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Video tags
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Russian
00:00:18
Berlin became the center
of Russian emigration00:00:20
because it was cheap to live there.00:00:22
They tried to get jobs as taxi drivers,
private tutors, bakers and salespeople.00:00:28
Between 1918 and 1924,00:00:31
more books were published here
than in Moscow and Petrograd.00:00:34
“The bastard came
from the Tolstoy family.”00:00:37
“A count, landowner and bourgeois squared;
he is now published by “Gosizdat”.”00:00:42
The so-called “good Russians”
quarrel with other “good Russians.”00:00:48
Nothing new.00:00:50
More than 30 countries agreed
to acknowledge this document.00:00:55
They either rented some tiny rooms
on the outskirts of town00:00:58
or chose to stay in villages near Prague.00:01:01
People sitting in Prager Diele
and drinking cognac.00:01:03
-What mood were they in?
-It was usually terrible.00:01:06
Nabokov lived in Halensee, Berlin,
for 15 years.00:01:09
As they say on the Internet,
he hated it the whole time.00:01:12
The Russian emigrants
were in an environment00:01:15
that was strongly
pro-communist and pro-Soviet.00:01:19
The Bolsheviks themselves established
a White underground movement00:01:22
that would go down in history
as the Trust organization.00:01:27
We lived peeking out over the sheets.00:01:32
A chekist asked Shklovsky
how he felt about his life there.00:01:35
As legend has it, Shklovsky answered,00:01:37
“It’s like being a living
fox in a furrier’s shop.”00:01:40
When Hitler rose to power,00:01:42
what was happening with
Russian emigrants at the time?00:02:20
Hello, guys. This is the second episode
of our miniseries00:02:24
which explores the White émigrés
of the first wave.00:02:27
If you haven’t seen the beginning,
click here to watch it00:02:30
in order to keep up with the storylines.00:02:32
It’s only natural that these storylines
are taking us here, to Berlin,00:02:36
a city that is once again
becoming the center00:02:39
of the latest Russian emigration wave.00:02:42
Yet a hundred years ago,
it acquired such status for a reason00:02:46
one would deem
inapplicable to Berlin today –00:02:50
it was one of the cheapest
and most accessible European cities.00:02:54
I’m going to elaborate on that later.00:02:56
There was one more reason as to why
Berlin was favored among the emigrants.00:03:00
In the beginning of the 20th century,
Europe was the railway continent.00:03:04
Commercial aviation didn’t exist.00:03:06
Well, it did, but wasn’t
as developed as it is today.00:03:09
No airports or flights to speak of.00:03:11
Berlin was home
to the biggest railway hub,00:03:16
and that’s why the vast majority
of the first wave emigrants00:03:20
who were leaving for Europe
arrived at the Berlin Ostbahnhof.00:03:25
Many would stay here for a long time.00:03:28
Just to give you an idea,
755 thousand Russian emigrants00:03:31
were registered in Europe
throughout the 20s,00:03:36
and those were just the ones
in the official register.00:03:39
By various estimates,
200-300 thousand lived in Berlin.00:03:44
Again, to put it into perspective,00:03:45
the population of the city at the time
was about four million people.00:03:50
It was impossible to walk through Berlin
or spend the day out and about00:03:55
and not hear any Russian.00:03:57
It was even more surprising,
because it hadn’t even been ten years00:04:00
since Russia and Germany had fought
each other in World War One.00:04:13
Germany had lost the war
and was at a low ebb.00:04:18
It wasn’t easy to revive
production in the country,00:04:22
and inflation was very high.00:04:25
Everyone was in a state of bewilderment.
Society was traumatized.00:04:38
To be fair, Berlin can feel
very inhospitable in terms of weather.00:04:43
We’re filming this in late March,
and it’s very cold here.00:04:46
So, you’ll have to excuse the hat.00:04:47
Remember when I said that Berlin
turned into the center of White emigration00:04:53
primarily because of
the cheap cost of living?00:04:56
So, how did it happen?00:05:01
Because after the First World War,
the German empire fell.00:05:06
In 1918, as a result of
the November Revolution,00:05:09
a new Constituent National Assembly
was elected.00:05:12
At one of its conventions
held in Weimar in August,00:05:15
a constitution of a new
democratic republic was adopted.00:05:19
It was called the Weimar Republic.00:05:21
Among other things, the Weimar Republic
had to make reparations00:05:25
in the aftermath of Germany’s defeat
in World War One.00:05:28
The economic situation was very difficult
even without those reparations.00:05:33
The country was in crisis.
Public opinion was low,00:05:36
with steep inflation and
the Deutsche Mark in a free fall.00:05:40
That’s why wealthy emigrants,
or wealthy foreigners in general,00:05:46
felt very comfortable in Germany.
It was much like the 90s’ Russia.00:05:50
Back then, you could go on a spree
with just a hundred dollars.00:05:55
It’s important to note that there weren’t00:05:57
many wealthy people
among the Russian emigrants.00:06:00
Even those who had millions in Russia,00:06:03
couldn’t get them transferred
outside the country.00:06:06
They only took what they could.00:06:10
Some were luckier than others and would
smuggle in some family jewels or gold,00:06:15
while the rest would arrive in what they
had been wearing with a tiny suitcase.00:06:19
The majority of Russian emigrants lived
either in poverty or very close to it.00:06:24
They didn’t get to be picky about jobs.00:06:26
Wrangel’s soldiers,
as Wrangler himself put it,00:06:30
“traded in their rifles for shovels,
their shashkas for ploughs.”00:06:33
They worked in lumbering,
at gift shops, and in bakeries.00:06:37
Many became taxi drivers,
which happened a lot in Paris especially.00:06:42
Colonels rolled cigarettes at factories,
officers became gardeners, for example,00:06:48
former actors often were
seen working as bartenders.00:06:51
You surely remember
Remarque's "Three Comrades".00:06:53
It features a minor Russian emigrant
character by the name of Count Orlov.00:06:57
He works as a kellner,
i.e. waiter, a movie extra,00:07:01
and a professional dancing partner.00:07:04
Remarque writes, “Every night
he prayed to Our Lady of Kazan00:07:09
that he might get a job as
receiving-clerk in a first-class hotel;00:07:14
and he was prone to weep
when he got drunk.”00:07:19
It was easier for those who spoke German.
Some would join the labor force.00:07:27
Many strived to get jobs as taxi drivers,
private tutors, bakers,00:07:33
salespeople and assistants,00:07:38
others tried to make
a living off translations.00:07:41
Real emigration makes it abundantly clear
that every job is worthwhile.00:07:49
Honest work is always a good thing.00:07:54
Among other things,
Berlin became the capital00:07:56
of Russian emigrant literature
and it’s publishing industry.00:07:59
Between 1918 and 1924,
more books were published here00:08:04
than in Moscow and Petrograd,
amounting to over two thousand titles.00:08:07
This included more than a hundred
Russian periodicals,00:08:10
all completely different
in terms of their political views.00:08:13
Main liberal newspaper was called "Rul’".
The brainchild of Vladimir Nabokov Sr.,00:08:19
Vladimir Nabokov’s father,
who led the Cadets Party.00:08:22
Rul’s main purpose was to heal the rift
between party members and unite them.00:08:27
A German publishing house
called Ullstein helped printing it.00:08:31
In the beginning of the 1920s,
both Ullstein and its headquarters00:08:34
were situated here, at Kochstrasse.00:08:38
Publishing books and newspapers in Russian
was a profitable business,00:08:42
not least thanks to a
huge audience of readers00:08:45
all across Germany and Europe in general.00:08:48
Every party had its own newspaper.00:08:51
Some of them only existed for a day,
week or month, others went on longer.00:08:57
"Rul’" was probably one of the most
significant publications.00:09:04
At first, in the early 1920s,
"Rul’" was even profitable00:09:09
with a circulation of up to
twenty thousand copies.00:09:12
Over the years, Bunin, Sasha Chorny
and Teffi were published there.00:09:16
It was also the first newspaper
to print the works of00:09:19
Vladimir Nabokov Jr.
under the pen name “Vlad Sirin”.00:09:22
Rul’s rival on the other side00:09:25
was "Nakanune", a newspaper
partly funded by Soviet money.00:09:30
It was a Soviet propaganda mouthpiece,
much like today’s RT.00:09:34
It was the only newspaper allowed
to be brought into Soviet Russia.00:09:38
The works of Bulgakov, Esenin, Zoshchenko
and others were printed in "Nakanune".00:09:42
One of this newspaper’s main
publishers and ideologists00:09:46
was someone who didn’t really
stay an emigrant for long.00:09:50
His story is very telling on the one hand
and quite unusual on the other.00:10:05
It still remains unclear
whether Aleksey Tolstoy00:10:09
was related to Leo Tolstoy or not.00:10:12
The thing is, his mother Alexandra,
while already pregnant,00:10:16
was married to Count Nikolai Tolstoy,
who was Leo Tolstoy’s third cousin.00:10:22
But before her son was born,
Alexandra left her husband00:10:26
for chairman of the county land
administration Aleksey Bostrom.00:10:29
Thus, many biographers believe that
Bostrom was Aleksey Tolstoy’s real father.00:10:35
In that case, he didn’t
have anything to do00:10:38
neither with the count title
nor with Leo Tolstoy.00:10:41
I’d like to dismantle the myth
behind his origin.00:10:46
When we were kids,
my dad explained the matter to us.00:10:52
Why is Aleksey Tolstoy not Bostrom’s son?00:10:55
Mendel's laws are at play here,
the laws of genetics.00:10:59
Two blue-eyed parents can’t
produce a brown-eyed child.00:11:05
Bostrom and Alexandra Turgeneva
both had blue eyes,00:11:09
while Aleksey Tolstoy was brown-eyed.00:11:11
Pigment couldn't appear out of nowhere;
it isn’t genetically possible.00:11:15
Then in an archive, we found indirect,00:11:18
but nonetheless psychologically
interesting confirmation.00:11:21
Alexandra Leontyevna, having
left her husband, Count Tolstoy,00:11:25
wrote this to her beloved Bostrom.00:11:28
“I’m leaving for you with
this little bastard under my heart.”00:11:32
Ouch.00:11:34
If a woman has any doubts,00:11:36
she will never say
such a thing to her lover.00:11:40
The bastard came from the Tolstoy family.00:11:48
However, Aleksey Nikolaevich Tolstoy
had ambitions00:11:51
the range of which aligned
with those of a true Tolstoy.00:11:55
Later, he would be sarcastically
dubbed “The Red Count”,00:11:58
and you’re about to find out why.00:12:01
When World War One broke out,
Tolstoy went to the frontlines00:12:04
as a correspondent for "Russkie Vedomosti".
There, he wrote a few plays and articles.00:12:09
By the start of the revolution,
he was already a famous writer.00:12:12
Tolstoy didn’t recognize neither
the revolution nor the Bolsheviks.00:12:18
Later he would write,00:12:20
“During the great war of the Whites
and the Reds, I was on the Whites’ side.00:12:24
I physically hated the Bolsheviks,00:12:27
considered them the devastators
of the Russian State,00:12:30
the reason for all the troubles.”00:12:32
In 1919, Tolstoy and his third wife –00:12:36
he had a total of four wives,
well, he was full of love –00:12:39
a poetess Natalia Krandievskaya
left Russia.00:12:43
First, they went to Constantinople
like everyone else, then to Paris.00:12:46
There he wrote his first novel "Sisters"
from "The Road to Calvary" trilogy.00:12:51
In 1921, he left Paris for Berlin.00:12:54
In a letter to his friend Bunin,
Tolstoy wrote00:12:56
that Berlin was a calm place
and the Germans worked really well,00:13:01
that the Bolsheviks would never reach
Berlin and that he felt at peace here.00:13:06
Berlin was enticing because it was
the capital of everything:00:13:12
art world, literary world, theater world,
entrepreneurship and so on.00:13:19
Many magazines and newspapers
were being published in Berlin,00:13:23
and the paychecks were hefty.00:13:25
His social circle was there
and that’s why he moved.00:13:29
How was he doing in Berlin financially?00:13:32
Amazing. He didn’t return to Soviet Russia00:13:38
because he was struggling financially and
wanted to have his comfortable life back.00:13:44
Rather, he exchanged one wealthy lifestyle
for another prosperous one.00:13:49
He was publishing one book after another.
He was a famous and relevant author00:13:57
who gave speeches and received accolades.00:14:01
It wasn’t a material choice for him,
but a much harder one.00:14:07
Bunin, in turn, wrote that many
laughed at Tolstoy in emigration,00:14:14
dismissively calling him Alyoshka –
or Alyosha in a more condescending manner.00:14:19
In general, everyone liked him
because he was funny00:14:23
and interesting company
and had a knack for storytelling.00:14:26
According to Bunin, he was also
“a cynic admirable in his candidness00:14:31
and gifted with a great and sharp mind.00:14:33
At the same time, he would often pretend
to be a goofy and blithe ne'er-do-well.00:14:37
He was also a clever leech."
A "leech", a now forgotten word,00:14:41
is someone who tries to profit
from every situation.00:14:45
There are recollections of Tolstoy’s
tendencies to act like Ostap Bender.00:14:49
When he was leaving Odessa
on his emigrant journey,00:14:53
he had to travel in third class,
just like many others.00:14:56
But as soon as the captain found out
Tolstoy was aboard,00:14:59
he, being a foreigner, assumed that it was
Leo Tolstoy, the author of "War and Peace".00:15:04
Aleksey Tolstoy didn’t try
to change his mind and said,00:15:07
“Yes, I did that, I wrote "War and Peace".”00:15:10
He then moved into a first class cabin
and continued his travels in comfort.00:15:16
Later, when Tolstoy was
in Europe, as legend has it,00:15:20
he sold his Russian estate
to a local merchant.00:15:24
Needless to say, he never had one.00:15:26
I’m sure he did so on numerous occasions.00:15:29
Many remembered him selling random things.
He once sold some teapots to ten people.00:15:37
He was much like Nevzorov
from his own book, he was Buratino.00:15:41
He was Alice the Fox and Basilio the Cat,
Karabas Barabas and Duremar.00:15:46
He could be everyone,
because he was multi-faceted.00:15:49
-You mean Nevzorov as in his character?
-Of course.00:15:52
Not the Nevzorov we know today,
might I add.00:15:55
He might’ve been able to
become today’s Nevzorov,00:15:58
but such a mask, such a position
as well as idiosyncrasies00:16:03
would’ve been alien to him.
