Aleksandra Izmailovich

Aleksandra Izmailovich
Аляксандра Ізмайловіч
Born	Aleksandra Adolfovna Izmailovich 1878 (1878) Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire
Died	11 September 1941(1941-09-11) (aged 62–63) Oryol, Soviet Union
Political party	Socialist Revolutionary Party (1902–1917) Left Socialist-Revolutionaries (1917–1921)
Movement	Revolutionary socialism
Relatives	Katerina Izmailovich (sister)

Aleksandra Adolfovna Izmailovich (Belarusian: Аляксандра Адольфаўна Ізмайловіч; 1878–1941) was a Belarusian socialist revolutionary. From a noble family, she joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR) while studying in Saint Petersburg. She used her family home in Minsk to host PSR meetings, during which they plotted attacks against Russian Imperial government officials. Izmailovich herself attempted to assassinate the governor of Minsk Pavel Kurlov, who was responsible for pogroms in the city, but her shots failed to hit him. In prison, she found out that her sister Katerina Izmailovich had died attempting to assassinate the Russian naval commander Grigoriy Chukhnin.

She was sentenced to death for the assassination attempt, but following appeals by her sisters, the sentence was commuted to a life sentence of penal labour. She was transferred to Butyrka prison in Moscow and then to Siberia, where she spent 10 years together with Maria Spiridonova and other women of the PSR. She spent most of the rest of her life in prison or internal exile. She was briefly freed by the Russian Revolution and became an official in the Soviet government, but following the Left SR Uprising, she was imprisoned again by the Bolsheviks. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, she was either imprisoned or internally exiled. After being sentenced for anti-Soviet agitation during the Great Purge, she was executed during the Nazi invasion of Russia.

Biography

Early life and activism

Aleksandra Adolfovna Izmailovich was born in 1878, in Saint Petersburg. She was the daughter of the Belarusian military officer Adolf Izmailovich, a brigadier general who commanded the 4th Artillery Corps of the Imperial Russian Army. She had three sisters: Mariya, Evgeniya and Katerina Izmailovich. She was also known by the diminutive name Sanya. Izmailovich studied at the Saint Petersburg Imperial University, where she first joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR).

While their father was in the Russian Far East, fighting in the Russo-Japanese War, Aleksandra and Katerina Izmailovich used their home in Minsk as the Belarusian headquarters of the PSR. From their house, the SR executive committee organised the party's activities, which Aleksandra and Katerina carried out while disguised as servants, farmers or vendors. Following the outbreak of the Russian Revolution of 1905, the sisters became involved in the SR Combat Organisation.

Attempted assassination of Governor Kurlov

After the proclamation of the October Manifesto in Minsk on 18 October 1905, a large political demonstration was held to celebrate the promise of constitutionalism in Russia. Tensions between the crowd and the gathered imperial soldiers escalated, culminating in the soldiers firing on the crowd, killing 50 and wounding 100; 1,500 more people were arrested and sentenced to penal labour in Siberia. Shortly afterwards, the Minsk branch of the PSR received orders from the party's central committee to cease all terrorist activities. The Izmailovich sisters opposed the order and convinced the Minsk branch to reject it.

The Minsk PSR called for the prosecution of Governor Pavel Kurlov and Police Chief Norov, respectively responsible for pogroms in Minsk and the violent suppression of the 18 October demonstration. As state terrorism against the revolutionary movement increased, the PSR central committee reversed its order and gave permission for the Minsk branch to resume terrorist attacks. As their first act, Aleksandra Izmailovich and Ivan Pulikhov were tasked with assassinating Governor Kurlov. While working on the plan, Izmailovich and her sister Katerina made other plans to disrupt military supply lines by attacking the army's trains. Plans were put on hold after Katerina was arrested, with Aleksandra Izmailovich convincing the Minsk PSR to break her out of prison before assassinating Kurlov.

