Eyewitness to War & Revolution, Part 4 of 4

Editor's comment: This is the final of four excerpts from the recently published book Four Thirds of Our Life, the autobiography of Nina Alekseevna Krivosheina. Krivosheina lived through revolution and the two world wars that enflamed Russia and Europe in the 20th century. The volume was translated and annotated [with notes in brackets] by our Assistant Editor Kimball Worcester. The series has been presented each Thursday in November 2022. MH

4.  Escape from the Soviet Union

Translator's comment: By the end of 1919, it was clear that Nina Alekseevna had to escape the country and become an émigré, as had her father not long before.  Her  immediate family left the country by different routes and at different times when deprivation descended after the Bolshevik coup. Here is her story of flight against large odds. Nina's only option was across the ice to the haven of Finland. She was one of a group of five that made the attempt: the Finn, Soder, who guided them; Zakharov, who had worked in Nina Alekseevna’s father’s business in Petrograd; an Englishwomen, Mrs. Allan; and Nina Alekseevna and her first husband. KW

The temperature started falling again, but it was a light frost, and on 19 December 1919 we put into place the plan we had worked out earlier. . . We went to Finland Station by tram, all separate. When we crossed the Okhtinskii Bridge, I saw that there wasn’t any ice on the Neva, just floating grease ice [second stage in the formation of solid sea ice]. We boarded a suburban train (around five o’clock in the evening) that went as far as Beloostrov. We sat apart on two cars. Zakharov was in my car, and Soder stood in the vestibule, with the other two in the next car. At first it was empty, since few people were traveling to the Finnish front, but then a large group of young people got in the car, all of them in overcoats and caps with red stars. Some carried shovels and some pickaxes. They were all around eighteen to twenty, maybe slightly older. In charge of them was a man of about thirty, a Russian, a little better dressed, also quasi-military, with a pleasant, open face. The train moved on, and I didn’t even notice. While we traveled, for around an hour, this leader loudly and impressively lectured about the benefits and importance of conducting Sunday services, the whole time referring to the words of Comrade Lenin. 

The entire young group—around fifteen or twenty of them—listened attentively and fortunately (for me) watched the speaker with eyes riveted; simply no one paid me or Zakharov any attention. However, my appearance could have given them cause to wonder. I was wearing a real sealskin coat (the first and last valuable clothing in my life) and a marvelous white ermine hat on my head that was decorated with a black motif in rare black karakul lamb, with fine white suede gloves on my hands and on my feet the infamous snow-white boots with triple soles. Zakharov, of course, could’ve remained unnoticed as just a passenger, but the whole time we were traveling to the station at Gorskaya, where we all got out, he pretended to read Pravda, which was upside down. So, really, no one paid us any attention—after all, there were people then who were casually wearing their precious things from their former life; maybe my neighbors in the rail car were thinking that I was going to spend Sunday at a dacha. 

As arranged, when we left the train, we went separately and were to meet up at the shoreline only when it was getting dark. As I walked along the forest, I felt I had gotten lost, but then I heard a whistle, and it turned out that Zakharov had followed behind me, and when he saw that I was going to the opposite side, he was letting me know where to go. 

When it was completely dark, all five of us convened, then walked down to the shore of the bay; it was about seven-thirty; the trenches seemed to be right alongside—we could hear the soldiers talking and laughing. We put on white robes with hoods. It wasn’t easy wearing them on top of our overcoats. Then we tied ourselves together with a rope about a centimeter thick, and they gave me the mountaineering pole that Soder had carried up till then. We walked in silence, not even a whisper. We each carried in a pocket a box of matches and a packet of acrid snuff to throw in the eyes of anyone who tried to seize us—now it seems that this was right out of a children’s book, from the adventures of Nat Pinkerton [Nat Pinkerton, King of Detectives, German adventure series in the early 20th century]. No one had any money, but in my right coat pocket I had a little black Tibetan stone god, a gift from my cousin Vsev. Bogdanov (I swore to him I would keep it always. I have it to this day.) I wore a ladanka [small receptacle for holy items] with a simple icon of the Mother of God, which had hung since childhood above my bed, as well as another small ladanka with a very modest amount of gold items. 

