Moura Budberg

Maria Ignatievna Budberg (Russian: Мария (Мура) Игнатьевна Закревская-Бенкендорф-Будберг, Maria (Moura) Ignatievna Zakrevskaya-Benckendorff-Budberg) — also known as Countess Benckendorff and Baroness Budberg — (née Zakrevskaya; February 1893 – November 1, 1974) was a Russian adventuress and suspected double agent of OGPU and British Intelligence Service.[1]

Moura Budberg
Moura Budberg, by Allan Warren
Born
Maria Ignatievna Zakrevskaya (Мария Игнатьевна Закревская)

1892
Poltava
Died1 November 1974
Terranuova Bracciolini, Tuscany, Italy
NationalityRussian Empire
Occupationsecretary, screenwriter
Spouse(s)
Ivan Alexandrovich Benckendorff
​
​
(m. 1911; died 1919)​

Nikolai von Budberg-Bönningshausen
​
​
(m. 1921, divorced)​
Partner(s)R. H. Bruce Lockhart
Maxim Gorky
H. G. Wells
Children2
Parent(s)
  • Ignaty Platonovich Zakrevsky (father)

According to British journalist Robin Bruce Lockhart, who knew her personally, "she was, perhaps, the Soviet Union's most effective agent-of-influence ever to appear on London's political and intellectual stage".[2]

Early life

Born in Poltava, in central Ukraine, Moura was the daughter of Ignaty Platonovich Zakrevsky (1839-1906), a Russian nobleman and diplomat.[3] In 1911, she married Johann (Ivan) Alexandrovich Benckendorff (1882-1919), Second Secretary at the Russian Embassy in Berlin and Gentleman of the Court. They had two children: Paul (born in 1913) and Tatiana (born in 1915), who later married Bernard Alexander and became the mother of the businesswoman Helen Alexander. Benckendorff owned a large country house in Estonia, Jendel Jäneda, where he was shot dead on 19 April 1919 by a local peasant.[4]

Arrest

Before the October Revolution, Moura worked in the Russian embassy in Berlin, where she became acquainted with British diplomat R. H. Bruce Lockhart. Upon the assassination of her husband in 1919, she was arrested on suspicion of spying for the United Kingdom and was transferred to the Lubyanka prison. Lockhart, who mentioned her under her given name in his 1932 book Memoirs of a British Agent,[5] tried to vouch for her but was detained as well for a couple of weeks. They had been lovers[6] and she became pregnant by him, but the pregnancy miscarried.[7] (Lockhart's book was made into an American movie in 1934, British Agent, in which he was played by Leslie Howard ("Stephen Locke") and she by Kay Francis ("Elena Moura").

After Lockhart was released and expelled from Russia soon afterward in connection with the "Ambassadorial Conspiracy" affair (also known as the "Lockhart Plot"), Budberg was released as well under the condition that she would co-operate with the intelligence service if the need ever arose. Budberg began to publish "World Literature", where she met the writer Maxim Gorky with the help of Korney Chukovsky. She became a secretary and common-law wife of Gorky, living in his house with a few interruptions from 1920 to 1933 when the writer lived in Italy before returning to the Soviet Union. He dedicated his last major work, the novel The Life of Klim Samgin, to her.

H. G. Wells

In 1920, Budberg met British author H. G. Wells when he made a celebrated visit to Moscow[8] and they became lovers. She was briefly married, on 13 November 1921, to Baron Nikolai (Rotger Emil Arthur Friedrich) von Budberg-Bönningshausen (born 1896).[9] The union was in the nature of a marriage of convenience, and they soon divorced. (It provided her with a passport, however, and thus an ability to leave Russia to visit both her children in Estonia and Gorky then lived near Sorrento. It is said that the Baron Budberg, a shady character, eventually disappeared in Brazil.[10]) Moura's relationship with Wells was renewed in 1933 in London, where she had emigrated after parting with Gorky. The close relationship continued until Wells's death in 1946. He had asked her to marry him, but Budberg strongly rejected the proposal.

Double agent?

Budberg was widely suspected of being a double agent for both the Soviet Union and British intelligence and has been called the "Mata Hari of Russia", after the famous Dutch exotic dancer and accused spy. She is known to have visited the Soviet Union at least twice after the 1920s: first in 1936 for the funeral of Gorky (which made people call her an agent of the NKVD) and again at the end of 1950, with a daughter of Alexander Guchkov.

An MI5 informant said of her, "she can drink an amazing quantity, mostly gin".[11]

Moura Budberg maintained residences in London at Ennismore Gardens and in Cromwell Road. She had made her permanent home in England from the time she emigrated there in 1929 until shortly before her death (October 31, 1974), when she returned to Italy.[12]

Writing

Among many other activities, Budberg wrote books and was the script writer for at least two films: Three Sisters (1970), directed by Laurence Olivier and John Sichel, and The Sea Gull (1968), directed by Sidney Lumet.[13][14] She translated Gorky's novel The Life of a Useless Man (1908) into English in 1971.

Family

Budberg's older half-sister, Alexandra 'Alla' Ignatievna Zakrevskaya (1887–1960), who married Baron Arthur von Engelhardt in 1908 but divorced in 1909,[15] was the great-grandmother of Nick Clegg, the leader of the British Liberal Democratic Party between December 2007 and May 2015, and Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2015.

Legacy

In May 2008 a television film, My Secret Agent Auntie, directed by Dimitri Collingridge, was released in England.[16] Her biography was written by Nina Berberova, who chronicled the émigrés.

References
  1. Biography at people.ru
  2. Bruce Lockhart, Robin (1987), Reilly: The First Man, Penguin Books, pg 86.
  3. Nicolas Ikonnikov, La noblesse de Russie (2nd edition, Paris, 1962) Vol. T.2, pp. 299-301
  4. Nicolas Ikonnikov, La Noblesse de Russie (Second edition, Paris, 1962) Vol. T.2, p. 301
  5. Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, Memoirs of a British Agent (1932); 384 pp; Reprinted Macmillan (January 1975) ISBN 0-333-17329-5 ISBN 978-0-333-17329-9
  6. Mystery of Nick Clegg's 'Mata Hari' aunt and a plot to kill Lenin Archived 2015-09-19 at the Wayback Machine
  7. "Epilogue" by Robin Bruce Lockhart (2003) in Memoirs of a British Agent by R. H. Bruce Lockhart (2003 edition by the Folio Society), pg 267.
  8. Burris, Charles (2007-08-01) Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal: An Annotated Bibliographic Guide, LewRockwell.com
  9. Nicolas Ikonnikov, La noblesse de Russie (2nd edition, Paris, 1962), Tome T.2, 301-2
  10. Bruce Lockhart, Robin (1987), Op. cit., pg 58.
  11. "Mosley was tracked by MI5". BBC News. 2002-11-28. Retrieved 2010-05-13.
  12. Bruce Lockhart, Robin (1987), Op. cit., pg 60.
  13. Internet Movie Database
  14. Filmography – Retrieved on 2006-10-23
  15. Nicolas Ikonnikov, La noblesse de Russie (2nd edition, Paris, 1962) Tome T.2, 301
  16. My Secret Agent Auntie (2008). IMDB

Further reading
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