RUSSIA: DESCENDANTS OF TSARIST ERA ARISTOCRACY REBUILD THEIR LIVES IN THE LAND OF THEIR ANCESTORS

Record ID: 838268

  • Title: RUSSIA: DESCENDANTS OF TSARIST ERA ARISTOCRACY REBUILD THEIR LIVES IN THE LAND OF THEIR ANCESTORS
  • Date: 1st May 2002
  • Summary: FRAMED PHOTOGRAPH OF THE LAST IMPERIAL GOVERNOR OF TABOLSK, ROSTISLAV'S GREAT-GRANDFATHER (4.22)
  • Embargoed: 16th May 2002 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: MOSCOW AND TVER REGION, RUSSIA
  • City:
  • Country: Russia
  • Topics: Quirky,Politics,Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky
  • Reuters ID: LVAD65LTA29QH36EI05G0QPZJ0QN
  • Aspect Ratio:
  • Story Text: "New Russians" may prefer life in the West, but some of the descendants of Russia's tsar-ist era aristocracy have rebuilt their lives in the land of their ancestors, something that would have been almost unthinkable just over a decade ago.
    A Russian prince welcomes his guests to a ball at one of the royal palaces in Moscow. The sound of chamber music filters through the banquet hall as the guests mingle and drink French champagne.
    There's a buzz in the air and the scene is a throw back to the days of tsar-ist Russia. But the women in flowing gowns and the men in dress uniform are not extras in a scene from a movie about Imperial Russia - this is Moscow in the spring of 2002.
    Russian aristocracy is making a come back, 75 years after the Bolshevik revolution toppled Russia's Imperial household.
    After the collapse of the rule of the Romanov's, many of Russia's nobility were forced to leave the country.
    Nowadays, their descendants are coming back to the land of their fathers. But these people don't like to be referred to as princes or counts, even though they cherish their tittles that belong to Imperial Russia's most aristocratic families.
    Prince Piotr Golitzine is one of them. He has been hosting and one of the sponsors of the Spring Charity ball for almost six years now.
    His family name is familiar to every Russian. The Golitzines have been in Russia for almost 700 years. There were nine families in the beginning, but only four were left.
    Members of the family played an important role in Russia's turbulent history - from Ivan the Terrible to that last of the Romanoff dynasty. Golitzine's great-grandfather was Imperial Russia's last Prime-minister.
    In 1918, his great-grandfather, along with other White Russians, took the last British sailing ship from the Black Sea port of Odessa to Yugoslavia.
    The family later moved to Argentina and later settled in the United States, but the thoughts of one day returning to their beloved country never left his ancestors.
    "We were brought up as Russian. There was no question of being Argentinean, or Peruvian, or an American for that matter," says Piotr Golitzine.
    "We were told, and we still know, that we were Russian. We worked out our own funny little mechanism, because we were sure that we will never live, or even see, Russia. We carried a little bit of it in our hearts, because that's as close as we were going to get to it."
    But, in 1991, thanks to Gorbachev's perestroika, Golitzine, his wife Mariana and six children decided to return to Russia and start a new life.
    His six children are brought up as Russians. They speak Russian with their father, French or German with their mother, who is Austrian, and mix the three languages among themselves.
    Golitzine, who heads a consulting company, is a holder of a U.S passport. He says he is willing to take a Russian passport as his second, but not as a special favour.
    "I don't think that's right. I could have it under those conditions any time. I think Russia could do itself a great service by offering it to those people who were forced to leave the country for political reasons, for religious reasons, or simply to stay alive."
    The Golitzines are not the only Russian family that had to flee Russia in fear of being killed for their aristocratic names. Many left Russia in hope of returning in a few months, but stayed for a lifetime.
    Rostislav Ordovsky-Tanayevsky is a businessman and the great- grandson of the last governor of Tabolsk, a city in Siberia. The governor's house was the last place where the Romanoff Imperial family stayed before being taken to Yekaterinburg where they were executed in the summer of 1918.
    The story of the family is much the same as the Golitzines - Odessa, emigration to Yugoslavia and finally Venezuela.
    Rostislav is the son of a Russian father and a Spanish mother.
    His Russian has a pleasant, Spanish accent. Fifteen years in Russia has turned him into a successful businessman, the owner of a chain of restaurants.
    Looking more Western European than Russian, Rostislav says he feels comfortable in Russia or Spain.
    ".......but I think that, if you take the balance, Russia would predominate, will win," he adds.
    The Golitzine family used to have property across the country that they know would never be returned to them, and they don't expect it to be. When Piotr Golitzine came back to Russia, he embarked on a series of visits to family houses. He found them in a dreadful state.
    He promised himself to stop doing that and build something of his own-a Russian wooden house on the Volga river.
    Golitzine is also involved in restoring Russian village churches that suffered a great deal in the 80 years of communist rule when churches where either destroyed or turned into storage houses.
    "I realised that, if I wasn't going to do this, nobody's going to do this. I happened to be blessed with a name that has a fairly high brand recognition, as they say in Russia.
    And that helps us open some doors, and I figure that this is like in love and war - everything is fair, you could use anything, anything God gave you."

    (lh/sog/
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