The ROVS, the NTS, and the BRP had a strong presence in France; in addition to the ROVS members who had been stationed in France by Shatilov from as early as 1924, Paris had become the ROVS’s headquarters since Kutepov had taken over after Wrangel's death in 1929. Since 1933, Shatilov also recommended that the members of his department join the NTS, resulting in a spectacular growth of activities in France. The head of the NTS’s French section at the time was Vladimir Dimitrievich Poremskii (1909–1997), the future head of the entire NTS from 1948 to 1972.

Political Context of the 1930s in France

During the 1930s, France found itself under attack from new forces on the far-right such as leagues like Croix de Feu and Jeunesses Patriotes and also new political parties like Jacques Doriot’s Parti Populaire Français and the Parti Républicain National et Social, which was only a legal front for the aforementioned Jeunesses Patriotes.

As historian William Irvine puts it:

Spurred on by repeated parliamentary scandals [notably the Dreyfus affair of 1894 and the Staviskii affair of 1934], by governmental impotency in the face of the economic crisis [namely the Great Depression of 1929], and by a growing fear of communism, the “new right” threatened to sweep away the decadent parliamentary republic and to replace it with a stronger and more authoritarian regime. These new movements had substantial popular base and bore disquieting similarities to fascist movements elsewhere; for a time, it appeared as if France might have the same experience as Italy and Germany.¹¹⁰

It is in this context of political unrest that the White Russian hub developed in France.

Participation in the Entente Internationale Anticommuniste (EIA)

As mentioned above, the BRP and the NTS collaborated closely with foreign secret services, especially Polish military intelligence. Additionally, both organizations, along with the ROVS, worked extensively with the Entente Internationale Anticommuniste (EIA), an intelligence organization co-founded by the Swiss lawyer involved in the Conradi Affair, Théodore Aubert, and a White Russian, Yurii Lodygenskii.

Théodore Aubert and Yurii Lodygenskii

It was at the “trial of Bolshevism”¹¹¹ of 1923 that the two co-founders of the EIA met for the first time. The Swiss anti-communist lawyer Théodore Aubert (1878–1963) was defending Arkady Polunin and Moritz Conradi for the murder of a Soviet representative to the Lausanne Conference, Vatslav Vatslavovich Vorovsky. The trial resonated internationally and was considered by some to represent a “victory over Bolshevism.”¹¹² This symbolic moment inspired Yurii Ilyich Lodyzhenskii (1888–1977) to create an anti-communist organization that would continue this first “victory,” and he asked Aubert to be part of it. Together they created the Entente Internationale Anticommuniste (EIA) also known as the “Aubert League” or the “International Entente Against the Third International.”

Before he met Lodygenskii, Aubert was already a committed anti-communist; he had been a founding member of the Swiss Patriotic Federation (Schweizerische Vaterländische Verband, SVV) serving as its general secretary for French-speaking Switzerland. The SVV was a far‑right group created in 1919 by Eugen Bircher (1882–1956). Bircher had close relations with German far‑right paramilitary groups like the German Freikorps and the Einwohnerwehren, and he tried to model the SVV on the same concept.

Bircher was also in contact with figures that were involved in the Kapp Putsch of 1920, such as Waldemar Pabst (1880–1970), and in the Beerhall Putsch of 1923, like Erich Ludendorff (1865–1937).

During the Russian Civil War, Yurii Lodyzhenskii, also known as George, was the head of the Red Cross infirmary in Kiev in 1915 that was named after Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich. He was also based in Geneva where, from 1921 to 1926, he was a representative of the Russian Red Cross to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Creation of the Entente Internationale Anticommuniste (EIA)

The first meeting of the EIA was organized in Geneva on March 13, 1924.¹¹³ Immediately following the Russian section of the EIA was created, and Anatolii Lieven—who was simultaneously the head of the Latvian sections of the BRP and the ROVS¹¹⁴—was appointed as president of the Russian section of the EIA.

