Zinovy Peshkov
Zinovi Pechkoff, originally Sinovi Alexeyevich Peshkov (Russian Зиновий Алексеевич Пешков; born October 16, 1884 in Nizhny Novgorod, † November 27, 1966 in Paris) was a French officer and diplomat of Russian origin.
Life
Pechkoff was born Yeshua Salman Sverdlov into a Jewish family and was the older brother of the later Soviet Russian head of state Yakov Sverdlov. From his father denied he was in 1902 Russian Orthodox baptized and Maxim Gorky ( Alexei actually Maximowitsch Peshkov ) adopted. He followed him to France and Italy.
1914 Pechkoff joined voluntarily in the French army in 1915, he lost in the war of position the right arm. Later he was sent to the white army of Kolchak in the Russian Civil War. In 1923 he received French citizenship. From 1921 to 1926 he fought in Morocco under Marshal Lyautey as an officer of the French Foreign Legion. 1937 to 1940 he commanded them there himself, in 1943 he was promoted to brigadier general. In 1941, he met in London, General de Gaulle, who entrusted him with important missions in Africa and the Far East, as head of the French liaison mission to the Allied occupation force in Japan from 1946 to 1950. For even 1964, he held talks with Chiang Kai- shek, the President of the Republic of China on Taiwan.
In the Soviet Union Pechkoff was considered a traitor. Stalinist censors therefore retouched him from the mid- 1930s from the famous photo that shows him as a spectator alongside his adoptive father in a game of chess with Lenin, Bogdanov in April 1908.
Zinovi Pechkoff died 1966. He is buried in the Russian cemetery in Sainte -Geneviève -des- Bois near Paris.