Dormidontov biography

Photo by R. Glazova, Facebook. Even in childhood, he met the history of his family, and later realized that the past is not only his personal, but also everyone else, needs to know and remember. For this, memories must be materialized by turning them into attributes of the era - newspapers, photographs, documents, etc.. This is what he has been doing for almost half a century. I am a hereditary Russian whose ancestors lived in Estonia back in the 19th century.

In my youth, I was a tailor, sold books and records, hippoval. Pants made of upholstery furniture material, a maple with seams on the trouser arrows ”-so Dormidontov said about his photo, which was taken at an underground rock festival in Estonian Elva in the year. Photo: Facebook. I began to recognize the stories of those whose fate intersected with the fate of my relatives.

As circles on water from the stone abandoned in it, they become wider, so my interest was expanding. Finding and acquiring everything that spoke about the era and was primarily connected with the life of Russians in Estonia, I gathered an archive that historians and other people who are interested in the pages of our past turn to today. I - your memory, as I admitted, is the name of Alexander Dormidontov, his friends, that he was “not ours”, he learned from the colonel appointed by the director of the Tallinn school in which he studied.

The colonel explained that if the relatives of the boy are “from the former”, then he himself is “white”. Arriving home, ten -year -old Sasha asked his parents what this means. My parents said that all our relatives are an Orthodox priesthood. In Viliyandy, these are Raevsky, and in Tartu, Narva, Rakvere, Tallinn - the Bezhanitsky family, whose ancestor was generally one of the first Orthodox priests in Estonia.

My great -grandfather Alexander Bezhanitsky for almost 20 years was the rector of the St. Nicholas Church on Vienna Street in Tallinn, and his brother Nikolai Bezhanitsky, shot in the year by the Bolsheviks, was the abbot of St. George's arrival in Tartu. By the way, in the year of the Russian Orthodox Church, he was ranked to the Holy of Saints. Maybe the director thought that I would be ashamed of all of them, but the information received from my parents, on the contrary, interested me.

They served as the impetus for the fact that after some time I began to collect everything related to the life of Russians in Estonia before the revolution and during the first period of independence of Estonia. In the youth of the Dormidonts, as mentioned above, he wore long hair, listened to rock music and was considered hippie, although he worked as a tailor.

And he still maintains a connection with those who, at that time, in the years, Hipped with him. The spirit of freedom has been brought up in it since childhood: already at the age of 16, having decided to live separately from his parents, he moved to the country in the green suburb of Nim, who had already belonged to his ancestors from the pre -war times.

Privokzalnaya Square in Nim. Foto: J. Christin, Year Source: Facebook. Even before the revolution, Nikolai von Glen, the Baltic German, the owner of all lands in the district, decided to make the city from the settlement of Nim. In order to attract residents to it, he began to put such wooden houses. The owner of one of them, acquired in years as a summer residence, was the family of my grandmother.

Now I live here. The cooled traces did not immediately, but a vast family meeting began to be formed gradually: to what was left of his grandfather and grandmother, the Dormidontov joined the papers and documents belonging to other relatives. Along the way, printed products gathered - newspapers and magazines in the Russian language of bourgeois time, as well as the period of revolution and civil war.

And the first book, bought by him in the Bukinist store at the age of 18, was the "Pechora agricultural messenger." Since then, the Dormidontov has become a regular in bugwood and antique stores. He took up exhibition activities already in perestroika, in the years. Here it is, freedom! But you know what I noticed? In the country, then they began to print the literature prohibited before, and everyone was stunned: they rushed to read Solzhenitsyn, were delighted.

Nevertheless, we did not understand each other. The year that my historical memory did not speak in any way. For me it was an event in a neighboring country, despite the fact that I was a citizen of the Soviet Union. And they did not understand the repressions of the year in Estonia, naively asking - have you not voluntarily joined the Union State? Our genetic memory was rooted in the Stalin era on the one hand and in the pre -war Estonia and the royal Estland and Livonia on the other.

Archival photos and documents from the collection of Alexander Dormidontov. Photo from the personal archive of Alexander Dormidontov The first exhibition of Alexander Dormidontov took place in the year at the Philatelists club. They organized their rally in the blue exhibition pavilion in Pirita. Among the Estonians of the Dormidonts, one was Russian. Then he exposed the Russian periodicals of the time of the independent republic to his press then emigrants, as well as revolutionary years, when many new newspapers came out.

The newspapers of the tsarist time were also represented.Dormidontov made similar exhibitions up to a year, and the latter took place in the house of trade unions on Sakala Street now there is the Slaris shopping center. Students of the University of Tartu, who reminded me of the Russian foreign archive in Prague of the Archive of Russian Emigration, approached me at one of the exhibitions.