The goal of the EIA was to be a centralized intelligence organization; White Russian organization like the ROVS, the BRP or, later, the NTS would gather information from their underground networks in the USSR. This intelligence would be passed on to the EIA, who would use it to create anti-Bolshevik propaganda. The propaganda would then be shared with the White organization on the ground to be distributed as leaflets in the USSR. From this chain of events, we can infer that the Russian section of the EIA was not simply an offshoot of the organization, but an integral part of its structure.

The EIA received direct funding from the Nazi government,¹¹⁵ notably through the Gesamtverband Deutscher antikommunistischer Vereinigungen, also known as Anti-Komintern, a German governmental anti-communist and anti‑Semitic propaganda agency affiliated with the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda of Joseph Goebbels. The Anti-Komintern was used as an intelligence source on the communist movement worldwide, and provided fuel for the ministry’s propaganda campaigns, before being merged into the Gehlen Organization after WWII.

The Russian Labor Christian Movement (Russkoe Trudovoe Khristianskoe Dvizhenie, RTCD) (1931)

In the 1920s, the intelligence-gathering system of the EIA was based on informal networks, without a centralized structure, and, therefore, its scope was relatively limited. It was only in 1930, with the creation of an EIA central office in France, that their intelligence activity gained momentum.

In 1927, Yuri Lodygensky had his brother Alexandr Ilyich Lodyzhenskii (1890–1954) come from Hungary to France to become the secretary general of the Russian Center of the EIA. Alexander Lodygenskii settled in June 1928 in Saint-Julien-en-Genevois, near Geneva and the headquarters of the EIA. The Russian center of the EIA in France, called the Russian Labor Christian Movement¹¹⁶ (Russkoe trudovoe khristianskoe dvizhenie, RTCD), was created a couple of years later in 1930 or 1931.¹¹⁷

The RTDC’s founding benefited from the help of Boris Vladimirovich Nikolskii (1870–1919), one of the leaders of the Black Hundred movement, and Protopresbyter Sergius Orlov (Sergei Ivanovich Orlov) (1864–1944), founder of parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) in Bern and Zurich (Switzerland), as well as in the south-east of France (Lyons, Annecy and Uzhin).¹¹⁸ The RTCD collaborated extensively with ROCOR and offered “spiritual development and Christian morality courses” for children, sponsored by Metropolitan Anastasius (Alexandr Alexeevich Gribanovskii) (1873–1965), second First Hierarch of ROCOR.¹¹⁹

The anti-communist rhetoric of the EIA ensured it sympathy in Protestant and Catholic circles; this effort also came at a time when, in 1930, the Catholics had launched a prayer crusade against communism.¹²⁰ Therefore, the goal of the RTCD was to spread Christian trade union organizations’ ideas,¹²¹ controlled by the Vatican, among Russian workers in order to counter the influence of their communist counterparts.¹²² During WWII, the RTCD also notably was sponsored by collaborationist organizations, like the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism (Légion des Volontaires Français, LVF), a unit of the Wehrmacht.¹²³

If the RTCD was controlled on one side by the EIA and on the other by the Vatican, it was still essentially a White Russian organization. Its central bureau included known figures of the White movement linked to the ROVS, like Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin (1883–1954) and General Golovin.¹²⁴ Additionally, the sections of the RTCD in Yugoslavia¹²⁵ and Bulgaria¹²⁶ received organizational and financial support from the local ROVS departments.

The NTS also collaborated with, and probably helped to create, the RTCD. Indeed, there is a record of a conference in the spring of 1930 in Saint-Julien-en-Genevois—the headquarters of Alexander Lodygenskii, the founder of the RTCD—organized by the EIA and attended by the NTS.¹²⁷ We can, therefore, deduce that the two organizations had an important influence on each other: the EIA most likely helped the NTS in its unification process in 1930 and the NTS must have contributed to defining the modus operandi of the RTCD.
As for the BRP, its collaboration with the EIA intensified when Lieven, who was the president of the Russian section of the EIA, took over the BRP in 1932. Subsequently, one of his deputies, Valentin Alexandrovich von Wrede (1886–?), became the new point of contact with the EIA. Georgii Leuchtenberg, the financier of the BRP, also had contacts with the EIA.

