Viki - Princess Vera Apollonovna Obolenskaya - was a woman of rare charm. Always surrounded by friends and happy in her, by the will of historical events, short-lived marriage, she did not crave asceticism, renunciation of everything that she loved. When faced with a choice: accept the political inevitability of the German occupation or resist it, there was no doubt; she immediately entered in Paris one of the earliest organizations of the French Resistance, in which she played a key role until her arrest. Her activities in the Resistance and the courage shown during the trials that fell to her lot earned Vika posthumous fame and recognition of her services to her second homeland - France.
This edition is supplemented with new testimonies tracing the life path of this bright woman.

ILLUSTRATIONS

	The guillotine as it was caught Soviet troops entered Berlin
Book. Nikolai Alexandrovich Obolensky awarding him the Order of the Legion of Honor	rector of the Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky in Paris, surrounded servant boys	in the last years of life

REVIEWS

Irina Chaikovskaya

"New Journal" No. 260, 2010

I diligently pushed aside this thin little book with a lovely female head on the cover. It was sent to me by the author, Lyudmila Obolenskaya-Flam, and it was necessary to read it, but ... It was scary to approach, because I knew about the fate of this woman from the cover, and this head. A woman, an active member of the French Resistance, will end up in a German prison. And in this prison on the outskirts of Berlin - literally on the eve of the Liberation - they will cut off her head. Yes, yes, cut off the head. There was such a medieval type of execution among the savage fascists. It could be assumed that Princess Vera Obolenskaya "honored" this non-trivial execution by virtue of her princely title - nevertheless, the heads were chopped off to persons of royal blood: the beautiful and clever Mary Stuart, the captivating capricious Marie Antoinette - but such an assumption is easy to refute. During my school years, I read about the Tatar poet Musa Jalil, who was captured by the Germans and, around the same time as Vera Obolenskaya, was beheaded in the Moabit prison in Berlin. Perhaps the "proletarian" and the "aristocrat" were neighbors in prison - Vera Obolenskaya also visited Moabit. But Vika was executed - as friends called the young charming Russian - not in Moabit, but in another fascist prison - Pletzensee.
Lyudmila Obolenskaya-Flam undertook to unravel this fate for several reasons. And the first, it seems, is that the name of "Vicky", Vera Obolenskaya, to this day says nothing to the Russian ear, either in Russia or abroad. Meanwhile, the life of this woman was heroic, and it was necessary to tell the world about her. The second reason is on the surface: the writer's husband belonged to the Obolensky family and was the nephew of Nikolai Alexandrovich, the husband of the heroine of the book. Actually, going to France to collect materials about Vicky, Lyudmila Obolenskaya-Flam simultaneously went to visit her French relatives - the Obolenskys, as well as their surviving old friends and acquaintances, who miraculously survived after prisons, concentration camps, the bombing of the "allies", hunger and fear war years.
However, the war in France proceeded in a peculiar way and it was not for nothing that it remained in history as “strange”. After eight months of the absence of front-line "events", with virtually no resistance, France was conquered by the Nazis and divided into two parts - occupied by the Germans (this zone included Paris) - and nominally independent, with a center in Vichy, headed by General Pétain, whose policy, admittedly was treacherous and pro-fascist.
It would seem that the country suffered a quick and shameful defeat, the enemy occupied the capital, began to establish a “new order”, catch the “leftists”, destroy and take Jews to concentration camps, send French youth to work in Germany .. / What did the French oppose to all this, a nation that cherishes freedom, with long-standing revolutionary traditions?! But nothing. Or almost nothing. Speaking about the then mood of the French, Lyudmila Obolenskaya-Flam writes that only a small number of French citizens decided to actively resist what had happened. “A year after the defeat, there may have been about a thousand resisters,” she quotes the American historian Blake Erlick, “all those who took the path of resistance in the fortieth year acted contrary to (italics mine, - I.Ch.) the then prevailing public opinion in France.”
And so, among these few was a young Russian woman born in Moscow, taken away by her parents from revolutionary Russia to France as a child and married there to Nikolai Aleksandrovich Obolensky, a representative of two ancient surnames at once - Russian and Georgian. The Obolensky princes descended from Rurik, while their maternal roots went to the Mingrelian family of the Dadiani princes.
Why did Vika, and then her husband, dare to resist the Nazis, to work underground, threatening prison, concentration camp, torture and, ultimately, death? Were they heard and picked up the words of General de Gaulle, who appealed to his compatriots from London to continue the struggle? It seems to me - and here I am in solidarity with Lyudmila Obolenskaya-Flam - that such decisions are ripening from within ... Be that as it may, Viki "without hesitation" joined one of the first underground groups created in France back when the term "resistance" itself was not put into use.
The young woman became the "general secretary" of the Civil and Military Organization - that was the name at first tiny, and then the most branched and numerous of the associations that fought against fascism in the territory of occupied France. Collected intelligence, which was then transported to London; prepared weapons; recruited supporters; disseminated truthful information from the fronts; wrote and posted flyers. And Vicki, the general secretary, directed this work: thanks to her exceptional memory, she knew all the agents and all the addresses by heart, kept documentation and a card file, rented rooms for underground meetings ... If it weren’t for the betrayal that ruined the entire organization in a short time, who would could suspect the charming princess of "subversion"?
And in fact, at the beginning of the war, she was 29 years old (she would die at the age of Christ - at 33), behind her shoulders was the work of a fashion model, so common among young Russian emigrants and so suitable for them; then secretaries... By the way, both sisters of Nikolai Obolensky also worked as Parisian fashion models in the 20-30s. A fashion model is as common a profession among Russian émigré women as a "taxi driver" among men.
The daughters of the “gentle”, refined and spoiled European ladies of the pre-revolutionary years, sung by Mandelstam, Georgy Ivanov, Mikhail Kuzmin, these young ladies, like their eternally young mothers, could not only wear fashionable hats with chic (in one of these hats, Vika is depicted on pre-war photography), to turn the heads of the French, as well as their compatriots, but also to save and lead their chosen ones when the time comes.
Vika's mother-in-law, Princess Salomea Nikolaevna Obolenskaya-Dadiani, or Princess Mingrelskaya, just belonged to that magical pre-revolutionary generation, was known as a beauty in decadent, forgotten in the carnival frenzy of St. Petersburg. Reading about her in Lyudmila Obolenskaya-Flam, I involuntarily remembered another Salome, Salome Nikolaevna Andronikova-Galpern, famous for her acquaintance with Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva, reproduced in the portraits of Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin and Vasily Shukhaev, nicknamed Mandelstam "Straw", which became a kind of symbol refined sophistication and aestheticism of the Silver Age.
Apparently, Vicki belonged to this breed of women, cheerful and mischievous, fashionistas and dancers who exacted tribute with their hearts and heads. But the Salomes and Columbines of the thirteenth year were swept away by the hellish whirlwind of the revolution, and their daughters, who found themselves in a foreign land, fell under the wheel of a monstrous war. Aesthetics came into conflict with the realities of life. I don’t know where the last photo of Vika, placed in the book, was taken - in prison ?, but on it she does not at all look like elegant, in jewelry, effective and self-confident Princess Vera Obolenskaya from the cover. In the last photo, Vicki is casually combed and dressed simply, she looks straight at us with huge sad eyes. And I would say that here she looks like a saint.
Lyudmila Obolenskaya-Flam wrote a book not only about Vera Obolenskaya - she told about the founders and members of the Civil and Military Organization, about Vika's friends, about the fate of her closest friend Sofka, who withstood the sadistic torture of the Gestapo and miraculously survived; about her husband Nikolai Obolensky, who passed through Buchenwald and, after all the trials and martyrdom of his wife, decided to become a monk. Prince Nikolai Alexandrovich Obolensky at the end of his life became an archimandrite.
The writer touched on the fate of the French associates Vika and Nikolai, the story of the brilliant officer of the French army, who joined the organization after demobilization, Roland Farjon, is especially interesting. Having become the commander of the Maquis battalion at the end of the war and marching with him under the Arc de Triomphe at the Liberation Parade, which was hosted by General de Gaulle in Paris, he, however, was suspected of treason and after the war was summoned to court. Farzhon (his guilt has not yet been proven!) Did not appear at the court - he preferred to drown himself. His son, accidentally learning from the old newspapers about the "father's case", also killed himself ...
It is known that in post-war France, collaborators were persecuted: women suspected of having links with the Nazis were shaved bald, "traitors", real or imaginary, were sometimes shot without trial or investigation. What can be said about the Russian emigration in this connection? Lyudmila Obolenskaya-Flam cites in her book some interesting statistics that were recently published. Approximately 300 to 400 Russian emigrants participated in the European resistance movement, and about 5 thousand in the troops of the anti-Hitler coalition. Compare with other figures: from 20 to 25 thousand emigrants from Russia fought on the side of Germany and its allies.
Along with Mother Mary and Father Dmitry Klepinin, Zinaida Shakhovskaya and Ariadna Scriabina, who remained in history as those who chose the path of heroic opposition to fascism, thousands of Russians lived in France, who believed that of two evils - fascism and communism - fascism is better. The "pro-fascist" statements of Merezhkovsky are known; the shadow of "collaboration" lay on Berberova; Georgy Ivanov hoped that the Germans, having occupied Moscow, and then all of Russia, would clear it of Stalin's dictatorship. And if quite recently in the Soviet ideologized history, the European Resistance was considered exclusively as communist, and the figures about Russian "collaborators" were hidden in secret archives, then today's historians tend to see the problems in all their complexity and multi-layeredness, revising the established ideological clichés, so as not to "falsify history." Lyudmila Obolenskaya-Flam just sets an example of such a "non-linear" story about the history of the Second World War.
Against the backdrop of a very informative historical part of the book, the story about Wiki itself seems too factographic and slightly dry. On the other hand, the author did not write a novel, but a documentary narrative, and is it therefore worth expecting “psychological discoveries”, “sculpting characters”, “picturesque descriptions” from the text? Is it up to artistic delights when it comes to prison, hand shackles, execution on the guillotine ...
In the book, however, there are several truly "romantic details", and although the author does not pedal them, they just ask for a "novel". Vika's friend, Maria Sergeevna Stanislavskaya, told the writer over a cup of strong Parisian coffee that Vika, as she heard, was in fact "an illegitimate child of a high-ranking person who was almost close to the throne ...". Another interlocutor-correspondent Lyudmila Obolenskaya-Flam wrote to her that Vika was strikingly different from her mother both in appearance and character (husband and father left the family, having moved to America). It seems to me that this version requires further clarification, and the very course of the "investigation" may be of great interest to readers of the new edition of the book.
The second detail concerns the family of Vika's husband. The author writes about the views of the Obolensky family on a rich inheritance - ten boxes of Mingrelian treasures stored in the dungeon of the State Bank of France. In 1921, these treasures were taken out by the Georgian Mensheviks from the Zugdidi palace of the princes Dadiani; their legitimate heiress was the mother of Nikolai Alexandrovich, Salome Nikolaevna Obolenskaya-Dadiani. Having told about the treasures stored in the bank, the author interrupts his story and returns to it only in the author's afterword, from which we learn that the "boxes" never got to the heiress. After the end of the war, General de Gaulle brought them as a gift to Stalin. Many years after that, in 1976, on a business trip to Tbilisi, Lyudmila Obolenskaya-Flam learned that part of the "Mingrelian treasures" was preserved and is in the Tbilisi museum (it would be interesting to know - in which? Ethnographic? Historical? Artistic?). Good novel?
I do not undertake to advise the author, but it seems to me that the composition of the book would only benefit if this "novella" were completely placed inside the narrative about the heroine. Still, I wonder why the French authorities did not return the exported valuables to their rightful owners, moreover, who are right here, nearby, in France ...
The last days of Vicki, preceding the execution, the author restores clearly and laconicly. From Zweig's book on Mary Stuart, I remember that the Scottish queen, sentenced to death, took a long time to choose an outfit suitable for the scaffold and settled on a red dress; Marie Antoinette wore a white dress on the day of her execution. Vika had no choice, she was wearing prison clothes, most likely she had her head shaved and placed in handcuffs on death row. And then... There is a photograph of a guillotine in the book. Lyudmila Flam tells us the name of the executioner - Willy Rettegr. “For each severed head, he was due 60 premium marks, and his assistants - eight cigarettes.”
Thus ended this life, and we will be grateful to Lyudmila Obolenskaya-Flam, without sentimentality, in a dignified and strict manner, who told us about the one whose fate cannot but strike the human heart.

