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 Sofka Dolgorouky |
Colourful life of Red Princess
The diary of Sofka Zinovieff’s grandmother revealed an amazing journey from Tsarist opulence to theatre paperwork and left-wing London, writes Dan Carrier Order This Book
AS Sofka Zinovieff was mourning the death of her grandmother, she remembered a gift the ageing Russian who she had been named after had once presented her with.
She dug out an old diary and, for the first time since she had been presented with it on her 16th birthday, settled down to read its secrets.
Sofka discovered her grandmother all over again – and it set her on a quest to write a biography that would tell the story of a notorious figure of the 20th century, a lady whose life started as a pampered Tsarist princess – a descendant of Catherine the Great – and ended as a virulent Communist.
“My grandmother did not tell me why she gave me her diary,” recalls Sofka. “She just handed over a surprisingly heavy book covered in dark, curlicued brass and soft, moss-green velvet.
“She explained that it had been made for my great-great-great-grandmother. I was 16 at the time and pleased with my present, but I didn’t really care about the content. It just looked old. I flicked through it and then put it away in a drawer.”
It also told the story of periods in her grandmother’s life Sofka had never heard about, of how she fled the Russian Revolution to settle in England; how she was caught in Paris when the Nazis invaded and was kept in an internment camp during the Second World War. She had travelled there from London to be close to her parents, sensing the war was about to start. Her mother had become addicted to morphine and her stepfather was unable to help.
She lost her husband, Grey, during the war. He had joined the RAF, and became a rear gunner – the most dangerous of all roles in fighter bombers, with the highest casualty rate. His plane was shot down during a 1,000-bomber raid deep into Germany, and she had his death confirmed while she was being held prisoner in a spa in Vittel, northern France, by German soldiers.
Sofka Dolgorouky was born on October 23 1907. Her early life was exceptionally privileged: she had an English nanny, which was seen as the height of sophistication for the Tsarist upper classes.
Her family enjoyed the richness of St Petersburg in the first decade of the 1900s, but were eventually forced to flee as the workers’ revolution attacked the vestiges of the hugely polarised society.
Despite this early experience, and seeing her family fall from being extremely wealthy into virtually penniless refugees, she was to become a member of the British Communist Party.
She recounts her father’s birth: Sofka had terrible morning sickness: “For many months she was weak and bed-ridden, hardly able to keep any food down.
“The doctor inconveniently recommended that the expectant mother drink a glass of champagne every morning to combat her symptoms, and Leo somehow came up with a case of half bottles. It sounds a bad mix: tipsy and nauseous, emaciated, pregnant. And poor.”
She eventually got a little better as her baby developed, and well-off friends sent partridge and grouse from Scotland, but, after a while, the meat became sickeningly rich and was swapped with a butcher for simpler fare: stewing beef.
Sofka’s father Peter was born in 1933 and his christening was held at a Russian church in Kensington. It shows the type of friends her family kept. Among the godparents was the Duchess of Hamilton and among the gifts was an account at Harrods.
It was shortly after Peter’s birth that Sofka applied to work for an agency called Universal Aunts, who offered services such as chaperones, dog walking, or childcare. Sofka said she could provide secretarial help.
She was sent one morning to an imposing house in Cheyne Walk in Chelsea and was ushered into a study. She found a “debonair young man in a silk dressing gown” who passed her a bundle of letters which he wanted answering: it was a pile of fan mail and the person who handed them to her was Laurence Olivier. It was the start of a lifelong friendship – he later made Sofka the secretary of the Young Vic theatre and such figures flit in and out of the narrative.
Sofka was well connected in London and her friends included leading figures in left-wing circles.
The author has grilled her relatives and chased down old friends to find out nuggets about her grandmother. She is met with some compassion, despite many of those who knew her namesake disliking her immensely. As one relative said, for a Tsarist princess to support the Communist Party was a little like a Jewish person expressing Nazi sympathies.
They also were scandalised by her attitudes towards sex: she had a string of men.
But what shines through is not just a granddaughter’s unconditional love, but a compassionate portrait of an exceptional woman who was a ringside spectator during some of the last century’s most exceptional periods.
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The Bloc bookings of Sofka
SOFKA Dolgorouky worked for a company called Progressive Tours in the late 1950s and 1960s, which organised holidays for left-thinking tourists.
At first they covered France and Italy, before branching out to encourage trips to Eastern Bloc countries.
It was with this firm that she became friendly with fellow employee George Pottle, who grew up in Lisson Grove, Paddington. He says: “She was a bit overwhelming – she had such an outgoing personality.”
Even a heart complaint could not slow Sofka down, although it did lead to her leaving the agency and settling down in a cottage on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. She moved to the South-west with Jack King, a trade unionist who she had met and fallen in love with while on a Progressive Tours trip in 1957. They stayed together for the rest of their lives.
Despite being out of London, Sofka’s social life remained busy.
“She retired – she had been feeling tired at the time,” recalls George. “But going to live in Bodmin did her the world of good. Working for Progressive Tours was more than full time – she did so much and was kept so busy, it was not good for her health.”
George recalls how Sofka’s personality meant the bright lights of the capital – from being secretary of the Young Vic through to the whirl of socialising with leading left-wingers – were not missed. She kept up a stream of correspondence each day.
“She settled into life down there immediately,” he says.
“And London came to her: when we would visit we would get a feeling that it was one in, one out. As soon as one set of guests left another set would arrive. She had an incredible group of friends.” |
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