Red Princess : A Revolutionary Life

by Sofka Zinovieff

In 1907 Princess Sophy ('Sofka') Dolgorouky was born in St Petersburg. Members of the Imperial family had attended her parents' wedding earlier that same year, and the child was born into a privileged world of nurses, private tutors and elegant tea parties. The Russian Revolution caused the princess to flee across Europe to England, but it was the Second World War that left the deepest marks on her adult life. During those years, she left her first husband and lost her second. Later, she was interned in a Nazi prison camp, where she discovered Communism and showed great bravery in defending the rights of the Jewish prisoners.It was her Communism which took her back to the Soviet Union as an improbable tour guide for British workers. And Communism, albeit indirectly, brought her the last love of her life, Jack, a working-class Londoner who had never been abroad. Sofka's colourful life also included a close friendship with Laurence Olivier, innumerable lovers, some serious, some quickly discarded, and an abiding love of reading and especially poetry. This affectionate portrait of the 'red princess' by her granddaughter and namesake uses letters, diaries and interviews to recreate a vanished world and also explore the author's own Russian roots.

Genres: Nonfiction, Russia, History, Biography, Biography Memoir, Royalty, Ukraine

346 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Sofka Zinovieff was born in London and was educated at Cambridge. She has worked as a freelance journalist and lived in Moscow and Rome before settling in Athens with her Greek husband and their two daughters in 2001.

Her book, Red Princess: A Revolutionary Life has been translated into ten languages and she is the author of Eurydice Street: A Place in Athens.

Reviews

[Evi Routoula · Rating 5 out of 5]

Η συγγραφέας Σόφκα Ζινόβιεφ μας διηγείται την πολυτάραχη ζωή της γιαγιάς της, πριγκίπισσας Σόφκα Ντολγκουρούκι, η οποία γεννήθηκε στην Αγία Πετρούπολη το 1907. Η πριγκίπισσα Ντολγκουρούκι έζησε την Οκτωβριανή επανάσταση, φυγαδεύτηκε μαζί με την γιαγιά της στην Γαλλία, στην Αγγλία και στην Ιταλία, μαζί με την βασιλομήτορα του τσάρου Νικόλαου του Β, εργάστηκε ως προσωπική γραμματέας του ηθοποιού Λόρενς Ολίβιε, παντρεύτηκε έναν Ρώσο ευγενή και κατόπιν έναν Άγγλο κόμη, φυλακίστηκε από τους ναζί σε ένα στρατόπεδο στο Βιτέλ της Γαλλίας ως Βρετανή υπήκοος, βοήθησε τους Εβραίους να φύγουν στην Λατινική Αμερική, έγινε κουμουνίστρια, αγάπησε την λογοτεχνία και το θέατρο και έζησε ως τα 86 της χρόνια ως μια πολιτισμική μποέμ.
Η Σόφκα Ζινόβιεφ μας μεταφέρει σε όλη την Ευρώπη του 20ου αιώνα μέσα από την άκρως ενδιαφέρουσα, αληθινή ζωή της γιαγιάς της. Είναι ένα από τα βιβλία που σε σημαδεύουν.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sofka Dolgorouky, the author's grandmother, led one of those remarkable lives that only the cataclysms of the twentieth century could offer. She began life as Russian nobility and ended it in the Cornish countryside with a labor activist. Along the way, Anna Akhmatova recited poetry in her house and she worked for Laurence Olivier. She began life in a palace in St. Petersburg with a vacation home in the Crimea, but also lived in a tent, spent much of the war imprisoned by the Nazis (where she managed to save enough Jews--although, painfully, not her lover--to be honored by the Israelis), and finished her working live arranging tourist jaunts to the Soviet Union for Western leftists. The author is helped in making her grandmother come to life by her many vivid letters and a memoir (as well as one by her Dolgorouky's own mother of a harrowing trip across Europe to save her husband from the early Soviets). But the author is also an intrepid yet congenial investigator, traveling to the long-confiscated family estate, unearthing documents, tracking down surviving friends and documenting the details (down to her grandmother's methods of avoiding conception with her many lovers). But all that vividness had a cost: three children largely abandoned; one husband divorced, the other lost on a bombing mission for the RAF; a lover sent to his death in a concentration camp, another victim of a lobotomy. The author shrewdly uses the material to illuminate some of the twentieth century's agonies, and along the way renders and affectionate and lively portrait of an irresponsible, often endearing, and in the end irrepressible woman of her time.

