Mariya Shkolnik
Mariya Shkolnik | |
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Мария Марковна Школьник | |
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Born | 18 March [O.S. 06 March]1882 Borovoi-Mlin |
Died | April 9, 1955(1955-04-09) (aged 73) |
Other names | Marie Sukloff |
Occupation | Member of the Russian Revolutionary Movement |
Organization | Socialist Revolutionary Party |
Known for | Russian socialist and revolutionary |
Criminal charges | Association with a society dedicated to the overthrow of the government, conspiring against the tsar, and attempted assassination |
Criminal penalty | Exile to Siberia and death (commuted to exile once more) |
Mariya Markovna Shkolnik (previously transliterated as Marie Sukloff, Russian: Мари́я Ма́рковна Шко́льник) (6 March 1882 - 9 April 1955) was a member of the Russian revolutionary movement that attempted to assassinate Alexei Khvostov and escaped exile in Siberia twice. Mariya was a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and assisted in the propaganda efforts of the party among peasant populations. [1]
Life
Mariya Shkolnik was born to a poor, Jewish, peasant family in Borovoi-Mlin, a village in the Vilna Governorate of the Russian Empire (now in the Grodno Region of Belarus), not far from the town of Smarhon'. Mariya started working at a young age and was not sent to school. Mariya remained illiterate till the age of 13. She did however learn to read from the daughter of a rabbi named Hannah who would often meet with peasant girls in Vilna to teach them progressive politics and economics.[2]
Strikes and demonstrations demanding the establishment of a ten-hour working day began in Vilna when Mariya was a teenager. Through an organizer from the Jewish Bund, Mariya joined the revolutionary movement.
After organizing in Ashmyany, Mariya felt that her future as a revolutionary would be better in a city. Eventually, she convinced her father to send her to her uncle's apartment in Odessa. In Odessa she worked in a candy factory and lived with others who shared her political ideology.
In 1918 she returned from exile to Soviet Russia. In 1927 she became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Works
Mariya published her memoirs "Life of a Former Terrorist" in 1927 in which she talks about her life from early childhood to emigration.[3]