Helena Agatha Alexandrovna (Kavetskaya) Swiszewski has a reputation among her descendants as the woman who, as the famous phrase goes, wore the pants in the family. Ironically, she rarely wore pants and prefered simple dresses which she exhibited beautifully all her life. At less than five feet tall, her personality was surprisingly far more tenacious than at first glance. 

Born into a prominent family in the ancient town of Ostrog in the mighty Russian Empire, Helena\’s early life was priviledged. She was the oldest child of Captain Alexey Josephovich Kavetsky of the Kiev Military District, whose record during World War I and previous engagements had won him a string of medals and awards. Her mother, Agatha (Ostrovskaya) Kavetskaya, stayed at home and raised her three children. The most prosperous member of the family however, was Helena\’s grandfather. Joseph Kavetsky was born an orphan, but became one of the most triumphant of the region\’s businessmen. Like many successful families, their political support was heavily for the monarchy…the ancient Romanov Dynasty whose men and women had ruled Russia for 300 years. The early twentieth century was an era of change, however. 1917 would be a year of Revolution, and when Lenin returned it would spell the beginning of Civil War.

The \”whites\”, who wanted to keep Russia a Republic or perhaps restore the monarchy, won the support of much of the industrialized world. This included the United States, and President Woodrow Wilson. They fought against the Bolsheviks lead by Lenin. Socialism, Leninism, was the ultimate goal of these revolutionaries. In May of 1918 the Bolsheviks entered the town of Ostrog, poised to disrupt and plunder the Jewish and the wealthy, both groups they strongly disliked. Captain Alexey Kavetsky, true to his heritage as very anti-socialist and anti-Bolshevik, sought to rid these invaders from his homeland. He was shot and killed during this time, having ridden off on horseback as his family and three children dissapeared behind him.

In the end, this family lost all it had worked for in the previous six decades. Joseph Kavetsky, now over 80 years of age, had lost what was his life\’s work. He died in 1925 at 82 years. This victory by the Bolsheviks would be the beginning of 70 years of a socialist Russia.

However, Alexey and Agatha\’s oldest child, Helena, would not live through this. Having married an American citizen in 1927, later that year she escaped to Poland where she was given her visa. In the United States Helen had three sons, who would truly be her life. For the next 72 years until her death at 94, she would prove to be a loving mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother to over 30 descendants. Her greatest achievment was leaving the troubled society of her birth, and escaping a second World War to raise an Engineer, a Professor of Anesthesiology for Yale University, and a Korean War Veteran who has become the first American to be an honorary South Korean Marine.

She rarely elaborated or even mentioned her young years in Russia and Poland. Grandma Helen was simply proud to raise children in a country where you were not penalized or poor for not being born into the nobility. These family members that are still alive, including those that stayed in Soviet Russia and others who moved to Australia after World War II, will never forget their bold mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, aunt, great-aunt, and sister-in-law whose humbleness and energy overruled any regal bearings she may have once possesed in the ancient autocratic era of the Romanov Dynasty.