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

by Deborah McDonald

  He raised his eyes to the balcony boxes, while with fierce staccato sentences he lashed himself into a passion . . .

  As he finished his peroration, he sank back exhausted into the arms of his aide-de-camp. In the limelight his face had the pallor of death. Soldiers assisted him off the stage, while in a frenzy of hysteria the whole audience rose and cheered itself hoarse . . . A millionaire’s wife threw her pearl necklace on to the stage. Every woman present followed her example, and a hail of jewellery descended from every tier of the huge house. In the box next to me, General Wogak, a man who had served the Tsar all his life and who hated the revolution as a pest, wept like a child.22

  History has forgotten the precise circumstances that brought Moura into contact with Kerensky. Perhaps it was through his wife Olga, who was a nursing volunteer in the war hospital. Or it might have been at the British Embassy, where Moura had many friends, and where Kerensky was frequently a guest of Sir George Buchanan. Whatever the circumstances, as the balance of power shifted, Moura eyed her chances, and made her move. While the nation draped the mantle of a Russian Bonaparte around Kerensky’s shoulders, and while her husband Djon was still away at the war, Moura turned the irresistible force of her personality upon the new premier, and became his lover.

  It was discreetly done, and only the most inveterate society gossips got wind of it, unlike Kerensky’s other dalliance at the time, his wife’s cousin Lilya, who lived openly with him in the Winter Palace.23 Kerensky loved Moura, but there was good reason for discretion on both sides: he suspected that she was working for British intelligence.24 He may have had good reason.

  In Petrograd in 1917 there existed a small group of Russians who were sympathetic to Germany. Some were merely fond of German things, but others supported Germany in the war. All were regarded as potential traitors. Brought together by German secret service agents, they gathered to discuss their politics in the salon of a sympathetic lady known only as ‘Madame B’. This woman, it would seem, was none other than Moura Benckendorff. She spoke German fluently, knew many Germans from her years in Berlin, and had a penchant for societies and politics (she and Djon were active in a similar Anglo-Russian society).

  But what neither the German agents nor the pro-German Russians knew was that Madame B was working for Kerensky’s counter-espionage department, and was reporting secretly on her guests’ discussions and activities. Naturally enough, but perhaps not entirely to Kerensky’s liking, British intelligence took an interest in Madame B, and one of their agents – Captain George Hill – attended one of her salons. Hill was well acquainted with Moura, and later became a good friend, as well as an associate in espionage work.25 Here, perhaps, is the explanation for the persistent rumours that Moura was a German spy, and the reason that her acquaintances in the British intelligence and diplomatic services seem never to have taken those rumours seriously. They knew she was double-crossing the Germans.

  In Kerensky’s eyes, Moura’s fondness for her British friends must have hinted at a double or triple purpose in her affair. Seduced and spied upon, Kerensky didn’t seem to mind. This was Moura’s great talent, a gift she would perfect through constant practice: the ability to play one side against the other, and gain advantage for herself; to commit treachery and make the betrayed love and forgive her. For Moura, the wages of sin was survival.

  But she hadn’t yet perfected either her arts or her wits, and wasn’t aware of the miscalculation she had made. As Kerensky’s oratory went on, while Moura looked to her own survival and her own pleasure, the war continued, and so did the shortages. Peace had returned to the streets of Petrograd, but contentment hadn’t. Kerensky’s charisma was a currency that would yield ever thinner returns as 1917 progressed. In the meantime, Moura lived on the interest.

  Her social circle remained as active as ever, with dinner parties and evenings at the opera and theatre, where productions went on playing to packed houses of the rich while the poor continued to starve. Along with other women of her class – the wise ones, at least – she had modified her appearance. Fine dresses with exquisite millinery and accessories were out; in came plainer couture, or even proletarian drab and headscarves – at least while in the city. To be a wealthy aristocrat might still be acceptable (just about), but to look like one in public was not.

  One thing that didn’t change was the annual social cycle: late in the summer Moura and the children left Petrograd and set out for Yendel once more.

  A burst of shrieking laughter drifted in through the open window – male and female voices suddenly raised in scandalised hilarity somewhere below. Moura glanced out to see what the fuss was about. It wasn’t right that there should be entertainment going on without her at the centre of it.

  Yendel had changed since she last looked through this window. The estate had gone through its seasonal transformation. The frozen acres had melted into expanses of rolling field and meadow, hazy under the summer sun; ice sheets had become placid lakes, and the chilling forests were now shady, fragrant pine-woods.

  And yet, no matter what the seasons did, Yendel no longer had quite the same old ease. To the west, the war front crept ever closer as the Germans forced the Russians back, and in the port of Reval there was unrest among the Russian sailors, who had caught the bug of Bolshevism and were trying to spread it to their British allies.

  Unable to see where the laughter was coming from, Moura wrapped her peignoir about herself and went down to investigate. She found most of her guests sitting on the terrace, surrounded by the detritus of a late breakfast – the women in déshabillé, the men in shirt sleeves, some still in pyjamas and dressing gowns. Yendel was never a place to stand on formality: not while Moura presided over it.

