Vera Ivanovna Zasulich (1849-1919)

A female leader of the early socialist movement in Russia; later she was one of the leaders of the Mensheviks. She was born to a feudal aristocratic family. She joined the Narodniks in 1869 and was a member of the “Land and Freedom Society”. She was imprisoned for two years and exiled abroad three times. In the early 1880s, she broke with the Narodniks and turned to Marxism. In a letter to Marx on February 16, 1881, she asked Marx to talk about the prospect of Russian historical development, especially the fate of Russian rural communes. From 1883 to 1884, she was one of the most active members of the “Emancipation of Labor” group. Many important works of Marx and Engels were translated into Russian, which contributed to the spread of Marxism in Russia. After 1900, she joined the editorial department of Iskra and The Dawn. After 1903, she became one of the prominent leaders of the Mensheviks. She returned to Russia in 1905. During Stolypin’s reactionary reforms period (1907-11) she was one of the leaders of the “liquidationists”. During the World War I, she took a social chauvinistic position. After the February Revolution in 1917, she joined the unified front of the Mensheviks and opposed the Bolshevik October Revolution. Her main works include “The Outline of the International Workers’ Association”, “Jean Jacques Rousseau: A Russian Revolutionary’s View of Rousseau’s Political Thought”, and others.