A Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia's Most Seductive Spy (2 page)

There were always rumours about her. She had been a spy, a betrayer, a double or even triple agent, in the service of MI6, MI5, the KGB . . . nobody could tell for sure, but everybody had his or her own opinion on the matter. She knew simply
everybody
who was anybody, and liked to convey that she knew everything about them as well. People who entered the sprawling social web the Baroness spun around herself were warned by the older acquaintances to watch their step and their tongues – Moura knew all, saw all, and had powerful, dangerous connections. But hardly anyone, enveloped in one of her bear hugs and subjected to her charm, could resist her.

Baroness Budberg – or the version she presented to the world – was a figure made partly out of fables and lies. Some of them (and not necessarily the most flattering ones) were her own inventions, concocted or stolen from the lives of others and added to the living mythology of Moura Budberg. She had spied for the Germans in the First World War; had spied for and against the British and the Russians; had worked as an agent for the fearsome Bolshevik secret police during the Red Terror of the Revolution; was the mistress of the British agent who plotted to bring down Lenin; had been the trusted agent of Stalin; and she might even have committed murder.

If there were any grains or shards of truth scattered in the folds of myth, nobody cared to discern what they might be, or separate them from the lies. Each man and woman who knew the Baroness – family member, friend, acquaintance or enemy – liked to imagine that he or she had put a finger on what made her tick, or knew concealed truths about her. Few of them, in fact, knew more than a fragment about her.

What they most wanted to know was the truth about her earliest adventures – her love affair with the British diplomat and secret agent Robert Bruce Lockhart in revolutionary Russia, and her involvement in his plot to bring down the Bolshevik government.

Almost all her friends wished that she would write her memoirs. The writer and peace campaigner Peter Ritchie Calder felt ‘a deep affection for her, and I’ve always thought what a marvellous book could be written about her’.
²
He wasn’t the only one. Publishers Alfred A. Knopf and Hamish Hamilton tried to arrange for her to produce an autobiography, and although she took and spent the advance, not a word was written. She had begun a memoir decades earlier, but nobody ever saw it, and it was burned – along with most of her other papers – shortly before she died in 1974.

After her death, several attempts were made to write a biography, but most came to nothing for lack of source material.

In 1979, five years after the Baroness had gone to her grave, biographer Andrew Boyle attempted to write her life. His book
Climate of Treason
– which caused Anthony Blunt to be exposed as a Soviet spy – had topped the bestseller lists, and he turned his attention to the woman who, coincidentally, had tried to tip off MI5 about Blunt decades earlier. He found her a much deeper mystery than any Cambridge spy, and almost as well defended by her circle of close friends. The exchanges of letters between Boyle and the members of Moura’s circle show a curtain quickly being drawn down around her as soon as her family realised what he was up to.

Boyle got as far as sketching out an outline, in which he noted that ‘a virtue must be made of explaining the tentative nature of the material’
³
relating to her early life. But the biography was never written – the writer who had penetrated the mystery of the last Cambridge spy couldn’t catch a sure enough hold on Moura Budberg to bring her to life.

One biographer succeeded where Andrew Boyle failed. Nina Berberova was a Russian novelist who had the priceless advantage of having known Moura during her early years in exile, from around 1921 to 1933. Other than that, Moura’s life was almost as mysterious to Berberova as it was to any other person. As a highly spirited writer of fiction, she wasn’t deterred, and where her source material failed, she didn’t hesitate to invent – not only decorative details but vital facts.

Since then, more material has come to light. Aside from the large archives of letters to Gorky, Wells and Lockhart, more recently the file kept on her by MI5 from 1920 to 1951 has been released. Added to facts uncovered by Andrew Boyle and tied to new research into the historical background of the ‘Lockhart Plot’, it has become possible to piece together the whole story of her life, and uncover some surprising and quite startling facts.

What Moura did in her life, what she was reputed to have done, and what she claimed to have done are difficult to tell apart. Sometimes it’s impossible to tell them apart. It is tempting to take a cynical view of Moura’s untruths – that she aggrandised herself or simply couldn’t distinguish fact from fiction. But what she was really doing was creating an artistic truth for herself. She did it all her life, but it was only in the course of her intimacy with Maxim Gorky, when she delved deeply into the mind of a literary creator, that she herself began to understand what she was doing. Trying to sum up what Gorky did in the process of converting life experience into fiction, she commented that ‘Artistic truth is more convincing than the empiric brand, the truth of a dry fact.’
⁴

There was her life and motive encapsulated. She wasn’t a magpie – she didn’t steal experiences because of their attractive gleam, or embellish her own in order to seem more interesting. Where Gorky created literary art out of people’s lives, Moura tried to create an artistically ‘true’ life for herself out of them, even as she was living it.

And her stealing and invention weren’t wholesale – just a little touch here and there. Her life, quite by chance, had a dramatic structure normally found only in novels; she was aware of the fact, and ensured that in her letters and her utterances at the time, and in her recollections afterwards, the right words were said and the right attitudes struck at the dramatically appropriate junctures. Whether it was a courageous farewell in the gloom of a night-time rail station, a vow to love unto death or a noble valediction on a mountain crag, she played her part to the full. That it was embellished and charged deliberately with drama did not make any of it less real, either for her or for the people who acted in the play of her life.

The contributions that have gone into the making of this life story are too numerous to list in full. If it hadn’t been for the late Andrew Boyle’s work in gathering the tales of her friends while they were still living, this book would not have been possible. Neither could it have been done without the memoir written by Moura’s daughter Tania,
An Estonian Childhood
.

