ZASULICH, VERA IVANOVNA(1849-1919) - activist of the social and revolutionary movement, populist, terrorist, writer. Party and literary pseudonyms - Velika, Velika Dmitrievna, Vera Ivanovna, Aunt.
She was born on July 27 (August 8), 1849 in the village of Mikhailovka, Gzhatsky district, Smolensk province. in the family of a small-scale nobleman, an officer, having lost her father early, she was brought up by her aunts - in the village. Byakolovo near Gzhatsk. In 1864 she was sent to a Moscow private boarding school, where they taught foreign languages and prepared governesses.
In 1867-1868 she worked as a clerk for a justice of the peace in Serpukhov, from there she returned to the capital, where, having settled down as a bookbinder, she was engaged in self-education. In the same 1868, she met S.G. Nechaev, but she refused to enter the organization "People's Punishment" created by him, agreeing only to give her address for sending letters from illegal immigrants to him. In 1869, she was arrested for liaising with the Nechaevs and for a letter received from abroad and sent to her for transmission to another person. She spent about a year in the Lithuanian Castle and the Peter and Paul Fortress, in exile in the Novgorod province, then in Tver. In Tver, she was arrested again for distributing illegal literature and deported to Soligalich, Kostroma province, from there - in 1873 - to Kharkov, where she entered obstetric courses.
From 1875 she lived under police supervision in Kharkov. There, carried away by the teachings of M.A. Bakunin, she joined the “Southern Rebels” circle (created in Kiev, but had branches throughout Ukraine, uniting about 25 former participants in “going to the people”; this group included L.G. Deutsch ). Together with other "rebels" - Bakuninists, she tried to raise a peasant uprising under the slogan of an equalizing redistribution of land with the help of false tsar manifestos. Lived in the village Tsebulevka. When the plan of the "rebels" could not be realized, Zasulich left, fleeing police persecution, to the capital, where it was easier to get lost.
From 1877 she worked in St. Petersburg in the underground "Free Russian Printing House", at the same time she entered the "Land and Freedom" society, to which this printing house belonged.
On February 24, 1878, she made an attempt on the life of the adjutant general, chief police chief of the mayor of St. Petersburg. F.F. Trepova trying to avenge him for the order to whip the political prisoner Bogolyubov (A.S. Yemelyanov), who did not want to bare his head when he appeared. Zasulich came to see Trepov and shot him twice in the chest, seriously wounding him. She was immediately arrested, but at the trial, with her modesty, naive sincerity and female attractiveness, she won the sympathy of the jurors. They acquitted her and released her in the courtroom, although the law required 15 to 20 years in prison for such crimes. In the unprecedented justification of Zasulich, the brilliant speech of her lawyer, the well-known Russian lawyer A.F. Koni, also played a significant role. “The story of Zasulich definitely stirred up the whole of Europe” (I.S. Turgenev): the shot of the revolutionary became a signal for similar assassination attempts in Germany, Italy, and Spain. The Russian police then issued an order for her capture, and Zasulich had to rush abroad.
In 1879 she secretly returned from exile to Russia. After the collapse in June-August, "Land and Freedom" joined the group of those who sympathized with the views of G.V. Plekhanov. She was the first of the revolutionary women to try the method of individual terror, but she was also the first to be disappointed in its effectiveness. She participated in the creation of the Black Redistribution group, whose members (especially at first) denied the need for political struggle, did not accept the terrorist and conspiratorial tactics of Narodnaya Volya, and were supporters of broad agitation and propaganda among the masses.
In 1880, Zasulich was again forced to emigrate from Russia, which saved her from another arrest. She went to Paris, where the so-called political Red Cross, created in 1882 by P.L. Lavrov, operated. a foreign union for helping political prisoners and exiles, which aimed to raise funds for them. While in Europe, she became close to the Marxists, and in particular to Plekhanov, who had come to Geneva. There, in 1883, she took part in the creation of the first Marxist organization of Russian emigrants, the Emancipation of Labor group. Translated the works of K. Marx and F. Engels into Russian (including such as Development of socialism from utopia to science F. Engels, The poverty of philosophy K. Marx), corresponded with Marx, published in democratic and Marxist journals. She took an active part in the activities of the International Association of Workers (I International) - she was a representative of the Russian Social Democracy at its three congresses in 1896, 1900 and 1904. Resolutely abandoning her previous views, she propagated the ideas of Marxism, denied terror - "a consequence of feelings and concepts inherited from the autocracy.
From 1894 she lived in London, engaged in literary and scientific work. Her articles of those years dealt with a wide range of historical, philosophical, socio-psychological problems. Zasulich's monographs on J.-J. Rousseau and Voltaire were published in Russia a few years later, albeit with large censored notes, in Russian, becoming the first attempt at a Marxist interpretation of the meaning of both thinkers. As a literary critic, Zasulich reviewed the novels by S. M. Kravchinsky (Stepnyak), the novels by V. A. Sleptsov Hard time. Sharply criticized the novel by P.D. Boborykin Differently, believing that in his reflections on the history of the Russian revolutionary movement, he distorted the essence of the dispute between Marxists and populist publicists, D.I. Pisarev and N.A. Dobrolyubov. Zasulich argued that the "hopeless Russian ideology" of the liberals needed "the renewal that Marxism brings", defended the "primogeniture of genuine Russian revolutionaries", saving, as she believed, their images from "vulgarization and falsification."
