Strange as it may seem, the cause of the Russian revolution coincided with the rapid feminization of women. More and more girls in the late 19th and early 20th centuries refused the role of wife and mother and plunged into an active struggle not only for their rights, but also 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 with the preparation of a daring assassination attempt on Emperor Alexander II.
Origin
The famous revolutionary Figner Vera Nikolaevna, as was usually the case 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 indicated that Alexander Alexandrovich Figner, her grandfather on the side of her father, was a nobleman from Livonia (the territory of the modern Baltic). In 1828, being a lieutenant colonel, he was assigned to the nobility in the Kazan province.
The landlords were also on the maternal side. The grandfather of Vera Nikolaevna, Khristofor Petrovich Kupriyanov, from large landowners, served as a district judge. He owned land in Tetyushinsky district and Ufa province. However, only 400 acres of the village of Khristoforovka remained from his wealth, which were left to her mother. Father, Nikolai Alexandrovich Figner, resigned in 1847 with the rank of staff captain.
Childhood
Vera Figner herself was born in 1852 in the Kazan province. The family had five more children: sisters Lydia, Eugene 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 to all children, each of which, probably due to severe education, left his mark on history.
Vera Figner, whose biography is detailed in her book “Sealed Work”, wrote that in her childhood she did not recognize the identity of the child, nor was there a kinship between parents and children. The basis of education was strict discipline, Spartan habits were instilled. Moreover, the brothers were also subjected to corporal punishment. The only close person for the children was their old nanny, Natalya Makaryevna. Nevertheless, Vera Figner notes that there were never quarrels in the family, no swear words “and there were no lies”. Because of the father’s service, the family lived in the village and was deprived of the conventions of urban life, and therefore, Vera Nikolaevna says, “we did not know hypocrisy, nor gossip and slander.”
Youth
As a result, or in spite of, but all the offspring of the family went out, as they say, in people: Peter became a major mining engineer, Nikolai - a 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 Rodion Institute of Noble Maidens. The training was based on religious dogmas, to which Faith remained indifferent, going deeper into atheism. The training lasted six years, during which the girl went home on vacation only four times.
After graduation, Vera Figner returned home to the village. As she herself wrote, only Uncle Pyotr Kupriyanov, who knew the ideas of Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov and Pisarev, as well as the doctrine of utilitarianism, which penetrated the young girl, visited them off the beaten path. She did not have a direct acquaintance with the peasantry; real life and reality, according to her apt remark, passed by her, which adversely affected her acquaintance with life and people.
External influence
Figner first got acquainted with serious literature at the age of 13, when her uncle Kupriyanov allowed him to take the annual binder of the Russian Word magazine with him to the institute. However, the works read there did not have any effect on the girl. At the institute, reading was banned, and the books the mother gave were related to fiction and influenced sensuality rather than intellectual development. Serious journalism did not fall into her hands until a certain time.
The first strong impression on her was made by Shpilgagen's novel “One is not a warrior in the field”. Oddly enough, Vera Figner celebrated the gospel with an important book for herself. Despite her commitment to atheism, she extracted principles from her life book that guided her whole life. In particular, the total dedication of a once chosen goal. Nekrasov’s poem “Sasha”, which taught not to separate the word from the deed, completed the formation of the ideological 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 in a logical way aroused her desire to study at 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 the suspect takes place and having seen this infamy, she persuaded her husband to quit this lesson and leave with her to receive 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 popular movement. The choice of the side of socialist transformations began with visits to the circle of “fritschi” in Zurich, where she met the French socialists Cabé, Saint-Simon, Fourier, Louis Blanc, Proudhon. As she herself noted, it was not so much a keen sense of justice that inspired her to choose the side of the revolution, but rather "the cruelty of the suppression of revolutionary movements by the ruling class."
Return to Russia
In 1875, members of the Fritsch group who came to Russia to arrest socialist ideas among the working class were arrested. Having received a call from her comrades to renew revolutionary ties in Russia, Vera Figner - a biography briefly concerns her feelings and doubts about this - was forced to leave her university studies and return to her homeland. Her doubts were connected with the fact that she was throwing the case halfway, although she always considered it cowardice. In Russia, she still passed the exams for the paramedic. After five years of marriage, she divorced her husband, who did not share her passion for the revolution, and went to Petersburg.
By the mid-70s of the 19th century, a new revolutionary center began to form, the program of which carried not only revolutionary romance, but also concrete actions. In particular, a real struggle with the authorities. Then they first talked about the use of dynamite in the fight.
In 1878, the first revolutionary shot was fired, changing the direction of this movement in Russia. Vera Zasulich shot at the mayor of St. Petersburg Trepova. It was revenge for corporal punishment, which one political convict suffered because he did not take off his hats in front of his superiors. After that, retaliation with the use of terror took place throughout the country.
Creation of "People’s Will"
Vera Figner, although it was not directly involved in the movement “Earth and Freedom,” nevertheless adjoined him with ideas and her own autonomous circle of “separatists”. She participated in the organization’s congress in Voronezh. However, as she wrote, they didn’t reach an agreement at the congress. The compromise was to continue the revolutionary enlightenment in the countryside and at the same time fight the government. The compromise, as usual, led to the fact that the movement was divided. Those who considered it necessary to actively fight the government and saw their task as the overthrow of the autocracy, united in the party "Narodnaya Volya". Vera Figner joined her executive committee.
The members of the new party were extremely determined. Several members of the organization prepared dynamite, and the rest developed a plan of assassination of 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 my comrades,” and she took part in her first terrorist attack.
From the death penalty by a thread
The whole organization fell into the hands of a detective in 1883. Vera spent 20 months in Peter and Paul Fortress in complete isolation. Then she was put on trial and sentenced to death, which was replaced by indefinite penal servitude. She spent twenty years in Shlisselburg. In 1904 she was sent to 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, the October Revolution did not accept 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 "Sealed Work" on the Russian revolutionary movement.