During the first Russian Revolution, "millions of cheap publications on political subjects were read by the people, the masses, the crowd, and the 'lower classes' as greedily as they had never read in Russia before. "1 According to the calculations of the well-known book critic and bibliographer N. A. Rubakin, 10-11 thousand titles of political and economic literature alone were published during the revolution, with a total circulation of 220 million copies .2
When the tsar signed the manifesto on "granting" civil liberties on October 17, 1905, the Bolshevik party moved from underground to semi-legal activities. In workers ' clubs, libraries, and people's homes, reports were organized and conversations were held explaining the actions of tsarism and the bourgeoisie. And if before the autumn of 1905 revolutionary and political literature was published and distributed in the country only illegally, now books and pamphlets of a political nature appeared not only in the major centers, but also locally. However, the censorship, as before, adhered to the principle of not allowing those works that dealt with the labor movement in Russia to be published. Hence the large number of publications of political content in translations and alterations from foreign languages. Sometimes they "slipped" into the press and publications that contradicted the censorship guidelines. Such is the pamphlet published in 1907 by V. Zhandr-Nikitina, entitled "Revolutionary Russia" .3
Very little is known about V. N. Zhandr-Nikitina. She came from a russified family of French nobles who emigrated to Russia in the XVII century. She was born in 1842 in Kronstadt, then her parents lived in St. Petersburg, and then in Kiev. Varvara Nikolaevna's father was the director of an earthenware factory, and her mother was an educated woman who managed to pass on to her daughter her passion for serious reading. V. N. Zhandr was in fragile health, but she was a capable, purposeful person who longed for thorough knowledge. After the death of her mother, V. N. Zhandr was sent to study at the Kiev Institute of Noble Girls, from which she graduated. Her biographer wrote about this period of her life: "It turned out that the empress at her institute, completely unaware of this, contributed to the development of a girl with a purely revolutionary direction." 4
At the age of 20, Varvara Nikolaevna married a serviceman V. N. Nikitin. For six years, she led the life of a socialite, traveling around Italy. She did not like to think about this period later. Because of her weak lungs, doctors advised her to go back to Italy for treatment (and later, with interruptions, she lived in this country for 11 years). It was a time of intense mental work by Zhandr-Nikitina. When she returned to her homeland two years later, she found that her views were completely at odds with her husband's worldview, broke up with him and after the divorce went abroad again. She was interested in social issues: the history of the international liberation movement, the women's issue, and others. Zhandr-Nikitina wrote about 70 articles and reviews on this topic. Why did she become interested in such questions? What circle of acquaintances did you have during the Italian period of your life? Due to the lack of information, say something definite about

1 V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 22, p. 83.

2 S. B. Lyublinsky. Knizhnoe delo v gody pervoi russkoy revolyutsii 1905 - 1907 gg. [Book business in the years of the First Russian Revolution 1905-1907].

3 V. Zhandr (Nikitina). Revolyutsionnaya Rossiya [Revolutionary Russia], St. Petersburg, 1907, 89 pp. Circulation of 4500 copies. (indicated in the "List of books published in Russia from January 1 to June 30, 1907". St. Petersburg, 1908, p. 114).

4 Ibid., p. 5.

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Unfortunately, this is not possible. It is only known that in 1878 she moved to Paris, where she continued to study sources on social issues, and became acquainted with French literature and art.

In the first article that V. N. Zhandr made in the press, she defended the right of women to higher education. It was the refusal of the historian and philosopher I. Ten to allow V. N. Zhandr to attend his art lectures that prompted her to take up this topic. The article was a success, and its author begins to speak in the radical and petty-bourgeois press, responding to international events, as well as questions in the field of history, sociology and literature. She gets acquainted with public figures and scientists of France, gets their recognition as a publicist. Her articles are distinguished by their knowledge of the topic, clarity and vividness of presentation, and sincerity. Socialist problems were actively studied at that time in the circle of Russian revolutionaries-emigrants headed by P. L. Lavrov. V. N. Zhandr was an active member of this circle. She shared common interests and friendship with Lavrov. Through him and G. A. Lopatin, she managed to establish contacts with other members of the Russian emigration in Paris. According to the denunciations of the okhrana, a note was found "during the arrest of the state criminal Lopatin, among other things, with different addresses that were encrypted. Between these addresses was placed the following: Paris, rue d'Assas, 45. Elisaveta Blonskaya " 5 .

