A Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia's Most Seductive Spy (71 page)
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Authors: Deborah McDonald,Jeremy Dronfield
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Historical
BOOK: A Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia's Most Seductive Spy
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| 22 | Moura, letters to Lockhart, 12–13 Feb. 1919, LL. |
| 23 | Moura, letter to Lockhart, 5 Mar. 1919, HIA. |
| 24 | Moura, letter to Lockhart, 6 Mar. 1919, LL. |
| 25 | Whitman, ‘Song of Myself’, Leaves of Grass . |
| 26 | Moura, letter to Lockhart, 12 Apr. 1919, LL. |
| 27 | Moura, letters to Lockhart, 12–20 Apr. 1919, LL and HIA. The account that follows is based on this series of letters. There are pages missing from the letters – possibly removed by Lockhart in order to suppress Moura’s statements about her movements at this period. |
| 28 | Maurice Magre, ‘ Avilir ’, L’Oeuvre amoureuse et sentimentale (Paris: Bibliothèque des curieux, 1922), p. 174 (translation Jeremy Dronfield); Moura, letter to Lockhart, 12 Feb. 1919, LL. |
| 29 | Alexander, Estonian Childhood , pp. 1–3, 8. |
| 30 | Moura, letters to Lockhart, 18 Apr. and Easter Day [20 Apr.], 1919, LL and HIA. |
| 31 | Moura, letter to Lockhart, 9 May 1919, HIA. In Tania’s account ( Estonian Childhood , pp. 1–3) the murder took place on the 18th. Note: ‘Esthonia’ was the contemporary English spelling. |
| 32 | In her letter to Lockhart on 9 May 1919, Moura writes that her mother was to undergo an operation the next day. According to Tania ( Estonian Childhood , p. 12), Madame Zakrevskaya died ‘in April, only a week or two after my father’. Presumably Tania was mistaken about the exact date, and her grandmother actually died from the operation on or after 10 May. |
| 33 | Moura, letter to Lockhart, 18 Apr. 1919, LL. |
| 34 | Moura, letter to Lockhart, 24 Jan. 1919, LL. |
| 35 | Moura, letter to Lockhart, 12 Apr. 1919, LL. |
| 36 | Lockhart, diary entry for 24 Oct. 1919, Diaries vol. 1 , p. 54. |
| 37 | Lockhart, Retreat from Glory , p. 43. |
Chapter 15: ‘We’re All Iron Now’
| 1 | Wells, Russia in the Shadows , pp. 14–15. |
| 2 | Wells, H. G. Wells in Love , pp. 161–4. |
| 3 | Berberova, Moura , pp. 98–100; Alexander, Estonian Childhood , pp. 56–9. Berberova produced a garbled account, apparently based on a misunderstanding of Moura’s own oral tale. She states that in early 1919 Moura was homeless and given accommodation by the elderly Gen. Aleksandr Mosolov. This is contradicted by Moura’s letters, which show her living with her mother. Both Berberova and Tania state that she approached Chukovsky in the spring or summer of 1919 begging for work as a translator; he gave her none, and instead he took her to meet (for the first time) Maxim Gorky. Thus she became his live-in secretary. We know from Moura’s letters that she was approached first by Chukovsky and by the beginning of January 1919 was already translating books for him (see Chapter 14). The account given here is arrived at by resolving the contradictions and errors in previous versions. |
| 4 | Moura, letter to Lockhart, 9 May 1919, HIA; Alexander, Estonian Childhood , p. 12. |
| 5 | Chukovsky, diary entry for 4 Sep. 1919, Diary , p. 53. |
| 6 | Berberova’s and Tania’s accounts both have Moura asking for translation work in mid-1919 and meeting Gorky for the first time then. Both women seem to have misunderstood Moura’s story and conflated two events into one. Berberova isn’t precise about the time when Moura entered Gorky’s household, but Tania states that it was September 1919. |
| 7 | Khodasevich, ‘Gorky’, p. 228. |
| 8 | Berberova, Moura , p. 100. |
| 9 | Moura, letter to Lockhart, LL. Undated: probably 1933. Moura does nothing to clarify the chronology in this letter, in which she refers to events several years apart (e.g. the Kerensky period and her time in the Gorky commune) as if they were virtually contemporaneous. All she specifies is that the ‘peacock’ reaction occurred at her very first meeting with Gorky. |
| 10 | Quoted in Figes, A People’s Tragedy , p. 208. |
| 11 | Gorky, Novaya Zhizn , 7 Nov. 1917 and 9 Jan. 1918, quoted in Leggett, The Cheka , pp. 45, 304. |
| 12 | Moura, letter to Lockhart, 18 Feb. 1919, LL. |
| 13 | Leggett, The Cheka , p. 65. |
| 14 | Moura, letter to Lockhart, 24 Jan. 1919, LL. |
| 15 | Recollections of Valentina Khodasevich (niece of Vladislav) quoted in Alexander, Estonian Childhood , p. 61. |
| 16 | Khodasevich, ‘Gorky’, pp. 227–8.; Valentina Khodasevich, quoted by Alexander; Vaksberg, The Murder of Maxim Gorky , p. 67. |
| 17 | Troyat, Gorky , pp. 62–3. |
| 18 | Troyat, Gorky , p. 87. |
| 19 | Troyat, Gorky , pp. 104–5. |
| 20 | Gorky, letter to Yekaterina, 5 May 1911, quoted in Vaksberg, The Murder of Maxim Gorky , p. 40. |
| 21 | Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment , pp. 149, 293. |
| 22 | Berberova, Moura , p.105. |
| 23 | Various sources are in conflict over the date and location of this escape bid. The narrative given here is, again, achieved by resolving the conflicts between the sources. |
| 24 | Moura, letter to Lockhart, LL. Undated: probably 1933; also Anna Kotschoubey (Assia), letter to H. G. Wells, 27 Dec. 1920, RBML, and Wells, Russia in the Shadows , p. 10. These three accounts contradict that given by Tania (Alexander, Estonian Childhood , pp. 65–6), which states that her mother’s escape attempt took place in December 1920 and was across the frozen river Narva into Estonia. Tania’s date is contradicted by contemporary evidence proving that it was late February or early March. Furthermore, by February 1920 crossing the frozen Narva would not be necessary to gain entry to Estonia, as it was no longer the frontier line – under the Russo-Estonian peace treaty of February 1920, the agreed frontier was several miles east of the river (Article III, Peace Treaty of Tartu, in League of Nations Treaty Series vol. XI, 1922, pp. 51–71). |
| 25 | Leggett, The Cheka , p. 251. |
| 26 | Quoted in Vaksberg , The Murder of Maxim Gorky , p. 105. |
| 27 | McMeekin, History’s Greatest Heist , pp. 57–61 and passim . By the end of 1919, 36 million gold roubles’ worth of materials had been collected in Petrograd alone. By spring 1921 Andreyeva was carrying out the role of saleswoman openly and from 1922 was working for the Commissariat for External Trade (Fitzpatrick, Commissariat of Enlightenment , p. 293). |
| 28 | The evidence (most of it circumstantial) for Moura’s involvement is summarised in an unpublished paper by G. L. Owen, ‘Budberg, the Soviets, and Reilly’, acquired by H. G. Wells’ biographer Andrea Lynn and passed to Deborah McDonald. |
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