. I do not want to write an extatic panegyric, I only want to be honest, but I unsuccessfully search in my memory for a single case where my sister raised her voice, and not only with us, but in ordinary lifeas well. But this was not the result of indifference or laziness. During arguments she could be passionate, was able to defend her views and to attack the opponent or guilty one fiercely and persistently, her gray-blue eyes shone and burned, but all this was somehow soft and always without insult, without yelling and sharp expressions, I would say with the precise restraint of an Eastern woman who had obtained all the rights of the Western world, but who had not forgotten the rules of decency of the East. In her, more than in any of us, was the restraint and good upbringing as it was in our Father, and perhaps therefore she was closer to him than the rest of us. Her influence on us brothers was modest and well-meaning – and that is how it was for all our lives – and without her we would not have become what we were in our lives.

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With her arrival our parents also became happier. Father became less somber and pensive. The music in the house and my sister’s beautiful singing often gave him much pleasure and accomplished more: our not very sociable Father, together with my sister, joined a circle of music lovers and began to sing in the choir, where his soft bass was treasured, and at home he studied his bass parts together with my sister, but did not forget (as the gay Schlee families made fun of him) to go to the window during the singing and look in the direction of Agach-Eli to see whether the rain clouds which he desired, were gathering. Our eternally working mother suspended her usual demands, did not wake her daughter in the morning, did not ask for her help in the kitchen and general household, (at that time there were already enough servants), and since my sister did not love doing this, she remained throughout her life an indifferent housekeeper and understood very little of kitchen glory. They say that only in Serbia did she learn to cook very well. – But it was not only the inside atmosphere of our house which changed. With her arrival it lost its isolation and now was constantly full of a great variety of young people. My sister enjoyed great success and young people swirled around her. A few times she sang in concerts of the musical society, and her voice and manner of singing brought her new admirers. Our Armenian priest, intelligent and cultured, handsome, old Father Zachary asked her to sing in church and on Good Friday, during the festive evening service, she sang the famous “Crucifix” by Far. Her voice sounded beautiful with the accompaniment of the harmonica in our high and spacious church, but not knowing the Armenian language – and was there a translation? – she sang in French. (And this caused talk, and our old Armenians were not pleased with this novelty. And soon these old Armenians obtained a transfer of our Father Zachary, of course not because of the singing, and we never again had a priest like him). At home she sang for us almost every evening, and ever so often I went to sleep during her singing. And perhaps for that reason those memories of her songs are so deep and alive in my mind. For a while she was seriously courted by a member of the provincial court – Rjazinov, who played the violincello well and often came to us with his instrument and then a trio was organized. In one word, there was no lack of young men who courted her, but my sister did not think of marriage, and as it turned

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out, her heart was not quite free, as from as long ago as Odessa. Already during the first summer after her graduation, a young man came to our village, very much impressing me, then a young village boy, with his bearing, perfect manners, and as it seemed to me then, wonderful suits. He was our guest for one week and then left, having made a good impression on all of us. He came from a good family, and was still a student, and I think that this was the reason why their relationship did not end with a marriage. In the same winter my sister, accompanied by Maria Egorovna Nogaseva went to Petersburg for a visit with her Aunt Masha, who was there for some courses, and I vaguely heard at that time, to settle this affair. I believe she made a condition for accepting him, which was that he finish his studies and thus be able to support a future family, but she realized that he did not have enough character for this. All this I only heard bit by bit, that is, nobody spoke of this in the family, and perhaps my sister’s feelings also were not deep enough; all this did not prevent her from spending a gay time in Petersburg and from returning home with her usual quiet and steady demeanor. In this way we lived in a friendly and happy way for two years. We, the brothers, became especially close to our sister when the parents stayed in the village, and we and our sister lived in town and went to high school. This truly was a wonderful youthful time. No guests and visits took our sister from us, she was always tender with us, gladly helped when help was needed, and she and Serjezha became especially good friends. Young people still swirled around her but she did not give hope to anybody, did not consider marriage and declined all offers. But among the aspirants one began to stand out with his persistence in courting her. That was Franz Schnaider.

It is necessary to tell you about the Schnaider family in more detail. My greatgrandfather Sevastian had a brother, Petr, who probably lived in Sevastopol. I do not know whether he already owned a restaurant there or was occupied with something else, but his son, Franz Petrovich, already was a prominent person during the Sevastopol War, owned a large restaurant and during the war acquired much money and a large house. He played a part during the war and was a commander in the local militia. He undoubtedly was practical, very smart, adroit and not squeamish, and very

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successful when compared to other German colonists. At the time of which I am writing now, he was a very wealthy person. In Simferopol he owned three houses: the restaurant “Golden Anchor” at the corner of Salchik Street and Fabr. (later he sold it to Achkinaz who built the “Europe” restaurant in its place, which you all remember). The “Petersburg” restaurant occupied the whole block of the Pushkinsky Street between the Evpatoria Street and the Gymnasium side street, a huge area stretching from our church along the Dvorjanskaja Street and the whole Pushkinsky Street to the Kubler house. During my childhood this house belonged to General Vzlitnev and had such a huge abandoned courtyard that the circus which sometimes came to Simferopol set its tents up there. Besides that he owned 5 thousand desjatin (ca 13,500.00 acres) of land –“Djav-djurek” – located next to Kronental, and in addition he bought for Franz, and in his name, “Kojash” which also had more the 1,500.00 desjatin (4,050.00 acres) of land. The “Petersburg” restaurant was the best in town for a long time, provided a huge profit for F.N. and all important faces in town dined there, and the important people of the district came there during their visits to Simferopol, and this gave F.N. the opportunity to be more or less close to all of them. He was already given the name of honorary citizen a long time ago, received orders including Order of Anna, second grade, and it was his dream, but not achieved, to receive the Order of Vladimir and thus to become a hereditary nobleman. However regardless how many attempts he made, however many people he wined and dined, the poor old man did not succeed - everything was in vain. The local town supervisor and the local representative of the nobility N.I. Ivanov and the chairman of the land district Vjatkin, not only ate there but also sent home those dishes which they especially liked, did their utmost to obtain this order for F.N., but for a “Vladimir” all this was too trifling. When, age around 65, he had a photograph taken of himself with all his orders, he could only list the old ones at the bottom. He sent this portrait to many people, and it was especially impressive in Kronental. He was not a mean person, but cold in a German way and basically indifferent to everything in life except his wealth. But even though wealthy, he kept on working, and every morning, in summertime already at 5 or 6, one could see him walking to the bazaar to buy necessities for the restaurant. Thus it continued until he rented out the restaurant and

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removed himself from it. He was married to Varvara Ivanovna Vetuel, whose family owned the restaurant “Vetuel” in Sevastopol. I did not know her well, but according to Franz she was a good, kind person, took a small interest in her husband’s work, and dedicated herself to her family. She died before Franz’ marriage and during her last years suffered from something like melancholia. Her children loved her very much and were much closer to her than to their father who was not very interested in them. They had four children. The oldest son, Stanislav, was a handsome and talented person. He finished high school and went to the Petersburg university, but due to the climate and the life which the wealthy young man led there, who knew nothing about monetary restraint, he soon fell ill with acute tuberculosis from which he died very quickly. You may remember the chapel which was built over his grave. The second son was Franz; he was born February 19, 1864. After him came Josef, probably younger by two years, and a sister, Anna, who was born in 1868. These last two were the representatives of the German clan, perfectly created to illustrate the outward signs of the German race. Both were very light blond, with blue eyes, pink cheeks, usually filled with a pleasant smile, reserved and mild in manners, with soft and pleasant voices. Jozja, as we called him, was very handsome in high school and was a student at the university. Anna was not as beautiful as her brother, but with her long braids was a real “Gretchen” as she always was portrayed in the “Faust” theater productions. Josza finished high school and went to Moscow to the university, but having studied for about two years, ended his studies and permanently settled down in Simferopol. All attempts to find an occupation for him ended in nothing. He was a terribly kind, cultured person, but nothing interested him. He did not drink and did not smoke, despite his handsomeness he did not court anybody, sometimes lived in the village and sometimes in town, he tried to keep house, he tried to work in Dzjav-djurek – nothing succeeded. He had no interest in anything. His relatives tried to marry him off but this also did not succeed; it happened that he had a bride, but at the last moment he declined. Gradually he became more and more melancholy; for a time he seemed to overcome this and married Natalia Aleksandrovna Ulbina, whose first husband was Dtakson. This was already at the time when I lived in Petersburg. During one of my trips I visited the young pair and with horror saw that

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poor Jozja was like a doll who moved at the command of his wife. In 1915 I saw them again, in Petersburg, when they already had their daughter, Varja, but Jozja sat through the whole visit without speaking. And so he died, I believe in 1917, not having come out of a state of apathy and melancholy. Anna Franzovna was a very unusual person and lived her whole live like a nun. Always reserved and silent, she was somehow passively good, never hurting anybody in her whole life, but could adhere to her principles almost ruthlessly. Nothing external really interested her, more than anything in the world she liked to read books, she did not like to be with company and when she was at our house for some family celebrations, she preferred to sit in a corner close to the bookshelves and look through the books there. During her high school years she still would come to some children’s evenings with us, and Serjezha, her contemporary, would be her escort, but with the years this discontinued; she dressed very simply, mostly in dark colors, and kept reading, reading all the time. She had several girlfriends with whom she could talk for hours, and sometimes they exploited her greatly despite their liberal attitudes. Anja not only did not appreciate her wealth, but felt burdened by it, as if it were a crime and all the money which she received while she was taking courses, and all the money which she had she did not spend on herself but somehow around herself. Again somehow passively – I do not remember that Anja ever gave her brother’s children a present – but of course they were showered with presents already without her. She found herself a husband. For a while there was talk in our large family that Uncle Matja thought of marrying her, and I remember that during one dinner which Franz Petrovich gave in honor of getting the order of “Anna”, second grade, after Franz’ marriage, Matja gave a speech during which he congratulated him in regards to “Anna”, and kidded about wishing he himself had an Anna. But of course Uncle Matja never approached Anja and she herself never thought of him in that way, perhaps because in her heart she already carried her future husband, Konstantin Erastovich Dobrovolny, the son of an admiral, who was Jozja’s comrade; he was very handsome, finished high school with a gold medal, and with his reserved nature was very suited to Anja. He certainly was not an ordinary person, but very peculiar and even strange. After high school he passed an

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examination to enter the Mining Institute and remained there through the 3rd year. But then he left and, as people said, because the work of a mining engineer did not give him the opportunity to serve people, in the true meaning of the word, he changed to the medical department in Moscow. This step cost him many years, especially since he had no funds and had to support himself somehow at the university. When he finished high school I was in the 2nd grade, but in Moscow we met when both of us were students. We met but did not become close, even though K.E. already was Anja’s bridegroom and she and I always had a good relationship. But I belonged to the capitalistic group which, I believe, K.E. rejected and despised endlessly. Of course this and his rejection of a brilliant career as an engineer, only elevated him in Anja’s eyes, and she always called him “Count Kostja” after the name of a hero of conscience who was so popular at that time – Kota-Murlyk ( Prof. of Petersburg Univ. Vagner). When they married, still during the time when Dobrovolny was a student, they had even sharper relations to their homeland and to her wealth. I remember with how much anger Franz spoke about the short time when K.E. and Anja were living with him in Moscow and the husband demonstratively would not eat anything that Franz would bring home that he considered beyond and above what a poor student would be able to afford. All these trifles attest to the characteristics of the deep divide between the capitalist land owners and the socialists. Of course Anja was on her husband’s side, and did not hide this, and of course our relations with them stopped completely. We met D. only once more when he came to me as a member of a deputation of professors of the Yalta University – and again he was a representative of a different ideology. We met one final time more, in 1919, after Franz’ murder; Anja came to me to find out whether it would be unpleasant for Sonja to see her. I of course convinced her of the opposite, and then Anja spent a few days in Kojash. The Dobrovolny’s remained in the Crimea.

Franz was a totally different person, had no resemblance whatsoever with his brother and sister. He was not handsome. Of medium height, much darker, he differed from them by having excellent health, was hardy and not at all spoiled. His small gray

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eyes shone with energy and liveliness, he could look tenderly, but he could also get almost devilishly angry. He was kind, kind with active deeds, he not only never denied anybody his or her wish if he could fulfill it, but often, too often, helped a stranger’s need without even being asked. He was naturally intelligent. His living and reading developed in him a deep understanding of life and the ability to figure out his surroundings, but the total absence of a systematic education and its inner discipline bothered him throughout his life. He easily caught the meaning of everything that was new to him, regardless whether in the estate area or public and government affairs, but it was beyond his ability to unite this knowledge into a system, to figure out its basics and develop a well-thoughout plan of action, to be constant and be guided by it; it bored him, and eagerly having begun something, and to remove all obstacles in the heat of the beginning to with great inventiveness, he sooned cooled down if the situation needed persistence and was full of tiresome minutae. He lacked the usual Germanic characteristics. Of course these deficits could be explained by his lack of education and upbringing. He finished the 2nd grade in the Simferopol highschool, then he switched to the Sevastopol scientifically oriented school, and there, under the supervision of his local relatives, he spent some time together with Al. Matv., with whom he remained friendly for the rest of his life; however, he did not do well in school there either, and attempted to live without his parents in the loose atmosphere of the port city. From then on everything went in the conventional manner: he learned the practical aspects of agriculture in Djzav-dzurek where at that time Nikolai Petrovich Schnaider was in charge, the brother-in law of Franz Petrovich, and then moved into town and began to assist his father in the “Petersburg” restaurant. And that, and some other work, undoubtedly brought him great practical knowledge and also cleverness, resourcefulness and savvy to a more than ordinary degree, but all this was so premature and in such a one-sided direction, that the fact that he did not falter and totally come undone can only be explained by his truly, deeply embedded good qualities. He began all this work when he was still a boy, when he still was called “Franchik” by his family, and this name stuck to him for a long time, so that the Agach- Eli Tatars did not know him by any other name and called him Franchik-schorbadzhi,

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that is, Mister Franchik, even though he had already been a married person for a long time. The guests who were forever changing, and even the steady customers of the “Petersburg” restaurant despite the differences in age, easily used “ty” (familiar “you”) and happily called the funny, solicitous son of the owner of the best restaurant, “ty”, and bit by bit there were two names: Franz Petrovich Schnaider, and to differentiate them, Franchik Schnaider. And while the simple-hearted Tatars or people who had a close relationship with him did this, nothing could be said against this “popularization”. Just the opposite – how we laughed when he once received a letter from a former worker and on the envelope it was addressed to “Franchik, Simferopol”. But many people made a ridicule out of this name. And, for example, Count V.A. Obolensky, who personally owed very, very much to Franz, was not ashamed to write, even in the memorial obituaries of all fallen members of the Cadet Party, in which about one hundred lines were dedicated to Franz, with mean spirited ridicule, that “whom everyone in town called Franchik” – and thus the reader would retain the idea of something small, banal, whom to murder was not on the same level as those, who were not murdered, leaders of the party, of whom Oblolensky put himself in first place, of course. It is unthinkable that during Franz’ life Obolonsky would have addressed him thus, or would have been his friend. Obolensky was only one of the many people whom Franz helped when the count himself, and his family, were in a hopeless situation. But fortunately not all people were like Count Obolensky.

I can say with pride that toward the end of his life Franz was the most popular person not only in the town of Simferopol, but far beyond its borders as well. Everyone knew him, but not as a weatlthy person or an active one, but simply as an honest, good and kind person, whom anybody could approach and ask for help or advice. This was of course especially true for our town, and here Franz was always surrounded by people. Some came to his house, others caught him in the street, and we often laughed at him and said that it took him two hours to walk two blocks because so many people stopped him on the way. Of course most of the activity concerned monetary matters in one way or another: one simply needed one hundred or two hundred rubles, the other

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one asked for a promissory note for an extended credit, the third needed him to push through his promissory note which the banks eyed with distrust, because “Franchik’s” word weighed heavily, the fourth asked for such a complicated favor that a lawyer or attorney had to be consulted. One had to be a very bad person, a merchant-speculator or terribly vexing, for Franz to deny him help. Everything was done immediately, right on the sidewalk, money was given without getting a receipt, and so forth. In what way all this did not get mixed up in Franz’ head, nobody could understand, because he never kept any notes; sometimes, of course, it got tangled up, and then he quietly paid out of his own pocket and patiently waited, sometimes for years, for a return of the money, and often he did not wait at all. The circle of his “clients” was not limited at all, and was of undetermined character. When banking committees audited their promissory notes, it turned out that everybody owed F.F.: high officials, noblemen, estate owners down to small Jewish merchants, and teachers, and coachmen, and doctors. Everybody in the bank was already used to this, nothing was out of the ordinary which would arouse the interest the members of the banking committee. Just as striking were the sums which F.F. “borrowed”. I will give you only two examples. In all of Crimea, the “Choty” estate was praised; it was situated in the Karasubarski plain and belonged to an old noble family named Rud. It was renowned for its huge and beautiful orchards. During our time the owner was a retired Hussar company commander Stepan Nikolajevich Rud and his wife Marija Orestovna, maiden name of Brams, also a Crimean estate owner from Alm. These were two interesting people about whom it would be interesting to write in more detail. They were two true old people of the gentry, with all its good and weak qualities. Together they were wonderful, industrious and loved their estate immensely. They did not have children, and they lived permanently in Choty and brought their orchards to such an admirable condition that people came to study them. The orchards encompassed about 270 acres and to service them they had several gardeners, and to assist them, they hired several young people and over time the estate turned into a sort of practicing school, graduating some excellent gardeners and pruners. The Ruds gladly experimented with all new methods in the care of gardens, and tried out new types of fruit, and instructors and

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specialists liked to come to them for advice. But the name of Rud was not famous only for its fruit business. The former Hussar was also an excellent breeder of race horses and had such stables that the stallion Miltrad (if I am not mistaken, one of the descendants of the, at that time very famous English horse Galtimor) won first prize at the All-Russia Derby. In this manner, the Choty estate was famous in many ways, but, oh my, all these distinctions were very expensive and materially paid very badly for themselves. An excellent man, personally very modest and undemanding, Stepan Nikolajevich did not know how to count money and became more and more entangled, despite the fact that his estate lay in a fortunate strip of land and enjoyed good soil. He did not have the heart to halt some of his industries which took so much labor during the summer, until the actual catastrophy. Having no money, St. Nik. did not purchase enough feed for the horses, and just at the time when the last feed had been eaten, the roads were so impassable that it was totally impossible to bring more feed, and many horses died of hunger. Riding (on a horse) to Choty at the first possible time, Franz told me with tears in his eyes, that the wooden barns were chewed up by the animals dying of hunger. Of course this was a crime and negligence that could not be explained byanything, and even such a horrible end to horse breeding could not save Rud. They managed to stay on a few more years, but could not handle their debts and the interest charged for them, and the bank put the estate up for sale. Stepan Nikolajevich was threatened with total ruin, on his estate lay a huge second mortgage by the famous Tatar Karaim Abram-Krim, Rud’s neighbor, who for a long time had been anxiously eyeing and wanted to transfer the wonderful orchards into his own hands. In order to save Choty about 200 thousand rubles had to be found. S.N. himself was already fatally ill – he had cancer – and his wife, Marija Orestovna turned to Franz. The relations between the two families reached back a long time and were very friendly, but Franz was not able to help by himself alone. But this did not deter him. It must be said that it was not only the desire to help the Ruds, but also his hatred of the usurious A. Krim. Legally everything was in order, and it would have been possible for Rud to pay the interest, but Krim was not to be moved. Franz found two more rich men, and the three obtained the necessary money from the banks, and the Rud estate was taken off

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the market. Krim was furious, but Franz rejoiced. Soon a buyer was found, and the estate went for the right price into the honest, good hands of Anna Antonovna Reveliat, and it could develop even further. Not only were all debts covered, but there was some remuneration for Franz’ partners for obtaining the money from the bank, and a very good sum was left, which S.N. who had already died, did not need any more, but which secured the old age of Marija Orestovna.

