2006 Author Nikolai Voronin. A hundred years later, the Frenchwoman Renee Chartrain returned to her father’s homeland. Born Rene Vasilievna Mironova. Her father, a former student at Tomsk Imperial University, ended up in France during the First World War. He died in 1945, when Rene was 15. And he said almost nothing about his past. All his life, his daughter, and then his granddaughter, dreamed of coming to Russia and finding at least some mention of his father and grandfather.