Fanny Kaplan, or rather Feiga Haimovna Roydman (this is her real name), was born in 1890 in the Volyn province. She will become Fanny Kaplan only 16 years later, when, when arrested, the police find her with a fake passport in this name. Under this name she will be sent to hard labor, under this name she will go down in history. Fanny - translated from the Hebrew "violet", and as a "violet of terror" she has been listed in the history of the Russian revolution for many decades.
Her family, like most Jewish families, was large: besides Fanny herself, there were three more girls and four boys. Her father taught at a Jewish elementary school, so there was no particular wealth in the family. Fanny received her primary education at home, from her father. And then, with the beginning of the revolution of 1905-1907, a revolutionary biography began, however, the same short and absurd.
1905 Fanny Kaplan joined the anarchists and became known in these circles under the name Dora. Her task, the first and, perhaps, the last - the assassination of the Kiev governor-general. None of this came of it, but the way to hard labor was opened.
1906, December 22, evening - an explosion thundered in one of the rooms of the 1st merchant hotel on Podol in Kiev. Fanny and her boyfriend had been living in this room for three days. The man disappeared after the explosion, and the girl was detained. During the search they found a Browning, a blank passport book and a fake passport in the name of Kaplan. During the explosion, she received minor injuries to her arm, buttocks and left leg. The newly-minted terrorist refused to give her real name and on December 30, 1906, under the name of Kaplan, was brought before a military court.
The verdict was cruel - the death penalty. But because Fanny was a minor, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment for possession of explosives "with a purpose contrary to state security and public peace." At first, until 1911, she was held in the Maltsev convict prison. Fanny had never imagined that it could be so hard in prison.
1908, summer - Kaplan suddenly had an incomprehensible visual disorder. After terrible headaches, she was completely blind. Three days later, her vision returned, but soon the seizure recurred, and she lost her vision for a long time. Previously, quite vigorous, she withdrawn into herself, refused to go for walks and even discussed with some inmates the methods of suicide.
The prison administration, which previously believed that Fanny was feigning, now placed her in the prison infirmary, where she spent most of 1910 under the supervision of the guards. No one could understand the reasons for what happened. Some believed it was the result of a traumatic brain injury sustained in a bomb explosion in 1906. Perhaps so, but here we should return to that year and to the person who disappeared after the explosion.
The fact is that after Fanny Kaplan was convicted, the police did not close the explosion case. She was looking for Tom, who lived in her room with a false passport in the name of Zelman Tom, either Romanian, or a native of Bessarabia, who had previously been wanted after a robbery of a store in Chisinau by an armed gang. Once again he distinguished himself there in the robbery of a banker's office. In underground circles he was known under the nicknames Sashka the White Guard, Realist, Z. Tom, J. Schmidman.
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This man was a member of the South Russian group of communist anarchists. 1908 - he was arrested in Odessa. During the arrest, he put up armed resistance and wounded two policemen and a watchman. Three members of the gang were sentenced to be hanged, and Schmidman (under this name he appeared before the court) as a minor - to a prison term of 12 years.
After 4 months in prison, he suddenly gave testimony about the explosion in Kiev, stressing that Fanny Kaplan was not involved in the incident and that he brought the bomb. But the verification of his testimony dragged on, and then stopped altogether. Then Schmidman conceived an armed escape, but he was suppressed at the end of 1908.
Curiously, during a search in his cell, two packages of potassium cyanide and encrypted correspondence were found. It may well be that Kaplan found out about the recognition of her friend and was counting on changes in her fate. When nothing happened, she began to have seizures, incomprehensible to everyone, with loss of vision: probably, she was seized by despair and a feeling of doom.
1911 - "indefinite term" Kaplan from the Maltsev prison was sent to Akatui, to the Nerchinsk penal servitude - the most terrible in Russia. And not just sent, but in hand and foot shackles. In Akatuya, she met the famous activist of the revolutionary movement Maria Spiridonova, and under her influence she turned from an anarchist into a Social Revolutionary.