Others who have helped this book on its way, and who have earned our thanks, include:

Archivists who have provided copies of documents and letters relating to Moura Budberg’s life: Arcadia Falcone of the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas; David K. Frasier of the Lilly Library, University of Indiana; Carol Leadenham, Sean McIntyre and Nicholas Siekierski of the Hoover Institution archives, University of Stanford; Dennis J. Sears, Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, University of Illinois; and the staff of the House of Lords archives, Westminster.

Enno Must, Director of Jäneda Mõis, and Georgi Särekanno, Head of Jäneda Museum, kindly gave Deborah an hour of their time to show her round the manor in which Moura lived in Estonia and which now contains a museum devoted to her and the Benckendorff family.

Biographers and historians who have shared their expertise and information: Andrea Lynn, for her help and for sharing information about Moura’s life and her relationship with H. G. Wells; John Puckett for creating an invaluable translation of the report by Yakov Peters on the Lockhart Case; Professor Barry P. Scherr of Dartmouth College, University of Chicago, for providing notes on the Gorky/Budberg correspondence held in Russian archives and for information on their relationship; Caroline Schmitz for translating the German correspondence between Paul Scheffer and Moura; Miranda Carter and Nigel West for information and advice.

Heartfelt thanks to those friends and acquaintances of Moura Budberg who shared their memories and thoughts about her in conversation with Deborah: Lord Weidenfeld; Michael Korda; Nathalie Brooke (née Benckendorff); and Jamie Bruce Lockhart, who also gave permission to use letters from Robert Bruce Lockhart’s archived documents. Thanks also to Simon Calder and family for allowing us to use the epigraph written by his late grandfather, Peter Ritchie Calder.

Finally, profoundest thanks to our agent, Andrew Lownie, for first seeing the potential of this story and for bringing us together to write it; and to Fiona Slater, Rosalind Porter and everyone at Oneworld for believing in the book and letting it see the light.

Deborah McDonald

Jeremy Dronfield

January 2015

Note on dates and place names

The Julian (‘Old Style’ or OS) calendar was used in imperial Russia until it was replaced by the Gregorian (‘New Style’ or NS) calendar after the Revolution. As a Catholic invention, the Gregorian calendar was resisted by Orthodox countries until very late. Eastern Orthodox Churches still use the Julian system for their ecclesiastical calendars.

The Julian calendar was thirteen days behind the Gregorian. Thus, the ‘October Revolution’ actually took place in NS November, and in pre-revolutionary Russia Christmas took place when it was January in the rest of Europe. In the narrative that follows, to avoid such anomalies, OS Julian dates will be given when dealing with Russian events prior to the official change (which occurred on 31 January 1918), and NS Gregorian after.

Shifting national borders and changes in rulership have caused several of the places featured in this story to change their names. Because of its Germanic tone, the name of St Petersburg was changed to Petrograd on the outbreak of war in 1914; following the Revolution, in 1924 it became Leningrad, before finally reverting to St Petersburg in 1991. The port city of Reval in Estonia became Tallinn in 1920. The Estonian village now called Jäneda, where Moura spent summers and Christmases at her husband’s country seat, was then known (at least to anglophone writers) as Yendel.

In this book, the names used are those that were current during the time in which the story is set. Similarly, Ukraine is referred to as
the
Ukraine. One exception is the people of Latvia, who were referred to by anglophones as
Letts
or
Lettish
; this has been avoided for the sake of clarity.

Prologue

London, 1970

Baroness Moura Budberg, moving as quietly and as gracefully as her age and arthritis allowed, entered the Russian Orthodox church in Kensington. Passing between the red marble pillars, her footsteps masked by the chanting of the choir, she paused before the icon of Christ, and lit a candle, that she might be forgiven her sins.

Of these she had many – more than a single lifetime’s worth, sins of all shades from the blackest transgressions to the most scarlet.

She was in her late seventies, yet Moura’s Slavonic cheekbones and feline eyes still hinted at the allure that had captivated men in her younger days. Aristocrats and diplomats, secret agents and intellectuals, prime ministers and princes, all had fallen under her manipulative spell. And yet, for all her sins, the only one for which she had really suffered was no sin at all – that of falling in love. The one man she had truly loved with all her heart had slipped out of her grasp. Now, long decades after the passion of their youth – a wild and dangerous affair sparked amidst the flames of the Revolution – she had come here today, to this church of exiles, to mourn his death.

Moura had ruthlessly lied her way through life: survival was what mattered, at any cost. She had used her sex and her powerful mind to manipulate men, had spied and betrayed, and suffered in her turn. She could safely say she had led a colourful life, despite not having shared it with the man she loved.

The choir chanted its haunting Russian melody, and incense filled the air. The gleaming gold leaf of the icons and the elaborate murals, the white vaulting and gilded dome above the altar were all in stark contrast to Moura herself: her dress, like her mood, was black and all-enveloping. She had felt the need to fortify herself with a few gins and a cigar before coming here. Other than the priest and choir she was the only person present: this was her own private memorial service. She was here to thank Christ for the life of Robert Bruce Lockhart, agent, writer and adventurer, her lost lover. At last, now he was dead, Moura had him to herself.

How different life might have been if he hadn’t betrayed and forsaken her – her dear Locky, her Baby-Boy. They could have been together all their lives, and there would not now be such a bitter twist of despair in her mourning for him. She recalled the night they were seized by the Cheka; the thunderous hammering on the door, the terrifying ride to the Lubyanka. He, the conspirator, the plotting assassin, expected execution. The gunshots of the firing squads echoed through the building as the Red Terror began to spread through the streets of Moscow. Alone in his room, hour by hour he expected them to come for him. Moura alone knew the full truth about why he was spared – the degrading sacrifice she had made in return for his life.