Inessa Kaplan. Fanny Kaplan and the assassination attempt on Lenin (8 photos). Meeting in Crimea
KAPLAN, Fanny Efimovna(Kaplan Feiga Khaimovna, Roytblat, Roydman Feiga Nakhumovna) (1890-1918) - a member of the revolutionary movement, an anarchist, who is credited with preparing and carrying out the assassination attempt on V.I. Lenin in 1918.
Born in 1890 in the Volyn province in a large family (8 children) of a teacher (melamed) of a Jewish religious elementary school (cheder) by the name of Roydman (Roytblat). Thanks to her father, she received her primary education at home, she did not study anywhere else. She left her family early and worked as a seamstress. During the revolution of 1905–1907, she joined the anarchists, having received from them the pseudonym “Dora” and a fake passport in the name of Feiga Khaimovna Kaplan, a girl of 19 years old (although she was 16 at that time), a milliner, a bourgeois town of Rechitsa, Minsk province.
On December 22, 1906, while living in the 1st merchant hotel on Podil in Kiev, equipping a bomb to assassinate the Kiev governor, she made a mistake: the bomb exploded, during the explosion Kaplan received minor injuries to her arms, legs and severe concussion, which resulted in damage to her eyes and hearing . During the investigation into the activities of the bombers, Kaplan's house was searched; in her things they found a Browning loaded with live ammunition and a blank passport form. The evidence gave grounds for her arrest and prosecution in the assassination case.
On December 30, 1906, the Military Field Court of Kiev sentenced her to death for "storage of explosives for purposes contrary to state security and public peace", which (due to Kaplan's minority) was replaced by life imprisonment.
On June 19, 1907, she was transferred “to the jurisdiction of the military governor of the Transbaikal region”, ended up in the Maltsev hard labor prison, then, as prone to escape, she was sent in hand and foot shackles to the Akatui hard labor prison (Nerchinsk mountain district of Transbaikalia). Here she met the famous socialist-revolutionary M.A. Spiridonova, who influenced Kaplan's transition from the position of anarchism to the position of right-wing social revolutionism.
While F. Kaplan was serving hard labor, her parents and all brothers and sisters moved to the USA (1911), communication with them was interrupted. In 1912, Kaplan was placed for eye treatment in the Chita prison hospital; while there, in 1913, in connection with the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, she received an amnesty: the replacement of life-long penal servitude with a 20-year one. However, the eye disease progressed, Kaplan was practically blind.
She was released from prison by the February Revolution of 1917. Kaplan left Chita in April 1917 for Moscow, where she lived with a friend in an apartment building on Bolshaya Sadovaya Street. (next to the writer M.A. Bulgakov, who remembered this).
She spent the summer of 1917 in Evpatoria, in a sanatorium for former political prisoners, where (according to legend) she met D.I. Ulyanov (V.I. Lenin's younger brother), on whose recommendation she was placed in the eye clinic of prof. Hirshman in Kharkov. It is believed that the rumor about the compassionate act of brother Lenin was spread by the convict F.E. Stavskaya in the 1930s. In fact, Dmitry Ulyanov did not meet with Kaplan, although he worked in those months as a doctor in the Crimea and, indeed, could be related to Prof. Hirshman. In this clinic, Kaplan partially regained her sight, she moved to Simferopol, where she managed to find work at training courses for workers of volost zemstvos.
The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly by the Bolsheviks on January 6 (19), 1918 Kaplan took it very painfully. She condemned Lenin, who at that moment became the head of the Soviet government, called him a "traitor to the cause of the revolution", whose actions "removed the idea of socialism for decades." At the beginning of 1918, she actively collaborated with the right SRs, who were in a semi-legal position. Having proposed the physical liquidation of Lenin, Kaplan, to the best of her ability, participated in the preparations for the implementation of this plan. The leaders of the right SRs, G. Semenov and L. Konoplev, supplied F. Kaplan with browning.
On August 30, 1918, on the day Lenin spoke to the workers of the Michelson plant in the Zamoskvoretsky district of Moscow, Kaplan was brought in advance to the place where Lenin was supposed to be. Preparing for the assassination attempt, the short-sighted Kaplan took a place not far from the podium where the head of government spoke, and shot him three times at close range. However, she did not kill Lenin, but only wounded him.
After that, she threw out the Browning and, forgetting about the cab that was waiting for her, tried to flee. Nearby was Lenin's driver, Stepan Gil, practically under whose feet she threw a pistol, who witnessed the assassination attempt. Kaplan herself was detained by S. Batulin, assistant military commissar of the 5th Moscow division. During a search, a railway ticket was found in her to the Tomilino station, where at that moment one of the safe houses of the members of the Central Combat Detachment of the Central Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party was located.
