The Unknown Tsesarevitch. Reminiscences and Considerations on V. K. Filatov’s Life and Times

Here is one more fact from father’s biography. His notebook was left after his death. Having read it, we found in it a strange record with figures. We appealed to the military-historic archive in Moscow. They answered that they did not know the time period the record had been made. The record was made in a simple code. But it turned out that his code system is used nowadays in fax-transmission of information, that is, each letter is denoted by a certain figure. Such a system has also been given in the case of investigator Sokolov A. N.. But father’s code was twice more difficult than that given in Sokolov’s book “Ubiistvo tsarskoi sem’i” (The Murder of the Tsar’s Family) ¹.This book demonstrates also the codes of the Royal Family. Each child of the Royal Family is known to have had a code of his own, which the child himself invented, as well as the Empress and the Emperor. In the book “Pis’ma tsarstvennykh muchenikov iz zatocheniya” (Letters of the Royal Martyrs from the Confinement) we read: “These days V.N. Stein came again from Tobolsk, who brought the Family 250 000 thousand rubles from the Moscow monarchical organization. On March 12/25 the Sovereign recorded in his diary: “For a second time Vl. Nik. came from Moscow and brought a considerable sum from our kind acquaintances. As well as books and tea. I just saw him passing by along the street.” On this arrival he not only brought money but also organized a secret written communication with the Royal prisoners. See a letter of the Empress of January 23, 1918 to Vyrubova, note 3. An excerpt from the Empress’s letter: “…In general, letters do not often reach us. If you have read “Solomon’s parables”, you should start now reading “Solomon’s wisdom”. You will find there much of interest… Kind Sednev has just brought a cup of cocoa to me, to warm myself, and asked for Jimmy

“From Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna To V.G. Kapralova. Letter is on 4 pages, 17x13. #9 (Tobolsk) March 29, 1918. 11 (April)

Thank you very much, my good Vera Georgievna, for your letter, #10. I did not answer it simultaneously with Anastasia since I think; there would be more enjoyment for you to receive not two letters at once but one by one. As she said, Vera Nikolaevna wrote letters to us c/o you, but we have never received them… What are you doing, dear, and how are you? If you chance to be at the Sidorovs’ remember us to them and to other acquaintances. Do you happen to know where A.A. Miller is? I’ve received your letters # is 1,2,3,4,8,10. So, unfortunately, four letters are missing. And what about my letters? – In our monotonous life we are always glad to receive letters. My sisters send their regards to you. Anastasia and I embrace you tenderly

God save you. Maria. +)

