The Kalaushin story by date, with a source class for every event. Dates before 1 (14) February 1918 are Old Style.
◆ documented◈ published source◇ family testimony△ hypothesisMore about the method
1627–1822 · 14 events
◆ documented
The Book of the Great Map names the steppe river Kalaus in a single passage both “Kulauz” and “Kalauz”. It is the earliest known mention of the river in whose upper reaches the Khoper Cossacks lived from 1777 to 1825.
◆ documented
The interrogation records of 8 May 1640, published among the Don Affairs, mention a place “at the mouth of the Kalauz river, eight days from Astrakhan and six days from Azov”.
◆ documented
On 17 July 1696 Cossacks, the Khoper men among them, broke into Azov and held two of its bastions. The day became the seniority date of the Khoper Regiment and later of the whole Kuban Cossack Host.
◆ documented
On the site of the Pristansky settlement, ruined after the Bulavin rising, the Novokhopyorsk fortress was built between 13 September and 2 November 1716 (its official founding year is 1710). In 1717 ninety-four former Khoper Cossacks with their families and 125 “Cherkasy” enrolled there; in Tolstov’s words they “formed the core of the Cossack community from which, sixty years later, the Khoper Regiment arose”.
◆ documented
The earliest Kalaushin named in documents, the Khoper Cossack Trofim Pakhomovich, was born around 1737: the revision tale of 1815 gives his age as 78. His patronymic preserves the name of his father, Pakhom. The compiler of the roster, without access to this record, correctly dated the founder’s birth to “about 1740”.
◆ documented
Under the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774 “the rivers Kalaus and Yeya were to be considered” Russia’s border in the Caucasus, and Potemkin resolved to extend a line of settlements from Mozdok to the Don.
◆ documented
By Grigory Potemkin’s order of 24 September 1775 Colonel Konon Ustinov was appointed commander and instructed to form a regiment of five hundred from the best of the Khoper Cossacks.
◆ documented
On 24 April 1777 Catherine II approved Potemkin’s report on the Azov–Mozdok Line: the Khoper Regiment, “settled… in a needless place”, was ordered “to move there in the coming spring”. On 6 August the regiment left Tsaritsyn and in 25 days crossed 516 versts of the Kalmyk steppe.
◆ documented
On 18 October 1777 a detachment was left on a tributary of the Kalaus to build the Aleksandrovskaya (from 1778 Severnaya) fortress, and on 22 October the Khoper Cossacks and the Vladimir Dragoons laid Fortress No. 8 — the future Stavropol. The horseman on the city’s arms stands for its founders, the Khoper Cossacks and the dragoons.
◆ documented
In the summer of 1778 the first party of families arrived from the Khoper, in 1779 the second and in the summer of 1780 all the remaining “Cossacks, women and children”. By February 1781 the regiment had settled for good in four stanitsas — Severnaya, Stavropolskaya, Moskovskaya and Donskaya; Stavropolskaya became the regimental stanitsa.
◆ documented
Trofim Pakhomovich’s eldest son, Ivan, a direct ancestor of the author of this chronicle, was born. The year is given both by the roster and by the revision tale of 1815.
◈ published source
In October 1810 the seventeen-year-old Ivan Trofimovich entered service in the Khoper Regiment; in January 1839 he was fully discharged, and in 1849 he was listed as a retired Cossack.
Note on the roster: the roster says that he began service “in Batalpashinskaya stanitsa in the 2nd Khoper Regiment”; in 1810 the regiment was undivided and the stanitsa was founded only in 1825. △ The unit is probably named as in the service record of 1849; the compiler himself noted his doubt.
◆ documented
The revision tale of Stavropolskaya stanitsa records under no. 321: “Trofim Pakhomov Kalaushin, 78. His wife Avdotya, 70. Their children: Ivan, 22; Aleksey, 16; Afanasy, 12; Andrey, 9; Anna, 19.” This record restored the founder’s name and showed who was whose son in the first generations.
◆ documented
In the confessional registers of Stavropol district for 1822–1825 Trofim Kalaushin is 85, with his wife Yevdokiya and his sons Aleksey, Afanasy and Andrey. Ivan keeps his own household: “Ivan Kalaushin, 28; his wife Yefrosiniya, 26; their children Nikolay, 6, Andrey, 4, Nastasya, 2.” This is the first record to name Nikolay, a direct ancestor of the author.
1825–1859 · 12 events
◈ published source
On 1 October 1825 Batalpashinskaya stanitsa (now Cherkessk) was founded: settlers from Vorovskolesskaya took its northern part, those from Stavropolskaya the south and centre. The move went in stages, and only in the late autumn of 1827, in Tolstov’s words, did the Khoper Cossacks “finally haul their belongings across and settle in the new stanitsas on the Kuban”.
◆ documented
In the 1827 confessional register of the new Batalpashinskaya stanitsa the Kalaushins appear twice: “the widow Yevdokiya Kalaushina”, 58, with her sons Aleksey, Afanasy and Andrey and their families (no. 172), and “Cossack Ivan Kalaushin”, 38, with his wife Yefrosinya Pavlovna and the children Nikolay, Andrey, Irina and Marina (no. 181). Trofim Pakhomovich is no longer alive.
◆ documented
In the July 1830 statement on the property of the Cossacks of the former Stavropolskaya stanitsa, one of Colonel Yefimovich’s gardens is listed as “formerly belonging to the retired Cossack Trofim Kaloushin”.
◆ documented
All the Caucasian Cossack regiments except the Black Sea Host were united “into one Host under the name of the Caucasus Line Cossack Host”. In the same year a detachment of Caucasus Line Cossacks appeared in the Convoy.
◈ published source
Labinskaya stanitsa (now Labinsk) was founded at the Makhoshevskoye fortification in 1841–1842; in 1845 it was a stanitsa of the 2nd Laba Regiment. With Matvey Alekseyevich’s generation it would become part of the family’s story.
