Five Sisters: Women Against the Tsar

Olga Liubatovich

OLGA LIUBATOVICH This page is intentionally left blank Olga Liubatovich was born in Moscow in 1854. Her father, an engineer by training, was a political refugee from Montenegro . Her mother was the daughter of a gold-mine owner and possessed, Olga writes, "a level of culture rare for those times: she had studied in the best French boarding school in Moscow and had spent time in the company of a number of writers at the home of one of her school friends." She died when Olga was in her mid-teens. Liubatovich got her early schooling in Moscow. In May 1871, along with her sister Vera, who was one year younger, she went to Zurich to study medicine. Francisca Tiburtius, a Swiss contemporary, has lett a vivid description of Olga Liubatovich as she appeared during those years. Waiting for some friends at an eating place frequented by Russians, she chanced to see an enigmatic being, whose biological character was at first all but clear to me: a roundish, boyish face, short-cut hair, parted askew, enormous blue glasses, a quite youthful, tender-colored face, a coarse iacket, a burning cigarette in its mouth-everything about it was boylike, and yet there was something which belied this desired impression. I looked stealthily under the table-and discovered a bright-coloured, somewhat faded cotton skirt. The being took no notice at all of my presence and remained absorbed in a large book, every now and then rolling a cigarette which was finished in a few droughts.! 1 J. M. Meijer. Knowledge and Revolution: the Russian colony in Zurich (1870-1873). Assen, the Netherlands, 1955, p. 59. 146 FIVE SISTERS Both of the Liubatovich sisters became active in the Fritsche women's circle in Zurich (in Figner's memoir, Olga appears as the "Shark"-a nickname she acquired because of her voracious appetite-while Vera was "Wolfie") and both subsequently returned to Russia as members of the Pan-Russian Social Revolutionary Organization. In the spring of 1875, Olga Liubatovich took up work as an unskiIled factory hand. She conducted socialist propaganda among workers in Moscow and, later, Tula, where she was arrested under circumstances described by Figner on page 30. It was nearly two years before she and her comrades appeared in court. FinaIly, at the Trial of the Fifty in March 1877, Liubatovich was condemned to nine years at hard labor. The sentence was subsequently reduced to simple banishment, and Liubatovich was transported to a smaIl town in Tobolsk province, western Siberia. Held under minimum security in a private house rather than a prison (a common arrangement), Liubatovich was able to place her medical knowledge at the service of the local population , among whom she promptly acquired a reputation as a miracle worker. Her fiercely independent attitude repeatedly brought her into confrontations with the authorities: at one point, she successfuIly resisted a search of her quarters for three days by barricading herself in and convincing a party of besieging gendarmes that she had a gun and was prepared to use it (actuaIly, she was armed with nothing more than a penknife and some kitchen utensils). Then, in July 1878, Liubatovich concocted a "suicide" for the benefit of the poIice-a note, a fareweIlletter to her sister, clothing strategicaIly flung on the banks of a rapid river-and, with the aid of a young peasant whom she had converted to socialism, made her escape.2 Traveling by coach, boat, and train, she managed to reach St. Petersburg, where she hoped to find her comrades and resume revolutionary activity. Her memoirs begin at this point. 2 The details of Liubatovich's life in exile and her escape come from Sergei Kravchinskii [Stepniak]. A Female Nihilist. Boston, 1886. Olga Liubatovich 1 47 Vera Liubatovich It was early August 1878, when I reached St. Petersburg, a free woman. As I stood in the train station, oblivious to the unusual activity and undercurrent of uneasiness among the crowd, my thoughts turned for the first time to the difficulties that confronted me in the capital: I had the clothes on my back, a scant few kopecks in my pockets, and nowhere at all to go. Then, through my reverie, I overheard: "Dead, killed on the spot!" I lifted my head and looked around in bewilderment . At that very moment, I was approached by an elderly, plainly dressed woman, who looked me over and started inquiring where...