The case of the Russian revolution, oddly enough, coincided with the rapid feminization of women. More and more girls in the late 19th and early 20th centuries abandoned the role of wife and mother and plunged into an active struggle not only for their rights, but for human rights in general. One of the brightest participants in the revolutionary movement at the turn of the century was Vera Figner, who went down in history by preparing a daring assassination attempt on Emperor Alexander II.
Origin
The well-known revolutionary Figner Vera Nikolaevna, as was usual in the nascent revolutionary movement, was of noble origin. In her autobiography, which she wrote in Moscow in 1926, already a deeply convinced revolutionary, she pointed out that Alexander Alexandrovich Figner, her paternal grandfather, was a nobleman from Livonia (the territory of modern B altic states). In 1828, being in the rank of lieutenant colonel, he was assigned to the nobility in the Kazan province.
The landowners were also maternal. Grandfather of Vera Nikolaevna, Khristofor Petrovich Kupriyanov, from large landowners, served as a county judge. He owned lands in the Tetyushinsky district and the Ufa province. However, only 400 acres remained of his we alth.the village of Khristoforovka, which went to her mother. Father, Nikolai Alexandrovich Figner, retired with the rank of staff captain in 1847.
Childhood
Vera Figner herself was born in 1852 in the Kazan province. There were five more children in the family: sisters Lydia, Evgenia and Olga, brothers Nikolai and Peter. Remembering her parents, the future terrorist wrote that they were completely different in temperament, but at the same time energetic and strong-willed, and also incredibly active. These qualities, she recalls, were instilled in one way or another in all children, each of whom, probably due to a harsh upbringing, left his mark on history.
Vera Figner, whose biography is detailed in her book “The Imprinted Labor”, wrote that in her childhood the identity of the child was not recognized, and there was also no family affinity between parents and children. The strictest discipline lay at the heart of education, Spartan habits were instilled. Moreover, the brothers were subjected to corporal punishment. The only close person for the children was their old nanny Natalya Makarievna. Nevertheless, Vera Figner notes that there were never quarrels in the family, there were no swear words “and there were no lies.” Because of the father's service, the family lived in the countryside and was deprived of the conventions of city life, and therefore, says Vera Nikolaevna, "we knew neither hypocrisy, nor gossip and slander."
Youth
As a result or in spite of, but all the offspring of the family came out, as they say, in people: Peter became a major mining engineer, Nikolai -famous opera singer. But the sisters, all three, devoted themselves to the revolutionary struggle.
And Figner Vera Nikolaevna, whose brief biography is presented in our review, also devoted herself to the bright cause of the revolution.
Childhood ended when the girl was assigned to the Kazan Rodionov Institute for Noble Maidens. The training was based on religious dogmas, to which Vera remained indifferent, going deeper and deeper into atheism. The training lasted six years, during which the girl went home for the holidays only four times.
After graduating from the institute, Vera Figner returned home to the village. As she herself wrote, in the wilderness they were visited only by Uncle Pyotr Kupriyanov, who knew perfectly the ideas of Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov and Pisarev, as well as the teachings of utilitarianism, which the young girl was imbued with. She had no direct acquaintance with the peasantry, real life and reality, according to her apt remark, passed her by, which adversely affected her acquaintance with life and people.
Outside influence
Figner's first encounter with serious literature happened at the age of 13, when her uncle Kupriyanov allowed her to take the annual volume of the Russkoe Slovo magazine with her to the institute. However, the works read there had no effect on the girl. At the institute, reading was forbidden, and the books that the mother gave were classified as fiction and influenced more on sensuality than on intellectual development. Serious journalism did not fall into her hands until a certain time.
The first strong impression on herproduced the novel "Not a Warrior Alone" by Shpilhagen. Oddly enough, Vera Figner noted the Gospel with an important book for herself. Despite her adherence to atheism, she drew principles from the book of life that guided her all her life. In particular, the total devotion of oneself to the once chosen goal. Nekrasov's poem "Sasha", which taught not to separate the word from the deed, completed the formation of the worldview foundation of the personality of the future revolutionary.
