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Updated: September 28, 2025
By this time also, Nelka and I were living in another house, in a closed apartment in a house where some very close friends of ours lived. Nelka was registered there under a false passport in the name of Emilia Sarapp. I was not known, unless as a boy friend. The food situation had become absolutely desperate. There just was none.
But the war was on she could not even indulge in her sorrow and she had to return to the front. Fighting was heavy that summer and her cavalry division was engaged and on the move. The unit was always up front, close to the fighting lines and the work was hard. That summer I entered Officers Training School and did not see Nelka for a very long time.
The guns kept on firing all night. This was the kind of life which went on. In July 1916 my uncle, the head of the unit, was killed by shell fire, at a moment of some very heavy fighting. The work they were carrying on was right near the firing lines. At one time, during 1916 Nelka came for a few days to our country estate and one day I went with her to Petrograd.
Nelka spent a whole winter in one of these villages, living in a one-room hut with a peasant family and sleeping on a wooden bench. What a contrast after the social life of Washington! Here is a descriptive letter written from Kalakshinovka, District of Samara, in 1912: "I am in a desert of snow, in quiet and peace, and feeding three villages.
She was always ready to see the funny qualities of people or the funny side of events and could laugh with a great deal of abandon. Despite her strong Russian nationalism, Nelka was fundamentally cosmopolitan.
One soldier was riding back with her. At night time they arrived at a small village and for some reason or other, the soldier disappeared. After waiting for a while, there was nothing to do but to continue. And so in the night, Nelka rode alone through the woods and over the mountains over the border from Rumania into Russia. A woman, riding alone, in the night in the midst of the Revolution!
I wish I could be so in America. You would not believe how waked up I can get. I believe it is in the air. There is something both stimulating and relaxing in the moral atmosphere that I feel only here." After her stay in Paris and Bulgaria, Nelka returned to America and stayed either with her aunt Miss Blow or with her aunt Mrs.
At the end of the same year Nelka went for four months to Sofia, Bulgaria where she stayed with the Russian Minister Mr. Bakhmeteff, my uncle and Madame Bakhmeteff who was an American and Nelka's godmother. She enjoyed very much that stay in Bulgaria and had a very interesting and pleasant time and great success.
But then later, having seen all the horrors of war, its utter futility, absurdity and uselessness and most of all its immorality and its contradictions to the principles of the teachings of Christ, she became an uncompromising and militant pacifist. Very characteristic of Nelka was her attitude towards all action and activities motivated for a principle. She was never worried or seeking results.
The Government once again set up feeding stations and hospital units to take care of the sick and aged and all emergencies arising from the concentration of many thousands of pilgrims. Once again Nelka was there and it was of great interest to her. During all of these absences Nelka kept her little dog Tibi either with us in the country or with friends in Kasan, the Krapotkins.
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