The stories about the life of spies are always of great interest. Intrigues, secrets, constant balancing on the brink of failure - all this, when viewed from the outside, looks like an action-packed detective story. And if a woman becomes the protagonist of spy stories, interest doubles. And this is not surprising: after all, in such cases, most often political interests are also intertwined with love interests.
Anna Chapman
Anna Chapman (maiden name - Kushchenko) is perhaps the most famous female spy of the 21st century. She was born in Volgograd in 1982, and at the age of 21, after graduating from the university, she moved to Britain to live with her husband. Three years later, Anna moved to the United States, where she became the head of a real estate agency. However, the real estate activity turned out to be only a cover - later it turned out that the girl, even during her life in London, began to work in favor of the "historical homeland", collecting data for the Russian special services. And in America she continued her activities. This continued until 2010.
As a result, the FBI arrested Anna Chapman, after which the girl pleaded guilty to "illegal cooperation" with her home country and was deported. In Russia, Anna Chapman leads a very active life, is engaged in politics, investments, journalism. She also "thundered" as a model - after the publication of erotic pictures of the beauty in magazines, Anna Chapman received the nickname "Agent 90-60-90" and the unofficial title of the sexiest Russian spy.
Mata Hari
Margarita Gertrude Celle (this is the real name of the legend of female espionage) was born in 1876. The girl grew up in a good family, but got married very unsuccessfully. For seven years she tried to get along with a drunkard, who, moreover, cheated on his wife right and left, after which she made a very courageous decision at that time to divorce. After that, she had to provide herself with money on her own.
At first she performed in the circus as a rider, then "switched" to oriental dances with striptease. The incredible relaxedness of the beauty made her a real attraction in Paris - and a very popular courtesan. However, due to the all-consuming passion for gambling, Mata Hari was constantly in debt, and earning money from espionage became a good income.
Even before the outbreak of the First World War, the star of the stage was recruited by German intelligence, and during the hostilities she also began to work for the French. In 1917, the career of the famous spy came to its logical conclusion: Celle was arrested and sentenced to death.
Christine Keeler
In the 60s, at the height of the Cold War, Christine Keeler became the heroine of a high-profile trial that rocked Britain and became known as the "Profumo case." It turned out that the sexy topless cabaret dancer was simultaneously "having an affair" with both the British Minister of War John Profumo and the USSR naval attaché Sergei Ivanov. However, this love triangle was not at all isosceles: Christine used Profumo to obtain information, passing it on to her “Soviet lover”.
The thundering scandal, however, had not so much a "spy" as a reputation and sexual overtones. As a result, the artist Stephen Ward, who supplied mistresses to high-ranking gentlemen and introduced Christine to the "heroes" of the case, was charged under 8 articles and committed suicide in prison. Profumo was forced to resign, Ivanov received the Order of Lenin for discrediting the British minister, and Christine, nicknamed "the new Mata Harry", spent 9 months in prison. After that, she made good money from her story, selling information about the "Profumo case" to newspapermen and posing for a photographer. Many years later, she admitted that she really worked for Soviet intelligence.
Ruth Werner
Ursula Kuczynski, better known by the name Ruth Werner and working pseudonym "Sonya", was fond of politics from a young age and was a committed communist. In 1930, Ursula moved with her husband to Shanghai, where she began to actively collect information for the Soviet special services. She worked together with the famous Richard Sorge, the legend of Russian intelligence. At the same time, the spy's husband did not even know about this side of her life. In 1933, she graduated from an intelligence school, after which she began to collect information on a large scale - not only in China, but also in England, Poland, Switzerland, and the United States.
The network of her informants was very extensive, and it was from Ruth Werner that the Soviet Union received information about the creation of an atomic bomb by the Americans. And "first-hand": the details were "leaked" by one of the engineers who worked on this project. After the end of World War II, in 1950, the scout returned to the GDR. In the "peaceful life" she was engaged in journalism and literature, having published several books. The most famous is the autobiography "Sonya is reporting".
Yoshiko Kawashima
In intelligence history, Yoshiko Kawashima is known as the "spy princess". Indeed, she was one of the fourteen daughters of the Manchu emperor. In 1911, when the girl was only four years old, a revolution thundered in China and the imperial dynasty ceased to exist. The orphaned Yoshiko was adopted three years later by Naniwa Kawashima, a resident of Japanese intelligence. The princess moved to the Land of the Rising Sun, where she was brought up in the samurai traditions.
The girl grew up "weird." From the age of 17, Yoshiko began to wear exclusively male clothes and openly display bisexual inclinations. After a whirlwind romance with a Japanese attaché, the princess began working for Japanese intelligence. She had a phenomenal ability to inspire trust and sympathy among people of any social stratum, from bandits to members of the imperial family, which brought her success in this field. Yoshiko took part in many special operations at the highest level, led a punitive cavalry regiment. However, being Chinese by blood, she often criticized the activities of the Japanese intelligence service - for which, in the end, she was "handed over" to the Beijing military police.
According to official figures, the spy princess was shot in 1948, but legend has it that she managed to escape and hide in North China, where she lived under a false name for more than 30 years.