Second example. About two months after Franz’ death, a Tatar whom I did not know at all, came to me. “You do not know me,” he said to me “and it is not necessary. Franz Franzovich lent me 100 rubles a long time ago. Nobody knows about this. Now he is dead and I brought that money to you. Give it to his wife.” I do not know whether you remember the small green piece of land with the old pussy willows which grew on the side of the small stream between the wall of Chadjievka and the Tatar mill? And do you remember that in the middle of summer, almost every year, a typical Gypsy wagon with a torn top came, and from within spilled out a row of half-naked Gypsies? They settled on the bank of the river and lived there for two or three weeks, cooked something or other over a campfire and slept on the bank and in the wagon. This was the family of the Gypsy Osman, whom Alek. Matveevich always called Franz’ adjutant. This Gypsy fed himself and his family through some business which nobody knew anything about, always hanging around the bazaar, but when things were bad for him, he always turned to Franz, always counting on his help. Franz, due to his former restaurant custom was at the bazaar almost every day and faithful Osman was always close by. We all laughed about this friendship, but Franz explained that Osman was of the same age, and they had known each other since childhood. And he never forgot to inform Osman if some misfortune happened to a horse and it had to be killed. Those occasions were simply festivals for Osman and his clan. Perhaps that is why he came to our plain as a guest, we teased Franz.

But Franz did not only help people. I am not speaking of all the philantropical societies and all the donations - that was a matter of course. All enterprises of a

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beneficial nature received help from him. Do you remember the polished white stairs in the house in Kojash which led from the front to the library? It was a memorial to the great sum which Franz gave to establish a cooperative of furniture- and cabinet makers who wanted to work independently. It did not work out. In order to help them, Franz ordered these stairs from them, and when we asked him how much they had cost him, he only smiled and said: “expensive.” And this is also only an example.

I think that this empathy with the misery of others, this inner beauty of the soul opened for Franz the way to my sister’s heart, not right away at all, but only after she had become better acquainted with him. Even though we were distant relatives of the Schnaiders – Mama was a niece-in-law of Fr. Petrovich – there was no close acquaintance between our houses. Mama very seldom visited Varvara Ivanovna, and Serjezha and Sonia were sometimes invited to some children’s celebration – and that was all. Father did not like Fr. Petr. because of his unsqueamish activities; he never set foot into the famous “Petersburg” restaurant where one could always see, besides Fr. Petr., all the “flavors” of Simferopol’s large and small dealers. They also did not mingle during social endeavors, where Fr. Petr. always supported people who were useful to him, whatever their moral physiognomy would be, and therefore such people, like the town supervisor, H.I. Ivanov, member of the governing body of Kazar, and so forth, were in league with him, but Father fought them as much as he could. Franz Petrovich, just the opposite, despised the “lack of business sense” in my father and in his heart could not forgive him for never asking him for help or advice, and was already spoiled by the general admiration of his wealth. In this way, even though my sister and Franz were of the same age, they did not know each other well. They only began to meet later, during the summer, when Sonja would come for vacations and Franz lived in Djav- dzurek. I remember one summer in Djav-djurek when there was a whole assembly of young people, among them Jozja with his tutor, I.M. Neddakosom, who was shortly supposed to pull him through some examinations. He was a student, Estonian, a very nice and intelligent person, especially interested in geology (later he worked in the Crimea for a long time as an assistant to Prof. Golavninsky who was a former hydro-

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geologist of the regional government). The young people often came to Agach-Eli, and all of them – “in corpora” - courted my sister and listened to her singing. The hopeful geologist gave proof of this. You remember that on the highest mountain around Agach-Eli was a burial mound. It was the highest point in the plain, and from there was an especially good outlook all around. Below one could see the whole Bulganak plain from Kolumbstel to the end of the German colony, behind this, the not very deep steppes of the plain, and parallel, to the right, truly majestically shone the tent of Gattyr- Daga, and beyond that the sea glistened in the sun. In the mornings, when the sun still did not stand very high, its rays illuminated especially starkly the white houses of Evpatoria and despite the distance of forty versts (ca 20 miles) one could clearly see not only the white strip of houses, but also their reflection in the darker branches of the gulf. The steppe in this area was as smooth as a table, and soft, completely translucent streams of air rose from the step which was warming after the cool night. One cannot paint this picture, but those who saw it also will not forget it. A left turn, and with binoculars at hand, you could clearly see the ships which were leaving from Sevastopol to Evpatoria, which was also 20-30 versts (ca 10-15 miles) distant. And then one fine day we found the letters in this same burial ground, gathered from stones in the steppe, about one meter long, spelling out “SOFIJA” on its incline. There could not be a second of doubt that only a person who loved long walks, could have written the letters – our hopeful geologist, and he did not deny it. The writing lay there for many years, and who would have destroyed it? - and besides us, the children when we played there, and the shepherds, nobody visited the burial grounds. Many years later, without our knowledge, a group of military topographers came and erected there a huge, awkward three-legged structure of long pine logs for geodesic studies. They probably used the stones for pounding the logs into the earth. With this unwanted intrusion the peace of the forgotten graves was ruined, and the words of young love as well. The gray logs prevented the eyes from seeing the formerly grand view. Life forcefully entered our life in Agach-Eli. Years passed. The logs rotted, the structure fell over, but nobody touched it. Later the logs themselves disappeared, and again only the lonely burial ground was left, but it seemed to have become unclean, spoiled by human touch. Have

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the wounds inflicted on it healed or will they ever grow over?

At that time I was a boy 9-10 years old, and barely remember whether Franz came to visit our house in town very often. During that time, I do not remember exactly when, his health suffered. His parents clearly remembered the death of his older brother at that same age, and sounded the alarm, and Franz went to Switzerland for six months or longer; Marija Matveevna was studying in Bern at that time. This trip caused a turning point in Franz’ life. He saw true culture for the first time, and realized the unpreparedness with which he entered adult life. At first he lived in Bern, but after having looked around, left and traveled to other cities and – I believe in Vevey – he met a young American, Neal, - who was slightly older. They quickly became friends and stayed together during the second half of Franz’ sojourn in Switzerland. Neal was an experienced traveler and showed and taught the impressionable young friend many things. According to general opinion, Franz returned from abroad a different person. He had learned to take care of himself and his clothing, let go of some of his former habits which were sometimes of an unpleasant and even offensive type, and learned to be truly cultured in an European manner. Of course his education had not improved, but he began to read more – but until the end of his life never loved belletristic and did not understand the beauty of “made-up stories.” On the contrary, he learned to love real history and sometimes read it addictively. He especially loved Napoleon and could talk about him endlessly. His love for my sister was not secretive – he was not the type of person who could hide anything which he felt. This did not help, and given my sister’s character, only hindered the matter, and for a long time his courtship led to nothing, and they came to a definite understanding only in the fall of 1887. My sister accepted his proposal, but Father emphatically opposed this marriage. I have already written that he loved his daughter with a deep and tender love, I think he felt that she was the closest to his soul of all of us, and he was right. In my sister there was more of that abstracted contemplation, removed from daily life, that search for the ideal, which lived in both of them, but Nature had not given them enough instinct to fight for it. Both loved people – and feared them, one due to bitter experience, the other intuitively,

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which so bitterly turned out to be right later towards the end of her life; both wanted to believe in people, and were clever enough to understand that they did not warrant that believe, and were too proud to mix in with the crowd and defend their truth. And now he had to give away such a daughter, young, pretty, clever and talented, to somebody though honest, and despite all his shortcomings and lack of sufficient education, decent and of good character – but imbued with the idle life of F.N. Schnaider, his father. And our kind, dear and soft Father protested. But protested alone, that is, Mama had no objections to this marriage, and all close relatives were in delight about this brilliant match which my sister desired. Only Serjezha was angry about his sister’s decision. They were so close that alone the idea of a husband for Sonja was difficult for him, but besides that, something in the opinions and life of Franz did not please him, already then being a populist in the style of the survivors of the 1860’s. I understood all this much later, but at that time a 13-year old boy did not have his own opinions, but only gathered and registered his observations.

Father did not insist on a renunciation, but insisted that the wedding would not take place for one more year. I think that with this he pursued two objectives: that my sister would reconsider her decision, and he wanted to see how true Franz’ break with his former life, which truly had given enough good reasons to be objectionable even to a less demanding father than ours, was. For him, who always so highly valued education and up-bringing, it was particularly difficult to give his most beloved to a person who had neither one nor the other, but who loved her unconditionally, totally, steadily, undividedly, for her whole life. He knew his “Azra”, and with great pain tore her from his loving heart, and later, only during intimate conversations with my sister, he would say with melancholy “ you have totally become a Schnaider.” This was his only scolding, and somehow it was like a small excommunication from our homey monastery, which he used not only toward her but also to his other children. He knew the strength and effect of such a scolding and used it only seldom and in order to influence his small, friendly and beloved herd with his opinion.

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The year designated by my father passed and nothing had changed. Franz diligently worked in Djav-dzurek and not long after F.Petr. bought Kojash in the former’s name, he lived there often, also in winter, but each Saturday, in any type of weather, sometimes even on horseback when the roads were impassable, he came to Simferopol in the evening with a bouquet of flowers and a box of candy for his fiancée. In the summers he had lunch with us on Sundays, and then he and my sister would walk to Kojash and roam around there until the evening, planning their future household. I have already written that at home my sister was not very interested in housekeeping. But Franz’ passionate love for the earth also carried her along, and it was difficult not to be delighted with Kojash – truly the best corner of our spacious steppe. After Numan, Kojash changed hands constantly. For a while it belonged to Dr. Heiman, who was even buried there together with his wife, but then it fell into Karaim Komen’s hands, then to Aga and then, for a rather large sum, to Franz. But basically nothing was left from all those owners. There stood the landowner’ house, typical for the Crimea, with four rooms lined up in a row, a veranda, a hall in front, a kitchen, the same one for guests and workers, a small booth way in the depths of the orchard, a sad, small building for the workers, and two half-ruined sheds for drying tobacco. Evidently the raising of tobacco was the alpha and omega of all the households of the landowners of the Bulganak plain at that time, and their plantations began in Kojash, also like in Agach-Eli, directly from the steps of the house, which stood on a little hill, where later the orangery was, and stretched along the whole length to the road. There also were vineyards, planted during Numan’s time; there was a wine cellar, looking solid and sound compared to the other buildings, which he built along the road, and a large, neglected garden. Magnificent old walnut trees along the road of the whole property froze during the terrible winter of 1879, and all of them died. There was also an old mill.

The most beautiful and precious thing about Kojash was its availability of water. I already described previously that there were many different strata in our region. There was a slight incline and the small rivers flowed towards Kojash on the right side; three springs flowed: one flowed into Bodrak, one into Kojash along the road, and the third

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one a little lower than our old house, but still high enough so that the plumbing in the new house always contained enough water from this spring. I do not know who developed this spring, but it was done before Franz; the wonderfully cold, clean water, flowing in a constant stream, was a never-ending gift from God in our water-less places. Something totally unexpected in our bald, dry steppes was the disposition, on the opposite side of the incline which was rather wide at that point, of the so-called Grottos. Who and why somebody called them thus I cannot say, because there were no grottos there at all. In that location some pointy cliffs came to the surface and, many, many years ago, two rather large blocks developed, probably pushed up by underground waters, and moved 2-3 sazhins (14-21 feet) away from the original mountain range. In that way a narrow corridor developed, all overgrown with bushes and trees, among them several huge walnut trees which fell during the winter of ’79 and blocked all entrances to any rays of the sun. On the tops of the original cliffs, bushes and trees also grew and everything, together with the murmur of the underground water, became a true oasis in the middle of the hot and empty steppe. This was such a point of interest in our plain that even before the Schnaiders’ purchase our guests, as well as Germans who generally were not interested in much, came from Bulganak on Sunday excursions. This comparative wealth of water and the far-flung plain of this area provided ample opportunity for establishing a beautiful and good household in Kojash, and this is what they hoped and planned foremost for their future young household. They married on October 11, 1888. In whatever relationship they were (they were related to the 7th degree) a special permit was needed according to the laws of the Catholic church for their marriage, and the zealous and negative priest of the local Roman Catholic (Polish, as we always said) church, Pater Aloisi Krinizky, found it necessary to bring the matter all the way to Rome, from where, one half year after the wedding, a special, belated permit arrived. A dispute about the location of the wedding arose. Krinizky was so disliked that many of his parishioners, among them Franz, preferred to go to our church, where the kind Pater Zachary officiated. But he was registered in Krinizky’s church who insisted that the wedding take place in his church. On the other hand it would have been ridiculous if the daughter of a Nalbandov would

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not be married in the church which her grandfather had built. However, Krinizky was the Dean, that is, he was in charge, and the decision was his to make. Finally this dispute ended in a compromise: the wedding would take place in our church, but Krinizky would perform the ceremony and would receive the fee. That was what all this was about. After the wedding, the young couple went abroad for a long while. During their absence, the turbulent relations between the two families, now even more closely related, were permanently damaged. Varvara Ivanovna had died 3-4 years before Franz’ marriage. Franz Petrovich was about 60 years old. And suddenly he decided to marry again. I already wrote that the Schnaider children loved and treasured their mother very much. You can see how the appearance of a new wife in their mother’s place, at that age, could not have been pleasant for them, especially since F.P.’s choice was somebody nobody knew, Marija Adamovna, whose last name I never heard mentioned - for some reason an American citizen, but a simple person, having some sort of position – a companion or live-in worker – in the family of Lang, a carriage maker, very religious, barely speaking Russian. For reasons strange to us, the Schlee family did not find anything special in this undertaking of the old man, and listened to his plans without objection or protest. The only person with whom F.P. would have had to reckon – Franz – was absent, and the other two children only begged him not to take that step, but he was only slightly interested in their request. The wedding was sped up, and when Franz returned everything was already finished. Between Franz and his father were very turbulent explanations, and their relationship was damaged for a long time, and was totally and permanently suspended with our house. They were never in our house and we were never in theirs, and we would meet only at Franz’. Marija Adamovna turned out to be a very decent person, and because of her there never arose any difficulties. She stayed in her circle and never even was in the young Schnaiders’ house at their holidays and receptions. F.P. left her a decent sum of money, and she lived comfortably in the sphere of the church and its representatives.

Of course I can only sum up all that the young Schnaiders accomplished during the years of working together, that is, the years 1888 to 1919. At first it was assumed that

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after the death of the father, Josef Franzovich would inherit Djav-djurek and therefore an orchard was planted there, and in general renovations were done in preparation for the self-sufficiency of both estates. At that time Franz made a very costly attempt to bring artesian water to Djav-djurek. Even though the District Council already had a hydrogeologist, at that time the middle steppe area of the Crimea had been researched very little, and except for some unsuccessful digging in the Aibarach, no further attempts for deep wells had been made. Unfortunately I do not remember how deep the well was in Djav-djurek, but it must have been 170-190 sazhen (1190-1330 feet) deep. It gave us its first water (probably from the same spring which fed the mountains and cold storage in Kojash) but it was below the surface for 9 sazhen (63 feet). Further digging showed much limestone but no water. The artesian wells would be viable only for potable water.

It soon became apparent that Jozja had no interest whatsoever in Djav-djurek, nor in any household at all, and from that time on Djav-djurek became an exclusively grain- and animal-raising estate, and all of the owner’s interest was concentrated on Kojash. The soil in Kojash was so much better than that in Agach-Eli, and better distributed, but basically was not very suitable for field crop farming. The thin soil was very difficult to cultivate, needed much strength during plowing, so that it was difficult to use fewer than 4 pairs of oxen (usually 2-3 pairs of oxen and one pair of horses in front in order to speed up the oxen). The plow turned up huge clumps of shale which it was difficult to break up, and which fell back down if they were not removed immediately...... ( Lengthy description of difficulty of planting, plowing, soil condition, watering, etc. Left out of translation, OG)......

I went through these difficulties together with Franz, and neither one of us had sufficient knowledge of agriculture to overcome the problems; we looked for the advice from agronomists, also young and basically learning together with us of the impossibility to farm in our region. There was much to consider, and one could drown in the horror,

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but Franz did not give up, kept trying, kept searching. Much later, when I was chairman of the Simferopol Regional Assembly, we decided to develop a regional experimental field in Kojash. For our not very wealthy and elementary agricultural enterprise, this would have been an impossible monetary outlay, but Franz took it upon himself to build a house on the field, take care of the purchase of equipment, and all the Council would have to pay would be the salary of an agronomist who would serve in the whole area of our corner in the region. We chose a suitable plot of land which lay directly on the so- called upper road from Simferopol to Bulganak (about ½ versts, ca ½ mile) because we understood that it is not sweet for a person to sit alone in the steppe. Franz built a good house, dug a well which unfortunately contained not much water, and with his usual passion fulfilled all the requirements of the agronomist, which was not easy even in his large household. But the experiment was not successful: the agronomist who had been invited by the Council lasted one year, became unnerved and left, and at that time my presidency of the Council began, and the whole matter withered, which of course was not Franz’ fault. I have already written how much love, interest and money the Schnaiders put into the dairy business. Even here Franz did not stop due to high expenses. Of course he built all necessary buildings: cow sheds, cold storage for dairy products, and built them again in a more modern design if something was no longer suitable. Someone who truly knew animal husbandry, K.V. Dal, about whom I have already written, came to Kojash regularly and actually helped greatly with his instructions. And finally there was a very successful herd of 40 half-blooded Dutch (Holstein) cows which gave an unusually high yield. I have already written that Franz was not satisfied with obtaining only pure-bred bulls, but also ordered several pure-bred cows. A meadow of alfalfa, situated to the left of the road in front of the exit to the country estate proved very successful. The location was very suitable, sunny and receiving all the water which tumbled from the incline. Just at that time the Council received three puds (108 lbs) of alfalfa seed which had been ordered from England and sent by the Agricultural Council to be distributed to the populace. Neither then nor ever again did any of us see such seeds – each cernel was large, and without any additions. Our regional council gave one pud (36 lbs) to Franz with the provision that he would

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have to return – I now do not remember how many – puds of seeds to the council after the harvest. The alfalfa grew miraculously and remained for a long time and greatly helped to raise the milk-giving of the herd. But we still had to learn something. The first attempt at harvesting the alfalfa had been made by the Schnaiders already a few years earlier. And I remember the sad letter of my sister (at that time I still lived in Petersburg) in which she wrote to me that six of the best cows of the herd gathered in the alfalfa meadow, ate their fill and died, and nobody at that time yet knew of the simple method against this misery which was later used without question in Anapa and in our estate by the thirteen-year-old girl, our Katjusha.

Franz bred wonderful half-breed horses, primarily from English breeders, but sometimes also bought work horses. He had a steady horse-mating station licensed by the governmental horse breeding administration, and to him were brought all the horses in the surrounding area except from those stations which had their own stallions. He was never interested in breeding pure-bred horses since he considered this not to be an agricultural business. But also here we only learned through a bitter experience that one could not improve the breed of work horses beyond a certain point: horses with a large amount of pure blood had such thin hooves that they did not tolerate our stony ground, and to keep a whole stable full of work horses in horseshoes was, according to the conditions of that time, very difficult. He also had an excellent pig breeding system. He constantly bought new sires and given fattening food they developed into huge animals; the lard was particularly fine, especially if the animals were fed corn. Of course this was not as tasty as true Ukrainian lard. In the fall Mother always received six piglets for fattening up as a present from Kojash. Chickens were kept by the Schnaiders on the side of a near little hill which was covered with various trees. Underneath was a huge platform surrounded by a fence. But of course the fence did not guard the chickens well, and little by little it became clear that chickens as well as eggs disappeared in large quantities. The whole enterprise had to be moved back and new chicken coops had to be built, for which our Agach-Eli type of design for chicken coops was used. The aquatic poultry was kept near the mill. Beekeeping was also Page 190

quite successful in Kojash. The huge areas of greenery, flowers and water in Kojash which were larger than those owned by all of us put together, were quite conducive for keeping bees. The Schnaiders had a large apiary and a special person who took care of it, and an observation beehive with windows so that one could observe the activities of the bees. As was the usual manner of Franz, he had a large meadow in which numerous gray rabbits lived, and at one point they were joined by numerous white and brown ones, and this resulted in a mad mix of colors and the whole meadow being dug up and criss-crossed with small mounds in which they lived and multiplied. But I cannot remember ever eating rabbit at the Schnaiders. There never were sheep in Kojash. At one time there were some so-called Spanish ones in Djav-djurek. I do not know why those animals suffered from pustules; the fight against this was not sustainable and Franz liquidated the whole herd. But Franz kept a small herd of astrakhan sheep, which he kept improving with new rams, in Djav-dzurek till the end.