He loved life a lot.00:16:06
That’s how actor-like he was,00:16:10
that's why he had no trouble
sparking a conversation at a table00:16:13
or why his guests and
women found him charming.00:16:19
As Bunin recollected, Tolstoy was
leading an idle life in emigration.00:16:23
He liked to visit rich people’s houses.00:16:25
Don’t forget that everyone was
strapped for money back then.00:16:29
At the same time,
in a letter to his friend,00:16:31
the writer Korney Chukovsky,
who lived in the USSR, Tolstoy wrote,00:16:36
“Emigration bored me to death.00:16:40
I don’t know if you’re able to feel so
overwhelmingly what a homeland means00:16:45
or what it’s like to have the sun shine
a familiar light on your rooftop.”00:16:49
That marked the beginning of
Tolstoy’s return to the Soviet Union.00:16:55
An important step in that direction00:16:57
was made through his
cooperation with Maxim Gorky,00:17:01
another writer who lived
in Berlin at the time.00:17:05
Tolstoy also found himself interested
in the Smenovekhovtsy’s ideology,00:17:09
a movement that united those emigrants
who in fact recognized the Soviet regime.00:17:13
Tolstoy’s works were printed in
"Nakanune", a Smenovekhovtsy paper.00:17:16
He was even hired as an editor
of the newspaper’s literary supplement.00:17:20
It was almost common knowledge that it was
funded by the State Political Directorate.00:17:25
"Nakanune" was sold on the streets
of Moscow and Petrograd.00:17:30
This partnership caused some
friction for Tolstoy in emigration.00:17:34
It was no surprise as not many
emigrants supported that ideology.00:17:38
In April 1922, Tolstoy received
a letter from Nikolai Tchaikovsky,00:17:42
not to confuse with Korney Chukovsky.00:17:44
Tchaikovsky was a famous revolutionary and
founder of the Popular Socialist Party.00:17:49
He emigrated after the
Bolsheviks had taken over.00:17:51
In the letter, he unequivocally
demanded that Tolstoy explain himself.00:17:59
Or, in modern terms, he asked Tolstoy
why he was repping "Nakanune"00:18:03
and Bolshevik propaganda.00:18:06
In an open letter to Tchaikovsky, Tolstoy
wrote that even though he hated Bolsheviks00:18:12
“My conscience tells me not to hide
in the basement, but to go back to Russia00:18:17
and contribute something to
our weather-worn Russian ship,00:18:21
even if just a nail, to follow
in Peter the Great’s footsteps.”00:18:25
In fact, as this was an open letter,
it wasn’t addressed to Tchaikovsky,00:18:30
but to the Soviet government, which
Tolstoy asked to allow him to return.00:18:35
His request was approved.00:18:37
In 1923, Tolstoy, his wife
and their sons went back to the USSR.00:18:43
My grandmother and his third wife,
Natalia Vasilyevna Krandievskaya,00:18:48
shared the following story.00:18:49
My five-year-old dad, at a metro station
in Berlin, wondered, “What’s a snowdrift?”00:18:55
Aleksey Tolstoy then said, “Enough.00:18:59
My son doesn’t know what a snowdrift is!
We’re going back to Russia!”00:19:03
He wasn’t going back on a whim.
No one ever does that.00:19:08
He was returning under
Leon Trotsky’s personal guarantee.00:19:13
Where did he get his Soviet passport?00:19:15
I’m not sure he had a Soviet passport
when he was going back.00:19:19
There was no need.00:19:20
He brought the refugee documents
that he had already had.00:19:24
As soon as he arrived, all the necessary
documents were promptly issued.00:19:30
The Aleksey Tolstoy monument is located
right in downtown Moscow.00:19:34
According to Korney Chukovsky,
upon his return to the USSR,00:19:38
Tolstoy threw himself into work at once,
leaving no time for a break.00:19:42
He reset his biography and redeemed
himself in the eyes of the Bolsheviks.00:19:47
There was a special term
for it in the USSR,00:19:49
“to disarm in the face of the party”.
Tolstoy disarmed,00:19:53
meaning that he started to
glorify the Soviet regime.00:19:56
It culminated in 1933 when he
once again boarded a steamboat,00:20:00
yet the travel itinerary was different.00:20:03
It was the infamous trip Soviet writers
took down the White Sea–Baltic Canal00:20:08
that prisoners of the Gulag were building.00:20:10
That trip resulted in the creation
of a photo book called00:20:14
“The I.V. Stalin White Sea–Baltic Canal;00:20:16
On Effective Methods
of Personal Rehabilitation”00:20:19
Solzhenitsyn would later
comment on the book saying that00:20:22
it was the first book in the history of
world literature that glorified slavery.00:20:26
You see, everyone got involved
in this mess. Everyone.00:20:32
Aleksey Tolstoy liked to have
a good night’s sleep,00:20:35
I’m telling you this as someone
with a similar set of genes.00:20:40
Had it bothered him,
he would’ve gone insane.00:20:46
He couldn’t stand being anxious.00:20:50
There was, however,
something tragic about him.00:20:53
You can’t love Russia this much
without it being tragic.00:20:56
But it’s not the sense of tragedy
that doesn’t let you sleep at night,00:21:00
it’s the sense of drama, I guess.00:21:01
One sleeps well only if he
believes that all is done,00:21:04
all's good, it’s no big
deal, it’s just the job.00:21:09
In 1936, Vyacheslav Molotov,
Stalin’s closest ally,00:21:13
spoke at a party congress
and said the following,00:21:15
“Comrades, he used to be Count Tolstoy.
You know who he is now?00:21:19
Now he’s become one of the best
and most popular Soviet authors,00:21:25
Comrade Aleksey Nikolaevich Tolstoy.00:21:27
From then on, Tolstoy
was dubbed “The Red Count”.00:21:31
He became a deputy of the Supreme Soviet,00:21:34
member of the Academy of Sciences
and one of Stalin’s favorite writers.00:21:38
Rumor had it that Tolstoy
enjoyed a lavish lifestyle and00:21:41
lived large during those times
of great trouble in the USSR.00:21:46
According to Anna Akhmatova's memoirs,00:21:49
Tolstoy himself told her
he would feast on caviar,00:21:53
smoked fish, cream, fruit and some
special cucumbers on a daily basis.00:21:58
Akhmatova noted that the country
was facing hunger at the time.00:22:01
This description is strikingly close to
how Pyotr Konchalovsky depicted Tolstoy00:22:06
in his famous painting, –
a sybarite of sorts,00:22:10
a lord of the manor with food and wine
in great abundance, "The Red Count".00:22:15
Yes, it was a sybaritic life.
He was a very wealthy person.00:22:19
He frequented consignment shops. He would
purchase Italian Renaissance paintings00:22:25
and beautiful furniture.
He had exquisite taste.00:22:29
He was making a fortune
off his literary works.00:22:33
But up until mid-1930s, he’d been
a trustworthy and diligent writer00:22:41
that could write just about anything
and adjust his novels to suit00:22:45
the interests of the Soviet authorities.00:22:48
Having returned to the USSR,
Tolstoy finished writing00:22:50
his magnum opus, "The Road to Calvary".00:22:53
As you know, he started working
on it back in Paris in 191800:22:56
and would only finish it in 1941.00:22:58
It’s evident that the
text and plot changed00:23:01
depending on the stance of the
author towards the Soviet government.00:23:06
Tolstoy was awarded
the Stalin Prize for this trilogy00:23:09
as for his novel "Peter the Great",
in which he glorified00:23:13
competent yet violent
individual authority.00:23:17
It’s clear who it was really addressed to.00:23:20
When the Great Patriotic War broke out,00:23:22
Tolstoy started to write for
"Krasnaya Zvezda" paper00:23:26
and stayed there throughout the war.00:23:28
He didn’t witness the victory as he
died from cancer in February of 1945.00:23:33
He was posthumously awarded
with his third Stalin Prize.00:23:38
This monument was erected here
twelve years after his death.00:23:44
This specific location was
chosen because Tolstoy lived00:23:47
just one hundred meters away,
on Malaya Nikitskaya Street.00:23:50
His spacious flat is still there,
it’s literally a stone’s throw away from00:23:55
the house of another writer who praised
the Soviet authorities, Maxim Gorky.00:24:00
I covered his story in detail
in our “Walks Around Moscow” episode00:24:04
that we did last summer, check it out.00:24:06
You can easily guess how
Tolstoy’s success was taken00:24:10
by the émigrés that stayed abroad.00:24:14
It was best put into words
by the emigrant poet Sasha Chorny00:24:18
in his poem written in Paris,00:24:20
“On Wednesday, he called them butchers,
On Thursday, he shined their boots,00:24:24
Lured in by their regale,
With Nakanune in cahoots”.00:24:27
"Nakanune" was a Smenovekhovtsy
newspaper that Tolstoy cooperated with.00:24:31
“His service didn’t go unnoticed,
A count, landowner and bourgeois squared,00:24:36
He is now published by “Gosizdat”.”00:24:39
Later, Tolstoy would travel
abroad numerous times.00:24:41
He was allowed to do so by the government.00:24:44
He also tried to talk
Ivan Bunin into following suit00:24:57
Actually, many emigrants that came
to Germany and Berlin in particular00:25:03
got the impression that the things
they’d gone through in Russia00:25:06
could happen in Germany, too, –
a revolution, coup d'état etc.00:25:13
It was a time of great upheaval
and it wasn’t clear00:25:17
which path the country would
take after the fall of the monarchy.00:25:40
Another country that became
a home for the Russian emigrants00:25:44
was Czechoslovakia, a state newly formed
from the remains of Austria-Hungary00:25:49
in the aftermath of World War One,
just like the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.00:25:56
Czechoslovakia hosted
up to 40,000 Russians.00:26:00
If Berlin’s allure resided
in its low cost of living,00:26:04
Prague was a good place to stay because
emigrants were literally compensated here.00:26:10
The government of Czechoslovakia
established special conditions00:26:13
that would lead to Prague being called
the “Russian Oxford” with one reservation.00:26:19
In Oxford, you do have
to pay a student fee.00:26:21
Here, the Russians were
the ones being paid for coming00:26:25
and receiving academic qualifications.00:26:30
I can’t say that the emigrants
were living a lush life, however00:26:36
they were given an opportunity
to survive, get an education and a job.00:26:44
No one would’ve thought that
Bolsheviks would have such a long reign.00:26:48
That’s why the Czechoslovakian government00:26:52
intentionally pursued
a policy of emigrant selection.00:26:56
They tried to draw in certain groups.00:27:02
First of all, as they called it,
“progressive Russians”,00:27:05
meaning the Russians that
shared leftist democratic views.00:27:08
They hoped that this action would
then be appreciated one way or another.00:27:15
I mean, it wasn’t that these people
would go back to Russia and rise to power.00:27:22
However, they might have connections
with those who would end up at the helm,00:27:27
thus fostering the development
of economic relations00:27:31
between Czechoslovakia and future Russia.00:27:34
So, was it an investment
in their own future?00:27:37
Yes, both in their own future and
in the development of future relations.00:27:46
So, in the early 1920s, the Russian
Aid Action was launched in Prague.00:27:51
Russian Aid Action was a program
to support Russian emigrants.00:27:55
It was financed directly from
the state budget. And what money that was!00:27:58
1924 was the peak of direct and indirect
spending on the Russian refugees00:28:03
it was eighty three million
Czechoslovakian korunas.00:28:06
Today, it would equal about
thirty eight million dollars.00:28:10
No other European country spent this much
money to help the Russian emigrants.00:28:14
Which begs the question:
who was paying for that?00:28:19
In that regard, there is a big beautiful
theory which has been making rounds00:28:24
in different publications for decades.
Now, it’s gained a solid footing online.00:28:30
The theory speculates that the Russian
emigration was sponsored by Russian money,00:28:35
namely by Kolchak’s gold reserves.
Have you ever heard this term?00:28:38
If you haven’t, I will now explain it.00:28:42
To understand who is who in this scenario
we have to go back in time a few years00:28:47
to the Russian Civil War.00:28:50
In 1919, the Czech legionnaires
established Legio Bank.00:28:54
Who were those legionnaires?
They had nothing to do with sport.00:28:58
They were people who had been
taken prisoner during World War One.00:29:02
They had mostly served
in the Austria-Hungary army,00:29:05
of which both Czechia and Slovakia
were part back in the day.00:29:10
They were taken captive,
then the revolution broke out.00:29:13
After all the trials and tribulations,
they joined the Whites in Siberia00:29:17
and fought against the Reds.
This was the famous Czechoslovak Legion.00:29:21
Then the White Army,
which the legion was part of00:29:24
and which would then
come under Kolchak’s control,00:29:27
seized some of the Russian Empire’s
gold reserves that were stored in Kazan.00:29:31
Only some of it, because the Bolsheviks
had already managed to spend the rest.00:29:36
The Whites transported
the remaining gold from Kazan to Omsk.00:29:40
It’s worth noting that they were
already losing ground to the Red Army.00:29:52
My father was supposed to be
part of the armed escort in Saratov00:29:56
that oversaw the loading
of the imperial gold00:29:58
into the boxes and it’s
transportation to Siberia.00:30:01
Did he tell you anything
about what the gold looked like?00:30:04
He did. At first, he didn’t know
what those boxes were for.00:30:09
Someone told him, “Well, try lifting them.00:30:13
It’s a gold reserve, we’re transporting it
to Siberia away from the Bolsheviks.”00:30:20
We’re talking about
an insanely big sum of money.00:30:23
Today, it would equate to
a few billion dollars in cash.00:30:28
The Whites withdrew from Omsk in 1919,
the gold reserve was loaded on the convoy.00:30:35
Together, the convoy, Alexander Kolchak
(the Supreme Ruler of Russia)00:30:39
and his command unit advanced
farther and farther eastward00:30:42
under the protection of
the Czechoslovak Legion.00:30:45
The Allies even insisted that the gold
be sent to Vladivostok. Kolchak refused.00:30:51
He said that he’d rather give the money to
the Bolsheviks than let it escape Russia.00:30:56
To avoid a deep dive into
the history of the Civil War,00:30:59
which we might do
a separate video about someday,00:31:01
Kolchak was betrayed along the way
and handed over to the Reds.00:31:05
He was arrested and shot while
the gold convoy stayed under protection00:31:10
of the Czech legionnaires
as well as the Reds for some time.00:31:15
Eventually, the Czechs were
presented with an agreement,00:31:18
“We’ll let you leave Russia,
give you coal for trains00:31:23
and an opportunity to leave the country.00:31:25
In return, you give us the gold.”
That's what happened.00:31:28
So, most of the gold remained
in Russia at the Bolshevik’s disposal.00:31:35
Four hundred and nine million gold rubles
were returned to Kazan, Moscow00:31:39
and so on and spent on various
needs by the Soviet authorities.00:31:43
Yet the remainder, – because there
was a huge difference, – was sold,00:31:49
but part of it was sent to foreign banks00:31:52
as deposits or guarantees
for loans and credit lines.00:31:59
This money would later be
donated to help Russian refugees.00:32:03
Of course, some was embezzled,
as is often the case.00:32:06
So, legend has it that part of
that money was stored in Legio Bank.00:32:11
There have been many serious studies
about this gold convoy and Kolchak’s gold.00:32:17
In general, esteemed historians have
concurred that this story is a fiction.00:32:22
The establishment of Legio Bank was
indeed funded by the legionnaires' money,00:32:26
but by their personal savings.00:32:28
The Czech legionnaires received
money from the Triple Entente allies00:32:33
and by selling weapons and
ammunition after the war.00:32:36
Yet, Kolchak’s campaign and saga
are surely embodied in Legio Bank00:32:41
and you can see it right now.
You see this frieze?00:32:45
Those are the Czech legionnaires00:32:47
and their trying experience
in Siberia’s barren cold.00:32:51
An important thing to mention here
is, these huge amounts of money00:32:55
that Czechoslovakia allocated
to help the Russian emigrants00:32:58
did have a Russian origin. Yet it had
nothing to do with the Czech legionnaires,00:33:04
but instead was connected
with a certain person.00:33:07
And that person's name
was Nadezhda Abrikosova.00:33:11
She was the wife of Karel Kramář,
Czechoslovakia’s prime minister.00:33:15
They’re not talked about
a lot around here,00:33:18
but I think that women play a key role
in their families and in other regards.00:33:24
They can lift us up or bring us down.00:33:27
So, this Russian Masaryk
aid action was spearheaded00:33:34
by the Russian wife of
Prime Minister Kramář.00:33:37
She was the one who made
Karel Kramář consider it.00:33:41
Of course, it’s not officially stated,
but the context suggests just that.00:33:51
Czechoslovakia had just
become an independent state.00:33:54
From a provincial town,
Prague transformed into a big city.00:33:57
There was a housing issue,
the city wasn’t designed to fit00:34:01
so many new people,
especially Russian refugees.00:34:04
So at first they either lived in dorms
provided by the Czechoslovakian government00:34:09
or tried to find an
apartment, which was hard.00:34:11
They would usually rent
some tiny rooms on the outskirts00:34:15
or settle in villages just outside Prague.00:34:18
They were housed in
Svobodarna and other places00:34:22
that weren’t very comfortable,
but at least they could study.00:34:27
When people have the privilege of
attending school in normal circumstances,00:34:31
they don’t appreciate it.00:34:33
So, the fact that they had to sacrifice
so much to be able to go to school…00:34:39
They would borrow the handbook of
anatomical charts from Czech students,00:34:43
because it was very expensive,00:34:46
and spend their nights copying
the drawings page by page.00:34:49
After lectures and a lunch break,
they would work on construction sites00:34:53
to avoid being dependent
and relying solely on the scholarship00:34:58
provided by the government.00:35:01
Right. My father recalled
that even though they were tired,00:35:04
it was enough for them
to sleep three hours a day.00:35:07
They would spend the rest of
the day taking every opportunity.00:35:12
They had a bucket of ice water in
the yard as they couldn’t afford coffee.00:35:17
So, when they struggled
to keep their eyes open,00:35:20
they’d stick their heads in the bucket
and it would be business as usual.00:35:23
-Was he studying to become a doctor?
