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Character History of Maria Petrov aka Mashenka Petrova
Requiem Player Cheryl Ann Costa
Character Name: Maria Petrov Aka Mashenka Petrova
Born: 2 June 1900
Place: Murmansk, Russia
Mortal Profession: Medical Doctor/Flight Surgeon
Embrace: 20 November 1944
Place of Embrace: Shanghai, China
Apparent Age: Forty Something
Clan: Ventrue
Covenant: Invictus
Personal History: Maria Petrov Aka Mashenka Petrova
Mashenka was born on a rainy spring day in Murmansk, Russia on the 2nd of June 1900 to Peter Zackevich & Sofia Alexinova. Masha’s father and uncles split their work between the fishing fleet during the warmer months and the shipyards in the colder season when the port was ice-locked.
The second youngest of seven children, Masha was noted by her aunts and her school teachers as a bright child. Her father Peter taught her to play chess when she was only five and she was beating him when she was twelve. Both Masha and her younger sister Sofia were considered by the aunties to be the smart young ladies who would grow up to not be content with just husband and family.
World War I began in Europe in 1914; and Masha's older brothers Yuri and Peter enlisted in the Army. Within a year, with the war going badly, the Tsar Nicholas II himself took command of the Russian Army. After two years of war the Russian people were disgusted by the terrible war losses and food shortages. Something had to give so finally, workers in Petrograd and Moscow rioted. Mutiny spread through the military. On March 15, 1917 Nicholas was forced to abdicate. After the Russian Revolution came the formation of the Communist Regime better known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR. Masha’s brother Peter never returned from the war.
In 1920, Masha was selected to attend Moscow University. It was there that she excelled in the sciences and by her senior year was selected to attend medical school. In 1928 Masha became junior doctor at the Central People’s Hospital in Moscow. During her internship she continued to impress her medical elders and was selected into a surgical training program. By 1935 she was a talented and respected surgeon on staff at the Moscow Hospital, but soon her life was to change.
In May of 1936, there was an attempted coup d'état in Spain committed by parts of the army against the freely elected Socialist government of Spain called the Second Spanish Republic. The supporters of the Republic, or Republicans (republicanos), gained the support of the Soviet Union and Mexico. The followers of the Rebellion, also called Nationalists (nacionales), received the support of neighboring Portugal and the major European Axis powers of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
As part of their support to the leftist republic’s effort to defend itself, the Soviet Union sent supplies and paramilitary aid. The Soviet government recruited volunteers from every aspect of Soviet society to aid the Spanish. When Mashenka was asked by her administrator she quickly volunteered partly out of her sense of duty and partly out of her desire for some adventure. In the spring of 1937, Mashenka was assigned to a forward Spanish POUM unit near Barcelona, a leftist strong hold throughout the war. Masha’s initial assignment was strictly as an advisor but the job quickly turned into a hands-on challenge of triage and “meat ball” field surgery to stabilize wounded soldiers for better treatment at a rear area hospital in Barcelona. Little did Masha know but her treatment became renowned as the best. Soon Soviet, Canadian and Mexican doctors serving in Barcelona made their way into the field to work with Dr. Petrova. Stories about her began appearing in the Soviet press and soon she was the toast of high Soviet party officials. Unfortunately Masha’s luck ran out in the spring of 1938 when she was seriously wounded when a fascist raid over ran a field hospital. She was initially treated in Barcelona by surgeons that she had trained and later returned to a military hospital near Moscow.
By the end of 1938 she was released from the military hospital and her paramilitary service and was allowed to join a Women’s and Baby’s clinic in Moscow as their deputy chief surgeon. Petrova really enjoyed the obstetrics practice. She was often heard to comment on very long days that birth and new life sure beat death and dying. She also told friends that she hoped to start a Women’s and Babies clinic in Murmansk at sometime in the future. She probably would have done just that had it not been for the out break of World War II in September of 1939.
In the Soviet Union the counterpart to famed woman flyer Emilia Earhart was a Russian woman named Marina Raskova. Raskova was a famous Soviet navigator who set many records during the 1930s. She and two others were the first women to be awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal in 1938 when they completed a dangerous Moscow to Komsomolsk-on-Amur (in the Russian Far East) flight in the 2-engined plane "Rodina", that broke the international women's distance record.
Her influence and the military need for more human resources made it possible for her to be able to persuade Stalin to allow her to organize three regiments of women flyers. Already a folk heroine, and a Major in the Soviet Air Force by 1941, Raskova was the logical choice to recruit, interview, and oversee the training of the women aviators, which she did magnificently. Being a Hero of the Soviet Union, she gave great inspiration to her trainees and passed her vast aviation experience to this new generation of Soviet female flyers. As Raskova built her all women’s air force, she knew she needed good medical personnel. She traveled to Moscow and recruited a number of fine woman doctors and nurses to the cause. Many of those medical professionals that she recruited was encouraged her to seek out Dr. Petrova.
