My aunt lived in Alexander Palace

[Mike]

While sorting out the family archive a couple of days ago, I've found two old postcards that might be of some interest for the people here.

1. Face: Nicholas' study in the Alexander Palace.
Back: My grandma's niece writes, on 22.08.36, to her aunt in Leningrad, describing how she spends her vacation in the Alexander Palace - converted to a sanatorium. "The rooms are very beautiful, we receive four meals a day so there is no feeling of hunger, and go on excursions every day".



2. My grandma writes, on 25.03.38, to her daughter from a sanatorium in Pavlovsk (then called S l u t s k). The face of the postcard shows the Rose Pavillion in the Pavlovsk park.

[amelia]

Dear Mike,

This is so interesting.  I understand that during the communist years you could go to sanatoriums and have a rest.  There were sanatoriums everywhere.  I think Youssupov palace in the Crimea was one of them.

Amelia

[helenazar]

Dear Mike,

Are you sure that the sanatorium was inside the Alexander Palace? I know that the AP once was a museum, then an orphanage, then storage area, then offices for the military, but I never heard that it was a sanatorium. Perhaps the sanatorium was located elsewhere in Pushkin, somewhere near the palace?

Helen

[Mike]

Galya - who was 16 at the time - specifically points out that she lives in the palace itself. A brief Web search confirms that there was a sanatorium (or, more exactly, a rest house) in the palace's service wing up to 1941.

Galya's father was a chemical engineer (a rare instance of a Jewish guy admitted to the Imperial Institute of Technology in Petersburg) and worked as chief technologist at a large gunpowder plant in the suburb of Porokhovye. I believe Galya's palace vacation owed to his job in the military industry. In our family, Uncle Volodya was always mentioned as an example of how  professional competence could earn a man respect and good life conditions. Indeed, his family enjoyed a separate apartment, and he was driven to his distant plant by a company car!

[Arleen_Ristau]

Mike, those post cards are truly wonderful.  Thanks so much for sharing!  Keep digging around in the boxes, no telling what you may still find!!

..Arleen

[helenazar]

Galya - who was 16 at the time - specifically points out that she lives in the palace itself. A brief Web search confirms that there was a sanatorium (or, more exactly, a rest house) in the palace's service wing up to 1941.

Thank you very much, Mike. As many people connected to the AP as I spoke to, no one mentioned this! Would you please point me to the website you found with the info about part of the AP being a rest house before 1941? Thanks!

Helen

[Mike]

Would you please point me to the website you found with the info about part of the AP being a rest house before 1941?

For instance, the official site of the Tsarskoye Selo Museum-Reserve.
Look at paragraph #10, just below the Nicholas II portrait.

[helenazar]

For instance, the official site of the Tsarskoye Selo Museum-Reserve.
Look at paragraph #10, just below the Nicholas II portrait.

Thank you, I never came across this and probably would have missed it. I wonder how long the "rest home" was there... What exactly does "HKBD" stand for?

[Mike]

NKVD means Ministry of the Interior. It included police, fire service and - yes - the future KGB. It surprised me a bit that Uncle Volodya's daughter spent a vacation there, but apparently his military plant received its quota of places. At that time it wasn't unusual.

[helenazar]

NKVD means Ministry of the Interior. It included police, fire service and - yes - the future KGB. It surprised me a bit that Uncle Volodya's daughter spent a vacation there, but apparently his military plant received its quota of places. At that time it wasn't unusual.

Thanks. Is your aunt still alive? It's amazing that they saved those post cards!

[Mike]

Is your aunt still alive?

Unfortunately not, she died in 1977. My grandmother (Galya's aunt) died of starvation in the sieged Leningrad in 1942, so I've never seen her.

As to the old images, I don't have many, but some are fascinating - at least to me. E.g. I have photos of my paternal ancestors up to a great-great-grandfather (from the 1880s).

[hikaru]

In a lot of the Palaces before the WWII , there were sanatoriums, orphanages etc., even in the Winter Palace
It is not the strange.
For Example, My Grand - Grand Mother said that they lived in the bedroom of Yusupovs in   the Arkhangelyskoe Estate. - it was Navy Sanatorium.
I think that only after WWII the  Yusupov Palace in the Estate became the museum .