They fought against the system different years and in different ways, some had weapons in their hands, others had a pen, but they all had one thing in common - they fought for what they believed in.

Nadezhda Krupskaya (1869 – 1939)

Many people know Nadezhda Krupskaya as Lenin's wife. But she and her husband took Active participation in the revolution and the life of the country after the uprising.

She participated in the organization and activities of the Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class, was the secretary of the Iskra newspaper, and after the revolution she became deputy people's commissar of education of the RSFSR. Krupskaya was an activist in Soviet censorship and anti-religious propaganda, and collaborated with the anti-Stalinist opposition.

Krupskaya's ashes were buried in the Kremlin wall in Moscow.

Constance Markevich (1868-1927)

Constance Markievicz - Irish suffragette political figure Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil parties, revolutionary socialist and nationalist.

In 1909, she founded the national paramilitary scout organization "Heroes of Ireland", which taught children how to use firearms. This organization became the predecessor of the Irish Republican Army.

In 1916, she took part in the Easter Rising (for Irish independence) and wounded a British sniper.

When the uprising was crushed, Markievicz and other revolutionaries were marched through the streets of Dublin, where they were mocked by the crowd. In the courtroom, a revolutionary who was about to be sentenced to death penalty, did not stop crying and said: “I am just a woman, you cannot kill a woman.” Markievicz's behavior had the desired effect on the judges and she was sentenced to life imprisonment, but a year later she was released from prison as a result of a general amnesty for participants in the Easter Rising.

From 1919 to 1922, Markievicz was Minister of Labor, but due to disagreement with the Anglo-Irish Treaty, she voluntarily left her position.

Petra Herrera

During the Mexican Revolution, women, known as soldaderas, served alongside men. They accompanied soldiers on campaigns, cooked food, did laundry, cared for the wounded, and buried the dead. Many of them had intimate relationships with the fighters.

One of these women was Petra Herrera, who initially posed as a man named Pedro Herrera. Under this name, she gained the trust and respect of her fellow soldiers during the battles. Later she revealed her real gender, but the revolutionary Pancho Villa did not pay tribute to the girl’s merits and did not appoint her as a general. In response to this, Herrera created her own all-female fighting force.

Lakshmi Sahgal (1914-2012)

Sahgal is an activist of the Indian independence movement, also known as Captain Lakshmi. During World War II, she fought in Burma on the side of Japan with the rank of captain in the Indian National Army. Later, she joined the “women’s regiment” created by the famous Indian independence fighter Subhas Chandra Bose.

In 1946 she was captured by British waxies in Burma. Fearing mass unrest, the British released Sahgal. In India she was greeted as a heroine.

After the war, the revolutionary became a member of the upper house of the Indian Parliament from the Communist Party.

Sophie Scholl (1921 – 1943)

German revolutionary Sophie Scholl is one of the founders of the anti-fascist non-violent organization “White Rose”. Activists of this group distributed leaflets and painted anti-Hitler graffiti. In February 1943, she and other members of the organization were arrested for distributing leaflets at the University of Munich and sentenced to death by guillotine. Scholl's executioner was Johann Reichart, famous for that he personally beheaded 3,165 people.

The leaflets were later smuggled out of the country, millions of copies were made and dropped in the skies over Germany under the name "Munich Students Manifesto".

Celia Sanchez Manduley (1920 -1980)

Most people have heard the names of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara at least once in their lives, but much more less people heard about Celia Sanchez Manduley. However, this woman was in the thick of revolutionary events in Cuba. According to rumors, she even made historical decisions. After the coup on March 10, 1952, Mandulei joined the fight against the Batista government.

After the revolution, Celia remained close to Castro until her death.

Kathleen Neal Cleaver

Kathleen Neal Cleaver was a member of the Black Panther Party and the first female member of the party's governing body. She served as a spokeswoman and press secretary, and later organized a national campaign for the release of the Party's Secretary of Defense, Huey Newton.

Asma Mahfouz

Asma Mahfouz is one of the modern revolutionaries. She is credited with being responsible for the 2011 Egyptian uprising. Then she allegedly spread the call for a protest in Tahrir Square through her video blog. Asma Mahfouz was one of the founders of the April 6 movement, which held millions of protests demanding the resignation of Mubarak.

Blanca Canales

Blanca Canales is a Puerto Rican revolutionary and organizer of the women's branch of the Puerto Rican nationalist party Daughters of Liberty. She was one of the few women in history who took part in the rebellion against the United States. On October 30, 1950, Blanca and others took possession of weapons that she had hidden in her home. As a result, the US President declared martial law and ordered the Army and Air Force to attack the city. The nationalists held the line for some time, but were still captured and sentenced to life imprisonment. And the media declared it a local conflict, but the truth was revealed later.

2017 marks the 100th anniversary of two great Russian revolutions - the February bourgeois-democratic and October socialist. "April" talks about the women who most directly influenced the course of Russian history.

1. Nadezhda Krupskaya

The “First Lady” of the Russian Revolution, Nadezhda Krupskaya, started out like many of her like-minded people: she trained workers at evening school, conducted propaganda, and participated in Marxist gatherings. At one of these meetings in 1894, she met the future leader of the Russian Jacobins.

In 1895, Ulyanov, Krupskaya and other members of the newly formed “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class” were arrested and, after many months of imprisonment, sent away from the capital. Lenin was sent to the village of Shushenskoye, in Siberia.

Nadezhda, who was ordered by the court to go to Ufa, was allowed to follow her lover. True, already in 1898 the authorities set a condition: either the young people get married, as required by law - in a church, or Krupskaya goes to Ufa. Lenin did not want to part with his Nadenka. And so they got married.

Since then, Krupskaya accompanied Ilyich in all his exiles and emigrations, worked as secretary of the party Central Committee and personal secretary of the leader of the international proletariat, was engaged in translations, teaching, and participated in the work of the party press.

After the October Revolution, Krupskaya took over the issues of communist education of children, was the head of the Glavpolitprosvet and developed methods for the work of the pioneer organization, the Komsomol and the union of working youth. After the death of the leader, Nadezhda Konstantinovna was engaged in cultural and educational work: she initiated the opening of museums, wrote books about the history of the party and Lenin, as well as works on pedagogy.