I see that I made a great omission by not writing one word about Schnaiders’ relationship with their workers – the big question of our times. We were all far from socialism, theoretically as well as practically. But the relationship with the workers, permanent ones who lived in quarters with their families – and seasonal ones who were hired for summer work, usually from May 15 till October (Pokrov), obviously was far from the bloodsucking of which the estate owners were accused. Proof of this might be the fact that the permanent workers lived with us for many years – you remember Michel and Peter? The seasonal ones also came to work for us many years in a row and brought their sons and daughters along. All this would of course not have been the case if the workers had felt badly treated by us. You probably remember our accommodations for workers, you remember their food – how happy we would have been during our first years in Munich, when you still lived with us, to have their food from the “black kitchen”, the borscht and kasha and that black bread and galushki, which you ate so gladly when we were still at home despite the fact that you were never hungry there. When it came to monetary remuneration, then there were in the South, where seasonal men and women mostly from the Poltava and other Southern regions of Russia came to work during the summer, “collective” contracts, which were not written Page 191

down but which were therefore not less conscientiously followed. If, for example, a worker who worked during the winter stayed with you for summer work, the pay was never based on some fixed sum, but one simply said: “I will stay till Pokrov for the Kachavsky price,” or “10 rubles more than the Kachavsky price” if the worker was more skilled than the average. Kachavsky which became so famous during the Civil War, was a place for an autumn fair to which not only agricultural products were brought, but where hundreds and thousands of workers looking for any summer work, also came. Officially the fair opened May 9, the “day of the summer Nikolai”, but in fact it operated already a few days earlier. Hundreds of land owners also came together there, as well as managers from distant places of the Taversky region, that is, from all regions without sufficient populations for a fair of their own. And in this way, nobody knows how, or with what method, suddenly a “price” developed which then became the guide and was used, without discussion, throught the whole, huge agricultural establishment of the South. A whole series of factors determined the amount of this price: first of all the condition of the winter crops which was already evident at that point, the number – by eye, of course – of workers who had come to the fair, the number of employers, and so forth – a whole row of not clearly defined but somehow captured moments. Some of the employers left home on the 5th or 6th of May not knowing how many workers they would need. These were the most critical days – will the much-desired rains come? For the harvest he will need 20 workers – if it does not come, 2 will be sufficient. And the land owner would command his people at home: if there is a good rain, send a telegram! And if the rains came, and the telegrams came, the whole fair perked up. The “price” jumped higher right away, many tens of thousands more rubles went into the pockets of the workers, and the land owner happily and gladly paid them because he was certain that his care and work would not be useless. And this was the Kachavsky price. Fall came. The day of Pokrov came- a day for settling with the workers, and according to custom, each worker, except the lackadaisical and unpleasant ones, received a small reward in addition to his salary – 5-10%. At the Schnaiders this holiday was always great. At that time, when salaries were 40-50 rubles for a period, a good mower received an award of 10-15 rubles, as I heard when I was present at the settlement.

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During the first years, when the Schnaiders lived in the village during the winter or until late fall, my sister provided lessons for reading and writing for the workers of all ages in the evening and on Sundays. The glass corridor of the old house served as a classroom. I remember how my sister enjoyed the success of Ivan Pivovar, a large and very good mower. And in my memory he was more than a good student. Later, when there already were many servants with families in Kojash, a school was established and a permanent teacher was invited to come. Our Katja also attended this school when she was six years old, in little high boots because of the dirt on the road between Kojash and Chadijevka. The 15th of August – Ascention Day – was a holiday of the Bachtshiserai Uspensky Monastery. And almost every year, at the end of this holiday, Franz provided one or two – depending on the number of people who wished to go – huge motor bikes that took them to church – all of Bachtshiserai showed a great interest in those bikes which were unknown in the Crimea. During the hot season, Franz never denied his transport services to people and the use of horses, and on Sunday mornings they went for the whole day to swim in the sea, 20 versts (12.5 miles) away. And, you will ask me, did all this foster a sense of gratitude, or, if not a feeling of love, or at least acknowledgement? It is hard to say. At that time this question did not arise, because all of us – and my sister more than any of us – were under the influence of the Uspensky group and other populists, and all this was felt to be a debt, whose fulfillment did not lead to an expectation of gratitude. Franz himself was more doubtful, but did all these things due to his inborn goodness toward everyone. But the future showed that no individual merit left a trace on the basic historic process for Franz, as for many other persons, larger of smaller unreasonablenesses appeared: they set fire to one of his huge stacks of hay, and then extinguished it and the remaining stacks with a feeling of very little benevolence, and did not shy away from the gorgeous Kojash house, which was burned down after we left, just like our much more modest Agach-Eli house. Last year, in Munich, a former office clerk of my sister, Ivan Vasiljewich Berezhinsky, told me that the house was burned down by Makhnovists, and that he was nearly killed when he began to carry books from the library, but nevertheless nobody raised a voice and the Russian uprising, truly senseless and merciless, equally did not show mercy to the bad

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as well as the good past.

Of course you remember the Kojash house? (See “Addendum”) It was a gorgeous edifice, into which Franz, with youthful energy, put all his love toward the earth in general, and toward Kojash in particular, and to his young wife. He also wanted to prove that he could rise above the usual bourgeois wealth, to build something better than anything else in the neighborhood and at the same time surround himself with beauty, comfort and what was undoubtedly most important to him in life – he built for his wife. For the design he invited a famous architect from Sevastopol, B.A. Rozhnov, who chose the beautiful location for the house, a little lower than the old one, on a former tobacco field but high enough above the road and the whole plain, that the house seemed to stand on a hillock and was visible from afar, and from it opened a wide and far view to all sides. It stood totally alone – all service buildings remained not far away; along a road with tall poplars in each side you came to a circle – an open stone courtyard. After a few steps inside a huge vestibule, you arrived at the dining room or, dining hall, which definitely was the center and main jewel of the house. This was a very large room, about 28 arshin (ca 47 feet) in length and 14 arshin (ca 24 feet) wide. Six windows and one glass door led to a terrace of the same large size. Despite the large number of windows, the dining room was somewhat dark, the sun never reached it, but in the hot Crimean summers it was always cool. But the study and children’s room next to the dining room were full of light and sun. Along the dining room was a wide corridor with many doors, that is, the bedrooms, three rooms for guests, the billiard room, the back and the exit doors, all opened into the corridor. From the entry rose a staircase to the turret which was high above the house, and later was made into a library, comfortable, beautiful, and removed from the noise in the house. And still the most beautiful thing of the whole house was the terrace. The view from it was breathtaking, as much as it could be in our poor plain. According to the architect’s drawing, the terrace was ringed by six ionic columns, and despite their thickness, they did not spoil the picture which opened before them: it was so wide that you did not even notice the columns, just as one does not notice the leaden soldered joints among the glass sections of Gothic windows. The terrace reached far out from the house, and on Page 194

its left side were wide stone stairs which led you to a narrow platform from which again two stairs led you to another platform with a stone balustrade and then to the park and the pool with little fountains. And from the top of the terrace, with one glance you could see the whole picture, and behind it ran the road, and further, between the two strips of the old Numan vineyard, the small road which led to the grotto and the orchard. The grottos were approximately at the height of the house on the left incline, the orchard lay lower and behind it one could see the tips of mountains, and to the right lay Chadijevka, the Tatar village and far away one could see Agach-Eli.

I know that my brother-in-law built his house with enthusiasm. But it was probably more than that. He discontinued all his other duties and spent his whole time with the construction. The walls were built of wonderfully layered sandstone which he himself extracted from the little hill across the house where the poultry house stood later, and under which a spring flowed across the road. (By the way, during these extractions we found a quarter of a deer, which I brought to the Moscow Geological Museum). For the lime for the building he burned straw all winter long in Djhav-djurek and used a huge supply of old straw which had uselessly lain moldering in old sheds. So that, God forbid, there would be no holes in the walls, and that no mice could set up house in them, a mixture of sand and lime was applied. In order that the lower rows of the masonry were sufficiently supported and would meet accurately, the mason who was able to make an opening between the stones of such width that the mixture would spread within like a fountain, would receive a bonus. I think that in all of this there was a bit of romanticism and phantasy in Franz’ soul, who probably thought that he was building this mansion for his future dynasty, and that it should serve a whole row of descendants. My poor, dear Franz, how maliciously Life played a joke on him, and for how short a time the mansion existed. But I am also convinced that evem if the torching of the walls of his house was not deliberate but accidental, the walls will fight their destruction for a long time. Around the house was a gorgeous park. The Schnaiders succeeded in finding a young, unpleasant and mean, but very good and knowledgeable

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gardener, a Czech, Matvey Ivanovich (I do not remember his last name) who turned out to be an excellent gardener-designer. He fashioned the park for them, measuring 1.5 to 2 desjatin (4-5.5 acres) all around and planted it. He was not carried away (as I was later) with filling up the park with plants which had not been tested in our difficult conditions, but beautifully grouped ordinary shrubs and trees and attained excellent results. The new plantings could be watered, and they grew wonderfully. Only the strip between the house and the road which was filled mainly with fruit trees, with a long row of chestnut trees on both sides of the middle, did not grow as well as the trees in the park, and until the end did not catch up. We thought the reason for this lack of success was that years ago Tatar women used to throw ashes from their huts onto this piece of land, but nobody remembers when there were Tatar huts in that place. However, this human activity almost forever influenced any growth of vegetation. I said that Matvey Ivanovich did not experiment with acclimatizing. However, once he attempted it, or perhaps it is the only one of which I am aware. He succeeded beautifully .... not for long. On the ends of two circular stairs he planted trees: Pawlonia imperialis. This is a Japanese plant with huge leaves; it grows very quickly and blooms in early spring with dark-and light blue blossoms resembling candles with golden flecks. Each fall each tree, branch by branch was wrapped in straw and each spring they were unwrapped. Several mild winters passed, and one spring all efforts were rewarded: the trees, already tall, stood like two blue bouquets of unusual beauty. Unfortunately that spring I was not home, and can judge this beauty only in my imagination; the care of the trees lasted as long as their height permitted, but never again did they bloom so magnificently, until the time came when they produced just a few blossoms. During one of the coldest winters, not only the buds died, but also whole branches; the trees themselves survived but lost all of their beauty and were attractive only due to their huge leaves. The second success of Matvey Ivanovich proved to be of longer duration. He did not only plant trees in the park, but also bushes, and you can imagine how much happiness it brought to the hearts of my Schnaiders when one summer, ten or maybe fifteen years after the founding of the park, a nightingale began to sing under the windows of the house. A nightingale in the Crimea, and even in the dusty and dry

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Bulganak plain! This was such an unexpected, wonderful reward for all their hard work that at first we did not believe that it was a nightingale, until Northern specialists confirmed it, and decided that this was a lost bird or one landing accidentally in the park. But the next summer the nightingale returned and then there were two, then three in the park. I do not know about later, - the Revolution came, and I do not know whether it was more merciful to the nightingales than to the landowners, or when they torched the house, did the birds die too, because they lived in the dense bushes right in front of the bedroom of the owners.

There was no end to tending the park around the house. Little by little the plants and trees grew and it was no longer necessary to obtain planting materials from distant private nurseries, but one could easily get them sent by train from public woodlands in the Tavrichesky and Shatyrovsky region. Fertilizer was put into huge pits from which stones had been removed. And later on the work was put into new gardens to the right and left of the grotto. It is not by chance that I speak of the garden last even though it became after all the main business of Kojash and its owners. It was in that order that the development of the Kojash household proceeded, historically and psychologically. It must not be forgotten that Franz spent his practical education in agricultural matters among German colonists, and with a graduate of the same circle – his cousin Nik. Petr. Schnaider. I do not want to generalize about all Germans, but I can say with certainty that a Russian-German colonist did not love and did not value trees and vegetation in general. They were clever, able and knowledgeable farmers but you would look in vain for a horticulturist among the German Crimean colonists. There were (and I consider only large estates in the Crimea) Greeks – Aleksiano, Reveliati, Pachadji, Armenians – Almundjs, Krym, Schishken, Tartars – Krymtaev, Topusaby and an unendinging number of small horticulturists in Kar and Alm, Russians – Rud, Golovinskiy, Gan, but among German names I only remember long-since Russified Dr. N.N. Betling and the brothers Konradi. Not less in vain would you look among the many German colonies and even more in the large and small German steppe estates with large, note-worthy orchards and gardens. A few acacias, this tree of few needs, growing in any soil, and knowing well the unpredictable Crimean early spring and its later characteristics, blooming last Page 197

and with sharp thorns defending its branches against the appetites of cows and goats of the steppe – usually standing along the front of the house, among them occasionally some half-withered lilac bushes and, separating the house from the street, some sad yellow or pink-violet mallows swaying in the wind, and on the ground some undemanding iris (Iris germanica!). It is true that those were steppe colonies and farms, where water was pumped from deep wells and it would seem strange to ask of these hard-working people to spend such expensive water on watering those plants, but still..... On the road from us to Saki it was necessary to drive past four trees, visible from afar in the totally empty and open steppe. There were two huge, old apricot trees and the other two were old acacias. These four trees and a well not far from them, where we always led the horses to drink, were all that remained of a former Tatar village which had been situated there, and which had so totally disappeared that it was only with difficulty that one could discern the huts, close to where the embankment rose. But - once the Tatars cared for those two apricot trees, and it was also not easy for them to carry the water for watering them.

Our Bulganak contained the so-called public garden, and in the vineyard apricot and plum trees grew here and there, but all the small home gardens were in one location, and nobody had the intimate, personal, if you will, connection with plants, which is so characteristic of the Tatars. Growing grain was a business, a large business, important and therefore serious, the garden was an indulgence, an amusement, and time- consuming. I think that Franz had that same feeling, which was subconscious and involuntarily absorbed by him in his youth. It is amusing that the very first auctions of the orchard in Agach-Eli, which I have already described, made a deep impression on our German family. Of course they had often heard about the large sums which were often paid for good orchards during fertile years. But all that was somewhere else in Karasivk, in Alm, in old, famous gardens and under very favorable conditions. And when suddenly a medium-sized, half-steppe garden which had been developed not that long ago by “our Varvara and Sergei” was sold for 8 thousand rubles – it was something totally new and unexpected. It had seemed to all as an almost useless endeavor, but then digging around in the garden suddenly had brought a profit, impressive with its Page 198

amount. Nobody gave a thought to whether the garden business was truly profitable, was the income truly quite substantial, achieved after so many years of work and expectations, and what were the chances to repeat the profit – all these questions were submerged by the amount of the profit. I remember that even Matvei Matveevich - totally ignorant of plant management and its economics, could not get over this and kept saying: “no, 8 thousand for a garden!”

But when Franz began to believe in the orchard business and became interested in it, as was his usual way, he threw himself into it. The location of the old Kojash garden was such that only a small part could be irrigated from Bulganak. To the Schnaiders that section seemed to be in very poor condition, and they began to improve and plant it during the early years of their ownership. But when all the areas which could be watered were occupied, they began to wonder whether that irrigatable area could not be enlarged artificially. The question arose about using the water of the springs in the Grotto, which flowed into the river bed of the Bulganak, and it was decided to build a plateau and develop a reservoir right by the Grotto. And that is how it was done, but unfortunately without the input of a good technician, and therefore the retaining wall was either poorly placed or badly built. When the new reservoir was filled, the wall began to crack, water began to escape, and the reservoir could never be filled to the top. Franz always planned to replace the supporting wall, but never executed the plan. At the same time the grottos had been improved and widenend. During the search for water, a deep cavern was dug quite far into the mountain, but no mountain spring was found, and as before, the water oozed throughout the plains and only a thin stream exited from the cavern. During a stay in Moscow, Franz visited a polytechnical museum and happened upon a display about fish development. Franz immediately ordered some trout eggs from Petersburg, and after they hatched in his bathtub, he put them into the upper pond under overhanging cliffs. In the lower pond he had carps and craw fish.

Now the water from the grottos began to exit much higher and one could therefore use a long stretch of the left cliff which previously could not be irrigated, for a garden. But in the middle of this stretch protruded a large cave of the mountain and impeded the

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flow of water. At that time the Schnaiders became very friendly with a mining engineer A.V. Konradi about whom I have already written, who married to the oldest sister of Maria Ferdinandovna Schlee,Varvara Ferdinandovna. Konradi served as the manager of the Saks Enterprise of Balaov, and visited rather frequently from his orchard in Alm, staying in Kojash overnight. I already wrote that this was a lively, smart and many- faceted person, a great lover of gardens and himself a horticulturist. Konradi measured the incline of the mountain, put down some markers, and one fall the whole area was plowed, the rocks removed, the earth was dragged with wooden rakes down and sideways until there was a large even field through which the water flowed all over and on which soon a new, young garden appeared. Now the orchard in Kojash occupied an area of 30 desjatin (81 acres) and became a truly large business. Little by little my sister also became pulled in, like my brother-in-law, who dedicated more and more time and interest to it. But all the actual work – cutting, planting, etc were boring for the impulsive Franz and were left to the gardeners; the size of the gardens made it necessary to find an excellent, positive gardener and his assistants. Franz was more occupied with the financial aspects of the business and he, much more than the rest of us, was busy with the thought of the most profitable yield. He experimented, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, but always with an eye on the profitability of the garden; he always searched for a good realization of his ideas, and also wanted to show that he knew about good gardening operations. But he was not lucky, or he did not have true commercial instincts and talents, and these experiments were very expensive for him, and did not yield results. The Schnaiders made attempts to involve themselves also in small garden cultures – the gardeners were available. They had a rather good orangery and later sold chrysanthemums, grew asparagus, attempted champignons, but I think that the commercial results of all these beginnings were quickly negative.

After Franz Petrovich’s death, Djav-Djurek became Franz’ property.- Iv. Franzovich got the “Petersburg” restaurant-hotel,- but this became less and less interesting to the owner, and its management was transferred into the hands of Erem Stepanovich Slepokobylsky, a simple, knowledgeable and seemingly honest person who had begun to work for Franz as a simple blacksmith. The business proceeded in a normal manner Page 200

along the established procedures – by the way I must add that Franz instituted a very good, however very difficult, rule: all of Djav-Djurek was divided into square quarters – with a measuring instrument – I think 100 desjatins (270 acres) per quarter, - and alternating planting and plowing became easy and correct – but Franz began to rent out larger plots to farmers from the neighboring village Nikolajevsky.

Thus happily, even though busily, but brightly and rich began the life of the young Schnaiders. But soon a dark spot which unfortunately followed them all their life long, appeared. Coming back from their honeymoon in the spring of 1889, they stayed only a few days in town, living in the “Petersburg” hotel, and left for the village: Spring demanded the immediate presence of the landlord. My sister expected her first child in the autumn. In August I left for high school, Serjezha for the university. I lived in the home of Iv. Serg. And one morning a rumor was reported to me – my sister was seriously ill. I went to the “Petersburg” hotel and found Fr. Petr. at his usual place in the vestibule on a divan. With his usual cold-bloodedness he answered my disturbed question about Sonja, that the birth was slow, was not proceeding correctly and that horses had been ordered to deliver some doctor or other. Then he yawned, stroked himself on his bald head and added: she is unlikely to live. I could not forget this to the end of his life and to the end of my life I will not forget the impression the words from this idler made on my young soul: after all, he was speaking of my sister. I remember that I cried all the way from the hotel to the house of Iv. S., and this was a long road, I was already in the 6th (10th) grade and did not like to cry. When I arrived in Kojash on the same morning, there truly was little hope. The child was born dead, and for a long time my sister was between life and death. When she finally recovered, we all breathed a sigh of relief and saw in this as one of the unfortunate occurances in life. But all of us were wrong. There followed a long row of miscarriages; this lasted for many years. This was a horrible time. Externally all seemed to be well. My sister kept her usual way of living; she worked hard and seemed her normal self, but when a new pregnancy occurred not only she and Franz but all people close to them trembled and awaited with fear what would happen this time. And again there were premature births and danger to the life and health of my sister. Whatever they tried, to whatever doctors they turned, Page 201

nothing helped. Now, looking back, it seems unexplainable for what and for whom a person had to undergo such physical and mental torments - whether there would or would not be a child? But this is now, when we all had been made wiser by life and saw, that sometimes Nature wisely prevents a child from being born. But then the wish to have a child evidently triumphed over all the other considerations, and my sister clearly was worn out by this horror, but it kept repeating itself over and over. For our family Sonja of course was more dear than anything else, and we felt her torture and the difficulty of her situation, and our relationship with Franz became more strained. Finally, in the winter of 1893-4 my sister was placed into a Moscow clinic for sick women, and Professor Snegirev operated on her. When we heard in the summer of ’95 that my sister was expecting a child, we held our breath again. The family Esperenyi whose daughter had been at the boarding house in Odessa with my sister, was visiting her that summer. At that time, Esperenyi who used to be a military physician, had already died. The family consisted of the widow Anna Aleksandrovna, the nicest person, the daughter Lucy and son Stanislav Karlovich, who served in the Imperial Hermitage. Beginning with the first months of her pregnancy, my sister watched every one of her steps, and the kind Anna Aleksandrovna helped her endure this difficult situation of sitting imprisoned, even if in the most beautiful Kojash house. As if she were still with me, I see her sitting in an armchair on the terrace at the end of the day. It was stuffy even on the large terrace, and she would descend a few steps in order to be under the open sky. She always was full-figured and fought against this by eating surprisingly little and moving about a great deal. But during that time she gained terribly much weight, and together with her condition, she became somewhat obese. It was terrible for us to see our sister in such a state, and she was very aware of this, and her tender eyes asked for forgiveness and not to judge her harshly, and to understand all of her difficulty and the hopelessness of her situation and to forgive her. The fourth month passed and we all sighed a sigh of relief. From then on everything went normally, and on December 24, ’95, Zhenja was born. What a celebration that was – how happy Franz was – this cannot be described in any words.

