Kaplan

[Pavel Samsonov]

> According to Aleksander Wat (1900-1967), Polish poet
> kept by the Soviets in
> several prisons, there was a rumour in Lyubianka,
> that Kaplan, pardonned by
> Lenin, was working as a librarian in this prison.
> According to his book "Moj
> Wiek" (there is a translation, "My Century: The
> Odyssey of a Polish
> Intellectual, University of California Press, 1988)
> also Stalin saved her in
> order to have some good traces for his posthumous
> biographies, but on the
> other hand he did not want to let news about his
> generosity spread too much
> - not to encourage potential killers of his own
> person.
>
> Jan Zielinski
>
> (I'm sending this to the list as well as, I suppose, it may be not
> without some general interest).

I sent it a week ago, but from a different account. It may not have come
through.

A certain Fanya Kaplan had been seen coming to the  factoty gates as Lenin
was finishing his speech, and she was detained. Gil later claimed to
recognise her as the assailant. But there were doubts whether he had really
been in position to see things clearly or even whether his testimony was
consistent in all its versions. No one else had much claim to bee taken
seriously as an eyewitness. The only other person who may have seen the
assaliant was Lenin himself; yet he was convalescing during Kaplan's
interrogation and had no influence on its course.
It's extremely doubtful that Kaplan was the wielder of the gun. Her maiden
name was Feiga Khaimovna Roitman and she was born in Ukraine, the daughter
of a Jewish schoolteatcher, in 1887. In adolescence she became an anarchist.
In 1906, while the Russian empire was in revolutionary turmoil, she and her
companions prepared explosives to attack the provincial governor-general.
The bomb went off accidentally in advance of the attempt. A maid in her
hotel was fatally wounded. Roitman was apprehended, put on trial by a field
court-martial and condemned to 'eternal' hard labour, i.e. an unspecified
term. She first did time in Maltsev hard-labour prison near Orel in central
Russia, and then in the notorious Akatua silvermining camp in eastern
Siberia. She broke with anarchism and became a Socialist Revolutionary. In
prison she went blind; and although her sight partially returned to her in
1912, she never completely recovered. She was released after the February
revolution. Her family had emigrated to America one year earlier.

When arrested, she made the following statement:
1918, 30 August, 11.30 PM
"I am Fanya Efimovna Kaplan, the name under which i served in Akatua. I have
borne this name since 1906. I shot Lenin today. I shot at him out of my own
conviction. I fired several times, I don't remember how many. I won't say
what revolver I used. I prefer not to give details. I was not acquainted
with the women who were talking to Lenin. The idea of shooting Lenin had
matured in my mind a long time ago. I didn't use to live in Moscow, I
haven't lived in Petrograd...
I fired at Lenin because I regard him as a traitor to the revolution and his
further existence will erode faith in socialism. What this erosion of the
faith in socialism consists of I do not want to say."

Kaplan demanded neither an open trial nor clemency. Her executioner, Kremlin
Commendant Pavel Malkov, later recalls how he was ordered to carry out the
sentence at 4 AM on 4 September. He was told to carry out the shooting in a
garage, with a car engine running. Kaplan's remains were to be destroyed
without a trace.

Later, during the Stalin era, it was enough to be asked "Are you a relative
of that Kaplan?" to be in trouble.

Source: http://www.torget.se/users/t/trotskij/lenin2.html

With compliments,

Pavel Samsonov
Texas A&M University

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