Overview

Stalin’s Singing Spy follows the remarkable life of NadezhdaPlevitskaya, a Russian peasant girl who achieved fame as one of Tsar Nicholas II’s favorite singers and infamy as one of Stalin’s agents. Pamela A. Jordan traces Plevitskaya’s life from her childhood in an isolated village to national stardom. She always declared that she was foremost an artist who sang for all people, regardless of their ideological leanings or socioeconomic background. She claimed throughout her career to be fundamentally apolitical, yet decades later in Europe, Plevitskaya was unmasked as one of Joseph Stalin’s secret agents along with her husband, White Russian General Nikolai Skoblin. Their experiences in exile shed light on Stalin’s covert operations and the hardships Russian émigrés faced in interwar Europe, an era of great political and economic turmoil. In addition, this book uncovers the roles that the couple played in one of the Soviets’ major intelligence coups—the 1937 kidnapping of White Russian General Evgeny Miller in Paris. Jordan recreates Plevitskaya’s sensationalized 1938 criminal trial in the Palace of Justice, where she was accused of conspiring to kidnap Miller and portrayed as a Red femme fatale. The first Western biography of Plevitskaya and the first to reconstruct her dramatic trial, this book provides a fascinating window into Soviet-era espionage in interwar Europe.

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9781442247734

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Reviews

A thorough and informative biography-the first in English-of the celebrated early-twentieth-century Russian popular singer Nadezhda Plevitskaya. It is fascinating to follow Jordan's reconstruction of Plevitskaya's improbable life trajectory from peasant village, to grand concert halls, to command performances for the tsar, and ultimately to the travails of emigration. Jordan provides a detailed and judicious analysis of Plevitskaya's involvement in the skulduggery and lopsided struggle between Russian emigres in Paris and the ruthless Soviet secret police, the tangled politics of the time, and the denouement of Plevitskaya's life-her notorious trial and conviction on the eve of the Second World War. -- Vladimir Alexandrov, Yale University From Tsar Nicholas II's beloved 'Kursk Nightingale' to the spy who helped lure an anti-Bolshevik war hero into the hands of the Soviet secret police, Nadezhda Plevitskaya rose from humble peasant origins to celebrity through exile, espionage, and ignominy. The twists and turns of her life are documented excellently in Pam Jordan's riveting work, based on extensive research and a masterful ability to contextualize her findings. Was Plevitskaya a Red Mata Hari? Read this book and find out. -- Rochelle Goldberg Ruthchild, Harvard University

A thorough and informative biography-the first in English-of the celebrated early-twentieth-century Russian popular singer Nadezhda Plevitskaya. It is fascinating to follow Jordan's reconstruction of Plevitskaya's improbable life trajectory from peasant village, to grand concert halls, to command performances for the tsar, and ultimately to the travails of emigration. Jordan provides a detailed and judicious analysis of Plevitskaya's involvement in the skulduggery and lopsided struggle between Russian emigres in Paris and the ruthless Soviet secret police, the tangled politics of the time, and the denouement of Plevitskaya's life-her notorious trial and conviction on the eve of the Second World War. -- Vladimir Alexandrov, Yale University

A thorough and informative biography-the first in English-of the celebrated early-twentieth-century Russian popular singer Nadezhda Plevitskaya. It is fascinating to follow Jordan's reconstruction of Plevitskaya's improbable life trajectory from peasant village, to grand concert halls, to command performances for the tsar, and ultimately to the travails of emigration. Jordan provides a detailed and judicious analysis of Plevitskaya's involvement in the skulduggery and lopsided struggle between Russian emigres in Paris and the ruthless Soviet secret police, the tangled politics of the time, and the denouement of Plevitskaya's life-her notorious trial and conviction on the eve of the Second World War. -- Vladimir Alexandrov, Yale University From Tsar Nicholas II's beloved 'Kursk Nightingale' to the spy who helped lure an anti-Bolshevik war hero into the hands of the Soviet secret police, Nadezhda Plevitskaya rose from humble peasant origins to celebrity through exile, espionage, and ignominy. The twists and turns of her life are documented excellently in Pam Jordan's riveting work, based on extensive research and a masterful ability to contextualize her findings. Was Plevitskaya a Red Mata Hari? Read this book and find out. -- Rochelle Goldberg Ruthchild, Harvard University Pamela Jordan's book furnishes hard-won new intelligence about a story both important and intriguing-a grim detective tale that provides further proof that the Soviet secret police operated in pre-WWII Europe with an audacity and ruthlessness unmatched by any other country, including Germany. The valuable material that Professor Jordan has mined in three national archives with very restricted access has allowed her to put together the most complete account we have of the Skoblin-Plevitskaya affair. -- Gennady Barabtarlo, University of Missouri

Author Information

Pamela A. Jordan is assistant professor of politics and global affairs at Southern New Hampshire University. Her publications include Defending Rights in Russia: Lawyers, the State, and Legal Reform in the Post-Soviet Era.

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