For a long time, until this same Zhenja was an adult – no clouds dimmed the Page 202

Schnaiders’ life. From early Spring until late Fall they lived in Kojash, and during the early years sometimes they even wintered there, but with our terrible roads even the 20 versts (ca 20 kilometers) which separated us from town were treacherous and I remember vividly one occasion when Mother left the house at 10 in the morning in our light van and arrived in town at 5 in the afternoon, and the horses (a troika) were covered with lather and literally swayed on their feet.

In the beginning the Schnaiders renovated for themselves the gorgeous apartment of General Vzmetniv in the house which F.P. Sch. had bought, but which was somehow unusual and awkward; actually one could say that F.P. who found the apartment quite comfortable, foisted it on them. My memory tricked me here. Now I remember that before that apartment, the Schnaiders lived for 2-3 years in the house of Zhashgozev on the Aleks. Nevsky Street. It was a very good, comfortable small apartment where they lived pleasantly. Soon the first tenant came – a tubercular medical student who was sent to them by Serjezha, and who stayed with them a few weeks before being sent to Yalta. He was laying in a clinic in Moscow and was to be sent to the South, but he had neither money nor friends. The Schnaiders helped him to settle in Yalta during the winter, the summer he spent with them in Kojash (still in the old house). He returned to Moscow, finished the university and then until the end of his life he lived in Simferopol. This was the surgeon of the Governmental Hospital –Dimitri Aleksandrovich Blagovershchensky. With this example I want to show Schnaiders’ word “Help”.

Then they rented a truly wonderful apartment in the house of Vadazian, where they lived until they bought a medium-sized house on the same Pushkinsky Street, which had belonged to Schaur. The Schnaiders worked during the summer and rested during the winter almost every year until there were children, in Petersburg or Moscow. Little by little they became involved in the social life and work in Simferopol and soon occupied noticeable and important positions. I have already spoken about the charitable works which was the private sphere of Franz. But he was also passionately involved in what was called social activity and which was a necessary supplement to the work of the governing bodies. He was a member of the Simferopol Agricultural

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Assembly, member of the city Duma, a member of the council of its Extraordinary Committee, member of the finance committee of the Asav-Donsky Bank and of a department of the Federal Bank in Sevastopol, an advisory member of the credit- granting society, and everywhere gave his energy and fervor. I am not even speaking of his charitable foundations and endeavors where, next to him, my sister was active. They soon directed the newly re-activated efforts to help children in poverty. My sister was the presiding person in this and put her whole soul into this endeavor. The means for this were collected from everywhere; often people who owed something to Franz paid him back, so to speak, by contributing to the Children’s Aid, but the major contributions came from the Children’s Aid committee. Here Franz mobilized all his energy; the accounts were done at home, and many days the tables were filled with materials for the Children’s Aid. If there were not enough means to cover expenses, or if a new roof was needed, or new heating was to be installed, Franz covered the deficit, but he gave no peace to anyone when it came to the success of the Aid. And everyone knew this and everyone felt the obligation to attend an evening of fundraising, to eat well, to drink well, to pay much, but with the knowledge to be doing a good and useful deed, with the certainty that not one kopek would stick to the hands and all money would find its intended use. These evenings were characterized by their very special democracy and, so to speak, internationality. Just as the Children’s Aid in its choice of its small clients, Franz in his unhesitating wish to help however he could never differentiated between Jews and Non-Jews, all nations of the town gathered at those evenings, but usually still separating themselves according to their nationalities. During other hand, at those evenings you might meet people who under different circumstances would not even think to enter the local club or a concert or ball, and then to stay there for dinner. Great was the attraction of the work itself and of its main agent – Franz, and the confidence that one could not only go there but that one should, and that one’s appearance there would not cause unpleasantness. And often some timid attendees would turn out to be generous benefactors.

And indeed, the Society could soon build a hospital on a piece of land designated for them by the city, not large but very well built, with 12 beds and various separate Page 204

divisions. Besides this, the Aid Society had a children’s camp for children of school age during the summer. Officially, the camp was directed by the city government, but ...... The camp was located adjacent to Djav-Djzurek, which belonged to Franz, and it was Franz who provided provisions, water and heat, and he gave horses and a coachman in order to drive the camp’s children back and forth, and to take them back and forth to the beach –I believe, every day.

For some reason, the urban properties interested Franz less. They were huge properties scattered about the best areas of town and brought in very large revenues. These revenues, as much as they reached his hands, Franz uncontrollably put into Kojash, but they were not sufficient, and he made debts; he never had enough time or desire to take care of the properties, even to see how he could increase their profitability. Franz Petrovich obtained a special contract with the town administration to build several buildings and at the same time a row of store fronts along the Izmetney house on the Pushkinsky Street. And this is how it remained. Only in 1913 did Franz decide to utilize the huge area of the empty-standing site, and together we developed a plan for building on it. But the war did not permit us to bring the matter to the end, and only one three-story building bordering the Armenian-Catholic church and opposite, a three-story house (only the frame) was completed; planned were: a movie-theater Bayan, opposite a restaurant-hotel “Metropol” (a club house was completed only on graphs, but had been worked out with all details). The new hotel was to offer full amenities and comforts and Franz was collecting details for its furnishings with much fervor during his foreign travels, which were quite frequent before the war and were meant for the health of his wife and children, sometimes even during the summer.

Everyone came to the Schnaiders. I am not only speaking of the Simferopolites. From his time of working at the “Petersburg” hotel he had many acquaintances in the whole region who traveled to Simferopol. The northern estate owners: Kovjanko, Friedrich Falz-Fein who was so famous for his zoo, the Melitopol Rykovs, the large estate owner Zacharov, Menonites with the dairy business – Wilm, Vibe, one of the best animal breeders who owned that beautiful German breed about which I wrote,

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horticulturists from Karasav Selinov, Shishman, Agtundzji – all came to Simferool and felt obliged to spend time with the hospitable and hearty Franz and his friendly but much more reticent wife. Simferopol, a young town, was still a former Tatar settlement, known as Aqmescit, at the end of the 18th century and did not have an old established aristocracy, had almost no nobility, and its “society” consisted of a “true mixture of tribes.” The bureaucrats were mostly Russian, also the judiciary and military circles. Everything else was diverse and did not at all flow together into some kind of society, but was grouped into clubs. During balls and evenings in the city’s clubs and at the theater one could see this diversity, but even there during dinner one saw the same circles. The Schnaiders were loved and honored everywhere for their activities, but in their private life they were close only to our extensive family. The rest of us, however, were not at all that sociable, and all efforts of my sister to become a haven where representatives of different backgrounds and clubs would get together, came to nothing. All of us, considered people of means and materially independent, worked many hours and often were not even available in the evening. My sister often liked to compare us to the large family of the Rougon-Macquarts, which at that time was a popular series of novels by Emile Zola. And truly, if one does not speak of the bureaucratic circles, then our family had a very marked effect on local life. Four of us were in the locoal Duma: Al.Mat., Franz, Uncle Fedja Lustich and I (not counting Cousin E.N. Nersesov); in the estate-owners’ assembly sat three of us: Franz, Al.Matv, and I; the three of us also sat in the Council of the Mutual Credit Bank; Franz and I were members of the inspecting section of the Asav-Donskoy Bank; Al. Matv. was a member of the inspecting section of the Petersburg M. Bank; F.O. Lustich was director of a department of the Russian Mercantile Bank, R.F. Lerich was director of the City Bank. In each of the many high schools one or the other of us was a member of the parents’ committee or the pedagogic assembly, during the last years I was president of the Commercial Institute of the Merchant Society. And all of these were unpaid volunteer activities, places entailing much actual work, for which not one of us received any compensation but which we accomplished with much effort and honesty. The budget and inspection committees of the estates and the city met every week, and we attended without fail. It was not

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possible not to go to the pedagogic assembly, where sometimes the situation of an unsuccessful student was decided, and a mother or father would come and ask that help would be given him. And so it went constantly. Seldom were the days when we did not meet for some work in the evening – during the day each one had his own – sometimes even two times. And every Friday there was a regular meeting of the city Duma and it was simply not permissible not to be there: all of us belonged to the voting membership without whom there would not have been a quorum. In this way, we had Saturday evenings free and Sundays. And slowly we formed the habit of getting together on Saturdays, most often at the Schnaiders – our four families. The four of us, Ferd. Osip., Al. Matv., Franz and I, would sit down to play whist, our wives would scold us for this, we would talk and then all of us would have a wonderful dinner and would depart for our homes – until the next Saturday. Once, during one of these evenings, which was not long before Franz’ death, having finished the card game, we went into the dining room for dinner. Not a quarter of an hour had passed when there was a loud crash: a huge mirror, about 3 arshin (84 inches) high, in a heavy wooden frame had loosened from its nails and fell right onto the table standing under it, and on which we just had played cards. The glass fell all over, of course, and the chair and the table were ruined. If this had happened while we were still playing, certainly the person sitting under the mirror would have suffered a broken skull or spine. For Franz, who always was superstitious, this was a very heavy blow: he turned a dull white. We tried to joke, but everyone was not quite himself. In this case, superstition turned out to be wholly correct, but I am telling you this not in order to strengthen this phantom. I was, it seems to me, never superstitious but this fact, as you can see, strongly stayed with me. This is probably how all superstitions take root. Someone will say something, and people will go and seek facts, not worse than I myself!

None of us could stand going to the club, even though all of us were members. Here we were among family, could speak comfortably, not fearing any gossip and finally – this was not the least of it – could eat and drink splendidly, and the lady of the house always tried to provide something special to set her Saturday apart, and was obviously glad when her spoiled guests remarked about her efforts and success. But it was Page 207

difficult to compete with the Schnaiders. My sister always was an indifferent cook, ate very little herself and never drank anything, and therefore handed her household over to her maid Lela, who served her for many years and died at their house soon after Franz’ death. For this reason, Franz was all the more in charge of everything. He went to the bazaar nearly every day early in the morning and bought everything that looked good and in such quantities that he often brought us something on his way home. All merchants knew his tastes and when they obtained something special – some salted fish, a grouse, oysters – they would let him know right away – and we would also be partaking of his purchases. Sometimes, when his purchases were particularly expensive, my sister and I held him to account. “What do you want – should I leave everything to my cousins?” was his usual answer and in this was also the thought that he did not and would not have a direct heir in his businesses. And in the evening he would ceremoniously host all uf us, feed us happily and well, and enjoy seeing the pleasure we experienced from the food and drink. He probably was a poor German in this regard also. Dear Franz. He was somewhat restless, liked to buy in the German manner – everything wholesale because it was cheaper –and that there would be a reserve at home. He bought rice by the sacks, boxes of oranges, matches and mountains of tea. But then, quite unlike Germans, he forgot his purchases, or gave them away right and left, and gave them to his close ones and distant ones as a gift or hosted them so generously. How many acquaintances and friends left him with some of his tea in their pockets from the cabinet by the door! How many times did he come to us in the morning to drink a glass of tea and bring some cheese, fish, radish and whatever else he came across and which would “bring pleasure to us or the children.” And when Andre fell seriously ill with a stomach ailment, and he was facing death, he sent whipped cream from the village every day, by horseback. And when Katja was very ill, he came every evening to visit her, and, seeing our concern, would take a pillow from the divan, put it on the floor of the dining room and lay there all night because: “one might need him to go to the pharmacy, or to get the doctor, or to get some ice”. Dear, true friend. Never, never will we forget you nor your true, heartfelt love for us.

I have to reiterate, if only shortly, the political opinions and outlooks of my sister and Page 208

brother-in law. They were typical and this was explained, as held true for many, many of its followers, at being comfortable with the Cadet party’s cultured and compromising middle-class behavior. But already at the very beginning of his political life he once, one may say, stepped into the foreground and got badly burned. His new Cadet friends, especially Count Obolensky, as he himself told me later during the emigration, led him into this. This was in 1905. All leftist groups wanted to organize a huge gathering, but they could never find a legal reason for this. Then they remembered that there existed a semi-secret organization or society in Simferopol, not active for a long time, and expressed the desire to resurrect its activities, having established an organizational meeting for this. In order to obtain the necessary permission for this from the governor, they convinced Franz to be the chair of this meeting. At that time the governor was Vladimir Fedorovich Trepov, a member of a famous family of Trepovs, who during the time of my service in Moscow was Home Secretary General of Department of State, a totally cultured and well-meaning person. He also knew Franz and my sister as completely loyal and probably decided ‘why not permit a gathering concerning agricultural matters under the chairmanship of one of the richest landowners?’ But the matter turned out to be different. Not only not knowing about the true aims of the gathering and completely inexperienced in this matter, the chairman called the meeting in session, and a picture developed which at that time we all knew very well, and which was very reminiscent of a ball to benefit nannies, which with such foresight Dostoyevsky described in “The Demon” and as Count Obolensky described this “meeting”: “ with a table we pushed the poor chairman Schnaider to the wall, so that he could not leave, and then, not paying any attention to his protests and declaration that the meeting was closed, one after another jumped up on the table and said whatever he wanted, and as long as he wanted.” In this way the new friends “played” my poor Franz, and it cost him much trouble and unpleasantness to convince Trepov that he himself was a victim, and was not the organizer of this unworthy comedy. During the revolution of course worse things were done, but truly one becomes despondent when one remembers how one and the same Count Obolensky borrowed money from “Franchik”, and of the thievery within the party, and the dirty deeds done

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behind Franz’ back. And after his death, in the obituary of the party he is called “Franchik,” and fun is made of his “helplessness” in the feuilleton. How well the Count benefited from all sides!

After this experience for a long time Franz did not even want to hear about taking any steps which possibly might have a political character, and when I wrote my open letter to the landowners of the Tavrichesky region, even though he and my sister were in complete agreement with its content, he decided not to sign it, and I had to take my first step in the Crimea without his participation – he still did not believe in the battle which I had begun and did not want to risk getting into a ridiculous situation again. But later all this changed. The Schnaiders did not leave the Cadet party, but in actuality we became close and inseparable in our common political battle and remained so until the end. During 12 years of our joint social work there was not a single instant when we had a different aim for anything concerning our labors, and this was not because we were related or because of our friendship but only because we tried to approach each situation honestly and without bias. If this is approached honestly, there are no bases for disunity. We had this in extreme measure, and together we rose in the landowner society and town.

After Zhenja, the Schnaiders had two more daughters: May 2, 1897 Elena and January 4, 1901 Marianna (Musja). Zhenja grew up as a totally normal child, a little slow and stout, learned easily and well, and finished high school with a medal. Her inclination to stoutness hindered her to ride well on a horse, and though Franz always hoped to have a son, but because of Zhenja’s interest in housekeeping, her unquestioned ability and agility, we thought that it would be Zhenja who would continue his beloved work. The Schnaiders loved and spoiled their children, and “the Schnaider children” were always the objects of envy of all the other children of our family; not only did Zhenja have everything she wanted, but even more than what she could wish for. Perhaps it was due to this that she did not much appreciate all the care and love surrounding her, but I think this was the main reason. As time passed, she began to resemble Anna Franzovna more and more, with her complete disinterest in the external

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world, and I would say, with a dogmatic rejection of it. More and more her eyes began to have that dark forbidding look which always amazed me unpleasantly and inhibited me during conversations with Anna: she looked at you and listened to you, but at the same time looked for something inside you as if examing the sincerity of what you were saying, or perhaps she was hearing and seeing her own thoughts. It was becoming clear to us that Zhenja’s interests were wandering somewhere else, and that she would not be a replacement for Franz; she was not talking to anybody and only kept reading, reading. After finishing high school, she went to Petersburg for some courses, but did not stay long. She fell in with some political group and was arrested, and Schnaiders succeeded in freeing her from the arrest and further persecution only after much trouble; she returned to Simferopol even more of a stranger, and after a short while told her mother that she had become the wife of Zachar – whose last name I never did find out. This Zachar was a cabinet maker, if I am not mistaken, for our master cabinet maker Petrov, was a totally uneducated person, a member of the Socialist party – I do not know of which one – and at one time even had been abroad. He lived with his mother in a small one-room apartment with a kitchen in a Gypsy settlement and this is where Zhenja moved. You can understand what a blow this was, not only for the parents, but for all of us. The issue was not the affront to the pride of our family. Zhenja’s choice was a negation of all of our way of life, it was an entry into an alien enemy camp which hated and despised us. All of us were cultured enough to recognize and acknowledge the convictions of others, and if Zhenja’s choice would have been the most left socialist, then none of us would have thought to judge her for this (even though we of course would not have been happy about such a marriage) if this socialist would have been a cultured person. But this person was the most common one among the cabinet makers, evidently worked over by the party and just that one Zhenja picked, having not said a word even to her mother, not even making an attempt to see whether the parents would agree to her normal marriage with her chosen one. The poor Schnaiders were simply heart-broken, especially Franz. But, still, he loved his daughter and felt within himself the desire to grant her wish even in this instance, or else he understood, being an intelligent person, how Zhenja’s legendary stubbornness harmed

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the family, and to our astonishment there was no explosion from his side, and after a talk with them, he offered Zhenja and Zachar to leave Simferopol and promised a monthly stipend of enough money to live on. This was a rare, perhaps the only case in the long years of our friendship when the Schnaiders did not seek my advice. Of course they were right – they knew me and understood that in this deal I would have been a poor advisor, and not understanding Zhenja, they would not have obtained sympathy for her from me. And my sister with her soft heart tried to find a conciliatory solution. The absence did not last long, however; they returned to Simferopol and moved into the Gypsy settlement. How all this would have ended I cannot say, the Revolution came and turned everything around radically.

Elja was born a weak, sickly child, began to walk very late and never had good legs, and in addition, incurably poor eyes. This was a kind and naturally good person, but of course not very suited to life and she remained so to her last day. Life was particularly difficult for her as well as for her mother, and for all of those around her, during the emigration. She died December 8, 1945 from influenza at Musja’s in Belgrade.

Since birth Musja also had bad eyes which did not improve with treatments or with glasses, but otherwise she reminded everyone of her father with her energy and agility, her expansiveness and tendency for quick decisions, and her deep love for Kojash and finally, her selfless love for her mother. What she went through during the emigration and is still experiencing, if she and her mother are still alive, I will not undertake to describe. I only think that all her sins and shortcomings must be forgiven because of her true love for her mother. In September of 1920 she married the Colonel of the General Staff Lev Stepanovich Tugan-Baranovsky. On May 26, 1923 a son, Georgy was born to them. L.S. Tugan-Baranovsky died after a long illness on Nov.14, 1955 in Trieste. (Their son, Georgy, married Inna Kartasheva and together with his wife went to America on Nov. 28, 1955.)

On January 1, 1918 all of us relatives and many close acquaintances assembled – for the last time – in the hospitable Schnaider house for the New Year dinner which already had become a tradition, to meet the New Year with them. Franz had never Page 212

been an orator at the dinner table, but there he suddenly spoke of dangers surrounding us from everywhere, about the lack of any help whatever, that we all needed to unite in order to save our land, and if necessary, to die. His agitation deepened, he breathed with difficulty, and, already only speaking in broken phrases, he concluded: “we will all go, nobody must bow down and give way .. whoever gives way, let him know that we all will step away from him....and if it is fated for one of us to perish in this battle, we will all accompany him in his coffin ...” Who among us could know at that minute that he spoke of himself, the only one of us who perished when our enemies came. Two weeks later, his coffin stood in that same room where we had dined, and not one of us could approach his coffin or accompany his remains to the cemetery.....

