Author Topic: 1913 Diary of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaievna, transl. by Marina Petrov  (Read 145735 times)

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Offline Janet Ashton

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Re: 1913 Diary of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaievna, transl. by Marina Petrov
« Reply #300 on: November 23, 2011, 03:54:42 PM »
"  the poster named "BlessOTMA"  
lol   That strikes me as funny....however you slice and dice it....made up sexual assault would  seem to be needed for modern  publication...and a number of authors are ready to provide....Indeed, in  FOTR on pages 140-141, King and Wilson  work mightly to create  the impression there was rape ....amazing  how the attacking soldiers  some how missed all the jewels in the girl's corsets .

Seriously - what's funny?
You are making assertions about the imagined intentions of people you don't know right into the face of someone who was discussing this with Greg King a couple of years before the book was published, and knew even then what he thought. Yours is a futile way to frame an argument. Given the content of your first post, it would make some sort of sense if you attempted to show that

a) the discussion of alleged assaults did not predate FOTR, and FOTR states that an assault took place
b) the rumours of abuse of Dmtri Pavlovich do not exist outwith Court of the Last Tsar, and have any relevance there beyond discussion of Serge's unsavoury reputation; and
c) the story of an assault on a train, which you cheerily jumped on when mentioned by a notoriously inaccurate poster, was part of FOTR or any other Greg King book.

You do none of these things, and they are refuted here.

Sneering, laughing, jeering, libelling - go right ahead. There's nothing of substance in your posts.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2011, 03:59:44 PM by Janet Ashton »
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many; they are few.

Offline Janet Ashton

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Re: 1913 Diary of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaievna, transl. by Marina Petrov
« Reply #301 on: November 23, 2011, 04:05:33 PM »
Oh hell - it has to be said, "BlessOTMA" - it seems you've a lot more interest in sexual assault than anyone you want to twit with that accusation.

Greg said it right out to me, sometime in October 2001: "I don't think any actual assault took place". I personally don't know if he's right or wrong, but it was his view. But if you prefer not to believe me - so be it. Never let it be said that you make things easy for yourself when you're in a hole.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2011, 04:11:29 PM by Janet Ashton »
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many; they are few.

Eric_Lowe

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Re: 1913 Diary of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaievna, transl. by Marina Petrov
« Reply #302 on: November 23, 2011, 06:22:38 PM »
That is very confusing if Greg King started to poke holes in the arguments in his books. He definitely implied that in "The Fate of The Romanovs". Both Olga's alleged "assault" on the train and Marie's alleged "flirtation" that caused the family to ignore her during the last days were dynamite revelations in that book. If he did tell you Janet that he does not believe what he wrote, he lost my respect for him as a researcher. That to me is a very serious flaw...

Offline Janet Ashton

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Re: 1913 Diary of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaievna, transl. by Marina Petrov
« Reply #303 on: November 23, 2011, 08:20:59 PM »
That is very confusing if Greg King started to poke holes in the arguments in his books. He definitely implied that in "The Fate of The Romanovs". Both Olga's alleged "assault" on the train and Marie's alleged "flirtation" that caused the family to ignore her during the last days were dynamite revelations in that book. If he did tell you Janet that he does not believe what he wrote, he lost my respect for him as a researcher. That to me is a very serious flaw...

Oh, for heavens sake. He didn't say he "didn't believe what he wrote." He said - perhaps I should have been more precise - that he believed no rape - no physical, sexual assault - took place on the Rus. This does not rule out some form of aggressive, sexual taunting of the girls, centered on the eldest Grand Duchess above all, which left her wary of the Ekaterinburg guards and understandably less keen to interact than her sisters were.
Ultimately, none of us actually knows what happens. All we can do is lay out and examine the various accounts to the best of our ability. The much-touted Volkov isn't definitive in any sense; nor are any bragging accounts by young guards which Radzinsky turned up.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2011, 08:24:04 PM by Janet Ashton »
Shake your chains to earth like dew
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Ye are many; they are few.

Offline Kalafrana

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Re: 1913 Diary of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaievna, transl. by Marina Petrov
« Reply #304 on: November 24, 2011, 01:17:39 AM »
'Seriously - what's funny?
You are making assertions about the imagined intentions of people you don't know right into the face of someone who was discussing this with Greg King a couple of years before the book was published, and knew even then what he thought. Yours is a futile way to frame an argument.'

