His appearance emphasized that he was "not from here": a bald head (at the end of the fifties of the last century it was unthinkable to be a Hollywood actor without luxuriant hair), pointed elf ears, a piercing oriental look of a hypnotist, a regal demeanor, a deep, what Americans would say, voice worth $15.000 and a bright stamp of Asian mysticism. In his creative imagination, he did not separate the mystery of the stage and the screen (onstage) from mystifying one's own biography (offstage).
Jul Briner, born 105 years ago in Vladivostok, was Russian, Swiss, Buryat, Mongolian, Gypsy, French, American; singer, actor, photographer, circus trapeze acrobat, Siamese king Mongkut on Broadway, replica of the samurai in the Wild West, Ramses, the cruel pharaoh of Egypt, Taras Bulba, Dmitry from Evil spirits.
He told some journalists, including women, that his real name is Taiji Khan, that he is a descendant of Mongols, whose origins go back to Genghis Khan, or the son of Mongols from Sakhalin Island; he told the police in Manchuria that he was the nephew of the Russian emperor who lived in the Winter Palace before the revolution; in Paris he said that he was a gypsy by origin. Even as a boy he was a very elegant liar and looked so strange that they believed him or just smiled suspiciously.
photo: from the book "What I Remember" by Irina BrinerFROM THE FAMILY ALBUM: Grandpa Julius,…
Yul Brynner was born in the middle of the civil war in the Russian Far East, on July 11, 1920, in a room on the third floor of Aleutskaya Street that had been built ten years earlier by his enterprising grandfather Julius-Josef (Jules/Yulij Ivanovich, 1849–1920), after whom he was named.
According to family tradition, in which there must be exaggeration, that Swiss, Julius from the village of Möriken-Wildegg, in the canton of Aargau, in Switzerland, at the age of 14 went to the East. He allegedly scrubbed the deck of a pirate ship and after a few years he reached Japan. There he worked as a courier in the office of an English entrepreneur, who provided him with an education and eventually made him his partner in Yokohama.
When he went to Vladivostok in 1873 to open a branch of the company, Julius left his wife and children in Yokohama. He married Natalia Yosifovna Kurkutova in Vladivostok. The ancestors of the Kurkuts come from the Mongolian Hurkhut tribe, after which Natalia's great-grandfather got his surname, and he got the name Gerasim when he converted to Orthodoxy. Based on this, his grandson will weave a story of his descent from the Mongol nobility - specifically from the line of Genghis Khan - which remains in the realm of family legend.
For about half a century, Julius Brynner was engaged in logging, fishing industry, developed shipping business in Vladivostok, mined coal in the Mongugay mines on the coast of the Amur Bay and silver, lead and zinc in the valley of the Tetyukha River.
photo: from the book "What I Remember" by Irina Briner...Brinner's house in Vladivostok...
When the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway began in 1891, winds of great change blew in Vladivostok. Then the biggest merchants there - Kuznetsov, Startsev, Yankovsky and Pyankov, with Brynner at the head, united in a commercial and industrial company that owned absolutely everything related to the economy in that territory - gold, silver, lead, zinc and coal mines, the first industrial oil on Sakhalin, timber, shipping, trade, construction... Theirs were the first European houses in Vladivostok, they built the first ports and roads.
Julius sent the sons of Boris and Felix to study in St. Petersburg, in order to prepare them to take over the business. They lived with Dmitry Blagovidov's family. He and his wife Anna Timofeevna had two daughters - Maria, who entered the Conservatory, and Vera, who chose the profession of psychiatrist, which was very rare for women at that time.
Boris fell in love with Maria, called Marusya, the daughter of Dmitry Evgrafovich, a doctor and collegiate adviser, with whom they lived. Boris knew his mother well and understood that she, the wife of a great industrialist and philanthropist, would not approve of his marriage to the daughter of a doctor, who was Jewish on her mother's side. That's why he didn't even ask for a marriage license, but simply put the family in front of the fait accompli.
After the wedding, Boris and Marusya went to Finland for a while, where their first child was born - daughter Vera (named after her mother's sister, who, by the way, was married to Boris' brother Felix).
Revolutionary events in Russia in 1917 forced them to return to Vladivostok. They settled separately from their parents, in the neighborhood.