After her experiences in Spain, Masha was not overly enthusiastic be on the front lines again, but Raskova and Petrova had several dinners to discuss the needs of the state and the needs of Raskova and to address the Mashenka’s concerns. It was when Raskova explained that she wanted Petrova as a flight surgeon that’s when she got Petrova’s attention. Masha would have to become flight qualified, something that absolutely caught Petrova’s interest. Becoming a pilot titillated her need for adventure. After assurances from Raskova that Masha would learn to fly and would have to maintain flight status with regular flying, Masha signed on without hesitation. Petrova received her flight training at the Engels flight school on the Volga River. She had an exhausting schedule, flight training in the morning and interning with the base flight surgeon, a male doctor who thought this idea of an all female bomber squadron was a bad idea. Although, after he watched Dr. Petrova in surgery, after a student training accident, he began to change his opinion.
Eventually, Dr. Petrova was assigned to the 588th IAP a bomber squadron equipped with obsolete Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes. For the rest of the war she served with distinction.
In the spring of 1944 her squadron was critically short handed for pilots and Dr. Petrova volunteered to fly two combat missions. Needless to say the story got out. After all, incidents of “behinds the lines” flight surgeons flying a combat missions were rare, a woman flight surgeons was absolutely unheard of. For her valor Dr. Petrova was awarded the Order of Lenin.
Shortly after that in the August of 1944, Dr. Petrova was called to Moscow. In the offices of the political foreign affairs bureau, she and a dozen other officers were asked to volunteer for an assignment in China. At issue was the state of Chinese politics. At the outbreak of the war the Chinese Nationalists under General Chiang Kai-shek and Chinese Communists under Mao Zedong were at each others throats trying to win control over China but with the threat and invasion of the Japanese, the two quarreling sides put their differences aside and defended China first. It was pointed out that American bombers had started bombing the Japanese in the open city of Shanghai a few weeks before in July. The political bureau wanted to start giving the Chinese Communist brothers a leg up on the Nationalists in the hearts and minds of the Chinese people. They wanted Russian civilian attired medical officers to secretly go to Shanghai equipped with large amounts of medical supplies in order to set up socialist medical clinics. The idea of getting off the front line and having some adventure and a chance to practice clinical medicine appealed to Petrova, who enthusiastically agreed.
A few weeks later Masha and a team of talented medical professionals were secretly spirited into Shanghai by operatives of the Chinese Communist party. Within days they had a medical clinic set up and were treating peasants and aristocrats alike in the tent clinic. With the daily American air raids the Japanese had other things on their minds besides interfering with a much needed public health clinic. The team had at their disposal a number of Soviet citizens who had lived on the Chinese border and spoke good Chinese; these translators made it possible for the doctors and nurses to communicate with the patients. The surprising thing to the team was the occasional appearance of white Russians who had been stranded in Shanghai without papers since the Russian Revolution 27 years before.
The medical team under the protection of the local Chinese Communist party did a wonderful job winning the hearts and minds of the Chinese people they were serving. Then one night in late November Masha and some of her team were conducting a routine surgery when an errant bomb from a American Air raid exploded near the surgical tent. Everyone was killed save Dr. Petrova who lay dying from concussion damage and wounded with small bomb fragments. Petrova stunned, but aware of her situation, suddenly found herself in the arms of a Chinese man who spoke broken Russian. He spoke to her telling her that she was a good person and a good doctor and kind to his people.
“I …save you …you serve Chinese people,” he told her.
Unable to move and as if in a dream she watched the Chinese man bite his own finger until it bled. He then dropped a few drops of his blood upon her lips. She thought about fighting back but everything was growing dark and cold. Then there was darkness.
An hour later during a break in the bombing, another team of Russians and their Chinese hosts found the remains of the bombed out clinic. The Russian team found that all of their medical comrades were dead as well as their Chinese patients, including. Dr. Petrova. They photographically documented the scene for a full report to Moscow. Before they could deal with the bodies a second wave of the bombing started and everyone ran for cover. It was during this time that the Chinese man who had attended to Petrova returned with two others and they carried off the body of Dr. Mashenka Petrova.
A day later, Petrova awoke from a dreamless sleep with a sudden shudder. She found herself in a lantern lit, windowless room. Upon closer examination it was clear that the room was an underground freehold of some sort. A few moments later the man who attended to her came in the room and spoke to her in Russian.
“Awake now…good…I get Madam Wu…you wait.”
The man walked away from her in to a dark tunnel and seemed to be swallowed by the darkness. A few minutes later he returned with an aristocratically dressed Chinese woman of middle age. Pointing at Petrova he spoke again,
“You speak to Madam Wu…she tell you everything.”