In 1897–1898 she lived in Switzerland. In 1899, she illegally arrived in Russia on a Bulgarian passport in the name of Velika Dmitrieva. She used this name to publish her articles, established contacts with local social democratic groups in Russia. In St. Petersburg she met V.I. Lenin.
In 1900 she returned abroad, having by this time become a professional revolutionary. She was elected to the editorial board of the Iskra and Zarya newspapers, and published articles in them that criticized the concept of legal Marxism. She published a number of literary-critical essays about Dobrolyubov, G.I. Uspensky, N.K. Mikhailovsky.
In 1903, at the Second Congress of the RSDLP, she showed herself sympathetic to Menshevism.
After the Manifesto, on October 17, 1905, she returned to Russia, lived on the Grekovo farm (Tula province), leaving for St. Petersburg for the winter. During the First World War, she shared the views of the “defencists”, arguing that “having turned out to be powerless to stop the attack, internationalism can no longer, should not interfere with the defense” of the country.
She regarded the February Revolution of 1917 as bourgeois-democratic, stating with irony: "Social Democracy does not want to allow liberals to power, believing that the only revolutionary good class is the proletariat, and the rest are traitors." In March 1917, she joined the Unity group of right-wing Menshevik defencists, and together with them advocated the continuation of the war to a victorious end (she set out these views in a pamphlet Loyalty to allies. Pg., 1917). In April, she signed an appeal to the citizens of Russia, urging them to support the Provisional Government (which has just become a coalition).
In July 1917, as the confrontation between the Bolsheviks and other political forces intensified, she took a firm stand in support of the current government, was elected to the vowels of the Petrograd Provisional City Duma, on behalf of the "old revolutionaries" called for unity to protect against the "united armies of the enemy." Before the October Revolution itself, she was nominated as a candidate member of the Constituent Assembly.
Zasulich considered the October Revolution of 1917 a counter-revolutionary coup that interrupted the normal political development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, and regarded the system of Soviet power created by the Bolsheviks as a mirror image of the tsarist regime. She argued that the new ruling majority simply "crushed the majority, dying of hunger and degenerating with their mouths shut." Claiming that the Bolsheviks were "destroying capital and destroying large-scale industry," she sometimes ventured into public speeches (at the Rabochee Znamya club on April 1, 1918). Lenin, criticizing her performances, however, admitted that Zasulich was "the most prominent revolutionary."
“It's hard to live, it's not worth living,” she complained to her comrade-in-arms in the populist circle, L.G. Seriously ill, until the last hour she wrote memoirs (they were published posthumously).
She died on May 8, 1919 in Petrograd, was buried at the Volkovskoye cemetery ("Literary Bridges").
Compositions: Memories. M., 1931; Articles about Russian literature. M., 1960.
Lev Pushkarev, Natalya Pushkareva
(1849-1919) Russian politician, publicist, critic
Vera Ivanovna Zasulich was born in the village of Mikhailovka, Smolensk province, in the family of a poor landowner - a retired captain. After the death of her father, she was brought up by her relatives at the Byakolovo estate. As Vera later recalled, in her lonely youth she dreamed of a "deed", of exploits, of struggle. Her favorite authors were M.Yu. Lermontov and N.A. Nekrasov, and the main shrine is the confession of Nalivaika, the hero of the poem by K. Ryleev.
After graduating from a German boarding school in Moscow, in 1867 Vera Zasulich passed the exam for the title of teacher. But there was no work in her specialty, and for about a year she served in Serpukhov as a clerk to a justice of the peace. From the summer of 1868, she began to live in St. Petersburg, where she worked in a women's bookbinding and stitching workshop-artel and at the same time taught at a Sunday school for workers. Gradually, she began to take part in revolutionary circles.
At the end of the sixties, Vera Zasulich became close to the populists. Since she gave her address for sending correspondence from abroad to S.G. Nechaev, the leader of the organization "People's Punishment", which included her sister, she is also attracted to the "Nechaev case". Zasulich is arrested and kept for two years in the Lithuanian Castle and the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. In March 1871, she was administratively sent to the village. Crosses of the Novgorod province, then to Tver. A new deportation to the city of Soligalich, Kostroma province, followed after his arrest for distributing revolutionary literature.
From December 1873, Vera Ivanovna Zasulich lived in Kharkov, where she entered obstetric courses. Gradually, she establishes connections and soon joins the Kiev populist circle of "southern rebels", and in the fall of 1875 she goes into hiding. In the summer of 1877, after the circle was destroyed by the police, she again changed her place of residence and went to St. Petersburg, where she worked at the Free Russian Printing House of the Land and Freedom Society.
January 24, 1878. Zasulich, on her own initiative, made an attempt on the life of the St. Petersburg mayor F.F. Trepov in protest against the abuse of political prisoners. At the trial, she stated that she “wanted to draw public attention to this incident and make the outrage against human dignity not so easy.” The trial of Vera Zasulich has become a nationwide event. Thanks to a brilliant defense, on March 31 of the same year, she was acquitted by a jury presided over by the well-known lawyer A. Koni.
In Russian society, many agreed with her position of responding to violence with violence. A whole series of acts of individual terror swept across the country. Vera Zasulich herself, already in 1901, opposed such a reaction to events, calling it "a storm in the open space."
During the process, she turned into a national heroine. As I. Turgenev wrote, "the story of Zasulich definitely stirred up the whole of Europe." The poet Y. Polonsky dedicated the poem "The Prisoner" to her. But still, friends advised the revolutionary to emigrate to Switzerland in order to avoid a possible new arrest. However, she was disgusted by the position of an outside observer. In 1879 she returned to St. Petersburg, where she became close to G. Plekhanov. Remaining opposed to “systematic” terror, after the split of “Land and Freedom” in August 1879, Vera Zasulich, together with Plekhanov and her close friend L. Deutsch, joined the Black Redistribution group.