1911 - 1944

Victoria Apollonovna Makarova, the future Princess Obolenskaya, was born in Baku on July 11, 1911. Her father, Apollon Apollonovich Makarov, a state councilor, Baku vice-governor, graduated from the Imperial School of Law in 1897, one of the most prestigious institutions of higher education in pre-revolutionary Russia. Died April 18, 1953 in New York. Mother - Vera Alekseevna, nee Kolomnina.

The family emigrated to France in 1920 when Verochka was 9 years old and settled in Paris. Here the girl graduated from high school. Vera studied easily. Possessing an excellent memory and a lively mind, she easily assimilated school wisdom, but, not differing in particular perseverance, she preferred dances, flowers, and poetry to classes. An easy, carefree, joyful childhood surrounded by parental love ended with the victory of the October Revolution.

Before the war, Vika, as her relatives called her, was a fashion model, one of the most beautiful women in Russian Paris. After the occupation of France by the Nazis, she became an active participant, one of the central figures in the Resistance, transmitted reports, wrote reports, and worked as a messenger.

When Hitler's troops began to win one victory after another over the Red Army, this only aggravated the determination of Vera Apollonovna to continue her dangerous work, now not only for France, but also for her Russian people. The Nazis subjected her to a brutal guillotine execution in Berlin in 1944. In the famous cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve des Bois in Paris, there is her tombstone. The grave has not been identified. She was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, First Class, the Military Cross with Palms, and the Medal of Resistance.

Vera's husband, Nikolai Alexandrovich Obolensky (1900-1979), was arrested by the Germans in 1944 and placed in the Buchenwald concentration camp, from where he was liberated in the spring of 1945 by the American army; officer of the Order of the Legion of Honor (1957), awarded the medal "with a rosette" for participation in the Resistance and the Military Cross with a laurel branch. Faithful to the memory of his wife, he became an Orthodox priest (1963), archpriest of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Paris and rector of Orthodox schools in Biarritz and Montarey. Honorary Chairman of the Union of Princes Obolensky (since 1970).

