14. A Tireless Revolutionary
Rozalia Zemlyachka’s advocacy of revolution and prohibited political activism got her jailed numerous times by the Tsarist authorities, and she caught tuberculosis and developed a heart disease behind bars. She finally fled Russia in 1909, her health broken, to join Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders in exile. She returned to Moscow in 1914, seemingly a spent force, only to spring back to life during the 1917 Russian Revolution. As a founding member of the Executive Committee of the Moscow Soviet, she was on the ground floor of the Bolshevik hijacking of that revolution.
Indeed, Zemlyachka played a key role in securing Moscow for the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution. In the ensuing Russian Civil War, she split her time between Moscow and various Bolshevik field armies, where she bucked up the troops as an electrifying speaker and political agitator. Lenin made her chief political commissar for the 8th Army in the Ukraine, then for that of the 13th Army. Her most famous – or infamous mark – however, in which she established her cred as one of history’s most dangerous women, was made during the Red Terror.