| T H E E N D O F A N E R A |
I first saw my husband, Jurii Kirnev, in a dream. From my early girlhood, I often had a recurring vivid nightmare that lingered on the delicate border between fascination and primordial horror. In that haunting dream, I wander through the endless corridors of a dark château, guided by what appears to be a black raven gliding silently before me. Then I slowly descend a grand staircase and find myself in a living room lit by flickering candles and a roaring fireplace. There, upon the floor, lies a small child. I raise my eyes and behold an armchair standing by the same hearth, in which sits a mysterious, powerful man with long dark hair. Although I had never seen them before, in that instant I feel with absolute certainty that this is my child and my husband. The man lifts his piercing gaze to me and utters:
“Do not look at how much darkness there is within us… we are still from the sky.”
Hearing these words, I would always awaken, trembling, left with the eternal question: who is this person and why does he haunt my dreams? Years later, I met this man. It was Jurii Kirnev, my future husband.
Reflecting on this now, I understand that Jurii has always hovered somewhere between reality and the veiled world of dreams. Therefore, it is impossible to write the biography of my beloved without touching upon these two realms at once. Here you will find truth… and fantasy. Each is necessary for the other to exist. At the same time, each must be regarded exactly as what it is. However, one should not forget that even in the wildest fantasy, truth is hidden, for every truth is born from someone’s fantasy. And only those who are capable of seeing will see.
And so the legend begins.
Jurii Kirnev was born into night in the city of Königsberg on 3 February 1989, at 20:05. The temperature was exactly 0 degrees. The moon above the city hung as a very thin crescent, dying three days before the new moon. That day, nothing foreshadowed any strange weather phenomena. However, according to Jurii’s mother’s recollections, in the evening, coinciding with his birth, a mysterious grey fog arose from the depths of the Baltic Sea, only to dissipate just as quickly with his first infant cry.
The child wanted to come into this world as quickly as possible, and thus the birth was fast and painless… which could not be said about the pregnancy itself. The pregnancy was incredibly difficult, and, as all the leading doctors said, such a pregnancy could not be carried to term. Both mother and child would die. All specialists insisted on an abortion. However, Jurii’s mother, Nadezhda Kirnev (née Avetisian), decided otherwise.
For many years she had no children and believed she would remain childless. She became pregnant for the first time at a very late age for a woman — 29 years old. She gave birth to her first son, Evgeny Kirnev, Jurii’s elder blood brother. And when she became pregnant again two years later, she refused under any circumstances to terminate the pregnancy, no matter how physically difficult it was. Thus, mother and child stood together against fate itself and the whole world. And perhaps this is where the first and most fundamental trait of the Kirnev family values manifests: never listen to others’ opinions, always fight for life, and never give up.
As Nadezhda recounted, during the pregnancy she often saw Dark Omens that came in the form of strange nightmares. In these visions, a mysterious shadowy demonic creature would come to her, trying to take Jurii from her arms and telling her that Jurii was already dead. But Nadezhda fought and would not surrender her child. At one point, when this dream returned, the demon decided to speak with Nadezhda. According to her, they managed to reach some kind of agreement regarding Jurii. She does not reveal the exact details of this agreement, but between the lines it was mentioned that Jurii would have a certain mission in his life.
Notably, after that fateful nightmare, the difficulties of the pregnancy began to ease. And soon Jurii was born… not thanks to circumstances, but rather in spite of all odds. The doctors could not even believe that such a thing was possible. And yet the child lived, as did his mother. A 3.650 kg boy with piercing brown eyes, dark hair, and an eerily quiet nature, who almost never cried. Blood type: A2+. As vampires would say, “the most exquisite, cold, thick and noble blood.” Which is hardly surprising, considering the lineage of his mother and his father, Zahar Kirnev.
On his mother’s side, Jurii continues the lineage of the Murawiews and the Glazunovs — the most educated and cultured families of the Russian Empire… and Armenian pirates of no less noble origin from the Safarian family.
At the beginning of the XX century, each of these families was subjected to the harshest and most unjustified repressions: exile, executions, and the loss of all property. Marxist ideology took everything from the family. The surviving members of the House of Safarian were even forced to destroy all documents linking them to their lineage and change their surname to Avetisian.
But this in no way broke the family, as they never relied solely on their name and origin, but always achieved everything through their own labour. Raphael Avetisian, Jurii’s grandfather, being the son of an “enemy of the Soviet people” and having a black mark in his passport, still managed through his intellect and hard work to rise from hungry poverty so high that he became one of the most recognised ship engineer-mechanics in the entire Kaliningrad region. His skill and authority were so legendary that even without being a member of the Party (which in the Soviet Union was already considered unheard-of audacity), he was granted special assignments to Cuba. For his talent in repairing and raising entire ships, Fidel Castro offered Raphael special titles and positions, and later the monarch of Spain offered to restore all his old noble titles, give new ones, and grant him ownership of islands. But to all monarchs and presidents, Raphael honestly replied: “Here I am safe with you, I can smoke cigars, but back in the Soviet Union, I have a son (Jurii’s uncle). If I don’t return to the port on time, my son will have big problems.” And so he always refused such high honours.
He knew that the Soviet regime would not allow him to stand out and would hammer him back down like any nail that sticks out. This was not a test of his loyalty — on the contrary… every time he returned home, he was strictly reprimanded for even allowing such conversations to happen. Intelligence reported everything. But the skill and authority of this man remained so great that it was more expensive to scold him.
This story reveals another important trait of the Kirnev-Avetisian family. Its members cannot be bought or sold. They value the lives of their relatives more than any foreign gold, status, or titles. Money, titles, entire states with their mad regimes come and go, but the bloodline of the family continues to flow.
