This is my Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather, Count Vladimir from the village of Zheno, Serbia. Not much is known of him now. What is for sure is that he drank heavily when he was home and volunteered for many a war.
He disappeared somewhere, sometime during the Crimean War. Some say he ran off with a Tatar woman, some say he just didn't want to return home to his wife, Countess Dragana, of whom he was terrified like a chicken of a fox.
Countess Dragana never seemed to notice that her husband did not return from the Crimean War. She was busy with the village and her many peasants. They hated and feared her, for she beat them if she found them cheating, lying, cursing or drinking -- and there was little else to do in the little village of Zheno.
Her great joy in life was her son Vladimir Vladimirovich II. She doted on the child, provided him with the best private tutors, and, when she thought him ready, sent her beloved boy to Charles University in Prague to study law.
After spending his youth in Zheno, Vladimir Vladimirovich II, felt liberated once he was out of the watchful eye of his mother in distant Prague.
He never did enroll in university, instead he joined the Prague Circus, where he wrestled under the name the "Mad Monk."
He returned to his home village of Zeno but once - to tell his mother he had found success, fame, fortune and happiness.
Countess Dragana choked on a goose bone the moment her son uttered the words "champion circus wrestler." Her funeral was the grandest the village of Zheno had ever seen. People came from all about to pay their respects and make sure she was dead. After she was put in the ground, the villagers drank themselves silly, and the first curse in 50 years was heard in the village of Zheno:"May a cow pee in your mother's boot!" yelled the blacksmith Yegor. The people laughed so long and so hard that the village caught on fire and burned down to the ground. And so began the villagers' quest for Vladimir Vladimirovich, their "Batka," who they believed would forgive them and find them a new home if they promised never to curse again. But their Batka was not easy to be found, for the Prague Circus had closed and the "Mad Monk" had changed his name and disappeared.
Countess Dragana choked on a goose bone the moment her son uttered the words "champion circus wrestler."
Her funeral was the grandest the village of Zheno had ever seen. People came from all about to pay their respects and make sure she was dead.
After she was put in the ground, the villagers drank themselves silly, and the first curse in 50 years was heard in the village of Zheno:"May a cow pee in your mother's boot!" yelled the blacksmith Yegor. The people laughed so long and so hard that the village caught on fire and burned down to the ground.
And so began the villagers' quest for Vladimir Vladimirovich, their "Batka," who they believed would forgive them and find them a new home if they promised never to curse again. But their Batka was not easy to be found, for the Prague Circus had closed and the "Mad Monk" had changed his name and disappeared.
After the circus closed, Vladimir Vladimirovich wandered from city to town and town to city seeking a circus worthy of his skills -- from Prague to Buda, from Buda to Pest, from Pest to Minsk, and from Minsk to Pinsk. Finally, he heard that the greatest circus on earth was to be in St. Petersburg, Russia!
When he finally arrived in the Russian capital, circus officials suggested he change his name, for they feared "Mad Monk" Rasputin would put a curse on them and their animals would all turn to dog meat.
He tried wrestling under various names: "Vlad the Czech Wreck," "Vlad the Impaler," "Vwad the Polish Sausage," and "Vlad Steak Tatar." Above, he's pictured as "Vlad the Cossack in Funny Turkish Boots," a name that did not last too long.
My Great-Great-Great Grandfather finished his wrestling career at the age of 70 as "Vlad the Mad Droshky Driver." It was the same year that the Zheno village people finally found their "Batka" and pleaded for him to forgive them their evils and find them a new home. To sweeten the deal, they offered him the lovely virgin maiden, Buba Balalayka, as a bride - a girl whose beauty and grace was legend throughout Eastern Europe. And so the young couple married, and the lot of them followed Batka and Buba to Chervpovets, their new village and home.
My Great-Great-Great Grandfather finished his wrestling career at the age of 70 as "Vlad the Mad Droshky Driver."
It was the same year that the Zheno village people finally found their "Batka" and pleaded for him to forgive them their evils and find them a new home. To sweeten the deal, they offered him the lovely virgin maiden, Buba Balalayka, as a bride - a girl whose beauty and grace was legend throughout Eastern Europe.
And so the young couple married, and the lot of them followed Batka and Buba to Chervpovets, their new village and home.
Vladimir Vladimirovich III rose quickly through the ranks of the Guard. He did not tolerate his soldiers cheating, lying, cursing or drinking, and he often beat them with the whip he wore on his neck. By the age 45 he was in charge of the Outer Palace Guard and ready to move on to the Tsar's Inner Sanctum Guard.
But just then the February Revolution came, and then the Great October Revolution of 1917. Family legend has him as the last Guard standing in front of the Winter Palace, yelling, "May a cow pee in your mother's boooo..." He died before he could finish -- his skull crushed by a Bolshevik snowball.
After the death of Vladimir Vladimirovich IV, Madame Grushenka, disguised as a Red Cross nurse, fled China for Berlin with her two bastard children. It was there that she met and married a valet to Kaiser Wilhelm and was forced to give up her children to a French theatrical troupe that was passing through town.
After the death of Vladimir Vladimirovich IV, Madame Grushenka, disguised as a Red Cross nurse, fled China for Berlin with her two bastard children.
