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

Besides that, the contact with the city on the Neva continued in autumn, when it was harvest time. Trucks would come to us from Leningrad and the drivers would often tell us about the city. During my visits to Leningrad I was also informed about the history of the blockade, they would tell me about the heroism of the people of Leningrad. I remember our visit to Piskarevskoye cemetery. Father, when recollecting his youth, would often speak about his travels about south Russia – it was very warm there and of course there was access to the sea. Together with other lads of the same, or almost the same age, he would spend the summers in southern towns. There was enough food there, there was no need of a special dwelling. Father would swim a lot and dive. But he could not dive deep because if he did, blood started running from his nose and ears. They dived for cockle-shells and caught fish and lobsters. This was between 1921 and 1928. He often went to the Sukhumi and Saakhi health resorts. There was a mud-resort at Saakhi, and father could get mud-baths there. He was in Baku and in the Crimea. Once father said that at that time he had tried to get work at the Dneprogess building, but conditions were very hard there and he, on the advice of someone from the personnel went to Magnitka. But there was mainly physical work there and he, being of delicate health, could not work there and went to the Cheliabinsk tractor works (to-day there is a Highway Institute in Cheliabinsk) and then to “Uralmashzavod”. At both plants there were engineers from Germany who suggested that he study to be a road-building engineer, since, as they explained, in disrupted Russia there was a lot of work in the reconstruction of roads and bridges

Having got work at “Uralmashzavod”, he entered the Highway Institute, where he studied for several years. I always wondered how without education he could obtain full-time tuition at a technical institute. At the same time, according to the documents, between 1930 and 1932 Father studied by correspondence, and from 1932 to 1934 he was a full time student at the Lunacharsky Tiumen Pedagogical Institute (see his biography for 1967). We have a reference given to him in 1933 at the Highway Institute that he was of poor estate, from a shoe-maker’s family, but having the right to vote. 1 That year they started issueing passports. Passports and references were issued according to one’s place of residence registration. Father lived in a hostel and was directed to the institute from where he worked (the year unknown). One can judge from the certificate of graduation from the free-time workers’ school at the Lunacharsky Tiumen Pedagogical Institute that he had not lived in Tiumen, and they had not demanded any reference there. From the documents, the tuition term at that school was 1930 to 1934, hence, father had not been registered in Tiumen. It turns out that he could have graduated from the Highway Institute, too. Clearly, it ought to have been so. Thus they had not known him in Tiumen until 1934, when he became a full-time student of the Pedagogical Institute, then, again, a free-time student of this Institute from 1937 to 1939. 2 We have no documents concerning the Highway Institute. But where are they? It is interesting that the certificates contain some discrepancies. Certificate #22909 of the middle school teacher V.K. Filatov’s graduation from the Teacher’s Institute in Tiumen in 1936 was issued on August 9, 1938 and signed by RSFSR people’s comissar of education L. Tiurkin himself. The question is: how does a graduate from the Institute, without a certificate get work in 1936? Maybe, such were the rules in 1936? It follows from the certificate signed by the Deputy Director of the Pedagogical Institute on July 17, 1937 and found in the Institute’s archive, that on July 1, 1936 he graduated from the Teacher’s Institute as a geography teacher. Then it gets more interesting. By order of deputy director #24/79 of 18.07.1937 he was admitted to the Pedagogical Institute as a third-year student of the free-time geography faculty, and as a graduate from the Teacher’s Institute of the Tiumen’ Pedagogical Institute. The printed order on V.K. Filatov’s graduation from the Institute has not been found. The geography teacher’s diploma #054485, given to Filatov V.K. on December 16, 1939 reads that he entered the Pedagogical Institute in 1934 and graduated from it in 1939. The result is that Filatov V.K. entered the Pedagogical Institute not in 1937 as a third-year student, but in 1934, and at the same time, according to order #63 of July 2 nd, 1934 he was admitted to the Teacher’s Institute. If he entered the Pedagogical Institute in 1934, according to the record of the higher-education diploma and not of the certificate, then, again, according to the certificate, he graduated from the Teacher’s Institute on July 1, 1936 and by order #24/79 of 18.07.1937 he was admitted as a third-year student of the Pedagogical Institute. Then one year (1936—1937) of study in the Pedagogical Institute falls out. In the extract from order #122 of July 25 th, 1939, paragraph 1, the management of the Pedagogical Institute commends and thanks officially the four-year, free-time student, Filatov V.K. for