Alja Rachmanowa

Galina Nikolaevna Dyuragina Галина Николаевна Дюрягина (15 June 1898 – 11 February 1991) was a Russian author and child psychologist. She is known for her diaries, published under the pen name Alexandra or Alya Rakhmanova (German transcription: Alja Rachmanowa), which describe her childhood, studies and marriage under the Russian revolution, and life as a refugee in Vienna.

Biography

Galina was the oldest daughter of a physician in the town of Kasli near Yekaterinburg. Since her family was part of the aristocracy of Russia prior to the revolution, they suffered much in the years after 1917. Eventually Galina and her Austrian husband Arnulf von Hoyer were forced to flee to western Europe. Her diaries describing life in Russia under communism were translated into many languages.

She died in the Swiss town of Ettenhausen, where she had lived for some years.