Vera Obolenskaya became posthumously known in the Russian Diaspora thanks to the many years of efforts of a longtime devoted friend of the House of Russian Diaspora, Lyudmila Flam-Obolenskaya, who published a book in 1996 in the publishing house "Russian Way" "Wiki: Princess Vera Obolenskaya".

In 2010, our compatriot significantly supplemented this publication and (initiated the creation of the film "18 Seconds" dedicated to Vera Obolenskaya (directed by Alexander Burykin).

The interest of Lyudmila Flam-Obolenskaya in the fate of Vika Obolenskaya is not accidental. She is a relative of the heroine. I first heard about her in the early 50s, becoming the wife of the nephew of Prince Nikolai Obolensky - Vika's husband. Nikolai Obolensky sacredly protected everything that had to do with the memory of his wife and her tragic death. His family archive, in a winding way, through Chile, came to Washington at the disposal of Flam-Obolenskaya and formed the basis of her research. An invaluable source of reliable information was the recollections of eyewitnesses who knew Vika from underground work. Also at the disposal of Flam-Obolenskaya were valuable memoirs of Vika's comrade-in-arms - Sofya Nosovich and handwritten memoirs of Maria Rodzianko, who had known Vika since childhood.

The book, like the film, tells how Vicki, a young woman, became the de facto coordinator of the Organization Civile et Militaire (OSM - "Civil and Military Organization"), created by Jacques Arthus, a wealthy Parisian, in whose office Obolenskaya worked as a secretary. OSM was engaged in intelligence activities, as well as organizing escapes and exporting prisoners of war abroad.

By 1942, the OSM had thousands of members in all departments of the occupied part of France, becoming one of the largest organizations of the Resistance. It included many industrialists, high-ranking officials, employees of communications, mail, telegraph, agriculture, labor, and even internal affairs and the police. This made it possible to obtain information about German orders and deliveries, about the movement of troops, about convoys with forcibly recruited Frenchmen for work in Germany, and about trains that took Jews to the east.

The information came to the headquarters of the OSM, fell into the hands of its general secretary, that is, Vika Obolenskaya. Vicki constantly met with liaisons and representatives of underground groups, handed over leadership tasks to them, received reports, and conducted extensive secret correspondence. She spent hours copying reports coming from the field, compiling summaries, multiplying orders and making copies of secret documents obtained from occupation institutions and plans of military installations.

On December 17, 1943, Obolenskaya was seized at the apartment of her friend and colleague in the Resistance, Sofia Nosovich. First, the friends were sent to the Fern prison, then to Arras, where other members of the OCM leadership were also taken. Obolenskaya answered “I don’t know” to all questions. For which she received the nickname "Princess - I don't know anything" from German investigators.

There is evidence of the following episode: the investigator asks Obolenskaya with bewilderment how Russian emigrants can resist Germany, which is fighting against communism. “They are crazy, right? What is the point for them to be with the Gaullists, in this communist nest? Listen, madam, help us to better fight our common enemy in the east." “The goal that you are pursuing in Russia,” Vicki objects, “is the destruction of the country and the destruction of the Slavic race. I am Russian, but I grew up in France and have spent my whole life here. I will not betray either my homeland or the country that sheltered me.”

On August 4, 1944, a member of the French Resistance with the underground pseudonym Vicky was beheaded in the German prison Plötzensee

Only in 1965 did they learn in the USSR that it was the Russian princess Vera Apollonovna Obolenskaya.

On the eve of the 20th anniversary of the Great Victory, the French government handed over to the USSR some documents related to the anti-fascist activities in the Resistance of representatives of the Russian emigration. It turned out that out of 20 thousand participants in the French Resistance, about 400 people were of Russian origin. Moreover, our emigrants were the first to call on the French people to fight. Already in 1940, an anti-fascist group began to work in the Paris Anthropological Museum, in which young Russian scientists Boris Vilde and Anatoly Levitsky played a leading role. Their first action was to distribute a leaflet "33 tips on how to behave towards the occupiers without losing one's dignity." Next - replicating, using museum technology, an open letter to Marshal Pétain, exposing him of betrayal. But the most outstanding action was the publication of the underground newspaper Rezistans on behalf of the National Committee of Public Safety. In fact, there was no such committee, but the young people hoped that the announcement of its existence would inspire the Parisians to fight the occupiers. “Resist!.. This is the cry of all the unsubdued, of all those striving to fulfill their duty,” the newspaper said. This text was broadcast on the BBC and was heard by many, and the name of the newspaper "Resistance", that is, "Resistance" with a capital letter, spread to all underground groups and organizations.

Vera Obolenskaya actively worked in one of these groups in Paris. In 1943, she was arrested by the Gestapo, and in August 1944 she was executed (at least 238 Russian emigrants died in the ranks of the French resistance).
By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of November 18, 1965, Princess Obolenskaya, among other underground emigrants, was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree. But the details of her feat were not told then. Apparently, as they are now talking about the Soviet theme, it was "non-format".

In 1996, the publishing house "Russian Way" published a book by Lyudmila Obolenskaya-Flam (a relative of the princess) "Vicky - Princess Vera Obolenskaya". We learned a lot from her for the first time.

The future French underground worker was born on July 11, 1911 in the family of the vice-governor of Baku Apollon Apollonovich Makarov. At the age of 9, she moved to Paris with her parents. There she received her secondary education, then worked as a fashion model in a fashion salon. In 1937, Vera married Prince Nikolai Alexandrovich Obolensky. They lived gaily and fashionably in Parisian style. Only one thing clouded the mood - the absence of children. But the outbreak of World War II showed that this was probably for the best. Because from the first days of the occupation, the Obolenskys joined the underground struggle.

Prince Kirill Makinsky later recalled how it was. He was a volunteer in the French army. Immediately after her surrender, he returned to Paris and first of all went to his friends Obolensky. That same evening, Vicki turned to him and said, "We're going to keep going, aren't we?" According to Makinsky, “the decision was made without hesitation, without doubt. She could not bear the thought that the occupation would be established for a long time; for her it was a passing episode in; it was necessary to fight against the occupation and fight all the more rigorously, the more difficult the struggle became.

Vera was attracted directly to the underground organization by her friend's husband, Jacques Arthuis. Soon she, in turn, attracted Kirill Makinsky, her husband Nikolai, and her Russian friend Sofya Nosovich, whose brother died in the ranks of the 22nd Infantry Regiment of Foreign Volunteers, to participate in the struggle. The organization founded by Arthuis was called the Organization Civile et Militaire (OCM - “Civil and Military Organization”). The name is explained by the fact that two directions were formed in the organization: one was preparing for a general military uprising, the other - under the leadership of Maxim Blok-Mascar, vice-chairman of the Confederation of Mental Workers, dealt with the problems of the post-war development of France. At the same time, OSM paid great attention to obtaining secret information and transferring it to London.

By 1942, the OSM had thousands of members in all departments of the occupied part of France, becoming one of the largest organizations of the Resistance. It included many industrialists, high-ranking officials, employees of communications, mail, telegraph, agriculture, labor, and even internal affairs and the police. This made it possible to receive information about German orders and deliveries, about the movement of troops, about trains with forcibly recruited Frenchmen for work in Germany. A large amount of this information went to the headquarters of the OSM, fell into the hands of its general secretary, that is, Vika Obolenskaya, and from there was transmitted to London in various ways, first through Switzerland or by sea, later by radio. Vicki constantly met with liaisons and representatives of underground groups, handed over leadership tasks to them, received reports, and conducted extensive secret correspondence. She copied the reports coming from the field, compiled summaries, duplicated orders and made copies of secret documents obtained from the occupational institutions, and from plans of military installations.