The Stolypin matrix (1930s)

In addition to its collaboration with the EIA, the French section of the NTS was also well-connected with several factions of the French extreme right, including, Action Française, the largest far-right organization at the time; members of the collaborationist Vichy regime; and also the conspiratorial matrix surrounding the failed fascist coup d’état of February 6, 1934. All of these connections were a result of its president during the interwar period, Arcadii Petrovich Stolypin (1903–1990).

Stolypin and Action Française (1930s)

Arcadii Stolypin was the son of Pyotr Arkadievich Stolypin (1862–1911), the prime minister to the last tsar, Nicholas II. Stolypin’s sister, Helena, married Vadim Grigorievich Volkonskii, who replenished the funds of Georgy Leuchtenberg’s Banque Slave du Midi when it closed to bankruptcy in 1926. When Volkonskii took control over funding the bank, he appointed his brother-in-law as secretary, where he stayed until the bank shut down after Leuchtenberg’s death in 1929.

A year later, on May 7, 1930, Stolypin married Gracita Georges Louis (1908–1993), the daughter of Georges Louis (1847–1917), the ambassador of France to Russia from 1909 to 1913. Pyotr Stolypin, Arcadii’s father, was Prime Minister of Russia from 1906 until his death in 1911. We can infer that Gracita’s and Arcadii’s fathers knew each other, and perhaps the spouses met through them.

Gracita’s uncle and Georges Louis's brother was Pierre Louis (or Louÿs) (1870–1925), a French poet who notably participated to the Ligue de la patrie française, a group formed during the Dreyfus affair in 1898 to gather the anti-Dreyfusards. This league was founded by Maurice Barrès and Jules Lemaître, both members of the main far-right group in France at the time, Action Française.

The connection of the Louis family with the French far-right continued in the next generation: Gracita Georges Louis herself was very involved in Action Française circles and introduced her husband to it.

Gracita notably volunteered at the Foyer du Duc de Guise,¹²⁸ a university restaurant designed to provide students who were members of Action Française with low-cost meals. The restaurant was created by Marthe Daudet (also known as “Pampille”), the second wife of Léon Daudet (1867–1942), co-founder of Action Française with Charles Maurras.¹²⁹ Arcadii Stolypin often frequented this restaurant where his wife volunteered, and he would share a meal with well-known figures from Action Française, such as Claire and François Daudet, Léon Daudet’s children.

Gracita was also linked to the Camelots du Roi, the youth organization of Action Française. Her childhood friend,¹³⁰ with whom she volunteered at the Action Française restaurant, was Simone (nicknamed Moune) Nouguès (1912–2006). Simone Nouguès was a member of Action Française and married Jean Despax, one of the leaders of the Camelots du Roi. The witnesses for their wedding ceremony—Action Française founder Charles Maurras (1868–1952) and the son of its co‑founder Léon Daudet, Alphonse—show how important the organization was in their lives.¹³¹

The Camelots du Roi took an active part in the February 6, 1934 riots which overthrew the socialist government known as Cartel des Gauches and were dissolved along with other far-right leagues on January 18, 1936. Just before being shut down, they managed to salvage weapons and flags of their organization, and Arcadii Stolypin and his wife offered their help to hide the loot in their Parisian apartment. They also sheltered one of their leaders, Jean Despax, the husband of Simone Nouguès, while he was wanted by the police. In the meantime, in September 1935, Arcadii Stolypin became a member of the NTS’s French section.¹³² And according to his autobiography, after WWII, the royalist circles repaid the favor by “providing services” to the French section of NTS.¹³³

Stolypin and the Vichy regime (1937)

In 1937, two years after joining the French section of the NTS, Arcadii Stolypin co-founded the Société des Amis de la Russie Nationale with Arsenii Anatolyevich Gulevich (1866–1947), a fellow White Russian, and Gustave Gautherot (1880–1946), the French representative of the Entente Internationale Anticommuniste (EIA).

