Antonina Milyukova was a Russian memoirist and pianist. She was born on 16 August 1848 into the noble family of Ivan Milyukov and Olga Milyukova. Her mother left the family when Antonina was young, taking only her youngest daughter with her. Antonina was educated at a private boarding school until a court decision returned her to her father at the age of seven; she then grew up on his estate in the Klin District.
In 1858, Milyukova entered the Moscow Elizabeth Institute, graduating in 1865. She enrolled at the Moscow Conservatory in 1873 to study piano and theory in Eduard Langer’s class, but ended her studies for reasons that are not known.
Milyukova met the composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky in May 1872 at the home of her brother Alexander. After five years of difficult relations, they married on 18 July 1877 at the Church of Saint George on Malaya Nikitskaya Street in Moscow. The marriage ended within weeks, and the couple subsequently lived apart; they were unable to obtain a divorce. In later correspondence, Milyukova wrote to Tchaikovsky about three children, one of whom was named after him.
After Tchaikovsky’s death in 1893, Milyukova wrote memoirs about their marriage. The book was published in 1894 and reissued in 1913, but did not become widely known. In October 1896, she was admitted to the Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker Hospital for the Mentally Ill, where she was diagnosed with chronic paranoia. In 1901, she was placed in an institution for people with mental illness at Udelnaya station. Milyukova died of pneumonia near St. Petersburg on 3 March 1917 and was buried in the Northern Cemetery; her grave has not survived.