Avenarius, Nikolai Aleksandrovich

Born in the town of Mologa, Yaroslavl Province, on March 9 ( 21 ), 1897 . His father Alexander Nikolaevich Avenarius (nephew of the writer V. P. Avenarius ) came from an old German family: the son of the historian-archaeologist N. P. Avenarius (1834-1903); graduated from the Warsaw Military School, soon left military service; He worked on the railroad, served in the insurance company "Russia", then - from his uncle V.K. Ferrein ; In 1896, he founded his own factory in Mologa, which in a few years was sold to the “V. Ferrein Partnership”. In 1913, A. N. Avenarius, having received part of the shares and the position of manager (administrative and commercial director) at a factory in Moscow, with his family in August 1913 left Mologa.

Nikolay Avenarius studied at the Rybinsk gymnasium since 1905, and after the family moved to Moscow, from 1913 - at the 10th Moscow gymnasium on Yakimanka . In 1915 he entered the Imperial Moscow Technical School . At the beginning of 1916, he graduated from the courses of mechanic drivers at the school and in April was sent to a car detachment at the demining battalion on the Western Front, where he served for six months as a truck driver and a signalman motorcyclist.

In the days of the October uprising in Moscow, he resisted the Bolsheviks together with other armed students. In August 1918, Avenarius’s father was dismissed from his position as factory manager, the family was forced to move to Uncle Vasily Petrovich’s apartment at Nova Basmanna, but this apartment was soon requisitioned. Under the guise of a former German prisoner of war, Avenarius managed to make his way to Ukraine , and from there to Bessarabia , to the city of Soroki , where he worked as his uncle Nikolai Nikolayevich as a doctor. The family (father, mother and daughter Olya) also moved to Kiev , and from there to Soroki, to the territory of independent Romania . In December, Avenarius fell ill with typhus and spent two weeks delirious. At this time, his father died of a heart attack. Having recovered from typhus, Avenarius worked as a tutor, a sawyer of firewood, and a guard in the garden. In August 1919, he crossed the Romanian border on the Dniester River , got to Odessa by train, from there he moved to Sevastopol , where he worked in the workshop for the repair of automotive armored cars . In the winter of 1920, he entered the 133rd Simferopol Infantry Regiment of the Volunteer Army , took part in defensive battles on the Perekop isthmus , suffered a bout of typhus and was taken to hospital in Simferopol . Coming out of the hospital, Avenarius joined the Eighth Battery of the First Artillery Brigade of the Kornilov Division , participated in the offensive of the White Army, reaching Nikopol . After the Bolsheviks concluded an armistice with Poland , the Red Army transferred large forces to the south and launched an offensive, the Kornilov division fought back to the Crimea . In November 1920, Avenarius was evacuated from Sevastopol on the Saratov cruise ship to Constantinople .

In Turkey, he was first kept in a refugee camp, then he lived in Constantinople in a night shelter, working as a street vendor. In the summer of 1921, he moved to Romania, where he was arrested by the Siguranza on charges of communist propaganda and released only through the efforts of her mother and the personal intervention of the Romanian Queen Maria . He lived in Bessarabia, worked as a technician at the plant and power plants. At the end of November 1923, he moved to Prague , entered the Russian Higher School of Railway Communication Technicians, and then the land faculty of the Czech Technical University . He worked as an intern at the construction of the railway. In March 1926 he passed the final exams and received two diplomas. In search of work, he moved to Bratislava , worked as a surveyor in the reconstruction of Dudvale drainage facilities. In February 1927 he moved to Liptovsky Mikulas , where he worked in the office of the Ministry of Finance. In 1929 he moved to Martin , where he soon left the public service and opened a private technical company. In the same year he took the citizenship of the Czechoslovak Republic (previously he lived on a Nansen passport ). In the spring of 1936, he met Moravka Yaroslav-Katerina (Yara) Mnyachko, they got married on June 26, on May 15, 1942, their son Sasha was born.

After the partition of Czechoslovakia under the Munich Agreement in 1939, a puppet Slovak Republic was formed under the control of the Nazis. During the Second World War, Avenarius was associated with the Resistance Movement , hid prisoners of war and Soviet paratroopers who had escaped from concentration camps, and helped them move to the partisans or to the front line. In 1944 he was arrested by the Slovak gendarmes and put in prison in the city of Ilawa , but was soon released, having got off with a fine. After the Slovak uprising in December 1944, the Gestapo was arrested, but released for a bribe of 20 thousand crowns .

After the war in Czechoslovakia in 1948, the Communist Party came to power, and all private firms were liquidated. The office of Avenarius was transferred to the State Enterprise “Stavproekt”, a newly purchased apartment was confiscated for employees of a military factory, and the family was evicted from the village. Avenarius worked as a mine surveyor in ore mines in the Turchan Greenhouses , then in Pezinok, near Bratislava. In October 1954, the Avenariuses moved to Bratislava, where they lived in an apartment with friends, and from 1965 they acquired their own apartment. Avenarius joined the Geodesy and Cartography firm in Bratislava, where he lived until his death in 1983.

In 1978–1983, Nikolai Avenarius wrote memoirs published in 2012 under the title “The Siliceous Path” with the participation of G. A. Vompe.

• Avenarius N. A. The siliceous path. - M .: Magic Lantern, 2012. - ISBN 978-5-903505-70-8 .

• Leonid Voronin. In a draft of history. About the memoirs of an intellectual and the preservation of Russia // NG-Exlibris. - 09/19/2013