Moura Budberg (1893–1974)

Moura Budberg was born Maria Ignatievna Zakrevskaya, the daughter of an aristocratic Russian landowner and diplomat. She is said to have been beautiful, sensual, seductive, and sexually liberated. She received an excellent education and became fluent in Russian, French, English, Italian and German. In 1911, she married Count Ioann von Benckendorff, an Estonian-born, high-ranking diplomat with whom she had two children. Before the Russian Revolution, Moura lived a life of luxury. Later she was forced to live by her wits, energy, and talents. She met British diplomat and secret agent Robert Bruce Lockhart, and some historians allege that they were lovers. In 1918, both Lockhart and Moura were arrested on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the Bolshevik regime and sent to the dreaded Lubyanka prison in Moscow. They were later released, and it's suspected that this was partly because Moura agreed to work for Soviet intelligence in future. She got a job in publishing and then became a secretary, translator, and lover of Maxim Gorky, living with him most of the time from 1920 to 1933. She was briefly married in the 1920s to Baron Nicolai von Budberg and was thereafter known as Baroness Budberg. She had an affair with H.G. Wells; they renewed their relationship in London, where Moura emigrated in 1933 after parting from Gorky. She lived with Wells and cared for him during his final illness. She worked as the personal assistant to director Alexander Korda. She visited the Soviet Union in 1936 for Gorky's funeral, and again in 1950 with her daughter, Tania Alexander. Moura is widely suspected of having been a spy and a double agent for both the Soviet and British intelligence services, and has been called the "Mata Hari of Russia." She also wrote books, translated Russian novels, and served as a theatrical adviser on them. She is credited as the screenwriter for two films based on Chekhov novels, Three Sisters (1970) and The Sea Gull (1968). Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister of the UK, is a descendant of Moura's older half-sister Alexandra. See her biography by Nina Berberova, Moura: The Dangerous Life of the Baroness Budberg (2005).