Oleg Filatov - The Unknown Tsesarevitch. Reminiscences and Considerations on V. K. Filatov’s Life and Times

Here is one more fact from father’s biography. His notebook was left after his death. Having read it, we found in it a strange record with figures. We appealed to the military-historic archive in Moscow. They answered that they did not know the time period the record had been made. The record was made in a simple code. But it turned out that his code system is used nowadays in fax-transmission of information, that is, each letter is denoted by a certain figure. Such a system has also been given in the case of investigator Sokolov A. N.. But father’s code was twice more difficult than that given in Sokolov’s book “ Ubiistvo tsarskoi sem’i” (The Murder of the Tsar’s Family) 1.This book demonstrates also the codes of the Royal Family. Each child of the Royal Family is known to have had a code of his own, which the child himself invented, as well as the Empress and the Emperor. In the book “ Pis’ma tsarstvennykh muchenikov iz zatocheniya ” (Letters of the Royal Martyrs from the Confinement) we read: “These days V.N. Stein came again from Tobolsk, who brought the Family 250 000 thousand rubles from the Moscow monarchical organization. On March 12/25 the Sovereign recorded in his diary: “For a second time Vl. Nik. came from Moscow and brought a considerable sum from our kind acquaintances. As well as books and tea. I just saw him passing by along the street.” On this arrival he not only brought money but also organized a secret written communication with the Royal prisoners. See a letter of the Empress of January 23, 1918 to Vyrubova, note 3. An excerpt from the Empress’s letter: “…In general, letters do not often reach us. If you have read “Solomon’s parables”, you should start now reading “Solomon’s wisdom”. You will find there much of interest… Kind Sednev has just brought a cup of cocoa to me, to warm myself, and asked for Jimmy

“From Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna To V.G. Kapralova. Letter is on 4 pages, 17x13. #9 (Tobolsk) March 29, 1918. 11 (April)

Thank you very much, my good Vera Georgievna, for your letter, #10. I did not answer it simultaneously with Anastasia since I think; there would be more enjoyment for you to receive not two letters at once but one by one. As she said, Vera Nikolaevna wrote letters to us c/o you, but we have never received them… What are you doing, dear, and how are you? If you chance to be at the Sidorovs’ remember us to them and to other acquaintances. Do you happen to know where A.A. Miller is? I’ve received your letters # is 1,2,3,4,8,10. So, unfortunately, four letters are missing. And what about my letters? – In our monotonous life we are always glad to receive letters. My sisters send their regards to you. Anastasia and I embrace you tenderly

God save you. Maria. +)

