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different years of birth for some women. For instance, in one source Batiushkova's is given as 1850 and in the other as 1849. But the difference in one year could not significantly affect my final analysis and I decided to opt for the most recent source. For exactly half of the women I was also able to enter the exact date of death with another two being known to be still alive after 1930. Four women died under the age of 40, one under the age of 50 and five lived over the age of 60. Four women lived long enough to witness the revolutionary events of 1917, among whom 31 were two of the Subbotin sisters. Three women took their own lives. Batiushkova committed suicide while serving her sentence in Tomsk and Khorzhevskaia died in St. Petersburg. The third, and arguably the best known woman from this group, is Sofia Bardina. She attracted the attention and sympathy of the Russian public with her passionate speech at the end of the trial. She had demonstrated her leadership qualities and strong conviction already in Zurich. Sofia was allowed to address the court as one of the organisation's leaders. In her final statement she declared: Whatever fate awaits me, gentlemen, I do not ask for mercy and do not wish it. You can persecute us as much as you like, but I am deeply convinced that such a broad movement, caused most likely by the spirit of the time, cannot be stopped by any means of suppression. ... Persecute us you have the material strength for a while, gentlemen, but we have moral strength, the strength of historic progress, the strength of ideas; and ideas, alas, you cannot pierce with bayonets!4 As mentioned above, there was a number of similarities in the biographical details of the female revolutionaries. One of such details is their educational background. Indeed, it was this factor that brought most of the women together to the revolutionary cause. In spite of an extensive search I drew a blank on the educational experience of six women. However, it is safe to infer that they were all literates for otherwise they would have been unable to conduct their propaganda. One of the main methods employed by the group was reading literature aloud to the gathered workers. At least five of the ten women who went to Zurich studied medicine there. None of them managed to complete the course preferring to return home with the aim of spreading propaganda among factory workers. The years spent in studies were not totally lost as the women could use their knowledge to support themselves by taking up professional work. For example, Ol'ga Liubatovich practised medicine in exile. Gesia Gel'finan studied midwifery in Kiev. At least one of them, A.Toporkova, also worked as a teacher. Once back in Russia the female revolutionaries began their work in factories. Only one, Vera Liubatovich, was chosen to stay in Moscow in order to co-ordinate the administrative side of the work. Unable to remain for any length of time at any one S. Tsederbaum, Zhenshchina v russkom revoliutsionnom dvizhenii, 1870-1905,28 32 place, women and men from the Moscow Circle travelled under assumed names across central Russia and in the south. O. Liubatovich and A.Khorzhevskaia worked in Odessa and Tula, A. Toporkova, L. Figner and V. Aleksandrova were important to the organisation's work in Ivanovo-Voznesensk. Verifiable information on marital status is available for seven women. Three - Aleksandrova, GePfman and O.Liubatovich - married fellow revolutionaries. S.Tsederbaum described O.Liubatovich as married twice and both times choosing men who shared her political beliefs. These marriages took place after the women had begun their radical activities. In two further cases - Batiushkova and Khorzhevskaia - the marriages were fictitious and occurred prior to the two women engaging in subversive work. Such marriages were not uncommon at the time among women seeking freedom from parental control and despotism. Having entered into such a union the 'couple' often remained celibate and went their separate ways. The case of Ges'ia GePfman differs from the others. She ran away from her home after her father, as it was customary in the Jewish community, had arranged a marriage for her. Later GePfman married a fellow revolutionary by whom she had a child. From O.Liubatovich's own accounts we know that she too had a child. The women received different sentences reflecting the authorities' view of the gravity of the offences. The most severe punishment was reserved for the women who stood accused of organising and / or being a member of a secret society whose ultimate aim was the overthrow of the tsar. Six women were sentenced to various -terms of hard labour, which were later commuted to lengthy exile terms. Among other prosecution charges was wilful dissemination of propaganda and