Vera Figner | |
|---|---|
 Portrait,c. 1880 | |
| Born | (1852-07-07)July 7, 1852 Kazan Governorate, Russian Empire |
| Died | June 15, 1942(1942-06-15) (aged 89) Moscow, Soviet Union |
Vera Nikolayevna Figner Filippova (Russian:Вера Николаевна Фигнер Филиппова; 7 July [O.S. 25 June] 1852 – 25 June 1942) was a Russianrevolutionary and political activist.
Born inKazan Governorate of theRussian Empire into a noble family ofGerman andRussian descent, Figner was a leader of the clandestineNarodnaya Volya ("People's Will") group, which advocated the use of terror to overthrow the government, Figner was a participant in planning the successfulassassination ofAlexander II in 1881. Figner was arrested and spent 20 months insolitary confinement prior to trial, at which she was sentenced to death. The sentence was subsequently commuted and Figner was imprisoned in theShlisselburg Fortress for 20 years before being sent into internal exile. Figner gained international fame in large part because of the widely translated memoir of her experiences. She was treated as a heroic icon of revolutionary sacrifice after theFebruary Revolution in 1917 and was a popular public speaker during that year.
Vera Figner was born on 7 July [O.S. 25 June] 1852, the oldest of six children of Nikolai Alexandrovich Figner, a retired army staff captain and his wife, the former Ekaterina Khristoforovna Kuprianova, both members of thehereditary Russian nobility.[1] Her maternal grandfather owned more than 17,000 acres of land, worked byserfs existing in a state of semi-slavery and the family retained two maids, who were also serfs, until theEmancipation of 1861.[2] Her father served in the state forestry service, resigning that post to become a local administrative functionary called a "peace mediator" in the years after emancipation.[3] She was the sister ofLidija Figner and of the famous Russian tenorNikolai Figner.[citation needed]
During Vera Figner's childhood, the adults in her family thought that she was "a beautiful doll ... good to look at ... but empty"[4] and expected that she would go into society and marry someone older and rich. In 1863, at the age of eleven, Figner was sent to theRodionovsky Institute for Noble Girls in the city ofKazan, which she attended for the next six years.[5] As one of only six cities in the Russian Empire to host a university, the provincial capital of Kazan was a city of culture and ideas and Figner gradually came to question and ultimately reject the passive and submissive gender role which the Radionovsky Institute attempted to inculcate into its pupils.[6] Despite the stifling intellectual regime at the cloistered institute, Figner expanded her intellectual horizons by surreptitiously reading prohibited books obtained during brief visits home.[7] She proved to be an excellent student, taking a particular interest in history and literature, and received the prize given to the top academic performer upon her graduation in 1869.[8]
Figner desired to study medicine, which was not permitted in Russia following the closure to women of theSt. Petersburg Medical-Surgical Academy in the early 1860s.[9] This meant leaving Russia to study abroad, and Vera Figner turned her eyes to theUniversity of Zurich, which was accepting Russian women despite their lack ofgimnazium diplomas.[9] In 1870, she married Alexei Filippov, an investigating magistrate who shared her love of books and supported her ambition to go to university. After her father's death, she persuaded Filippov to give up his position and accompany her to Zurich, to study medicine.[10][11]
From 1872 to 1875, she was a student of Department of Medicine at theUniversity of Zurich. In 1873, Figner joined the Fritsche circle, which was composed of thirteen young Russian radical women, some of whom would become important members of theAll-Russian Social Revolutionary Organization. She had trouble reconciling her new political view of herself as a parasitic member of the gentry with her previous view of herself as a good, innocent, person. A directive banning all Russian women students from remaining in Zurich was published in theGovernment Herald, accusing them of using their medical knowledge to perform abortions on themselves, in 1873.[11]
Most of the Fritsche decided to return to Russia and spread socialist propaganda among the Russian peasantry, but Figner decided to remain in Switzerland to finish her studies. In 1875,Mark Natanson told her that the Fritsche desperately needed her help in Russia. She returned to Russia that year without getting her degree, but found herself unable to help the circle and so got a license as a paramedic and divorced her husband, where she became active with other revolutionaryintellectuals in theZemlya i Volya (Land and Liberty) organization.[12]
Figner took part in theKazan demonstration inSt. Petersburg in 1876. From 1877 through 1879, working as a doctor's assistant, she conducted revolutionarypropaganda in the villages aroundSamara andSaratov.[citation needed]
In the spring of 1879 the Zemlya i Volya organization was deeply divided over the question of terrorism, with one wing of the party advocating revolutionary propaganda in the villages and the other in favor of creating a revolutionary situation through the assassination of key figures in the Tsarist government and monarchy. In June of that year party activists gathered at theVoronezh Congress in a final effort to settle these differences.[13] No permanent solution was reached and by the fall the Zemlya i Volya organization has split into two independently functioning groups: an anti-terror faction led by proto-MarxistGeorgy Plekhanov calledCherny Peredel (Black Repartition), which includedPavel Akselrod,Lev Deich,Vera Zasulich, and others; and a pro-terror faction calledNarodnaya Volya (People's Will).[13]