The source is unknown.¹

What father needed it for remained unclear, though we supposed that he used these codes in his correspondence with his friends. To-day all of them are probably, dead. Those alive who have father’s letters, either attach no importance to them, or know that father died, or do not know that he had children. We haven’t got any relevant instructions from father and, respectively, could not keep up any contacts with these people. When father lived in the Isetsk region, he had no dwelling of his own. He decided to build a log-house. Since he lived in woodland, there was no problem with the building material. He got timber and built himself a five-wall house on the shore of the River Iset, where he lived. He built this house despite his physical disability. He handled an axe with skill. He would say that both axes and saws should be different. An axe for notching, a hatchet, an axe for chopping. But most of all he loved a carpenter’s axe and would say that one should never use axes anyhow, that is, one must not chop wood with a carpenter’s axe, it gets blunt and needs special sharpening. He knew how much time it was neccessary for the logs to dry to be used in building. In general, father was always interested to know how and of what materials it was better to build. I still remember that he would say he always dreamed of building roads and bridges, but unfortunately he was unable to graduate from the Highway Institute. He explained that the Motherland needed teachers at that time and they, the students of the Highway Institute, were transferred to the Teacher-training college. As far as his studies in the Highway Institure are concerned, we found only the surname Filatov, without initials. It was a pay-roll with the signatures of the students of the workers’ faculty. That Filatov got a stipend only for May and June 1933 ¹, and from his biography it follows that he studied at the workers’ faculty of the Tiumen Pedagogical Institute from 1930 to 1934. There is a certificate which is not numbered. According to the Tiumen State archive the Highway Institute workers’ faculties were organized in 1932 in four towns: Shadrinsk, Kurgan, Krasnoufimsk, Sterlitamak. In connection with the liquidation of the Urals Highway Institute during the period 01.06—21.07, 1933, the workers’ faculties in these towns, including Shadrinsk, were also closed. The name of student Filatov V.K. was also not found in other Highway Institutes in the Urals and Siberia.² Six Institutes, secondary schools and colleges have been examined. “Try as we might to obtain “two” at exams, they entered all of us on the list of the students of the Lunacharsky Tiumen Pedagogical Institute”, – said father. It turns out that the son of the former military man became a shoe-maker because of his illness, and had reasons to conceal some facts of his biography. It is not likely that he had had amnesia and had not remembered the names of his parents and sisters and therefore had not mentioned them in his biography when entering the Institute, etc., during all his life. It was the considered line of action of a literate and knowledgeable man. The documents available in our family always lack something in the general information necessary for the documents of that hard time. Life in the 30’s was difficult, only on the eve of the war was there almost plenty of everything. When father was a student, they got food by using coupons. He would say: “I would come to the students’ dining-room, they would give me a soup, I would look into the plate and see how a grain gains on another grain…” He could no longer live in this way, and in 1937 he became a free-time student. His life without relatives and home was very hard, but in the village where he taught in the Upper-Beshkil school one could get potatoes, in summer one could go berrying, but all the same it was difficult. He bought a cow and drank milk, but he could not keep it long and soon sold it. And so the years slipped by. As I recollect, father would like to listen to the radio and was always well informed about everything. He subscribed to a lot of leading journals and newspapers, local newspapers, journals on embroidery, fishery, medicine, chemistry, geography, chess, history, and newspaper in German “Neues Leben”. When in 1963 it became possible to buy a TV set, our parents bought “Yenisei-3”. And it was the first TV set in the village. Teachers would often come to us to look at films and telecasts, especially “Goluboi ogonek” (Light-blue light). Since we lived 80 km from Orenburg, an antenna was needed, and father, having made arrangements with the chairman of the kolkhoz (collective farm) Konstantinov, made an antenna and mounted it with guide wires. It was 20 m high. Thus we had information and learned about life in the country and in the world. Then our parents bought a washing machine. Being an invalid, father especially wanted to get a three-wheel carriage intended for invalids. But he had no disability certificate and did not want to get it. The kolkhoz “Karl Marx” was rich, its members had motorcycles and cars, but my father wanted an invalid’s carriage to go to work and fishing. Unfortunately, he had never gone to the medical commission. Apparently, father did not want to change his habits and wanted to avoid publicity that he suffered from bleeding. Father corresponded with his old acquaintance from Leningrad, who during the war ostensibly lived with children in the Iset region with the evacuated. He was Boris Vasilyevich Zhuravlev, a lecturer on mathematics in Leningrad University. He had also taught it in the regional centre at Iset. He had two daughters: Natalia and Tatiana. Natalia studied in the senior grades and Tatiana in junior grades. Later Natalia became a physician and worked in GIDUV (State Institute for Improvement) in Leningrad, and Tatiana headed the chair of pathological anatomy in the First Medical Institute. To-day it is the I.P. Pavlov Medical University. The Zhuravlevs would send us parcels from Leningrad. In 1961 my mother and I went to Leningrad, father went there in 1964 and n 1966 he visited the Zhuravlevs in Melnichy Ruchei (a suburb near St. Petersburg). We had no idea about the topic of their talks. Most likely they had talked about the war. Zhuravlevs children remember our father. They recollected that in 1942 father helped to accomodate the evacuated families. Several decades later I found them. They lived on Bakunin Str., 29 and worked in Leningrad but they could not tell us anything special about father. They recollected: “Yes. There was such a geography teacher, he was poor. He kind of married a collective farmer Polina, it was a civil marriage. They were childless. The marriage was not a success. He lived at her house, they were glad that it had become easier for him because he was an invalid.” Now it is known exactly that Filatov V.K. was not married during the war.¹ Therefore doubts arise that the Zhuravlevs were in the village of Isetskoe at that time. When I asked them what their father Zhuravlev B.V. had been they answered that he had long been in captivity in Poland wounded in the legs and then had been exchanged for somebody. Zhuravlevs knew nothing about his relationship with V.K. Filatov. I asked for his photo. They refused to give it. When we voyaged from Samara to Leningrad in 1966, father would call Zhuravlev B.V. up and visited him. We thought that they had known each other long before the war. When father went to Melnichy Ruchei, he never took us along. When father and I went to see “memorable places”, as he called them, in Leningrad, I remember that he showed me the places where the Russian tsars had shed blood – in Winter Palace, in the streets, namely the embankment where terrorists had killed Alexander II. I asked him, why Alexander II had been killed. He answered, that he was a progressive man, who wanted to change much in life, but was killed. The Revolutioners did not want the Tsars to rule Russia. The “Spas-na-krovi” church was built in honour of that Tsar. In the Winter Palace he showed me the dining room where Kerensky’s provisional government had sat. But Kerensky had not managed to keep power. “These people have changed the Tsars and this has led to civil war” – father said. Father showed me Mikhailovsky castle where Pavel Ist had been killed. We walked about the town with mother, at father’s request. He would get tired. Mother took me to St. Peter and Paul’s fortress and we went to St. Peter and Paul’s Cathedral where I saw, for the first time, the Tsars’ tombs. Everything was interesting to me, I tried to be close to the guide to hear and learn more. I was especially struck by the fine marble tombstones. The size of the Cathedral was also impressive. We were in churches, cathedrals, and museums. We visited all the environs, and parks. Such was my childhood. Every summer we were in Leningrad. Every time they told me about the life of the northern capital and its people, and, of course, they fixed in my mind, that all that had been built on the initiative of the Tsars. I was surprised why, instead of going to health resorts (and we could allow for it), our parents would take us to Leningrad for two months and we would live at mother’s sister’s place (Olga Kuzminichna) as if there was no other place on earth, in Russia

