Anna Ilinichna Elizarova-Ulianova

Born Aug. 14 (26), 1864, in Nizhny Novgorod (now Gorky); died Oct. 19, 1935, in Moscow. Active participant in the Russian revolutionary movement. Soviet statesman and party leader. Sister and comrade-in-arms of V. I. Lenin. Member of the Communist Party from 1898.

In 1880, Elizarova-Ul’ianova graduated from the Simbirsk Gymnasium. In 1883 she became a student at the Bestuzhev Higher Courses for Women in St. Petersburg. She joined the student revolutionary movement in 1886. Elizarova-Ul’ianova was arrested and sentenced to five years in exile for her brother’s (A. I. Ul’ianov) attempted assassination of Alexander III on Mar. 1, 1887. She spent her exile in the village of Kokushkino, Kazan, and Samara. Having established ties with workers’ circles, she joined the social democratic movement in Moscow in 1894. In 1896 in St. Petersburg she provided a liaison for the arrested Lenin with the St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class. She supplied Lenin with literature and recopied party documents and letters written by him in prison. Abroad in the summer of 1897, she established communication with the group Liberation of Labor. In 1898 she became a member of the first Moscow committee of the RSDLP. When Lenin was in exile she organized the publication of his work The Development of Capitalism in Russia. From 1900 to 1902 in Berlin and Paris and then in Russia, Elizarova-Ul’ianova engaged in activities to assist the newspaper Iskra. She was involved in party operations in Kiev and St. Petersburg (1903–04) and was a participant in the Revolution of 1905–07. She was a member of the editorial board of the publishing house Vpered. She translated into Russian several works, including W. Liebknecht’s book on the Revolution of 1848 in Germany. From 1908 to 1909 in Moscow she facilitated the publication of Lenin’s book Materialism and Empirio-criticism. She worked in St. Petersburg in 1913 for Pravda, as secretary of the journal Prosveshchenie, and as a member of the editorial board of the journal Rabotnitsa. In Russia she organized collections of money for the party and the transportation of literature. She was arrested in 1904, 1907, 1912, 1916, and 1917. After the February Revolution of 1917 she became a member of the bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, secretary of Pravda, and then editor of the journal Tkach. She helped to prepare the October Revolution of 1917. She was chief of the department for the protection of children in the People’s Commissariat for Social Security and then occupied the same position in the People’s Commissariat for Education (1918–21). She was one of the organizers of Istpart (Commission of Party History), as well as of the V. I. Lenin Institute. Until the end of 1932 she was a research associate of the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute of the Central Committee of the CPSU. She was secretary and editorial board member of the journal Proletarskaia revoliutsiia. She wrote memoirs about V. I. Lenin. Elizarova-Ul’ianova was buried in Volkovo Cemetery in Leningrad.