-Yes.00:35:26
In Charles University,
the faculty of Medicine.00:35:30
The ancient Charles University
founded back in the 14th century, –00:35:34
this building was built much later, –00:35:36
became in 1920s a hot spot
for Russian students and professors00:35:40
from all over Europe
thanks to the Russian Aid Action.00:35:44
The Russian faculty of Law became
one of Charles University’s campuses.00:35:49
In 1922, its establishment
was met with enthusiasm by00:35:53
the Russian emigrants in Europe
and all Russian émigré publications.00:35:57
It was like, “Look, Russian students
are going to get educated,00:36:00
become the best specialists and work
in the beautiful Russia of the future00:36:04
where there won't be any Bolsheviks.”00:36:06
This faculty graduated a total of
about four hundred specialists.00:36:12
You know what they
studied very rigorously?00:36:17
The Law of the Russian Empire, acts of law
that had been in effect up until 191700:36:24
and other regulations of the
already non-existent country.00:36:29
This gives a very clear idea about
what hopes the Russian emigrants00:36:33
and Russians in exile
were entertaining at the time,00:36:35
what they were waiting for,
where they were going to return to00:36:39
and what laws they’d
abide by in this new Russia.00:36:44
Needless to say, this faculty’s alumni
struggled to find a job in their field.00:36:52
He got his diploma,
but there was a reservation,00:36:55
because the Doctors’ Union
was afraid of the competition.00:36:59
So, they had to give a written guarantee00:37:02
that they wouldn’t start a commercial
medical practice in Czechoslovakia.00:37:08
Basically, a ban on work?00:37:10
A ban on paid work to avoid competition.00:37:14
Because Czech students saw how
rigorously the Russians were studying.00:37:20
They were head and shoulders
above their Czech classmates.00:37:24
Then he was visited by a delegation
from a neighboring village.00:37:29
They said, “Our doctor is retiring,
would you like to take over?”00:37:35
My father told them,
“I can’t, I don’t have citizenship,00:37:39
so I have no right to be
compensated for my work.”00:37:41
“Don’t worry, we’ll settle this, because
we have connections in the Parliament00:37:45
through the Republican Party of Farmers
and Peasants. We'll grant you citizenship,00:37:51
give you a no-interest loan – we’ll do
whatever it takes to have you here.”00:37:56
So did he receive citizenship then?00:37:58
Yes, he did.00:38:02
All Russian emigrants –
not only in Czechoslovakia,00:38:04
but everywhere else, – ended up
in a legally challenging position00:38:08
because the country whose citizens
they used to be didn’t exist anymore.00:38:12
Moreover, in 1921 the Bolsheviks
issued a decree stipulating00:38:16
that everyone who failed to get
a Soviet passport by June 1, 1922,00:38:21
would be stripped of their citizenship.00:38:23
Therefore, Russian emigrants
abroad ended up being stateless,00:38:28
i.e apatride, which is
the term for such people.00:38:32
And it was quite a predicament,
because everyone needed visas,00:38:35
resident permits, roofs over their
heads that required such documents,00:38:40
doctors, schools, universities.
Today, the same rules still apply.00:38:46
Some serious measures were taken
on international level to fix this issue.00:38:50
In 1921, the famous Norwegian
polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen00:38:57
was appointed Refugee
Commissioner at the League of Nations.00:39:01
A couple of things about
this amazing person.00:39:03
He first came to prominence in 1893
during his expedition to the North Pole.00:39:10
The Pole was considered
an unreachable point at the time.00:39:13
Nansen, however, was going
to reach it in an inconceivable way00:39:17
that many deemed crazy.00:39:19
His vessel entered an ice pack and
drifted with the current towards the Pole.00:39:25
His ship, "Fram", drifted for 1,5 years
at the speed of about 1,5 miles a day.00:39:31
As the direction of
the drift was a bit off,00:39:33
at some point Nansen got off and
headed to the North Pole wearing skis.00:39:39
He surely could’ve died in many ways
during his trip, but it all came up roses.00:39:46
Except he didn’t reach the Pole after all,
he was four hundred kilometers short00:39:50
as it was later discovered.
So he headed back. It took place in 1896.00:39:57
The North Pole would stay
uncharted for another twelve years.00:40:01
Another explorer would reach it later.00:40:03
After Nansen fell short of his North Pole
ambitions, he decided to go into politics.00:40:08
In 1921, he became the Refugee
Commissioner at the League of Nations00:40:12
and introduced the most
important for the Russian emigrants,00:40:16
which granted them
temporary proof of identity.00:40:19
It would soon be named after him
and referred to as “Nansen’s passport”.00:40:26
The latest reconstruction, so to say.
We printed it ourselves.00:40:31
You can now find one
in many different museums.00:40:33
In 1926, more than thirty countries
agreed to recognize this document.00:40:40
For the majority of the Russian
refugees, Nansen’s passport00:40:43
became their main document
and proof of identity.00:40:48
What’s interesting is, the Russians that
settled in Prague would often dismiss it.00:40:54
Why? Because the conditions
in Czechoslovakia00:40:57
were so good, given the circumstances,00:41:02
than Russian emigrants didn't
need any Nansen’s passport.00:41:07
They were given regular
identification documents called "prukazy",00:41:10
They looked like this.00:41:12
This one is in the name of a
Russian emigrant, Sergey Stoyanov.00:41:17
Basically, this is like
a modern resident permit.00:41:21
It bears stamps,
signatures and a photograph.00:41:23
It was called "Resident Průkaz".00:41:27
By the way, the "průkaz" was beneficial00:41:31
to those emigrants that traveled abroad00:41:39
as they would also get
a foreign travel passport.00:41:44
If something happened abroad,00:41:47
a person who had a průkaz could contact
the Czechoslovakian envoy in said country.00:41:55
Meaning that this person
had some kind of protection.00:42:00
100 years ago, all the Russians
in Prague knew this address, Panska 12.00:42:06
Hotel Palace was
and still is located here.00:42:08
At the time, it was
considered very expensive.00:42:11
But Russian refugees didn’t come here
to check into a luxurious suite.00:42:16
They frequented the place
because that’s where all certificates00:42:20
and "průkazy" were issued
and registration forms filled in.00:42:24
Here most of the money given out
as financial aid to Russian emigrants00:42:28
by the Czechoslovakian
government was distributed.00:42:31
It was a cross between a multifunctional
public services center and a consulate.00:42:35
The Prague Zemgor was located here.00:42:38
It's the Committee of the Union of
Zemstvos and the Union of Towns.00:42:42
It was the Zemgor Committee
on Aiding Russian Citizens Abroad.00:42:46
It was founded in February 1921
if my memory serves me right.00:42:49
Georgy Lvov, who was in emigration,
became the chairman.00:42:54
He held the position
up until his death in 1925.00:43:01
It occupied offices on the
first floor and in the basement.00:43:04
It’s interesting that, because the Czecho-
slovakian government allotted money00:43:10
mainly through the SRs and Zemgor
was generally controlled by the SRs,00:43:15
it displeased their ideologiсal foes,
the monarchists and cadets.00:43:20
It’s only natural – the ones who are
in charge of financing always annoy00:43:24
those who aren’t or are,
but to a lesser extent.00:43:28
It was for that reason that
around Zemgor there was always00:43:32
some drama and petty quarrels
in the emigrant circles.00:43:36
Zemgor was blamed for
engaging in financial speculation,00:43:40
for wasting money and
giving it to those of the same00:43:44
ideological persuasion or
who had just worked out a deal.00:43:47
It’s the same old story.00:43:51
In that sense, the Russians
took Russia to Prague.00:43:55
Russian emigrants communicated
with each other very often.00:44:02
And according to Russian tradition,00:44:05
there were several groups
that argued with each other a lot.00:44:08
That was common, it still happens.00:44:11
The so-called “good Russians”
quarrel with other “good Russians.”00:44:17
Nothing new.00:44:33
One of the major differences between
the first wave of the White emigration00:44:37
and all the subsequent ones,
including the current one,00:44:39
was that it was the closest to
creating a real state in exile.00:44:46
That is, creating all the
institutions of statehood.00:44:49
That’s because these émigrés
had political parties.00:44:52
Monarchists, SRs, and Cadets were
leading a political fight with each other.00:44:57
It had some distinct structures like
committees, zemstvos, and communities.00:45:03
None of the following waves
of Russian emigration00:45:07
got close to anything like this.00:45:09
And the reason is obvious.
Those white émigrés00:45:12
left Russia in early 20th century,
from Tsarist Russia.00:45:16
They also had experience in
public politics under their belts.00:45:20
Those who later emigrated from
the USSR didn’t have anything like that.00:45:29
The representatives of the old state00:45:35
and the diplomatic elite
before 1917 arrived in Berlin.00:45:40
For example, Alexander Kerensky
lived in Berlin for a while.00:45:44
He led the Russian Provisional Government.00:45:47
The whole political spectrum
of old Russia gathered here.00:46:06
This is the Russian Embassy in Berlin.00:46:08
Now it’s all surrounded
with Ukrainian flags.00:46:12
The Soviet Embassy used to
occupy the same building,00:46:16
but it was built after World War Two00:46:18
because everything was ruined
on Unter den Linden during it.00:46:22
The old Russian embassy
was in the same place.00:46:27
As you know, after the October Revolution,
not all European countries00:46:33
recognized the Bolshevik government
and later the Soviet Union right away.00:46:37
A lot of them took a while,
even decades to do that.00:46:41
But as we remember,
Germany had special circumstances.00:46:43
That’s because after
signing the humiliating00:46:47
Treaty of Versailles
that ended World War One,00:46:51
Germany had to cede its territories,
to reduce its army significantly,00:46:55
pay reparations and became
an international outcast.00:46:58
Soviet Russia was in the exact same
situation after the revolution.00:47:02
So, the Weimar Republic recognized RSFSR.00:47:07
There was no USSR back then.
In 1922, it was one of the first ones.00:47:12
For most émigrés, the Soviet embassy00:47:15
was a point of hatred,
a point of tension in Berlin.00:47:22
They scornfully called this place
"Sovdepia", just like all Soviet Russia.00:47:37
The main language of the
Communist International was German.00:47:44
That’s why the Russian emigrants
who moved to Berlin00:47:48
were in an environment that was
strongly pro-communist and pro-Soviet.00:47:52
Not only did the Bolsheviks
target the White emigrants,00:47:58
but also liberal emigrants,
Constitutional Democrats,00:48:05
Cadets, and Mensheviks were
targeted by right-wing extremists.00:48:09
For example, there was an attack
on Vladimir Nabokov’s father,00:48:14
Vladimir Nabokov, too.00:48:18
We are now in Halensee district in Berlin.00:48:21
It was one of Vladimir Nabokov’s
Berlin addresses.00:48:24
He had ten in total.00:48:26
And Nabokov didn’t plan on moving
to Berlin, just like a lot of emigrants.00:48:32
But his story was special.
Initially, he lived in Berlin on and off00:48:38
because ever since his family left
Russia, first they went to London,00:48:43
and Nabokov studied
at the Cambridge University.00:48:46
Meanwhile, his father,
Vladimir Dmitrievich,00:48:48
a well-known politician, a tribune,
and an outstanding man of his time,00:48:53
who created the Cadet party
before the revolution,00:48:56
an incredibly respected person,
continued his activity in Berlin.00:49:01
That included opening
a newspaper called "Rul’".00:49:03
I already told you about it.00:49:06
They rented not the whole apartment.
And by no means was it their house.00:49:12
They immediately started
renting out one or two rooms.00:49:18
It was due to their financial state.
They were lucky to get good lodgers.00:49:22
But you can’t say it was
a luxurious apartment.00:49:28
No, it was a normal but good flat for…
One, two, three… For five people.00:49:34
It was Nabokov, his spouse
and their three younger children.00:49:39
What’s important is that
Nabokov Sr. still had some money.00:49:43
He was rich before the revolution,
and his wife was from a rich family.00:49:50
And they must've brought
some money from Russia.00:49:52
Anyway, the family wasn’t poor.00:49:54
But that all changed in the blink of
an eye with a tragedy in March 1922.00:50:01
Nabokov Sr. came to listen to the speech
of the former Minister of Foreign Affairs00:50:05
of the Provisional Government,
Pavel Milyukov, here in Berlin.00:50:09
During that speech, Vladimir Nabokov
was killed by two monarchists,00:50:14
but it was in fact a tragic accident.00:50:19
These monarchist terrorists were
targeting Milyukov, not Nabokov.00:50:26
Milyukov stopped talking.
When he went backstage,00:50:30
one of the criminals stood up
and tried to shoot him but missed.00:50:36
Nabokov and two or three other people
rushed towards him to neutralize him.00:50:42
A mêlée started. At this moment…
It all happened in one or two seconds.00:50:48
At this moment, a second criminal
ran onto the stage00:50:51
and made an absolutely
irrational and impulsive decision.00:50:57
He shot into the crowd
as if trying to free his friend.00:51:04
He shot several times, two or three shots.00:51:07
A couple of people were
injured, but it wasn’t grave.00:51:10
Unfortunately, Vladimir Dmitrievich
Nabokov was killed instantly.00:51:14
He could have died in one or two
minutes. That’s not important.00:51:18
What’s important is that he died there
and very quickly. He was gone.00:51:23
Milyukov wasn’t injured during the attack.00:51:25
This is the very tragic irony because
Russian émigrés criticized him a lot.00:51:32
For the mistake he made in 1917,
for his words and deeds.00:51:37
That’s because the search for
those responsible for what happened00:51:41
always took place within the emigrant
community during all the waves.00:51:46
But Nabokov Sr.’s situation was different.00:51:50
He was deeply respected in
almost all the White émigré circles.00:51:58
And after his death, several noted
émigrés wrote obituaries for him.00:52:04
Ivan Bunin and Alexander
Kuprin were some of them.00:52:08
Here is Bunin’s00:52:09
An immense loss. Yet another one.
Oh God, when will Russia’s miseries end?00:52:15
It is something that
induces superstitious fear.00:52:20
Year after year, day after day, an
unending chain of miseries and losses.00:52:26
Vladimir Nabokov Sr. is buried
in the Berlin-Tegel cemetery.00:52:32
But, as it often happens
in life, this tragedy00:52:36
impacted the history of
Russian literature immensely.00:52:40
That’s because Nabokov Jr. had to drop out
of Cambridge and come to Berlin urgently00:52:47
since he had to
take care of his big family.00:52:53
Nabokov the writer didn’t like Berlin.
He was irritated by it.00:52:59
But soon we’ll see that
exactly due to this irritation00:53:04
and unwillingness to accept Berlin,
we got his first prose masterpieces.00:53:08
Later, thanks to them,
Nabokov became a great author.00:53:12
That includes “Mary”,
“King, Queen, Knave,”00:53:16
“Laughter in the Dark,”
and finally, “The Gift.”00:53:21
He taught languages, he taught sport.00:53:25
-It was chess, right?
