A Strange Menage-à-Trois

Quisling’s Two Wives

In my series of blogs on the Norwegian Resistance movement during WW II (see other blog posts), the quizzical Quisling, leader of the fascist party Nasjonal Samling and Hitler’s minion, will - unfortunately - play an important role. But in this blog we’re not discussing his bloody regime but his bigamous personal life.

Though a staunch anti-Bolshevik, he managed to marry not one but two Russian ladies. And yes, at the same time!

In August 1922, Vidkun Quisling (35) married this lovely young girl Alexandra Voronina on the day after her 17th birthday.

In March 1923, Alexandra was pregnant with his child, but Quisling wanted nothing of the sort and insisted on her having an abortion. Then in the summer of that same year, Quisling bigamously married Maria Pasetshnikova (23), without divorcing Voronin. A year later, the three returned together to Norway, where Vidkun and Maria referred to Alexandra as their “foster daughter”. The title of wife for no 1 was swept under the carpet. Later that year, Alexandra left Norway to live with an aunt in Nice and never returned.

A Hot Guy?

It took until 1929 before Quisling broke off all contact with Alexandra and in 1933, after 10 years of illegal marriage to Maria, their marriage was finally annulled, so that Alexandra could marry again.

With her third husband, George Yourieff, Alexandra eventually wrote her memoir In Quisling’s Shadow about the strange menage-à-trois she landed in as a mere girl and how it had affected her.

Maria Pasetchnikova Quisling

Maria and Quisling stayed married until he was sentenced to death by a firing squad in 1945.

She was questioned and held captive for a short while but never charged with war crimes. She continued to live in Oslo - always loyal to her late husband’s traitorous legacy - until she died in the 1980s.