Name of the project
Year 2006. A documentary about Empress Maria Feodorovna was filmed in cooperation with “The First Channel” of the Russian television. The film was entitled “The 13 moments of destiny”.
Purpose of the project
In 2006 both – big Russia and small Denmark prepared for an important date – reburial of Empress Maria Feodorovna.
The Peter and Paul Cathedral was preparing the burial place, the marble sarcophagus, the Orthodox Church was preparing for services for the dead in Saint Petersburg churches and in the suburb churches, the administration of St. Petersburg was making the city ready to receive numerous guests, Denmark and Roskilde were preparing to receive many visitors as well. Denmark was about to say Princess Dagmar the final farewell. Getting ready to accompany Dagmar to Russia where she would be met as Empress Maria Feodorovna. At that time books, booklets, postcards, movies and documentaries were getting ready in big numbers. Thus, we met a filming team led by an intelligent woman Olga Barkovets, who wanted to make an unusual documentary about the Empress Maria Feodorovna. The intention was to show Her motherland. We helped telling the story about the Russian cemetery on the territory of Danish cemetery Assistens.
We used our archive with pictures, plans, documents to make the story easier for perception.
Result
The Russian viewers could see an interesting movie about the unusual destiny of Empress Maria Feodorovna and for the first time learned the story about Russian cemetery in Copenhagen, about glorious sons and daughters of the Imperial Russia. Cooperation with “The First Channel” gave us great joy while working on “The 13 moments of destiny “. From 2002 onwards we started searching for relatives, children, grandchildren, grand-grandchildren of those who are buried at the cemetery in Denmark. We found some families, although we could not find any information about relatives of The Empress Maria Feodorovna’s second cossack, Don-cossack Kirill Ivanovich Polyakov (1934).
On the day of the premiere, the granddaughter of Kirill Ivanovich responded from Stavropol – she was able to find contact with us and we met, shared our materials, and Poliakov family told us about the cossack, shared with us family album of Kirill Ivanovich.
We used the photos in the second issue of Timofei Jaschik book “Ryadom s Imperatritsei” (Next to the Empress) and also for the small photo exhibition “The court of the Empress Maria Feodorovna in Denmark after the revolution.”
