Facing Revolution

This is how my paternal Grandmother, Tatjana, looked around the time she attended the St. Petersburg university. She was the first woman to graduate from the institution with a degree in Chemical Engineering:

Tambov, Russia, 1916. My Grandmother, Tatjana, poses for a passport photograph.

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This is how Tatjana looked three years later, after she watched the Russian Revolution unfold, witnessed the execution of her father, searched for his remains, feared deportation to Siberia, and fled to Lithuania:

Russia, 1919. Tatjana wears the locket in which she kept the portraits of her Grandparents.