Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, Dehn wrote a biography, The Real Tsaritsa, to refute rumors that were circulating in Europe during the 1920s about the Empress and Grigori Rasputin.

Dehn was born Yulia Alexandrovna Smolskaia on her family's southern Russian estate, Revovka, a home of her ancestor General Mikhail Kutuzov, who defeated Napoleon during the 1812 invasion of Russia.

Alexandra remained disturbed that her godchild had had a Lutheran baptism and insisted seven years later that the child must be rebaptized in the Russian Orthodox Church.

[4] She was not allowed to return to the Alexander Palace, and persuaded the government to place her under house arrest in her own home because her son Titi was dangerously ill.[2] Dehn wrote in her book that she blamed the Revolution on Jewish revolutionaries.

[2] Dehn escaped Russia aboard the ship SS Kherson with her mother and son Titi via Turkey and Greece.

[3] The family first settled in England, where the von Dehns had two more children, Ekaterina, or Katharina, or Catherine (Kitty), in December 1919[1] and Maria Olga, or Marie, in April 1923.

[1] After World War II broke out, she was forced to emigrate again and ended in Caracas, Venezuela, with her son Alexander (Titi) and her daughter Maria.