Vera Figner was the oldest of six children of a wealthy forester. When she was eleven she was sent to the Rodionovsky Institute for Women in Kazan for the following six years. When she returned to her rural home she was influenced by her liberal uncle, and began to aspire to help the poor. She decided to study medicine, which was not permitted for women in Russia at the time, in Switzerland. Figner's father forbade her from going, so she married Alexei Filippov, saved money and sold her dowry, and traveled to Zurich.
From 1872-1875, she was a student of Department of Medicine at the University of Zurich. In 1873, Figner joined the Fritsche circle, which was composed of thirteen young Russian radical women, some of whom would become important members of the All-Russian Social Revolutionary Organization. She had trouble reconciling her new political view of herself as a parasitic member of the gentry with her previous view of herself as a good, innocent, person. A directive banning all Russian women students from remaining in Zurich was published in the Government Herald in 1873. Most of the members of the Fritsche circle decided to return to Russia and spread socialist propaganda among the Russian peasantry, but Figner decided to remain in Switzerland to finish her studies. In 1875, she returned to Russia without getting her degree, but found herself unable to help the circle and so got a license as a paramedic and divorced her husband. A year later, she became one of the narodniks, who had been siding with Zemlya i volya (Land and Liberty). Figner took part in 1879 in the Voronezh Congress of Zemlya i volya and after the split of Zemlya i volya, she became a member of the Executive Committee of Narodnaya Volya (The Will of the People), conducting propaganda activities among intelligentsia, students and military in St.Petersburg and Kronstadt. After several members of People's Will were arrested, Figner became its leader. Figner took part in the creation of the paramilitary wing of Narodnaya Volya and participated in planning the assassination of Alexander II in 1880 in Odessa and in in the successful assasination on March 1, 1881 in St. Petersburg. As the only member of the Executive Committee left in Russia, she tried to resurrect Narodnaya Volya in 1882, which had been eliminated by the Czarist police.
Vera Figner became the most hunted revolutionary in Russia, and was arrested at Kharkov, on February 10, 1883 and a year later sentenced to death. The sentence, however, was commuted, to perpetual penal servitude in Siberia. She spent the 20 months before her trial in solitary confinement at the Peter and Paul Fortress and was then imprisoned for 20 years at Schlüsselburg. In 1904, Figner was sent into internal exile to the Arkhangelsk guberniya, then Kazan guberniya, and finally Nizhny Novgorod. In 1906 she was allowed to go abroad, where she organized a campaign for political prisoners in Russia. She spoke in different European cities, collected money, published a brochure on Russian prisons translated into many languages.Figner left the party after the Azef scandal (Azef was a double-agent). In 1915 she returned to Russia. After the October Revolution, she took active part in a magazine called "Katorga and Exile" (Katorga means "Hard Labour").
It has been said that Czar Alexander II was in fact a good man, imbued with good intentions. Perhaps, had the Czarist regime paid heed to the warning signals of the idealist Decembrists of 1823, then maybe violence and revolution could have been averted. However, the good intentions of a Czar cannot replace necessary social reforms. Even when the Czarist regime was confronted with necessary change (Dimitrij Miliutin's report during the Crimean War), the changes were too slow (finally, the serfs were nominally freed in 1861). However, the changes were not comprehensive enough: that required a revolution. See
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Instead, the Czarist regime attempted to remain in power without carrying out the necessary social reforms. The Czarist regime used a "divide and conquer" methodology, spreading anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic pogroms. Such a program cannot produce social reforms, thus the Czarist regime doomed itself.