The goal of the Société was similar to that of the EIA, i.e., to act as a centralized intelligence organization between three groups: (1) White émigrés, in particular the NTS through Stolypin, (2) the EIA through Gautherot (who had been a member of the permanent bureau of the EIA since 1933), and (3) the anticommunist members of parliament (MP) in France, the majority of whom were close to the French far-right and later to the collaborationist Vichy regime. The anticommunist MPs who were members of the Société (especially Gautherot and Frédéric Eccard (1867–1952), who were also members of the EIA) used the information from the NTS and the EIA to present anti-Soviet rhetoric to parliament and to recruit among their ranks.

Even though the Société disbanded when WWII broke out, in 1939, the connections it had helped establish were likely maintained during the war. Indeed, the members of the Société took on leading roles during the war and during the collaboration with Nazi Germany; the anticommunist MPs of the Société joined the Vichy government, and Arcadii Stolypin became president of the French section of the NTS from 1941 to 1948, which was during the Vichy regime. This nexus between the White Russians and the Vichy regime is illustrated by the ease with which Alexandr Kazem-Bek, the leader of the Mladorossy organization, was released from his internment camp in 1941 thanks to the personal intervention of the leadership of the Vichy regime, Pierre Laval and Marshal Pétain.

The Société des Amis de la Russie Nationale cofounded by Stolypin was a point of interconnection between three factions that were operating in the field of the French extreme right:

a) Every member of the Société was either a minister in the Vichy government or an MP who voted full powers to Marshal Pétain in July 1940. These powers further authorized Pétain to dissolve the French Third Republic and establish the collaborationist and authoritarian regime of Vichy. After the war, most members of the Société also joined the Association pour défendre la mémoire du maréchal Pétain (ADMP), which was set up in memory of the head of the Vichy regime that had collaborated with the Nazi regime and was complicit in the deportation of 76,000 Jews from France during WWII.¹³⁴ Among those collaborators were Maxime Weygand (1867–1965), who helped enforce the racial laws and Philippe Henriot (1889–1944) who helped create the foundation of the Gestapo-affiliated Milice, a fascist‑type paramilitary organization in charge of tracking down resistance fighters, Jews, freemasons, and people trying to escape forced labor in Nazi Germany.

b) Among the members of the Société were also representatives of the royalist extreme right Action Française—especially Xavier Vallat (1891–1972). This is not surprising given how close Arcadii Stolypin, the co-founder of the Société, was to these circles. Of note is Joseph Denais’s (1851–1916) membership. From 1910 to 1924, he was the codirector, along with Edouard Drumont, of La Libre Parole, a far-right newspaper that was the voice of the anti-Dreyfusards during the Dreyfus affair.

c) The last faction represented in the society are the conspiratorial- and coup-oriented organizations. These can be placed into two categories. The first are the far-right leagues involved in the failed fascist coup d'état of February 6, 1934—an uncoordinated but violent attempt to overthrow the socialist Cartel des Gauches government elected in 1932. Notably, among these were the Jeunesses Patriotes,¹³⁵ and their founder, Pierre Taittinger (1887–1965), who was a member of the Société. Between 1925 and 1935, the Jeunesses Patriotes were notably close to the Mladorossi, a White Russian youth organization sponsored by Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, with whom they shared their attraction for fascism.¹³⁶ Another member of the Société was Georges Lebecq (1883–1956), President of the Parisian group, Union nationale des combattants, which also participated in the 1934 attempted fascist coup.

