New Book Recounts Children’s Forgotten Civil War Odyssey
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.
“They were afraid to mention it and many of these children eventually suffered in some way or another,” said Lyubov Krokhalyova, daughter of Leonid Danilov, who made the journey. “Some of them just weren’t trusted because of this exposure to Western life, some were denied the right to get higher education.”
Lipovetsky said the Russian ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, a friend of Yakobson, was astonished to hear that he had been one of the wandering children.
“She just didn’t believe it at first,” he said. “She said Yakobson would have told her. But we received a written confirmation from Yakobson’s widow that he was there. And it was then already that he demonstrated an ability for dancing: one of my heroes recalls an episode when many girls were dancing on board the Japanese ship, and Lyonya was the only boy to dance.”
The episode was based on Yakobson’s reminisence.
The story began in the spring of 1918, when Petrograd authorities decided to send children from the starving city to safer and warmer places. Eight hundred children, aged between 7 and 15 years old, left for the Urals.
However, by the time they were to return home, White general Alexander Kolchak’s troops blocked the railway in Siberia, making the trip impossible. The children faced a hungry and cold winter.
American Red Cross volunteers working in Siberia found out about the plight of the children, and started plotting a rescue plan. After they discovered that taking the train to St. Petersburg was not an option, they took the bold decision of arranging a detour by sea.
Lipovetsky compares the story to the Arabian Nights.
“You can tell a new episode every night, and there will be no end to the story,” he said.
Lipovetsky wrote his book as a semi-fictional account.
“The writer chose the most difficult genre for his novel,” said Alexei Gordin, head of Azbuka publishing house, which has published the book. “In a documentary you simply list the facts. Writing fiction is more entertaining but fiction is a rather ‘irresponsible’ genre. But in semi-fiction you not only have to stick to historical truth, you need to reconstruct people’s feelings without insulting anybody’s memory.”
Several children died during the journey.
“The first two children, a little brother and sister, died while on the train in Siberia,” Lipovetsky said. “It is difficult to watch over 800 kids, and during a train stop they ran away, ate some poisonous berries and died.”
A girl died after she was bitten by a tropical fly when the boat was crossing the Panama canal. A boy was killed during an accident with a U.S. soldier’s gun.
“There were several deaths but children were dying by hundreds in starvation-stricken Petrograd,” Lipovetsky said.
Upon arrival in Petrograd in 1921, the children and their parents had trouble recognizing each other. One mother looked for a specific birthmark to recognize her son. One girl refused to accept that an emaciated woman was her mother, Lipovetsky said.
Vladimir Pozner, head of the Russian Television Academy, called the book a literary and historical epic of heroism.
My grandmother was among those children. She told me this amazing story. how she made it around the globe. She was 9 then. She described San Francisco streets full of people greeting them.. children from soviet Russia... Grandma told me ...some children were adopted by Americans, it was up to the children, but she said she wanted to go home back to Petrograd. When the ship arrived in Sankt-Peterburg, nobody met her, her parents left to Paris and she was taken to an orphanage but on the way there recognized a blue mail box at the house her aunt lived, so she announced she knows where she lived before, and was dropped there, fortunately it was the house of her relative and they accepted her. My grandma never published or gave any information to anybody except of her family what happened to her in her life. She lived and died in 1986 at Sankt-Petersburg, Russia.
And yes, both of her parents left to Paris without their children in 1917 and never came back. What were they thinking is a mistery, maybe they planned to take the kids later... But yes, because of Mr.Lenin my ancestors lost their family, kids, everything. My grandma saved by the Americans, gave birth to 3 children, 4 grandchildren, 7 grandgrandchildren. Four of the grandgrandchildren live in USA now.
-Svetlana,
Atlanta USA
