About the book: 2009 / Alexander Khristoforovich Benkendorf played the role of an anti-hero in Russian history for too long. Historians and literary critics, writers and screenwriters have endowed him with all sorts of negative traits. This is not surprising - for a century and a half, not a single noteworthy biography of Benckendorff has been written, and a significant part of his memoirs is overgrown with archival dust. Knight of St. George, scout and partisan, military general, hero of the War of 1812, liberator of Holland from Napoleonic rule, member of the State Council and the Committee of Ministers, Benckendorff tried to create a state mechanism for combating corruption and embezzlement. He was a personal friend of such disparate figures as Emperor Nicholas I and the Decembrist Sergei Volkonsky; interceded for Pushkin, Lermontov and Gogol; stole Napoleon’s mistress and experienced a tragic affair with the one to whom Tyutchev’s “I Met You” is dedicated. The book by historian Dmitry Oleinikov tells how Count Benckendorff lived, fought, traveled, and loved.