The police literally followed on the heels of the Narodnaya Volya, and in January of the following year, Vera Zasulich, together with Plekhanov, Deutsch and J. Stefanovich, again emigrated to Switzerland. Together with P. Lavrov, she led the “political Red Cross”, which provided assistance to political prisoners and exiles.
In the early eighties, Vera Ivanovna Zasulich entered into a correspondence with Karl Marx, which later influenced the change in her position. In 1883, in Geneva, she participated in the creation of the first Russian Marxist group, the Emancipation of Labor.
Defining her position, Vera Zasulich asked Marx to express his point of view on the fate of the peasant community in Russia. In his response, he argued that "the community is the fulcrum of the social revival of Russia." Vera Zasulich translated the work of F. Engels "The Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science" into Russian and wrote a preface to it. Communication with Engels continued for two years, from 1883 to 1885; they not only corresponded, but also met on several occasions. Zasulich's convictions gradually changed. She remained true to populist ideals, but she understood that the future was Marxism.
She continued to translate the works of K. Marx (“The Poverty of Philosophy”, “The Trial against the Rhine Regional Committee of Democrats”), F. Engels (“The Foreign Policy of Russian Tsarism”, “The Resignation of the Bourgeoisie”, “On the Social Question in Russia”, “Anti- Dühring”), the works of K. Kautsky, E. Marx-Aveling. At the same time, she begins work on her own large essay - "An Outline of the History of the International Society of Workers." In the article "Revolutionaries from the bourgeois environment" Vera Zasulich critically assessed the ideology of the eighties and liberals. Young people saw in her work "a theoretical explanation for the decline of the Russian intelligentsia."
Continuing to engage in social and political work, Vera Zasulich is in charge of the printing house of the Emancipation of Labor group, and is the secretary of the Russian Social Democratic Union. Irritated by her activities, the authorities exiled her in 1889, together with Plekhanov, from Switzerland. She moves to France, where she settles in the village of Morne.
Since the nineties, Zasulich has become a prominent publicist, participating in the publication of the literary and political collection Social Democrat. Her articles were devoted to the criticism of individual terror, the description of the activities of Stepnyak-Kravchinsky as a chronicler of revolutionary Russia. At this time, for the first time, she expresses the idea that terror can cause a civil war.
Vera Zasulich presented her own understanding of the activities of Dmitry Pisarev, wrote a number of literary-critical essays on N. Chernyshevsky, V. Sleptsov. A special place in her critical heritage is occupied by the analysis of the activities of French encyclopedists. The book "Voltaire, his life and literary activity" (1893) became the first legal publication in Russia of a work of a Marxist nature. A kind of continuation was the book "Jean Jacques Rousseau: an attempt to characterize his social ideas" (1899).
Having received the right to reside in Switzerland, in March 1897, Vera Ivanovna Zasulich settled in Zurich, joined the Union of Russian Social Democrats Abroad, and edited its publications Rabotnik and Worker List. In fact, she turned out to be associated with a variety of organizations: she represented the Emancipation of Labor group at the first and second congresses of the Union, opposed the "economists"; was a member of the revolutionary organization Social Democrat, which arose after the split of the Union of Russian Social Democrats Abroad. As an author, she contributed to the St. Petersburg Marxist journals Novoeslovo (1897) and Scientific Review (1894-1903). Her views can be defined as social democratic, she consistently proved them by participating in the activities of the 2nd International.
From December 1899 to March 1900, Vera Zasulich was illegally in Russia, where she established contacts with local Social Democrats, and met with V. Lenin for the first time. Since 1900, she became a member of the editorial board of the Iskra newspaper, continuing to maintain relations with Georgy Valentinovich Plekhanov. Already in her new capacity as an employee of Iskra, Zasulich tried to negotiate with the theoretician of the "legal Marxists" P. Struve on joint literary and publishing activities.
Having again gone abroad, she settled in Munich, after negotiations with Struve, she entered the Foreign League of Russian Revolutionary Social Democrats. Zasulich advocated expanding membership in the Social Democratic Party, opposed limiting it to underground work. She also actively argued with Lenin on the issues of building the party, believed that the party for Lenin was his "plan", his will, guiding the implementation of the plan. In her opinion, a political party should not become a terrorist organization.
After the Second Congress of the RSDLP, Vera Zasulich becomes one of the leaders of Menshevism. At this time, she no longer accepts terror and violence as a means of achieving power.
In November 1905, after the amnesty of political prisoners, Vera Zasulich got the opportunity to return to Russia, where she immediately began to collaborate in the legal newspapers Nachalo, Russkaya Zhizn, Narodnaya Duma, which were published until 1907. After the defeat of the revolution of 1905-1907, Mr. she again goes into an illegal position, leaves for the Grekovo farm, located in the Tula province, and practically moves away from active political activity. Zasulich could not change her convictions about the unacceptability of violence, but she saw that her ideas were divorced from reality.
In the tenth years, she first acted as a translator of fiction, translating the works of Voltaire, Honore de Balzac, HG Wells. Translations allowed her to become a member of the All-Russian Society of Writers and the All-Russian Literary Society.
During the First World War, Vera Ivanovna Zasulich took an openly nationalist position, speaking with an article "On the War" (1916), in which she spoke of the need to continue the war to a victorious end. Trying to reconstruct the activities of the Emancipation of Labor group, she worked in the Unity organization and in its print organ, the Emancipation of Labor newspaper. She still believed that power could only be won through political means.
