I recently found out about the book Children's Ark by Vladimir Lipovetsky. The book documents the unbelievable journey of 800 Russian children around the world in the wake of the Russian Civil War in 1918. What was amazing to me is that I heard this story before many years ago when I was a child. I heard it from my Grandma Maria Alexandrovna Monfred who was one of the children. She was about 7 years old at the beginning of her odyssey. She and other kids were saved by the American Red Cross in the Ural mountains and they made it around the globe in spite of everything. My Grandma told me that her parents had left for Paris in 1917, leaving her and her two siblings in the care of relatives, probably because traveling by train was extremely dangerous or they planned to have them sent later... it is a mystery. Unfortunately her parents were never able to return to Russia or have the children sent to them. What happened to my Grandma was a miracle. She remembered how they left St. Petersburg to the Urals accompanied by their teachers. Then the teachers disappeared, kids were dying, and the American Red Cross took them and shipped them to America. The buses were riding them through the streets of the San Francisco and crowds of people were along the streets, waving little flags, greeting the children from Soviet Russia. The children lived there somewhere and some of them were adopted. A couple came to talk to my Grandma about if she'd like to live with them staying in the US, she said no, she wanted to go home back to Russia. She hoped her parents would be back, everything would be over and things would be like before... she was just a kid. The Americans returned all kids back to Petrograd (St. Petersburg), traveling around the world... my Grandma was not met at the port when the ship arrived to Petrograd, no address, no names, she was taken by a sailor to an orphanage... on their way through the streets of Vasilievski ostrov (island) she suddenly recognized a blue mail box on the side of the building she believed she lived in before. She asked the sailor to stop by to inquire. Fortunately she was right. She was accepted by her old aunt. My Grandma lived in Leningrad until her death in 1986. She rarely talked about her amazing adventure, she never told the story to anybody else or published it for fear of admitting contact with the West during Soviet times. But she told me somebody could be looking for her. My grandma gave birth to 3 children, and went on to have 4 grandchildren and 7 great grandchildren. 6 of them live in America now.
To my astonishment I happened to find 2 articles at sptimes.ru concerning absolutely the same story and learned that the book Children's Ark by V.Lipovetsky exists. Once again I descended into the past with so many memories rushing back to me.
Finding out that the story of these children, and my grandmother, had been written down and told to the world meant so much to me! For years when I'd told the story to my friends I'd never felt they believed the story. It must have seemed too fantastic to them. How much the heart of a 7 year old girl could bear.
If anybody else knows more about the Children's Ark or knows of other survivors or their descendants, I would love to hear your stories!
Here are the articles:
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New Book Recounts Children’s Forgotten Civil War Odyssey
By Galina Stolyarova
Staff Writer
For 800 children sent on summer vacation to the Urals in 1918, it was meant to be a three-month escape from war-torn St. Petersburg. Known as Petrograd at the time, the city was suffering chronic food shortages.
But as the Russian Civil War raged, it became impossible for the children to return. They began an incredible three-year-long Odyssey around the globe — eventually returning to St. Petersburg the long way around the world via the Russian Far East, Asia, the U.S. and Europe.
The existence of the journey was kept hidden to the Soviet public for a simple reason: the children were rescued by officers from the American Red Cross.
With the arrival of “The Unbelievable Story or The Children’s Ark,” Vladimir Lipovetsky’s novel about these adventures, the story is for the first time reaching a mass audience in Russia. St. Petersburg sailor and journalist Lipovetsky came across the subject by sheer accident on a trip to the U.S. in 1978.
“I researched this mind-blowing story for 25 years, working in archives in New York, San Francisco, Japan, Belgium, Vladivostok and St. Petersburg,” Lipovetsky said. “The characters I describe in the book have become close people to me.”
Lipovetsky wasn’t planning to write the book himself, and appealed to already established cultural figures, from writer Daniil Granin to filmmaker Sergei Gerasimov, but in vain.
“Everybody turned this fascinating story down for the same reason: it would look like pro-American propaganda and will be sure to cause a sour reaction from the Russian government,” the author said.
From Vladivostok the boat, a Japanese cargo boat rented by the Red Cross for the rescue, docked at San Francisco, the Panama Canal, New York, Brest andHelsinki.
The children who made the journey kept their travels a secret. That famous St. Petersburg choreographer Leonid Yakobson was one of them, only came to light after he died, during Lipovetsky’s research.
... (for the rest of the article see
http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=16221)
Here's another article about the book:
http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=2455Svetlana Strain
Atlanta, USA
