Kremlin wives

Across more than seven decades, the Moscow Kremlin housed the leaders of the Soviet Union, from Lenin to Gorbachev. Historians know a good deal about the men who controlled millions of lives, but far less about the women married to them or involved with them. This book turns to those women, whose lives ranged from active participation in the Revolution and its aftermath to motherhood, mistreatment, imprisonment in Siberia, suicide and murder.

Larissa Vasilieva drew on KGB files that were opened to her in 1991, along with her own research and interviews, to assemble the material. The result shows the Soviet political world from a new angle: that of the prominent women who prospered and suffered inside the seat of power. The narrative begins with Nadezhda Krupskaya, who worked devotedly for the revolution beside Lenin from his years of exile until her death. It also covers Inessa Armand, the French revolutionary who was Lenin's lover and, complicating matters, a close friend of Krupskaya.

Stalin married Nadezhda Alliluyeva when she was sixteen. The author argues that Stalin had earlier been involved with her mother, and that there is strong evidence Nadezhda may have been his daughter as well as his wife. After Stalin publicly humiliated her, she was found dead in a pool of blood one morning. The official explanation was suicide, though many believe she was murdered. Molotov's wife, Paulina Zhemchuzhina, became the unofficial first lady of the Kremlin after Nadezhda's death, until Stalin, who never tolerated rivals for long, had her arrested and sent to Siberia. She was freed only after his death.

Lavrenti Beria, the secret police chief nicknamed the Butcher, prowled Moscow in a limousine with curtained windows, targeting young girls who were later abducted by his agents. His wife, Nina Teimurazovna, was one of the women he had seduced and was compelled to marry him. At his trial, Beria admitted to 760 mistresses. The book also profiles many other figures tied to the Kremlin, including Alexandra Kollontai, Larissa Reisner, Olga Kameneva, Nina Khrushcheva, Victoria Brezhneva, her daughter Galina, and Tatyana Andropova. It closes with Raisa Gorbachev, whom the author presents as the only wife of a Soviet leader to have married for love.