Vera
Zasulich was
born into a poor family in 1849. Her father died when she was three
years old and as her mother was unable to cope, she sent Vera to
live with wealthy relatives in Biakolovo.
When Zasulich finished her schooling she moved
to St. Petersburg and found work as a clerk. She became involved
in radical politics and met Sergi
Nechayev,
the co-author with
Mikhail Bakunin
of
Catechism of a Revolutionist.
Zasulich joined a weaving collective and became
active in the movement to educate workers, conducting literacy classes
for them in the evenings.
In 1876 Zasulich found work as a typesetter
for an illegal printing press. A member of the Land
and Liberty group, when Zasulich heard that one of her fellow
comrades, Alexei Bogoliubov,
had been badly beaten in prison, she decided to seek revenge. Zasulich
went to the local prison and shot General Trepov, the police chief
of St. Petersburg.
Zasulich was arrested and charged with attempted
murder. During the trial the defence produced evidence of such abuses
by the police, and Zasulich conducted herself with such dignity,
that the jury acquitted her. When the police tried to re-arrest
her outside the court, the crowd intervened and allowed her to escape.
Zasulich was forced into hiding but remained
active in politics and joined the Black
Repartition group. Zasulich was a strong supporter of
George Plekhanov. Zasulich, like
Plekhanov, was highly critical of the terror campaign being carried
out by the People's Will.
In 1883 Zasulich joined with George
Plekhanovand Paul Axelrod to form
the Liberation
of Labour, the first Russian Marxist
group. Later she moved to Switzerland where she became active in
the Social Democratic
Labour Party (SDLP) and served on the editorial board
of Iskra.
At the Second Congress of the Social Democratic
Labour Party in London in
1903, there was a dispute between Vladimir
Lenin and Jules Martov, two of SDLP's
leaders. Lenin argued for a small party of professional revolutionaries
with a large fringe of non-party sympathizers and supporters. Martov
disagreed believing it was better to have a large party of activists.
Jules Martov based his ideas on the
socialist parties that existed in other European countries such
as the British Labour Party. Lenin argued
that the situation was different in Russia as it was illegal to
form socialist political parties under the Tsar's autocratic government.
At the end of the debate Martov won the vote 28-23 . Vladimir
Lenin was unwilling to accept the result and formed a faction
known as the Bolsheviks. Those who
remained loyal to Martov became known as Mensheviks.
Gregory Zinoviev, Anatoli
Lunacharsky, Joseph Stalin, Mikhail
Lashevich, Nadezhda Krupskaya,
Mikhail Frunze, Alexei
Rykov, Yakov Sverdlov, Lev
Kamenev, Maxim Litvinov, Vladimir
Antonov, Felix Dzerzhinsky,
Gregory Ordzhonikidze and Alexander
Bogdanov joined the Bolsheviks.
Whereas Zasulich, George Plekhanov,
Pavel Axelrod, Leon
Trotsky, Lev Deich,