Janet

I think you are taking a jokey comment a bit too seriously. This Forum is for serious and informed discussion, but we can still have a bit of light relief now and then, and are able to distinguish between the serious and the jokey.

Eric

It's perfectly reasonable for an author to write something he doesn't believe, i.e. when he is setting out someone else's version of events. All he says is something like, 'This is what X says happens, but there is no evidence to support this.'

Ann

Offline blessOTMA

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Re: 1913 Diary of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaievna, transl. by Marina Petrov
« Reply #305 on: November 24, 2011, 01:58:08 AM »
Oh hell - it has to be said, "BlessOTMA" - it seems you've a lot more interest in sexual assault than anyone you want to twit with that accusation.

Greg said it right out to me, sometime in October 2001: "I don't think any actual assault took place". I personally don't know if he's right or wrong, but it was his view. But if you prefer not to believe me - so be it. Never let it be said that you make things easy for yourself when you're in a hole.
Well Janet, if that's how Greg feels about it, then imo that  makes the  pages of whipped up innuendo in FOTR about it even more questionable. He works quite hard to put the idea across imo.  Where did I say I didn't believe you? What I believe is my own eyes reading FOTR and  then expressing an opinion about it. What I was laughing at earlier was simply you referring to me as "  the poster called  blessOTMA, " ( which I quoted so it would be clear that's what it was )  instead of simply addressing me... the thrid person treatment was unexpectedly  hostile and therefore,  amusing. 

"Give my love to all who remember me."

  Olga Nikolaevna

Offline Janet Ashton

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Re: 1913 Diary of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaievna, transl. by Marina Petrov
« Reply #306 on: November 24, 2011, 07:20:33 AM »
Janet

I think you are taking a jokey comment a bit too seriously. This Forum is for serious and informed discussion, but we can still have a bit of light relief now and then, and are able to distinguish between the serious and the jokey.

Ann

Maybe so, Ann - but I am also a member of the forum, and I didn't catch a joke.  This sexual assault issue has a long and contentious history, here and elswehere, and has caused a great deal of emotional upset as well as simply hassle, so it's hard for me to discern a joke when people level accusations that someone is making things up and publishing them, and then say "We're all friends here; can't you take a joke."

I'll leave it there, anyway.
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many; they are few.

Penny_Wilson

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Re: 1913 Diary of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaievna, transl. by Marina Petrov
« Reply #307 on: November 24, 2011, 11:35:05 AM »

Just a bit of insight from the "inside"...

The last months of the Romanovs cannot ever be definitively described.  The classicist Daniel Mendelsohn suggests historians frequently can only tell “the story of the story.”  Mendelsohn was writing of the Holocaust, but his theory applies equally to the Romanovs, I think.  The main players were murdered.  They are dead.  They cannot tell their own story.  Only those who committed the murder, who witnessed the murder, or who survived the murder can tell about it – and all of them can only tell their story.  In real life, each person is his own “main player” and can at best only peripherally describe what happened to others.

Greg and I agree with Mendelsohn’s theory, and we knew that in certain parts of The Fate of the Romanovs, we could only tell “the story of the story.”  And in telling “the story of the story,” we realized that if we were to competently and inclusively cover all the possibilities and probabilities (and impossibilities and improbabilities) of this story, we would have to include a number of accounts and sources that we knew would kick up controversy. 

In coming to the decision to include these (sometimes previously unacknowledged and unused) sources, we knew we would have to rely on our readership being somewhat sophisticated and discerning in that they would have to be able to sift through all the information we found and decide for themselves what the most likely scenario could have been.  We did not want to tell people what to think.  We did not want to do the sifting for our readers (though we did exclude for the sake of word-count a couple of accounts that were only of the slenderest of interest).  We knew that we would be flying in the face of the decorum and “mist of holiness” that sometimes surrounds the Romanovs if we raised the subjects of sexual violence and rape which were an undertone in many of the accounts we accessed.  But ultimately, we felt that 21st-Century readers would be markedly less sheltered than previous generations, and more open to the idea that an “idealized” prison experience probably – or possibly – didn’t happen for the Romanovs.


