E.M.Zablotski. Tamara Karsavina – Notes to Her Biography and Genealogy.

(translation: Andrew Foster, authorized)

 

   The biography of the outstanding ballerina Tamara Platonovna Karsavina she gave herself in her famous book of memoirs “Theatre Street” [1] which has been  published in many editions and translated into many languages. The central theme of the memoirs is, of course, the balletic theatre - the world of artists and her own artistic journey, but particularly interesting are the descriptions of her childhood years and the details about her family. Vivid pictures are presented to the reader of the ballerina’s father, the ballet artist Platon Konstantinovich Karsavin, and her mother - Anna Iosifovna, (nee Khomyakova), and also her brother, the future famous philosopher Lev Platonovich Karsavin. She writes in detail about her grandmother, Maria Semenovna Khomyakova, (nee Paleologue), who was the relative of the famous slavophile A.S.Khomyakov. Karsavina mentions her second grandmother, without mentioning her name, in the last chapter of the book, recalling “the portrait of a lady in a green silk dress with a rose in her hand” [2]. Other relatives appear at intervals in the pages of the book. There are her father’s brother and sister, “uncle Volodya” about whom no mention is even made that he was a ballet artist), “aunt Katya” and also her mother’s sister, Raisa. Nothing is said in the book about the ballerina’s cousin, Nikolai Nikolayevich Balashev, the son of “aunt Katya”, also a ballet artist and a dear nephew of Platon Konstantinovich.

 

One should not be surprised that more detailed information about Karsavina’s relations is absent from the book. Tamara Platonovna writes about her childhood memories without the benefit of studying the roots and branches of her family tree. Even if she had taken on the task of researching her genealogy she would certainly have encountered almost insurmountable problems. It would have required close contact with people in Soviet Russia, which she left in 1918, to all intents and purposes illegally. Working with archived documents would have been required.

 

Irina Lvovna, the ballerina’s niece and the oldest daughter of her brother L.P.Karsavin [3] was interested in the genealogy of the Karsavina family. We know this from the words of her sister Susanna [4], youngest daughter of Lev Platonovich. In 1989 Susanna Lvovna Karsavina met for the first time my mother, Nina Nikolayevna Zablotskaya (nee Balasheva), granddaughter of “aunt Katya” and goddaughter of Tamara Karsavina. Their contact continued until 1994. Susanna Lvovna particularly recalled her sister Irina speaking of “uncle Kolya”, her father’s cousin, and his children. The discussion therefore was about the family of my grandfather, Nikolai Nikolayevich Balashev.

 

In 1989, 37 years after L.P.Karsavin’s death, his grave was found in the graveyard at the Abez' camp. (His student and camp comrade, A.A.Vaneev, wrote an acclaimed book called “Two years in Abez'”). Then the political atmosphere in Russia changed substantially. There was no longer any prohibition on the names and events in the country’s history and there appeared the real possibility of bringing to publication both family and archival material, and so casting light on the genealogy of the clan which gave to world culture both an outstanding religious thinker and a brilliant ballerina. The first results of this work were published [5]

 

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Information contained in the files of the archives of the Ministry of the Imperial Court [6], can add to and support occasional references in Tamara Karsavina's book about the family characters and the situation in the years of her childhood. For example, recollections about the family’s place of residence in 1890 can be supplemented with the exact address of the family’s apartment, Ekaterininsky Canal Embankment (now Griboyedova Canal), house No.170, apartment No.9. At this address the Karsavin family lived until 1896, when, due to their worsening financial situation (according to “Theatre Street”), they moved to another apartment in the same house – Apartment No. 15. House 170 is located not far from the junction of Griboyedova Canal with the river Fontanka. Up until this time the family had changed address frequently, and so, in 1888-1889, Anna Iosifovna lived at four addresses consecutively: Malaya Morskaya Street, Torgovy Lane, Ofitsersky Lane and Mogilev Street. After the house on the Yekaterininsky Canal, from 1901, not long before Tamara finished at the ballet school, the family lived along Sadovaya Street, Number 93, apartment 13. [7].

 

According to the archives, in the summer of 1882, when Karsavina’s parents married, her father was living with his sister, “in aunt Katya’s house”, which Karsavina mentions in her book. This house was actually located “beyond the Narva gates”, in the Tentelevka village of those days, Pravaya Street, house number 6. The photograph of Ekaterina Konstantinovna Balasheva shows this house in the background.  The house had two floors, and the Balashev family made a living by renting out one floor to tenants.

