Whatever Remains

by Penny F. Graham

  We loved our month in Poland — the Polish beer, the people, the history and some of the more spectacular scenery. Two of our many memorable experiences were the snow-covered slopes of the High Tatras mountains near Zakopane and a canoe trip through the many lakes and rivers of north eastern Poland. To reach Russia, we took the overland train to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania and then flew on to Moscow. We were to meet my cousin Jacky and her daughter Georgia in Moscow. They were flying from Western Australia direct to Russia. Jacky spoke a little Russian and this would be of great value as we knew from experience how difficult it was to communicate with just a small Russian/English dictionary.

  There was another reason I wanted to return to Astrakhan. I had kept some of Tony’s ashes as I knew he had, in life, wanted to visit his mother’s and grandmother’s homeland. He never did, so in death he would make that journey and I would sprinkle his remaining ashes from the top of the Red Tower in Astrakhan’s Kremlin.

  Moscow was hot, very hot. We were staying in one of a series of high-rise hotel blocks put up for the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. Four enormous accommodation blocks were built to house overseas visitors. Conveniently situated next to a Metro Station, they would have been ideal but for a very serious design flaw. The unlagged hot water pipes delivering hot water throughout the hotel ran along the walls of all the bathrooms. This, the architects must have thought, not only delivered hot water to your tap and shower, but heated the building at the same time. Fine for cool days, but this was July and the temperature in the buildings was almost unbearable. The small two-paned windows were also a problem, as one was a fixed pane and the other would only open a few centimetres. Obviously they did not want any ‘jumpers’ or ‘accidents’ but this meant you could not get any air flow through the room. Oh, and the fans we hopefully asked for at the registration desk? ‘No, sorry, none available’.

  We met up with Jacky and Georgia and headed towards our destination of Astrakhan as soon as they had spent a few days doing the sights of Moscow. Lindsay and I could not get out of Moscow, or that hotel, fast enough.

  We all took the train to Saratov. We wanted to show Jacky and Georgia the marvellous food market and Saratov was a good jumping-off point for taking a ship to Astrakhan. We were lucky to find a ship within a few days, the Alexander Nevsky. The journey down river was pretty much as we had experienced in 1998, but hotter. This Russian summer was going to be very trying. Unfortunately, our cabins were over the engine room which added to our general discomfort — not only were our nights uncomfortably hot, but the floor of our cabin shook with every pulse of the old 1950s engines.

  Once again we walked up Mamayev Kurgan to the statue of Mother Russia and wended our way through the rebuilt city of Volgograd, then continued down river to Astrakhan. There we booked into the same Lotus Hotel on the banks of the Volga. The hotel had not changed much in the intervening years, just got a little grimier and a little more run down. We booked into an almost identical back room as on our last visit with the same tired linoleum floor and noisy air conditioning unit that blocked half the window.

  The hotel may not have moved with the times, but the city had. As we set off to show our visitors the sights, it was a pleasure to see that the streets looked much cleaner and the buildings in the city centre were in better repair.

  Jacky and Georgia could only stay a couple of days as they were travelling on to England and Ireland. So on our second day we took Tony’s ashes to the Kremlin. The Red Tower at the main gate was closed for repair as were many of the walls surrounding the Kremlin. The Kremlin was undergoing a major face lift. But we were able to climb the north-east wall which overlooked the city on one side and the Kremlin gardens on the other. I don’t think Tony would have been disappointed to find himself flying in the warm air currents over the city that he considered his mother’s birthplace.

  Almost as soon as we had waved Jacky and Georgia off on their train journey back to Moscow, the weather broke. The heat abated and the humidity dropped. All at once it became a more pleasant place to be.