Two cofounders of the Société, Gautherot and Henry Lémery (1874–1972), were also close to a second type of conspiratorial organization: the Cagoule¹³⁷ ¹³⁸ a fascist terrorist organization that existed from 1935 to 1941 and tried to overthrow the leftist government by performing assassinations, bombings, and sabotage of armaments intended to cast suspicion on communists and add to the political instability.

From 1930 to today

These two factions, the royalist extreme right of Action Française and the conspiratorial circles involved in the failed 1934 coup, to this day have links with the White Russians. In many ways, these connections have set the stage for the Franco-Russian relations that can still be observed.

The Chiappe Connection

On January 8, 1934, Ukrainian Jew, Serge Staviskii, who had just been convicted for embezzling millions of francs, was found dead from a gunshot wound. Originally, the newspapers reporting on the “Stavisky affair” called it a suicide; however, after details were released to the public about his criminal history and ties to the French establishment, speculation arose that police officers had killed Staviskii to protect influential people. This scandal led to the resignation of Prime Minister Camille Chautemps.

The new Socialist government, led by Prime Minister Edouard Daladier, wanted to take advantage of this scandal to get rid of the political opposition, and they decided to dismiss the prefect of the Paris police, Jean Chiappe (1878–1940), notorious for his right-wing sympathies, by accusing him of having hindered the investigation of the Staviskii affair.

Chiappe was indeed close to far-right circles, including relationships with Maurice Pujo (1872–1955), the founder of the Camelots du Roi, and Horace de Carbuccia (1891–1975), the director of the far-right journal Gringoire and his own son-in-law.¹³⁹

These extreme right-wing, anti-Semitic leaders close to Chiappe were scandalized to learn of the demotion of their colleague on account of the “Jew Staviskii,” and they decided to organize a demonstration in support to Chiappe. The demonstration, organized by Action Française and far‑right leagues like the Croix-de-feu and the Jeunesses Patriotes, took place on the night of February 6 and 7, 1934, and quickly degenerated into a violent riot. The police fired upon and killed fifteen demonstrators. The viciousness of the event caused it to be interpreted as an attempted coup d’état. According to historians, even though the right-wing forces lacked coordination and a centralized leadership for it to be considered a proper coup d’état, they still achieved their initial goal—the fall of the socialist Prime Minister Edouard Daladier. He was replaced by conservative Gaston Doumergue.

The Jeunesses Patriotes were notably close at the time (between 1925 and 1935) to the White Russian youth organization Mladorossy, and it is therefore likely that the Mladorossi may have also participated in the demonstration. To support this theory even further, Jean Chiappe, in whose honor the demonstration was organized, was known for being sympathetic to the White cause. In 1932, the left‑wing newspaper, L’humanité, published a series of articles on the, “collusion between White Russian emigration and its protectors, the French conservatives, Prime Minister Tardieu and Police Prefect Jean Chiappe.”¹⁴⁰ ¹⁴¹

Chiappe died in 1940, but Franco-Russian relations continued on with his nephew, Jean‑François Chiappe (1931–2001). In 1961 Jean‑François married Marina Antonovna Denikina (1919–2005), also known as Marina Grey. She was the daughter of General Anton Ivanovich Denikin (1872–1947) (link to anna’s chapter), the Commander-in-Chief of the White Armies whose regime incited violence against “Jew‑communists” and whose troops carried out pogroms against the Jewish population.

Jean-François introduced his wife to the French far-right circles he was engaged with, notably the far‑right journal Rivarol, of which he was the president of the funding structure called Association des Amis de Rivarol, and Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National, whose central committee he joined in 1974. Marina Grey herself developed close relationships with these organizations as well, notably with Ghislain de Diesbach (1931–), the Vice President of the Association, to whom she dedicated the biography of her father, and Jean Bourdier (1932–2010), the co-founder of the Front National, with whom Gray wrote the book “Les armées blanches” in 2004. In 1974, Chiappe, Bourdier, and two of their friends, François Duprat (1940–1978)¹⁴² and Victor Barthélémy (1906–1985),¹⁴³ founded the Institut des Études Nationales (IEN),¹⁴⁴ an ideological training center for Front National executives.

