Vera Nikolaevna Figner (1852–1942) was a Russian revolutionary Narodnik and writer. She spent part of her exile in The History of Nizhny Novgorod, where she arrived after serving a 22-year term of solitary confinement in the Shlisselburg Fortress.

Biography

She was born on 6 (some sources say 7) July 1852 on the Nikiforovo estate, Tetyushsky Uyezd, Kazan Governorate.[1] She was educated at the Kazan Rodionovsky Institute for Noble Girls, where, by her own admission, she became a confirmed atheist, though the evangelical principle of "giving oneself wholly to a chosen cause" came to define her life. In 1870 she enrolled at Kazan University and married the examining magistrate A. V. Filippov; together with her husband she went to Switzerland to complete her medical education. In 1872 she enrolled in the medical faculty of the University of Zurich, where she met the Narodnik Sofia Bardina and her circle of Russian women students. In 1874 she transferred to the University of Bern, where she met Mikhail Bakunin.[1]

Revolutionary activity

In 1875 she returned to Russia, where she conducted propaganda among the peasants in Samara Governorate and took part in the "going to the people" movement. Without formally joining Land and Liberty, she led an autonomous circle of "separatists" who shared the platform of the Zemlya i Volya members. After the organization split, she joined the Executive Committee of the People's Will, conducted agitation among students and soldiers in St. Petersburg and Kronstadt, and took part in preparing assassination attempts on Alexander II in Odessa and St. Petersburg. After the assassination of Alexander II in 1881 she was the only member of the Executive Committee not arrested; going to Odessa, she took part in an attempt on the life of the military prosecutor Strelnikov. In the spring of 1883 she was betrayed to the police in Kharkiv, arrested, and put on trial.[1]

The sentence called for indefinite solitary confinement. Figner spent twenty-two years in the Shlisselburg Fortress. After her release, from 1904 she was in exile in Arkhangelsk and Kazan governorates, and later in Nizhny Novgorod.[1] In 1906 she left Russia and abroad launched a campaign in defense of political prisoners: she gave public lectures, raised funds for the needs of prisoners, and published a pamphlet on Russian prisons. She returned to her homeland in 1915.[1]

Literary activity and final years

After the October Revolution she turned to literary work. Her book of memoirs "Sealed Labor" (Zapechatlyonny trud) brought her wide renown; she contributed to the journal Katorga i Ssylka (Penal Servitude and Exile), wrote biographies of a number of members of the People's Will, and published articles on the history of the revolutionary movement of the 1870s–1880s. She became a member of the Society of Former Political Prisoners and Exiled Settlers. In 1926, by a special decree of the Council of People's Commissars, she and eight other "participants in the regicide of 1 March 1881" were granted a lifetime pension.[1]

She died on 15 June 1942 in Moscow, at the height of the The Great Patriotic War. She was buried at Novodevichy Cemetery.[1]

Sources

  1. dates.pr-cbs.ru — Memorable Dates of the Petrograd Side. Vera Nikolaevna Figner (archive)
  2. rounb.ru — Three Lives of Vera Figner — Under the "Trial of the 14" (1884), Figner was sentenced to death, later commuted to indefinite penal servitude; solitary confinement in Shlisselburg… (archive)
  3. calend.ru — Vera Figner (7 July 1852 — 15 June 1942), Russian revolutionary Narodnik and writer