-Chess, boxing, and tennis.00:53:28
He really liked it, too.00:53:31
But more than teaching,
which Nabokov was forced to do,00:53:37
he loved literature, as well as
the new art of cinema.00:53:42
He even got a job as a background actor
in the "Ufa" studio in Berlin.00:53:48
There is a film called "Chess Fever".00:53:52
We remember Nabokov was fond of chess.
And we can see him close-up in this movie.00:53:56
There is no proof that it was really him.
Yet, it looked like him. Take a look.00:54:07
What was the story of a broken engagement
between Nabokov and Svetlana Siewert?00:54:14
Svetlana Siewert was
one of his friends’ cousins.00:54:21
He was twenty two, and she was sixteen.
She was completely infatuated by him.00:54:27
He wasn’t very well-known, but he had
already gotten some recognition as a poet.00:54:35
An outstanding handsome
and tall young man.00:54:40
He was slender and extremely well-rounded.
So she fell head over heels for him.00:54:46
-It was going so well. What happened?
-Money happened, or rather lack thereof.00:54:53
Nabokov didn’t have it, while
Siewert was from a rich family,00:54:57
and her parents wanted her
further life to be wealthy and happy.00:55:03
That’s why there was
a saying that allegedly00:55:09
is attributable to Siewert’s parents,00:55:12
“We can’t let Svetlana marry him.
He’s broke as a joke.”00:55:22
Nabokov lived in Halensee,
Berlin, for fifteen years.00:55:29
He became a famous author here.
He met his future wife Vera Slonim,00:55:34
with whom he would live all his life.
Here, their only son Dmitry was born.00:55:39
However, Nabokov never
came to like Berlin.00:55:42
As they say on the Internet,
he was toxic about it.00:55:45
Later, he wrote that during all the time,
he never befriended a single German,00:55:49
didn’t read a single book
or newspaper in German,00:55:52
and never felt uncomfortable
not knowing the language.00:55:57
So, he never gave Berlin
a proper thank you for the stay,00:56:00
or anything like this that
modern polite emigrants like to write.00:56:04
As he himself said,
his German was enough to say,00:56:09
“Ich möchte etwas Schinken,”
(“I would like some ham”) in a shop.00:56:17
That was it.00:56:29
What language did your family speak
when you were in Czechoslovakia?00:56:32
Only Russian, of course.00:56:34
We even had a sign
on the dining room door:00:56:37
"We only speak Russian in this house."00:56:40
When our Czech guests were trying
to say something in Russian, we said,00:56:43
"No, it doesn't apply to you.
You aren't going to move to Russia,00:56:47
but we are waiting."00:56:49
Did your father say
that he was going to return?00:56:52
Yes, of course.00:56:53
He believed it all the time.00:56:56
It just was a lost motherland.00:56:59
They realized it but didn't want to admit
that they would never go back.00:57:06
They idealized this Russia.00:57:09
These thoughts tortured them
until they died.00:57:20
I'd like to clarify something
about the nostalgia and home sickness00:57:25
a lot of people mention in this episode.00:57:28
In 1927, Vladimir Nabokov wrote
a poem called "The Shooting" in Berlin.00:57:34
Some nights, as soon as I lie down,
I'm back in Russia in my dream;00:57:38
My hands behind my back are bound
They're taking me to the ravine.00:57:42
Then he writes that he wakes up
and realizes that he isn't in Russia.00:57:46
And then the rhythmic ticking sound
Calms down my benumbed mind00:57:49
The fortunate exile I found
Around me is safely twined.00:57:54
And yet, my heart would still desire
To make it true, this Russian scene:00:57:58
The starry sky, a gunshot fired,
White hackberries in the ravine!00:58:03
You might have heard these verses
in Monetochka's song00:58:08
in her recent album.00:58:10
So, I'd like to say something important
about the difference00:58:15
between the first wave of the emigration
and the rest of them.00:58:19
All emigrants are homesick.
A lot was written about it.00:58:24
People talk and write about it now.
It's obvious.00:58:28
But for the people from the first wave,00:58:32
the motherland isn't the place
where they won't let you in.00:58:37
They'll let you cross the border.00:58:39
It's not a place where you don't return
because you might be arrested00:58:45
and put in jail because you don't agree
with authorities.00:58:51
It literally means death to them.00:58:57
All these people are convinced
that this returning to the motherland,00:59:03
which is physically possible,
means immediate destruction.00:59:08
That's what Nabokov wrote about
in his poem.00:59:13
This metaphysics penetrated
the whole first Russian émigré wave.00:59:19
For the first time, it was important
for those peoples' understanding,00:59:24
and some people did return
to the Soviet Union00:59:28
and confirmed that feeling by their fates.00:59:33
Some survived and even made
a decent Soviet career,00:59:37
but it was a completely different life.00:59:40
In general, and a metaphysical way,
it was a life after death,00:59:44
a life from scratch,
a life in a different Russia.00:59:55
1917, PETROGRAD00:59:57
During the revolution,01:00:00
my grandparents fought in the White Army,01:00:05
but my grandmother would go
to the Soviet side.01:00:11
She would spy on them to find out
what was happening on the frontline.01:00:16
Then she'd come back and give a report.
She was a scout.01:00:21
-So, it was intelligence. Wow!
-Yes.01:00:23
She'd give the White Army a report
where the attacks would take place01:00:27
and stuff like that.01:00:28
And once… She was living with my grandpa.
Not sure where exactly.01:00:35
And my grandpa heard
that she was talking in her sleep.01:00:40
After that, he forbade her
to do these forays.01:00:44
He said, "What if you don't come back?01:00:46
You will give something away at night,
and they'll kill you."01:00:53
-Was he a White Army officer?
-Yes.01:00:55
How did he leave Russia
when the White Army lost?01:00:58
His mother was German.01:01:00
Germans and half-Germans
were allowed to go.01:01:05
-Did they give them citizenship?
-No. They let them live there at first.01:01:12
My grandpa worked
as a taxi driver in Berlin01:01:15
and was studying at the same time.01:01:18
My grandma was also studying
to get a Kaufmann diploma.01:01:23
It meant a salesperson
with a high education.01:01:28
That's how it was.01:01:29
-They lived in Berlin, right?
-Yes.01:01:31
-Were they poor or wealthy there?
-They were very poor at first.01:01:34
Then, their financial status got
better and better over time.01:01:40
CHARLOTTENBURG, BERLIN01:01:43
Charlottenburg became the main quarter
for the Russian émigrés.01:01:49
Even nowadays01:01:51
it's the main showcase of West Berlin,
and it was like that back then.01:01:55
Well, it was just the western part
of Berlin.01:01:58
If you have ever observed how Russians
lived abroad in the 2000s and 2010s,01:02:04
you know that London, as one
of important places for Russian emigrants,01:02:11
was given the derogatory nickname
Londongrad.01:02:17
It wasn't made up by modern Russians01:02:21
because even Charlottenburg
was named Charlottengrad.01:02:25
CHARLOTTENGRAD01:02:28
What's interesting is that only people
on a wealthier side could live here01:02:32
because the quarter was expensive.01:02:34
Why did Russians live here?01:02:36
This is another characteristic
of the Russian emigration.01:02:40
People wanted to live in wealthier areas01:02:43
because they wanted to show
their good sides.01:02:50
Besides, someone would also
recommend this place to their friends,01:02:54
to rent a flat here, and so on.01:02:57
But, unlike Londongrad,01:02:59
the Charlottengrad people
didn't spend the money01:03:02
they had earned or stolen in Russia
as much as they tried to earn money.01:03:06
Because they lacked it.01:03:08
That's why a bunch of Russian cafés,
restaurants, bookstores01:03:11
and banks appeared in Charlottenburg.01:03:13
It looks more like the modern Istanbul
than London.01:03:17
They've got
a lot of stuff like that there, too.01:03:22
Prager Platz, Prague Square
is one of the places01:03:26
you can call a part of Russian Berlin
from a hundred years ago.01:03:31
But the thing is,01:03:33
if you try to locate
these so-called Russian places01:03:38
and Russian Berlin from
a hundred years ago,01:03:43
you'll in fact be hunting ghosts.01:03:48
You'll feel like you are searching
for ghosts01:03:51
because, due to the destruction
of World War II,01:03:56
very few things have obviously survived.01:04:01
Prager Platz was one of the main squares,01:04:03
if we are talking about the Russian Berlin
of the 1920s.01:04:08
Because, first of all, it's the center
of a district called Wilmersdorf,01:04:13
where a lot of Russian emigrants lived.01:04:17
That's where the famous
Prager Diele café was located.01:04:23
-There was even a verb, to pragerdeal.
-Yeah, to pragerdeal.01:04:27
It was coined by Andrei Bely,
but I wouldn't say it's something unique.01:04:33
It means to talk about life...01:04:38
in a blue haze and drink cognac.01:04:44
So, people were sitting in Prager Diele
and drinking cognac.01:04:47
-What mood were they in?
-It's usually terrible.01:04:50
Let's keep three points in mind.01:04:52
Point one:01:04:54
a lot of people, pretty much 99%
left Russia unwillingly.01:04:59
That was point one.01:05:01
Point two:01:05:03
they had problems with the Internet
and with WhatsApp.01:05:10
-Yeah.
-It just didn't exist.01:05:12
-There was no coverage.
-Yes, there was no coverage.01:05:15
Nowadays you can basically do anything
but maybe hug your relatives01:05:21
and shake your friends' hands.01:05:26
This problem was way greater for people
back then because people just left.01:05:32
Okay, you can get a letter every month
or six months, but not always.01:05:37
And factor number three.01:05:39
It's less significant than the other two.01:05:43
Berlin...01:05:46
was less attractive as a city back then.01:05:49
-Was it?
-It was. It was boring.01:05:52
Just a plain normal city.
There were no attractions.01:05:57
The weather here is a little better
than in Moscow.01:06:01
I'm telling you that
as a former Muscovite.01:06:03
In any case, it's not like you
particularly enjoy the local climate.01:06:08
PRAGUE, THE CZECH REPUBLIC01:06:13
We know this building
as the Professor's House.01:06:16
It was one of the building cooperatives,
which were built by the Russian refugees,01:06:21
with their own money01:06:22
and money
from the Czechoslovak government.01:06:24
They needed them to solve
the housing problem,01:06:27
at least for the older or elderly people.01:06:30
It's called the Professor's House
because most flats were occupied01:06:33
by professors from different educational
institutions who migrated to Prague.01:06:37
Let me clarify.01:06:39
Building cooperatives were popular
in Soviet times, too.01:06:42
People invest their money...01:06:44
Yes, they took a 2,5 million loan
from a Czech bank.01:06:49
And it was taken under the Czechoslovak
government's guarantee.01:06:52
I think the future residents invested
just 100,000 korunas.01:06:56
Did they simply invest the money,
or they participated in the construction?01:07:00
The only one who participated was
Professor Vladimir Alexandrovich Brandt.01:07:04
He was the one who designed this house,
and he lived in this house later.01:07:08
And did this house become one
of the centers of the Russian emigration?01:07:12
No doubt about it.
When everyone moved in,01:07:14
public life centered around here.01:07:16
A house church appeared here, right?01:07:18
It appeared only in 1945 when the church
on the old Town Square was closed down.01:07:22
The worship service there was led
by Mikhail Vasnetsov,01:07:25
the son of the famous Viktor Vasnetsov,01:07:28
the painter of the Three Bogatyrs
and Alyonushka.01:07:31
Mikhail miraculously evaded the GULAG
and was the only Orthodox priest01:07:36
in Prague.01:07:37
But not everyone was as lucky.01:07:39
We'll talk about what happened to
the Russian émigrés after socialism came01:07:44
to Czechoslovakia later.01:08:00
My mom directed the choir
in the Russian Orthodox church.01:08:06
My grandpa and I, when my voice changed
when I entered my teens,01:08:12
were bass singers.01:08:14
-You and your grandpa were bass singers?
-Yeah, we would be standing there01:08:19
and singing Kyrie eleison
and all that stuff.01:08:21
I have still got all the scores
and lyrics.01:08:31
-You write music yourself, don't you?
-I do.01:08:43
Do you think there is some
Russian influence in this music?01:08:48
-There is. It's immense.
-Go on please.01:08:52
My aunt was an opera singer.01:08:56
My grandpa played the seven-string guitar.
I still have it upstairs.01:09:00
He played and sang chastushkas,
humorous parody songs.01:09:10
What did a Russian émigré
from a century ago, from 1923, look like?01:09:15
When talking about an émigré, we shouldn't
fall into the pitfall of generalization01:09:21
because when we talk
about the Russian emigration,01:09:26
we think about different famous names.01:09:30
Andrei Bely, Vladimir Nabokov,
Maxim Gorky, Bunin, Marina Tsvetaeva.01:09:36
But who said they were wealthy?01:09:40
-On the contrary.
-Right.01:09:42
Besides, when approximately 300,000
former Russian Empire emigrants01:09:49
found themselves01:09:53
in Germany,01:09:57
they obviously were people
from all strata of society.01:10:02
There definitely were individuals
in a better financial situation.01:10:08
They looked better.
There were people in a difficult position.01:10:17
We are still in Charlottenburg,
on Grolmanstrasse.01:10:20
I'll tell you why we are here.01:10:22
As you have understood,
people who worked with language,01:10:25
had it rough in the emigration.01:10:27
As it always happens, when emigrants
have to do with a different language.01:10:32
In our case, it was Russian.01:10:34
It was so then, and it's the same today.
Undertakers had it easier.01:10:38
Here is a good example.01:10:40
Don Cossack Nikolay Paramonov,
the son of a famous merchant Cossack –01:10:45
that's what they called those involved
in trade and production –01:10:48
Yelpidifor Paramonov.01:10:51
In the Russian Empire,01:10:52
the Paramonov family owned
a great deal of grain storage,01:10:56
mills, mines, and steamships.01:10:58
They were basically billionaires,
millionshchiki, as they said.01:11:02
But Nikolay was more interested
in politics when he was young.01:11:05
He participated in student rallies.
Then he joined the Cadets party.01:11:11
Yelpidifor tried to make his son stop
all that nonsense.01:11:15
He gifted him several mines.
It didn't help.01:11:20
After Yelpidofor's death in 1909,01:11:23
Nikolay tried to take up father's business
but didn't want to quit politics either.01:11:27
During the Civil War, he became the chief
of Denikin's propaganda division.01:11:32
He established the headquarters
for this division in his house01:11:36
in Rostov-on-Don.01:11:39
People say that as businessman himself,01:11:43
he made such costly propaganda estimates
that they fired him before long.01:11:50
Anyway, after the Revolution,01:11:51
Nikolay Paramonov sailed to Constantinople
on his own steamship01:11:55
and then arrived in Berlin.01:11:59
Obviously,
here he had to start from scratch01:12:01
because all his money was left in Russia.01:12:04
Yet, Paramonov was able
to bring something.01:12:07
He started to look for opportunities.01:12:10
And invested everything he had brought
into vacant lots in Berlin,01:12:14
or into industrial areas.01:12:16
They had garages, outbuildings
and old stables in such places.01:12:21
He bought these lots for next to nothing.01:12:25
Why?01:12:27
He realized that a new market
was appearing before his eyes,01:12:34
the car market.01:12:37
He thought,01:12:38
"If there are more and more cars,01:12:40
people will need car services,
tuning-ateliers, and maintenance centers."01:12:47
He saw that this niche was unoccupied.01:12:50
He took this opportunity and bingo!01:12:54
A local Steve Jobs. The business thrived.01:12:57
Money started flowing into his pocket.01:12:59
He opened some revenue houses
and later took up publishing.01:13:03
Here in Charlottenburg, he opened
one of the first pawnshops in Berlin.01:13:08
You could pawn your car
if you really needed money.01:13:11
They still exist and are popular.