excellent studies and social work. Signed by the Director of the Institute, Korolev. Again, it does not make five years. That is, he studied from 1934 to 1939, but in 1939 Filatov V.K. was a four-year student and on December 12, 1939 he obtained a higher-education diploma. This does not fit with five-years of studies. It means that his studies ought to have lasted for seven years, i.e., from 1934 to 1941, and father’s diploma ought to have been issued on December 16 th, 1941. But from archival reference #51 of 12.09.1967, from the Department of public education of the Administration of Isetsk Region, Tiumen Province, in 1941 Filatov V.K. was the acting Director of this department. Though, they could count the years of studies in the Teacher’s Institute and Pedagogical Institute as a term needed to obtain a higher education, that is, 5 years. But, again, it is more than 5 years, i.e., 7 years. And again, it is not clear, why he obtained the certificate in 1938 and not in 1936. Such is the history of his studies. But let’s go back. As a free-time student, father could freely move about the country and he got acquainted with many interesting people. He told me about one of them who was a man working at “Uralmashzavod” and who had graduated from the Highway Institute. Later on, when father spoke about the importance of learning languages, he recollected that that man knew German perfectly because he had associated with German engineers. Father told us about the fate of this man during the war: he was in the partisan detachment in the occupied territory. His messenger in Poland Yavorsky, a former forester in Bielovezhskaya Pushcha, had lived in our village. Yavorsky associated with father and told father about this man in my presence. The man they talked about was Kuznetsov Nikolai Nikolaevich. I’ll remember it all my life. Only now, after decades, have I understood that Kuznetsov was a man who was well acquainted with father. They had been acquainted for a long time. Father took Kuznetsov history to heart and during his life he thoroughly studied all the related materials published in the press. The impression was that father had been with him all his life. Besides that, Litvinov Georgy lived in our village. He was another man who during the war had also known those partisans, such were the rules. Father would meet with him and they would speak about the war. I remember it well and it is still of interest to me because the detachment where N.I. Kuznetsov had been was located in Bielovezhskaya Pushcha, where, as father often recollected, he had been in his early childhood with his parents. He spoke so often and in such detail about that place, that is, Rovno that one would think that he had been there later on, and not just once. During the war Mother had also been there. She was a medical sister, in 1943—1944 their hospital accompanied the army over Bielorussia and the Ukraine. Father would often speak with me about the usefulness of sciences. For instance, he would cite not only the works of scientists but also the deeds of Peter the First, stressing their force and emphasizing the importance of getting into the bottom of all spheres of knowledge and learning the arts, literature and languages. We lived in a village where the native villagers were the Germans and the Dutch, from the times of Catherine II. He himself spoke German with the villagers but at home he never did. He would often suggest that one ought to know languages and use them to learn the culture of other peoples. Later on, being a student of the faculty of foreign languages at the S.M. Kirov Pedagogical Institute, I would often hear from him that what we study at the Institute is only theory, and one needs practice. But there was no practice in the spoken language. However, I translated both technical texts and texts on archaeology, history, fish-breeding, physics, and chemistry, etc. By 1975, I was already in my four year. I was in the group “Poisk” (Search), which studied the lives of the students of our Institute who had been in World War II. That year a Museum of Glory was created. Because we started this museum the RSFSR Ministry of Education awarded our group “Poisk” with a bonus, and the management of the institute decided to send us students, to Bielorussia, to visit the most famous sites of the war.Before leaving for Minsk, in May of 1975, I told father about it. Father listened to me and suddenly said that he had studied in the Highway Institute and worked at practising the language. Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov, a future hero of the Soviet Union, a known secret service agent, studied and worked with him. Father said that Nikolai Ivanovich spoke German fluently, and when he was taking his examinations he wrote his graduation essay in German. Kuznetsov spoke German and wrote it without any mistakes, better than the other students wrote and spoke their native language. Father said that I ought to know German as well as Kuznetsov had known it. Then he said that the body of N.I. Kuznetsov had not been found, and the statement that he had been killed was only a rumour. Father said: “When you are in Minsk, look at Kuznetsov photo in the WW II Museum. That photo is the only original available. His weapon and his officer’s map case are also there.”