By this time, Izmailovich and Pulikhov were living together near Kurlov's house, posing as a married couple. They spent most of their time watching and following the governor. After breaking her sister out of prison and securing her safe passage into hiding, Izmailovich returned to her planned assassination. On 14 January 1906, she found out that the governor was due to attend a military funeral at the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul. Izmailovich and Pulikhov, respectively armed with a revolver and a bomb, entered the church yard as the funeral took place inside. After the ceremony, Governor Kurlov and Police Chief D.D. Norov left the church and walked towards the two SRs. Izmailovich fired her revolver at the two and Pulikhov threw the bomb at them, but the shots failed to hit their targets and the bomb failed to detonate. They were immediately attacked and arrested by the gendarmes, while their targets escaped. Norov and a retired military officer attempted to shoot Izmailovich, but both missed. The two SRs were taken to the local police station, where they were detained and tortured for information.

Imprisonment in Minsk

On the morning of 15 January, Izmailovich and Pulikhov were brought into the police station's courtyard, where they were to be identified by an assembled group of house servants. Izmailovich had been beaten so severely that one of her eyes was swollen shut and her skirt had been torn. Izmailovich was recognised by one of her father's servants and put back in her cell. Later that night, she and Pulikhov were led out of the police station and made to walk through the streets of Minsk to the city's prison. Izmailovich was given bread before being taken to her cell, where she heard the other imprisoned women singing revolutionary songs, including "La Marseillaise". Each day, while the other prisoners were allowed out of their cells to exercise in the prison yard, Izmailovich was kept in solitary confinement. She was only able to briefly exchange information with others from her cell window. Although torture by her captors continued, she was able to maintain hope due to the kindness expressed to her by her imprisoned comrades. This also caused a political dilemma for her, as she was preoccupied with the question of whether "the people" included both her captors and comrades.

One day, when she was brought to the prison office for questioning, she was reunited with her sister Mariya. She discovered that her family had initially been told she was killed during the assassination attempt. Mariya also told her that their family home had been searched, but the police had found nothing. Izmailovich was also confronted by her former maid Tatyana, a devout Christian and a supporter of the Black Hundreds who had resisted Izmailovich's attempts to convert her to socialism. Although she was brought to tears by seeing Izmailovich's wounded face, she had been shocked to find out she had attempted to kill someone. Izmailovich's sisters visited her regularly, inquiring about her health and the status of her legal proceedings. Izmailovich herself believed she would be hanged, and repeatedly stated that she wanted to "die bravely".

In prison, she was able to communicate with an SR comrade in the cell above her through tap code; they opened their tapped conversations with the password "God Save the Tsar". Through tap code, she found out that the bomb Pulikhov had thrown was not defective and would have killed their targets if it had detonated. She confessed that she no longer felt hatred for Governor Kurlov, but she still felt contempt for Norov, who had refused to go to the prison and act as a witness. She believed he wanted to avoid questions about firing shots at her. On 29 January, her comrade informed her that the Black Sea Fleet commander Grigorir Chukhnin had been wounded in an assassination attempt. She celebrated the news, as Chukhnin had been responsible for suppressing the mutiny of the Russian battleship Potemkin. But she was soon saddened to hear that the would-be assassin had been shot and killed; the assassin, who used the name Maria Krupnitskaya, was her sister Katerina. In grief for her sister, she was unable to sleep that night. The next day, when the whole prison discussed the news of the attack, Izmailovich kept the identity of the attacker a secret. She read smuggled newspapers that detailed Chukhnin's recovery from his five bullet wounds inflicted by Katerina. When her comrade expressed his condolences, she responded that she took comfort in the idea that Katerina had died for a reason. She informed her sisters that Katerina had died attempting to kill Chukhnin, but they refused to believe her. She later received false news that Maria Spiridonova had been killed attempting to assassinate Gavriil Luzhenovsky, which contributed to her sadness.

Trial

One morning, a prison guard told Izmailovich that she would be hanged within five days. Although she was not concerned about the death sentence, her sisters hired her a defense lawyer for her court martial. When the lawyer brought her the indictment, she was shocked to discover it named an innocent baker's assistant as the bomb thrower. Her lawyer advised her to call witnesses of the 18 October events, who could testify about the massacre of peaceful protestors ordered by Kurlov. She compiled a list, but the court refused to permit her any witnesses in her defense. After saying goodbye to her comrade in the room above her, and expressing her love for him, she prepared herself for her death. He told her not to imagine herself to be a second Sophia Perovskaya, as he believed her sentence would be commuted.

