Vera Zasulich was born in 1849 in the Smolensk province into an impoverished noble family. In 1864, she was admitted to the Rodionovsky Institute for Noble Maidens in Kazan. Three years later, she passed the exam for the title of home tutor with distinction and moved to St. Petersburg. She was unable to find work in her specialty and went to Serpukhov near Moscow, where she took a job as a clerk for a magistrate. After working in this position for a year, Vera returned to the capital. There she got a job as a bookbinder and spent her free time self-educating. In St. Petersburg, Vera first became acquainted with revolutionary ideas and began attending radical political circles.

In 1868, fate brought Zasulich together with Sergey Nechayev, who, though not immediately, involved the young revolutionary in the activities of his organization "People's Retribution." On April 30, 1869, Vera Zasulich fell into the hands of justice. The reason for her arrest was a letter from abroad, received to be passed on to another person. Thus, Zasulich became one of the defendants in the famous "Nechayev case," which then shook all of Russian society.

Zasulich spent almost a year in the "Lithuanian Castle" and the Peter and Paul Fortress. In March 1871, she was exiled to Kresttsy in the Novgorod province, and then to Tver, where she was again arrested for distributing illegal literature. This time she was sent to the small town of Soligalich in the Kostroma province, and in 1875 Zasulich found herself in Kharkov.

Despite constant police surveillance, Zasulich joined a revolutionary circle of followers of M. Bakunin's ideas called the "Southern Rebels." Uniting the efforts of the "Bakunin rebels," she attempted to incite a peasant uprising in the village of Tsebulevka. The uprising failed, and Zasulich fled to St. Petersburg, where it was easier to hide from police persecution.

When the "rebels'" plan failed, Zasulich, fleeing police persecution, moved to the capital, where it was easier to disappear. In the capital, Vera went underground, joined the society "Land and Liberty," and began working in the illegal "Free Russian Printing House."

Then an event occurred that, according to historians, set in motion the bloody machine of political terror in Russia and served as the pretext for one of the most sensational trials of Tsarist Russia in the 1870s.

Six months passed from the incident with Bogolyubov to the assassination attempt on Trepov — hardly a matter of impulse. It turns out there was no unaccountable outburst, but a planned, organized action. On the same day, Vera's close friend Masha Kolenkina was supposed to attempt to assassinate prosecutor Vladislav Zhelekhovsky, but something went wrong. However, the gentle girl Vera did shoot two bullets into her satrap's abdomen. She became the first female terrorist in Russia. And it seems she fully understood what she was doing and the risks involved.

However, this is just a fact of her biography. But those were special times — Alexander II's reforms had triggered a hidden mechanism; civil society was emerging in Russia, and it was Vera Zasulich who was destined to play the role of catalyst in this process.

On February 5 (January 24), 1878, a 28-year-old young lady calling herself Elizaveta Kozlova came to the reception of the capital's chief of police, General-Adjutant

Fyodor Trepov at the building of the St. Petersburg Chief of Police Administration, at Admiralteysky Prospect, house 6. The petitioner said she was looking for a governess position and wanted to obtain a certificate of good conduct for this purpose. The general was about to approve the request with a "Permission" resolution when suddenly the girl pulled out a 5-shot English "Bulldog" revolver and fired it at the general! The subsequent dramatic scene was depicted many times in drawings.

The general's wound (which many did not believe at all) was no joke, and the bullet remained in his body until the end of his life. Gendarme General Vasily Novitsky recalled: "There were rumors in society that Trepov was not even wounded by Zasulich's bullet, that the bullet missed Trepov's torso, and his statement about being wounded was false. These circulating rumors were undoubtedly false, spread by revolutionaries. Trepov was indeed wounded by a bullet in the left side of his chest, and the bullet sometimes moved downward toward the bladder, causing Trepov, especially in his later years, severe pain, which he relieved only by wearing a bandage made by a famous Italian surgeon, which prevented the bullet from moving down and eased the pressure on nerve nodes, from which he suffered incredibly painful pains, as he told me." However, none of this prevented Trepov from living to 77 years old.

Then the trial of Vera Zasulich took place.

On March 31, 1878, at 11 a.m., the session of the St. Petersburg District Court on the case of Zasulich opened, chaired by A.F. Koni, with judges V.A. Serbinovich and O.G. Den participating. Zasulich's act was qualified under Articles 9 and 1454 of the Penal Code, which provided for deprivation of all civil rights and exile to penal labor for 15 to 20 years. The session was open, and the hall was packed with people.