Besides our common guilt of being bourgeois and landowners before the Revolution, Franz and I had another special fault: we both were members of the League of Defense of the town, I was its chairman, and Franz an appointee. Evidently this caused a special interest in us from the powers that ruled Simferopol on January 14, and both of us were arrested that evening. Several groups came to Franz that evening. He was able to telephone me about one group which came – sailors – they did not search him and were totally decent. One group, evidently more official, demanded that he hand over the League’s money. My brother-in-law answered that the money was in the bank, and that tomorrow he would go to the bank with them and would give them everything which, according to the books, belonged to the League. They were satisfied with this and left. But still another group came and demanded that he go with them. They led him to the corner of Pushkinskaya Street and the dark Gymnastichsky corner and there killed him on the sidewalk by the small annex of the “Petersburg” hotel. Of course we never found out who belonged to that group, whether they had a connection to the new rulers. But the physical assassin was a farmer from the Nikolajevsky village, close to Djav-Djurek, Konokrad, whom the Regional Court had sentenced to exile in Siberia, and Franz had had the misfortune to be the jury foreman in this case.

About this village – the only Russian one in our region at that time, more must be said in detail. (Zburjevka was a fellowship and originated in 1906-07; at the same time

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the village of Adji-Ibrash came into being). In all of the Crimea there were only 3-4 Russian villages, developed in a so-called typically Russian manner, that is, the settling of Russian farmer-serfs on the land of an estate owner. There were the Sablovs on the land of the Dekabrist Davydov, Kurzs and Zus on the land of General Vzlitnev. All of them were serfs of the owner who were resettled from their Russian estates into the areas which the Tatars had vacated. Of course it was not the best serfs who were resettled, but the less able and pleasant ones. In the Crimea it used to be said that these villages were settled with the lowest elements. One hundred years passed and all this was forgotten, but their descendants kept some of the characteristics and were the ‘restless and quarrelsome’ part of our peoples. They also did not care about expressing these characteristics in all of their relationships. Besides having a decent amount of land, they also worked in the forest and wood delivery service and their specialty was in shipping fruit, as I have described before. In this way they lived well, and they never showed signs of that beaten-down and humble demeanor so common in Russian farmers. But still.... When there was a Jewish pogrom in Simferopol in 1905, undoubtedly instigated by what was then called ‘the black net’, the Sablovs were invited to take part in it and in the looting of Jewish stores. But let us assume that this was some peculiar patriotism of a true Russian populace, an anger toward foreigners in the Crimea. And then, I believe in 1913, the old woman Davydova (born a Countess Trubetskoy, daughter of a Dekabrist who married N.V. Davydov) won 200 thousand rubles. A rich land owner, still harboring old ideals, she did not know what to do with this money, and decided to use it for the benefit of former serfs, among whom no one who still knew the former rulers, was left. One must add that the old Davydovs (they must have been around 70 at that time) were the nicest people, somewhat removed from life, far from oppressing Sablovs; they lived on the estate only during the summer and long ago gave the management of the estate to their daughter-in-law, O.A. Davydova. The old Davydova decided to build a new church in Sablov, a new school and a new hospital, to leave capital for their furnishing and made and agreement with the City Council for the upkeep of these structures. In this manner, the farmers received a great gift without any cost to them. And what happened? The new

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structures had not yet been quite completed when the Revolution came. The first decree of the Sablovs was: evict the Davydovs. The Nikolaevskys had never been serfs, but their whole life long they somehow looked like warriors. Their quite adequate space bordered on Djav-Djurek. Nikolaevsk lay right on the edge of the sea, it had precipices and a rather high beach from which they never managed to build a decent descent to the sea, but with such beautiful sand that during the summer the less well-to- do families from Simferopol gladly came here, and there would have been many more of them if the Nikolaevskys had thought to make a stay there more pleasant. I am writing all this only in order to show that it was not a God-forsaken, forgotten, impoverished village. The relationship between Franz and the Nikolaevskys was a long-standing one, and one might say, not a well-meaning one. It seems to me that even before his marriage, when Franz was living in Djav-Djurek, he facilitated the building of a school in Nikolaevsky through the regional council. But since Nikolaevsk was in an area far from Simferopol and in a region of a population with a different religion, Franz insisted on the addition of a special hall to the usual design of a school; this hall was supposed to serve as a small church, so that the citizens of Nikolaevsk would have a place to bring a priest a few times a year and would have church services a few times a year. During those times this was still possible and Franz had a large monetary part in the building of the hall and the building of the whole school, and was a beneficiary-for-life of this and always helped out the school and its teacher. A small detail: during the building of the school a student of the Agricultural Academy, Chuikov, worked for Franz in Djav-Djurek. His sister, Elizaveta Alexeevna Chuikov, came for a visit. She was a typical young lady of those times, wanting to work for the people. She became a teacher in Nikolaevsk and remained there for several years. This was in 1888. And so, after 20 years when I was president of the Simferopol Regional Council, I offered her, who was by that time a senior teacher of the region, to move to a school which was closer to Simferopol. She was already a mature person, but still filled with her youthful idealsm, we all dealt with great respect with her and her achievements, and I thought that as one gets older it is not easy to sit so solitary and cut off from everything. But E.A. declined, saying that she was used to Nikolaevsk and I never

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heard that she left that service in the region and it is likely that she also stayed there in the 20’s. And you can see: in Nikolaevsk there never were serfs, there were more than sufficient parcels of land, there were good businesses (a fish store, goose breeding), it had a school which was the best in the region and a teacher who stayed for many years, an educated person who without a doubt only taught ‘smart, good, eternal things’, but the Nikolaevskys were like wolves and – I am deeply convinced of this – harbored in their souls the only thought of how to divide, and even ‘without recompense’, the land of the ‘trustee of the school’. It is right to think about this. And for the murder of Franz there also appeared a Nikolaevsky person! After the murder, the murderer settled in Nikolaevsk. We could not return to our estates until the summer of 1918. During that summer several young officers, either wounded or separated from their units, lived in my sister’s house in Kojash. P.N. Schnaider, having somehow or other found out that the person responsible for Franz’s death lived in his own house, convinced several of the officers to try and arrest him, and without my sister’s knowledge, the young officers got on their horses one night and rode to Nikolaevsk. There they surrounded the hut and a young officer, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten, went straight up to the entrance door. A shot rang out and the young man, wounded in the stomach, fell and with his body blocked the door. Since the door was still open, anyone who approached the wounded man would have experienced the same fate, and so the poor man lay there until dawn. Later he was taken into town, and he died after several days. But the one whom they had wanted to arrest jumped through a window still in the dark and escaped. Later it was said that he was killed on the Red Front, but this could have been just a rumor which he himself put out for his own protection.

In this way our poor Franz perished, a victim of troubled times and personal revenge. Whether he deserved such a death – let those who read this description of his life, decide.

The following day his corpse was given to his family for burial. A delegation of the new government came to my sister and announced that the murder of my brother-in-law

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occurred without any participation whatsoever of their group and was a tragic misunderstanding, and expressed its sympathy to the family. But it demanded that the burial would take place in complete silence. The body was taken to the cemetery and put into a crypt under the cemetery church, and only in June, when Simferopol was occupied by German troops was it moved and buried in the crypt built for my father. We only had time to surround the grave with a temporary fence, and in order to get to it, we took away a part of the fence surrounding my father’s grave. We placed a tall simple oak cross on the grave. This cross was made in the workshop of N.I. Chernetenko. For many years F. Ja. Petrov had worked for our family as a furniture- and cabinet maker. This was a sly but very clever and able worker, who had worked himself up from a simple labore to a cabinet maker and got the best jobs in our town. He not only got work from Franz all the time, but also assistance during difficult financial times in his life. It was obvious that my sister would turn to him about the cross, since Chernetenko had not worked for us for a long time. But Petrov refused. This was of course a distressing small matter, and expecially for me. I always had good relations with P. and truly thought him to be a decent person, even though a sly one. What was the matter? His relationship with Franz was good until the end. Was Petrov really too afraid to fashion a cross for a “bourgeois”? This fear was too great to overcome the feeling of gratitude which P. must have had for Franz? Afterwards P. naturally avoided meeting me and this question has remained unresolved for me.

The burial was during a clear summer day. For the funeral service in the church, the German commander sent a military orchestra, I do not know on whose initiative, and it was unusual and undoubtedly festive, to hear it under the dome of our church. And there were many people in the church and at the cemetery. Glass was built into the lid of the zinc coffin and we could look at our Franz one more time. His face had not changed at all and was peaceful, and only on one cheek was a dark trace of a stab with something sharp.

With the death of Franz, Sonja’s life also practically ended, even though she is still alive even now. This does not mean at all that they were so close that they could not

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exist without each other, or that my sister was a person who could not live independently. She remained the same kind, smart and good person she had always been, and all she had lived through did not lessen her regard for people’s misery, just the opposite, she became even more kind to strangers’ grief, continued her work in the Children’s Aid Society, took part in charity organizations springing up in Simferopol (like a Cup of Tea, etc). to help the wounded soldiers of the volunteer army, and managed the estate and the town houses - but all this was not the same. Perhaps under normal circumstances she would have found her former interests again, and would have followed further along that path which she had gone with Franz for thirty years, but these circumstances did not develop. Franz, with uncanny premonition, and overcoming his usual dislike of bureaucratic matters, made a list of all his fiscal businesses shortly before his death. This way no difficulties whatsoever arose after his death. In Djav- Djurek Eremiy Stepanovich managed as he had before, and Vasiliy Adamovich (I do not remember his last name) who had been gardener in Kojash and who over time had become a friend of the family, took care there. Of course Zhenja could have provided much spiritual as well as practical help, but she had removed herself so far from the family that one could not even think of it. (During the evening of Franz’ murder we met among the crowd standing on the stairs of the “Petersburg” hotel, in front of number 22, where the young Schnaiders had once lived when they returned from abroad, but where now the Revolutionary Tribunal was in session. Later I found out that she walked behind Franz during his abduction from the house, knew that he had been killed and had heard his cries. But she told me nothing about that – she later said that she thought that I would also be killed then, and did not want to depress me – and spoke only about her husband’s arrest and that she came to bail him out). She saved him. In March of the year 1919 she and her husband also decided to leave, and boarded the ship “Rion” in Sevastopol. But before “Rion” set sail, a large bomb exploded on it and I do not know why this had such an effect on Zachar, but he was taken off the ship onto the beach where he died of a heart attack. Zhenja brought the corpse to Simferopol and as I was told later, a huge and very ceremonial burial was given to the Socialist Zachar, and the coffin was put into Franz’s crypt. When I returned from Anapa, I went to visit Zhenja

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and found her in a bread warehouse, where the Union of Household Helpers was located, which Zhenja administered. I found her surrounded by a group of women; she was explaining something to each of them and I only heard her voice: “you think, Comrade Ivanova, if you want, Comrade Petrova....” Zhenja informed me that she already was building a crypt for the corpse of her husband, and I only asked her to complete the transfer before my sister’s return. When I was already in Munich I received a letter from Zhenja in which she informed me that she married again, a Kibler, a German colonist, already has a child and lives with her husband in Chibinogorsk, in Kareli, where they had been sent. She wrote about her husband warmly, but I was very surprised by one phrase: “he somewhat resembles you’’. What was the meaning of this? I truly had thought that in Zhenja’s eyes I came to represent all the sins of the bourgeois estate-owner circle from which she so severely had distanced herself, and suddenly there was something in common between me and her chosen man! I did not hear anything else from her and sent the letter to Sonja.

Unexpectedly quickly, however, Musja matured and developed, and this young girl began to go to committees and offices where we could not always show ourselves, and where we were in the eyes of the new rulers, depraved people. And my sister did not have much time to get used to live alone. In March 1919 we all went to Anapa, and from there she and the children, and also Mama, returned only during the summer. On November 1, 1920 all of us together left on the ship “Lazarev” to Constantinopol. There the plague broke out on the ship and my sister and Elja spent two weeks in quarantine and endured disinfection. When they finally got to shore, we saw each other only seldom, that is, lived far from each other, and I moved only with difficulty in the sticky and slippery dirt of Constantinopol. I made efforts to move to France for us and my sister and her family. Finally a visa came telegraphically, but only for us, the German name of my sister evidently prevented hers. On December 23 (standard time) we, evidently for the last time, said good-bye to my sister and went to France. There I continued to make efforts on behalf of my sister, but unsuccessfully. Soon she, together with Elja and the Tugan Baranovskys moved to Belgrade, where they spent the next 24 years. This was not a life but a state of vegetation. At first they attempted to get Page 219

settled somehow while my sister still had some valuables; they began to sell them, but the family selling in a tiny store was somehow incompatible, and of course the business ended in a crash and the loss of the last pennies. We tried to help my sister and found a sanatorium - a shelter run by Catholic Sisters - for Elja which would keep her permanently, but my sister could not decide to separate from her and declined. We called Sonja and Elja to come to us, but Yura was born and permanently bound Sonja to stay there. L.S. had work, and according to rumors, relatively well paid by the standards of that time, and later Musja also began to work by selling lottery tickets and so forth. So they lived until a new misery developed. About eight years ago my sister had a stroke, and since then her left arm and leg almost do not function, and she cannot move without help. From that moment on my sister’s life became a torture from which only death would be a welcome release. She herself wrote this to me and only worried what would become of Elja. This she wrote to me in her last letter and said good-bye to us and said that they would stay in Belgrade. My last letter of September 29, 1944 was returned to me. On October 8 I received a letter from someone I did not know, a Sergei Boldyrev: “I am writing to you on behest of Sofia Sergeevna and the T.-B. Three days ago I came to Germany from Belgrade, where I lived in the same courtyard with T.-B. They asked me to write to you that they stayed in Belgrade and did not go to Germany, since a move would be very troublesome for the sick S.S. – she cannot walk at all, and only lies or sits in bed. At this time they all are without work. Only Yura is working. I feel sorry most of all for Sofia Sergeevna. She is a total invalid, but endures everything stoically without complaining about her fate. All her neighbors admired her very much because of this.”

This complete stranger correctly understood the basic character of my sister. At any moment she was ready to listen to a stranger’s sorrow, and never burdened anybody with her own. And by the way, despite the apparent glitter of the first half of her life, it had contained more than a few bitter moments, and its end represented a true tragedy. There is no doubt that she felt them deeply and bitterly, beginning with the time when she, due to some unavoidable will of fate turned from a highly gifted person who was full of the desire to think and work, into some sort of queen bee from whom only one thing Page 220

was wanted – a child. Later, when these so much desired children began to be born, but were weak and sickly, the blow which Zhenja inflicted on her parents, and finally the horrible, undeserved death of Franz, the loss of everything, and especially having to live off the income of her son-in-law, all this she had to overcome, and she overcame it uncomplainingly. Even to the people closest to her – and for her I was one of them – she did not complain, and only her eyes spoke of what was in her soul. During 24 years of poverty and humiliation she could not write of any happiness or success even once. And in almost all of her letters she poignantly apologized that she could only write sad letters. Of the past she seldom wrote in her letters. I remember when Yura still was a little boy and it was absolutely necessary for him to have a rest in a village, she wrote to me: “how curious that at one time I could provide a summer’s rest for so many children, and now there is no place for my only grandchild.” And that was all. Only during the last years and months she wrote to me that it was unendingly agonizing for her to feel how she hinders Musja and her family through her illness, and that she would prefer to die soon.

She loved very much and often sang the aria by Tchaikovsky:

“Not one word, oh my friend, not one sigh!

We will be silent together

Because silently over the stone, because over the gravestone

The willows bend sadly.”

She died on January 14, 1945, “evidently from the heart”, Musja writes to me (Feb.8,’50). “She was not feeling well toward morning, and she died at 11:30 at night. I think that she understood that she was dying, but felt sorry for me and therefore did not speak of it; till the last minute she stroked my head and her hand fell from my head only when her breathing stopped...”

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I am very distressed by the thought that I did not do enough to save my sister. But I wrote letters to her, I wrote to Musja, offered assistance and sent money for a move. I am copying here my last letter from Musja: ‘24. VII. ’44. My dear Vovik. Forgive me for not answering your letter for such a long time. But it is so difficult to write what one is thinking, when one is not thinking at all and one is not thinking at all because there are no data on the basis of which one would be able to think. We moved here (to a village near Belgrade) because when the bombardments started, life became so much more difficult, because it is so difficult for Mama to constantly descend to the basement, and there is no good basement near us, it is impossible to walk far with her, it of course never occurs to me to leave her, and because of this we had constant dramas, that is, Yura said to me: “I will not go without you”, but together with that reprimanded me, because we live in such a place. We are sitting here because Yura is working, and it is impossible to travel further, that is, I and Lev are already unemployed, and beside that we are stuck here because of the food coupons. I think that we will return one day soon (they returned October 1, Boldyrev wrote), that is, because in winter it is impossible to live here. What will be then, it is difficult to say, because so little depends on us. Somewhere deep inside, and perhaps it is stupid of me, it seems that perhaps everything will end well, and we all will see each other again and we will talk, and together we will complain about our fate which has so cruelly separated us and gave us only the hope to return home, and we did not live but always postponed life until that time when our hope would be fulfilled, and we did not notice how life passed. Dear Vovik, do not be angry that I am writing to you and that again there is nothing clear in our plans, but if you would only know how difficult it is to decide anything within the possibilities we have, since only Yura is able to work, I can only work half-time, and all the others cannot. Lev is already 63 years old, and that already is a lot. And now, my dear one, do not be angry with me and believe that I will do everything that is possible. I think that I will begin working again. I kiss you and I am so unendingly happy that you moved, because every time my heart was not in the right place. What will be in the future, God only knows, and we shall hope that since He has not forsaken us this long, He will not forsake us now. I strongly, strongly kiss you, my dear Shurochka, Katja and

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the children. Always your loving Musja “. And that was all. I called them, I wrote that here everyone who wanted to come was placed into a camp and was taken care of. “All of us could have left,” wrote Boldyrev who left October 2, “I tried very much to convince Marianna F. and L.S. to leave, but they nevertheless decided to remain, motivated by the thought that in Germany nobody would be working to sustain them, but in Belgrad the same would be true. I believe that L.M. had his own plans.” I cannot imagine what plans L.M. could have had, I only know that it was infinitely difficult to think of the poverty in which my sister and her family live, if they are still alive. I do not know what will happen here, but they could have lived some time longer. And perhaps Musja’s faith will be fulfilled, God willing.

------

(Pages 269 throught 272 of the manuscript have been removed – by whom? Why? Olga.)

