Grisha's Loop - My Slavic Saga: From the Bolshevik Revolution to America a Story of Courage and Survival

By Marsha S Denison and Gregoire I Samoylenko

Grisha' s Loop -My Slavic Saga: From the Bolshevik Revolution to America -A story of Courage and Survival is based on Gregoire Ivanovich Samoylenko's unfinished autobiography, My Slavic Saga, which he wrote in the early 1930's with the help of his friend, Arthur

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadersMagnet LLC
• Release date: Jan 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9798890913944

Marsha S Denison

Marsha Denison was born in Boston and grew up in Newton, Massachusetts. She received a B.A. degree from the University of Massachusetts, and her M.A. degree in Gerontology from St Joseph's College in Connecticut. She has published two books, "Grisha's Loop" in 2016, and "My Name is Buttons-and this is My Story" in 2023. Grisha's Loop is a memoir of her immigrant father's life and escape from Russia in 1922. The author has two daughters and now lives in Maine.

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Grisha’s Loop - My Slavic Saga: From the Bolshevik Revolution to America a Story of Courage and Survival

Copyright © 2023 by Marsha Samoylenko Denison and Gregoire Ivanovich Samoylenko

Published in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024904527

ISBN Paperback: 979-8-89091-393-7

ISBN eBook: 979-8-89091-394-4

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Gregoire Ivanovich Samoylenko

(September 28, 1897 - May 28, 1976)

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Map Key

Part 1 A Tapestry of Memories

Preface

1.The Parcae’s Handiwork

2.Grisha’s Universe

3.An Unexpected Loop

Foreword

Part 2 My Slavic Saga

1.I Want to Go Home, Mother

2.He Has Decided, It Must Be

3.I Can Read Well

4.Kill Them! Kill Them!

5.The City of Armavir

6.Kolyada! Kolyada!

7.The Vodyany!

8.Good Men Left to Fight

9.Not a Mere Squall

10.Won’t You Let Me See Your Face?

11.War! War! It is War!

12.Your First Time in Petrograd?

13.Sea Wolves – Aviators

14.Long Live the Revolution!

15.How’s the Revolution?

16.Your First Duty for the Revolution

17.From Revolution to Civil War

Part 3 Life in America

Echoes of the Past

Conclusion: A Deeper Way

Family of Origin In America

Afterword

Part 4 Appendix

Glossary of Russian Words

Selected Translations by John Weeks

Miscellaneous Documents and Photographs

The New Colossus—Emma LazarusWritten in 1883

Readers’ Guide

NOTE:

This author has donated all original documents, pictures and memorabilia pertaining to her Ukrainian father’s life, to be archived a the H.C. Fung Library, Department of Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. The collection is now fully available to Harvard’s students, researchers and the public. It is available online to any interested readers.

A collection of notes, documents, manuscripts. memorabilia, photographs, and an unfinished memoir pertaining to the life of Gregory Samoylenko, a Russian/Ukrainian emigre to the United States who lived and travelled throughout Russia during the revolution of 1917 and fought in the White Army in the Russian Civil War.

Dedication

To:

My Father, Gregoire Ivanovich Samoylenko — for his example of courage in the face of hardship and challenges.

My husband, J. Philip Denison, for his love and support.

My daughters, Kristin Denison and Karen Ix, and my son-in-law, David Ix, who bring immeasurable joy to my life;

and to my beloved grandchildren, Matthew, Christopher, and Sarah, for whom my love and pride grow with each passing day.

ALL MY LOVE!

Acknowledgements

I am so grateful to my editors and many others whose insights and good judgment helped to shape this book and bring it to it’s conclusion. I deeply appreciate their faith and support. Although it is impossible to name everyone who has helped me along the way, there are several people who merit specific mention.

Theresa Rogers, a retired Senior Research Scientist at Columbia University, encouraged me to translate the documents in my father’s long-forgotten box containing his memories. In encouraging me to write my father’s autobiography, she pointed me in the direction of several sources to assist in the whole effort. Theresa’s early guidance and ongoing interest spurred my eagerness to proceed with the project.

Suzanne and Peter Read, my lifelong friends, who have displayed unwavering support and have inspired me to pursue my objective of completing this book. I will forever be grateful for their interest and their presence in my life.

Judith Herrick Beard, my copy-editor par excellence, not to mention one of my dearest and cherished lifetime friends.

Janet and Clayton Rose, friends since my college days, have supported me through this effort with steadfast kindness and encouragement. They have my deepest gratitude.