In the 30s, while remaining a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, Krupskaya criticized the party leadership, tried to resist Stalin’s methods of collectivization, interceded for the repressed and children of “enemies of the people”, but all to no avail - Lenin’s widow had no real power. In 1939, Nadezhda Konstantinovna passed away.

“Vladimir Ilyich could find a more beautiful woman<…>, but we didn’t have anyone smarter than Nadezhda Konstantinovna, more dedicated to the cause than she...", the revolutionary and close friend Ilyich Gleb Krzhizhanovsky.

2. Clara Zetkin

Political struggle was in Zetkin’s blood. Her maternal grandfather Jean Dominique was among the active participants French Revolution 1789, and mother Josephine Vital communicated with the leaders of the German women's movement Louise Otto-Peters and Augusta Schmidt.

By the time she met Lenin in 1907, Zetkin was one of the most prominent representatives radical wing of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. She actively fought against revisionism among German Marxists and acted as the editor-in-chief of the party newspaper for women, Equality.

Zetkin’s opinion on a number of fundamental issues differed from Ilyich’s position. Lenin considered the same “issues of sex and marriage” not significant enough to make them the main focus of political teaching and educational work in the proletarian environment. However, despite this, the German revolutionary became one of Lenin’s closest comrades in the revolutionary struggle for many years.

“Vladimir Ilyich very much loved and appreciated Zetkina (written as in the original - editor’s note) as a passionate revolutionary, as a Marxist who deeply understood the teachings of Marx, as a fighter against the opportunism of the Second International, and he loved to talk heart to heart with her “To talk about those topics that interested him very much in those aspects in which he did not officially speak,” Nadezhda Krupskaya wrote in her memoirs.

Having visited Soviet Russia for the first time in 1920, Zetkin visited her homeland less and less every year. And after the Reichstag fire in February 1933, she left Germany forever, moving to the Union. The revolutionary died in the summer of the same year in Arkhangelskoye near Moscow.

3. Rosa Luxemburg

Luxemburg began her revolutionary activities back in the 1880s. Fleeing persecution by official authorities, in 1889 Rosa had to leave her native Poland. Then there were years of wandering around Europe, many arrests and imprisonments, and, finally, Germany, where she managed to find the support of like-minded people and join the powerful labor movement.

In 1906, Luxemburg published a brochure entitled “Mass Strike, Party and Trade Unions,” dedicated to the experience of the First Russian Revolution. This text was highly appreciated by Lenin. A year later, at the congress of the Second International, Luxemburg, together with Ilyich, introduced a number of amendments to Bebel’s resolution on the attitude towards militarism. The German socialist and the future leader of the world proletariat agreed that if war breaks out, it is necessary to use the crisis it generates to overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie.

The war, as we know, has begun. During the First World War, Luxemburg led the left-radical opposition to German Social Democracy and conducted active propaganda work directed against militarism, which provoked a number of arrests.

After the conclusion of peace in 1918, the forces of radical left socialists (including Luxembourg) created the Communist Party of Germany, which in January 1919 supported the Spartacist Uprising, which became one of the key events of the German November Revolution.

This was the last straw in Rosa's relationship with the ruling elite. The central body of the SPD placed a bounty on the heads of the leaders of the Communist Party. Three days after the end of the uprising, Luxemburg was killed by one of the guards who accompanied her to prison.

4. Inessa Armand

Inessa Armand joined the labor movement in the early 1900s. In 1904, impressed by Lenin’s work “The Development of Capitalism in Russia,” she joined the RSDLP and, along with her party comrades, participated in revolutionary events 1905 - 1907.

Inessa met the future leader of the revolution either in Paris or in Brussels. Close friendships were immediately established between fellow party members, trusting relationship. They say that Lenin even addressed her as “you” - only Ilyich’s wife had previously received such an honor.

Even during the life of the leader, there were rumors that such a change in his behavior was not accidental. They whispered that Lenin and Armand had an affair, that allegedly Krupskaya, seeing what was happening, even offered her husband a divorce. Historians nicknamed Inessa “the mistress of the revolution.” One way or another, one thing is clear - the comrades in the revolutionary struggle clearly had warm feelings for each other.

In exile, Armand campaigned among the local proletariat and translated Lenin's works. In addition, Inessa was interested in women's question: she wrote an article with a synonymous title, in which she called for the abandonment of traditional marriage and family relations in favor of greater personal freedom for spouses.

In the Union, Armand headed the women's department of the party's Central Committee, and in 1920 she organized the first International Women's Communist Conference. However, active work for the benefit of the working people was hampered by Inessa’s poor health - the costs of the revolutionary struggle affected her. Therefore, in the same year, Lenin decided to send Armand to a sanatorium in the Caucasus. This journey became fatal for Inessa: on the way back she caught cholera and within two half days faded away.

“He could not survive Inessa Armand. Inessa’s death accelerated his illness, which became fatal...” wrote revolutionary Alexandra Kollontai.

5. Alexandra Kollontai

Alexandra Kollontai has had independent views since her youth. It all started in 1893, when the beauty and general’s daughter, in defiance of her parents, married the poor officer Vladimir Kollontai, greatly upsetting all the “prospective suitors” and admirers (one of them even shot himself from grief).

However, this romance did not last long. Then, in the 1890s, Shurochka, thanks to her acquaintance with the Marxist Elena Stasova, became seriously interested in socialist ideas. The love for the revolutionary struggle turned out to be stronger than love to your spouse. In 1898, leaving her husband and son, Kollontai went to study in Switzerland.

Then there was a series of trips abroad, in which Alexandra became increasingly imbued with Marxist ideology: like all party members, she was engaged in active propaganda among workers, gave public lectures, and communicated with representatives of the labor movement in Europe.

During the revolution of 1905, Kollontai met Lenin and continued to engage in political struggle, but for more high level. During the years spent abroad, she managed to attend several international socialist congresses, and also made two propaganda trips to the States.

In parallel with this work, Alexandra wrote journalism and fiction texts dedicated to the image of the “new woman” - an intellectually and financially independent, versatile person who has equal relationships with men:

“Bourgeois morality demanded: everything for a loved one. Proletarian morality dictates: everything for the collective! Eros will take its rightful place among the members of the labor union. It’s time to teach a woman to take love not as the basis of life, but only as a way to reveal her true self.”

After the February Revolution, Kollontai returned to her homeland, where she became a member of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. In October of the same year, she took the post of People's Commissar of Public Charity. At her People's Commissariat, Alexandra created the Department for the Protection of Motherhood and Infancy, in addition, on her initiative, a women's department was created under the Central Committee of the RCP (b).