In Russia, too.01:13:14
Anyway, the Paramonov family
became one of the wealthiest.01:13:18
At this time,
among the White Russian émigrés in Berlin.01:13:44
Among the Russians in Berlin,01:13:46
very few do not mention this place
in their memoirs, letters or books.01:13:51
This is the Berlin Zoo.01:13:53
It's not that Russian émigrés
were all so keen on the lives of animals.01:13:59
It's just a big park in the city center
with plenty of cafes.01:14:04
Russian émigrés came here to pass time
and called this place a zoo-garden.01:14:10
Here, I have to tell you
about Viktor Shklovsky, a writer01:14:12
who commemorated this place
in the title of his famous novel,01:14:19
Zoo, or Letters Not About Love.01:14:22
Shklovsky was one of those émigrés
who couldn't be called "White",01:14:28
as he was an SR, that is, a revolutionary.01:14:31
He was involved in the February Revolution
in 1917.01:14:35
In the 1920s, he was even fighting
in the Red Army against Wrangel.01:14:40
But in 1922,
when they started arresting the SRs01:14:42
after the Bolsheviks
declared them enemies,01:14:44
Shklovsky fled from Russia,
first to Finland, and then to Germany.01:14:48
He stayed in Berlin for about year.01:14:50
Here, he was publishing Beseda magazine
with Maksim Gorky01:14:53
and wrote the aforementioned novel.
It was published in Berlin as well.01:14:57
This novel is written in the form
of letters from a man to a woman01:15:04
he loves very much.01:15:06
She doesn't love him and answers him
once in a blue moon,01:15:09
which proves that she has no feelings
for him.01:15:14
It's a true story from the life
of Shklovsky.01:15:16
His unrequited love's name was
Elsa Triolet.01:15:19
She was a sister of Lilya Brik,
Mayakovsky's muse01:15:22
who he shared with her husband, Osip Brik.
You must know this story.01:15:26
So, Triolet went and got married
to French officer Andre Triolet01:15:32
and went to France with him.01:15:34
Then the officer disappeared,
but she kept his fancy name.01:15:37
She lived in London and later moved here,
to Berlin.01:15:40
Here's the amazing thing.01:15:42
Shkolovsky dedicated this book
about his love to Triolet to...01:15:46
Who, do you think? His wife.01:15:49
Yes, he was married
to Vasilisa Shklovskaya, an artist.01:15:53
Yet she wasn't here with him,
she was in Russia.01:15:57
She was arrested in Russia during
the Civil War and kept there as a hostage.01:16:02
It was an established practice
among the Reds as well.01:16:05
She ended up in prison
and spent almost a year there.01:16:12
ilya Yurievna Brik often
sent her packages.01:16:19
She was her savior
and helped her to survive.01:16:23
And since there were no charges
against her personally01:16:26
and Shkolovsky fell off the radar
after a while,01:16:31
they released her on bail.01:16:35
She was released on a bail of 200 rubles,
yet she stayed in Russia.01:16:41
Apart from his yearning for Elsa
in Zoo, or Letters Not About Love,01:16:46
Shklovsky wrote a lot about homesickness.01:16:51
He wrote that emigration is a dead end.01:16:53
"We are emigrants, – no, not emigrants,
we were itinerant,01:16:59
and now we are convicts.01:17:03
Russian Berlin isn't going anywhere.
It has no destiny."01:17:06
Later, we will return to Shklovsky's
gloomy and pessimistic view of Berlin01:17:12
and German society of that era.01:17:15
But first let me tell you
how his book ends.01:17:20
The author submits a request to the RSFSR
government to take him back.01:17:23
I cannot live in Berlin.01:17:25
With all my habits and my skills,
I am tied to the Russia of today.01:17:30
The Berlin anguish is bitter
like carbide dust.01:17:33
Let me back into Russia
with my plain luggage,01:17:38
six shirts (three are with me,
three are in laundry),01:17:42
yellow boots waxed black by mistake,01:17:47
and old blue pants with a crease
I've been trying to fix up in vain…01:17:53
Shklovsky's friends, Gorky and Mayakovsky,
were making arrangements for him,01:17:57
and after a year and half of troubles,
the Soviet authorities let him come back.01:18:04
In September 1923,01:18:06
he was one of the first Russian émigrés
of that wave to return to the USSR.01:18:19
But even here in Moscow,
Shklovsky was lonesome.01:18:22
He wrote this.01:18:23
My life is as dim
as if seen through a condom.01:18:25
I can't work in Moscow.
At night I have guilty dreams.01:18:29
I don't know about you, but this kind
of duality really resonates with me.01:18:35
At first, you want one thing
and strive for it with all your heart,01:18:39
like Shklovsky.01:18:40
But when you get it,
you begin to miss what you've lost.01:18:46
You feel like you've betrayed those
who stayed there.01:18:51
But we can't deny that Shklovsky
had a very eventful life in Moscow.01:18:55
He became one of the leaders
of the Left Front of the Arts association,01:18:58
founded by futurists after the Revolution.01:19:01
He wrote scripts for Soviet silent movies
hat were very popular,01:19:06
like The House on Trubnaya
and Bed and Sofa.01:19:08
Speaking of Bed and Sofa,01:19:11
even by later Soviet
and today's puritan standards,01:19:16
this film is absolutely outrageous.01:19:19
The plot is as follows:
the protagonist is visited01:19:21
by his wartime friend in Moscow.01:19:24
The protagonist's wife becomes smitten
with this friend and doesn't hide it.01:19:29
They talk it over and decide
to live together.01:19:34
Soon this wife, Lyudmila, gets pregnant,
and they can't tell who is the father.01:19:39
Shklovsky said that he read this story
in the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.01:19:44
There was an article about
a young mother visited01:19:47
by two potential baby daddies
at the hospital.01:19:49
They were workers
and members of the Komsomol,01:19:52
and they weren't jealous,
because they were new Soviet people.01:19:55
How do you like that?01:19:57
By the Hamburg score, so to say.01:19:59
The Hamburg score is an expression
that entered the vernacular01:20:02
thanks to Shklovsky.01:20:03
In 1924, he published a book titled
The Hamburg Score.01:20:08
One day at dinner, Shklovsky was told01:20:10
about a closed wrestling match
in Hamburg held without any audience.01:20:15
The wrestlers there would fight for real
and see who is actually the best.01:20:21
In all other tournaments,
they would fight according to a contract,01:20:24
and the outcome was predetermined.01:20:26
This expression, "by the Hamburg Score",
entered the Russian language,01:20:30
meaning "by the most objective judgement".01:20:37
Our family lived cautiously.01:20:40
What I mean is, when meeting a new person,01:20:46
I would decide if they were friend or foe,01:20:48
and based on that I'd choose
how to behave.01:20:51
But no one had ever taught me that.01:20:54
I just...01:20:58
saw how my mother and aunt01:21:04
were treating that person
and acted accordingly.01:21:10
So, we lived peeking out01:21:15
over the sheets.01:21:20
In 1933, Shklovsky was part of a group
of writers sent to the White Sea Canal.01:21:26
Unlike some others,
he had a personal interest in going there.01:21:29
He wanted to help
his exiled brother Vladimir,01:21:32
who had been arrested01:21:34
for protesting against the confiscation
of church property01:21:37
and had been sent to the White Sea Canal.01:21:39
There's a script of Shklovsky's
conversation with a chekist.01:21:44
The chekist asked him how he was doing.01:21:46
And the story has it that Shklovsky said,
"Like a live fox in a fur shop."01:21:55
Grandfather never had the inner peace
or confidence01:22:02
that he complied with state orders.01:22:09
He was always going against the grain01:22:16
and speaking his mind.01:22:19
And nobody expected anything else
from him.01:22:25
And yet Shklovsky wrote
the lion's share of text for the book01:22:28
about the White Sea Canal
by that team of authors.01:22:31
But it didn't help his brother.01:22:33
Vladimir was executed in 1937.01:22:36
Shklovsky himself survived the war
by evacuating to Almaty.01:22:39
His son Nikita was killed at the front
two months before victory.01:22:45
Our family didn't hide its son,01:22:49
and he died at the very end of the war
at the age of twenty one.01:22:54
My mother and brother suffered01:23:00
from their painful inability to lie.01:23:06
How? I could never understand that.01:23:11
Why can't you lie?
If you have to, why not? There!01:23:19
Then Shklovsky safety returned to Moscow.01:23:21
In the 1950s, he was actively involved
in the persecution of Boris Pasternak.01:23:26
Then he wrote a big book on film theory
and scripts for TV shows,01:23:30
becoming a well-seasoned
and renowned author.01:23:33
He lived to the age of ninety
and died in 1984.01:23:38
It wasn't an émigré's story at that point,
but by the Hamburg score,01:23:43
it proves an important point,
that if émigrés01:23:49
were given the opportunity to come back
to the Soviet Union,01:23:52
especially public figures,01:23:53
they had to glorify and serve
the Soviet regime.01:23:58
You couldn't just come back
and stick to your former convictions.01:24:15
This wave of emigration
was a terrible loss for the country,01:24:19
a terrible loss of talent, genius, labor,
human capital.01:24:26
When you think of everyone who departed
on the philosophers' ships in 1921-1922,01:24:33
those prominent personalities
in the development of Russian thought01:24:36
and philosophy, it was a terrible loss.01:24:43
Outstanding figures of Russian philosophy,
culture and science01:24:46
went into forced emigration from
this embankment in the autumn of 1922.01:24:49
In the 2000s,
they put a memorial sign here,01:24:51
on the Schmidt Embankment
in Saint-Petersburg,01:24:54
stating that from here, from this
embankment in the autumn on 1922,01:25:00
people boarded a ship
and left Russia never to return.01:25:07
Their deportation was enforced
by Vladimir Ulyanov-Lenin personally.01:25:11
Now we all know it
as the philosophers' ships.01:25:15
This name appeared in the 90s,01:25:18
because there indeed were philosophers
on that ship.01:25:23
There were Nikolay Lossky,
Nikolay Berdyaev, Ivan Ilyin.01:25:28
But there weren't just philosophers.01:25:30
The entire ship contained Russia's
deported intelligentsia.01:25:36
To be exact, there were at least
two steamers that left from here, not one.01:25:41
One of them was called
Oberbürgermeister Haken,01:25:44
the second one was Prussia;
they were heading for Stettin.01:25:47
Then it was in Germany,
now it is in Poland.01:25:49
There were more ships beyond those,
some departed from Odessa and Batumi.01:25:55
And there were also trains which took
the intelligentsia to Riga and Berlin.01:26:04
Dissent was what they couldn't stand.01:26:08
Because they thought differently,
spoke differently.01:26:11
There definitely weren't
any conspirators among them,01:26:15
they weren't about to stage any coups.01:26:18
But their dissent rubbed the authorities
the wrong way.01:26:23
We had an episode called
"Walks Around Saint-Petersburg",01:26:27
and there we were saying that Lenin
didn't like the Russian intelligentsia,01:26:31
and he had to take revenge on them01:26:33
for not recognizing him
as their spiritual leader.01:26:37
How did they compile the lists
of the passengers for those ships?01:26:41
That's easy. By 1922,
all press was under tight control.01:26:47
Most newspapers not operated
by the Bolsheviks were closed.01:26:51
But there were still some newspapers
that didn't focus on politics01:26:55
and didn't have to be loyal to the regime.01:26:57
For example,
there was the Economist magazine,01:27:00
where they described
what was happening in terms of economics.01:27:04
And Lenin pointed out the articles
in that magazine01:27:09
and made a demand to Dzerzhinsky.01:27:11
On one of the pages,
there was a list of editors.01:27:15
So, he said, "Felix Edmundovich,
copy this whole list,01:27:18
these are the people to be deported."01:27:20
Lenin called them spies,
molesters of working youth and so on.01:27:25
Lenin was generally too verbose.01:27:28
The other leader of the revolution,
Leon Trotsky,01:27:31
on the contrary, expressed himself
in a clear and concise manner.01:27:35
He explained it this way,
"We deported those people01:27:38
because there was no reason
to execute them,01:27:40
but there was no way to keep them
in Russia."01:27:44
And in hindsight,
we could say they were lucky.01:27:48
Because very soon the Soviet regime had
no problem finding a reason for execution.01:27:57
In total, about two hundred people
were deported.01:28:02
The operation began in August.01:28:04
By then, the lists of those to be arrested
had been compiled.01:28:10
First, they arrested them all01:28:13
and engaged them
in very sentimental conversation,01:28:16
getting them01:28:18
to give consent to being deported abroad.01:28:24
Mind you, most of them had to go
at their own expense.01:28:27
A question pops up, how do you send
people to another country,01:28:31
say, Germany, without a visa?01:28:33
Well, the Bolsheviks took care of it,01:28:35
they requested that Germany issue visas
to the people listed for deportation.01:28:40
Germany, represented
by chancellor Wirth, refused01:28:43
saying that Germany is not Siberia,
and you can't exile people there.01:28:48
"If they want to come here,
let them request the visas,01:28:51
and we'll see."01:28:52
Mikhail Osorgin, a writer,
who was also deported,01:28:56
said that they were all informed
that it was their responsibility01:29:01
to get visas and take care
of the documents.01:29:04
"If you don't do it, you'll go to prison."01:29:08
Osorgin wrote,
"Of course, we took care of it."01:29:13
In the end, everybody got their visas
and safely left for Germany.01:29:21
They came to Germany and settled there.01:29:24
But for many, Germany became
kind of a transit point.01:29:40
In the early 1920s,
another Russian émigré came to Berlin.01:29:43
His name was Alexander Zubkov
and he was a bit over twenty.01:29:47
At first, nobody really knew him
in the émigré community.01:29:52
But very soon Zubkov moved here, to Bonn,01:29:56
and lived in the Palais Schaumburg.01:29:59
Here it is, behind a fence.01:30:01
It houses
one of the Federal Chancellor’s residences now,01:30:05
so we can’t get any closer.01:30:08
So how did this unassuming young man
from the émigré community01:30:13
pull it off?01:30:18
Alexander is the most famous representative
of the Zubkov merchant dynasty.01:30:22
His branch of the Zubkovs took
the Revolution rather enthusiastically,01:30:26
understanding
its historical inevitability.01:30:29
And they accepted the Revolution,01:30:31
even though it made them lose
all their property and possessions.01:30:35
They had to live at the expense
of Alexander’s father, Anatoly,01:30:38
who was already working at a university,01:30:40
so they lived on his salary.01:30:42
Alexander Zubkov’s grand-niece01:30:45
In 1921, Alexander left Moscow for Sweden.01:30:51
It was his mother’s homeland,
so he easily got permission01:30:57
under the pretext that he was needed there
to help manage the family estate.01:31:04
In fact, nobody in Sweden needed01:31:06
Russian émigré Zubkov’s help
with the family estate.01:31:10
This large family had people
who managed it without him just fine.01:31:16
Besides, this young man was rumored to be
a playboy and knucklehead.01:31:22
He had a talent for getting into stupid
and scandalous situations,01:31:27
associated usually with women or alcohol
or even drugs.01:31:34
From descriptions of him,
we make the following image.01:31:37
I will be listing the characteristics
I believe he had,01:31:40
and you say yes or no.01:31:42
Okay, he was handsome.
- Yes.01:31:44
- Adventurer.
- Yes.01:31:47
- Gigolo and Don Juan.
- He was a ladies’ man for sure.01:31:55
At first, he came to his Swedish aunt
in Uppsala, Sweden,01:32:00
and so to say, was trying to manage
the estate.01:32:02
There he tried to star in films.01:32:04
He was also considered to look like
Rudolph Valentino,01:32:08
so he served as his body double
in some dangerous scenes,01:32:12
because he could ride a horse,
and was physically fit.01:32:16
- So he was a stuntman.
