Andrei Chilkov-Choubersky

Born Andre Viadimirovitch Khilkoff-Choubersky, mining engineer, many years a senior consultant to British Steel, the United Nations Development programme and the World Bank; in the last two posts he made substantial contributions to the economic development of the Third World the Second World War.

Born in 1907 at Gatchina, the terminus of the so-called Imperial Track, a railway which linked a series of summer palaces along the coast of the Gulf of Finland. He was the son of Princess Eudoxia Khilkoff and Vladimir Choubersky, a banker who in 1920s bankrolled and worked actively on the preparation of a counterrevolution with the British secret agents. He himself played frequently with the children of Tsar Nicholas II, but escaped their fate, fleeing from St Petersburg to Finland with his English Governess just before the October Revolution.

After reaching England, he was for a while at Rugby but continued his schooling in Paris and then attended Strasbourg University. By way of postgraduate studies he spent a year on a mining research expedition to the Tibesti mountains and the area around lake Chad. In Morocco in 1936, working on mining projects for a French company he married Adrienne, a niece of the designer Coco Chanel, from whom he was divorced three years later. In 1940 he married Joan Tomlinson, daughter of a British Bank Manager in Casablanca.

During the early part of the Second World War he was recruited to assist the Americans' nascent intelligence service. The liberation of Morocco by General Patton's troops saved him from deportation to a concentration camp for which he had been marked down by the Germans.

He was recruited for the Allied North African Economic Board at Algiers and given the responsibility of restoring the mining industries in Morocco, Algieria, and Tunisia to full production. After the war he became a British citizen.

Working for the British Iron and Steel Corporation, he opened a mine at Conakry and then was sent, on secondment to a French concern, to Fort Gouraud, Mauritania, to survey a major iron ore deposit there. He spent many years developing mining operations, and founded what is now a substantial town. The site for the town was selected by throwing his hat in the air, and centering the plan where it fell on the desert sand.

Forseeing the need for large ore-carrying ships, he was influencial in the development of Port Talbot as a berth for these huge vessels.

In the 1960's he became a consultant mining engineer to the UN Development programme abd the World Bank, assesing mining development projects throughout the world.

UN business took him to the former Soviet Union where he was pleased to see the efforts of his ancestors to modernise Russia appreciated by the authorities.

Photograph = Surveying a Huge Mountain of Iron Ore, Mauritania.

РОССИЙСКИЕ ЭМИГРАНТЫ НА АФРИКАНСКОМ ТЕАТРЕ ВОЕННЫХ ДЕЙСТВИЙ (1939-1945 гг.)
Валентина Хохлова. Опалённые войной. Русские эмигранты на африканском (средиземноморском) театре военных действий (1939-1945 гг.) // Африка глазами эмигрантов. М., 2002. С. 185-193.
Хилков-Шуберский Андрей Владимирович (1907-1989)— горный инженер. Во время войны занимался сбором ценной информации для американской военной разведки в Северной Африке. http://old.hubara-rus.ru/heroes.html#3

см. английский текст