In 1922, Kollontai left Russia again - this time as an authorized representative of the young state. They say that the reason for Kollontai’s transfer to the ambassadorial position was her own initiative: She had just separated from her husband Pavel Dybenko and needed a change of scenery.

For the next couple of decades, Kollontai served as the USSR plenipotentiary representative in Sweden, Norway, and even managed to work in Mexico. In 1945, several years before her death, Alexandra’s health seriously deteriorated, and she had to leave the service.

6. Maria Spiridonova

Maria Spiridonova joined the labor movement in the early 1900s, immediately after finishing her studies at the gymnasium. The girl was very radical: she not only decided to engage in propaganda, but immediately joined the militant organization of the Socialist Revolutionary Party.

In 1906, Spiridonova volunteered to carry out the murder of the adviser to the Tambov governor Luzhenovsky, who created a branch of the national-monarchist organization “Union of Russian People” in the province and became famous for his particular cruelty in pacifying peasant unrest.

The murder took place at the Borisoglebsk station. Having fired 5 bullets at the official, Maria, as they say, lost her head. What exactly happened is not known for certain. According to one version, she became hysterical: the girl ran along the platform, shouting: “I killed him!” According to other sources, Spiridonova tried to shoot herself. The “performance” ended at the moment when the girl was stunned by a Cossack who ran up with a butt.

The police who detained the revolutionary severely beat and tortured her during interrogation, and in the carriage transporting the criminal to Tambov, the girl was raped. The court sentenced the terrorist to death by hanging; she spent 16 days awaiting execution. However, at the last moment, Spiridonova was pardoned: the execution was replaced by indefinite hard labor.

After February Revolution Maria, like other political prisoners, was granted an amnesty. Thanks to its rich biography and the aura of a “great martyr”, upon her arrival in Moscow she quickly gained authority among fellow party members. Spiridonova became a member of the organizing bureau of the left faction of the AKP, conducted propaganda among the military and workers, calling for an end to the war, the transfer of power to the Soviets, and the land to the peasants.

For a long time, her views largely coincided with the Bolshevik program. However, in the spring and summer of 1918, Spiridonova sharply changed her position. She harshly criticized the foreign policy of the Council of People's Commissars (the conclusion of the Brest Peace Treaty), as well as the Bolshevik methods of socializing the land.

“At first we worked hand in hand with the Bolsheviks, often making concessions on party issues so that there would be no disagreements. But there was a disagreement on the issue of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty... and from that time on, completely different working conditions began,” Spiridonova said at the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’, Soldiers’ and Cossacks’ Deputies.

However, she was not allowed to work. Beginning in the fall of 1918, the revolutionary spent most of her time in prison. And in 1941, when the Germans were advancing on Moscow, Spiridonova was shot.

7. Larisa Reisner

Larisa Reisner knew from childhood what political struggle was: her father, a law professor, made acquaintances with the leaders of the European and Russian labor movement: Karl Liebknecht, August Bebel and Vladimir Lenin.

After finishing her studies at the gymnasium, the girl entered the Psychoneurological Institute and at the same time took up literary creativity. Reisner wrote modernist fiction and published the magazine Rudin, designed to “brand with the scourge of satire, caricature and pamphlet all the ugliness of Russian life.”

After the October Revolution, Larisa was the personal secretary of the first People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR, Lunacharsky, and also worked on the Special Commission for the Accounting and Protection of the Hermitage and Petrograd Museums.

In 1918, Reisner’s career took a sharp turn: she joined the intelligence service. After serving as commissar of the reconnaissance detachment of the 5th Army headquarters, the girl received a promotion: she was appointed commissar of the General Staff of the RSFSR Navy. In 1918 - 1919, Larisa actively participated in hostilities, and in 1920 she became an employee of the Political Directorate of the Baltic Fleet.

There, in the navy, the first female military politician in history arranged her personal life: she married the commander of the flotilla, Fyodor Raskolnikov, with whom she later went to establish diplomatic relations with Afghanistan. All this time, Larisa did not forget about writing: under the impression of a trip abroad, the book “Afghanistan” was born.

Later, already in a relationship with Karl Radek, Reisner visited Germany, from where she brought the book “Hamburg on the Barricades” and two collections of essays: “Berlin in 1923”, “In the Land of the Hindenburg”. Next was Donbass and the work “Coal, Iron and Living People”.

Visiting St. Petersburg more and more on short visits, Reisner nevertheless took an active part in cultural life Northern capital: had an affair with Gumilev, was friends with Blok. Fellow writers, however, did not particularly favor the writer. It was believed that Larisa’s talent was somewhat inferior to her outstanding external characteristics.

In the winter of 1926, the brave revolutionary decided to take a break from travel and military exploits. Unfortunately, the Moscow “vacation” turned out to be more dangerous for her than all the naval battles combined. Reisner drank a glass of milk and died of typhoid fever.

Connoisseur female soul Mirabeau once told emissaries of the French Revolution that “if women don’t get involved, nothing will come of it.” Women intervened heavily in the Cheka. Countrywoman - in Crimea. Concordia Gromova - in Ekaterinoslav. Comrade Rosa is in Kyiv. Evgenia Bosh - in Penza. Yakovleva and Elena Stasova - in St. Petersburg. Former paramedic Rebekah Meisel-Plastinina is in Arkhangelsk. Nadezhda Ostrovskaya is in Sevastopol. (This dry teacher with an insignificant face, who wrote about herself that “her soul shrinks like a mimosa from every sharp touch,” was the main character of the local terror, when officers were drowned en masse in the Black Sea, tying their bodies to the cargo that sank to the bottom it seemed to the diver that he was at a meeting of the dead.) In Odessa, the Hungarian Chekist Remover acted, who was later recognized as mentally ill on the grounds of sexual perversion, who arbitrarily shot 80 arrested people, and even Bolshevik justice established that this Chekist personally shot not only those suspected of counter-revolution, but also witnesses summoned by the Cheka and who had the misfortune of arousing her sick sensuality.

In Kazan, Chekist investigator Braude was noted to have shot the “White Guard scum” with her own hands, and during the search she personally undressed not only women, but also men. Socialists who visited her during a personal search wrote: “I had to wonder if this was a special soulless machine or a kind of sadistic woman?”

