By Nathalie Apouchtine
Every family has fascinating stories from the past. Unfortunately many of us do not become interested in them until it is too late and the relatives who could tell us those stories have passed away.
In exploring my family’s past for No Way Back I have been both unfortunate – and fortunate. I never knew my grandparents: three died before I was born, the fourth lived on another continent. But I have been lucky in that several relatives in my grandparents’ generation left behind accounts of their lives and times: diaries, memoirs, letters, photos… Not a replacement for being able to speak directly to my grandparents, but a treasure trove nonetheless.
I was able to interview members of my parents’ generation, in Canada, France and Russia. They described their own experiences and witnessing of historic events and they also told me more about their parents’ lives and experiences.
While wanting to know more about my predecessors, I have always wondered how people experience turbulent times – how they cope and survive. The twentieth century was not short of dramatic world developments and my relatives found themselves in the middle of some of these: world wars, revolutions, civil war, multiple migrations; in Russia, France – and eventually Canada and Australia.
I travelled to many of the locations where these events occurred to try to get a sense of places which held so much significance for my family.
My goal was to tell about what they lived through and saw through their words, to bring to life these major events. In my own reading of histories, I have always felt a greater understanding and connection to the events being described when there is personal involvement and reflection on what happened: how it played out, how it affected ordinary people, how they coped and moved on – and whether the impacts echoed down the generations.
Of course memory is fallible and often unreliable. Everyone remembers events in different ways. Besides, some record their memories with ulterior motives: to address their descendants specifically, to commemorate a place or time, or sometimes to try to justify their roles in the events. But their experiences and the impacts of them have a truth of their own.
If I occasionally questioned the “facts” in my relatives’ memoirs, I did not question the validity of their memories. At the same time, I wanted to place them firmly within the historical record. This meant searching archives and extensive research in historical texts. But then historians also often disagree – especially on the interpretation of events: why they happened, what they meant, their ongoing significance.
This can be particularly problematic where part of the past one is exploring is of a country where there has been systematic altering of history for propaganda purposes. Still, working in the post-Soviet era, I was able to access archives that had been closed for decades and to consult the work of Russian historians finally able to research more freely. They added to a broad range of sources in the West, on the Russian Revolution, Civil War and the birth of the Soviet Union.
Researching French history of the twentieth century had a different set of complications: the decades of re-examination and debate over events in the Second World War. French historians, and society more generally, have grappled with questions of collaboration, guilt, revenge and punishment – or non-punishment. The discovery of new information about the past, and analysis through the prism of the present, mean many issues in history are hard to put to rest.
I also conducted extensive research on the movements of people, whether as refugees or migrants. While the Russian exodus after the Revolution made up the first major refugee wave of the twentieth century, such mass migration is now something all too familiar, amid the political and social upheaval around the globe. The experiences of migrant countries like Canada and Australia over the twentieth century are part of my family’s story too.
While trying to reconcile differing accounts of the past is challenging, the variety of tellings means history is not frozen – the understanding of any period is dynamic. Keeping in mind the fluidity of history and the pitfalls of eyewitness accounts, I embarked on my task: to blend all these sources into a coherent account of major events in Russia and France in the first half of the twentieth century that would be informative and as accurate as possible. And engaging and interesting for the reader.
Researching and writing No Way Back has been a fascinating journey. I have learned more than I can quantify – both about my family and the crucial events through which they lived. I hope readers of the book find the results of my work equally fascinating.
