Maria (Masha) Alexandrovna Kolenkina (russian: link=no, Мария Александровна Коленкина; 1850 - 31 Oct 1926) was a Russian

socialist revolutionary The Socialist Revolutionary Party, or the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries (the SRs, , or Esers, russian: эсеры, translit=esery, label=none; russian: Партия социалистов-революционеров, ), was a major politi ...

from a merchant family in

Temryuk Temryuk ( rus, Темрю́к, p=tʲɪmˈrʲʉk) is a town and the administrative center of Temryuksky District in Krasnodar Krai, Russia, located on the Taman Peninsula on the right bank of the Kuban River not far from its entry into the Temr ...

, a small town on the

Sea of Azov The Sea of Azov ( Crimean Tatar: ''Azaq deñizi''; russian: Азовское море, Azovskoye more; uk, Азовське море, Azovs'ke more) is a sea in Eastern Europe connected to the Black Sea by the narrow (about ) Strait of Kerch, ...

. While studying to be a midwife in

Kyiv Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the List of European cities by populat ...

in the early 1870s, she became part of the populist movement in Russia. She went "to the people" in 1874 to propagandise and later belonged to Bakunist socialists known as the Southern Rebels (Iuzhnye Buntari) in Kyiv. She was subsequently associated with the Land and Liberty movement in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

. Together with

Vera Zasulich Vera Ivanovna Zasulich (russian: link=no, Ве́ра Ива́новна Засу́лич; – 8 May 1919) was a Russian socialist activist, Menshevik writer and revolutionary. Radical beginnings Zasulich was born in Mikhaylovka, in the Smol ...

she planned what was in posterity seen as the first modern terrorist act, to assassinate two Russian government officials on 24 January 1878. Her attempt to assassinate Vladislav Zhelekhovskii, the prosecutor in the

Trial of the 193 The Trial of the 193 was a series of criminal trials held in Russia in 1877-1878 under the rule of Tsar Alexander II. The defendants were 193 socialist students and other “revolutionaries” charged with populist “unrest” and propaganda again ...

, failed, while Zasulich succeeded in injuring the governor of St. Petersburg, Fyodor Trepov. After a gun fight, the Russian gendarmes arrested Kolenkina on 11 October 1878, and she was sentenced to 10 years of hard labor and internal exile to Siberia.Franco Venturi, ''Roots of Revolution: A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth Century Russia'', 571.

Bibliography

* Jay Bergman. ''Vera Zasulich: A Biography'', Stanford University Press, 1983, , 261p. * EK Breshko-Breshkovskai͡a͡, L Hutchinson, ''Hidden springs of the Russian revolution: personal memoirs of Katerina Breshkovskaia'', Stanford University Press, 1931. * Ana Siljak. ''Angel of Vengeance: The "Girl Assassin," the Governor of St. Petersburg, and Russia's Revolutionary World'', St. Martin's Press, 2008, , 370p. * ''Five Sisters: Women Against the Tsar'', eds. Barbara A. Engel, Clifford N. Rosenthal, Routledge, 1975, reprinted in 1992, , pp. 61–62. * Franco Venturi, ''Roots of Revolution. A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth Century Russia'' (1960). Weidenfeld and Nicolson. London.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kolenkina, Maria 1850 births 1926 deaths Revolutionaries from the Russian Empire Russian socialists