The Shesterka of 1905–06: Terrorist Heroines of Revolutionary Russia

Abstract

As part of my ongoing study of the political life and mythology of the Socialist Revolutionary (SR) terrorist and Left SR party leader Mariya Spiridonova, in this article I examine the context within which she launched her revolutionary career: the terrorist fringe of the radical subculture known to its denizens as Underground Russia. Specifically, I focus on the other five women who with Spiridonova formed the <italic>shesterka</italic> of terrorists venerated in SR martyrology for their roles in the revolution of 1905‒07. Although Riva Fialka, Lidiya Ezerskaya, Anastasiya Bitsenko, Manya Shkol’nik and Aleksandra Izmaylovich, unlike Mariya Spiridonova, were very little known or not known at all to the Russian public in 1905‒06, they too were participants in the revolutionary underground, their behavior as much guided by its ethics and mythology. The stories of these five female SR terrorists, juxtaposed with Spiridonova’s, demonstrate how women radicals of the reluctantly modernizing Russian empire sought in the underground socialist community the autonomy and equality denied them by Russia’s entrenched patriarchal culture. In Underground Russia, women found fulfillment not only in principled activism against the autocratic regime but also in the empathetic support of like-minded comrades. Most significantly, the collective revolutionary experiences of the <italic>shesterka</italic> underline the emotional as well as the ideological bonds that deepened women’s involvement in SR terrorist activities. According to prosopographical studies of female Russian revolutionaries by Barbara Alpern Engel, Beate Fieseler and Barbara Evans Clements, the bonds of romantic love, friendship and family featured prominently in women’s radicalization. In the story of each of these six SR heroines can be found a confluence of similar motivations for taking up revolutionary terrorism. All of the women experienced some form of personal loss or frustration concerning their family situations and career opportunities. Education or training as a means of achieving autonomy played a role in radicalizing each of them, while gender, class or ethnic disadvantages gave them a powerful empathy for, and even identification with, the least fortunate classes and groups in Russian society. Family, friends and lovers drew them into the revolutionary movement and toward terrorism as a political tactic. Finally, each of these women sought moral, intellectual and emotional fulfillment by participating in the radical subculture known as Underground Russia.