3 ‘grandfathers’ in Russian history who had no… grandchildren

Ivan Krylov

The fabulist Ivan Krylov began to be called ‘grandfather’ during his lifetime, although he was never married and had no recognized children, much less grandchildren. And the nickname stuck to him, thanks to poet Pyotr Vyazemsky.

In 1838, Krylov's circle of close friends decided to celebrate his 70th birthday, which coincided with the 50th anniversary of his literary activity.

The celebration was supposed to be magnificent, Emperor Nicholas I was informed about it and the organizers were Sergei Uvarov, Minister of Public Education, Fyodor Tolstoy, Vice President of the Academy of Arts, composer Mikhail Glinka, artist Karl Bryullov, as well as other prominent people.

The high status of Krylov was emphasized by the fact that the sons of the emperor, Grand Dukes Nikolai Nikolaevich and Mikhail Nikolaevich, six and five years old respectively, arrived to congratulate the hero of the day as representatives of the children's reading audience. This was an informal contribution of the imperial family to the state celebration of the fabulist.

The culmination of the celebration, as researchers Ekaterina Lyamina and Natalia Samover note in their book ‘Ivan Krylov – Superstar’, was the performance of couplets based on the verses of Pyotr Vyazemsky by Osip Petrov, considered the best bass of the St. Petersburg stage at the time:

Long live a happy fate,

The thread of years dear to us!

Hello with your sweet wife, 

Hello, grandfather Krylov! <…> 

By "wife" the muse was meant. Those present testified that Vyazemsky's poems had an extraordinary success and Krylov, thus, forever remained a "grandfather" for not only his contemporaries, but also for subsequent generations.

Vladimir Lenin

Soviet propaganda made sure that every Soviet child could retell several stories from the life of Vladimir Lenin, very closely to the text: from his childhood, youth and maturity. Books on this topic were published in the USSR without interruption in huge print runs.

Among the stories about the last years of his life, the book ‘Lenin and Children’ by Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, a revolutionary, publicist and de facto secretary of the leader of the world proletariat, was especially popular. It emphasized the hero’s love for his “little comrades”, his ease, kindness, responsiveness and ability to get along with children, as well as find a common language with them.

For health reasons, Lenin and his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya could not have their own children. However, contemporaries testified to Lenin’s love for the children of his friends. This love was extended to all children of the Soviet Union; thus, the slogan “pioneers are Ilyich’s grandchildren” gradually appeared and he soon became the “grandfather” of all Soviet children.

Joseph Stalin liked this formula, because, after Lenin's death, he himself became the "father of the people" and, as it were, the unofficially adopted son of Ilyich.

Nikolai Tchaikovsky

This Tchaikovsky did not write music, he conducted much larger-scale processes of overthrowing the monarchy in Russia, for which he received the nickname "grandfather of the Russian revolution".

A chemist by education and a student of Dmitri Mendeleyev, Tschaikovsky participated in the revolutionary movement in Russia from the 1870s. From a young age, he was completely immersed in underground work, which meant prisons, exile and emigration. Like many populists, he considered the struggle for a new Russia to be the main work of his life. His long career (from populism to the Provisional Government) inspired respect even among opponents.

In his memoirs, Lev Trotsky referred to him as the “patriarch” of the revolution, while the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries called him “grandfather”, because of his moral authority.. After 1917, Tchaikovsky criticized the Soviet government, and the Bolsheviks called him "grandfather" with a hint of condescension – they say, "the old guard" that does not understand the new times. He outlived several generations of revolutionaries: from the Narodniks of the 1870s to the Socialist Revolutionaries of 1905 and the anti-Bolshevik movement in the 1918-1920s. Despite his nickname, he fought against the Bolsheviks in 1918 (also heading the Arkhangelsk government during the intervention) and, later, emigrated. He died in London, never having accepted the outcome of the October Revolution.