On the same day, at the very first interrogation, Kaplan confessed to the assassination attempt: “Today I shot at V.I. Lenin. I consider him a traitor to the revolution. I don’t belong to any party, I consider myself a socialist.” According to her, she made the decision to assassinate in Simferopol in February 1918 and carried it out "on her own behalf, and not on behalf of any party." Kaplan was interrogated by the deputy of F.E. Dzerzhinsky Ya. Peters, People's Commissar of Justice D.I. Kursky, head of the department of the Cheka N.A. Skrypnik.
By order of Ya.M. Sverdlov (“Destroy. We will not bury Kaplan. Destroy the remains without a trace”). Kaplan was shot without trial on September 3, 1918 in the courtyard of the Moscow Kremlin to the sound of car engines, her corpse was doused with gasoline and burned in an iron barrel in the Alexander Garden by the commandant of the Kremlin P.D. Malkov. The poet Demyan Bedny became an accidental witness to the execution and massacre of the corpse. (E.V. Pridvorov). The execution was reported by the Izvestiya VPIK newspaper of September 4, 1918, which called it in the message about the execution of the sentence "the right-wing Socialist-Revolutionary Fanny Royd (aka Kaplan)". Subsequently, the story of the assassination attempt on the leader of the revolution of a middle-aged Jewish woman in glasses (in fact, absent), with a briefcase and an umbrella, forced the formation of a repulsive image of a villain-intellectual who joined the Socialist-Revolutionaries. It was intended to confirm the expediency of the "Red Terror" in relation to the intelligentsia and the remnants of the bourgeoisie.
The leader of the Left Social Revolutionaries, Maria Spiridonova, who herself was in prison at that moment, wrote to Lenin: “How was it possible for you, how did it not occur to you, Vladimir Ilyich, with your great intelligence and your personal impartiality, not to grant pardon to Dora Kaplan? How invaluable mercy could be in this time of madness and frenzy, when nothing is heard but the gnashing of teeth. However, the verdict against Kaplan remained unchanged.
But the rumor about the intercession for Kaplan of the wounded Lenin existed for a long time even after the death of Kaplan. So, one of those involved in the case of the attempt on Lenin on August 30, 1918, V.A. Novikov, claimed that he met her in the prison yard of the Sverdlovsk transit prison in 1932 and testified about this to the prison authorities. A certain Matveev insisted in 1937 (the protocols of his interrogations on this topic have been preserved) that Kaplan, under the name of Fanny Royd, worked in the Siblag Administration in Novosibirsk. Someone allegedly saw her in Vorkuta, in the Urals and in Siberia. An encyclopedia published in Israel claims that Kaplan worked in the last years of her life in the library of the Butyrskaya prison in Moscow and died only in 1950. However, this version does not have convincing evidence, as does the hypothesis that it was not Kaplan who made the attempt on Lenin, but another rightist socialist-revolutionary - terrorist L.Konoplev.
Natalya Pushkareva
98 years ago, on August 30, 1918, the loudest attempt on Lenin's life was made: the terrorist Fanny Kaplan shot at the leader of the world revolution. In Soviet times, her name was known to every schoolchild, and her opinion was unambiguous: the crime was organized by the Social Revolutionaries, and the exalted and fanatical Fanny Kaplan became the performer. Today, alternative versions are being expressed - that Fanny was just a pawn in someone else's game, or even was not involved in the crime at all. Who was she really?
Her real name is Feiga Khaimovna Roidman (or Roytblat), that was her name until the age of 16, until her parents left for America, and the girl became interested in revolutionary ideas and anarchism. Under the name of Fanny Kaplan, she carried out various assignments, mainly transporting seditious literature. However, modern researchers suggest that her participation in revolutionary activities was indirect.
Fanny Kaplan
She joined the anarchists during the revolution of 1905, under the influence of a young man with whom she was in love. Then a group of anarchist agitators appeared in the Volyn province, among whom was Viktor Garsky (aka Yashka Shmidman, aka Mika) - for the sake of him, the girl was ready for a lot. In revolutionary circles, she was known under the name Dora or Fanya. The "Southern Group" was preparing an assassination attempt on the Kiev Governor-General Sukhomlinov. In December 1906, Fanya and Mika rented a room at the Kupecheskaya Hotel. There, lovers were assembling a bomb, but due to incorrect assembly, an explosion was heard.