Vera Liubatovich was also accused of resisting arrest. Only three women received comparatively light sentences. Tumanova was sentenced to six weeks in prison. Georgievskaia was to spend two months in prison and the lightest sentence was reserved for Vvedenskaia who had been simply accused of knowing of the organisation's existence. Almost all the women were deprived of their social privileges and rights to property. A number of those who were sent to Eastern Siberia escaped and tried to rejoin the revolutionary movement, including O.Liubatovich and S.Bardina. I shall explore the outcome of these attempts later in the chapter. A close analysis of the sixteen women uncovers some interesting patterns which were repeated among other women in later trials. Despite a reputation for asceticism and single-minded devotion to the cause, family relationships were very 33 important for revolutionaries, men and women alike. For instance, among the accused there were two sets of sisters: Liubatovich and Subbotina. Female revolutionaries tended to marry men who came from the same circle or had similar political views. In spite of the apparent ready availability and comparatively complete nature of the information available on the trial I did come across one interesting discrepancy. All historians who wrote about the case quote the figure 16 for the number of women accused at the trial. When I began compiling a list of all the names cross-referencing them against at least four different works I ended up with 18 names. For example, E.Pavliuchenko in her work Zhenshchina v russkom osvoboditel 'nom dvizhenii (Moscow, 1988) talks about Praskov'ia Georgievskaia, a sister of Nadezhda, whom I have included into my database. Praskov'ia did not appear in any other source however. She was not mentioned in V.Sablin's Protsess 50-ti (1906) which contains a full list of the accused and their sentences. Having checked against all the other names in my list for the Trial of the 501 spotted one probability - P. Georgievskaia may, in fact, be E.Vvedenskaia. Given the very different initials the two surnames could not belong to the same woman as her married and maiden name. Yet the women of the group had been known to use aliases and there is a possibility that Praskov'ia succeeded in keeping her anonimity to the very end of the trial. There are three factors which are in favour of this theory. The profession of the two women's fathers is 'a priest' and the age of the two women is given as 24. Vvedenskaia was sentenced to two weeks in prison while N. Georgievskaia, possibly her sister, was given a more severe two months' sentence. The other person who features in all written work about the Trial of the 50 is Betia Kaminskaia. Like her comrades she had studied in Zurich and was a member of the Fritsche Circle, having gone to Switzerland with her friends, the Liubatovich sisters. Vera Figner wrote about Betia's experience of work in a paper factory that had left her exhausted both physically and mentally. It is a proven fact that Kaminskaia was arrested among other members of the Moscow Circle. But she was never brought to trial. In prison Kaminskaia fell seriously ill and became mentally unstable. Shortly after her comrades were sentenced Betia committed suicide by taking poison. I decided to include her into my general database and took her shared experience into account in my statistical calculations. I In all around 4,000 young city people most of whom were students, had sought to spread socialist ideas among the peasantry by 'going to the people' in 1874, 34 dressing as peasants, in some cases living in a village, in others moving from one village to another, trying, with minimal success, to win over the peasants to socialism. The response from the villages was largely indifference but there was also hostility and suspicion. Peasants could not understand why urban, upper class, educated men and women would give up their comforts to wander the countryside. The movement was soon crushed. Within a few months of the Trial of the 50 a much larger group of people appeared in court accused of conducting illegal propaganda. Among the accused stood 38 women. I was able to find information on 17 out of 38 women who stood trial. It was not as füll as on the women from the first trial. Nevertheless, I decided to draw up a table and to make a statistical analysis that could contribute to the better appreciation of female revolutionaries who took part in the early days of the radical movement. Table 2: NAME DATES Alekseeva- D'iakova OG (1850-1918) Averkieva EI Breshko- Breshkovskaia (1845-1934) Griaznova Iurgenson (Golovina)NA (1855-1943) Ivanova (Boreisho) SA (1856-1927) Kornilova-Moroz :M (1853-nd) Kuvshinskaia- Charushina AD (-1909) Lebedeva-Frolova TI (1850-1887) Leshern-von Gertsfel'd SA (1839-1898) Perovskaia Sofia 