The Road to Exile
Journal: Oxford University Press eBooks
Year: 2015

Abstract This chapter follows the Nabokov family to Crimea, where it took refuge in 1917 before the Bolshevist takeover. There Nabokov, while getting to know his cousins Vladimir and Sergei, was instructed by the quirky composer Vladimir Rebikov. Forced by the civil war into exile, the family left Russia in the spring of 1919, settling first in Athens. Nicolas then spent a few months in The Hague, where an encounter with a German diplomat named Alexandre Grunelius changed the course of his life.