Throughout his life, Vladimir Lenin suffered many assassination attempts.
He would become one of the most influential and prominent politicians of the 20th century,
and he would change Russia hugely.
He would change it to become a one party socialist state which was governed by the Communist
Party.
His actions would lead to civil war and contribute to it, and he would during the February Revolution
oust the Tsar and his royal family, and they would overthrow the new regime of the Bolsheviks
during the October Revolution.
Lenin was a key political person, and he is seen as a divisive figure and a controversial
one, but he would be shot by a Ukrainian Jewish woman who would at the age of 28 go to her
own execution for attempting to kill Lenin.
Fanny Faplan was the almost blind woman who tried to kill Lenin, but she would experience
a brutal execution herself.
But in some regards her actions were slightly successful as for the rest of his life Lenin
would suffer from Kaplan’s actions that day, and it’s possible that these injuries
eventually led to his death.
Join us today as we look at the Execution Of The Woman Who Shot Lenin.
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Fanny Kaplan was born as Feign Haimovna Roytblat on the 10th February 1890, and not much is
known about her childhood and her early life.
She was born into a Jewish family, and was raised by her father who worked as a teacher.
She also had a large family, of 7 brothers and sisters, and they called her Dora.
She was educated at home, but then she would leave to go and work as a Milliner in Odessa.
But at some point Fanny Kaplan became politically active and motivated and it’s likely her
early exposure to work led her down this path.
She would join the Socialist Revolutionaries, but then when she was just 16 she was arrested
in Kyiv.
Political dissent in these areas at times was very dangerous, and there had been a terrorist
bomb plot inside of the city.
Kaplan was captured following a bomb that she made with her partner exploded accidentally,
and she was then accused of plotting to carry out an assasination and because of the was
sentenced to life impriosnment in a hard labour prison camp, and she was transferred to Siberia
which was one of the toughest places to be held due to the weather conditions.
Fanny Kaplan though lost her sight and she would become partially blind, and this would
in some regard come back later on.
On the 3rd March 1917 she was released from the labour camp, after the February Revolution
which would greatly affect the imperial government and the monarchy.
But Fanny Kaplan at the time was in her 20s, and she was greatly affected by her imprisonment
and because of her treatment she would for the rest of her life suffering from migraines,
headaches and times in her life when she would go blind temporarily.
She was not a well woman, but she was still incredibly devoted to politics, but in 1917
she would lose faith and belief with Vladimir Lenin and his politics.
At the time there was conflict between her party the Socialist Revolutionaries and the
Bolsheviks.
The Bolsheviks had a lot of support across Russia, but they would not win a majority
in the November 1917 elections, and because of this a Social Revolutionary member was
later elected the president in the January after the elections.
The Bolsheviks would order the Constituent Assembly to be shut down, and then the Bolsheviks
would sweep to ban other political parties and they banned their rivals.
The Socialist Revolutionaries also suffered and this was what Fanny Kaplan suppored, and
the Bolsheviks would turn on their allies who had been their coalition partners for
a while.
With this Fanny Kaplan then began to consider the best way that she could deal with Lenin,
and she then began to plot and plan an assassination attempt.
She regarded Lenin as a man who was a traitor to the Revolution, and she wanted to make
him pay.
On the 30th August 1918, Vladimir Lenin would go to the Hammer and Sickle, which was a weapons
factory located in the south of Moscow.
Fanny Kaplan had heard of this appearance, and she would also go to the factory to see
Lenin amongst the crowds, but she was there with sinister intentions.
She placed herself near to the exit of the building that Lenin was in, and after visiting
the factory and praising workers, he then left the building and along with a few guards
walked towards the car that would take him away.
Whilst Lenin approached the car, Fanny Kaplan shouted out to him, screaming his name and
Lenin turned to see who was shouting him, and as he turned towards her, she shot three
bullts at Lenin from a Browning Pistol.
One of the bullets passed through Lenin’s coat missing him, but the other two Kaplan
fired hit Lenin.
One was a very serious wound that went through his neck and it punctured part of his left
lung with the bullet stopping and coming to a rest near to his right collarbone.
The other bullet was stuck in his left shoulder.
