Breshkovsky, Catherine

Breshkovsky, Catherine (brĕshkôf`skē), 1844–1934, Russian revolutionary, called "the little grandmother (babushka) of the Russian Revolution." Of a noble family, she began on her father's estates the education of the peasants and other social reforms. These, carried into a larger field, brought her over 30 years of imprisonment and exile in Siberia. Released from exile by Kerensky after the Revolution of 1917, she returned to Russia, but found herself out of sympathy with the Bolshevik regime and left the country. Her letters and memoirs were edited by Alice Stone Blackwell with the title Little Grandmother (1917).

Bibliography

See her autobiographical Hidden Springs of the Russian Revolution (1931).

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Breshkovsky, Catherine

(born 1844—died Sept. 12, 1934, near Prague, Czech.) Russian revolutionary. After becoming involved with the Narodnik (or Populist) revolutionary group in the 1870s, she was arrested and exiled to Siberia for the years 1874–96. In 1901 she helped organize the Socialist Revolutionary Party, and her involvement again led to her arrest and exile to Siberia (1910–17). Though she became known as the “little grandmother of the Revolution,” she opposed the Bolsheviks after their 1917 victory and emigrated to Prague.