 

The archives contain information about Tamara Platonovna’s father’s parents - her grandfather, whom she describes as a provincial actor and a playwright, and her grandmother, whom she only mentions in passing. In a recent biographical article [8] it states that Konstantin Mikhailovich Karsavin subsequently became a tailor. The archives show that in 1851 K.M.Karsavin was already a master “permanent Guild tailor” [9]. He died in 1861, being at this time the master of a lady’s tailoring shop. Pelageya Pavlovna, K.M.Karsavin’s wife, died in 1890 at the age of 70, when Tamara was only five years old. The “lady in the green silk dress” in the portrait, the grandmother she recalled living in the house “beyond the Narva gates”, was possibly Pelageya Pavlovna in her youth.

 

From the archives we also learn about the training, the service and the dates of birth and death (1851-1908) of Vladimir Konstantinovich Karsavin, Tamara Platonovna’s uncle. In 1865, at the age of 13, he was accepted from the day students into the numbers of official pupils at the Theatre school; in 1867 he graduated from the school and then served as a dancer in the corps de ballet up to his retirement with pension in 1887. As can be seen from the official listing for that year, at the age of 37 he remained unmarried. We learn from the certificate given by the St. Petersburg board of the craftspeople, that in 1865 the widowed Pelageya Pavlovna was looking after three children: Ekaterina 17, Vladimir 15 and Platon 12. Judging by P.P.Karsavina’s age in the year that Ekaterina was born, about 30 years, we can assume that this was not her first child. Actually, as Susanna Lvovna Karsavina told me in one of her letters, it was believed in their family that her grandfather Platon had two sisters and many brothers.

 

Archives also tell about the marital status of Ekaterina Konstantinovna (“aunt Katya” of Karsavina’s memoirs). She was born in 1849 and married between 1870 and 1872. Her husband, Nikolai Alekseyevich Balashev (the grandfather of my mother, Nina Nikolayevna Zablotskaya) was a theatre artist, assistant to the scene painter at the Mariinsky Theatre, and was registered as a member of the urban commoners' class. N.A.Balashev was apparently considerably older than his wife - his certificate of service was dated 1857 (In 1872, at the time of the birth of a son, Nikolai was already retired). The archive documents suggest that N.A.Balashev died sometime between 1880 and 1885, and his wife, according to N.N.Zablotskaya’s information, died in 1920.

 

 “Aunt Katya’s” son, Nikolai Nikolayevich Balashev, also became an artist of the ballet. He was at the theatre school from 1880 until 1890, and began service in the corps-de-ballet of the Mariinsky Theatre. In 1897 he was promoted to coryphee and in 1910 finished service as an artist of the 3rd level. Nikolai Nikolayevich maintained a close relationship with his uncle, P.K.Karsavin for many years. Both the father and the daughter, who was herself becoming a famous ballerina, took his family affairs to their heart. After the death of his first wife at a young age and divorce from his second wife, the dancer N.T.Rykhlyakova, N.N.Balashev for a long time couldn’t get permission for a church marriage with the mother of his three additional children, a domestic teacher named Antonina Pavlovna Moskaleva [10]. According to Nina Nikolayevna Zablotskaya, her father quite often visited his uncle, even in the post-revolutionary years, - first in his apartment on the Petrograd side, on Vvedenskaya street opposite the Vvedenskaya church (destroyed in Soviet times), and then, after Anna Iosifovna's death in 1919, in the home for old artists on Kamenny Island [11]. Nikolai Nikolaievich often took his children to visit Lev Karsavin and family, living in a university apartment on the Neva embankment.

 

Interesting information is contained in the records of baptism for two generations of Karsavins as well as the marriage of Platon Constantinovich to Anna Iosifovna (in 1882). All these religious acts took place in the church of the Holy Ascension (Vozneseniya Gospodnya) close to the Admiralty area. This church, one of the oldest in Petersburg (it was built of wood in 1728, and then in stone in 1769), was located at 34-a Voznesensky Prospekt, on the Ekaterininsky Canal embankment, and was pitilessly destroyed in 1936. Both Vladimir and Platon Karsavin were christened here (in 1851 and 1854), and also Platon’s children, Lev and Tamara.

