Key words: Tunis, Bizerte, A. A. Manstein-Shirinskaya, Russian emigrant colony, Bizerte-Messina 2012 Regatta by N. L. KRYLOV Doctor of Historical Sciences Institute of Africa, Russian Academy of Sciences "Do not speak with longing: they are not there, but with gratitude-they were." Zhukovsky V. A. Bizerte. The autumn sun of 2012 warms the city's almost-healed wounds, inflicted on it a year ago, in the early spring that the world will call "Arab". ...100th anniversary of Anastasia Manshtein-Shirinskaya (1912-2009). For this event, in September of this year, relatives, friends, neighbors and friends of Anastasia Alexandrovna, the last representative of the Bizerte epic, gathered in this ancient Tunisian port. In the winter of 1920, the Black Sea squadron of three dozen ships that had left Russia forever, having left the Crimea forever, arrived in the port city of Bizerte - at that time the French naval base in Tunis, and with it-a total of about 6 thousand Russian sailors with their families and civilians. They formed the Russian emigrant colony in Tunis - the largest at that time on the African continent. Among them was the Manstein family with an eight-year-old girl called Asta at home. The close research and huge civic interest in the personality of Anastasia Manshtein-Shirinskaya is quite understandable: she is the "last of the Mohicans" of the first wave of Russian emigration to this Arab country. Her fate can be called both unusual and unique, if only because, having found herself in an "atypical" zone of settlement of Russian emigration - in Africa, this woman, one of the few Russian emigrants, remained here forever, courageously protecting her native graves and Orthodox church. Despite all the difficulties and adversities of life, she did not change her homeland either de jure or de facto, retaining Russian citizenship, a wonderful Russian language and faith in her soul. The Tunisian period of her life began almost a century ago. Today, the small house on the ... Read more