Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, popularly known as Maxim Gorky, was a Russian writer and socialist political thinker and proponent. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Before his success as an author, he travelled widely across the Russian Empire changing jobs frequently, experiences which would later influence his writing.
Sidney George Reilly —known as "Ace of Spies"—was a Russian-born adventurer and secret agent employed by Scotland Yard's Special Branch and later by the Foreign Section of the British Secret Service Bureau, the precursor to the modern British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6/SIS). He is alleged to have spied for at least four different great powers, and documentary evidence indicates that he was involved in espionage activities in 1890s London among Russian émigré circles, in Manchuria on the eve of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), and in an abortive 1918 coup d'état against Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik government in Moscow.
Gorky Park is a 1981 crime novel written by American author Martin Cruz Smith.
Christian Georgievich Rakovsky was a Bulgarian-born socialist revolutionary, a Bolshevik politician and Soviet diplomat and statesman; he was also noted as a journalist, physician, and essayist. Rakovsky's political career took him throughout the Balkans and into France and Imperial Russia; for part of his life, he was also a Romanian citizen.
Princess Katharina Alexandra Dorothea von Lieven, née Freiin von Benckendorff, 17 December 1785 – 27 January 1857), was a Baltic German noblewoman and the wife of Prince Christoph Heinrich von Lieven, who served as the Russian ambassador to London between 1812 and 1834. She became an influential figure among many of the diplomatic, political, and social circles of 19th-century Europe.
Jäneda is a small village in northern Estonia. It is located in Lääne-Viru County and is a part of Tapa municipality.
Ethel Lilian Voynich, néeBoole was an Irish-born British novelist and musician, and a supporter of several revolutionary causes. She was born in Cork, but grew up in Lancashire, England. Voynich was a significant figure, not only on the late Victorian literary scene, but also in Russian émigré circles. She is best known for her novel The Gadfly, which became hugely popular in her lifetime, especially in Russia.
Gorky Park is a 1983 American mystery thriller film based on the book of the same name by Martin Cruz Smith. The film was directed by Michael Apted.
Beate Barbara Juliane Freifrau von Krüdener, often called by her formal French name, Madame de Krüdener, was a Baltic German religious mystic, author, and Pietist Lutheran theologian who exerted influence on wider European Protestantism, including the Swiss Reformed Church and the Moravian Church, and whose ideas influenced Tsar Alexander I of Russia.
The Gadfly is a novel by Irish-born British writer Ethel Voynich, published in 1897, set in 1840s Italy under the dominance of Austria, a time of tumultuous revolt and uprisings. The story centres on the life of the protagonist, Arthur Burton. A thread of a tragic relationship between Arthur and his love, Gemma, simultaneously runs through the story. It is a tale of faith, disillusionment, revolution, romance, and heroism.
Sir Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart, KCMG was a British diplomat, journalist, author, secret agent, and footballer. His 1932 book Memoirs of a British Agent became an international bestseller and brought him to the world's attention by telling of his failed effort to sabotage the Bolshevik Revolution in Moscow in 1918, by assassinating Lenin and instigating a coup. After the plot failed, U.S. Consul General to Moscow and spymaster DeWitt Clinton Poole dissembled. It was said at the time that his main co-conspirator Sidney Reilly, and others were double agents working for the Bolsheviks. In the end, the "Lockhart Plot" was revealed as a cunning sting operation controlled by Felix Dzerzhinsky with the goal of discrediting the British and French governments. However Boris Savinkov and in particular Xenophon Kalamatiano were working with State Department under the direction of US Secretary of State Robert Lansing, as pieced together in recent research by the historian Barnes Carr.
Nina Nikolayevna Berberova was a Russian writer who chronicled the lives of anti-communist Russian refugees in Paris in her short stories and novels. She visited post-Soviet Russia. Her 1965-revision of the Constance Garnett translation of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina with Leonard J. Kent is considered the best translation so far by the academic Zoja Pavlovskis-Petit.
Irina is a feminine given name of Ancient Greek origin, commonly borne by followers of the Eastern Orthodox Church. It is derived from Eirene, an ancient Greek goddess, personification of peace. It is mostly used in countries within the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Balkans.
Robert Norman Bruce Lockhart, known as Robin, was a British journalist, stock broker, and author.
British Agent is a 1934 American romantic espionage film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Leslie Howard and Kay Francis. It is based on Memoirs of a British Agent, the 1932 autobiography of R. H. Bruce Lockhart, who worked for the British Secret Service during the Russian Revolution and had an affair with a Russian agent, later known as Moura Budberg. The film was produced by First National, then a division of Warner Bros.
Geneviève Vix was a French soprano. She was a descendant of the Dutch painter Adriaen Brouwer.
Julia Danzas was a Russian historian of religion, a Catholic theologian, writer and a Catholic female religious leader.
Dame Helen Anne Alexander DBE was a British businesswoman. She served as the chairman of UBM plc. She had an MA from Oxford, an MBA from INSEAD and in 2016 was awarded the Legion d'Honneur. She was Chancellor of the University of Southampton (2011–2017).
Marian Schwartz is an American translator of contemporary Russian literature. She is the principal English translator of the author Nina Berberova and has translated over 70 books of fiction, history, biography, and criticism into English. She is the recipient of two translation fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Based in Austin, Texas, she is the former president of the American Literary Translators Association.