Vika's assistant in sorting and reprinting secret information was her friend Sofka, Sofia Vladimirovna Nosovich. Nikolai Obolensky also contributed. All three knew German. Thanks to this, Nikolai, on behalf of the organization, got a job as an interpreter at the construction of the so-called "Atlantic Wall". As conceived by the Germans, the rampart was to become an impregnable defensive fortification along the entire western coast of France. Thousands of Soviet prisoners were driven there to work, who were kept in appalling conditions. They were dying, Obolensky recalled, "like flies." If anyone dared to steal potatoes in the fields, he was immediately shot. And when rocks had to be mined to build structures, forced laborers were not even warned about this, "the poor fellows died mutilated." Obolensky was seconded to the outfits of workers so that he would translate the orders of the German authorities to them. But from the workers, he received detailed information about the objects on which they worked. The information he collected was sent to Paris, from there - to the headquarters of the "Free France" of General de Gaulle. This information turned out to be extremely valuable in the preparation of the landing of the allied forces in Normandy.

For a long time, the Gestapo was unaware of the existence of the OSM. But already at the end of 1942, Jacques Arthuis was arrested. Instead, the organization was headed by Colonel Alfred Tuni. Vicki, who was aware of all the affairs of Arthuis, became Touni's right hand.

On October 21, 1943, one of the leaders of the OSM, Roland Farjon, was accidentally arrested during a raid, in whose pocket they found a receipt for the paid telephone bill with the address of his safe house. During a search of the apartment, they found ammunition, addresses of secret mailboxes in different cities, schemes of military and intelligence units, names of members of the organization and their secret nicknames. Vera Obolenskaya, the General Secretary of the OSM, lieutenant of the military forces of the Resistance, appeared under the pseudonym "Vicky".

Soon Vicki was captured and, along with some other members of the organization, was taken to the Gestapo. According to one of them, Viki was exhausted by daily interrogations, but did not betray anyone. On the contrary, without denying her own affiliation with the OSM, she shielded many by claiming that she did not know these people at all. For this, she received the nickname "Princess I Know Nothing" from the German investigators. There was evidence of such an episode: the investigator asked her with feigned bewilderment how Russian emigrants could resist Germany, which was fighting against communism. “Listen, madam, help us to better fight our common enemy in the East,” he offered. “The goal that you are pursuing in Russia,” Vicki objected, “is the destruction of the country and the destruction of the Slavic race. I am Russian, but I grew up in France and have spent my whole life here. I will not betray either my homeland or the country that sheltered me.”

Vika and her friend Sofka Nosovich were sentenced to death and taken to Berlin. OSM member Jacqueline Ramey was also brought there, thanks to whom evidence of the last weeks of Vika's life was preserved. Until the very end, she tried to morally support her friends in rare meetings on walks, through tapping and using people like the jailer-maid. Jacqueline was present when Vicki was called out during the walk. She never returned to her cell.
Jacqueline and Sofka miraculously escaped. They did not have time to execute them - the war ended.

For a while, it was believed that Vicki was shot. Subsequently, information was received from the Plötzensee prison (today it is the Museum-Memorial of Resistance to Nazism). There, especially dangerous opponents of the Nazi regime were executed by hanging or on the guillotine, including generals participating in the failed assassination attempt on Hitler on June 20, 1944. Opposite the entrance to this terrible room with two arched windows, along the wall, there were six hooks for the simultaneous execution of state criminals, and in the center of the room a guillotine was installed, which is no longer there today, only a hole in the floor for blood flow remained. But when Soviet soldiers entered the prison, there was not only a guillotine, but also an iron basket into which the head fell.

It turned out the following. It was a few minutes to one in the afternoon when, on August 4, 1944, two guards brought Vika in with her hands tied behind her back. Exactly at one o'clock, the death sentence handed down by the military tribunal was carried out. It took no more than 18 seconds from the moment she lay down on the guillotine to the decapitation. It is known that the name of the executioner was Rettger. For each head he was due 80 Reichsmarks premium, his handy - eight cigarettes. The body of Vika, like the other executed, was taken to the anatomical theater. Where it then went is unknown. At the Sainte-Genevieve cemetery in Paris there is a slab - a conditional tombstone of Princess Vera Apollonovna Obolenskaya, but her ashes are not there. This is the place of her remembrance, where there are always fresh flowers.

What an important example does Princess Vera Obolenskaya send from the distant past to us, today, half of whom are ready to bury Soviet Russia and everything connected with it, and the other half can’t stand modern democracy, as if it’s unaware that regimes of power come and go , and the Motherland, people, country remain invariably sacred for a true citizen and patriot, and not for an adherent of a single ideology, no matter how attractive it may be.

The biographies of modern models are so similar, everything is so typical. She was walking on the street and looked into the store, where she was noticed by an employee of a modeling agency, made an offer, she could not refuse, and they went to a modeling agency, and there they signed a contract, then she flew away for a photo shoot, then followed by shows of fashion brand collections, cooperation with famous photographers… Isn't it true that you have heard this many times?

If you interview models, write about them, at some point you begin to realize how everything is the same, maybe you shouldn’t interview, clarify your biography - just change your first name, last name and date of birth. This is of course a joke, but there is some truth here - the biographies of modern models are very similar. But not everyone is like that, there were models whose life path turned out differently.

I would like to introduce you to one of these models. Princess Vera Obolenskaya, let's find out the story of her life, and at the same time remember the history of the 20th century.

Now many people and entire states are trying to forget the history that is unpleasant or even scary, hoping thereby to live in happiness, not to have disagreements and problems in the future. The idea is not bad, but utopian, wisdom and experience clearly show that people who forget their history turn into a herd that is easy to manage, inspiring the necessary desires.

So, today we recall the biography of an unusual fashion model.
Princess, fashion model, member of the Resistance, poetess, lieutenant of the French army, holder of the orders of the Legion of Honor and the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree.

Vera Obolenskaya was born on June 11, 1911 in the family of the Baku vice-governor Apollon Makarov, and at the age of nine she was forced to emigrate to France with her parents in connection with the October coup in Russia.

After graduating from a French high school, Vera communicated in the circles of the golden youth of those years, and decided to become a fashion model. At the same time, it is important to note that Vera Obolenskaya possessed not only external attractiveness, but also a lively mind, a phenomenal memory. All this will be useful to her in the future, when she will store many ciphers and secret messages in her memory.

When Vera was 26 years old, she married Prince Nikolai Alexandrovich Obolensky. Her husband, the son of the former mayor of St. Petersburg and the daughter of His Serene Highness Prince Dadiani Mingrelsky, had income from real estate in the south of France and was one of those few Russian emigrants who settled well in a new place.

Only happiness and peaceful life did not last long, a new threat loomed over the Russian emigrants, which now posed a danger to the whole world - the Second World War began. France did not put up significant resistance to the Nazi troops and was occupied by the Germans in the shortest possible time.

Shortly thereafter, Princess Vera Obolenskaya decides to become a member of an underground organization, where she was known under the pseudonym Vika.

