Prince Sergei Golitsyn did not use his title, did not live in the family estate, because all his adult life he tried to hide his origin. He was a simple topographer, and he also wrote wonderful books: children's, fiction, and popular science.
Biography
Sergey Mikhailovich Golitsyn was born in 1909 in the Tula province. Their family lived in the Buchalki family estate, which had belonged to the Golitsyn family since time immemorial. His mother was also from a noble family, her name was Anna Sergeevna Lopukhina.
In the twenties and thirties of the last century, many Golitsyns were arrested, imprisoned in camps and died there. Sergei himself, as a child, realized that you cannot talk about your title, and that all this is in the past.
Moreover, he had no right to receive a good education and a decent job, because he was a descendant of the prince. From childhood, he dreamed of becoming a writer, and he managed to enroll in literary courses in Moscow. But he did not finish them - he was arrested when he was only seventeen years old. True, after holding him for ten days, they released him, because there was no reason for arrest. However, a close family friend advised Sergei to leave the capital in order to stay away from law enforcement agencies.
Golitsyn did just that - he went to the construction site of the Moscow-Volga canal. He worked as a surveyor-surveyor, that is, he explored the possibilities of building bridges and other structures. And in his free time, he wrote stories, notes, and then books.
The first book "I want to be a surveyor" was published in 1936. Then it was reprinted several times, the book was translated into several foreign languages - it is so fascinating. In it, Golitsyn included drawings, drawings, a description of devices, conventional signs - everything that a novice topographer needs. The book is still in demand today.
When the war began, the Golitsyns lived in the Vladimir region. Sergei Mikhailovich was mobilized immediately after the outbreak of hostilities, but he ended up not at the front, but in the construction troops. He later recalled that he had not killed a single German and was not wounded himself, because he was building and restoring destroyed bridges and roads. The family believed that his mother's prayers helped him survive - she prayed to the Lord for her son day and night.
As a true writer, Sergei Golitsyn described all the military hardships in the book "Notes of a bestemnya". This is a very frank book, almost documentary. And the author really was without shoulder straps - he was not entitled to any title because of his noble origin.
After the war, Golitsyn was not allowed to go home for a long time - it was necessary to restore roads in Warsaw, and later in Gomel. He came home only at the end of 1946. After the war, there were long business trips for topographic research in front of various construction sites: he visited the Transcaucasus, the Volga region and Central Asia. Some business trips lasted up to a year.
And all the time Sergei Mikhailovich wrote books and somehow managed to publish them. Among the books that are still read, such works of the writer: "The terrible Crocosaurus and his children", "The town of tomboy", "Behind the birch books", "Forty prospectors", "Notes of old Radul", "Pages of the history of our Motherland", "Notes of the Survivor".
The last book is called the most important work of Golitsyn, because it describes his whole life, the life of the family and the history of the country in the interval between his birth and death. The writer did not quite finish this work - he died while making the last edits. It happened in November 1989.
The book "Notes of the Survivor" was published after his death and withstood several reprints.
Hiking and travel
From a young age Golitsyn loved to go hiking and travel to unfamiliar places. At the age of nineteen, he went to the Northern Lakes: together with his comrades, they visited Vologda, Kirillov, Belozersk, Arkhangelsk. In the "Notes of the Survivor" the writer described in detail and vividly this journey with rains, overnight stays, mosquitoes and all sorts of adventures. They traveled by trains, steamers, walked where no transport went.
In 1930, friends even went to look for the city of Kitezh in the Vladimir forests on Lake Svetloyar.
And when Golitsyn retired, he took up children's tourism: he took children around the Vladimir region. Sometimes he worked in children's recreation camps if there were not enough staff.
At this time, Sergei Mikhailovich was collecting material for his books, and he himself taught children to know and understand the history of their country. We can say that all his work is permeated with love for his homeland.
Personal life
Golitsyn did not want to marry at all. In his youth, he had love, but he did not dare to propose to the one he liked. The reason was simple: he thought that at any moment the offspring of the princely family could be arrested, shot, and his family would suffer along with him.
And in the exploration party, the girl Klavdia drew attention to him. She herself invited him to marry and said that she was not afraid of anything. Parents set a condition for the young: to meet for several months, get to know a friend of a friend, and only then will they give permission for a wedding. In the end, the wedding took place, the wedding also took place - everything was done according to secular and religious canons.
The young family settled in Moscow, they constantly had one of their relatives: they either lived temporarily, or came to spend the night, although they lived in a communal apartment in a seventeen-meter room. Sergei was on business trips all the time, and when his first son was born, he was brought up practically by Claudia alone. Then two more sons were born one after another, the family grew, but all the same, the relatives often met, were friends and supported each other. The descendants of the Golitsyns still retain family ties.
Sergei and Klavdia Golitsyn lived together until the death of their wife in 1980.
In 1984, at the age of seventy-five, Golitsyn married Tamara Vasilievna Grigorieva, who accompanied him on his last journey.
In the city of Kovrov, a street was named after Sergei Golitsyn, and his name was also given to a children's library.
