Elizabeth Kovalskaia

Infobox Person
name=Elizabeth Kovalskaia
caption=
birth_date=1850
birth_place=
death_date=1933
death_place=Russia

Elizabeth Kovalskaia(1850-1933) was a Russian Revolutionary and founding member of Black Repartition.

Early life

Kovalskaia, daughter of a serf was born in 1850, was the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy land owner, who owned both her and her mother. In 1857 Kovalskaia's father agreed to grant her and her mother their freedom. When he died he unexpectedly left his large estate to his illegitimate daughter.

Revolutionary life

She went on to join the "Kharkov society" for the promotion of literacy. She was inprired by the women's movement in the 1860's and so she was always interested in feminist and socialist views. Impressed by the work of Robert Owen, she used one of her inherited houses as a college for young women seeking education.

In 1869 she met Sophia Perovskaya and began attending her women's meeting, both joining Zemlya i volya (The Land and Liberty).

When Zemlya i volya split, Kovalskaia joined the Black Repartition, while her colleague Sophia Perovskaya joined Narodnaya Volya ("The Peoples Will"). Black Repartition rejected terrorism, while Narodnaya Volya felt that terrorist acts where an appropriate method in forcing reform. Kovalskaia worked with Black Repartition to support a socialist propaganda campaign among workers and peasants.

Although only involved in propaganda work, she was arrested in 1881, found guilty of being a member of an illegal organization and sentenced to hard labor for life. After entering the prision, she did escape. The house that she was hidden in was occupied by a farmer and his daughter. The daughter's lover, who was a police officer, had asked why they hadn't been intimate. He feared she had been cheating on him and started beating her. She gave in and told him everything. Shortly thereafter, she was arrested again.

During the next twenty three years, she went through several hunger strikes and made two more unsuccessful prison escapes as well as knifed a prison guard.

She was finally released in 1903, moving to Geneva and joining the Socialist Revolutionary Party.After the February Revolution, Kovalskaia returned to Russia and worked in the state archives and served as a member of the editorial board of a journal devoted to the history of the revolutionary movement.

She had been married twice and there was never any mention of having children.

Elizaveta finally died in 1933.