T 1-2 in KH 263
W 12-2 in HOB 2 121
Vera Figner—A Terrorist in
her own Words
I. Memoirs as primary sources
A. Written in 1921 under Soviet regime. Literal translation of title: The Work of Remembrance
B. Strengths: first hand account; unusual voices; background and motivation; history as narrative.
C. Weaknesses: faulty memory, know
the ending, personal bias, political background.
My thesis:
In
this memoir, Figner justifies her choice of terrorism
as a method of resistance. However, her
defense undercuts itself, making it easy to read this work as a critique of
terrorism as a political tool.
Perhaps
her ambivalence toward terrorism is evidence of her mixed feelings about the
final results of the Russian revolution, namely the Soviet regime.
A.
From debutante to university student
·
Part of provincial nobility from Kazan.
Cultured home
·
Liberal parents
“In the family circle we often talked
of various public affairs and
questions, and emphasized the idea of a life spent not only
for oneself and family, but for society as well” (31).
·
Woman doctor as role model
“I began to work for admission to a university, either a
foreign university or the one at Kazan. It made no difference; all I wanted was to
study, to become a physician, to bring my knowledge into the village as a
protection against sickness, poverty and ignorance” (34).
·
Father would not allow her to leave. Husband did.
B.
Trying for change in ordinary life
·
As student
o
Became a populist in Zurich.
o
Sister took part in “going to the people” campaign.
o
Russian populists asked her to return.
“I decided to go, in order that my deeds might not disprove
my words” (42).
·
As medical practitioner
o
Tried to heal the sick
o
Also set up school
o
Met with many frustrations
·
Decision--only radical action could change Russia.
·
Renounces ties to family, love, friendship, community
service.
Figner promises “to forget
for [terror’s] sake all ties of kinship, and all personal sympathies, love and
friendships…to give [her] life also, if necessary, taking no thought of
anything else, and sparing no one and nothing” (76).
·
Begins life underground.
“The people existed for the government, not the government for the people. Every individual exploitation paled before the exploitation that the government practiced on the people” (71).
“Every attempt to secure a change in the existing order
through
one means or another, either beat vainly against inertia, or
met with furious persecution” (73).
·
Violence the only way.
“Peaceful methods had been forbidden me; we had of course no
free press, so that it was impossible to think of propagating ideas by means of
the printed word. If any organ of
society had pointed out to me another course than violence, I might have chosen
it, at least, I would have tried it” (164).
·
BUT NOT valid in systems that allowed popular
participation. Opposed the assassination
of Garfield in 1881.
“In a land where personal freedom gives an opportunity for
an honest conflict of ideas, where the free will of the people determines not
only the law but also the personality of the ruler, in such a land political
murder as a means of struggle presents a manifestation of that despotic spirit
which we aim to destroy in Russia” (7).
B.
Political Efficacy
·
Kill central leaders, not random targets.
o
Centralized state destabilized when central figures killed.
·
Offer hope to those who believe that the tsarist system is
invulnerable, cannot be changed.
·
Spare the people the pain of uprising.
·
Violence of the revolutionaries caused by the violence of
the state.
“Parallel with the violence practiced by the revolutionary
party, but on a larger scale, was the violence practiced by the
government. It enchained thought,
forbade free speech, and despoiled the people of life and freedom. Administrative exile was an ordinary
occurrence, the prisons were filled to overflowing, executions numbered in the
dozens” (117).
C.
Popular Approval
·
The nation is behind terrorism.
“Society, at any rate its more intelligent element, greeted
our activity with great enthusiasm, and offered us sympathetic aid and ardent
approval. From this point of view we had
a right to speak in the name of society.
We constituted to a marked degree the front rank of society” (82).
·
Terrorists express the will of the people, not the existing
government. (309).
D.
Pure motives
·
Actions not taken for personal gain.
·
A form of good works, political altruism
They engaged in
“preparation not for a popular uprising, but for
a conspiracy against the higher authority, with the aim of
seizing it and turning it over to the people” (73).
·
Underscored her self-sacrifice during the trial
(159-65).
IV. Defining Success
“In the
course of ten years we have seen how, notwithstanding the most severe
persecutions…in its attempts to suppress the revolutionary movement, that
movement has nevertheless tenaciously grown and spread, attracting to itself
the best elements of the nation” (307).
B.
Inspiring a revolutionary tradition
·
“In its aspiration to secure a liberal form of government,
it was the advance guard of the Russian intelligentsia”
(130).
·
Writes as a kind of political celebrity; celebrated in the
Soviet period.
A.
Innocent victims
·
Figner’s terrorism presented
as targeting the guilty—fight violence with violence.
·
But innocent victims caught in the way.
“The second train was wrecked, but the Tsar was traveling in
the first, while the second proved to be bearing ONLY court servants” (80).
Fifty-two soldiers in the Winter Palace killed, but the
royal family not harmed.
Attendants killed in the final assassination.
·
She expresses no remorse, but nonetheless lists the victims.
B.
Corrosive role of violence
·
Assaults and counterassaults create a cycle of revenge.
·
Violence “created a cult of dynamite and the revolver, and
crowned the terrorist with a halo; murder and the scaffold acquired a magnetic
charm and attraction for the youth of the land” (116).
·
Undermined friendships and trust—Degayev.
C.
Naïve understanding of political power
·
Alexander III far worse than his father.
“[T]here was no use in expecting any progressive innovations
from the new Tsar. The reactionary tendency
of his internal policy was evident to everyone” (126).
·
Expectations for concessions “proved to be a very sad and
unfortunate mistake” (115).
·
No uprising; no broad support.
·
Critical voices within the revolutionary movement
“I love freedom, but I do not approve of political
assassinations. I can understand a
battle on the barricades, but not a stab in the back with a dagger” (147).
· In her memoirs, Figner presents a terrible method—assassination—to achieve a good end—a democratic system.
· But she never analyzes relationship between the ends and means, neither in the 1880s nor at the time of her writing in 1921.
· Does she mean to say that these ends were never achieved?
·
Written
under a new government with scant respect for the civil rights that stood at
the center of the Will of the People’s platform.
·
Missing the
“official script” of Soviet revolutionary memoirs praising the current regime
as the legitimate outcome of youthful idealism.
·
Perhaps
this memoir also a guarded critique of that regime.
