June 14, 2017

The First Pancake is Always Lumpy


The First Pancake is Always Lumpy
Filming and interviewing gets underway. {Photo: Mikhail Mordasov}

The Children of 1917 Expedition is underway.

We began in the most logical place, in St. Petersburg, the birthplace of the Russian Revolution. And we began at a very symbolic time: June 12, Russia’s independence day.

Those who remembered the history of 27 years ago, were marking the day in 1990 when Russia declared its independence from all the other Soviet republics. Yet a not insignificant number of people all across the country also came out to participate in meetings against corruption. But the majority of Russians took this Monday holiday in its most literal sense and simply rested.

For our team, it was a double holiday, perhaps even a triple.

First, the night before our team grew by one. At the last minute, as our ship was sailing from the shore, Zhenya Mashchenko jumped on board as our documentary cameraman. He had just returned from a six-month trip to Asia, where he had been making a film about a hired assassin who had gone into retirement. He returned to Russia safe and sound, and with a burning desire to film something interesting in Russia. And we made him an offer he could not refuse: a tour around his homeland in search of the secrets of long life. And exclusive interviews with centenarians.

Second, we interviewed and filmed the first “child of 1917.” And, despite the fact that this was the “first pancake” of our journey, it was lump-free (as the Russian proverb has it: первый блин всегда комом, “the first pancake is always lumpy,” meaning the first try on something is always a flop.)

Alexandra Nikolayevna Antonova {Photo: Mikhail Mordasov}

Alexandra Nikolayevna Antonova is the most beautiful woman in the world of long-livers. Slender and fit, she is strong and graceful, like a ballerina in retirement. Her movements are deliberate and noble, like a dowager queen. Nature gifted her with fine, porcelain skin that even wrinkles have not spoiled. She has an attentive, lightly sardonic gaze, and a soft, intelligent way of speaking.

There is a shared myth we have about the true Petersburg babushka: a noblewoman, a graduate of the Institute for Noble Maidens, a blockade survivor, and a frequenter of the Mariinsky Theater and Hermitage Museum.

The truth is that Alexandra Nikolayevna was born into the family of a railway trackman in a distant village, received a degree from an accelerated accounting course and arrive in Piter (that is, Leningrad) as an adult, a few years after the war.

Her story is the century’s-long tale of a single mother struggling for a modest place in the sun. It is a tale of arriving in Leningrad with a babe in her arms and a fictitious letter of invitation to Leningrad (without which provincials were simply not allowed into the city) in her pocket, of how a simple Russian woman conquered the cradle of the revolution.

“The most difficult thing in life,” she said, “is the apartment problem.” All other problems that she encountered in her hundred years, she said, were nothing by comparison. And somehow she won for her and her family a very compact, five-room apartment in the city. And there, over several decades, she hosted crowds of random visitors and longtime friends, visiting from all across the country.

Alexandra's library {Photo: Mikhail Mordasov}

Many of those former visitors are no longer of this world. But Alexandra Nikolaevna, living to see her grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren, has given her large “mansion” to her relatives and moved into a small top-floor apartment. For two years, she has not left the walls of her new home. She spends her days chatting with her daughter, reading books, getting her exercise walking between the kitchen, the bedroom, and back again. Occasionally she will go out on the balcony and, from her ninth-floor perch, survey the area with her theater binoculars.

{Photo: Mikhail Mordasov}
Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The fables of Ivan Krylov are rich fonts of Russian cultural wisdom and experience – reading and understanding them is vital to grasping the Russian worldview. This new edition of 62 of Krylov’s tales presents them side-by-side in English and Russian. The wonderfully lyrical translations by Lydia Razran Stone are accompanied by original, whimsical color illustrations by Katya Korobkina.
White Magic

White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.
The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas

The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas

This exciting new trilogy by a Russian author – who has been compared to Orhan Pamuk and Umberto Eco – vividly recreates a lost world, yet its passions and characters are entirely relevant to the present day. Full of mystery, memorable characters, and non-stop adventure, The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas is a must read for lovers of historical fiction and international thrillers.  
The Little Golden Calf

The Little Golden Calf

Our edition of The Little Golden Calf, one of the greatest Russian satires ever, is the first new translation of this classic novel in nearly fifty years. It is also the first unabridged, uncensored English translation ever, and is 100% true to the original 1931 serial publication in the Russian journal 30 Dnei. Anne O. Fisher’s translation is copiously annotated, and includes an introduction by Alexandra Ilf, the daughter of one of the book’s two co-authors.
Bears in the Caviar

Bears in the Caviar

Bears in the Caviar is a hilarious and insightful memoir by a diplomat who was “present at the creation” of US-Soviet relations. Charles Thayer headed off to Russia in 1933, calculating that if he could just learn Russian and be on the spot when the US and USSR established relations, he could make himself indispensable and start a career in the foreign service. Remarkably, he pulled it of.
Maria's War: A Soldier's Autobiography

Maria's War: A Soldier's Autobiography

This astonishingly gripping autobiography by the founder of the Russian Women’s Death Battallion in World War I is an eye-opening documentary of life before, during and after the Bolshevik Revolution.
The Latchkey Murders

The Latchkey Murders

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin is back on the case in this prequel to the popular mystery Murder at the Dacha, in which a serial killer is on the loose in Khrushchev’s Moscow...
Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Bilingual series of short, lesser known, but highly significant works that show the traditional view of Dostoyevsky as a dour, intense, philosophical writer to be unnecessarily one-sided. 
Chekhov Bilingual

Chekhov Bilingual

Some of Chekhov's most beloved stories, with English and accented Russian on facing pages throughout. 
Survival Russian

Survival Russian

Survival Russian is an intensely practical guide to conversational, colloquial and culture-rich Russian. It uses humor, current events and thematically-driven essays to deepen readers’ understanding of Russian language and culture. This enlarged Second Edition of Survival Russian includes over 90 essays and illuminates over 2000 invaluable Russian phrases and words.
The Samovar Murders

The Samovar Murders

The murder of a poet is always more than a murder. When a famous writer is brutally stabbed on the campus of Moscow’s Lumumba University, the son of a recently deposed African president confesses, and the case assumes political implications that no one wants any part of.

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955