A Beautiful Nihilist

poetry

Joseph Verey, “Vera Sassulitch” (1880)

August 5, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist
VERA SASSULITCH. Joseph Verey If any asked the student, which He thought the prettiest among A score of Moscow school-girls, “Young And gentle Vera Sassulitch,” He answered with a ready tongue. Netchaieff was the student named, And Vera and his sister moved In the same social grade, and loved Each other, and the student claimed The heart of Vera unreproved. But oft Netchaieffs mind was bent— With passion which to youth belongs— Upon the many cruel wrongs Of a despotic Government, Deriding it in tales and songs. And some of these to Vera given, Around her drew the fatal coil […]
fiction

Leon de Tinseau, “A Beautiful Nihilist” (fiction, 1892)

June 27, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist
A BEAUTIFUL NIHILIST. From the French of Leon de Tinseau; V.E.T., Chateau Bange, Bordeaux. In 187-, somewhat before the tragic death of the least Czar, one of the most notable men of the Russian Empire was Prince Michael ——-, whose family name, an illustrious one, reasons of the highest importance forbid our giving. During a visit to France after the war, while at one of the receptions of the Princesse Lise, he met that superb daughter of General de Contremont, whom the Parisian world, springing to life again from its ashes, knew already as “la belle Madeleine,” a girl as […]
biographies

Gesya Gelfman (1852-1882)

June 27, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist
[aka Jessy Helfman, Hessy Helfman, Hesse Helfman, Hesia Helfman] Gesya Gelfman at Wikipedia “A Horrible Story” (1881) JESSY HELFMAN, THE HUMBLE MARTYR [From Stepniak’s Underground Russia] There are unknown heroines, obscure toilers, who offer up everything upon the altar of their cause, without asking anything for themselves. They assume the most ungrateful parts; sacrifice themselves for the merest trifles; for lending their names to the correspondence of others; for sheltering a man, often unknown to them; for delivering a parcel without knowing what it contains. Poets do not dedicate verses to them; history will not inscribe their names upon its […]
Saint Ravachol

Cruel Punishments (Goukoffski, 1979)

June 26, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist
The St. Petersburg correspondent of the Daily Telegraph says that official details now published confirm the astonishment which has been felt at the terrible severity of the sentences on the Odessa political convicts. The official publication states that all the 28 prisoners were found guilty of having belonged to an illegal society, which called itself the Social Revolutionary party. No further accusation was brought against Lissogoub, a gentleman aged 29, who had already been hanged; against Bolomeze, aged l8, condemned to 20 years’ hard labour; against the lady Levandovski, aged 25, and condemned to 15 years hard labour; or against […]
Saint Ravachol

Russian Revolutionary Heroines (Sophia Bardina, 1881)

June 26, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist
RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY HEROINES THE weight of a woman’s brain in Slavonic races is greater than that of a man’s. Among the Germanic peoples the brain weight of the sexes is equal, and in the Latin nations the brain of the man is heavier than that of the woman. Quantity does not necessarily imply quality, but in this case worth follows weight. “For intelligence and resolution,” says M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, the most recent and; the most fascinating of writers on Russia and the Russians, “as well as for education, and the rank she holds in the family, the Russian woman is […]
Saint Ravachol

Mentioned in passing

June 26, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist
“Achristoff, the 17-year-old priest’s daughter, who made love to the detective Lavroffski, in order to betray him into the hands of the nihilists…” “Victoria Goukoffski, daughter of a medical dispenser of Odessa, who, on hearing that the Nihilist Kovalsky had been sentenced to death, created a riot…” “the daughter of Major General Herzfeld, who was arrested at Kief…” “Jude Krakoffski, the daughter of a university official at Kieff, whose banishment to Siberia for having destroyed certain compromising papers in 1877, was confirmed only the other day…” (1881) “the lady Levandovski, aged 25, and condemned to 15 years hard labour…” “Anna […]
Saint Ravachol

May Beals-Hoffpauir, “Sketches of Russian Heroines. I. Vera Figner”

June 26, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist
Sketches of Russian Heroines. I. Vera Figner BY May Beals-Hoffpauir Twenty-two years, nearly one-third of the expected three score and ten, spent in a black prison cell with no glimpse of passing cloud or starry skies; no message for thirteen of these years from friend or relative; no hope, in all that dreary time, of any change but death—such is the record of nearly one-half of Vera Figner’s life. It is not strange that her recent appearance in London aroused the wild enthusiasm to which she was already accustomed on the continent. Few can survive twenty years in a Russian […]
poetry

Joaquin Miller, “Sophia Perovskaya” (1881)

June 26, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist
Sophie Perovskaya, LIBERTY’S MARTYRED HEROINE. Hanged April 15, 1881, For Helping to Rid the World of a Tyrant. Down from her high estate she stept,             A maiden, gently born And by the icy Volga kept             Sad watch, and waited morn; And peasants say that where she slept             The new moon dipped her horn.                         Yet on and on, through shoreless snows                                     Stretched tow’rd the great north pole,                         The foulest wrong the good God known                                     Rolls as dark rivers roll.                         While never once for all these woes                                     Upspeaks one human soul. She toiled, […]
poetry

George Barlow, “Sophia Perovskaia” (1895)

June 26, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist
SOPHIA PEROVSKAIA. Blue-eyed, fair-haired, a girl in outward seeming, With lips, men held, that only cared to sing, When thy foot passed along the meadows dreaming Soft dreams and tender of the gold-haired Spring— When other maidens dreamed with longing wonder Of love, thou crowned with Spring’s most loving light Beneath blue skies wast dreaming of the thunder, Beneath the morn wast dreaming of the night . High-born, thou didst forsake the lordly places; Thy young heart thrilled at Freedom’s trumpet-call: Thou wanderedst forth, a light for poor men’s faces; Love, wealth, repose,—thou didst surrender all. And has not yet […]
Saint Ravachol

“Extraordinary escape of a young Nihilist girl…” (1879)

June 22, 2016 A Beautiful Nihilist
THE Moscow journals relate an extraordinary escape of a young Nihilist girl named Gobieslawska from the hands of the police. They had discovered the house in which she was concealed, and were about to make the arrest, when, to their surprise, they saw a balloon rising from the garden containing the object of their search and two men. The balloon rapidly disappeared. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (September 13, 1879): 23. Up in a Balloon.— A novel mode of escape was recently practiced by a Nihilist. A young woman named Olga Gobieslawska had been wanted for a long time by the […]