Author Topic: Depression/Melancholy/Nervous breakdown during WWI  (Read 128210 times)

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Offline blessOTMA

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Re: Depression/Melancholy/Nervous breakdown during WWI
« Reply #225 on: October 12, 2011, 09:21:56 PM »
I find it odd that when I say that Olga and Tatiana were old enough to know their own minds in some of my postings, I am told that they were innocent and immature. 

Then when I say that in this case, they were following their mother's lead and that they probably didn't have any input or options, I am told that they WERE mature women who wanted to do what was best and were not being pushed about by their mother.
lol! True!....most likely they were both
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IMHO - They were young women not children.  But they were treated like children.  Alexandra did not understand that they had different needs and motivations than she did and she acted like they were extensions of herself and therefore would do what she would do without question.
Indeed...I think because AF lost her mother so early...before she could separate herself etc. and we can't give what we did not get. She was their Sovereign too, besides thier mother...I just can't imagine trying  to say no to such a person in that position :  mother and sovereign! You make great points...but oddly their nurse friend, Valentina Ivanovna Chebotareva ,called the girls " children" in her diary. I think they could be both mature and child like by turns . In their social interactions  that VIC witnessed at the start of their nursing career, they did seem child like since they had  no interacting  experiences that went beyond royal protocol. TN grabbed VIC's hand when faced with a group of nurses, because she didn't know quite how to interact and she very much liked knowing what to do. The hospital looms so large in thier story...a chance at an adult life for those denied adulthood . But thier royal  positions  kept them to childlike roles at this time ...whatever leavle thier personal development.This balancing act would be difficult , particularly as the war was shredding the old ways all around them
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I am sure that Alexandra made the decision to go into nursing training and simply assumed that Olga and Tatiana would go with her without question.  It might be that the young women thought it was a great idea, until they actually got into the hospital.  Until then "nursing" by royals meant visiting hospitals and reading and writing letters for the wounded and contacting their families for them.
Exactly
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Until WWI no women of royal blood had actually entered the operating theater or assisted in surgery.
Well not in Russia. But Princess Andrew of Greece( Prince Philip's mother ) another Princess Alice descendant, did heroic nursing at a front line hospital in 1912 during one of Greece's wars and did everything that entails ...lord knows she must of seen.... And interestingly she was given arsenic injections like Olga was  for " low spirits." ...however  seeing what they saw, I would say low spirits is a normal reaction!
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  Had they admitted failure, I believe that Alexandra would have lectured them on duty and obligation instead of being sympathetic and realizing that they might be another way for her daughters to help.
That's why an illness would be the only way out, and  Olga would understand that, I believe.  Alix was enough of a Victorian to accept that as really the only  reason to not do one 's " duty" ...and it's funny because I don't believe she was one much  for duty during the brief time before her marriage when when she was the main lady at Ernie's court  lol! Her sister Victoria, still over saw their mother's intuions from afar and with a young family....and while Ducky was married to Ernie too! ...another love of Princess Alice's was embroidery...and we we see Alix really pass that on to her daughters . They began knitting at 2! 

Anyone interesting in AF really should read about Princess Alice.

"Give my love to all who remember me."

  Olga Nikolaevna

Offline Inok Nikolai

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Re: Depression/Melancholy/Nervous breakdown during WWI
« Reply #226 on: January 26, 2012, 10:16:22 PM »

Anyone interested in AF really should read about Princess Alice.



"Alix [Empress Alexandra of Russia] and her mother [Princess Alice of England] were similar not only in their physical frailty but also in their highly strung, passionate temperaments. Princess Alix was a proud, strong-minded, very emotional woman who fought to control her anger and nerves. Her mother [Princess Alice] once complained [to her own mother] Queen Victoria that:
      
'…people with strong feelings and of nervous temperament — for which one is no more responsible than for the colour of one’s eyes — have things to fight against and put up with, unknown to those of quiet, equable dispositions, who are free from violent emotions, and have consequently no feeling of nerves… One can overcome a great deal — but alter oneself one cannot.'"

Nicholas II: Tsar of All the Russias,, p. 48, by Dominic Lieven

Later edition of same book:
http://www.alexanderpalace.org/palace/books.html?sku=22

(Dominic Lieven was our guest here at the monastery a couple of times while he was teaching at Harvard one year.)
инок Николай

Antonina

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Re: Olga Breaking Windows
« Reply #227 on: August 16, 2012, 10:42:22 PM »
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Here are my translations of Chebotareva's stories:

Varvara Afanas’evna with horror saw in tatters the cloakroom in her room. “Who did this?”
“Yesterday I was in a rage,” answered Olga Nikolaevna.
“But may I ask why you wished to become angry?”
“When that idiot arrived, K… It’s very silly, I can’t stand him, imagining that he is a relative, and that is why without fail he tries to grab my shoulder.”

Maybe it has been discussed - who was K., what do you think? May it be GD Konstantin Konstantinovich?

