Moura Budberg with Herbert George Wells and Maxim Gorky in Petrograd, 1920 (b/w photo)

Maria Ignatievna Budberg, aka Countess Benckendorff, Baroness Budberg (1891–1974), born in Poltava, was the daughter of a Ukrainian tsarist nobleman and diplomat; mistress to prominent men on both sides of the east-west divide; double agent who worked for the British Intelligence Service during a plot to assassinate Lenin in 1918. and the OGPU (working directly for the Genrikh Yagoda, who was the chief of the Soviet secret service in the 1930s, at the beginning of the "Great Purge"). H.G.Wells (1866-1946), English writer of novels, history, politics and social commentary; textbooks and rules for war games. Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, aka Maxim Gorky (1868-1936). Russian and Soviet writer, founder of socialist realism genre and a political activist.