But soon the blind prisoner was placed in an infirmary, where patients with progressive paralysis, dementia, and transient consumption were kept. Here there was no time for ideas: neither before the anarchist nor the Socialist-Revolutionary. Complete despair. The situation began to change in 1912, when a doctor who inspected the penitentiary institutions of the Nerchinsk Territory examined Fanny and, seeing that her pupils were reacting to light, advised Kaplan to be transferred to Chita.
The following year, after an amnesty in connection with the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, Kaplan's stay in hard labor was reduced to 20 years, and then she was admitted to a special hospital, where her eyesight began to improve. By that time, Kaplan's parents had emigrated to America, and she herself had a chance to stay in hard labor until the February Revolution of 1917.
After her release, Fanny lived for some time in Chita, and in April she moved to Moscow. There was no health, vision was not restored. Comrades in the Socialist-Revolutionary Party sent her to Yevpatoria for medical treatment, where the Provisional Government, showing concern for the victims of tsarism, opened a sanatorium for former political prisoners.
Then she came to Kharkov, to the clinic of the famous ophthalmologist L. L. Girshman, where she underwent surgery on her eyes. It was here that Kaplan found the news of the October Bolshevik coup. From Kharkov, she again moved to the Crimea and for some time taught courses in Simferopol for the training of workers in volost zemstvos.
And then there was Moscow. How Fanny got there and what she did until August 30, 1918, is unknown. Here, perhaps, it would be appropriate to mention again her friend in the Kiev case - J. Schmidman. In March 1917 he was released from prison. It turned out that his real name is Victor Garsky, he comes from the Moldavian town of Gancheshty. After the Bolshevik coup, this former anarchist suddenly became the commissar of the food detachment in Tiraspol and until 28 August 1918 was in one of the Odessa hospitals recovering from his injury.
There he tried to restore his former connections, and on August 28, leaving a relatively well-fed Odessa, he suddenly rushed to Moscow. 48 hours remained before the attempt on Lenin's life. Tarski had to stay in Kiev because of some delays in the Russian Consulate General in Ukraine. So he reached Moscow only after September 17 and immediately got an appointment with YM Sverdlov. Was it so easy to get an appointment with the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the head of state? Further more.
Immediately followed by the appointment of Tarski as commissar of the Central Directorate of Military Communications and entry into the RCP (b) without a candidate's experience. Curious, for what merits such favors? Having survived all the hardships and repressions, Garsky survived safely until 1956. And Fanny Kaplan?
Fanny Kaplan - attempt on Lenin
1918, August 30 - Lenin was supposed to speak at several rallies. The last was a meeting at the Michelson plant in the Zamoskvoretsky district. The day before, the murder of the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, Uritsky, took place in Petrograd. The killer, by the way, could not be detained. Lenin's relatives did not want him to go to perform that day, especially for some reason without protection. But he went anyway.
Lenin was at the factory late in the evening, talking for almost an hour. And at about 11 pm, when he was already at the exit, three shots were fired. One of the bullets hit the left shoulder blade. Lenin fell facedown to the ground. No one has yet really had time to realize what happened, but it is absolutely reliably known that 20 minutes before what happened (!), The chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Sverdlov, signed a resolution "To all Soviets of workers, peasants and Red Guard deputies, all armies, everyone, everyone, everyone":
“Several hours ago, a villainous attempt was made on Comrade Lenin … We have no doubt that here too will be found traces of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, traces of the hirelings of the British and French. In this resolution, both the time and the direct indication of the culprits are striking. But Kaplan has not yet been arrested and no interrogations have yet been carried out!
However, back to the Michelson plant. After the shots, people in panic began to scatter in different directions. Lenin's driver Gil rushed to him. Further, we will quote Gil himself: “… I saw from the side, on the left side of him, at a distance of no more than three steps, a woman's hand with a Browning stretching out from behind several people, and three shots were fired, after which I rushed in the direction from where shot. The woman who was shooting threw a revolver at my feet and disappeared into the crowd … Nobody raised the revolver in front of me … I'm getting better: after the first shot I saw a woman's hand with a Browning."
