Devoted to my family
There’s a well-known phrase about families: "All happy families are happy in like manner, yet any unhappy family is unhappy in its own unique way". It’s difficult to define whether my family was or was not happy; its history is though remarkable because it goes along with the Russian chronicles. That’s what I’m going to tell you about - my genealogy reflecting the great events in the history of my country.
My story will be lacking some pieces of information for I learned about my origins at the age of 16 when few of my elderly relatives were still alive. My mother told me everything she knew, starting from my great-grandfather Feofil Zalevski, the first ancestor of whom we are aware. He was born in 19th century in Poland in a noble family descended from Polish earl, and received the best education including knowledge of foreign languages . He was brought up as an aristocrat but the family was gradually losing its wealth and social status until finally it went bankrupt. Because of some anarchic uprisings and unstable political situation in Poland, young Feofil left the country and emigrated to Russia. In Ukraine, then a southern part of Russian empire, he settled down and married a local girl, my great-grandmother to-be. Even leading a simple life of village man, he managed to preserve his aristocratic appearances and behaviour. He wore suits and white shirts, spoke correct language, read books despite the difficulty of obtaining them in a small Ukrainian province. Despite his blue-blooded backgrounds, he wasn’t afraid of manual work. He built a marvellous house for his family accordingly to the self-designed project. The building was decorated with wooden carving so beautiful that people from the neighbourhood came to Feofil’s place to see it. The house was inhabited by a large family by the time: Feofil had 14 children only 8 of which survived to adulthood.
The time went by, and the 20th century brought lots of drastic changes in the quiet life of the family. Feofil was enthusiastic about the revolutionary ideas and participated actively in the secret anti-tsarist organisations in 1915-1916. These years he had to hide from the police and lived in a town of Berdjansk while his beloved wife and children stayed safely in the village. He even was into writing rebellious poems! But unfortunately, or maybe luckily, severe tuberculosis prevented him from witnessing his radical dreams come true. He died of the disease in January 1917, the year of two Russian revolutions.
Feofil’s family consisted then of his wife, six sons from 17 to 23 years old and two daughters, the younger of which would become my grandmother Anna. They were rather well-off because Feofil’s offsprings were hard-working and smart. The household provided food for the family needs and for sale; they had cows, pigs, poultry farm, grow corn, vegetables and fruit on the fertile Ukrainian soil. With respect for their father’s achievements, the sons kept the house and facilities in excellent condition and tried to improve it. By their own hands they made a superb wooden cart to be driven by horses, and even constructed a bicycle! By the locals the brothers had a nick-name of "The hive", that is, a cluster of bees, because they always stuck together and worked hard.
Probably for the same reason the family was considered too rich by the new authorities and in 1925 their property was expropriated by the government. They were robbed of everything they had, even the family name: they had to change the surname from Zalevski to Zalivnoi so that it wouldn’t sound Polish and no one would guess of their noble origins. The house was destroyed by the armed men. My great-grandmother rejected to leave her home and was forced to go out barefoot on the snow. After this nightmare the family was left without money and place to live, and they moved from the native village to the city of Donezk with large-scale coal industry. The men went to work in the coal mines in order to earn money, and my grandmother Anna studied at school and later at a local college. After graduation she became a head of the kindergarten in spite of her young age, for at that time there was lack of educated people in Russia. In the 1930s she met a man who became her husband and my grandfather, Nikolai Shevchenko.
Their marriage was one of those rare happy cases when people are content with their life, especially after the birth of their only child Valentina, my mother, in 1940. Nikolai was proud of his precious girl more than any father had ever been, he used to put the child up on his arms and shout "Look what a beautiful daughter I have!" But everything good has its end, and the happiness of the family was disturbed by the Second World War. Officially, the war started for the USSR on June 22, 1941, but, strange it may seem, my grandfather was summoned to the army on June 21. His job was somehow related to the KGB affairs as our family found out much later; it is likely that he was trained to be an undercover agent. So when the war began, he got an opportunity to apply his skills. After that day no one of my relatives has ever seen him. Nikolai wrote letters to his wife - usual letters of a soldier who is eager to defend his country and beloved ones and wants to see the end of the war as soon as possible. After some time the letters stopped coming, and then the family was told that Nikolai had died in a battle. My grandmother wanted to find his tomb, so she went to the place where Nikolai’s troop was located, and to her surprise people told her that they had seen her husband alive after the assumed date of his death! After long investigations she found out that he was believed not dead but missing. However after the war had ended, she qualified for a large state pension which was usually paid only to the families of deceased heroes. More than that, all personal belongings of my grandfather including the marriage certificate and war letters, were stolen. Not a slightest documented memory was left of this person, as if he had never existed.
Naturally my grandmother tried to learn of her man’s fate, she wrote a number of letters to the military and government institutions and used every chance to get information, but it was all hopeless. After several years of fruitless attempts she stopped her inquiries because asking too much was dangerous and she didn’t want to ruin the life of her young daughter. Then she re-married, and her second husband was the only father her daughter saw. Nevertheless, my mother knew a whole lot about her real father, and there came time when this information helped her. She grew up in the South Russia and Ukraine where the family was moving from one place to another with the group of geologists, and after finishing school entered the Institute of Economics and Finance in St. Petersburg - that’s where I study now, 40 years later.
In the late 50s, when my Mom was a student, she was summoned to the KGB department in SPb and asked questions about her father. These were very personal questions, the answers to which only members of the family might have known, and it was odd that someone came to asking about that particular situation or other. For instance, the officials showed a picture of the parents to my mother and asked what she could say about the suits they wore on the photo. There was a funny story about these suits: my grandparents wore them when visiting a friend in the countryside, and they fell down in the big basin of pig’s food. Who could ask such a question except for people close to my family? It was obvious that KGB officers were well aware of the family secrets; they were bound to knew also what had happened to my grandfather. However they told my mother nothing new and kept repeating that her father was dead.
Such questionings happened several times, with large time intervals in between, and though hard my Mom tried to find out something she didn’t succeed. The officer in charge of the case has called her from time to time, and it was apparent that he kept an eye on our family. Last time he called about two years ago and said that my grandfather was alive and living in Switzerland but unable to contact us for security reasons. Nothing more was heard from him, and I can’t be sure he told us the truth. I have no idea how to find my Grandpa or any relevant information; even if he is alive, he must be an old man now and certainly living under a fake name. I thought of seeking through Internet but in this case Web engines won’t be of much help, I believe. Speaking fairly, the chances of finding my grandfather are really tiny. The only thing which I can do is telling people what I know, not allowing the world to forget the names of my ancestors with unusual destiny. It’s a pity I know so little, but I keep on investigating. Now that my parents regard me as a grown-up person and talk to me about their past, I see that it’s much more exciting than reading fiction and watching soap operas on TV :)))