Prototype of Anka the Machine Gunner and the Viper

A woman horseman, in a leather jacket, tightened with a sword belt with a Mauser on her side, Elsa Grundman became for the creators a symbol of the heroine of troubled times. Portraits of Anka the machine gunner and the leaders of bandits were painted from it. Elsa Grundman's life after the war was tragic. She failed to find her place in peaceful life. For some time she tried to work in the People's Commissariat. In the early thirties, with the ardor characteristic of her nature, she fell recklessly in love with the head of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department. Got started whirlwind romance. But the head of the threat could not leave the children for Elsa. And Elsa Grundman acted as decisively as she always did when faced with a tough choice. She took out her award-winning Mauser and pointed it at her temple... Her last literary prototype was the heroine of Alexei Tolstoy’s essay “The Viper.”

The time spent in prisons made her cruel, sometimes to the point of pathology. The new party nickname - Demon - suited her perfectly. Crimea was handed over to Bela Kun and Rosalia Samuilovna. The triumphant victors invited Lev Davidovich Trotsky to become the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Soviet Republic of Crimea, but he replied: “Then I will come to Crimea when there is not a single White Guard left on its territory.” The leaders of Crimea took this not as a hint, but as an order and a guide to action. Bela Kun and Zemlyachka came up with a brilliant move to destroy not only the prisoners, but also those who were free. An order was issued: all former servicemen of the Tsarist and White armies must register - last name, rank, address. For evading registration - execution. There was only no notification that everyone who came to register would be shot...

“Why even these questions about origin, education. I’ll go into his kitchen and look into the pot; if there’s meat, he’s an enemy of the people, against the wall!”

Chekist MIZIKIN

We will greet them with volleys of challenge -
To the wall of the rich and the bar! -
And we will respond with hail of lead
For every sneaky blow...
We swear on the cold corpse
Carry out your terrible sentence -
Vengeance on the people's villains!
Long live the Red Terror!

Dropout high school student

“I had no gap between political and personal life. Everyone who knew me personally considered me a narrow fanatic, and perhaps I was.”

V. BRAUDE

When young fans asked Vera Figner what her six-year stay at the Rodionov Institute for Noble Maidens gave her, she answered: cultural bearing. And a sense of camaraderie. Vera Bulich only had enough patience for a year. By the time she got into this privileged educational institution, behind her were numerous clashes with the authorities and teachers of the Mariinsky Gymnasium, from where she was expelled in the fourth grade. The noble, free village life of an educated family formed in her somewhat anarchic inclinations. External discipline was clearly not her thing. Is it any wonder that at the institute she came into conflict - this time with the Law of God, the lessons of which were considered mandatory? The parents were convinced atheists and generally “university” people who did not pray to recognized public authorities. His father, Pyotr Konstantinovich, was the great-nephew of both the famous professor and rector Bulich, and Butlerov, who taught him chemistry, and his mother belonged to the Chaadaev family, who were proud of their famous relative, Pyotr Yakovlevich - officially, almost by the tsar himself, who was declared crazy for destroying criticism of Russia. The girl, in her inner understanding, simply could not help but despise her fellow students, who gladly mastered the secular conventions and skills of noble wives.

For not attending lessons in the Law of God, she was kicked out of the institute.

The situation was saved by the appearance in the city of a private female Kotovskaya gymnasium, located in the newly opened Kekin House. Having passed the fifth grade course as an external student, Vera Bulich transferred there. And she immediately ended up in a student circle of the left direction. Here life was in full swing and vividly reminiscent of Stepnyak-Kravchinsky’s “Underground Russia,” whose foreign publications passed through the hands of “conscious” youth. Proclamations, secret orders... Russia was moving towards its first revolution, and experienced agitators, who were short of hands, did not spare the student youth. It is no wonder that the whirlpool of events captured Vera Bulich. And when the university was closed in 1905, and its classrooms were occupied by soldiers, hotheads recklessly rushed into street fighting. The result was the arrest of a fifteen-year-old high school student. She was lucky: due to her young age, the gendarmes simply handed the girl over to her parents against a signature. But the young maximalist did not want to sit quietly and below the grass, and when her father demanded that she stop dangerous social experiments before finishing the gymnasium course, she took a pair of underwear and went to live in a “commune” on Staro-Gorshechnaya Street - now Shchapova. And I didn’t regret one bit that I had exchanged my private room with a comfortable bed for an untidy communal apartment, where the beds themselves were often used in turn. Now this would be called deviant behavior, but then it was the norm for some young people - a norm consecrated by the names of the general’s daughter Sofia Perovskaya, the daughter of a member State Council Natalia Klimova, many others. Some even saw a certain chic in this - “to go among the people.” This still happens today - under the guise of rock communes, “snow landings”, and other more serious sects.

Most of the fugitives eventually returned to ordinary life, they started families, position in society. But there were others whom the exhausting, deprived party life embittered and turned into fanatics. In the Kazan prison, where Vera Bulich soon ended up, she met such a passionate person - the famous Narodnaya Volya Oshanina, who spent thirty years fighting the regime. Her skin resembled fish scales, but her eyes sparkled with a young blue. It made a great impression.

The country was then alive with reports of endless assassination attempts on governors and gendarmes; throughout the Volga, landowners were forced out of their estates, and they were given the “red rooster.” On the Chistopol estate of the rebel’s uncle, Alexander Konstantinovich Bulich, who served as the zemstvo chief, where Vera was assigned, thanks to connections, to live under supervision, she became friends with local Socialist Revolutionaries and village hooligans. And she threw out the number: she suggested that they burn down the estate! Authority was assured. Then the barns of the mother’s estate were also set on fire - the house where the landowners located the village school remained intact. But after this I had to urgently flee to Ufa, become an illegal immigrant, and wander around Russia.

Having cut herself off from her former life and relatives in a truly surgical manner, without sparing her feelings, Vera acquired her first experience of insensitivity to the suffering of others. It is likely that such drastic revolutionary behavior still had a medical basis, some kind of excess of male hormones in the blood. Maybe a tendency towards vagrancy. Beliefs alone are not enough to explain criminal hooliganism. It is also not enough to say “idea”, “asceticism” to understand the motives for such actions. But there was also an environment of revolutionism, permeated with criminality. And the thought characteristic of those who have “suffered”: we suffered - now you too will feel it!