At 04:00 on 16 February, she was woken up and brought to the prison office, where she was reunited with Polikhov and met the innocent baker's assistant. They were taken by a troop of Cossacks to the headquarters of the 4th Artillery Corps. After 5 hours waiting under armed guard, they were brought tea by Izmailovich's lawyer. They were then taken to the hall where they would be court martialled; Izmailovich saw her sister Mariya and her father waiting for her. They were tried by military officers. Governor Kurlov himself was present, and he remained standing while the others sat. The three defendants were charged with "conspiracy with intent to kill". When the prosecution's witnesses gave testimony against them, Izmailovich's lawyer managed to induce Police Chief Norov into admitting he had shot at Izmailovich while she was disarmed and under arrest.

In his opening argument, Izmailovich's lawyer pointed out that officers in that courtroom had ordered their soldiers to shoot peaceful protestors in Minsk on 18 October 1905 and asked why they had not been charged with murder. Beneath a portrait of Izmailovich's father, Kurlov responded to questioning without looking at the defendants, the attorneys or the judges. Izmailovich had thought him the victor, but when he walked past her, she saw fear in his eyes. She took comfort in having frightened such a powerful figure of the Tsarist autocracy. When Izmailovich and Pulikhov made their final statements, they focused on the killings of 18 October 1905. In his own final statement, the prosecutor requested capital punishment. After a few minutes of deliberation, the judges found Izmailovich and Pulikhov guilty of the charges of conspiracy to murder and sentenced them to execution by hanging.

Before they could be led out of the courtroom, Izmailovich asked to give testimony in the trial of the baker's assistant. The judge agreed and she testified that he had nothing to do with the assassination, that he was not a member of their political party, and that she knew the real name of the bomb thrower. When asked for the name, she said his given name was "Samson", but that she did not know his family name. The judge disregarded her testimony and she was led out of the room. As she passed her sisters, Mariya told her that she did not believe she would be hanged. Izmailovich reported that she and Pulikhov were not afraid of death, as they believed they were dying for a good cause. At 16:00, they were taken out of the Artillery Corps headquarters and taken back to the prison by the Cossacks. On the way, Izmailovich noticed people watching her from windows, smiling and waving at her. When they arrived at the prison, Pulikhov and Izmailovich embraced for the last time. Pulikhov told Izmailovich that he was happy to die for socialism, but told her to live. He said that his last thought would be of her and her sister.

When she was returned to her cell, she discovered that the baker's assistant had been sentenced to death, which caused her greater grief than her own sentence. Although she had been told she would be executed in short time, she passed through a week in her cell without incident. She said that, during this time, she felt a greater love for life and humankind than she had ever experienced before. As she thought of the possibility of the victory of the social revolution, she decided she wanted to live to see it. Eight days after the trial, she heard Pulikhov shouting to their fellow inmates that his death sentence had been upheld. The following morning, before dawn, he was hanged in the prison courtyard. As other prisoners song revolutionary funeral songs, Izmailovich wept for her comrade, but kept in her mind his last words to her that he had been "happy to die for the cause".

After several days, the prisoners received news that the baker's assistant's sentence had been commuted to 15 years of penal labour; the authorities had faced public pressure after the publication of a letter from Izmailovich which proclaimed his innocence. Meanwhile, Izmailovich's sisters had travelled to Vilnius to appeal for a pardon. Her sentence was ultimately commuted to life imprisonment with penal labour. She understood her sisters' actions, but nevertheless felt deprived of dying for the same cause that Pulikhov and her sister Katerina had died for. On 8 March 1906, she was told she would be transferred to a prison in Moscow and given a chance to say goodbye to her sisters and other comrades in the prison. She was stripped of her clothes, changed into a prison uniform and her legs were cuffed with heavy chains. Cossacks then took her to the Minsk railway station, where she was waved off by a crowd of sympathisers. On the train, she was greeted by a sympathetic guard who expressed regret that the bomb had not exploded on the day of the assassination attempt. He spoke to her for the rest of the night, discussing their mutual interest in revolutionary socialism.

