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Some Breshkovskaya Letters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Warren B. Walsh
Warren B. Walsh*
Affiliation:
Syracuse University
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Extract

Ekaterina Konstantinova Breshko-Breshkovskaya, nee Verigo, was born in 1844 in the Vitebsk District and brought up on a large estate in the Chernigov District. Her father was the scion of an aristocratic Polish family and her mother was a member of the Russian aristocracy. Madame Breshkovskaya grew up in wealth and comfort with an assured social position. Her parents were liberally inclined, and she explained her own liberalism as being founded upon her father's teachings and influence. However, Madame Breshkovskaya went far to the left of her father's mild liberalism.

As a girl in her late teens, Madame Breshkovskaya went to St. Petersburg, where she at once became an active member of the liberal and revolutionary groups which centered around the University. Like others of her class among the intelligentsia, she was driven to the left by conviction and by a mysterious compulsion to expiate the sins of her peers.

Type
Articles
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 4 , Issue 3-4 , December 1945 , pp. 128 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1945

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References

1 Kennan, George, Siberia and the exile system, two vols., The Century Co., N. Y., 1891. See n, 54, 119–122.Google Scholar

2 There is a very brief statement concerning this activity of Madame Breshkovskaya in Isloriya graždanskoi voinyi v SSSR, Moscow, 1938,1, 286.Google Scholar

3 For information on this movement, see Blackwell, Alice Stone (ed.), The little grandmother of the Russian revolution; reminiscences and letters of Catherine Breshkovsky,Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1918, pp. 111–132, 332-333.Google Scholar

4 Istoriya graždanskoi voiny, pp. 240, 260; Chamberlin, William H., The Russian Revolution, two vols., The Macmillan Co., N. Y., 1935, II, 20,451. See also Mavor, Chernov, et al. Google Scholar

5 Trotsky, Leon, History of the Russian Revolution, three vols., Simon & Shuster, N. Y., 1932, i, 230.Google Scholar

6 Published in 1931 by the Stanford University Press.Google Scholar

7 Yarmolinsky, Avrahm, The Kennan Collection, N. Y. Public Library, N. Y., 1921. Dr.Yarmolinsky reported (p. 4) that about 40 of these letters had not been used in compiling the American edition of The little grandmother, etc. Upon later investigation, Dr.Yarmolinsky reported that “only about half a dozen of the letters have apparently remained unpublished“ (letter to WBW, 2/Nov/44.), and this was confirmed by Mr.Paul N. Rice of the Library staff (Letter to WBW, 29/Dec/44).Google Scholar

8 Blackwell, Miss, op. cit., pp. 197–202, dated this letter Nov. 10, 1911, and said that it was written to Dr. Chaikovski. Internal evidence suggests that it was written in 1910, not long after Madame Breshkovskaya's arrival in Kirensk. The last lines of the Letter, which Miss Blackwell did not print, seem to indicate that it was not written to Dr.Nicholas Chaikovski. Passages which were not published by Miss Blackwell are indicated by the # sign at the beginning and end, but no attempt is made to indicate changes involving only a few words. The parentheses appear in the typescript copies.Google Scholar

9 Hitherto unpublished. No place or date is given, but the card was presumably written from Kirensk early in 1911.Google Scholar

10 Hitherto unpublished.