After the 1917 revolution, hundreds of thousands of people fled from Soviet Russia. For many who constituted the glory and pride of the country, the last refuge was the Russian cemetery in the Parisian suburb of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois.
Non-random meetings
Three people are buried under one of the modest marble tombstones with an Orthodox cross - Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich, his wife Matilda Kshesinskaya and their son Vladimir.
The legendary Matilda Kshesinskaya, “little Malya,” as her family and friends called her, was really small - 153 centimeters. But from childhood, she was distinguished by her determination.
What do the young ballerinas Matilda Kschesinskaya and Jeanne-Antoinette Pompadour, the omnipotent favorite of Louis XV, have in common? The fact that both girls planned their destinies very early. In childhood, Jeanne-Antoinette was told that the king would fall in love with her. Her family belonged to the third estate, so the girl had practically no chance of meeting the king. However, she systematically walked towards the goal predicted to her, by all means sought a meeting with Louis XV and in the end achieved her goal.
The Kshesinsky family, which consisted of ballet actors, also did not belong to the cream of society. But the royal family loved ballet and attended it often. And Malya found her chance.
At the banquet of the Imperial Ballet School, after the graduation performance, Emperor Alexander III invited 17-year-old Matilda to sit next to him. According to rumors, after consulting with the director of the school, which of the young ballerinas will suit the heir? The director advised Matilda.
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She sat at the table between the sovereign and his heir Nikolai. Malya writes in her memoirs that she fell in love with the Tsarevich at first sight, and then arranged meetings in every possible way, either walking in the same places as Nicky, then “accidentally” bumping into him in the theater.
Contemporaries recalled that Kshesinskaya was short, strong, dark-haired, with a narrow waist and muscular, almost athletic legs. But she possessed inexhaustible energy, undeniable femininity and irresistible charm. Undoubted trump cards were innate practicality, willpower and fantastic performance.
She was the first of the Russian ballerinas to play 32 fouettés (other dancers claimed that after the eighth fouetté they were terribly dizzy), amazing the audience with her skill and brilliance (and brilliance in the literal sense, since she performed in fabulous diamonds - gifts from high-ranking fans).
The greed for life, charm, energy, talent, determination - this was inherent in both Matilda and her predecessor, Madame Pompadour. Maybe reincarnations do happen?
Jewelry box
In her memoirs, Kshesinskaya speaks of an extremely strict upbringing in her family, but her father let the shy Malya live separately, in a mansion on the English Embankment, for the sake of secret meetings with the Tsarevich, who came to her under the pseudonym "Hussar Volkov". In St. Petersburg, it was rumored that a good half of the best Faberge products were in the Kshesinskaya box. According to some reports, Matilda carried a child from Nicky, but lost him when her carriage capsized on the bridge.
However, the happiness of the lovers was short-lived - it was time for Tsarevich Nicholas to marry a girl of his equal kind. He chose Princess Alice of Hesse and said goodbye to Kshesinskaya.
Nikolai instructed his relative, Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, to take care of Malya. The custody grew into a novel. The Grand Duke continued to replenish the jewelry box, and at the same time bought Male a dacha in Strelna, where in 1902 she gave birth to a son, Vladimir, who was baptized with a patronymic Sergeevich.
Sergei Mikhailovich proposed marriage to her, but it was too late. Malya fell in love with another Grand Duke - Andrei Vladimirovich. A strange pattern: Matilda fell in love exclusively with the Romanovs. In her memoirs, Matilda insists that the father of her son is Grand Duke Andrew.
Thanks to connections at the court and the patronage of Nika, who became emperor, Malya was omnipotent: she survived at the price of foreign rivals, ballets were staged for her. Upon a call from the palace, she was returned to the performances from which they had previously removed. When the director of the imperial theaters offended her, he was immediately retired.
She was officially recognized as the first Russian ballet dancer and received a fabulous fee for performances - up to 750 rubles.
On the cote d'azur
Everything collapsed in an instant - the year 1917 came. The Kshesinskaya mansion was captured and plundered by the Bolsheviks. Malya hurriedly fled from there, almost forgetting her beloved dog. For several months she wandered around friends and relatives in the naive hope that soon all the unrest will end, she will return to her home. Realizing that nothing would settle down, Kshesinskaya left for Kislovodsk, where Andrei Vladimirovich was with his relatives.
In 1918, the red wave reached Kislovodsk. Searches, robberies and executions began. The Romanovs and Kshesinskaya moved on - Anapa, Tuapse, Novorossiysk … For six weeks they lived in carriages, typhus and Spanish flu were raging around them. But Matilda still did gymnastics and manicure every day.
Once Andrey and his brother Boris were arrested by the Bolsheviks and taken to Pyatigorsk to be shot. But a miracle happened: the Bolshevik commissar, who in his youth tried to become an artist in Paris, recognized Boris as the main, only buyer of his Parisian creations and let the brothers go.
In the summer of 1918, Sergei Mikhailovich was killed in Alapaevsk and thrown into a mine. In the hand of the Grand Duke, they found a gold medallion with a portrait of Kshesinskaya and the inscription "Malia". At the same time, Nicholas II, her beloved Nika, was shot.
And Matilda sailed to Constantinople with Andrew's family, intending to move to France, to the Cote d'Azur, where she owned a villa. Alas, the happiness in the villa lasted only a few years. Malya was let down by her constant passion for gambling - she lost her villa at roulette, and most of the capital that she managed to save from the Bolsheviks. But after the death of Andrei's mother, who was categorically against the marriage of her son to a ballerina, the Grand Duke and Matilda entered into a marriage in the Orthodox Church in Cannes. Andrei adopted the son of his beloved, changing his patronymic to Andreevich.
Even in her youth, Malya composed herself a title - Princess Krasinskaya. And she achieved her goal: in 1926, her husband's brother, Kirill Vladimirovich, who in emigration proclaimed himself emperor, conferred on her and her offspring the title of princes Krasinski, and in 1935 - of the serene princes of Romanovski-Krasinski.
They live in Passi, ride taxis
Sound titles are, of course, good, but the money ran out, and the family moved to Paris. According to Matilda, in a "modest house" in the prestigious Passy quarter. “They live in Passi, ride taxis,” the envious emigrants snapped.
Malya again did not give up - she organized a ballet studio, where she taught, being already a rather elderly lady. The studio was very popular and allowed Kshesinskaya to support his family.
The last time she shone on stage was 64 years old and was in great shape. Andrei Vladimirovich in Paris was engaged in public activities - he chaired the unions of former guards officers and in the Russian historical and genealogical society. And Vladimir, the son of Kshesinskaya, became a traveling salesman: he rode a bicycle selling wines to friends and acquaintances. Everyone loved him for his kind disposition and jokingly called him "Vovo de Russy", hinting that he was supposedly the son of Nicholas II.
But the war came. Vladimir ended up in a Nazi concentration camp in Kom-pien and spent 144 days there. “By whose order and why he was released, it remains a mystery to us forever,” his mother writes. It was rumored that she achieved a meeting with the head of the Gestapo, Müller.
After his release, Vladimir immediately left for England, and in 1944 he returned to France as a liaison officer between the British army and General de Gaulle. He may have worked for British intelligence. Vladimir died single and childless, buried in his parents' grave.
Matilda lived to be almost a hundred years old, remaining elegant and stylish. In the gambling houses of Europe, she was called "Madame 17", as she always bet on that number.
Anastasia GARSIA