Patricia Fienemann has been with me throughout the process of writing, researching, traveling, and generally, guiding me at every step of this journey. For her support, I am endlessly grateful.

John M. Weeks, Ph.D., Slavic Languages and Literature, University of California, Berkeley, engaged in painstaking efforts to piece together all of my father’s information. His brilliant translations of many well-worn documents assisted in bringing this book to life. I sincerely believe that without his support and expertise, the text never would have taken shape. My eternal thanks for his contributions.

David Levinson, Ph.D., Suny of Buffalo, Cultural Anthro-pologist and Co-founder of the Berkshire Publishing Group, kindly shared his knowledge and assisted me in organizing and formatting materials.

Professor John M. Thompson, M.A., Ph.D., Russian History, Amherst College, imparted his wisdom and expertise on Russian history and reviewed my materials. His input provided enhanced understanding and enlightenment. Many thanks.

Cristina Popescu graciously assisted in translating the article in the Romanian newspaper, The Farul (The Beacon), written by Captain Samuelenco Gregoire (Gregory Samoylenko) about his ship, Naufragiul Tankului La Perette (The Wreck of the Tanker La Perette).

Gabriella M. Gafni, J.D., experienced writing collaborator and editor, provided continuity and flow to the materials presented. I have cherished her input and patience with all the many facets of bringing this book to completion. It was a pleasure to work with her. Blessings!

Hugh McMunn, fine artist, who fashioned the original cover and two interior drawings for this book: a map of Gregory’s travels and The Great Blessing of the Water. These masterful renderings have added greatly to the aesthetics of this presentation. I am profoundly grateful.

And many thanks to Molly, my Faithful Furry Muse!

Grisha’s Travels

Map

The red dots and numbers indicate many of Gregory’s travels and coincide with those on the following map key.

Map Key

Gregory’s Travels — 1897-1922

In the Kuban Region:

1.Temirgoyevskaya: the Cossack stanitsa, or settlement where Gregory was born and raised. Pronounced approximately thus: Teh-meer-GOY-ef-skuh-yuh.

2.Armavir: where Gregory attended gymnasium (high school).

3.Maykop: nearby town in his youth.

4.Ekaterinodar: a major city in the Kuban region (the name refers to Catherine the Great and means Catherine’s gift); the Soviets renamed this town (gift of the Reds), which remains the city’s name to this day.

5.Stavropol: originally the administrative center of the Stavropol territory in Southwestern Russia near Krasnodar.

In the Northern and Middle Part of Russia

6.Petrograd (Leningrad and now St. Petersburg): Gregory attended the University of Petrograd to study Mechanical Engineering. This study was interrupted by the Russian Revolution which began in 1917. Gregory goes to Moscow.

7.Moscow: The early capital of Russia. It was briefly moved to St. Petersburg by Peter the Great, but following the Russian Revolution of 1917, Vladimir Lenin moved the capital back to Moscow in 1918, fearing possible foreign invasion. Gregory visited there several times for various reasons.

8.Stalingrad: By way of general information, this city is where the 1942-1943 Battle of Stalingrad was fought between the Soviets and the German Nazis. It is thought to have been the turning point in World War II.

Southern Part of Russia:

9.Baku: The capital and largest city of Azerbaijan and the largest city by the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus region. Gregory went there to become trained as a Naval Aviator. For some reason, he was arrested at that point, and sent back to Moscow to be tried by the Russian Tribunal.

10.Novorossiisk (New Russia town): major port and Russian naval base, located on the eastern shore of the Black Sea region on the coast of the Sea of Azov (between the Kuban region and the Crimea):

11.Mariupol: (in Soviet times called Zhdanov after Stalin’s minister of culture).

12.Genichesk: in the present-day Ukrainian form, it would be called Heniches’k.

On the Crimean Peninsula:

13.Sevastopol: a major naval port for the Russian Navy, famously besieged for a year by the English, French, Turkish and Sardinian forces during the Crimean War of 1854-55. Gregory was treated for typhus in the hospital and in Shumen, Bulgaria.

14.Armyansk: a city located on the Isthmus of Perekop, at the very northernmost point of the Crimea.

15.Perekop: the aforementioned isthmus, site of a pivotal battle during the Russian Civil War.

West of the Crimean Peninsula:

16.Kherson: port city of the Dnieper River (Dnipro in Ukrainian) in southern Ukraine.

17.Mykolaiv: (Ukrainian name), Nikolaev (Russian name): a major ship-building city in the estuary of the Southern Bug River in southern Ukraine. In his narrative’s outline, Gregory slightly erred in calling it Nikolaevsk.

