While researching her autobiography, Helen Mirren discovered that she was born to perform.
"I think it has to be genetic. One of my Russian ancestors started the first theatre in Russia, a serf theatre on his estate in the 18th century. It was one of the very first formal theatres.
"But my mother was a huge drama queen, so it could have come from her side of the family also." [Link]
The region of Ulyanovsk in Russia promotes procreation by giving couples time off from work on Sept. 12 (the "Day of Conception") to try making babies.
The hope is for a brood of babies exactly nine months later on Russia's national day. Couples who "give birth to a patriot" during the June 12 festivities win money, cars, refrigerators and other prizes.
Everyone who has a baby in an Ulyanovsk hospital on Russia Day gets some kind of prize. But the grand prize winners are couples judged to be the fittest parents by a committee that deliberates for two weeks over the selection. [Link, via Boing Boing]
During Spain's 1936-1939 civil war, about 3,000 children were evacuated to the Soviet Union. Some of them are still there.
The government of the USSR helped those children retain their language and culture, and provided them with education and professional training, but - in contrast to their fellow exiles in other countries - Moscow did not allow them to return to Spain after the Civil War was over.
According to the Centro Español in Moscow, living currently in Russia are some 315 "war children," who - along with their own children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren - form a community of 1,200 to 1,300 people. [Link]
James W. Anderson tells how the LDS Church got help from the KGB when they ran low on cameras while microfilming records in the former Soviet Union.
Historically, the Communist governments felt they did not want to rely on the West for their equipment, goods, or services, so they made their own of just about everything. In music, they knocked off the Hammond B3 organ, and in microfilming, they knocked off the Kodak cameras the LDS Church was using among many other businesses and groups.
But the cameras still took the standard size film, and they soon were put to work filming anything that could be found. There is a vast quantity of records still there, and at the outset they soon had, thanks to the old KGB cameras, ... 40 operational throughout Russia and other areas almost right away. [Link]
Russia has been suffering from a declining birth rate, but nobody told Aleksei Shapoval's kids.
The retired steelworker celebrated the arrival of his 101st grandchild this week, a girl named Tatiana, in the village where he lives with most of his huge family.
Mr Shapoval now has 50 granddaughters and 51 grandsons from his 11 sons and two daughters in what is believed to be a record for Russia. They range in age from 26 years to three days.
Asked if any of his children had failed to produce offspring, he replied swiftly: “Yes, Yakov. He has only two.” [Link]
According to Gunter Kruse, I have something in common with Vladimir Lenin: we both have convicted witches perched in our family trees.
Only witchcraft could explain why Lenin's body is so nicely intact 83 years after his death."I went as far back as the middle ages and discovered one of Lenin's ancestor who lived in the 13th century", Kruse reported after spending several years in archives, drawing up the Western European branch of Lenin's family tree.
According to Kruse, the witch who was burnt at the stake by the Inquisition is the most intriguing member of the Ulyanovs family, though almost no information about her has survived. [Link]
Neatorama has an English translation of a YouTubed interview with Sarhat Rashidova—a woman who died in January at the reported age of 131 years.
The proof for this is her passport, which shows the date of birth of 1875. Locals found this fact out during a passport exchange [...], but they believed it only after their own investigation.Update: Nope, this guy in India is the oldest person ever.
According to Habib Miyan's relatives, he was born on May 20, 1871, at Rajgarh in Alwar district of Rajasthan. But there is no official record to establish his age.
Oscar winner Helen Mirren's next project will be a documentary about her Russian roots.
"I'm hoping to get the full family tree, at long last," she said of her forthcoming visit, which will include her attempting to track down the site of her grandfather's family's estate in western Russia, and the family graveyard, and meet long-lost relatives in Moscow.Mirren was tipped off as to her Russian heritage by the name on her birth certificate—Ilyena Lydia Mironova.
The documentary, called The Journey, will fulfill a lifelong ambition for Helen. [Link]
Viktor Chumakov's mission in life is to save the seventh letter of the Russian alphabet from extinction and, by doing so, preserve the traditional spellings of some 2,500 Russian surnames (including Khrushchyov and Gorbachyov).