Elizaveta Fominichna Blonskaya, the daughter of a teacher, served as a governess first for Varvara Nikolaevna's father, and then in the Nikitin family, and remained abroad with V. N. Zhandr. The addresses of P. L. Lavrov and G. A. Lopatin were well known to the tsarist Okhrana, and the" unblemished " address of E. F. Blonskaya could be useful to Russian revolutionaries. From the correspondence between P. L. Lavrov and G. A. Lopatin in the autumn of 1874, it can be established that Lavrov received correspondence and money transfers at this address, and that the address of Blonskaya, according to Lavrov, was known only to three persons [6] (it was not possible to establish exactly to whom). From the documents preserved in the archive, it can be seen that during Blonskaya's stay in Paris, the security department was never interested in her until 1885. As it turned out from the correspondence of the police department with the mayor of St. Petersburg in 1890 - 1891, the case arose about finding out the identity of the Italian Eleonora Cataliotti, and indirectly affected E. F. Blonskaya and V. N. Zhandren. Blonskaya herself tried by all possible means to make life easier for V. N. Zhandr and helped her in her activities.

Among the numerous articles of that period by V. Gendre, there are some in which she pays tribute to the love and respect of her teacher Lavrov, covers the activities of I. S. Turgenev ("Ivan Turgenev and Russian Realism"), translates into French the poem" Threshold " about the self-sacrifice of a Russian revolutionary girl.

V. N. Zhandr has read some of the works of Karl Marx and Fr. Engels. According to her friends, Kapital made an indelible impression on her .8 In her articles, however, she refers to Marx only in a general form, and even in such matters as the working day, she does not draw on Marx's specific propositions in her polemic with the bourgeois economist Guyot .9 From Engels ' letter to Laura Lafargue, it is known that Gendre was going to translate the Communist Manifesto into French. Engels, knowing that the translation of such a work is "not a toy," made it a condition to give him the finished text of the translation for editing, and only then promised to write a corresponding preface .10 In this connection, V. N. Zhandr addressed a letter to Marx's daughter Eleonora. When reporting this letter to Lavrov, E. Marx expressed a positive opinion about its author. She was looking forward to meeting V. N. Gendre when she was in Paris 11. But this was prevented by the premature death of V. N. Zhandr in December 1884.

She passed away in the prime of her creative life. She was supposed to go to the suburbs of Paris to get materials for an article about Ireland. The day was wet and cold-

5 TsGAOR USSR, f. 102, 3 cases, op. 79, 1883, d. 111, l. 247.

6 Laurels. Years of emigration. Archival materials in two volumes. T. I. Lavrov and Lopatin. Correspondence (1870-1883). Dordrecht-Boston. 1974, pp. 195, 207-208.

7 TsGAOR USSR, f. 102, 3 del-vo, 1890, 574, ch. 20, l. 1.

8 B. Gendre (Nikitine). Etudes sociales, philosophiques et morales. P. 1886, p. VIII.

9 Ibid., pp. 214 - 221.

10 See K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 36, p. 5.

11 "Correspondence of members of the Marx family with Russian political figures", Moscow, 1974, p. 64.

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new one. The cold was complicated by pneumonia, and a week later Varvara Nikolaevna died. In this regard, E. Marx wrote to Lavrov:"I understand how much you miss this friend and what a loss this means for our party, which is not so rich in talented people." 12 The funeral of V. N. Zhandr was attended by a large number of emigrants, including people from the ranks of the Russian colony. Among the mourners were among others the founder of the newspaper "La Justice" J. Clemenceau and its editor C. Pelton (representatives of the radical left), figures of the French labor movement (P. Lafargue and S. Longuet). Among the seven speakers at the funeral rally was Lavrov, who noted that " in her struggle for the great principles of freedom and progress, the struggle to which she devoted her entire life, Gendre remained Russian all the time, even though she fought on French soil... she experienced the excitement of the revolutionary breeze that was blowing on the heads of the Russian women of her time... To the liberation movement, especially the Russian one, with its heroes and martyrs, she gave her thoughts and talent as a publicist... First, it advocated women's equality , and finally the great ideas of socialism. " 13
Obituaries appeared in the Russian and foreign press. Here is an excerpt from one: "V. N. Gendre was a passionate preacher of socialism, which she studied thoroughly and deeply from scientific sources, and therefore all her articles were distinguished by extensive erudition, moreover, they were warmed by extreme sincerity, and it was these qualities, with a very talented and masterful presentation, that brought her such a prominent position in French literature. the press, where she was known by the name of Gendre, as she always signed it with her maiden name. As far as we know, she did not write anything in Russian, but she served her homeland, which she continued to love dearly, by acting as an intermediary between the Russian revolutionary party and radical France... We knew the deceased well, and, not belonging to the social party, we highly valued her affection, because, knowing her, one could not help but respect deeply this weak, thin woman with her gentle, comely face, with her indomitable faith in the future and amazing responsiveness to everything honest and beautiful! This small, sickly body had an extraordinary energy and dedication to its principles... She was never discouraged and was extremely happy that she could win her own existence and position by personal labor. " 14
V. N. Zhandr's essay "Revolutionary Russia (from the Decembrists to the Events of March 1, 1881)" is imbued with warm sympathy for the Russian revolutionaries. As for the author's political orientation, it did not go beyond the dream of winning bourgeois freedoms for Russia on the Western model. This essay, written in French, was originally published in 1884 in the Parisian bourgeois-Republican magazine La Nouvelle Revue .

