These are the earliest photos of my grandmother Pauline Shugaevsky I have found. At the time her name was Polina Grigorievna Kunashova. I’ve started using the non-Anglicized spellings of names because they more closely match the original pronunciation. The photo on the right was once glued in an album or on some other paper object. I tried removing the remains on the back to read any writing and damaged the photo.

According to our relatives in Russia and Polina’s Naturalization papers, she was born in 1900 in Moscow. I don’t know if she spent any time there before the family moved to St Petersburg (or even if they lived in Moscow at all - maybe she went there to give birth). She always claimed to be the oldest but she had an older brother, Lev, who died in World War I. Like a true Soviet citizen she made up her own history - in this case it was probably to hide from the pain.  To me it looks like the object at the bottom of the photo on the right is a bicycle. I expect there are more early photos with relatives in Russia.