The Russian masses have to be shown something very simple,
very accessible. Communism — is simple.

VLADIMIR LENIN

i wonder what my amazon is doing now — when will i be able to put my arms around her again or little dove do you miss me i have found us a very pretty place to stay not far from the neva you will like it — they know of a good ballet master here too, said Simon’s telegrams from Petrograd. Frivolities of this kind vexed the town’s postmen, and people cast outraged glances at Stasia — this sort of thing just wasn’t done.

Later, the lines changed, growing more worried: little dove there is unrest here we dont know what is to come take care of yourself or little dove bad things are happening in this country but i cant help… (the rest was missing).

Only after several requests did Stasia manage to discover exactly what her husband was doing: he had joined the RKKA, and was responsible for procuring bread.

Since January 1918, Russia had been in the grip of terrible hunger. The RKKA had the task of confiscating bread; farmers were unable to maintain the required rate of production, and were subject to looting and raids.

In May of that same year, the first Democratic Republic of Georgia was proclaimed. The chocolate-maker breathed a sigh of relief, and, in May, he met with the first minister for economic affairs in Tbilisi to talk about expansion plans for his business. A large patisserie in the capital — nothing now seemed to stand in the way of this proposal. Afterwards, the chocolate-maker held a celebratory dinner, and invited the provincial town’s high society to celebrate the future that seemed to be looking so bright for him.

Stasia and her husband had agreed that she would follow him in February. After months of waiting, she could stand it no longer, and, when summer arrived, she informed her father that she wanted to go to her husband and stand by him, come what may; her dance training could be put on hold for the time being. Her father, irritated at seeing his independent daughter so willing to sacrifice herself, tried to console her. Under different circumstances, he would have wished his daughter to be at her husband’s side, as befitted a wife. But, given the situation, my great-great-grandfather opposed her plans. The long battle over her departure that followed wore Stasia down so much that she would spend hours sitting in the garden on the old swing seat that had belonged to her mother, staring into space, in the hope that her tragic appearance would soften her father’s heart.

‘Men always want to be in charge of you. What kind of life is that? I may as well have been born a dog; even as a dog I would have more freedom,’ she complained to Lida, who just shook her head in horror and accused her younger sister of blasphemy.

When, in July, the telegrams stopped, concern for her husband finally brought Stasia’s free-thinking ideals crashing down, and she went to the Church of St George, sought out the priest, Seraphim, and asked him for help. Afterwards, she was said to have knelt in the little church and prayed aloud for two hours: ‘Please, God, please, please: if it is Your will, then I won’t dance, or only later, but bring Simon back to me, or make my stubborn father take pity on me and let me go to my husband. I believe I really do love him, really, and it’s so unfair, God, You can’t have made me, with all these thoughts and wishes, and then have willed that I must only ever obey; please make it so that I have the same free will that You do. Yes, I know I should say ten Our Fathers and bring red eggs to the dead every Easter Monday and pour wine on the graves. I have neglected my Christian duties. I will gladly make up for it all, but please be a little lenient with me. I mean, if You created everything, then You created dance, too, didn’t You?’

At that moment, a strong gust of wind blew open the church door, and Stasia leapt up in fright (at least, this is how I imagine it: in my imagination Stasia’s prayers were answered on the spot).

In the doorway stood Seraphim, in his black habit, with a slip of paper in his hand. He went to Stasia and whispered in her ear that a carpet-seller had agreed to take her as far as the station in his coach. He couldn’t get her past Military Road, but if she dared make the long train journey alone in these troubled times, then he would get her to the train. And, as love was the most divine thing of all and the bringing together of lovers who had married in the sight of God was the most wonderful duty of all, Seraphim would support her with his prayers.

Stasia threw her arms around Seraphim’s neck, forgetting that he was a priest, and then discussed the details of her escape plan with him in whispers.

Three days before her departure, everything was already prepared, and Stasia had packed her things. Most importantly, she had taken a few banknotes from Father’s trouser pockets, and a little jewellery she could count as part of her dowry, and had sewn them into her dress.

At dawn, she fled her home in a carpet-seller’s carriage. She left a letter for each of her sisters and for her father, begging their understanding for what she had done.

I know little about the long journey she made through the increasingly ravaged landscape. I only know that her father sent out some men to fetch Stasia back, and that Seraphim withdrew to the cave monastery, claiming to have taken a vow of silence during the fasting period. And I know that Stasia arrived in Russia. Three weeks later.

