Early life

Born in Poltava, in central Ukraine, Moura was the daughter of Ignaty Platonovich Zakrevsky (1839–1906), a member of the Russian nobility and diplomat.^[3] In 1911, she married Count Johann (Ivan) Alexandrovich von Benckendorff (1882–1919), a member of the Baltic German nobility, 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 and estate in Estonia, the Jäneda (Jendel) manor. This is 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, starring Leslie Howard as "Stephen Locke" and Kay Francis as "Elena Moura".)

Shortly after Lockhart's release and expulsion from Russia, in connection with the "Ambassadorial Conspiracy" affair (also known as the "Lockhart Plot"), Budberg was also released, 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 through 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, who 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.

Writing career

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.^[12][13] She translated Gorky's novel The Life of a Useless Man (1908) into English in 1971.

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 (31 October 1974), when she returned to Italy.^[14]