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beyond
their
control,
and who remained there
as a
result of the will
or
whim of other
individuals.
But
even
those who deserve
our
respect
and
recognition
have been
so
frequently
portrayed
in
a manner
which is
likely
to
alienate
them from
us.
Russia's
literary heritage
is focused
on
works which have
brought
to
millions of readers around the world the
concept
of 'dusha'
or
'soul',
meaning
the inner
strength
and
beauty
of
a
person.
These
officially recognised
heroes
of the
revolutionary
movement
appear
to
be
curiously
devoid ofthat soul. Of
course,
the
use
of such
a
word
as
'tverdokamennaia'
('steadfast',
literally meaning
'made of
hard
rock')
as a
laudatory
term
to
describe
Bolshevichki did
nothing
to
endear
them
to
subsequent
generations.
After
all,
can a
rock have
a
soul?
I
did
not
experience
shortage
of material in
general,
but
I
did find it difficult
to
locate material
on
specific
individuals.
Throughout
my research
I
continued
to
look
for
information
on
revolutionary
women
workers,
in
particular
Vera
Karelina, who,
I
believe,
deserves
to
be among the
female
revolutionary
elite.
But
even
at
this
point
I
do
not
have
any
data
confirming
her date
or
place
of
death, beyond
the
knowledge
that
an
article written
by
her about the
early
days
of the social democratic
movement
appeared
in
a
journal
in 1930.
However,
my
aim
was
by
no means
to create
a
'pantheon'
to
outstanding
Russian
revoliutsionerki,
as
Clements did with the
Bolshevichki
she included in her
study
Bolshevik Women.
By
means
of
a
prosopographical study
I
was
aiming
to create
a
collective
biography
where
individuals
and their
experience
of life and
revolutionary
work will
not
be obscured
by
the
dry figures
of statistical
analysis
or
put
into the shadows
by
a
few from the
ranks of their
comrades-in-arms, especially
the ranks
of'party
officers'.
From the
very
beginning
I realised that
given
the
limitations
of
time
and
resources,
I
would
not
succeed in
tracking
down every
single
female
revolutionary
who had contributed
to
the
cause.
I
would
not
have achieved that
even
if I had limited

141
my
research
to
a
very
narrow
chronological
band. It takes
greater bodies
of
people
and
considerable financial
resources
to
do that. I
came
to
understand
that I did
not
need
to
find every
individual,
no
matter
how
deserving,
to create
a
balanced
impression
of what
a
revoliutsionerka
was.
I did
need, however,
to
find
as
many
as
possible
and
try
to
fill in the gaps in their
individual
biographies.
I
set out to
look
at
women
throughout
the entire
period
of the
history
of the
revolutionary
movement
in
Russia for I
was
just
as
much interested in the
development
of the
movement
they
helped
to
shape
as
I
was
in
the
developments
of individual revoliutsionerki
whose
characters and life stories
were
shaped by
that
movement.
I
concentrated
my
research
on
the
following
aspects
of the
revoliutsionerki's
life:
age
(including
dates of birth and
death,
time
they
entered the
movement),
social
origins
(included
information
on
revoliutsionerki's parents
and
siblings),
educational
experience, occupations
and
professional
experience,
marital
status
and their children
and
finally,
but
no
less
importantly,
their
revolutionary
activities.
There
were a
number of
areas
which
I
did
not
scrutinise
specifically
though
I
did
collect information
about them: revoliutsionerki's
religious
denomination
and
faith,
and
geographic origins.
In
studying
female revolutionaries'
lives,
I
soon came
to
the conclusion that while
religion
may
have
been
important
in their
childhood,
it did
not
influence women's decision
to enter
the
revolutionary
path.
Geographically,
women's
origins
are
extremely
diverse and
representative
of
the
Russian
state
in the
given
time
period.
The
overwhehning majority
of
revoliutsionerki
came
from the
European
parts
of Russia and
Ukraine.
However,
there
is
a
substantial
body
of those who
came
from
Poland,
the
Caucasus,
Siberia and the
Baltic
states.
For
instance,
Rahil
Abramovich
came
from
Kiev,
Evgeniia
Adamovich
came
from Poltava
province,
Ekaterina
Aleksandrova
came
from
Georgia,
Nina
:
Aladzhalova
was
born in
Azerbaijan,
Inessa Armand
was
born in
Paris,
Liubov'
Aksel'rod
was a
native of Vilnius
province,
Anna
Boldyreva
was
born in Tver'
guberniia,
Margarita
Fofanova
was
born in Perm
guberniia,
Aleksandra Kollontai
was
j<
born
in
Moscow,
Nadezhda
Krupskaia
was
born
in St.
Petersburg,
while Konkordiia
Samoilova
was
born in
Irkutsk. The
only provinces
absent from the list
are
those in
Moslem
Central Asia.
I shall
start
my
final
analysis
with the
age.
As has been
demonstrated
in the
previous
chapters,
most
revoliutsionerki
joined
the
movement
in their late
teens
or
early
twenties. I did
not
find
any
strong
correlation between female
revolutionaries'

