Above is a photo, taken at Ivnia, of my maternal great-grandmother, Countess Catherine Nicholaievna Kleinmichel, her daughters and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich – according to the writing on the back of the photo. I believe my grandmother, Olga Voronov (Woronoff) née Kleinmichel, is second from the left, next to her
My parents and grandparents were definitely hoarders. Each time I attempt to sort through the papers and letters and documents and photographs and other things I brought home after the death of my father; I am amazed at how much they kept. Bearing in mind either my grandparents had to
I often find documents in the many papers I inherited, which make me wonder about why they have been kept for so long. Documents which nowadays we would (and I do) throw out after they are no longer needed – of course many of our documents are now virtual. In
Prior to delving into my family history I had no idea that the English played a role in the Russian Civil War. Of course I knew my grandparents eventually escaped Russia on a British steamer, but I did not realise there was a British mission to South Russia from late
The Covid-19 pandemic and the recent lockdown here in Melbourne had me searching through my grandmother’s papers. I knew that she had kept notes on the diseases which devastated southern Russia in 1919. It was the time of the Civil War in Russia and my grandfather was fighting with the
Today I remembered yet another box full of documents and papers which I had put away for sorting. Most of it is loose pieces of paper on which my grandmother, Olga Woronoff, had written notes and stories. Some of them are in English, a fair bit in Russian. The vast