After the October Revolution, Vera Zasulich condemned the policies of the Bolsheviks, accused them of usurping power and repression. She believed that it was the activities of her comrades that paved the way for the accession of the "red leaders", who in one day trampled all the bright democratic ideals of her generation. L. Deutsch admitted that Zasulich told him that she did not even want to live. Indeed, at one time, she even sacrificed her health in order to have time to do everything necessary for the cause of the revolution.
On the advice of friends, Vera Ivanovna Zasulich began to write memoirs, they were partially published in the journal Byloe, but completely published in 1931.
Vera Zasulich was born in the village of Mikhailovka, Gzhatsk district, Smolensk province, into an impoverished noble family. Three years later (1852) her father, a retired officer, died; the mother was forced to send Vera as one of three sisters to financially better-off relatives (Makulich) in the village of Byakolovo near Gzhatsk. In 1864 she was sent to a Moscow private boarding school. After graduating from the boarding school, she received a diploma as a home teacher (1867). For about a year she served as a clerk at the justice of the peace in Serpukhov (1867-1868). From the beginning of 1868 in St. Petersburg, she got a job as a bookbinder and was engaged in self-education.
She took part in revolutionary circles. In May 1869 she was arrested and in 1869-1871 she was imprisoned in connection with the Nechaev case, then in exile in the Novgorod province, then in Tver. She was again arrested for distributing forbidden literature and exiled to Soligalich, Kostroma province.
From the end of 1873 she studied at obstetric courses in Kharkov. She became a member of the populist Kyiv circle of "southern rebels". In the autumn of 1875 she went underground. After the defeat of the group of "southern rebels" she moved to St. Petersburg (1877).
On January 24 (according to other sources, January 28), 1878, she shot at the St. Petersburg mayor F. F. Trepov, on whose orders the imprisoned revolutionary Bogolyubov (Emelyanov A.) was flogged, and wounded him. The verdict of acquittal, handed down to her on March 31, 1878 by a jury (chairman of the court A.F. Koni, defender P.A. Aleksandrov), caused unanimous approval of the public. At the insistence of friends and not wanting to be subjected to a new arrest, the order for which was given after the acquittal, Zasulich emigrated to Switzerland.
In 1879 she returned to Russia, together with L. G. Deutsch and G. V. Plekhanov, she joined the Black Redistribution. In 1880 she emigrated again, was a foreign representative of the "Red Cross" of the "Narodnaya Volya". In 1883, having moved to the position of Marxism, she became a member of the Emancipation of Labor group, translated the works of K. Marx and F. Engels, and corresponded with them. At the end of 1899, she illegally came to Russia to establish contact with social democratic groups. In 1900 she became a member of the editorial boards of Iskra and Zarya. Participated in congresses of the Second International.
At the Second Congress of the RSDLP (1903), she joined the Iskra minority; after the congress she became one of the leaders of Menshevism. In 1905 she returned to Russia. After the revolution of 1905 in 1907-1910 she was one of the "liquidators", that is, supporters of the elimination of underground illegal party structures and the creation of a legal political organization. During the First World War of 1914-1918, she occupied a defensive position (“social chauvinist”), i.e., unlike the Bolsheviks who advocated the defeat of Russia, she advocated the defense of the fatherland. In 1917 he was a member of the Menshevik group Unity. V. I. Lenin, sharply criticizing the Menshevik position of Zasulich, highly appreciated her previous revolutionary merits. She met the October Revolution of 1917 with hostility, rightly accusing the Bolsheviks of usurping power and repressions.
Literary activity
The first publicistic work was a speech dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Polish uprising of 1831, published in Polish translation in the collection Biblioteka "Równosci" (Geneva, 1881). Zasulich owns an essay on the history of the International Association of Workers, books about J. J. Rousseau (1899, second edition 1923) and Voltaire (the first Russian biography of Voltaire "Voltaire. His life and literary activity", 1893, second edition 1909), as well as literary critical articles about D. I. Pisarev (1900), N. G. Chernyshevsky, S. M. Kravchinsky (Stepnyak), about V. A. Sleptsov’s story “Hard Time” (1897), -different”, and other writers and works. Having entered the editorial office of the Iskra newspaper, she published in it an article about N. A. Dobrolyubov, obituaries about Gleb Uspensky and Mikhailovsky. After the revolution of 1905, in search of work, she took up translations of G. Wells' prose, Voltaire's novel The White Bull. She was a member of the All-Russian Society of Writers and the All-Russian Literary Society. In her literary-critical works, Zasulich continued the traditions of revolutionary-democratic literary criticism and journalism. In recent years, she wrote memoirs, published posthumously.
Vera Ivanovna Zasulich
The Minister of Justice of the Russian Empire, Count Konstantin Palen, accused the presiding judge in the Zasulich case, Anatoly Koni, of violating the law and persistently urged him to resign. The illustrious lawyer did not make concessions, for which he was transferred to the civil department of the judicial chamber. But Count Palen did not escape the displeasure of the emperor and was dismissed from his post "for the negligent conduct of the Zasulich case."
