In 1974 together with the physicist Andrei Sakharov she protested against Solzhenitsyn's deportation

In 1974, together with the physicist Andrei Sakharov, she protested against Solzhenitsyn's deportation. Written in the form of a diary, it describes the impossible situation of the poetess Anna Akhmatova and the satirical writer, Mikhail Zoshchenko, who in 1949 were ferociously attacked and then thrown out of the Writers' Union. In 1937 he was arrested on a fabricated charge and disappeared to the gulag where he was executed. By the time of Stalin's death in March 1953 Chukovskaya had become an established literary figure, one of the senior editors on a liberal monthly, Literatur Naya Moskva. Her real breakthrough had been a short story, "Sofia Petrovna", which she wrote during 1939-40; circulated in typescript form in literary circles in the late 1950s, it appeared in Paris in 1965 under the title "Opustely Dom" ("An Abandoned House"). It was banned in the Soviet Union.Her second important book, Spusk pod Vodu ("Descent Into Water"), again never appeared in her own country It was published in Paris in 1972. She published her first short story, "Leningrad-Odessa", under a pen-name, A Uglov.

She was born in 1907 in Helsingfors in the Grand Duchy of Finland, part of the Russian Empire. Her father, Kornei Chukovsky, was a writer much loved for his children's stories. Chukovskaya's first job was as an editor at a children's publishing house in Leningrad. The writer Lydia Chukovskaya stood firm in the face of totalitarianism.

In the 1960s she raised her voice in defence of the young but already well-known poet Joseph Brodsky and she protested against the trial of two fellow writers, Andrei Siniavsky and Yuli Daniel. In the 1970s she stood up for the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn and the nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov, who were being harassed by the KGB The Soviet government regarded her as a thorn in their side. Baron Guy recognised this in the dedication of his memoirs: "To Marie-Helene, without whom things would only be just what they are."Marie-Helene van Zuylen de Nuyvelt, patron of the arts and racehorse owner: born New York City 23 August 1931; married first Count Francois de Nicolay (one son, marriage dissolved), 1957 Baron Guy de Rothschild (one son); died Ferrieres, Seine et Marne, France 1 March 1996.. In Marie- Helene the Rothschild fortune was more than matched by imagination, inspiration, supreme good taste and generosity.