Tsarist censorship could not allow such material to end up in the hands of the Russian reader. Therefore, the essay from the full set of the magazine that got to Russia was cut out, and the remaining last page (487) was scored with black postmark 16 . In 1886, an essay from the magazine was reprinted in a collection of articles by V. Gendre, published posthumously in Paris17 . The review of this collection indicated that it was published by E. Blonskaya [18], who probably followed the publication of V. N. Zhandr's articles and compiled their bibliographic list. The editorial board of the Revue socialiste promised to make readers more familiar with the works of V. N. Zhandr and to analyze them in the future.

12 Ibid.

13 V. Zhandr (Nikitina). Revolyutsionnaya Rossiya, pp. 10-12.

14 " Common Cause "(Geneva), 1884, No. 68, December, p. 16.

15 "La Nouvelle Revue", 1884, N 14, pp. 449 - 487.

16 See the copy kept in the library of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU. The copy, which is located in the State Library named after V. I. Lenin, escaped censorship. In the " Russian Biographical Dictionary "(Vol. 11, St. Petersburg, 1914, pp. 305-306), the list of references to the article about V. N. Zhandr indicates "The Russian calendar for 1886". The censorship again took care of the seizure, but so vigorously that a copy of the calendar was not preserved either in the IML or in the GBL. It seems to us that the censorship gave its "favorable attention" to both the magazine and the calendar due to the presence of V. N. Zhandr's materials in them. During the years of the reaction, the book of Gendres in Russian was banned and included in 1909, 1910 and 1913 in the "Alphabetical index of books and pamphlets, the arrest of which is approved by judicial regulations".

17 B. Gendre (Nikitine). Etudes sociales, philosophiques et morales. Avec une notice biographique par Ch. Letourneau. P. 1886.

18 "Revue socialiste", 1886, N 14, p. 191.

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in the following numbers, but did not do so.

In the essay "Revolutionary Russia "(in French) there is also material about the well-known" Trial of 50": a few paragraphs and the final part of the speech of the revolutionary worker Pyotr Alekseev are given. In the Russian version, the translator, despite the censorship, gave his speech in full. In the translator's note, hidden under the initials "K. D.", the following explanation draws attention to itself: "Gendre gives excerpts from the speech, but we prefer to restore it in full. The speech of this man, one of the first "class-conscious" workers, is now forgotten. " 19
Who was the translator? With the initials "K.". Dmitry Klements, a revolutionary narodnik, an employee of Vperyod, one of the editors of Obshchestvo, and editor of Zemlya I Volya, sometimes signed his articles. In 1879, he was arrested, spent 2.5 years in the Peter and Paul Fortress, served exile in Minusinsk, and in 1874-1875 lived in France and Germany. The possibility of his personal meeting with V. N. Zhandr is conditional, while correspondence acquaintance through Lavrov is possible. Biographers of D. A. Klementz claimed that in the pre-Siberian period, the source of his existence was mainly translation work. It remains to be assumed that the essay of V. N. Zhandr was sent by someone to Klemenz for translation, which he did. This probability does not seem too fantastic, if we recall how the protest of prisoners (including P. A. Alekseev) in the Novobelgorod prison against the cruel regime was transferred to freedom and, with the help of Klemenz, illegally published 20, and the manuscript was sent abroad.

During the first Russian Revolution, Klemenz remained faithful to his revolutionary past. Perhaps it was then that he translated the essay by V. N. Zhandr? It is also possible that he used Blonsky's Paris address earlier. After all, in that era, various methods were used to circumvent censorship, including the indication of fictitious printing houses and publishing houses, false censorship permits on books, changing the original name of books and places of publication.

19 V. Zhandr (Nikitina). Revolyutsionnaya Rossiya, p. 43.

20 A. V. Dolgushin. Buried alive, St. Petersburg, 1878, p. 24.

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