A Very Dangerous Woman

April 20, 2015
Maria Ignatievna Zakrevskaya, called Moura by friends and family, led a life as turbulent as the Russian revolution she cunningly managed to survive. Biographer McDonald (Clara Collet 1860–1948) and novelist Dronfield (The Locust Farm) explore that life in a fast-paced story of European intrigue, featuring an enigmatic, strong-willed woman who married twice and whose lovers included Alexander Kerensky, Maxim Gorky, and H.G. Wells. Moura was raised in a wealthy Ukrainian family with connections to the Russian czar, and her first husband, Djon Alexandrovich von Benckendorff, was from an equally upper-class Estonian family. The outbreak of the Great War in 1914 disrupted this life of privilege; von Benckendorff resigned his diplomatic post in Berlin and joined the Russian army. Once the revolution started, Moura didn’t hesitate to cultivate sexual connections as a means of protecting herself. In 1918, she met Robert Lockhart, head of the British diplomatic mission in Petrograd, and they embarked on an affair that got her embroiled in a plot to overthrow the Bolsheviks, turned her into a spy for the Soviet secret police, and eventually drove her into exile in England. Moura’s survival story is fascinating on its own; unfortunately, the authors overcommit to the unnecessary love story angle. Illus.

March 15, 2015
An attempt to introduce the world to a female spy far more successful than Mata Hari and just as captivating. Moura Zakrevskaya (1891-1974) was born in Ukraine to a family with land, wealth, and a connection to the czar. Despite her origins, her instinct for survival and a liberal political temperament led her to spy for the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. After leaving Russia in 1921, though, evidence of her continued spy activity is largely circumstantial. She was often in the right place at the right time to engage in espionage; travel in and out of restricted areas was frequently easier than seemed legitimate; and both the general gossip and the files kept by European governments concluded that she was likely a spy for one entity or another for most of her life. For the most part, McDonald (The Prince, His Tutor and the Ripper: The Evidence Linking James Kenneth Stephen to the Whitechapel Murders, 2007, etc.) and Dronfield (The Locust Farm, 2013, etc.) craft a colorful tale, but they impart little of the urgency that makes spy stories so successful. Combined with the amount of historical and familial detail necessary to make sense of Zakrevskaya's life, this makes for an informative but rarely thrilling read. The biography is thorough for a subject as careful and secretive as an assumed spy, and while the authors make an effective argument that their subject lived a double life, there is little payoff in terms of hard documentation. Prodigious research and endnotes prove mostly that Zakrevskaya was incredibly effective at survival, generally through her many relationships and affairs. The story retains an air of mystery, much like the woman herself, but in a work promising "the lives, loves and lies of Russia's most seductive spy," that mysterious nature is more disappointing than tantalizing. Intriguing but lacking the salacious detail and hard evidence necessary for true fascination.

April 15, 2015

Great biographies can easily transport a reader into a different time and place, especially those places that are often in hurly-burly. McDonald (The Prince, His Tutor and the Ripper) and Dronfield (The Locust Farm) detail the life of Moura Budberg (1892-1974), a noble Russian emigre who was a European socialite and, more important, a Soviet-British double spy. The authors draw on diaries, correspondence, and newly released files to create a powerful study that attracts sympathy toward their subject. It also produces a great snapshot of life in Russia during the collapse of the czarist regime through the early part of the Joseph Stalin era. Survival was the main thrust of why Budberg became a spy--and was behind whom she chose as confidants and partners. Sympathy was earned because of what she lost in terms of love, and those close to her who were killed. This book is in good company with recent works about espionage such as Ben Macintyre's A Spy Among Friends and Karen Abbott's Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy. VERDICT Recommended for fans of espionage and strong-willed women as well as biography connoisseurs.--Jacob Sherman, John Peace Lib., Univ. of Texas-San Antonio

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