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« on: August 03, 2020, 09:01:49 AM »
RE: The incident in the Catherine Palace supply depot:
One doesn’t quite know what to make of this account taken from N. A. Krivosheina’s memoirs.
The Krivosheins are a classic example of the fate of the “Former People”, as described in Douglas Smith’s book.
They escaped across the frozen Gulf of Finland in the 1920s; lived twenty-seven years in France; survived the Gestapo, but believed the post-WW II propaganda; took out Soviet passports and repatriated — only to be arrested and sent to the Gulag. After another twenty-seven years in the Soviet Union, they were allowed to return to Paris in 1974, where they spent their remaining years.
N. A. began writing her fascinating memoirs only in 1977. They contain an epilogue written by her husband after her death in 1981, and a second epilogue written by their son in 1998, when the memoirs were being prepared for publication in Russia itself.
However, her account of the incident in the Catherine Palace supply depot is related third-hand. It comes from an un-named woman (to whom the author assigns a fictitious name) who told the author’s mother that…
But the book “Most-august Sisters of Mercy” — which has been cited elsewhere on this Forum — contains the memoirs (published in 1925) of S. Y. Ofrosimova, who also worked at the supply depot in the Catherine Palace of Tsarskoe Selo. Her account tells quite a different story, and according to her, the Grand Duchesses did indeed interact with their co-workers.
Some excerpts:
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“…In one of the halls of the Catherine Palace there was established a large supply depot. Every day people worked there packing bandages, preparing wadding, and sewing linen for the soldiers and their families.
The Grand Duchesses came there almost daily. With excitement I awaited the time when the gilded doors of the huge palace hall would open and the Grand Duchesses would appear on the threshold.
…In my imagination I see them once again, sitting opposite me, as in that long-ago time.
Grand Duchess Olga Nicholaevna is sitting obliquely from me. … I become perplexed and flustered when she cordially strikes up a conversation with me.
…Her manner of laughing… her melodious voice…
Grand Duchess Tatiana Nicholaevna… laughs more rarely than her sisters.
Opposite me sits Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicholaevna. … her eyes do not miss a thing of what is happening around her; they notice everything, and her sharp, at times merciless, little tongue, tells of all that she sees. Wherever she appears, irrepressible liveliness breaks out, and merry laughter is heard.
…[During the War] Palace etiquette was gradually simplified, and their [the Imperial family’s] relationships with their subjects became simpler and more intimate.”
(pp. 285-293)
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N. A. Krivosheina concludes her narrative concerning the Catherine Palace depot with the dubious remark: “As far as I know [?], the next day the Grand Duchesses stopped coming to the depot to work, and ten days later the depot itself was closed altogether and ceased to exist.”
(No source given, and this was written sixty years after the event.)
It should be noted here that S. Y. Ofrosimova herself does go on to say that the Grand Duchesses did live a rather lonely and sheltered life.
(But from her account above, it does seem that the Grand Duchesses did use those opportunities given them to socialize.)
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