◈ published source
Under the Statute of 14 February 1845 the single Khoper Regiment became two; the staff of the 2nd Khoper Regiment was placed at Batalpashinskaya, and from then on it was the Kalaushins’ “own” regiment.
◆ documented
The 1848 confessional register of the St Nicholas church at Batalpashinskaya lists four Kalaushin households: that of Ivan (with his married sons Nikolay and Andrey and seventeen-year-old Gavriil) and those of Aleksey, Afanasy and Andrey Trofimovich. The register showed who was whose son and made it possible to refine the early part of the family roster.
◆ documented
On 10 April 1849 “the Cossacks of Batalpashinskaya Stanitsa Mikhailo Kalaushin and Osip Kucherov” found three horses near the Solenoozersky post; the Host administration’s notice was printed in the provincial gazettes. △ The only adult Mikhail in the stanitsa in the 1848 register is Mikhail Afanasyevich.
◈ published source
On 21 January 1853 the Tsesarevich’s chancellery informed the appointed ataman that Andrey Kalaushin, an uryadnik of the 2nd Khoper Regiment serving in the Convoy, was to become chamber Cossack to the Tsesarevna Maria Alexandrovna. He held the post from 2 September 1853 and went to St Petersburg with his wife and daughters Matryona and Fedosya. Documents show him to be Andrey Ivanovich, son of Ivan Trofimovich (the roster has Andrey Alekseyevich).
◆ documented
In July 1857 “Cossack Nikolay Ivanov Kalaushin and Vassa Andreyeva” had their son Ilya, born on 13 July, baptised. The entry gives the patronymic of Nikolay, a direct ancestor of the author, and agrees with the family’s memory of a “second Ilya”.
◆ documented
By an order of the Minister of War of 22 June 1859, for actions in the first half of 1858 on the Right Flank of the Caucasus Line, the Insignia of the Military Order, 4th class, was awarded to Stepan Kalaushin, an uryadnik of the 1st Urup Regiment — Stepan Alekseyevich, son of Aleksey Trofimovich. According to the roster, insignia no. 6451 was given for repelling a mountaineers’ raid near Ispravnaya on 17 May 1858.
◆ documented
On 19 October 1859 mountaineers drove off half a herd of cattle at the Psebay fortification; two Khoper sotnias caught them at the crossing of the Malaya Laba and recovered the herd. The Insignia of the Military Order, 4th class, went to Uryadnik Luka Fisenkov and twelve Cossacks, among them “Stepan Kalaushin” — △ most likely Stepan Nikolayevich, son of Nikolay Ivanovich.
1860–1916 · 54 events
◆ documented
The 1860 confessional register of Batalpashinskaya lists five Kalaushin households: the widow Yefrosinya (17 people), Uryadnik Andrey Ivanovich, the Cossack Andrey Trofimovich, the Cossack Vasily and the eighteen-year-old Cossack Yegor. On 19 November of that year the Caucasus Line and Black Sea Hosts were abolished and the Kuban and Terek Hosts formed.
◆ documented
Receiving a deputation of Line Cossacks at Labinskaya, Alexander II recognised Potsvirov, an old uryadnik of his escort, and asked: “Do you remember Kalaushin?” — adding, “Poor fellow, he is always ill; a pity, he is a good man.” An eyewitness explained that Uryadnik Kalaushin of Batalpashinskaya had served as chamber Cossack to the late Empress; △ it is natural to see Andrey Ivanovich here.
◈ published source
Matvey, the eldest son of the saddler Aleksey Nikolayevich and Anna Nikitichna, was born — the master who won the earliest known exhibition award of the family.
◈ published source
Mikhail Alekseyevich was born in Batalpashinskaya — later an uryadnik of the Convoy, a saddler and an instructor at military crafts schools.
◈ published source
Fedot Alekseyevich Kalaushin was born — later an uryadnik of His Majesty’s Own Convoy, a saddler, Purveyor to the Imperial Court and stanitsa ataman of Batalpashinskaya.
◆ documented
In the Russo-Turkish War the 2nd Khoper Regiment held the Dayar gorge throughout 9 June 1877. The Insignia of the Military Order, 4th class, went to Uryadnik Yegor Afanasyevich and Prikazny Ilya Nikolayevich Kalaushin — in the award list, “to Yegor Koloushin” and “to Ilya Koloushin”.
◆ documented
During the withdrawal of the Erivan Detachment near Zeydekyan the regimental commander “ordered all the non-combatants to be called out, and they, under the command of Uryadnik Kalaushin… took the height on our right flank and opened fire”. △ This may have been Yegor Afanasyevich or Gavriil Ivanovich, both then uryadniks of the 2nd Khoper Regiment.
◈ published source
According to the 1877 list of internal-service uryadniks of the Batalpashinsk Department cited by the roster, Fyodor Andreyevich, son of Andrey Trofimovich, was an uryadnik of the 1st squadron of His Majesty’s Own Convoy.
◆ documented
In September 1887 saddlery and harness-making began in the crafts department of the Batalpashinsk Town School. The report for 1887 names first among its masters “the saddle master and harness-maker, Cossack A. Kalaushin”; the report for 1890 names the saddlery teacher Anton Kalaushin and the harness teacher Stepan Kalaushin.
Note on the roster: the roster takes “A. Kalaushin” to be Aleksey Nikolayevich; the report for 1890 names the master in full as Anton. △ Probably Anton Nikolayevich (No. 33).
◈ published source
In May 1889, in the reign of Alexander III, Naser al-Din Shah visited St Petersburg. △ This visit fits the family’s account of the saddle for the Shah less well: Fedot Alekseyevich had not yet taken the oath (1891) and was not serving in the Convoy.
◆ documented
At the Caucasus Exhibition in Tiflis, where Fedot, Matvey and Ilya Kalaushin of Batalpashinskaya exhibited, the list of bronze-class awards reads: “186. To Matvey Kalaushin — for a saddle and saddle straps”. It is the earliest exhibition award of the Kalaushins found so far; the crafts department of the Batalpashinsk school received a diploma equal to a large silver medal.
