Five Sisters: Women Against the Tsar

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Description

Violent movements that opposed the existing political order erupted in all places Europe for the duration of the 19th century. Nowhere was once revolutionary violence more visible and dramatic than in Russia. There, revolutionaries took the lives of dozens of people, most, though not all of them, high officials. Accepting the label “terrorist” as a badge of honor, the revolutionaries insisted upon the morality and justice of their cause, and they were fully prepared to sacrifice their own lives for the sake of it. Unlike most of the people considered terrorists today, Russian revolutionaries selected their targets carefully, focusing on those whom they considered responsible for the oppressive political and social order and mourning unanticipated civilian casualties. The goal: the replacement of the current order by one that would genuinely represent and serve the people.
The daring young women who tell their stories in this book shared this goal and participated actively in efforts to understand it. Vera Figner presided over the remnants of the People’s Will after it assassinated Tsar Alexander II. Vera Zasulich’s attempt to assassinate the governor of St. Petersburg made her a heroine to Western European leftists in addition to much of the Russian public. Olga Liubatovich belonged to probably the most first groups of revolutionary propagandists to take jobs as factory laborers. Praskovia Ivanovskaia became a typesetter for the printing press that presented the movement’s goals to a broader public. Elizaveta Kovalskaia, a peasant by birth, envisioned terror as the means to relieve economic oppression. In conjunction with a new introduction, Barbara Engel and Clifford Rosenthal provide an up to date list of suggested readings in this edition of their classic work of translation. Students and specialists of Russian history and women’s studies, in addition to general readers, will find these memoirs to be a fascinating record of a tumultuous time.

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