Maria Spiridonova

Maria Alexandrovna Spiridonova (Russian: Мария Александровна Спиридонова; 16 October 1884 – 11 September 1941) was a Narodnik-inspired Russian revolutionary. In 1906, as a novice member of a local combat group of the Tambov Socialists-Revolutionaries (SRs), she assassinated Gavriil Luzhenovsky, a Tsarist security official. Her subsequent abuse by police earned her enormous popularity with the opponents of Tsarism throughout the empire and even abroad.

After spending over 11 years in Siberian prisons she was freed after the February Revolution of 1917, and returned to European Russia as a heroine of the destitute, and especially of the peasants. According to G.D.H. Cole, she was, along with Alexandra Kollontai, one of the most prominent women leaders during the Russian Revolution, leading the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries to initially side with Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and then to break with them.