Author Topic: Olga's Letters  (Read 151983 times)

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Offline blessOTMA

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Re: Olga's Letters
« Reply #240 on: July 09, 2012, 10:19:04 AM »
I have a downloadable version of RSOM and i had ahard time dividing the letters... having all of them there, each girl her owns is priceless for me.
I've an idea of translating them all, and give you an english version. It will be a very long task (i'm the kind of person who needs to change the way of passing freetime) but i'll do!
Bless you!!

"Give my love to all who remember me."

  Olga Nikolaevna

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Re: Olga's Letters
« Reply #241 on: July 10, 2012, 05:35:49 AM »
I have a downloadable version of RSOM and i had ahard time dividing the letters... having all of them there, each girl her owns is priceless for me.
I've an idea of translating them all, and give you an english version. It will be a very long task (i'm the kind of person who needs to change the way of passing freetime) but i'll do!
Bless you!!

Oh no *shame*
You'll have to wait A LOT...

Offline Inok Nikolai

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Re: Olga's Letters
« Reply #242 on: July 25, 2013, 04:49:45 PM »
Just a little help needed pinning down who some of the people are whom the Grand Duchesses mention in their letters.

I presume that most of the ones which we still have not deciphered must have been wounded soldiers, patients in their hospitals.

Any idea who Petrenko was?

Or Onoshk.? The full surname was probably Onoshkin.

Thanks!
Inok Nikolai

PS: Context really doesn't help much. They just ask that regards be given to so and so, etc.
инок Николай

Offline Sarushka

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Re: Olga's Letters
« Reply #243 on: July 25, 2013, 08:50:31 PM »
Just a little help needed pinning down who some of the people are whom the Grand Duchesses mention in their letters.

I presume that most of the ones which we still have not deciphered must have been wounded soldiers, patients in their hospitals.

Any idea who Petrenko was?

Or Onoshk.? The full surname was probably Onoshkin.

Thanks!
Inok Nikolai

PS: Context really doesn't help much. They just ask that regards be given to so and so, etc.

I've just done a search of my digital copy of Royal Sisters of Mercy. "Petrenko" turned up no hits, but here's an entry from Tatiana's diary that might be of help with "Onoshk.":

Пятница, 19 февраля [1916]
Утром поехала к "Знамению", оттуда в лазарет. Перевязала: Малышенко, Спиридонова, Журавлева, Заболванова, Чуганкова, Павленко. После Емельянова, Апоянца, Батиевского, Губенко, Мартьянова. В. И. Шпаченко и Павлову - правую ногу. Потом сидела с Оношковичем. Завтракали и обедали с Папой и Мамой. Днем каталась с Ольгой и Настенькой. Пили чай с Мамой. Папа в Петрограде. В 6.45 мы все, кроме Ольги, поехали с Настенькой в мужскую гимназию на концерт. Играли мальчики две пьесы и потом на балалайках. Очень хорошо. После обеда Папа читал.
THE LOST CROWN: A Novel of Romanov Russia -- now in paperback!
"A dramatic, powerful narrative and a masterful grasp of life in this vanished world." ~Greg King

Offline Inok Nikolai

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Re: Olga's Letters
« Reply #244 on: July 26, 2013, 01:13:48 PM »
Just a little help needed pinning down who some of the people are whom the Grand Duchesses mention in their letters.

I presume that most of the ones which we still have not deciphered must have been wounded soldiers, patients in their hospitals.

Any idea who Petrenko was?

Or Onoshk.? The full surname was probably Onoshkin.

Thanks!
Inok Nikolai

PS: Context really doesn't help much. They just ask that regards be given to so and so, etc.

I've just done a search of my digital copy of Royal Sisters of Mercy. "Petrenko" turned up no hits, but here's an entry from Tatiana's diary that might be of help with "Onoshk.":

Пятница, 19 февраля [1916]
Утром поехала к "Знамению", оттуда в лазарет. Перевязала: Малышенко, Спиридонова, Журавлева, Заболванова, Чуганкова, Павленко. После Емельянова, Апоянца, Батиевского, Губенко, Мартьянова. В. И. Шпаченко и Павлову - правую ногу. Потом сидела с Оношковичем. Завтракали и обедали с Папой и Мамой. Днем каталась с Ольгой и Настенькой. Пили чай с Мамой. Папа в Петрограде. В 6.45 мы все, кроме Ольги, поехали с Настенькой в мужскую гимназию на концерт. Играли мальчики две пьесы и потом на балалайках. Очень хорошо. После обеда Папа читал.

