In memory of Prince Alexander Trubetskoy, a member of the Editorial Board of the Russian Mind magazine
«My motherland is France, and my fatherland is Russia. I feel more Russian than French,» Prince Alexander Alexandrovich Trubetskoy said in one of his interviews. His whole life is behind these words. He ended his earthly journey after a serious lung disease caused by protracted pneumonia. He was ill for a long time, becoming weaker before everybody’s eyes, but always kept his spirit up. «This is the character trait of my ancestors,» Trubetskoy asserted. «We never give up – we go to the end: the harder it is at the beginning, the higher we rise later.»
Needless to say, Alexander Alexandrovich was lucky with his forebears. Born in Paris in 1947, he was a descendant of the famous noble Trubetskoy-Golitsyn family, originating from the Lithuanian princes. From this root grew a huge sprawling family tree of the Trubetskoys: military men and scientists, politicians and figures of art.
The prominent musicologist Nikolai Trubetskoy, Alexander Alexandrovich’s great-grandfather, founded the Moscow Conservatory together with Nikolai Rubinstein. Alexander Alexandrovich’s grandfather Eugene Trubetskoy was a distinguished Christian philosopher of the Silver Age. His brother Sergei Trubetskoy, a philosopher, became the first elected rector of the Moscow State University. His mother Alexandra Mikhailovna was a granddaughter of Dmitry Golitsyn, the Moscow Military Governor-General and a veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812. His father, Alexander Evgenievich, fought in the First World War and then in the Volunteer Army.
Alexander Alexandrovich’s parents first met in emigration in France. «We lived very modestly – no hot water, no bath,» Alexander Alexandrovich recalled his youth. “My father worked both as a taxi driver and a tram conductor. During the occupation the Germans invited my father to fight with them, to go to war for them… But he refused resolutely: he remained a patriot of Russia forever.»
After serving in the French Army, Prince Trubetskoy got a job as an interpreter at a shipyard in Nantes. In the 1970s The Soviet Union signed a contract with France to supply fishing vessels. A quick mind, the ability to make good acquaintances and knowledge of the Russian language allowed Alexander Alexandrovich to be involved in supplying French welding equipment to the USSR. In the 1980s he began working for the Thomson corporation that specialised in the development and production of mass communication media, and in the 1990s he serviced contracts in the energy sector. In 2011 he was granted Russian citizenship, and he headed the Board of Directors of the Svyazinvest telecommunications holding company.
However, by his nature he always remained a humanitarian, or rather a historian, because that was his initial education. Trubetskoy collected archival documents, helped museums, and even contributed to the rapprochement of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. His main passion was the history of the Russian nobility. His house in the town of Juoy-en-Josas near Paris became a real centre of Russian culture. Trubetskoy collected rare books and family heirlooms… He wrote interesting articles for our magazine. He was a co-author of monographs on the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 and on the Italian campaign of Alexander Suvorov.
His knowledge of genealogy and heraldry was encyclopedic: he could tell for hours how in the olden days the Trubetskoys built churches and how the Golitsyns supported Russian art. The prince’s ambition was to open a Trubetskoy-Golitsyn family museum. To do it he was restoring their family estate near Rybinsk in the Yaroslavl region. He was writing a book about his family. But unfortunately, he did not have time to realise his dream…
Trubetskoy was an honorary professor at the Moscow State University, president of the Imperial Guard Memorial Association, head of the Franco-Russian Alliance Association, and took active part in the work of the Coordinating Council of the World Congress of Russian Compatriots Living Abroad. He used to say: «The main goal for me, as for the entire Coordinating Council, is always to remind my compatriots that we belong to the Russian world. This is both an honour and a patriotic duty… We are envoys of Russia…»
In recent years, Moscow became a home for Alexander Trubetskoy and his family. He has stayed here forever. The funeral service for the prince was performed at the Great Cathedral in honour of the Don Icon of the Mother of God at the Moscow Donskoy Monastery. Alexander Alexandrovich has been the first of the Trubetskoys since the Revolution to choose as his resting place the family vault of the princely families of Golitsyn, Shcherbatov and Trubetskoy at the Church of the Archangel Michael of the Donskoy Monastery. He used to say: «We are not just names in textbooks, we are living history.» He went down in History himself.
Eternal memory to him!
Editorial Board and editorial staff
Of the Russian Mind Magazine
