Nick Cherniavsky Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

when you just started talking to than. So actually this is the extent of
my extremely liadted contact with people who had car^ directly from Red
Russia.
Q: Your uncle carte to see you in Shanghai about h t
year?
A: I muld say it ms 1927 or 1928 and now that you have asked IIE I
recall the real reason for his caning to Sh-i was my aunt Evegenia,
whose niJmame in the f mily WHS Baby. She w.s the second oldest dau&ter
in the £aaily. My uncle ms the youngest mug the four children in that
family. She ws dying with tukrculosis and that ms the reason for my
uncle 's visit. Actually it ws not strictly social, it ms necessitated
by the fact that his sister ws dying and he wanted to see her. That was
the time in the Soviet Russian gaverrment's position *en there ms a
small degree of laxity on allowing things like that just preceding the
purge period when actually a mber of people mre allmd to leave Russia
and take residency in &rope, in kame and Germany ddch very shortly ms
totally cut off and people who wnted to leave, they muld mre than
likely get arrested and sent to a concentration camp.
Q: Your awt Evegenia m s living in %anghai at the time?
A: Yes.
Q: 'Ws is not the sam aunt that was in . . .
A: Indonesia, No. That tas Valia, Valentina.
Q: Was this aunt married?
A: The one who was dying frm tuberculosis? Yes. She ms married to
another off icer--Russian officer . Her husband vas a colonel, a veteran of
brld W r I just as my dad, and also a general staff officer and he ms in
%anghai trying to write his rrrernoirs and as I recall, participating in
some venture t m to form a Russian-language newspaper or samething to
that effect. Years later, when I was mrking in another Russian-language
newspaper in Tsingtao, rJhose editor ms also a Eomr Russian officer, a
captain in artillery, who ms a gOOd persanal friend of my ht Evegenia's
husband and he also wts involved in that newspaper venture and there was a
whnle closet full of papers, of all sorts of old issues of that newspaper
and uy aunt: ' s b band ' s writings. I have gone over those papers and
lead a great deal about many facets of the Ehsian civil mr in Siberia
which up to that tinre I did not know.
Particularly there ms--ft actually should be the subject of a separate
interview kt there wm a fascinating episode in that part of the Russian
civil WK involvetrrent which involved &nerd Ungern--it's a Gem nanae,
he ws of Geman origin but he ms unbelievably enough a Cossack general.
He todc his cantingent from Russia into what today is knom as Outer
Ibngolia and fought his way into the capitol city of Fbngolia
v
called Urga
t the Chinese garrison and threw than out of the city and then out
o Mongolia itself, occupied bngolia. IJle ws married-I believe the
marriage w not corwmmated, it ws a political marriage and there are
different versions--to either a Mongolian or a Tibetan young princess to
stablize his political situation there. He reorganized his aq, unifonrred
Nick Cherniavsky Memoir, vol. 2 - Archives/Special Collections - Norris L Brookens Library - University of Illinois at Springfield - UIS