Moura Budberg, c.1920 (b/w photo)

Maria Ignatievna Budberg (Russian: Мария (Мура) Игнатьевна Закревская-Бенкендорф-Будберг, Maria (Moura) Ignatievna Zakrevskaya-Benckendorff-Budberg), also known variously as Countess Benckendorff, Baroness Budberg (c. 1891 – November 1974), born in Poltava, was the daughter of a Ukrainian tsarist nobleman and diplomat. As a glamorous beauty she was the mistress to prominent men on both sides of the east-west divide. As an adventuress and double agent she 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").