[Wealhtheow · Rating 3 out of 5]

Princess Sophy Dolgorouky (called Sofka) was born in 1907 into an ancient family of nobility. She grew up in an atmosphere of incredible privilege and cossetting, raised by her stiff grandmother and, intermittently, her rebellious surgeon mother and diletante father. Her family fled to Europe during the Bolshevik revolution, and lived nomadic lives while their prestige and money slowly dribbled away. Sofka, strong-willed, intellectual, sensual, charismatic, and with a fire for social justice, shocked her family throughout her life. She divorced her suitable first husband, spent little time or energy on her children, and by her thirties was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. Despite desperate situations (she nearly starved several different times, lost the love of her life after only a few years of marriage, was interned in a Nazi camp, her mother committed suicide while she was in the house, etc), Sofka refused to do anything less than what she wanted and felt was needed. From a jeweled upbringing to a homey little cottage in Cornwall, Sofka's journey is a riveting one.

[Kenghis Khan · Rating 3 out of 5]

It starts out with an intriguing enough idea - a Russian aristocratic exile who becomes a mucky muck in British high society, survives Nazi occupied France in a prison designated for "enemy nationals" and comes to embrace the Bolshevik revolution and became your stereotypical British socialist grandmother. But despite this incredibly compelling subject, I felt the book was a bit too self-indulgent and in the end failed to adequately deal with the complex political realities that shaped the people of the time. It's an interesting story to be sure and I'd recommend it, but there was something a bit self-righteous and too eager to embrace the excessively conventional historical analysis of the USSR about the attempt to personalize the story that ended up alienating me more than I thought.

[San Hernan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dos estrellas porque cuenta cosas interesantes pero si tuviera que ser fiel reflejo del título una como mucho.
Me ha parecido desordenado, caótico, sin forma. Se supone que es la vida de Sofka y hay tantísimas referencias a un sinfín de personas que llegas a perderte, Sofka no es casi ni el núcleo que une todas las demás.
Me ha resultado incluso, que relata más regularmente y con cierto orden la vida de Sophy, la madre de Sofka y, ni aún así. Cabe destacar que la vida de Sophy, ya puestos, es mil veces más interesante que la de su hija. Y ambas fueron princesas y ambas pasaron por la pobreza más absoluta, aunque Sophy no se hizo comunista, sufrió los castigos y la desolación comunista.
Menciona datos, lugares y personajes que da por sentado que el lector conoce. En fin, un libro que no recomendaría jamás.

[Daisy · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Tea is the centre of all our nostalgias," said the exiled Stravinsky.

[Lauri Särkkä · Rating 4 out of 5]

Koskettava ja traaginen elämäniloa pursuava tarina ihmisestä, jonka elämä kuulostaa enemmän romaanilta kuin todelta. Kirja antaa 1900-luvun kauhuille, etenkin Venäjän vallankumoukselle sekä toiselle maailmansodalle, ihmisen kokoisen mittapuun. Kirjaa varten on selvästi tehty valtava määrä taustatutkimusta ja kirjoittaja Sofka Zinovieff onkin sen vuoksi matkustanut ympäri Eurooppaa isoäitinsä jäjillä. Muuten miellyttävää lukukokemusta rikkoo hieman poukkoileva ei-kronologinen kerronta. Historiallisia osuuksia pilkkovat kirjailijan omat retket ja kokemukset, jotka pahimmillaan ovat vaivaannuttavan eksotisoivia (Moskovan ja Pietarin välinen junamatka 2000-luvulla esitetään oudon jännittävänä ja junahenkilökunta vertautuu vallankumouksellisten teloituskompaniaan). Kaikesta kuitenkin paistaa Zinovieffin vilpitön pyrkimys tehdä oikeutta isoäitinsä elämälle ja teoille.

[Patrick Gesnot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good story about a strong women.

[Miriam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm about halfway through and am enjoying this book very much. The author does a good job of tempering the aristocratic aspect of her ancestors and focussing on the daily events of people who were caught up in turmoil. It also leads me to think about what else was going on all over the world at the same time.

