Sofia Tyutcheva: A Few Years Before the Disaster, Part I

Translated and annotated by Greg King

Sofia Ivanovna Tyutcheva.

In 1945, an elderly woman sat down and wrote down a set of memoirs about her past.  Composed in the Soviet Union of Josef Stalin, they spoke of a Russia long since passed, and a time of Imperial rule.  She had lived through momentous events and had a privileged position that brought her into contact with the highest figures in t…