Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov
(1870 - 1922)

Evsei Lazarevich Slonim
(1865 - 1928)

Elena Ivanovna Rukavishnikov
(1876 - 1939)

Slava Borisovna Feigin
(1872 - 1928)

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

Véra Evseevna Slonim

bd. 22 Apr 1899, St.Petersburg
dd. 2 Jul 1977, Vevey (Vaud), buried at the cemetery in Clarens/Montreux

Writer, professor, entomologist

Nabokov objected to his family being called "Russian aristocrats". They were not, at least not in the literal sense. Neither the Nabokovs nor his mother's forebears the Rukavishnikovs ever belonged to the titled nobility. His paternal grandmother Maria Korff had been born as a Russian and German baroness – that was the closest his immediate family had come to nobility. In his memoirs Speak, Memory (p.58) Nabokov recounts that Tsar Alexander III had offered his paternal grandfather Dmitri Nikolaevich, Minister of Justice under two Tsars,  the choice "between the title of count and a sum of money, presumably large... but contrary to the thrifty Tsar's hopes my grandfather (as also his uncle Ivan, who had been offered a similar choice by Nicholas I), plumped for the more solid reward." Nor was Nabokov's father a landowner. The domain of Vyra had been brought by his mother into her marriage. The neighboring Rozhdestveno also belonged to the Rukavishnikovs. The other adjoining estate, Batovo, was the inherited property of his paternal grandmother until she sold it in 1913.

  »#1 Forebears

Main places of residence:

up to 15 Nov 1917: St.Petersburg and Vyra

1917-1919: Crimea (Gaspra and Livadia near Yalta)

15 Apr 1919: from Yalta to Piraeus on 'Nadezhda'

from 1 Oct 1919: Trinity College, Cambridge

from 21 Jun 1922 to 18 Jan 1937: Berlin (Wilmersdorf, Schöneberg, Halensee)

from Oct 1938 to May 1940: Paris

c.19 to 28 May 1940: on 'Champlain' from Le Havre to New York

from 1 Sep 1942: Cambridge, Massachusetts

from summer 1945: Wellesley, Massachusetts

from 1 Jul 1948: Ithaca and Cayuga Heights, New York

29 Sep to 5 Oct 1959: on 'Liberté' from New York to Le Havre

from 10 Mar to 12 Oct 1960: Los Angeles, California

2 Nov 1960: on 'Queen Elizabeth' from New York to Cherbourg

from 1960 to 1961: Nice

from Oct 1961 to his death: Hotel Palace, Montreux (Vaud), Switzerland

For further details, click here

bd. 5 Jan 1902, St.Petersburg
dd. 7 Apr 1991, Vevey (Vaud), buried at the cemetery in Clarens/Montreux

From October 1960 to spring 1990, she lived at the Hotel Palace, Montreux (Vaud), Switzerland. When  she had to leave the suite because the hotel was refurbished in 1990, Dmitri bought an apartment on the slopes above the hotel, in the "Résidence Rossillon", Chemin de la Caudraz 19, where she and he spent the rest of their lives.

SM 129, 195, 292, 295-310

Dmitri Vladimirovich Nabokov

(1934-2012)