The de Roux-Von Pahlen Partnership

Action Française still exists today, 120 years after its creation. However, the more time distanced France from its royalist past, the more the monarchist faction gradually lost importance within the world of the French extreme right. The post-war years in France were dominated by the organizations that were created to oppose Algerian independence in the 1960s, notably the Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS)¹⁴⁵ and the student groups that gravitated around it. Later the “Revolutionary nationalism” movement appeared including, most notably, Groupe Union Défense (GUD). They were the main group up until 1972, when Jean-Marie Le Pen founded the Front National, which has since passed into the hands of her daughter, Marine Le Pen. Today, the group is still the main extreme right-wing force in France.

Today, even if the Golden Age of the monarchist movement is over and Action Française has become marginal on the political scene, this does not mean that its militants have disappeared. In 2012, Action Française members filled the ranks of the demonstrations organized in opposition to gay marriage by La Manif pour tous. It is indeed more at the individual level that Action Française continues to exist, rather than as a unified organization. And one of the playgrounds of its militants today is metapolitics, defined, according to French far-right ideologue Guillaume Faye, as “the occupation of culture” unlike politics, which is “the occupation of a territory”, or put differently, the idea that the political struggle is carried out first on the cultural level.

One of the ways that the extreme right has to spread its ideas is through books, and, therefore, through publishing houses. One such publishing house that has seen the White Russians and the French monarchist extreme right unite again is the Editions des Syrtes, founded in 1999 by Pierre-Guillaume de Roux and Sergei Sergeievich von der Pahlen.

On the French far-right side is Pierre-Guillaume de Roux (1963–2021), the great-grandson of Marie de Roux (1878–1943) who was himself the lawyer of Charles Maurras and one of the leaders of Action Française in its early days. Pierre-Guillaume’s father, Dominique de Roux (1935–1977), was also involved in publishing right‑wing books, and especially antisemitic poets like Ezra Pound and Louis Ferdinand Céline. Dominique co-founded his far-right editorial collection¹⁴⁶ with his cousin, Jacqueline de Roux, who was the granddaughter of both Marie de Roux and Maxime Real del Sarte (1888–1954), the founder of Camelots du Roi. Jacqueline’s offspring are notably involved today in SOS Chrétiens d’Orient¹⁴⁷, a Catholic, pro-Russian, anti-Israeli far-right organization in favor of Bashar al-Assad.

On the White Russian side of the founding of Editions des Syrtes is Sergei Sergeevich von der Pahlen (1944–), the son of Sergei Sergeevich Duke von der Pahlen (1915–1991), who participated in the Russian National Liberation Army (Russkaia Osvoboditel'naia Narodnaia Armiia, RONA), a Waffen-SS brigade made up of White Russian volunteers. Sergei’s great-grandfather, Leonid von der Pahlen (1834–1908) had a sister who married into the Lieven family and gave birth to Prince Anatolii Pavlovich Lieven (1872–1937), who was the head of the Latvian sections of the BRP and the ROVS and also the president of the Russian section of the EIA.

Sergei himself married the heir to the FIAT empire, Margherita Agnelli (1955–),and reinvests his wife’s money in the publishing house he co-founded with Pierre-Guillaume de Roux. Sergei von der Pahlen is also a member of the board of the St. Basil the Great Charitable Foundation, headed by Konstantin Valeryevich Malofeev (1974–) and Prince Zurab Mikhailovich Chavchavadze (1943–). The foundation has important ties with the French extreme right and, in particular, the Front National.

The Le Pen-White Russian Nexus

On May 31, 2014, Marine Le Pen’s (1968–) international adviser and Front National MEP, Aymeric Chauprade (1969–), participated in a discreet meeting in Vienna¹⁴⁸ that was focused on the theme, “How to save Europe from liberalism and the homosexual lobby?” The meeting was initiated by Konstantin Malofeev and the St. Basil the Great Charitable Foundation. Among the guests were Sergei von der Pahlen; Alexandr Dugin, a theorist of Eurasianism;¹⁴⁹ and an individual called Iliya Glazunov.