Madam Wu began speaking in near flawless Russian; she explained to Petrova that she was no longer a creature of the living. She told Petrova that she was now “dead” to the living and a member of the Kindred. Petrova’s mind had all it could do to wrap itself around the concept. How could she be dead? She indicated that she didn’t believe it. Wu pointed at Petrova’s medical bag which Chang had brought in. Wu then told Petrova to check her own vital signs. Masha grabbed the stethoscope and searched in vain for a heart beat. She seized a scalpel from her bag and cut open her left index finger; a bit of blood oozed from the wound - but not the gush she expected. She looked at Madam Wu in total disbelief and asked what she was. Wu told her in one word,
“Undead.”
Again Petrova tried to wrap her head around what was being told to her. She reached in to her medical kit as if by instinct to get a gauze pad to dress her wounded finger only to find that the cut was healed under the droplet of blood she wiped off of it.
MadamWu extended her hand,
“Come child; let me teach you the ways of the Kindred.”
Petrova, like a school girl slowly, reached out for Madam Wu’s hand and grasp it. MadamWu smiled and began leading Petrova toward the dark tunnel, pausing before she entered it to say to Masha,
“Welcome to the Jade Court.”
In the coming days and weeks Chang and Madam Wu taught Petrova the basics of her nature and how to address her hungering needs and the dangerous risk of sunlight. Petrova heard the Tradition words of: Masquerade, Progeny and Amaranth. Petrova at first felt she had this weird advantage, being immortal. The only thing that was initially repugnant to her was the idea of killing for blood. Of course Madam Wu pointed out that in nature all the creatures of creation hunt one another. Only Man has distanced himself from the actual killing by assigning by proxy the job to the butcher or slaughter house worker. In the end all life on earth is sustained at the cost of killing something and eating it or drinking its blood. Gradually, Madam Wu began taking Petrova out for walks in the night and teaching her to hunt smartly and how to avoid being caught outside during the deadly sunlight.
After a time Madam Wu set Petrova up with a windowless building with comfortable personal quarters in the basement and a clinical space in the above ground floors. MadamWu provided Petrova with Chinese nurses and assistants who spoke both Chinese and Russian and even a few who spoke a little English and French. The building quickly became “The Night Clinic” where the sick could come to see a doctor for free. At the end of the war in 1945 there wasn’t much in Shanghai to be had but the strange thing was while people couldn’t pay, they frequently left small gifts for the doctor and the staff. This was something that agreed with Masha’s socialist heart. For the next few years Masha became friends with Madam Wu and Chang. Masha practiced her medicine, learned English, and nourished herself from a small blood bank that she maintained in the clinic.
After Shanghai was liberated in September 1945, Shanghai's Jews and white Russians dispersed to Australia, North and South America, Europe, and Israel. In 1949, MadamWu obtained well forged identity papers for Masha and with those papers she was able to get an immigration visa to the United States. Of course she had to book travel on a steam ship and specifically requested and paid extra for an inboard cabin space with no windows and private access to a refrigeration unit for her “transfusion blood for her blood condition”. Of course she only came out for dinner and evening social events.
When she arrived in the port of San Francisco on November of 1949. She used letters of introduction from Madam Wu to prominent persons in the Chinatown community. With local contacts and assistance Petrova was quick set up in a night clinic similar to the one she had in Shanghai. Using her forged medical license from Shanghai, she was able to become reinstated as a Medical Doctor in America. Later she regained surgical privileges at a San Francisco hospital. She became noted for being the only staff doctor who demanded to work the night shift.
Since her papers indicated that she was a white Russian refugee from Shanghai, it wasn’t a major effort to become a Naturalized citizen in the mid 1950’s.
She worked the hospital and her clinic faithfully for years. She lived quietly and existed anonymously in the San Francisco Chinese community and became a prosperous and savvy business woman, even though being a seeming recluse. She appeared to embrace capitalism and the American Dream by investing in stocks and bonds; she even owned a couple of gas stations, some bridal shops, two funeral homes, a slaughter house and even a small detective agency. Though the socialist in her, always maintained the free medicine clinic open to all who needed medical care.
Then in 1985, she realized that she wasn’t showing her age well enough so in order to maintain the Masquerade she allowed herself to be found dead. Her Kindred lawyers claimed her lifeless body and went through the motions of dissolving her estate. The proceeds went to her long lost niece Maria Petrov, a parachute identity she paid an expert in forgery to construct for her. With that she left San Francisco and moved to Washington, DC area.
In the winter of 2006 she decided that the Washington, DC kindred community wasn’t a healthy one so she moved to Syracuse, NY for easier hunting and a fresh start.
For a short time she participated with the Kindred of Albany until its Prince was killed by a neighboring Kindred gang. Petrov and her kindred housekeeper have since that time lived a quiet anonymous life in the Strathmore region of Syracuse.
No one alive truly knows her business or her origins.
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