Besides that, the contact with the city on the Neva continued in autumn, when it was harvest time. Trucks would come to us from Leningrad and the drivers would often tell us about the city. During my visits to Leningrad I was also informed about the history of the blockade, they would tell me about the heroism of the people of Leningrad. I remember our visit to Piskarevskoye cemetery. Father, when recollecting his youth, would often speak about his travels about south Russia – it was very warm there and of course there was access to the sea. Together with other lads of the same, or almost the same age, he would spend the summers in southern towns. There was enough food there, there was no need of a special dwelling. Father would swim a lot and dive. But he could not dive deep because if he did, blood started running from his nose and ears. They dived for cockle-shells and caught fish and lobsters. This was between 1921 and 1928. He often went to the Sukhumi and Saakhi health resorts. There was a mud-resort at Saakhi, and father could get mud-baths there. He was in Baku and in the Crimea. Once father said that at that time he had tried to get work at the Dneprogess building, but conditions were very hard there and he, on the advice of someone from the personnel went to Magnitka. But there was mainly physical work there and he, being of delicate health, could not work there and went to the Cheliabinsk tractor works (to-day there is a Highway Institute in Cheliabinsk) and then to “Uralmashzavod”. At both plants there were engineers from Germany who suggested that he study to be a road-building engineer, since, as they explained, in disrupted Russia there was a lot of work in the reconstruction of roads and bridges