Convicts after release. Fanny Kaplan is in the middle row near the window. March 1917
Garsky managed to convince the girl that it was she who should divert the attention of the police, since he would have been threatened with an imminent death penalty, and they should have shown leniency towards her. He fled, and the naive Fanya appeared before the court. For attempted murder, she also faced the death penalty, but as a minor she was sentenced to ... life imprisonment. In prison, she met the famous revolutionary Maria Spiridonova, and under her influence she changed her anarchist views to those of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. At hard labor, the girl began to have bouts of blindness as a result of shell shock after a bomb explosion. She was often ill and probably would have died in hard labor, but the February Revolution took place, and Fanny was released.
Lenin during a speech at a rally
In the Evpatoria sanatorium in 1917, the paths of Fanny Kaplan and Lenin's younger brother Dmitry Ulyanov unexpectedly crossed paths. It is not known exactly what kind of relationship they had, according to one version, it was he who sent the girl to an eye clinic in Kharkov. After surgery in this clinic, vision partially returned. In Kharkov, Kaplan learned about the October Revolution, and took it extremely negatively. Allegedly, it was then that she had a plan to kill Lenin as a traitor to the revolution, which, in her opinion, was strangled by the Bolshevik dictatorship.
Investigative experiment of the assassination attempt on V. I. Lenin in 1918 (1 - the place where Lenin stood, 4 - the place from which Kaplan fired)
The rebellion of the Socialist-Revolutionaries in Moscow was suppressed, and the murder of Lenin was for Fanny Kaplan the only chance to continue the fight against the Bolsheviks. How she learned that Lenin would appear at a workers’ rally in the courtyard of the Michelson factory is difficult to say, just as it is difficult to answer questions about who ordered this assassination attempt on her, and who, besides her, participated in it. She had poor eyesight, even though she had been treated, which may explain her miss, although she fired at very close range. The girl was immediately seized and shot after 3 days without trial. After that, her body was doused with gasoline and burned.
The scene of the assassination attempt from the movie *Lenin in 1918*
According to the official version, the shots were fired by Kaplan. Although, apart from her confession, there was no other evidence for this: there were no witnesses, and she had no weapons. The opinion about Kaplan was unequivocal, it was expressed by N. Bukharin in the Pravda newspaper of September 1, 1918: “A narrow-minded fanatical petty-bourgeois woman, who, perhaps, sincerely believes that Lenin ruined Russia; who, perhaps, does not really understand that the hand of those who drive along the 5th alley of New York after business conversations on the street of bankers - Wall Street willed it. One becomes ashamed of these small people, small and insignificant, like road dust.
Fanny Kaplan
According to one version, the attempt was staged by the Bolsheviks themselves: this made it possible to unleash a bloody terror against the Socialist-Revolutionaries and strengthen their own power. Be that as it may, the wounds undermined Lenin's health and became the cause of a serious illness, which caused him to step down from power and die. Already in our time, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation reviewed the case and came to the conclusion: it was Kaplan who shot at Lenin.
Almost all historical figures are under the veil of secrecy, but even among them, individuals stand out, who, with their mysteriousness, attract the attention of historians.One of these historical figures is Feiga-Dora-Fanya-Fanny Efimovna-Khaimovna-Fayvelovna Kaplan-Royd-Roytblat-Roydman - so many names had a woman who attempted on Vladimir Ulyanov-Lenin and shot him, sometimes, however, immediately mentioning about her extremely poor eyesight.
Historians also mention that the trajectories of the shots do not correlate in any way with the place where Kaplan was captured (according to eyewitnesses, she was not going to run anywhere). Undoubtedly, the terrible death of Fanny Kaplan, which was burned in a barrel of gasoline without any trial and with a minimal “investigation”, which was carried out by Latsis, Avanesov and Sverdlov in less than four days (!) attracts attention.
Currently, there is an active version, according to which Fanny Kaplan is not involved in the assassination attempt on Lenin, which was actually carried out by members of the Cheka. Recent historical research refutes the fact that Fanny Kaplan was involved in the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, as well as the fact that she allegedly shot at Lenin. Considering how poorly she saw, she could not shoot at Lenin, not only practically, but also theoretically. Meanwhile, X-rays confirm that at least three bullets hit Lenin. According to a number of historians, L. Konoplev and the sailor Protopopov shot at Lenin on the orders of Sverdlov. Kaplan, on the other hand, became a "scapegoat", on which everything was blamed.
We really believe that Fanny Kaplan did not shoot Ulyanov-Lenin. And we will share what we managed to find out.
Feiga Khaimovna Roytblat-Kaplan was born in the Volyn province in the family of a teacher (melamed) of the Jewish elementary school (cheder) Chaim Roydman.
In 1905, the wind of change brought a group of anarchist agitators into the gloomy backwaters of Volyn. Feiga also left with them. She joined the "Southern Communist Anarchist Group"; it was then that she received the sonorous party nickname Dora. Among her comrades-in-arms, the newly-minted anarchist met the man of her dreams.
