Catherine A. Gumensky, 1897 - 1988

Catherine Gumensky was born Ekaterina Aleksandrovna Aristova in Kazan' on 14 July 1897 (N. S.). On her mother's side she was descended from the Demidov family. From 1914 to 1917 she studied at the Vysshie Golitsynskie sel'sko-khoziaistvennye zhenskie kursy in Moscow, but following the Revolution departed to Harbin, and thence to the United States (1921). The same year, she married an engineering student Dmitrii Gumenskii, from whom she was later divorced (1932). She graduated from UC Berkeley in 1925, later also acquiring an M.A. from UCLA. In 1927, she was naturalized as a U.S. citizen. From 1945 to 1952, she worked as a translator for the U.S. Army European High Command. Catherine Gumensky died in Apple Valley, California in 1988.

Though she achieved some local prominence as a painter and attempted to publish children's stories, her lasting contribution to the world is her archive, which contains her and her mother's (Neonila Platonovna Aristova) correspondence with relatives in the Soviet Union from 1917 to the 1980s (there is also some correspondence with members of the Demidov family in France). These family letters provide a fascinating insight into the life of Gumensky's relatives in the USSR (Kazan', Moscow, and other places). There is also a subject file on folklorist Ella Young, whom Gumensky apparently knew.

Detailed processing and preservation microfilming for these materials were made possible by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and by matching funds from the Hoover Institution and Museum of Russian Culture. The grant also provides for depositing a microfilm copy in the Hoover Institution Archives. The original materials and copyright to them (with some exceptions) are the property of the Museum of Russian Culture, San Francisco.

Catherine Gumensky Register