- We could say he was a stuntman,01:32:19
so he stood in for him on the set.01:32:23
Who is Rudolph Valentino?01:32:25
He’s an Italian born American actor,01:32:29
a hottie and one of the first sex symbols
of silent movies.01:32:33
Even though his career lasted
only six years,01:32:35
he was super popular,
primarily with women, as you could guess.01:32:41
Among other films, he was in Rex Ingram’s01:32:45
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,
where he played a young and careless reveler01:32:49
who cares for nothing but romance and fun.01:32:52
And the lightness
of his being was interrupted01:32:55
by the World War.01:32:58
This part was similar
to Valentino’s own story.01:33:02
He was known to be a heartbreaker01:33:05
and one of the main lovers
of Hollywood in the 20s.01:33:07
He had countless flings with popular actresses
only to abandon them.01:33:11
Before cinema,
Rudolph went through plenty of jobs.01:33:14
At some point, he even was a gigolo,01:33:16
dating older women for money.01:33:21
So his understudy
Alexander Zubkov decided to follow01:33:24
in the famous actor’s footsteps.01:33:27
He came to Berlin and worked
at a local dance hall.01:33:31
He had received a good education
and was a well-cultured man,01:33:38
he danced well, he was physically fit
and good-looking,01:33:42
so he worked at a dance hall
with older ladies,01:33:47
pleasing them with alcohol and so on.01:33:49
So probably
that’s how he came up with the idea01:33:52
to get closer to Viktoria.01:33:54
Polina Rysakova,
Alexander Zubkov’s grand-niece01:33:57
Who is Viktoria of Prussia?01:33:59
She is the younger sister
of the last German emperor,01:34:02
as they call him here,
Kaiser Wilhelm the Second.01:34:05
As a result of the November Revolution01:34:07
after Germany’s defeat
in the First World War,01:34:10
he abdicated the throne.01:34:12
He was exiled in Holland01:34:14
and lived there
in the small town of Doorn.01:34:16
Mind you,
the government of the Weimar Republic01:34:19
allowed him to take
twenty three train cars of furniture,01:34:21
twenty seven containers of personal effects
and a private car.01:34:25
So technically,
it was no longer a ruling dynasty,01:34:28
but in comparison
with the fate of the Romanovs in Russia,01:34:32
we could say
that Wilhelm got off quite easy.01:34:37
So the Russian émigré
Alexander Zubkov met his younger sister,01:34:42
Princess Viktoria, here in Bonn.01:34:44
Zubkov at the time was about twenty seven,
she was about sixty.01:34:50
The official legend has it
that he met some Russians01:34:54
who set their sights on Viktoria’s wealth01:34:58
and wanted to get closer to her
through Alexander01:35:01
and profit off of it.01:35:04
We can’t say for sure
if Alexander was only after her money,01:35:08
but it can’t be denied
that he wanted to settle down01:35:11
and get a cushy spot for himself.01:35:17
Apparently, they arrived in Bonn,01:35:19
where Viktoria lived
in the Schaumburg Palace,01:35:24
and they were introduced at some party.01:35:28
And as he says,
they were left to spend the night at the palace.01:35:31
In his memoirs, Alexander says01:35:35
that he reckoned
if she came to his bedroom,01:35:39
it would prove the success of his plans
and guarantee his carefree future.01:35:44
He stayed with her and they got married.01:35:50
It’s easy to guess
how much of a scandal it was.01:35:53
All the European royal houses boycotted
their wedding,01:35:57
and Wilhelm the Second
outright refused to consent01:36:01
to his sister’s marriage.01:36:02
But Wilhelm didn’t have
his former authority,01:36:06
so Viktoria simply
didn’t listen to him.01:36:08
On September 19th, 1927,01:36:10
the couple got married
in an Orthodox ceremony,01:36:13
because the Lutheran Church forbade
this marriage01:36:15
at the request
of the former Kaiser.01:36:18
Also Viktoria converted to Orthodoxy
and took her husband’s last name.01:36:24
His motivations are clear.
What about hers?01:36:27
- Memoirs mention that he looked
like her first betrothed,01:36:32
a Bulgarian first prince
she was engaged to but never married.01:36:35
And again, if he was courting her,01:36:38
why not get some joy and pleasure
at the ripe age of sixty?01:36:42
Polina Rysakova,
Alexander Zubkov’s grand-niece01:36:43
Princess Viktoria’s first husband,01:36:46
Prince Adolf of Schaumburg-Lippe,
died in 1916.01:36:48
They didn’t have children,
so the princess inherited the palace.01:36:52
That was where
the newlyweds settled after the wedding.01:36:55
And the palace became a venue
for endless festivities and parties.01:36:59
Alexander Zubkov didn’t hold back,
and in a few months,01:37:02
he frittered away all the fortune
Viktoria had left.01:37:06
She was forced into debt.01:37:09
When the time came to pay her debts,01:37:11
Viktoria’s relatives said
they could pay her allowance,01:37:16
but to her only,
so Alexander should disappear.01:37:19
Besides, the police said
he had problems with his documents,01:37:23
as he did not have a visa
or a residence permit.01:37:25
Viktoria arranged
for him to move to Luxembourg,01:37:29
where her connections helped to get him
all the necessary documents.01:37:34
She would go
to Luxembourg to visit him01:37:36
and they had a long-distance
marriage for some time.01:37:40
Zubkov stayed in Luxembourg01:37:42
working as a simple waiter
at a restaurant,01:37:45
but he still was enjoying perks
from his kinship with the imperial family.01:37:49
For example,
a sign at the restaurant entrance said,01:37:52
“The Kaiser’s brother-in-law
is serving you here.”01:37:54
Also Alexander published
his memoirs titled01:37:57
My Life, My Love01:37:59
There he described
in detail his relationship01:38:02
with his brother-in-law Willy,01:38:03
the emperor,
who actually didn’t want to01:38:06
have anything to do with him,
to put it mildly.01:38:08
Also, he described his married life,
yet without excessive sentiment.01:38:13
He honestly writes that01:38:14
it would be strange to say
that he was head over heels for her.01:38:17
And in a sense,
it was very truthful and honest.01:38:20
But he also writes
that he was grateful to her01:38:23
for the kindness
she treated him with.01:38:25
And he paid her back with gratitude.01:38:29
Shortly before her death,01:38:31
Princess Viktoria also published
a book of memoirs01:38:34
and signed them as Viktoria Zubkoff.01:38:37
And her memoirs were very tender
and sentimental.01:38:41
For example, here’s what she wrote
about Alexander.01:38:45
“By a heavenly favor of Providence,
I was given a dear life partner,01:38:50
filling my life with new interests01:38:52
and dispelling the loneliness
that often afflicts those01:38:56
of an old age who used to be
in the center of life.”01:39:00
This sentimental romance didn’t last long.01:39:03
In 1929,
Viktoria caught pneumonia and died.01:39:08
She never divorced Alexander.01:39:11
She didn’t want to get a divorce.01:39:14
It could have been a protest
against her family01:39:16
and an attempt to establish herself
rather than her love for Alexander.01:39:21
Perhaps she held on to him
more than he did to her.01:39:26
Alexander Zubkov outlived his wife
by only five years.01:39:30
He was only 34 when he died
of tuberculosis in Luxembourg.01:39:34
The newspapers wrote,01:39:36
“Princess Viktoria’s husband
dies in poverty.”01:39:39
Maybe I’m justifying him,
but I can’t really picture him01:39:43
as an evil, insidious,
calculating, and mercantile man.01:39:47
Rather, he seems like more of a goofball.01:39:50
Bender is also a cheerful man.01:39:51
- He was a cheerful, light,
adventurous person01:39:54
who didn’t know money’s worth,01:39:56
did not value money,
easy come easy go.01:39:59
It came to him,
and he squandered it away.01:40:01
He had this rare optimism
that is hard to come by,01:40:06
when a person just likes to live and
doesn't think they should build a career,01:40:10
leave behind trees, houses, and children,
they just want to live here and now.01:40:14
- Living fast, so to say.
- In a good way.01:40:18
Although I think that he brought
a lot of suffering to his mother01:40:21
who probably had
different expectations of him.01:40:24
And Viktoria too might have expected
a more stable married life.01:40:29
Moscow, Russia01:40:39
Poet Marina Tsvetaeva emigrated01:40:42
to her husband Sergey Efron in 1922.01:40:45
Here is their story.
She was eighteen years old.01:40:47
It was before the Revolution01:40:49
when she met seventeen-year-old
Efron in the Crimea, in Koktebel.01:40:52
And a year later,
as soon as Efron turned 18,01:40:56
they got married,
despite their very different backgrounds.01:40:59
Tsvetaeva’s father was
the founder of the Museum of Fine Arts,01:41:04
now the famous Pushkin Museum.01:41:05
Efron’s parents were revolutionaries01:41:08
who lived most of their lives
in exile abroad.01:41:11
After their wedding,
Efron and Tsvetaeva settled in Moscow,01:41:15
in this house in Borisoglebsky Lane.01:41:18
And they had a daughter, Ariadna,01:41:20
and a few years later,
a second daughter, Irina.01:41:24
A monument to Marina Tsvetaeva
was erected here not so long ago,01:41:27
right in front of the house
where she lived.01:41:30
The first couple years of their marriage
were filled with bliss,01:41:33
but later they had some side flings.01:41:35
Before the Revolution,
they didn’t have any financial01:41:40
or accommodation problems.01:41:42
It was all very good.01:41:45
When the Civil War broke out,
Efron joined the White Army.01:41:50
He took part in Denikin’s Ice March
and in the defense of the Crimea.01:41:54
With the remnants of the White Army
he went to Constantinople01:41:58
and ended up in that Gallipoli camp01:42:00
that I’ve already told you about.01:42:02
Tsvetaeva then was in Moscow,01:42:04
she didn’t know where was her husband,
if he was still alive.01:42:07
Here’s what she wrote in her diary
referring to her husband.01:42:10
If God performs this miracle
and saves your life,01:42:15
I will walk after you like a dog.01:42:20
In the summer of 1921, Ilya Ehrenburg,
a writer and friend of Tsvetaeva,01:42:24
brought her a letter from Sergey Efron
from Prague.01:42:28
Efron came here under the Russian campaign
of the Czechoslovak government01:42:33
that was providing
generous financial assistance01:42:37
to Russian émigrés.01:42:38
He entered Charles University,01:42:40
and his education was covered
by the Czechoslovak government.01:42:44
Tsvetaeva found out
that her husband was alive01:42:47
and studying at Charles University.01:42:49
She decided to take Ariadna
and go to Europe,01:42:53
and they managed to leave in May 1922.01:42:57
I say managed
because by then Soviet Russia01:43:01
had restored
diplomatic relations with Germany.01:43:03
Besides, the New Economic Policy
had been established,01:43:06
so it was easier to get permission
to leave.01:43:09
Tsvetaeva used this opportunity
and travelled to Berlin via Riga.01:43:15
Berlin. The Weimar Republic01:43:18
On May 15th, 1922,01:43:20
Marina Tsvetaeva and her daughter
arrived at Berlin-Charlottenburg station.01:43:24
The building looked different then,
as it was severely damaged during the war.01:43:29
As Tsvetaeva later wrote,
their luggage consisted01:43:32
of a chest with manuscripts,
a suitcase,01:43:35
and a garment bag, which was the last gift
from Marina’s father,01:43:39
the one who founded the Pushkin Museum.01:43:41
They had almost no clothes or shoes,
because everything had been worn out.01:43:46
Unlike, let’s say, Nabokov,01:43:47
Marina Tsvetaeva
was obviously closer to Germany,01:43:51
as her mother was half German,01:43:52
so Marina had spoken German well
since childhood.01:43:56
Germany had been
with Tsvetaeva since her childhood01:44:00
and was an integral part of her life,01:44:04
she loved Germany a lot.01:44:06
Where do I take a proper reason,01:44:08
With eye for eye and blood for blood.01:44:10
Germany – my sheer madness!01:44:11
Germany – my greatest love!01:44:18
Trautenaustrasse 9.01:44:19
This used to be
Elisabeth Schmidt’s boarding house.01:44:22
Now there’s a memorial plaque
in Tsvetaeva’s memory,01:44:25
because it’s in this boarding house
Tsvetaeva’s close friend Ilya Ehrenburg01:44:31
rented a room for her and her daughter.01:44:34
He had lived in this house before.01:44:36
Among the émigrés,
this boarding house was known01:44:39
as the house with balconies01:44:42
– there are indeed balconies,01:44:43
though not quite outstanding,
but they exist,01:44:45
– or as the Russian house in Wilmersdorf.01:44:47
Tsvetaeva’s husband Sergey Efron came here
to her from Prague.01:44:52
Here they finally reunited.01:44:54
After a while, Efron went back to Prague
to wait for his family there.01:44:59
As for Tsvetaeva,
she spent eleven weeks in Berlin01:45:04
meeting and talking to her friends.01:45:06
For emigrants, it is often the case
that when a new person arrives,01:45:10
at first,
they can’t get enough of everyone.01:45:17
Here’s an interesting detail.01:45:19
This is where Tsvetaeva started her,
let’s say,01:45:22
“virtual romance” with Boris Pasternak,01:45:26
who was then in Russia.01:45:28
They started exchanging letters
and kept it going for thirteen years.01:45:35
Berlin was a good place for Tsvetaeva,01:45:37
because thanks to Ehrenburg01:45:39
she published
two collections of her poetry there,01:45:42
Separation and Poems for Blok.01:45:49
Here I’d like to tell you about Ehrenburg.01:45:52
His story is very different
from the other stories of Russian émigrés01:45:57
because he wasn’t an emigrant per se,
although he was in Berlin,01:46:01
in Paris,
and everybody seemed to know him.01:46:04
He backed the 1905 Revolution.01:46:07
At sixteen, he was
elected to the editorial board01:46:09
of the Social Democratic Union newspaper.01:46:11
He was arrested for that01:46:13
but then released
under police supervision.01:46:16
Then he emigrated to Paris
and lived in France for eight years.01:46:20
Then the First World War began,
and he worked as a correspondent01:46:23
for Russian newspapers
Birzhevyie Vedomosti and Utro Rossii01:46:26
on the Western front,
that is, for the Allies.01:46:29
Summer of 1917, the Revolution broke out
in Russia, Ehrenburg came back.01:46:33
At first, he was against the Bolsheviks,
but when they came to power,01:46:38
he switched his allegiance
and got a Soviet passport.01:46:42
In March 1921,01:46:44
thanks to prominent party figure
Nikolay Bukharin,01:46:50
who was Ehrenburg’s old friend,01:46:52
he received permission to travel abroad01:46:55
on a so-called artistic trip.01:46:58
He moved to France again with his wife
while keeping his Soviet passport01:47:02
and would go back to the USSR
from time to time for his lectures.01:47:05
An incredible position.01:47:07
And he was again incredibly lucky,01:47:11
as being friends with Bukharin
who was later repressed,01:47:14
did not affect Ehrenburg in any way.01:47:17
In France, Ehrenburg was cooperating
with the Soviet press01:47:21
and working for Soviet propaganda
with such enthusiasm01:47:24
that he was deported from the country
in 1921.01:47:27
But instead of going back to the USSR,01:47:29
he came to Berlin
and lived here for three years.01:47:32
He wanted to make sort of a Michelin Guide
named after himself.01:47:37
And if somehow
he had seen it through, perhaps01:47:41
he would have gone down in history
in a different way.01:47:44
He wanted to make a guide
for European cafés01:47:47
with reviews and photos
by an experienced stranger.01:47:53
A contemporary look,
don’t you think?01:47:56
Roman Gul, an emigrant publicist,
wrote about Ehrenburg01:47:59
that he really loved the restaurant life.01:48:01
Rather, he liked to spend time
and work in cafés,01:48:05
including the famous Prager Diele,01:48:08
where Russian emigrants
were pragerdealing.01:48:11
“He can live without coffee,
but he can’t live without cafés”,01:48:14
wrote Gul.01:48:15
Ehrenburg himself wrote about emigrants
as follows.01:48:19
I don’t know why all these people live
in Berlin.01:48:22
Is it the currency or visas?
