Maria Spiridonova

Early life

Spiridonova was born in the city of Tambov, located approximately south-southeast of Moscow. Her father, a bank official, was a member of the non-hereditary minor nobility of the Russian Empire. She attended the local gymnasium until 1902, when the death of her father, and a first attack of tuberculosis, caused her to drop out. She studied dentistry in Moscow for a short while, before returning to Tambov to work as a clerk for the local Assembly of the Nobility. She soon became involved in political activism and was arrested during the student demonstrations of March 1905. In September 1905 she applied for training as a feldsher (a health care professional similar to a physician assistant) but was rejected due to her political record. Instead, she joined the Party of Socialists–Revolutionaries (SRs) and became a full-time activist. During this time, she formed a relationship with Vladimir Vol'skii, a local SR leader.

Unable to escape, Spiridonova tried to shoot herself but was restrained, brutally beaten and arrested by Luzhenovsky's Cossack guard. She was then transferred to the local police station where she was stripped naked, searched and mocked by her captors. She was interrogated and tortured for more than half a day by two government officials, P.F. Avramov, head of the Cossack guard, and T.S. Zhdanov, a local police officer. That night she was transported to Tambov by train. During the journey, Avramov subjected her to further ill-treatment and sexual harassment, possibly rape. It received mainly local attention until the following month, when Spiridonova succeeded in leaking a very well-thought-out letter to the press. It described the treatment she had received, including threats of gang rape directed at her, and hinted that Avramov might have raped her on the train to Tambov. The letter was published on 12 February 1906 by Rus, a liberal newspaper in Saint Petersburg, and soon taken up by others, becoming an immediate sensation with their readers.

Progressive public opinion in Russia traditionally tended to consider terrorism with a certain degree of understanding, as it was regarded as a natural reaction against autocracy. For example, in 1878, a jury caused a sensation by acquitting populist terrorist Vera Zasulich despite her pleading guilty to causing serious injury to Colonel Fyodor Trepov during a failed attempt to assassinate him. In the case of Spiridonova, many were outraged by the appalling cruelty to a prisoner, especially as she was an attractive young woman. Liberal circles throughout Russia condemned the Tambov authorities.

Rus sent reporter Vsevolod A. Vladimirov to Tambov. He produced seven sensational articles that appeared in March 1906. These articles exaggerated Spiridonova's mistreatment and injuries, and more explicitly touched on her alleged rape. Vladimirov also glossed over Spiridonova's political convictions, portraying her as a genteel, high-principled victim of the tyrannical Russian system. This annoyed the Tambov SRs almost as much as it did the conservatives and the authorities. Spiridonova herself repudiated Vladimirov's account.

The government released its report on the case on 8 April. The report acknowledged that Spiridonova had been beaten by the Cossacks at the time of her arrest and that Avramov had verbally abused her on the train, but denied all the more lurid accusations. This was denounced by some as a whitewash. the train was met at every stop by growing crowds of sympathizers. Each time, although she was suffering from a serious recurrence of tuberculosis, Spiridonova would get up from her couch, greet the audience with smiles and patiently answer their numerous questions, expounding the SR political program.

Spiridonova and her comrades were first detained in the Akatuy penal colony. The prison regime of the colony was exceedingly mild, more similar to a sort of internal exile or political confinement than to a real prison. In 1907, however, they were moved to the new female colony that had been established at Maltsev, another centre of the Nerchinsk katorga. Here the rules of detention were somewhat stricter, though not so extreme as in "the regimes of punishment and mistreatment that 'politicals' endured elsewhere" (including beatings, floggings and isolation in dark, freezing cells). "For the Maltsev women there was no forced labor, only enforced isolation from the outside world in which each day was like the next and the one that had gone before". thumb The Shesterka ("Six") in exile at Akatuy (Spiridonova is the first on the left)In 1908, a young Ukrainian maximalist, Irina Konstantinovna Kakhovskaya, arrived at Maltsev. She had been convicted of involvement in a terrorist group. Kakhovskaya was a descendant of Decembrist revolutionary Pyotr Grigoryevich Kakhovsky, who had been hanged in 1826 for assassinating Saint Petersburg Governor Mikhail Andreyevich Miloradovich and another Grenadier officer. She formed a special friendship with Spiridonova and Izmailovich, a bond of political and personal sisterhood that would last throughout their lives.

