On October 28, 1884, the legendary revolutionary Maria Spiridonova was born. We will tell about her and other women who participated in the revolutionary movement in Russia.

Maria Spiridonova

"It's dark in the women's prison hospital,

A gloomy day looks through the window.

It's sad, all in black, with my dear daughter,

An old woman sits crying.

This unfortunate daughter is her Mary

With a broken chest, lying at death,

The place of the living on the body is not visible,

The skull is broken, and the eye does not look.

She held out her weak hand

To shake her own hand.

Mother covered her hand with kisses

And she started crying even louder.

To the motive of this song, which was considered almost folk, the famous “Mommy-mother, forgive me, dear, that she gave birth to a thief-daughter into the world ...” And Maria from the original version of the song was SR Maria Alexandrovna Spiridonova.

She was born in Tambov in an intelligent family, graduated from high school, and became interested in revolutionary ideas. She joined the fighting squad of the Socialist-Revolutionaries during the revolution of 1905, at the same time she was arrested for the first time.

In 1906, Maria Spiridonova at the railway station in Borisoglebsk mortally wounded the adviser to the Tambov governor Gavriil Luzhenovsky, who distinguished himself with particular cruelty in suppressing the 1905 revolution. After killing him, the girl was going to commit suicide, but did not have time, she was arrested.

In prison, the girl was severely beaten. The court sentenced her to death, which was commuted to life imprisonment. The name of Maria Spiridonova was then known to all of Russia. The girl became a folk heroine, a great martyr. They not only composed a song about her, ordinary peasants hung a portrait of Maria Spiridonova on the wall and lit a candle in front of him, as in front of an icon.

After the February Revolution of 1917, Maria Alexandrovna was released from hard labor, came to Moscow and actively joined the party activities of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. American journalist, author of the famous book "Ten Days That Shook the World" John Reed called at that time Maria Spiridonova "the most popular and influential woman in Russia." The soldiers idolized her, as she advocated an end to the war, and the peasants adored her, because she promised to distribute the land to the people.

If in 1917 Maria Spiridonova considered the alliance of the Social Revolutionaries with the Bolsheviks temporary, but necessary, then in the summer of 1918 she became a categorical opponent of the ideas of the Bolsheviks and, most importantly, their methods. “Instead of free, shimmering like light, like air, folk creativity, through change, struggle in councils and congresses, you have appointees, bailiffs and gendarmes from the Communist Party,” the revolutionary wrote in an open letter to the Bolshevik Party. But this party did not tolerate opponents.

The first time the Bolsheviks arrested Maria Spiridonova in the summer of 1918, but they released her, given her special services to the revolution. The whole further life of a fiery revolutionary is a series of arrests.

Arrest in 1919, then in 1920. Two years of life under the supervision of the Cheka, an unsuccessful attempt to escape abroad, a three-year exile in the Kaluga region. Then a link to Samarkand for three years, another two years - to Tashkent, for five years - to Ufa. Maria Spiridonova had a lot of time to think about what she fought for in her youth, what she believed in, what she dreamed about.

In Ufa, Maria Alexandrovna was caught in 1937. She was already over fifty, she spent most of her life in prisons, in hard labor, in exile. But the Stalinist terror machine did not look at age or merit. Spiridonova was arrested.

Maria Spiridonova was shot on September 11, 1941 in the Medvedev forest near Orel, along with 153 other prisoners.

Varvara Yakovleva

By a fatal coincidence, she was shot on the same day and in the same place as Maria Spiridonova. Did the two revolutionaries see each other before they died? Did they have anything to say to each other? We will never know.

Varvara Nikolaevna Yakovleva was born in Moscow into a wealthy merchant family, graduated from high school and entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Higher Women's Courses.

In 1905, twenty-year-old Varya Yakovleva participated in the revolutionary movement. She was arrested and deported from Moscow. She returned to the city illegally, again engaged in revolutionary activities. Again she was arrested and exiled to Narym. From exile, Yakovleva fled abroad. She returned to Russia only in 1912 to carry out the responsible tasks of the Bolshevik Party. In 1913, a new arrest and exile followed, in which Varvara Yakovleva stayed almost until the revolution.

In the days of the October coup, Varvara Nikolaevna was part of the party combat center. Pravda then joined the "Left Communists" and resigned in protest against the conclusion of the Brest Peace.

Since May 1918, Varvara Yakovleva was deputy head of the department for combating counter-revolution in the Cheka. And she fought fanatically, convinced that all these human sacrifices really serve the cause of the revolution. Among the “counter-revolutionaries” destroyed by Yakovleva were many acquaintances of her parents, people among whom she spent her childhood and youth.

In 1920, the husband of Varvara Nikolaevna, a famous Russian astronomer, who fully shared the revolutionary ideas of his wife, Pavel Karlovich Sternberg, died. The only thing that remained in Yakovleva's life was serving the cause of communism, in the inevitability of which she firmly believed.

From 1929 to 1937, Yakovleva was the People's Commissar of Finance of the USSR. She acted as a witness for the prosecution at the trial of Nikolai Bukharin. Could the old revolutionary believe in the guilt of her party comrade, or simply wanted to save herself? And we will never know the answer to this question.

Varvara Yakovleva was arrested in 1937. The next is known.

Irina Kakhovskaya

There is such a sad anecdote: the old granddaughter of the Decembrist hears shots outside the window and asks the maid:

What is happening there?

Revolution, lady.

What do the revolutionaries want?

To not be rich.

It's strange, but my grandfather, the Decembrist, dreamed that there were no poor people.

The real prototype of the heroine of the joke is Irina Konstantinovna Kakhovskaya, the great-grand-niece of the Decembrist Pyotr Kakhovsky, a socialist-revolutionary, about whom party comrade Grigory Nestroev wrote: “Does she impress you as a saint? an acquaintance of the Social-Democrats asked me more than once. Menshevik. - What faith! What devotion! You know, she very often does not have money to travel beyond the Shlisselburg outpost to the workers, and she walks almost 10 versts on foot from the Petersburg Side. Only the first Christians believed this way, and, perhaps, the first Russian socialists. Now there are few of those who would walk on foot. Look at her face: pale, calm, breathing deep faith in the triumph of socialism ... And these words were true .... For her simplicity, for her sincerity, for her deep faith in the triumph of the workers' revolution, which was transmitted to her listeners, to she was treated with deep respect and valued as her best friend.

Irina Kakhovskaya was born into an intelligent family, sincerely sympathizing with the plight of the people. She graduated with a silver medal from the Mariinsky Institute for orphans of noble birth in St. Petersburg, entered the historical and philological department of the Women's Pedagogical Institute. In 1905, the girl heard a speech by Maxim Gorky, became interested in revolutionary ideas, joined the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, and was engaged in revolutionary propaganda among the peasants of the Samara province. Apparently, these peasants reported her to the police. Kakhovskaya was arrested and sent to Nerchinsk penal servitude. Here Irina met Maria Spiridonova and other active participants in the revolutionary movement.

After the revolution of 1917, Irina Kakhovskaya, together with Maria Spiridonova, participated in the creation of the Chita Committee of the AKP, was the only woman among the delegates of the II All-Russian Congress of Soviets.