The logic of underground life eventually led her into the ranks of a conspiracy aimed at killing the commander of the Kazan Military District, General Sandetsky. The attempt on the tyrant’s life did not take place, but something else is important. At 18, killing became a morally acceptable norm for her. In essence, it no longer mattered that she later married the Marxist lawyer Samuel Braude and gave birth to a daughter. The vector of life was determined to the end: the revolutionary path. Perhaps she would have turned into a luminary of the revolution, a kind of grandmother of the Russian revolution, like Breshko-Breshkovskaya. But the revolution broke out, and “operational space” opened up.

“If Lenin had gained power in reality, and not just in his imagination, he would have played tricks no worse than Paul I on the throne.”

V. Menzhinsky, 1911

“The Kazan branch of the State Bank, the treasury, and the savings bank are forced to make daily payments: 1. To individuals and firms - no more than 300 rubles; 2. To factories and factories - in full... of which 25% in money, the rest in Freedom Loan bonds... The manager of the KOGB humbly asks not to refuse to accept the bonds...”

“The Kazan Council brings to the attention of the population that persons who refuse to accept bonds at a price of 85 rubles per 100 common nouns are subject to trial by a revolutionary tribunal.”

"Kazan Word", December 1917.

“And the cadets are eaten by dogs...”

In past years, historians made a lot of mistakes with the so-called “October battles” in Kazan in 1917. Ideological considerations, calling to see everywhere either the role of the party or the machinations of the enemies of socialism, highlighted the role of the Bolsheviks in the Kazan events, which, in fact, did not exist. And gradually, in step with the situation throughout the country, a garrison storm was brewing. The events were initiated by the famous explosion - the second in a row - of the Kazan Powder Plant. On August 14, at two o'clock in the afternoon, bags of saltpeter on the Porokhovaya platform caught fire. Then the fire reached the boxes with shells and cellars. Thousands of pounds of gunpowder smashed the entire area to smithereens. Glass flew out many kilometers from the epicenter. It tore for several days in a row. They said that the boilers of the Alafuzov factory were blown up. Classes in schools and gymnasiums were cancelled, the tram stopped running, traders fled from the markets, and shops closed. The population urgently packed their things and fled the city. The soldiers of the reserve regiments stationed in Zarechye fled with him. The command introduced martial law in the city, but this angered the soldiers. Order collapsed and numerous rallies broke out demanding an end to the war. There were unauthorized seizures of weapons depots, beatings of officers who demanded compliance with martial law, subordination, and regulations. The chairman of the Bolshevik committee, Grasis, played the role of instigator. On the opposite side, the provincial military commissar Kalinin was involved in incitement. It is no coincidence that later, in December, an investigation was carried out into the “bloody October events.” This is what the October Revolution was called back then. The newspapers, not yet covered up by the Bolsheviks, were indignant: on the banks of the Kazanka the corpses of cadets were lying, bayoneted by soldiers, despite assurances that life would be preserved. And dogs eat them! And the leaders of the new regime, as if making excuses, said that they had become victims of “provocations” and did not think about any seizure of power.

The Soviet, which seized political power in October, was dominated by the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. Under the Soviet, a revolutionary tribunal was created even under Kerensky to try provocateurs, gendarmes and similar types, whose personal affairs became the object of public attention. And the investigative commission of the tribunal was headed by the head of the Coalition Committee, Girsh Olkenitsky, and Vera Braude, the leader of the “junior” Social Revolutionaries of Kazan. This was before the official establishment of the Cheka.

In Kazan they said then that both the October Revolution and the “Chrekayka” appeared here earlier than in the Center.

Kazan trace of the famous terrorist

“I arrived in Moscow in February 1918, and in my pocket there were some 500 - 700 rubles in Keren money... There were no funds. I obtained funds by personally running around Moscow and finding - somewhere a thousand, somewhere five hundred, somewhere 2 thousand Kerensky money. That’s what the original budget was.”

This is how Boris Savinkov later recalled the very beginning of his famous “Union for the Defense of the Motherland and Freedom,” which covered half of Russia. The organization was growing, growing much faster than he or anyone else expected and, of course, these funds were in no way sufficient. And it was at this time that Masaryk sent 200 thousand rubles. It was they who saved the organization. They gave it the opportunity to develop and reach a position where, with its numbers and organization, it interested the French Ambassador Nulans, from whom Boris Viktorovich received more than two million rubles.

Over the course of several months, he formed a large organization from fragments of the Right Socialist Revolutionary Party and individual, “fighting”-minded representatives of the Cadet parties and People’s Socialists. The members of this underground organization were not only armed, but the vast majority of them had combat experience as front-line officers. Even among the officers of the Latvian riflemen closest to the Kremlin, Savinkov managed to create a cell of his “Union”, hoping with their help to capture the entire Bolshevik government. Savinkov and the Latvians were united by a common rejection of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty that had just been signed by the Bolsheviks and Germans (under which Latvia came under German rule).

Soon the “Union” numbered about 5,000 volunteers and had branches in Kazan, Kaluga, Kostroma, Yaroslavl, Rybinsk, Chelyabinsk, Ryazan, Murom. In each of these cities, weapons depots were created in case of an uprising. The central staff of the "Union", headed by Savinkov, was located in the very center of Moscow and existed under the guise of a "hospital for incoming patients." In addition to Boris Viktorovich, the leaders of this organization were Lieutenant General Rychkov, Colonel Perkhurov and the commander of the Latvian Soviet regiment guarding the Kremlin, Jan Bredis.

Reference

The organization's charter contained a table of salaries that were paid to each member. According to it, a private received 300 rubles a month, a detached one - 325 rubles, a platoon commander - 350 rubles, a company commander - 400 rubles, a battalion commander - 500 rubles and a regiment commander - 600 rubles. In addition, benefits were given to families from 150 to 300 rubles per month and free food and uniforms.

“I didn’t go looking for the French, but they found me and started helping me: at first they gave 20 - 40 thousand, then this figure increased. By the end of May, the Union had grown so much that its size no longer allowed it to remain underground.”

B. SAVINKOV

Savinkov initially thought about performing in Moscow. The performance was scheduled for June 1-2 and preparations were being made by this time. However, the performance in Moscow was canceled and it was decided to evacuate part of the organization to Kazan. It was not difficult to capture the Council of People's Commissars and the most important strategic points in Moscow at that time, but it was impossible to hold out, firstly, due to the significance of the Soviet troops and, secondly, due to the impossibility of feeding the population of the capital, since transport was destroyed. The new government would soon collapse.

