Lydia Sergeevna, eldest daughter of Zoya & Sergei Zhdanov, was born in Omsk in 1899. She was a notorious tomboy, developing only one "lady-like" skill - she was extremely adept on the piano. At the age of 17 she, like her mother, married an older man - Nikolai Zephyroff. In 1920 she was arrested in place of Nikolai when the red army took Omsk. For a year she was marched between the early gulags before she was scheduled for execution. As the story goes the head of the gulag camp was infatuated with Lydia, and agreed to move her papers from the pile earmarked for execution to that for release.
However it happened, Lydia escaped from the gulag and returned to her mother in Omsk. Anxious to get out of Russia and find Nikolai in Harbin, but unable to take the trains as so many white refugees did, Lydia traversed Siberia alone, on foot and relying on the kindness of strangers. Arriving on the border with no papers, no kopeks and no way of contacting her husband in China, she entered the local church and used the very last of her money to buy a votive candle. While praying to Nicholas "the miracle maker" she heard the voice of an old acquaintance, whom she was able to persuade to help her cross the border. She was reunited with her husband there.
Lydia worked in her mother's studio and gave piano lessons and a year after her arrival she gave birth to her only child - a daughter, Eliena. In 1925 she took Eliena to Shanghai to follow Nikolai in his new work in that city. In 1934, with Nikolai in debtors prison, she moved back in with her mother. Though they were reconciled on his release Lydia would divorce him in 1936 and go to live with her new lover - Alexander Rouben. Rouben left shortly after for Australia, where he arranged passage for Lydia and her daughter, and she left in November of 1938.
She married Rouben on her arrival in Sydney, but not 2 years later he died of cancer. With some trepidation she took over his businesses - a tobacconist and army supply store, and did surprisingly well, becoming something of a "mother" to the immigrant populations in Rozelle and Balmain. She died in 1968 of a heart attack.
