Blackwell Reference Online

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Vera Ivanovna Zasulich is remembered primarily for her 1878 attempt to assassinate the governor of St. Petersburg, General Fyodor F. Trepov, and for her subsequent trial. Zasulich went on to become an important figure in the Russian exile community, where she joined efforts to foment revolution from abroad. Although Zasulich's writings never attained the profound influence of her contemporaries Vladimir Lenin , Georgi Plekhanov , or Julius Martov , she was an exceptionally skilled propagandist and organizer and a crucial figure in the formation of Russian Marxism . Zasulich was born into a family of impoverished nobles on July 27, 1849 in the Gzhatsk district of Smolensk Province. Her father died when Vera Ivanovna was three years old, and her mother, unable to support the family, sent Vera and her two sisters to live with affluent relatives in nearby Biakolovo. After finishing high school in the late 1860s, Zasulich moved to St. Petersburg, where she worked as a clerk and became actively involved in the Russian populist movement, beginning a life in hiding, prison, and exile. She taught evening literacy classes for workers, distributed propaganda, and met with Sergey Nechayev , which resulted in her first imprisonment in 1869. Later, in Kiev, she worked for the anarchist supporters of Mikhail Bakunin . In 1878, in revenge for the beating of a political prisoner, Zasulich ... log in or subscribe to read full text