“The Beauteous Terrorist”: Russian Women and Terrorism in Literature at the Turn of the Century

Abstract

Based partly on sensationalized journalistic accounts of the lives of famous Russian terrorists, such as Vera Zasulich, and partly on the memoirs of radicals such as Sergei Kravchinksii, English-language novels at the turn of the nineteenth century depicted female terrorists as fascinating and, for the most part, beautiful. Embodying seemingly contradictory gender characteristics, female terrorists were described as both ruthless and compassionate, violent and kind. Given the supposedly tyrannical nature of the Russian regime, their revolutionary devotion was fully justified. Therefore, despite the need to adopt masculine bravery and heroism, they were still fully feminine, and often alluring. They became heroines, or “beauteous terrorists.”