However, the organization’s inaction threatened it with collapse, and the headquarters developed and adopted a plan for the capture of Kazan. Savinkov said that he “gave orders for the evacuation of some members of the organization to Kazan in order to start an uprising there when the Czechs approached.”

Military units were designated for evacuation, and lodgers were sent to Kazan. In total it was planned to transport 500 - 700 people. Lodgers going on reconnaissance were given 400 rubles for the trip and 2,000 rubles for renting premises; in addition, the lodger received 400 rubles per family, 150 rubles for lifting and uniform expenses - 100 rubles, and enjoyed housing allowances. Special instructions were drawn up, which each evacuated member of the “Union” had to follow.

The talkativeness of some members let us down... At the height of the evacuation, on the night of May 30, the All-Russian Emergency Commission arrested the Union headquarters in Moscow and, through it, up to 100 Union members.

The evacuation plan to Kazan and documents about the existence of the “Union” and preparations for the performance in Kazan were also captured there.

Theroigne de Mericourt: the forerunner

At the age of seventeen, she disappeared from her parents' house along with some nobleman who seduced her. At the beginning of the French Revolution, she found herself in Paris and became known to Danton and other revolutionary celebrities who willingly visited her salon. She dressed in a short cloak, trousers and something like sandals - a costume in which the mythology textbooks of that time depicted the Amazons; She usually appeared in public riding on a huge horse, armed from head to toe. When the question of the fate of the Girondins was being decided, she appeared in the square near the convention and ardently defended the Girondin party. Having finished her speech, she went into the Tuilerie garden, where several Jacobin women suddenly appeared, who rushed at the “bloodthirsty hetaera, leader of the Parisian cannibals” and subjected her to a painful beating with rods. She immediately went crazy; she was put in a mental home, where she remained until her death.

“The Revolutionary Tribunal is the shortest bridge from the emergency situation to the churchyard.” (A proverb from that time)

As a matter of fact, the Kazan “emergency” became aware of the conspiracy a little earlier - at the end of April - beginning of May. The local Menshevik Piontkovsky (later a famous historian), who held the post of deputy provincial commissar of labor, told Vera Brauda a story about how a certain fellow officer, who came from the family of a priest, suddenly warned him about an imminent coup. But Piontkovsky categorically refused to name him. Vera Petrovna did not insist or put pressure on the double-dealer, but simply looked through the lists of Piontkovsky’s fellow students and identified the person involved. It was a certain Serdobolsky, who lived on Popova Gora - now Telman Street.

During the search, the owner escaped out the window, and his guests - Nefedov and Bogdanov - ended up in the Cheka. There Nefedov spoke about General Popov, who led the organization, and about the weapons depot, which Bogdanov was in charge of. The case was headed by Kalinin, former military commissar of Kerensky in Kazan, and another Menshevik, Bartold.

On May 29, lodgers from Moscow left for Kazan. They were supposed to appear at the “Northern Rooms”: ask Yakobson, a famous Socialist Revolutionary figure of the 1905 era, introducing himself “from Viktor Ivanovich.” They also had the address of the treasurer of the Right Socialist Revolutionary Party, Konstantin Vinokurov - Poperechnaya 2nd Gora, 12 (Lesgafta), through whom they were supposed to contact Joseph Aleksandrovich Springlovich, the head of the fighting squad of the Right Socialist Revolutionaries, and Leonid Ivanovich Rezenev-Rozanov. But the role of lodgers was played by the Moscow security officers Zakovsky and Stringfler.

With their help, they covered the entire headquarters of the Kazan organization and its guests - the commander of the monarchists General Popov, the Muscovite courier Lieutenant Olgin-Herzen, the right Socialist Revolutionaries Yakobson and Nikitin. In the notes of the detainees, Braude and Olkenitsky found information about 20 people who promised to help with the placement of the headquarters and regiment of Savinkovites moving to Kazan from Moscow.

A professional in his field

It should be admitted that the Kazan security officers at the decisive moment showed much greater determination than their opponents.

So on June 18, in the whirlpool of the garrison upheaval - just like in October 17th - the power of the Bolsheviks and the “Chreka” almost ended, as soon as it began. An armed detachment of deserters from the Syzran sector of the front appeared in the city. The Garrison Committee immediately took him under its protection and entered into a dispute with the Council, which proposed decisive measures against the fugitives and sending him back to the front. The locks were knocked off the doors of the wine warehouses on Prolomnaya, wine appeared in the units, and dissatisfied people began to make noise. This happened in the Kremlin itself, where the troublemakers were stationed. The Bolsheviks were even forced to move their headquarters and archives to the Communist Club (Karl Marx, 66). There they urgently formed a military revolutionary committee and, having gathered units loyal to them, prepared to suppress the flaring uprising by armed means.

And again, big events were prevented with little bloodshed: the Bolshevik secret police - the Cheka - outplayed their opponents. Numerous arrests drove out the leaders and instigators.

At this time, lists of counter-revolutionaries being executed were published almost daily in Kazan. Vera Braud was spoken of in whispers and with horror.

“I myself have always believed that all means are good against enemies, and on my orders... active investigative methods were used: conveyor belt and methods of physical influence.”

V. BRAUDE

The Kazan underground at the end of July 1918 sent representatives to Simbirsk with an offer to Komuch and the Czechs to rush to Kazan, tempting them with Russia's gold reserves concentrated in the vaults of the State Bank and strong support from the underground, ready to rebel. The mutiny was planned for 8 o'clock in the evening on August 5, but the performance took place only at two o'clock in the afternoon the next day, when the detachments of the Czechs, Stepanov and Kappel broke through to the city center. Trucks with young people wearing white bandages were rushing around the city. They broke into houses and made arrests. They suppressed pockets of resistance - the Cheka building on Gogolevskaya, the Communist Club on Gruzinskaya (Karl Marx), the Kazan Compound, where the commander-in-chief of the Eastern Front Vatsetis was headquartered. It was then that Sheinkman, who remained in Kazan working underground, was shot, Vakhitov, who was captured in the suburban village of Bogorodskoye, a significant group of communists - Gassar, Komlev and others.

