Vera
Figner,
the daughter of prosperous parents, was born in Kazan, Russia,
on 25th June, 1852. The oldest of six children, she was sent away
to a private school in 1863.
On her
return to Kazan she came under the influence of an uncle who held
radical political views. With his encouragement she decided that she
wanted to become a doctor. This was impossible in Russia at this time
and so Figner moved to Zurich in Switzerland to obtain her training.
In Geneva
she met Russian political exiles such as Mark
Natanson and was converted to revolutionary socialism. After her
medical training Figner returned to Russia and worked as a medical
aide in Samara and Saratov.
Figner
joined the Land and Liberty group and when
it split into two in October, 1879, she joined the People's
Will, the faction who favoured a policy of terrorism.
Several
figures in the group were arrested and in March, 1881, Figer became
the leader of the People's Will. She was involved
in planning several acts of terrorism including the successful the
assassination of Alexander II. She
remained at large until being arrested in 1883 and the following year
was sentenced to death. This was eventually commuted to life imprisonment
in Siberia.
Figner
was released in 1904 and joined the Socialist
Revolutionaries but left after discovering that Evno
Azef had been working as a double agent.
Figner
was highly critical of the Bolshevik Government and in his book Memoirs
of a Revolutionary (1945), Victor
Serge, reveals that Figner was closely watched by the Communist
Secret Police and for many years was in danger of being arrested.
Vera
Figner died
in 1943.
(1)
In her memoirs Vera Figner explained why
she became a revolutionary.
There is poverty in the world; there is ignorance
and disease. People who are educated and - like me - born to well-to-do
families ought to share my natural desire to assist the poor. Under
the influence of my mother and my uncle, as well as the journal articles
I read, I made up a social program for myself; some day I was going
to help peasants in Russia buy horses, or build new huts after their
old ones had burnt down; as a doctor I hoped to cure people suffering
from tuberculosis and typhoid, to perform operations and give advice
on medicine and hygiene; and as a zemstvo activist I planned to set
up schools, spread literacy, and provide grain elevators to help peasants
save money.
(2)
In her memoirs Vera Figner explained how her political views developed
while she was living in Geneva.
Our circle in Zurich had arrived at the conviction
that it was necessary to assume a position identical to that of people
in order to earn their trust and conduct propaganda among them successfully.
You had to "take to plain living" - to engage in physical
labour, to drink, eat, and dress as the people did, renouncing all
the habits and needs of the cultural classes. This was the only way
to become close to the people and to get a response to propaganda;
furthermore, only manual labour was pure and holy, only by surrendering
yourself to it completely could you avoid being an exploiter.
(3)
In October, 1879, Vera Figner joined
the People's Will.
I was invited to become an agent of the Executive
Committee of the People's Will. I agreed. My past experience had convinced
me that the only way to change the existing order was by force. If
any group in our society had shown me a path other than violence,
perhaps I would have followed it; at the very least, I would have
tried it out. But, as you know, we don't have a free press in our
country, and no ideas cannot be spread by the written word. And so
I concluded that violence was the only solution. I could not follow
the peaceful path.
(4)
Members of the People's Will were constantly
being arrested by the Okhrana.
Although leader of the group, Vera Figner managed to avoid
capture for many years.
Occasionally, they stumbled on the trial of people
who actually had been involved in the Moscow Organization's work;
in other instances, however, they contrived to tie in people who were
not implicated at all. That's how the "Trial of the Fifty"
came about. It included eleven of the women who had studied in Zurich;
a twelfth, Keminskaia, was not brought to trial, ostensibly because
she became mentally disturbed during her preliminary detention. There
was a rumour that the quiet melancholia from which she suffered would
not have saved her from trial if her father hadn't given the police
5,000 rubles. After her comrades were sentenced. Kaminskaia's thwarted
desire to share their fate led her to poison herself by swallowing
matches.
(5)
Vera Figner was involved in the planning
of the assassination of Alexander II.
Everything was peaceful as I walked through the streets.
But half an hour after I reached the apartment of some friends, a
man appeared with the news that two crashes like cannon shots had
rung out, that people were saying the sovereign had been killed, and
that the oath was already being administered to the heir. I rushed
outside. The streets were in turmoil: people were talking about the
sovereign, about wounds, death, blood.
On March
3, Kibalchich came to our apartment with the news that Gesia Gelfman's
apartment had been discovered, that she'd been arrested and Sabin
had shot himself. Within two weeks, we lost Perovskaia, who was arrested
on the street. Kibalchich and Frolenko were the next to go. Because
of these heavy losses, the Committee proposed that most of us leave
St. Petersburg myself included.
(6)
Victor Serge worked
with Vera Figner in 1929 when he had the task of translating her memoirs
into French. Serge revealed in his autobiography,
Memoirs of a Revolutionary, that in her final years Figner
came close to being arrested by the Soviet
Secret Police.
I was translating
her memoirs, and she overwhelmed me with corrections framed in her
fastidious tones. She was, at 77 years of age, a tiny old woman, wrapped
in a shawl against the cold, her features still regular and preserving
the impression of a classical beauty, a perfect intellectual clarity
and a flawless nobility of soul. Doubtless she looked upon herself
proudly as the living symbol of the revolutionary generations of the
past, generations of purity and sacrifice.
As a member
of the Central Committee of the Narodnaya Volya (People's Will Party)
from 1879 to 1883, Vera Figner was responsible, together with her
comrades, for the decision to take to terrorism as a last resort;
she took part in organizing ten or so attempts against Tsar Alexander
II, arranged the last and successful attack on 1st March 1881, and
kept the Party's activity going for nearly two years after the arrest
and hanging of the other leaders.
After this
this she spent twenty years in the prison-fortress of Schlusselburg,
and six years in Siberia. From all these struggles she emerged frail,
hard and upright, as exacting towards herself as she was to others.
In 1931, her great age and quite exceptional moral standing saved
her from imprisonment, although she did not conceal her outbursts
of rebellion. She died at liberty, though under surveillance, in 1942.
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