  This time, we had decided, we were going to do our research correctly. First, we needed a competent interpreter, so we enlisted the help of the two young girls on the hotel front desk. Both looked to be in their early twenties, smartly dressed, friendly and, best of all, had a few words of English. They were wonderfully helpful. Yes, they thought they could organise a translator for us, a young acquaintance of theirs who had just completed her university degree in music and language. They confirmed she was a competent English speaker, was prepared to come with us to the Archives Office and would be happy to translate for us. She charged by the hour, and a very moderate fee it seemed to us. Her name was Alina Savinova. We met outside the big wooden doors of the Archives Office a couple of days later. This time the office was open. We sat in the main hall and got to know each other and told Alina our story. She was petite, attractive, spoke good English and had a disarmingly friendly manner.

  Sitting across the desk from the archivist, we wondered what we were letting ourselves in for. Were we, she asked sternly, eying us over the top of her glasses, seeking to make a claim for money or property from the Russian Government? Not an auspicious start I thought. With Alina’s unassuming charm and pretty smile, she made it clear that we were only interested in finding information for family history purposes. There was a perceptible warming of attitude from the archivist. We settled in for a long discussion between the archivist and Alina, with clarification by us via Alina when needed. We were asked to hand over 2404 roubles ($A120), which we thought pretty reasonable if they did indeed do a proper search. After filling in (with Alina’s help) lots of paper work and being given an assurance they would do their best to find any evidence of my grandmother, Julia Orlov, having been born, married or even lived in Astrakhan, we left the building.

  Well, I had given it my best shot. We had twice made the journey through Russia to this small city on the Caspian Sea. Twice we had made representations, admittedly one informally, to the Archives Office in the search for information on my Russian ancestors. Realistically, what more could I do?

  We sat with Alina in a small coffee shop not far from the Archives Office and she told us a bit about herself. We kept in touch with her for some years but like many friendships made away from home, time and distance take their toll. Last we heard of her, she was trying to get a place at a Japanese University to do post-graduate work.

  We travelled back to Saratov by train as it was too late in the season for the bigger cruise ships to visit Astrakhan. Maybe it was wishful thinking but I was now convinced this was the homeland of my forefathers. Who knows if I will ever see again this dusty little city that I had come to love?

  As the train pulled out of the station and headed through the wide dry landscape, tears misted my view. I was thinking of the time 90 years ago when my grandmother would have perhaps turned to look back one last time at the town of her birth. If she had left Astrakhan by train, horse and cart, or even on foot, there would have surely been the opportunity, and the desire, to take that one last look back.

  Once again we took the last ship of the season from Saratov, this time to Kazan to try and make contact with our friend Elena whom we had met on our previous visit to Russia. This part of the river was new territory for us and now that the days were cooler, travelling was more enjoyable.

  Kazan is a prosperous city. It is the capital city of the republic of Tatarstan, and the eighth largest city in Russia. The city centre has wide well-maintained streets, at least by Russian standards. But, like other towns in Russia, it was another story when you left the city centre and ventured into the suburbs. The drab high rise concrete monstrosities thrown up soon after World War II were everywhere, and pot-holed and crumbling-edged streets criss-crossed the extensive suburbs. Everywhere there was the same dichotomy of the old and the new we had seen so often in Russia.

  It took us two days to find Elena but at last, there she was, standing in the foyer of our
hotel. We spent a wonderful three days together catching up on each other’s lives and seeing the city through Elena’s eyes. This was her city and she was proud of its achievements and its many great buildings and monuments. All too soon it was time to leave and head back to Moscow for our flight out. Elena came with us to the train station with some gifts to remind us of our time together in Kazan. One of them, a small plate with a delicately etched picture of Kazan’s Kremlin, sits on the wall in our study just above my computer.

  Luckily, neither of us gets sick very often when we travel, but for me, the journey back to Moscow and our last few days in Russia were clouded by a virulent bout of flu. The train trip to Moscow became a nightmare as my temperature escalated, my throat hurt and my head ached. Sadly, the last few days in Russia were spent resting in our hotel room. We had left some of our excess luggage at the Delta Hotel so that’s where we returned. The room was still very hot but the hotel staff took one look at me and, wonder upon wonder, found us a fan.

  We flew from Russia back to Germany and then on to France to spend time with our son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren in their new home in a small rural village. We spent the next six months there helping them work on their straw bale home and just being part of the family.