Their tender bones were sucked by dirt,
The ditches slammed shut above them.
And the signature on the verdict curled
A stream from a shot head

After the liberation of Kazan, the head of the Cheka of the Eastern Front, Latsis, reported in Moscow: “There is no one to shoot. There are six death sentences in total.” But then central newspapers began to publish calls for the Red Terror. Latsis was summoned to a meeting of the Kazan Committee of the RCP(b). He was reproached for not pursuing the Red Terror policy energetically enough. After this, the situation changed dramatically: extrajudicial executions in the city became commonplace. It was generally more convenient: to eliminate opponents instead of negotiating with them.

And not all of their opponents left the city. The famous Larisa Reisner, for example, who, during her “reconnaissance” into a city occupied by the White Czechs, ended up in prison, found her landlord - the former bailiff Alekseev, thanks to whom she was captured. She was captured clumsily - because she escaped from protection. The bailiff was shot. They were looking for the Chuvash members of the “founding party” Vasiliev, Nikolaev, Alyunov. Judicial officials serving in August were locked up. Sixty workers' representatives were shot for demanding an eight-hour working day, a revision of tariff rates and the removal of the rampaging Magyar detachments. On September 10, the KGB newspaper “Red Terror” published lists of enemies of Soviet power and invited everyone who wanted to work according to these “proscriptions.” It is not known exactly, but there were obviously rewards for informers - as in Ancient Rome, the customs of which the red leaders tried to revive on the banks of the Volga in 1918.

Latsis's right hand was Vera Petrovna Braude, whose path followed the units advancing on Kolchak. There she became famous for the mass executions of her former party brethren - the Social Revolutionaries. So she diligently scraped off the old skin of the party of “people's lovers”.

Stubborn biographical facts...

Tomsk December 1919. There was no local scout squad as such. Most of the scouts, along with their parents, fled after the troops. And those who still remained in the city sat quieter than water, lower than the grass, only in the evenings gathering at each other’s apartments and sharing the terrible news with which the city was filled. Nevertheless, in a dark room in one of the classrooms sat two scouts and the famous Braude, whose very name struck fear throughout Siberia. Both boy scouts were interrogated for a long time: they were demanded that they name all the scouts known to them and that they hand over the squad banner to the revolutionary authorities. Yura and Misha resolutely refused to do both. The scouts bravely endured the terrible moral torture of interrogating a monstrous woman, but did not give up, did not waver. Without a single groan, without fear, without weakness, nineteen-year-old scoutmaster Gan accepted death from a bullet a month later, and sixteen-year-old Yura Pavlov quietly faded away in the Cheremkhovo mines.

As if in mockery, in 1938 Vera Petrovna was accused of being a Socialist-Revolutionary. She died in 1961, completely rehabilitated, with the rank of KGB major and with an impressive personal pension of three thousand rubles.

I wonder how the honored revolutionary and security officer answered the questions of schoolchildren, who even then suffered from the hypocrisy of teachers and parents? Did she advise you to break up decisively and leave irrevocably?

International Women's Day is celebrated in all republics former USSR. Almost everywhere it is a day off. This year, somewhere, not even one, but four. March 8th is a day of solidarity for equal pay compared to men. That's how it was. And how it happened - in the report of the MIR 24 TV channel.

February 23, 1917 Petrograd. Almost 130 thousand people took to the streets of the capital. A crowd also gathered near the Kazan Cathedral. The first to do this were simple housewives and weaving factory workers. They were afraid of hunger - they demanded “Bread!” and “Feed the children of the defenders of the Motherland.” This is how it began " woman's revolt».

“They went to the cordon more boldly than men, grabbed their rifles, asked, almost ordered: “Drop your guns and join us,” Leon Trotsky wrote in his memoirs.

Only a few days have passed. The women of Petrograd were still on strike. But the slogans were already political: “Down with the Tsar!”, “Long live equality!”, “Women’s place in the Constituent Assembly.”

Very brave. After all, throughout the world, elections have long been considered a man’s business. For example, in Switzerland until 1971, in France until 1944, in Spain until 1931, in Britain until 1928. In the United States, gender discrimination was abolished in all states only in 1920. In Russia already in 1917, just 8 months after the February Revolution, as the newspapers wrote then, “women had the great happiness, which women in other countries did not know, to take part in the Constituent Assembly.” They could vote and even be elected.

“They were not fighting for privileges compared to men. Namely for equality. They were perceived in the parties - both the Social Revolutionary and the Bolshevik - as comrades in arms. This is where the address “comrade” came from, which has no gender difference. A comrade is both a man and a woman. It was breakthrough, innovative for that time,” explains Arseny Zamostyanov, deputy editor-in-chief of the Istorian magazine.

Comrade Alexandra Kollontai is the face of Bolshevik Russia. The first female minister in world history. Back in 1913, Kollontai unveiled the principles of the “new woman”. A few points: victory over emotions, interests are not limited to home, family and love, renunciation of jealousy, while “a woman should not hide her sexuality.”

Her coat of excellent quality, ordered abroad (there is a tag from a Swedish fashion house), and her hat with a veil have survived. The revolutionary knew a weapon that men could not resist. For her, relationships are as easy as drinking a glass of water. One husband, the other, lovers. People shot at her because of her, she was idolized and hated. In 1922, Kollontai wrote a story about the near future: the family was destroyed, the new unit of society was the commune.

“They are distributed by age. Children - in “Children’s Palaces”, young men and teenage girls - in cheerful houses surrounded by gardens, adults - in hostels arranged for different tastes, old people - in the “House of Recreation,” Kollontai wrote in her story “Soon (in 48 years)".

Against the background of the revolution and civil war Kollontai had another whirlwind romance - with Pavel Dybenko. “Leader of Sailors” is a horror with a gun. The same Dybenko who became famous for organizing the massacre of officers and admirals of the Baltic Fleet. The furious petrel of the revolution was 17 years younger than the general’s daughter Kollontai. But who bothered then? They got married, but the marriage was not church. This is the first time in Soviet Russia, it’s so easy and fast. You can get a divorce just as easily and quickly.

“At some point, her theory and views on free love collided with practice, with real life. Dybenko stopped loving her and became interested in another woman. Then Kollontai could not feel like a new woman, free from jealousy and bonds with the man she loves. She was jealous, cried, could not find a place for herself,” says Alexander Smirnov, candidate of historical sciences.

