Ekaterina Dmitrievna Kuskova

Ekaterina Dmitrievna Kuskova

Ekaterina Dmitrievna Kuskova born Ekaterina Dmitrievna Jessipowa , ( Russian Екатерина Дмитриевна Кускова , maiden name Russian Екатерина Дмитриевна Есипова ; born November 23, ^jul. / 5. December  1869 ^greg. In Ufa ; † 22. December 1958 in Geneva ) was a Russian journalist .

Life

Ekaterina Dmitrievna's father was a high school teacher of literature and later a tax officer, while the mother was a simple Tatar . Ekaterina Dmitrievna attended the girls' high school in Saratov . At the age of 15 she lost her parents: the father shot himself and the mother died of tuberculosis . To support herself and her younger sister, she took over her mother's job as the manager of a poor house. She was expelled from high school for missing school lessons. Then she graduated from school as an external student. In 1885 she married the high school teacher IP Juwenalijew, with whom she had two children. Juwenalijew was previously involved in Narodniki circles. He and his wife organized a home university in their apartment with science lessons for high school students and reading of Narodniki writings. In 1889 Juwenaliev died of tuberculosis.

In 1890, Ekaterina Dmitrievna went to Moscow and completed an obstetrics course. She came to Narodniki student circles and distributed illegal literature. In 1891 she returned to Saratow and completed Feldscher courses. She took part in the fight against the cholera epidemic and witnessed the cholera uprising. She continued to work illegally in Saratov. She took part in Nikolai Astyrev's Narodniki district and met the revolutionaries Mark Natanson and Viktor Chernov . She took part in the founding of the Narodnoye Prawo revolutionary party , which was disbanded by the police soon after it was founded. Because of her participation, she was sentenced to one year in prison followed by three years of police custody. She entered into a fictional marriage with the student and Narodnik Kuskov, who was in custody on a hunger strike to get him out of prison. Since then she had the family name Kuskowa , by which she became known.

In 1894 Kuskowa went to Nizhny Novgorod , where she met Vladimir Korolenko , Nikolai Annensky , Maxim Gorky and Sergei Prokopovich . She turned to Marxism and agitated the workers in the Nizhny Novgorod industrial district of Sormovo . In 1895 she married Sergei Nikolajewitsch Prokopovitsch.

In 1896, Kuskowa went abroad with her husband to be cured of tuberculosis. She got to know Georgi Plekhanov and other leaders of the Russian Social Democrats and, with her husband, joined the Union of Russian Social Democrats Abroad. She attended lectures on social sciences at the Université libre de Bruxelles and she studied the European trade union movement . Soon she saw contradictions with the opinions of the Russian Social Democrats. She got to know Eduard Bernstein 's revisionist endeavors that she propagated after her return to Russia . In 1899 she wrote a corresponding summary document that was not intended for printing and became known in Marxist circles as her Credo . Anna Jelisarowa-Ulyanova sent this creed to her brother Vladimir Ulyanov-Lenin in the Minussinsk exile, who immediately wrote a clear reply for publication abroad. On Plekhanov's initiative, Kuskowa and Prokopovich were expelled from the Union of Russian Social Democrats abroad and their views condemned. In a letter to Vladimir Burzew , Kuskova declared that she was turning away from the revolutionary political struggle.

Kuskowa and Prokopowitsch took part in the establishment of the illegal liberal Union of Liberation, which was decided in 1903 at a meeting with around 20 participants in Schaffhausen . At the meeting in January 1904, Kuskowa and Prokopowitsch were elected to the executive council. In addition to the right wing with liberal Zemstvo representatives, there was then a left wing with moderate Marxists ( Peter Struve , Nikolai Berdjajew , Sergei Bulgakow , Simon Frank , Bogdan Kistjakowski , Wassili Bogucharski-Jakowlew ), to which Kuskowa and Prokopowitsch belonged. This left wing was strongly represented in St. Petersburg and influenced the activities of the Imperial Free Economic Society of St. Petersburg and the Russian Technical Society. Kuskowa distributed illegal literature, in particular the magazine Liberation published by Struve .

