Faina Stavskaya

Faina Efremovna Stavskaya ; ; 1890–1937) was a Belarusian revolutionary. Initially involved in the anarchist movement, she carried out propaganda throughout Belarus and attempted to assassinate the governor of Katerynoslav province. She was caught and imprisoned for several years, over time becoming attracted to the principles of revolutionary socialism. Upon her release during the Russian Revolution of 1917, she joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR) and worked for it in Crimea, Moscow and Ufa. She was charged in the Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries, but managed to avoid a prison sentence after she agreed to join the Communist Party. She worked in a number of official positions throughout the 1920s and 1930s, becoming the director of the State Public Historical Library of Russia. She was arrested and shot during the Great Purge of 1937.

Biography Early life and activism Faina Efremovna Stavskaya was born on 19 November 1890, in Antopal, in the Grodno Governorate of the Russian Empire. She was raised in a Belarusian Jewish family, which provided her with an education. The three lived together in a boarding house, which they shared with Lenin's brother Dmitry Ulyanov.

During the Great Purge, she was arrested on 30 April 1937 and charged with anti-Soviet agitation. On 13 July 1937, was found guilty by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union and sentenced to be shot. Her body was buried in Moscow's Donskoye Cemetery. On 23 April 1957, she was posthumously rehabilitated by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.