Boris Skossyreff was a man of longevity. He died in 1989just turned 93 years old, in a nursing home in Boppardin what was then West Germany. However, even that long existence seems to fall short when we remember the many lives that Skossyreff chained: he was born into a rich family in Vilnius, but the Bolshevik Revolution forced him very soon to leave his country and look for a life, trying his fortune as a swindler, spy, forger, gigolo, translator and even contender for the throne of Andorra.
Added to this extensive resume is his status as a troublemaker, born drinker, lover of good bad life, seducer, fortune hunter and possessor of an elastic morality that, among other things, allowed him to act as triple spy (they say that he served as such for Germany, Great Britain and the United States) and survive in concentration camps and gulags, even at the cost of collaborating with the Nazis.
Anything to survive.
His life may not be exemplary, but it is exciting enough to have made him the protagonist of a documentary and a bookboth titled ‘Boris Skossyreff, the swindler who was king’ and signed by Jorge Cebrián. Reconstructing his story did not only require years of interviews and diving into archives and newspaper archives. As confesses the director and authorthe work has had to go beyond the “myths, half-truths and lies” that surround the figure of Boris to discover the authentic character without “simplifying or romanticizing him.”
And the Russian Revolution came
Skossyreff’s must have been a life of privileges, comforts and income. At least those were the letters he found when he was born, in 1896, in Vilnius, today the capital of Lithuania but at that time part of the Russian dominions.
Theirs was a good family, rich and aristocratic. The problem is that those cards turned against him when the Red Revolution of 1917 broke out. Young Boris had no choice but to run away and look for a life outside the country. He ended up in the Royal Navy British, maintaining a more or less comfortable life based on scams, bad checks and a lot of gossip.
In addition to its good perch, they say that Skossyreff was a polyglot (he spoke at least Russian, English, French, German, Spanish and Italian, although he raised the list of languages that he knew 20), he took such care of his appearance that he even walked around with a monocle in a prison camp and above all he exuded a charisma that opened doors for him. Among other things, he achieved a Nansen passport which allowed him to move around Europe even with the safe conduct already expired.
His wanderings through Great Britain did not last long.
From there he ended up going to the Netherlands, where he presented himself as a distinguished aristocrat in the service of the queen, and continued his life journey through Spain, Marseille and finally Spain again, where he ended up in Mallorca. His problems with the law haunt him, but he manages to gain the trust of two women: Marie Louise Parata rich divorcee 14 years older than him, whom he ends up marrying; and Florence Marmonex-wife of an automobile industry magnate, with whom he indulges in a life of debauchery.
So many that it ends up forcing him to pack his bags and leave Mallorca.
Boris I of Andorra
After passing through Sitges accompanied by his lover, the Russian hustler decided to launch himself into the biggest and craziest of all his coups: invent an aristocratic lineage that would make him, he argued, the prince of Andorra. He even introduced himself as Boris I. The fact that he noticed just that portion of Pyrenean terrain is not causality. At that time Andorra was governed by the bishop of Seu d’Urgel and the president of France and presented a series of shortcomings (and potentialities) in which Skossyreff saw a huge opportunity.
He encouraged the Andorrans to break with their rulersdelve into their independence and undertake a series of projects to modernize following the example of Monaco. In front, of course, he would put himself, something to which his family tree supposedly (supposedly) entitled him.
Skossyreff managed to make noise and aroused the interest of the press.
It is counted that even The New York Times (among other newspapers) came to give visibility to that extravagant aristocrat who insisted that he was born to occupy the throne of Andorra. The truth is that Boris was not content with moving papers and launching advertisements. In 1934 He even proclaimed himself Boris I, sovereign of Andorra, a daring move that did not last long. Fed up with his adventures, the bishop of La Seu d’Urgell notified the Civil Guard to stop him.
His supposed (supposed) reign lasted just nine days.
That could have been the final chapter for Boris Skossyreff, but he managed to navigate the turbulent 20th century, moving through Europe with astonishing ease. It does not matter that the civil war caught him in Spain, that France sent him to a republican refugee camp, that after the outbreak of World War II he ended up in a Dachau concentration camp or that, once Hitler fell, the Russians condemned him to more than two decades of forced labor in the icy Siberia. Like the most seasoned cat, he always managed to land on his feet.
To achieve this, he had no qualms about dazzling women who sent him money or taking advantage of his linguistic skills to serve as a translator for the Nazis. If there is an anecdote that portrays his ability to survive, it is the one that circulates about his stay in the Dachau camp, where, makes sure In the documentary filmed by Cebrián, “he did not take off his monocle not even to clean the latrines“.
Not even Siberia could put an end to it.
In the mid-1950s he managed to return to Germany. He first settled with his French wife, then separated from her and finally married another German woman 40 years younger than him. The idyll did not last long and Skossyreff was condemned to an epilogue that detracts from his crazy life journey: he died in 1989, in a nursing home, like a sad shadow of the hustler he had been and (some versions have) marked by allegations of abuse of minors.
A character tailored to the turbulent 21st century who now inspires films.
Images | Wikipedia and Aboodi Vesakaran (Unsplash)
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