Mariya Shkolnik

Mariya Shkolnik
Мария Марковна Школьник
Born	18 March [O.S. 06 March]1882 Borovoi-Mlin
Died	April 9, 1955(1955-04-09) (aged 73)
Other names	Marie Sukloff
Occupation	Member of the Russian Revolutionary Movement
Organization	Socialist Revolutionary Party
Known for	Russian socialist and revolutionary
Criminal charges	Association with a society dedicated to the overthrow of the government, conspiring against the tsar, and attempted assassination
Criminal penalty	Exile to Siberia and death (commuted to exile once more)

Mariya Markovna Shkolnik (previously transliterated as Marie Sukloff, Russian: Мари́я Ма́рковна Шко́льник) (6 March 1882 - 9 April 1955) was a member of the Russian revolutionary movement that attempted to assassinate Alexei Khvostov and escaped exile in Siberia twice. Mariya was a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and assisted in the propaganda efforts of the party among peasant populations.

Life

Mariya Shkolnik was born to a poor, Jewish, peasant family in Borovoi-Mlin, a village in the Vilna Governorate of the Russian Empire (now in the Grodno Region of Belarus), not far from the town of Smarhon'. Mariya started working at a young age and was not sent to school. Mariya remained illiterate till the age of 13. She did however learn to read from the daughter of a rabbi named Hannah who would often meet with peasant girls in Vilna to teach them progressive politics and economics.

Strikes and demonstrations demanding the establishment of a ten-hour working day began in Vilna when Mariya was a teenager. Through an organizer from the Jewish Bund, Mariya joined the revolutionary movement.

After organizing in Ashmyany, Mariya felt that her future as a revolutionary would be better in a city. Eventually, she convinced her father to send her to her uncle's apartment in Odessa. In Odessa she worked in a candy factory and lived with others who shared her political ideology.

In 1918 she returned from exile to Soviet Russia. In 1927 she became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Works

Mariya published her memoirs "Life of a Former Terrorist" in 1927 in which she talks about her life from early childhood to emigration.