The letter "ё" (pronounced "yo") first appeared in 1795, but fell on hard times when printers began dropping the dots to save a few kopeks. The letter was also hanging out in the wrong neighborhoods.
Part of the reason for the demise of the letter 'ё' could be because of its unsavory associations with Russian 'mat' -- the colorful language within a language that constitutes Russian swear words. Very few words begin with 'ё' in Russian, and most of the ones that do would make a sailor blush.Those two little dots do make a difference. Without them, a Russian bride might be given a "solityor" (tapeworm) instead of a "soliter" (diamond).
But Chumakov says he is not deterred by the letter's reputation -- he has written three books on the history of the 'ё' and a dictionary of words that contain the letter. To date, there are 12,500 ordinary words and 2,500 surnames. And he didn't include a single curse. [Link]
An article on the popularity of genealogy in Russia ends with a quote from Mikhail Kroutikhin—webmaster of Researching Russian Roots.
Genealogy has become so popular now that "some archivists in Siberia are rejecting our requests for information and document copies. They have so many, they tell us they aren't able to do it all with only one copy machine in places like Tobolsk," he said.I'm not absolutely sure what that means, but I'm pretty sure I like the image.
"To me, they feel like a bird that perches on the spine of a book you believe in." [Link]
Konstantin Pogorely is a genealogist and proprietor of Genealogia.ru. (If text on the site looks like gibberish, it's probably because you don't read Russian—try here.) Over the years, he's learned that discretion is the better part of genealogical valor. Ancestors believed by clients to have been Stalin-era political prisoners have proved to be petty criminals. And at least one war hero proved even worse.
Pogorely said he always tried to prepare clients for the unexpected. In one case, he decided not to tell an elderly woman that her father had earned his medals in World War I not on the battlefield, but as the commander of a firing squad. Pogorely shared his findings with the woman's daughter, who thanked him for his discretion. [Link]
Eleven-year-old Georgian pianist Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili is proud of the great-great-grandfather from whom he inherited his name. You probably know his ancestor better by his nom de guerre: Josef Stalin.
Josef said that he knew who his great-great-grandfather was — “President of Russia!” — and had admired his portrait hanging in his grandfather’s home.Something tells me young Josef has been skipping history class to practice his scales.
“He was very clever and everybody knew him because he ruled all the world — he was a tsar,” he said. “I want to be famous, too. But I want to be a pianist, not a tsar.” [Link]
From The (Toronto, Ont.) Globe and Mail:
Descendant of last czar pushes Russia to admit mistake
By GRAEME SMITH
Monday, January 9, 2006
From Monday's Globe and Mail
Yekaterinburg, Russia — On the face of it, Maria Romanova's legal application to Russian prosecutors might seem straightforward.
As the self-described head of the surviving family of Nicholas II, Russia's last czar, Ms. Romanova wants rehabilitation for her ancestors, according to her lawyer. Under Russian law, this would mean a formal admission that Nicholas II was unjustly killed along with his wife, children and attendants after revolution swept away Russia's monarchy.
[snip]
Perhaps most troubling for Ms. Romanova's legal process are the questions posed by experts in Yekaterinburg about her credibility. The birth certificate for czar Nicholas that she submitted as part of her application looks as though it could belong to anybody, said Vadim Viner, a businessman from Yekaterinburg who has been researching the death of the Romanovs for 17 years.
"She probably got the certificate from some homeless person whose name was Nicholas," Mr. Viner said, slouching in a badly rumpled three-piece suit in his small, dark office.
[snip]
[Read the whole story]
From Pravda.Ru:
Ten American showbiz celebrities of Russian descentCheck out the rest of this article for the Russian roots of Michael Douglas, Harrison Ford, David Duchovny, Winona Ryder, Sean Penn, Lenny Kravitz, Monica Lewinsky, Steven Tyler, Jennifer Connelly, and Joaquin Phoenix. (Since when is Monica Lewinsky in "showbiz"?)
