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

Бывает в жизни часто трудно, без этого прожить нельзя

Но закаляться в этом нужно, тогда легко пойдут дела

Here is an English version

With love on your birthday we send you best regards

And wish your health and happiness, and great labour feats

We send congratulations beforehand so you do not forget us, And wish a spell of fine weather continuing for you

Let everything you’ve dreamed about in times of stress be realized

We ask you, do remember us and do not curse us much sometimes

Life’s often difficult to people, and no one avoids his fate

But steel your will, then all the problems will be solved

While reading a book on the murder of the Tsar’s family, I discovered a poem named “Pray”

Пошли нам, Господи, терпенья

В годину буйных, мрачных дней

Сносить народные гоненья

И пытки наших палачей

Дай крепость нам, о, Боже правый

Злодейства ближнего прощать

И крест тяжелый и кровавый

С твоею кротостью встречать

И в дни мятежного волненья

Когда ограбят нас враги

Стерпеть позор и оскорбленье

Христос Спаситель, помоги

Владыка мира, Бог Вселенной

Благослови молитвой нас

И дай покой душе смиренной

В невыносимо страшный час

И у преддверия могилы

Вдохни в уста твоих рабов

Нечеловеческие силы

Молиться кротко за врагов

Holy God, give us patience to bear the persecution and tortures

By our butchers in time of trouble

Do give us, God, the ability to pardon the evil deeds of our

Neighbours and to meet meekly the heavy bloody cross

Christ, Saviour, help us endure insults and disgrace

When enemies are robbing us. God, bless us and restrain our souls at an unbearably horrible hour

And at our mortal hour give us the superhuman power

To pray for our enemies

Of course, the poems are not of equal value and have been written on different occasions. But it seems to me that even a self-trained reader will find in them a consistence in style and form of expressing oneself. I deliberately cited these poems at the beginning of the chapter, because these poems seem to explain splendidly father’s state of mind and his ability to adapt to another life, even one built by his enemies who had killed his family, and, having adapted to it, to live in a fitting manner. Forced to conceal his real origin, he had to disguise his knowledge and breeding, to make himself as inconspicuous as possible

He lived as if everything around him was a sort of mirage, i.e., everything was different, not his. My sisters and I were close by and felt his inexplicable force and influence. We believed that his whole life is some other life, unknown to others

What was it? Probably, a mirage of his former life

Being alone with him, somewhere, like simply in a field, one could often observe how he would suddenly stop (and we were going to the management board of the kolkhoz, the chairman of which was a friend of his) and start counting the birds flying above. Suddenly, as if he recollected something, he would recite Esenin’s poem: “You’re still alive, my little old woman, and I am still alive. My kind regards to you, my greetings. Let the in extinguishable light stream above your hut…”

Then, as if he recollected something, he would look at me and say: “Come along, Oleg, We should go to the Board now.” I later understood that he was grieving over his mother, fair-haired, beautiful and kind

He associated with people easily. He would come to the Board with me. The chairman would say: “A-a, Ksenofontovich, do come in.” Entering the room, father would stand just inside the doors, look to see who was where and only then would he move on, and I with him. Father wore his cap on one side. He would take it off and keep it in his right hand. When he put on the cap, he would take its vizor by his left hand and with his right hand he would put it onto the back of his head and, holding it with his right hand he would pull the vizor down to the forehead, as if fixing it. Before putting on his cap, he would always shake it. Another thing he did was check his boots for comfort. He would put on his boots in the following way: he would put his right foot on a low stool, tie up the lace with a seaman’s knot, first showing it to me, then he would do the same with his left boot, straighten his back, shake himself, and take along his field bag and – out he went. At that time I thought that he had been a military man. He would leave for work early, 30 minutes before the beginning of lessons, though the school was 300 m from our house. He would sit in the teachers’ room and take his time to prepare to his lessons

His whole life was given to school and to his family. He was an authority at school. He would always find a simple form of expression for the material. The children loved and respected him. One time he taught geography in the 6 grade. I saw how he tried to help the pupils even if they hardly knew the material. He did not let them know their marks. At the end of the lesson they would come up to him to ask about their marks for the lesson, but he first put dots in the class register and then would say either “a satisfactory” or “learn better”, but he never gave a “two” th

At the next lesson he would simply ask, for instance, Andrei Yancher, whether he was ready to answer or not. If Andrei could answer the new material then he would not ask him about the old. He did not ask me until I raised my hand. I would come to the blackboard and answer the questions. He would listen to me without interrupting and then say: “Well, Filatov, you know the lesson, I’ll give you a “five”. But I felt confused: he was my father, after all. Of course, I did my best not to let him down in order that others would not think that I got “fives” because I was the teacher’s son

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, on one’s right – a children’s room (12m, farther, straight ahead, – a large room, “hall” (20m, and – parents’ bedroom (16m. There were two windows in the “hall” – one window looked on to the road, the other – on to the neighbour 2) 2) 2) 2)

So, when you entered the “hall”, on your right, in the corner, was the radio with a bookstand underneath. The table stood in the center. Near the door to the parents’ room there stood a bookcase. The hall was illuminated with a lusters. The house was heated by the stoves. One stove was in the kitchen, the other was in the children’s room. By order of the director of the school, the parents as teachers were always provided with coal. Father and I unloaded the coal with the spades and then carried it to the shed in buckets. One and a half bucket was enough for one day to heat the rooms in winter. Winters were very cold – we were located on the steppe, with surrounding hills

Father liked to associate with people. Not simply to speak with, but to play chess, dominoes, to go wolf-shooting, duck-shooting, fishing. He loved to take part in performances, in amateur concerts, to lecture, to see films, and to participate in competitions, etc. When we lived in Pretoria, a former middle-school director of studies Kliver Yakov Yakovlevich lived just across the street. He was a pensioner. Father often visited him, they played chess over tea. Father was friends with Yakov Shmidt. He was a miller, his son studied at father’s school. Father distinguished him from the rest and said that he was a genuine man. Father had one close friend – the chairman of the “Karl Marx” kolkhoz Konstantinov. He also associated with A.A. Makarov, an old man who later moved to the village of Sud’bodarovka. During World War II, he was in captivity in the Buchenwald concentration camp. He had two sons: Sasha and a younger one, Kostia. There was a thrown-away lorry in our yard. We would often sit in it, giving ourselves out to be drivers, as if we were travelling. I remember this because father with Makarov and the chairman would go either to the chairman’s house or to the Board, and we were left all by ourselves. Makarov worked as a supply manager in our new, brick-built school. Once F father told me that this Makarov was captured during the beginning of the war, but before the war he had worked in the NKVD and that he was an untrustworthy man. Later on, when his elder son finished the middle school, they moved to Orenburg. They had left before our departure from Pretoria (the Makarovs lived near the club-house, opposite the Klivers)