Last survivor of the Narodnaya Volya Executive Committee who spent 20 years in solitary confinement and wrote its definitive memoir
"I often wondered: could my life have ended in anything other than the dock? And every time I answered: no!" — at the 'Trial of the 14,' 1884
Born into a noble family in Kazan Governorate, Figner studied medicine at the University of Zurich, where she joined the revolutionary 'Fritsche' circle. Elected to the Executive Committee of Narodnaya Volya in 1879, she helped plan Alexander II's assassination and was the only committee member to evade arrest after the 1881 attack. Betrayed in 1883, she spent 20 years in solitary confinement at Shlisselburg, then wrote the memoir 'Запечатлённый труд' (Memoirs of a Revolutionist, 1921–22), a definitive primary source on the revolutionary movement. Though she never joined the Bolshevik Party, she remained in the USSR and during the Great Purge wrote appeals to Stalin seeking clemency for old comrades.
Career Timeline
- 1872–1875Medical studies in Zurich and Bern; member of the 'Fritsche' circle
- 1876–1879'Going to the People' propaganda in Samara and Saratov; worked as a paramedic
- 1879–1883Narodnaya Volya Executive Committee; planned assassination of Alexander II
- 1883–1884Arrested; 'Trial of the 14,' death sentence commuted to life imprisonment
- 1884–190420 years solitary confinement, Shlisselburg Fortress
- 1906–1915Exile abroad; organized Paris Committee for Aid to Political Prisoners
- 1917Executive Committee, All-Russian Soviet of Peasant Deputies; Constituent Assembly candidate
- 1921–1932Published memoirs; active in Society of Former Political Prisoners and Exiles
Related historical events
Запечатлённый труд: The Definitive Memoir of Revolutionary Russia
Figner's memoir Запечатлённый труд (Memoirs of a Revolutionist, 1921–22, two volumes) is widely regarded as the most important primary source on the Narodnaya Volya movement. She conceived the work in her Shlisselburg cell, but began writing only after her 1904 release, refining the manuscript for nearly two decades. Volume one traces her path from noble-born girl to Executive Committee member: Zurich studies, 'Going to the People,' assassination planning. Volume two, 'When the Clocks of Life Stopped,' renders the interior experience of 20 years in solitary confinement. Ivan Bunin praised her prose: 'This is whom one must learn to write from.' The first edition was published by Zadruga, a Moscow cooperative press aligned with the socialist intelligentsia. In the Soviet period the memoir anchored her seven-volume collected works (1932) and became canonical in revolutionary historiography, though it was withdrawn under late Stalinism for glorifying terrorism. Cold War English translations became a crucial window for Western understanding of the Russian revolutionary movement.