Having got work at “Uralmashzavod”, he entered the Highway Institute, where he studied for several years. I always wondered how without education he could obtain full-time tuition at a technical institute. At the same time, according to the documents, between 1930 and 1932 Father studied by correspondence, and from 1932 to 1934 he was a full time student at the Lunacharsky Tiumen Pedagogical Institute (see his biography for 1967). We have a reference given to him in 1933 at the Highway Institute that he was of poor estate, from a shoe-maker’s family, but having the right to vote.¹ That year they started issueing passports. Passports and references were issued according to one’s place of residence registration. Father lived in a hostel and was directed to the institute from where he worked (the year unknown). One can judge from the certificate of graduation from the free-time workers’ school at the Lunacharsky Tiumen Pedagogical Institute that he had not lived in Tiumen, and they had not demanded any reference there. From the documents, the tuition term at that school was 1930 to 1934, hence, father had not been registered in Tiumen. It turns out that he could have graduated from the Highway Institute, too. Clearly, it ought to have been so. Thus they had not known him in Tiumen until 1934, when he became a full-time student of the Pedagogical Institute, then, again, a free-time student of this Institute from 1937 to 1939.² We have no documents concerning the Highway Institute. But where are they? It is interesting that the certificates contain some discrepancies. Certificate #22909 of the middle school teacher V.K. Filatov’s graduation from the Teacher’s Institute in Tiumen in 1936 was issued on August 9, 1938 and signed by RSFSR people’s comissar of education L. Tiurkin himself. The question is: how does a graduate from the Institute, without a certificate get work in 1936? Maybe, such were the rules in 1936? It follows from the certificate signed by the Deputy Director of the Pedagogical Institute on July 17, 1937 and found in the Institute’s archive, that on July 1, 1936 he graduated from the Teacher’s Institute as a geography teacher. Then it gets more interesting. By order of deputy director #24/79 of 18.07.1937 he was admitted to the Pedagogical Institute as a third-year student of the free-time geography faculty, and as a graduate from the Teacher’s Institute of the Tiumen’ Pedagogical Institute. The printed order on V.K. Filatov’s graduation from the Institute has not been found. The geography teacher’s diploma #054485, given to Filatov V.K. on December 16, 1939 reads that he entered the Pedagogical Institute in 1934 and graduated from it in 1939. The result is that Filatov V.K. entered the Pedagogical Institute not in 1937 as a third-year student, but in 1934, and at the same time, according to order #63 of July 2^nd, 1934 he was admitted to the Teacher’s Institute. If he entered the Pedagogical Institute in 1934, according to the record of the higher-education diploma and not of the certificate, then, again, according to the certificate, he graduated from the Teacher’s Institute on July 1, 1936 and by order #24/79 of 18.07.1937 he was admitted as a third-year student of the Pedagogical Institute. Then one year (1936—1937) of study in the Pedagogical Institute falls out. In the extract from order #122 of July 25^th, 1939, paragraph 1, the management of the Pedagogical Institute commends and thanks officially the four-year, free-time student, Filatov V.K. for excellent studies and social work. Signed by the Director of the Institute, Korolev. Again, it does not make five years. That is, he studied from 1934 to 1939, but in 1939 Filatov V.K. was a four-year student and on December 12, 1939 he obtained a higher-education diploma. This does not fit with five-years of studies. It means that his studies ought to have lasted for seven years, i.e., from 1934 to 1941, and father’s diploma ought to have been issued on December 16^th, 1941. But from archival reference #51 of 12.09.1967, from the Department of public education of the Administration of Isetsk Region, Tiumen Province, in 1941 Filatov V.K. was the acting Director of this department. Though, they could count the years of studies in the Teacher’s Institute and Pedagogical Institute as a term needed to obtain a higher education, that is, 5 years. But, again, it is more than 5 years, i.e., 7 years. And again, it is not clear, why he obtained the certificate in 1938 and not in 1936. Such is the history of his studies. But let’s go back. As a free-time student, father could freely move about the country and he got acquainted with many interesting people. He told me about one of them who was a man working at “Uralmashzavod” and who had graduated from the Highway Institute. Later on, when father spoke about the importance of learning languages, he recollected that that man knew German perfectly because he had associated with German engineers. Father told us about the fate of this man during the war: he was in the partisan detachment in the occupied territory. His messenger in Poland Yavorsky, a former forester in Bielovezhskaya Pushcha, had lived in our village. Yavorsky associated with father and told father about this man in my presence. The man they talked about was Kuznetsov Nikolai Nikolaevich. I’ll remember it all my life. Only now, after decades, have I understood that Kuznetsov was a man who was well acquainted with father. They had been acquainted for a long time. Father took Kuznetsov history to heart and during his life he thoroughly studied all the related materials published in the press. The impression was that father had been with him all his life. Besides that, Litvinov Georgy lived in our village. He was another man who during the war had also known those partisans, such were the rules. Father would meet with him and they would speak about the war. I remember it well and it is still of interest to me because the detachment where N.I. Kuznetsov had been was located in Bielovezhskaya Pushcha, where, as father often recollected, he had been in his early childhood with his parents. He spoke so often and in such detail about that place, that is, Rovno that one would think that he had been there later on, and not just once. During the war Mother had also been there. She was a medical sister, in 1943—1944 their hospital accompanied the army over Bielorussia and the Ukraine. Father would often speak with me about the usefulness of sciences. For instance, he would cite not only the works of scientists but also the deeds of Peter the First, stressing their force and emphasizing the importance of getting into the bottom of all spheres of knowledge and learning the arts, literature and languages. We lived in a village where the native villagers were the Germans and the Dutch, from the times of Catherine II. He himself spoke German with the villagers but at home he never did. He would often suggest that one ought to know languages and use them to learn the culture of other peoples. Later on, being a student of the faculty of foreign languages at the S.M. Kirov Pedagogical Institute, I would often hear from him that what we study at the Institute is only theory, and one needs practice. But there was no practice in the spoken language. However, I translated both technical texts and texts on archaeology, history, fish-breeding, physics, and chemistry, etc. By 1975, I was already in my four year. I was in the group “Poisk” (Search), which studied the lives of the students of our Institute who had been in World War II. That year a Museum of Glory was created. Because we started this museum the RSFSR Ministry of Education awarded our group “Poisk” with a bonus, and the management of the institute decided to send us students, to Bielorussia, to visit the most famous sites of the war.Before leaving for Minsk, in May of 1975, I told father about it. Father listened to me and suddenly said that he had studied in the Highway Institute and worked at practising the language. Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov, a future hero of the Soviet Union, a known secret service agent, studied and worked with him. Father said that Nikolai Ivanovich spoke German fluently, and when he was taking his examinations he wrote his graduation essay in German. Kuznetsov spoke German and wrote it without any mistakes, better than the other students wrote and spoke their native language. Father said that I ought to know German as well as Kuznetsov had known it. Then he said that the body of N.I. Kuznetsov had not been found, and the statement that he had been killed was only a rumour. Father said: “When you are in Minsk, look at Kuznetsov photo in the WW II Museum. That photo is the only original available. His weapon and his officer’s map case are also there.”