◈ published source
Afanasy Yegorovich, a graduate of the Stavropol Cossack Junker School, was commissioned khorunzhy in the 1st Uman Regiment; in 1895 he became a sotnik. His brother Stepan Yegorovich followed him as an officer (khorunzhy from 1896).
◈ published source
Fedot Alekseyevich took the oath of service; the name index to the orders of the Kuban Host records him as a “saddler”.
◈ published source
By Kuban Host Order No. 156 of 7 June 1892 Fedot Alekseyevich was enrolled in His Majesty’s Own Convoy. He served, according to the roster, “first at Gatchina, under Alexander III, and then in the capital, St Petersburg, under Nicholas II”, as an uryadnik of the Life Guards 2nd Kuban Sotnia.
◈ published source
Aleksey, son of Matvey Alekseyevich, was born in Kutais — later an officer of the 3rd Khoper Regiment, a student of the General Staff Academy and an émigré.
◆ documented
At the 16th All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition a bronze medal for leather goods went to “Kalaushin, Fedot Alekseyevich, uryadnik, and Kalaushin, Mikhail Alekseyevich, and Fisenko, Ivan Mikhailovich, Cossacks, in St Petersburg”, and an honourable mention to “Kalaushin, Matvey Alekseyevich, uryadnik, in Yekaterinodar”.
◆ documented
In August 1896 Archduke Franz Ferdinand, honorary chief of the Russian 26th Bug Dragoon Regiment since 1891, met Nicholas II at the Vienna station in the uniform of his Russian regiment; at the doors of the imperial carriage, the newspapers wrote, stood “Circassians in bright red uniform” — △ the name they gave to Convoy Cossacks in scarlet cherkeskas.
◈ published source
By Kuban Host Order No. 5 Fedot Alekseyevich was “by Imperial leave permitted to accept and wear the Mecklenburg-Schwerin silver medals of Grand Duke Friedrich Franz III”. Grand Duchess Anastasia Mikhailovna, the Grand Duke’s consort, was honorary chief of the 1st Khoper Regiment, and at her request Khoper Cossacks received Mecklenburg awards in 1885 and 1896.
◆ documented
At the agricultural exhibition held at the Voznesenskaya horticultural school near Labinskaya “Uryadnik Kalaushin, instructor at the Labinskaya Military Crafts School, exhibited a Cossack saddle of elegant workmanship” and received a large silver medal. △ Probably Mikhail Alekseyevich.
◆ documented
On 2 (15) February 1900 St Petersburg reported that Nicholas II had invited Mozaffar ad-Din Shah of Persia on the occasion of his journey to Europe; at the end of February (early March New Style), that extensive preparations had been ordered and that the Shah was expected in the capital at the end of May.
◇ family testimony
◇ family testimony · confirmed by relatives
The saddle for the Shah of Persia was made on the order of Emperor Nicholas II in Fedot Alekseyevich’s workshop; the work took two months. Fedot Alekseyevich took it to St Petersburg himself; at a review of the Guards, on his last day before going home at the end of his service, Prince Trubetskoy reported to the Emperor that the saddle had arrived. Nicholas II examined it, said that it was very well made, and there and then congratulated the master on the title of Purveyor to the Court of His Imperial Majesty; the gold watch promised with the title never reached Fedot Alekseyevich. The story is recorded in the family history, and relatives confirm it.
◆ documented
In April 1900 the route was changed: the Shah would cross Russia incognito, and the official reception in St Petersburg was moved to his return journey — it took place in July.
◆ documented
In May 1900 the Shah crossed the Caucasus incognito; his train of carriages along the Georgian Military Road, from Mtskheta to Gudauri, was escorted by sotnias of the 1st Khoper Regiment — the Kalaushins’ fellow Khoper Cossacks.
◆ documented
On Wednesday 31 May (13 June) 1900, at half past two in the afternoon, in front of the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, the Emperor walked along the ranks of Convoy Cossacks leaving for the reserve, “honoured each of them with gracious words” and handed them the badges for service in the Convoy with his own hand; the Minister of the Imperial Court, Baron V.B. Frederiks, stood beside him. The Emperor’s diary records no other such review in 1900; △ this is the day most naturally seen in the family’s “review on the last day before going home”.
◈ published source
By Kuban Host Order No. 60 of 17 June 1900 Uryadnik Fedot Alekseyevich Kalaushin was discharged “retaining the Guards uniform and awarded the badge for service in the Convoy” — seventeen days after the farewell review and seventeen days before the Shah’s arrival.
Note on the roster: the same entry gives his Convoy service as “from 1892 to 1911”; the numbered and dated order is more precise — Fedot Alekseyevich was in the Convoy in 1892–1900. △ “1911” probably refers to his whole term of Cossack service or echoes the Convoy’s centenary.
◇ family testimony
The family remembered that the workshop’s products more than once won prizes and gold medals at the world exhibitions in Paris and London.
The family account is undated; the entry is placed at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900.
The award lists found so far record prizes to the Kalaushin masters at four exhibitions: Tiflis (1889), Nizhny Novgorod (1896), the Voznesenskaya exhibition (1899) and Yekaterinodar (1902); the documents bear out the family’s words that the workshop was “repeatedly awarded prizes”. At the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 Cossack equipment was exhibited by the Main Directorate of Cossack Hosts; the makers are not named in the catalogue.
◆ documented
On 4 July the Shah arrived at the Nikolayevsky station; two Convoy sotnias escorted the carriage of the Emperor and his guest, and in the Malachite Room of the Winter Palace Nicholas II presented the Shah with the Order of St Andrew. On 6 July there was a parade at Krasnoye Selo, on the 8th the Shah was taken to Tsarskoye Selo, and on the 10th, at the farewell luncheon, he gave the Emperor “a handsome antique sabre and his portrait”.
◆ documented
On 11 December 1900 the Convoy commander, Baron Meyendorff, came to Nicholas II “with a Caucasian dress saddle and a shashka — the gift of some kind Dagestani”. The entry shows the route by which Caucasian saddles reached the Emperor.