 

From these records we also learn about the people close by, the friends who appeared as sponsors at the baptisms or witnesses at the wedding. We can see the changes to the circle of these people through the different generations of Karsavins. So, for the family of Platon Konstantinovich Karsavin it is artists of the Imperial Theatres: M.N.Lusteman (guarantor for the bride at the wedding of P.K.Karsavin and A.I.Khomyakova, and also godfather to their son Lev) and P.A.Gerdt (Tamara Karsavina's godfather). Platon’s godparents were the master of a chimney-sweep guild, Saxony-national Knefler, and Rezanova, the widow of a master tailor.

 

 

The godparents named in the baptism record of Vladimir, eldest son of Konstantin Mikhailovich and Pelageya Pavlovna are particularly interesting in explaining the genealogy of the Karsavin family. They probably refer directly to the parents of Tamara Karsavina’s father and mother. They are staff-captain Filimon Sergeyevich Zheleznikov and princess Maria Mikhailovna Angalycheva, a landowner from the Orlov province. So far it’s just a guess that M.M.Angalycheva is possibly the sister of Konstantin Mikhailovich, and that Zheleznikov is the surname of Pelageya Pavlovna’s father or mother.

 

***

 

The archives also contain some interesting facts about Tamara Karsavina’s father, Platon Konstantinovich Karsavin, who, in contrast with his elder brother and his nephew, was an outstanding ballet artist. On his release from school in 1875, at the age of 20, he was already a dancer of the 1st rank, a soloist. Karsavin’s service began from the age of 16, when he was still at the Theatre School. In 1881, after 11 years of service, he requested an increase in salary for the first time. On his application to the director of the Imperial Theatres is added comment of the chief stage manager (regisseur): “Fulfills his responsibilities with complete diligence and with competence” and the endorsement of the director: “Present for full payment”. As a result from the beginning of 1882 his salary of 700 roubles per year was increased by 443 roubles. At the end of the same year his pay was increased to 2000 roubles.

 

Karsavina notes in her memoirs about the very end of the 1880's: “Even at that time of comparatively easy existence, Mother often talked about the difficulty of making both ends meet”. Platon Karsavin remained on a salary of 2000 roubles until his retirement in 1891 and then on a pension of 1140 roubles a year [12]. From 1882 until 1896 he taught dancing at the Theatre School, giving the family an additional 500 roubles. With his release from teaching living became more difficult. “Theatre Street” specifically includes a description in the spring of 1897 of the mysterious operation of taking the winter clothes to the pawnshop, carried out by “uncle Volodya”. As Tamara Platonovna expressively describes, “… we always lived from hand to mouth…” The family’s straitened circumstances are demonstrated by Platon Konstantinovich's applications for financial aid in connection with the burial of mother (1890) and the illness of his wife (1896). The reference in the memoirs to her father’s teaching  in Prince Oldenburg’s Charity School (“the pay there was meagre, but continuous”) pertains to the years 1900-1901.

 

After leaving on a pension in 1891 Platon Konstantinovich had to determine his social status. Until 1870, when he entered into the numbers of official pupils of the Theatre School (from this year also began the calculation of the period of his service), Platon Karsavin was in the tailor craftspeople guild. In 1875, on his release from the school, he was discharged from the guild society and was freed from the guild tax After serving more than 15 years as an artist of the Imperial theatres, Karsavin had the right to be accepted to the class of hereditary honourable citizens. He made use of this right in 1891, and obtained the appropriate document [13]. Finally, in the archive are preserved original documents connected with training and service of the outstanding ballerina [14]. The earliest, not counting the documents about the birth and baptism, is “evidence about the smallpox inoculation of the 7-year old daughter of hereditary honourable citizen Tamara Karsavina”, performed on April 22, 1892. The last - the report of the chief stage manager (regisseur) of the ballet company to the Petrograd office of the Imperial (amended to State) Theatres dated March 16, 1917 about the ballerina Karsavina's return from leave.

 

Between these two documents can be found:  A.I.Karsavina’s application for her daughter Tamara to be accepted into the number of incoming students of Theatre School (dated August 17, 1894) with the endorsement on the back - “is enrolled as a free student” (according to the protocol of Conference from May 23, 1895) and “certificate of training from 1894 until 1902 and the completion of the whole course of study at the Imperial St Petersburg Theatre school”, Tamara Karsavina's application for acceptance to service (dated May 28, 1902, with  photograph) and the directions of the board concerning Karsavina’s promotion, “information about the wedding” in the school church to the son of active state councillor, province secretary Vasiliy Vasilevich Mukhin (on July 1, 1907) and the artist contracts with the board of the Imperial Theatres (for 1908-1911, 1911-1914, 1914-1915 and 1915-1917).

