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Mikhaïl Serguéïèvitch Mikhailoff-Raslovleff

Mikhail Sergeyevich Mikhailoff-Raslovleff comes from a noble family whose origins, in Russia, date back to 1436. He is the son of Sergei Mikhailoff Mikhailoff-Raslovleff and Olga Constantinova Fanshawe.

He spent his childhood, until the age of eleven, on the property of “Arsentievka” in the Petrovsk district, then studied at the Alexander II Cadet Corps in Saint Petersburg. When his parents died, his mother in 1904 (died of a lung infection) and his father in 1905 (killed at the naval battle of Tsushima against Japan), his uncle, Baron Alexandre Henrikovitch Nolcken, was appointed his guardian legal. Mikhail Serguéïèvitch entered the Bergakademie in Freiberg-en-Saxony in 1910, preparing to become a mining engineer in the hope of making his fortune in the exploitation of the silver mines of Malaysia. The war of 1914 brought him back to the estate of “Baranovka”, located in the province of Saratov and inherited by him, with his sisters and his younger brother, in 1908, upon the death of their paternal grandmother, Helena Alexandrovna von Liphardt. He held positions in the civil administration there.

In 1915, he enlisted, as a simple sailor, in the Imperial Navy of the Black Sea, in Sevastopol, where his older sister and her husband, the frigate captain Lev Fanshawe, were already there, as well as his younger sister and her fiancé. , the young artillery officer of the Guard, Vassili von Harder. He distinguished himself in several perilous operations and received three citations to the Order of Saint George. From 1917 to 1920, he took part in the Russian Civil War. He is charged by Admiral Kolchak, like other volunteers wearing the uniform of simple sailors, to infiltrate the military soviets and get elected president. In 1918, he became a liaison between the monarchists in central Russia and created his own network. In 1920, in Sevastopol, he published the first legitimist review. He leaves Crimea for Constantinople, with the remains of General Wrangel's army.

Mikhail Serguéïèvitch was the one who discovered and provided proof in 1921 that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were a forgery, a vulgar plagiarism of the Dialogue in the Underworld between Machiavelli and Montesquieu by Maurice Joly. He did it out of honesty even though, at the time, he did not wish to draw attention to himself and had no particular sympathy for the Jewish Cause. From 1921 to 1924, his goal was the restoration of the monarchy in Russia. In 1921, he founded in Constantinople the political movement “The Pan-Russian Union Cosma Minine” whose aim was to “beg the decapitated Romanov dynasty to resume its centuries-old role of unifying all the living forces of the Nation”. His clandestine trip to Russia during the summer of 1922 convinced him of the impossibility of putting back on its feet even part of the important monarchist organization destroyed by the events of 1919. His dream of restoring the Russian monarchy was broke in August 1924 when the disagreement within the Russian imperial family materialized. He nevertheless returned, clandestinely, to the U.S.S.R. in 1935 in the hope, without success, of meeting Marshal Tukhachevsky.

Mikhail Sergeevich married Nathalia Alexandrovna Ivanenko on July 27, 1919, in Odessa. Nathalia Alexandrovna was born on July 29, 1893 in Bakhchysarai, Crimea. She was the daughter of Alexandre Grigorievich Ivanenko and Cécile Markévitch. The Ivanenkos are an ancient family from southern Russia descended from Gospodar Ivoni of Moldavia who lived in the second half of the 16th century. In 1923, he moved to Paris with his wife and son Nikolaï.

The jobs that Mikhail Sergeyevich pursues outside Russia are food or serve as a cover for his counter-revolutionary activities supported by the government in exile of General Wrangel and certain European courts. Thus in 1921-1922, he was a journalist in the Balkans. From 1923 to 1935, he worked as an office worker in France. From 1935 to 1940, he returned to the press and was correspondent for La Nation Belge. During the war, from 1940 to 1943, he was a secretary-interpreter at General Motors in Paris. In 1944, after the liberation of Paris, he worked at the Radio Listening Center which had just been created at Mont Valérien and, in 1946, entered the Joint Military Documentation Center at the Military School in Paris where he became head of the foreign languages service. He knew nine languages, four of which were Russian, French, German and English, which he spoke perfectly. He retired in 1957.

Mikhail Sergeyevich is also a poet and writer. His first collection of satirical poetry was published in 1921 in Constantinople. In 1932, in Paris, he published his allegorical tale History of Tévanghir the Basorite and the enclosed garden of his soul. He dedicates the main poem of his first collection in French verse Les Voix Glorieuses to Paul Fort with whom he maintains an ongoing correspondence. He then wrote two historical dramas, the first in French, in five acts, entitled Hyde de Neuville, the second in Russian inspired by the epic of the future Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky. But it was the French translation of the popular Russian tale Koniok Gorbounok (The Little Hunchbacked Colt), which made him known in 1935. He only took up his pen again in 1957, once he retired. In 1958 he published his collections Saint Russia and Reflets furtifs, then some studies on Russian literature and prosody. In 1962, he published the prose poem The Saying of the Holy Russia and in 1978, his friend Jean Pourtal de Ladevèze prefaced his New Choice of French Poems. In 1981, he began the publication of the historical-poetic trilogy From Derjavin to Bunin or the grandeur and decadence of the Empire of All Russia illustrated by its poets; 1981: The Cantor of Félice (Gavriil Derjavine); 1982: The Slavophile Bard (Fédor Tutcheff); 1987: Ivan Bunin, the disillusioned witness to the fall of the Russian Empire, appeared a few days after his death.

Mikhail Sergeyevich retained the status of Russian refugee until his death. He held Volunteer Resistance Fighter card no. 36923.

Work

  • Collection of satirical poems, Constantinople, 1921.
  • Songs of the counter-revolution, Constantinople, 1921.
  • History of Tévanghir the Bassorite and the enclosed garden of his soul, Paris, 1932.
  • Les Voix Glorieuses.
  • Hyde de Neuville.
  • The little hunchback foal, Paris, 1935.
  • Holy Russia, Paris, 1958.Reflets furtifs, Paris, 1958
  • The story of Holy Russia, Paris, 1962.
  • Les Chouans sur Rail, Paris, 1951
  • New choice of French poems, Paris, 1978.
  • Historico-poetic trilogy By Derjavine to Bunin or Grandeur and decadence of the Empire of All Russia illustrated by its poets: the Chantre de Félice (Gabriel Derjavine), Paris, 1981; the Slavophile bard (Fédor Tutcheff), Paris, 1982; Ivan Bunin, the disillusioned witness of the fall of the Russian Empire, Paris, 1987.