Imprisonment in Moscow

After completing their journey on the Moscow–Brest Railway, they were taken by horse-drawn carriages to Butyrka prison. With a long history of detaining subversives, Izmailovich compared the prison to a hotel for revolutionaries. The Belarusian prisoners were taken into the courtyard, to the sound of clanking chains and shouting prison guards. They were strip searched and their hair shaven, before being divided into groups and taken to their respective sections of the prison. A Finnish trusty escorted Ismailovich to the criminal women's prison, where she stayed with 20 other women in a single cramped room. She was given new clothes and tea, then asked by one of the women if she had killed her husband. One day, she was taken to the recreation room, where she met a number of other women who had attempted to assassinate government officials: Mariya Shkolnik, who had attacked Chernihiv governor Alexei Khvostov; Lydia Ezerskaya, who had assassinated interior minister Vyacheslav von Plehve; and Rebecca Fialka, who had been arrested while making bombs.

Following Shkolnik's advice, Izmailovich requested she be transferred from the criminal prison to be held together with the political prisoners. The ranks of the political prisoners continued to grow, with the prison soon becoming overcrowded. Izmailovich was visited in Butyrka by her sisters and other comrades from Minsk, who smuggled to her some illegal newspapers. From her cell, she could hear the sounds of Moscow city life. She was later visited by her father, who was granted a private room to speak to her. He was sad about her imprisonment and worried for Katerina, still not knowing that she had died attempting to assassinate Chukhnin. After he left the prison and returned to Minsk, he committed suicide. In April, Maria Spiridonova and Anastasia Bitsenko, the respective assassins of Gavrill Luzehnovsky and Viktor Sakharov, were transferred to Butyrka. Izmailovich, who had met Bitsenko in Saint Petersburg, regularly spoke with her through the bars of her cell. From solitary confinement, Spiridonova made contact with her fellow SRs through hand-written notes.

Transfer to Siberia

On 21 June 1906, Izmailovich, Spiridonova, Bitsenko, Shkolnik, Ezerskaya and Fialka were lined up for deportation to Siberia. Together they became known as The Six. Izmailovich quickly came to clash with Spiridonova, who she believed had pursued individual fame at the expense of the cause of revolutionary socialism. They were taken to the railway station and packed onto the prison car of the Trans-Siberian Railway, where they were greeted by other travellers. They were also greeted by large crowds at several stops along the way. On one occasion, Spiridonova gave a speech to a gathered crowd in Syzran, to the astonishment of Izmailovich. She wrote that Spiridonova did not understand why her speech-making made the other prisoners angry; they attempted to get her to stop, but she continued. Izmailovich reported that the hostility of her imprisoned comrades was difficult for Spiridonova to process. However, as the crowds continued to gather at each stop, even growing in size, they became more sympathetic to her and joined her in making speeches to their audiences. Izmailovich herself was convinced that Spiridonova was using her personality in the service of the revolution, rather than at the expense of it.

Izmailovich and her SR comrades arriving in Omsk in July 1906

When they arrived in Omsk, they were greeted by a crowd of 5,000 people with red flags. The crowd surrounded the car and demanded the Six be allowed to speak to them, forcing the authorities to give in. When the time came for them to leave, the crowd initially refused to let them go. Even as the women got back on the train, people climbed on the roof and tried to get them to sign autographs through the windows. The women pleaded that the crowd allow the train to proceed on its way. Once it departed, people ran alongside it, with one person throwing them flowers. During their journey, the Six spoke to thousands of people about revolutionary socialism. Izmailovich was amazed by the emotions displayed by the people when they saw the six women, as some broke down in tears or gave them anything from flowers and copper coins to jewellery. The Siberian people were increasingly sympathetic to rebellion, as political repression in the region had been heightened by the Tsarist regime. According to Izmailova, the people were particularly attracted to Spiridonova because she was "a woman who had declared war on tyranny and had suffered for it". The Six were even successful in distributing propaganda to the soldiers who guarded them, further spreading the ideas of democracy and revolutionary socialism. They also received news that a sailor had killed Chukhnin, finishing Katerina Izmailovich's work.

