Maria Spiridonova
| Maria Spiridonova | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
16 October 1884 Tambov, Russian Empire |
| Died | 11 September 1941 (aged 56) Oryol, Soviet Union |
Maria Alexandrovna Spiridonova (Russian: Мари́я Алекса́ндровна Спиридо́нова; 16 October 1884 – 11 September 1941) was a Russian socialist revolutionary. Her assassination of a police official in 1905 was the most famous terrorist act by a woman in Russia, and her subsequent abuse by police made her a celebrated martyr. Having spent 11 years in a Siberian prison, she was freed after the February Revolution of 1917 and returned as a heroine of the Revolution. She led the Left SRs into alliance with Lenin and the Bolsheviks, but was imprisoned for a time and incarcerated in a mental sanitarium after the Left SRs broke with the Bolsheviks in 1918.
Spiridonova was arrested by the secret police during the Great Purge of 1937 to 1939 and consigned to the forced labor camps of the Gulag, where she was summarily executed shortly after the outbreak of World War II late in the summer of 1941.
Maria Alexandrovna Spiridonova was born in the city of Tambov, located approximately 480 kilometres (300 mi) 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 her father's death and tuberculosis caused her to drop out in 1902. She then studied dentistry in Moscow for a short while. Returning to Tambov, she worked as a clerk for the local assembly. Soon she became involved in political activism; she was arrested during the student demonstrations of March 1905. In September 1905, she applied for training as a nurse, but was rejected for her political record. Instead she joined the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, and became a full-time activist. She also became the lover of Vladimir Volsky, a local SR leader.
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