The Unknown Tsesarevitch. Reminiscences and Considerations on V. K. Filatov’s Life and Times. Oleg Vasiljevitch Filatov

father. They recollected that in 1942 father helped to accomodate the evacuated families. Several decades later I found them. They lived on Bakunin Str., 29 and worked in Leningrad but they could not tell us anything special about father. They recollected: “Yes. There was such a geography teacher, he was poor. He kind of married a collective farmer Polina, it was a civil marriage. They were childless. The marriage was not a success. He lived at her house, they were glad that it had become easier for him because he was an invalid.” Now it is known exactly that Filatov V.K. was not married during the war.¹ Therefore doubts arise that the Zhuravlevs were in the village of Isetskoe at that time. When I asked them what their father Zhuravlev B.V. had been they answered that he had long been in captivity in Poland wounded in the legs and then had been exchanged for somebody. Zhuravlevs knew nothing about his relationship with V.K. Filatov. I asked for his photo. They refused to give it. When we voyaged from Samara to Leningrad in 1966, father would call Zhuravlev B.V. up and visited him. We thought that they had known each other long before the war. When father went to Melnichy Ruchei, he never took us along. When father and I went to see “memorable places”, as he called them, in Leningrad, I remember that he showed me the places where the Russian tsars had shed blood – in Winter Palace, in the streets, namely the embankment where terrorists had killed Alexander II. I asked him, why Alexander II had been killed. He answered, that he was a progressive man, who wanted to change much in life, but was killed. The Revolutioners did not want the Tsars to rule Russia. The “Spas-na-krovi” church was built in honour of that Tsar. In the Winter Palace he showed me the dining room where Kerensky’s provisional government had sat. But Kerensky had not managed to keep power. “These people have changed the Tsars and this has led to civil war” – father said. Father showed me Mikhailovsky castle where Pavel Ist had been killed. We walked about the town with mother, at father’s request. He would get tired. Mother took me to St. Peter and Paul’s fortress and we went to St. Peter and Paul’s Cathedral where I saw, for the first time, the Tsars’ tombs. Everything was interesting to me, I tried to be close to the guide to hear and learn more. I was especially struck by the fine marble tombstones. The size of the Cathedral was also impressive. We were in churches, cathedrals, and museums. We visited all the environs, and parks. Such was my childhood. Every summer we were in Leningrad. Every time they told me about the life of the northern capital and its people, and, of course, they fixed in my mind, that all that had been built on the initiative of the Tsars. I was surprised why, instead of going to health resorts (and we could allow for it), our parents would take us to Leningrad for two months and we would live at mother’s sister’s place (Olga Kuzminichna) as if there was no other place on earth, in Russia

      Besides that, the contact with the city on the Neva continued in autumn, when it was harvest time. Trucks would come to us from Leningrad and the drivers would often tell us about the city. During my visits to Leningrad I was also informed about the history of the blockade, they would tell me about the heroism of the people of Leningrad. I remember our visit to Piskarevskoye cemetery. Father, when recollecting his youth, would often speak about his travels about south Russia – it was very warm there and of course there was access to the sea. Together with other lads of the same, or almost the same age, he would spend the summers in southern towns. There was enough food there, there was no need of a special dwelling. Father would swim a lot and dive. But he could not dive deep because if he did, blood started running from his nose and ears. They dived for cockle-shells and caught fish and lobsters. This was between 1921 and 1928. He often went to the Sukhumi and Saakhi health resorts. There was a mud-resort at Saakhi, and father could get mud-baths there. He was in Baku and in the Crimea. Once father said that at that time he had tried to get work at the Dneprogess building, but conditions were very hard there and he, on the advice of someone from the personnel went to Magnitka. But there was mainly physical work there and he, being of delicate health, could not work there and went to the Cheliabinsk tractor works (to-day there is a Highway Institute in Cheliabinsk) and then to “Uralmashzavod”. At both plants there were engineers from Germany who suggested that he study to be a road-building engineer, since, as they explained, in disrupted Russia there was a lot of work in the reconstruction of roads and bridges

