With Adventure Through Life: Maria Alexandrovna Grishina-Almazova (Mikhailova)

Abstract

The publication is a historical and biographical study of a woman who played an important role in the highest socio-political circles of Omsk during the Civil War, becoming the beloved of two key political figures in anti-Bolshevik eastern Russia, and subsequently ended her days in emigration. Using previously classified documents in archives of the FSB Directorate for the Omsk Region and the State Archives of the Khabarovsk Territory and applying historical-biographical and chronological methods, the article considers historiography of the topic and unexplored lacunae. The most informative materials are diary fragments and judicial-investigative documents from the criminal case concerning the heroine (1920), and emigrant questionnaires of her and her son (1942, 1945), along with memoirs and published sources about the heroine’s participation in the trial of Kolchak ministers in May 1920, as well as references on Russian emigration. These sources provide an ambiguous biography of the heroine.