Viktor Garsky (aka Yashka Shmidman), was several years older than her, he had already worked as an apprentice with a shoemaker, a salesman in a shop ...
The Odessa summer of 1906 was for Dora the happiest in her short life. There were comrades nearby, under whose guidance she took a “short course of a fighter of the revolution” - she just didn’t know how to shoot and didn’t try to learn. The dislike for weapons was compensated by devotion to the revolution, comrades-in-arms and Garsky (Shmidman). Dora was ready to die for the revolution and Victor, there was no place left for other feelings in her life. A born adventurer, Garsky easily settled into his new role as a raider-expropriator, tasked with raising money for underground work - delivering weapons to Odessa, forging documents and developing operations. He took the feelings of his fighting girlfriend for granted, immediately declaring that he would never marry, as this would interfere with the activities of a professional revolutionary. But Dora did not pretend to anything, she only wanted to be with him and work for the good of the revolution. The "Southern Group" began preparations for an assassination attempt on the Kiev Governor-General Sukhomlinov. On December 18, 1906, at the Kupecheskaya Hotel, the lovers rented a room on the third, most fashionable, floor.
On the evening of December 22, Fanya was helping her lover assemble a bomb, when suddenly an explosion was heard due to incorrect assembly. The girl was shell-shocked, two shrapnel wounded her in the shin and buttock, her lover did not receive a scratch.
Garsky was threatened with the death penalty, and the minor Feyga could count on indulgence. They agreed that they would get out together, she would distract the police, and then, when Victor was safe, he would definitely return for her. Garsky fled.
The young terrorist appeared before a court-martial on January 8, 1907. For the attempted murder of Fanny Kaplan, the death penalty was due, but as a minor she was pardoned and ... sentenced to life imprisonment. After the verdict, the convicted Kaplan spent almost six months in a Kiev prison, until the Main Prison Directorate for Special Relations No. 19641 determined Nerchinsk penal servitude as the place of serving the sentence. Feyga Khaimovna Kaplan was ordered to follow in hand and foot shackles - even then they approached her with the maximum measure. With a careless stroke of the pen, it was added: can walk, requires increased supervision due to a tendency to escape.
At the same time, a description of the appearance of a potential fugitive was also made: “height is about 156 cm, her face is pale, her eyes are oblong, brown, with lowered corners, her hair is dark blond, a scar from a wound is above her right eyebrow.” Fanny traveled all the long way to Transbaikalia as a particularly dangerous criminal, shackled "to the fullest extent of the law" in shackles. In Nerchinsk, she was assigned to the infamous Maltsev prison: for several years, once healthy people withered and died there, and there were more prisoners who had lost their minds than in the rest of the Nerchinsk prisons combined.
In the autumn of 1907, Kaplan began to have severe pains in the area of the scar above the eyebrow, then they disappeared, it became easier, and then Fanny went blind for the first time.
She was suspected of a simulation, but after examination, the loss of vision was associated with the consequences of shell shock from the Kiev explosion. Kaplan was transferred to the infirmary, but she suddenly regained her sight - she was returned to the cell again. A month later, an attack of blindness recurred, and since then she has constantly fallen into darkness, and when the blindness receded, damp walls and pale faces of her convict friends appeared before her eyes.
Until 1917, Fanny spent in hard labor; here Kaplan met a famous activist of the revolutionary movement Maria Spiridonova , under the influence of which her views changed from anarchist to SR.
Socialist-Revolutionary Maria Spiridonova behind bars in a prison hospital.
Once, a doctor from the regional administration was visiting Nerchinsk penal servitude; the neighboring prisoners asked him to examine Fanny's eyes. He made them very happy with the news that her pupils were reacting to light, and told them to ask to be transferred to Chita, where she could be treated with electricity. They decided - come what may, but they must ask Kiyashko to transfer Fanny to the Chita prison for treatment. Whether the young girl with blind eyes touched him, I don’t know, but only her friends immediately saw that they would succeed. After questioning their representative, he loudly promised to transfer Fanya immediately to Chita for testing. Her sentence was reduced to twenty years. But the February Revolution broke out, and Roytblat was released.
From this moment begins the most interesting and most tragic part of Feiga Roitblat's life. Let's start with the fact that she has a new surname Kaplan.
Until now, among historians there is no consensus on where this surname came from. Presumably, she changed her last name after she married the Bolshevik Max Kaplan, an active member of the Crimean underground. But before marriage...
There is an article by Max Lvovsky. It tells facts that are difficult to dispute - about the close relationship between Feiga Roitblat and Dmitry Ulyanov.
