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

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СКАЧАТЬ there were leather-processing, gardening, electricians, land communication, and junior nurses’ courses. The teachers were from Ekaterinburg and many of them, according to the archive data, were highly educated. In his biography of 1937 father wrote that in 1918 he graduated from the fourth grade of the parish school. “I lived with my father until 1921. That year my father died and I was left alone, since at that time I had no family, although I had had two uncles. They had joined the Red Guard while my father was still alive and disappeared without a trace. Between 1921 and 1930 I worked as an apprentice at shoe factories in various cities of the Union.” In his biography of 1967 he wrote that he was born in 1907. (Here we should digress. The point is that neither the Shadrinsk ZAGS nor the archive has records of issueing Vasily Filatov’s birth certificate to any of his parents. There is only a record that a boy Vasily was born in the Filatov family. A question arises: how could Vasily Filatov get work without his birth certificate? From his words, Father had lost his birth certificate during the Civil war. He, as a homeless child, was sent to an orphanage in Kaluga. The medical commission determined his age with a 3-year difference. But they ought to have given him a document certifying him and to have indicated his age. His birth certificate was probably of the 1940 pattern. Person, who made out father’s birth certificate, did not date the document. On the back of the page there is a seal that the passport was issued in 1940 in the village of Isetskoe, Tiumen Province. There are no records that before 1940 Filatov V.K. had received any other certificates including a passport. There are no other records as of to-day. Though there is a possibility that information about Filatov V., having changed one document for another, is contained in the passport department of the village of Isetsk, Tiumen Province. This has yet to be checked.) Further he wrote that during his father’s life time he finished the primary school and entered the Shadrinsk Polytechnicum, where children were taught various trades. (To-day it is known from the archival data that grown-ups, up to 40 years old could also study there for a period of six months. But, according to the Shadrinsk archive, Vasily Filatov was there only one day). Then father wrote that he was unable to finish up there due to his father’s death in 1921. (His foster father really died on September 22, 1921 due to the famine that began in their district after a failed harvest.) These circumstances in 1922 forced father to abandon his studies and to work. (In the first biography he worked from 1921 in various cities of the Union) and had to leave his native region in order to save himself from starvation. From 1922 to 1928 he worked in various towns west of the Ural Mountains. Doctor Derevenko V.N. had been in Perm from the fall of 1920. Had father visited him? It’s unknown. In November 1923 Doctor Derevenko moved to Dnepropetrovsk, the south Ukraine, near the Crimea. In late January father went to Moscow to try his last chance to declare himself. He went to the British Embassy on Diplomaticheskaya Street where John was waiting for him in February of 1924. Who was that John? One cans supposr that it was sir John Henbery-Williams. Sir John Henbery-Williams was a British general, chief of the military mission of Great Btitain at the Headquarters of the Russian Army in the period 1914—1917, quartered at Mogilev. It was only he who could wait for father at the Great Britain Embassy. Father had not the habit of misleading us, his children. He was not going to do that because, first of all, he was worried about the safety of his family, i.e. his heirs. The fact of the planned meeting can probably be reflected in the materials archived in the Great Britain Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The British Embassy was the first one opened immediately after Lenin’s death. It was opened on February 2, 1924. One can read about it in M. Paleolog’s book¹. But after a failure with this visit he left for the Crimea and lived there for some time. After Baron Vrangel’s White troops abandoned the Crimea he returned to the Urals and lived in different places of the Urals, including Perm Province. The locals taught him how he should treat his illness using natural remedies, the people’s healing knowledge, the climate, and diets. Judging from his knowledge of the komi-permyak language, he had close contacts with the locals and knew their life, rituals and traditions. As a child, I often listened to him singing komi-permyak chastushki (humorous folk ditties). I then understood that with one’s wish, one can become a harmonically developed personality and with one’s aim set correctly one can learn any language. Besides, he then had friends there whom Strekotin and Gladkikh had acquired from the times of the Urals army campaign, when they were in the detachment of Kashirin and Bliukher. Both Strekotin and Gladkikh had made certain attempts to legalize the Heir in those places. He had to accustom himself to a new system, and life style. As he would say, “to save his life by all means”

      In 1930 Doctor Derevenko V.N. was sentenced to five years of camps. Once, during the Civil war, father took a job on a ship cruising from Nizhnii Novgorod to Astrakhan and back. He did the job of a sailor, and cook’s assistant. He did everything he was told to do. (an experience on “Standart”). And, of course, any moment father could disappear and move to the North Caucasus via Astrakhan, to the Crimea via Novocherkassk, or Rostov-on-the-Don. He had fought with querulous old sailors, but he had the advantage of being comfortable, he had a place to sleep and to work. He worked both on deck and in the galley. While in port, father could obtain information from the talk on the street, about who was where, i.e., where the Reds were, where – the Whites. Besides, it was difficult to break his cover, while he was on board a ship

      From 1921 he worked as a piano-tuner in Kaluga, Moscow and other cities of central Russia, as well as a shoemaker’s apprentice on hire. As a piano-tuner he, respectively, called on the families who could afford to have a piano, that is, the families of intellectuals. He could communicate with educated people who had information on the current events; many of them were military men. Besides, in his time, Nikolas II had intended to move General Headquarters to Kaluga and, of course, father had been there before the Revolution and had known many people who served under the Tsar. Also, he had been to Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Torzhok, and Tver. He was acquainted with the priests who helped him. Specifically, he had been treated in the island monastery on Lake Seliger. There were salt caves there, where he took treatments according to home remedies. Once he lived with monks in Tsar Ioann III’s house, in the forests near Moscow, near Serpukhov. In winter he longed to go south. It was warm there and the border was nearby. He lived in the mountains near Sukhumi

      Our family was there in the summer of 1989 in the region of Pitsunda

      Father was a man with a broad outlook and a vast circle of people who had known him while he lived. He would tell us much about some interesting facts which he knew for various reasons. For example: where the state storehouses and special repositories were located, as well as the reserve command posts of defence objectives organized before the Revolution. So, when he lived in Ekaterinburg, the Staff Military Academy was quartered there and he knew many of the officers. Part of these officers went over to the Whites, part – to the Reds, and during World War II they already held high posts. These people knew him as Tsesarevich Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov, after the tragedy, even with changing his name, he needed no proof as to who he was. Not all of them but some could have helped him.¹

      Of course, it is difficult to-day to describe all his connections because he was doomed to silence both by his origin and by the age. For some time during the Civil war he did not reveal his name and age because he could keep them concealed because of the unrest. And later, when the Soviet Republican Government declared that children are the future of the country, homeless children were gathered into orphanages, and father declared himself an orphan. At that time he was already 16—17. But one should say that he was always young-looking. He was not tall and had physical defects. Strange as it may be, the defects helped to conceal his age and origin. But he could not conceal his age completely, he could only forget who he was and when he was born, since, as he would say, he was 4 when his mother died, then his father died, too, and by 1921 none of his relatives remained alive. So, when, as a result of a round-up, he turned out to be in an orphanage, the doctor determined his age approximately from his teeth. He had not taken along any documents, let alone his birth certificate record, when crossing the front lines. He would try to keep out of sight. Some СКАЧАТЬ