II. Serjezha and Manja.

Serjezha more than the rest of us, resembled the Schlee family. He did not exhibit

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the Nalbandovian heaviness, from childhood on he was thin, and he was not threatened, as all of us were, with obesity. On childhood photographs he appeared especially pale and thin. And in his nature there was nothing that reminded one of the reticence of Franz and Aleksander Matveevich, and only during moments of inebriation did the pure Nalbandovian hot-headedness come to the fore. In high school he was neither a bad nor a brilliant student. He stayed in 2nd grade (6th) high school for two years because he suffered from typhus for a long time, but received prizes for the 3rd and 4th grades. The second mishap occurred during the 7th grade, I think. My sister, having already returned from Odessa, had a good acquaintance, not very pleasant, very talkative, squeezing herself somehow into our house and visiting us very often. At that time one of Serjezha’s teachers, a nervous person, married a relative of this person, a very wealthy young woman, but very ugly, and so, speaking of this in our house, Serjezha said that in school they make jokes about the looks of the bride and call her “puss in boots”. My sister’s acquaintance relayed this, and poor Serjezha was severely punished: he was left back in 7th grade (11th) and according to our inquiries, this was due to that one teacher (Russian literature). I had finished my examinations and already was in the village, but I remember vividly how Mama and I arrived in town to pick up Serjezha. He met us at the top of the courtyard stairs, pale and beaten down. He clearly was bearing up, but when answering Mama’s questions how it could be that he did not pass the examination, he threw himself against Mama’s chest like a child and began to sob like a child. This was so unusual for our reticent, almost-adult Serjezha. I already wrote that at the return of our sister, Serjezha and I were put into the so-called lower room, with the entrance from the courtyard stairs. In this way, we had our special entrance, and this was very useful for Serjezha’s friends and later for myself. Besides that, the room was also totally isolated, there were no neighbors at all, and therefore the young people’s noise and talking did not disturb anybody and could not be heard by anyone. Serjezha was a sociable person, his friends loved him, and due to the totally uncontrolled entry into our room – the door was always open, one did not have to ring the bell, or knock – made visiting very easy. And therefore, sometimes it happened that coming down one found one or two high school boys who were waiting for my brother

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sitting there peacefully. A very unusual habit developed. My brother and I had a large, very bright lamp which did not only shed light but also heated our rather small room so that many times we did not even use the furnace. And on this lamp shade the visitors, often waiting for us for a long time but not waiting long enough for us to come, wrote notes to us. From the notes we progressed to adages and I remember that for a long time Greek-lettered sayings remained on the lamp shade, handwritten by Serjezha’s good friend, a Greek named Konstantin Dmitrovich Fardi, so artistic that the maid did not dare to wash away these foreign letters together with all the other sayings and drawings on the lamp shade which was normally wiped once a week. Well, this was characteristic of those times. We had almost total freedom in our room. Father almost never came down to us, Mother usually only in the morning when she came to wake us, the maid only came when we called her and cleaned the room while we were in school. And never, not once, neither with my brother nor with me, was there drinking or playing cards or anything like that (except nightmares). After all, there was a restaurant attached to the hotel right next door from which one could have brought, totally unnoticed, vodka and wine or beer. It is true that our comrades smoked so much in our room that it was difficult to breathe some air – neither I nor my brother ever smoked – but this was the extent of our “freedom.” Those were different times, different interests, and those interests disturbed us so deeply that we truly did not feel like playing cards or drinking. And this I can truly say of all the other high school students, regardless of their families and their social standing or origins. In the spring of 1888 Serjezha finished high school and began his studies for medicine at Moscow University. He threw himself into this new endeavor, so much so that he did not even come to my sister’s wedding. It is true that to come was not so simple at that time: while we were students we had to travel two days and three nights to Moscow, with two transfers. Therefore, one had to count 10 days for traveling home and this the beginning medic did not want to do, and also because weddings were unimportant in the mind of radically thinking young people, but nevertheless I believe that in this case his absence was also a silent protest about our sister’s choice. Thus we were all the more surprised when, at Easter of the year ‘89 the doorbell suddenly rang at night, and before us stood Serjezha, without any luggage

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except for two books under his arm. It turned out that there were student disturbances in Moscow and that my brother was taken from the Butyrsky prison, where the students had been chased after an assembly, directly to the train station and sent to their home districts in the same condition as they had gone to the assembly from the Anatomical Institute, where he worked. Student disturbances! How much childish naivite, non- malicious idealism, almost something noble was in all this. The government, incomprehensive and awkward towards the child-students and upper classes, called this movement of the young people serious. One should tell about this in more detail if it were not so long ago already; it has become so uninteresting and not repeatable in our terrible and bloody times. Now, I think, nobody would understand us – students, nor our enemy at that time - the government - and would only shrug their shoulders uncomprehendingly and smile forgivingly. Yes, much has changed since then and we have learned much, but at that time all this was very serious. It was serious for Serjezha, and it threatened to cost him one year of study if he would not be able to return to the university quickly and take the necessary tests. What was his guilt which had called forth such repression? The poor thing himself did not know. If I am not mistaken, this was the so-called Brysgalovsky story. At that time, according to by-laws of the year ‘84, the university establishment burdened the students with many severe disciplinary requirements, so unpopular with the Russian public, and Russian students who were busy with peaceful work, particularly. Small conflicts – not following the dress code, attendance of lectures in a different department – arose constantly, and one of them came to the attention of Inspector Bryzgalov. He, generally coarse and abrasive, had been particularly coarse with the accused student, who slapped him in the face. There was very little positive in all of this, of course, but the student was punished with some kind of administrative punishment, either they sent him to a military disciplinary battalion, or else they sent him somewhere far away. In any case, they acted illegally. The young people flared up and an assembly was called. Serjezha would not have been a Nalbandov if he had not attended it and it was not particularly risky to go. But to his misfortune, he left through the Novozdanie gate of the university, in whose courtyard the assembly was taking place; he was not in a crowd, but quite alone because he had

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kept working in the Anatomical Institute, and was seen by the pedel (we russified the German word “Pedell”) (monitor) of his department. These monitors were brought in by the new administration and basically were simple policemen, retired sergeants, whose job it was to know each student of their departments, to note their presence during lectures, etc. He marked down Serjezha as having attended the assembly. As usual, no one of the administration came to the assembly, there were speeches, and a demand for the release of the guilty student was made. Then the police came, encircled the whole crowd and drove it forward into the university’s huge front square and towards evening to the Butyrskij prison. From there, after 2-3 days the “instigators” were sent home, among them was Serjezha. And that was all. Father knew that he could rely on Serjezha’s word, and he became incensed. Despite the fact that Easter was approaching, and he was not feeling well, his ears ached and he did not hear well, and he was basically disrupting the work in the office, he went to Moscow. This was typical for Father. His energy awoke during difficult moments, but then he became unstoppable. In Moscow he did not have a single familiar soul, he came during Holy Week, but did not calm down until he reached the highest police department and achieved the removal of the banishment and the permission for my brother to return to the university immediately. I repeat that at time everything was simpler and more primitive than it was later – including the students with their misbehavior, and the administrators with their decisions and repeals. I believe that he already was back at home on the first day of Easter, and Serjezha sped to Moscow to catch up on his anatomy the very next day.

My brother did not distinguish himself with brilliant abilities, but he was an excellent worker - quiet, thoughtful and persistent, and all of these traits made him an excellent physician, enjoying the complete confidence of his patients. During all of his five years in Moscow he worked very hard, and actually interrupted this work very seldom by attending a theater performance – when he succeeded in getting a ticket – and spending a little time with a few acquaintances. The proverbial “student” years with what I consider rather questionable activities, that is, sauntering along the numerous Moscow boulevards, visiting billiard and beer halls, eternally sitting, and sometimes staying Page 227

overnight, with fellow students, playing cards and drinking - all this did not entice either one of us (the same in my case later on)- I will right away say –. We took the idea of hard work from home – I might say our bourgeois or petit-bourgeois origins. Both of us did not drink or smoke, were used to sit at home peacefully, and we brought these habits with us to Moscow. We did not miss lectures, came to them on time, and worked during the remainder of the day. The fact that my brother was a medical student and I a naturalist played a big role, of course. This meant that we had work up to our necks, and we did not return home before eight o’clock in the evening, and at eight o’clock in the morning we were already going to lectures again. Three years Serjezha and I spent at the university at the same time, and lived in one room or apartment, like two brothers or two friends who had nothing to hide from one another. Serjezha was much more communicative than I, and when I came to Moscow he already had quite a few friends. The closer ones were Aleksander Petrovich Ivanov, also a medical student in the same department, born in Kursk. When both of them began the fourth year, in the summer of 1892, a large cholera epidemic broke out. Serjezha went home for vacation, but soon asked the parents to let him go to fight cholera in Kursk, where the epidemic already was in full bloom and where Ivanov was working as a medic. The parents and all of us tried with all our strength to convince my brother – the newspapers even wrote about the epidemic and its horrors, and not only about the disease itself, but also about all the cholera side effects happening in all locales where cholera had taken over – the killing of doctors and medics. But Serjezha remained determined and insisted on his wish. During that year I had just finished highschool and traveling to Moscow, went to Kursk to visit him. I spent 2-3 days there, lived with the Ivanovs and only then found out that Serjezha himself had contracted cholera, but having recovered, continued his work, and enjoyed great fondness from his colleagues at work and the people of the district where he worked. This was a first characteristic of my brother, a clear willingness to work for the common good, which like a red thread ran through Serjezha’s entire life. He remained a physician for his whole life, loudly pronounced his views, appeared publicly in primary roles, but a good deed always found in him a good worker and intense advocate. And as a person as well as a doctor, he dealt in his life and in the diseases

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of his patients with careful and attentive determination, without personal self- assuredness, but once having made a decision, he held to it tenaciously and always knew his reasons for it. It is not surprising that everyone loved him, and I was tied to him as a friend and person even more than as a brother. In this way we lived for two years peacefully and friendly, always working. During the first year A.P. Ivanov also lived with us, with whom I also became very friendly. This was a nice person, quiet, almost phlegmatic, but a true friend and good comrade, with whom our good relations lasted throughout our lives. He was a great lover of music, but for some reason had a wrong ear for music and always was off key. And there was a strange situation: he knew and remembered masses of musical phrases from operas and songs, and we asked him often: how does this go, Sasha, remind us. And A.P. would remember very correctly, but always in the wrong key. When my brother was working in Kursk, according to the words of A.P., he was courting a pretty little lady by the name of Meri. Evidently A.P. was himself not indifferent and was somewhat jealous of Serjezha. To take revenge, he wrote some poems and put them to music from various operas and waltzes himself. The poems were very long and in them he made fun of many people in our circle, but I will present to you only a few lines in which he characterized our family atmosphere, which was probably somewhat strange and amusing for A.P., with a purely Russian psychology so different from ours.

In “Serja”, which somehow sounded like “Meri” – he makes her an offer of marriage: “said Serja – surprised about himself, - how did he have the nerve to do such a foul deed - to make a marriage proposal without having permission –from his parents, he deemed it a crime – he remembered what Papa would say, and Mama would repeat his words – Sofie, Franz, and the whole family – all would say he is a swine! – He still has to study, and suddently had the thought to marry! - And without our permission he made the offer of marriage...... “

Further on the author or Meri – it was not clear who, comforted Serja, that he was not the only one but all the people around him were courting somebody. All this was so harmless and I, as well as the others in our circle, gladly sang these verses, and A.P.

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also – always out of tune with his bass, smiling happily. The poems, by the way, did not have an ending, just like my brother’s courting had no end. He never was in Kursk again and did not see Meri again.

My brother and I each received 50 rubles a month from home, but separate money to pay for the university. In those times this was a large amount of money, and seldom did one of our comrades have that kind of money. Our room cost us 18-20 rubles together. We ate lunch in a private home and paid 12 rubles each for a month, which was also unusually expensive for those times, and received a rather simple, but always filling lunch. Perhaps this is why we kept our healthy stomachs, which was not easy to do when people nourished themselves in what was called “normal” restaurants where every day a list of food and the amounts of calories contained in each dish was at each table, but despite this culture of keeping a healthy diet, after a few weeks of eating such food one could keep a healthy stomach only if for dessert one would take only jelly one day, and the next – chocolate, that is, the first one strengthened, the second one removed that strength; why? Nobody knows. Going to lunch really cost much time, but it could not be helped, and we, having eaten plenty, ran again – my brother to the clinic and I to the laboratory. With such expenses for the apartment and also having to pay for the necessary lunches and breakfasts of tea with enough milk, bread cheese and sausage, plus the streetcars and laundry, there remained about 10 rubles which we spent for theaters and books. Serjezha had been careful with money since childhood. I have already written that we were not greatly spoiled with sweets, but on Christmas, for example, and on special family occasions, we each received a plate full of candy, nuts, cookies and so forth. We saved all this in the drawers of the writing desk of our grandfather, which stood in our father’s study. And Sonja and I were always angry because we already had eaten all our goodies, but Serjezha still had something in reserve. At the university he spent his allowance and declared that he would only buy “good” items. When I came to Moscow I already found two of such items: Serjezha’s table lamp sharply differed in size and in the decorations of its stand from the type commonly used by students and gave much more light. Of course it also cost much more. The second item was the dictionary by Pavlovsky, at that time also considered Page 230

very costly. This theory – basically the first expression of his feeling for aesthetics – brought about for poor Serjezha much derision and many jokes especially from A.P., who at that time became such an inseparable friend of Serjezha that he was called Sasha Galbandov.

Medical students, due to their great and necessary, constant and non-postponable work which was carried out far from the university in a clinic situated in Devychy, lived somewhat outside the general student body, and small squabbles as well as forgetting them, touched them less. Something exceptional was necessary for the medical students to come to meetings and become involved. Their course-life was regulated – even if not legally – by the so-called “class elder” who during our time was replaced by “collegial elders” – a word that always seemed particularly absurd to me – which consisted of five members. This removed individual responsibility – it was very difficult to isolate or arrest 5 people, and professors had to consider the presence of at least one of the 5 during the discussion of their courses. Serjezha, already once noted in “the list”, avoided positions of responsibility but always took a great interest in the life of his class. The head of their class elders was the famous Andrei Ivanovich Shingarev, a doctor of the Legislative Assembly and member of the Federal Duma, killed together with Kokoshnik during the second Revolution. Also a student together with Serjezha was the future Professor Aleksinsky, who later became famous in Paris.

In the spring of the year 1894 the medical students of the fifth class left early for their homes to prepare for the governmental examinations which would occur in the fall. I came home much later, probably in the middle of June. As always at vacation time, our carriage awaited me, and the coachman Fedor and I rolled directly to the village. During the trip we drove into such a terrible thunderstorm and torrents of rain that Fedor slipped under the raised back of the carriage with me, and left it to the horses to pull us step by step through the water and storm. Rain at that time in the Crimea was a huge happiness, and we only had one thought: is it also raining in our Bulganak? By the time we arrived, the rain had already stopped, and Fedor scrambled back onto his perch and the horses sped up, and the rain had penetrated the top and caused much dirt. I

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already knew from the letters of my sister that her friend from Odessa, Marija Christoforovna, had been visiting her since early spring. She had been unwell during the whole winter, and her doctors had advised her to leave Odessa. “She came to us with many little boxes and little bottles” my sister wrote to us in Moscow, “but here she is feeling so well that she almost does not need them anymore.” I stopped to see my sister for a short while in Kojash, but hurried home, as one could not leave the exhausted horses in their harness for a long time. When we were even with the Kojashan wine cellar, a horseman appeared, and to my greatest astonishment it was my Serjezha in a coat and with a large bouquet of roses in his hand. Instead of studying his books, my serious Sergei rode in the morning, evidently right after tea, after the soaking rain, because it would have been difficult to take out the cabriolet due to the roads, on horseback, and sped to Kojash and with a face more embarrassed than happy at meeting me. It became even clear to me how little I was involved in the matter of things. I do not know whether “Serja” asked Father’s and Mama’s, Sofie’s and Franz’ permission, but he certainly did not ask for mine, and I, according to Nalbandovian custom, was somewhat angered by this. Marija Christoforovna Chalaidzhglo was Armenian-Georgian. Her father, Christofor Sergeevich, already deceased at that time, used to be a significant businessman in Odessa – I do not know exactly what his business was; the mother, Sofia Ivanovna Cherkess came from the wealthy Cherkess family, also Armenian – estate owners in the Bessarabian area, where her family had acclimatized itself to such a degree that the language they spoke was Moldavian. In the very diverse Odessa all this was smoothed over, and the young generation (besides Marija there was another daughter, Liza, and a son- the boy Vanja) spoke Russian correctly and cleanly, and Marija, living in the same boarding school with my sister, learned to speak French and German and to play the piano not badly. There was nothing specifically Armenian in the way of religion or in the way of living, in the two daughters, and both girls were typical young Russian ladies of those times, with their good and silly characteristics, very reticent and perhaps, with a whif of Eastern ceremoniousness together with common practicality. In one word: neither objectively nor subjectively one could say one word against my brother’s choice, and all of us soon

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sincerely loved Manja and never had reason to regret this. She served as an excellent addition to the somewhat dreamy character of my brother, and they lived their life span together so well and contentedly, as one may wish God would grant every couple.

The wedding was in the fall of the year 1894 in Odessa, and Al. Petr. Ivanovich and I served as my brother’s best men. After the wedding the young couple went abroad for half a year. It was better for Manja to spend that time in a mild climate, and Serjezha also had earned some rest, after just having brilliantly passed the governmental examinations. For such an occasion our parents always found enough money. They also found enough money to have my brother and his wife settle in Moscow, and Serjezha could become a resident in the Nerve Clinic of Prof. Alek. Jakovl. Kozhevnikov, in order to specialize in this area. A resident received, if I remember, 75 rubles a month, and a room and complete board in the Clinic, but this of course did not suit Serjezha, and the whole time that Serjezha served in the Clinic Father gave him, I believe, 200 rubles a month. Our father was very economical and modest when it came to spending money, but we never knew of a refusal of money in serious cases. And this is how it was in this case. Father viewed this residency , and of course correctly, as a continuation of the university, and knew that if he were to refuse this money, my brother would have to persue a career as a rank and file physician. The summer of 1895 came, and the young couple, having spent the winter in Veyvey, having been in Paris and Nice, came to Agach-Eli. Manja’s sister, Elizaveta Christoforovna, also came with them. Now, from the heigth of my 70 years, it is curious for me to remember how stormy that summer was. My sister and I carefully examined what had happened to our beloved brother during the past half year and whether he had changed our idea of family through the influence of his wife. Everything seemed in order, but we still had a certain feeling, and instigated arguments about totally groundless things. I am almost embarrassed to say that during one gorgeous summer night, we squabbled until 2 o’clock about whether it had been correct for the young couple to order calling cards for themselves in Switzerland saying: Mr et Mme Serge Nalbandoff. My sister with a fervor unusual for her, accused Manja that she, against all Russian customs, had forsaken her own personal being, and Sonja was totally opposed to this concession being made as was Page 233

usual in the Western system. I very hotly supported her, and poor Manja, as yet not accustomed to our vehement arguments, helplessly attempted to excuse her husband who had been assigned the most guilt for degrading a woman until she ended with “Monsieur”. Finally Franz, for quite a while already comfortable on the divan (the argument occurred in the Kojashin dining room), became outraged and said that it was time for the coachman and everyone else to go to sleep. And on the following day we still quarreled and ended up without any agreement. Now I think that we could not settle the issue because the root of the agrument was not about the calling cards at all!

Soon my brother traveled to Moscow to look for an apartment, and in the middle of August came to get his ladies. In the beginning of September I also came to Moscow and together with them, I settled into a small, clean wooden house which stood in a rather dirty courtyard-garden on the Smolensky Boulevard. Even though the sign on our entrance said: Dr. S.S.N., my brother did not count on any patients and he was not perturbed by our apartment in the courtyard. I had a smallish, but wonderful room, and the year during which I lived with my brother and sister-in-law has forever remained one of the most pleasant memories. In the center of the apartment was my brother’s private office, which also served as our dining room, and on his desk stood his famous lamp – I believe the “only good thing” surviving from our student days. In this apartment the first son – Sergei – was born on September 29 of the year ‘85. And again the working days went by regularly and peacefully, for my brother in the clinic, for Manja at home, for me at the university. There was nothing more pleasant for us than the evenings after work, now with the additional company of the kind, intelligent, movingly concerned lady of the house. In the summer there had already been a discussion about what religion the expected child of the new couple should have. The situation was that none of us, including the new member of the family, Manja, were particularly religious, and therefore nobody had considered that she was an Armenian-Gregorian, and she herself did not think about the fact that she was marrying a Catholic. After much consultation the decision was reached that the right thing would be for the family to decide about the religion, and that the Nalbandovs were first of all Armenian Catholic and “had their own church”. And so it remained not only for the new Serjezha but also for Edja’s and my Page 234

children. In Moscow we invited a kindly French priest who quickly understood the whole situation, asked no further questions, drank a little glass of cognac with us and said he needed to hurry away to other business.

