When I first came to Kara ten women “politicals” were imprisoned there, one of whom—Lèbedieva—died soon after my arrival. The most remarkable among those remaining was Sophia Löschern von Herzfeld. She was the daughter of a general, and her relations belonged to the Court circles in Petersburg. She joined the Propagandist movement in the early sixties, and lived among the peasants, dressed like one of themselves, trying to diffuse the ideas of “peaceful” Socialism, if I may so call it. She was arrested, endured four years’ imprisonment while still under examination, and was at last banished to Siberia in the “Case of the 193.” The efforts of one of her relatives, a lady in the Tsaritsa’s household, procured her pardon, and in 1878 she was released from prison, at which time I made her acquaintance in Petersburg. But she was not allowed to enjoy her liberty for long; a year later she was arrested in Kiëv, and resisted capture “with weapons in her hand.” She was brought before a court-martial, together with Ossìnsky and Voloshenko; she and Ossìnsky were condemned to death, and he paid the full penalty of the law, but in her case “by favour” the sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life, and she was deported to Kara in 1879. Sophia Löschern von Herzfeld was modest and even shy in manner, giving the impression of an extremely reserved character. She suffered a longer term of imprisonment than any other participant in the revolutionary movement of the early seventies. [Illustration: ANNA KORBA] [Illustration: ELIZABETH KOVALSKAYA] [Illustration: NADYESHDA SIGIDA] [Illustration: MARIA KOVALEVSKAYA] [Illustration: NADYESHDA SMIRNITSKAYA] [Illustration: SOPHIA BOGOMOLETZ] To face page 266