      Having got work at “Uralmashzavod”, he entered the Highway Institute, where he studied for several years. I always wondered how without education he could obtain full-time tuition at a technical institute. At the same time, according to the documents, between 1930 and 1932 Father studied by correspondence, and from 1932 to 1934 he was a full time student at the Lunacharsky Tiumen Pedagogical Institute (see his biography for 1967). We have a reference given to him in 1933 at the Highway Institute that he was of poor estate, from a shoe-maker’s family, but having the right to vote.¹ That year they started issueing passports. Passports and references were issued according to one’s place of residence registration. Father lived in a hostel and was directed to the institute from where he worked (the year unknown). One can judge from the certificate of graduation from the free-time workers’ school at the Lunacharsky Tiumen Pedagogical Institute that he had not lived in Tiumen, and they had not demanded any reference there. From the documents, the tuition term at that school was 1930 to 1934, hence, father had not been registered in Tiumen. It turns out that he could have graduated from the Highway Institute, too. Clearly, it ought to have been so. Thus they had not known him in Tiumen until 1934, when he became a full-time student of the Pedagogical Institute, then, again, a free-time student of this Institute from 1937 to 1939.² We have no documents concerning the Highway Institute. But where are they? It is interesting that the certificates contain some discrepancies. Certificate #22909 of the middle school teacher V.K. Filatov’s graduation from the Teacher’s Institute in Tiumen in 1936 was issued on August 9, 1938 and signed by RSFSR people’s comissar of education L. Tiurkin himself. The question is: how does a graduate from the Institute, without a certificate get work in 1936? Maybe, such were the rules in 1936? It follows from the certificate signed by the Deputy Director of the Pedagogical Institute on July 17, 1937 and found in the Institute’s archive, that on July 1, 1936 he graduated from the Teacher’s Institute as a geography teacher. Then it gets more interesting. By order of deputy director #24/79 of 18.07.1937 he was admitted to the Pedagogical Institute as a third-year student of the free-time geography faculty, and as a graduate from the Teacher’s Institute of the Tiumen’ Pedagogical Institute. The printed order on V.K. Filatov’s graduation from the Institute has not been found. The geography teacher’s diploma #054485, given to Filatov V.K. on December 16, 1939 reads that he entered the Pedagogical Institute in 1934 and graduated from it in 1939. The result is that Filatov V.K. entered the Pedagogical Institute not in 1937 as a third-year student, but in 1934, and at the same time, according to order #63 of July 2^nd, 1934 he was admitted to the Teacher’s Institute. If he entered the Pedagogical Institute in 1934, according to the record of the higher-education diploma and not of the certificate, then, again, according to the certificate, he graduated from the Teacher’s Institute on July 1, 1936 and by order #24/79 of 18.07.1937 he was admitted as a third-year student of the Pedagogical Institute. Then one year (1936—1937) of study in the Pedagogical Institute falls out. In the extract from order #122 of July 25^th, 1939, paragraph 1, the management of the Pedagogical Institute commends and thanks officially the four-year, free-time student, Filatov V.K. for excellent studies and social work. Signed by the Director of the Institute, Korolev. Again, it does not make five years. That is, he studied from 1934 to 1939, but in 1939 Filatov V.K. was a four-year student and on December 12, 1939 he obtained a higher-education diploma. This does not fit with five-years of studies. It means that his studies ought to have lasted for seven years, i.e., from 1934 to 1941, and father’s diploma ought to have been issued on December 16^th, 1941. But from archival reference #51 of 12.09.1967, from the Department of public education of the Administration of Isetsk Region, Tiumen Province, in 1941 Filatov V.K. was the acting Director of this department. Though, they could count the years of studies in the Teacher’s Institute and Pedagogical Institute as a term needed to obtain a higher education, that is, 5 years. But, again, it is more than 5 years, i.e., 7 years.