Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once wrote, “Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.” If I can make a judgement from this comment alone, my parents, especially my father, left me a very substantial way to remember them. The tub in the photo only holds
Apparently my grandmother kept a diary. It was brought to my attention last week when a friend, who speaks Russian, was kind enough to look through the documents I have. With her help I have been able to label and sort the various papers. Now I know what I should
Fear lurked in the background of my childhood. It was never named when I was a child but, as I grew older, I learnt its name was Communism. Both sides of my family feared Communists and especially Bolsheviks, with good reason. In her book, Upheaval, my grandmother wrote of traumatic
Last year, I wrote this post about four ways to research your family history. This week I discovered the limitations of research while I was writing an essay for my study. The task was to write a short narrative on a person, place, time or event, using techniques based on
These were the siblings of my grandmother. In this picture her eldest sister Clair and her brother Dima are shown performing a Russian dance. Cleopatra was called Clair as she detested her given name. She was, according to my grandmother, sensitive, kind, straightforward and truthful. She acted older than her
With the 100th anniversary of the death of the Romanovs approaching next month, my thoughts have been more and more on the Russian side of my family; my mother’s family. My grandmother’s family were Russian aristocrats. As a young lady, she became a Maid of Honour to the Empress Alexandra