The Defiant Life of Vera Figner: Surviving the Russian Revolution

9 Resurrection in Exile

9 RESURRECTION IN EXILE In the days before Vera left Shlisselburg, her dear friend Nikolai Morozov composed a poem to commemorate her release. In it he expressed his wish that fate would treat his cherished comrade well and that soon she wouldputthehorrorsofprisonbehindher.1 ButVerahadspenttoomanyyears in Shlisselburg to believe that Morozov’s good wishes for her would be realized . She knew that inmates did not move easily from fortress to freedom. On the contrary, the steamer ride down the Neva from Lake Ladoga was just the first leg of a long journey that brought former Shlisselburg prisoners to new, untried terms of incarceration. For most this fresh incarceration was physical , as newly released Shlisselburg inmates faced periods of varying length in other prisons of the tsar or in distant exile settlements. But even those lucky few who quickly passed from imprisonment to freedom soon realized that they still remained captive to the fortress that had stolen their youth. Though the former inmates might never see the white walls of the fortress again, they never completely left Shlisselburg, nor did it leave them. As Vera explained almost a decade after her release, “I cannot erase twenty years during which I experienced more than in the rest of my life combined. Shlisselburg always hangs over me. I cannot shake it off, nor do I want to.”2 Vera did not expect her release from Shlisselburg to bring liberation. She felt too damaged, too transformed. With her nerves frayed from years of neartotal isolation and her spirit demoralized by decades spent without the power tocontroleventhemostbasicelementsof herlifeandbody,shesimplywanted 180 The Defiant Life of Vera Figner to remain entombed under the conditions to which and with the people to whom she had grown accustomed. If she had retained any autonomy over her fate, she certainly would have rejected the “resurrection” that her now deceased mother and the tsarist government had foisted upon her. Four weeks after she left the prison where she had been confined for two decades, Vera was still behind bars.3 After almost a fortnight in the Peter and Paul Fortress, where the new electric lamps signaled the passage of time from her last stay, she landed in a prison in the northern town of Archangel.4 Although she expected to be transferred to a distant exile outpost such as Irkutsk or Sakhalin Island in the eastern section of the country,5 Russia’s recent war with Japan dictated the need to send her north. As her family and officials from the Ministry of Internal Affairs debated about her ultimate place of exile, Vera waited, confined to the Archangel Prison. In spite of the government ’s intentions to send her to a remote location in the far northern part of the province, the state finally acceded to her family members’ requests to place Vera in a less severe environment. Both parties settled on the small town of Nenoksa, a mere 128 miles northwest of the provincial capital.6 Believing that their fifty-two-year-old sister had suffered through enough extremes in her life, the Figner siblings were heartened that despite the White Sea coastal town’s extreme climate, Nenoksa had ample provisions, access to medical care, and lovely pine forests through which Vera could stroll.7 The female members of the Figner family realized how important these types of niceties could be in exile. Both Lidia and Eugenia had spent more than a decade each in Siberian exile for their revolutionary activities, while the youngest sister, Olga, though never convicted of a crime herself, followed her husband into exile. The Figner brothers, however, were strangers to the practical ramifications of a life lived challenging the tsarist state. Embracing the legitimacy and material gain that came through their positions as noblemen in Imperial Russia, Peter and Nikolai had eschewed radical politics for financial security and aristocratic privilege. For Vera, both sets of her siblings’ experiences and life choices would bring salvation and solace in the decade after Shlisselburg. When Vera first laid eyes on her sisters and brothers in 1904 after a twentyyearseparation ,shewasjarredbywhatsheencountered.8 Gonewerethefreshfaced youths who had lived in the distant recesses of her memory. The passage of time had transformed these boys and girls into middle-age men and womenwhosegrayinghairandexpandingwaistlinestestifiedtotheyearsthat Resurrection in Exile 181 separated Vera from life. Even Olga, who was barely out of her teens when she had gazed mournfully at Vera as she walked away...