After the Revolution the Sheremetevs were allowed remain in a few rooms in their Moscow home in Vozdvizhenka Street. In this house Sergei and his wife lived with their sons Paul and Boris, Boris’ daughters, their daughters Anna and Maria and their families, their son Peter’s widow, Elena, and her children.
Sheremetev house on Vozdvizhenka Street in Moscow:
Sergei and Ekaterina’s granddaughter Elena Petrovna Sheremeteva described their life after the Revolution in Sergei’s home in Moscow:
http://moskva.kotoroy.net/histories/31.html“At first our family lived in the corner drawing room …We slept, some on a sofa, some standing. My brothers were placed somewhere else. Grandfather lived upstairs he could not go downstairs due to his illness… After school we came home to dinner. Alexei Alexandrovich, (their chef) prepared tasty food but (there was) very little. We all sat at the big table. Dmitry Feodorovich passed around a dish to the left. Grandmother Sheremeteva sat with her sons; Uncle Paul, Uncle Boris, Uncle Sergey, Uncle Alik (Saburov), Uncle Sasha (Gudovich), Mama, Aunt Maria my father’s sisters and all of us children… We all sat properly and talked.”
Elena goes on to describe how on one such evening in late 1918 their dinner was interrupted by a visit from the Cheka:
“Suddenly from the grand staircase the door opened, and a man in a black leather jacket burst in, with a raised revolver: “Hands up”!... We all remained sitting and raised our hands, and Dmitry Feodorovich put the dish on the floor and too raised his hands also. Toward grandfather they have risen, but he was already very sick. The search lasted all night…Many precious things they took from Aunt Maria Gudovich and put them in their pockets …They took all the men…because of grandfather’s illness they released his sons on bail….”
Alexander “Sasha” Gudovich and Alexander “Alik” Saburov were less fortunate. They remained in prison and were shot by the Cheka in 1919.
Sergei Sheremetev, the family matriarch, was spared this horror dying after a long illness at his home in Moscow not long after the raid, in November 1918.
Anna (Sheremeteva) Saburova was arrested in 1921, but released. In 1924, along with many other nobles, Maria, her sons Dmitri and Andrei, and Anna and her three children, were banished from Moscow and exiled to Kaluga. There they occupied a small squalid house. Maria’s daughter Barbara had married and was living elsewhere. I do not know what the Gudovich children were like, but Anna’s eldest son Boris Saburov was described by someone who met him at the Sheremetev home in Moscow during the early 1920s as extremely talented, unusual, beautiful, with a keen interest in the future despite their present conditions. This same person, after encountering Anna in Kaluga in the mid-20s, remarked that while hardship had marred Anna’s beauty, her personality remained the same. Anna’s daughter Xenia Saburova was the most practical member of the family. As they had very little to live on Xenia tried to economize. She would make occasional excursions to Moscow to try and sell a few of their remaining possessions for extra money. Sometime between 1924 and 1927 they were allowed to settle at Tsaritsyno, but the NKVD (the Cheka’s successors) would not leave them in peace. In 1927, Dmitri and Andrei Gudovich were arrested along with their cousins Boris and Yuri Saburov. They were each sentenced to five years in a gulag.
It seems that the Saburovs - Boris and Yuri - were sent to a gulag near the Siberian town of Irbit in Sverdlovsk Oblast. I am not certain if the Gudovichs were sent to the same gulag or another. I found a transcription online in Russian of a letter Maria (Sheremeteva) Gudovich wrote to David Ryazanov dated 27 April 1930 asking him to intercede on behalf of her sons Dmitri and Andrei. My Russian isn’t terribly good, but I was able to make out the gist of the letter. She wrote that her sons had been incarcerated for three years and that she was frightened that they would die, as epidemic typhus was raging through the concentration camp where they were being held. She asked that they be transferred to a town where they could be allowed to serve their sentence working as laborers. She also mentions that official charges had never been brought against them. Perhaps this plea did not fall on deaf ears because all four young men were apparently released later that year (1930).
Dmitri and Andrei Gudovich, after being released, were put to work in construction taking part in the building of the Moscow-Volga Canal. What became of them after 1930 I do not know.
Their cousins the Saburovs were released and sent off to Vladimir where their mother Anna joined them. However, in 1937, Boris and Yuri Saburov were once again arrested, and this time they disappeared without a trace. They were almost certainly executed by the NKVD.
Anna and Maria’s daughters were no more fortunate than their brothers. Xenia Saburova was arrested and exiled to a gulag in Kazakhstan ca 1930. What became of her after this I do not know. Maria’s daughter Countess Barbara Gudovich (1900-1938) was a painter. She married her Uncle Paul’s brother-in-law Prince Vladimir Vasilyevich Obolensky (1890-1937) at Ostafievo in August 1921. Both Barbara and Vladimir perished in Siberian gulags. Barbara had three children with Vladimir Obolensky: Elizabeth (1922-2003 Moscow), Andrei (1923/4- MIA during WWII 1943), and Nikolai (b.1927) all were born at Tsaritsyno and later resided in Moscow. Barbara’s son Nikolai became a professor and is apparently still alive and well.
A photo of the wedding of Barbara Gudovich in 1921 to Paul’s brother-in-law Prince Vladimir Obolensky. Seated on the left five people from the front is Praskovia (Obolenskaya) Sheremeteva, to her right is her mother-in-law Ekaterina (Vyazemskaya) Sheremeteva, to Ekaterina's right (I believe) is the groom Vladimir Obolensky, to his right is the bride Barbara, seated to her right is Paul Sheremetev, and to the right of Paul is Barbara’s mother Maria (Sheremeteva) Gudovich.
