Fanny Kaplan

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Fanny Kaplan before 1918

Fanny Kaplan ( Russian Фанни Ефимовна Каплан Fanni Yefimovna Kaplan , also Fanya Kaplan , originally Фейга Хаимовна Ройдман Feiga Chaimowna Roidman , born January 29, jul. / 10. February  1890 greg. In volhynian governorate , Russian Empire , now Ukraine ; † 3 September 1918 in Moscow ) was a Russian anarchist and social revolutionary who is best known today for her assassination attempt on Lenin , which she is said to have committed in 1918.

Life

Kaplan was one of eight children of Chaim Roitman, a teacher in a Jewish elementary school . She was tutored at home by her father, who himself was loyal to the authorities. Around 1905 she became an anarchist and moved with the code name "Dora" in revolutionary circles. In 1906 she participated in the assassination attempt on a government official and a Kiev court sentenced her to death. The sentence was later commuted to life. Kaplan suffered severe visual damage from the bomb explosion.

After a stay in prison, she was deported to Akatui in the Trans-Baikal mountain region of Nerchinsk , where hard labor ruined her health. Under the influence of Maria Spiridonova , she turned away from anarchism and became a social revolutionary . Her family emigrated to the USA in 1911 , she herself was released during the February Revolution and traveled to Moscow in April 1917. Party members decided to take them to a sanatorium in the Crimea for rest . During the October Revolution , she was in Kharkov for an eye operation and then went back to the Crimea, this time to Simferopol .

Assassination attempt on Lenin

Vladimir Ptscholin's depiction of the attack with the assassin in front of the car on the left

On August 30, 1918, Lenin was hit by two bullets in the shoulder and neck while leaving a Moscow factory where he was giving a speech. Kaplan was arrested as an assassin. During interrogation by the chekist J. W. Jurowski and the head of state Sverdlov , she made the following statement:

“My name is Fanja Kaplan. Today I shot Lenin. I did it at my own discretion. I won't say who I got the revolver from. I won't give any details. I had long since decided to kill Lenin. I consider him a traitor to the revolution. I was exiled to Akatui for participating in an assassination attempt against a tsarist official in Kiev and spent eleven years in slave labor. I was released after the revolution. I was and still am a supporter of the constituent assembly . "

She also stated that she had an extremely negative attitude towards the October Revolution and that she had made the decision to commit the assassination attempt in Simferopol in February 1918, after the Bolsheviks forcibly disbanded the Constituent Assembly. Lenin was a traitor to the revolution who had wiped out the socialist idea of ​​the past ten years through personal decisions and without any party.

After it became clear that Kaplan would not provide any further information, the Cheka shot her in the Alexander Garden of the Moscow Kremlin without a formal trial . Her remains were not buried, but destroyed by the Cheka.

There are doubts as to whether she actually carried out the attack or was only used as a scapegoat or covered another perpetrator. The initiator of the quick shooting was Yakov Sverdlov .

Movie

literature

  • Scott B. Smith: Who shot Lenin? - in: Yearbooks for the History of Eastern Europe / NF 46.1998 - pp. 100–119
  • S. Lyandres: The 1918 Attempt on the Life of Lenin: A New Look at the Evidence - in: Slavic Review 48 (1989) 3 - pp. 432-448 - www.jstor.org/stable/2498997

Web links

Commons : Fanny Kaplan  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.peoples.ru/state/citizen/kaplan/
  2. ↑ Orlando Figes: Die Tragödie eines Volkes , Berlin, 1998, p. 665
  3. ↑ http://www.hrono.info/biograf/bio_k/kaplan_fani.html
personal data
SURNAME Chaplain, Fanny
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian anarchist and social revolutionary
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Volyn Governorate , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH September 3, 1918
Place of death Moscow