We really continued our student lives in a different setting. The young couple was visited mostly by old and new colleagues of Serjezha, our friend Al. Petr. had also become a resident in a surgical clinic. We only had one servant, a cook, and all three of us took care of little Serjezha. How we took care of him I already wrote in another section. – After one year I finished the university and left Moscow; first I went to the Crimea, then to Petersburg, but our relationship did not become more distant or cooler because of this but continued through much correspondence and many visits, either in the summers during vacations or my stop-overs in Moscow where I always went to stay with them. After two years a daughter, Natasha, was born, and they rented a large apartment on the Prechistensky Street, my brother’s practice was growing, and he began to prepare for the doctorate examination and had already decided on his doctoral work. But Dr. Kozhevnikov went into retirement, and the relations between his successor, Dr. V.K. Rot, and my brother somehow did not go successfully, and gradually my brother abandoned his idea of a doctorate. In the coming years they established close ties, and there already was a circle which gathered at their place, with the type of left-intelligentsia direction which then was so typical of Moscow society. The brother who served in the Interior Department was not very impressive, but still interested my brother’s new friends, and therefore the debates and the attempts to convert the “Petersburg bureaucrat” into the left-democratic belief were without end. Those were the years before 1904-5 with their political and social animation. And so I remember that during one of my visits I happened into the full circle of my brother’s companions during a banquet for some jubilee and the famous Gr. Dusanchiev, a singer and commentator not speaking of the great reforms under Aleksander II, not propagandizing his true greatness, but speaking to spite the current government. And later, in the famous “Prague” on the Arbat******, where the democratic intelligentsia gathered, I saw the difference in the attitudes and lives between the Moscow and Petersburg people of those times. Page 235

During that time the childless uncle of Marija Christoforovna, David Sergeevich Chalaidzhoglo, died, much beloved by his nieces, and left them a good inheritance and a large plot of land and villa on Maly Fontan Street, the so-called “Villa of Joy.” This location was very convenient for the young couple, and my brother decided to move to Odessa. This again angered us inwardly, since we had considered his lengthy stay in Moscow a continuation of his university education and had hoped that at the end he would return to Simferopol. But of course we could not but agree with him that Odessa offered a young doctor more opportunities and work, and entertainment, even if for the only reason of having a university there. Especially upset were our elders, but they did not have enough heart to dissuade my brother from his path. Right now I cannot remember exactly when they moved. It probably was in the year 1902 or 3. My brother obtained a position in the neurological department of the city hospital, and soon also a good practice. It mus be said that he never chased after a practice. “It bothers me to realize that the sick person has to pay his money for my wish to help him,” he always said and this was totally sincere. “I have to live, and have to take money for my work, but I prefer to receive enough compensation to live on, rather than to watch the hand of my patient reach into his pocket to take out money” and my brother really spent most of his life in employment and even took temporary positions, doubtlessly harming his practice. The move to Odessa of course was a move forever, and the young couple decided to settle there thoroughly. And here again the feeling for aesthetics which we had seen in my brother previously, came to the fore. Marija Christoforovna completely shared his aspirations and now having the means allowed them to spend a good amount of money. One would have to see my brother, and the enthusiasm with which he chose and ordered new furniture for the dining room. I remember how he showed me the new dining room of red wood in the simple, but very beautiful English style with chairs and an armchair - slender, straight highly polished sticks without any carving, upholstered with some silky material of the same cut but of different colors, and how he explained the beauty and also the ease of keeping everything clean, and the difference of the lightness of the new furniture in comparison with the heaviness of the old carved furniture. I think that in the mind of the practical Manja there might also have been

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concerns about how long these slender sticks would survive their use of the sometimes heavy bodies of future guests, which I involuntarily also considered, but Serjezha sincerely believed in the furniture and it would have been sad to instill doubts in him. And he remained true to himself: he bought and ordered only good items. The villa was in an excellent location on the high coast of the sea with wide and distant views. Unfortunately the property, like all the coasts of Odessa in that location, had one serious defect: the whole coast suddenly descended by a whole portion of the area and crept toward the sea. The whole property was divided, according to the number of descendants, into four plateaus perpendicular to the sea, and the Nalbandovs decided to build a house for themselves on their plateau. The area had three parts. The lowest, right on the sea, was not habitable, the middle one consisted of unsteady parts of the upper plateau and therefore was not firm, and only the upper one seemed firm. But the young people decided to risk it and built a medium-size house, all made of wood and built with the idea of the possibility of moving it to another location for use during the summer in the middle plateau. This is where I lived with them at some time during my trip from Petersburg to the Crimea and was enchanted by the magnificent view of the sea, the comfortable simplicity of their small house and its beautiful terrace where the new circle of doctors, not known to me, colleagues from the hospital with their wives, cultured and interesting people, gathered in the evenings. And here my brother was appreciated and loved, like he was in Moscow, and here it was loud and gay, and the same arguments were debated. But unfortunately the hope that the plateau would “calm down” did not come true, and after a few years new cracks appeared, became dangerous, and the poor little house became uninhabited and abandoned. At that time the couple built a new, larger house on the upper plateau and moved into its lower level and there they lived to the end of their lives. But my brother built this house without his former enthusiasm. He undoubtedly suffered an internal upheaval. The lover and buyer of good things and books, definitely lost interest in them. Internally, and even to me, he explained this as some kind of disillusion. I remember that after a trip abroad for some conference or vacation which he had taken with Manja he said to me: “you know, it does not pay to strive too much for the beauty of the house, as well as one would

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want you cannot have it – not sufficiently - it is not worth it.” Another time he surprised me even more: “I am thinking of giving my books to the public library,” he said to me during one of my visits. “There are masses of them. I do not have time to reread them, so why crowd the bookcases and the room?” It was clear that all this was a symptom of a deep upheaval, about which my brother avoided speaking to us, knowing that we would not come to an agreement. I do not know whether it was the crowd surrounding him, his own ruminations, his medical work, or, finally, a general turning to the left of the Russian public in the years 1904-05 which influenced his mood, but our brother, always leaning more left than the rest of us, clearly was leaving our circle for another one, one distant from us and harmful to us. This was difficult for both sides, and both sides did not want to look straight at the truth for a long time and avoided to, with an uncautious word or act, hasten the unavoidable outcome, equally hurtful for both sides, as both sides were sincere and not even for a second doubted each other’s personal honesty, or stopped to honor and love one another.

I believe it was in 1908 that it was for the first time that he was invited to become the chief physician of the Saki Sanatorium. The Great Saki Salt Lake lay on the road between Simferopol and Evpatoria, about 18 versts (ca 11 miles) from Evpatoria. The Saki mud was primarily used for the healing of rheumatism, and also a whole row of other diseases, dating back to the Tatar rule of the Crimea. All this belonged to the State, but the business was in a long-term lease to Balainov, and the mud sanatorium had been given to the Tavercheski District Local Assembly and a section of it had been reserved for mud treatment of the military. Gradually the Assembly developed Saki into a large and well-established health-resort, which was not easy when one considers that Saki had only meager amounts fresh water and was connected with the outer world only through a wide, unpaved road. It was only after digging artesian wells that the Saki Mud Sanatorium could be provided with enough fresh water for drinking, for the steam kettles, the development of a park and the dilution of salt baths, that the resort could undertake further development. The Assembly was not stopped by expenses, especially since the resort had a golden floor and generously covered all expenditures towards its well-being through the huge number of patients from all corners of Russia. Page 238

In Saki the healing season, which needed the full intensity of the Crimean sun for heating the mud baths, lasted three months – from May 15 to August 15, and for this period everyone of the personnel was invited, beginning with the chief physician. Egor Leonidovich Minjat, an excellent doctor, had been chief physician for many years, a wonderful person whose advanced age was the only reason he had to stop working at Saki where the Assembly as well as the workers and patients treasured him. Upon leaving, he recommended Serjezha: he knew all of our family well, that is, he had tended to us all of our lives. Of course this invitation was a sign of great confidence in Serjezha whom basically nobody in Simferopol knew as a physician, but Serjezha justified him completely, and after the first season had already established himself as the chief physician many years before the revolution, and afterwards he again was in Saki, I do not know under which circumstances. This work suited his character exactly. He was too lively to become a professor – a theoretician, and he could not distance himself from direct involvement in ordinary lives, but his natural reserved manner and his love – after all - of the scientific work of a doctor – prevented him from totally entering public work, as, for example, his comrade Shingarev, had done. In Saki he worked only three months a year. Of course he took part in all technical projects for enlarging the resort, its building and equipment, personnel matters, introducing new healing methods (in Saki, for example, a whole special hall equipped with machines was ordered from Sweden for medical gymnastics and massages). Inviting new personnel was done only by the chief physician and if I am not mistaken, in 1915 there were 14 doctors and 40 massagers and medical assistants. The sanitation of the clinical department as well as the question of feeding the patients was the obligation of the Assembly since there was neither a hotel nor a restaurant in the town of Saki – but of course all of this was under the supervision of the chief physician. At the same time the Sanatorium belonged to the Assembly which meant that besides the private patients, who were augmented by so-called first and second class patients who lived in Assembly hotels and nourished themselves in Assembly restaurants. There were many Assembly patients, that is, patients who were sent to the mud baths by regional Assemblies, and who were treated without personal cost and paid for by these

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Assemblies. These were treated as third class patients, but, in contrast to many other health resorts, in Saki the methods of their treatments did not differ at all from those of the other two classes, and the building for the third class bathers, which had just recently been built, was decidedly more comfortable and better than the aging accommodations of the 1st and 2nd class. In these conditions it was understandable that Serjezha gave himself to this new work which was basically barely connected to his primary job in nerve pathology with all his energy and love, and gladly left Odessa for those three summer months without considering that these interruptions would hurt his private practice. I have forgotten to say that in Odessa, even before his invitation to Saki, Serjezha worked in a sanatorium of the Saki type, and for this reason he was not a newcomer to this business.

When war began in 1914, the Tavrichesky Administration decided to establish its own special hospital for its wounded and invited Serjezha to become its chief physician. And without any hesitation or doubts he accepted this proposal and directed this hospital which at first was located in Krasnurov, and later in Chernovka until it was disbanded. He went to Saki only during the summer months and left the hospital to his deputy.

It was under these conditions that the war and later the Revolution found Serjezha. He was the father of four children, he was already a famous physician and enjoyed general respect in Odessa, had directed Saki for 7 or 8 years already which provided him work of great interest as well as a very good income, and had an excellent private practice. The material situation of the family was better than good, because Manja had sold part of her inherited property, and on the other part they built a gorgeous two-story house, the first floor of which they occupied themselves, and then rented out the second floor. In addition, M.K. owned an additional income-producing house in town and they got a good sum of money from the sale of land on the Djankoy Street, which our father had bought together with her on a half and half basis. Despite all this material well- being the family lived simply but without denying itself pleasures. His practice was not at all necessary for him, and he practiced there only with patients who suffered from his

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direct speciality. He was satisfied with it and did not seek a better one. But gradually he became less content with the liberal-democratic atmosphere in which we, mostly intuitively and naturally rather than after logically thinking it through, were raised by our parents and the circles surrounding us, and in which we grew up and developed. It was said that all physicians were politically radical. Sergei became more radical politically, however strangely as a doctor, he was meticulously careful and attentive and believed in the healing powers of one’s own organism for whom the doctor only had to lighten its work with the patient, more than with medications, especially when they were administered in the old manner, when the patient did not trust the doctor unless he gave him a prescription. However that was, we felt that in this area our brother became more and more distant and left, from us. I do not know whether he became a member of some socialist party, I rather think not: our old custom of thinking freely could hardly be reconciled with party discipline, especially since my brother’s socialism was greatly of Tolstoyan outlook and anarchy. We did not like to speak about this theme and both sides avoided dotting the “i”. Because here it was not only an ideological disagreement. By becoming a socialist, especially a faithful one, my brother must have seen in us a class enemy who, even if not personally, needed to be “eradicated.” But he not only loved and knew us, and knew that we did not act only because we aspired to a well-fed life, but also with ideals – and honestly carried out the duties of keeping a household, turning “all left-overs squeezed from the exploitation of the workers” to the use of the various agricultural organizations which we represented. He knew that I was much poorer than he, that I myself worked as well as I could, used all the blessings of life less than he did, and especially his family, and put all left-overs into Agach-Eli, formerly a desert out of which I developed a new people-friendly entity. How then could he “eradicate” me? He knew that I treasured money for the sake money as little as he himself did, as a means of exploiting another, as a means of idleness and luxury. He knew that we were brothers not only by blood but were also soulmates, that if we differ in our opinions, then honestly and through inner conviction, and not through selfish, reticent aspirations. And for what did he want to “eradicate” me? Really only for the fact that he chose the profession of a doctor seeing himself only in a neutral setting of

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personal work, where his income was inviolable (pure) but mine, undoubtedly also considered personal by him, the job of an estate owner whose work could only be accomplished with the help of the soil and laborers, not so?

But socialism demanded “eradication”! Therefore we left this side of our relationship unsaid, but it was not at all clear. My brother’s new opinions, beginning with an indifference toward personal aesthetics, became increasingly evident. One summer in the year 1915 it became necessary for me to replace one member of the Regional Legislative Assembly, M.G. Serebrjakov, in his duties as director of the Saki Sanatorium. The functions of the director and the chief physician were of course clearly delineated, and my work together with my brother proceeded completely smoothly, but a great difference in our opinions was already quite evident and I felt, that in case of need, Serjezha would come before me as a member of perhaps not yet the organization but then as a member of the group of employees before the director, but not as a person before a person. We felt the same during the time that Serjezha lived in Agach- Eli.

Ever since his marriage it had become customary for his family to spend the summer with Grandfather and Grandmother. It varied, sometimes they came together if Serjezha was free, or Manja with the children and their nanny, or only the children with the nanny, but they rested for nearly two months and feasted on Grandmother’s good food! Feasted – this must of course be understood in the sense of a farm’s offerings – Marija Christoforovna was an excellent housewife, herself liked to eat well, and their menu at home always was first-class, and probably more refined than the heavy and simple food at our house. But everything was available, without fuss, and therefore, even though Serjezha raised his eyes to heaven with horror at the amount of food brought to the table in the morning, at lunch and in the evening, his family did not share his horror, and his children ate in such a way that we developed the saying: to butter one’s bread Serjezhka’s way, you butter the bread almost a finger thick, cover it with ham or something else, so the butter becomes absolutely invisible. However one must say that only Serjezhka did this. And so we saw each other every summer, Serjezha

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remained the same kind, soft, sociable brother, but gradually removed himself more and more from our agricultural work and became not its lively, only occasionally present participant, but a detached observer and critic, with a unique, specific point of view. I will tell you a small funny episode. When I still lived in Petersburg, Father had decided to build new barracks and a new kitchen for the workers. During my vacation we all deliberated together, and later in Petersburg I carefully sketched all plans with exact measurements and generally with all requirements. We felt that we had done all we could. The sleeping quarter for the workers was a large room with iron beds with pillows, and mattresses with hay which a worker could change as often as he wanted, and 4 windows, attached high to avoid the constant breakage of glass, but the upper third was with shutters which could be opened and ventilation was total. Next to the sleeping quarter was the dining room. The entry to the dining room was through the sleeping quarter with a special door. From the kitchen there was a special entry for the female workers – in the summer there were up to 20 working for us – and for the cook’s room and into the bakery, the oven which in part was in the women’s room, heated both. In the winter, when there were no female workers, the workers remaining through the winter, lived in their warm room. Since the workers brought all their clothing in back packs, it would usually be hung up on hooks on the walls, and we provided a special room where it was anticipated that the back packs could be folded and locked up with a key which the person who was chosen by the workers, kept. There also was a small single room where a sick worker who did not need to be taken to the Bulganak hospital, could lie. And finally, there was another room with a cement floor, a counter for water and a boiler which was heated every Saturday and Sunday for washing and laundering clothes. This room had a special entry, and was only for the workers. When Serjezha and I met again the following summer in Agach-Eli I took him to see the new kitchen. He looked at everything and approved, even though rather drily. “Well, and how is it with the toilet,” he finally asked me. It seemed to me that the toilet question had already been resolved so brilliantly as in no other house in Bulganak, and even in the entire region of Simferopol. About 10 steps from the laundry and about 40 steps from the exit door from the kitchen a hole had been dug and on top of it were two separate, very well

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built huts with doors which could be closed and which formerly had served as our toilets and but were no longer needed after a water closet had been built in the house. I quietly took Serjezha into one. But he suddenly frowned and asked: “and what about in winter?” I did not even understand right away what he wanted to say. “In winter the workers have to go there in wind and cold?” Yes, and at home they do the same thing and it could not have been done differently. He wanted it arranged inside the house, but to have it inside the house a water line would be needed, and “you know that we have little water and that it is insufficient and is not designed to function in winter!” “All this does not concern me, this technical side is your business, but people have to have all comforts.” I could only shrug my shoulders and abbreviate our useless conversation. This is how far party and professional arguments can take even a reasonable person who was raised together with me on the same level and who certainly could understand the absurdity of what he demanded. And he was not even fulfilling his professional obligations!

Now you might understand why we avoided similar discussions. They were difficult and aimless, and it even seemed to me that the beloved face of my brother took on a strained expression during those instances, I would say a ‘party’ one. All this seemed no less difficult for him than for us, but he clearly felt that it was his duty to present his ‘platform’ even here. I remember that summer, after Franz’s murder, we were speaking to him about this senseless horror and were hotly outraged about this abomination. And suddenly Serjezha said: “I can understand that you cannot judge differently, but I cannot agree with you.” Again the conversation stopped, but it is still difficult for me to remember it. In this way political differences gradually destroyed a friendship which had lasted so many years, was sincere and filled with love!

The family life of my brother and his wife was very happy and remained so to the end. Inwardly Serjezha was a very soft, tender and attentive person, and despite his reserve, he could be very amusing and witty and could entertain everyone around him. Manja was usually even more reserved. She was stern, undoubtedly carrying some Eastern characteristics, her upbringing with unwavering respect for her elders and the

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special reserve which was unavoidable for a woman left a mark on her throughout her life and she laughed loudly and gaily only in the presence of very close friends. She was much more practical and efficient than my brother, and all financial aspects of their life were in her hands. She looked at life simply, and was just as distant from our romanticism as from the socialist convictions of my brother. Therefore she always tried to find a compromise and to smooth over our sharp disagreements but usually was helpless in trying to soften our loud and passionate disputes. I think that inwardly she did not regard us highly because of our inefficiency, but saw our harmlessness, was sincerely attached to us and never tried to take Serjezha from us. But during minutes of friendly sincerity she did not hide her criticism, expressed softly but always in a very determined manner.

They had four children. The oldest, Sergei, Serjezhka as we called him to distinguish him from Serjezha, was an amusing, witty and lively boy. He was very talented, especially in languages and studied very successfully. He completed the law school of Moscow University, already during the revolution, and somehow very skillfully got himself to Odessa and established himself as a translator for the British there. During the evacuation of Odessa in the year 1919 he left on an English ship and continued working for the British in Constantinopol where he met us in the year 1920. Later he got himself to England, was very poor, then entered the film business for which he somehow anglicized his last name. Slowly he succeeded and married a Scottish woman who may even been well-to-do. For several years our correspondence was active, and his wife even wrote to us in French. But gradually Serjezhka became silent and our correspondence broke off. One reason was perhaps my refusal to accept 2 pounds which my brother had sent to him to send to me. It was difficult for me to take this money which he had earned from people from whom I did not want to accept anything, and therefore I sent this money to my sister who was as needy as I was, and about which I, as we were accustomed to do, openly wrote to Serjezhka. He evidently was offended for his father, tried to change my mind but later became silent and no longer answered all my attempts to revive our correspondence. I have not known anything about them for many years. Page 245

Natasha was two years younger than her brother. She was a very kind and beautiful, slender girl, with a dark-complexioned face like her mother and somehow crystal blue-gray eyes. She finished highschool in Odessa, and in the year 1920 lived with our sister or with us in Agach-Eli. During the evacuation the Schnaiders tried very hard to convince her to leave with them, and a place was ready for her, but she did not want to leave because she knew that her parents remained in Odessa and wanted to make her way to them. The poor girl paid heavily for her attachment. After our departure, she together with brother Edy’s wife, was arrested and when they announced: “Nalbandova can go – she is free” – she insisted that Tamara, whose situation was much more dangerous, should go, and she herself remained imprisoned. I do not know how she disentangled herself, but later she became, or had to become, the wife of some scoundrel who rewarded her with some disease from which her legs became paralyzed. In this way and when she was quite young she became an invalid and from then on always lived with her parents. I know all this from A.I. Lerich.

The son, Boris, was a boy of a very different type than Serjezha. Quiet and thoughtful, he studied excellently, finished high school and planned to become an engineer, but he was drafted, or went voluntarily – I do not know – and found himself in Feodosia in the White Army. There he became ill with typhoid and lay in the hospital, about which he wrote none of us, not even his sister Natasha, who also was in Simferopol. Therefore it was as if we had been hit by thunder when we received the news from S.S. Krim that Boba was desperately ill, and Natasha, having gone to Feodosia, found him dying.

The last girl, Tanja, was again a very lively but not very strong girl, and during her childhood we called her “I myself” because whenever we attempted to help her in some manner she said: “I myself”. She grew up in a time marked by civil strife, and I do not have firm impressions of her. Already after our departure she married Assistant Professor Burdenko, I believe from the family of Ivanov, and went with him to Moscow. Nikolai Nilych Burdenko – at that time not yet a professor –practiced for some seasons in Saki as a surgeon, and my brother always valued him highly as a worker.