In 1918, Kakhovskaya and her comrades-in-arms are preparing an assassination attempt on the commander of the German occupation forces in Ukraine, Field Marshal Hermann von Eichhorn. As a result of the terrorist attack, a German military leader was killed. The Germans arrested Kakhovskaya and sentenced her to death. Only the conclusion of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk saved the life of the Russian revolutionary.

And in 1919, the Bolsheviks arrested Kakhovskaya. After the first arrest, she was released on the personal orders of Lenin, who valued such fanatics. In 1925 - a new arrest and already exile in Samarkand. There, Irina Konstantinovna meets again with the also exiled Maria Spiridonova. Together they are then sent into exile in Tashkent, Ufa.

In total, Irina Kakhovskaya spent 45 years in prisons and exile! After Stalin's death, the old revolutionary was given a passport, but with a ban on living in large cities. Irina Konstantinovna settled in Maloyaroslavets, where she died in 1960.

In the last century of its existence, the Russian Empire was at war with almost all the leading world powers. But the most dangerous enemy was not an external rival, but an internal one - the revolutionaries.

1. Pavel Pestel (1793-1826)

In preparing the Decembrist uprising, Colonel Pestel did not hesitate to use the principle "the end justifies the means", bribing and blackmailing his immediate superiors. The Decembrists accused him of immorality and dictatorial intentions. A similar opinion was shared by Nicholas I in his memoirs: "Pestel was a villain in all the power of his word, without the slightest shadow of repentance ...". Pestel was an ardent supporter of a unitary republican Russia with its capital in Nizhny Novgorod. It was Pestel who, during interrogation, pointed to regicide as one of the options for the development of the Decembrist uprising.

2. Peter Kakhovsky (1799-1826)

Kakhovsky was a man of "exceptional ardor of temperament, an enthusiastic enthusiast by nature, ardently devoted to the feeling of love for freedom, a selfless seeker of truth and justice." Due to the fatal circumstances for him, Kakhovsky became one of the most famous Decembrists. It was him that the Decembrists planned as a regicide. True, he never fulfilled his mission, but the St. Petersburg mayor Count Miloradovich and Colonel Stürler fell from his hands. The life of Kakhovsky, like the rest of the Decembrists, classified by the court as "state criminals outside the ranks", was interrupted on July 13, 1826 on the gallows in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

3. Alexander Herzen (1812-1870)

Herzen remained a revolutionary theorist for the rest of his life. Due to his emigre position, he concentrated all his energy on the fight against autocracy in the uncensored foreign press, which was illegally delivered and read in Russia. “Just as the Decembrists woke up Herzen, so Herzen and his “Bell” helped to awaken the raznochintsy…” – this is how Lenin characterized the historical role of Herzen in the development of Russian freethinking. It was not for nothing that for two decades, in the 1850s and 1860s, all the attention of the foreign agents of the III Branch was focused on counteracting Herzen's activities by all legal and illegal means.

4. Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876)

The uprising in Dresden in 1849 was crushed, and Bakunin, as one of its leaders, was arrested.

Throughout the 19th century, the tsarist authorities proved that all criminal revolutionary ideas in Russia came from Western Europe. Along with Herzen, the most important ideological influence on Russian youth was exerted by an emigrant with thirty years of experience in the revolutionary struggle - Mikhail Bakunin, who participated in several revolutionary uprisings, was twice sentenced to death, served 7 years in the Shlisselburg and Peter and Paul fortresses and exiled to an eternal settlement in Siberia. Bakunin, unlike other prominent theorists of the Russian revolutionary movement, devoted most of his time to practical work. Even from Siberian exile, he escaped through Japan and America to return again to Switzerland, which became his second home. “A monk of the militant church of the revolution, he wandered around the world, preaching the denial of Christianity, the approach of a terrible judgment over this feudal and bourgeois world, preaching socialism to everyone and reconciliation - Russians and Poles,” Herzen wrote about Bakunin.

5. Dmitry Karakozov (1840-1866)

No one expected that after the "Great Reforms" the revolutionary movement would only intensify. On April 4, 1866, student Dmitry Karakozov shot at Alexander II at the gates of the Summer Garden. The emperor's life was saved that day by the peasant Osip Komissarov, who managed to push the revolutionary's hand up, receiving hereditary nobility and the surname Komissarov-Kostroma for this feat. And Dmitry Karakozov, who opened the era of terrorism in Russia, was hanged six months later by a court verdict.

6. Sergei Nechaev (1847-1882)

No one expected that this "thin, small, nervous, always biting his blood-eaten nails" young man would become the main personification of the Russian revolution of the early 1870s. Having enlisted the support of Bakunin and Ogarev abroad, Nechaev pretends to be an emissary of the international revolutionary center and organizes the "People's Reprisal Society". True, the only revolutionary act was the murder of his own comrade, the student Ivanov. Nechaev flees abroad, from where the Swiss government transfers him as a criminal to Russia, where he will be sentenced to 20 years of hard labor, but will die after 9 years of imprisonment in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

7. Peter Tkachev (1844-1886)

Revolutionary fame came to Tkachev already in exile, when he, following Herzen, decided to wake up the Russian public, but now by "hitting the alarm." In the revolutionary organ of the same name, he no longer called for propaganda among the peasants and workers, but for a political conspiracy to seize power and social revolution. So without waiting for the realization of his conspiratorial theory in practice, Tkachev will go crazy and end his life in a French psychiatric hospital. In recent years, due to material problems, Tkachev was forced to work as a secretary under the first head of the Foreign Agents of the Police Department, Korvin-Krukovsky, who secretly operated in Paris. It is still unknown whether either of them had any idea about the actual role of each other.

8. Vera Zasulich (1849-1919)

On February 5, 1878, a young woman came to the reception of the capital's mayor, General Trepov, and shot him at point-blank range. For this crime, the maximum punishment could be applied to her, but a jury will acquit Vera Zasulich a few months later, which will cause warm public approval. Thus, a judicial precedent dangerous for the tsarist government was created in Russian law, when a criminal act in the form of murder or attempted murder for political reasons could be justified by a jury. The next day after the release, the sentence was protested, and the police issued a circular about the new arrest of the revolutionary. But Zasulich was already safe, on her way to Sweden.

9. Sergei Stepnyak-Kravchinsky (1851-1895)

On the morning of August 4, 1878, a young revolutionary journalist on Italianskaya Street in the center of St. Petersburg killed the chief of the gendarmes, Mezentsov, with a dagger. By personal order of the emperor, the entire metropolitan police were looking for the killer, but Kravchinsky was already on his way to Switzerland. The tsarist government will seek his extradition to Russia, but meanwhile Kravchinsky again flees from the persecution of the Okhrana and settles in London, where he later organized the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom and the Free Russia press organ to fight Russian autocracy. His fight with the government was flamboyant but short. At the age of 44, he will die, accidentally falling under a train.

10. Lev Hartmann (1850-1913)

In August 1879, Hartmann took part in digging on the railway near Moscow to blow up the train of Alexander II. After an unsuccessful assassination attempt, he flees abroad. Since all the other participants in the attempts on the life of the emperor continued their illegal activities inside Russia, the tsarist authorities concentrated all their efforts to capture Hartmann. Tsarist agents find him in Paris and, with the consent of the French authorities, have already practically achieved his extradition to his homeland. But thanks to the efforts of the Russian revolutionary emigration, the entire progressive French public, led by Victor Hugo, came to the defense of the revolutionary from Russia. As a result, his expulsion from France (but not to Russia, but to London), close friendship with Marx and Engels, and the international image of a “true fighter against Russian despotism” that has survived for several decades.