The responsibilities of Vera Obolenskaya were wide - meetings with liaisons and representatives of other underground groups, establishing contacts with Soviet prisoners of war, secret correspondence, copying secret documents, compiling reports, and much more. Vicki was elected general secretary of the OSM and given the rank of lieutenant.

Two years later, the OSM became the largest organization of the Resistance, with thousands of members. At the end of 1942, its founder, Jacques Arthuis, was arrested, and he died in a concentration camp. And the organization was headed by Colonel Alfred Tuni, Vicki became his right hand.

But the Nazis also had their own agents, intelligence and special services, while acting very decisively and cruelly. In October 1943, one of the main leaders of the OCM, Roland Farjon, was arrested. In his pocket they found a receipt of the telephone bill he paid with the address of the safe house. During the search, addresses of secret mailboxes in different cities, the names of members of the organization and their secret nicknames were found. Arrests began, one by one the resistance members were taken to the Gestapo.

Vicki was arrested on December 17, 1943 and taken to a Paris mansion that served as a prison. Here the detainees were interrogated. And soon Prince Nikolai Obolensky was also taken to the same prison.

Vicki defended her husband as best she could, claiming that he had nothing to do with the organization. For lack of evidence, the prince was released. And Vera Obolenskaya was transferred to another prison, where the majority of the OCM leadership was already imprisoned. The Gestapo during interrogations provided the princess with a lot of irrefutable evidence of her activities in the ranks of the OSM, but Vera Obolenskaya chose a special type of protection - she refused to give any information.

For this reason, the Gestapo investigators nicknamed her "Princessin - ich weiss nicht" ("Princess - I don't know anything"). To attempts to psychologically influence the princess as a representative of the anti-Bolshevik emigration, Vicki replied that Hitler was not only against the USSR, he was pursuing the goal of finally eliminating Russia and the Slavs. “As a Christian,” the princess declared, “I in no way share the idea of ​​the superiority of the Aryan race.”

The Germans again arrested Nikolai Obolensky, and sent him to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he held out until April 1945, when the prisoners were released.

But Vera Obolenskaya was waiting for a different fate. On August 4, 1944, Vicki was unexpectedly taken to a separate stone building with high arched windows. There, along the wall, as in a butcher's shop, hung hooks, on which eight people were hung at the same time. In the middle stood a guillotine, next to which was a basket where severed heads were placed.

Vicki put her head on the guillotine....

The name of the executioner is Willy Roetger, a butcher by profession. For each head he was entitled to a financial reward, and his handy eight cigarettes. One of them testified to the fact of the execution of Vera Obolenskaya.

After the end of the war, in a special order dated May 6, 1946, Field Marshal B. Montgomery wrote: “With this order I want to capture my admiration for the merits of Vera Obolenskaya, who, as a United Nations volunteer, gave her life so that Europe could be free again.”

A memorial plaque with her name was installed on the monument to the victims of the war in Normandy. The merits of Vika were also appreciated in the USSR. Her name was included in the list of "a group of compatriots who lived abroad during the Great Patriotic War and actively fought against Nazi Germany." By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Vera Obolenskaya was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, I degree.

The French government awarded Vera Obolenskaya the highest awards of the country - the Military Cross, the Medal of Resistance and the Order of the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor with a palm branch.

Princess Vera Obolenskaya was uncompromisingly against the communist regime, which took away her homeland from her, but the Russian soul and genuine love for her native land burned in her, so she always remembered Russia. The princess was a person of two cultures - French and Russian, she loved both Russia and France. With honor and nobility, Princess Obolenskaya defended the country that had once extended her hand of salvation.

Vera Obolenskaya does not have a grave, because her body was destroyed, but her name is written on memorial plaques and on the grave of her husband.

Nikolai Obolensky after the war took the priesthood and served as rector of the Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky in Paris. He died in 1979 and was buried in the cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois, on the site of the Foreign Legion, in the same grave with General Zinovy ​​\u200b\u200bPeshkov, the son of Maxim Gorky. Before his death, Nikolai bequeathed that the name of his beloved wife be engraved on his tombstone. This desire was fulfilled, and the first lines on the common slab of N. Obolensky, Z. Peshkov and B. Egiazarova de Nork were carved in memory of Vera Obolenskaya.

Zinovy ​​Sverdlov, the elder brother of future All-Russian Central Executive Committee chairman Yakov Sverdlov, became Zinovy ​​Peshkov in 1902 when he was adopted by Maxim Gorky. But Zinovy ​​quickly withdrew from Gorky's revolutionary entourage. With the outbreak of World War I, he joins the French Foreign Legion, and on May 9, 1915, he is seriously wounded. The orderlies, considering him hopeless, did not want to evacuate him from the battlefield, but an unknown lieutenant named Charles de Gaulle insisted on evacuation. Zinovy ​​survived, having lost his right hand, and they struck up a friendship with de Gaulle.

During the Civil War in Russia, Peshkov was part of the French diplomatic mission. At the beginning of 1919, Zinovy ​​sent the following telegram to his brother Yakov: "Yashka, when we take Moscow, we will hang Lenin first, and you second, for what you have done to Russia!"

During World War II, Peshkov refused to recognize the surrender of France. For this, he was captured and sentenced to death by a military tribunal. In anticipation of the execution, he managed to negotiate with the sentry and exchange the gold watch presented by Gorky for a grenade. Taking an officer hostage, he fled on a hijacked plane to Gibraltar to de Gaulle. Later, he also brought his old friend, Vera Obolenskaya, to de Gaulle.

For services to France, Zinovy ​​Peshkov received many awards and became a brigadier general in the French army. When Zinovy ​​\u200b\u200bPeshkov died, his friend Nikolai Obolensky buried him in the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. Zinovy ​​was buried in Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois as a national hero, with a huge gathering of people. He wanted to be buried at the foot of the grave of Princess Vera Obolenskaya, and although Vika has no grave, Zinovy ​​lies under a slab with her name. According to the will, only three words were carved about him on the tombstone: "Zinovy ​​​​Peshkov, legionnaire."

Vika Obolenskaya adored fun, dancing, champagne, coquetry, outfits and, in general, a “beautiful life”. She did not dream of performing feats, entered the anti-fascist underground because she was a decent person, and sacrificed her life so that others would not be deprived of the right to life.

Her father was Apollon Apollonovich Makarov, a former vice-governor of Baku. Mother's name was Vera Alekseevna. Vera was 9 years old when the family left Russia and moved to France. “Vicki”, with an emphasis on the second “and”, the girl began to be called in France by neighbors in the boarding house Madame Darzan on Chateau Boulevard, in which nine-year-old Vera Makarova settled with her mother and aunt. She was a charming and very lively child, was friends with all the children from neighboring houses, was the ringleader of all games. Vicki quickly adopted French mannerisms and pronunciation, and she was not mistaken for a foreigner.

The father soon left them. At first he settled separately, which was a necessary measure - only women with children were allowed into a cheap boarding house. And then he completely left for America, where supposedly it was possible to get on his feet faster in material terms. He promised to call his family there, but this never happened. There were rumors that Apollon Apollonovich was not Vika's own father at all, and that she was the fruit of the passion of Vera Alekseevna Kolomnina and some high-ranking person close to the throne, and her parents' marriage was accomplished by order given from above, and therefore Makarov, who ended up in exile , tried to break the marital ties imposed on him. However, in parting, the father instructed Vicki to present her mother with a bouquet of roses every year on his behalf. He even left his daughter a small amount, which could be enough for all the bouquets until the family reunion.