On his father’s side, Jurii possessed an equally noble heritage, their history carefully documented and their traditions passed down from generation to generation into the modern era. Through his maternal line, Zahar Kirnev continued the noble House of Zacharia, which played key roles in the history of Albania and the Venetian Republic, as well as the aristocratic House of Raycu, direct descendants of Basarab I. While Zahar’s father descended from successful gold merchants and alchemists of the House of Tukan, and, naturally, from the ancient Thracian Kirnev clan, whose relatives had long been honoured members of the cult of Dionysus, preserving their rituals through the centuries.
Unfortunately, Marxist brutality reached this branch of the family as well. When the red plague spread across Albania and Moldova, the socialists stripped the Kirnevs of all their ancestral lands and gold, reducing them from once-respected lords to the lowest workers on the outskirts of the Soviet Empire.
The socialist period became the darkest chapter in the history of Jurii Kirnev’s ancestors. After their historical greatness, the XX century marked an era of decadence and decline for the family. But as was said before, this family could not be broken. Despite severe financial hardship and repression solely because of their origin, they continued to preserve their nobility, their education, and their history.
And Jurii’s father, Zahar Kirnev, walked a path very similar to that of Raphael Avetisian. Through diligence and intellect, as an educated and cultured man, Zahar crossed the vast territory of the Soviet Union and earned such authority that, despite not being a Party member and despite carrying the black mark of belonging to a “national minority” in his passport, he still proved his superiority, gained admission to a prestigious institute in Moscow, and eventually received an assignment abroad, to Hungary, during the most difficult period of the Iron Curtain.
I think that after everything said above, there is no point in talking about this family’s attitude toward any Marxist manifestations. Marxism is a disrespect for traditions, as sung in their anthem: “We will destroy the whole world of violence to the ground, and then…” But there is no “then” when the foundation is destroyed… and the foundation is tradition. That is why political regimes never managed to bring down the members of the Kirnev clan. They always rise again like a phoenix and fly higher.
The union between Zahar and his wife Nadezhda marked the end of the old era and the beginning of a new one — the one that would restore the lost grandeur of their families.
It must be said that Nadezhda was also a woman who fully lived up to the reputation of her father, Raphael. She was a successful track and field athlete and unofficially the most beautiful woman in the entire Baltic region. At all the championships, she stood in the centre as the face of Soviet sports. And this, too, is connected with many amusing stories, because the country held her up as an example of an ideal citizen… even though she was not a Pioneer, not a Komsomol member, nor did she hold any of the other titles that people eagerly signed up for. The family had always been educated enough not to harbour any fanaticism or blind respect for any political system. They knew the history well and perfectly understood the true nature of these ideologies.
Already by the mid-1980s, the Kirnevs knew that the Soviet Empire would not last long and that it would most likely be replaced by an even harsher and more insane form of despotism — so characteristic of those lands. Fortunately, it was thanks to that trip to Hungary that the family finally gained a chance to leave the country of Marxist madness.
Hungary turned out to be the ideal place to begin a new life. Although it was still part of the socialist camp, this nation was the first to openly rise up against the Soviet system. This meant that Hungary was not a country of slaves, unlike the nations of the Soviet Union, and therefore it would soon be cured of the red plague. The national heroes of Hungarian history were not kings or despots, but poets such as Sándor Petőfi, who called for freedom of speech, the absence of political prisoners, and equality of all before the law. As the Kirnevs say: “Show me which idol you worship, and I will tell you who you are.” And that is why Hungary was the perfect land to begin a new chapter in the family history. They only needed to make the decision.
The main catalyst and the final push for this radical change came in the most unexpected and unpleasant form.
The birth of Jurii was a huge celebration for the family. However, it was immediately overshadowed by the fact that he was born with serious health problems. It was clear from birth that this child was different. His body and development did not resemble the norm, so Jurii immediately ended up in the hospital for endless examinations.
It was precisely because of his health that all doubts about moving disappeared. The family needed to emigrate urgently to a free country, because if they had stayed in the USSR, Jurii as a child officially registered as disabled would have had no prospects for education or even a normal human life. In that country, all disabled people were sent to Valaam or somewhere even farther away, since according to their ideology of “eugenics” and “politically correct people,” the undesirable had to be eliminated. Jurii immediately fell under this unwritten but actively enforced rule, and the only fate that awaited him there was to be a lab rat in some hospital. Notably, the collapse of the Soviet Union changed nothing in Russia’s attitude toward disabled people.
In fact, by calling this child Jurii, I am making a factual error… a kind of anachronism, because for a long time he had no name. He had a surname, yes, but no first name for several months. Every time, doctors in the medical records assigned him completely different names that the nurses gave him just so the boy could be called something. And every time his mother was unhappy with these borrowed names, but she herself did not know what to name her child.
None of the names suited him, and in the end, the name “Jurii” was chosen by himself. A funny story is connected with this. Nadezhda was sitting with the infant in her arms, reading him a book of names (a “book of dead names,” as Jurii likes to joke — a Necronomicon, since all the names there were dead to him). His mother pronounced the names in alphabetical order and watched to see how well each one suited her baby, but every time the boy remained completely indifferent. But in the next room, his grandfather Raphael was watching television, where they were showing the programme “Club of Film Travellers” hosted by Jurii Senkevich. The family knew this gentleman — a respected scientist, physician, and incredibly educated man. Hearing his voice on TV, Nadezhda asked the child: “What if you are Jurii?” And it turned out to be the only name to which he reacted. At that very second, the child let out a loud sneeze, acknowledging himself as Jurii.
And so, at eight months old, the boy with a new name set off for Budapest, to bring the New Era.