11/18/2005 10:20
David Duchovny is very proud of the meaning of his last name, which translates from Russian as 'spiritual'
Emigrants have their own holiday too, the so called Day of the Emigrant, observed by those who left their homelands seeking a better life abroad. The holiday is barely known in Russia, though millions of Russians have been scattered around the world. Quite a few celebrities were Russian by origin. It is worthy of note that some of Hollywood movie stars and pop singers have Russian ancestors too. On the face of it, there is nothing Russian about the people we are listing below. But the first impression can be often deceptive. After all, it was a big surprise to learn about the Russian grandmother of Lenny Kravitz.
[snip]
[Read the whole story]
From The (Provo, Utah) Daily Herald of Oct. 28, 2005:
Tolstoy namesake speaks at UVSC
Anna Chang-Yen DAILY HERALD
Textbooks, novels, historical works, the first diary recorded in Russia -- they all are the work of Nikolai Tolstoy's ancestors. But perhaps the distinction that draws the most attention is the fact that his grandfather's cousin was Leo Tolstoy, author of "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina."
Nikolai Tolstoy, who also is the step-son of novelist Patrick O'Brian, told attendees at a reception in his honor at Utah Valley State College on Thursday that his family enjoys a legacy of literature and creativity. Sometimes, he said, the connection leads to confusion. At the premiere of the Russian film "War and Peace," Tolstoy was seated at a table with dignitaries including a young Russian actress. The actress ignored him for most of the night, he said, but after he was introduced, she asked, "Why didn't you tell me you were the screenwriter?"
[snip]
[Read the whole story]
From newKerala.com (of India), posted Oct. 21, 2005:
Lenin, Stalin, Gorbachev to meet in Moscow here tomorrow
Thiruvananthapuram: A bus from here is all set to embark to Moscow with Stalin, Lenin, Gorbachev, Gagarin and Tereshkova among the passengers.
However, the reality is far simpler. It is not the Russian capital the bus leaves for but a small village at Kottayam near Changannasery, where it is not these Russian legends but their local namesakes, who will congregate to observe the 80th anniversary celebrations of the Russian Centre for Co-Operation with Foreign Countries (Razaruzhcentr).
[snip]
Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Keralities are partial to such names, [Ratheesh C.] Nair said, noting that the state possesses a large number of people having names of famous Soviet and Russian politicians and literary figures.
[snip]
[Read the whole story]
From the St. Petersburg (Russia) Times of Sept. 6, 2005:
Rasputin’s Notoriety Dismays RelativeThe Times published an article last year on the display of Rasputin's pickled parts. (The linked article is not for the squeamish or the prudish. In fact, no one should read it.)
By Galina Stolyarova
Staff Writer
“He is either demonized or deified and my mission is to try and make his image look more human, more normal, if you like,” says Laurence Huot-Solovieff, 62, one of the four great-grandchildren of Grigory Rasputin to come from his legal marriage, and the only of his surviving descendants to have traveled to Russia.
Interviewed in St. Petersburg’s Astoria hotel on Monday, Huot-Solovieff, who grew up in France, put the wild-eyed mystic who some felt ruled the country during World War I in a positive light.
[snip]
Huot-Solovieff has not visited and has no plans to visit the Erotic Museum of the Prostatology Center, whose director Igor Knyazkin claims to have Rasputin’s sex organ preserved in a jar.
“I have seen men’s private parts before, and I don’t care if it is original or not,” she said. “As for the idea of cutting out genitalia and putting it on display, human greed is no surprise to me either. I have seen people do worse for money.”
[snip]
[Read the whole story]
From BBC News World Edition of July 4, 2005:
Astrologer sues NASA over probe
A Russian astrologer is suing NASA for crashing a probe into a comet, claiming it has distorted her horoscope.
Marina Bai is seeking $300m (£170m) in damages, saying the probe's impact on Comet Tempel 1 violated her "life and spiritual values".
[snip]
"It is obvious that elements of the comet's orbit and associated ephemera will change after the explosion, which interferes with my practice of astrology and deforms my horoscope," Ms Bai told the Izvestia daily newspaper.
[snip]
Ms Bai, from Moscow, said the Tempel 1 comet held an important place in her family history, as her grandfather wooed her grandmother by showing her the comet.
Her lawyer, Alexander Molokhov, said the case was based on solid legal ground, since NASA has an office in Russia, located in the premises of the US embassy in Moscow.
[Read the whole story]
