Amazing images of Imperial Russia's richest and most beautiful heiress, Zinaida Yusupov, and the hospital train she sent to the front in WWI to save horribly wounded troops.
Her story is fascinating,
Russian hospital trains are an amazing story- During W.W. I, many of the Russian aristocrats financed the creation and operation of hospital trains. Trains that were mobile ERS and surgeries- Neatly equipped with many beds and hospital supplies- great metal boilers for sterilizing materials and linens. Staffed by nurses and doctors who traveled to the front or wherever Russian soldiers lay gravely wounded.
The trains served their urgent needs and transported them to the major hospitals in Moscow and St.Petersburg. The train featured is named after the beautiful Princess Zinaida Yusupova, and numbered #14. Her father, Prince Nicholas Yusupov had purchased and outfitted the hospital train for the Turkish- Russian War - when war struck again in 1914, his daughter dedicated the train to saving the wounded of WW I.
Interesting side note: Zinaida had two sons. The elder, Nicholay died in a duel at age 26 (her lasting heartbreak). The younger, Felix, was the flamboyant eye makeup-wearing conspirator, who played a key role in the murder of Rasputin- killed in Yusupov's intimate salon in the Yusupov Palace. Felix Yusupov's banishment to Crimea by Tsar Nicholas saved his life and the life of his wife, the Tsar's niece, Irina.Felix swooped back in l917 to grab some famous paintings (Rembrandt) to sustain his life style in Paris to whence he fled. Zinaida herself barely escaped being murdered by the Bolsheviks- she was able to flee to Europe and survive by selling some of her jewels- another great jewel cache was left hidden in her Moika Palace but was discovered.
Zinaida remained a great beauty and a compassionate soul- as these photos by her train attest! She is the gray haired at 55 but still lovely Princess at the center. She died in Paris in l939.
The Passion of Marie Romanov
by Laura Rose
February 24, 2016