Marriage
The desire to be useful, to bring as much happiness as possible to as many people as possible, logically aroused in her the desire to study as an Aesculapius. She decided to study medicine in Switzerland. But she managed to realize this intention only in 1870, after she married the young investigator Alexei Viktorovich Filippov. Having once heard how the interrogation of a suspect was going on and seeing it as vile, she convinced her husband to quit this occupation and leave with her to get a medical education at the University of Zurich.
Arriving abroad, Figner Vera Nikolaevna first met and was imbued with the ideas of socialism, the commune and the people's movement. The choice of the side of socialist transformations began with visits to the Frisch circle in Zurich, where she met the French socialists Cabet, Saint-Simon, Fourier, Louis Blanc, Proudhon. As she herself noted, it was not so much a keen sense of justice that prompted her to choose the side of the revolution, but "the cruelty of the suppression of revolutionary movements by the ruling class."
Return to Russia
In 1875, the members of the circle of "friches" who came to Russia to propagate socialist ideas among the working class were arrested. Having received a call from her comrades to renew revolutionary ties in Russia, Vera Figner - the biography briefly touches on her experiences and doubts on this score - was forced to leave her studies at the university and return to her homeland. Her doubts were connected with the fact that she was throwing things halfway, although she always considered this cowardice. In Russia, she nevertheless passed the exams for a paramedic. After five years of marriage, she divorced her husband, who did not share her enthusiasm for the revolution, and went to St. Petersburg.
By the mid-70s of the 19th century, a new revolutionary center began to form, the program of which carried not just revolutionary romance, but also concrete actions. In particular, a real struggle with power. Then for the first time they started talking about the use of dynamite in the fight.
In 1878, the first revolutionary shot was fired, which changed the direction of this movement in Russia. Vera Zasulich fired at the St. Petersburg mayor Trepov. It was revenge for the corporal punishment suffered by a political convict for not taking off his hat to his superiors. After that, actions of retaliation with the use of terror took place throughout the country.
Creation of the People's Will
Vera Figner, though not directly a member of the Land and Freedom movement, nevertheless joined it with ideas and her own autonomous circle of "separatists". Participated incongress of the organization in Voronezh. However, as she wrote, nothing was agreed at the congress. The compromise was to continue the revolutionary education in the countryside and at the same time to fight against the government. The compromise, as usual, led to the fact that the movement was divided. Those who considered it necessary to actively fight against the government and saw it as their task to overthrow the autocracy united in the People's Will party. Vera Figner joined her executive committee.
Members of the new party were extremely determined. Several members of the organization were preparing dynamite, while the rest were developing a plan to assassinate Emperor Alexander II. Vera Figner, whose photo tells us about a thin and whole girl, but not about a terrorist, took an active part in preparing the assassination attempts in Odessa in 1880 and in St. Petersburg in 1881. Initially, her participation was not planned, but, as she herself wrote, "my tears softened the comrades", and she took part in her first terrorist attack.
From the death pen alty in the balance
The whole organization fell into the hands of a detective in 1883. Vera spent 20 months in the Peter and Paul Fortress in complete isolation. Then she was put on trial and sentenced to death, which was replaced with indefinite hard labor. She spent twenty years in Shlisselburg. In 1904 she was sent to the Arkhangelsk, then to the Kazan province. After being transferred to Nizhny Novgorod, she was allowed to leave Russia, and in 1906 she went abroad to treat her nervous system.
She returned to her homeland only in 1915, was elected to the Constituent Assembly after the February Revolution. However, she did not accept the October Revolution and did not become a member of the Communist Party. In 1932, in the year of her eightieth birthday, a complete collection of works was published in seven volumes, which included her main opus - the novel "The Imprinted Labor" about the Russian revolutionary movement.