Vicki fulfilled her father's assignment all her life. When the money left by him ran out, she borrowed money. Then she learned to earn money and continued to give roses to her mother even during the war.

Vicki has been a frivolous young lady for quite a long time. A friend of her youth, Maria Stanislavskaya, recalled: "At seventeen, Vika was more interested in dancing and young people than science." Vicki joined the company of notorious playboys who formed around Alexander von Bilderling: a descendant of several generations of Russian military men, he received a good inheritance and, unlike most emigrants, could not work and live happily on rent, but said that he would spend all the money on pleasure , and then shoot himself, because he does not see the point in life. Bilderling paid for restaurant visits, picnics and country walks for a whole company of which Vicki was the star. All Russian Parisians condemned them. Especially the girls who were Bilderling's girlfriends, believing that they were all in a reprehensible relationship with him. But no one knew and did not know the truth. Alexander Bilderling really went bankrupt and shot himself. Vicki was one of the few who took the suicide coffin to that shameful corner of the cemetery where they buried those who were denied a funeral.

The fun life ended when Vicki was 19 years old. She did the same as many of her compatriots, owners of a slender figure and impeccable posture - she went to work as a fashion model ("mannequin") in the Russian Fashion House "Mieb", founded by the former maid of honor Elizaveta Goyningen-Guis. There she was entrusted to the care of the best and most experienced of fashion models - Sofya Nosovich. Sophia, as she was often called - Sofka Nosovich, was 10 years older than Vika. She was a woman of incredible fate: her fiancé died during the First World War, she herself was a sister of mercy in the Wrangel troops, was captured by the Reds and was sentenced to death, managed to escape and get to Paris, where she fell ill - she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and breast cancer. The chest was amputated, and no one hoped that Sophia would survive. However, she survived, found a job, settled in a cozy attic, arranged tea parties for Russian friends and amazed everyone with her invariable melancholy and fatalism. It would seem that there could not be more different people than the lively, eccentric and very active Vika Makarova - and the imperturbable Sofia Nosovich. However, they became best friends.

Sophia taught Vicki all the intricacies of the work of a fashion model, and it was she who noticed that Vicki had a phenomenal memory. Whatever Vicki heard, she remembered it forever. Vicki remembered the names of all the clients, even those who came to the show only once. She didn't read much, but she remembered everything she read. She spoke flawlessly not only in Russian and French, but was also fluent in English and German. And then Sophia suggested that Vicki look for a job in which she could use her intellect. After all, the age of a fashion model, as a rule, was short, Nosovich herself was a rare exception in this profession, but she had a special gift, as they said, to turn any rag into an elegant outfit, and Vicki did not particularly stand out among other fashion models.

Thanks to her incredible sociability and charm, Vicky became friends with one of her clients, a young French woman, Yvonne Arthuis. She shared with her her desire to change jobs, and it turned out that Yvonne's husband, a wealthy entrepreneur Jacques Arthuis, was looking for a secretary with knowledge of English and German. Vicki's candidacy was perfect. She also became friends with Jacques, and soon the Arthuiss began to invite their secretary to play bridge every Saturday.

Vicki in Paris.

Sophia, according to her friends, during the time of emigration wooed more than two hundred men, but she did not give her consent to anyone. But she was very fond of arranging the fate of her friends, and she selected suitors for them with the skill of a professional matchmaker: exactly those who could fit perfectly. She introduced Vicki to Prince Nikolai Alexandrovich, or, as he was called, Nika Obolensky. He was 11 years older than Vika, was the godson of Empress Maria Feodorovna and Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, studied at the Corps of Pages, and then at the University of Geneva. His father was the Ryazan governor Alexander Nikolaevich Obolensky, his mother was Princess Salome Nikolaevna Didiani-Mingrelskaya. In emigration, they did not live in poverty, and in Swiss banks there were six boxes with the treasures of the princes Didiani, taken out of the Zugrid Palace by members of the Georgian government during the evacuation in 1921, and the lawyers of Salomea Nikolaevna promised that sooner or later these treasures would be returned to her. But Nika Obolensky didn’t need it anyway, they said about him that he was one of the few Russians in Paris who could ride a taxi as a passenger, not a driver. Sofya Nosovich wanted to marry Vicki to him for this very reason. However, Nika was the type that Russian ladies in Paris especially liked: a charming playboy, a lover of dances and restaurants, if Obolensky made visits, he would certainly leave a rose with his card and knew how to look after him beautifully. He was nervous, spoiled, capricious, in his youth he tried several times to commit suicide, once he even jumped out of the window and injured his leg so much that he had to wear an orthopedic boot ever since. But Nika was not boring - and for Vika this was the most important criterion when she judged her fans.

Vicki and Nika got married on May 9, 1937 in the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. After returning from their honeymoon, they settled in a luxurious apartment, the balconies of which overlooked the Bois de Boulogne. But Vicki returned to work with Jacques Arthuis, as she was bored sitting at home doing nothing.

Nikolai and Vera Obolensky.

In 1939, Germany occupied Poland, England and France declared war on Germany, and from a "sitting", as it was derisively called, the war very soon became real. Paris was bombed, and Vicki was dying of horror, sitting in the basement under a seven-story building. Before the war, she dreamed of children, but now she was glad that she and Nika did not have them.

On June 14, 1940, Nazi troops entered Paris. France was divided into an occupied zone in the north and a Nazi-friendly "free" Vichy Territory in the south. Jacques Arthuis was interested in politics before the war and was one of the ideologists of the movement for the creation of the United States of Europe. He took the occupation very painfully and immediately decided to fight. He retained old business contacts with the British. He was able to reach out to British intelligence and began to create an organization that was supposed to supply the British with information about the location and movement of German troops, the operation of German factories, and any other useful information. He almost immediately attracted Vicki to this activity, and she attracted many of his Russian friends, including Sofya Nosovich and Kirill Makinsky, who later said: “Vicki could not admit the thought that the occupation would be established for a long time; for her it was a passing episode in history; it was necessary to fight against the occupation and fight the more rigorously, the more difficult the struggle became.

By the end of 1940, the Arthuis group had merged with another underground resistance organization. The resulting alliance was called by the underground members Organization Civile et Militaire, abbreviated as OSM, translated as “Civil and Military Organization”. They not only supplied information to London, but organized escapes for French and English prisoners of war, met English residents at the landing sites and helped to introduce them. By 1942, the OSM had thousands of members in all departments of the occupied part of France, becoming one of the largest organizations of the Resistance. It included many industrialists, high-ranking officials, employees of communications, mail, telegraph, agriculture, labor, and even internal affairs and the police.

Arthuis hated the communists and did not feel the slightest sympathy for the USSR. But for Vika and Nikolai Obolensky, as well as their Russian friends, June 22, 1941, when the Germans invaded the USSR, became a day of mourning. They listened with horror to reports from the Eastern Front about the endless retreat of the Soviet army. Soviet prisoners of war appeared in France. Nikolai Obolensky, following the order of Arthuis, traveled a lot in France, carrying documents or accompanying the British, and he saw how horribly the Germans treated the Russians. At the same time, the internment of Jews began. And soon it became known that they were being sent to death camps. Vicky wanted to save Jews, Nika wanted to help Russian prisoners of war. And in any case, the main business of life for them was the resistance movement, that is, the fight against the invaders. One of Vika's initiatives was the opening of the Monte Cristo cabaret, where the Germans and French fascists liked to come, and where the date of the German attack on the USSR became known to the OSM. Vicki handed her over to London, the British notified the Soviet embassy, ​​but Stalin considered this another provocation.

