In China, Olga Lang also met Tatiana Manooiloff Cosman, one of Ida Pruitt’s adopted daughters. Cosman was a Russian orphan whose parents had fled to China to escape the Revolution. After her adoption by an abusive Russian family in Manchuria and engagement to an opium dealer, she worked as a cabaret hostess and taxi-dancer in Peking [Beijing]. She was 15 years old when Pruitt took her in.

Pruitt arranged for Cosman’s education, including her instruction in English and Chinese, and eventual passage to the United States in 1938. "Ida took care of me in China," Cosman once said. "When I got to America, Olga took over." Cosman joined Lang in New York and worked there until both were denounced by Lang’s then ex-husband Karl Wittfogel.

Cosman later earned an M.A. in Russian from Middlebury College, taught at Sarah Lawrence and Barnard Colleges, and received a Ph.D. from New York University in 1973. That year, Lang recommended Cosman for a position at Swarthmore, where she taught Russian for 10years. She published a memoir, My Heritage With Morning Glories, in 1995 and now lives with her husband in Media, Pa.

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