The mysterious Филаретов
On our first visit to Olga and Misha’s house, we tell them about Nicholas Filaratoff, our great-great-great-grandfather who’s faint trail has brought us here to St Petersburg. We have very little information about him – the only physical item remaining from his life is a Russian medal that we were told was from the Crimean war. When we were working in Hull in 2010, we also visited his grave, which showed that he died in 1903, aged 89. We believe he lived in St Petersburg before emigrating with his daughter Ann. Misha confirms that the medal is from the Crimean war (1853-56) and is a common medal awarded to all soldiers who fought in the war. They also tell us that Filarefoff (Филаретов) is a Russian name, which raises questions about Nicholas’ Jewish identity, and yet again reminds us how names get altered through migration and translation.
Olga kindly offers to take us to the National Library, to see if we can find any more clues about who Nicholas was, and what he did to eventually be described as a ‘Gentleman’ on his daughter’s marriage certificate. The trip to the library is quite an experience – it’s a grand building, commissioned by Catherine the Great as the first public library in Russia. Gaining access isn’t easy – you have to show your passport, fill in a form, enter a booth to be questioned and photographed and then finally are issued with a library card. Olga leads me upstairs into a beautiful reading room, lined with old books, with strict looking librarians sitting at various desks. She talks to one librarian, who gives us a form to fill in, and we take it to another who finds two huge volumes for us. These are directories of directories, which Olga searches through. Eventually she finds a reference to something promising: street directories from the 1860s and 70s. We return to the desk, and are sent to another room, where a large, grumpy librarian looks annoyed at being disturbed. A long conversation ensues, of which I understand nothing. It turns out that to look at these books, you need a special letter from an institution. So after several hours of searching we drew a blank, but Olga said that she will return when she gets the chance.
Katy’s book about the Jews of St Petersburg gives us some idea about the areas where the Jewish community would have lived here. But we have nothing specific to go on, and even less certainty about the Filaratoffs movements than we had about the Beinarts in Lithuania. This trip has involved a good deal of searching for something we can’t find. We both expected this to be the case, but perhaps we harboured a secret hope of uncovering something new. Wanting to mark our ancestor’s presence in this city, and our own week of walking these streets making our own memories, we perform a departing gesture. Leaving the apartment on Galernaya Street for the last time on Sunday, we use our remaining South African salt to mark an Ф on the pavement. Filaratoff’s initial is also the symbol for the golden ratio – a mathematical problem that intrigued and mystified great minds for centuries.
R Beinart