18.Ockakiv: (Ukrainian), Ochakov (Russian): a major city on the Dnieper River estuary, seized from the Turks during a famous battle in the 1780’s.

19.Odesa: (Ukrainian). Odessa (Russian): a major seaport on the Black Sea coast of the Ukraine.

20.Constanta: an area and ports that Gregory sailed around during his stint as Captain of the tanker La Perette. His boat was wrecked in high winds and sea, and he finally was towed to port after being adrift and without recourse.

21.Varna: a principal port of export, as well as a city of higher learning and international festivals.

22.Constantinople (Istanbul): site of Armenian Genocide and deportation of Armenian intellectuals, April 24, 1915. Ottoman sultan, Mehmed VI was exiled in November, while at the same time Gregory escaped through Constantinople to America. The following year, the Ottoman occupation of Constantinople ended with the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne and recognition of the Republic of Turkey. Constantinople, located on the Bosphorus Strait, and the Sea of Marmara, was Gregory’s point of departure through the Dardanelles, to the Aegean Sea. He then traveled across the Mediterranean Sea through the Strait of Gibraltar to the Atlantic Ocean, and then on to New York, U.S.A.

*Sochi: site of the 2014 Winter Olympics.

Part 1

A

Tapestry of Memories

Preface

Think of each of us as a snowflake, each a unique individual with our own distinct crystallized structure. Think of God as the water that makes up the snowflake. The water is not only responsible for the existence of the snowflake, it also links each individual snowflake with every other snowflake: each is unique yet it shares its existence in an internal connection with others.

~ Jeffrey Small

Virtually, everyone has a story worth telling – life experiences, lessons, and anecdotes that come alive for future generations to recount and hear. Somehow, I always knew that I had a book within me. The mere idea of writing began as a profound expression of something that I couldn’t quite explain. So, I bided my time, knowing that someday the subject matter would be revealed to me. I just didn’t know when or how, what to expect, or the kinds of challenges that awaited me.

When my parents passed away, I was faced with the task of clearing out their home of forty-five years. Among their possessions lay a dust-covered box, languishing in obscurity. It contained a treasure trove of documents that my father, Gregory John Samoylenko, brought with him from Russia to the United States. Leafing through the pages, I discovered that they were written in Russian, English, French, and Bulgarian, and were accompanied by photographs of family members and friends. The true gem of the collection was my father’s unfinished autobiography, entitled My Slavic Saga, begun in 1932, with the assistance of his American friend, Arthur Cornwell Knapp. As I moved through my life’s various phases and transitions, the box accompanied me, silently resonating with purpose.

Upon our retirement to Ocean Park, Maine, I opened the box. For the sake of keeping it and its contents within the family, I decided to hand pictures and other memorabilia over to my older daughter, Kristin, who takes an interest in antiques and the stories behind them. Yet, I could not bring myself to part with the writings and untranslated documents (which I wanted to pursue at a later time).

Stirring within the recesses of my mind and heart was the need to bring Gregory’s story to life; but I remained too busy to respond to the calling — that is, until my then fourteen-year-old grandson, Matthew, requested information about his ancestry for a school paper. He chose my Russian born father as his subject, and turned to his grandfather for information about Gregoire Ivanovich Samoylenko, who had survived the Russian Revolution and escaped to America. My husband, Phil, rose to the occasion, recalling a conversation that he had with my father in 1959, while the two were driving from Boston to Ocean Park, where our family was on vacation. Phil and my father had a very comfortable relationship with one another — so much so, that on that trip, my father opened up to him and shared some of the stories about his life in Russia.

My father’s revelations came as quite a surprise, particularly since he was, in general, a private man, reticent about speaking of his past. Interestingly, Phil’s mind had been on other things, namely asking my father for my hand in marriage; but the best laid plans that often dominate our present moments frequently take a backseat to memories — echoes of times gone by, but never forgotten.

Over five decades later, just as Phil inspired my father’s trust, Matthew reached across generations and asked his grandfather to share that conversation. The following correspondence took place between them in 2012 via e-mail — a conduit of communication of which my father could never have imagined.

Phil’s message:

Dear Matthew,

Here is the story of Gregory John Samoylenko, and how he got to the U.S. after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, when the Czar was overthrown. He told me this story as I was driving him from Boston to Ocean Park, Maine.

After your great-grandfather arrived in the U.S., he never talked much about his life and escape from Russia, even to his wife and family. How much of the story of his escape and arrival into the U.S. is true, or partially true, I have no way of knowing, but here goes!