142
social
origins
and the age
at
which
they began
their
revolutionary
work. The main
difference
lies in the
place
of
initiation.
For the
women
of
intelligentsia
it
was
their
gimnasiia
or
Higher
Courses
days,
while for
women
workers it
was
the
factory
floor;
and
at
the
beginning
of this
century
their
home
was
becoming increasingly
more
important
not
simply
in
shaping
their beliefs but also in
involving
them in
direct
revolutionary
work. The latter is
especially
true
of
women
workers. For
example,
Klavdiia
Kiriakina
from Ivanovo became
an
activist before she reached
the
age of 16.
Introduced
to
the social democratic
movement
by
her
elder
brother,
Klavdiia
began
by
keeping
and
distributing
clandestine
literature,
and
attending illegal meetings.
In
1901,
at
the
age
of 17 she
was
already
a
member of the RSDRP. Mariia
Nagovitsyna,
another
woman
worker from Ivanovo also
joined
the
movement
as
a
young
teenager.
Evgeniia
Adamovich
was
only
15 when she
joined
a
revolutionary
student
circle in
her
gimnasiia,
while
Feodosiia
Drabkina
was
already
carrying
out
tasks for the local
social
democratic
organisation
in Rostov when she
was
15.
However,
there
were
also considerable numbers of
women
who
were
late
arrivals in the
movement.
Vera Zakharova
was
30 when she first became attracted
to
a
social
democratic
circle.
At
the
same
age Natal'ia Aleksandrova turned her attention
to
a
Populist
organisation.
The
woman
worker
Sergeicheva
was
40 when she
joined
a
workers' circle.
Still,
such
examples
were
less
frequent.
In
chapter
2,1
looked
at
the
age of Narodniki
women
and the
age
at
which
they
were
tried. The data showed that
on
average these female revolutionaries
were
under the
age
of 26
(see
Table
2).
B.Itenberg
in his
study
of the 1870s revolutionaries made
an
analysis
of
1,665
Narodniki.
According
to
his calculations 27.5 per
cent
of them
were
under the age of
21,
38.4
per
cent
were
between 21 and 25
years
of age, 21.3 per
cent
were
from the
age group of 25
to
30 and
only
13
per
cent
were over
30.1
Barbara Clements calculated that 25.8 per
cent
of the old Bolshevichki
joined
y
the
party
between the ages
15
and
19,42.4
per
cent
between 20 and
24,13.5
per
cent
between
the
ages
25 and
29,
6.2
per
cent
were
in the
age group
of 30
to
34.2
In
other
words,
even
in
comparing
revolutionaries of
two
different
generations
we
can see
that the
most
common
age
for
joining
the
revolutionary
movement
was
if
not
static,
then
at
least
largely unchanged.
1
B.Itenberg,
Dvizhenie
revoliutsionnogo
narodnichestva,
311
2
B.Clements,
Bolshevik
Women,
34.

143
It is the life span of many
revoliutsionerki
that
presented
the
most
interesting
'discovery',
with
so
many of
them
living
on
well into their seventies and
eighties;
From Table
1,
E.Subbotina
was
77 when she
died,
from Table
4
E.Koval'skaia
was
92
and from
Table
9
K.Kiriakina
was
84.
Bearing
in mind that the
majority
of the
revoliutsionerki spent
years
in
imprisonment
and
exile,
and
ran
constant
risks
to
their
own
safety,
these
figures
are
certainly
remarkable and
are even more
impressive
as
those tables show that such
longevity
was
by
no
means
an
exception.
Barbara
Engels
and Clifford
Rosenthal
gave
the
following
summary of
Elizaveta
Koval'skaia's life
after her
imprisonment:
During
two
decades
of Siberian exile and
imprisonment,
Koval'skaia
waged
an
unyielding struggle against
the authorities:
hunger
strikes,
two
more
escape
attempts,
a
suicide
attempt
to
call attention
to
prison
conditions,
a
knife attack
on a
prison
official
who had administered
corporal punishment
to
one
of Koval'skaia's
woman
comrades. In
1903,
twenty-three
years
after she
was
sent to
Siberia,
she
was
released
and
went
abroad with her second husband.
In
Geneva,
Koval'skaia
joined
the
populist
Socialist
Revolutionary
Party,
but she
quit
within
a
month and formed
a
group
of'maximalists'
-
people
who
accepted only
the 'maximum
program'
of the Socialist
Revolutionary
Party,
which
provided
for the
socialisation
of all
means
of
production,
not
just
the land.
Shortly
before the October Revolution of
1917,
she
returned
to
Russia. Under
the Soviet
regime,
she worked in the State Archives and served
as a
member of the editorial board
of
a
journal
devoted
to
the
history
of the
revolutionary
movement
in Russia. She died in
1933.3
The 1992 edition of Granat
gives
her date of death
as
1943.
The
pattern
of the social
origins
of
female
revolutionaries, however,
did
change,
with
increasingly
more women
from the
working
class and
peasantry
joining
the
movement
from the
beginning
of this
century
and
certainly
after the 1905
Revolution.
In
1922,
an
analysis
of the social
origins
of
Bolshevik
women
who
joined
3
B.Engel
and Clifford
Rosenthal, ed.,
Five
Sisters,
248-9