Aha!

Thanks! I missed that when reading the book.
The longer surname "Onoshkovich" explains the abbreviated form. It would have been odd to leave off just the last two letters of "Onoshkin".
Now that we have the name, we can hope to find out more about him!

PS: Voila!

Your key made this too easy. I simply typed the surname into Google.ru, and an article on the poet Sergei Esenin's military duty, produced this -- all in a nutshell!

http://master-gun.com/slovo/soldat-esenin

Георгиевский офицер Е. Оношкевич-Яцына писал: «Будучи тяжело ранен в бою 31 июля 1915 года в рядах лейб-гвардии Кирасирского Его Величества полка, я был эвакуирован в Царское Село. Государыня Императрица и Великие Княжны Ольга и Татьяна ежедневно проводили целое утро в госпитале, помогая в перевязке раненых и всеми мерами облегчая наши страдания…».

Officer of the St. George Cross, E. Onoshkevich wrote: "Having been seriously wounded in battle on July 13, 1915, while in the ranks of Her Majesty's Cuirassier Life-guard Regiment, I was evacuated to Tsarkoe Selo. The Empress and Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana would spend the whole morning in the hospital every day, helping to change the bandages of the wounded and by every means to alleviate our sufferings... "

Thanks again!
Inok Nikolai
инок Николай

Offline Inok Nikolai

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Re: Olga's Letters
« Reply #245 on: July 26, 2013, 01:29:18 PM »
Even more here, in this on-line history of the Cuirassiers during WW I:

http://grwar.ru/library/Goshtovt-Kirasiry_II/CM_16.html?PHPSESSID=aed8bd6a2e7e08a9b3da5b4a9a6ea1c9

Onoshkevich appears on the far right in the top photo, and in the middle of the line of officers in the second photo.

It's so rewarding to put names and faces to these people mentioned in the Imperial Family's letters and diaries!
инок Николай

Offline Inok Nikolai

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Re: Olga's Letters
« Reply #246 on: July 26, 2013, 01:34:59 PM »
I guess I'm on a spin.

Here he is listed in 1920 fighting against Budeny's Red Cavalry:

http://wap.1918.borda.ru/?1-10-0-00000002-000-0-0
инок Николай

Offline Sarushka

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Re: Olga's Letters
« Reply #247 on: July 26, 2013, 06:14:00 PM »
You're welcome -- glad to be of help.
THE LOST CROWN: A Novel of Romanov Russia -- now in paperback!
"A dramatic, powerful narrative and a masterful grasp of life in this vanished world." ~Greg King

Offline wakas

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Re: Olga's Letters
« Reply #248 on: September 15, 2013, 01:17:48 PM »
Hello Everyone !

I read all the online letters of the imperial family. I have also some books about them.
But if I understood well, there are many more letters from them in GARF. I was wondering if we can read them, like the letters the children wrote to each other (I've heard that they do exist but I can't find them anywhere).

Is it true that the only way to read them is to go to GARF  (which is not possible for me, especially because I do not speak Russian) ? Or perhaps is it possible that we can read the rest of their letters on the Internet or in books ?  It's mostly the parents' correspondence that is published, and very little for the children's. I think it would be very interesting to read all the letters from the children, it would give us a more precise idea of ​​their personality and how they got along with each other.

Thank in advance for your answers.
Tess.
After death, there is not death, but life.

Offline Olga Maria

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Re: Olga's Letters
« Reply #249 on: October 01, 2013, 02:02:51 AM »
Unfortunately Tess, we cannot have access to GARF unless we go there ourselves and ask a permission to read the letters for the purpose of writing a book :’(  It may even be difficult to get their approval. However good thing is that there are authors here who are shedding light to many of those letters (Ms. Helen Azar’s book on Olga’s Diary and Inok Nikolai’s work-on-progress of letters of the Imperial Family from wartime to captivity) : )  All wartime letters of OTMA in Russian online might also have been already translated by Inok Nikolai’s team.

