Interview: Alexis Shelokov Page 1 NIH History Office Alexis Shelokov Interview December 12, 2005 Lisa Walker: This is Lisa Walker, interviewing Dr. Alexis Shelokov on December 12, 2005 in Dallas, Texas. This interview is part of Lisa Walker’s research as a DeWitt Stetten Fellow in the Office of NIH History. Can you just give me a verbal “yes” that you know we’re recording? Alexis Shelokov: Yes, I do. LW: Okay. Dr. Shelokov, my question to you specifically starting off, is about growing up and who your role models were, in terms of your decisions later to go into science, to go into medicine, first of all. AS: Well, okay. One [set] of role models, not surprisingly, were two physicians. I come from a family in which no one had ever been in medicine. There were scientists, natural scientists, on my mother’s side. [On my] Father’s side, I do not know. But when I told my father that I wanted to be a doctor, he became very upset, and he said something to effect of: “You mean to tell me that you want to do rectal examinations on people? and you want to do pelvic examinations on women whom you very [well] might even know socially?” I don’t remember the exact words, but basically he said, “What are you? Are you a pervert of some sort?” LW: Interesting, that was his first impression. AS: That’s right. Well, he’s from another generation, and it was inconceivable to him that I would like to do this kind of thing. LW: And he was a businessman, is that correct? AS: He was a businessman, yes, for many, many years, and involved very much in politics. [There is] a local American [here in Dallas] who’s been to Russia a number of times and collects Russian books. He reads Russian quite well, and speaks some. We’ve become very close in the last few months. He is also very interested in the issue of the Russian diaspora and Russian émigré viewpoints and how they developed. Among other books, on one of his trips to Russia, he picked up a book called Russkii Kharbin, which means “Russian Harbin1,” and in it, there is a page or so on my father. 1 Harbin is a city in northeast China (Manchuria region) that was founded by the Russian Empire in the late nineteenth century as the imperial Ministries of Communication and Finance oversaw the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway and its southern (Trans-Manchurian) spur. With the October 1917 revolution in Russia and the escape to China of opposition figures and refugees from Bolshevik Russia, Harbin became a center of the anti-Bolshevik “White Guard” movement and generally an important community of Russian émigrés. Alexis Shelokov’s parents had lived in Harbin for several years before his birth there in 1919. Prepared By: National Capitol Captioning 820 S. Lincoln St. 703--920--2400 Arlington, VA 22204 Interview: Alexis Shelokov Page 2 NIH History Office At that time [ca. 1920], my parents already had separated, but he continued to live in the original mansion, and his home is described by the author of this particular article, published in Harbin, and then reprinted in Moscow a year or two ago. [In it], again, he is described as a “magnat” [entrepreneur, business magnate], a “russkii magnat” [Russian business magnate] living in this beautiful place, because he was still well-to-do, and had been a millionaire (and lost millions eventually). At this time he would entertain everyday at luncheon the cream of Russian émigrés. This was 1920, so it was three or four years after the revolution. [The author] said the lunches were attended by princes, generals, and they would sit around and plan how they were going to retake Russia, and take it back away from the Soviets. That, I’m sure, did not endear him to the Soviet authorities, and thus his history is very well known. The other thing that he did, a little earlier: he was a book publisher and bookseller. At one time he had the only European bookstore in Harbin – [selling] not just Russian, but European [books]. During the war I spent [several months] in Washington being interviewed for a job with the Office of Strategic Services, OSS, as I eventually found [out], for an assignment to drop behind Japanese lines in Manchuria and engage in what we nowadays would call terrorist activities: blowing up bridges and so on. And eventually, many years later, I met the man who got that assignment, and he told me the hell that they went through. In several books, published in several languages, my father is mentioned by a fellow named Nikolai Sokolov, who was sent by the White Guard to find out what happened to the Romanov dynasty [after the execution of Emperor Nikolai II and the rest of