11. Stepan Khalturin (1856-1882)

A worker from the railway workshops was arranged under a false name as a carpenter in the Winter Palace. For several months he carried and put dynamite in his pillow. As a result, on February 5, 1880, an explosion thundered, killing eleven soldiers from the guard, but the king, by a lucky chance, even escaped injury. Nobody expected such a daring attempt in the heart of the empire. But Khalturin then escaped arrest, was caught by the police and executed only in 1882 in Odessa.

12. Andrei Zhelyabov (1851-1881)

The son of a former courtyard, Andrei Zhelyabov gave up a prosperous family life with his wife and son for the sake of a social revolution in which he sincerely believed. Disillusioned with peaceful propaganda, Zhelyabov became one of the leaders of the People's Will and from the autumn of 1879 focused on organizing assassination attempts on Alexander II. In the last attempt, which ended on March 1 with the death of the emperor, Zhelyabov no longer took a direct part, since he was arrested the day before. The royal authorities did not have sufficient evidence against him. But Zhelyabov himself demanded that he be brought to trial in the case of the regicides, thereby signing his own death warrant.

13. Sofia Perovskaya (1853-1881)

The daughter of the St. Petersburg governor, Sofya Perovskaya, left home at the age of 17 and joined populist circles. “Perovskaya was a “populist” to the depths of her soul and at the same time a revolutionary and a fighter of the purest temper,” writes Pyotr Kropotkin about her. When the tsarist authorities, having arrested Zhelyabov at the end of February 1881, believed that the "Narodnaya Volya" would be finished, it was Perovskaya who took charge of the planned assassination attempt. Her integrity and stubbornness became, as a result, fatal for the emperor on that noon on March 1 on the embankment of the Catherine Canal. On March 10, she was arrested, and already on April 3, she was executed.

14. Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921)

The anarchist prince, who escaped from the Peter and Paul Fortress, insulting to the authorities, for a long time became in the eyes of tsarism the personification of the entire revolutionary infection that emanated from Western Europe in the 1870-1890s. The tsarist government also attempted to extradite him to Russia, but the only success was a court case fabricated in agreement with the French authorities for belonging to the International, for which Peter Kropotkin received 5 years in prison as punishment. But the danger to tsarist power posed by Kropotkin was greatly exaggerated. Back in the 1870s, having gone into exile, he concentrated not on the Russian revolutionary movement, but on the theoretical preparation of the world anarchist revolution.

15. Lev Tikhomirov (1852-1923)

Lev Tikhomirov began as a theorist of the People's Will, but after that he became one of the most ardent defenders and theorists of monarchical statehood. Such an ideological upheaval occurred during the years of emigration after the collapse of Narodnaya Volya, when he experienced not only financial difficulties, but also suffered from paranoia: it seemed to him that he was constantly being watched by agents of the Russian foreign police. For the sake of the safety of the family and the health of his son, who was on the verge of life and death all this time, the leader of the Narodnaya Volya, who remained at large, renounces his revolutionary views and comrades, writes a pardon in the name of Emperor Alexander III and returns to Russia to now serve tsarism.

16. Alexander Ulyanov (1866-1887)

Six years after the assassination of Alexander II, young students Pyotr Shevyrev and Alexander Ulyanov organized the "Terrorist Faction" of the People's Will party to prepare an assassination attempt on the new emperor. But on March 1, 1887, Ulyanov and his comrades, who were waiting for the passage of the tsarist carriage along Nevsky Prospekt, were arrested, having found three bombs prepared by Ulyanov himself. The investigation continued for two months, and then five students from the People's Volunteers were hanged in the Shlisselburg fortress.

17. Grigory Gershuni (1870-1908)

Fatal for the empire was the mistake made by the head of the Moscow security department, Zubatov, who released the young pharmacist and revolutionary leader Gershuni, who had been arrested earlier in Minsk, after long interrogations, although there were enough facts to send him to Siberia. After that, Gershuni leaves Minsk and devotes himself to terror. Gershuni became the leader of the first Russian professional terrorist group, which was responsible for the assassination of the Minister of the Interior Sipyagin, the Ufa governor Bogdanovich. Interior Minister Plehve told Zubatov that Gershuni's photograph would remain on his desk until Gershuni was arrested. Gershuni was arrested in 1903 in Kyiv, and in 1907 he died in Switzerland after escaping from a Russian prison.

18. Evno Azef (1869-1918)

The unprincipled and self-serving Azef led both the police and the Socialist-Revolutionary Party by the nose for several years, one of the founders of which in 1902, by the way, he was. It was under his direct leadership of the Fighting Organization of the Socialist-Revolutionaries that they managed to kill the Minister of the Interior Plehve, the Governor-General of Moscow, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and the St. Petersburg mayor von der Launitz. He was exposed as a provocateur only in 1908, although many from the revolutionary camp and government agencies continued to believe in his devotion. But even here he managed to get out, avoiding arrest by law enforcement agencies and revenge from party comrades.

In the case of Ulyanov-Lenin, there was a clear underestimation of the danger of his revolutionary doctrine on the part of the leadership of Russian law enforcement agencies. After serving exile in the Yenisei province in 1900, Lenin and his comrades were allowed to hold the necessary meetings and in the summer of 1900 go abroad, issuing the necessary passport. Lenin, who did not expect such inaction on the part of the authorities, immediately set about organizing a social democratic newspaper and a theoretical journal in Germany for illegal distribution in Russia. For a long time, the tsarist agents abroad could not even determine the place and names of the publishers of the new revolutionary organ. Lenin, having received the necessary political freedom for his revolutionary theoretical activity, became the head of the entire Russian social democratic movement abroad and within the empire, which the tsarist police could no longer cope with.

21. Leon Trotsky (1879-1940)

Trotsky's revolutionary star first rose in 1905 in revolutionary Petersburg, when he became one of the founders and a member of the Executive Committee of the capital's Soviet of Workers' Deputies. Prior to that, he constantly changed his party priorities, first becoming famous as a "Lenin's club", then as a defender of Menshevism, and in the end becoming close to Parvus on the ideas of a "permanent revolution" and the immediate unification of the party. Only the revolution of 1905-1907 made him an independent revolutionary figure, a "non-factional social democrat", and the revolutionary year of 1917 allowed Trotsky to prove himself as a revolutionary leader and become one of the leaders of the October Revolution. The tsarist government, due to political events, did not have time to feel the whole revolutionary danger emanating from Trotsky, but Stalin fully realized the whole threat, who competently dealt with one of the party leaders.

22. Nestor Makhno (1888-1934)

During the years of the First Russian Revolution, young Nestor Makhno participated in anarchist terrorist attacks and expropriations, for which he was arrested several times, and in 1910 he was even sentenced to death. In the Butyrka prison, where he spent the last seven pre-revolutionary years, Makhno was diligently engaged in revolutionary self-education. The February Revolution allowed him to return to his native Gulyaipole, where he was already accepted as a prominent revolutionary and anarchist. Right up to the start of the active phase of the Civil War, Makhno continued his revolutionary training, becoming acquainted with the prominent anarchists Kropotkin, Grossman and the Bolshevik leaders Lenin, Sverdlov, Trotsky and Zinoviev. The anarchist ideals of Makhno were alien to the Soviet government, so he had to leave the country with the rebel detachments and from 1921 to remain forever in exile.

