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

interesting people. He told me about one of them who was a man working at “Uralmashzavod” and who had graduated from the Highway Institute. Later on, when father spoke about the importance of learning languages, he recollected that that man knew German perfectly because he had associated with German engineers. Father told us about the fate of this man during the war: he was in the partisan detachment in the occupied territory. His messenger in Poland Yavorsky, a former forester in Bielovezhskaya Pushcha, had lived in our village. Yavorsky associated with father and told father about this man in my presence. The man they talked about was Kuznetsov Nikolai Nikolaevich. I’ll remember it all my life. Only now, after decades, have I understood that Kuznetsov was a man who was well acquainted with father. They had been acquainted for a long time. Father took Kuznetsov history to heart and during his life he thoroughly studied all the related materials published in the press. The impression was that father had been with him all his life. Besides that, Litvinov Georgy lived in our village. He was another man who during the war had also known those partisans, such were the rules. Father would meet with him and they would speak about the war. I remember it well and it is still of interest to me because the detachment where N.I. Kuznetsov had been was located in Bielovezhskaya Pushcha, where, as father often recollected, he had been in his early childhood with his parents. He spoke so often and in such detail about that place, that is, Rovno that one would think that he had been there later on, and not just once. During the war Mother had also been there. She was a medical sister, in 1943—1944 their hospital accompanied the army over Bielorussia and the Ukraine. Father would often speak with me about the usefulness of sciences. For instance, he would cite not only the works of scientists but also the deeds of Peter the First, stressing their force and emphasizing the importance of getting into the bottom of all spheres of knowledge and learning the arts, literature and languages. We lived in a village where the native villagers were the Germans and the Dutch, from the times of Catherine II. He himself spoke German with the villagers but at home he never did. He would often suggest that one ought to know languages and use them to learn the culture of other peoples. Later on, being a student of the faculty of foreign languages at the S.M. Kirov Pedagogical Institute, I would often hear from him that what we study at the Institute is only theory, and one needs practice. But there was no practice in the spoken language. However, I translated both technical texts and texts on archaeology, history, fish-breeding, physics, and chemistry, etc. By 1975, I was already in my four year. I was in the group “Poisk” (Search), which studied the lives of the students of our Institute who had been in World War II. That year a Museum of Glory was created. Because we started this museum the RSFSR Ministry of Education awarded our group “Poisk” with a bonus, and the management of the institute decided to send us students, to Bielorussia, to visit the most famous sites of the war.Before leaving for Minsk, in May of 1975, I told father about it. Father listened to me and suddenly said that he had studied in the Highway Institute and worked at practising the language. Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov, a future hero of the Soviet Union, a known secret service agent, studied and worked with him. Father said that Nikolai Ivanovich spoke German fluently, and when he was taking his examinations he wrote his graduation essay in German. Kuznetsov spoke German and wrote it without any mistakes, better than the other students wrote and spoke their native language. Father said that I ought to know German as well as Kuznetsov had known it. Then he said that the body of N.I. Kuznetsov had not been found, and the statement that he had been killed was only a rumour. Father said: “When you are in Minsk, look at Kuznetsov photo in the WW II Museum. That photo is the only original available. His weapon and his officer’s map case are also there.”

      Later I told father about our trip. He listened to me and said nothing. Still, I wonder why father remembered that man for so long. From the documents available in our family he had not participated in the war and could not know any of these details. Namely, about the photo being the only original or about Kuznetsov’s personal weapon and map case or that all these things are kept in the WW II Museum in Minsk

      He had never been there, as far as we know. I thought that maybe he had learned about it from Yavorsky who lived in our village, but that was in the 60’s and Yavorsky had been very old already and also had not left the village. How could that be? This fact of his biography has also not been clarified. We’ve sent inquiries to the Highway Institutes in the Urals and Siberia about father and got answers that there was no such student. To-day we should, probably, study not only our father’s biography but also the biography of Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov. It is clear from publications that Kuznetsov was called the Hero of the Soviet Union not post mortem but while he was still living. In the book of the Heroes of the Soviet Union kept in the archives of the Military-historical museum of artillery, military engineering and communication, there is a record: “Kuznetsov N.I. – partisan, secret-service agent, Hero of the Soviet Union.” No other Kuznetsovs. The facts of his death are still unknown. Somebody had seen something, somebody had heard something. Not more. Theodor Gladkov in his book Disappeared from the place of attempt writes that people still hope that Nikolai Ivanovich is still alive and that maybe he has moved to another place, with his death feigned. And that Kuznetsov has continued his work but under another name and on another theme, because at that time the era of nuclear confrontation was approaching

      Father would tell that N.I. Kuznetsov had been concerned with he search for the Amber room. And he said that in Koenigsberg, on the keft side of the highway going into town, there was an underground airdrome where it was kept in one of the wells. But nobody had searched for it in that region. It is of interest that the head of the geo-archaeological expedition on the search for the Amber room in the 60’s and 70’s at Kaliningrad, a Candidate of History, expert in the recent history of Germany, Andrei Stanislavovich Przhezdomsky is of the opinion that “…The Amber room and numerous valuables of interest not only to us but to world culture have remained on the territory of Prussia, namely, on the territory of Koenigsberg. Only the lack of skill, our famous haphazard ways and inability to approach the case from the scientific point of view, seriously explains a lack of results. If we can overcome our shortcomings, we shall be able to bring the valuables back.” ¹. Maybe their lives had really intersected and we know nothing about it. We do not know whether father had ever been to Bielorussia or what friends he had there. I was born when he was 49 and his life during those earlier years we have only just begun to uncover. Much is to be studied. The life of this man is enigmatic and mysterious. We do not know how many similar fates there have been in Russia. If each of us studied these lives, we would enlarge the volume of information about Russian history, with the deeds of these people. Father had passed through numerous ordeals. For instance, three wars: World War I, Civil war, and World War II. Years of disruption of collectivization, anad of reconstruction of the economy. After the Civil war he was registered nowhere for 12 years – he lived in several orphanages. Therefore it would have been difficult to find him if anyone had wanted to. We have mapped his life and seen that he was mainly in central Russia, and in southern Russia where the climate was milder, and there was plenty of fruit and vegetables, and mud resorts. He had lived for a long time in the Siberia and in the Urals where his family had been executed and where he had studied. Grigory Rasputin’s relatives had also lived there. Here it becomes clear why Father appeared as a student in 1930. Industry was developing intensively at that time. In 1933 a passport system was introduced. One ought to be registered somewhere, to work and live. In 1930 he entered the Highway Institute (we have a related reference). Father had never kept a diary, his photos were not numerous, he neither liked to be photographed nor to take photos himself. But he had bought us two cameras and books on photography. We learned to do photography ourselves and we were photographed by other people on father’s request. Once a lad had come and lived with us for two weeks (it was Kukolev). He photographed us but left no photo. There are no other documents in our family apart from certificates, diplomas, references, and birth certificates. Father had asked us to guard these documents like they were the apple of the eye. He said that they contained everything about his life, and the remaining could be found in books such as Gorky’s books “V liudiakh” (Among People) and “Moi universitety” (My Universities). In all his life father had never sought for information