A. Brusilov's Wife Portrait: N. Brusilova at Her Motherland and in Emigration

• Main Author: Rodionova Nadezhda
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: St. Tikhon's Orthodox University 2016-02-01
• Series: Vestnik Pravoslavnogo Svâto-Tihonovskogo Gumanitarnogo Universiteta: Seriâ II. Istoriâ, Istoriâ Russkoj Pravoslavnoj Cerkvi
• Subjects: General Brusilov; Nadezhda Zhelihovskaya-Brusilov; post-revolutionary emigration
• Online Access: http://periodical.pstgu.ru/en/pdf/article/3184

The author reveals the life and personality of an outstanding fignhting commander of World War I, Aleksei Brusilov’s wife. Her role in his life was shadowed during the Soviet period because of her anti-soviet position mostly due to her orthodox religious views. The paper is based on the unpublished correspondence between Nadezhda Brusilov) and her husband in 1914–1917 when A. A. Brusilov was at the front, and his wife was engaged in charity work in the rear, as well as her diary written during the years she lived in Czechoslovakia as an emigrant (5972 GARF F. A. A. and N. V. Brusilov). The letters show a great emotional unity of the couple although the relationship between them has not always been smooth. N. V. Brusilov had a strong character, tried to infl uence her husband, give recommendations how to conduct military operations, to avoid casualties, but she managed to brighten up the loneliness of the commander in the last period of his life, taking care of him, preserved and published his memoirs. Brusilov believed their marriage happy. After Aleksei Brusilov’s death in 1926, Nadezhda Brusilov went to Czechoslovakia (1930) under the guise of treatment and did not returned to Russia. She was marginalized in the emigrants’ milieu because of Alexei Brusilov’s position during the Soviet — Polish War in 1920 when he joined the Red Army. The position of her husband she unequivocally justified patriotic motives. She fixed her nostalgic feelings for the lost homeland and her loneliness in a foreign land in her diary. It was not intended to be published as N. V. Brusilov feared damage to people stay in Russia. Her diary is an important source on her life abroad as an emigrant, her thoughts about her lost homeland, her views on Orthodox Church, both in Russia and abroad.