The connoisseur of the female soul Mirabeau once told the emissaries of the French Revolution that "if women do not intervene in the matter, then nothing will come of it." In the Cheka, women interfered heavily. Zemlyachka - in the Crimea. Concordia Gromova - in Yekaterinoslav. Comrade Rosa - in Kyiv. Evgenia Bosch - in Penza. Yakovleva and Elena Stasova - in St. Petersburg. The former paramedic Rebekah Meisel-Plastinina is in Arkhangelsk. Nadezhda Ostrovskaya - in Sevastopol. (This wizened teacher with an insignificant face, who wrote about herself that “her soul shrinks like a mimosa from every sharp touch,” was the main character of local terror, when officers were massively drowned in the Black Sea, tying their bodies to cargo. it seemed to the diver that he was at a rally of the dead.) In Odessa, there was a Hungarian Chekist, Remover, who was later recognized as mentally ill on the basis of sexual perversion, who arbitrarily shot 80 arrested people, and even the Bolshevik justice established that this Chekist personally shot not only those suspected of counterrevolution, but also witnesses called to the Cheka and had the misfortune to arouse her sick sensuality.

In Kazan, the Chekist investigator Braude was noted, who shot the “White Guard bastard” with her own hands, during the search she personally undressed not only women, but also men. The socialists who visited her on a personal search wrote: “I had to be perplexed that this was a special soulless machine or a kind of sadistic woman?”

Prototype of Anka the Machine Gunner and the Viper

A female equestrian, in a leather jacket, tightened with a harness with a Mauser on her side, Elsa Grundman has become for the creators a symbol of the heroine of troubled times. Portraits of Anka the machine-gunner and leaders of bandits were painted from it. Elsa Grundman's life after the war was tragic. She failed to find her place in peaceful life. For some time she tried to work in the people's commissariat. In the early thirties, with the ardor inherent in her nature, she recklessly fell in love with the head of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department. A stormy romance ensued. But the head of the threat could not leave the children for Elsa. And Elsa Grundman acted as decisively as she always did when faced with a tough choice. She took out a premium Mauser and pointed it at her temple... Her last literary prototype was the heroine of Alexei Tolstoy's sketch The Viper.

Time spent in prisons made her violent, sometimes to the point of pathology. The new party nickname - Demon - suited her perfectly. The Crimea was handed over to Bela Kun and Rozalia Samuilovna. The triumphant winners invited Lev Davidovich Trotsky to the chairmanship of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Soviet Republic of Crimea, but he replied: “I will come to the Crimea when there is not a single White Guard left on its territory.” The Crimean leaders took this not as a hint, but as an order and a guide to action. Bela Kun and Zemlyachka came up with a brilliant move to destroy not only the prisoners, but also those who were at large. An order was issued: all former servicemen of the tsarist and White armies must register - name, rank, address. For evading registration - execution. There was only no notification that everyone who came to register would be shot...

“Why even these questions about origin, education. I will go to his kitchen and look into the pot, if there is meat - an enemy of the people, against the wall!

Chekist MIZIKIN

We will meet them with volleys of challenge -
To the wall of the rich and the bar! -
And we will answer with a hail of lead
For each of their sneaky blows...
We swear on a cold corpse
Your formidable sentence -
Revenge on the villains of the people!
Long live the red terror!

Dropout schoolgirl

“I didn’t have a gap between political and personal life. Everyone who knew me personally considered me a narrow fanatic, perhaps I was one.

V. BRAUDE

When young admirers asked Vera Figner about what her six-year stay at the Rodionov Institute for Noble Maidens gave her, she answered: cultural bearing. And a sense of camaraderie. Vera Bulich had only enough patience for a year. By the time she got into this privileged educational institution, she had numerous clashes with the authorities and teachers of the Mariinsky Gymnasium, from where she was expelled in the fourth grade. The noble free rural life of an educated family formed in her somewhat anarchist inclinations. External discipline was clearly not for her. Is it any wonder that at the institute she also came into conflict - this time with the Law of God, the lessons of which were considered mandatory? The parents were staunch atheists and, in general, “university” people who did not pray to recognized public authorities either. Father, Pyotr Konstantinovich, was the great-nephew of both the famous professor and rector Bulich, and Butlerov, who taught him chemistry, and his mother belonged to the Chaadaev family, who were proud of their famous relative, Pyotr Yakovlevich - officially, almost by the tsar himself, declared insane for destroying criticism of Russia. The girl, according to her inner understanding, simply could not help but despise her fellow students, who were happy to master secular conventions and the skills of noble wives.

For not going to the lessons of the Law of God, she was kicked out of the institute.

The situation was saved by the appearance in the city of a private female Kotovskaya gymnasium, located in the only open House of Kekin. Having passed the fifth grade course as an external student, Vera Bulich moved there. And immediately landed in the student circle of the left direction. Here life was in full swing and vividly resembled Stepnyak-Kravchinsky's Underground Russia, whose foreign publications went through the hands of "conscious" youth. Proclamations, secret assignments... Russia was moving towards its first revolution, and experienced agitators, lacking hands, did not spare the student youth. No wonder that the whirlpool of events captured Vera Bulich. And when the university was shut down in 1905, and soldiers occupied its classrooms, hotheads recklessly rushed into the street fight. The result was the arrest of a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl. She was lucky: due to her infancy, the gendarmes simply handed over the girl to her parents on receipt. But the young maximalist did not want to sit quieter than water and lower than the grass, and when her father demanded that dangerous social experiments be stopped before the end of the gymnasium, she took a couple of linen and went to live in a “commune” on Staro-Gorshechnaya Street - now Shchapova. And she did not regret at all that she had changed her separate room with a comfortable bed to an untidy communal apartment, where the beds themselves were often used in turn. Now this would be called deviant behavior, but then it was the norm for some young people - a norm consecrated by the names of the general's daughter Sofya Perovskaya, the daughter of a member of the State Council Natalya Klimova, and many others. Some even saw in it a certain chic - "to go to the people." This is still happening now - under the guise of rock communes, "snow landings", other more serious sects.

Most of the fugitives eventually returned to normal life, they acquired families, a position in society. But there were others whom the exhausting, full of hardships of party life hardened, turned into fanatics. In a Kazan prison, where Vera Bulich soon landed, she met such a passionate person - the famous Narodnaya Volya Oshanina, who ruined thirty years to fight the regime. Her skin was like fish scales, but her eyes sparkled with a young blue. It made a big impression.

The country then lived with reports of endless assassination attempts on governors and gendarmes, all over the Volga, landlords survived from their estates, let them "red rooster". In the Chistopol estate of the uncle of the rebel - Alexander Konstantinovich Bulich, who served as the zemstvo chief, where Vera was assigned - thanks to connections - to supervised living, she met with local socialist-revolutionaries and village hooligans. And she threw out the number: she suggested that they burn the estate! Authority was secured. Then the sheds of the mother's estate were also set on fire - the house where the landowners placed the village school remained intact. But after this, I had to urgently flee to Ufa, switch to the position of an illegal immigrant, wander around Russia.