Later I told father about our trip. He listened to me and said nothing. Still, I wonder why father remembered that man for so long. From the documents available in our family he had not participated in the war and could not know any of these details. Namely, about the photo being the only original or about Kuznetsov’s personal weapon and map case or that all these things are kept in the WW II Museum in Minsk

He had never been there, as far as we know. I thought that maybe he had learned about it from Yavorsky who lived in our village, but that was in the 60’s and Yavorsky had been very old already and also had not left the village. How could that be? This fact of his biography has also not been clarified. We’ve sent inquiries to the Highway Institutes in the Urals and Siberia about father and got answers that there was no such student. To-day we should, probably, study not only our father’s biography but also the biography of Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov. It is clear from publications that Kuznetsov was called the Hero of the Soviet Union not post mortem but while he was still living. In the book of the Heroes of the Soviet Union kept in the archives of the Military-historical museum of artillery, military engineering and communication, there is a record: “Kuznetsov N.I. – partisan, secret-service agent, Hero of the Soviet Union.” No other Kuznetsovs. The facts of his death are still unknown. Somebody had seen something, somebody had heard something. Not more. Theodor Gladkov in his book Disappeared from the place of attempt writes that people still hope that Nikolai Ivanovich is still alive and that maybe he has moved to another place, with his death feigned. And that Kuznetsov has continued his work but under another name and on another theme, because at that time the era of nuclear confrontation was approaching

