Today, few are willing to give their lives for their ideals. And at the beginning of the last century, when the socialist revolution took place in Russia, there were many such people. They went to the barricades, they were sent to hard labor and shot. One of these “ideological” ones is Maria Spiridonova, who was one of the leaders of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party.
She gave her life for the beliefs to which she was invariably devoted. Maria lived only fifty-six years, and she spent more than thirty years in prison.
Biography
Maria Alexandrovna Spiridonova was born in Tambov in 1884. Her parents were fairly wealthy people, and gave her daughter a good education. She graduated from a female gymnasium in her native city - it was there that her leadership qualities were manifested.
She defended the rights of female students, went against the decisions of the leadership of the gymnasium, for which she was almost expelled. However, Maria was still able to get an education, and after the gymnasium she got a job in the Provincial Noble Assembly.
She had a well-delivered speech, a talent for persuasion, and at one of the youth meetings she was noticed by local Social Revolutionaries. She took their ideas with all her heart and became one of the activists of the movement.
Revolutionary activity
Companions held numerous meetings, protest demonstrations, because of which Mary and several comrades were arrested in March 1905. They were quickly released, but the Socialist Revolutionaries concluded that demonstrations could not be helped, and decided to kill.
The courageous Spiridonova volunteered to do this. The party members decided to “eliminate” Gabriel Luzhenovsky, one of the advisers to the Tambov provincial government, who brutally suppressed peasant unrest.
Mary was against all violence, but for this man she did not see another revenge.
Before the murder, Spiridonova tracked down Luzhenovsky for several days, and at the right moment released five bullets from a pistol at him.
After her arrest, she was severely beaten, and in March 1906 she was sentenced to death. She waited a long time for this event to happen, but she was pardoned and sentenced to indefinite penal servitude. It was another shock, and it is not known how it affected the psyche of the former "suicide bomber".
At that time, Maria was in Butyrka, where there were also revolutionaries Alexandra Izmailovich, Anastasia Bitsenko and others. All of them were found guilty of activities against the state.
In the summer of 1906, all women were transferred to Akatuysky prison, where they led a fairly free lifestyle: walked in their clothes, walked, used the library and talked to each other. However, in early 1907 they were sent to another prison, where orders were much stricter and where they were among criminals.
Maria Alexandrovna stayed there until February 1917, after which, by personal order of Kerensky, she was released. Soon the activist was already in Moscow.
Ten years of hard labor did not break a strong woman, and she actively joined the party. She joined the Organizing Bureau, where she was responsible for the "processing" of soldiers. She knew how to convince anyone that the war must be stopped and put in order in the country so that there was social justice.
At the same time, she wrote articles in the newspaper Zemlya i Volya, and kept a strip in the newspaper Znamya Truda. She presided at peasant and party congresses - was in the thick of things. And soon became the editor of the magazine "Our Way".
Maria Alexandrova possessed such a large-scale thinking that her article "On the Tasks of the Revolution" was considered a guide for the Left Social Revolutionaries. In the article, she rejected the possibility of a return of the bourgeois system and called for the unification of the people, criticized the actions of the Provisional Government.
Break with the Bolsheviks
Spiridonova made only one mistake in understanding the revolutionary processes: she believed that the people temporarily followed the Bolsheviks, and soon everyone would turn their backs on them. Because the Bolsheviks rejected the monarchy and were not financially secure.
Maria Alexandrovna was sure that there would be a second stage of the revolution that would wake the working people of the whole world. She was a tireless agitator: she talked with peasants, workers, bourgeois. They believed her, because the strength of her conviction was huge, and the hard labor past gave a halo to the great martyr.
However, this did not help - the Bolshevik movement grew, the Bolsheviks occupied key posts in the state. Left Social Revolutionaries did not agree with their policies, and Spiridonova was the loudest speaker. In July 1918, she was arrested and sent to prison for a year. She wrote angry letters, calling the Bolsheviks "gendarmes from the Communist Party" and said that they had betrayed the ideals of the revolution.
After her release, Mary did not abandon her beliefs and continued her propaganda of the brotherhood of all peasants and workers of the whole world. But even the closest associates did not fully accept her ideas, although she made a great contribution to the common cause.
Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks grew stronger, and old friends, who did not agree with their policies, began to interfere with them. The "inconvenient" Spiridonova was again arrested in January 1919, accused of libel, and sent to the Kremlin hospital, from where she escaped.
A year later, they searched for her and again put her in jail. Then Maria was released on condition that she would cease all political activity. Agreeing, she settled in the suburbs. And in 1923, made an attempt to escape abroad. For this, she was sentenced to three years of exile.
In 1930, she was released, and a year later everything repeated: again arrest and again three years of exile.