Are they emigrants or frugal tourists?01:48:26
Anyway, they are all unhappy with Berlin01:48:28
and don’t miss a single opportunity
to criticize it.01:48:31
Especially Russians, among them
it’s considered good manners.01:48:34
In 1924, the Left Bloc came to power
in his beloved France,01:48:38
so Ehrenburg was allowed to return
to Paris, which he did.01:48:42
And there he was working01:48:45
in the news bureau
of the Soviet newspaper Izvestiya01:48:48
under the pen name of Paul Joscelin.01:48:50
When I was thinking
about Ehrenburg’s biography,01:48:54
I thought it made01:48:56
a perfect parallel with Vladimir Pozner.01:48:59
He was the Pozner of his time.01:49:01
He was also a Francophile
with a Soviet passport,01:49:04
he was also working for Soviet propaganda,
but at the same time he had an opportunity01:49:09
to travel freely
and work at international news bureaus.01:49:14
He was also on a first name basis
with everybody from the émigré community,01:49:17
but still stayed friends
with the Soviet regime.01:49:20
An absolutely unique position.01:49:22
Prague, Czechoslovakia01:49:27
Tsvetaeva and her daughter Ariadna
arrived in Prague in August 1922.01:49:31
They spent their first night here
in this building01:49:35
in the outskirts of the city.01:49:36
At the time, it was a dormitory
for Russian emigrants.01:49:39
The curious thing is that now
there’s a dormitory01:49:42
for a local construction company.01:49:44
That’s where Sergey Efron
was taking shelter.01:49:48
Now the building has been rebuilt
and repainted,01:49:51
but then it was one of the most famous01:49:55
settlements of Russian emigration.01:49:57
In those times this building
was considered quite modern.01:50:00
There were even tiny rooms for one person.01:50:04
There wasn’t any furniture,01:50:07
and they were separated
from other rooms only by a small screen01:50:11
that didn’t even reach the ceiling.01:50:13
So, there was no soundproofing at all.01:50:15
The family of Tsvetaeva and Efron
couldn’t afford to rent an apartment01:50:20
in Prague,
but living in this cramped dormitory01:50:23
with strangers behind the wall
was unbearable for them.01:50:27
So, they moved to the suburbs,01:50:29
and most of their Prague period01:50:31
they spent moving from house to house
in Czech villages.01:50:38
When their financial situation improved,
partially thanks to the Russian Campaign,01:50:42
Tsvetaeva rented an apartment in the city,01:50:45
and for about six months in
1923-192401:50:47
she and Efron lived in this house01:50:51
with a beautiful
view over all of Prague.01:50:56
Tsvetaeva was even visited here
by Vladimir Nabokov,01:51:00
and he liked this
apartment so much01:51:01
that he later rented it
for his mother and sister.01:51:12
This is house number 109 on Loreta Square.01:51:15
Its story regarding Russian emigration
began one hundred years ago01:51:19
with the death of the academic Kondakov,01:51:21
who also lived in Prague
as an emigrant in February 1925.01:51:24
The Kondakov’s circle of students
and like-minded colleagues,01:51:28
including Sergey Efron,
decided to continue his work.01:51:34
Kondakov at the time
was one of the most prominent researchers01:51:39
of Byzantine and ancient Russian art
in the world.01:51:41
When Kondakov died, his followers decided
to continue his work,01:51:44
holding seminars named after him
– Seminarium Condacovianum,01:51:47
as they called them in Latin.01:51:50
Let’s talk more about Kondakov.01:51:52
We remember that he and Bunin lived in Odessa01:51:55
and took the same ship
via Constantinople to emigrate.01:52:01
A whole cult developed
around Kondakov later.01:52:04
What was that all about?01:52:06
- At first, he lived in Sofia.01:52:07
Then Bunin left Sofia for Paris.01:52:11
Kondakov realized that somehow things
weren’t working out there01:52:15
in terms of research in his sphere.01:52:17
And then Masaryk sent him an invitation,01:52:19
which Kondakov accepted and moved here.01:52:22
And here Kondakov became
a high-profile academic,01:52:26
partly because there were
only two Russian academicians in Prague01:52:30
at that time.01:52:33
When Kondakov died,
it was a huge problem for Efron,01:52:36
because the following day he had finals.01:52:39
He had to take an exam in some subject,01:52:41
and his professor
had just died.01:52:43
So Tsvetaeva wrote
to one of his professors01:52:45
to arrange for Efron to get his credits01:52:48
despite Kondakov’s death.01:52:51
Marina Tsvetaeva left
a very vivid description01:52:57
of Kondakov’s death.01:52:58
Kondakov died very quickly,
saying, “I am suffocating.”01:53:02
Then he reconsidered and clarified,
“No, I am dying.”01:53:06
Tsvetaeva wrote,01:53:07
“The last clarification of an academician
who did not tolerate sentiment.”01:53:10
That’s what Kondakov was like.01:53:13
Three years later,
Tsvetaeva and Efron moved to France01:53:18
only to suffer more hardship,01:53:20
which perhaps pushed Efron to serve
as a Soviet intelligence agent.01:53:26
But we’ll talk about that later.01:53:28
We need to say a couple words
about what White emigration meant01:53:34
to Soviet government.01:53:35
That’s where it was first called White.01:53:39
The Bolsheviks were well aware001:53:42
that this was
an alternative external Russia,01:53:45
that there, that is, here,01:53:46
was the intellectual elite
of the former nation.01:53:49
And they saw it
as nothing but a threat and an enemy.01:53:54
Almost until the end of the regime,01:53:57
Soviet questionnaires
would have the question,01:54:00
“Do you have relatives abroad?”01:54:02
And one of the reasons for this question
was White emigration.01:54:06
The Soviet secret services were also
well aware that among émigrés01:54:10
especially among those Whites
who fought in the war,01:54:14
many wanted revenge
and could form secret organizations01:54:19
to try and interfere
in what was happening in the Soviet Union.01:54:23
And they came up with a truly clever plan.01:54:26
They themselves organized
the White Underground01:54:29
that would go down in history
as the Trust.01:54:33
The Trust organized illegal crossings
across the Soviet border for migrants,01:54:38
held secret meetings in Moscow
and Leningrad,01:54:41
and helped distribute
anti-Bolshevik leaflets.01:54:44
And in the eyes of most émigrés,01:54:47
this was a real underground organization01:54:53
which got certain recognition and respect,
and nobody knew01:54:55
that in fact it was Lubyanka behind it.01:54:58
As a result, with the help of the Trust,
the OGPU managed to exterminate01:55:03
a lot of real enemies
who believed the legend01:55:06
about the underground network in Russia01:55:08
fighting the Bolsheviks,
and came back to the USSR, and died there.01:55:13
That’s how they killed Boris Savinkov,
one of the leaders01:55:16
of the Socialist Revolutionary
Fighting Organization01:55:19
that used to fight tsarist officials
and later switched to the Bolsheviks.01:55:24
He was lured into the Soviet Union
under the false pretext01:55:28
of a special operation
called Syndicate-Two.01:55:34
But the Trust wasn’t just
luring enemies into the USSR01:55:38
and exterminating them there.01:55:40
The idea was much broader.01:55:42
It was also meant to carry out
ideological work01:55:46
and show emigrants who allegedly arrived
in the USSR illegally01:55:49
that life was good there
and people were happy.01:55:52
So that those emigrants spread this idea
when they went back abroad.01:55:57
Isn’t that an impressive plan?01:55:59
And the most famous episode
of this ideological struggle01:56:03
was Vasily Shulgin’s trip to the USSR.01:56:07
This story alone is worth a whole movie.01:56:19
Shulgin is a well-known monarchist
and writer, like many of them.01:56:25
He did not accept
the Revolution point-blank.01:56:28
This is what he wrote
about the February Revolution.01:56:31
Disgust flooded my soul,01:56:33
and it didn’t leave me during the whole01:56:37
of the Great Russian Revolution.01:56:39
Personally,
he didn’t want the Revolution.01:56:41
He wanted change,
he wanted change through reform,01:56:47
if we can put it that way,
but not through some shocks.01:56:53
But when
the February Revolution broke out,01:56:55
he actually took an active part in it.01:56:58
He was elected to the Provisional Committee
of the State Duma,01:57:01
and as a member of that Committee,
in March 1917,01:57:04
he accepted the abdication
of Nicholas the Second.01:57:06
He was present
when Nicholas signed his renunciation.01:57:09
Later he said
that the monarchists had to be present,01:57:14
as to not leave the sovereign alone
to explain himself to the enemies.01:57:19
It was already clear
that it was past the point of no return,01:57:25
nothing could be taken back.01:57:27
And at the same time, we see that for many
it had become very convenient01:57:32
to blame all their own weaknesses
on Shulgin.01:57:36
“Look at this monarchist
who forced the monarch to abdicate.”01:57:40
But where were you?01:57:42
In 1917, we saw that not just monarchists,01:57:45
but leaders of the right-wing parties
were renouncing01:57:49
their former views en masse.01:57:51
Purishkevich wrote
the book Without a Visor,01:57:53
welcoming the Provisional Government.01:57:55
Lev Tikhomirov, who was given
a Faberge inkwell by Nicholas II01:57:59
for his book
On Monarchist Statehood,01:58:02
was talking to his wife on the phone,01:58:06
and his wife exclaimed,
“Congratulations on the coup!”01:58:08
Tikhomirov himself,01:58:10
who was the head
of the largest monarchist newspaper,01:58:12
wrote in his diary that he was happy
that the revolution took place.01:58:16
So, to some extent,
almost everyone proved their weakness.01:58:22
In 1917, after the Bolsheviks’ victory,01:58:24
Shulgin joined the White movement.01:58:27
At some point he was in Denikin’s Army.01:58:29
In 1920, he ended up in Constantinople01:58:32
and went to the Gallipoli camp.01:58:34
There he tried to find
his missing son Veniamin01:58:37
who he lost during the defense
of the Crimea.01:58:39
Let’s remember this detail.01:58:40
Shulgin then showed up in Czechoslovakia,01:58:43
then in Berlin,01:58:44
then he went to the State of Slovenes,
Croats, and Serbs,01:58:48
and settled there in Sremski Karlovci,
where we’ve already been.01:58:51
In 1925, he was put in contact
with the Trust Organization01:58:56
which promised to help him find
traces of his missing son inside Russia.01:59:04
He agreed.01:59:06
They made him a fake passport01:59:08
under the name
of a foreign citizen Eduard Schmidt,01:59:11
and Shulgin illegally travelled
to the Soviet Union.01:59:15
Someone still had to go to Soviet Russia.01:59:18
They say
there is this powerful organization,01:59:20
it needs to be verified.01:59:23
It has to be an experienced person;01:59:25
it must be a broad-minded person.01:59:29
It must be a person
with a fairly good intellect.01:59:34
Shulgin was perfect
for the role of an infiltrator,01:59:39
let’s be honest, that’s who he was.01:59:43
His personal motivation was,
of course, an attempt to find his son.01:59:49
And Shulgin decided to take the plunge.01:59:54
He visited Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev.01:59:57
Later he wrote a whole book about it
titled Three Capitals.02:00:01
If you haven’t heard about it,
I highly recommend it.02:00:04
It is full of everyday02:00:07
realia and details
of Soviet life,02:00:10
which I find very interesting.02:00:12
Shulgin then safely returned to Europe.02:00:16
Later, when it was revealed
that Trust was an OGPU operation,02:00:21
for Shulgin
it came as an especially low blow,02:00:24
because his book had already come out.02:00:26
And it turned out
that in order not to compromise the people02:00:30
who had allegedly helped him on that trip,02:00:32
he sent galley proofs of his book
to those people who he believed02:00:36
to be members of the underground.02:00:38
And then he wrote these bitter words,02:00:40
“It turned out they were proofread
by Dzerzhinsky at the Lubyanka.”02:00:44
Dzerzhinsky was by then long gone,
but the story was one of a kind.02:00:47
Indeed, his book was edited
at the Lubyanka.02:00:52
It dented people’s confidence in Shulgin,
he himself took it very badly.02:01:00
He wrote
that this whole situation forced him02:01:04
to leave politics.02:01:06
He stayed in Yugoslavia02:01:08
and led a private life
there for quite a long time.02:01:12
And when Yugoslavia was occupied by Nazis,
Shulgin stayed there, was very cautious,02:01:18
avoided any contact
with German authorities,02:01:22
but didn’t call to stand
against them either.02:01:24
And in 1944,02:01:26
when Soviet troops were approaching
Yugoslavia,02:01:28
Shulgin decided to stay.02:01:31
When the Red Army got to Yugoslavia,02:01:35
he was arrested and sent via Hungary
to Moscow, to the Lubyanka,02:01:38
where in 1947 he was sentenced
to twenty-five years in prison02:01:42
for anti-Soviet activities.02:01:45
And he went to serve his term
in Vladimir Central Prison.02:01:51
He was lucky to be sentenced to prison.02:01:53
If they had gotten him a little earlier,
he would have been executed.02:01:58
Due to the poor nutrition there
and his old age02:02:04
and poor health,02:02:07
he faced serious problems.02:02:10
Shulgin was in the Gulag when Stalin died.02:02:13
Three years later, in 1956,
after twelve years in prison,02:02:18
he was released and stayed in Vladimir,02:02:21
where he became quite famous.02:02:26
Vladimir02:02:29
Shulgin was given an apartment.02:02:31
It was a one room corner apartment.02:02:34
Of course, he didn’t get a passport.02:02:37
Instead, he got a green ticket,
a kind of residence permit.02:02:43
It stated there that he remained
a citizen of the Russian Empire.02:02:47
If he wanted to go somewhere,02:02:50
he had to get permission
from the authorities.02:02:54
And he had to register himself
at a state office once a month as well.02:03:03
At the suggestion of the KGB,02:03:05
probably they were censors as well,
a small book was published02:03:09
under the title
Letters to Russian Emigrants.02:03:15
There he honestly and openly wrote
about the success of our country,02:03:19
that everything was fine,
that he liked it there,02:03:21
and all of that was unbiased.02:03:24
But that wasn’t the end
of Vasily Shulgin’s story.02:03:28
It had a fantastic sequel.02:03:31
In 1965, having survived everything,
including the Soviet camps,02:03:36
Shulgin got to star
in a film about himself.02:03:40
Shulgin played Vasily Shulgin,02:03:44
and the rest were actors,
because it was a feature film.02:03:48
It was called
Facing the Judgement of History.02:03:50
In the film, Vasily Shulgin arrives
in Leningrad02:03:55
on a Tu-104 plane,
it doesn’t mention where he comes from,02:03:58
and he is met
by the “right” Soviet historian,02:04:03
played by Sergey Svistunov.02:04:06
And together they walk
around Leningrad02:04:08
where Shulgin hasn’t been
for about forty years,02:04:11
which was true
both in the plot and in life,02:04:14
and they are having talks of all kinds
and discussing how the city has changed.02:04:20
- What does the Senate building house now?02:04:24
- The Senate building
now houses the state national archive.02:04:29
But what’s more important02:04:31
is that these two main characters
are constantly engaged02:04:34
in a political discussion.02:04:35
Shulgin appears there
as an awesome old man02:04:40
who had not lost faith in anything,
who had not abandoned02:04:45
the ideals of his youth,02:04:46
who had not lost faith in the cause
that he had served his whole life.02:04:50
They discuss
the White movement, the Civil War,02:04:55
the tsar, the Great Patriotic War,
fascism.02:05:00
Shulgin again totally outshines
this Soviet historian02:05:06
played by Svistunov
and looks really impressive.02:05:13
As for Svistunov’s character,
he looks like a stuck-up Soviet nerd.02:05:22
- What silence, how peaceful
and blissful it is.02:05:29
- Yes, peaceful silence.02:05:33
How much it cost us,
