She was born in the Nikiforovo estate of the Tetyushsky district of the Kazan province on July 7, 1852. The Figner ancestors were originally from Livonia; Paul I granted them hereditary nobility. The girl's father, Nikolai Alexandrovich, a retired staff captain, served as a provincial secretary and later as a forester. He was married to Ekaterina Khristoforovna Kupriyanova. The family had six children. Vera Nikolaevna, along with her brothers and sisters, spent her early childhood, as befitted the children of a forester, in remote forests.

In 1863, eleven-year-old Vera was sent to the Kazan Rodionovsky Institute, which she graduated from as the top student, with a "gold cipher." The girl was talented and very proud. A serene post-institute life awaited her, in anticipation of a happy marriage.

The young woman, wishing to study medicine, began asking her father to let her go to Switzerland. But instead of university, she was introduced to high society, and at one of the balls, she met Alexei Filippov, the son of a wealthy Kazan landowner. The feeling that ignited was mutual. On October 18, 1870, the young couple were married.

In the spring of 1872, Vera, together with her husband and sister Lydia, went to Zurich to continue her education. Switzerland at that time had many various revolutionary circles, in the work of which the sisters eventually became involved. Vera tried in every way to involve her husband in revolutionary activities, but Alexei Viktorovich resisted. The differences in the couple’s political views became the cause of their separation. In the spring of 1874, Filippov filed for divorce and returned to Russia.

Meanwhile, Vera became increasingly passionate about revolutionary activities, which eventually became the meaning of her entire life. At the first call of the revolutionary organization, she returned to Russia. By that time, Figner had irrevocably put her past behind her.

In December 1876, she took part in a revolutionary demonstration at Kazan Square in Saint Petersburg. After the split of "Land and Liberty" in 1879, Figner became a member of the executive committee of "People’s Will."

She remarkably managed to evade the police; legends circulated about her fearlessness and elusiveness. Only three years after the assassination of Alexander II by the People's Will and the execution of the assassination participants was Vera Figner, betrayed by a traitor, arrested by the police. Upon receiving news of her arrest, Alexander III exclaimed: "Thank God, that terrible woman is arrested!"

In the "Trial of the Fourteen" (1884), she was sentenced to death, which was commuted to life hard labor. She served solitary confinement in the Shlisselburg Fortress for 20 years.

Vera Figner was highly respected by the prisoners; she was one of the main participants in the struggle against the prison administration. She wrote memoirs about her life in prison titled Sealed Labor. When the Hours of Life Stopped.

From Colonel Kairovs’s report on Vera Figner:

"Prisoner No. 11 is almost a cult figure for the entire prison; the inmates treat her with the greatest reverence and respect. She undoubtedly leads the public opinion of the entire prison, and her orders are obeyed almost without question; it can be said with great confidence that the protests manifested in the prison by the inmates in the form of general hunger strikes, refusals to take walks, work, etc., are carried out according to her cue."

She was released under Nicholas II—in 1904. In 1906, Vera went abroad, where she joined the Socialist-Revolutionaries and actively worked to defend political prisoners in Russia, as well as began writing memoirs about the former revolutionary struggle. She became a historian of her own past and the past of her friends.

She returned to her drastically changed homeland only in 1915, greeted the February Revolution with joy, did not accept the October Revolution, but did not emigrate and remained in Russia. She engaged in literary work, donating most of her royalties to support schools, libraries, and museums. Figner was a member of the USSR Writers' Union. On the 80th anniversary of her birth, a complete collection of her works was published in seven volumes.

Vera Nikolaevna Figner passed away just a few weeks short of her 90th birthday and a few months before the 25th anniversary of Soviet power, dying on June 15, 1942.

Her life spanned the reigns of four emperors: Nicholas I, Alexander II, Alexander III, and Nicholas II; during her lifetime, the Romanov throne fell, the October Revolution occurred, and Stalin came to power. She lived a quarter of a century under Soviet rule. Few are granted the fate to witness the "ends of beginnings," as Herzen put it. Vera Figner was one of the fortunate ones. She lived to be 89 and died in Moscow in 1942. She witnessed Stalin’s repressions and collectivization that destroyed the Russian peasantry, the demise of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the party she once belonged to. Having become a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary party after the defeat of "People’s Will," Figner never accepted the October Revolution (1917) with its dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and subsequent policies. She did not join the Communist Party, preserved her ideals, and even tried to save Socialist-Revolutionaries from repression, unsuccessfully appealing to Stalin and his associates. She was one of the few who remained untouched herself; she was even paid a personal pension.

Sources:

https://dostop.ru/leningradskaya-oblast/krepost-oreshek.html

https://rounb.ru/news/tri-zhizni-very-figner