Nikolai remained a simple liaison because he did not have special talents. And Vicki was entrusted with more and more tasks: meetings with liaisons and representatives of other resistance groups, contacts with organizations of Soviet prisoners of war, copying and transferring secret data, encryption and decryption, compiling reports. Vicki was elected general secretary of the OSM and given the military rank of lieutenant. In fact, this meant that information from all over the organization flowed to her, she knew the names of all the members, knew their addresses and what they did for the OCM. The unique memory allowed Vicki not to write down anything without unnecessary need. But don't forget anything either. She was irreplaceable. In the organization, she was known under the pseudonym "Katrin". There were legends about her, but not all even those close to Arthuis guessed that “Catherine” was the charming Vika Obolenskaya. Her right hand and first assistant was Sofya Nosovich, whom Viki completely trusted. However, Vicki tested all her friends for their attitude towards the invaders, their courage and readiness for a secret struggle. She recruited Yvonne Arthuis' friend, Jacqueline Richet-Sucher. Years later, Jacqueline recalled Vicki: “She accepted everything from life - both pain and joy; she guessed with some deep instinct what was destined for her by fate and what price she would have to pay for it. Vicki was impeccably honest with herself, never indulged in self-deception regarding her feelings and actions ... She loved life too much not to look for meaning in it, and she was often haunted by the thought that suddenly she would not be able to express herself. And when she showed it, this was expressed in her complete self-sacrifice.

Jacques Arthuis was arrested in December 1942. He did not betray anyone and was shot in a concentration camp. Instead, the organization was headed by Colonel Alfred Tuni. He trusted Vicki as much as Arthuis trusted her. Colonel Tuni's adjutant, Daniel Gallois, left memories of his first meeting with Obolenskaya, and how Vika's eyes struck him: “A spark of amazing cheerfulness shone in her eyes; in the future, I saw how this light could radiate hatred, and mockery, and anxiety, but it never died out, remaining true to her, like her very soul ... "

Subsequently, Daniel met with Vicki twice a week. He was even slightly in love with her, and it was not difficult for him to pretend to be a suitor walking with a lovely woman in the park or inviting her for a cup of coffee. Meanwhile, they talked about terrible things, for example, Vicki said that Nikolai was very worried about the fate of teenagers who were stolen from Ukraine to work in Europe, that almost all of them were sick and exhausted, dying by the hundreds, and yet they are almost children. Is there any way to help them too? She wanted to help everyone, save everyone. She planned to organize the sending of Jewish children from the occupied territory to the south of France. But Vicki did not have time to complete this most important action for herself.

In October 1943, one of the main leaders of the OCM, Roland Farjon, was arrested. During a search, a receipt of the telephone bill paid by him with the address of his secret apartment was found on him. Stockpiles of weapons, lists of members of the organization and their secret nicknames were found in this apartment. The arrests began. Then - as the organization suspected - Farjon himself broke down under pressure and agreed to meet with the OCM contact. The contact was captured. And during the search, they found a notebook with addresses, among which was the address of Sofia Nosovich.

The Gestapo arrived at this address on December 17, 1943. Vicki arrived an hour early to persuade her friend to leave Paris. They were arrested and taken away, shackled with the same handcuffs. Having met one of the neighbors on the stairs, Vicki moved her hand aside so that the chain from the handcuffs could be seen. When Nikolai Obolensky, alarmed that his wife had not returned for a long time, also went to Sofya, a neighbor intercepted him and told him about the arrest. He rushed home to burn incriminating documents.

Vicki and Sophia were taken to a mansion occupied by Rudi von Merod, who personally handled the OCM. They were more afraid to get into this mansion than to go to prison. Von Merod equipped a personal torture chamber there, and no laws, which the Gestapo as an organization nevertheless obeyed, were in effect within the walls of the mansion. Vicki was saved by the reverence of the Germans for the aristocracy. Reading in her documents that Vika was “Princess Obolenskaya,” she was interrogated without torture. They tried to convince her that, being a "princess", she should not support the Gaullists, communists and other rabble, but should help the Germans in the fight against "our common enemy in the East." “The goal that you are pursuing in Russia is the destruction of the country and the destruction of the Slavic race. I am Russian, but I grew up in France and have spent my whole life here. I will not betray either my homeland or the country that sheltered me, ”Vicki answered. She was convinced that the Jews she was saving were the true culprits of the war, in which Europe, Russia, and America were now drawn. “I am a Christian and therefore cannot be a racist,” Vicki replied. She was threatened with "special methods". But they only threatened. But Sophia was tortured to the point of fainting, after which they brought her half-dead to the cell. She was deaf from the beating.

Vicki was very afraid of torture. She was sure that, unlike Sophia, she would not be able to endure and be silent. And if she spoke, not one organization would be destroyed, but also everyone who was associated with the OSM. Having achieved nothing, Vicki and Sophia were transferred to the Fran prison. Soon, Nikolai Obolensky also got there, who went around all instances in an attempt to find out something about the fate of his wife, and he was arrested simply for having a connection with her. However, during interrogations, Vicki was able to convince the Gestapo that she and her husband no longer had a close relationship, and that she loved another person. She spoke of Nikolai with irony and disdain, and it worked: Nikolai was released. Daniel Gallois, who was also arrested, remembered that Vika was always powdered at face-to-face confrontations, with painted lips - it was Nikolai who gave her cosmetics from the outside.

Members of the OSM were transferred to a prison in Arras. On the way, Gallois was able to talk to Vicki. She confessed her fears to him: “They are strong, I don’t know what they will do to us, and I am afraid of torture. I used to regret not having a child; I so wanted to have a girl ... but now I am glad: what would happen if I had to leave the poor little one ... "

Nikolai Obolensky was not officially told where Vika was taken. But in prison, she made friends with a French woman who was imprisoned for two months because she slapped a German soldier who molested her. The Frenchwoman was about to be released, and she undertook to inform Nikolai about the whereabouts of his wife. Nikolai immediately went to Arras, rented an apartment from where the window of Vika's cell was visible. He stood idle for hours with binoculars, hoping to see his wife. And then he was arrested again. But Vicki did not know about this, and she was very supported by the idea that her beloved was at large and probably managed to escape, which means that he was safe. But she learned with bitterness that among those arrested in Arras is the head of the OSM, Colonel Tuni, and Jacqueline Richet-Sucher, whom she herself recruited.

The interrogations continued, but Vicki remained silent. For her stubbornness, she was nicknamed Prinzessin - ich weiß nicht - "Princess - I don't know anything." Tuni was shot in Arras. Vicki, Sophia and Jacqueline were moved to Paris to judge. All three women were sentenced to death. They were given the opportunity to write an appeal. Jacqueline and Sophia wrote the appeal: the first - because they believed that this was an inevitable part of the farce, the second - out of their usual fatalistic indifference to what was happening. Princess Vera Obolenskaya refused to write an appeal. The sentenced were taken to Germany in the Alt-Moabit prison, and they never saw each other again.

