Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams

Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams
Historical photo of Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams
Born	(1869-11-13)13 November 1869 Saint Petersburg, Russia
Died	12 January 1962(1962-01-12) (aged 92) Washington, DC
Other names	Ariadna Borman
Occupation	Politician, journalist, writer, and feminist
Spouse(s)	Harold Williams
Children	Arkady Alfredovich Borman (1891–1974) Sophia Alfredovna Borman Botcharsky (1896–1982)

Ariadna Vladimirovna Tyrkova-Williams (Russian: Ариадна Владимировна Тыркова; November 13, 1869, Saint Petersburg – January 12, 1962, Washington, DC; Ariadna Borman during the first marriage) was a liberal politician, journalist, writer and feminist in Russia during the revolutionary period until 1920. Afterwards, she lived as a writer in Britain (1920–1951) and the United States (1951–1962).

Ariadna Vladimirovna Tyrkova was born on 13 November 1869, the daughter of Vladimir Tyrkov, a landowner whose hereditary estate was Vergezhi in the Novgorod region. She studied in Saint Petersburg.

There she married A. N. Borman, an engineer, and with him had a son, Arcadiy (b. 1891). In the early 1900s, she became active among liberal opposition groups linked to Pyotr Struve's periodical, Osvobozhdenie ('Liberty'), and in 1904 was arrested while trying to smuggle 400 copies of Osvobozhdenie into Russia . Later the same year, she was arrested again, sentenced to 30 months in prison and fled to Stuttgart, where she met Williams; together they moved to Paris. At the end of the year Williams was sent to St Petersburg. His wife would follow. Returning to Russia under the general amnesty granted by the October Manifesto during the Russian Revolution of 1905, she helped found the Constitutional Democratic party (also known as the Kadet Party), and in 1906 became a member of its Central Committee.

In 1906, she married Harold Williams (1876–1928), a New Zealand-British Slavist who was working as a journalist in Saint Petersburg for the Morning Post. The same year she joined the All-Russian Union for Women's Equality and, with Ekaterina Kuskova, became a leading campaigner for equal rights for women, prompting the Constitutional Democratic party to add women's suffrage to its platform .