Having cut herself off from her former life and relatives in a truly surgical way, without sparing her feelings, Vera also gained the first experience of insensitivity to other people's suffering. It is likely that such a sharp revolutionary behavior still had a medical basis, some kind of excess of male hormones in the blood. Maybe a wanderlust. Beliefs alone are not enough to explain criminal hooliganism. It is also not enough to say: "idea", "austerity", in order to understand the motives of such actions. But there was also an environment of revolutionism, permeated with criminality. And the thought characteristic of the “suffered”: we suffered - now you feel it too!

The logic of the underground life led her, in the end, into the ranks of a conspiracy aimed at assassinating the commander of the Kazan Military District, General Sandetsky. The attempt on the petty tyrant did not take place, but something else is important. At the age of 18, murder became a morally acceptable norm for her. In fact, it no longer mattered that she later married - a Marxist lawyer Samuil Braude and gave birth to a daughter. The vector of life was determined to the end: a revolutionary path. Perhaps she would have turned into a coryphaeus of the revolution, a kind of grandmother of the Russian revolution, like Breshko-Breshkovskaya. But the revolution broke out, and "operational space" opened up.

“If Lenin had gained power in deed, and not in his imagination alone, he would have played tricks no worse than Paul I on the throne.”

V. Menzhinsky, 1911

“The Kazan branch of the State Bank, the treasury, the savings bank are forced to make daily payments: 1. Individuals and firms - no more than 300 rubles; 2. Factories and factories - in full ... 25% of them in money, in the remaining amount - bonds of the Freedom Loan ... The manager of the KOGB humbly asks not to refuse to accept bonds ... "

"The Kazan Soviet brings to the attention of the population that persons who refuse to accept bonds at a price of 85 rubles for 100 common nouns are subject to trial by a revolutionary tribunal."

"Kazan Word", December 1917.

"And junkers are eaten by dogs..."

With the so-called "October battles" in Kazan in 1917, historians in past years have confused a lot. Ideological considerations, calling everywhere to see either the role of the party, or the intrigues of the enemies of socialism, emphasized the role of the Bolsheviks in the Kazan events, which, in fact, did not exist. And there was gradually, in step with the situation throughout the country, a ripening garrison storm. The events were initiated by the famous explosion - the second in a row - of the Kazan gunpowder factory. On August 14, at two o'clock in the afternoon, sacks of saltpeter on the Powder Platform caught fire. Then the fire reached the boxes with shells and cellars. Thousands of pounds of gunpowder smashed the entire district to smithereens. Glasses flew out for many kilometers from the epicenter. Tore for several days in a row. They said that the boilers of the Alafuzov factory flew into the air. Classes were canceled in schools and gymnasiums, the tram stopped running, merchants fled from the bazaars, shops closed. The population urgently packed their things and fled the city. Together with him, the soldiers of the reserve regiments stationed in the District ran away. The command introduced martial law in the city, but this angered the soldiers. Order collapsed, numerous rallies broke out demanding an end to the war. Arbitrary seizures of armories began, beatings of officers who demanded compliance with martial law, subordination, and regulations. The chairman of the Bolshevik committee, Gracis, played the role of an instigator. On the other hand, the provincial military commissar Kalinin was engaged in incitement. It is no coincidence that later, in December, an investigation of the “bloody October events” was carried out. That is what the October Revolution was then called. Newspapers, not yet covered by the Bolsheviks, were indignant: on the banks of the Kazanka, the corpses of junkers, stabbed with bayonets of soldiers, were lying around, despite assurances of saving lives. And dogs eat them! And the leaders of the new regime, as if justifying themselves, said that they were victims of "provocations", did not think about any seizure of power.

The Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks dominated the Soviet, which seized political power in October. Under the Soviet, even under Kerensky, a revolutionary tribunal was created to try provocateurs, gendarmes and the like, whose personal affairs became the object of public attention. And the investigative commission of the tribunal was headed by the head of the Coalition Committee Hirsh Olkenitsky and Vera Braude, the leader of the "junior" Socialist-Revolutionaries of Kazan. This was before the official establishment of the Cheka.

In Kazan, they said then that both the October Revolution and the "emergency" appeared here earlier than in the Center.

Kazan trace of the famous terrorist

“I arrived in Moscow in February 1918, and with me in my pocket there were some 500-700 rubles in Keren money ... There were no funds. I got money by personally running around Moscow and finding somewhere a thousand, where five hundred, where 2,000 Kerensky money. That's what the original budget was."

So then Boris Savinkov recalled the very beginning of his famous "Union for the Defense of the Motherland and Freedom", which covered half of Russia. The organization grew, grew much faster than he or anyone else expected and, of course, this money was in no way enough. And it was at this time that Masaryk sent 200 thousand rubles. It was they who saved the organization. They gave her the opportunity to develop and come to a position where, with her numbers and organization, she interested the French ambassador Noulens, from whom Boris Viktorovich received more than two million rubles.

In a few months, he formed a large organization from fragments of the Right Socialist-Revolutionary Party and individual, "fighting" representatives of the Cadet parties, People's Socialists. The members of this underground organization were not only armed, but the vast majority of them had behind them the combat experience of front-line officers. Even among the officers of the Latvian riflemen, who were closest to the Kremlin, Savinkov managed to create a cell of his "Union", hoping with their help to capture the entire Bolshevik government. Savinkov and the Latvians were united by a common rejection of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which had just been signed by the Bolsheviks and the Germans (according to which Latvia passed under German rule).

Soon the "Union" consisted of about 5,000 volunteers, had branches in Kazan, Kaluga, Kostroma, Yaroslavl, Rybinsk, Chelyabinsk, Ryazan, Murom. In each of these cities, weapons depots were created in case of a speech. The central staff of the "Union", headed by Savinkov, was located in the very center of Moscow and existed under the guise of a "hospital for visiting patients." In addition to Boris Viktorovich, the leaders of this organization were Lieutenant General Rychkov, Colonel Perkhurov and the commander of the Latvian Soviet regiment guarding the Kremlin, Jan Bredis.

Reference

The charter of the organization contained a table of salaries that were paid to each member. According to it, an ordinary soldier received 300 rubles a month, a detached one - 325 rubles, a platoon commander - 350 rubles, a company commander - 400 rubles, a battalion commander - 500 rubles and a regiment commander - 600 rubles. In addition, benefits were given to families from 150 to 300 rubles a month and free food and uniforms.

“I didn’t go looking for the French, but they found me and started their help: at first they gave 20-40 thousand, then this figure increased. By the end of May, the Union had grown so much that its size did not allow it to remain underground.

B. SAVINKOV

Savinkov originally thought about performing in Moscow. The speech was scheduled for June 1 - 2, and preparations were underway by this time. However, the speech in Moscow was canceled and it was decided to evacuate part of the organization to Kazan. Capturing the Council of People's Commissars and the most important strategic points in Moscow was then not difficult, but it was impossible to hold out, firstly, due to the significance of the Soviet detachments and, secondly, due to the impossibility of feeding the population of the capital, since transport was destroyed. The new government would soon collapse.

However, the inaction of the organization threatened to disintegrate it, and the headquarters developed and adopted a plan to capture Kazan. Savinkov said that he "ordered the evacuation of part of the organization's members to Kazan on the subject that, when the Czechs approached, raise an uprising there."

Military units were scheduled for evacuation, lodgers were sent to Kazan. In total, it was supposed to transport 500 - 700 people. The tenants traveling on reconnaissance were given 400 rubles during the trip and 2000 rubles for renting premises; in addition, the tenant received 400 rubles for a family, 150 rubles for lifting and uniforms - 100 rubles, and enjoyed apartment allowances. A special instruction was drawn up, which was to be followed by each evacuated member of the "Union".

