Sofia Perovskaya
| Sophia Perovskaya | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
13 September 1853 Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire |
| Died | 15 April 1881 (aged 27) Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire |
Sophia Lvovna Perovskaya (Russian: Со́фья Льво́вна Перо́вская; 13 September [O.S. 1 September] 1853 – 15 April [O.S. 3 April] 1881) was a Russian revolutionary and a member of the socialist revolutionary organization Narodnaya Volya. She helped orchestrate the successful assassination of Alexander II of Russia, for which she was executed by hanging.
Perovskaya was born in Saint Petersburg, into an aristocratic family who were the descendants by marriage of Elizabeth of Russia. Her father was the former military governor of Saint Petersburg, and her grandfather had been Minister of the Interior. She spent her early years in the Crimea, where her education was largely neglected, but where she began reading serious books on her own. After the family moved to Saint Petersburg, Perovskaya entered the Alarchinsky University for Women in 1869. Here she became friends with several girls who were interested in the radical movement. She left home at the age of sixteen over her father's objections to her new friends. In 1871–1872, together with these friends, she joined the Circle of Tchaikovsky. In 1872–1873 and 1874–1877, she worked in the provinces of Samara, Tver, and Simbirsk. During this period, she received diplomas as a teacher and a medical assistant.
A prominent fellow member of the Circle of Tchaikovsky, Peter Kropotkin, said the following of Perovskaya:
In her moral conceptions she was a "rigorist", but not in the least of the sermon-preaching type. Perovskaya was a "populist" to the very bottom of her heart, and at the same time a revolutionist, a fighter of the truest steel. She said to me once: "We have begun a great thing. Two generations perhaps, will succumb in the task, and yet it must be done."
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