Arrests
Before the October Revolution, Moura worked in the English embassy in Petersbourg, where she became acquainted with British diplomat R. H. Bruce Lockhart. Upon the assassination of her husband in 1919, she was arrested on suspicion of spying for the United Kingdom and was transferred to the Lubyanka prison. Lockhart, who mentioned her under her given name in his 1932 book Memoirs of a British Agent, tried to vouch for her but was detained as well for a couple of weeks. They had been lovers and she became pregnant by him, but the pregnancy miscarried. Lockhart's book was made into an American movie in 1934, British Agent, starring Leslie Howard as "Stephen Locke" and Kay Francis as "Elena Moura".
Before Lockhart's release and expulsion from Russia, in connection with the "Lockhart Plot", Budberg was also released, under the condition that she would co-operate with the intelligence service if the need ever arose. After two more arrests and detentions in Petersburg, Budberg began to work for and publish in the review "World Literature", where she had met its director, the writer Maxim Gorky through Korney Chukovsky. She became the secretary and common-law wife of Gorky, living in his house with a few interruptions from 1920 to 1933 when the writer lived in Italy, before returning to the Soviet Union. He dedicated his last major work, the novel The Life of Klim Samgin, to her.
