Olga Forsh (1873–1961)

Olga Dmitryevna Forsh, née Komarova, was born in the fortress at Gunib, in Dagestan, a region of the Russian Empire in the North Caucasus. Her father was a general in the Russian Imperial Army. Her mother died when Olga was very young. After the death of her father in 1881, she was placed in an orphanage for children of the nobility. In 1895, she married Boris Eduardovich Forsh, also a military officer. In the 1890s, she studied at art schools in Kiev and St. Petersburg. In 1904, her husband resigned from the Russian military and the couple and their two children moved to a farm in the Ukraine. Her first works of fiction began appearing in print at this time. Her early novels included The Knight From Nuremburg (1908). She continued to draw and paint, and worked as an art teacher. As time went on, her work began to reflect revolutionary and socialist themes. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Olga and her husband became active supporters of the Bolsheviks. She produced books such as Palace and Prison (1924–25) and The Fervid Workshop (1926). She also wrote the three-part biographical novel Radishchev, comprised of Jacobin Leaven (1932), The Landlady of Kazan (1934–35), and The Pernicious Book (1939). In The Lunatic Ship (1931) and The Raven (1933), she portrayed life among the literary and artistic intelligentsia of St. Petersburg in the early 20th century and created portraits of her contemporaries such as Maxim Gorky and Alexander Blok. She is considered to have played a significant role in the development of the Soviet historical novel.