It should be said that because everything happened at night, none of the witnesses questioned saw the person who shot Lenin in the face. In addition, the testimony includes two instruments of the assassination attempt - the Browning and the revolver. And in the end, if Kaplan, as they later claimed, was on the left, then she could not injure Lenin who was approaching the step of the car in the back. And nevertheless, of the many who fled along the street, already far from the plant, Commissioner S. N. Batulin detained her.
He testified to the Commission of Inquiry: “On Serpukhovka … behind me, near a tree, I saw a woman holding a briefcase and an umbrella in her hands, who, with her strange appearance, stopped my attention. She had the appearance of a man who was fleeing persecution, intimidated and hunted … I searched her pockets and took her briefcase and umbrella, invited her to come with me … On Serpukhovka, someone from the crowd in this woman recognized the man who had shot at Comrade. Lenin . So, just one frightened look is enough (so blindly at night), it is enough for someone (no one knows who) to recognize … But not a word is said about weapons!
At 11:30 pm, the first interrogation of Fanny Kaplan began at the Zamoskvoretsk military commissariat. She refused to sign the protocol, but said: “Today I shot at Lenin. I shot out of my own conviction. " There is evidence that Sverdlov was present at this interrogation, who asked her several questions: “Who instructed you to commit this unheard-of atrocity? Are you a Socialist Revolutionary? An agent of world imperialism?"
During this interrogation, Kaplan did not admit that she was a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, but the charges against this party had already been brought forward! This is where everything is clear. The Bolsheviks generally did not need any other parties in the country, and even more so with a militant past and criticizing their policies.
At the next interrogations, Fanny stated that she had made the decision to attempt on Lenin's life back in February 1918 in Simferopol, that she had a negative attitude towards the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, stood for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly (dispersed by the Bolsheviks), considered Lenin a traitor to the revolution, and was convinced that his actions "remove the idea of socialism for decades." But all these are just words, but with evidence it turned out to be difficult.
It turned out that she didn’t know the details of the assassination attempt: “How many times I fired - I don’t remember … I won’t say what revolver I fired from,” and, in general, she was detained “at the entrance to the rally”. At the entrance, not at the exit - the rally was over by that time. And what about the testimony of Batulin and other witnesses? And how could this half-blind woman at such a time of day be able to shoot so accurately? Where and when did she manage to learn this? The investigation did not pay attention to these absurdities - she herself admitted. But what about the instrument of crime? During a search of Kaplan's house, neither a revolver nor a Browning was found. They will be discovered later and not at her place.
On September 1, the deputy chairman of the All-Russian Cheka Y. Kh. Peters told Izvestia of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee that the arrested woman was a Social Revolutionary and that a group of people had participated in the assassination attempt. Over 40 witnesses were questioned over 4 days. Some of them claimed that a man was shooting. Fanny Kaplan herself was no longer interrogated on 31 August.
Now about weapons. On September 2, the worker AV Kuznetsov brought the "that" revolver he had discovered to the Cheka. It lacked three cartridges … A year later, the Cheka received a denunciation against Zinaida Legonkaya, by the way, an employee of the Cheka, that she allegedly shot Lenin. In fact, after the assassination attempt, Legonkaya was near the Michelson plant and then accompanied the wounded woman to the Lubyanka. She also took part in the search of Kaplan. But the weapon was not found then!
And now, after a search, they found Legonkaya's apartment. The explanation she gave is rather wild for an employee of the Cheka. Lightweight claimed that she found the Browning in Kaplan's briefcase and decided to keep it as a souvenir. It is hard to imagine what they should have done to her then for this. In fact, it is difficult: she was … released.