11853-1881) Pototskaia MP Women who appeared at the Trial of the 193 ORIGIN Father- landowner Father -landowner Father -junior courtier Father - officer Father- factory owner Gentry Father -officer EDUCATION PROFESSION Professional revolutionary Teacher Seamstress Type setter Studied midwifery in Vienna Teacher teacher teacher Midwife; studied MARITAL STATUS Married with two children Married with a child married Married to a fellow revolutionary Married to a fellow revolutionary married SENTENCE 5 years of katorga Exiled Exiled Exiled Acquitted 35- Sidoratskaia- Obodovskaia Ala Subbotina SA - (1830-1919) Supinskaia EV Zarudneva LT Zavadskaia EF committed suicide Gentry in Zurich Studied in a private school Married; 3 daughters Exiled Acquitted Of the nine women for whom I have dates of birth six were born in or after 1850. The oldest of the remaining three, S. Subbotina, was 47 during her trial. This means that the average age was just over 26, only three years more than the Moscow Circle members. From the information about their year of death we learn that five of them lived after the Revolution of 1917 with three - Breshko-Breshkovskaia, Iurgenson and Subbotina living to a remarkably old age. The social origins of the known eight indicate that the women tended to come from a privileged background. Like the Moscow Circle most of these women had a good education but only two, Kornilova and Pototskaia, were known to have studied abroad. The others received their education in Russia with three, Aleksandra Kornilova, Anna Kuvshinskaia and Sofia Perovskaia, attending the Alarchin Courses (preparatory courses for women seeking entry to higher education, opened in St. Petersburg in 1869). A circle for the study of political economy was set up by the course students, many of whom later became Chaikovtsy. One woman stands out from this group when we analyse the educational pattern. S. Ivanova was born into a well-off family. But as her father died before she reached the age of 16, Ivanova failed to secure enough funds that would allow her to train as a teacher or a midwife. For a while she worked in a seamstress' workshop but gave this job up in favour of working in a printing house. In other words, Ivanova was among those upper-class Russian women who had to earn their own living and whose job opportunities were severely limited due to inadequate education. Six of the 17 were known to have been married and three of them had children. One, Kuvshinskaia, was married to a fellow revolutionary. In this category, S. Subbotina deserves a special mention. The mother of the three Subbotin sisters who were tried just a few months before her, she never joined any revolutionary circle. Yet from the very beginning of her daughters' involvement in radical activities she became their closest ally assisting them with keeping and distributing literature and 36 giving shelter to her daughters' comrades-in-arms. She was quoted as saying to them, 'You, the young ones, conduct your revolutionary cause, and I shall help you by finding funds.'5 This exceptional woman spent three years in prison. She refused to seek pardon for herself and her daughters and instead followed one of them, Nadezhda, to exile in Tomsk. There senior Subbotina organised help for political exiles and was once again punished for this activity by being sent further away to Eastern Siberia. Of the 38 women tried during this case five were sentenced to katorga. Though Breshko-Breshkovskaia was not the first revoliutsionerka to receive such a sentence, she was the first one to serve it. Nine women were sentenced to imprisonment and the remaining twenty-four were acquitted. Among the latter was S. Perovskaia who just four years later would become the first Russian woman to be executed for her participation in the assassination of the tsar Alexander II. In all 84 political trials were held during the 1870s. Ninety-five women were tried during them. The 35 women featuring in the two tables represent only a small number of female revolutionaries of the 1870s. The biographical analysis of this decade would remain incomplete without adding information about a sample of other women who were politically active during the period. In 1874 the Russian Minister of Justice spoke about 23 centres which were actively engaged in conducting radical propaganda among industrial workers. He named seven women who were suspected of heading some of them: Leshern, Subbotina, Tsvetkova, Andreeva, Kolesnikova, Breshkovskaia, Okhremenko. Apart from Subbotina, all the other women were representatives of the so-called Great Propaganda Society which came to be generally referred to as the Chaikovtsy Circle, the name taken after one of its male leaders. At Download 88.01 Kb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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