Olga Liubatovich

Olga Liubatovich, the daughter of a political refugee from Montenegro, was born in 1854. Liubatovich wanted to train as a doctor but this was impossible in Russia so in 1871 she went to Zurich to study medicine. While there she met other Russian women who held radical opinions about politics. This included Sophia Bardina, Vera Figner, Lydia Figner and Anna Toporkova.

Franziska Tiburtius met her during this period: "Behind the table was an enigmatic being whose biological character was not at first clear to me. A roundish boyish face, short-cut hair parted askew, enormous blue glasses, a quite youthful tender expression, a coarse jacket, a cigarette burning in its mouth - everything about it was boyish, and yet there was something which belied the impression it desired to create. I looked stealthily under the table and discovered a bright faded cotton skirt. This being took no notice of my presence and remained absorbed in a large book, every now and then rolling a cigarette... It appeared that this phenomenon was a seventeen-year-old Russian girl from Moscow, Miss Liubatovich, which fact she confirmed with a brief nod."

The anarchist Peter Kropotkin also met Liubatovich and her friends: "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?"

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 Liubatovich, 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."

Liubatovich joined what became known as the Pan-Russian Social Revolutionary group. She later recalled: "Our program reflected in embryo the course of the revolutionary movement in the seventies: from peaceful propaganda to armed resistance and disorganization of the government by means of terror. Many people subsequently told me that the solidarity we had achieved served as a model for the revolutionary organizations that came after us, particularly Land and Liberty. Our group did not produce a single traitor, thanks to the principle on which I was based: the complete freedom and equality of all its members."

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, Sophia Bardina, Lydia Figner and Anna Toporkova, were arrested. Soon afterwards, 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."

Liubatovich and Sophia Bardina were sentenced to nine years hard labour in Siberia, whereas Gesia Gelfman and Lydia Figner got five years's hard labour in factories. Bardina committed suicide but Liubatovich survived this experience. In Tobolsk she became popular among the local villagers. After a year or so she was allowed to stand in for the local doctor, who was a notorious drunkard. She was so successful she became known as the "miracle worker".

In 1876 Liubatovich managed to escape and went into hiding in St. Petersburg. She joined the recently formed Land and Liberty secret society. Most of the group shared Bakunin's anarchist views and demanded that Russia's land should be handed over to the peasants and the State should be destroyed. The historian, Adam Bruno Ulam, has argued: "This Party, which commemorated in its name the revolutionary grouping of the early sixties, was soon split up by quarrels about its attitude toward terror. The professed aim, the continued agitation among the peasants, grew more and more fruitless."

In October, 1879, the Land and Liberty split into two factions. The majority of members, who favoured a policy of terrorism, established the People's Will (Narodnaya Volya). Others, such as George Plekhanov formed Black Repartition, a group that rejected terrorism and supported a socialist propaganda campaign among workers and peasants. Elizabeth Kovalskaia was one of those who rejected the ideas of the People's Will: "Firmly convinced that only the people themselves could carry out a socialist revolution and that terror directed at the centre of the state (such as the People's Will advocated) would bring - at best - only a wishy-washy constitution which would in turn strengthen the Russian bourgeoisie, I joined Black Repartition, which had retained the old Land and Liberty program.

Liubatovich, Vera Figner, Anna Korba, Andrei Zhelyabov, Nikolai Morozov, Timofei Mikhailov, Lev Tikhomirov, Mikhail Frolenko, Grigory Isaev, Sophia Perovskaya, Nikolai Sablin, Ignatei Grinevitski, Nikolai Kibalchich, Nikolai Rysakov, Gesia Gelfman, Anna Yakimova, Sergei Kravchinskii, Tatiana Lebedeva and Alexander Kviatkovsky all joined the People's Will. Figner later recalled: "We divided up the printing plant and the funds - which were in fact mostly in the form of mere promises and hopes... And as our primary aim was to substitute the will of the people for the will of one individual, we chose the name Narodnaya Volya for the new Party."

Michael Burleigh, the author of Blood & Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism (2008), has argued that the main influence on this small group was Sergi Nechayev: "The terrorist nucleus of Land and Freedom had already adopted many of Nechayev's dubious practices, including bank robberies and murdering informers. People's Will also borrowed his tactic of suggesting to the credulous that it was the tip of a much larger revolutionary organisation - the Russian Social Revolutionary Party - which in reality was non-existent. There was an imposing-sounding Executive Committee all right, but this was coterminous with the entire membership of People's Will... In fact, People's Will never had more than thirty or forty members, who would then recruit agents for specific tasks or to establish affiliate cells within sections of society deemed to have revolutionary potential."