After the first interrogations, Fanny Kaplan was no longer viewed as the organizer of the assassination attempt. This followed from the content of the questions she was asked. But she was stubbornly portrayed as a lone terrorist. It is likely that she did not shoot, but it is also possible that she actually took part in this case. Only her role is different.
Most likely, Kaplan had to track Lenin's movements that day, in order to know for sure whether he would speak at the rally, and to convey a message to the performers. According to her own testimony, she arrived "at the rally at eight o'clock." It was then that numerous witnesses saw this strange, and therefore easily remembered woman. But who was the organizer of the terrorist attack? The investigation, so short, did not give an answer to this question, but some strange things began.
On August 31, A. Protopopov, deputy commander of the Cheka detachment, was arrested and shot. On the same day, Kaplan was interrogated for the last time at the Lubyanka. The next day, the commandant of the Kremlin, P. D. Malkov, transported her from the Lubyanka to the Kremlin. It was then that new questions began. Why was Protopopov, by the way, a former Socialist-Revolutionary, shot? Who gave the order to transfer Kaplan from the Cheka - were the cellars really unreliable there? And here the threads again converge to Sverdlov.
Only the owner of the Kremlin could give an order to the commandant of the Kremlin. And that was Sverdlov. His power was then enormous both in the state and in the party: chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, chairman of the Politburo and Central Committee of the RCP (b), secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP (b). Now, after Lenin was wounded, he took turns with A. I. Rykov to chair the Council of People's Commissars. Yes, this is almost absolute power. Did he need Lenin?
“Here, Vladimir Dmitrievich,” he once said to V. Bonch-Bruyevich, “we are coping without Vladimir Ilyich”. All this will come back to haunt Yakov Mikhailovich. Soon after Lenin's recovery and their one-on-one conversation, Sverdlov would suddenly die - allegedly from a "Spanish flu". There is no need to idealize the relations that have developed at the top of the Bolshevik Party, shown in films and literature. Having broken into power, the "fiery revolutionaries" behaved like spiders in a bank.
The whole history of the communist regime can testify to this. Only Fanny Kaplan didn't get any better from this. On September 3, 1918 (what a hurry!) The same commandant Malkov received an order to shoot her. Malkov had nothing to do with the execution cases. According to his position, he could not and had no right to do this. But he did. The corpse seems to have been burned in a barrel. This subsequently gave rise to various legends, among which - that the shot woman was not at all Kaplan; she was secretly pardoned and was seen in various places in the 1930s.
The next day, Izvestia VTsIK reported that “by order of the Cheka, the woman who shot at Comrade. Lenin's right Socialist Revolutionary Fanny Roydman (aka Kaplan). Yes, for some reason it was not the Chekists who were shot by the order, not by the verdict of the court. Maria Spiridonova, who was at that time in a Moscow prison, having learned about the execution, wrote to Lenin: “How was it possible for 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.
But they did not forget the case with the execution of Kaplan. 1922 - an open trial was staged over the party of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, in which it turned out that the attempt on Lenin's life was prepared by the officers of the Cheka GI Semenov-Vasiliev and LV Konopleva, who were introduced into the party of the SRs. The latter testified about the preparation of the Central Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party of terrorist acts against Volodarsky, Uritsky, Trotsky, Zinoviev and Lenin. With this she signed the death warrant for the leadership of the party.
But then it turns out that the Cheka was involved in organizing the attempt on Lenin's life, and Kaplan worked under the leadership of the Chekists. What happened to Semyonov and Konoplyova at the end of the trial? Nothing but promotion. They will also give incriminating information about N. I. Bukharin - after all, in 1937 he was also accused of organizing an attempt on Lenin's life, and he, by the way, did not particularly refuse it - and will be shot in the same 1937.
In the mid-1990s, an attempt was made to reconsider the Kaplan case. However, as in 1918, everything was released on the brakes. So, apparently, Fanny Kaplan will be considered a "violet of terror" for a long time - she shot at the heart of the revolution.
A. Ilchenko