◆ documented
In February 1902 Archduke Franz Ferdinand travelled to St Petersburg to present himself to Nicholas II as a General of Cavalry of the Russian army.
◇ family testimony
In the deed of 1902 for a house and garden in Batalpashinskaya, Aleksey Nikolayevich stipulated that “until my death and the death of my wife Anna Nikitichna, I and my wife shall own and enjoy all this property”. The family called his wife Annushka the Circassian: Boris Matveyevich, from his father’s words, told how brothers travelling for Damascus steel carried her off from a well in a Circassian aul; Yevdokiya Fyodorovna said she was the daughter of a Gypsy named Belavin; the compiler of the roster believed her to be Adyghe.
The roster records Anna Nikitichna as née Bulavina; Cossacks named Bulavinov lived in Batalpashinskaya from the stanitsa’s first years — the confessional register of 1827 lists a Cossack Anton Bulavinov. Her daughter, Anna Alekseyevna, was named after her mother.
◆ documented
In 1902 Mozaffar ad-Din Shah met Nicholas II at the manoeuvres near Kursk. △ By then Fedot Alekseyevich had left the Convoy, and this meeting fits the family’s account of the saddle less well than the visit of 1900.
◆ documented
At the Kuban Exhibition of 1902 a reviewer singled out, in the pavilion of the Labinskaya Military Crafts School, “the invention of the master of the saddlery department, Mikhail Kalaushin — clamps for gluing the saddle tree”; Mikhail and Fedot Alekseyevich received silver medals of the Kuban Economic Society “for saddlery work”.
◇ family testimony
The family told how Matvey Alekseyevich obtained Damascus steel — through Suleymanov, father of Lyubov Jelalovna Geychenko — and re-tempered it himself, and how daggers “of Kalaus steel” were highly prized in the Caucasus; in support the family cited the words of the Arabist historian Leonid Lavrov.
The family account is undated; the entry is placed at the 1903 record of blades for Kalaushin.
The Kalaushins also received blades from the state Zlatoust works: on 30 September 1903 the list of unclaimed railway consignments includes “from the Zlatoust state works to Kalaushin — blades”. Lyubov Geychenko’s father, Jalal Suleymanov, was a jeweller and armourer in Kutais.
◇ family testimony
According to Emiliya Fyodorovna, Aleksandr Alekseyevich served as a Convoy uryadnik in St Petersburg in 1904–1908; on 1 (14) May 1904, in the Convoy barracks at 28 Shpalernaya Street, his son Boris was born — the first of the direct branch of the Kalaushins to be born in St Petersburg.
◆ documented
In Labinskaya the saddler Matvey Alekseyevich and Pelageya Yemelyanovna had a youngest son, Matvey — the future Pushkin scholar and first director of the All-Union Pushkin Museum. The family called him “Matylyok”.
◆ documented
In August 1905 Mozaffar ad-Din Shah met Nicholas II at Peterhof. △ Fedot Alekseyevich had already left the Convoy, and August was not the time of the farewell review, so this meeting fits the family’s account less well.
◆ documented
On the evening of 16 May 1906 in Kutais, Cossacks of the 2nd sotnia of the 1st Khoper Regiment were escorting General Alikhanov’s carriage; riding in front were the Cossacks Pavel Kalaushin and Ivan Melnikov. Two bombs were thrown: one Cossack was killed outright, two were badly wounded, “Pavel Kalaushin lightly”. △ Probably Pavel Aleksandrovich, a direct ancestor of the author.
◈ published source
In 1906 Prince Georgy (Yury) Ivanovich Trubetskoy took over the Convoy from his uncle, Baron Alexander Meyendorff (commander from 1893), and commanded it until 1914; Fedot’s younger brother, Aleksandr Alekseyevich, served under him as an uryadnik. △ In the family’s account of the saddle for the Shah, the report is made by “Prince Trubetskoy”: the family most likely kept the name of the later, better-remembered commander — an ordinary feature of family memory, not a contradiction of the account.
◆ documented
On 17 September 1907 Uryadnik Fedot Kalaushin was confirmed as stanitsa ataman of Batalpashinskaya; on 25 November 1909 he was released from the post “at his own request”.
◈ published source
Pavel Aleksandrovich and Pelageya Alekseyevna had a son, Mikhail — the author’s great-grandfather and later a food-industry engineer.
◆ documented
By Imperial Order of 6 May 1909 Afanasy Yegorovich was promoted to yesaul with seniority from 22 April 1903. The Caucasus Calendar for 1910 lists side by side in the 2nd Khoper Regiment “Yesaul Af. Georg. Kalaushin” and Podyesaul “St. Georg. Kalaushin” — two brothers in one regiment.
◆ documented
In 1910 Matvey Alekseyevich was chairman of the Second Mutual Credit Society of Labinskaya; directories record the Kalaushins’ harness goods and trade in burkas. The family remembers Mikhail Alekseyevich’s two-storey mansion on Krasnaya Street and the Kalaushins’ garden with electric lamps, an “electrobiograph” cinema and a brass band.
◈ published source
In a photograph of the 1910 graduates of the Maykop Military Crafts School, with saddle trees laid out before the ranks, the collector captions Mikhail and Aleksandr Alekseyevich as master instructors; in 1913 the Caucasus Calendar names Aleksandr Alekseyevich as the school’s teacher of harness-making.
◈ published source
From 17 to 21 May 1911 the Convoy celebrated its centenary at Tsarskoye Selo; on 18 May a new standard was consecrated in front of the Catherine Palace and the Convoy paraded. The ten-man Kuban deputation included Podkhorunzhy Ivan Stepanovich Kalaushin of Batalpashinskaya, a former uryadnik of the Convoy.