The sentence on Vera Apollonovna Obolenskaya was carried out on August 4, 1944 in the Pletzensee prison. Obolenskaya, right from the walk, was taken to a room that the Germans called the “death room”. There, the executioner actuated the guillotine for 18 seconds. For the work done, he received 60 marks, and his assistants - 8 cigarettes each. Obolenskaya's head was cut off on the guillotine, and her body was taken to the theater, where medical students practiced.

The cases of Jacqueline Richet-Sucher and Sofya Nosovich, thanks to appeals, dragged on, and when a massive offensive began on Germany, they were both sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp, where by some miracle they survived. Nikolai Obolensky also survived. Four days after his release from Buchenwald, he sent a letter to his sister in Paris for Vika, hoping that she would be home before he did: “Viki, my dear! I sincerely hope that you have been free for a long time, that you feel well, and that we will be together soon. I was always supported by the confidence that after our common test we will become closer, stronger and even happier than ever, and that no clouds can separate us. Here I am free, and alive, and I can only say one thing: this is a miracle of the Lord's Grace. You will see how I have changed in all respects, and I think that for the better ... My thoughts did not leave you for a moment, and I am so happy, thinking that our suffering will bring us even closer. Honey, I was only saved because of my faith. I have solid evidence that the dead live and help us ... I kiss you tightly, my beloved Vicki, bow before you and bless you. Your old husband, Nicholas."

He only found out about Vika's death on December 5, 1946. Obolensky believed that she had been shot. Michel Pasto, one of the surviving members of the OSM, went to Germany to find out about the fate of his comrades. He visited the Plötzensee prison, where the executions of "especially dangerous criminals" of the Nazi regime took place. He saw a room with two arched windows, along the wall there were six hooks on which the convicts were hung at the same time. In the center of the room was a guillotine, a metal basket into which a head fell, and a hole in the floor for blood to drain. Michel Pasto was told by the prison administration that Vicky had been guillotined. In a special order dated May 6, 1946, Field Marshal B. Montgomery wrote: “With this order, I want to capture my admiration for the merits of Vera Obolenskaya, who, as a United Nations volunteer, gave her life so that Europe could be free again.”

Returning, Pasto told the truth in Paris about how Vicki was executed. “I can’t get used to Vika’s death, which forever crushed my life,” Obolensky told friends. “I could be so happy.”

A memorial plaque with the name of Obolenskaya was installed on the monument to the victims of the war in Normandy. The merits of Vicki, with some "adjustment", were also appreciated in the USSR. Her name was included in the list of "a group of compatriots who lived abroad during the Great Patriotic War and actively fought against Nazi Germany." By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, she was posthumously awarded in 1965 with the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class. The French government awarded Vera Obolenskaya the highest awards of the country: the Military Cross, the Medal of Resistance and the Order of the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor with a palm branch.

Vladimir Putin at the grave of Nikolai and Vera Obolensky at the Russian cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois.

About Vika Obolenskaya wrote the book "Viki - Princess Vera Obolenskaya" Lyudmila Flam. She was related to Vicki. For the first time, Lyudmila Flam heard about her in the early 1950s, becoming the wife of the nephew of Prince Nikolai Obolensky, Vika's husband. Nikolai Obolensky sacredly protected everything that had to do with the memory of his wife and her tragic death. His family archive, through a winding path, through Chile, came to Washington at the disposal of Flam-Obolenskaya and formed the basis of her research. An invaluable source of reliable information was the recollections of eyewitnesses who knew Vika from underground work. Also at the disposal of Flam-Obolenskaya were valuable memoirs of Vika's comrade-in-arms - Sofya Nosovich and handwritten memoirs of Maria Rodzianko, who had known Vika since childhood.

Sofia Nosovich.

From the memoirs of Lyudmila Obolenskaya-Flam: “I first heard about Vika ten years after her execution, when I married her husband’s nephew Valeryan Alexandrovich Obolensky, a journalist who worked first for the BBC, and then held one of the leading positions at Radio Liberty. Soon after the wedding, we went from Munich, where we then lived, to grandmother Salomia Nikolaevna and uncle Nika Obolensky, who settled after the war in the Parisian suburb of Anyer. They lived in a small apartment on the seventh floor without an elevator, where Obolensky climbed, rattling his orthopedic boot on the steps, and his mother, who was then over seventy, easily took off with full shopping bags and shouted to me from the top platform: “Masher, don’t hurry. ..” The apartment was filled with family photographs, and Viki reigned in Nika’s room: Viki in a ball gown from the early 1930s, Viki in a wedding veil, Viki and Nika embracing on the balcony ... Nikolai Obolensky himself also, following the Military Cross and the Resistance medal , was awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor in recognition of his "fulfillment of repeated and dangerous assignments in the course of the underground struggle against the enemy" and for his "service to the cause of freedom." His brother, Alexander, was awarded the Military Cross and two military certificates for his courage in the ranks of the French army. ... By the time I met Vika's husband, Nikolai Obolensky, he already knew that his wife had been executed by beheading ... But nevertheless, we avoided talking about Vika's execution with Nicky. Perhaps this was a vain display of tact on our part; we did not know then that he did not turn away from what happened, did not try to forget everything they experienced during the war, but accepted the tragedy of her death and the irreparability of the loss with Christian humility ... "

Collecting materials about Vika, Flam traveled to France, visited Obolenskaya's relatives, her acquaintances and friends who survived the famine, bombing, prisons and concentration camps ... In the 1950s, Nikolai Obolensky published the book “Viki - 1911-1944. Memories and testimonies. Cinematographers in the USSR became interested in the book, deciding to make a film about Vicki. “Obolensky,” wrote Lyudmila Flam, “categorically opposed this, fearing the ideological distortions that appeared about Vika in the Soviet press, where her political convictions were given a wrong interpretation. So, for example, an article published in 1964 in the Ogonyok magazine spoke of her “dream to return to her homeland” ... Obolensky was indignant: “Despite the fact that the USSR was an ally of the West during the war,” he said, “Vicki never wanted to return to the Soviet Union. Never!"

Nikolai Alexandrovich Obolensky remained faithful to his wife until the end of his life, he never married again. He decided that he would dedicate his life to God and wait until he was united with Vicki in heaven. But while his mother was alive, he could not take the priesthood. In 1963, Obolensky buried his mother and became a priest, and soon the rector of the very cathedral where he married Vika.

Archpriest Nikolai Obolensky, surrounded by servant boys.

Nikolai Alexandrovich died in 1979. From the memoirs of Lyudmila Obolenskaya-Flam: “On November 30, 1978, Father Nikolai lost his old friend and comrade-in-arms in the Resistance - Sofya Nosovich. When Sofya Nosovich was buried, Father Nikolai Obolensky was already seriously ill with cancer. He died in the rank of miter archpriest on July 5, 1979. If Vika's headless body disappeared without a trace, then Father Nikolai was solemnly seen off by almost the entire Russian Paris, starting with Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich. He was escorted to the cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve de Bois and his comrades in the struggle.

Princess Vera Obolenskaya has no grave. There is only a memorial plaque in the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois cemetery, on the memorial Monument to Russian soldiers who died in the ranks of the French army. Her name is also inscribed on the tombstone of Nikolai Obolensky: it was he who wished so that their names would be united in eternity.

The text was prepared by Elena Prokofieva

Used materials:

Site materials www.myjulia.ru
Site materials www.ippo-jerusalem.info

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