Boris Yuljevic immediately got involved in the business life of Vladivostok. He was elected the first president of the Union of Engineers and became the chief assistant to his father in a mining company in the valley of the Tetyuha River.
photo: from the book "What I Remember" by Irina Briner…and baby Jul with her family
However, in 1917 the revolutionary authorities tried to nationalize those lead mines, and when Julius Brynner refused to hand them over, he was removed from the business. Old industrialist, honorary citizen of Vladivostok Yuliy Brynner could not survive that shock. He died on March 10, 1920, before his grandson was born on June 11, who would bear his name, the second child of his son Boris Yulievich Briner and daughter-in-law Maria Blagovidova.
MARIONET FAR EASTERN REPUBLIC
Engineer Boris Yulievich Brynner, who learned to find a common language with everyone, took over the job after his father's death, but now as a foreign concessionaire for the exploitation of lead-silver ore in the valley of the Tetyukha River. The Bolsheviks simply did not have the strength to completely "sovietize" the Far East. And in order to gain time, they created a puppet Far Eastern Republic, with Chita as its capital.
From April 1920 to November 1922, there was formally a multi-party system and a coalition government there, but in fact all fundamental decisions were made by the communists. Officially, it was supposed to be a buffer zone between Bolshevik Russia and the Japanese forces still present in Manchuria and Priamur.
During the 1920s, Boris Brynner came into contact with the British magnate Kalusta Gulbenkian, apparently with the consent of the DFR authorities.
In the same 1920, he became the chairman of the Committee of the Vladivostok Stock Exchange and the manager of trade and industrial affairs. As Yul Brynner's son, Rock Brynner, writes in the book Empire and Odyssey. Briners in the Russian Far East and beyond (Empire and Odyssey...), the concession was formally renewed and expanded in 1924 after the entry of that region into the RSFSR.
After the Red Army conquered Vladivostok on October 25, 1922, the Soviets were faced with a serious question: what to do with the enterprises in the Tetyukha Valley, which, as Yevgeny Zhirnov writes in the article "The End of the Dalsnigorsk Concession", produced 5.600 tons of metallic lead, 6.400 tons of zinc, more than 11 tons of silver per year and considerable amounts of sulfuric acid.
Many families of merchants and industrialists left Russia, but some remained. Briners were among them. The new government needed competent experts in the field of industry, and Boris Yuljevic Brynner was just such a person, so he was partially restored to management rights in enterprises in the Tetyukha Valley.
Until then, Swiss citizenship made it easier for the Briners to travel abroad, and it still partially protected the family from persecution by the new authorities. However, the new government no longer recognized dual citizenship. Boris Brynner was called "where necessary" and it was clearly explained to him what he had to do... Thus, as it is written in the aforementioned book by Rock Brynner, the members of the Brynner family became Soviet subjects.
Private owners - who after the publication of the so-called New economic policies were allowed to deal with entrepreneurship - the scope and autonomy of business were strictly limited.
Boris Brynner found a solution that suited both parties. The mines in the Tetjuha Valley were leased to an English company for 36 years, and he continued to manage the mines and plants as a director. That pragmatic solution was approved by the Iron Chekist Felix Dzerzhinsky when he became the commissar of national economy.
"RED OLIGARH" AND ACTRESS MHAT A
At that time, an important change in the life of Boris Yulevich took place: while he was on a business trip in 1924 in Moscow, he fell in love with the actress of the Moscow Art Theater Yekaterina Kornakova. He divorced his wife Maria Dmitrievna without asking for her consent.
For Marusia, it was a terrible blow from which she never recovered. After receiving a letter in which Boris asked for understanding and forgiveness, she fell into depression and for a while could not even take care of her children.
At first, Felix Brynner, Boris's younger brother and the husband of Maria's younger sister, took care of her and the children. But then she pulled herself together and decided to go with her children, first for a few years to Harbin, Manchuria.
By 1930, it became clear that the concession contract could soon be terminated. Boris rushed to Moscow to settle the claims, but financial inspectors seized two houses owned by Brynner in Vladivostok to pay off the company's existing debt. The concessionaire lost his apartment, office and documents kept there.
In the end, Boris Brynner had to sign a capitulation - an agreement on the termination of the concession and the transfer of all its facilities to the state, albeit with a fairly decent compensation for that time - more than 40 million rubles, in fact, in installments over 17 years. Outside the contract, there was an agreement that the entrepreneur and his relatives would be allowed to leave the USSR freely. The work of the Briners in Russia was completely and finally finished.