F. Kaplan, 1918
The fact of this acquaintance in Soviet times was methodically hushed up. Such an episode from the life of Dmitry Ilyich did not at all fit into the biography of the Ulyanov family “canonized” by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism. But it was in Evpatoria in May 1917 that the paths of Zemstvo doctor Dmitry Ilyich Ulyanov and Feiga (Fanny) Roitblat-Kaplan, amnestied by the Provisional Government from indefinite hard labor, crossed paths.
For the 28-year-old Kaplan, whose relatives called Feiga, and her convict friends called Fanny, the trip to the Crimea was the first in her life. She, as a political prisoner who suffered from the tsarist regime, received from the trade union of socialist revolutionaries a ticket to Evpatoria sanatorium - House of convicts. Ten years in the Akatui prison (625 km from Chita) with work in the lead-silver mines had a significant impact on her health - she had tuberculosis, her eyesight worsened. In the reception department of the House of convicts, she first saw Dr. Ulyanov, the county doctor who oversaw this institution.
Their romance developed rapidly and rapidly. The doctor was known as a ladies' man, a walker, and he could not miss such a prominent young lady. Fanny, according to the old Evpatorians, was a beautiful woman.
Their romance could well have ended in a wedding if party comrades had not intervened in their relationship. The Socialist-Revolutionaries did not want their comrade-in-arms to go over to the camp of political competitors in this revolutionary time - she became the wife of the brother of the Bolshevik leader!
On the recommendation of D. Ulyanov, Kaplan ended up in the Kharkov ophthalmological clinic of the famous doctor Girshman, where she underwent an operation that partially improved her vision. And Fanny left with her husband for Moscow. But they quickly divorced. And that's where she comes in to the Semyonov detachment.
Semyonov and Konopleva were ordinary militants.
The mysterious man - Semyonov. He was arrested by the Cheka in October 1918. The list of charges brought against him drew on the execution. But after a year in prison, he comes out of there, being ... a member of the Russian Communist Party. His fighting girlfriend Konopleva also becomes a member of the Communist Party. Then something phantasmagoric begins. In 1920, Semyonov was thrown into Poland. Soon the Polish authorities arrest him along with other Russians on suspicion of spying for Moscow. All of them are being sentenced to death. Everyone except Semyonov. He goes free and goes to Savinkov. Having entered into his confidence, he returns to Moscow, comes to the Lubyanka and reports: he arrived at the direction of Savinkov to organize an assassination attempt on Lenin. And he presents appearances, names, instructions. In 1922, Semyonov published a revealing pamphlet about the Socialist-Revolutionary militants, and his girlfriend Konopleva published a series of articles in newspapers about terrorist attacks organized by the Socialist-Revolutionaries. The publications become the basis for initiating a criminal case against the entire Socialist-Revolutionary Party by the GPU. The Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal of the republic begins a lawsuit against the Socialist-Revolutionaries. In the dock are the most prominent figures of this party.
Fanny Kaplan was a convenient target for hanging on her many actions of both Semenov himself and Konoplev. Semyonov appeared in court as an accused, Konoplev as a witness.
It was Sverdlov and Trotsky who were the authors of the assassination attempt on Lenin. It was they who prepared the terrible role and death of Fanny.
After hard labor, Fanny lived for a month in Moscow with the merchant's daughter Anna Pigit, whose relative I. D. Pigit, who owned the Moscow tobacco factory Dukat, built a large apartment building on Bolshaya Sadovaya. This house will become famous in a few years - it is in it, in apartment No. 50, that Mikhail Bulgakov will “settle” a strange company led by Woland. It was said that Bulgakov knew something about Kaplan. And the enormity of power tried to show in The Master and Margarita. The horror of power was really like a monstrous mysticism.
Did Vladimir Ulyanov Lenin know about the existence of Fanny Kaplan, the mistress of his younger brother, and if so, how did he treat her?
As for the attitude of the leader of the world proletariat towards Dmitry himself, the testimony of a contemporary of the Ulyanovs has come down to us, in which he indicates that this attitude was completely unambiguous:
... Lenin's brother, Dmitry, was appointed without any pressure from him to some very high post in the Crimea. And on this occasion, Lenin spoke of his brother in the following way:- These idiots, apparently, wanted to please me by appointing Mitya ... they did not notice that although we have the same last name, he is just an ordinary fool who only fits printed gingerbread cookies ...
Sverdlov and Trotsky did not accidentally choose Fanny as a scapegoat - this was due precisely to Dmitry Ulyanov, as an enemy of his brother. It was then that Sverdlov ordered: “We will not bury Kaplan. Destroy the remains without a trace.
