Lydia Figner

Timofei Mikhailov

Lydia Figner was born in Kazan, Russia, 1853. Lydia wanted to go to university but this was not allowed in Russia at this time. In 1872, along with her older sister, Vera Figner, she decided to study medicine in Zurich. Vera told a friend: "In my opinion in order to be more useful one should know more, but where can you learn what you want to do? I think only the university is worth so much that a woman could sacrifice everything for it... But in Russia this way is closed to women. Therefore... I have decided to go to Zurich. We shall return to our country and organize life in a fine way... I shall organize a hospital and open a school or a handcraft institute... I shall stop at nothing because this whole plan is not the mere product of an idle fantasy but my whole flesh and blood, and my motivation will be the three needs or targets of my existence: economic independence, the formation of my intelligence, and usefulness to others."

While in Zurich she met a group of women who held radical political views. This included Sophia Bardina and Olga Liubatovich. The anarchist Peter Kropotkin met Figner and her friends during this period: "They lived as most students do, especially the women, that is on very little. Tea and bread, some milk and a thin slice of meat, amidst spirited discussions of the latest news from the socialist world and the last book read - that was their regular fate. Those who had more money than was needed for such a way of life donated it to the common cause ... As to dress, the most parsimonious economy reigned in that direction. Our girls in Zurich seemed defiantly to throw this question at the population there: can there be a simplicity of dress which does not become a girl if she is young, intelligent and full of energy?" Another observer, Franziska Tiburtius, provided a less complimentary picture of this group of radicals: The short-cut hair, the enormous blue spectacles, the short quite unadorned dress which resembled umbrella lining, the round glossy matelot, the cigarette, the dark and supercilious countenance all came to be considered as characteristic of the woman student."

The activities of these young women began to concern the Russian authorities. The Russian Government Herald published an article on 21st May, 1872, claiming: "Several Russian girls set off abroad to attend lectures at Zurich University. At first there were only a very few of them, but now there are more than a hundred women there... Largely because of this increase in Russian women students, the ring-leaders of the Russian emigration have chosen this town as a centre for revolutionary propaganda, and have done all in their power to enlist into their ranks these young women students. Under their influence, women have abandoned their studies for fruitless political agitation. Young Russians of both sexes have formed political parties of extreme shades... In the Russian Library they hold lectures of an exclusively revolutionary nature... It has become common practice for the girls to attend workers' meetings... Young and inexperienced minds are being led astray by political agitators, and set on the wrong course. And to cap it all, meetings and party struggles throw the girls into such confusion that they accept this fruitless and fraudulent propaganda as real life. Once drawn into politics the girls fall under the influence of the leaders of the emigration, and become compliant weapons in their hands. Some of them go from Zurich to Russia and back two or three times a year, carrying letters, instructions and proclamations and taking an active part in criminal propaganda. Others are led astray by communist theories about free love, and under pretext of fictitious marriages carry to the most extreme limits their rejection of the fundamental laws of morality and feminine virtue. The immoral conduct of Russian women has aroused the indignation of the local citizens against them, and landladies are even refusing to accept them as lodgers. Some of the girls have sunk so low as to practise that branch of obstetrics which is judged a criminal offence, and deserves the utter contempt of all honourable people."

Mikhail Bakunin meet this group of women when he visited Zurich. He urged them, to return to Russia and to carry out propaganda work. Vera Figner refused as she wanted to complete her degree but Lydia Figner, Sophia Bardina, Anna Toporkova, Berta Kaminskaya, Alexandra Khorzhevskaya, Evgenia Subbotina and Nadezhda Subbotina agreed and arrived in their homeland and found work in factories.

Cathy Porter, the author of Fathers and Daughters: Russian Women in Revolution (1976), points out: "Sophia Bardina and Berta Kaminskaya both got jobs in large textile factories where there was a large proportion of women workers - Sophia in the Lazareva factory, Berta in the Nosovye factory. Lydia Figner rented a small room in the city, where she lived under the passport of a soldier's wife and got a job in the large Gubner factory. Varvara Alexandrova, Marya Subbotina and Anna Toporkova all worked in factories in nearby Ivanovo-Voznesensk and lived in a communal flat leased by Anna Toporkova. On their first day at work they were greeted with the normal barrage of obscenities to which women workers were subjected. They were horrified by the demoralization and promiscuity of the workers, and tried at first to make contact with the women workers, who worked and lived apart from the men. But the women they found interested only in clothes, their sexual adventures and malicious gossip."