144
the party
between 1905
and 1922
was
carried
out.
According
to
its
findings,
among
women
who
joined
it before 1905
(just
156
of
them),
there
were
94
(60.2
per
cent)
women
from
intelligentsia
and 44
(28.2
per
cent)
women
workers.
Only
4
(2.6
per
cent)
of
women came
from
junior employees,
which refers
to
people
whose main
occupation
was
that of
a
house
servant,
hospital
orderly,
or
nurse.
Leading
up
to
the
February
revolution the
percentage
of
women
workers
joining
the
party
began
to
grow
and among
those
who
became
party
members in the
period
between
1914
and
1916 it
reached
45.7
per
cent.
At the
same
time the number
of
junior employees
was
growing
too:
among
those
who
joined
before
1905
they
made up 2.6
per
cent
while among
those who
joined
between
1914 and 1916 the
figure
grew
to
12.3
per
cent.
In the
period
which witnessed
an
upsurge in the workers'
movement
(1912-13),
the
proportion
of
women
workers in the total
recruitment
reached 59.2
per cent. At
the
same
time there
was a
fall in the numbers of
women
from the
intelligentsia
and
those
referred
to
as
senior and
middle-ranking employees
who
joined
the
party.
Thus among
those who
joined during
the First
World
War
they
constituted 24.6
per
cent.
After the
February
Revolution the
proportion
of
women
workers among
party
members
had
risen
once
again
and
was
45.6 per
cent.
At
the
same
time the
proportion
of
junior
-
employees
in 1917
was
15.3 per cent,
while
that of
peasant
women
joining
the
party
was
only
1.8
per
cent.
The
proportion
of female
intelligentsia
and senior and middle
employees
continued
to
fall and in 1917
they
made 25.1 per
cent.4
The
changes
in the
social
make up of the
women
revolutionaries from
my
database,
between 1870 and
1904,
was
reflected in the
two
charts I
included
into the
thesis.
It
was
not
possible
to
make
a
comparison
with B.Fieseler's tables of social
origins
not
only
because she had
a
different
chronological
division,
before and after
1905,
but also because she divided her
women
into the
following
five groups:
a)
nobility
and merchants
(2,
or
4.5%); b)
meshchane and
raznochintsy (sluzhashchie)
(26,
or
59.1%); c)
clergy
(4,
or
9.1%);
and
d)
peasants
and workers
(12,
or
27.3%).
I
consider the numbers
on
which
she based these
calculations
for the
post-1905
period
(44) extremely
low and
unrepresentative, bearing
in mind the fact that the
mass
movement
dates back
to
this
particular
period. Moreover,
in the
post-1905
table there
was
no
information
on
four of the revolutionaries which would
bring
the total in the
(table
to
48. Yet Fieseler fails
to
include them in her
final
calculations which is
4
E.Smitten,
'Zhenshchiny
v
RKP\ Kommunistka,
8-10

145
surprising
as
they
make
up
over
eight
per
cent
of her
group.
Indeed,
given
that data
on
many
female
revolutionaries
is
so
fragmented,
the exclusion of such
a
high
percentage
of
individuals
inevitably
distorts the final results.
It
is also difficult
to
agree with
Fieseler's
decision
to
put
peasants
and workers
into
one
group
after
1905.5 By
that
time,
workers made
up
a
considerable
proportion
of the Russian
population,
with
at
least
two
generations
of workers in
many
families.
As
has been
pointed
out
above,
the research into social
origins frequently
presented
me
with
conflicting
information,
even
within
accounts
written
by
the
revoliutsionerki themselves.
I
have
already
highlighted
the
case
of the
two
Itkind
sisters. Such
examples
were
not
uncommon.
For
instance,
in her
autobiography
Anna
Bychkova
at
first
gave
her
origins
as a
peasant,
but later in her
account
she
explained
that her father had
taught
in
a
village
school for
over
17 years. In fact her father
came
from
a
peasant
family
and
was an
autodidact.
At
some
point
the entire
family
moved
to
Ekaterinburg
where he became
a
sluzhashchii in
a
railway
company.
Bychkova
does
not
give
any data
on
what her father's
occupation
was
when she
was
born,
and
based
on
the
available
information she
can
easily
be entered into
one
of
two
different
social
groups:
peasants
or
sluzhashchie.6
The educational level of
women was
directly
linked
to
their social
origins,
with
women
workers and
peasants
having
the lowest level of education and the
women
from the
nobility reaching
the
highest
levels open
to
Russian
women.
However,
most
female revolutionaries
paid
close attention
to
their
education,
constantly
seeking
ways
to
raise their standards. In this desire
to
improve
themselves
women
from
different
social groups
were
united.
Many
women
workers
began
their
revolutionary
life
in
study
circles and
Sunday
schools where
they
went to
learn
basic
literacy.
In
addition
to
the
examples
which had been cited
before,
there
are
many
others. Nina
Tret'iakova,
born in
1893,