Y. Felshtinsky also claims [that Kaplan's corpse was doused with gasoline and burned in an iron barrel in the Alexander Garden.
There was no rain on the day of the assassination attempt on Lenin. But Kaplan was told to take an umbrella. During the search, they did not find a pistol, although they seized it immediately. People saw the shooting woman, but they did not show Kaplan. Kaplan could not shoot due to very poor eyesight, darkness and the simple fact that she could not stand a weapon.
Sverdlov ordered the detainee's body to be rolled up and immediately shot, and then burned.
Immediately after the assassination attempt on Vladimir Ulyanov-Lenin, the appeal of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee was published, signed by Yakov Sverdlov. This attempt on Lenin was the signal for the beginning of the Red Terror on September 5, the taking of hostages by the Bolsheviks from among the nobles and the intelligentsia and their executions.
... we habitually speak of "Stalinists", Trotskyists. And we never mention the "Sverdlovists" (or Sverdlovites?) But they, it turns out, existed, "leader number two" had a very real group. And the grouping is so strong that at the end of his life, Yakov Mikhailovich was ready to stand in opposition to Lenin himself ...
Biography
Feiga Khaimovna Roytblat-Kaplan was born in the Volyn province in the family of a teacher (melamed) of the Jewish elementary school (cheder) Chaim Roydman.
Kaplan did not write a single request for clemency. She was ill and was in the hospital several times. Blind on hysterical grounds - as indicated in the medical report. She read with a magnifying glass. One of the convicts recalled: “In the cell with us was the indefinite Kaplan, blind. She lost her sight back in Maltsevskaya. When she was arrested in Kiev, a box with bombs that she kept exploded. Thrown away by the explosion, she fell to the floor, injured, but survived. We thought that the head wound was the cause of the blindness. First she lost her sight for three days, then it returned, and with a second attack of headaches she became completely blind. There were no ophthalmologists at hard labor; what happened to her, whether her vision would return, or whether this was the end, no one knew. Once a doctor from the regional administration visited Nerchinsk hard labor, we asked him to examine Fani's eyes. He made us very happy with the news that the pupils were reacting to light, and told us to ask to be transferred to Chita, where she could be treated with electricity. We decided - come what may, but we must ask Kiyashko to transfer Fani to the Chita prison for treatment. Whether the young girl with blind eyes touched him, I don’t know, but we immediately saw that we would succeed. After questioning our representative, he loudly promised to transfer Fanya immediately to Chita for testing. Her sentence was reduced to twenty years. But the February Revolution broke out, and Kaplan was released.
After hard labor, Fanny lived for a month in Moscow with the merchant's daughter Anna Pigit, whose relative I.D. Pigit, who owned the Moscow tobacco factory Dukat, built a large apartment building on Bolshaya Sadovaya. They lived there, in apartment number 5. This house will become famous in a few years - it is in it, only in apartment number 50 that Mikhail Bulgakov will “settle” a strange company led by Woland. The Provisional Government opened a sanatorium in Evpatoria for former political convicts, where in the summer Mrs. Kaplan went to improve her health. There she met Dmitry Ulyanov. Ulyanov Jr. gave her a referral to Dr. Girshman's Kharkov eye clinic. Kaplan had a successful operation - vision partially returned. Of course, she could not work as a seamstress again, but she distinguished silhouettes, oriented herself in space. She lived in Sevastopol, treated her eyesight and taught courses for the training of zemstvo workers.
Assassination attempt on Lenin
| I arrived at the meeting at eight o'clock. Who gave me the revolver, I won't say. I didn't have any train ticket. I have not been to Tomilino. I didn't have any union membership card. I haven't served in a long time. Where I got the money, I will not answer. I have already said that my last name is Kaplan for eleven years. I shot with conviction. I confirm that I said that I came from the Crimea. Whether my socialism is connected with Skoropadsky, I will not answer. I didn’t tell any woman that “it’s a failure for us.” I have not heard anything about a terrorist organization associated with Savinkov. I don't want to talk about it. Whether I have any acquaintances among those arrested by the Extraordinary Commission, I do not know. During my time, none of my acquaintances in the Crimea died. I have a negative attitude towards the current government in Ukraine. How I feel about the Samara and Arkhangelsk authorities, I do not want to answer.
Interrogated by the People's Commissariat of Justice Kursk (Investigation file No. 2162) |
| A few hours ago, a villainous attempt was made on Comrade. Lenin. Upon leaving the rally, Comrade Lenin was wounded. Two shooters were detained. Their identities are being revealed. We have no doubt that here, too, traces of the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, traces of British and French hirelings, will be found. |
| Not only St. Petersburg and Moscow answered for the attempt on Lenin with hundreds of murders. This wave swept all over Soviet Russia - both in large and small cities and in towns and villages. Information about these murders was rarely reported in the Bolshevik press, but nevertheless in the Ezhedelnik we will find references to these provincial executions, sometimes with a specific indication: he was shot for an attempt on Lenin. Let's take at least some of them.
