In-Depth Look at Woman Who Shot Lenin

Fanya Kaplan was born on 10th February, 1890, into a poor peasant family and her four brothers and two sisters were all educated at home. Her parents both emigrated to the United States.

Kaplan became involved in radical politics and joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party. In 1906 she took part in a plot to kill a Tsarist official in Kiev. Kaplan was caught and sentenced to a life of hard labour in Siberia. She later recalled: "I was exiled to Akatoi for participating in an assassination attempt against a Tsarist official in Kiev. I spent eleven years at hard labour." (1)