Turning a rebel into a terrorist
Vera Zasulich was born in 1849 in the Smolensk province into an impoverished noble family. In 1864, she was admitted to the Rodionov Institute for Noble Maidens in Kazan. Three years later, she passed the exam for the title of home teacher with honors and moved to St. Petersburg. It did not work out with work in her specialty, and she went to Serpukhov, near Moscow, where she got a job as a clerk at a justice of the peace. After working for a year in this position, Vera returned to the capital. Here she got a job as a bookbinder, and in her free time she was engaged in self-education. In St. Petersburg, Vera first became acquainted with revolutionary ideas, starting to attend circles of a radical political persuasion.
In 1968, fate brought Zasulich together with Sergei Nechaev, who, albeit not immediately, but involved the young revolutionary in the activities of his organization "People's Reprisal". April 30, 1869 Vera Zasulich fell into the hands of justice. The reason for her arrest was a letter from abroad received for transfer to another person. So Zasulich became one of the defendants in the famous "Nechaevsky case", which then stirred up the entire Russian society.
Zasulich spent almost a year in the "Lithuanian Castle" and the Peter and Paul Fortress. In March 1871, she was exiled to Krestsy, Novgorod province, and then to Tver, where she was again arrested for distributing illegal literature. This time she was sent to the small town of Soligalich in the Kostroma province, and in 1875 Zasulich ended up in Kharkov.
Despite constant supervision by the police, Zasulich entered the revolutionary circle of adherents of the ideas of M. Bakunin "Southern Rebels". By uniting the efforts of the "rebel-Bakuninists", she tried to raise a peasant uprising in the village of Tsebulevka. The uprising failed, Zasulich fled to St. Petersburg, where it was easier to hide from police persecution.
In the capital, Vera found herself in an underground position, entered the Land and Freedom society and began working in the illegal Free Russian Printing House. Then there was an event that, according to historians, launched the bloody machine of political terror in Russia and served as an occasion for one of the most high-profile trials of Tsarist Russia in the 70s of the XIX century.
What prompted Zasulich to make an attempt on the mayor
In the summer of 1877, the newspaper Golos published a message about the punishment of the populist Bogolyubov with rods, who was sentenced to hard labor for participating in a youth demonstration on December 6, 1876 on the square of the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg. The flogging was carried out on the orders of the mayor of St. Petersburg Trepov, at the appearance of which Bogolyubov refused to take off his hat. Corporal punishment at that time was prohibited by law, the shameful execution caused a riot among the prisoners and received wide publicity in the press.
Trepov understood that the incident with Bogolyubov, which caused a wave of popular anger, could have serious consequences, and on the same day he twice wrote to the well-known lawyer and public figure Anatoly Fedorovich Koni with a request for a meeting. Realizing that the mayor acted illegally in ordering Bogolyubov to be flogged, Koni frankly expressed to him his indignation at his actions against not only Bogolyubov, but also all other prisoners.
Vera Zasulich did not stand aside either. Impressed by the mockery of the prisoner, she decided on a desperate step. January 24, 1878 Zasulich made an attempt on the mayor. She came to Trepov for an appointment, pulled out a revolver from under her cloak and shot him three times in the chest. As a result of the assassination attempt, Trepov was seriously injured, and Zasulich again found herself in the role of a prisoner.
The investigation quickly established the identity of the terrorist. The name Zasulich was listed in the file of the police department and was also referred to in the Nechaev case. It was not difficult to find the suspect's mother, who identified her as her daughter, Vera Ivanovna Zasulich.
At the end of January 1878, the entire metropolitan beau monde discussed the assassination attempt on Governor Trepov. The most incredible rumors were circulating in high society. Gossips claimed that Zasulich was Bogolyubov's mistress, and the attempt on Trepov's life was her revenge on the mayor (in reality, Zasulich did not know Bogolyubov).
An interesting coincidence: on the day of the assassination attempt on Trepov, A.F. Horses. Perhaps this is what decided the fate of Vera Zasulich.
Investigation and preparation for trial
Vera Zasulich shot at the mayor in the presence of several police officials and did not deny her guilt herself. But a lot depended on the legal qualification of her actions. According to A.F. Koni, "every hint of a political nature was eliminated from the case with persistence, simply strange on the part of the ministry, which until recently inflated political affairs for the most insignificant reasons." Everything that had any political connotation was carefully etched out of the investigation. The prosecutor of the St. Petersburg Court of Justice, Alexander Alekseevich Lopukhin, argued that the Minister of Justice was confident in the jury trial and boldly transferred the case to him, although he could have withdrawn it by a special imperial order. The investigation into the Zasulich case was completed by the end of February 1978.
“Opinions,” Anatoly Fedorovich wrote, “hotly debated, were divided: some applauded, others sympathized, but no one saw Zasulich as a “scoundrel,” and, arguing differently about her crime, no one threw dirt at the criminal and did not douse her with vicious foam all sorts of fabrications about her relationship to Bogolyubov.
A.F. Koni, through Lopukhin, received from the Minister of Justice an order to set the case for consideration on March 31 with the participation of jurors. The criminal case was submitted to the court, the composition of the court was determined, and preparations for the hearing began.
The first difficulties had to be encountered in the appointment of a prosecutor, the selection of which was handled by the prosecutor of the chamber Lopukhin. IN AND. Zhukovsky, former Kostroma provincial prosecutor, whom A.F. Koni highly appreciated it and refused, referring to the fact that Zasulich's crime had a political connotation. Talented lawyer and poet S.A. Andreevsky also refused the offer to act as a prosecutor. As a result, Comrade Prosecutor of the Petersburg District Court K.I. agreed to become a prosecutor. Kessel.