When the revolution took place, Gregory was in the Czar’s fledgling Naval Air Force, flying pontoon airplanes out of an air base on the Black Sea.¹ They were not very reliable, and several of his squadron had crashed. I do not know why Gregory felt he had to leave Russia, but he may not have been happy living under the Bolshevik regime.

Anyway, he returned to the village where he grew up (I presume, to check on his relatives). There, he was captured by a group of Cossacks who were still fighting the Bolsheviks. Since he was apparently in his naval uniform, they thought he was the enemy, and were about to shoot him, when an army patrol came along and the Cossacks had to leave. However, the only way to escape was on a barge tied up nearby on the river, but they could not get the motor started. Gregory, who was a mechanic and engineer, said that he could start the motor. So, they took him along, he started the motor, and they escaped.

Sometime after that, Gregory ran into an Orthodox priest, who was trying to get a group of students from his school out of the country. They must have been from wealthy families, and were wanted by the Bolsheviks. Somehow, they acquired a boat with a steam engine, and they proceeded down the river to the Black Sea. The problem was that during their trip they had stripped all the wood off the ship down to the water line to burn in the engine, so they were left adrift in the Black Sea. Several ships passed nearby, but it was some time before one stopped to pick them up and take them to Turkey. Possibly, there were mines floating by, so ships were reluctant to stop.

Gregory said that he worked in the oil fields in Turkey, until he made his way to Constantinople (now Istanbul). There, he got in touch with a group called the YMCA Russian Social Center. In 1922, they wrote him a letter of introduction to YMCA’s in New York City. After getting a job on a French freighter, he eventually arrived at the docks in New York City, where he told the captain that he was leaving. The captain informed him that he would not get paid until the ship returned to Le Havre, France. Gregory replied, I don’t care. I’m leaving anyway.

After disembarking, with his sea chest and mandolin in tow, with $4.00 in his pocket, Gregory made his way to the New York YMCA with a letter from a Mr. Alexander of the YMCA Russian Social Center in Constantinople(Istanbul). The New York YMCA gave him a room and introduced him to a Polish gentleman who spoke Russian. The man had a coal business, and he hired Gregory to deliver coal to homes and businesses and, at the same time, he had the opportunity of learning English.

Eventually, as Gregory’s English improved, he made contact with fellow Russians in Boston, who introduced him to the Russian Student Fund, which financed his degree in mechanical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic. In turn, he had to repay the Fund ten percent of his post-degree earnings. Later, Gregory got a job as the Chief Mechanical Engineer at Boston Edison Power Company, where he worked until he retired.

During that time, he met your great-grandmother, Grace Olson, the daughter of a Swedish immigrant and builder. They married and had two children, John and Marsha, your grandmother. Both Gregory and Grace have passed away.

One last note: When, during World War II, Gregory tried to join the Seabees [the United States Naval Construction Forces], the authorities discovered that he had not entered the country legally, through Ellis Island. They were going to deport him, but his employer at Boston Edison was able to persuade the government to let him stay, and he became a U.S. citizen.²

I will send you some documents in a separate e-mail.

Love,

Grampie

Matthew’s reply:

Thank you, Grampie. I cannot tell you how much this means to me, and it will help me so much in my project. This is truly an amazing story.

Love, Matthew

With an A grade on his paper and the enduring legacy of his great-grandfather’s history, Matthew felt enriched for having journeyed into the past – if only for a moment. As for me, the inquiry had just begun. Little did Matthew know, at the time, that he was the catalyst for my deeply personal odyssey into my father’s world, where I would access the heart and soul of a man whom I hardly knew. At last, the old, forgotten box took on a character and life of its own. Indeed, it spoke to me, coaxing me to delve into its contents to write and record my father’s story.

After several years, my book would become a reality. I thrust myself into the project with a mixture of enthusiasm, excitement, and anxiety. Sensing the task’s complexity and magnitude, I nonetheless told myself that revisiting the past was something I had to do.

While rummaging through my father’s documents and reading his writings — particularly My Slavic Saga, I became overwhelmed with emotion surprise, sadness, and curiosity. At times, I walked alone on the beach in Ocean Park to where my husband and I had retired — just to be with my own thoughts and to process my father’s experiences. When I returned, I immersed myself, yet again … and again … into the piles of papers, documents and memorabilia that awaited me, allowing waves of compassion and sorrow to wash over me for the courageous man named Gregoire Ivanovich Samoylenko who,