◇ family testimony
◇ family testimony · confirmed by relatives
The family remembers the last commission that Matvey Alekseyevich carried out together with Fedot Alekseyevich as a complete set of parade equipment for Archduke Franz Ferdinand — “full parade harness, saddles, sabres, kinzhals and so on”. The family history records that it was a “political” commission, meant to help improve relations with Austria-Hungary; war came all the same in 1914, after the Archduke’s assassination. Relatives confirm that the commission was completed.
◇ family testimony
In 1912 the family lost two of its masters. Matvey Alekseyevich, as the family tells it, died from an accidental shot; in the same year, relatives recall, Mikhail Alekseyevich was accidentally shot while hunting. Matvey Alekseyevich’s grave in Labinskaya bore the words “Purveyor to the Court of His Majesty”; the family workshop passed to Aleksandr Alekseyevich.
◆ documented
Russia sent a special envoy to Ahmad Shah’s coronation in Tehran in 1914. △ A gift would then have gone to Tehran, without any review in St Petersburg — this date fits the family’s account of the saddle less well.
◆ documented
By Imperial Order of 1 October 1914 Aleksey Matveyevich, a graduate of the Yelisavetgrad Cavalry School, was commissioned khorunzhy in the 3rd Khoper Regiment with seniority from 12 July 1914. In May 1915 he was concussed and remained in the ranks.
Note on the roster: the roster dates his commission to 12 June 1912; according to the Imperial Order he was commissioned in 1914, with seniority from 12 July.
◈ published source
On 19 October 1914 the 1st Kuban Plastun Brigade was ordered into Turkey towards Karakilisa and then force-marched to the Passin valley. Describing the march, General Ye.V. Maslovsky cited the information of the brigade’s senior staff adjutant — “Yesaul, later Colonel N.I. Kalaushin”.
◆ documented
On 17 March 1915 Podyesaul Stepan Yegorovich of the 2nd Khoper Regiment received the Order of St Vladimir, 4th class with swords and bow, and in May, by then a yesaul, the Order of St Anna, 2nd class with swords. He was killed in 1915: in the summer Russkoye Slovo listed him among those who had died of wounds, and an order of 1916 struck him off the rolls as killed in action.
◆ documented
On 9 June 1915 Yefim (Yevfimy) Mikhailovich, fighting the Turks with the 1st Kuban Regiment, was promoted to yesaul for distinction in action; in 1916 he became voyskovoy starshina, and by 1 January 1917 he was assistant regimental commander. In the spring of 1915 he received the Order of St Anna, 4th class “for bravery”.
◈ published source
The List of Purveyors to the Imperial Court, compiled at the beginning of 1915, includes among 1,340 firms and persons “the saddle-maker Fedot Kalaushin of Batalpashinskaya stanitsa”. The family also remembers the title for Matvey Alekseyevich.
Note on the roster: in retelling this passage the roster has “40 firms and persons” — a slip; the List contains 1,340.
◆ documented
In February 1916 Yesaul Nikita Ilyich, senior staff adjutant of the 1st Kuban Plastun Brigade, received the Order of St Vladimir, 4th class; a year earlier he had received the Order of St Anna, 4th class “for bravery” for distinction against the Turks.
◇ family testimony
According to his daughter, in 1916 Aleksandr Alekseyevich bought the Zlygosteva house in Labinskaya “together with a power plant and a cinema”, where his son Boris showed films. Mariya Aleksandrovna remembered the children playing in the house, rolling gold coins across the floor until they slipped into the cracks beneath the window.
In 1931, in Batalpashinsk, Aleksandr Alekseyevich was disenfranchised “as the owner of a cinema with its own electric motor”.
1917–1931 · 17 events
◈ published source
In March 1917 the Convoy was renamed the Life Guards Caucasian Cossack Regiment and sent to the front; in June of that year it was disbanded. With it ended the service at court to which the Kalaushins of Batalpashinskaya had given more than half a century.
◇ family testimony
Pavel Aleksandrovich lived in Batalpashinskaya; the family had a large and prosperous farm and kept bees. “During the Revolution” he was killed with pitchforks. His wife, Pelageya Alekseyevna, and their three small children were locked in a barn with other hostages and the barn was set on fire; “only by a miracle did they escape”. Afterwards the family lived in Cherkessk.
The family account is undated (“during the Revolution”).
△ The three children were most likely Pavel Aleksandrovich’s three sons: Mikhail (b. 1908), the author’s great-grandfather, Nikolay (b. 1911) and Vyacheslav (b. 1915). In these years the stanitsa changed hands more than once: Soviet power in the spring of 1918, the Whites from September 1918 to March 1920, Fostikov’s rising in the mountains in the summer of 1920. The account fits both periods of Soviet rule; in the summer of 1920, according to M.A. Fostikov’s memoirs, whole families with children were taken hostage in the stanitsa.
◇ family testimony
Roman Vasilyevich served in the 3rd Khoper Regiment. The family told how the Revolution found the Khoper Cossacks at war in Persia; they came by ship to Baku (Makhachkala), where “the revolutionaries would not let them ashore”, landed fighting, seized several trains by force and, short of Mineralnye Vody, rode home on horseback.
The same route — Enzeli, Petrovsk (now Makhachkala), trains through Grozny, Mineralnye Vody — is described in the memoirs of A.G. Shkuro, who sailed with the 3rd Khoper Regiment in the spring of 1918. △ Most likely Roman Vasilyevich came home by the same route and in the same weeks.
◈ published source
At dawn on 5 September 1918 A.G. Shkuro’s detachment took Batalpashinskaya; for about a year and a half, until March 1920, the Whites held power here. Fedot Alekseyevich’s son Nikolay, the roster records, joined Shkuro and served as a podkhorunzhy, and Fedot Alekseyevich again became stanitsa ataman.
◆ documented
The list of students of the 3rd intake of the General Staff Academy as of 18 November 1918 includes “3rd Khoper Cossack Regiment, Podyesaul Kalaushin, 10.68 (at the disposal of Colonel Kappel)” — △ almost certainly Aleksey Matveyevich. The Academy had gone over to the Whites at Kazan on 7 August 1918.
