Duchess of the Great Russia, born in 1895 in Kazan. Friend of the imperial family, in spring and summer she often stays at the royal residence in Peterhof (today’s Petrodvorets) or in Tsarskoe Selo (today’s Pushkin). It is in Tsarskoe Selo that she receives the unexpected news about the uprisings in Petrograd (the name of St. Petersburg from 1914 to 1924) in February 1917.
Her loved Nevskij prospect thus turns into a battlefield and the tsarist regime that she goes on supporting turns into a republic. These events strengthen more and more her innate dislike for the popular class and lead her to leave for Caucasus without waiting for the Bolshevik Revolution of October. In February 1918, she avoids again the attack by the Red Army against the volunteer army of the Don formed by the white counter-revolutionaries. She becomes the passionary of the white army and crosses Siberia, which is, too, devastated by the civil war, on her armour-plated train. In 1920 she is killed by Rasputin at the strategic railway crossroads of Karymskoje where the trans-Siberian and the trans-Manchurian railways cross. If the duchess had gone into exile to the United States, thanks to her aristocratic manners and sophisticated charm she would have become a film star.