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.

Princess Yekaterina Romanovna Vorontsova-Dashkova (1743 – 1810) was a leading figure of the Russian Enlightenment and the closest female friend of Empress Catherine the Great. By her own account, she played a critical role in the coup d'état by which the autocratic Peter III was overthrown and Catherine was raised to the throne. In her travels abroad, she met Diderot, Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin. Catherine later named her the first female head of the Imperial Academy of Arts and Sciences, and then the Russian Academy.