Born Nadezhda Andreyevna Durova (Russian: Надежда Андреевна Дурова; September 17, 1783 – March 21, 1866), known as Alexander Durov, Alexander Sokolov and Alexander Andreevich Alexandrov, was a Russian cavalry soldier and writer who participated in the Napoleonic Wars.

Assigned female at birth, he ran away from home and lived as a man while enlisting in an uhlan (light cavalry) regiment. He is regarded as one of the first known female officers in the Russian military. He received the Cross of St. George for bravery. His memoir, The Cavalry Maiden, is a significant document of its era because few junior officers of the Napoleonic Wars published their experiences, and because it is one of the earliest autobiographies in the Russian language. Its title encompasses much of the historical and scholarly debate over how to refer to his gender: Alexandrov himself wanted it published as Notes of Alexsandrov under his male name, but to his distress publisher Aleksandr Pushkin changed it to the feminine Notes of N.A. Durova, and the editor of the first book edition retitled it to the even more feminine Cavalry Maiden.

There has been a debate over whether Durova's gender identity. Much of the scholarship concerning Durova treats him as a cross-dressing woman; however, Durova in his personal life rejected femininity (even expressing an aversion to the female sex), and behaved as a man.

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RT @HarleighDog: finally, the answer to a decades-old question #TheyWereRoommates https://t.co/3wEKm4OXSV