In the autumn of 1904, in view of the failure of the Russo-Japanese War , the Union of Liberation initiated a campaign with Zemstvo petitions and petitions from other social organizations to the Tsar , calling for a constitution and a parliament . The newspapers Nascha Schisn ( Our life with Kuskowa as editor ) and Naschi Dni ( Our days ) were founded for the mass agitation among the workers . In November 1904, Kuskowa, Prokopovich and Bogucharsky-Jakowlew met with Georgi Gapon, the leader of the legal assembly of Russian factory workers in St. Petersburg, and agreed to mutual assistance. This led to the Russian Revolution in 1905 , in which Kuskowa played an active role with the newspaper Nascha Schisn . After the October Manifesto of October 1905, the Union of Liberation split, the right wing accepted the manifesto and wanted to work with the government, which led to the establishment of the Constitutional Democratic Party ( Cadets ). The representatives of the left wing rejected the manifesto and sought the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a parliamentary republic , so that they joined the Social Democrats and Social Revolutionaries ( SR ).

Kuskowa, who in October 1905 did not accept the election to the Central Committee at the founding meeting of the Cadets, wanted to keep the Union of Liberation. When the Union of Liberation dissolved, it founded the non-partisan group Without Address , to which Prokopovich, Bogucharsky-Jakowlew, Vasily Vodowosow , Viktor Portugalow , Aron Lande , Lyubow Gurevich and others belonged. From the beginning of 1906 Kuskowa and Prokopowitsch published the magazine of this group, in which the right-wing parties were criticized for their cooperation with the government and the left-wing parties for their intolerance, their sectarianism and their extremism. She described herself as a representative of E. Bernstein's critical socialism. After the stolypin reaction, the journal was banned and the group disbanded. Kuskowa continued to publish and worked in various magazines. She participated in the struggle for women's equality and in the cooperative movement .

When, after the failed revolution in 1905, Kuskowa was looking for new ways to fight for the liberation of Russia, she turned to Freemasonry , which had a long tradition in Russia and remained closed due to the traditional secrecy of the police. In 1910 the liberal Russian Freemasons began to turn to politics. In 1912 the Great Orient of the Peoples of Russia (WWNR) was founded, with the political goals in the foreground. Kuskowa was a member there. As Kuskowa described in her unpublished memoir, meetings of the WWNR leaders who planned the composition of the future Provisional Government took place in her apartment . After the successful February Revolution in 1917 , Kuskowa supported the new system of government and maintained contact with Alexander Kerensky and other leaders until the end of the Provisional Government, which also included the Freemasons Prokopovich and Pyotr Palchinsky . From April 1917 Kuskova published the magazine Vlast Naroda ( power of the people ), out in the Prokopovich, Alexander Potresov , Maxim Winawer , Sergei Melgunow , Nikolai Tchaikovsky , Boris Savinkov cooperated and others. At the same time Kuskowa worked in the cooperative movement. She rejected Lenin as an extremist and utopian and was in favor of continuing the defensive war against Germany to the victorious end. She also criticized the cadets who supported Lavr Kornilov . In September 1917 she was elected as a delegate of the cooperatives in the pre-parliament of the republic.

After the October Revolution , Kuskowa continued to publish her magazine until it was banned in 1918. In the Russian Civil War , Kuskova and Prokopovich did not join the Bolsheviks or the Whites . In the autumn of 1918, on the initiative of Vladimir Galaktionowitsch Korolenkos and others, Kuskowa founded the League for the Rescue of Children in order to provide homes and colonies for homeless children. Kuskowa, Nikolai Kishkin , Jekaterina Peschkowa and other well-known personalities took over management positions . The league was approved by the Council of People's Commissars . In 1920 the league unsuccessfully applied for help for starving children from abroad. Kuskowa and Kishkin were banned from traveling abroad, and in early 1921 the League's children's homes were handed over to the government. In July 1921, Kuskowa, Prokopovich and Kishkin founded the All-Russian Committee for Famine Relief (WK Pomgol, WKPG) in Moscow to alleviate the famine , after this had been approved with the help of Maxim Gorky. WG Korolenko became honorary chairman, and Fyodor Alexandrovich Golovin , Nikolai Nikolayevich Kutler and others joined. Based on rumors in August 1921 of anti-Soviet speeches in the WKPG, Lenin ordered Stalin to disband the WKPG and arrest the leaders. In September 1921, Kuskowa, Prokopowitsch and Kischkin were exiled to Vologda by decision of the Cheka . When Kuskowa and Prokopovich returned to Moscow the following year, they were exiled abroad in June 1922.

