What inspired you to revisit and revise your grandmother’s memoir for a second edition?
That was a question I was asked during the book launch for the 2nd edition of Upheaval and a question which I’m often asked by both friends and contacts on social media.
I never envisaged revisiting Upheaval, the memoir my grandmother Olga Woronoff published in 1932. I originally read it when I was a teenager, later when I was in my twenties. As is often the case with books, age changed my perspective on the narrative. But one thing never changed, I always saw my grandparents and their families as characters in a novel, not as real people who happened to be my ancestors. Because to me, my grandparents were the old, white haired, rather frail people I knew, not the wealthy, romantic, elegant people in Upheaval.
I was bored one day and decided to Google all the names in my immediate family. You can imagine my surprise when I typed my maternal grandfather’s name, Paul Woronoff (and the Russian equivalent Pavel Voronov), in the search bar, to discover he was apparently one of the crushes of the Grand Duchess Olga, the eldest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra. As I dove deeper down the rabbit hole I discovered forums which speculated on this relationship and I was hooked.
The only primary source which I knew of was my grandmother’s memoir, so I reread Upheaval to see if she had written anything about it, but she hadn’t. However, I did find several passages in the memoir which puzzled me, so I began to search for clarification. I thought my sons might be interested in what I found and perhaps some of my friends. Then I discovered social media groups which were focused on the Romanovs, and some of them mentioned my grandfather, so the idea began to form that the information I found might appeal to a wider audience.
My journey into the history of my grandparents took me along many different paths. Most of it had to be done online, which limited my findings. Another limitation was my inability to understand the Russian language. However, I was fortunate to make connections with various historians, researchers and experts like Helen Azar, George Hawkins and Svetlana Starkova in St Petersburg who has been incredibly helpful.
I started off small, using the tools I have written about in my eBook 5 Ways I Discovered More About My Family History, and then gradually expanded my research, wandering off the path many times as there are so many both fascinating and terrible stories from that time in Russian history.
After the initial disbelief I felt when I discovered the link between my grandparents and the last Imperial Family of Russia, what inspired me to continue with my research, and still does, was my curiosity. I am curious to discover not only the dry facts about my ancestors – birth dates, marriages, death dates, etc – but also the stories about their lives. What they did, where they lived, how they lived and why they made the decisions they did.
The 2nd edition of Upheaval has a lot more information in it than the original version. Apart from my explanatory notes, there is my grandmother’s diary from 1919 and letters between her and the two eldest Grand Duchesses, daughters of Tsar Nicholas II. If you are interested in a personal experience of life in Russia before and during the Revolution, Upheaval is a story you should read.
