BlogFrom Nikolaev, 1887 to Petrograd, 1921.
Alexander was the last child in the family of Colonel Alexander Yermolaev, Tanya’s great-grandfather. Colonel declared that his family has grown large enough by giving his name to his sixth child, who would become Tanya’s grandfather. Those of you, who read Captain Yermolaev‘s story, remember that those days the family lived in the militarized port-city Nikolaev on the Black Sea, and Colonel left to serve in the city of Lublin, Poland, when Alexander was 10 years old.
Alexander’s mother, Olga – Tanya’s great-grandmother – was a very attractive woman from a Greek family, but despite her tender look, she managed her kids with an iron hand – it was she who was the real Colonel in the family. Alexander adored her.
Like most boys, Alexander was dreaming about adventures in the far away lands, and one of his heroes was Cossack ataman Yermak Timofeyevich, who in the 16th century, at the time of Ivan the Terrible, crossed the Ural Mountains and fought Khan Kuchum for Siberian lands. His attempt failed in the end, but Yermak became one of the symbols of Russian folklore and an example for future explorations.
Although Yermolaev’s family was not very rich, all children got good education. One of Alexander’s older brothers, Nikolai, was in the Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg, another – in Engineering School in Moscow. Sisters graduated from the advanced Gymnasium for the noble girls, and, after graduation, taught music and foreign languages to kids in the large Manors surrounding the city.
Here is the picture of one of them, Julia, made around 1910. Twenty five years later, she would come to Altay, together with the grand piano from her house on the Baltic Sea and her sister Lyudmila, to teach her young niece Iskra, future Tanya’s mother, “proper music”. “Nobody can play piano here”, angry Alexander wrote to his sisters.
Alexander graduated from Nikolaev Real School in 1908 and enrolled in Kiev Military School specialized in engineering.
Dreams about romantic adventures never disappeared, but instead of Yermak, the Decembrists became his heroes. He read a lot about their life, and death, and Siberian exile. Iskra, his daughter, remembered how he had told her the stories about the noble rebels, whose honor was above their fear of death; and about their wives, who followed them to Siberia.
Even the name “Iskra” (spark) that he gave her, was a symbol taken from the famous line of one of the Decembrists, poet (and prince) Alexander Odoevsky — “из искры возгорится пламя” — the spark will kindle a flame.
Poet A. Odoevsky by Nikolay Bestuzhev (also Decembrist)
After Military School Alexander graduated directly into the Second Siberian Engineering Battalion in Zabaykalye. It could be a coincidence that he was assigned to the Decembrists’ Siberia or could be his request, we do not know. It might have been his destiny – ten years later he had received another Siberian assignment, that time by the Bolsheviks’ government.
The next seven years Alexander served everywhere from Siberia to Ural to Galicia to Bessarabia. At the time of the 1917 Revolution he was on the Romanian front. Although a commanding officer, Alexander had earned the respect of both soldiers and subordinates and was elected to the recently created Military Committee of Rumanian Front Staff – new “democratic” component in the Army structure, initiated by revolutionized soldiers. The new Russian Provisional Government had no choice but to accept such “innovation”.
It didn’t last long, anyway. Discipline on both sides of the front could no longer to be enforced – soldiers saw as their real enemy those, who forced them to fight each other. Fraternization became common and soldiers started deserting.
As a Decembrists lover, Alexander easily accepted the Revolution and joined the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries, (known as SR “esery”). The Head of the Russian Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky, was also a member of that party. That SR membership was never forgotten and Alexander was never forgiven by Bolsheviks.
At the end of the year there were no soldiers left in Alexander’s battalion, and he was allowed to go to St. Petersburg to join his mother, sisters and brother Nikolai.
Nikolai had a negative, but passive view on revolution and the next year Nikolai and his wife left for Paris. Olga and her two daughters found a place to live not far from St. Petersburg, in a house by the Baltic Sea, which belonged to one of Colonel Yermolaev’s relatives.
And Alexander – he found himself in the middle of the new era. His active military service, engineering background and Military Committee experience gave him a position of Military Commissar of the Engineering School, and, later, Military Academy. He also took full courses at that Academy.
His appointment proved to be the right choice – in anticipation of future advances of White Army against Petrograd (Bolshevik’s name for the St. Petersburg), Alexander organized Special Battalion from the students’ body of the Academy. In 1919, when General Yudenich launched his Army against the city, Special Battalion was ready. His battalion was one of many. Leon Trotsky, in his book “My Life” quoted one of the Yudenich’s ministers: “… he [Trotsky] quickly concentrated all the Petrograd military students, mobilized the entire male population of Petrograd, and with machine-guns drove all the Red army units back to their positions, and by means of his energetic measures established defenses on all the approaches to Petrograd …”. With machine-guns… Sounds like Soviet Russia.
Between work, war and studies, Alexander got married.
In 1921, his mother, Olga, passed away. Alexander took it very hard. Then more trouble came. Later the same year, for the violation of Party discipline (fighting with another officer), his Party membership was suspended and he was temporarily discharged from active military duty.
Despite of all that, it was Alexander who was charged with a special mission – with the Executive Mandate of the Central Committee of the same Party that just suspended his membership, he was sent to Altay to organize a network of Military Engineering Schools. As if what he already went through – War, Revolution, Civil War – had not yet been enough…
But that will be another story.
P.S. His wife – soon to be ex – unlike wives of his beloved Decembrists, had no intentions to follow him – Alexander was not at the Petrograd’s top-echelon anymore.