Several lawyers tried to become defenders of Vera Zasulich at once, but at first she was going to defend herself. However, upon receipt of the indictment, the defendant made an official statement that she was electing Pyotr Akimovich Alexandrov, a barrister and former prosecutor of the judicial chamber, as her representative. Alexandrov told his colleagues: "Give me the protection of Vera Zasulich, I will do everything possible and impossible to justify her, I am almost sure of success."
After the opening of the trial, Alexandrov decided to use his right to challenge the jury.
Before the hearing, the Minister of Justice, Count Konstantin Palen, had another conversation with A.F. Horses. The minister began to realize that he had acted lightly by referring the Zasulich case to a jury trial. He tried to convince A.F. Horses that the crime is a matter of personal revenge and the jury will accuse Zasulich: "Now everything depends on you, on your skill and eloquence." “Count,” answered Koni, “the ability of the chairman lies in the impartial observance of the law, and he should not be eloquent, because the essential features of the summary are impartiality and calmness. My duties are so clearly defined in the charters that now you can already say what I will do in the meeting. No, count! I ask you not to expect anything from me, except for the exact fulfillment of my duties ... "
Trial
On March 31, 1878, at 11 am, a meeting of the St. Petersburg District Court in the case of V.I. Zasulich chaired by A.F. Horses with the participation of judges V.A. Serbinovich and O.G. Dena. The act of Zasulich was qualified under articles 9 and 1454 of the Code of Punishments, which provided for the deprivation of all rights of property and exile in hard labor for a period of 15 to 20 years. The meeting was open, the hall filled to overflowing with the public.
The jury included nine officials, one nobleman, one merchant, one free artist. Court counselor A.I. was chosen as foreman of the jury. Lokhov.
The secretary of the court reported that on March 26 Trepov had received a statement that he was unable to appear in court for health reasons. A medical certificate signed by Professor N.V. Sklifosovsky and other doctors.
The judicial investigation began. Zasulich behaved modestly, spoke with naive sincerity. When asked if she pleaded guilty, she replied: "I admit that I shot at General Trepov, and whether a wound or death could follow from this was indifferent to me."
After interrogation of witnesses, medical experts made their conclusion. Then the debate began.
The first was K.I. Kessel. He accused the defendant of premeditated intention to take the life of the mayor Trepov. In support of his words, Kessel added that the defendant was looking for and found just such a revolver, from which it was possible to kill a person. Kessel devoted the second part of the accusatory speech to the act of the mayor Trepov on July 13, emphasizing that the court should neither condemn nor justify the actions of the mayor.
Admittedly, against the backdrop of the accuser's colorless speech, the speech of Aleksandrov's defense lawyer was a major event in public life. The defender traced in detail the connection between the flogging of Bogolyubov on July 13 and the shots at Terepov on January 24. The information received by Zasulich about the section of Bogolyubov, he said, was detailed, thorough, reliable. The fatal question arose: who would stand up for the desecrated honor of a helpless convict? Who will wash away the shame that will forever remind the unfortunate of himself? Zasulich was also tormented by another question: where is the guarantee against the repetition of such an incident?
Addressing the jurors, Alexandrov said: “For the first time, a woman appears here for whom there were no personal interests, personal revenge in the crime, a woman who connected with her crime the struggle for an idea in the name of someone who was only her brother in misfortune. her whole life. If this motive of misconduct proves less heavy on the scales of divine truth, if for the common good, for the triumph of the law, for public safety, it is necessary to recognize the punishment as lawful, then may your retributive justice be done! Do not hesitate! A little suffering may be added by your sentence for this broken, broken life. Without reproach, without bitter complaint, without offense, she will accept your decision from you and console herself with the fact that, perhaps, her suffering, her sacrifice will prevent the possibility of a repetition of the incident that caused her act. this act, in the very motives of it one cannot fail to see an honest and noble impulse. "Yes," said Alexandrov, concluding his speech, "she may come out of here condemned, but she will not come out dishonored, and one can only wish that the causes that produce such crimes do not happen again."
Zasulich refused the last word. The debate was declared over. With the consent of the parties A.F. Koni posed three questions to the jury: “The first question is posed as follows: is Zasulich guilty of having decided to take revenge on the mayor Trepov for the punishment of Bogolyubov and having acquired a revolver for this purpose, on January 24, with deliberate intention, inflicted a wound in the pelvic cavity on Adjutant General Trepov a large-caliber bullet; the second question is that if Zasulich committed this act, then did she have a premeditated intention to take the life of the mayor Trepov; and the third question is that if Zasulich intended to take the life of the mayor Trepov, did she do everything what depended on her to achieve this goal, and death did not follow from circumstances that did not depend on Zasulich.
A.F. Koni admonished the jury and, in fact, prompted them to acquittal. He clearly imagined all the hardships that could be associated with Zasulich's acquittal, but remained true to his principles and expressed them in questions that the jury had to answer.
Kony concluded his summary as follows: “The instructions that I have given you now are nothing more than tips that can make it easier for you to analyze the case. They are not at all obligatory for you. You can forget them, you can take them into account. You will pronounce a decisive and final word on this case. You will pronounce this word according to your conviction, based on everything that you have seen and heard, and not constrained by anything except the voice of your conscience. If you find the defendant guilty on the first or on all three points, then you can recognize it as deserving of indulgence according to the circumstances of the case. You can understand these circumstances in a broad sense. These circumstances always matter, since you are not judging an abstract object, but a living person, whose present is always directly or indirectly formed under the influence of his past. Discussing grounds for indulgence, you will remember the life of Zasulich revealed to you."
