The Defiant Life of Vera Figner Surviving the Russian Revolution [Hardcover]

This engaging biography tells the dramatic story of a Russian noblewoman turned revolutionary terrorist. Born in 1852 in the last years of serfdom, Vera Figner came of age as Imperial Russian society was being rocked by the massive upheaval that culminated in the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. At first a champion of populist causes and women's higher education, Figner later became a leader of the terrorist party the People's Will and was an accomplice in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Drawing on extensive archival research and careful reading of Figner's copious memoirs, Lynne Ann Hartnett reveals how Figner survived the Bolshevik revolution and Stalin's Great Purges and died a lionized revolutionary legend as the Nazis bore down on Moscow in 1942.

Hartnett is an able storyteller, and the chapters portraying Figners involvement in the Peoples Will, her prolonged ordeal in Schlisselburg, and her harrowing experiences during the 1917 revolution and Civil War make riveting reading. Scholars will benefit from this more expansive and thorough treatment of Figners astonishing career in Soviet Russia, when her youthful defiance had mellowed to carefully calibrated accommodation with and resistance to a regime that was in part her legacy.Although Figner was a famous and politically active figure throughout her life, historians have overlooked her part in the events of 1917 and after. Hartnetts biography is an excellent and comprehensive effort to correct this situation, but there is always the danger that once one book has been written about a prominent woman, no further works are published. . . . The greatest achievement of Hartnetts impressive work would be that it encourages further study of a woman who did not simply survive the Revolution, but lived it.The Defiant Life of Vera Figner is a valuable contribution to our understanding of an important Russian political figure and of broader political developments.

Lynne Ann Hartnett is Assistantl£.