This is my mother's family.
To the left sitting: my maternal grandmother, my mother's elder sister Tatiana is sitting on the right.
Standing: mother's elder sister Anna, mother's brother, Dmitriy Titov (in the uniform of Alexeyevskiy military school), my mother Capitolina Titova.
The photograph was made in the town of Bronitsa, Moscow province in 1915.
My mother was born in Moscow suburb, in Bronnitsy [50 km from the center of Moscow]. I have never seen Philip Titov, my maternal grandfather.
I know that he was the assistant of the merchant. The merchant was involved in the trade of tea and sent grandfather to China, Japan rather often.
It was a very wealthy family. There were 12 children in the family, but I did not know many of them. I only remember three of mother's sisters, who lived in Moscow- Anna, Tatiana and Maria. I heard about the rest from my mother.
My mother Capitolina was born in 1899. She was the youngest in the family. Grandfather made sure that all his children were educated in lyceum, mother also finished the full lyceum course. There is a dacha place in the vicinity of Moscow, called Kratovo [40 km from the center of Moscow].
My maternal grandfather built 12 houses over there for each of the children. Of course of that property was sequestrated by soviet regime. My grandpa was reported missing. He must have been shot. Grandmother died during civil war.
Mother's elder brother Dmitriy Titov went to study at the officer's school after having graduated from lyceum. With the outbreak of revolution, Dmitriy joined Bolsheviks.
During civil war he fought in guerilla squad. He was captured. The captives were taken away by train, which stopped at every station. Some captives were shot at every station as the edification for the local population.
Dmitriy was lucky because the train, he was taking, was attacked by guerilla squad, which rescued the captives from Kolchak. Of course, Dmitriy joined the Bolshevik party. When civil war was over he became the prosecutor of the Siberia district. He settled in Omsk [over 2000 km from Moscow].
There were times of hunger and typhus fever epidemic in Moscow in that period. Dmitriy called mother from Moscow and found a job for her as the culture worker in the prison. Mother said that there several members of the Provisional Government in that prison. Being a prosecutor Dmitriy was supposed to sign the fusillade lists.
Soviet regime exterminated its enemies. It was deemed it would be better to shoot 10 innocent than to miss one guilty. Such a proportion must have been in the aforementioned lists.
There were a lot of Dmitriy's friends from officers' school, who did not accept revolution. Of course, it was hard for him and he became demented. During one of his fits he committed suicide.
Mother's second brother Alexander, mining engineer, lived in Petrograd and died from tuberculosis in early 1920s. Mother's sister Serafima committed suicide. Another mother's brother Konstantin Titov also committed suicide.
During great patriotic war he was a private in the army and the officer slapped him because he had a bad stature. Konstantin pierced that officer with the bayonet in front of the aligned soldiers. Then he dashed under the train.
There was an inherited predisposition to the mental suicidal disease in the family. Fortunately, mother was not affected by that. This is all I know about mother's family.
My parents met, when father was practicing medicine and was in the last year of the institute, internship. He was assigned to hold internship in tuberculosis sanatorium in Moscow suburb. Mother was afflicted with tuberculosis as a result emaciation from hunger during revolution and civil war.
The doctors sent her to the sanatorium for a treatment course. My parents met there and fell in love with each other. My mother's feeling was even stronger than love - it was adoration, worshiping. I cannot even put in words.
The picture on my table tells a lot about them. Father was looking ahead of him, and mother looked as if she only needed father in her life. It has always been like that between them.