the Imperial royal family in July 1918].2 [In the midst of the Russian Civil War, in late July 1918,] the Russian [White Guard, anti-Bolshevik forces] specifically threw an attack on the city of Yekaterinburg3, recaptured the city, and they arrested the people who were involved [in the Romanovs’ deaths shortly before the city’s capture]. Of course, the [Bolshevik] commissars escaped to Moscow immediately, and Sverdlov4 specifically. But [the White Guards who took 2 Nikolai A. Sokolov was an investigator sent in early 1919 on the orders of White Guard commander Admiral Kolchak to Yekaterinburg to investigate the deaths of the Imperial royal family. The results of his investigation were published in France shortly before his death in 1924 under the title Enquête judiciaire sur l'assassinat de la famille impériale Russe. 3 Yekaterinburg is a large city in the Ural region of Russia, where the Imperial family was held under house arrest in 1918. The city was renamed Sverdlovsk in 1924, in honor of Bolshevik leader Sverdlov. The original name Yekaterinburg was reinstated in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the failed coup d’etat that brought an end to Communist Party rule in Russia. The discussion in the recorded interview reflects the variation in names for the city. 4 Yakov M. Sverdlov was a Bolshevik party leader and chairman of the Central Executive Committee from shortly after the October Revolution in November 1917 up to his death in March 1919. As chair of the Central Committee in 1918, as White Guard forces were closing in on Yekaterinburg, where the imperial family was being held under house arrest, it is widely believed that Sverdlov ordered their execution. Sverdlov was not present in Yekaterinburg at the time of the execution, but the Bolshevik secret police official (Chekist) widely accepted to have locally directed the execution, Yakov Yurovsky, is known to Prepared By: National Capitol Captioning 820 S. Lincoln St. 703--920--2400 Arlington, VA 22204 Interview: Alexis Shelokov Page 3 NIH History Office over the city] rounded up [the] people who had carried out [the killings], including some Magyar5 prisoners who carried out the murder, and they got the story from them. The man who conducted this investigation was an investigative coroner from Imperial Russia by the name of Nikolai Sokolov. His book [has appeared] in every language, sometimes called “The Murder of the Romanov Family,” sometimes it’s called “The Assassination of the Romanovs,” and so on, but it’s all the same [account]. There were movies -- “Nicholas and Alexandra” -- that were based on that, and so on. [Sokolov] was the man who[se expedition] was financed probably by Admiral Kolchak6. [Sokolov] recovered the remains [of Emperor Nikolai and the royal family], and he questioned the people who were around, and some of the people who did the murder. And then the Soviets retook the city, and [Sokolov] escaped [and ended up in Harbin]. He brought with him several suitcases of evidence, including the Empress Alexandra’s finger, the buckles where they didn’t burn -- other things like that. Some diamonds, which were hidden in the corsets for the girls… Because they were burning the bodies at night, in the muck, and then the Whites took the city, a lot of that stuff was left behind. So [Sokolov] dug it all up, and he brought it all [with him]. And when he came, he stayed in our house and lived with my father for a while, and that’s [mentioned] in the book. So he [Sokolov] brought this to Harbin, stayed with my father. At that time, my mother and father were separated. And the Chinese government was going to turn him over to the Soviets. That’s not in the book. As I understood it, my father told me once, that Sokolov then came to him. Sokolov lived in our house for a while, kept a suitcase there. (He may have stayed someplace else, or maybe he continued to stay in the mansion, because Mother was living with the other two children elsewhere. At the time I was not around yet, [they had] just the two children.) There was good reason to believe that he would get arrested by the Chinese authorities, and turned over, and the evidence of course would be totally destroyed. He [Sokolov] appealed, as he says in the book, to the French military attaché [in Harbin] General Jenin, who said, “It’s a matter of personal honor for me, in this situation, to provide you with diplomatic immunity, to get the evidence of the murder of the Romanovs out of Harbin, rather than have the Soviets get it.” So, as I understand it, he picked up Nikolai Sokolov from my father’s house with all of these things.