Let down the talkativeness of some members ... In the midst of the evacuation, on the night of May 30, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission arrested the secret headquarters of the "Union" in Moscow and through it up to 100 members of the "Union".

The plan of evacuation to Kazan and documents on the existence of the Soyuz and preparations for a performance in Kazan were also captured there.

Theroigne de Mericourt: Forerunner

Seventeen years old, she disappeared from her parents' house along with some nobleman who seduced her. At the beginning of the French Revolution, she found herself in Paris and became known to Danton and other revolutionary celebrities who willingly visited her salon. She dressed in a short cloak, pantaloons and something like sandals - a costume in which the then textbooks of mythology portrayed the Amazons; she usually appeared in public riding a huge horse, armed from head to toe. When the question of the fate of the Girondins was being decided, she appeared on the square near the convention and passionately defended the Gironde party. Having finished her speech, she went into the Tullier garden, where several Jacobin women suddenly appeared, who rushed at the “bloodthirsty getter, the leader of the Parisian cannibals” and subjected her to a painful flogging with rods. She immediately lost her mind; she was placed in an insane asylum, where she remained until her death.

"The Revolutionary Tribunal is the shortest bridge from the Cheka to the churchyard." (A proverb of the time)

As a matter of fact, the Kazan "Cheer" about the conspiracy became known a little earlier - in late April - early May. The local Menshevik Piontkovsky (later a famous historian), who served as deputy provincial commissar of labor, told Vera Braude a story about how a classmate-officer, who came from a priest's family, suddenly warned him of an imminent coup. But Piontkovsky categorically refused to give his name. Vera Petrovna did not insist and put pressure on the double-dealer, but simply looked through the lists of Piontkovsky's fellow students and figured out the person involved. It was a certain Serdobolsky, who lived on Popova Gora - now Telman Street.

During the search, the owner escaped through the window, and his guests - Nefedov and Bogdanov - ended up in the Cheka. There, Nefedov spoke about General Popov, who led the organization, and about the weapons depot, which was in charge of Bogdanov. The case was headed by Kalinin, former military commissar of Kerensky in Kazan, and another Menshevik, Bartold.

On May 29, lodgers from Moscow left for Kazan. They were supposed to appear at the Northern Rooms: ask Yakobson, a well-known Socialist-Revolutionary figure of the 1905 era, introducing himself "from Viktor Ivanovich." They also had the address of the treasurer of the party of the Right Socialist Revolutionaries Konstantin Vinokurov - 12 (Lesgaft) Cross-Current 2nd Mountain, through which they were supposed to contact Iosif Aleksandrovich Springlovich, the head of the Right Socialist Revolutionary fighting squad and Leonid Ivanovich Rezenev-Rozanov. But the role of the lodgers was played by the Moscow Chekists Zakovsky and Stringfler.

With their help, they covered the entire headquarters of the Kazan organization and its guests - the commander of the monarchists, General Popov, the Muscovite courier, Lieutenant Olgin-Herzen, the Right Social Revolutionaries Yakobson and Nikitin. In the notes of the detainees, Braude and Olkenitsky found information about 20 people who promised to help with the deployment of the headquarters and the regiment of Savinkovites who were moving to Kazan from Moscow.

Professional in his field

It should be recognized that the Kazan security officers at the decisive moment showed much greater determination than their opponents.

So on June 18, in the whirlpool of the garrison storm - just like in October 17th - the power of the Bolsheviks and the "Cheers" almost ended, barely having begun. An armed detachment of deserters from the Syzran sector of the front appeared in the city. The garrison committee immediately took him under their protection and entered into a dispute with the Soviet, which proposed decisive measures against the fugitives and sending him back to the front. The locks were knocked off the doors of the wine warehouses on Prolomnaya, wine appeared in the units, and dissatisfied people rustled. This happened in the Kremlin itself, where the buzoters stood. The Bolsheviks were even forced to move their headquarters and archives to the Communist Club (Karl Marx, 66). There they urgently formed a military revolutionary committee and, having pulled together units loyal to them, they prepared by armed means to suppress the flaring uprising.

And again, big events were prevented with little bloodshed: the secret police of the Bolsheviks - the Cheka - outplayed their opponents. Numerous arrests knocked out leaders and instigators.

At that time, lists of counter-revolutionaries being shot were printed almost daily in Kazan. Vera Braud was spoken of in whispers and with horror.

“I myself have always believed that all means are good with enemies, and on my orders ... active methods of investigation were used: a conveyor belt and methods of physical influence.”

V. BRAUDE

At the end of July 1918, the Kazan underground sent representatives to Simbirsk with a proposal to Komuch and the Czechs to hastily go to Kazan, enticing them with the gold reserves of Russia, concentrated in the cellars of the State Bank, and the strong support of the underground, ready to raise an uprising. The rebellion was planned for 8 o'clock in the evening on August 5, but the performance took place only at two o'clock in the afternoon of the next day, when detachments of Czechs, Stepanov and Kappel broke through to the city center. Trucks loaded with young men wearing white armbands rushed through the city. They broke into houses and made arrests. They suppressed pockets of resistance - the building of the Cheka on Gogolevskaya, the Club of Communists on Gruzinskaya (Karl Marx), "Kazan Compound", where the commander-in-chief of the Eastern Front Vatsetis was headquartered. It was then that Sheinkman, who remained in Kazan on underground work, was shot, Vakhitov, who was captured in the suburban village of Bogorodskoye, a significant group of communists - Gassar, Komlev, and others.

Their tender bones sucked dirt
The ditches closed over them.
And the signature on the verdict curled
A jet from a shot through the head

After the liberation of Kazan, the head of the Cheka of the Eastern Front, Latsis, reported in Moscow: “There is no one to shoot. Only six death sentences." But then in the central newspapers began to publish calls for the Red Terror. Latsis was summoned to a meeting of the Kazan Committee of the RCP(b). He was reproached with the fact that he did not carry out the policy of red terror energetically enough. After that, the situation changed dramatically: extrajudicial executions in the city became commonplace. It was generally more convenient: to eliminate opponents instead of negotiating with them.

And not all of their opponents left the city. The famous Larisa Reisner, for example, who, in the course of her “reconnaissance” in the city occupied by the White Czechs, ended up in prison, found her landlord, the former bailiff Alekseev, thanks to whom she was captured. Caught clumsily - for she left the guard. The bailiff was shot. They were looking for Chuvash participants in the "constituent assembly" Vasiliev, Nikolaev, Alyunov. They put under lock and key judicial officials who served in August. Sixty representatives of the workers were shot for demanding an eight-hour day, a revision of wage rates, and the removal of the raging Magyar detachments. On September 10, the KGB newspaper Red Terror published lists of enemies of Soviet power and invited everyone to work on these "proscriptions". It is not known exactly, but there were, obviously, rewards for informers - as in ancient Rome, the customs of which the red leaders tried to revive on the banks of the Volga in 1918.

The right hand of Latsis was Vera Petrovna Braude, whose path lay after the units advancing on Kolchak. There she became famous for the mass executions of her former party brethren - the Socialist-Revolutionaries. In this way she painstakingly scraped off the old skin of the party of the people.