Ida Rubinstein, actress and dancer, stripped naked on stage. Except that the beads remained. So . Then it was a real revolution, a breakthrough, a shock. Ida had to fight for the right to stun the audience. Relatives, who did not approve of such hobbies at all, sent her to a hospital. But a year later she was “freed” to dance again. Dance without clothes.

Excessive freedom, the same glass of water theory, according to contemporaries, was not approved by Vladimir Ilyich. Like, “thirst requires satisfaction, but does normal person will he drink from a puddle? However, he himself still ended up in love triangle. Even before October 2017, in exile, in Paris.

“Apparently, there was a short-term affair, whether it was platonic or not, with the charming revolutionary Inessa Armand, who was in love with him. This romance ended with a threefold agreement that Vladimir Ilyich remains with Nadezhda Konstantinovna, and Inessa Armand remains a friend for both him and her,” notes Arseny Zamostyanov, deputy editor-in-chief of the “Historian” magazine.

Krupskaya knew about her rival and even offered to divorce, but Lenin persuaded her to leave everything as it was. And so life turned out to be three: they returned to Russia together. In Moscow, the apartments were located nearby in the Kremlin. One is Lenin and his legal wife, the other is Armand. But the leader of the peoples did not even think of parting with Nadezhda Konstantinovna. There was a lot about her that captivated him.

Krupskaya read “Capital” for the first time in a girls’ gymnasium. Then she joined a student Marxist circle in St. Petersburg. At the same time, she began campaigning among workers - she went to factories, taught at a school for adults, and told textile workers about the class struggle in geography lessons. As a result of diligent underground work, she was arrested in 1896. At that time she was not even married to Lenin.

Marxist ideas were cemented. She was his secretary. Together they created the “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class.” They were in exile together and returned to the Russian capital together in April 1917.

Shirokaya Street, building 48, apartment 24. This is the first address in Petrograd where Lenin and Krupskaya stayed. Vladimir Ilyich’s older sister helped and gave her shelter. There they edited the newspaper Pravda and often gathered party comrades. Life has faded into the background. Krupskaya did not like to cook. So there was the simplest food on the table - porridge and tea.

Krupskaya is from a noble family, like many feminists of the 19th century, in which we must look for the reasons for the Great Revolution. Women are tired of the routine: high school, husband, children, that’s all. I wanted a different life. The manual was Chernyshevsky’s novel “What is to be done?”, and the ideologist was the “grandmother of the Russian revolution” Ekaterina Breshko-Breshkovskaya.

“She got married, gave birth to a son, Nikolai, and then she realized that she needed more. She left the family, left her husband, and left the child in the care of relatives. And she became a traveling propagandist,” says Alla Morozova, candidate of historical sciences, senior researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Breshko-Breshkovskaya spent a third of her life in hard labor. But after her liberation she did not stop “going to the people.” She was not at all afraid of being arrested.

More than one revolutionary had to go through the punishment cell. The Trubetskoy Bastion prison was specially built for political prisoners in the early 1870s. The conditions there were sometimes unbearable. Fully insulated, instead of a mattress there is felt, the pillow is stuffed with straw. You can’t smoke, no meetings or correspondence, you can’t even read, only the Bible was allowed. Some people went crazy there.

“We are not utopians. We know that any laborer and any cook are not capable of immediately taking over the management of the state... But we (...) demand an immediate break with the prejudice that only the rich are able to manage the state, carry out the everyday work of government,” wrote Vladimir Lenin in the article “Will the Bolsheviks retain state power?”

The revolution made women free in Russia. They were among the first in the world to receive the right to vote, free nurseries and kindergartens. They were the first to master male professions - they became tractor drivers and commissars. But is it possible to equate freedom and happiness? Who knows...

Here are the names of ten famous revolutionaries, many of whom gained eternal fame and became national heroes at home.

Behind the popular T-shirt print is the personality of a man whose vision of freedom was both romantic and uncompromising. Ernesto Guevara was born in 1928 into a middle-class Argentinean family. He learned about all the hardships of life for the poor Latin America when I received my medical practice. Che Guevara vowed to change the situation, and subsequently became one of the leaders of the Cuban Revolution.

Among all the historical personalities after whom the squares and boulevards of France are named, the name of Maximilian Robespierre, for an inexplicable reason, appears less often than others. A brilliant orator and an incredibly intelligent man, Maximilian Robespierre was one of the leaders of the Great French Revolution. After the coup d'etat, Robespierre was executed on July 28, 1794.

I wonder how the history of the 20th century would have turned out if the uprising of the German left forces of 1918–1919, in which Rosa Luxemburg played a significant role, had ended in success? Rosa Luxemburg was one of the founders of the Spartacus League, which opposed the First World War and later transformed into the German Communist Party. Photo: Rosa Luxemburg in prison in Warsaw in 1906 Luxemburg was imprisoned several times for her political activities.

In the photo: Mahatma Gandhi with his granddaughters in New Delhi, 1947. Mahatma Gandhi became a symbol of nonviolent resistance after successfully applying his principles and tactics in the struggle for Indian independence from Britain. Gandhi was born to Indian parents, but gained his first experience of nonviolent resistance in South Africa. Upon his return to India, he organized a protest movement of workers and peasants against land taxes. Gandhi won the struggle for Indian independence, although he was against the division of India and Pakistan.

Things are not going well in Haiti at the moment, but the country boasts the first anti-slavery uprising in history since Spartacus. François Dominique Toussaint Louverture was the leader of the Haitian Revolution of 1791, which resulted in Haiti's independence.

Mary Harris or Mother Jones, who went down in history as the most dangerous woman America, was a teacher and dressmaker. Her children and husband died during a jaundice epidemic. Mary Harris was the founder of the Industrial Workers of the World, fought against the exploitation of child labor and was one of the organizers of strikes by miners and silk workers.

James Connolly is considered one of Ireland's founding fathers, but his name has been undeservedly lost among the greatest European revolutionaries of all time. He founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party, and in 1913, together with Jim Larkin, organized the strike that three years later led to the Easter Rising, in which his Irish Citizen Army took part.

Emiliano Zapata was the leader of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Inspired by the works of the anarchist revolutionary Prince Peter Kropotkin, Zapata began to fight for the land rights of peasants. The Southern Zapata Liberation Army continued to fight against the landowners even after the victory of the revolution.