Alexandra Voronin


Alexandra Andreyevna Voronin was the Soviet wife of Norwegian fascist Vidkun Quisling, the leader of Nasjonal Samling, the political party which collaborated with the German occupational force in Norway during World War II.
Voronin was born in Sevastopol to an upper-class family, the daughter of physician Andrei Sergeyevich Voronin, who had considerable income from oil. When she was about three years old, the family moved to Yalta. The family moved again to Kharkov after the First World War began in 1914. There she attended the Kharkov Ballet School and was sent to the LV Dombrovskaya women's gymnasium, at that time a prestigious boarding school for the children of the nobility. During the 1917 Russian Revolution, the family's lifestyle collapsed as their servants fled and rooms in their mansion were confiscated. They returned to the Crimea for a period, where her mother considered emigrating to France or Romania.
She married Quisling the day after she turned 17. In 1923, Quisling went back to Kharkov, where Voronin lived, after a short trip home to Norway with Voronin. When he went back to Kharkov, he bigamously married Maria Pasetshnikova, later Maria Quisling, despite not having had a formal divorce with Voronin. When all three came back to Norway, Voronin was referred to as a "foster daughter" by Vidkun Quisling, instead of his wife, as she had been earlier. Voronin claims they had a divorce in 1924, but there is no documentation to confirm this. After that, she left Norway for good. She left to France and eventually the U.S., where she spent the rest of her life.
Later in life she wrote a book about her life with Vidkun Quisling.