Here--captured by the pen of the beautiful Vavara Softa--is court life in Imperial Russia at its most glorious, and at its lowest; while the serfs suffered untold cruelties, the aristocracy gave itself over to unbridled sexual pleasures. In this setting, Memoirs of a Russian Princess presents the touching, yet brutal, self-portrait of the Princess herself--her debaucheries, her tender love for the mechanical statue Belphegor, her tragic end as the mistress of Emperor Paul and the wife of Count Tarrasoff.