In January 1875 the women began distributing the newspaper, Rabotnik (The Worker), that was being produced by Bakunin in Berne. It was the first Russian-language paper to focus serious attention on the urban proletariat. However, it had little impact on the largely illiterate workers. However, the Russian secret police was informed and in August 1875, Figner, Sophia Bardina and Anna Toporkova, were arrested. Soon afterwards, Olga Liubatovich and Gesia Gelfman were taken into custody.

The trial took place on 14th March, 1877. Sophia Bardina stated in court: "All of these accusations against us would be terrible if they were true. But they are based on misunderstanding. I do not reject property if it is acquired by one's own labour. Every person has a right to his own labour and its products. So why do our masters give us only one-third of our labour-value? As for the family, I also do not understand. Is it the social system that is destroying it, by forcing a woman to abandon her family and work for wretched wages in a factory, where she and her children are inevitably corrupted; a system that drives a woman into prostitution through sheer poverty, and which actually sanctions this prostitution as something legitimate and necessary in any well-ordered society? Or is it we who are undermining it, we, who are attempting to eliminate this poverty, which is the chief cause of all our social ills, including the destruction of the family? As to religion, I have always been true to the principles established by the founder of Christianity, and have never propagandized against these principles. I am equally innocent of attempting to undermine the State. I do not believe any one individual is capable of destroying the State by force. If it is to be destroyed, it will be because it bears within it the embryo of its own destruction, holding as it does the people in political, economic and intellectual bondage."

Sophia Bardina and Olga Liubatovich were sentenced to nine years hard labour in Siberia, whereas Lydia Figner and Gesia Gelfman got five years's hard labour in factories. After her release she appears to have ended her interest in politics.

Primary Sources

(1) Russian Government Herald (21st May, 1872)

Several Russian girls set off abroad to attend lectures at Zurich University. At first there were only a very few of them, but now there are more than a hundred women there... Largely because of this increase in Russian women students, the ringleaders of the Russian emigration have chosen this town as a centre for revolutionary propaganda, and have done all in their power to enlist into their ranks these young women students. Under their influence, women have abandoned their studies for fruitless political agitation. Young Russians of both sexes have formed political parties of extreme shades... In the Russian Library they hold lectures of an exclusively revolutionary nature... It has become common practice for the girls to attend workers' meetings... Young and inexperienced minds are being led astray by political agitators, and set on the wrong course. And to cap it all, meetings and party struggles throw the girls into such confusion that they accept this fruitless and fraudulent propaganda as real life. Once drawn into politics the girls fall under the influence of the leaders of the emigration, and become compliant weapons in their hands. Some of them go from Zurich to Russia and back two or three times a year, carrying letters, instructions and proclamations and taking an active part in criminal propaganda. Others are led astray by communist theories about free love, and under pretext of fictitious marriages carry to the most extreme limits their rejection of the fundamental laws of morality and feminine virtue. The immoral conduct of Russian women has aroused the indignation of the local citizens against them, and landladies are even refusing to accept them as lodgers. Some of the girls have sunk so low as to practise that branch of obstetrics which is judged a criminal offence, and deserves the utter contempt of all honourable people.

(2) Cathy Porter, Fathers and Daughters: Russian Women in Revolution (1976)

Sophia Bardina, Lydia Figner, Berta Kaminskaya, Alexandra Khorzhevskaya and the Subbotina sisters, all equipped with false passports, embarked on their first political work. After three years in Zurich, the insecure adolescents who had been so avid for knowledge and liberty were now self-confident women, mature in matters of political theory. But they were totally unprepared for the realities of Russian factory life. Vera Figner, who was well aware of her physical limitations, realized that political ardour would never compensate for physical weakness. And even the women who did not succumb to the backbreaking labour, the infested beds, the overcrowded dormitories and the miserable diet were frustrated that, after fifteen hours of soul-destroying work, the exhausted workers generally had no energy to get angry about their working conditions.

