Talk:Aleksandra Izmailovich

Two remarks

I would like to comment on two statements in this very good article.
1. In the section "Early life and activism" the article claims that "Following the outbreak of the Russian Revolution of 1905, the sisters [Izmailovich] became involved in the SR Combat Organisation". This claim is based on two sources: one Russian (Leoniev), which states that Izmailovich was a member of a "flying Combat Detachment of the Northern Region"; one American (Maxwell), which does not even seem to allude to Izmailovich's participation in any specifically terrorist organisation, but only to her deep commitment to SR tactics, including terror. As far as I know, the Combat Organisation was a top level structure, extremely narrow and elitist, whose targets were the top officials of the Tsarist state. It therefore seems highly unlikely that the two young women from Minsk could have been members of it. Anna Geifman (Thou shalt kill: revolutionary terrorism in Russia, 1894–1917, Princeton University Press, 1993, p. 58) writes that the SR leadership also relied, both centrally and locally, on smaller, more streamlined structures or individuals, who were tasked with carrying out the sentences issued by the party's representative bodies, as may have been the case with the Izmailovich sisters. In my opinion, the statement in the article should be changed to something like this: "...the sisters were involved in terrorist activities carried out by the PSR".
2. At present, in the "Transfer to Siberia" section, the article claims that "In 1908, Izmailovich and Spiridinova helped Irina Kakhovskaya, a convicted member of the Maximalists, get settled at the katorga." As this is a meeting of three people who were to form a deep, lifelong friendship that included decades of shared political life and then shared living and mutual assistance, the above statement seems to me to be extremely reductive to the point of being misleading. Jeanambr (talk) 16:09, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

@Jeanambr: Hey, thanks for taking interest in this! On point 1, I think you're right so feel free to change that. On point 2, I only reduced the information because I was having trouble finding it in the cited source (I found their meeting on page 216, but didn't see where the rest was coming from); is there somewhere in Maxwell that explicitly talks about them forming a lifelong friendship? --Grnrchst (talk) 16:26, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

I do not believe there is such a clear statement in Maxwell’s book, but the sources on the subsequent events of the three revolutionaries clearly demonstrate this assumption.

Their friendship was formed in Maltsev after Kakhovskaya’s arrival in 1908; the relationship the three formed between them allowed Spiridonova’s biographer Isaac Steinberg (Spiridonova: Revolutionary Terrorist. London: Methuen, 1935, p. 172) to style them "Katorga cell-mates". Their ideological and political consonance is confirmed by the fact that during her imprisonment Kakhovskaya rejoined the PSR, where the other two were already active.

At the time of the amnesty after the February Revolution, Kakhovskaya had already been released and was joined by the other two in Chita, the capital of Transbaikalia, where she was in exile. All three returned together by train to European Russia and then pursued parallel political careers. Despite the ovations with which they were welcomed at the PSR congress, none of the three was elected to the central committee. All three positioned themselves on the extreme left and cast their lot with the new Left SR party during the October Revolution. There was even talk of Izmailovich joining the coalition government, probably as a deputy minister, but in the end she preferred to work in the peasant section of the VTsIK, chaired by Spiridonova.

In July 1918, all three shared the Left PSR's choice to resume terror, this time against the German invaders. Spiridonova and Kakhovskaya physically organized the two main attacks, the assassinations of the German ambassador and of the military governor of Ukraine, respectively. Spiridonova and Izmailovich were arrested together in Moscow during the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Kakhovskaya was arrested by the Germans in Ukraine and sentenced to death. However, she was released in January 2018 after the Kaiser's fall, and managed to return to Moscow in time to attend the second trial of Spiridonova by the Bolsheviks: she was among the few who managed to get in. Steinberg describes the scene as follows: "Suddenly a cry was heard. ' Marusya ! ' ' Irina ! ' Kakhovskaya dashed through the barrier of sentries and the two old comrades embraced. No one in the room dared disturb them" (p. 241).

In the following years, Spiridonova and Izmailovich went into hiding together in Moscow, posing as peasants, while Kakhovskaya continued her clandestine terrorist activity now directed against the White generals Kolchak and Denikin, for a while even with the cover of the Bolshevik police.

When they were arrested again, Spiridonova’s mental and physical health conditions were truly terrible and were aggravated by the hunger strike she undertook. Izmailovich was transferred from Butyrka prison to nurse her. When, in 1921, it was decided that the SR leader would be "released to the custody of two Left SR comrades under the condition that she cease all political activity," Kakhovskaya sent a letter declaring her agreement to accept the Cheka’s terms. “Otherwise” she wrote, “Marusya will die.” (Steinberg, p. 275).

In 1923, a long period of internal exile began during which Spiridonova and Izmailoich lived together almost continuously, and Kakhovskaya joined them as often and as long as she was permitted to, lovingly caring for each other. Izmailovich even had a finger amputated due to infection from an accidental cut (Steinberg, p. 285). The three continued to live together even after Spiridonova’s marriage to Mayorov. In her 2017 FiLia conference address, "'Unanimous in Our Enthusiasms': Female Friendship in the Russian Revolutionary Movement", Angelina Lesniewski argued that, during their internal exile, Spiridonova and Izmailovich formed "an SR family with Irina Kakhovskaya and Ilya Mayorov." The final chapter of Maxwell’s book, "Political Heroines in the Gulag," finally gives a moving account of the efforts of the sole survivor Kakhovskaya in the 1950s to preserve the memory of her slain comrades.

I apologize for my English Jeanambr (talk) 15:38, 6 July 2025 (UTC)

Went ahead and changed the first one, thanks for pointing it out. --Grnrchst (talk) 18:07, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

@Grnrchst: since, in my opinion, leaving out the lifelong sisterhood that developed between the three prisoners doesn't seem to do Izmailovich justice, I searched for further sources online: in addition to aforementioned Lesniewski, I have found an academic dissertation that outlines the concept of "revolutionary family," also making explicit reference to the three. Based on these additional sources, I therefore propose that the following text, or something similar, be added after footnote 62:

A deep, lifelong friendship then developed between the three prisoners, a sort of personal and political sisterhood that would culminate, beginning in 1925, during the years of internal exile, in the formation of what has been styled a "revolutionary family".

@Jeanambr: Hey, thanks for looking into this! I've added a slimmed-down version of what you wrote here (see diff). --Grnrchst (talk) 22:28, 15 July 2025 (UTC)