Father would tell that N.I. Kuznetsov had been concerned with he search for the Amber room. And he said that in Koenigsberg, on the keft side of the highway going into town, there was an underground airdrome where it was kept in one of the wells. But nobody had searched for it in that region. It is of interest that the head of the geo-archaeological expedition on the search for the Amber room in the 60’s and 70’s at Kaliningrad, a Candidate of History, expert in the recent history of Germany, Andrei Stanislavovich Przhezdomsky is of the opinion that “…The Amber room and numerous valuables of interest not only to us but to world culture have remained on the territory of Prussia, namely, on the territory of Koenigsberg. Only the lack of skill, our famous haphazard ways and inability to approach the case from the scientific point of view, seriously explains a lack of results. If we can overcome our shortcomings, we shall be able to bring the valuables back.” ¹. Maybe their lives had really intersected and we know nothing about it. We do not know whether father had ever been to Bielorussia or what friends he had there. I was born when he was 49 and his life during those earlier years we have only just begun to uncover. Much is to be studied. The life of this man is enigmatic and mysterious. We do not know how many similar fates there have been in Russia. If each of us studied these lives, we would enlarge the volume of information about Russian history, with the deeds of these people. Father had passed through numerous ordeals. For instance, three wars: World War I, Civil war, and World War II. Years of disruption of collectivization, anad of reconstruction of the economy. After the Civil war he was registered nowhere for 12 years – he lived in several orphanages. Therefore it would have been difficult to find him if anyone had wanted to. We have mapped his life and seen that he was mainly in central Russia, and in southern Russia where the climate was milder, and there was plenty of fruit and vegetables, and mud resorts. He had lived for a long time in the Siberia and in the Urals where his family had been executed and where he had studied. Grigory Rasputin’s relatives had also lived there. Here it becomes clear why Father appeared as a student in 1930. Industry was developing intensively at that time. In 1933 a passport system was introduced. One ought to be registered somewhere, to work and live. In 1930 he entered the Highway Institute (we have a related reference). Father had never kept a diary, his photos were not numerous, he neither liked to be photographed nor to take photos himself. But he had bought us two cameras and books on photography. We learned to do photography ourselves and we were photographed by other people on father’s request. Once a lad had come and lived with us for two weeks (it was Kukolev). He photographed us but left no photo. There are no other documents in our family apart from certificates, diplomas, references, and birth certificates. Father had asked us to guard these documents like they were the apple of the eye. He said that they contained everything about his life, and the remaining could be found in books such as Gorky’s books “V liudiakh” (Among People) and “Moi universitety” (My Universities). In all his life father had never sought for information about his relatives, at any rate, in our presence. He would say: “What should they need me for? It’s my life and they have a life of their own”. His secluded life astonished us. He knew how to be silent. We have never heard of his other family or whether he had any other children. Mother said that when I was born, father celebrated that event for a fortnight. Apparently, he had long waited for an heir. So one period of his life had ended and another period began, full of care for his hildren. He needed to earn money and worked from morning till night, like mother. Strange as it was for that time, we had “nurses”. They were Kashirins’ children from another village who studied in the Pretoria middle school and lived with us. When I grew up, I myself looked after my sisters when our parents were at school. Father dreamed that our life would not be like his. Therefore he did his very best for us and tried to pass all his knowledge on to us. It was a very interesting time. At school, where he worked, he tried to create an atmosphere of accessability to knowledge and trained the children’s interest in it. For example, Father’s stories about Kuznetsov N.I. or Gladkikh M.L. have created a life-long impression. He was always near them or they near him, days and nights, during all his life, that is, his life and their lives had been intertwined and, of course, he had learned much from them. I saw how father was cautious with people though he himself was approachable for others. Therefore later, when I observed him, and after his death examined his documents, I understood how hard it had been for him to get those documents. He had never kept diaries. Moving from place to place he had tried either to destroy or to take with himself all the necessary documents, which would be left after he died. So, as mother told it, from Tiumen and from Orenburg Province he took with him a file with his dossier. In 1955 our parents moved from Tiumen Province. As Father explained later, it was impossible to live there because due to a nuclear accident in Cheliabinsk, dead fish could be seen floating in the river Iset for a whole year after. Our parents travelled via Moscow. In Moscow they came to the Ministry of Education and tried to get work but, for some reason they failed. Mother cried, and father soothed her. Later mother recollected that father went away somewhere and sometime later the Minister appeared in the corridor and asked mother why she was crying. She answered that she could not find work. The Minister asked her: “Where would you like to work?” Mother answered, either in Altai krai or in Orenburg Province. The Minister took mother’s arm and conducted her to the personnel department, where my parents obtained a permit. So that’s how they came to live in Orenburg Province. The first seal witnessing a record in father’s work-record card appeared only in 1955. I still can’t comprehend how this could have happened, because father himself had once been Director of RONO. As if all those years he had been either in an administrative exile or on a business trip. And the most incredible thing is that he had served in the army and had had a serviceman’s identity card. Father had been exempt from military service for poor health but he was called twice to the medical commission. What for? When we appealed to the Military-medical archive of the Ministry of Defense in St. Petersburg, they said that they could not understand it either. We also failed to find his medical cards. Though the archive officers explained that medical commissions in the time of war had consisted of the medical workers of the hospitals and not of the region, and all medical records had been sent to the military districts. The districts had turned over the documents to the archives. But nothing has been found there either. Order #336 of 5.12.42, item 12 testifies to the fact that father suffered from a chronic illness of the muscular system of a neuropathic nature.¹ It’s a terrible desease. They had prescribed other medicines, while in this case strychnine ought to have been used, for example. Everything was and is strange. Father had not registered a disability certificate either. It seems that with this illness, and with any other, one should be examined, obtain a disability certificate, be registered in the polyclinic, be treated, get medicines, and go to resorts. Father had done nothing of the kind. He was already 60 and could think only of his children, about their health, but he would not do anything for himself. Was it unwillingness or a disregard for medicine, because it could not help him since he knew about the incurability of his hereditory illness? His hereditory illness had accustomed him to the thought that his life was in God’s hands, and he would live as many yearas as God gave him.And father had lived each day as if it would be his last. During his last years father would pray and repeat: “God, how long shall I suffer? When shall I die at last?” There was a single answer: “We all are in God’s hands.” He would say, that only thought, his ability to think, had made it possible for him to live. Many years later we decided to ascertain the diagnosis of father’s illness with the help of forensic genetics and medicine, that is, whether father was ill with haemophilia “A” or not