Vera Ivanovna Sassulitsch

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Wera Sassulitsch (1849-1919)

Vera zasulich ( Russian Вера Ивановна Засулич , scientific. Transliteration Vera Ivanovna Zasulič ; born July 27 . Jul / 8. August  1849 greg. In Michailowka, Smolensk , † 8. May 1919 in Petrograd ) was a Russian Narodniza and later Marxist Author and professional revolutionary .

Life

Childhood, youth and first revolutionary activities

Sassulitsch was born in Mikhailovka, Russia, as one of three daughters into an impoverished aristocratic family. After three years her father died, whereupon the mother brought her to more affluent relatives, the Mikulitsch family in Bjakolowo. After graduating from school in 1866, she went to Saint Petersburg , where she worked as a clerk. She quickly came into contact with radical political ideas and taught literature for factory workers. Her contacts with the nihilistic anarchist Sergei Nechayev led to her arrest in 1869. After Sassulitsch was released in 1873, she went to Kiev , where she joined the revolutionary group of Kiev rebels . She supported the thoughts of the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin . Sassulitsch became a respected leader in this movement.

The Trepov incident

In July 1877, a political prisoner, Archip Petrovich Bogolyubov, refused to take off his headgear in the presence of the general and city governor of Saint Petersburg Fyodor Trepov , who had gained prominence primarily for his suppression of the Polish November uprising in 1830 and the January uprising in 1863. As punishment was Bogoljubow the flogging subjected; an incident that angered not only revolutionaries, but also the intelligentsia sympathizing with them. A group of six revolutionaries then decided to kill Trepov. Sassulitsch, who acted single-handedly, got ahead of them. In order to avenge the mistreatment Bogolyubov suffered in the Petersburg prison, the student Sassulitsch shot Trepov with a revolver on January 24, 1878 while she was petitioning him, and seriously wounded him. In a widely acclaimed trial, she was nevertheless acquitted on April 11th by the jury who was inclined to her. This showed the efficiency of the legal reform carried out by Tsar Alexander II , it proved that a court could pass judgments against authorities. Sassulitsch then fled to Switzerland before she could be arrested again. She became a heroine of the Narodniki and radical sections of Russian society. Despite this event, she was an opponent of the terror campaign that would eventually lead to the murder of Alexander II in 1881.

Turning to Marxism

First edition of Iskra

After she fled to Switzerland, she began to deal with Marxism . In 1883 she founded the first Marxist group within the Russian labor movement , Labor Liberation (Освобождение труда) together with Georgi Plekhanov and Pawel Axelrod in exile in Switzerland ( Geneva ). This group was of great importance in the dispute with the Narodniki over the establishment and supremacy in a future proletarian revolutionary party. Sassulitsch translated some of Karl Marx's works into Russian, such as the Communist Manifesto in 1882 , and also maintained an exchange of letters with him, which later became known because of its content, in particular the so-called Sassulitsch letter . She also had correspondence with Friedrich Engels . As a representative of the Russian social democracy Sassulitsch took part in the International Socialist Congress 1900 in Paris of the Second International .

Mensheviks and rejection of the October Revolution

In the middle of 1900, people from the “radical wings” of a “new generation” of Russian Marxists, such as Julius Martow , Lenin and Alexander Potressov , met with Sassulitsch, Plekhanov and Axelrod in Switzerland. Despite disagreements between the two groups, between 1900 and 1903 they jointly formed the editorial staff of Iskra (Искра; Der Funke) , a revolutionary Marxist magazine of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party ( SDLP ) . They were against the more moderate Russian Marxists (the economists ) as well as against ex-Marxists like Peter Struve and Sergei Bulgakov . In 1903 the editors of Iskra successfully called a second, pro-Iskra-oriented congress of the RSDLP in Brussels and London. Surprisingly, the Iskrab supporters split into two factions during the congress: Lenin's Bolsheviks and Martov's Mensheviks. Sassulitsch supported the Mensheviks. She was also familiar with Leon Trotsky .

In 1905 she returned to Russia , but her interest in revolutionary politics waned. She supported Russia's war successes in World War I and was an opponent of the October Revolution in 1917. She died in Saint Petersburg in 1919 and was buried in the Volkovo Cemetery there.

literature

  • Monika Bankowski-Züllig: Sassulitsch, Wera Ivanovna. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  • Jay Bergman: Vera Zasulich: A Biography . Stanford University Press, 1983; ISBN 0-8047-1156-9 .
  • Barbara A. Engel and Clifford N. Rosenthal (Eds.): Five Sisters: Women Against the Tsar . 1975, new edition 1992, ISBN 0-415-90715-2 , pp. 61-62.
  • Wolfgang Geierhos: Vera Zasulic and the Russian revolutionary movement . (Studies in Modern History, Volume 19). R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich Vienna 1977; ISBN 3-486-44431-X .
  • Frank Ortmann, revolutionaries in exile. The "Foreign Union of Russian Social Democrats" between authoritarian leadership and political impotence (1888–1903) . (Sources and studies on the history of Eastern Europe, Volume 39). Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1994; ISBN 3-515-06340-4 .
  • Stephan Rindlisbacher: Living for the cause. Vera Figner, Vera Zasulic and the radical milieu in the late tsarist empire (= research on Eastern European history 80). Wiesbaden 2014; ISBN 978-3-447-10098-4 .

Web links

Commons : Wera Sassulitsch  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: From a Russian Courtroom (Journal Article, 1878)  - Sources and Full Texts
Correspondence with Marx

Individual evidence

  1. ^ International Socialist Workers' Congress : International Socialist Congress in Paris. September 23-27, 1900 . In: Karl Dietz Verlag (Ed.): Congress protocols of the Second International . Unchanged reprint of the 1975 edition by Detlev Auvermann Verlag Edition. 1 Paris 1889 - Amsterdam 1904. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin, ISBN 3-920967-09-7 , pp. 3 .
personal data
SURNAME Sassulitsch, Vera Ivanovna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Засулич, Вера Ивановна (Russian); Zasulič, Vera Ivanovna (scientific transliteration)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian author and revolutionary
DATE OF BIRTH August 8, 1849
PLACE OF BIRTH Mikhailovka, Smolensk Governorate
DATE OF DEATH May 8, 1919
Place of death Petrograd