Iliya Glazunov (1930–2017) was the nephew of Boris Fedorovich Glazunov (1895–1963), a member of the Gatchina SD (Sicherheitsdienst) under the command of Pavel Petrovich Delle (1900–1990) (link to Marlene’s chapter). In 1968, Glazunov traveled to France¹⁵⁰ at Count Sergei Mikhailovich Tolstoi’s (1911–1996) invitation (link to Marlene’s chapter). During his stay, Glazunov met with a former Gatchina colleague of his uncle’s, a man named Nikolai Nikolaevich Rutchenko, who was still a member of the French section of the NTS. Glazunov also met with the former head of the NTS’s French section, Arcady Stolypin.¹⁵¹ But this visit to France also resulted in the first meeting of Glazunov and Jean-Marie Le Pen (1928–), the founder of Front National. The encounter resulted in a long-lasting friendship, and Glazunov even painted a portrait of Le Pen, who has kept the painting in his home ever since.

We can therefore summarize the aforementioned May 2014 meeting in Vienna was an encounter between the Front National MEP Chauprade and two third-generation White Russians, whose ancestors were involved in Nazi-controlled organizations (the Gatchina SD for Glazunov and the Waffen-SS for von der Pahlen).

Four months after this meeting, in September 2014, Marine Le Pen obtained a loan of 9 million Euros for the Front National from the First Czech Russian Bank.¹⁵² Even if neither Malofeev nor von der Pahlen were directly involved in the negotiation, we may suspect some lobbying occurred on their part to facilitate a the acquisition of this significant loan.

The release of this loan to the Front National by a Russian bank came at a critical time in foreign relations, notably the Ukrainian Revolution of 2014, and Malofeev had been suspected of having financed the pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk.¹⁵³ The disclosure in March 2015 of text messages from a Kremlin official mentioning how the president of the Front National was to be “thanked” in exchange for her support on Crimea, certainly supports this suspicion.¹⁵⁴

Even though all this occurred in 2014, when Marine Le Pen was the head of the Front National, it is actually her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who can be considered as the initiator of this dynamic of Franco‑Russian rapprochement.

He is the connection with Iliya Glazunov, whom he has known since 1968. Glazunov then introduced Jean-Marie Le Pen to Malofeev in 2013.¹⁵⁵ We, therefore, believe that Jean-Marie Le Pen initiated the Vienna meeting in May of 2014, which preceded the loan to Marine Le Pen in September 2014.

Also, on April 18, 2014, months before Marine received her loan, Jean-Marie (and his fundraising organization, Cotelec) received a 2-million-Euro loan from Russia. This loan came from an obscure Cypriot company, Vernonsia Holdings Ltd, to the Swiss bank, Julius Baer. The economic beneficiary of the Cypriot transaction was Yuri Kudimov, a former KGB agent and, until October 2014, the Director of the investment bank Vnesheconombank (VEB Capital), owned by the Russian state.¹⁵⁶

Within a month of obtaining the loan for his daughter, Jean-Marie Le Pen discreetly traveled to Moscow in October 2014, where he met¹⁵⁷ with both leaders of the St. Basil the Great Charitable Foundation, Konstantin Malofeev and Zurab Chavchavadze.

In conclusion, thanks to a fluid anti-communist doctrine and a certain opportunism, the White Russians found allies in both the French extreme right and Nazi Germany, which allowed them to collaborate with the nationalist regimes of Spain, Finland, Poland, and Japan. It is this same opportunism that has seen the succeeding Russian and French generations unite once again against new enemies, the United States and Israel. The complex history enables us to clearly see the Franco-Russian relations that exist today and to recognize that beyond a French fascination for Russia and its authoritarian values, we are dealing with real political cooperation between major actors of the far-right.