Red Princess: A Revolutionary Life
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The remarkable life of a Russian princess who became one of Britain's most outspoken communists.
Born in 1907 in St. Petersburg, Princess Sophy "Sofka" Dolgorouky was born into a world of privilege and nobility—ten short years later, Sofka's world would crumble when the Tsar and his family were overthrown, exiled, and executed.
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Burning with shame, Sofka and her family fled to England and then to Paris, where Sofka quickly embraced the bohemian culture of the 1920s and 1930s. During the Nazi occupation, Sofka would leave her first husband only to lose her second. Interned in a Nazi prison camp, she worked with the French Resistance and discovered communism, whose cause she would ironically continue to uphold for the rest of her life, becoming an outspoken member of the British Communist party and even leading tour groups for workers visiting the Soviet Union.
But what was even more outrageous in its day than her conversion from princess to communist was Sofka's private life. She not only believed in sexual freedom, but often placed love, literature, and adventure before even her own children. Sofka was much more than a princess in exile—she was someone whose existence was constantly dislocated by revolution, yet nonetheless believed in revolution as a way of making the world a better place.
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