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The Revolution came with all its upheavals. I cannot even remember clearly when I saw my brother and his family for the last time. I think it was either in the summer or fall of the year 1919, because I remember that he told me that one of his patient in Odessa, someone from the Red administration of that time, asked him: “Tell me, is that your brother, Nalbandov, in Simferopol?” My brother said: “yes, and why does this interest you?” “When we occupied the Crimea we searched for him very hard, but he left ahead of time ...” I had left in March of the year 1919. And it was unbelievably frightening for me to hear that my brother was treating somebody who was searching for me with a very indisputable aim, and who was not ashamed to tell this to the brother of the one they were searching for. Hard people, deeply convinced of their truth and of their infallible right to “search!” When our “allies” left Odessa, Serjezha-the-younger, serving, as I have written, in the British navy, and according to his words, tried to convince his parents to leave with us, and to take Tanja along – Boba and Natasha were in the Crimea – and places for them on the same mine carrier as Serjezha jr. had already been arranged for them. The time for sailing away had come, and according to Serjezha jr. he begged to send another car for them, but it came back empty and brought a note that they had decided to remain. What happened later I know only from rumors. During the first years they were very poor. From their apartment they were given only one or two rooms, it was cold, they were hungry, water had to be carried from afar in buckets. Serjezha traveled to the Crimea and brought Mama, who died soon after, back with him. The ailing Natasha came. And still life straigtened itself out. A good, experienced doctor was valuable. My brother began to work again, first in clinics in Odessa, and then again in Saki. He became a professor at the University of Odessa. All this I heard from the wife of my brother’s great friend, Mich. Vas. Braikevich, who had settled in England whose mother had remained in Odessa and who corresponded with her daughter. From Serjezha himself I received several letters during the first years after our flight, but soon he became silent, like all correspondents from Russia fell silent. Later Sof. And. Braikevich wrote that some kind of anniversary of my brother was celebrated in Odessa, and he was given the title of “a hero of labor”. Then I heard nothing about my brother for many years and knew nothing about him. In

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the summer of the year ‘44 I learned that the son of a German lady who lived across from us was serving in Odessa. I requested that she ask her son to find out about him and he told her that my brother had already died about four years ago . Now Volodja Schlee writes the following to me: for several years I met with Serjezha several times in Simferopol about resort matters. He died in Moscow in a street car of heart failure; he was in Moscow to arrange for an apartment in Odessa which had been assigned to him for life, but which they later wanted to take away from him. In the year ‘41 I was with them in Odessa for a very short while, about one-half hour. Tanja and Marija Christoforovna were there, they were packing in order to move to Moscow to Tanja where she lived with her husband, a physician. Nata already lived with Tanja. She is totally broken with paralysis.” And this is all that I know after 24 years of the life of the family who was so close and dear to me.

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I experience strange feelings as I am concluding my pages of this “biography”. I am writing of people who are the most dear and close to me, and I would so very much like to capture their images for you, even if only as a memory, of those whom you still knew somewhat. I want to sketch them for you as live beings, with their good, honest and simple souls, undoubtedly making mistakes, having their merits but not any stark deficiencies, but sincerely striving for all that is good and beautiful for themselves and others; everything is turning out bland however, like old fading photographs instead of living portraits. How many memories about Serjezha which still live within me, I would like to tell you, but I involuntarily hesitate: who needs this? Who will even have the patience to read what I have written? Does Serjhezhka have children, or Tanja? If they do, will they see the people in whose hands these notes will fall? Will they recognize each other, or even know about each other? And these are questions to which nobody will ever give me an answer, and which weigh on me and make writing difficult, fading and incomplete images. And who outside our family needs this, all these Volodjas, Sergeis and the rest? Every day such people, such cultural values perish, not only we, small, average and already extinguished people.

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III. Volodja and Shura

About our family I will only add dates here. Everything else you know anyway. I was born August 2 of the year 1874, Mama – September 3, 1880. We married January 8 of the year 1906. Katja was born November 7 (the 20th according to the new calendar) of the year 1906. Married Josef Egger in April 1927. Their children: Ernst-Aleksander was born July 16, 1929 in Brixen (Bressanone), Olga Maria on June 26, 1932 in the same place. Andrjusha was born July 4/17 of the year 1912, married Olga Oliver September 1, 1937.

With a feeling of great sadness, and since I have taken on the position of biographer of our family, I must include this addition. On May 8, 1953 at 5 o’clock in the morning I accompanied Aleksander (grandson) who was leaving for military service. The next day I received the following letter: Dear Grandfather. Sitting in the train station and waiting for the train – I came an hour earlier than the others – I want to take this opportunity to write you about the intrigue which has been taking place behind your back. I did not want to speak of this earlier because I know that the name “Galchenko” –the name which I decided to take – and which will be confirmed by the Court on June 15 – does not speak to you as much as it does to me. Of course, sentimentality is not the main reason for my decision. I have long ago decided to build my life along Russian, not American, lines. Why Russian and not German, I believe you will understand. Olga went along the German route, and I understand her perfectly. You, just as I, probably had the thought of my changing to “Nalbandov”, but things did not turn out that way. Why I am doing this (dear) act now, and not at the hour when I take citizenship, I explain with the fact that this break in my life through military service is more appropriate than another moment.....Mama has known about this for a long time, I think and hope that you will also understand. I squeeze your hand, A.

IV. Edja and Tamara. Page 249

In childhood Edja was a true white-skinned chubby German. Mama kept a locket of his hair – totally white, and it was difficult to think that this was the hair of the same Edja who in later years became much darker but remained lighter than the rest of us, and his beard had a reddish tint, typical of all Schlee’s. In figure and height he most of all resembled his father, and in his youth he was quite a fatty. He did not like to study very much, even though he had enough talent for it. He was particularly gifted in languages, understanding and memorizing them quickly, he played the violin well and he took lessons for this, and besides that he taught himself to play the pianoforte and played by ear, much to my envy, because even though I had music lessons I could only play from notes and never just by ear, and could not remember how to play anything. I think that the unsuccessful studies of Edja can partially be the fault of the fact that he was left by himself much of the time. He was only in the 2nd grade (high school) when I left for the university, and the parents lived in the village during the spring and fall. He was placed into an apartment, and even though it usually was a teacher’s apartment, he actually had neither supervision nor help with his studies, and gradually he neglected them. Later he was given tutors – among them an especially solid one was my brother’s colleague K.D. Fardi, about whom I have already written – but all this did not work out. With many tribulations he reached 7th grade, and there he had to change high schools. He went to Moscow and entered high school; but here, too, it did not work out, and he was threatened with having to repeat the year. After a communal discussion it was decided that he should quit high school, especially because Edja wanted to follow an agricultural career and a high school diploma was not necessary for this. After a long search we settled on the Agricultural Academy in Hohenheim, near Stuttgart, Germany, where so-called “one-year” students were accepted; they were students who had the right to postpone their military obligation for one year, and Edja had that right because he had finished six grades. And so in the summer of, I believe, the year 1899 Father took Edja abroad. The difficulty was that Edja spoke and knew German as little as all of us, and therefore the first year was spent learning German and soon he even went to Reutlingen where he settled in with a German family, took special lessons and totally refused to attend the Academy. But he did well with the language and when he came

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back home, he not only spoke German but Swabian and with it amused the Swabian population of Bulganak who declared with delight that at last one of us had learned to speak “correctly.” In the year 1901 – or maybe 1902, Edja had to do his military duty, and despite all our efforts was not given an extension, and had to interrupt his studies and come home. Afterwards he went back to the Academy and received a good certificate. If one believes that some people “are lucky” and others are not, one must say that Edja was particularly unlucky in his military duty and killed much time in a service in which his heart never lay. Almost immediately after finishing his studies, before he even had time to look around and decide what he wanted to do next, the Japanese war broke out and Edja as an ensign was called to duty and sent to the Far East. Returning from there, fortunately without any defects to his health, he was still in an officer’s uniform in the beginning of the year 1906 as best man at our wedding and only went home afterwards, to become a peaceful citizen and agronome. There, resting in Simferopol, he met Tamara Sigismundovna Tsezenevskova who was visiting my sister, and later in the summer of that same year married her. The Tsezenevskov family was of a very mixed background. Sigismund Petrovich Ts. already deceased at that time, was Polish, a doctor and seemingly a good one. Evgenia Egorovna Ts. was the daughter of Doctor Pospishil, a Czech, judging by his name who also at one time had been director of the Saki sanatorium, and his wife Anna Semenovna, who was half- Greek. Tamara was pretty, had received her education at the Institute in Odessa, was a very good housewife and a very practical person. At that time Edja was in the prime of his youth. Abroad he had learned many things – to dress well, to take care of himself, to get accustomed to be among people and in society. Tall and well-built, he had soft blue eyes and a beautiful, childish smile. He played well, danced, and could be funny and entertain others. It was not strange that they met quickly, especially since each one stood at the threshold of their lives and could fashion it according to their own ideas. Edja took on the job of district agronomist in the Orgesvesky district of the Bessarabian Province and took his young wife there. The settled there not badly, but this job did not last long. Already in the fall of the next year – or 1908? – the Administrative Assembly eliminated the position of the agronomist, and Edja with his wife and son returned to

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Simferopol. There we lived for one year in the backyard of Schektman’s house on Pushkinsky Street, they on the first floor, we on the second. Edja obtained the position of manager of the estate of Baron Ginsburg in the Perepozhny district, but since the estate had been rented out, it was not necessary for him to live there. In the beginning all went well, Edja even traveled with the accounts to Paris to his employer but then he evidently impeded Ginsburg’s authorized agent, J.K. Reschko, who managed to have him removed. Since this happened after Father’s death, and Mother was alone and so devasted after the death of our father, that it would have been difficult for her to manage Agach-Eli by herself, it was decided that Edja would manage Agach-Eli. Each of us, that is Edja and I, received 50 rubles a month. I lived in my father’s house for free, paid for its upkeep and everything else myself. Edja and his family lived in Agach-Eli, and while he lived there he received all that was necessary from the estate. I took care of the accounts and financial aspects of the house, Edja of the estate. In order to live in town during the winter, Edja soon bought a piece of land in the Novy Gorod on the embankment of the Salgir River and built a house for himself there. Now one could say that he stood on both of his legs and contentedly could look to his future. But the year 14’ arrived, and he was drafted again. This time he found himself in Smolensk, was there not long, but lay in a wet trench for three days and sustained such a sciatica that he was taken to Moscow and after a long time in various infirmaries he returned home so sick that he was not ordered to serve anymore until the end of the war, but was not released from the army. The revolution found him as a commandeer of a company. Generally a soft and obliging person, he was not only pleasant but also well-loved by the soldiers of his company, he cared very much for the people in his company and about their food. His company was called “the automobile unit” for the following reason. At that time it already was difficult to obtain material for shoes, and soldiers were particularly worried about this. Edja quietly bought a large number of dust covers from old automobile wheels and when there was no material to be had at all, he had heavy but durable shoes made for his whole company, to the envy of all the other companies and their commanders. What I personally value highly in Edi is that he always was good to his soldiers but never curried favor from them, even during the most difficult

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moments of the revolution. I still remember that in the very beginning, during the Temporary Administration, a new commander from Odessa came to Simferopol, General Marks, and ordered an inspection. At the end of the war there were about 40 thousand reservists in Simferopol. And company after company walked past our house with Crimean flags, with red ribbons on the chests of the soldiers and officers. And our Edja walked somewhat hobbling, because it was difficult for him to walk in step with the company, the only one without the red ribbon. – And so until the end Edja could not escape the military. When the regular army disintegrated, and after the fall of the Crimea whose Temporary Administration had disappeared and an Independent Crimean Republic was constituted, a company of officers developed and a special Crimean military staff came into being. Edja was one of them. The evening before the offensive on Simferopol, Edja came to me already without shoulder straps and sadly said to me: “everyone has left, the headquarters are empty.” I advised him not to go home but to stay with us in our yard. He decided to do that, but soon came back and said that he had decided to go home anyway. It was already dark, and we were afraid that he might be killed on the way, being an officer. He left his cap and coat with me (we naively stuffed them under the stairs in my downstairs study), put on a jacket and a cap and went home. He hid for a few days, and then our priest, Father Afnasi Avtisan dressed him in a cassock and drove him to Karasubazar, where he concealed himself for a long time. After the occupation of the Crimea by German troops he again was drafted into the White Army and went all the way to Kerch where he spent a long time and later he took part in the renewed occupation of the Crimea by the White Army under General Dobrovolski, who was replacing General Baron Shilping. During the time of Gen. Wrangel my brother tried again to be released from the military, and I did everything to help him with this, but everything was unsuccessful. The final evacuation came. When Shura went to Simferopol to get you, (Andrei and Katja) she saw Edja and tried to persuade him to come with us. He wavered and said that Tamara did not want to leave for anything, and he could not leave her and his son. Later we were told that he did come to the train station, but too late – there were no more trains. Of course he still could have left, for example, Aleks. Matv. Schlee left later with his horses, and

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probably would have found room for Edja also, but internally he must have decided that he had to remain. Fortunately he left town, and, so they said, spent two weeks hiding in a hay stack of a benevolent person in the environs of the town. He was brought food there, they say it was horrible to look at him when he, dirty and disheveled, crept out from his hay lair. Volodja Schlee writes the me the following about him: ‘toward the end of the year 1920 I served in the People’s Commission for Agriculture and was sent to the Karasubazarsky region in order to inspect the gardens of estates which were to be transferred to the ownership of Soviet households. Once, going on business to the Professional Union of Agricultural Workers, I inadvertently stepped on someone’s foot when I stood next to the desk of the president. Excusing myself I looked at that person, bearded and with dark glasses, and it seemed to me that the eyes behind the glasses were laughing. I returned again in the year ’21 and met him and spoke with him for about half an hour. It turns out that this was Edja, hiding among many other officers in a forest district under the protection of Kara-Murzy, who was later shot for this. But they already had noticed that they were under surveillance and decided to hide ahead of trouble. Edja of course lived under a different last name: Emil Sigismundovich Novikovski.”

From other informants I later heard that Edja was in Odessa, where a young Jew (I forgot his last name) who had spent one summer with us in Agach-Eli as a tutor for Serjezhka, and who under the new regime became an influential face in Odessa,helped him. Further traces of Edja are totally lost and I do not know where he is now. After his disappearance, Tamara was arrested and who knows what would have become of her during the mass shootings under Bela Kun, if Natasha would not have let her leave, staying in prison for her herself. Tamara also evidently went under cover and only much later appeared working as a cook in that same region far from the Crimea, where the new Edja also lived. They became acquainted there and after a while Tamara married him. They had a son, Gleb I think in 1928. He was a very talented boy, a portrait of his mother. After many ups and downs he was able to obtain a higher education, and according to some rumors, he became an engineer in the Caucasus, according to other rumors, somewhere in central Russia. I do not know which last Page 254

name he carries – the old or the new one. He was married and had a son.

Edja did not have the time or the possibility to declare his political and social world view, so much of his young life had been taken by the war and his military service. But of course we, his close family, knew his thoughts and opinions, even though they had not yet been formed conclusively at that time. He was softer, better, more obliging than my other brother and I, and did not approach life with such demands as his brothers did. Neither my strong right nor Serjezha’s strong left tendencies attracted him, he stood somewhere in the middle, much closer to the opinions of our sister. In any case, the profession and work of an estate owner did not frighten him at all, and in his honest work and pay he saw nothing dishonorable. I know this because he totally and with fervor followed the White movement and gladly worked in responsible positions in our revolutionary cause. It was always extremely sad that he and his family did not leave with us. He and Tamara spoke German excellently, Edja had a diploma from a German academy, and would have been in a much more priviledged position than all the rest of us. This terrible yoke of having to hide under a different name would not have hung over him and Gleb probably would have received a much better education. But who knows – perhaps all this was for the better? Let us not erect questions and let us await the ending of all our lengthy drama. We do not have to wait long now......

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July 15, 1946. Time is passing and my notes are aging. I must complete them in relation to the many relatives who are in Germany now. 1) L.F. Schlee lives in a camp with his wife. Both have aged much and are destroyed by losing both of their sons – that is to say, they have no news of them. 2) N.F. Schlee is working for a farmer near Nurnberg. 3) V.A. Schlee is working for UNRRA, his wife and stepdaughter live in a camp. 4) A.A. Schlee and his wife live in Bad Tolz, and he works as a cook for the Americans. 5) George A. Schlee married Miss Emma Kellner on March 6 ’46.

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About the Nalbandov line: 1) While we still were in Bad Tolz, Lidija Georgievna von Zeela, evidently the daughter of Sofia Nersesovna – my first cousin at whose wedding I had been, came to visit. I was unexpectedly very moved by this visit. It was so strange and touching to see a living descendant from a life so long ago. Lidija G. inherited many traits of the N. family. She promised to tell us more in detail about the family of her parents, but until now this has not happened. Her father was the director of the university in Riga, then the whole family evacuated to Germany, where her parents died. L.G.’s husband was Baltic, an officer in the German army, same as the son, both were taken captive, her husband (an architect by profession) returned as a very sick man, the son is still in France. 2) Recently I received a letter from Genrusija Nalbandov, the daughter of S.I. N. She and her sister Valerija with her husband Pavel Stepanovich Burdin and daughter Galina (born Nov.23, 1933) live in Hamburg. She writes the following about the relatives: a) not long ago, before the beginning of the war, Edja and Tamara lived in Mogilev. Gleb worked in Moscow as an engineer on the building of the metro and received a bonus for good work as well as a trip to a sanatorium in the Caucasus. He was married, but evidently very unhappily and was planning to be divorced. b) Kristofor Nik. lived in Moscow, worked in a pharmacy and died there. His wife, Zinaida Michailovna took care of the household and his daughter Valentina worked in the cosmetics business, his son Leonid was a chauffer. v) Aleksander Nik. worked as a legal adviser in Moscow and reunited with his wife, their daughter died in infancy. g) Marijana Nik. sent a letter and a package when the Germans were in Simferopol. She wrote that all of ther brothers, that is, Karpusha, Vitja and Kolja have died, and her sister Sofie was very sick (with her nerves).

From November 25 to 28 ’46 Genrusija and Valerija stayed with us. They were traveling through Munich in order to buy some provisions; the situation in Hamburg was very difficult for them. Each one made a good impression on us, and I felt an undefined kinship with them, I migh say something Nalbandovian – somehow they speak and act in many things typically like my old impressions of Ivan. Ser. In Valerija, Misha rose for me again – with his proud, handsome and at the same time, timid, looks. In January and March ’47 Lerich’s daughter visited and also stayed with us – Irena Rifenstal. And Page 256

again the impression was the best, but quite different – as if Anja Lerich had been with us. On April 7 Anja wrote that her sister Valija had died in ’46 – somewhere near the Caspian Sea where the Bolsheviks evidently had exiled her – alone, as a German? Did her Jewish husband not help her? Here one truly can say: God’s plan is not to be known. Along how many difficult paths this poor woman had to suffer! In the summer of ’51 Genrusija married an engineer, Pavel Aleks. Kudrjavtsev.

August 2 ’52. After a 4-day visit, V.A. Schlee left. He looks very fit and healthy. He is very satisfied with his job as a janitor in the school of the Dominican Monastery in San Rafael. And now A.A. Schlee with his wife, and Vova Schnaider with his wife and three children are moving to San Francisco. G.A. Schlee and his wife are living in Caracas, Venezuela.

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Explanations

*p.23 - John Dillon, British Diplomat, financial officer, 1919.

**p.32 - Chichikov, fictional character in Gogel's 'Dead Souls' who buys the souls of dead serfs at a reduced rate in order to sell or mortgage them as his own property.

***p.36- My grandfather changed the spelling of "Schneider" to "Schnaider".

****p.45- When an officer in the Imperial Army married before the age of 28, he had to pay a certain sum which then was returned to him after he turned 28.

****p.60- Aivazovsky, Ivan, 1817-1900, greatest marine artist in history. One can view his paintings on Google.

*****p.93 - Names of various types of apples growing in the Crimea.

******p.1 02 - Pestalozzi, Johann, Swiss pedagogue whole philosophy of "learning by head, hand and heart" has influenced education to this day.

Acknowledgements

I want to thank my children, Elaine, Karen and Andy for encouraging me to keep translating and for uncomplainingly and patiently helping so many times to get the translation into and out of the computer.

Thank you also to Fatima and Alexei Buevich for helping me with the translation of Russian words which were not in any dictionary.

A very special thank you goes to my friend Ulrike Fear who spent many hours meticulously going through the translation, catching all the typos, misspellings and semantic problems.