  By January 2007 we were back home again in Australia. No longer in our Kambah home, but in a townhouse where we had moved not long before we left for overseas. With regret, we decided the home we had designed and built was now unnecessarily large for just the two of us. Our new home was closer to the centre of Canberra and the garden smaller and more manageable.

  From our knowledge of the workings of the Russian bureaucracy, I had not expected to hear from the Archives Office in Astrakhan for four to six months. It was now getting on for eight months since our visit to Astrakhan. Was our latest journey to Russia going to turn into another huge disappointment? I emailed our young interpreter, Alina, and asked if she would be kind enough to either ring or visit the Archives Office to ask them how their search was proceeding. She promised to do so and within a week I had an email from her with some not too encouraging news. They were, Alina assured us, doing their best to process our request for information on the Orlov family but were not having much success as yet. I was now prepared for the worst.

  But in March 2007 an email in Cyrillic with many attachments arrived in my inbox. The last of the big mysteries was about to be unravelled.

  We were desperate to know what the covering email said, so using BabelFish, the online translating program, this is what we got.

  How do you do!

  We send archive information and archive extractions on your genealogo-biographical demand to you.

  Archive information assured by press AOGU the ‘Public Archive of the Astrakhan province’ and the archives copies of documents will be to you sent to the post address.

  And there were pages of attachments to translate.

  We, of course, could not understand Russian and my cousin Jacky’s Russian was not up to the job of translating many, many pages of text. We did do a preliminary translation of all documents using BabelFish but we knew we really needed expert help. Where would we find a competent and skilled Russian to English translator?

  Lindsay got onto a mailing list of people involved in Russian genealogy. He asked if there was anyone who would be prepared to translate our Russian documents. We had the attachments in Word or PDF format, so it was an easy task to send them on to anyone who could help.

  How wonderfully kind complete strangers can be. Within a day or so we had a couple of people who put up their hand to offer their services as translators.

  My everlasting gratitude goes to Bill Everett and Kirill Chashchin, who within a week or so had sent us back translations of all documents and certificates. The translations from Bill and Kirill were very similar and so with our rather strange BabelFish translation we now had three sets of papers to work with.

  Both Bill and Kirill, and any subsequent Russian speakers who have seen the original documents, have told us that the information and certificates sent to us from Astrakhan were of amazing quality. The Archives Office had done us proud. The people we spoke to there may well have been suspicious and wary of our intentions when we arrived with our young interpreter. But in the end, and after many months, what they turned up was pure gold. No, it was better than gold. It gave me peace of mind, a feeling of knowing where I came from and an unquestionable link to Astrakhan, my city in the sand.

  Chapter 28

  A parcel from Russia, 1848 onwards

  The parcel from Russia gave me a history and a background; it also gave me closure on any doubts I had on my possible Russian heritage. In amongst the dry facts, official stamps and Cyrillic signatures lay the history of five generations of the family Orlov — my family.

  On 8 July 1848, in the city of Astrakhan, a young freewoman (that is to say, not a serf) Agrippina Yaklovevna Borovkova (that is, the daughter of Yakov Borovkov), gave birth to a son, Mikhail. Agrippina was unmarried, so at her son’s baptism in the Russian Orthodox Church of St Mikhail the Archangel in the city of Astrakhan, he was given the patronymic and surname of his godfather, the freeman Egor Vasilyevich Orlov. So was born and baptised my great great grandfather, known initially as Mikhail Egorovich Borovkov and then as Mikhail Egorovich Orlov. It has been suggested, but not proved, that the godfather Egor may have been his natural father.

  We hear no more of Agrippina, but someone was looking after the young Mikhail, and that person had both money and some influence, for Mikhail studied at a church-affiliated school till he graduated in 1862 at age 16. He then joined the Astrakhan Chamber of State Properties as a surveying student (or land valuator trainee, depending on which translation is used). He went on to obtain a position in the state service of Astrakhan. Someone was backing him — his godfather maybe?

