Table of Contents
The Yakovleff Family
Elena’s father, Vladimir Yakovleff (30 March 1881 – 20 March 1940) was a St Petersburg merchant who headed the ‘Joint Stock Company of Kulotinskaya Jute and Linen Manufactory’. Click here for a Russian article.
He also established a partnership in St. Petersburg on the shares of the Chudovskaya Match Factory ‘Solntse’ – as mentioned here.
Nothing is known about Elena’s mother, but her siblings were: Viktor, Boris, Georg, Kyrill and Eugenia. Eugenia married a German man, Gustav Holzwarth, and they had a son, Arnold. After escaping Russia, they all lived together in one big apartment in Berlin-Buckow.
Click here for Vladimir’s grave.
Elena Yakovleff
My family never talked about Elena, so I was left with her description in all the newspaper articles (fully realising how coloured those might be) and her daughter’s memoirs.
From what I could retrieve, she was flirtatious with a love for the good life and struggling with émigré life. Knowing where she came from, I can only imagine she mourned the luxurious life she had to leave behind in Russia.
Dashka
Lidochka
Feodor and Elena’s daughter, born 05-04-1924.
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff
(14 January 1872– 29 October 1949)
A mystic, philosopher, spiritual teacher, and composer of Armenian and Greek descent. Gurdjieff taught that most humans live their lives in a state of hypnotic ‘waking sleep’, but that it is possible to awaken to a higher state of consciousness and achieve full human potential.
During the Revolution, he set up a temporary study community in Yessentuki from spring 1917 until early August 1918. He then moved on to Maykop, Sochi and Poti, before moving to Tbilisi. In late May 1920, political conditions in Georgia had changed, and the old order was crumbling. Just like the Kamendrovskys, he travelled to Batumi on the Black Sea coast and travelled by ship to Istanbul, where they stayed for some time. In 1936, he settled in Paris, where he was to stay for the rest of his life.
Sources
For the newspaper articles, see chapter 22 (they do contain spoilers)