Oleg Vasiljevitch Filatov

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


Скачать книгу

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 years later he made an inquiry about his birth certificate at Shadrinsk. We should dwell upon father’s style of life, his behaviour, his established habits, his special ability to adapt himself to life, and the environment where he would happen to be. With these facts left out of our account, one would not understand how he became who he was, the man we knew, and we knew only the second half of his life, i.e., beginning from 1953. Really how did he become? Who he became?