  In 1869, Mikhail was appointed as a surveyor, and then, seven years later, promoted to senior surveyor with the Astrakhan Department of Fisheries and Seal Resource Management. By 1880 he had been appointed supervisor of fisheries resource management. The following year he was promoted to Civil 14th Grade according to the Table of Ranks legislation. Mikhail was no longer considered working class, but was part of the state bureaucracy, with rank equivalent to the Army rank of Ensign (the most junior officer). This made him a member of what was then called the personal non-hereditary nobility, a status that also applied to his wife, but was not transferable to his children.

  Here is a man who obviously is not letting the fact of his illegitimate birth hold him back.

  His personal life too was prospering — in 1870, Mikhail married the daughter of another senior surveyor. His wife, Aleksandra Simakina, was of similar age and also of Russian Orthodox faith. They had five children. Their eldest, a son, was born in 1874 and baptised Vasily Mikhailovich Orlov. Enter my great grandfather. Then came daughter Klavdia in 1876, son Petr in 1880, and daughters Maria in 1884 and Serafima in 1886.

  At 3 pm on 19 February 1888, tragedy struck. Mikhail Orlov died at his place of work from a ‘heart stroke’. He was only 40 years old and his youngest child was not yet two.

  Mikhail Orlov owned no property, so his widow, Aleksandra, was left with no means of support for herself and her five young children. Upon application, she was granted a one-off state assistance payment of 800 roubles. It was enough for her to keep at least the oldest son, Vasily, at Astrakhan’s religious school until he graduated in 1889. We hear no more of Vasily’s four siblings — they were not my direct family line, so the Archives Office gave no information other than their births.

  After graduation at age 15, Vasily joined the Astrakhan Orthodox Seminary where he successfully completed a six-year course, coming second in the first grade graduates’ class. In 1895, he was ordained as deacon of the Trinity Church of Kharabali village, beside the Akhtuba River, an arm of the Volga some 160 kilometres north-west of Astrakhan. This is now one of Russia’s primary vegetable growing areas, particularly well k
nown as a major source of watermelons. It is also very close to where Sarai Batu, the 13th century capital of the Golden Horde, was most likely located. Set in wide open flatlands with bone chilling winters and blisteringly hot summers, the village must have seemed very primitive after the comforts of Astrakhan

  A year later in 1896, Vasily was appointed a priest at the Church of St Vasily, Biryuchya Kosa, another village on the Volga, this time some 130 kilometres south-west of Astrakhan, almost on the shores of the Caspian Sea. The move brought him a little closer to Astrakhan but being in the delta, the ever-shifting sand and summer mosquitoes must have been a constant feature of his life. He served at that church till 1903.

  Some time before ordination, Vasily had married Anna Andreevna — unfortunately, the Archives Office could not find the date of their marriage and we have no other information about Anna or her family. Over the next 13 years four children were born to Vasily and Anna. The eldest was a daughter. She was born four or five years after the marriage and her name was Julia.

  At long last we have her, my elusive, my very secretive grandmother! She was born in the village of the same name as her father’s church, Biruychya Kosa. The Archival Extract says: Yuliya, daughter of the priest of St Vasily’s Church, Biryuchya Kosa, village in the Astrakhan area, Vasily Mikhailovich Orlov, and his lawful wife Anna Andreevna, both Orthodox, born on 17 April 1900, baptised by her father on 25 April 1900. Andrei Murygin and Agapia Petelina stand up as her godparents.

  I can well imagine the type of small village outside Astrakhan where Julia was born. We saw many of them on our voyages on the Volga. The houses were small, all made of timber with shingled roofs. The more impressive homes had intricately carved and painted shutters and lintels. The more carving, the grander the house. The timber shingled roofs were bleached silver by sun and were often weighed down with heavy stones to protect them from the ever-present wind. The village streets are narrow and unsealed, small flower and vegetable plots huddle around the houses and chickens roam the streets. Silver birch trees line some of the streets of the larger villages and the brick or timber church usually holds pride of place.