Fanny Kaplan
| Fanya Kaplan | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
Feiga Haimovna Roytblat February 10, 1890 Volhynian Governorate, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) |
| Died | September 3, 1918 (aged 28) Moscow, Russian SFSR |
Fanya Yefimovna Kaplan (Russian: Фа́нни Ефи́мовна Капла́н; real name Feiga Haimovna Roytblat, Фейга Хаимовна Ройтблат; February 10, 1890 – September 3, 1918) was a Russian revolutionary who tried to assassinate Vladimir Lenin.
As a member of the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), Kaplan viewed Lenin as a ‘traitor to the revolution’, when his Bolsheviks managed to get the Tsars out of power. On 30 August 1918, she approached Lenin as he was leaving a Moscow factory, and fired three shots, badly injuring him. Interrogated by the Cheka, she refused to name any accomplices, and was shot on 3 September. The incident did much to provoke the imminent civil war.
Some historians have cast doubt on Kaplan’s guilt, as she was almost blind, following years of beatings as a prisoner in Siberia.
There is some confusion as to Kaplan's birth name. Vera Figner, in her memoirs, At Women's Katorga, gives the name Feiga Khaimovna Roytblat-Kaplan (Фейга Хаимовна Ройтблат-Каплан). Other sources give her original family name as Ройтман (transliterated from Russian as Roytman, which corresponds to the common German/Yiddish name Reutemann). She is also sometimes called "Dora."
Kaplan was born into a Jewish family, as one of seven children. She became a political revolutionary at an early age and joined a socialist group, the Socialist Revolutionaries. In 1906, when she was 16 years old, Kaplan was arrested in Kiev over her involvement in a terrorist bomb plot, and committed for life to the katorga (a hard-labor prison camp). She served in the Maltsev and Akatuy prisons of Nerchinsk katorga, Siberia, where she lost her sight (partially restored later). She was kept in the Maltzevskaya prison, where she was severely caned on her bare body as disciplinary corporal punishment. Fully undressed corporal punishment was not usual for political prisoners at that time. She was released on March 3, 1917, after the February Revolution overthrew the imperial government. As a result of her imprisonment, Kaplan suffered from continuous headaches and periods of blindness.
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