Stubborn Biography Facts…

Tomsk. December 1919. There was no local scout squad as such. Most of the Scouts, along with their parents, fled after the troops. And those who still remained in the city sat as quiet as water, below the grass, only in the evenings gathering in each other's apartments and sharing the terrible news with which the city was overflowing. Nevertheless, in the dark room of one of the classes sat two scouts and the famous Braude, whose name alone inspired fear throughout Siberia. Both boy scouts were interrogated for a long time: they were required to name all the scouts known to them and to give the revolutionary authorities the banner of the squad. Yura and Misha resolutely refused to do both. The scouts courageously endured the terrible moral tortures of the interrogation of the monstrous woman, but did not give up, did not hesitate. Without a single groan, without fear, without weakness, a month later, nineteen-year-old scoutmaster Gan accepted death from a bullet, and sixteen-year-old Yura Pavlov quietly died out at the Cheremkhovo mines.

As if in a mockery, in 1938 Vera Petrovna was accused of precisely “Socialist-Revolutionary”. She died in 1961, fully rehabilitated, with the rank of KGB major and with an impressive personal pension of three thousand rubles.

I wonder how the honored revolutionary and security officer answered the questions of schoolchildren, who even then suffered from the hypocrisy of teachers and parents? Did she advise you to break decisively and leave irrevocably?

They fought against the system in different years and in different ways, some had weapons in their hands, others had a pen, but they all have one thing in common - they fought for what they believed in.

Nadezhda Krupskaya (1869 - 1939)

Many people know Nadezhda Krupskaya as Lenin's wife. But she, along with her husband, took an active part in the revolution and the life of the country after the uprising.

She participated in the organization and activities of the Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, was the secretary of the Iskra newspaper, and after the revolution became the Deputy People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR. Krupskaya was an activist of Soviet censorship and anti-religious propaganda, collaborated with the anti-Stalinist opposition.

The ashes of Krupskaya were buried in the Kremlin wall in Moscow.

Constance Markevich (1868-1927)

Constance Markevich is an Irish suffragist, politician of the Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil parties, a socialist revolutionary and a nationalist.

In 1909, she founded the Heroes of Ireland, a national paramilitary scouting organization that trained children in the use of firearms. This organization became the forerunner of the Irish Republican Army.

In 1916, she took part in the Easter Rising (for the independence of Ireland) with a weapon in her hands and wounded a British sniper.

When the uprising was crushed, Markevich and other revolutionaries were led through the streets of Dublin, where they were mocked by the mob. In the courtroom, the revolutionary who was about to be sentenced to death kept crying and declared, "I'm just a woman, you can't kill a woman." Markevich's behavior had the desired effect on the judges and she was sentenced to life imprisonment, but a year later she was released from prison as a result of a general amnesty for participants in the Easter Rising.

From 1919 to 1922, Markevich was Minister of Labor, but due to disagreement with the Anglo-Irish Treaty, she voluntarily left her position.

Petra Herrera

During the Mexican Revolution, women served side by side with the men, known as soldaderas. They accompanied soldiers on campaigns, cooked food, did laundry, cared for the wounded, and buried the dead. Many of them had intimate relationships with the fighters.

One such woman was Petra Herrera, who at first posed as a man named Pedro Herrera. Under this name, she won the trust and respect of her colleagues during the battles. Later, she revealed her real gender, but the revolutionary Pancho Villa did not pay tribute to the merits of the girl and did not appoint her a general. In response to this, Herrera created her own all-female combat unit.

Lakshmi Sahgal (1914-2012)

Sahgal is an activist in the Indian independence movement, also known as Captain Lakshmi. During the 2nd World War, she fought in Burma on the side of Japan with the rank of captain in the ranks of the Indian National Army. Later, she joined the "women's regiment" created by the famous Indian independence fighter Subhas Chandra Bose.

In 1946, she was taken prisoner by the British Waxes in Burma. Fearing mass unrest, the British released Sahgal. In India, she was greeted as a heroine.

After the war, the revolutionary became a member of the upper house of the Indian Parliament from the Communist Party.

Sophie Scholl (1921 - 1943)

German revolutionary Sophie Scholl is one of the founders of the anti-fascist non-violent organization White Rose. The activists of this group distributed leaflets and painted anti-Hitler graffiti. In February 1943, she and other members of the organization were arrested for distributing leaflets at the University of Munich and sentenced to death by guillotine. Scholl's executioner was Johann Reichart, famous for beheading 3,165 people with his own hands.

Later, the leaflets were smuggled out of the country, made millions of copies and dropped in the skies over Germany under the name "Munich Students' Manifesto".

Celia Sanchez Manduley (1920 -1980)

Most people have heard the name of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara at least once in their lives, but far fewer people have heard of Celia Sanchez Manduley. However, this woman was in the midst of revolutionary events in Cuba. According to rumors, she even made historic decisions. After the coup on March 10, 1952, Manduley joined the fight against the Batista government.

After the revolution, Celia remained close to Castro until her death.

Kathleen Neal Cleaver

Kathleen Neal Cleaver was a member of the Black Panther Party and the first female member of the party's governing body. She served as a spokesperson and spokeswoman, and later organized a national campaign to free Defense Party minister Hughie Newton.

Asma Mahfouz

Asma Mahfouz is one of the modern revolutionaries. She is credited with being responsible for the 2011 Egyptian uprising. Then she allegedly spread a call for protest in Tahrir Square through her video blog. Asma Mahfouz was one of the founders of the April 6 movement, which held millions of shares demanding the resignation of Mubarak.

Blanca Canales

Blanca Canales - Puerto Rican revolutionary, organizer of the women's branch of the nationalist party of Puerto Rico "Daughters of Liberty". She was one of the few women in history who took part in an uprising against the United States. On October 30, 1950, Blanca and others took up arms that she had hidden in her home. As a result, the US President declared martial law and ordered the Army and Air Force to attack the city. The Nationalists held the line for a while, but were still captured and sentenced to life imprisonment. And the media declared it a local conflict, the truth was revealed later.

Performer of the assassination attempt on Lenin.

She was born in Ukraine in a religious Jewish family, which she left, carried away by the ideas of anarchism. She worked as a seamstress, fell in love with the raider Viktor Garsky, and together with him she was preparing an assassination attempt on the Kiev governor-general. The bomb exploded prematurely, damaging her eyesight. After her arrest, she was silent during interrogations. She was 16 years old, so the execution was replaced by Akatui penal servitude. There the Socialist-Revolutionary Maria Spiridonova gave her her shawl. Fanny was released only after 9 years, almost blind. She underwent surgery at the Kharkov eye clinic. At the station, she ran into Victor, arranged a date and sold her shawl to buy scented soap. But after a passionate night, Victor said that he did not love her. A year later, she (on her own initiative or on behalf of the Socialist-Revolutionaries) wounded Lenin, who was speaking at the factory. A 28-year-old terrorist was shot, her body was doused with gasoline and burned in a barrel.

Her features: fidelity, inflexibility, fatalism, patience, perseverance.

Inessa Armand (1874–1920)

Revolutionary, feminist, mother of five.

