The SR activist who shot Lenin, believing him a 'traitor to the revolution'
At her Cheka interrogation: 'Today I shot Lenin. I did it on my own. I consider him a traitor to the Revolution. I favoured the Constituent Assembly and am still for it.'
Born into a Jewish teacher's family in Volhynia, Fanny Kaplan took up anarchism at 15 and was arrested at 16 for a bomb plot against the governor of Kiev, earning a life sentence to Siberian hard labour. During eleven years in prison she went blind and partially recovered, and under Maria Spiridonova's influence joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Freed by the February Revolution of 1917, she came to see Lenin as a traitor to the revolution after the Bolsheviks dissolved the Constituent Assembly, and on 30 August 1918 fired three shots at him outside Moscow's Michelson factory. The attempt, along with the same-day assassination of Moisei Uritsky, triggered the Red Terror; Kaplan was shot in the Kremlin four days later.
Career Timeline
- 1906Arrested in Kiev for a bomb plot targeting Governor Sukhomlinov
- 1907–1917Served life sentence at Maltsev and Akatuy prisons, Nerchinsk katorga; went blind and partially recovered
- 1917Released under Provisional Government amnesty after February Revolution; resumed SR activity
- 1918.08.30Fired three shots from a Browning pistol at Lenin outside Moscow's Michelson factory, wounding him seriously
- 1918.09.03Shot in the Kremlin by Pavel Malkov after Cheka interrogation