What It Is
A postcard from a series called “Martyrs of Bolshevism” highlighting the story of revolutionary assassin Maria Spiridonova. The postcard series, a popular fundraiser for the Bolshevik cause, was something like the social media of their day, offering short, pithy reports on the doings of influential figures that were possible to cheaply produce and mail. Some ended up at our offices on East Broadway, and some were published in our pages.
Why I Love It
Spiridonova’s picture reminds me of a photo album documenting the Bund, the Jewish worker’s movement, that I came across at the Yiddish Book Center as an undergrad at Hampshire College. That album taught me about women like Pati Kremer, who taught the Jewish poor of Vilna to read, and Frume Grabelski, a young Warsaw dressmaker wounded by Russian soldiers firing upon the crowd at a 1905 demonstration.
Nobody in that album smiled for the camera. Spiridonova’s postcard has the same spirit. It’s a commemoration of a remarkable woman whose story of resistance — she assassinated a hated Czarist police inspector, then survived police abuse and 11 years in Siberian prison — isn’t nearly as well known as it ought to be.
What It Makes Me Think About
Spiridonova’s sober stare makes me curious about the role of women in the history of the Forward — and in progressive Yiddishist politics. And I wonder about her part in the Narodnik political movement that attracted her — as it did our own founder, Ab Cahan.
Narodniks were revolutionaries, largely drawn from the intelligentsia, who were tasked with popularizing revolutionary thinking among the peasant classes. It’s a task that, to me, feels close to that of archive-keeping at its most urgent. How best do we offer the stories that shaped Jewish history — and modern ideals — to the people?
Al dos guts/Best,