Eric_Lowe

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Re: 1913 Diary of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaievna, transl. by Marina Petrov
« Reply #308 on: November 24, 2011, 12:24:43 PM »
Thanks Penny,

It has been quite awhile since we last met. I don't remember was it Arturo's conference or ED in UK ?

I agree with you that including things of controversial matter would require a more sophisticated audience to read through it. Just like in "The File On The Tsar". Many possibilities were presented. However the problem is that is we put them in the work, we must take responsibility or credit to the end product. Which is to say that it "could have been" that way at least. If not to put the debunk in the text as "I don't think this happened but there are those who suggest another scenario...". To put a suggestion and tell people "I don't believe in it" is quite irresponsible (if Janet remembered the talk with Greg correctly that is). I greatly respected the extensive research that got into "The Fate Of The Romanovs" and considered it a great piece of investigative history. Which is why I was a bit shocked in at Janet's quote.

Eric

Penny_Wilson

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Re: 1913 Diary of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaievna, transl. by Marina Petrov
« Reply #309 on: November 24, 2011, 12:31:32 PM »

Hi Eric!

We last met at Art's conference -- I think it was in 2001?  2002?  I went to that one and the one in 2006, IIRC.

As for The Fate of the Romanovs, and Greg and I and our research and what we wrote -- well, as far as I know, we both believe what we wrote, and stand by it.

Offline blessOTMA

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Re: 1913 Diary of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaievna, transl. by Marina Petrov
« Reply #310 on: November 24, 2011, 10:42:21 PM »
Penny, thanks for that very  interesting Daniel Mendelsohn perspective

I have been  reading Olga's 1913 diary lately  and as always something pops out I swear I didn't see before...for one thing when TN  returned to thier daily life after recovering from typhoid, ON says  on March 23rd "she's grown considerably taller" ...and a few days later Olga  mentions looking at colour photographs! If ONLY they were taken of the family...odd they weren't . But you can't read the diary just once to get the full benefit  I find

"Give my love to all who remember me."

  Olga Nikolaevna

Sunny

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Re: 1913 Diary of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaievna, transl. by Marina Petrov
« Reply #311 on: November 25, 2011, 12:49:27 AM »

when TN  returned to thier daily life after recovering from typhoid, ON says  on March 23rd "she's grown considerably taller" .

Yep, it often happens, even if when we're not children anymore! In the dialect of my region this is called "crescentin" (from "crescere" = to grow) and it means that kind of fever or illness that meakes you taller, like it helps you go on growing, LOL. Alas, it never worked on me. I'm short and i remained short.
Uuuuh i WANT olga's diary. I want my copy! Xmas is near ^^

Offline blessOTMA

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Re: 1913 Diary of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaievna, transl. by Marina Petrov
« Reply #312 on: November 25, 2011, 08:02:44 AM »
when TN  returned to thier daily life after recovering from typhoid, ON says  on March 23rd "she's grown considerably taller" .
Yep, it often happens, even if when we're not children anymore! In the dialect of my region this is called "crescentin" (from "crescere" = to grow) and it means that kind of fever or illness that makes you taller, like it helps you go on growing, LOL.
that is amazing...particularly as TN was 16 at this time ( early 1913) and one would think she had gained her full height...perhaps TN would not have been as tall as she was if she hadn't gotten typhoid at this time? But I never heard of that effect of a fever, thanks for the info.
Quote
Alas, it never worked on me. I'm short and i remained short. Uuuuh i WANT olga's diary. I want my copy! Xmas is near ^^
I think you will enjoy it. But reread it now and then, it's amazing how things seem to not be there before...in the middle of who was at tea and Alix's health reports, there is often a very interesting line. 

"Give my love to all who remember me."

  Olga Nikolaevna

Sunny

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Re: 1913 Diary of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaievna, transl. by Marina Petrov
« Reply #313 on: November 26, 2011, 12:38:28 AM »
Moreover, i can't wait to have the others diary!

helenazar

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Re: 1913 Diary of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaievna, transl. by Marina Petrov
« Reply #314 on: November 29, 2011, 02:32:40 PM »
I checked my copy of the last page of the 1917 diary, and it is kind of hard to tell if it was really the last page, or if there was more and the rest was torn out. It could go either way really. The last line says that Lilly Dehn moved into the Red room, which is at the bottom of the page, and this follows by Olga's temperature chart on the next page, and there is nothing else written on that page... So I really can't tell one way or another!