Amazing colored fotos  by the most wonderful Yelena Aleksandrovna. Endless thank you very much!

Offline wakas

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Re: Olga's Letters
« Reply #250 on: October 01, 2013, 01:33:38 PM »
Thank you very much for your answer.
After death, there is not death, but life.

Offline Inok Nikolai

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Re: Olga's Letters
« Reply #251 on: June 11, 2014, 04:50:39 PM »
The poet Serge Bekhteev, brother of Zinaida Tolstaya, put that excerpt from Grand Duchess Olga Nicholaevna' letter into verse while living in Nice, France, in 1941.
http://soulibre.ru/Отец_всем_просит_передать_(Сергей_Бехтеев)
http://www.tsaarinikolai.com/tekstit/Sergej_Behteev1.pdf

That fact at least tells us that the excerpt must have been well known enough in émigré circles by 1941 for it to be put into verse.

Thus, we have moved back two decades in our quest to find the letter itself, or the first publication of the excerpt.


Very interesting.

Is it possible that Sergei Bekhteev was the original recipient of the letter that contained that quote?

Eureka!

In her latest book, The Romanov Sisters, Helen Rappaport cites that excerpt on p. 348 (Chapter 20), and confirms its provenance in endnote 52 on p. 444.

The unpublished memoirs of Princess Barbara Dolgorouky, found in the Hoover Institution archives, prove it.

G. D. Olga wrote on behalf of her father and the others to Sergei Bekhteev to thank him for the poems which he had sent to them in Tobolsk.

So he was the recipient! That is why he later wrote the poem about it.
инок Николай

Offline Inok Nikolai

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Re: Olga's Letters
« Reply #252 on: June 11, 2014, 04:59:20 PM »
The fact that the phrase "little soul" comes up so often is an indicator that some portion of the letter was written in Russian.

"Little soul" is a literal translation of the Russian word "dushka." When writing in English, the IF used common English endearments like darling, dear, and dearie -- I've never seen the English phrase "little soul" in the IF's letters.

IMO, it's most likely that the letter was written in a mixture of languages. Alexandra in particular had a habit of rendering Russian names and words in their original cyrillic, even in her English letters and diaries. "Dushka" is exactly the kind of word that members of a multi-lingual household would NOT translate themselves -- it loses something when translated literally.

Also, to my knowledge the use of foreign languages was not banned until the IF's arrival in Ekaterinburg. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Alexandra had been writing to Anna Vyrubova in English while in Tobolsk.

Here's another "For The Record" comment based on our research:

These letters (between the members of the Imperial family while separated in Tobolsk and Ekaterinburg) were originally written in Russian. Of course, they may have contained a few words in other languages, as often happens in the Imperial family's correspondence.

The letters were translated into French for Princess Eugenie by Nicholas Komstadius, whose family had been acquainted with the Grand Duchesses in Tsarskoe Selo.
(He and his family likewise received a few letters from captivity in 1917-1918.)

We corresponded with N. Komstadius when he was already living in an old folks home near Paris. He died there in April of 1989.

Princess Eugenie herself also died in 1989; her book containing the letters was published posthumously in 1990. The footnotes are those of Princess Eugenie.

According to her introduction to the book, Princess Eugenie found the letters in a cookie tin in the cellar of her parents' home (near Paris) after her mother's death! Pr. Eugenie stated that she had no idea how they got there, and that her parents never told her about them. In her book she theorizes about how they may have come to them — but most of her ideas are pretty far-fetched and inconclusive.

Her father was Prince George of Greece ("Big Georgie"), the one who accompanied the future Tsar Nicholas II on his tour of the Orient when he was still just the Heir.
It was Pr. George who parried the second sword-blow aimed at the Tsarevich in Otsu, Japan, in 1891. George and Nicholas were first-cousins.

