Iron woman

“Iron Woman” is a book about one of the most mysterious women of the 20th century, Maria (Moore) Zakrevskaya-Benkendorf-Budberg. She was loved, Maxim Gorky and Herbert Wells trusted her and devoted her to her works, British diplomat and intelligence officer Robert Bruce Lockart was passionate about her.
Nina Berberova was familiar with this amazing person, and her brilliant novel, full of documentary evidence and letters, has long become a bestseller.

The world where she lived until 1918 was destroyed, and she came out of it unharmed. ... This does not mean that Moore did not know the fears, but her fears were not the same, the former, which our grandmothers had, they were also new, like the fate of granddaughters: fear of prison, fear of hunger and cold, fear of unpareence and - probably - probably - - Fear of disclosure of secrets. And the joys were new: the joy of freedom of personal life, not constrained by either the moral code, or the “what the neighbors say”, the joy of survive and survive.
Nina Berberova