In April 1911, 28 female inmates, including Spiridonova, were transferred back to Akatuy where the conditions of their detention were further worsened and they were forced to work in a bookbindery. The constant physical work, however, was eventually welcomed by the detainees and made their prison life more tolerable.

Left SR leader Accommodation with the revolution After the February Revolution of 1917, Spiridinova was released from incarceration at the women's Akatuy prison by a general amnesty covering imprisoned political criminals. She was also involved in work helping to establish soviets amongst the peasantry.

Following the October Revolution, Spiridonova cast her lot with the Left SRs, who had split from their old party and sided with their erstwhile rivals of the Bolshevik Party. Consequently, for some months she strived primarily to safeguard the alliance with the Bolsheviks, even at the cost of being temporarily sidelined within her own party.

On 18 January 1918, at the inaugural meeting of the Constituent Assembly, both the Left SRs and the Bolsheviks proposed Spiridonova as their candidate for the chair, but centrist SR Víktor Mikhailovich Chernov was elected instead. The Assembly was dissolved for good after the end of that same first session.

Revolt against Bolshevism

The honeymoon between Spiridonova (and the Left SRs generally) and the Bolsheviks was short-lived. Late in the spring of 1918, Bolshevik military detachments were formed to conduct forced requisitions of grain in a desperate effort to stave off famine in the cities amidst economic collapse. Unity between Left SRs and Bolsheviks turned to rivalry over the future of the revolution and a competition ensued for control of the 5th Congress of Soviets, scheduled to begin in Moscow on 4 July 1918.

On 6 July 1918, two members of the Left SR Party, Iakov Bliumkin and , assassinated German ambassador Wilhelm Mirbach.

The confrontation with the government, however, did not evolve as the Left SR leadership expected. At the time of Mirbach's assassination, the Left SRs enjoyed undoubted military superiority in the Moscow area and within the Cheka, but they "showed no inclination to press home" this advantage: they appeared "much less interested in seizing power themselves than they were in calling for a popular uprising to force the Bolsheviks to change their policies. The Left SRs had no idea where this uprising would end up: they were happy to leave that to the 'revolutionary creativity of the masses'." For his part, Lenin, far from fueling a new conflagration with Germany, used Mirbach's assassination as a pretext for the suppression of the Left SR organization, the terrorist attack being immediately portrayed as a straightforward uprising against Soviet power. Lenin promptly summoned Jukums Vācietis, the commander of the Latvian Riflemen, now headquartered in the outskirts of the capital, and secured their support; albeit not immediately available, they were the only military forces capable of effectively opposing the units controlled by the Left Social Revolutionaries. While the latter continued "to rise up" without even moving from their barracks, Spiridonova and her comrades hastened to the Bolshoi Theatre, where she delivered an inflamed speech against the Bolshevik regime before the ongoing Congress of Soviets, which they evidently regarded as the supreme authority in the Soviet republic. In the meantime, the theatre security forces proceeded to seal the building and detain all the Left SR delegates therein. Later, the Bolsheviks recaptured the Cheka headquarters at the Lubyanka and overcame the Cheka Combat Detachment commanded by Left SR Dmitry Popov, the unit that had taken over the Pokrovsky barracks and arrested Felix Dzerzhinsky when he had gone there to arrest Mirbach's assassins. Thus ended the Left SR uprising, and historian Orlando Figes notes that "it was not a coup d'état but—not unlike the Bolsheviks' own July uprising of 1917—a suicidal act of public protest to galvanize 'the masses' against the regime. At no point did the Left SRs ever really think of taking power. They were only 'playing at revolution'."

