Sashenka

St. Petersburg, 1916

Peter de Sagan, Captain of Gendarmes, officer of the Okhrana, penniless Baltic nobleman

Rasputin,* Grigory the “Elder,” peasant healer and the Empress’s “friend”

Anya Vyrubova,* Empress’s close friend and Rasputin supporter

Julia “Lili” von Dehn,* Empress’s close friend and Rasputin supporter

Prince Mikhail Andronnikov,* well-connected influence-peddler

Countess Missy Loris, Ariadna’s American friend, married to Count Loris, St. Petersburg aristocrat

Boris Sturmer,* Premier of Tsarist Russia, 1916

D. F. Trepov,* penultimate Premier of Tsarist Russia, 1916

Prince Dmitri Golitsyn,* last Premier of Tsarist Russia, 1916–17

Alexander Protopopov,* syphilitic politician and the last Tsarist Minister of the Interior

Ivan Manuilov-Manesevich,* spy, con man, journalist and fixer for Premier Sturmer

Max Flek, Baron Zeitlin’s lawyer

Dr. Mathias Gemp, fashionable doctor

The Bolsheviks and Others, 1939

Vladimir Illich Lenin,* Bolshevik leader

Grigory Zinoviev,* Bolshevik leader

Josef Vissarionovich Stalin,* ne Djugashvili, nickname “Koba,” a Georgian Bolshevik, later General Secretary of Communist Party, Premier and Soviet dictator

Vyechaslav Molotov,* ne Scriabin, nicknamed “Vecha,” Bolshevik, later Soviet Premier and Foreign Minister

Alexander Shlyapnikov,* worker and midranking Bolshevik in charge of Party during February Revolution of 1917

Hercules (Erakle Alexandrovich) Satinov, young Georgian Bolshevik

Tamara, Satinov’s young wife

Mariko, Satinov’s daughter

Ivan “Vanya” Palitsyn, worker, Bolshevik activist

Nikolai and Marfa Palitsyn, Vanya’s parents

Razum, Vanya’s driver

Nikolai Yezhov,* “the Bloody Dwarf,” secret police chief (People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs—NKVD), 1936–8

Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria,* a Georgian, Stalin’s secret police chief (People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs— NKVD), 1938 onward

Bogdan Kobylov,* Georgian secret policeman, Beria’s chief henchman, “The Bull”

Pavel Mogilchuk, NKVD investigator, Serious Cases Section, State Security, and author of detective stories

Boris Rodos,* NKVD investigator, Serious Cases Section, State Security

Vasily Blokhin,* NKVD executioner, Major, State Security

Count Alexei Tolstoy,* writer

Ilya Ehrenburg,* writer

Isaac Babel,* writer

Klavdia Klimov, deputy editor of Soviet Wife and Proletarian Housekeeping

Misha Kalman, features editor, Soviet Wife and Proletarian Housekeeping

Leonid Golechev, NKVD commandant of Special Object 110, Sukhanovka Prison

Benjamin (known as “Benya”) Golden, writer

The Vinsky Family of the North Caucasus

Dr. Valentin Vinsky, a Russian doctor in the village of Beznadezhnaya Tatiana Vinsky, his wife

Katinka (Ekaterina Valentinovna), their daughter

Bedbug, Sergei Vinsky, Valentin’s father, a peasant

Baba, Irina Vinsky, Valentin’s mother, a peasant

The Getman Family of Odessa

Roza Getman, nee Liberhart, widow from Odessa

Pasha (Pavel) Getman, Roza’s son, a billionaire oligarch

Professor Enoch Liberhart, Roza Getman’s father, Professor of Musicology at the Odessa Conservatoire

Dr. Perla Liberhart, Roza Getman’s mother, teacher of literature at Odessa University

Moscow, 1990s

Maxy Shubin, historian of Stalin’s Terror

Colonel Lentin, Russian secret policeman, KGB/FSB, the Marmoset

Colonel Trofimsky, Russian secret policeman, KGB/FSB, the Magician

Kuzma, archivist in KGB/FSB archives

Agrippina Begbulatov, archive official

Apostollon Shcheglov, archivist

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Simon Sebag Montefiore was born in 1965 and was educated at Harrow School and Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge University. As a historian, he has written three studies of Russian power. Potemkin: Catherine the Great’s Imperial Partner was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson, Duff Cooper and Marsh Biography Prizes. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar won the History Book of the Year Prize at the British Book Awards. His latest book, Young Stalin, won the Costa Biography Prize, the LA Times Book Prize in Biography and the Bruno Kreisky Prize for Political Literature, and has been shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His books are now published in thirty- four languages. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he lives in London with his wife, the novelist Santa Montefiore, and their two children. For further information see simonsebagmontefiore.com.

PRAISE FROM THE UK

Voted a “Top Five Summer Read of 2008” by The Observer and one of the “Ten Hottest Books this Summer” by The Independent

“This completely addictive story offers an authoritative insight into Stalin’s USSR and, in its huge characters and epic ambition, carries echoes of Tolstoy himself.”

—Ross Gilfillan, Daily Mail

“[Sashenka’s] agonizing adult dilemma, her attempts to save the children she loves, [is] so powerfully and persuasively set out that, by the time I finally put the book down, long after midnight, I was in tears.”

—Vanora Bennett, The Times

“Excellent…. A powerful novel, erudite and well structured, and with a heroine who lingers in the mind when the story is finished.”

—Simon Baker, The Spectator