*

In the meantime, the Russian Empire, so recently so powerful, sank ever deeper into chaos: the expropriation and communisation of property, banks, and housing, and the downfall of the free-market economy, had catastrophic consequences. As did replacing the courts with so-called people’s tribunals.

The whole country was in the grip of unrest, as there were not enough professional organisers to implement these radical reforms. The Soviet Constitution, established in July, denied entire social classes in the country their rights. Only eight months after the revolution, a leadership profile had established itself that would lead inevitably to civil war: the concentration of power in the hands of a few leaders, the pursuit of economic and information monopolies, and discrimination against certain sections of the population.

And, by the time Stasia reached Petrograd, Nicholas II and his blue-blooded family were no longer alive. Their story had ended anonymously, with shots fired in a cellar in Ekaterinburg.

But, as yet, Stasia knew nothing of this. Nor did she know where Simon Jashi was to be found. At his official address, which should have been their ‘lovely place not far from the Neva’, Stasia found only drunken Red Army soldiers. It was a headquarters, not an apartment, and Comrade Jashi was not among this rabble. She wandered the cold streets of Petrograd, asking for her husband in her accent-free Russian, which was spoken at the time by every sophisticated lady on her side of the endless Silk Road.

She was finally forced to send a telegram home asking her father for help, though having to do it made her die a thousand deaths.

Scarcely an hour later she received her father’s reply:

we nearly died with worry how could you but thank god you are well — go to thekla she is the cousin of my cousin david from kutaisi — she lives by the fontanka — say you are my daughter — i dont know the house number — its a big house and she is known in the city — ask around — write as soon as you are safe.

Stasia had never heard of a Thekla-who-is-known-in-the-city. Which didn’t mean much: Stasia didn’t really know half her relatives, and was always discovering them at the birthday parties, weddings, and funerals her father made her attend.

For three hours, Stasia wandered, confused and frightened, through a city that had gone mad, until she found a drunk Cossack who said he was prepared to take her and her meagre luggage with him as far as the Fontanka.

Stasia, whose worry and fear made her unreceptive to the beauty of the city, stared open-mouthed from the cart as they thundered through the streets.

Uniformed men were patrolling the countless bridges. Peasants pushed wheelbarrows laden with furniture; there were endless queues outside the shops, and people were running about with worried faces. Even the river, murky, angry, and loud, seemed to be in tune with this strange atmosphere.

Outside the imposing St Isaac’s Cathedral, a public assembly was taking place: a large crowd of people stood holding banners and constantly shouting noisy slogans.

On the Fontanka — the riverbank promenade with its light green and pale yellow villas and courtyards — people were clustering around fire pits where food was being prepared. The manicured city of the tsars seemed absurdly contradictory as a backdrop to these goings-on.

The Cossack had to stop three times to ask people about Thekla, and finally informed the speechless Stasia that he didn’t have the time to go looking for a landowner. At that moment, one of the girls clustering around the bonfire shouted that it must be the pretty yellow house up ahead on the left. Stasia didn’t know what she would have done if this girl hadn’t come to her aid.

She paid the Cossack, unloaded her luggage, and knocked on the classical villa’s monumental iron door — no, she positively hammered on it with the door knocker, as a column of shouting people was coming up the promenade towards her and if she didn’t get to safety right away she would be swept along by the crowd. Eventually, a frightened girl wearing a traditional Russian headscarf opened the door and hastily bundled Stasia into the house without saying a word. Then she slid home the numerous bolts and barricaded the door with furniture.

Cautiously, Stasia looked around. She found herself in one of the most beautiful houses she had ever set foot in. A marble staircase led up from the wide, welcoming entrance hall. The floor was inlaid with beautiful black and white tiles. Stasia was shown into a light, spacious drawing room, in which, to her surprise, there was no furniture beyond a fantastically long oak table and two chairs. The girl left her alone, telling her to wait there and not go anywhere.

After a while, she heard footsteps, and a woman appeared at the top of the staircase. She might have been in her mid-fifties, but she could have been older or younger: her biological age was masked by a thick layer of make-up. She was wearing a pale-pink dressing gown decorated with a feather collar, like a dancer in one of the morally dubious dance halls her father had so often warned her about. The figure rushed towards Stasia and wrapped her arms around her.

‘Oh God, such a big girl, the last time I saw my dear cousin was at the New Year’s ball in Kutaisi, I don’t believe it, what a beauty, you have his solemn eyes, so serious!’

She ordered the peasant girl, who was the only servant to have stayed on in the house, to prepare some strong tea and fetch some biscuits from the pantry.

‘But the biscuits are for emergencies,’ the girl muttered, before being silenced by a stern look from the lady of the house.