◈ published source
On 16 February 1920, at Verkhneudinsk, Aleksey Matveyevich was made a colonel by Order No. 24 of the 3rd Army; from March 1920 he served in Chita, on the staff of the Far Eastern Army.
◈ published source
Under the Whites Fedot Alekseyevich was again stanitsa ataman of Batalpashinskaya. In 1920 he was “shot by the Bolsheviks as a hostage in Batalpashinskaya by order of the special plenipotentiary of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 9th Army”; S.V. Volkov’s database dates his death to 1921. The family remembered him as “a man of kind soul”.
◇ family testimony
From 1920, “from the moment Soviet power was established in the North Caucasus”, Matvey Matveyevich, still a schoolboy, served as secretary of the revolutionary committee of the aul of Khodz — so his grandson writes, and so the roster records. His three elder brothers, Aleksey, Nikolay and Aleksandr, went into emigration with the Whites in the same years.
◆ documented
The “Name list of refugees to be sent on the steamer Kherson, 18 December 1920 (if places are available)” includes “Kalaushin Nikita Ilyich — Colonel — 43”. Whether he sailed on the ship is not yet known.
Note on the roster: the roster has “Colonel from 18 December 1920”; the date belongs to the list for the steamer, and the date of his promotion to colonel is not yet known.
◈ published source
As of 1 October 1922 “Colonel A.M. Kalaushin was chief of staff of the border guard” in General Diterikhs’s Zemskaya Rat. In October–November 1922 the Zemskaya Rat withdrew into China and Korea; △ Aleksey Matveyevich probably left Russia then.
◇ family testimony
In 1923, his grandson writes, Matvey Matveyevich was transferred from the Don University to Petrograd “for special success in his studies”. He graduated from Leningrad University in 1926; B.M. Eichenbaum supervised his diploma work and later his candidate’s dissertation.
◈ published source
Nikolay Matveyevich, who had been on Lemnos, appears in the autumn of 1925 as a sotnik of the 1st Combined Kuban Cossack Regiment in Yugoslavia. According to the family, he later moved to France with his brother Aleksandr and worked at the Renault factory.
◈ published source
Boris Aleksandrovich, a student of the chemistry faculty of Leningrad University from 1926, was expelled in August 1929 “for Cossack origin”.
◈ published source
Boris, son of Matvey Matveyevich and Emiliya Fyodorovna, was born in Leningrad — the future book artist and painter.
◆ documented
From December 1930 the Kalaushins appear in decisions depriving them of the vote: Aleksey Dmitriyevich (6 December 1930, with exile beyond the North Caucasus Krai), Sergey Ivanovich (24 January 1931), Aleksandr Alekseyevich “as the owner of a cinema with its own electric motor” and Stepan Ilyich as a trader (18 April 1931), Yuliya Matveyevna “as having had a saddlery and harness workshop” (4 July 1932), and Pelageya Kalaushina (2 January 1934).
◆ documented
On 5 June 1931 the OGPU Collegium sentenced Grigory Vasilyevich Kalaushin of Novobekeshevskaya as a member of the “militant, counter-revolutionary, insurgent, monarchist organisation Army of Extermination”; he was shot in Krasnodar on 23 June 1931. He was rehabilitated on 14 November 1989.
◆ documented
On 20 September 1931 the Šabac Cossack stanitsa in Serbia elected its board at a general assembly, with “Col. Kalaushin, Yesaul Nosak and V. St. Vinnikov” on the audit commission. △ Most likely this was Nikita Ilyich.
1933–1987 · 28 events
◇ family testimony
The family believed that his saddler’s trade saved Aleksandr Alekseyevich and his family “from the harsh repressions of de-Cossackisation”: he too was apparently arrested but released on Budyonny’s orders, “as he was a good saddler”; a sentry was posted at the house, and Red Army men were taught saddlery inside it; “one big family of nineteen people” lived there. Aleksandr Alekseyevich died suddenly in Sukhum in 1933, sitting in a hammock.
◆ documented
On 17 January 1934 the act transferring the Pushkin Reserve to the Academy of Sciences was signed, among others, by “M.M. Kalaushin, research fellow of the first rank of the Institute of Russian Literature”; supervision of the reserve’s museum and research work was entrusted to a “troika” — Yu.G. Oksman, D.P. Yakubovich and M.M. Kalaushin.
◇ family testimony
In the Bekeshevskaya branch the 1930s were remembered for dekulakisation: the family of Roman Vasilyevich, who managed an alabaster works in the aul of Kubina, was “dekulakised, de-Cossackised, stripped of everything that could be taken”. The mother obtained a paper saying that the dekulakisation had been wrong, but “they returned only a sewing machine and an empty chest”. In 1935 Roman Vasilyevich fled to Sulimov — as Batalpashinsk was called in 1934–1937 — and rejoined his family.
◆ documented
In the summer of 1935 N.E. Radlov, N.K. Shvede-Radlova and L.S. Khizhinsky worked at the Reserve; on 29–30 August the district’s first exhibition of their paintings was held, as Matvey Matveyevich himself wrote. The family remembers that six-year-old Borya went sketching at Trigorskoye with Radlov and Khizhinsky.
◆ documented
For the centenary of the poet’s death the Leningrad regional Pushkin Committee opened a jubilee exhibition in nineteen halls of the Hermitage; “the scholarly secretaries of the exhibition were S.Ya. Gessen and M.M. Kalaushin”.
◆ documented
On 1 February 1938, in Fyodorovka district of Kustanai Oblast, the state-farm agronomist Ivan Pavlovich Kalaushin was arrested; on 23 August 1938 he was sentenced to fifteen years in the camps, and he was rehabilitated in 1993. His birthplace is recorded obscurely as “Severopavlovsk Krai, town of Yezhovsk”; △ this may stand for Yezhovo-Cherkessk, and he may have belonged to Pavel Aleksandrovich’s family. He is not in the roster.
◈ published source
Aleksey Matveyevich, who in the 1930s was connected with Ataman Semyonov’s circle and worked in newsreel, died in Harbin in April 1941 “in unexplained circumstances” and was buried in the New Uspensky Cemetery.