Announcing the questionnaire, the foreman only had time to say "Not guilty", which caused thunderous applause in the hall. Koni announced to Zasulich that she was acquitted and that the order for her release would be signed immediately. Vera freely left the house of pre-trial detention and fell directly into the arms of an admiring crowd. Abroad, they also reacted with great interest to the news of Zasulich's acquittal. The process was covered in detail by the newspapers of France, Germany, England and the USA. The press noted the special role of the lawyer P.A. Alexandrov and presiding A.F. Horses. However, the Russian government did not share such enthusiasm.
Justice Minister Palen accused Koni of violating the law and persistently urged him to resign. The illustrious lawyer remained true to himself and did not make concessions, for which he was transferred to the civil department of the judicial chamber. In 1900, under pressure, he left the judicial activity. Count Palen was soon dismissed from his post "for negligent handling of the Zasulich case."
Life after the process
The next day after Zasulich's release, the sentence was protested, the police issued a circular about the capture of Vera Zasulich. She was forced to hastily hide in a safe house and soon, in order to avoid re-arrest, she was transferred to her friends in Sweden.
In 1879, she secretly returned to Russia and joined a group of activists who sympathized with the views of G.V. Plekhanov. In 1880, Zasulich was again forced to leave Russia, which saved her from another arrest. She went to Paris, where the so-called political Red Cross, created in 1882 by P.L. Lavrov, a foreign union for helping political prisoners and exiles, which aimed to raise funds for them. While in Europe, she became close to the Marxists, and in particular to Plekhanov, who had come to Geneva. There, in 1883, she took part in the creation of the first Marxist organization of Russian emigrants - the Emancipation of Labor group. Zasulich translated the works of K. Marx and F. Engels into Russian. In addition, Zasulich herself wrote a lot. At one time, such works of her as "Rousseau", "Voltaire", "Essay on the history of the international society of workers", "Elements of idealism in socialism" were known. Most of them have been published in two volumes.
Zasulich, becoming the first Russian woman to commit a terrorist act, subsequently abandoned her previous views, promoted the ideas of Marxism, and denied terror.
What is famous
Vera Ivanovna Zasulich(1849 - 1919) was born in the village of Mikhailovka, Gzhatsk district, Smolensk province, in the family of a small estate nobleman. When the girl was three years old, her father died, and she was brought up by her aunts in the village of Byakolovo near Gzhatsk. In 1867 she graduated from a Moscow private boarding school, where they taught foreign languages and trained governesses. After that, she worked as a clerk for a justice of the peace in Serpukhov, then returned to the capital, where she began working as a bookbinder. In Moscow, Vera Zasulich met Sergei Nechaev. However, she did not join Nechaev's organization "People's Punishment", she only gave her address for sending letters to him. After the exposure of the Nechayevites, she was arrested, as she received one letter from abroad and forwarded it. She spent more than a year in prison, after which she was sent into exile in the Novgorod province, then to Tver. Arrested a second time in Tver for distributing illegal literature and deported to Soligalich. Since 1873 she lived in Kharkov, where she studied at obstetric courses, at the same time participating in the work of the underground circle "Young Rebels". Since 1877 - in St. Petersburg, where she became a member of the "Land and Freedom" society.
February 5, 1878 made an attempt on the St. Petersburg mayor Fyodor Trepov. Acquitted by jury. Soon the court's decision was protested, but Vera Zasulich managed to leave for Switzerland. In 1879 she secretly returned to Russia. Disillusioned with individual terror, she became a member of the "Black Redistribution" group, the members did not accept the terrorist tactics of "Narodnaya Volya" and were supporters of broad propaganda among the masses. A year later, fleeing from arrest, she again left Russia. In exile, she, along with Georgy Plekhanov, Pavel Axelrod, Vasily Ignatov and Lev Deitch, entered the first Marxist Social Democratic group, the Emancipation of Labor. She was a representative of the Russian Social Democrats at the congresses of the First International in 1896, 1900 and 1904. Since 1894 she lived in London, wrote articles on contemporary issues, literature, history, published monographs on Rousseau and Voltaire. Met with London with Engels. In 1897-1898 she lived in Switzerland. From there, she illegally entered Russia with a passport in the name of the Bulgarian Velika Dmitrieva. Met Lenin. In 1900 she returned abroad, was elected to the editorial board of the Iskra and Zarya newspapers, published articles in them criticizing the concept of legal Marxism. In 1903 she participated in the II Congress of the RSDLP in London. After the Manifesto on October 17, 1905, she was able to return to Russia, where she lived on the Grekovo farm in the Tula province, leaving for St. Petersburg for the winter. When the First World War began, Vera Zasulich, together with Plekhanov, joined the Menshevik defensists, who considered the war on the part of Russia to be defensive, and Russia's loss of the war was called not only a national tragedy, but also a blow to the entire Russian labor movement. Therefore, in the opinion of the defencists, the Social Democrats had to support the Provisional Government waging war. Zasulich then wrote: "Having turned out to be powerless to stop the attack, internationalism can no longer, should not interfere with the defense of the country." In the last years of her life, she was seriously ill, worked on her memories. Vera Zasulich died in Petrograd on May 8, 1919.