Here is how the letters might have ended up with Pr. George:

It is a known fact that in 1922 a Russian peasant, who had escaped from Soviet Russia, showed up in Riga with a packet of letters and photos from the Imperial family from captivity. These letters and photos were forwarded to some Princess in Paris. One letter from that packet is now at Yale — we have a copy, plus an explanation of how it got there. Other letters from that same packet ended up in the hands of some of the Romanov princes (Mikhailovichi) here in America, which they have shared with us. While the letters were still in Paris, most likely some of them were given directly to Prince George, or perhaps someone else who received them at that time later gave them to Pr. George — since he was N II's cousin.


The biggest problem with these letters is that Princess Eugenie and Nicholas Komstadius did not always fully understand the rather cryptic text and abbreviations of the original Russian, and thus, both the French translation itself and the footnotes contain errors and misconceptions. This is evident if one attempts to reconstruct the Russian text from the French translation. Then too, researchers now have access to much more information concerning the sixteen months of the Imperial family's imprisonment than Princess Eugenie and N. Komstadius did twenty years ago.

Members of this forum who also read French, and have a knowledge of the events of 1917-18, can themselves, no doubt, detect some of these errors in the French versions of these letters.

Mr. Alferieff, the compiler of the original collection of letters from captivity, knew Princess Eugenie, and he requested that she allow him to include her eighteen letters in his book.
She declined because she wanted to publish them first in her own proposed book, which, as stated above, was finally printed posthumously in 1990.

As you know, the eighteen letters contained in Princess Eugenie's book are unique in that they were written by the members of the Imperial family to one another during the period of their separation in the spring of 1918. That is what makes them so moving.

Obviously, for our own book, we would much prefer to translate from the Russian originals into English. Therefore, for many years we have been asking Princess Eugenie's heirs for photocopies of those eighteen letters and permission to publish them. So far, we have not been successful.

An acquaintance of Princess Eugenie's pointed out to us that perhaps her archives have simply not been put in order, and therefore, it may be that no one knows where the originals are located. Nevertheless, we feel that it is very worthwhile to keep trying to locate copies of the original Russian texts. Perhaps Mr. Komstadius had a set of photocopies when working on the translation? We certainly hope that this matter can be resolved before we have to go to print with our own book.



Update:

As you know by now, these letters have now appeared in English in Helen Azar's new book The Last Romanovs: In Their Own Words, as translated by Eva and Daniel McDonald.

Helen Rappaport also cites them in her latest book, The Romanov Sisters.

On p. 363 of Chapter 21, she gives passages from Grand Duchess Olga Nicholaevna’s long letter to Empress Alexandra in Ekaterinburg . Then on p. 446, note 38, she mentions the “third-hand” translations of the letters from Princess Eugenie’s book -- i.e. from Russian to French to English. Something which we have discussed here on the Forum.

Helen Rappaport also cites an earlier translation of them by Rev. Terence Wilson, published in 1993:

On p. 455 of her bibliography, she cites the source: Royalty Digest: A Journal of Record 3, nos.  25, 26, 27, 28, June–October, 1993.

Can anyone out there send me copies, or loan them to me? We would very much like to read that translation too.

Thanks in advance!

Inok Nikolai
« Last Edit: June 11, 2014, 05:02:08 PM by Inok Nikolai »
инок Николай

matushka

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Re: Olga's Letters
« Reply #253 on: June 12, 2014, 05:22:17 AM »
Members of this forum who also read French, and have a knowledge of the events of 1917-18, can themselves, no doubt, detect some of these errors in the French versions of these letters.


That was exactly my impression, when I read it in the 1990's. The French text sounds like the translators work "with blinds years", translating words but not understanding them. Only because of the lack of information those days.

Nothing constructing to add, unfortunately, but I just admire your work, father Nikolai, and read those pages with the greatest interest! Thank you very much.

ashdean

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Re: Olga's Letters
« Reply #254 on: October 06, 2014, 01:00:07 PM »
Was the Princess Barbara Dolgorouky whose unpublished memoirs are mentioned the daughter of Princess Olga Petrovna Dolgoruky (nee Countess Shouvalova) who left Russia in April 1919 in the retinue of the Dowager Empress and died at Versaillies in (I think) 1927 ?