The jury consisted of nine officials, one nobleman, one merchant, and one freelance artist. The foreman of the jury was chosen as Court Councillor A.I. Lokhov. The court secretary reported that on March 26, Trepov had submitted a statement that due to health reasons he could not appear in court. A medical certificate signed by Professor N.V. Sklifosovsky and other doctors was read out. The judicial investigation began. Zasulich behaved modestly and spoke with naive sincerity. When asked if she pleaded guilty, she replied: "I admit that I shot General Trepov, and whether this caused a wound or death was indifferent to me."

After the witness interrogation, medical experts gave their conclusions. Then the parties' arguments began.

The first to speak was K.I. Kessel. He accused the defendant of a premeditated intent to take the life of Chief of Police Trepov. To support his words, Kessel added that the defendant sought and found exactly such a revolver from which a person could be killed. The second part of Kessel's accusatory speech was devoted to Trepov's action on July 13, emphasizing that the court should neither condemn nor justify the chief of police's actions.

By general consensus, against the backdrop of the dull speech of the prosecutor, the defense attorney Alexandrov's speech became a major public event. The defender thoroughly traced the connection between the flogging of Bogolyubov on July 13 and the shots at Trepov on January 24. The information Zasulich received about Bogolyubov's flogging, he said, was detailed, thorough, and reliable. The fateful question arose: who will stand up for the insulted honor of the helpless convict? Who will wash away the shame that will forever remind the unfortunate man? Zasulich was tormented by another question: where is the guarantee against the repetition of such a case?

Addressing the jurors, Alexandrov said: "For the first time here appears a woman for whom there were no personal interests or personal revenge in the crime — a woman who connected her crime with the struggle for an idea in the name of one who was only a comrade in misfortune throughout her life. If this motive of the act turns out to be less heavy on the scales of divine justice, if for the common good, for the triumph of law, for public safety it is necessary to recognize the punishment as lawful, then let your punitive justice be fulfilled! Do not hesitate! A little suffering may be added by your sentence to this broken, shattered life. Without reproach, without bitter complaint, without offense, she will accept your decision and be comforted by the thought that perhaps her suffering, her sacrifice will prevent the possibility of a repetition of the case that caused her act. No matter how grimly one looks at this act, in its very motives one cannot but see an honest and noble impulse." "Yes," Alexandrov concluded his speech, "she may leave here convicted, but she will not leave disgraced, and one can only wish that the causes producing such crimes do not recur."

Alexandrov's speech was published in many Russian newspapers and translated into foreign languages.

Zasulich refused to make a final statement. The arguments were declared closed. With the consent of the parties, Koni put three questions to the jury: "The first question is: is Zasulich guilty of having, deciding to avenge Chief of Police Trepov for the punishment of Bogolyubov and acquiring a revolver for this purpose, on January 24, with premeditated intent, inflicted a wound in the pelvic cavity on General-Adjutant Trepov with a large-caliber bullet; the second question is whether, if Zasulich committed this act, she had premeditated intent to take the life of Chief of Police Trepov; and the third question is, if Zasulich intended to take the life of Chief of Police Trepov, did she do everything in her power to achieve this goal, with death not resulting due to circumstances beyond Zasulich's control."

A.F. Koni addressed the jurors and essentially suggested an acquittal verdict. He clearly understood all the hardships that might be associated with acquitting Zasulich but remained true to his principles and expressed them in the questions the jurors had to answer.

Koni concluded his summary: "The instructions I have just given you are nothing but advice that may facilitate your examination of the case. They are not binding on you. You may forget them or take them into account. You will pronounce a decisive and final word on this case. You will pronounce this word according to your conviction, based on all that you have seen and heard, and constrained by nothing but the voice of your conscience. If you find the defendant guilty on the first or all three questions, you may consider her deserving leniency due to the circumstances of the case. You may understand these circumstances broadly. These circumstances always matter because you are judging not an abstract subject but a living person whose present is always directly or indirectly influenced by their past. Discussing the grounds for leniency, you will recall the life of Zasulich revealed to you."

When reading the verdict, the foreman only managed to say: "Not guilty," which caused a storm of applause in the hall. Koni announced to Zasulich that she was acquitted and that the order for her release would be signed immediately. Vera freely left the detention house and went straight into the arms of an admiring crowd. Abroad, the news of Zasulich's acquittal was also received with great interest. Newspapers in France, Germany, England, and the USA covered the trial in detail. The press noted the special role of defense attorney Alexandrov and presiding judge Koni. However, the Russian government did not share such enthusiasm.

The jurors deliberated for only twenty minutes. "They came out, crowding, with pale faces, not looking at the defendant... A dead silence fell. Everyone held their breath. The foreman handed me the sheet with a trembling hand... Against the first question was written in large letters: no, not guilty! The hall exploded with delight," recalled Anatoly Koni, who presided over the trial.