‘And what does this look like to you? My own flesh and blood, arriving here from my homeland, in times like these … What do you think it is?’ she called out after her.

Over hot tea and very dry biscuits (which to Stasia still seemed like the eighth wonder of the world), Thekla quickly told Stasia her whole life story. Stasia drew her own conclusions as to why she had never heard of Thekla-who-is-known-in-the-city.

Thekla was a member of the minor nobility from the valleys of central Georgia. She had realised very early on what she wanted from life, and also how to get it. Gossipy Kutaisi, her hometown, did not offer her enough breathing space, so she married young. Her husband was a rich merchant from Tbilisi, who managed a number of vineyards and sold Georgian wine to Russia. It couldn’t have been particularly difficult for Thekla to find a willing candidate: if you looked closely — once you had grown accustomed to the layers of make-up — she had a very delicate, soft face, a gentle aspect inviting daydreams, along with a truly voluptuous and appetising body which featured a high, larger-than-life bosom. But the marriage had been without passion: her husband had been more in love with his vines than with her, Thekla said, and on one of their business trips to Petrograd, or St Petersburg, as it was then, she had fallen in love with Alexander: irrevocably, powerfully, tremendously. Alexander Olenin, a descendant of the rich Petersburg Olenin dynasty, which had brought forth patrons of the arts, art collectors, and the founder of the St Petersburg Library, was an educated, elegant, free-spirited man — ‘outrageously beautiful, moreover’ — and a member of the tsar’s army.

Following her return to Tbilisi, Thekla informed her husband that she would forgo all privileges and leave his house without a gold ring, if he let her, because she had fallen irrevocably, powerfully, tremendously in love with another man.

Of course, there was a scandal. Her husband thoroughly destroyed her reputation and refused to divorce her for years. But, as the marriage was childless, Thekla was able to travel to Petersburg without a gold ring, although she was still officially married, and play at being Anna Karenina in the city of the tsars.

Olenin must have been an honourable man: unlike Count Vronsky, he stayed with his beloved and introduced her to St Petersburg society as his rightful wife. Although this society initially rejected her, Thekla managed to get a foot in the door, and even find friends. Eventually she managed to gather a real community around her, which must have been due to her truly unconventional and vivacious character. Her ‘outrageously beautiful’ Alexander bought his beloved this wonderful house, and began to enjoy the good things in life to the full with his Thekla, who was eager to experience them all. They lacked neither means nor opportunity, and invited artists and ‘all kinds of crazy people’ to the house, all of whom were ‘illicitly interesting’, thus continuing the Olenins’ tradition of patronage and engaging in philanthropy. They travelled around Europe and enjoyed the piercing beauty that the world has to offer when one is so ‘obliviously in love and beloved’.

‘Alexander and I were married for only two years,’ Thekla confessed sadly. It took a very long time for the Georgian to grant her a divorce, but when he did, Thekla and her Alexander were finally able to marry and seal their love.

‘We were as happy as children. Life was good to us. I know I have had a great deal of happiness in my life.’

But, since then, she had not been back to her homeland.

In the accursed year of 1904, Alexander fell in battle in Japan, a war hero. Something in Thekla was forever broken by his death. It took years for her to get over it, she said — but then, to honour his name, she used her lavish inheritance to help out wherever she could. She went on hosting the salons, the literature and music circles, at their house. She took trips to health spas, made new friends, and, above all, put the money to good use.

‘But Alexander and I had to pay a high price for our happiness: he went before God had blessed us with children.’

With that, Thekla brought her account to an end, and sipped from the expensive porcelain cup that the housemaid had produced from the kitchen.

In terse sentences, exhausted and shivering slightly, Stasia then told the story of her journey to Petrograd, of her new husband, his inexplicable disappearance, and her own desperate situation.

‘If I could just stay here for a few days — you know, until I’ve found Simon. I won’t be any trouble. And I can help with the housekeeping,’ Stasia murmured shyly, before she was silenced by Thekla’s mighty laugh.

‘What housekeeping, my dear? Of course you can stay. The house is big enough. Those swine may have taken away everything they could find, but I’m permitted to remain in the house. There are two beds left. And I think this is a temporary state of affairs. Those imbeciles can’t stay in power forever, the resistance is too great, and then … Then everything will go back to how it was before. I’m glad you’re here, Anastasia. Since those idiots started rampaging around, a lot of my friends have fled abroad or taken to hiding in their houses, and it’s grown rather lonely here. But we two can have fun again — splendid!’ Thekla cried triumphantly.