“The criminal attempt on the life of our ideological leader, comrade. Lenin, according to the Nizhny Novgorod Che.K., encourages us to abandon sentimentality and with a firm hand to carry out the dictatorship of the proletariat ... "Enough words!" ... "Because of this" - the commission "executed 41 people from the enemy camp." And then there was a list in which officers, priests, officials, a forester, a newspaper editor, a guard, etc., etc. appeared. On this day, up to 700 hostages were taken in Nizhny just in case. "Slave. Cr. Lower List" explained this: "For every murder of a communist or attempted murder, we will respond by shooting the hostages of the bourgeoisie, for the blood of our comrades killed and wounded demands vengeance." |
Fanny Kaplan was shot without trial on September 3 at 16:00 in the courtyard of the auto-combat detachment named after the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (behind the arch of building No. 9 of the Moscow Kremlin) on the oral instructions of the Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Sverdlov. To the noise of running cars, the sentence was carried out by the commandant of the Kremlin, a former Baltic sailor P. D. Malkov in the presence of the famous proletarian poet Demyan Bedny. The corpse was pushed into a tar barrel, doused with gasoline and burned near the walls of the Kremlin. According to another version, not confirmed by reliable evidence, Kaplan was exiled to a prison for political prisoners in the city of Tobolsk and was already shot there.
Versions and legends associated with Fanny Kaplan
There is a second version that, in fact, Fani Kaplan was not killed, as the workers were then told, but in fact she was exiled to prison and lived until 1936.
Since Soviet times, there has been a legend according to which Fanny Kaplan was not shot; there are several conflicting versions about how she managed to escape execution and about her subsequent life. So, for example, witnesses claimed to have seen Fanny Kaplan in Solovki. This version is refuted by the memoirs of the Kremlin commandant P. Malkov, who quite definitely wrote that Kaplan was shot by him personally. Although the reliability of these memoirs in itself is questioned, but still the version of leaving Kaplan alive looks implausible - there are no reasons for such a step. In addition, there are memories of Demyan Poor, who confirms that he saw the execution.
Currently, there is an active distribution of the version according to which Fanny Kaplan was not involved in the assassination attempt on Lenin, in fact, carried out by members of the Cheka.
Subsequent historical research refuted the fact that Fanny Kaplan was involved in the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, as well as the fact that she allegedly shot at Lenin. Considering how poorly she saw, she could not shoot at Lenin, not only practically, but also theoretically. Meanwhile, X-rays confirmed that at least three bullets had hit Lenin [ clarify] . In addition, the bullets extracted from Lenin's body did not match the cartridges for the pistol system from which Kaplan allegedly fired. The gun was, as material evidence, in the Kaplan case.
This version became widespread after the collapse of the USSR, officially Kaplan's guilt in the assassination attempt was never questioned.
Malkov P.D. about the execution of Fanny Kaplan on September 3, 1918
| Already on the day of the assassination attempt on Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, August 30, 1918, the famous appeal of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee “To everyone, everything, everyone”, signed by Ya. M. Sverdlov, was published, in which merciless mass terror was declared to all enemies of the revolution.