Following firing at Lenin, Kaplan tried to leave the scene as Lenin was taken away and
escorted to his living quarters at the Kremlin, but he believed that this was part of a larger
coup and because of this he suspected anyone who came in to treat him.
He really needed hospital assistance and to be in a hospital to have the bullets removed
in a sterile and clean environment, but he would refuse this because of further fears
of assassination.
Doctors came to his rooms but could not remove the bullet safety, and because of this Lenin
had to then deal with the bullets inside.
He would survive the assassination attempt, but many historians have claimed that in the
end Fanny Kaplan was successful in her attempt to kill Lenin.
This is because later in life his health would never recover, and it’s believed that the
effects of the shooting may have led to his strokes which left him in a sorry state in
which he was incapacitated.
Eventually these strokes would kill Lenin, and if the bullets from Kaplan’s revolver
did cause these, there is a belief that she was successful in her quest to assassinate
the leader of the Soviet Union.
But back at the Factory, there were different stories regarding Fanny Kaplan’s capture.
One stated that following firing the three shots, a woman who looked suspicious was detained.
But another account states that witnesses in the crowd identified her, and that children
turned her over.
She was then brought to a prison for her interrogations.
It’s possible she believed that whatever fate came her way could be nothing compared
to the years she spent inside of the hard labor camp in Siberia.
During her interrogation it’s believed that she was tortured, and she would state in her
confession that, ‘"My name is Fanya Kaplan.
Today I shot Lenin.
I did it on my own.
I will not say from whom I obtained my revolver.
I will give no details.
I had resolved to kill Lenin long ago.
I consider him a traitor to the Revolution.
I was exiled to Akatui for participating in an assassination attempt against a Tsarist
official in Kyiv.
I spent 11 years at hard labour.
After the Revolution, I was freed.
I favoured the Constituent Assembly and am still for it" But the authorities wanted her
to hand over people who she worked with, as they were convinced that she could not have
worked on her own trying to kill Lenin.
But Kaplan would give over no information at all.
Eventually a military commander would protect himself and would turn state’s evidence
against her.
He would claim that Fanny Kaplan was a member of the socialist revolutionists and that this
was a plot conspired by them to kill Lenin.
He would also say that Kaplan was said to have been the best person to carry out the
attack as she would attract the least suspicion in the crowd.
Some Historians have claimed that she could not have carried out the attack herself as
she was nearly blind and she would have needed someone to help.
No witnesses would admit that she shot the gun also, as they would not see the deadly
shots.
What is also interesting too is the fact that the bullets which were embedded inside Lenin
which were removed after his death were different to the ones that were allegedly fired by Fanny
Kaplan’s weapon.
But because she was frustrating and would not give over information, she was seen as
a lost cause, and the Soviets then ordered her execution.
It’s possible that her previous antics and history had gone against her too.
But her execution would be swift.
In Alexander Garden, Fanny Kaplan was led out from her prison cell and there was a commander
of the Kremlin, and former Baltic Sailor P.D Markov and a group of Latvian Bolsheviks.
These were her execution squad.
On the 3rd September 1918, she walked towards the executioners, who then quickly shot her
in the back of the head.
But what happened next was barbaric.
Her remains were then collected and were thrown into a barrel which was then burned and set
on fire.
Yakov Sverdlov was the man who gave the order to do this, and he was also the man who would
order the execution of the Russian royal family and the last Tsars.
Fanny Kaplan’s body and remains were reduced to nothing, but some rumours emerged around
soviet society that she had been spared, and that she went back to the Siberian Labour
camp, but this was not what happened.
At the age of just 28, Fanny Kaplan was executed inside of a garden or a park by Lenin’s
bolshevik execution squads.
She had a tough life which was dominated by politics, but she was imprisoned in a horrific
labour camp that led to her being beaten to the point where she experienced blindness.
Still today historians debate her role in the assassination attempt on Lenin’s life,
and some doubt that she was the real executioner as she could not have shot straight into the
leader of the Soviet Union because of her eyesight.
But Lenin would survive the attack, however his health would not be the same following
Kaplan’s attempt on his life, and he would suffer from poor health until the day he died,
and it has been alleged that he would be killed in part by the complications from the bullets
left inside his body.
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