Fanny Kaplan
1890 – 1918 Russian Socialist Revolutionary who shot Lenin
The revolutionary whose 1918 shooting of Lenin helped trigger the Red Terror.
- Religion
- Born to a Jewish family; a secular revolutionary drawn to anarchism and the Socialist Revolutionaries.
- Affiliations
- Socialist Revolutionary and former anarchist; shot and wounded Lenin in 1918.
Kaplan was a radical who had lost her sight for a time after a bombing accident under the tsar. Believing Lenin had betrayed the revolution, she shot and seriously wounded him in August 1918. Her attack, with the killing of a Cheka chief the same day, was used to launch the Red Terror, and she was executed within days.
Connections
- rival of Felix Dzerzhinsky — Her attack led his Cheka to unleash the Red Terror.
- rival of Vladimir Lenin — Shot and nearly killed him in 1918.