Soon afterwards the People's Will decided to assassinate Alexander II. A directive committee was formed consisting of Andrei Zhelyabov, Timofei Mikhailov, Lev Tikhomirov, Mikhail Frolenko, Vera Figner, Sophia Perovskaya and Anna Yakimova. Zhelyabov was considered the leader of the group. However, Figner considered him to be overbearing and lacking in depth: "He had not suffered enough. For him all was hope and light." Zhelyabov had a magnetic personality and had a reputation for exerting a strong influence over women.

Zhelyabov and Perovskaya attempted to use nitroglycerine to destroy the Tsar train. However, the terrorist miscalculated and it destroyed another train instead. An attempt the blow up the Kamenny Bridge in St. Petersburg as the Tsar was passing over it was also unsuccessful. Figner blamed Zhelyabov for these failures but others in the group felt he had been unlucky rather than incompetent.

In 1880 there was strong disagreement in People's Will about the purposes of terrorism. One group that included Liubatovich and her husband, Nikolai Morozov , argued that the main objective was to force the government to grant democratic rights to the people of Russia. However, another faction, led by Lev Tikhomirov, who had been deeply influenced by the ideas of Sergi Nechayev, believed that it was possible for a small group of revolutionaries to gain control and then hand over its powers to the people.

Liubatovich later argued: "During the debates, the question of Jacobinism - seizing power and ruling from above, by decree - was raised. As I saw it, the Jacobin tinge that Tikhomirov gave to his program for the Executive Committee gave to his program for the Executive Committee threatened the party and the entire revolutionary movement with moral death; it was a kind of rebirth of Nechaevism, which had long since lost moral credit in the revolutionary world. It was my belief that the revolutionary idea could be a life-giving force only when it was the antithesis of all coercion - social, state, and even personal coercion, tsarist and Jacobin alike. Of course, it was possible for a narrow group of ambitious men to replace one form of coercion or authority by another. But neither the people nor educated society would follow them consciously, and only a conscious movement can impart new principles to public life."

Morozov agreed with Liubatovich: "At this point, Morozov announced that he considered himself free of any obligation to defend a program like Tikhomirov's in public. I too, declared that it was against my nature to act on the basis of compulsion; that once the Executive Committee had taken on a task - the seizure of state power - that violated my basic principles, and once it had recourse in its organizational practice to autocratic methods fraught with mutual distrust, then I, too, reclaimed my freedom of action."

In the summer of 1880 Liubatovich and Morozov left the People's Will and went to live in Geneva. While in exile Morozov wrote The Terrorist Struggle, a pamphlet that explained his views on how to achieve a democratic society in Russia. Based on ideas developed with Liubatovich, Morozov advocated the creation of a large number of small, independent terrorist groups. He argued that this approach would make it more difficult for the police to apprehend the terrorists. It would also help to prevent a small group of leaders gaining dictatorial powers after the overthrow of the Tsar.

Nikolai Morozov returned to Russia in order to distribute the pamphlet. He was soon arrested and imprisoned in Suvalki. Liubatovich, who had recently given birth to their child, decided to try and rescue him. She later wrote: "By early morning, I was at Kravchinsky's. Sergei was remarkably thoughtful: he had already obtained a crib for my little girl and set it up in a clean, light room. He left me alone with the child. For a long time I stood like a statue in the middle of the room, the tired baby sleeping in my arms. Her face, pink from sleep, was peaceful and filled with the beauty of childhood. When I finally decided to lower her into the bed, she opened her eyes - large, serious, peaceful, still enveloped in sleep. I couldn't bear her gaze. Not daring to kiss her lest I wake her up. I quietly walked out of the room. I thought I'd be back; I didn't know, didn't want to believe that I was seeing my little girl for the last time. My heart was numb with grief."

Liubatovich attempts ended in failure and she was herself arrested and sent to Siberia in November, 1882. She remained in captivity until the political amnesty that followed the 1905 Revolution. After her return to St. Petersburg she wrote her memoirs.

Olga Liubatovich died in 1917.

Primary Sources

(1) Olga Liubatovich first met Sergei Kravchinskii in 1876.

There were a number of people in the room by the time Kravchinskii walked in, but I felt my attention shift involuntarily to his strong, manly figure and distinctive face. He carried a top hat and was dressed like a gentleman; his Napoleonic goatee made him look like a foreigner. Although several other women were present, he walked directly toward me and extended his hand in a free, comradely gesture.

He was older than me and had more experience among the people; I regarded him as a senior comrade. Although I was extremely shy with people in my youth, we somehow struck up a sincere, unconstrained conversation; and as we talked, I glanced freely at his open, bold face, a face in which ugly, irregular features and broken lines became beautiful. We became friends immediately.