Born in France in the family of an operatic tenor, after his death she moved to Moscow to her aunt: she taught music to the children of the manufacturer Armand, whose son Inessa later married. But, having given birth to four children, she became interested in socialism, fell in love with her husband's younger brother, Vladimir (who shared her interests), and gave birth to a fifth child from him. She did not divorce her husband, he continued to support her, including rescuing her from exile, where she was sent more than once. Vladimir died of tuberculosis. Inessa's acquaintance with Lenin in 1910 in Paris grew into a romance. After parting, they remained friends and returned to Russia together with Krupskaya in 1917 in a "sealed carriage". Armand had a diploma in economics, she fought for equal pay for women and freedom from everyday life. She was very tired, went to Kislovodsk for treatment, contracted cholera on the way back and died at the age of 46.

Her features: tenderness, curiosity, disinterestedness, intelligence, devotion.

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952)

The world's first female minister, ambassador, promoter of free love.

The daughter of a colonel of the General Staff, spoke seven languages. She married against the will of her parents, gave birth to a child, divorced, went abroad, where she met Lenin. Until 1917, she established ties with the Social Democrats, was the mistress of two prominent revolutionaries, abandoned both: one was married, the other wanted to marry her too much. Promoted the "glass of water" theory: sex is as simple as quenching one's thirst; condemned "bourgeois" jealousy, but left her second husband (17 years younger than her), having learned about the betrayal. In 1917-1918 she served as People's Commissar. Since 1922, she represented the USSR in the Scandinavian countries. There she began an affair with a French communist 21 years younger than her, but broke up with him at the request of the government. After a stroke in 1945, she ended her career. She died at the age of 79.

Her features: decisiveness, amorousness, observation, love of freedom, audacity.

Nadezhda Krupskaya (1869–1939)

The faithful wife of the "leader of the world proletariat."

The daughter of a lieutenant and a governess, she did not have a higher education. She taught at an evening school for workers. A friend introduced her to the young Marxist Vladimir Ulyanov, whom she herself refused. Both were sent into exile in Shushenskoye, where they got married. Krupskaya did not know how to cook, her mother ran the household. In exile, Nadezhda edited her husband's articles, corresponded, and taught at the party school. Not distinguished by her beauty, she was not offended, having received secret nicknames “Fish”, “Lamprey” from her husband. She herself offered Lenin and Armand freedom, but her husband stayed with her. She underwent surgery for Basedow's disease. Krupskaya, one of the authors of the Soviet education system, opposed the persecution of children by "enemies of the people." She taught Ilyich, who had had a stroke, to speak again. She died at the age of 70 from peritonitis.

Her features: dedication, devotion, modesty, high efficiency, caring.

Determine how these women make you feel:

Mostly admiration, the desire to be something like them, or a general elation.

Predominantly anxiety, fear, irritation, indignation, pity, or hard to describe emotional discomfort.

Fanny Kaplan

+ You are attracted by inflexibility, a willingness to uphold ideals and resist powerful external forces. You feel that you are not capable of such a thing, or you think that this is how you need to manifest yourself if circumstances require. Perhaps one day you could not move in the direction you wanted without getting support from outside, and chose to adapt to the expectations of the environment, and not to do it your own way. They retreated for fear of being alone. Or do you consider yourself an experienced fighter by vocation.

– The heroine is your opposite: you will not show intransigence if the risk of failure is high, you will not commit radical acts even for the sake of desired goals. Or do you think that suggestibility, maximalism, infantilism stand behind her actions. Perhaps those values ​​​​that Fanny neglected are important to you (family, religious tradition ...), and you are perplexed: how can you sacrifice them, getting involved in dangerous adventures.
Or you are proud of the flexibility of your views, the ability to "squeeze the best" out of circumstances and humbly accept the result.

Inessa Armand

+ Having every opportunity to live a happy and peaceful family life, she took up "big politics". Her close rapprochement with Lenin can cause various reactions, despite the warm words of the leader's wife in an article in memory of Armand ("It was brighter in the house when Inessa came"). You admire her willingness to join in life and be indifferent even at the end of her own strength. You tend to see her story as a manifestation of fortitude, no matter what virtues of the heroine touch you the most.

– The priorities or personal qualities of the heroine do not find a positive response from you. Perhaps you treat the events of your life with less vehemence, or even appreciate the iron self-control in yourself, which allows you to soberly analyze circumstances and regulate your ardor. Perhaps, in the motives of the decisions and actions of the heroine, as they seem to you, you find those that do not correspond to your personal ethics or are incomprehensible to you. But remember that attention to the "incomprehensible" impulses of someone else's soul is an opportunity to discover something that has not yet been mastered in oneself.

Alexandra Kollontai

+ It seems to you that this historical figure is not at all like you, or, on the contrary, has those features that you like about yourself, but they are more pronounced in her. Perhaps your talent, which is waiting to be recharged, is quick adaptation to new conditions, readiness to act, express and embody intentions and views. You are characterized by an expressive and honest manifestation of yourself in communication, acceptance and subtle knowledge of your emotional and sensory states. Although it is possible that you believe that you have qualities that are not characteristic of the heroine, the intensity of which you would like to reduce in your character. For example, you feel annoyed when shyness does not allow you to defend your ideas in the face of everyday circumstances or under someone's pressure. Or the restraint of feelings forced you to retreat when trying to get to know a person you are interested in.

– The glorified revolutionary is the bearer of those qualities that you do not support in yourself. You consciously and systematically educate your personality, following those values ​​that exclude the manifestation of its character traits. Maybe,
you try not to bring your feelings to the heat, choose more familiar and calm conditions, preferring them to situations that will doom you to “extra” adventures and experiences that are unusual for you. Maybe you are familiar with the content of the heroine’s views (for example, on issues of love and sexuality), and then not only judgments about her personality, but also Kollontai’s ideas can fuel your reactions, indicating that these topics are currently very significant for you.

Nadezhda Krupskaya

+ Productivity, dedication, commitment, a life full of events and accomplishments, passion for what you do, total dedication, and/or a desire to invest in family values ​​can be exciting. Contemporaries did not consider Nadezhda Krupskaya a beauty, but appreciated her intelligence, pedagogical talent and ability to work. You can also respect her "feminine wisdom", which allowed her to recognize a man with great potential, to whom she was able to become a faithful and irreplaceable companion. Whatever captivates you in her image, use your admiration as a hint - what your hidden talents are looking for embodiment.

– Something in Krupskaya's character acts on you like a red rag on a bull. Perhaps the choice of submissive service to a partner or cause causes a great internal protest in you. Selflessness goes against today's trends, which dictate the ability to balance between public and private, obligations and pleasures. The implementation of the skills of "healthy egoism" hardly occupied the great wife, who devoted herself to something outside herself - her husband, the interests of the country. Her lifestyle can easily be associated with the loss of freedom in the name of commitments and chosen priorities. Particularly acute emotions arise if your family history inclined you towards certain forms of sacrifice and reverence, patience, despite the fact that you have not been able to sincerely appropriate and adopt these views.

Revolutionary keep step!

By determining what your similarities and differences with the chosen heroine are, you can advance even further in self-development. Psychologist Maria Dolgopolova suggests two steps for this.

Step 1. List the qualities you admire. Recall even minor cases when you manifested them. Develop your potential: create conditions in which you need to show these qualities, gradually increasing the level of difficulty. Do not scold yourself if it didn’t work right away, maybe your skills are not yet strong enough.

Step 2 Come up with advice that would help the heroine achieve important goals or live a more prosperous and happy life. Now make the opposite recommendation out of it and apply it to yourself. For example, the advice to “spend more time with loved ones” means that it is good for you to learn solitude.
and independence.