Sophia Bardina and Berta Kaminskaya both got jobs in large textile factories where there was a large proportion of women workers - Sophia in the Lazareva factory, Berta in the Nosovye factory. Lydia Figner rented a small room in the city, where she lived under the passport of a soldier's wife and got a job in the large Gubner factory. Varvara Alexandrova, Marya Subbotina and Anna Toporkova all worked in factories in nearby Ivanovo-Voznesensk and lived in a communal flat leased by Anna Toporkova. On their first day at work they were greeted with the normal barrage of obscenities to which women workers were subjected. They were horrified by the demoralization and promiscuity of the workers, and tried at first to make contact with the women workers, who worked and lived apart from the men. But the women they found interested only in clothes, their sexual adventures and malicious gossip. It was obviously not long before some of the more curious workers began to question them about their presence there, with their undeniably refined ways and speech. They explained, to the workers' satisfaction, that they were Old Believers of peasant origin, who had just left their villages. Gradually they began to gain the workers' trust and respect.

Sophia Bardina was soon on friendly terms with a woman worker who confided her family problems to her, and she ended up going to the woman's home, taking with her populist fables and the latest periodicals. Her humour and persuasive narrative gifts began to win her friends, who dogged her heels, begging her for the "latest news". She began going with them to bars where they could show off their new literate friend, who was now urging them that the only way of improving their work conditions was to take immediate strike action. A small study group, the first of its kind, was formed within the factory, and a nucleus of literate workers was provided with literature to read and distribute among their friends. There was nothing very subversive about the literature - stories by Tolstoy and Sleptsov, the odd periodical.

The only openly revolutionary literature distributed among the workers was Bakunin's paper Rabotnik (The Worker), published in Berne and smuggled into the country by various "young Bakunists". It first appeared in January 1875 and was the first Russian-language paper to focus serious attention on the urban proletariat. Although it was widely distributed in the factories, its actual propaganda value was slight, making as it did unrealistic political assumptions about a largely illiterate and totally unorganized proletariat. Its vaguely idealistic collectivist spirit did not inspire immediate sympathy among the workers, and the paper soon lapsed into the sloganizing vocabulary of international revolution. The personality and intellectual power of the Moscow women far outweighed the influence of the periodicals they were distributing, and this was both their strength and their weakness. Workers were risking their jobs by inviting the women into their dormitories, where they listened reverently as the propagandists talked about the French Revolution and the International Labour Movement.

(3) Sophia Bardina, speech in court (14th March, 1977)

All of these accusations against us would be terrible if they were true. But they are based on misunderstanding. I do not reject property if it is acquired by one's own labour. Every person has a right to his own labour and its products. So why do our masters give us only one-third of our labour-value? As for the family, I also do not understand. Is it the social system that is destroying it, by forcing a woman to abandon her family and work for wretched wages in a factory, where she and her children are inevitably corrupted; a system that drives a woman into prostitution through sheer poverty, and which actually sanctions this prostitution as something legitimate and necessary in any well-ordered society? Or is it we who are undermining it, we, who are attempting to eliminate this poverty, which is the chief cause of all our social ills, including the destruction of the family?

As to religion, I have always been true to the principles established by the founder of Christianity, and have never propagandized against these principles. I am equally innocent of attempting to undermine the State. I do not believe any one individual is capable of destroying the State by force. If it is to be destroyed, it will be because it bears within it the embryo of its own destruction, holding as it does the people in political, economic and intellectual bondage. I am accused of inciting riot, but I believe that revolution can only be the result of a whole series of historical events, and not instigated by any one group of individuals.

We do not stand for anarchy if this means chaos and dictatorship; what we want is a social system that would establish harmony and order in all social relations. And if to attain this we must have an armed revolution, this is because in the present circumstances this is unfortunately an unavoidable evil. Whatever my fate, lords of the bench, I do not beg for mercy and I do not desire it. Persecute us if you want to, but I am deeply convinced that this vast movement which has already been existing for so many years cannot be checked by any repressive measures. It can be suppressed briefly, but then it will renew itself with even greater force, as always happens after such a reaction. Persecute us for at the moment, gentlemen, you have the material power on your side. But we have the moral power, the power of historical progress, of ideals - and ideals, I fear, you will not kill with your bayonets.