24
 

Nathaniel Knight
 

outweighed his distaste for the Bolsheviks—a common attitude at
the time. Unfortunately, circumstances would not allow Cony to
continue his Naval career. On two or three occasions he was
arrested by the secret police on suspicion of spying, and by 1922 he
 

Constantin Alexandrovich ("Cony") and Pierre Alexandrovich Benckendorff
at the familv estate, Sosnovka, ca, 1900
 

had come to know Moscow's Butyrsky prison all too well. In the
end his superiors at the Naval Ministry decided it was simply too
politically risky to keep him on.

Unemployed and at risk of being arrested yet again, he was saved
by his lifelong love for music. Cony was an enthusiastic amateur
flutist, and when he lost his job with the Navy, friends arranged to
have him join a symphony orchestra, thus providing him with a
modicum of security. Here he fell in love with Maria Korchinskaia,
an accomplished harpist. They were married in 1923, and their first