M Liachowcy

I have some question that Iwan Mamiszew, arriving on the Campanello in 1910 from Lechowiec, Russia is our Grandfather Mamyshoff.  There are two differing factors:  his age on the manifest is 32, and his naturalization papers say he would have been 21 and arrived on the Olympic from Liverpool.

The manifest for the Olympic doesn't show his name, so the key difference is his age. I think there is just one way to ascertain his age, and that would be to determine his town of origin and see if any birth or other records still exist. The women on the Ukrainian chat board have been very helpful, and they have narrowed it down to Lyakhovichi, a small village southwest of Pinsk, province of Brest, in today's Belarus.

The Jewish genealogy site has research on shtetls in eastern Europe, and have some resources on this area.  The first is Lyakhovichi.  The second is an interesting page on the various spellings of the village and the people originating from there.  The names listed are Jewish, and I did see the Silberman family listed, who is the family that was listed on the Oceania manifest right before Anafansi Mamiszew. I am making the assumption that he knew them, since they were in line together, and listed the same origin village. This gives me a little confidence I am on the right track.

The village would have been in the Volhyn province in 1910 and part of the Russian Empire. The Moscow and St. Petersburg areas and East were called Great Russia, the Ukraine was called Little Russia, and the Belarus area was called White Russia.  Grandpa's village would have been in the far northwest Ukraine, right on the border then with White Russia. But all of these were part of the Russian Empire, not individual countries.

My next step is to determine what resources I can find to explore for things like his birth certificate and baptism in the Church. This will be a little more difficult. I will start by contacting the Lyakhovichi research group and use the information on the JewishGen website that talks about church records.

I am reading the history of Ukraine, but am still in the 1600's, so have a ways to go until Grandpa was born.

Kieven Rus'

I have decided to stop on Orlando Figes' book, A People's Tragedy, at around 1910, the time that Grandpa Mamyshoff left the country. I have some sense of the atmosphere then in Russia. Although there were peasant uprising, most of the significant events happened in the two main cities of St. Petersburg and Moscow. There is not as much information for the smaller towns and villages, particularly in the western provinces. Since Grandpa was Ukrainian and most likely from a village in that area, I need more background.

I have switched to Ukraine a History by Orest Subtelny. So far I have covered the Kievan Rus' period, from 880 to about 1350. Lots of princes and battles, swapping of land and conversion from paganism to Christianity. A good, short overview of this time can be found here.

Kyiv was the center of everything: trade, power, culture. The book also covers this period for Galicia, Belorussia and Vohlyn (western part of Ukraine), which is my main place of interest. Particularly Vohlyn. Ukraine didn't really exist as a nation, as generally defined. It was Kievan Rus', then Lithuaian territory, then Polish territory with the Golden Horde taking over from time to time.

I am now at the period where Poland was trying to Polanize everything under its dominion, such as the land system, language and religion. Poland was Roman Catholic, while Kievan Rus' was Greek Orthodox, due to the Great Schism that occured in 1054. The Roman Catholics were ruled by the Pope, while the Orthodox Christians took their orders from Constantinople.

This religious history also explains the Greek Cyrillic alphabet that is used by most Slavic countries.

Since there was really no form of central government in the early days, religion was the center of everyone's universe. Ukraine, as well as Russia, was originally pagan, then adopted the Greek Orthodox religion. The Greek Orthodox religion segued into Russian Orthodox. Both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches were very, very powerful in their territories.

When Lithuania took over the western part of Ukraine, it was Orthodox and shared a lot of similarities, so things went fairly well. However, when Poland got involved with Roman Catholicism, this created a lot of tension. From what I understand, this tension still exists. I will learn more as I continue reading.

By the way, the preferred spelling of Kiev is Kyiv.

Revolution and The Battleship Potemkin

I am up to 1905 in my reading on Russia, the year of the first Revolution. Due to the Famine in 1891-1892, peasants were drawn to the major cities to work in factories. The Revolution was sparked by Bloody Sunday in January, when an estimated 100,000 workers marched peacefully on the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to ask the Tsar for improved working conditions and representative government. The Tsar's army fired at the workers, killing and wounding about 1,000 people.

The unrest soon spread to the countryside and peasants seized and destroyed property. This Revolution caused the Tsar to form the first Duma, or representative government. The Duma ultimately failed around 1912, primarily because the Tsar was unwilling to abdicate his autocracy, believing that he was appointed by God to rule the Russian people as their patriarch.

The unrest also spread to the military. The crew of the battleship Potemkin, in the Black Sea, objected to being fed meat covered with maggots. The ship's doctor said the meat was just fine, and the crew complained to the captain. This resulted in the killing of their spokesman, Vakulenchuk.  The crew mutinied, killed several officers and raised a red flag on the ship.

The Potemkin sailed to Odessa, where the sailors laid the body of Vakulenchuk at the base of a long series of marble steps leading from the city to the harbor, where he was paid tribute by the many workers in Odessa that were on strike. Thousands of people gathered at the site.

The government sent in soldiers, shooting at everyone in their path. An estimated 2,000 people were killed and around 3,000 wounded. The Potemkin left the harbor, and eventually surrendered.(A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes)

The key part of this event was that even some of the military in 1905 was in revolt against the government.

In 1925, the event was immortalized as a propaganda film, the Battleship Potemkin. It is a silent film available as an Instant Play movie on Netflix. You can also read about it here. The scene of the soldiers on the steps to the harbor is chilling. I hope to visit Odessa and see it in person.