  They all looked up when she appeared. There was Captain Francis Cromie, the British submarine commander, whose flotilla was harboured at Reval and whose heart harboured a particular dedication to Moura. He was a handsome man, with a square jaw and soulful eyes, and a brave sailor – the scourge of German shipping in the Baltic – but Moura managed to resist him. Meriel Buchanan was there, of course, along with Miriam and the aptly named Baroness Fairy Schilling, a pretty, racy young thing. Also visiting was Edward Cunard, of the shipping family, who held a post as secretary at the British Embassy. Finally, there was young Denis Garstin, a cavalry subaltern who worked in the British Propaganda Mission. He was a budding writer, and had been brought into propaganda by his friend Hugh Walpole.26 Denis was a bright, lively, optimistic fellow, despite being a veteran of the battles of Loos and Ypres. An idealist, he was excited by the Revolution; he believed it had been caused by the war and was ‘the greatest thing in the history of our times’:

  The Revolution has raised the level of the war and of our ideals, and restrained all tendency to imperialism, so that the ideals we began to fight for, and forgot, have become our declared peace terms – universal democracy.27

  Moura was fond of Denis, and called him ‘Garstino’ because of his literary pretensions. Cromie was simply ‘Crow’.

  Last night they had all picnicked by the light of a huge bonfire in the woods and sat watching the sparks fly upwards into the dark canopy.28 Now they were ready for more fun. Meriel had suggested bathing in the lake. Edward had protested that he and Denis had no bathing costumes: they could hardly swim naked, could they? Yes! insisted the party unanimously, causing the hilarity and indignant protests that had drawn Moura from her bed. The young men’s modesty was preserved by Baroness Schilling, who found them suitable costumes. ‘Our virtue is safe!’ said Denis. ‘What a good Fairy!’

  While youth disported itself in the glittering lake, Moura noticed her mother-in-law, also drawn by the sounds of laughter and rumours of indecency, patrolling nearby, looking for evidence of scandalous behaviour. As dowager, she had her own small house on the estate, on the far edge of the lake. (The house took its name from the lake: Kallijärv.) She had a low opinion of her son’s disreputable wife – a harlot indulging herself in naked fornication while
poor Djon was away at the war. Discovering that the guests were neither naked nor fornicating, the old lady went away disappointed.

  The days of summer 1917 – the last golden summer of the old imperial age – were dwindling. Soon it would be time to return to Petrograd. Even for Moura the city had lost some of its attraction. Making the most of Yendel, they relished every drop of pleasure. As well as midnight picnics and morning swims, there were rides on a liniaker, a precarious cart with a single plank seat on which one sat with arms around the waist of the person in front; Denis was tickled by Fairy’s hysterical wails at the jolting ride, which startled the poor horse into going even faster. They spent nights in Reval, the sleepy little port city, with its golden-domed cathedral and ancient streets of crooked houses, all huddled around the fortified naval port. Signs of war and revolutionary fervour were present even in this quaint corner. There was fervour of another kind too, if Denis Garstin was to be believed – he teased Cromie about his infatuation with Moura, sitting aboard his submarine, all duty forgotten, sighing over his unrequited Russian love.

  It was all in stark contrast to the strife they had left behind in Petrograd, and the bitter conflict on the German front. One by one, the guests went back to their regular lives. Before he left, ‘Garstino’ set down some doggerel verses about his time at Yendel, concluding:

  Oh God. And I must take a train

  And go to Petrograd again,

  And while I deal out propaganda

  My nicer thoughts will all meander

  Back, back to Yendel, oh to be

  In Yendel for eternity.29

  It was an idyll that couldn’t last. One year later, the optimistic Denis Garstin would be dead, killed in action on the north Russian shore. The lovelorn Francis Cromie would also be in his grave, cut down in a savage gunfight while defending the British Embassy from Bolshevik raiders.

  When summer faded to autumn, Moura returned to Petrograd. Kerensky’s grip on power was becoming more tenuous with each passing day. The coming man of the new era had turned out to be merely a man for a passing season; throughout the summer months there had been sporadic Bolshevik uprisings, increasingly frequent and ever more violent.

  Kerensky took strong measures against his enemies, but it was too late: many of his former supporters had gone over to the Bolsheviks, who had become a cohesive force under the inspirational guidance of Lenin and Trotsky. Revolutionaries were arrested, their newspapers were suppressed, but Kerensky had lost control of the situation. People were starving, they were sick of the war that he had insisted on continuing; they were no longer charmed by his oratory or his charisma.

  The soviets had become militarised, and on 25 October they struck. Bridges and key points throughout Petrograd were seized, and the Winter Palace, where Kerensky had set up his office and his home, came under attack. Kerensky went into hiding, from which he tried to muster an armed resistance to the Bolshevik forces. His known associates in Petrograd began to be arrested, and those who escaped were hunted down.30

  Moura was not among them – her discretion had spared her that. But it was clear that she had made the wrong choice. The wolves were running again, and Russia’s second great revolution had unseated the mount she had chosen to run with.

  Nothing would ever be the same again.

  Notes

  * Tsar’s Village.

  † Now called Tallinn.

  ‡ soviet: an elected council.