Izmailovich (third from right) during her exile in Siberia

The Six finally stopped at Sretensk, where they disembarked the train and were detained for several days. They were eventually loaded onto horse-drawn carriages and taken to the Akatuy katorga; along the way they were cheered on by locals. At the prison, they were greeted by other members of the PSR holding banners and singing revolutionary songs. Izmailovich's account of their journey ends with them receiving gifts from their fellow prisoners. This relatively lax regime ended in December 1906, when the prison administration was replaced. In February 1907, the women were transferred from Akatuy to the women's prison in Maltsev. The journey was extremely hazardous, due to the conditions of the Siberian winter. The prison was dilapidated and they struggled to keep warm through the winter.

While in the Maltsev katorga, in 1908, Izmailovich wrote two long letters that formed the main primary source for information on her and her sister's revolutionary activities. The letters were smuggled out of the prison and, in 1923, they were published in the journal Prison and Exile. Izmailovich wrote that during her 10 years in Maltsev, she struggled on a daily basis to get food and books and even to maintain her dignity. Izmailovich reported that her years in Maltsev were "engraved on [her] soul". She later wrote that Maria Spiridonova helped maintain her faith in socialism throughout their time in Maltsev, despite the hardships they went through there. For a brief time, Izmailovich ran a school for the roughly 100 children in Maltsev, but it was ultimately shut down by the authorities.

Prison and exile in Soviet Russia

Izmailovich was released during the February Revolution of 1917. She initially worked as a PSR propagandist in the Chernihiv Governorate, before moving to Petrograd, where she took part in the October Revolution. Izamilovich unsuccessfully ran in the 1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election on the electoral list of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries (Left SRs) in Petrograd. In November 1917, she was elected to the Left SR central committee; and in December 1917, she became a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK). On 9 December, she was appointed to the Council of People's Commissars (CPC) as commissar for public property, but she never took her post and instead continued her work in the VTsIK. From April to May 1918, she headed the Organisational and Propaganda Department of the VTsIK. By the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets in June 1918, the Left SRs had been forced out of the government by the Bolsheviks; Izmailovich quipped that "the Left SRs failed to consider the Bolsheviks' capacity to work miracles".

Izmailovich was free for only 16 months before being arrested again by the new post-revolutionary authorities. After the Left SR uprising, on 6 July 1918, Izmailovich and Spiridonova were arrested and imprisoned in the Kremlin. Izmailovich wrote that the conditions of the former Tsarist prisons remained largely the same under the Soviet Republic, except that they had become dirtier. Izmailovich was arrested again in Minsk in January 1919, but released shortly afterwards. She was later held in Butyrki prison from October 1919 to September 1921. She and Spiridonova were then kept under house arrest for the rest of their lives. Spiridonova wrote to Izmailovich that she believed their treatment in the Bolshevik prisons was intended to slowly kill them.

Under constant police surveillance, Izmailovich cared for Spiridonova at a trade union's dacha in Malakhovka, until she was rearrested in 1923 and exiled to Kaluga. In 1925, Izmailovich and Spiridonova were then exiled to Samarkand, where they reunited with Irina Kakhovskaya. There they worked menial jobs until 1928, when they were transferred to Tashkent. As the health of Izmailovich and Spiridonova declined due to typhoid fever, they were taken to a sanatorium in Yalta. Their accommodation, treatment and their medication was not paid for by the authorities, so they were sent money by friends living abroad. Izmailovich soon went back to Tashkent, while Spiridonova stayed in Yalta until August 1930. Izmailovich, Kakhovskaya and Spiridonova were then transferred to political exile in Ufa, where they were kept under house arrest and subjected to constant surveillance. Over the course of the 1930s, Izmailovich progressively rejected politics, refusing to read any newspapers. As her health deteriorated, she was no long able to continue with her office job and took over housekeeping for her comrades that were still working. She spent most of her time writing, completing a book on art and literature by 1937.

