Act 2 (of 2)
A follow-up post to "Why Must a Heroine Die?"
The Real Vera Zasulich: A Revolutionary
Vera Zasulich was born in Russia in 1849 (Simkin, “Vera Zasulich”) to a family of impoverished nobles (“Zasulich”). She was one of five children (“Zasulich”) and her father died when she was three years old (Simkin, “Vera Zasulich”). Vera’s mother sent her to stay with wealthy relatives (Simkin, “Vera Zasulich”), where she attended school in order to become a governess, which was typical for women of her status (“Zasulich”).
After her schooling, and encouraged by her sister Ekaterina (“Zasulich”), Vera became involved in radical politics (Simkin, “Vera Zasulich”). She joined a group to educate workers and gave them literary classes in the evenings (Simkin, “Vera Zasulich”). She met Sergi Nechayev, who co-write the 1869 book, Catechism of a Revolutionist, which had a great impact on young Russians (Simkin). Sergi would often give the names of his comrades to police so that his comrades would grow to hate the regime as they suffered in prison. Vera supposedly did not escape this fate, and she was arrested by police in 1869 for revolutionary activity. Within the next six years, Vera faced imprisonment and was exiled multiple times. When she was released in 1875, she was apparently no longer the quiet woman she had been and had become a committed revolutionary (Zasulich).
Vera ended up joining the secret society, Land and Liberty. Land and Liberty was led by Mark Natanson, who believed that the Russian Empire should cease to exist and that two-thirds of the land should be given to the peasants where they could then organize self-governing communes (Simkin). Vera was described by Lev Deich, a fellow member of Land and Liberty as:
“Because of her intellectual development, and particularly she was so well read, Vera Zasulich was more advanced than the other members of the circle... Anyone could see that she was a remarkable young woman. You were struck by her behavior, particularly by the extraordinary sincerity and unaffectedness of her relations with others” (Simkin, “Vera Zasulich”).
Vera believed that the revolutionary party should be a group of equals and that there should be no hierarchy within the party (“Zasulich”).
It is as a member of the Land and Liberty society that Vera heard that a prisoner, by the name of Alexei Bogoliubov, had been cruelly beaten by Dmitry Trepov, the Governor General of St. Petersburg (Simkin, “Vera Zasulich”). Furious with the abuse, Vera decided to seek revenge on Trepov. She snuck a revolver into his office, and not concerned whether she killed him or only wounded him, she shot him in the pelvis (“Zasulich”). Vera later recalls:
“The revolver was in my hand. I pressed the trigger – a misfire. My heart missed a beat. Again I pressed. A shot, cries. Now they’ll start beating me. This was next in the sequence of events I had thought through so many times. I threw down the revolver – this also had been decided beforehand; otherwise, in the scuffle, it might go off by itself. I stood and waited. Suddenly everybody around me began moving, the petitioners scattered, police officers threw themselves at me, and I was seized from both sides” (Simkin, “Vera Zasulich”).
Vera was arrested and charged for the attempted murder of Trepov (Simkin, “Vera Zasulich”). Her trial occurred two months later and caused quite a sensation. Vera’s defense attorney said that since Vera had been a prisoner herself, she was able to identify with Alexei’s experience at the hands of Trepov. He then emphasized that Vera committed her attack against Trepov selflessly, and that she did so in order to stop the government from enacting such violence on prisoners (“Zasulich”). They were also able to provide evidence of police brutality (Simkin, “Vera Zasulich”). Vera conducted herself with dignity (Simkin, “Vera Zasulich”), and her attorney said that she would accept the punishment “without a reproach, without a complaint” (“Zasulich”).
At the time of her trial, Russia allowed jury members to follow their consciences even if they thought the defendant was guilty. Thus, after only ten minutes of deliberation, the jury found Vera not guilty (“Zasulich”). Fyodor Dostoevsky, famed Russian novelist, had said that punishing Vera would have been “inappropriate and superflouous” (“Zasulich”).
As you can imagine, the police and government were not happy with the verdict, and they tried to arrest Vera outside the court; however, they were obstructed by a crowd, which allowed Vera to escape (Simkin, “Vera Zasulich”). In regards to her trial, Vera said:
“Had I been convicted, I should have been prevented by main force from doing anything, and I should have been tranquil, and the thought of having done all I was able for the cause would have been a consolation to me” (Simkin, “Vera Zasulich”).
After the trial, Vera was forced into hiding. Despite this, she still remained an active participant in politics. In 1883, she formed the first Russian Marxist group called, Liberation of Labour. She would then move to Switzerland and became active in the Social Democratic Labour Party (Simkin, “Vera Zasulich”).
Despite having attempted to assassinate Trepov, Vera ended up denouncing the use of violence to gain a democratic system (Simkin, “Vera Zasulich”), and she opposed the future terrorist attacks against tsarist officials and the tsar himself (“Zasulich”). Vera saw the current attacks to be different from her attack on Trepov, which she saw as a moral statement, meant to draw attention to the government’s abuse (“Zasulich”).
Vera had a relationship with a fellow revolutionary, Lev Deich, in which they were lovers for ten years, and promoted Marxism together. She was apparently devastated when Deich was captured and exiled to Siberia, and then even more so when he married another exile in 1895 (“Zasulich”).
In 1905, Vera was able to return to Russia after a quarter century in exile. She spent the last years of her life in poverty and distanced herself from politics. However, in 1914, she joined a friend of hers and they urged Russians of all political views to come together and defend Russia against Germany in World War I. She even went out to the front lines and encouraged Russia’s soldiers to keep up the fight (“Zasulich”).
In 1917, the tsar was overtaken and it looked like a new democratic state would be created. In this new Communist Russia, Vera was not treated well and she was cast out of the Russian Writers home on 1918 by the Red Army soldiers. She died of pneumonia on May 8, 1919 (“Zasulich”). She was described by Sergei Kravchinsky as a new kind of hero:
“On the horizon appeared the outlines of a somber figure, illuminated by some kind of hellish flame, a figure with chin raised proudly in the air, and a gaze that breathed provocation and vengeance. Passing through the frightened crowds, the revolutionary enters with proud step on to the arena of history. He is wonderful, awe-inspiring and irresistible, for he unites the two most lofty forms of human grandeur, the martyr and the hero” (Simkin, “Vera Zasulich”).
April 6, 2019
Works Cited
Eltis, Sos. “Vera; or, The Nihilists.” Oxford Scholarship, Oxford University Press, 17 Nov. 2014, www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198121831.001.0001/acprof-9780198121831-chapter-3.
“Simkin, John. “Land and Liberty.” Spartacus Educational, Spartacus Educational, spartacus-educational.com/RUSland.htm.
Simkin, John. “Vera Zasulich.” Spartacus Educational, Spartacus Educational, spartacus-educational.com/RUSzasulich.htm.
Wilson, Jennifer. “When Oscar Wilde Colluded with the Russians.” The Paris Review, 18 Oct. 2017, www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/10/18/oscar-wilde-colluded-russians/.
"Zasulich, Vera (1849–1919)." Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia.com. 5 Apr. 2019<https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
Images
https://www.amazon.com/Vera-Nihilists-Oscar-Wilde-ebook/dp/B00P6V0JFE
https://lanterns.buzz/page_blog_post.cfm?threadid=6F834B0F-155D-8226-308F5007CB1F6F01
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Feodorovich_Trepov
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