A day or two later, Varlam Aleksandrovich Avanesov called me. Go to the Cheka immediately and pick up Kaplan. Place it here, in the Kremlin, under reliable protection. I called a car and drove to the Lubyanka. Taking Kaplan, he brought her to the Kremlin and put her in a basement room under the Children's Half of the Grand Palace. The room was spacious and tall. The barred window was three or four meters from the floor. I set up posts near the door and opposite the window, strictly instructing the guards to keep an eye on the prisoner. I personally selected the sentries, only the communists, and personally instructed each one myself. It never occurred to me that the Latvian riflemen might not see Kaplan, I had to be afraid of something else: as if one of the sentries would put a bullet into her from his carbine. Another day or two passed, Avanesov summoned me again and presented the decision of the Cheka: Kaplan - shoot, the sentence to carry out the commandant of the Kremlin Malkov. When? I briefly asked Avanesov. Varlam Alexandrovich, always so kind and sympathetic, did not tremble on his face not a single muscle. Today. Immediately. There is! Yes, I thought at that moment, the red terror is not just empty words, not just a threat. There will be no mercy for the enemies of the revolution! Turning sharply, I left Avanesov and went to my commandant's office. Calling a few Latvian communists whom I personally knew well, I instructed them in detail, and we set off for Kaplan. On my order, the sentry took Kaplan out of the room in which she was, and we ordered her to get into a car prepared in advance. It was 4 p.m. September 3, 1918. Retribution is done. The sentence was carried out. I, a member of the Bolshevik Party, a sailor of the Baltic Fleet, the commandant of the Moscow Kremlin, Pavel Dmitrievich Malkov, performed it - with my own hand. And if history were to repeat itself, if the creature that raised its hand to Ilyich again appeared before the muzzle of my pistol, my hand would not tremble, pulling the trigger, just as it did not then ... The next day, September 4, 1918, a short message was published in the Izvestia newspaper: “Yesterday, by order of the Cheka, the shooter at comrade was shot. Lenin's Right Socialist-Revolutionary Fanny Royd (aka Kaplan)." |
"Monument to Fanny Kaplan" in Moscow
55.720471 , 37.628302 55°43′13.69″ N sh. 37°37′41.88″ E d. / 55.720471 , 37.628302 (G) (O) (I)
In 1922, at the site of the assassination attempt, the foundation stone of the future monument was erected "at the site of the attempt on the life of the leader of the world proletariat ...". At present, a large monument to V.I. Lenin is installed nearby (already the third on this site), and the foundation stone remains in place to this day. Jokers call it a monument to Fanny Kaplan.
There are no other "Kaplan monuments" in the vicinity of the plant, despite a note that appeared in one Zamoskvoretsk newspaper with a photograph of the monument project.
Notes
- Galina Sapozhnikova No one shot at Lenin? Writer Polina Dashkova searched the archives for material for her new detective story. And found a real sensation. Komsomolskaya Pravda 07/01/2008
- “I am Fanya Efimovna Kaplan. She has lived under this surname since 1906 . In 1906, she was arrested in Kiev in connection with the explosion... She was sentenced to eternal hard labor. In Akatui, I was sitting with Spiridonova. In prison, my views were formed - I went from an anarchist to a socialist-revolutionary. I changed my views because I got into the anarchists very young. The October Revolution found me in the Kharkov hospital. I was dissatisfied with this revolution, met it negatively. I stood for the Constituent Assembly and now I stand for it. In the current in the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, I am more attached to Chernov. My parents are in America. They left in 1911. I have four brothers and three sisters. All of them are working. My father is a Jewish teacher. I was raised at home. She occupied [a position] in Simferopol as the head of courses for the training of workers in volost zemstvos. I received a salary of 150 rubles a month for everything ready. I fully accept the Samara government and stand for an alliance against Germany. I shot at Lenin. I decided to take this step back in February. This idea matured in me in Simferopol, and since then I began to prepare for this step. ( Interrogated by Peters )
- Moscow Electromechanical Plant named after Vladimir Ilyich - OJSC "Electro ZVI"
- Assassination attempt on Lenin
- Fanny Kaplan's Story: Abandoned Women Are Deadly for Leaders RU
- http://www.lib.ru/POLITOLOG/MELGUNOW/terror.txt S. P. Melgunov. "Red Terror" in Russia 1918-1923
- A. L. Litvin Red and White Terror 1918-1922. - M.: Eksmo, 2004
- Witnesses claimed to have seen Fanny Kaplan in Solovki
- Interestingly, K. P. Chudinova wrote in her memoirs that Molotov’s wife, Polina Zhemchuzhina, told her how, during her exile in Minusinsk, she was mistaken for Fanny Kaplan in the market: “Once a week she was allowed to go with a security guard to the market for food. There, one day, they attacked her with shouts: “This is a Jewess, she shot at Lenin! Beat her!” After that, she no longer went to the market.
- P. V. Kochetkova Tatiana I. Revyako Executioners and killers Chapter III. Terrorists (Part 1) 1997
- “Our television historical journalism has long since completely separated from historical science. You have probably seen Nikolayev's "independent investigation" recently into who shot Lenin in 1918. A lot of people were attracted to the “search for truth”. A girl with a toy gun staged an assassination attempt, forensic experts spoke. The historian Sergey Zhuravlev was also present there. He was shown in front and in profile, they left some kind of replica, and the rest was cut out. Why? Yes, because the whole program would have collapsed, because Zhuravlev, on the basis of an analysis of previously unknown documents, “put an end” long ago - yes, Fanny Kaplan shot. And there is simply no problem for a new “investigation” and such a passionate debate ... ".
- V.A. Avanesov (real name S.K. Martirosov) - Secretary of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR, member of the Board of the Cheka,.
- Malkov P. Notes of the commandant of the Kremlin. - M .: Young Guard, 1968. S. 148-149.
