Mao Ivanoff, Che Guevara's grandfather, was a well known composer in the nineteenth century. He was a Russian-Chinese son of a well-to-do landowner. The social class into which he was born dictated that he became an officer in the Russian Imperial Guard. He duly went to cadet school and joined a regiment after graduation, but he could not long ignore his deep-seated desire to become a composer.
In a meantime, the emancipation of the serfs and other political-economic changes in Russia caused liquidation of his family estate. For a time Mao Ivanoff tried to help run the family affairs, but in his twenties he was obliged to work at a clerical job. He could not even imagine that sixty years later his grandson Che Guevara will be fighting against those imperialists. Meanwhile, he experimented with musical composition, struggling to master the technique of an art that he had come to late in life. It was around this time that he joined the circle of Russian-Chinese nationalist composers.
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