In 1922 Kuskowa and Prokopowitsch settled in Berlin . Kuskowa continued her political and journalistic work. She was elected chairman of the Berlin Aid Committee for Prisoners and Exiles in the Soviet Union , which was part of the Political Red Cross and was particularly committed to helping political prisoners. In Moscow, the relevant organization was headed by Ekaterina Pavlovna Peschkowa and Maxim Vinawer.

In 1924 Kuskowa went to Prague , where she worked in various newspapers. Her apartment became a political salon for the Russian emigrants . With Pavel Milyukov she held talks about the establishment of a republican-democratic association. The aim should be the liberal infiltration of Soviet power along the lines of political freemasonry before the February Revolution. It rejected the military struggle against the Soviet power and saw possibilities for an inner evolution under the conditions of the New Economic Policy (NEP) . In her publications and radio lectures she urged emigrants to look for ways to return home. This return idea was heavily criticized by her former comrades-in-arms Struve, Kerensky, Nikolai Avksentjew and others. The seizure of power by Stalin ripped off the idea of ​​a return.

After the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the German Wehrmacht in 1939, Kuskowa and Prokopowitsch moved to Geneva, where Kuskowa continued their journalistic work and worked in various newspapers. During the German-Soviet war she hoped for the victory of the Soviet Union over fascism and the possibility of being able to return to the Soviet Union. After the war she tried to help Vasily Maklakov and other Russian emigrants in the American and Soviet occupation zones . Prokopovich died in 1955.

Web links

• Catalog of the Russian National Library : Кускова Екатерина Дмитриевна
• Literature by and about Yekaterina Dmitrijewna Kuskowa in the bibliographic database WorldCat

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Большая российская энциклопедия: КУСКО́ВА (урождённая Есипова) Екатерина Дмитриевна (accessed October 18, 2019).
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Chronos: Кускова Екатерина Дмитриевна (accessed October 17, 2019).
3. ↑ Encyclopaedia Britannica: Yekaterina Kuskova (accessed October 18, 2019).
4. ↑ Е. Д. Кускова - В. Л. Бурцеву. Прага, 29 сентября 1936 г. (accessed on October 16, 2019).
5. ↑ В. П. Волков: Либеральная идея в жизни и деятельности В. И. Вернадского (accessed October 16, 2019).
6. ↑ Р. Пайпс: Struve. Биография. Том 1. Струве: левый либерал. 1870-1905 . Moscow 2001.
7. ↑ ^{a b} Из письма Е. Д. Кусковой - Н. В. Вольскому (Валентинову) 10 ноября 1955 г. (accessed October 17, 2019).
8. ↑ A. В. Тыркова-Вильямс: На путях к свободе . Moscow 2007.
9. ↑ JD Kuskowa: Ответ на вопрос - кто мы? In: Без заглавия. Политический еженедельник . No. 3 , 1906.
10. ↑ Серков А. И .: Русское масонство. 1731-2000 . Moscow 2001, p. 622-623 .
11. ↑ Noteworthy members of the Grand Orient of France in Russia and the Supreme Council of the Grand Orient of Russia's People (accessed October 18, 2019).
12. ↑ PN Miljukow: Воспоминания (1859-1917) . New York 1955 ( [1] [accessed October 17, 2019]).
13. ↑ В.Г. Макаров, BC Христофоров: К ИСТОРИИ ВСЕРОССИЙСКОГО КОМИТЕТА ПОМОЩИ ГОЛОДАЮЩИМ . In: Nowaja i Noveischaja Istorija . No. 3 , 2006 ( [2] [accessed October 17, 2019]).
14. ↑ Протокол допроса Е.Д. Кусковой, произведенный ВЧК от September 6, 1921 (accessed October 18, 2019).