How the main love of Admiral Kolchak lived in the Soviet Union: Anna Timiryova

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Thanks to the film "Admiral" and the talent of Elizaveta Boyarskaya, the name of the common-law wife of Admiral Kolchak is known today even to schoolchildren. The moment of her voluntary surrender and the desire to share the fate of her beloved is a historical fact, but Anna Timireva's life did not end in 1920. She lived to a very advanced age and paid in full for her bright, but short-lived happiness. Few people know that in the 60s an elderly woman worked part-time at Mosfilm, and we can even see her in a cameo role with Bondarchuk.

Probably, in calm times, the love of two people bound by obligations with their families could not bloom so brightly, but fate gave Alexander Kolchak and Anna Timireva this very time - restless and stormy. The tragic and great events that changed the course of the history of our country allowed them to show themselves to the fullest: he took on the most difficult task of leading the remnants of the dying empire, and she became his guardian angel and showed miracles of loyalty. These exploits could not save either themselves or the former country, but gave the world a wonderful love story.

In films and books, it is customary to end adventures at the brightest, most touching moment. Anna voluntarily went to prison for her love in order to stay close to the last. While the Cheka was interrogating the white admiral, a loving woman was able to break through to him three times on a date, but the proceedings did not last long. Two weeks after his arrest, on the night of February 6-7, 1920, Admiral A. V. Kolchak was shot on the banks of the Ushakovka River near the Znamensky Women's Monastery. The woman who followed him remained in prison.

Until October 1920, prisoner Timiryova sat in a cell. There was no fault for her, but since I got into dungeons, sit still. Perhaps young and a little naive, she did not understand this when she made her choice, but as a reward for her loyalty, Anna received decades of prison and exile. At first, she was able to free herself under an amnesty, in October of the same year, but already in May 1921, Kolchak's former mistress was arrested again. She sat in Irkutsk, then in Moscow, was released a year later, but in 1925 - again on a bunk. The woman was expelled from Moscow, she lived for some time near Kaluga. There Anna Vasilievna remarried the railway engineer Vladimir Kniper, but then, in 1935, they still came up with a serious article for her, because then they were imprisoned for less.

For her counter-revolutionary activities, Anna received five years in the Trans-Baikal camps. A few days before her release, under the same article, she was added another eight years in the camps in Karaganda. Simultaneously with the extension of the prisoner's term, a message was received about the shooting of her only son and the death of her husband, who could not stand the "persecution" and died of a heart attack. The Kazakh camps were waiting for Anna Vasilievna.

In the terrible branch of the GULAG - Karlag, about 25 thousand prisoners provided "food base for the developing coal and metallurgical industry of Central Kazakhstan." Detachments of former kulaks, reinforced with small additions from former nobles, labored in gigantic fields. "Madame Kolchak", as Anna Vasilievna was called in those years, worked together with everyone, but a little later she was lucky, she managed to get a job as an artist in a club.

After her release from prison, Timiryova-Kniper lived 100 kilometers from Moscow, but in 1949 she was arrested again, already as a "repetition". With such a definition, a new charge was not required, and the woman was sent by stage to Yeniseisk. He was released six years later, but limited in civil rights. Only in 1960 was the Soviet government finally satisfied and left the former love of the white admiral alone. She was already 67 years old at that time.

The whole life of this loving and faithful woman was a series of "imprisonment", camps and interrogations. In short breaks, the former prisoner, of course, could not even dream of a normal permanent job, interrupted by whatever she had to: she worked as a librarian, archivist, preschool teacher, draftsman, retoucher, cartographer, embroiderer, toy painting instructor, painter, props and artist in the theater. Sometimes I had to sit without work, interrupt odd jobs.

In 1960, Anna Vasilievna finally managed to settle in Moscow. A tiny room in a communal apartment on Plyushchikha and a pension of 45 rubles - probably, after all the tests, she simply rejoiced at the calmness and the opportunity not to be afraid of the night calls at the door. According to the recollections of acquaintances, "Madame Kolchak" in those years was a cheerful old woman with lively eyes and excellent manners, which the years of imprisonment could not erase from her.

Through mutual acquaintances, director Sergei Bondarchuk found out about Anna Vasilievna and invited him to the shooting of the epic War and Peace as a consultant. Thanks to this, we can see Anna Timireva-Kniper in several shots, at the first ball of Natasha Rostova. The noble old woman who stands next to the director in the image of the young Pierre Bezukhov is she.

Five years before her death, in 1970, Anna Vasilievna wrote lines dedicated to her main love, Alexander Kolchak:

The Karaganda camps have become just one moment in the life of this amazing woman. However, even in the days of terrible trials, a person can find consolation. It was there that Anna Vasilievna met another former aristocrat, who became her lifelong friend. We can also see Countess Kapnist in films of the 60s and 70s in the roles of noble old women. These women could tell posterity how, having gone through the horrors of the camps and repressions, they could preserve their self-esteem and faith in people.