The Alexander Palace Time Machine Discussion Forum

I'm going to go with Wolfsgarten and other Darmstadt area towns and castles. I love that Old World Central European atmosphere and the cooler,greener , yet summery weather.

I'm reading An American in the Gulag by Alexander Dolgun, about a young American embassy employee swept up into the Soviet Gulag system in 1948 and his amazing survival story. It's inspiring and depressing at the same time. But here I just want to pass along a few items he mentions in his narrative that are   references or artifacts that have carried over,in a sense , from the time of Nicholas II's reign. In a way they are understandable,but nevertheless striking to me,or maybe just poignant.
 
In one prison, Lefortovo(?) he meets another prisoner, one Krovoshein. Though Alexander is only twenty-two, and  American-born,  he's able to recognise and have a sense for Nicholas' highly regarded Minister of Agriculture  First name(?) Krivoshein, who in the last years of WWI
tried to organise  Russia's dire food needs., only to be ultimately overtaken by political disaster. Alexander doesn't know if Krivoshein is related to the late Minister.

On another occasion as  Alexander was driven in an MGB van one morning through cold Moscow streets, he  saw that he was on Kalyaevskaya Ulitsa, named after the assassin who blew up Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich in February, 1905, Ivan Kalyaev. It's not clear if Dolgun makes the association.

Finally,(or for now), Alexander D. is transported to a   slave labor camp in Kazakhstan in a "Stolypin "railway car. These were apparently an innovation of Nicholas II's Interior and Prime Minister Peter Stolypin from the period post-1905 Revolution. They were prisoner transport cars attached to regular railway trains, but painted  as mail cars. They were originally sleeping wagons with four tiers of bunks converted to  cells to hold four to seven  times that number of 'passengers.' At least as described herein the conditions were horrible. These were Stolypin cars in the period of Beria and Stalin, though  undoubtedly without Orient Express comfort levels of comfort  even in Stolypin's original design.

Typically, Dolgun observed that Soviet citizens  rarely remarked on the need for four or five such  large mail cars on ordinary passenger routes.

The young man is observing things here that were between thirty and forty years removed from significance in Nicholas II's time. To me that is not much time at all. In the framework of high Stalinism, they seem references to a different world, one Stalin and his generation remembered well, but often chose to selectively forget.

Good job,Lady!

It looks like she's passing along a not so subtle hint from Olga, being the accommodating one, as well as her own sweet self.

"PS. It was my idea to write you."    Was Marie one of a kind,or what?

Not a problem, Dru. I just wanted to be clear,too.

Can someone please point me toward the text of the letter where little Maria asks Alexandra if Olga can have her own room at Peterhof?

I can't help you , LadyM, but I'd really like to see it again too, including pinning down its date. I do recall it as being typically Marie, open and apparently guileless, while revealing  the obvious thought process of a young child. You could almosrt see the wheels turning in her young mind.

Catching up here....

Day Four :  GD Ernst Ludwig , "Uncle Ernie", is urched out by his adorable daughter Princess Elisabeth.

Day Five :  The goofy, big-eared Joy

Day Six:  The dresses worn by the little GDs , OTMA, in those photos in roughly 1902-3, in which they were seated on a little bench in front of a tree, and wearing big bonnets. I can't believe I'm answering this, but what the hey Going with the flow.

I said the girls inherited their noses from Emperor Paul, and I think they did,but the resemblance is most noticeable in Olga ('my humble snub"), then Marie and Anastasia ,and relatively less in Tatiana.

I don't know; I think all of OTMA were much better looking than Emperor Pavel.   Maybe one or two of them inherited his nose, but it probably ended there.  Painter Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun said of the emperor:  “Paul was exceedingly ugly.  A flat nose, and a very large mouth furnished with very long teeth, made him look like a death's head.”  Not too complimentary.

II'm just pointing out OTMA's noses' resemblance to Emperor  Paul's. I didn't and don't think they're unatractive. In fact I think they're all beautiful, including the preadolescent Anastasia. Their father Nicholas Ii had somerhing of the Pauline nose and was rightly regarded as quite handsome. Like father, like daughters.

Okay,

Day one: GD Maria Nikolaievna.. not a hard call

Day Two :  Any Crimean palace, so can't  go wrong with Livadia ...nice beach!!! nice hiking!!!, fabulous weather!!!

I said the girls inherited their noses from Emperor Paul, and I think they did,but the resemblance is most noticeable in Olga ('my humble snub"), then Marie and Anastasia ,and relatively less in Tatiana.

I'd say those are definitely Kiknadze and Ravtopulo. And , yes, a little curious that both  of TN's suitors might pose together. We can surmise that each wishes the other were Tatiana, n'est-ce pas?

Bonne chance, AP!

Another one, ladies and gentelmen!

A wonderful , sweet photo, Antonina!  The two really seem a couple here, almost holding hands. That's very rare in photos of the Imperial daughters with their 'beaus' . There's no reading between the lines necessary in this one. And good for them! Tatiana really seems happy and proud.

I guess OTMA got their noses from their fathers side of the family.

Yes, and more specifically, from Emperor Paul. The girls' retrousee noses are especially noticeable in their photos in profile from the years 1903-1908 or so.

Going slightly off topic, the wikipedia article (obviously written by a non-native English speaker) says that Alexei B-Z was 'orderly' to his uncle, Serge Alexandrovich. 'Orderly' in British military parlance means 'batman'. Alexei was actually an ADC. To judge from the photograph, he also had a decided resemblance to Serge.

Ann

And of course given that Wikipedia, while a valuable resource, shouldn't be taken as fact either. I also see what you mean about Alexei's striking resemblance to uncle Serge!

 This Alexei is indeed a near perfect  GD Serge Alexandrovich lookalike.

Alexei Alexeivich? This is a new one on me. Can you tell me a bit about this,edubs, or anyone? 

If he was in fact killed by the Bolsheviks/ Communists , the total number of  Romanov victims would be nineteen. Horrific enough, but there could have been many more. Many were in Bolshevik custody , or at least reach, at some point , post November 7, 1917.