 

Tamara Karsavina’s career steps (according to the archive documents) appear as follows: on June 20, 1903 she was a dancer in the corps de ballet with pay of 800 roubles per year, and from May 1, 1904 promotion from coryphee to  2nd soloist, from September 1, 1907 she is promoted to 1st soloist (her pay is 1300 roubles), from March 25, 1912 Tamara Karsavina is promoted to the rank of ballerina [15]. There are documents about the award of a gold medal to be worn around the neck on the ribbon of Alexander (on April 14, 1913) and the award by His Majesty the Emir of Bukhara of a small gold medal for wearing on the chest (on September 22, 1916).

 

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Examining documents concerning the people sheds more light on the reasons behind the formation of the ballet dynasties, so characteristic of the Russian stage. Regarding the Karsavin dynasty it’s easy to see that getting her sons into the Theatre school was not a bad solution for Pelageya Pavlovna Karsavina, a master tailor’s widow, given her straitened circumstances. Their enrolment as official pupils (after a preliminary period as day students) in a private boarding school with subsequent civil service and guaranteed pension undoubtedly seemed a more reliable and more attractive proposition than remaining in the serving class. Probably the same considerations guided Ekaterina Konstantinovna Balasheva when she arranged for her son Nikolai to enter the Theatre school.

 

The question of inheriting the profession arose further. Here the idea of forming a circle of friends within the profession already had great significance. We know from Tamara Karsavina's book about her parents’ opinion on decision to enter the school. Platon Konstantinovich’s negative opinions were probably connected with the unpleasant atmosphere of intrigue and routine, which he himself had become a victim of at this time, forcing him to leave on a pension at the height of his powers. But his artistic nature and love of the theatre soon overcame his first thoughts. Tamara Platonovna mentions also the role of “aunt Vera” in preparation for entering the school. Vera was the ballet artiste V.V.Zhukova, one of her father’s partners and a family friend. As for Nikolai Nikolayevich Balashev, his desire to send his own children also to the school was probably determined by more pragmatic considerations [16]. At the same time, Lev Platonovich Karsavin was categorically against the idea of his oldest daughter Irina following the family tradition and entering the Theatre School.

 

***

 

Having left Russia, which had just gone through the October revolution, for good Tamara Karsavina, like her brother, knew nothing about the fate of “aunt Katya’s” descendants. Many years later there arrived in England via the International Red Cross, an inquiry, made by my mother, N.N.Zablotskaya, Karsavina’s niece. At the end of 1973 Tamara Platonovna sent a reply to Nina Nikolayevna Zablotskaya (Balasheva), in Leningrad. On November 6, 1973 Nina Nikolayevna received from the search administration of the executive committee of  the Union of the Societies of the Red Cross and Red Crescent the following message:

“It has been established that Tamara Platonovna is alive and happy. The letter from the British Red Cross included the following: 'Since her eyesight is failing with the years and she suffers severe arthritis it is difficult for her to read and write. Her son Nikita is alive and well, and he has children Caroline, 16, and Nikolai, 12. She asks to pass on to her niece her best regards and good wishes and, if it should interest her niece to know, that she greatly loves and honours the country in which she lives, for its wonderful and warm respect and assistance to ballet'. Unfortunately Tamara Platonovna did not give her address, but, given her age, she found it difficult to write and answer letters.”

 

What memories did this message stir in the legendary ballerina, this iconic figure of the “Silver Age”? Perhaps she recalled the warm, trusting hand of her little goddaughter Ninochka, orphaned so young – the daughter of her cousin Nikolai… perhaps she recalled the distant years of the beginning of the 20th century, the years of her ascending glory… This I cannot know. But I do know the memories that connected my mother, Nina Nikolayevna with “aunt Tamara”, whom she had not seen since her distant and sad childhood. Nina Nikolayevna told me and my sister Tatiana about our grandfather Nikolai Nikolayevich, whom we barely remembered - about her good and kind father, forever worried about money, who couldn’t do anything with his evil step-mother. And this was by no means “fiction”. And in these stories always appeared the image of “aunt Tamara”, the good fairy, who gave magical gifts and who drove with the children to see her friend, Matilda Kshesinskaya, at her palace on the Petrograd side. This would happen at Christmas and Easter.