I immediately recalled Alexei Bulatov, a Russian public figure who was in Estonia in the X and collaborated with many periodic publications, published in Russian in Estonia. He sent part of the materials to the Russian archive in Prague. By the end of the conversation, completely involuntarily, those present began to call my collection an archive. I did not mind.

The archive takes up a lot of space. Photos from the personal archive of Alexander Dormidontov in the year, when Estonia returned independence, lost half a century ago, Dormidontov was invited to Estonian radio. The Russian edition was formed, the theme of the new program of transfers - “Russians in Estonia” was set accordingly. The topic that none of the journalists did not know how to reveal did not know what could be said in connection with this.

The Russian archive of Alexander Dormidontov proposed an extensive material for these purposes. At the same time, preparing for the programs, and he himself, by his own admission, was “smart”, complementing the information from other sources that he had. Keeper of the Russian Archive. Photo from the personal archive of Alexander Dormidontov, we are the Russian first “serious” exhibition of Dormidontov - “Russians in Estonia”, dedicated to the anniversary of the formation of the Estonian Republic, occurred in February in the Tallinn City Archive.

It was prepared on the basis of materials collected by him over the preceding years and telling about the life of the Russian diaspora in Estonia before the Second World War, starting from a short period of German occupation per year. Numerous documents and photographs reflected the emigrant life, the life of the Orthodox Church, talked about cultural organizations, including the theater, and education.

Printed products of that time were presented - books, newspapers. Two stands were introduced to Russian engineers and entrepreneurs. It was also possible to get an idea of ​​the pre -war contacts of Estonia and the Soviet Union. I remember the historian Viktor Mamamyagi came up, noting that the exhibition is well made and everything is well read. He asked where I got so much?

Professor of the University of Tartu, the author of the works of Estonia’s culture, Sergei Isakov, called my exhibition unique. The exposition was visited by employees of the Russian Embassy in Estonia, as well as a number of other embassies. The director of the Tallinn city archive Yuri Kivimae, who said that in four months it had visited a considerable number of citizens, responded to the exposition.

Estonians went to her. The historical memory of my Russian compatriots could not digest the fact that before the war there was an Estonian republic and Russians also lived in it. Until now, a whole series of our fellow citizens lives a story written in Soviet times, and does not want to perceive it different. Cutting out of the newspaper. A trip to Moscow was organized by the Estonian Institute, formed in the year at the suggestion of Estonia President Lennart Mary.

Its goal was to promote the culture of Estonia abroad. The activities of the Institute today are supported by the Ministry of Culture of Estonia and European integration funds. The exhibition in Moscow was held in the library of foreign literature, one of the central channels of Russian television even shot a news story about it. The next was the large exhibition "Russian spirit in Estonian photography - years." Located at 16 stands, it was demonstrated in the Estonian parliament.

With her, I traveled to all Estonia, put the stands at the monument to the “bronze soldier” on the Tynismsi. Then there was a great stir around him, a lot of people came. Wherever I came with the exhibition, I simultaneously collected signatures in support of the creation of the Russian Museum, in which I hoped to place my overgrown meeting. When I realized that the building, intended for him in Kadriorg, unlucky Russian politicians who promised to help, “profiled”, I again was left alone with my Russian archive.

At the same time, Alexander Dormidontov lived in the same place, in the Nymom, where his ancestors lived. The log house made of the circle inherited from Glen did not survive for a hundred years, but Sasu built a house from a brick, also with a bathhouse and a fireplace in the place of the old stable, converted into the bathhouse, in which he lives. The new bathhouse, where Alexander Dormidontov lives now, with an archive saved from the old house.

Photo: Jenny Graph everything here breathes the past, even a pile of stones on the site recalls the “Russian trace” in the history of Estonia: a hundred years ago they served as the foundation of the monument to Peter I on the central square of the Estonian capital. When, a few years ago, Petrovskaya Square, in Soviet times - victories, and now - freedoms, modernized, then the stones brought Sassy in Nymom.

The very stones.Photos from the personal archive of Alexander Dormidontov, the road without end not to retell everything that the Dormidontov made in his life, collecting the Russian archive of Estonia and wanting to make it the property of a wide range of interested fellow citizens. We will only say that part of it finally found a refuge: two years ago, the family archive of the Raevsky, Bezhanitsky and Dormidontovs Alexander Dormidontov handed over to the Tallinn city archive.

The very first documents in it dates back to the XVII century, and the photograph of the year Dagerrotype is considered the oldest in Estonia. In my Russian archive there is everything that is related to the history of Russians in Estonia.