[Sherri Moshman-Paganos · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author’s grandmother, also named Sofka, was born into an aristocratic Russian family in St. Petersburg in 1907 into a world that would soon disappear, as all Russian emigres in various cities — London, Paris, Rome, New York — had to learn to cope with being in exile. In Sofka’s case she became a Communist, unusual for a Russian of her class, who of course had everything taken away from them in the Revolution.
The spark for the book came from Zinovieff’s at last reading her grandmother’s diary, that she had given her granddaughter soon before she died.
Grandmother Sofka’s own mother Sophy, was way ahead of her time in becoming a doctor. Not much of a mother, it seems that Sofka followed in her footsteps in that regard, having no qualms about passing her three sons, onto others, if she needed to go away, perhaps pursue one of her numerous affairs in and out of marriage that she seems so proud of. Although flawed in many respects, she was admirable in other spheres, for example, during world war II, when in a Nazi prison camp, she became involved in the French resistance and actively part of a network to try and help Polish Jews. (At the end of her life, her efforts were in fact recognized by Israel.) Zinovieff did an excellent job of bringing her grandmother to life and painting her extraordinary life against a background of 20th century events and upheavals. 4 1/2 stars rounded up to 5.

[Lindsey Gingerich · Rating 4 out of 5]

The backstory on Pre-Revolution Russia and Sofka's imprisonment at Vittel makes it worth the read for just that. Obviously the writing was biased, it was written by her granddaughter who was very close to her, but she does do her best to be impartial. I found Sofka to be an interesting woman and this was very well researched. 4.5 stars.

[Yvonne · Rating 3 out of 5]

En realidad le doy tres ⭐️ y media. No sé si fue la traducción o com estaba escrito por la nieta de la protagonista, que quería reflejar a su abuela lo mas positivo posible, pero no me convenció. La parte histórica sí fue interesante. ¿Como te vas a volver comunista después que tu familia lo pierde todo?
La mujer era un monstruo de egoísmo.

[Simon Stembridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating history

Another gripping read from this author whose other works all bear traces of her diverse and eccentric family be they works of fiction or otherwise. I particularly enjoyed " Putney " and " Mad Boy, Lord Berbers my Grandmother and Me".

[Gemutlichkeit · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this, though it was confusing at times. A granddaughter inherits her grandmother's diary and unpacks the narrative through this book. That grandmother was born into Russian royalty during the revolution. The grandmother becomes an expat communist.

[Mathona Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you love Russian history, a gritty true story and are fascinated by the opulence of the uber wealthy aristocrats, of 19th Century Russia then, you're going to really enjoy this book!!!!!

[Sue Wheeler · Rating 1 out of 5]

A good story badly told

This book should be called the Life and Loves of Sofia. The revolutionary bit is minimum. A good editor could improve it immensely!

[Natka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nie oceniaj książki po okładce w tym przypadku sprawdza sie w 200% (Bellona, ale się nie popisaliście) Wygląda jak tanie romansidło, a jest fascynującym opisem nieprzeciętnego życia.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book because I think this time period in history (especially Europe) is so interesting. The Princess (as many monarchy families (?)) I found to be spoiled and self serving - she was a horrible parent and wife. But she did try to help the Jews while imprisoned by the Germans at Vittel and she led an interesting life with all her travels. You got the feeling though that the author (granddaughter & whom she was named after) tried her best to put a positive spin on her life. As I mentioned, the history of the time period was worth the read.

[emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story was great. This woman had an amazing life, which she herself wrote about. It seemed like everyone mentioned had written an autobiography. It makes me want to read all of them to see what they left out and what their great grand daughter dug up later.

[Sue Jellum · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting read, but I'm not sure the woman was really so extraordinary she deserved a book. Very selfish woman glorified by her grandaughter - look how progressive she was, she had affairs and ignored her children before that became popular!

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible true story told by her granddaughter. Her curiosity from finding her grandmother's diaries. led her to search her past life.
A very unusual woman who seemed to be before her time regarding her attitude to life.

[Lorraine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating life story! Written by the granddaughter of a Russian princess, it encapsulates much of the history of the 20th century. I couldn't help thinking about my own grandmother who was born a few years before Princess Sofka and how different their lives were!

[Mary Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting overview of the Russian revolution and the place royalty played in it. The book focuses on the diary of the author's grandmother who was a Russian princess and became a communist.

[Corey · Rating 3 out of 5]

The fascinating true story of a woman who was born in pre-Revolutionary St. Petersburg, and her life wandering across Europe. Filled with history, adventure, and romance.

[Kiriya Kannathasan · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's really nice!