◇ family testimony
On the evening of 22 June 1941, as his eight-year-old son remembered, Boris Aleksandrovich said that he would rather die than surrender; he took leave of his son at the well and of his wife at the troop train, under the lime trees. On 30 July he wrote to his wife from near Novgorod: “War is terrible, and whoever stays alive will be a happy man.”
A cinema and radio technician of the political department of the 128th Rifle Division, military technician 2nd rank, Boris Aleksandrovich is listed as missing since 15 August 1941, during the withdrawal from Novgorod.
◈ published source
In the Siege winter of 1941–1942 Matvey Matveyevich served as acting commandant of Pushkin House: he was responsible for the building and its collections and looked after the staff — ration cards, the sick, funerals. In July 1942 he escorted a train with the most valuable museum materials to Tashkent. His son Boris made more than a hundred and fifty handwritten booklets in the besieged city and in evacuation.
◈ published source
The Book of Remembrance of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic lists nine people named Kalaushin who did not return from the war: Pyotr Ilyich, Aleksandr Semyonovich, Ivan Andreyevich, Ivan Ilyich, Ilya Andreyevich, Nikolay Sergeyevich, Nikolay Fyodorovich, Pavel Ilyich and Pyotr Ivanovich. Three of them are in the roster — the brothers Ilya and Ivan Andreyevich and Nikolay Sergeyevich.
◆ documented
Two Kalaushins from Cherkessk were killed at Myskhako near Novorossiysk: Junior Sergeant Vladimir Alekseyevich, son of Aleksey Dmitriyevich, on 24 April 1943, and the teacher Nikolay Sergeyevich, a submachine-gunner of the 404th Rifle Regiment, who died of wounds on 14 June 1943 (spelled “Kaloushin” in the report). Vladimir is not in the roster — the loss report names him.
◈ published source
Mikhail Pavlovich’s only son, Vyacheslav, the grandfather of the author of this chronicle, was born. The roster records that he was named after his father’s younger brother, Vyacheslav Pavlovich, who died in the Civil War. According to the family, he was born in Chimkent (now Shymkent) in the Kazakh SSR; there he met Galina, and their son Oleg Vyacheslavovich is the father of the chronicle’s author.
The year of birth is from the roster (◈); the birthplace and his meeting Galina are the family’s account (◇, 9 Oct 2026). Of Galina, name and relationship only.
◆ documented
The act of 27 November 1944, signed among others by M.M. Kalaushin, recorded that the Pushkin Reserve had been “completely destroyed and plundered”. Late that autumn Matvey Matveyevich came to Mikhailovskoye, “paid the wages for all the past months” and took the staff to Leningrad for the winter.
◈ published source
On 12 April 1945 fifteen-year-old Boris Kalaushin set out for Pskov with S.S. Geychenko — “the future artist, who was going with me to sketch the ruined Pushkin monuments”, as Geychenko recalled. On 16 May Boris finished a draft plan of the Petrovskoye park, with its minefield and dugouts, and drew “Nanny’s Cottage” in pencil.
◈ published source
By Order No. 59 of the Institute of Literature of 15 April 1945 S.S. Geychenko was appointed director of the Pushkin Reserve. “More than anyone, Matvey Matveyevich Kalaushin pressed for my being sent to the Reserve,” Geychenko recalled.
Note on the roster: the roster says that Matvey Matveyevich “handed the post over” to Geychenko; in the documents Matvey Matveyevich is never called director of the Reserve — from 1934 he oversaw it on behalf of Pushkin House and recommended Geychenko as director.
◆ documented
By an order signed in Berlin on 21 July 1945, Private Roman Vasilyevich Kalaushin of an army trophy depot, called up at the age of forty-six in November 1941, received the Medal “For Combat Service”: “he keeps the horses entrusted to him in excellent condition”.
◆ documented
Lance Corporal Nikolay Pavlovich, a driver with the guard company of the staff of the 15th Army, 2nd Far Eastern Front, received the Medal “For Combat Service”: “during the fighting against the Japanese imperialists driver Kalaushin drove his vehicle over roadless country knowing neither difficulty nor fatigue”.
◈ published source
In 1946 the Nekrasov museum opened in the apartment on Liteyny Prospekt — the first museum opened in Leningrad after the war; the display was prepared by M.M. Kalaushin and O.V. Loman.
◈ published source
On 10 June 1949 the first exhibition of the future All-Union Pushkin Museum opened in the Alexander Palace (then in the town of Pushkin); the President of the Academy of Sciences, S.I. Vavilov, cut the ribbon. Matvey Matveyevich was among those who opened the museum: a photograph captioned “On the day of the opening of the All-Union Pushkin Museum in the Alexander Palace” shows, from right to left, Vavilov, Geychenko and Kalaushin.
◆ documented
Pushkin’s house museum at Mikhailovskoye opened on 12 June 1949; on 14 June a commission accepted the display, and the first name in the act is “Kalaushin M.M., head of the Museum of the Institute of Literature of the USSR Academy of Sciences”.
◈ published source
By a decree of 16 June 1953 the Pushkin collections of Pushkin House were transferred to the Ministry of Culture, and the All-Union Pushkin Museum took shape — the Lyceum, the apartment at 12 Moika, the Nekrasov apartment. Matvey Matveyevich was its first director until 1965.
◈ published source
Boris Matveyevich graduated from the graphics faculty of the Repin Institute (1950–1956) and joined the Union of Artists the same year; the first books with his illustrations — V. Gubarev’s The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors and Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes — appeared in 1956.
◆ documented
At the unveiling of M.K. Anikushin’s Pushkin monument the speakers included “M. Kalaushin, director of the All-Union Pushkin Museum”. In the discussion of the competition designs he and B.V. Tomashevsky supported Anikushin’s work; the family remembers that it was thanks to his decision and support that the young sculptor won the competition.
