Olga Dmitryevna Forsh (Russian:О́льга Дми́триевна Форш,Oljga Dmitrijevna Forš), née Komarova (Russian:Комаро́ва) (May 28 [O.S. May 16] 1873 – July 17, 1961), was a Russian/Soviet novelist, dramatist, memoirist, and scenarist.

Olga Forsh
Portrait byAlexei Mozhaev
Born	(1873-05-28)May 28, 1873 Ghunib,Daghestan
Died	July 17, 1961(1961-07-17) (aged 88) Leningrad,Soviet Union

Forsh was born in the fortress atGhunib, inDaghestan, the daughter of a major general in the Russian Imperial Army. Her father met her mother, Nina Shakhetdinova, an azerbaijani, while he was stationed in theCaucasus. Nina died when Olga was very young. Olga's stepmother, who was also her former nurse, showed little interest in her, especially after the birth of her own daughter by Olga's father. When her father, Major General Komarov, died in 1881 Olga was placed in an orphanage for children of the nobility.^[1][2]

She married Boris Eduardovich Forsh, who had also been born into the family of a high-ranking military officer, in 1895. In the 1890s she studied at various art schools,^[2] most importantly inKyiv and St Petersburg, where she worked in the studio ofPavel Chistyakov.^[1]

In 1904 Boris Forsh resigned from the military in objection to his having to serve at the executions of political prisoners. He was deprived of his salary, and he and Olga moved to a farm in Ukraine with their two children. Olga was also pregnant at the time. She later attributed the inspiration for her early stories to this extended period of living among the peasantry. Her first works of fiction were published in 1907. She continued drawing and painting, and worked as an art teacher at the Levitskaya School inTsarskoye Selo in 1910-11, but she turned toward writing as time went by.^[1]

Olga was interested in the fashionable ideas of the time, includingTolstoyanism,Theosophy andBuddhism,^[2] but was increasingly drawn to Socialism. After theRussian Revolution of 1917 Olga and her husband became active supporters of theBolsheviks. Olga's husband died oftyphus while serving with theRed Army in Kyiv.^[2] After his death she continued to dedicate herself to cultural work.^[1]

She devoted several novels to the history of revolutionary thought and the revolutionary movement in Russia. Among them arePalace and Prison (1924–25, also made into the filmThe Palace and the Fortress), about the revolutionaryMikhail Stepanovich Beideman,The Fervid Workshop (1926), about theRevolution of 1905–07, andPioneers of Freedom (1950–53), which deals with theDecembrists. She also wrote the three-partbiographical novelRadishchev, which comprises the booksJacobin Leaven (1932),The Landlady of Kazan (1934–35), andThe Pernicious Book (1939). Her experimental playThe Substitute Lecturer was published in 1930.^[3]

The fate of the creative individual under an oppressive regime is treated in the novelThe Contemporaries (1926), which is aboutNikolay Gogol andA. A. Ivanov. In the novelsThe Lunatic Ship (1931) andThe Raven (originally titledThe Symbolists, 1933), Olga portrayed life among the St Petersburg artistic intelligentsia in the early 20th century and the first post revolutionary years and created portraits of such contemporaries asMaxim Gorky,Alexander Blok andFyodor Sologub.^[3]

Olga rose to prominence in the arena of Soviet literature,^[2] playing important roles at the1934 Congress of Writers, and at the 1954 Congress, where she gave the opening address.^[1] She was awarded theOrder of the Red Banner of Labour (twice) and theOrder of the Badge of Honour.^[4]

She died in Tyarlova, a suburb of Leningrad, in 1961. She was buried in theKazan Cemetery, on the outskirts ofPushkin.^[1]

• Palace and Prison, (novel), Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow.from Archive.org
• Dolls of Paris, (story), fromGreat Soviet Short Stories, Dell, 1990.
• The Substitute Lecturer (one-act play), fromAn Anthology of Russian Women's Writing, Oxford, 1994.
• Pioneers of Freedom, (novel), University Press of the Pacific, 2003.