Kyra Petrovskaya Wayne

Kyra Petrovskaya Wayne is a Russianborn American author. In Russia she was an actress and a sniper during World War II and a survivor of the Siege of Leningrad. She married an American diplomat and came to the United States, becoming the author ofbooks. Among her various activities in America, she made many appearances on television programs, gave lectures on literature and history on cruise ships, and sang on concert stages.

Kyra was born in Crimea, on the coast of the Black Sea in 1918. She is the descendant of one of the Russian noble families. Her father was a pilot during World War I. He was executed by the Bolshevik firing squad after the Russian Revolution, when Kyra wasmonths old. Her young mother never remarried, and they lived in poverty in Leningrad with her grandmother. They lost all the males of their family in the Russian Civil War that followed the revolution.

Source: Wikipedia