◈ published source
The brochure “Introducing a system of defect-free production at Ryazan Bakery No. 3” (16 pp.) was published in Moscow by the Central Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of the food industry; the catalogues of the Russian State Library and the National Library of Russia give the author as “Kalaushin, M. P.”.
◈ published source
In 1966 Boris Matveyevich began the series “Hieroglyph of a Woman” and in 1967 “Sunlit”: a sign-hieroglyph on bands of bright flat colour. The painting “Sunlit” (1966–1968) is in the Museum of Fine Arts of Karelia; until 1987 he did not show his paintings at exhibitions.
◈ published source
Matvey Matveyevich Kalaushin died. Three weeks later Emiliya Fyodorovna wrote to Yu.G. Oksman, with whom her husband had served on the Reserve’s “troika” in 1934. The roster records that Matvey Matveyevich is buried in the Bogoslovskoye Cemetery, with his bust on the grave.
◇ family testimony
In December 1983 Nikolay Nikolayevich Koloushin of Vladikavkaz wrote to Aleksey Yefimovich Kalaushin: “Our childhood was very hard; we were cut off from our relatives and so we know little of our distant kin.” The compiler of the roster attributed such breaks to the Revolution, the Civil War, de-Cossackisation, prisons and the war of 1941–1945.
◈ published source
Boris Matveyevich’s paintings were shown for the first time at the exhibition “Painting by Leningrad Graphic Artists” in the Okhta Hall; in 1987 and 1992 he took part in large exhibitions at the Manege.
1992–2026 · 15 events
◈ published source
By the resolution of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation “On the rehabilitation of the Cossacks” all acts concerning the Cossacks adopted since 1918 were annulled as unlawful in so far as they imposed repressive measures.
◈ published source
The Apollon society and publishing house, founded by Boris Matveyevich with his sister Yuliya Matveyevna and colleagues, published two volumes on Nikolay Kulbin — “Search” (1994) and “Documents” (1995); in 1992–1999 the society held ten exhibitions and three conferences.
◇ family testimony
According to the family, the father of the author of this website, Oleg Vyacheslavovich Kalaushin, worked as an automotive journalist for the St Petersburg magazine Pyatoye Koleso (5 Koleso) from 1995 to 2019.
◈ published source
Boris Matveyevich Kalaushin died a little short of his seventieth birthday and of a planned one-man exhibition; he is buried in the Kuzmolovo cemetery. Apollon’s tenth exhibition, in 1999, was dedicated to his memory.
◈ published source
For Matvey Matveyevich’s centenary the All-Russian Pushkin Museum opened the exhibition “Our First Director” in the Biron stables at 12 Moika.
◈ published source
The Mikhailovskoye museum reserve held the exhibition “Matvey Matveyevich Kalaushin: for the centenary of his birth”; for it his grandson, N.G. Firtich, wrote a biographical essay that also records the motto of Matvey Alekseyevich’s family: “No feeling is holier than friendship”.
◆ documented
The Throne Hall of the Catherine Palace in Pushkin hosted the ceremony of the 10th professional competition for journalists of St Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, the Golden Pen (results for 2004); the special prize “Best Test-Driving Journalist” went to “Oleg Kalaushin (Pyatoye Koleso magazine)”.
◈ published source
The Green Hall of the All-Russian Pushkin Museum at 12 Moika hosted the exhibition “Boris Kalaushin. From the Academy to Abstraction. Graphics and painting of the 1950s–1970s”; much of it was shown for the first time.
◆ documented
EdWay, an adaptive-learning platform that prepared students for the EGE, Russia’s school-leaving exam, by finding their weak points, was launched in St Petersburg; it was founded by the author of this chronicle, Vyacheslav Olegovich Kalaushin. In October 2018 EdWay was one of six projects at Delovoy Peterburg’s Startup Exchange, and in February 2019 the paper named Vyacheslav Olegovich as co-owner of the startup, which was then in the accelerator of the pre-seed fund Startup Lab.
◇ family testimony
The chronicle’s author, Vyacheslav Olegovich Kalaushin, was born in St Petersburg, was into IT from childhood and after school, in his own words, “decided to try himself in the craft”. Early in 2018 he moved to Moscow, from there to Dubai, and then to Abu Dhabi, where he lives today.
Early 2018.
◆ documented
EdCAS, a cloud corporate-microlearning platform with analytics for every lesson, founded by Vyacheslav Olegovich Kalaushin, won Bronze in the “Best MVP Website” category of the Tagline Awards 2019; the ceremony was held on 29 November 2019.
◆ documented
Data Nexus Technologies Services FZ-LLC (UAE), founded by Vyacheslav Olegovich Kalaushin, has been active since 2024 by its own account — a marketing, product-architecture and data-systems practice. Besides client work it runs products of its own; CyberEGE, NeuroFrame and Carfleet the chronicle’s author calls “ours” — he and the Data Nexus team created them. The company’s office is in Abu Dhabi, where he lives today.
◈ published source
Version 03.02 of the Kalaushin family roster on the Philippov genealogy website is dated 13 July 2025 (a short draft was there as early as January 2025): 265 entries in seven generations. It is told in the voice of its compiler, Aleksandr Borisovich Kalaushin, “who for more than 40 years gathered the facts bit by bit”.
◆ documented
CyberEGE, a preparation platform for Russia’s EGE and OGE school exams, was launched — a Data Nexus product created by Vyacheslav Olegovich and the company’s team: it assigns every wrong answer to one of five causes — theory, calculation, inattention, strategy or presentation. On the path “from idea to platform” that the site describes, the prototype came in 2024 and the adaptive engine in 2025.
◇ family testimony
The author of the website, Vyacheslav Olegovich Kalaushin, reported that two family accounts are confirmed by relatives and recorded in the family history: the saddle for the Shah of Persia made in Fedot Alekseyevich’s workshop, and the parade commission for Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which was completed. For the saddle the family asked for the years to be matched; the most consistent dating is spring to early summer 1900, for Mozaffar ad-Din Shah’s visit.