Offline blessOTMA

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Re: Depression/Melancholy/Nervous breakdown during WWI
« Reply #228 on: August 17, 2012, 12:53:40 AM »
author=Sarushka link=topic=1288.msg142757#msg142757 date=1136177890]
Here are my translations of Chebotareva's stories:

Varvara Afanas’evna with horror saw in tatters the cloakroom in her room. “Who did this?”
“Yesterday I was in a rage,” answered Olga Nikolaevna.
“But may I ask why you wished to become angry?”
“When that idiot arrived, K… It’s very silly, I can’t stand him, imagining that he is a relative, and that is why without fail he tries to grab my shoulder.”

  Maybe it has been discussed - who was K., what do you think? May it be GD Konstantin Konstantinovich?

wow, I never heard of the shoulder grabbing by the  relative K...fasinating!

"Give my love to all who remember me."

  Olga Nikolaevna

Offline Kalafrana

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Re: Depression/Melancholy/Nervous breakdown during WWI
« Reply #229 on: August 17, 2012, 04:33:54 AM »
Wait a minute, it says K is 'imagining he is a relative'. The Konstantinovichi were relatives, so unless Olga thought they were so far distant that they weren't really relatives, it must have been someone else.

Ann

Offline blessOTMA

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Re: Depression/Melancholy/Nervous breakdown during WWI
« Reply #230 on: August 17, 2012, 06:20:02 AM »
Good catch Ann, I was reading it as "Imagine and him a relative!". But your way isright , he's imagining  that he's a relative...perhaps by distant marriage?  Touching Olga at all ( not even in a romantic way ) would be a huge breach of etiquette . How does K get away with even trying?  Also it seems to happen with frequency

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Offline Lady Macduff

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Re: Depression/Melancholy/Nervous breakdown during WWI
« Reply #231 on: January 21, 2013, 03:58:55 PM »
Something I've wondered about - we all know that Alexandra passed the hemophilia gene to Alexei (and possibly Maria too) but what about Olga? Is it possible that she had an anxiety disorder that she passed to Olga, and it did not appear until the war? My apologies is this has been discussed before.
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Offline blessOTMA

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Re: Depression/Melancholy/Nervous breakdown during WWI
« Reply #232 on: January 22, 2013, 11:14:50 PM »
Interesting thought!

My feeling is,  being depressed is a normal reaction to the up close  horror of war, and  the train wreck of statehood  that was her parent's imploding rein at that time. As soon as they let her leave the OR,  Olga seemed well again, well enough to function fully  in the mist of the family and for the rest of thier lives. There doesn't have to be a ongoing disorder, when circumstances are awful . If Olga had  mental problems when thing were tranquil, there would be more of a case.  Just my 2 cents ( the old fashion way to say :  imo)

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  Olga Nikolaevna

Offline edubs31

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Re: Depression/Melancholy/Nervous breakdown during WWI
« Reply #233 on: January 22, 2013, 11:34:52 PM »
I agree, and think it also worth pointing out that Olga's hospital meltdown is made to probably appear more extreme simply because we only really have her sister and mother's behaviour to compare to. Alexandra was in her mid-40s and had seen suffering and death firsthand in a way Olga really had not, barely over the age of 20. Tatiana far more the stoic and pragmatist in general than her siblings so it makes sense that she would have handled her nursing duties better. Tanya was really her mother's daughter. Marie and Anastasia were fully devoted to daddy, but I always feel like Olga had more her own unique personalty. The Tsar himself surely knew this and seemed to have an even greater level of respect for his eldest...even though his love to all of them was equal and unconditional.
Once in a while you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right...

Rodney_G.

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Re: Depression/Melancholy/Nervous breakdown during WWI
« Reply #234 on: January 23, 2013, 05:51:54 PM »
Something I've wondered about - we all know that Alexandra passed the hemophilia gene to Alexei (and possibly Maria too) but what about Olga? Is it possible that she had an anxiety disorder that she passed to Olga, and it did not appear until the war? My apologies is this has been discussed before.

If you're suggesting that there's a gene for anxiety disorder that Alexandra might have had, and which she might have passsed on to Olga, I'd have to say no way on all counts. Any personality or emotional or psychological  problems Alexandra might haver had could well influence and affect her daughter Olga. But to the extent that that was possible , it would also have been possible for her other children, which we know is not really the case. Olga did suffer from depression at this time and did have a breakdown, but these can't be directly attributed to her mother.

helenazar

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Re: Depression/Melancholy/Nervous breakdown during WWI
« Reply #235 on: April 20, 2013, 01:10:54 PM »
Something I've wondered about - we all know that Alexandra passed the hemophilia gene to Alexei (and possibly Maria too) but what about Olga? Is it possible that she had an anxiety disorder that she passed to Olga, and it did not appear until the war?

This could very well be true. Anxiety and depression disorders do run in families and seem to be strongly hereditary. Very often the predisposition to these disorders is triggered by external factors, like it seems to have done in Alexandra, and also Olga. And while of course we cannot diagnose either one of them from where we stand now, it certainly sounds like both Alexandra and Olga had anxiety disorder, which Olga could have inherited from her mother. When a lot of anxiety provoking events started to happen, as during WWI, Olga may have been more prone to it than her siblings because she was the one who ended up with that gene.