Justice Minister Palen accused Koni of violating the law and persistently urged him to resign. The famous lawyer remained true to himself and did not yield, for which he was transferred to the civil department of the judicial chamber. In 1900, under pressure, he left judicial work. Count Palen was soon dismissed from his post "for negligent handling of the Zasulich case."

What was the controversy about then? Philosopher Georgy Fedotov wrote about young revolutionaries like Vera: "Saints cannot be asked about the subject of their faith: that is the business of theologians. But reading their amazing lives, the feat of renouncing all earthly joys, infinite patience, all-forgiving love — for the people who betray them — one cannot help but exclaim: yes, saints, only a madman can deny this!"

"That is the horror," Dostoevsky objected, "that with us one can commit the most vile and disgusting act without sometimes being a scoundrel at all! This is not only with us but everywhere in the world, always and since the beginning of time, in transitional times, in times of upheaval in people's lives, doubts, denials, skepticism, and instability in fundamental social beliefs. But with us, this is more possible than anywhere else, and precisely in our time, and this trait is the most painful and sad feature of our present time. The possibility of considering oneself, and even sometimes actually being, not a scoundrel while committing obvious and indisputable vileness — this is our modern misfortune!"

But the enlightened public no longer listened. No, really, if on one side you have a dull official, a servant of the "bloody regime," a typical villainous villain, and on the other — a young naive girl who committed an act of self-sacrifice in defense of the honor of a political prisoner who became a victim of arbitrariness...

Vera's lawyer, Petr Alexandrov, turned out to be a genius of PR technologies: he managed to forever instill in the nascent Russian civil society a sense of guilt for its own complacency and turned the trial of Zasulich into a trial of the system.

No, he did not lie; he merely emphasized: he showed that the political system was corrupt, that arbitrariness of officials reigned in the country, that the prison system was ugly, and society tolerated all this. And here comes a pure girl who, by her act, destroys this shameful unspoken "social contract." And now they will punish her for this? She is a heroine, not a criminal!

After Vera Zasulich's acquittal, a wave of political terror swept not only Russia but also Europe — assassination attempts on people embodying the Church and the state swept through Germany, Spain, Italy, France...

And the voices of reactionary outcasts, ready, like Dostoevsky, to shout against the mainstream: "They will probably tell me that these gentlemen do not teach evil at all; that if, for example, Strauss hates Christ and made mocking and spitting on Christianity the goal of his whole life, he still adores humanity as a whole, and his teaching is elevated and noble beyond compare. Very likely, this is all true... But what seems indisputable to me is this: give all these modern supreme teachers full opportunity to destroy the old society and rebuild it — and such darkness, such chaos, something so crude, blind, and inhuman will result that the whole structure will collapse under humanity's curses before it is completed. Having rejected Christ, the human mind can reach amazing results. This is an axiom."

They did not listen. They awaited the revolution like a holiday, took to the streets with ribbons, ostracized the henchmen of the "vertical," and in February 1917 gave carnations to revolutionary soldiers. Let the storm roar louder...

The events of October 1917 were considered by professional revolutionary Vera Zasulich a counter-revolutionary coup that interrupted the normal political development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, and the system created by the Bolsheviks was a mirror reflection of the Tsarist regime.

Returning from emigration, she lived as she had all her life. "The scene I saw when I opened the door to her room immediately reminded me of the past," recalled her comrade from "People's Will," Mikhail Frolenko. "Vera Ivanovna sat at the table with a book in her hand, the table cluttered with all sorts of things. On the windows, on another table lay things, there were teapots, plates with uneaten food, unwashed glasses, in the corner was piled either dirty laundry or some kind of junk, the bed was unmade. In short, Vera Ivanovna remained true to herself."

She spoke at meetings, denounced the Bolsheviks for "oppressing the starving and degenerating majority with their mouths shut." And she complained to comrades: "Life is hard. Not worth living." And yet, mortally ill, she wrote memoirs until her last hour.

In the winter of 1919, a fire broke out in her room. Vera Zasulich lost her last corner and her beloved cat. The seventy-year-old, unwanted old woman sat on the steps and cried. She was taken in by two sisters living in the same yard, simple, unknown commoners, and a few months later, on May 8, Vera died. The cause of death was pneumonia. Her grave is located in the Literatorskie Mound of the Volkovo Cemetery.

Sources:

https://www.bbc.com/russian/features-43462363

https://foma.ru/kaznit-nelzya-pomilovat.html

https://pravo.ru/process/view/17103/

https://maysuryan.livejournal.com/617322.html