I was the first to descend the rather steep shore onto the ice with a mountaineering pole in hand. I immediately fell into the water up to my waist. They dragged me out, and thanks to my overcoat and the boots I barely got wet. Within a few minutes we went down a little farther, and there we could stand [on the ice]. I went forward immediately in the direction of a distant small island. For a long time, I walked in front, tied by the rope to the others; I didn’t weigh much then (I had lost a lot of weight), and my boots gave me stability even on the most fragile ice. 

It was bright because of the snow, and everything was visible, although then it gradually became foggy. The cold wasn’t too intense, five or seven degrees below zero [20-23F]. The walking soon became difficult, and we were more often encountering chunks of ice and snow. As first in line I had to scramble about and then hop directly below onto the dark “floor,” and it often seemed to be just the water. However, it was ice, very thin, in places not more than a centimeter, and the evil crackling that rang out frequently behind us showed that the water had frozen not long ago and only just a little. Thus, with some short rests, we walked and scrambled for about three hours and started to tire out. A bit of land rose up, and we became concerned—where were we actually going? 

A Fort and Lighthouse at Kronstadt

Soder calmed us down, saying, “Everything’s fine. That’s a fort; we’ll go around it, and soon Finland will appear.” A little flame, which was visible from the start, became still brighter, and there were indeed fires off to our right. The icy surface seemed endless. Suddenly I tripped on something and fell down. It turned out to be a heavy cable. What was that? We stopped in a complete panic. I walked a few paces more and saw a streetlamp in front of me, a street and audible voices. We were just a few steps from Kronstadt. 

We stood in horror, dazed, stock still. The Kronstadt coast security, of course, heard how in the quiet the fresh ice crackled under our feet, and they started to cast two powerful searchlights about that made it brighter than day. 

Soder said, “While it’s still lit, keep still without the slightest movement so that not even a shadow moves, however hard it is.” Thus it continued, how long I don’t remember: they shined the searchlight for about twenty minutes, then darkness, then the light again. We walked during the darkness, trying to be quieter, back beyond the streetlamp and the voices. Again, they shone the searchlight, and there was no movement and almost no breathing in that theatrical lighting. 

We felt no fear; we just weren’t up to it. But it was nearly over, and after four or five searches, the sailors, not having detected us, apparently went off to bed. When it became clear that now we had been left in peace, we sat down on the ice to rest. We conferred in whispers—which direction to go in now? Finland was somewhere to the right of Kronstadt, but from which corner? Fortunately, we had an excellent compass. We struck a match and obscured the flame with a sleeve. The compass persistently showed west to be not where we had thought. We decided to go thus: an hour to the west, an hour to the north, we feared drowning in the open sea or simply going back to the trenches at Gorskaya. We made short halts for two or three minutes. The ice piles on our route soon stopped, and we almost ran along the smooth, even ice. Around three in the morning, after a halt, I refused to stand up, saying, “Let me sleep, just for twenty minutes. I just can’t—and don’t want to—walk anymore.” Again, Zakharov saved me; he silently walked up to me and slapped me with full force on both cheeks, shouting in a loud whisper and speaking informally, “Get going now and stop fooling around. I’ll show you what tired means.” “How dare you speak to me in that way!” I shook with outrage, and he said, “Do you want more? I can go on.” So I almost ran, and at this rate I went on ahead of everyone, not stopping for a minute, no fear or exhaustion remaining, only—quickly, quickly…

Toward nine in the morning, it was completely light, and suddenly the coastline climbed out of the fog, with pine trees and a red wooden cottage. How could we figure out where we were? Who would clamber up onto the shore? We stood there a few minutes. Then I turned to Soder. “You must find out where we are. You said you knew the way, and we’ve been wandering now for twelve hours already. It’s light, and we can be seen. Go and find out where we are.” He understood and answered in his Finnish accent, “Everything’s fine. Wait here.” After a minute, we heard his joyful shout. “Come! It’s Finland!”

A legless man and his wife lived in the cottage. They didn’t speak Russian, but now everything was quickly taken care of. In an hour, some soldiers in sledges arrived and took us about ten kilometers to Terijoki, where we were interrogated (Soder was critically useful here), and soon, at about twelve noon, we were in a spacious dacha on the seacoast—in quarantine, where we had to stay for an entire two weeks. 

Later, Nina and Her Son in Paris, 1936

Source:

The four articles in this series are excerpts from the recently published volume Four Thirds of Our Life, the autobiography of Nina Alekseevna Krivosheina.

Four Thirds of Our Life is available now in hardcover at Blurb.com  and is coming soon in paperback at Amazon.