  § izvozchik: sleigh or carriage driver for hire.

  §§ Peter and Paul.

  3

  Red Winter

  December 1917–January 1918

  12 December 1917, Petrograd

  Two Christmases came that year, and neither was a happy one.

  A horse-drawn cab drove through the Admiralteysky district, heading towards the Palace Quay. The izvozchik kept his malnourished horse to as fast a pace as it could manage; it wasn’t safe to be on the streets at any time, let alone after dark, but a fare was a fare. Horses and drivers were starving for want of trade, and like every other soul in this blighted city who looked like they might have a few roubles on them, izvozchiki were prey to the robbers and murderers that roamed everywhere. At the bridges and street corners, little groups of soldiers sat warming themselves around braziers, but they did little to keep order. The mob was the law.1

  Inside the cab, Moura looked out at the familiar streets. How many times she had passed through them in cars, carriages and cabs, or strolled gaily in the summer along the avenues, in the shadow of the Winter Palace and the dome of St Isaac’s. All secure within the great apparatus of the imperium; the web of aristocracy, ringed around by splendour and military might. She had never thought it could all come to this – a shabby cab rattling through haunted streets. The golden pinnacles were still there, and the Palladian buildings gleaming under the night sky, but the life was gone.

  Sitting beside Moura, lost in his unhappy thoughts, was Djon, her husband home from the war, probably for good this time. The Bolsheviks had agreed a ceasefire with the Germans in November, and negotiated a temporary armistice to be maintained until January 1918. In the meantime, peace talks were under way at Brest-Litovsk in Poland.* Already there was discord among the Bolsheviks. Their leader, Lenin, wanted a quick end to the war, to hasten the consolidation of the Revolution, but the majority of the Central Committee, including Trotsky, People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, were pressing for a plan to renew the fighting, engage the sympathies of the German proletariat, and spread revolution throughout western Europe.2

  Djon’s patriotic heart was breaking, torn three ways by the war and the Revolution. He had ties to Germany through his diplomatic past, as well as through the long and cosmopolitan ancestry of the Benckendorffs, but he had been a true Russian all his life, utterly loyal to the Tsar. At the same time, he fretted for the future of his native Estonia, caught between the two great powers. Would it continue under the Bolsheviks, or be ceded to Germany, or would it achieve its independence?

  For Moura, the main effect of the armistice was to force her to be in Djon’s company far more than was comfortable. Filled with angst, shorn of the advantages of his rank, his position and his opulent lifestyle, he was daily becoming a less and less congenial spouse. There was friction, tension, frequent arguments.

  Petrograd looked bleak now, not like the magical city it had once seemed. A place of confinement. There was no excitement here any more, only fear, and no chance of seeking fun and fulfilment elsewhere. There would be no more Christmases at Yendel for Moura and her friends. It had become dangerous there. Just a few weeks ago, with the family still in residence, the estate had come under attack.3

  It was a terrifying experience. In the wake of the October Revolution, the fierce spirit of Bolshevism had run here and there throughout the Russian Empire, resisted in some places, catching hold in many more. One of the places it caught fire with a vengeance was Estonia. Armed gangs roamed the countryside, looting and terrorising. At Yendel, a band of peasants – those people who had been little more to the Benckendorffs than a faceless labour force and a malodorous, sheepskin-clad presence in the railway stations – came to the manor house seeking blood and booty. Moura, terrified for the lives of her children, gathered them to her, and with the mob marching up the drive, fled the house.

  On that occasion, the peasants didn’t attack the house itself. They stopped at the estate farm, whose imposing stable blocks, barns and piggeries straddled one branch of the roadway. There they set about stealing the horses and cows and vandalising anything they couldn’t take. Moura and the children hid in the gardens for five hours, freezing, listening to the shrieking of the pigs as they were slaughtered in their sties.

  The idyll of Yendel was gone forever.

  Fear was everywhere. There was anarchy in the countryside and crime on the city streets. But real terror came now from the state. Common Russians had always had reason to fear their government, but this was different. This time it was the bour
geoisie who had most cause for dread. With the country in a state of civil war, the Bolsheviks organised their state with astonishing speed, taking over the existing bureaucracy and purging its upper ranks of untrustworthy individuals. The Red Army, composed of the old regiments, likewise purged of unsympathetic officers, was almost instantly fit to take on and beat the scattered White monarchist forces. By early December the Bolsheviks had a political security police mobilised. Its full name was the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-revolution and Sabotage. It immediately became known by the shorter name ‘Cheka’,† and its officers known as Chekists, names which soon became bywords for terror.

  The same decree that created the Cheka also brought in a requirement for all wealthy citizens to be registered.4 The dispossession of the ruling and landed classes was beginning. The foresighted among them began hiding their treasures. Most, though, still failed to see the full enormity of the downfall that was coming to them. For the time being, they still enjoyed what little remnants of pleasure and dignity they could salvage. They braved the streets to shop, paying stupendous prices for everything, and often getting robbed within minutes of making any purchase.5 They even ventured out at night to visit one another for dinner parties, their loyal servants scraping together what dishes they could from the meagre supplies, and stoically put up with the almost constant electricity failures.