Olga Grigor'eva at lastromanovs on VK
Above: Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia, photographed by Boissonnas and Eggler.
Above: Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia, photographed by Sergey Levitsky.
Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia (born June 1/13, 1882, died November 24, 1960) was the youngest child of Tsar Alexander III of Russia and younger sister of Tsar Nicholas II.
She was raised at the Gatchina Palace outside Saint Petersburg. Olga's relationship with her mother, Empress Marie, the daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark, was strained and distant from childhood. In contrast, she and her father were close. He died when she was 12, and her brother Nicholas became emperor.
In 1901, at 19, she married Duke Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg, who was privately believed by family and friends to be homosexual. Their marriage of 15 years remained unconsummated, and Peter at first refused Olga's request for a divorce. The couple led separate lives and their marriage was eventually annulled by the Emperor in October 1916. The following month Olga married cavalry officer Nikolai Kulikovsky, with whom she had fallen in love several years before. During the First World War, the Grand Duchess served as an army nurse and was awarded a medal for personal gallantry. At the downfall of the Romanovs in the Russian Revolution of 1917, she fled with her husband and children to Crimea, where they lived under the threat of assassination. Her brother Nicholas and his family were shot by revolutionaries.
Olga escaped revolutionary Russia with her second husband and their two sons in February 1920. They joined her mother, the Dowager Empress, in Denmark. In exile, Olga acted as companion and secretary to her mother, and was often sought out by Romanov impostors who claimed to be her dead relatives. She met Anna Anderson, the best-known impostor, in Berlin in 1925. After the Dowager Empress's death in 1928, Olga and her husband purchased a dairy farm in Ballerup, near Copenhagen. She led a simple life: raising her two sons, working on the farm and painting. During her lifetime, she painted over 2,000 works of art, which provided extra income for both her family and the charitable causes she supported.
In 1948, feeling threatened by Joseph Stalin's regime, Olga and her immediate family relocated to a farm in Campbellville, Ontario, Canada. With advancing age, Olga and her husband moved to a bungalow near Cooksville, Ontario. Colonel Kulikovsky died there in 1958. Two years later, as her health deteriorated, Olga moved with friends to a small apartment in East Toronto. She died aged 78, seven months after her older sister, Xenia. At the end of her life and afterwards, Olga was widely labelled the last Grand Duchess of Imperial Russia.
The letter:
1903. 5 Сентября. Фреденсборгъ.
Дорогая Марій,
Сегодня тутъ играла музыка — наши матросики. Очень весело было.
Что вы подѣлываете. Напиши мнѣ пожалуйста. Поцѣлуй отъ меня Мама и Папа и дядю Мишу. Крѣпко тебя цѣлую.
Любящая тебя Тетя Ольга.
With modernised spelling:
1903. 5 Сентября. Фреденсборг.
Дорогая Марий,
Сегодня тут играла музыка — наши матросики. Очень весело было.
Что вы поделываете. Напиши мне пожалуйста. Поцелуй от меня Мама и Папа и дядю Мишу. Крепко тебя целую.
Любящая тебя Тетя Ольга.
English translation (my own):
1903. 5 September. Fredensborg.
Dear Marie,
Today music was playing here — our sailors. It was a lot of fun.
What are you doing. Please write to me. Kiss Mama and Papa and Uncle Misha for me. A big kiss.
Your loving Aunt Olga.
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