Вера Фигнер: Революционерка и борец за свободу

Russian political activist (1852–1942)

Vera Nikolayevna Figner Filippova (Вера Николаевна Фигнер Филиппова; 7 July 1852 [O. S. 25 June 1852] – 25 June 1942) was a Russian revolutionary and political activist. Born in Kazan Governorate of the Russian Empire into a noble family of German and Russian descent, Figner was a leader of the clandestine Narodnaya Volya ("People's Will") group, which advocated the use of terror to achieve a revolutionary overthrow of the government, Figner was a participant in planning the successful assassination of Alexander II in 1881. Figner was later arrested and spent 20 months in solitary confinement prior to trial, at which she was sentenced to death. The sentence was subsequently commuted and Figner was imprisoned in the Shlisselburg 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 the February Revolution in 1917 and was a popular public speaker during that year.

Vera Figner was born on July 7 1852 [O. S. June 25 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 the hereditary Russian nobility. Her maternal grandfather owned more than 17,000 acres of land, worked by serfs existing in a state of semi slavery and the family retained two maids, who were also serfs, until the Emancipation of 1861. 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. She was the sister of Lidija Figner and of the famous Russian tenor Nikolai Figner. During Vera Figner's childhood, the adults in her family thought that she was "a beautiful doll good to look at but empty" 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 the Rodionovsky Institute for Noble Girls in the city of Kazan, which she attended for the next six years. 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. Despite the stifling intellectual regime at the cloistered institute, Figner expanded her intellectual horizons by surreptitiously reading prohibited books obtained during brief visits home. 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. Figner desired to study medicine, which was not permitted in Russia following the closure to women of the St. Petersburg Medical Surgical Academy in the early 1860s. This meant leaving Russia to study abroad, and Vera Figner turned her eyes to the University of Zurich, which was accepting Russian women despite their lack of gimnazium diplomas. From 1872 to 1875, she was a student of Department of Medicine at the University 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 the All 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 the Government Herald, accusing them of using their medical knowledge to perform abortions on themselves, in 1873. Figner took part in the Kazan demonstration in St. Petersburg in 1876. From 1877 through 1879, working as a doctor's assistant, she conducted revolutionary propaganda in the villages around Samara and Saratov. 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 the Voronezh Congress in a final effort to settle these differences. 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 Marxist Georgy Plekhanov called Cherny Peredel (Black Repartition), which included Pavel Akselrod, Lev Deich, Vera Zasulich, and others; and a pro terror faction called Narodnaya Volya (People's Will). The Narodnovoltsy (Narodnaya Volya members) established study circles of workers in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, Kiev, and Kharkov, and coordinated propaganda efforts among students at the country's universities. including a failed attempt in 1880 in Odessa and a successful effort in March 1881 in St. Petersburg. The State 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. This status made Figner the focal point and leader of the group's depleted forces. On February 10, 1883, Figner, characterized by police as "one of the most dangerous of the Central Committee of terrorists," was herself arrested at her Kharkov apartment. The next chapter of Figner's life, that of a political prisoner, had begun.

Following her arrest, Vera Figner spent the next 20 months before her trial in solitary confinement at the Peter and Paul Fortress. In 1884 Figner was sentenced to death, during the Trial of the Fourteen. This sentence was commuted through the intercession of Niko Nikoladze to perpetual penal servitude in Siberia. She was instead imprisoned for 20 years in the fortress at Schlüsselburg. In 1904, Figner was sent into internal exile to the Arkhangelsk guberniya, then Kazan guberniya, and finally Nizhny Novgorod. In 1906 she was allowed to go abroad, where she organized a campaign for political prisoners in Russia. She spoke in European cities, collected money, published a brochure on Russian prisons translated into many languages. In 1907 Figner joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR), but left the organization in 1909 after the Azef scandal. In 1915 she returned to Russia.

After the October Revolution (she never accepted the way it had happened), Figner published her book Запечатлённый труд (English title: Memoirs of a Revolutionist), which is still considered one of the best examples of the Russian memoir genre. The book made her famous worldwide and was translated into many languages. 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.

Vera Figner died in Moscow on June 15, 1942. She was 89 years old at the time of her death.