It was there that she met and married a valet to Kaiser Wilhelm and was forced to give up her children to a French theatrical troupe that was passing through town.
My Great Uncle Pierre never forgave his mother. He danced in small local ballet productions in and around Paris, acted in burlesque shows, but he never really found fame or fortune or himself. Eventually he left France for Casablanca with his long-time American companion Rick to work in Rick's new bar as a greeter and bus-boy.
When the Germans captured Casablanca, he had a ticket and an exit visa on the last plane out, but Rick gave them to the husband of an ex-girlfriend, and, as fate would have it, the very next day while crossing a busy Casablanca intersection, Great Uncle Pierre was accidentally run over by a drunk Panzer unit that was singing the then-popular song "Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles."
My Grandmother, Natalia Vladimirovna, danced with Ballet Russe and was briefly married to the aging French writer, Andre Gide. When the war broke out, she left her sickly husband and joined the French Underground where she fought with the Resistance as a crack sniper and interrogator. It was during this time that she was introduced to the existential writings of Albert Camus, and even had a affair with the struggling, unknown author. Toward the end of the war, she became disenchanted with the bourgeois world of Paris, joined the French Communist Party, changed her name to Karla Marksovna, and after a failed assassination attempt on Henri Philippe Petain of the Vichy government, fled to the Soviet Union with her young son Karl Albertovich. Her daughter, Sonya Andrevna, remained behind in Paris where she already was dancing with the French National Ballet.
My Grandmother, Natalia Vladimirovna, danced with Ballet Russe and was briefly married to the aging French writer, Andre Gide.
When the war broke out, she left her sickly husband and joined the French Underground where she fought with the Resistance as a crack sniper and interrogator.
It was during this time that she was introduced to the existential writings of Albert Camus, and even had a affair with the struggling, unknown author.
Toward the end of the war, she became disenchanted with the bourgeois world of Paris, joined the French Communist Party, changed her name to Karla Marksovna, and after a failed assassination attempt on Henri Philippe Petain of the Vichy government, fled to the Soviet Union with her young son Karl Albertovich. Her daughter, Sonya Andrevna, remained behind in Paris where she already was dancing with the French National Ballet.
Arriving in war torn Moscow, Grandmother immediately volunteered as a paratrooper for the Red Army. On her first mission - an overflight of some 50 miles by the pilot, a lover she had just jilted - she was spotted by the Nazis after her ex-lover/pilot circled back and dropped bombs on her landing spot. Soon she was captured by the Germans when her machine gun jammed and she broke a nail in the eye socket of one of the members of the Nazi SS division trying to wrestle her to the ground.
As a POW she came to rue Fascists, Communists, Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and, most of all, Red Army pilots, and joined General Vlasov's Russian Liberation Army. She fought in the liberation of Prague, but then was captured by the Americans. Soon thereafter, a U.S. army chaplain recruited her and her companion Tamara (standing in the photo above) to work for the CIA and shipped the two of them clandestinely to the United States.
She and Tamara are now retired and living in Del Boca Vista, Florida, where they run the very successful Babushkas' Firing Range and Jump School.
As noted, Aunt Sonya Andreyevna followed in her mother's footsteps as a dancer. She traveled the world with various ballet companies, was married several times, and had many lovers.
She had two sons who also became dancers: Rudolf, whose father was the Tatar emigre, Prince Nureyev; and Mikhail, who was born the year she spent in Leningrad with the Kirov Ballet, the product of a one-night stand with a Russian taxi driver named Barishnikov. Aunt Sonya danced until her eighth month of pregnancy, then after the boy was born, she left him with his father and returned to France.
Aunt Sonya eventually joined her mother in Del Boca Vista, where she runs the very successful Barishnikov's Mother's Dance School. Her son visits her each year to help with enrollments.
The fate of my father, Karl Albertovich Marksov, was not as happy as that of his half-sister's. While Grandmother fought in the Red Army, he was well-cared for in School No. 765 for Children of Hero Paratrooper Mothers.
But after his mother defected to America, he was promptly shipped off to a labor camp for children of "enemies of the people" near Magnitogorsk. At sixteen he was drafted for work in the copper mines where he remained until he lost his mind in 1976 and was admitted to Polyclinic No. 393 for Insane Workers and Progeny of Enemies of the People.
He so hated his mother, his half-sister, and his destiny in life!
Whenever I visited him at the Polyclinic, he mumbled the same words until his passing some 25 years later: "May a cow pee in your grandmother's and your aunt's boots! May a cow pee..."
Like, already enough, Papa!!
I live in Magnitogorsk, a very lovely town in Russia. I enjoy dressing pretty, the dancing, cooking, washing dishes, beating waiters, sewing, shooting, cleaning, parachuting, wrestling, mining, and shopping. In mine free time I love to be reading the French existential fashion magazines.
I understand some of the English language and French pictures. But no, no, no! Not to curse in the either tongue!!
I be looking for - how you say? very rich? - Amerikan citizen man in failing health and with no descendents, who needs good nurse and likes the children -- mine be of age 3, 7, and 19.
Marriage to be possibly possible if you be very, very rich!
My first three husbands now all be run far far away, and so I be - VIRTUALLY YOURS!!
