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

When father lectured on the material, he never looked at the pupils, but if anybody made a noise, he, without looking at the pupil, would call him by name, and it was effective, the pupil stopped immediately. Father would go about the classroom, leaning on the pointer

If the noise continued, father would glance once at the pupil and silence fell immediately, because the look of his eyes was special. He gave the pupil a piercing glance – and he would shrivel up. When Father brought films on geography and showed them, many pupils from other grades would come to see the films. For instance, a film about the conquest of the North he showed in the assembly hall during a long break. Father did everything himself, like the projectionist

He would come home very tired. He would change his clothes, go to the kitchen, have dinner, then go to the room where the desk was, sit down and read the newspapers, and listen to the radio. In the evening we would come home having had plenty of running about the fields where the steppe tulips bloomed in the spring, the grasshoppers chirped, butterflies flew the in summer, and gophers often ran about. We spent our time on the river Gusikha, on the first lake. When we came home we first drank milk and ate wheat-bread which had been baked in the oven which stood in the street. We baked bread from our own flour. We ground wheat in the mill which had stood in our village from the times of Catherine II. Our district was famous. Tatishchevo was close by, where Suvorov had captured Pugachev. The environs of Tatishchevo had been described by Pushkin in his “Captain’s daughter”. During the Civil war the Strekotin brothers, Tsesarevich’s rescuers, had fought there. Kashirin headed the Urals army march to Perm, to the Kungur coves. Chapaev, my father showed me his death place, located there. They were virgin lands in the 50’s and 60’s. All those years, the years of Khrushchev N.S., we lived at Pretoria

It was the time when the world was on the brink of nuclear war, the time of changing the way people thought

At that time father read the newspapers attentively, listened to the radio and told me much about the presidents of other countries and about the international situation

We were children then and all these problems did exist but without our participation. Besides it was the time of the first space flight of Yuri Gagarin

In the days of Khrushchev, father suddenly felt drawn to the memorable places in Leningrad. It continued till our sudden movement to Vologda Province in 1967, nearer to Leningrad

Those years we had lived within our own peculiar dimension. A lot of events were shaking the world of which we were witnesses. Father crammed us with information on all fields of knowledge. He read much and rapidly. In the evening he read aloud to us. He was in a hurry because each day could be his last day. He tried to be among the people and took me along. I often asked for his permission to go to the drivers who lived in our club-house in the summer. They were mainly from Leningrad. They would take me along to the field, to the combine, where the trucks were being filled with grain. Then a truck would go to the barnyard where women tossed grain up to the transporters with wooden spades. Boys of my age worked as combiner’s assistants, as, for instance, Yasha Kliver, but I could not – father forbade me, he was concerned for my health

At that time father was a Village Soviet deputy and therefore he tried to be everywhere. He helped the Board to accommodate people who had come from other cities to harvest

In those distant years mother mainly looked after us. In the summer, when it was posible she would work as a tutor in the Young Pioneer camp. During the days my sisters would be on the lake or in the gardens with the other children of their age

When we lived in Pretoria, we did not have a garden of our own. His entire spare time father would spend fishing. He tried to disconnect himself from the political environment in which we had to live

In the evening he would go to the kitchen garden, dig out rain-worms, then go home, check his fishing-rods, mainly of bamboo, and choose one. At about 5 o’clock in the morning he would go to the river, first investigating the weather-forecast, he looked at the barometer, at the sunset colours, and checked the wind. On the river he would usually choose a place on the lee side, near the stones. If the fish were biting, he would catch 10—15 red-eyes, and some chubs, go home and gave his catch to mother, “na zherekh” – (to frizzle), as he would say. Usually it was already 7 o’clock, and the distance to the river was 1.5 km, so father, apart from his callisthenics, kept in training by walking, and he splashed himself with cold water. It should be emphasized that walking to the river required special skill, because in some places near the river Gusikha the land was marshy, with tussocks, and one ought to jump from tussock to tussock. The bog was about 100 m long, but father did so. I wondered how he managed it despite his physical deficiency. His one leg was bad, but he covered the distance there and back, and with a load. The load was a 3- or 5-litre can with water and with living fish. Father would wait impatiently while mother fried the fish, then he would sit down at the table and rapidly eat them up. When he was eating, it was better not to ask him anything, he would never answer. He followed the rule: “When I’m eating, I am a deaf-mute”. When anyone of us did not follow this rule, he would get a blow on the forehead with a wooden spoon (not powerful, though). Part of the catch was left for a fish-soup for dinner. Father was the single constant angler, on the river. Many other teachers had cars, three-wheel motorcycles, they bred cattle, had poultry, and cultivated gardens with vegetables and fruit. They did not go fishing often. Neither did the collective farmers. Partly because they worked in the field, partly because there was no need. But we had neither garden, nor cattle, nor poultry or a car, though father all his life wanted to get an invalid’s cart. For this purpose it was necessary to go to the medical commission. But he never went to doctors. When possible we would have hams usually hanging in the passage. But it was later, when I was about 9 and we got our own house

It was a three-room house. The house was of saman brick. This brick had been made at our place. It was made of clay and straw. It was all made in a large pit filled with clay, water and straw/ Then it was mixed up. A horse was driven into that pit and it trod and mixed up the mortar till it became workable

Then the mortar was poured into rectangular boxes 30x20x10 cm in size. Then the moulds were taken out and dried in the open air. The resulting bricks were then used in building. But this does not mean that every house was built of straw. There were some built of real brick and wooden planks. There were many who had gardens. It was hot in summer. They had steel tanks, pumped water into them and the whole day the water got warmed in the sun. In the evening they watered their gardens. We had nothing of the kind. Our small house stood near the old shop. There was a road in front of the house, but it was screened with enormous lilac bushes. Two windows faced the road. If one stood in front of the house then the shop and the road to Mikhailovka (a branch of the kolkhoz) was on one’s left

It was a three-room house, not including the kitchen: two small rooms and one large. In the hall, as father called it, there were bookshelves, a round table, the radio, and bookstands

The entrance was from the roadside. On one’s right there was the entrance to the corridor. The small corridor had a double door to keep the warmth. (The plan of the houses was standard). Then, on one’s left there was a kitchen (10m 2), on one’s right – a children’s room (12m 2), farther, straight ahead, – a large room, “hall” (20m 2), and – parents’ bedroom (16m 2). There were two windows in the “hall” – one window looked on to the road, the other – on to the neighbour