What is famous
Fame Vera Zasulich brought an assassination attempt on the St. Petersburg mayor Fyodor Trepov. In July 1877, on his orders, a political prisoner, student Alexei Bogolyubov, was flogged in prison. The prisoner's fault was that he did not take off his hat to Trepov. This order was in violation of the Corporal Punishment Prohibition Act of April 17, 1863. On February 5, 1878, Zasulich came to see Trepov and shot him with a revolver. The mayor was seriously wounded in the stomach. The Minister of Justice, Count Palen, promised the Tsar that the verdict of the jury would be guilty. Meanwhile, sympathy for Zasulich and a negative attitude towards Trepov's role in the Bogolyubov affair was widespread in society. “Opinions,” Anatoly Koni recalled, “hotly debated, were divided: some applauded, others sympathized, others did not approve, but no one saw Zasulich as a “scoundrel”, and, arguing differently about her crime, no one, however, threw mud at criminal and did not douse her with malicious foam of all kinds of fabrications about her relationship with Bogolyubov.<…>Its section, which was accepted at one time rather indifferently, was again brought to life before a society that was indifferent in general, but impressionable in particular. It - this section - came to life with all the details, was commented on as the grossest manifestation of arbitrariness, stood before the eyes of a secretly shamed society, as if it had been done yesterday, and burned on many weak but honest hearts, like a freshly inflicted wound. The jury declared Vera Zasulich not guilty. She was released in the courtroom. On the street, the gendarmes were waiting for her and wanted to arrest her, but the crowd recaptured Zasulich. Conservative circles were outraged by what had happened. The publisher of the Grazhdanin magazine, Prince Vladimir Meshchersky, wrote: “The acquittal of Zasulich happened as if in some kind of terrible nightmare, no one could understand how such a terrible mockery of state superior servants and such a brazen triumph of sedition could take place in the courtroom of the autocratic empire” .
What you need to know
Vera Zasulich was extremely negative about the revolution carried out by the Bolshevik Party. In her opinion, the coup interrupted the normal development of the democratic revolution, and the resulting regime of the Bolsheviks did not differ much from the tsarist one. In one of the articles she wrote: “Socialism has no more fierce enemies at the present time than the gentlemen from Smolny. They are not converting the capitalist mode of production into a socialist one, but they are destroying capital, destroying large-scale industry...”. On April 1, 1918, she delivered a speech at the Workers' Banner Club, which celebrated the 40th anniversary of her acquittal at trial. In it, Zasulich also sharply criticized the Bolsheviks. Lenin was dissatisfied with this position of Zasulich, but recognized her as "the most prominent revolutionary." Old revolutionary merits protected Vera Zasulich in the last years of her life.
Direct speech
The mayor has already gathered about a dozen petitioners.
Mayor accept?
Accepts: out now! - Someone, as if on purpose for me, asks again: “Does he accept it himself?” The answer is yes.
Some woman, poorly dressed, with tearful eyes, sits down next to me and asks me to look at her request - is it written there? There is something wrong with the request. I advise her to show the petition to the officer, as I saw that he was already looking through someone. She is afraid, she asks me to show her. I approach the officer with her and draw his attention to the petitioner. The voice is ordinary, - nothing shows excitement. I am pleased. - There is no trace of the nightmarish heaviness that has been crushing me since yesterday evening. Nothing in the soul, except care that everything went as planned.
The adjutant led us into the next room, the first one, and put me on the edge, and at the same time, Trepov came out of the other doors with a whole retinue of military men, and everyone went towards me.
For a moment it confused, alarmed me. Thinking over all the details, I found it inconvenient to shoot at the moment of filing the petition: both he and the retinue were looking at me, my hand was busy with paper, etc., and I decided to do it earlier, when Trepov stopped; not reaching me, against a neighbor.
And suddenly there is no neighbor before me - I was the first ...
Is it all the same: I’ll shoot when he stops near the petitioner following me, ”I shouted to myself inwardly, and the momentary anxiety immediately subsided, as if it had never happened.
What is the petition about?
On issuing a certificate of conduct.
He scribbled something with a pencil and turned to a neighbor. The revolver is already in her hand, she pressed the pawl ... Misfire.
Heart skipped a beat, again, a shot, a cry ...
Now we must rush to beat, - it appeared in my picture of the future experienced so many times.
But there was a pause. It probably only lasted a few seconds, but I felt it.
I threw the revolver away - this was also decided in advance, otherwise, in a dump, he could shoot himself. She stood and waited.
From the memoirs of Vera Zasulich about the assassination attempt on F. Trepov
Gentlemen of the jury! Not for the first time on this bench of crimes and severe mental suffering, a woman appears before the court of public conscience on charges of a bloody crime. There were women here who avenged their seducers with death; there were women who stained their hands in the blood of those who had betrayed their loved ones or their happier rivals. These women walked out of here justified. It was a right judgment, a response of the divine judgment, which looks not only at the external side of deeds, but also at their inner meaning, at the real criminality of a person. Those women, committing massacre, fought and avenged themselves. For the first time, a woman appears here for whom there was no personal interest in the crime, no personal revenge - a woman who, with her crime, connected the struggle for an idea, in the name of someone who was only her brother in misfortune throughout her young life. If this motive of the offense turns out to be less heavy on the scales of social truth, if for the good of the general, for the triumph of the law, for the public, it is necessary to invoke legal punishment, then - let your retributive justice be done! Don't hesitate! Not much suffering can add to your sentence for this broken, broken life. Without reproach, without bitter complaint, without resentment, she will accept your decision from you and console herself with the fact that, perhaps, her suffering, her sacrifice prevented the possibility of a repetition of the incident that caused her act. However gloomy one may look at this act, one cannot but see in its very motives an honest and noble impulse. Yes, she may come out of here condemned, but she will not come out dishonored, and it remains only to wish that the causes that produce such crimes, give rise to such criminals, do not repeat themselves.
