Lydia Stahl

Lydia Stahl (1890-?) was a secret agent who worked for Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU) in New York and Paris.She was born Lydia Chkalov in Rostov, in the south of Russia, in 1890. Once the wife of a Tsarist officer, she later married Baron Stahl, a Baltic nobleman, and emigrated to the United States where she became a naturalized citizen. When her only son died in 1918, the lonely and grief-stricken Lydia returned to Europe. She befriended the Finnish writer Hella Wuolijoki and was a regular visitor to her estate Marleback in Southern Finland, which was a meeting place for leftish intellectuals and politicians. Through her relationship with Otto Kuusinen, she met the American radical John Reed, and maintained a correspondence with him until his death in 1920. She joined the Soviet secret service while a refugee in Finland in 1921.
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