Vera Zasulich

Vera Ivanovna Zasulich (Russian: Ве́ра Ива́новна Засу́лич; 8 August [O.S. 27 July] 1849 – 8 May 1919) was a Russian Menshevik writer and revolutionary.

Zasulich was born in Mikhaylovka, in the Smolensk Governorate of the Russian Empire, as one of four daughters of an impoverished minor noble. When she was 3, her father died and her mother sent her to live with her wealthier relatives, the Mikulich family, in Byakolovo. After graduating from high school in 1866, she moved to Saint Petersburg, where she worked as a clerk. Soon she became involved in radical politics and taught literacy classes for factory workers. Her contacts with the Russian revolutionary leader Sergei Nechaev led to her arrest and imprisonment in 1869.

After Zasulich was released in 1873, she settled in Kiev, where she joined the Kievan Insurgents, a revolutionary group of Mikhail Bakunin's anarchist supporters, and became a respected leader of the movement. As her lifelong friend and fellow revolutionary Lev Deich wrote:

In July 1877, a political prisoner, Alexei Bogolyubov, refused to remove his cap in the presence of Colonel Fyodor Trepov, the governor of St. Petersburg famous for his suppression of the Polish rebellions in 1830 and 1863. In retaliation, Trepov ordered Bogolyubov to be flogged, which outraged not only revolutionaries but also sympathetic members of the intelligentsia. A group of six revolutionaries plotted to kill Trepov, but Zasulich was the first to act. She and her fellow social revolutionary, Maria (Masha) Kolenkina, were planning to shoot two government representatives: the prosecutor Vladislav Zhelekhovskii in the Trial of the 193 and another enemy of the populist movement. Following the Bogolyubov flogging, they decided that the second target should be Trepov. Waiting until after the verdict was announced at the Trial of 193, on 24 January 1878 they went for their respective targets. Kolenkina's attempt against Zhelekhovskii failed, but Zasulich used a British Bulldog revolver and shot and seriously wounded Trepov.

...
Wikipedia