30 sierpnia 1918 r. Zamach na Lenina

Igor Rakowski-Kłos

Zamach na Lenina (Fot. Gazeta.tv)

Fanya Yefimovna Kaplan (Russian: Фа́нни Ефи́мовна Капла́н; real name Feiga Haimovna Roytblat, Фейга Хаимовна Ройтблат; February 10, 1890 – September 3, 1918) was a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party who allegedly 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 banned her party. 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 Kaplan attempt and the Moisei Uritsky assassination provoked the Soviet government to reinstitute the death penalty after its abolition on October 28th, 1917.

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.”^[1]

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.^[2] 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.

Wódz bolszewików skończył właśnie przemawiać w moskiewskiej fabryce Michelsona i zmierza do auta. Kiedy miał wsiąść, rozległy się trzy strzały. Strzelała Fania Kaplan; Lenina trafiły dwie kule, jedna w ramię, druga spowodowała groźną ranę między szczęką i karkiem. Kaplan zeznała, że postanowiła zgładzić Lenina, bo jest zdrajcą rewolucji. Kierownictwo zwalczanej przez bolszewików partii eserowców (Socjalistów-Rewolucjonistów) wyparło się związków z zamachem. Kaplan, która była w autonomicznej grupie eserowskich terrorystów polujących na bolszewickich przywódców, została stracona w 1918 roku. Lenin żył jeszcze prawie sześć lat, lecz zamach nadszarpnął mu zdrowie i przyczynił się do śmierci w wieku 54 lat.