Sofka Skipwith

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Sofka Skipwith (born October 23, 1907 in St. Petersburg as Sofja Petrovna Dolgoruki ( Russian Софья Петровна Долгорукий ); † February 26, 1994 in Blisland , Cornwall ) was a Russian-British aristocrat and communist .

Life

Sofka Dolgoruki's parents, Prince Pyotr Alexandrowitsch Dolgoruki (1883-1925) from the noble family Dolgorukow and Countess Sofja Alexejewna Bobrinskaja (1888-1949), were members of the high nobility in Tsarist Russia . As a born princess, she was playmate of Tsarevich Alexei Nikolajewitsch Romanow at the Tsar's court in the Winter Palace . After the October Revolution , she was evacuated from the Crimea with other nobles on the British battleship HMS Marlborough in 1919 and first made her way to Scotland , where she attended school. Through the family of George Douglas-Hamilton she found acceptance into the society of the English aristocracy. The Duchess Nina Douglas-Hamilton took care of her and employed her in her Animal Defense and Anti-Vivisection Society Foundation . Dolgoruki married Leo Zinovieff in 1932, with whom they had two sons, Peter and Ian. After separating from Zinovieff, she married nobleman Gray Skipwith in 1937, with whom she had a son, Patrick. Just as her parents paid little attention to her, she also cared little about her sons, so that these mainly grew up with their father families. Her husband Gray Skipwith was killed in the air war over Germany in 1942 as a member of the Royal Air Force .

Sofka Skipwith worked as an assistant to actor Laurence Olivier before World War II . Despite the outbreak of war in 1939, she traveled several times during the time of the Drôle de guerre and also in April 1940 to her mother and stepfather in Paris , but was unable to return to England in June after the German conquest of France . In November 1940, as a British woman, she was interned by the German occupation, first in a barracks camp near Besançon , then from May 1941 on in a women's internment camp in requisitioned hotel accommodations in Vittel . The imprisonment lasted until the liberation of France in the summer of 1944. Skipwith was not only active in the social life of the internment camp, but also joined a discussion group of communists among internees from different countries. She also tried with her modest means to help Polish prisoners who were threatened with deportation to the German concentration camps . Skipwith worked through the camp fence with members of the French Resistance .

After the liberation of France, she returned to England, resumed her organizational work in the Old Vic Company for Olivier and went on a tour of the continent with the Entertainments National Service Association . Skipwith joined the Communist Party of Great Britain and was involved in the local party organization in Chelsea . In 1949 she registered as a translator for the World Peace Congress in Paris. A travel agency operated by her, Progressive Tours, organized trips to the Soviet Union , the Eastern Bloc countries and Albania . She traveled to the Soviet Union herself several times and had the illusion of being able to return to Russia entirely. Until 1957 she lived mainly in France and after her return to England with another partner from 1962 in the seclusion of Bodmin Moor in Cornwall .

In the 1960s she published a cookbook and a Russian grammar and worked as a literary translator from Russian. In 1968 the first part of her autobiography was published. She gave her granddaughter Sofka Zinovieff her diary, which revealed an independent and permissive lifestyle as a woman. Zinovieff began interviewing and researching her life after her death, and published a biography in 2007 that also revealed that Skipwith had been monitored by MI5 . The book title "Red Princess" was an invention of the granddaughter.

Skipwith was posthumously for their efforts in rescuing Jews during the 1998 period of National Socialism from the Israeli memorial Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations honored. She was also posthumously included in the list of Britons honored for holocaust heroism in 2010 .

Works

  • Sofka Princess Skipwith: Sofka: The Autobiography of a Princess . London: Hart-Davis, 1968 ( Sofka: the autobiography of a Princess, by Sofka Skipwith nee Princess Sophy Dolgorouky )
  • Sofka Dolgorouky: Eat Russian . Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1973
  • Sofka Skipwith: A Short Guide to the People's Republic of Albania . Ilford: Albanian Society, 1968

literature

  • Sofka Zinovieff: The red princess . From the English by Aurelia Batlogg. Deuticke, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-552-06080-7 ( Red Princess. The Revolutionary Life, Love Affairs, and Adventures of Princess Sophy , 2007, 2009).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Sofka Zinovieff: Princess of the revolution , The Telegraph , February 3, 2007
  2. ↑ The British comedy film Two Thousand Women gives the wrong picture of the situation. For the film see also the English Wikipedia: en: Two Thousand Women
  3. ↑ Sofka Skipwith on the website of Yad Vashem (English)
  4. ↑ Britons honored for holocaust heroism ( March 9, 2010 memento on WebCite ), The Telegraph, March 9, 2010


personal data
SURNAME Skipwith, Sofka
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dolgorouky, Sofka (maiden name); Zinovieff, Sofka; Dolgoruki, Sofja Petrovna (maiden name, transcribed); Долгорукий, Софья Петровна (maiden name, Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian-British communist and noblewoman
DATE OF BIRTH October 23, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Petersburg , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH February 26, 1994
Place of death Blisland , Bodmin Moor , Cornwall , UK