The source is unknown. 1

What father needed it for remained unclear, though we supposed that he used these codes in his correspondence with his friends. To-day all of them are probably, dead. Those alive who have father’s letters, either attach no importance to them, or know that father died, or do not know that he had children. We haven’t got any relevant instructions from father and, respectively, could not keep up any contacts with these people. When father lived in the Isetsk region, he had no dwelling of his own. He decided to build a log-house. Since he lived in woodland, there was no problem with the building material. He got timber and built himself a five-wall house on the shore of the River Iset, where he lived. He built this house despite his physical disability. He handled an axe with skill. He would say that both axes and saws should be different. An axe for notching, a hatchet, an axe for chopping. But most of all he loved a carpenter’s axe and would say that one should never use axes anyhow, that is, one must not chop wood with a carpenter’s axe, it gets blunt and needs special sharpening. He knew how much time it was neccessary for the logs to dry to be used in building. In general, father was always interested to know how and of what materials it was better to build. I still remember that he would say he always dreamed of building roads and bridges, but unfortunately he was unable to graduate from the Highway Institute. He explained that the Motherland needed teachers at that time and they, the students of the Highway Institute, were transferred to the Teacher-training college. As far as his studies in the Highway Institure are concerned, we found only the surname Filatov, without initials. It was a pay-roll with the signatures of the students of the workers’ faculty. That Filatov got a stipend only for May and June 1933 1, and from his biography it follows that he studied at the workers’ faculty of the Tiumen Pedagogical Institute from 1930 to 1934. There is a certificate which is not numbered. According to the Tiumen State archive the Highway Institute workers’ faculties were organized in 1932 in four towns: Shadrinsk, Kurgan, Krasnoufimsk, Sterlitamak. In connection with the liquidation of the Urals Highway Institute during the period 01.06—21.07, 1933, the workers’ faculties in these towns, including Shadrinsk, were also closed. The name of student Filatov V.K. was also not found in other Highway Institutes in the Urals and Siberia. 2 Six Institutes, secondary schools and colleges have been examined. “Try as we might to obtain “two” at exams, they entered all of us on the list of the students of the Lunacharsky Tiumen Pedagogical Institute”, – said father. It turns out that the son of the former military man became a shoe-maker because of his illness, and had reasons to conceal some facts of his biography. It is not likely that he had had amnesia and had not remembered the names of his parents and sisters and therefore had not mentioned them in his biography when entering the Institute, etc., during all his life. It was the considered line of action of a literate and knowledgeable man. The documents available in our family always lack something in the general information necessary for the documents of that hard time. Life in the 30’s was difficult, only on the eve of the war was there almost plenty of everything. When father was a student, they got food by using coupons. He would say: “I would come to the students’ dining-room, they would give me a soup, I would look into the plate and see how a grain gains on another grain…” He could no longer live in this way, and in 1937 he became a free-time student. His life without relatives and home was very hard, but in the village where he taught in the Upper-Beshkil school one could get potatoes, in summer one could go berrying, but all the same it was difficult. He bought a cow and drank milk, but he could not keep it long and soon sold it. And so the years slipped by. As I recollect, father would like to listen to the radio and was always well informed about everything. He subscribed to a lot of leading journals and newspapers, local newspapers, journals on embroidery, fishery, medicine, chemistry, geography, chess, history, and newspaper in German “Neues Leben”. When in 1963 it became possible to buy a TV set, our parents bought “Yenisei-3”. And it was the first TV set in the village. Teachers would often come to us to look at films and telecasts, especially “Goluboi ogonek” (Light-blue light). Since we lived 80 km from Orenburg, an antenna was needed, and father, having made arrangements with the chairman of the kolkhoz (collective farm) Konstantinov, made an antenna and mounted it with guide wires. It was 20 m high. Thus we had information and learned about life in the country and in the world. Then our parents bought a washing machine. Being an invalid, father especially wanted to get a three-wheel carriage intended for invalids. But he had no disability certificate and did not want to get it. The kolkhoz “Karl Marx” was rich, its members had motorcycles and cars, but my father wanted an invalid’s carriage to go to work and fishing. Unfortunately, he had never gone to the medical commission. Apparently, father did not want to change his habits and wanted to avoid publicity that he suffered from bleeding. Father corresponded with his old acquaintance from Leningrad, who during the war ostensibly lived with children in the Iset region with the evacuated. He was Boris Vasilyevich Zhuravlev, a lecturer on mathematics in Leningrad University. He had also taught it in the regional centre at Iset. He had two daughters: Natalia and Tatiana. Natalia studied in the senior grades and Tatiana in junior grades. Later Natalia became a physician and worked in GIDUV (State Institute for Improvement) in Leningrad, and Tatiana headed the chair of pathological anatomy in the First Medical Institute. To-day it is the I.P. Pavlov Medical University. The Zhuravlevs would send us parcels from Leningrad. In 1961 my mother and I went to Leningrad, father went there in 1964 and n 1966 he visited the Zhuravlevs in Melnichy Ruchei (a suburb near St. Petersburg). We had no idea about the topic of their talks. Most likely they had talked about the war. Zhuravlevs children remember our father. They recollected that in 1942 father helped to accomodate the evacuated families. Several decades later I found them. They lived on Bakunin Str., 29 and worked in Leningrad but they could not tell us anything special about father. They recollected: “Yes. There was such a geography teacher, he was poor. He kind of married a collective farmer Polina, it was a civil marriage. They were childless. The marriage was not a success. He lived at her house, they were glad that it had become easier for him because he was an invalid.” Now it is known exactly that Filatov V.K. was not married during the war. 1 Therefore doubts arise that the Zhuravlevs were in the village of Isetskoe at that time. When I asked them what their father Zhuravlev B.V. had been they answered that he had long been in captivity in Poland wounded in the legs and then had been exchanged for somebody. Zhuravlevs knew nothing about his relationship with V.K. Filatov. I asked for his photo. They refused to give it. When we voyaged from Samara to Leningrad in 1966, father would call Zhuravlev B.V. up and visited him. We thought that they had known each other long before the war. When father went to Melnichy Ruchei, he never took us along. When father and I went to see “memorable places”, as he called them, in Leningrad, I remember that he showed me the places where the Russian tsars had shed blood – in Winter Palace, in the streets, namely the embankment where terrorists had killed Alexander II. I asked him, why Alexander II had been killed. He answered, that he was a progressive man, who wanted to change much in life, but was killed. The Revolutioners did not want the Tsars to rule Russia. The “Spas-na-krovi” church was built in honour of that Tsar. In the Winter Palace he showed me the dining room where Kerensky’s provisional government had sat. But Kerensky had not managed to keep power. “These people have changed the Tsars and this has led to civil war” – father said. Father showed me Mikhailovsky castle where Pavel Ist had been killed. We walked about the town with mother, at father’s request. He would get tired. Mother took me to St. Peter and Paul’s fortress and we went to St. Peter and Paul’s Cathedral where I saw, for the first time, the Tsars’ tombs. Everything was interesting to me, I tried to be close to the guide to hear and learn more. I was especially struck by the fine marble tombstones. The size of the Cathedral was also impressive. We were in churches, cathedrals, and museums. We visited all the environs, and parks. Such was my childhood. Every summer we were in Leningrad. Every time they told me about the life of the northern capital and its people, and, of course, they fixed in my mind, that all that had been built on the initiative of the Tsars. I was surprised why, instead of going to health resorts (and we could allow for it), our parents would take us to Leningrad for two months and we would live at mother’s sister’s place (Olga Kuzminichna) as if there was no other place on earth, in Russia