Bardina, Sofia Illarionovna

Born May 1 (13), 1852, in the village of D’iach’e, Shatsk District, Tambov Province; died Apr. 14 (26), 1883, in Geneva. Russian revolutionary; populist. Member of the dvorianstvo (nobility or gentry) by birth.

Bardina was educated in Zurich and Geneva, where she was one of the organizers of a revolutionary women’s circle (the Fritsche) and was a typesetter in the press of P. L. Lavrov’s journal Vpered!. Returning to Russia in 1874, she became an active participant in a populist circle in Moscow; she worked as a laborer in factories and conducted propaganda among the workers. She was arrested in 1875 and tried in the “Trial of the 50” (1877). She made a revolutionary speech in court (it was first printed in an illegal printing plant in St. Petersburg in March 1877). She was sentenced to nine years at hard labor, which was changed to banishment in Siberia. She fled from Siberia in 1880. Bardina settled abroad, where she ended her life in suicide as a result of a serious illness.