In February 1937, as their sentence of exile was due to end, they were arrested during the first days of the Great Purge. They were put in solitary confinement, accused of attempting to assassinate Stalinist officials. According to Irina Kakhovskaya, Izmailovich defied the interrogations by the NKVD, despite her own weakening health. She believed that the Great Purge had exposed the "monstrous lie" of the Soviet revolution. She was ultimately found guilty of anti-Soviet agitation and sentenced to a long term in prison. The Left SR prisoners were transferred to Oryol. By September 1941, as the Nazi invasion approached Oryol, the NKVD decided to execute all the remaining prisoners there. On 11 September 1941, Izmailovich, Spiridonova, Ilya Mayorov and 154 other political prisoners were gagged and sentenced to death. The prisoners were led out into Medvedev woods, where they were executed.

Legacy

As part of De-Stalinization, in 1957, Izmailovich was rehabilitated for her sentences during the Great Purge. In 1989, she was also rehabilitated for the sentences against her during the 1920s and early 1930s. Alongside Maria Spiridonova, Fruma Frumkina and Dora Brilliant, Izmailovich has been recognised as one of the most prominent female terrorists of the 1905 Revolution.

Historian Oleg Budnitskii depicted Izmailovich as a romantic who had pursued terrorism in order to overcome the boredom of Russian aristocratic life. Writer Semion Lyandres believed Izmailovich to have been driven to terrorism by mental illness, although he provided no information to support his claim, leading scholar Nadezda Petrusenko to conclude he was engaging in gender stereotyping.

Bibliography

• Boniece, Sally A. (2003). "The Spiridonova Case, 1906: Terror, Myth, and Martyrdom". Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. 4 (3): 571–606. doi:10.1353/kri.2003.0034.
• Douds, Lara (2017). "'The dictatorship of the democracy'? The Council of People's Commissars as Bolshevik-Left Socialist Revolutionary coalition government, December 1917–March 1918". Historical Research. 90 (247): 32–56. doi:10.1111/1468-2281.12170.
• Leoniev, Ya. V. (1993). "Измайлович Александра Адольфовна" [Izmailovich Aleksandra Adolfovna]. Политические деятели России 1917. ISBN 9785852701374. OCLC 29600430.
• Lyandres, Semion (1989). "The 1918 Attempt on the Life of Lenin: A New Look at the Evidence". Slavic Review. 48 (3): 432–448. doi:10.2307/2498997.
• Maxwell, Margaret (1990). Narodniki Women: Russian Women Who Sacrificed Themselves for the Dream of Freedom. Pergamom Press. ISBN 0080374611.
• Morozov, Konstantin (2024). "Subculture of the Russian Revolutionary as a Factor of 'Revolutionary Biography' Formation" (PDF). Revolutionary Biographies in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Imperial–Inter/national–Decolonial. Brill. pp. 117–148. ISBN 9783847112488.
• Petrusenko, Nadezda (2011). "Women in the world of gender stereotypes: The case of the Russian female terrorists at the beginning of the 20th century" (PDF). International Journal of Humanities and Social Science. 1 (4): 135–146. ISSN 2220-8488.
• Rabinowitch, Alexander (1995). "Maria Spiridonova's 'Last Testament'". The Russian Review. 54 (3): 424–446. doi:10.2307/131440. JSTOR 131440.

Further reading

• Boniece, Sally A. (2024). "The Martyrdom of Illness: Mariia Spiridonova in Siberian Imprisonment, 1906–17". Slavonic and East European Review. 102 (1): 98–125. doi:10.1353/see.00005.
• Goldman, Emma (1925). "Heroic women of the Russian Revolution". Welfare.
• Yaroshevski, Dov B. (1987). "Russian Regionalism in Turkestan". The Slavonic and East European Review. 65 (1): 77–100. JSTOR 4209432.