Spiridonova and many other Left SR leaders were imprisoned in Moscow, her Peasant Section of the VTsIK was dissolved,

After she was kept in jail for several months, it was announced that Spiridonova was to be tried on 1 December 1918. To undercut the possibility of a potentially volatile situation developing, a secret trial was conducted on 27 November instead. Despite her bitter refusal to compromise, Spiridonova remained separate from the party's ultra-left terrorist wing, focusing on the idea of revitalizing the system of Soviets in opposition to the rule of the Communist party by bureaucratic edict. This time, the Communist authorities proved somewhat more merciful than usual: given her extremely poor health, Spiridonova was initially put under house arrest. Alexandra Izmailovich was transferred from Butyrka prison and charged with nursing her, along with the party co-leader, Boris Kamkov, then possibly Spiridonova's romantic partner as well. Kamkov was with her at the moment of arrest and was permitted to stay beside her for the next four months. She was later transferred to a Cheka medical facility, then confined in a psychiatric prison. on 18 November 1921 under the condition that she cease all political activity. Spiridonova's active political life was at an end.

Persecution, death and legacy Despite her withdrawal from active politics, she was arrested again on 16 May 1923. At the time, large numbers of moderate socialist and liberal leaders were permitted or obliged to emigrate to the West (including the two Left Socialist-Revolutionaries to whom Spiridonova had been entrusted). Nevertheless, Spiridonova was charged with "having made preparations to flee abroad" and sentenced to three years of administrative exile, a sentence that was repeatedly extended. She spent the rest of the 1920s in Kaluga (1923–25), Samarkand (1925–28) and Tashkent (1928–30). In 1930, after Joseph Stalin's consolidation of power, Spiridonova was arrested once again. Charged with maintaining contacts abroad, she was sentenced to three more years of administrative exile (twice extended), this time in Ufa, capital of the Bashkir Republic. She lived with her former prison partner Izmailovich during the whole period of exile. Kakhovskaya also spent time with them as often and as long as she was permitted to. In the mid-1920s, Spiridonova had also married her fellow exilee , a Left SR leader of peasant origin and erstwhile Deputy People's Commissar for Agriculture.

In 1937, Spiridonova was arrested yet again, with several former party comrades including her husband, her teenaged stepson, her invalid father-in-law, Alexandra Izmailovich, Irina Kakhovskaya and the latter's aged aunt. The group was accused of plotting to create a united counter-revolutionary center and to assassinate Bashkir Communist leaders. Spiridonova underwent cruel interrogation in prison in Ufa and in Moscow for several months, without admitting any guilt, although a confession was extorted from her husband. In November 1937, she wrote a long letter to the 4th Section of the Main Directorate of State Security (GUGB) within the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) from her cell, protesting against the prison treatment inflicted on her, contesting the correctness of the judicial procedure and rejecting every single charge. The letter proclaimed that she fully supported the construction of socialism and acknowledged the Communist leadership. However, she concluded what was later called her "last testament" with a vibrant heart-felt plea against capital punishment, twice abolished in the aftermaths of the February and October Revolutions and twice re-established by subsequent governments despite vehement protests from the Left Social-Revolutionaries:

On 7 January 1938, she was eventually sentenced to 25 years in prison by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court. After a hunger strike, she was held in isolation at Oryol Prison. On 11 September 1941 (three months after the German invasion of the USSR), Spiridonova, Izmailovich, Mayorov and over 150 other political prisoners (among them Christian Rakovsky and Olga Kameneva) were executed by order of Stalin in the Medvedevsky Forest massacre.

Despite Kakhovskaya's efforts after the 1956 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, "not until 1990 were the 1941 charges against Spiridonova rescinded [...] Finally, in 1992, [she] was exonerated of the charges for which she had been imprisoned and exiled beginning in 1918, and was fully rehabilitated" by the Russian Federation. The exact burial place of the Medvedevsky Forest victims has never been found.

Spiridonova in Russian culture Some of Russia's major poets, such as Maksimilian Voloshin, dedicated their poems to Spiridonova during the First Revolution. Russian historian Yaroslav Leontiev believes that Boris Pasternak also immortalized Spiridonova (but already without being able to name her directly), in the first few lines of his poem "The Year 1905", published in 1926.