"LITTLE RUSSIA" IN HARBIN
In May 1931, Felix Brynner's family left Vladivostok, arrived in a small boat early in the morning to Ruskiy Island and, under the veil of fog, boarded the British steamer "Glenifer", whose captain, Baker, Felix Yuljevic had agreed on this in advance. All the property of the Briners in Vladivostok was seized.
After learning that his brother and family had arrived safely in China, Boris decided to do the same. In order not to arouse suspicion, he announced that he and his second wife, Ekaterina Kornakova, were returning from Moscow to Vladivostok. But in Irkutsk they secretly transferred to a train that took them to Harbin in Manchuria.
The anxiety of Yul Brynner's mother, Maria, was aggravated by the fact that Boris Brynner and his second wife came to Harbin for permanent residence. When they came to see the children, it was a tragedy for her. She raised her two children alone and enrolled them in the best school of the time, which Jul, by the way, never finished.
In Harbin, Julius developed a talent for music. He owed that, above all, to his sister Vera, who mastered the basics of musical mastery at the lyceum. On the same course together with Vera, he read sheet music, mastered solfeggio and learned simple arias. When Julij turned 10, his father gave him a guitar for his birthday.
"Little Russia in Exile" in Harbin at that time numbered tens of thousands of people and had schools, churches, lyceums, and monasteries, Russian newspapers and publishing houses, cafeterias, bookstores and libraries modeled after those of pre-revolutionary Russia and theaters where opera troupes, ballet schools and concert societies of the Orthodox Church performed. Russian was the dominant language in many parts of the city.
After the October Revolution and the Civil War, Harbin became a refuge for the White Guards, Tsarists, Cossacks and other opponents of the Bolshevik regime. However, from the end of the 1930s, the position of the Russians in Harbin deteriorated. In 1935, Japan purchased the rights to the Sino-Eastern Railway from the USSR, which weakened Soviet influence and further exposed the Russians to Japanese control. The Japanese authorities repressed dubious elements, especially USSR sympathizers and communists, but also former tsarists who were considered undesirable. Many Russians were spied on, deported or blackmailed into joining pro-Nazi or pro-Japanese organizations such as the Russian Fascist Party, which the Japanese tolerated and used.
In 1932, the Japanese Kwantung Army occupied Manchuria, after the staged "Mukden incident", the planting of a small amount of explosives on the railway in Mukden. The Manchukuo was nominally headed by Emperor Pu Yi, the last Chinese emperor of the Qing dynasty, but he had a symbolic role - the real power rested with Japanese military and intelligence officials.
Panic reigned among the residents of Harbin. The Russian population of Harbin experienced many restless nights fearing military pogroms. People were also afraid that the defeated Chinese would loot or attack the white population. Some armed themselves for self-defense and covered the windows with sandbags.
In her memoirs, Irina Briner describes the atmosphere of fear and insecurity: "Night fell, no one slept, everyone watched and waited. And then they appeared. On wooden carts, pulled by small horses or mules, sat Chinese soldiers in their dirty jackets, scared and miserable. No one was looting anything; they just wanted to quickly throw off their military uniforms and hide from the Japanese. We felt sorry for them."
YOU WILL BECOME KING...
photo: promo...
Maria Dmitrievna was very worried about her children. In the fall of 1933, she decided to go with them to Paris, under the pretext that her daughter should continue her musical education.
Jul, who did not speak French, was sent to an intensive language school outside Paris. He didn't stay long - he was troublesome, broke discipline, smoked, fought with those who mocked him, but the teachers recognized his intelligence and talent.
A decisive change occurred when Sister Vera met the Roma musical family Dmitrijevic in the Hermitage restaurant, where she sang several songs with them. The Dmitrievichs were a large, friendly, creative family: there was father Ivan Dmitrievich, two daughters and four sons, the youngest of whom, Alyosha, was enchanted by Vera and invited her to come again. And she came, along with her brother. When they heard that their brother played the guitar, they invited him to perform on June 15, 1935, accompanied by thirty guitars. They parted amicably - each went his own way (by the way, in 1967, already as a well-known actor, Yul recorded a joint album with Alyosha Gypsies and I).
Yul was not yet 15 years old at the time, but he was handsome, he looked older than his age, and he gained admirers - the first of whom was the sister of Alyosha Dmitrievich Marusya, who once, carefully looking at the lines of his palm, predicted his fate: "You will become king!"
(Continued in the next issue)
