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My project uses biography to understand the generation that made the Russian Revolution. Sofia Panina was one of Russia's greatest heiresses and a pioneering social reformer. She rose to unusual political prominence in 1917 when she became the only woman minister in the Provisional Government, then the defendant in the Bolsheviks' first political trial. Fleeing Russia in 1920, she contributed to the development of international refugee relief and emigre institutions. My book is the first scholarly effort to reconstruct Panina's life from widely scattered archival sources in Russia, Europe, and the U.S. I analyze her significance as a woman who constructed innovative institutions while resisting social and gender conventions. My book also examines why she has been appropriated as a political symbol at times of transition, both in the past and in Russia today. The audience for my book includes historians of Russia, women, and reform movements, and general readers.