 

“Aunt Tamara” was godmother at the baptism of Nikolai Nikolayevich Balashev’s  children - Lev [17], Nina and Luba, and also the daughters of her brother, Lev Platonovich Karsavin - Irina and Marianna [18]. Nina Balasheva barely remembered her mother. Antonina Pavlovna Moskaleva, the third wife of Nikolai Nikolayevich, died when her daughter was only five years. And through the years, as I understand it, the bright image of “aunt Tamara”, her godmother, became clearer and stronger, as is usually the way with elderly people’s memory. This warm and simple image in my mother’s recollections seemed to bear no relation to that atmosphere of the “Silver Age”, so often talked about. That was another world, another life. And yet the celebrated Tamara Karsavina was, and remained, in my mother’s memory as  - “aunt Tamara”.

 

Notes

1. Theatre Street. London, 1930; in Russian - "Театральная улица". L., 1971.

2. This part, which describes Karsavina’s dramatic troubles and her departure from Russia together with her husband and two-year-old son, was removed from the Soviet publication of 1971, probably for censorship reasons.

3. Lev Platonovich Karsavin (1882 – 1952), brother of Tamara Karsavina – historian, philosopher and religious thinker.

4. Susanna Lvovna Karsavina (1921-2003).

5. Zablotsky, E.M., "Karsavins and Balashevs". - In the book "Perm' Annual-95. Choreography. History, documents, study". Perm', 1995.

6. Russian state historical archive (RGIA), fund 497 (Board of Imperial Theatres), inventory 5, matter 195, 1371, 1372, 1373, 2753 and fund 498 (Petersburg Theatre School), inventory 1, matter 2383, 2597, 3268, 4561, 6190.

7. According to Karsavina’s details in Theatre Street the house was located opposite the Pokrov church (Church of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin) in Kolomna (now Turgenev Square. The church was demolished in 1934).

8. Sokolov-Kaminsky, A.A." Karsavina, Tamara Platonovna" - In the book: "Russian foreign lands: a golden book of emigration". M, 1997.

9. “Permanent Guild” - those registered with the Guild on a permanent basis, in contrast to those registered only provisionally, belonged to the craftsman class. After a period as a student and then as an apprentice the member of the guild could present his work to the board of craftspeople for assessment and, if approved, obtain a certificate as a master.

10. He was already looking after a daughter, Iraida (1892-1941), from his first marriage to Elena Mikhailovna Shchukina (1874-1893). The second daughter of Nikolai Nikolaievich, by Natalia Trofimovna, was named Evgenia and died at the age of 9 years in 1905.

11. According to Nina Nikolayevna Zablotskaya’s recollections, in these years Anna Iosifovna was partially paralyzed, but with her one still good hand she was occupied with embroidering adornments for church equipment. Platon Karsavin passed away in 1922.

12. This was the pension for a dancer of the 1st rank. In comparison, the pension for an artist in the corps de ballet (like Vladimir Karsavin) was 300 roubles, and for N.N.Balashev, a dancer of the 3rd rank - 500 roubles a year.

13. RGIA, fund for 1343 (Department of Heraldry), inventory 40, matter 2207

14. “Concerning the day pupil Tamara Karsavina” (fund for 498, inventory 1, matter 4561) and “concerning the service of the artist of the ballet company Tamara Karsavina (fund for 497, inventory 5, matter 1373).

15. In her memoirs Karsavina says that she obtained the title of prima ballerina in 1910.

16. Besides his son Lev, who became a ballet artist, Nikolai Nikolayevich wanted his daughter Nina to enter the school, but she was not accepted because she was too short.

17. Lev Nikolayevich Balashev (1904-1960) studied at the ballet department of the Theatre school from 1914 until 1922; he danced at the Mariinsky theatre, then in the Music Hall, and from 1930 he earned his living as layout artist,  - tradition has it that he was a friend of the artist  V. Ushakov. And so for a period of 70 years three generations of the Karsavin-Balashev clan served on the stage of the Mariinsky Theatre.

18. Nina Nikolayevna Zablotskaya (1905-1994); Lubov' Nikolayevna Safronova (1908-1977); Irina Lvovna Karsavina (1906-1987); Marianna Lvovna  Suvchinskaya (1911-1994).