Yekaterina Dmitriyevna Kuskova
Екатерина Дмитриевна Кускова
A publicist who moved between reformist socialism and anti-party politics
During the famine of 1921 she worked in Pomgol relief, and the following year she was expelled from Soviet Russia.
Yekaterina Kuskova was a political activist and writer who moved from revolutionary populism through Marxism and Economism toward liberal reformist socialism. Her 1899 Credo, which prioritised workers’ economic struggle and democratic reform, helped provoke a major dispute over the strategy of Russian Social Democracy. After 1905 she pursued democratic alliances through the Union of Liberation, the cooperative movement, women’s equality work, and journalism; in 1917 she supported the Provisional Government while also opposing the Kornilov movement. During the famine of 1921 she organised non-Bolshevik relief work in Pomgol with Sergei Prokopovich, but after the committee was dissolved she was arrested and expelled, continuing to write in exile.
Career timeline
- 1880s–1893Joined clandestine populist circles; arrested and exiled to Nizhny Novgorod
- 1895–1899Married Sergei Prokopovich; worked in émigré Social Democracy and developed Economism
- 1903–1905Helped found the Union of Liberation; edited Nasha Zhizn
- 1906–1914Published Bez Zaglaviia; worked in cooperatives and for women’s equality
- 1917Published Vlasti Naroda; delegate to the Democratic Conference and Pre-Parliament
- 1921Non-Bolshevik organiser in the All-Russian Committee for Famine Relief, Pomgol
- 1922–1958After expulsion, worked in émigré journalism in Berlin, Prague, and Geneva