(2) In the book, Knowledge and Revolution: the Russian Colony in Zurich, Franziska Tiburtius described meeting Olga Liubatovich for the first time.

Olga Liubatovich had a roundish, boyish face, short-hair, parted askew, enormous blue glasses, a quite youthful, tender-coloured face, a course jacket, a burning cigarette in her mouth - everything about it was boylike, and yet there was something which belied this desired impression. She took no notice at all of my presence and remained absorbed in a large book, every now and then rolling a cigarette which was finished in a few droughts.

(3) In 1875 Olga Liubatovich joined the Pan-Russian Social Revolutionary group.

Our program reflected in embryo the course of the revolutionary movement in the seventies: from peaceful propaganda to armed resistance and disorganization of the government by means of terror. Many people subsequently told me that the solidarity we had achieved served as a model for the revolutionary organizations that came after us, particularly Land and Liberty. Our group did not produce a single traitor, thanks to the principle on which I was based: the complete freedom and equality of all its members.

(4) When the Land and Liberty movement split in October, 1879, Olga Liubatovich joined the People's Will group.

Stefanovich became the head of the Black Repartition, and his friends Vera Zasulich and Lev Deich joined him. But even ardent populists like Vera Figner, who had been working in one of the countryfolk settlements in the provinces, and Sophia Perovskaia joined the People's Will, the group that had taken up arms to defend the people and their apostles.

Black Repartition was stillborn; it left no visible traces of its work among the people at the end of 1879 and the beginning of 1880, because no such activity was possible on a broad scale. After a series of failures, Stefanovich, Deich, Plekhanov, and Zasulich returned abroad.

As for me, naturally I joined the People's Will. The Executive Committee of the People's Will soon began to chart its own course. Its initial plan had been to carry out a number of actions against the governor-generals, but this decision was called into question at one open-air meeting in Lesnoi: shouldn't we concentrate all our forces against the Tsar instead, it was asked. We resolved that this should indeed be the goal of the Executive Committee. The implementation of that decision engaged the People's Will right up to March 1, 1881.

(5) Olga Liubatovich left the People's Will over the issue of Jacobinism in 1880.

During the debates, the question of Jacobinism - seizing power and ruling from above, by decree - was raised. As I saw it, the Jacobin tinge that Tikhomirov gave to his program for the Executive Committee gave to his program for the Executive Committee threatened the party and the entire revolutionary movement with moral death; it was a kind of rebirth of Nechaevism, which had long since lost moral credit in the revolutionary world. It was my belief that the revolutionary idea could be a life-giving force only when it was the antithesis of all coercion - social, state, and even personal coercion, tsarist and Jacobin alike. Of course, it was possible for a narrow group of ambitious men to replace one form of coercion or authority by another. But neither the people nor educated society would follow them consciously, and only a conscious movement can impart new principles to public life.

At this point, Morozov announced that he considered himself free of any obligation to defend a program like Tikhomirov's in public. I too, declared that it was against my nature to act on the basis of compulsion; that once the Executive Committee had taken on a task - the seizure of state power - that violated my basic principles, and once it had recourse in its organizational practice to autocratic methods fraught with mutual distrust, then I, too, reclaimed my freedom of action.

(6) Olga Liubatovich was living in St. Petersburg when she heard of the assassination of Alexander II.

One morning I awoke to an unusual commotion in the streets. On every corner, small groups of people were standing around talking about something, shaking their heads. Obviously something important had happened - but what? I went outside. Couriers were tearing madly through the streets. I thought back to the previous evening, March 1, when carriages had been hurrying to the governor's house, which was lit up as for a ball, although there was no sign of a large gathering. Judging from the rumours that were now circulating among the crowd - the sovereign had been killed. Toward noon, the notice of Alexander II's death and Alexander III's accession to the throne appeared, and people started gathering in synagogues and churches to take the oath of allegiance.

(7) After the arrest of Nikolai Morozov in 1881, Olga Liubatovich returned to Russia to try and help him escape from prison. This meant that she had to leave her young baby behind with friends. The baby died of meningitis when it was six months old.

By early morning, I was at Kravchinskii's. Sergei was remarkably thoughtful: he had already obtained a crib for my little girl and set it up in a clean, light room. He left me alone with the child. For a long time I stood like a statue in the middle of the room, the tired baby sleeping in my arms. Her face, pink from sleep, was peaceful and filled with the beauty of childhood. When I finally decided to lower her into the bed, she opened her eyes - large, serious, peaceful, still enveloped in sleep. I couldn't bear her gaze. Not daring to kiss her lest I wake her up. I quietly walked out of the room. I thought I'd be back; I didn't know, didn't want to believe that I was seeing my little girl for the last time. My heart was numb with grief.