Vera Figner aligned herself with the latter, terrorist wing,[13] becoming a member of the group's executive committee, which in a proclamation later in 1879 called for the execution ofTsar Alexander II for crimes committed against the people of the Russian Empire.[14] TheNarodnovoltsy (Narodnaya Volya members) established study circles of workers in St. Petersburg, Moscow,Odessa,Kiev, andKharkov, and coordinated propaganda efforts among students at the country's universities.[14] It also established printing presses for the production of leaflets and issued a magazine and a newspaper in an effort to build support for its revolutionary program.[14]
As a member of the executive committee, Figner also took part in the creation of the paramilitary wing of Narodnaya Volya and coordinated its activities. Figner participated in planning the assassination of the Tsar,[15] including a failed attempt in 1880 in Odessa and the successful effort on 1 March 1881, in St. Petersburg. During the night of 28 February – 1 March 1881, a contingent ofNarodnovoltsy gathered at Figner's apartment and prepared bombs for the assassination attempt.[16] On the day of the assassination, Figner was assigned to stay at the flat and shelter Narodnaya Volya members who might later be implicated in the attack.[17] Upon hearing of Alexander II's demise at the hands of her fellow conspirators, Figner would later recall that, "I wept as did others that the heavy nightmare that had oppressed young Russia for ten years was over."[17]
TheState secret police were relentless in tracking down members of the terrorist organization responsible for the killing of the Tsar and by the spring of 1882 only Vera Figner remained at large in Russia out of Narodnaya Volya's executive committee of 1879–80.[18] This status made Figner the focal point and leader of the group's depleted forces.[18] One assassination was carried out on her watch, the shooting of a member of the secret police in Odessa in March 1882.[18] Figner's main activity as the de facto head of the Narodnaya Volya organization in 1882 related to the restoration of the underground apparatus, which was devastated by secret police arrests and seizures of equipment.[18] TheNarodnovoltsy managed to set up a new underground press in the period and conducted propaganda work among university students.[18]
Originally based in Odessa, Figner later moved to Kharkov, where she was ultimately betrayed by fellow Executive Committee memberSergey Degayev, who turned police informer in order to lessen his punishment after his 20 December 1882 arrest.[19] On 10 February 1883, Figner, characterized by police as "one of the most dangerous of the Central Committee of terrorists," was herself arrested at her Kharkov apartment.[19] The event moved new TsarAlexander III to write in his diary, "She was finally caught."[20]
Following her arrest, Vera Figner spent the next 20 months before her trial insolitary confinement at thePeter and Paul Fortress. In 1884 Figner was sentenced to death, during theTrial of the Fourteen. This sentence was commuted through the intercession ofNiko Nikoladze to perpetualpenal servitude in Siberia. She was instead imprisoned for 20 years in thefortress at Schlüsselburg.[citation needed]
In 1904, Figner was sent into internalexile to theArkhangelskguberniya, thenKazan guberniya, and finallyNizhny Novgorod. In 1906 she was allowed to go abroad, where she organized a campaign forpolitical prisoners in Russia. She spoke inEuropean cities, collected money, published abrochure on Russianprisons translated into many languages. In 1907 Figner joined theSocialist Revolutionary Party (PSR), but left the organization in 1909 after theAzef scandal. In 1915 she returned to Russia. Upon her return, Figner immediately expressed support for theBolshevik Revolution in 1917.[21]
After the Bolshevik Revolution, Vera Figner decided to share her experiences with the world through literature. In 1920, she publishedMemoirs of a Revolutionary,[22] recounting her twenty years behind bars. In 1924, she compiled her prison writings intoCollected Works (included in most versions of her memoirs). She continued documenting her experiences withIn Penal Servitude (1927), which expanded on her time in prison, followed byAfter Penal Servitude (1930), where she reflected on her life after release. In 1932, she wroteFrom the Recent Past, a historical analysis of her participation in revolutionary movements, and in 1933, she publishedRecollections, offering personal reflections on life and the struggles of being a revolutionary.[citation needed]
In 1932, Figner's collected works were published in the Soviet Union by the publishing house of the Society of the Former Political Prisoners and Exiles in seven volumes.[23]
Vera Figner died in Moscow on 15 June 1942. She was 89 years old at the time of her death. Her legacy lives on through the works she composed. In her writings, she honors the women who fought alongside her and those who supported her during her imprisonment. Through her contributions to the Russian Revolution and literature, both she and the people she wrote about will be remembered in history.[citation needed]
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