Table of contents:
- Where was she born, studied and how she got into the storm of revolution Dora Vulfovna Brilliant
- How a young Jewish woman joined Savinkov's Fighting Organization
- A noble assassin, or how the hunt for Plehva and the Governor-General of Moscow ended, and how Dora Brilliant mourned her victims
- How Dora Paid for Participation in a Combat Organization
Video: The horseman of death named "Diamond", or Why the Kherson midwife made bombs
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
When a girl was born in Kherson in a pious Jewish family, joyful parents dreamed of a happy fate for their baby. In their worst dream, they could not have dreamed that their daughter would choose the craft of an executioner for herself, and instead of giving life, she would take it away. That the "hell machines" she created will literally tear people to pieces, and for eternity she will leave not surrounded by caring children and grandchildren, but in prison dungeons, in a state of madness.
Where was she born, studied and how she got into the storm of revolution Dora Vulfovna Brilliant
The future terrorist Dora Brilliant was born in 1879 into a rather influential merchant family of Orthodox Kherson Jews. Trade brought a good income, and parents had the opportunity to take care of their daughter's education. Dora was assigned to a Jewish girls' school, after which she studied at the gymnasium for four years. The girl had a strong craving for education, therefore, having buried her mother who died early, she, against the will of her father, left her home and entered obstetric courses at one of the oldest higher educational institutions of the Russian Empire - Yuryev University.
To continue her studies in the fall of 1900, Dora Brilliant moved to Kiev, where she plunged headlong into student life, seething with unrest. In progressive youth circles, the girl first came into contact with revolutionary ideas. For participation in a mass student demonstration of protest against the abuse of the administration and groundless expulsion of fellow students, she was arrested and placed in the Lukyanovskaya prison. After a short stay in a penitentiary institution, Doru was sent under supervision to Chisinau. Soon Ekaterinodar became the place of exile, then Poltava.
How a young Jewish woman joined Savinkov's Fighting Organization
In Poltava, Dora Wolfovna became a revolutionary. This happened under the influence of her new acquaintances, among whom were a member of the secret revolutionary organization "Ishutinsky circle" Pyotr Nikolaev, the famous "grandmother of the Russian revolution" Yekaterina Breshko-Breshkovskaya, one of the founders of the Fighting Organization of the Socialist Revolutionary Party Grigory Gershuni. These strong personalities strengthened Dora's Socialist Revolutionary convictions and recruited them to work on the local committee of their party. It was a peaceful activity (keeping archives, printing proclamations, participating in the publication of the "Krestyanskaya Gazeta"), and Dora wanted something more serious. Therefore, it is not surprising that she had to serve another sentence in prison companies for participating in a demonstration.
Another important event for the girl took place in Poltava - a meeting with a former student of the Kiev University, a militant Socialist-Revolutionary Alexei Pokotilov, with whom she was tied for a long time by both friendly and deeper personal relations. At the end of the supervision period, in the fall of 1903, Brilliant returned to Kiev. There, she continued the boring committee work that had become hateful to her, until she was able to fulfill the cherished dream that had formed in Poltava - to become a full member of the Combat Organization of the Social Revolutionaries. Dora was brought to Boris Savinkov by Pokotilov. It didn't take long for the leader of the Socialist-Revolutionaries to see in the short, fragile girl a man fanatically devoted to the revolution, capable of sacrificing himself for a great cause and ready to go on terror.
A noble assassin, or how the hunt for Plehva and the Governor-General of Moscow ended, and how Dora Brilliant mourned her victims
Dora's knowledge of chemistry determined her place in a terrorist organization - she was supposed to be engaged in making bombs. In the immediate plans of the Social Revolutionaries was the assassination of the Minister of Internal Affairs Vyacheslav Plehve. This action gave the organizers a lot of trouble: the first attempt failed, while preparing the second Alexey Pokotilov accidentally died. In an effort to avenge a loved one, Dora begged to be taken as a thrower, but she was not allowed to. Egor Sozonov was instructed to carry out the sentence, and he coped with it. However, at the scene of the explosion, Savinkov, accustomed to failures, did not notice Plehve's corpse and mistook the bloody pieces of human flesh for the remains of a comrade-in-arms. And only when he saw a portrait of the minister in a mourning frame in the newspaper, he realized that the deed was done.
The victim of the next terrorist attack was the Moscow Governor-General, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. Despite Dora's regular requests to allow her to take a direct part in the murder, the management again instructed her to only make and save two bombs until the required moment. The first attempt did not take place: the terrorist Ivan Kalyaev, who was instructed to throw the bomb, could not raise his hand against the wife of the Grand Duke and his young nephews who were in the carriage. On February 4, 1905, Sergei Alexandrovich left alone - and was torn apart by the "hellish machine" created by Dora Brilliant and abandoned by Kaliayev.
According to Boris Savinkov, a strange contradiction lived in Dora: in both cases she reached a hysterical state and sobbed, but she mourned not only the dead comrades, but also her victims and blamed herself for their death.
How Dora Paid for Participation in a Combat Organization
Despite the thorough conspiracy of the terrorists, at the end of 1905, two secret chemical laboratories in St. Petersburg were discovered by the police. Dora Brilliant, who was in one of them, was arrested, convicted of criminal activity against the emperor and members of the imperial house, and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Staying in a dark, damp cell revived the horror experienced earlier in the closed walls of Lukyanovka, pressing on the consciousness. Exhausted physically and mentally, Dora could not stand the nightmare and lost her mind. She was pushed to this by the episode when the electricity went out in the casemate, and guards with candles appeared on the threshold of her cell. Not reacting to the dim light, the girl saw only ominous figures approaching her from the darkness. After this incident, Dora was transferred to the hospital of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, where she, constantly begging for poison to end her suffering, died in October 1907.
The role of Dora Wolfovna in the Combat Organization can be judged by how Savinkov noted in his "Memoirs of a Terrorist" that the death of Brilliant deprived the SRs "of one of the largest women of terror."
Another famous terrorist, Vera Zasulich, also took this path, but she managed to avoid punishment.
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