this peaceful silence!02:05:36
Even by the standards
of the Khruschev Thaw,02:05:38
when this film came out…02:05:40
I can’t wrap my mind
around how the censors allowed it,02:05:44
how they could even shoot this
in the Soviet Union.02:05:46
In my opinion,02:05:48
this film is one hundred percent
anti-Soviet.02:05:51
Here is how it happened.02:05:53
There was a decorated Soviet director
Fridrikh Ermler.02:05:57
Among other things,
he made the milestone film02:06:02
The Turning Point in 1945.02:06:05
This film was
a Palme d’Or winner at Cannes.02:06:09
But by the middle of 1960s,
he was an old man,02:06:13
forced to give way to the fresh youth.02:06:17
So Ermler wants to show
that he’s still a force02:06:20
to be reckoned with,02:06:21
so he comes up with this incredible story.02:06:23
He goes to the Central Committee’s
Department of Culture02:06:26
and reminds them about Shulgin,02:06:28
who is still in good health.02:06:32
He suggests bringing him to Leningrad02:06:35
and engaging in
an ideological discussion02:06:37
with him to beat
the Whites at their own game.02:06:40
He sells this idea very beautifully,02:06:42
saying,
“I myself fought in the Civil War,02:06:44
people like Shulgin
were put up against a wall,02:06:47
back then.02:06:48
But now, after so many years,
we have to beat them ideologically.02:06:51
Let’s put the last nail
in the White Guard’s coffin.”02:06:56
The Central Committee agrees to this,02:07:00
but as I said,
the effect is quite the opposite,02:07:05
because Shulgin doesn’t play the part,02:07:10
speaking in an absolutely sincere way.02:07:14
- In this fratricidal massacre,02:07:19
it was shed by both Whites and Reds,02:07:27
because blood begets blood.02:07:33
When the film came out in 1965,
the Soviet government realized02:07:38
something was wrong,02:07:39
because it showed in theaters
for three days before being removed.02:07:44
It wasn’t banned outright,
but it wasn’t shown anywhere02:07:46
until the end of the Soviet regime.02:07:48
Ermler died shortly thereafter.02:07:52
It’s just an amazing story,02:07:55
because it shows
how these people, the stars02:07:58
of the first emigration wave, so to say,02:08:01
how integral they were,
how true they were to themselves,02:08:05
even after everything
they had to go through,02:08:09
even admitting
to their ideological defeat in the end.02:08:13
If you are interested
in the history of Soviet power,02:08:17
the history of White emigration,
I highly recommend this film to you,02:08:20
because it is
a unique snapshot of the era.02:08:28
He might not be that interesting
as a writer,02:08:35
he wasn't that lucky as a politician,02:08:38
but he was a witness,
and that's interesting.02:08:43
He was a witness to a terrible age,
a witness to a cruel age.02:08:56
THE 1920S
THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC02:09:16
At the end of the 1920,02:09:18
things were going well
in the Weimar Republic.02:09:20
The economic situation was improving,
the unemployment rate was going down,02:09:23
incomes going up,
production rates increasing.02:09:27
The National Socialist
German Workers' Party, NSDAP,02:09:30
which grew popular during the crisis,
was losing support,02:09:34
and in the 1928 parliamentary elections
it got only two percent of the vote.02:09:40
This period went down
as the Golden Twenties, Goldene Zwanziger.02:09:45
The new-found stability
of day-to-day life allowed02:09:49
for the flourishing of art and science.02:09:52
And of course, that was
the most liberal time in German history,02:09:56
a time of cabarets, bars,
restaurants, ubiquitous alcohol,02:10:01
drugs, free sex, and all kinds of shows.02:10:06
Recently, there was
a TV series by Tom Tykwer,02:10:09
famous for directing Run Lola Run.02:10:12
This new series was called Babylon Berlin.02:10:15
If you haven't seen it02:10:16
and are interested in this period,
check it out.02:10:18
They've done some meticulous work
lovingly recreating this atmosphere.02:10:26
And through this tobacco smoke,
loud music, and bright colors,02:10:32
Russian emigrants made their way,
lived their lives.02:10:40
Shklovsky described it very nicely.02:10:41
Three hundred thousand Russians
of different ethnicities02:10:45
are roaming around
through the cracks of a dying city.02:10:47
Music in cafes.02:10:48
A nation of waiters and singers
within the nation of the defeated.02:10:53
Shklovsky was very critical
of Berlin's depravity.02:10:57
And we remember that by the 1930s
he had already left for the Soviet Union.02:11:03
In 1929, the Golden Twenties ended.02:11:06
The country faced a new shock.02:11:10
The Great Depression is wreaking
havoc across America,02:11:13
and like a house of cards,02:11:15
the European economies are collapsing
one after another,02:11:18
exacerbating the global economic crisis,02:11:20
the biggest economic downturn
in world history at the time.02:11:27
1930
CZECHOSLOVAKIA02:11:32
In 1930, all prukazes in Czechoslovakia
were replaced by Nansen passports,02:11:40
despite the active protests
of Russian emigrants,02:11:42
because by 1930 here in Czechoslovakia,
there were more important issues.02:11:48
Everyone realized
that the Bolsheviks were there to stay.02:11:51
The global financial crisis
had reached Czechoslovakia02:11:56
and the hopes and plans
for a beautiful Russia of the future02:11:59
were put on the back burner.02:12:03
1933
THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC02:12:08
Millions of Germans were losing
their jobs and sinking into poverty.02:12:12
And with the economic and political chaos,02:12:15
the radical Nazi party was gaining
popularity again.02:12:18
And in 1933, it won the elections
with over forty percent of the vote02:12:24
in the Reichstag Parliament.02:12:26
The party leader Adolf Hitler
became Reichskanzler.02:12:29
It was totally legitimate,
in full accordance with the constitution.02:12:33
He became the leader of the country02:12:35
and literally the next day
he began to tighten the screws.02:12:38
All opposition newspapers were banned,02:12:40
as well as public speeches
against the Nazis.02:12:43
Mass arrests began,
and all parties were outlawed02:12:45
except for the Nazi Party.
Strikes were next in line.02:12:48
Tensions were mounting quickly.02:12:51
As far as movies are concerned,
you probably remember02:12:55
Bob Fosse's great movie
Cabaret with Liza Minnelli.02:12:59
That moment was shown
there very dramatically.02:13:07
What happened to Russian emigrants
during Hitler's rise to power?02:13:12
Some of them fled abroad,02:13:14
as well as part
of the German intellectual elite.02:13:16
On January 3, 1919,02:13:19
God took me away
from Lenin's totalitarianism02:13:22
to a free Germany.02:13:24
And on September 3, 1933,02:13:27
he took me from Hitler's totalitarianism
to a free France.02:13:30
This is how the writer Roman Gul described
the end of his German period of life.02:13:37
Interestingly enough,
not everyone left the country immediately.02:13:41
And not all Russians left it at all,
because many hoped02:13:44
that Hitler was a temporary thing,02:13:46
or because they considered
themselves apolitical02:13:48
and thought that they could
wait it out in the city02:13:51
and keep their usual life working
at their restaurant or shop.02:13:56
Needless to say, that proved
to be just as fatal of a delusion02:13:59
as what was said about the Bolsheviks
after they came to power,02:14:04
when many also thought it wasn't
for long and they could wait it out.02:14:14
Control over Russians
who stayed in Berlin was intensified.02:14:20
Vasily Biskupsky, a general from Munich,02:14:23
was in charge
of the Russian National Administration.02:14:27
Polarization was taking place.02:14:29
Most had left,
but some remained staying in Berlin.02:14:33
Their exact number is not known,
between ten and forty thousand.02:14:40
Remember that successful
Cossack businessman, Paramonov?02:14:43
At first, the rise of the Nazis
to power did not affect his life.02:14:47
He was summoned
to the Gestapo for a conversation.02:14:50
They asked him about his attitude
toward Bolshevism,02:14:53
but in the end, they let him go
and pressed no charges against him.02:14:57
He had business there.02:14:59
No one really bothered him.02:15:02
Elpidifor, his son, studied
at the German Polytechnic Institute.02:15:08
And they were doing just fine.02:15:10
They did not seem
to welcome the Nazis very much.02:15:15
Paramonov didn't have
much to do with them,02:15:17
and his son did not get
German citizenship,02:15:20
so as not to be drafted into the army.02:15:22
And when things got tough,
with shelling and so on,02:15:25
they fled to Karlsbad, Karlovy Vary.02:15:30
And then the Red Army came.02:15:32
Of course, they quickly realized
there was nothing good for them there,02:15:36
and by hook or by crook
they started trying to get permission02:15:40
to travel to the American zone,
that is, the German territory02:15:43
under control of American troops.02:15:45
It's hard to tell how they managed
to get this permission02:15:48
and why they weren't arrested.02:15:51
Probably SMERSH and the NKVD
were busy with other things then.02:15:56
Later they said that Paramonov's wife
managed to get permission02:16:02
through one of the Soviet commandants02:16:04
by promising to bring him
a watch as a gift.02:16:07
In the end, they didn't fulfil
their promise and did not return02:16:10
from the American zone.02:16:12
There they settled
in the Bavarian city of Bayreuth.02:16:16
Of course, once again
the Paramonovs had nothing left02:16:19
of their business and money.02:16:21
And sixty-nine-years-old Nikolay
had to start from scratch again02:16:24
and went into publishing.02:16:27
He published books in Russian –
with the permission02:16:30
of the American occupation
administration –02:16:32
which were meant for displaced persons.02:16:36
There were a lot of former citizens
of the Soviet Union02:16:39
who were in Germany then,
having been kidnapped,02:16:43
or sent there after a camp,02:16:45
and a lot of them were in camps
in the American zone.02:16:50
Paramonov was publishing books for them.02:16:52
Only once did he have trouble
with American authorities,02:16:56
when they confiscated his set
of postcards with Saint Nicholas,02:17:00
because religious propaganda
was prohibited in the camps.02:17:07
Paramonov died of a heart attack
in Bavaria at the age of seventy-three.02:17:13
After his death, his son Elpidifor,
named after his grandfather, left02:17:18
for the USA with his family,
because he was sure02:17:21
that Soviet invasion and
the Third World War weren't that far off.02:17:32
For Vladimir Nabokov,02:17:34
the Nazis' rise to power
was the last straw,02:17:37
and he began to urgently look
for opportunities to leave Germany02:17:41
that as we remember he deeply resented.02:17:44
One of important signals for him
was what happened to Ivan Bunin,02:17:51
who was taken off a train
from Paris to Berlin by customs officers02:17:56
and put through several hours
of humiliating questioning.02:18:02
It was an outrageous
and pretty ugly situation.02:18:07
Also, Nabokov's wife, Vera, was Jewish.02:18:10
In 1933, she was dismissed from her work.02:18:14
Until 1933, Vera worked as a secretary
for a company owned by Jews.02:18:22
They were forced to shut down
due to various obvious reasons,02:18:25
such as financial troubles
and physical assaults on its owners.02:18:33
In 1937, Nabokov left Germany.02:18:36
First he headed for Belgium,
and his wife at the time went to Prague,02:18:40
where Nabokov joined her.02:18:42
Together they moved to France
and stayed there for the next three years.02:18:47
France was about to become the center
of the first-wave of Russian emigration.02:18:52
How did Ivan Bunin take the news
on his Nobel prize here?02:18:55
What happened to his love story
with Galina Kuznetsova,02:18:59
a woman who he invited to live
with him and his wife as his muse?02:19:06
And what happened to Kuznetsova's archive,02:19:09
that apparently contains
a lot of curious things?02:19:12
Why is it now in the hands of a person02:19:14
who swore never to give it to Moscow?02:19:18
Why did they arrest
the singer Nadezhda Plevitskaya02:19:20
and sentence her
to twenty years in prison?02:19:23
Why were there so many
princes-slash-taxi drivers in this city?02:19:27
How did White officers
become the main workforce02:19:30
of giant car producers
like Renault and Citroen?02:19:33
And what did those Russian emigrants
look like in Paris?02:19:37
How did their language sound
compared to modern Russian?02:19:40
What did they eat?
What music did they listen to?02:19:43
What happened here
after France was occupied by Nazis?02:19:46
How did Russian emigrants split
after the summer of 1941,02:19:50
when Hitler invaded the USSR?02:19:52
And what happened in 1945
when Stalin promised02:19:56
to pardon all the White emigrants
if they came back?02:20:00
Did any of them manage
to win recognition in a new country,02:20:03
and how do their descendants
live these days?02:20:05
What do they think of Russia
and the current wave of emigration?02:20:10
See all of that in the third part
of our mini-series on White emigration,02:20:15
the next episode will be all about France.02:20:18
Subscribe to our channel,
we'll see you soon.Description:
18+ THIS MATERIAL (INFORMATION) WAS PRODUCED, DISTRIBUTED AND (OR) SENT BY A FOREIGN AGENT PIVOVAROV ALEXEY VLADIMIROVICH OR CONCERNS THE ACTIVITIES OF A FOREIGN AGENT PIVOVAROV ALEXEY VLADIMIROVICH The second episode of our mini-series about the white emigration is coming out today. We continue it in Berlin, where in the 1920s, according to various estimates, from 200 thousand to 300 thousand Russians arrived. For a city with a population of about four million, it was a serious change — you couldn't spend a day on the street without hearing the Russian speech. Just like in Prague, where the Czechoslovak authorities decided to pay extra to the Russian emigrants. For what? And how much? All the answers are already on our channel! Contents: 00:00 Why is Berlin becoming the capital for the Russian emigrants? 05:57 Who did they work for? 07:55 The Russian press in Berlin 11:40 Is Alexey Tolstoy a relative of Leo Tolstoy? 14:06 How Alexey Tolstoy left for emigration to come back 21:06 Why was Tolstoy nicknamed "the red count"? 29:00 Why did Prague become known as "The Russian Oxford"? 31:24 Is it true that millions were paid to the Russian emigrants in Czechoslovakia? 41:36 How did a Norwegian polar explorer create passports for the Russian refugees? 46:10 "The good Russians scold other good Russians" 48:04 What makes the first wave of the Russian emigration different? 51:50 Why was Vladimir Nabokov's father killed? 1:00:00 "We had an inscription on the door in the dining room – We speak only Russian in this house!" 1:00:56 Did the return to Russia mean execution for them? 1:05:15 Charlottenburg – the main Russian district of Berlin 1:06:56 What does it mean "to pragerdiel"? 1:09:44 How did the Russian emigrants build a house church in a cooperative house? 1:13:47 How did the Cossack Paramonov lose everything, and then become a millionaire again in emigration? 1:17:10 Viktor Shklovsky on homesickness 1:24:10 Why does Shklovsky go to the White Sea-Baltic Canal? 1:27:37 The "philosophical steamer" 1:33:10 How did a 20-year-old Russian emigrant marry the sister of the German Emperor? 1:44:02 The story of Tsvetaeva and Efron 1:49:19 Vladimir Pozner in the first wave of emigration 1:57:25 How the chekist organization The TRUST infiltrated the circles of emigrants 1:59:50 Vasily Shulgin's secret trip to the USSR 2:07:15 "In the court of History" – an anti-Soviet film in Soviet Russia 2:12:44 Cabaret, alcohol and sex: what was the era of the "golden twenties" in Germany 2:15:57 What happened to the Russian emigrants after Hitler came to power? 2:22:37 Paris is the center of the Russian emigration
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