98 years ago, on August 30, 1918, the most high-profile attempt on Lenin: terrorist Fanny Kaplan shot at the leader of the world revolution. In Soviet times, her name was known to every schoolchild, and her opinion was unambiguous: the crime was organized by the Social Revolutionaries, and the exalted and fanatical Fanny Kaplan became the performer. Today they speak alternative versions- that Fanny was only a pawn in someone else's game, or even was not involved in the crime at all. Who was she really?
Her real name is Feiga Khaimovna Roydman (or Roytblat), that was her name until the age of 16, until her parents left for America, and the girl became interested in revolutionary ideas and anarchism. Under the name of Fanny Kaplan, she carried out various assignments, mainly transporting seditious literature. However, modern researchers suggest that her participation in revolutionary activities was indirect.
Fanny Kaplan
She joined the anarchists during the revolution of 1905, under the influence of a young man with whom she was in love. Then a group of anarchist agitators appeared in the Volyn province, among whom was Viktor Garsky (aka Yashka Shmidman, aka Mika) - for the sake of him, the girl was ready for a lot. In revolutionary circles, she was known under the name Dora or Fanya. The "Southern Group" was preparing an assassination attempt on the Kyiv Governor-General Sukhomlinov. In December 1906, Fanya and Mika rented a room at the Kupecheskaya Hotel. There, lovers were assembling a bomb, but due to incorrect assembly, an explosion was heard.
Convicts after release. Fanny Kaplan is in the middle row near the window. March 1917
Garsky managed to convince the girl that it was she who should divert the attention of the police, since he would face an imminent death penalty, and she should have been treated with indulgence. He fled, and the naive Fanya appeared before the court. For attempted murder, she also faced the death penalty, but as a minor she was sentenced to ... life imprisonment. In prison, she met the famous revolutionary Maria Spiridonova, and under her influence she changed her anarchist views to those of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. At hard labor, the girl began to have bouts of blindness as a result of shell shock after a bomb explosion. She was often ill and probably would have died in hard labor, but it happened February Revolution and Fanny went free.
Lenin during a speech at a rally
In the Evpatoria sanatorium in 1917, the paths of Fanny Kaplan and Lenin's younger brother Dmitry Ulyanov unexpectedly crossed paths. It is not known exactly what kind of relationship they had, according to one version, it was he who sent the girl to an eye clinic in Kharkov. After surgery in this clinic, vision partially returned. In Kharkov, Kaplan learned about October revolution and took it very negatively. Allegedly, it was then that she had a plan to kill Lenin as a traitor to the revolution, which, in her opinion, was strangled by the Bolshevik dictatorship.
Investigative experiment of the assassination attempt on V. I. Lenin in 1918 (1 - the place where Lenin stood, 4 - the place from which Kaplan fired)
The rebellion of the Socialist-Revolutionaries in Moscow was suppressed, and the murder of Lenin was for Fanny Kaplan the only chance to continue the fight against the Bolsheviks. How she learned that Lenin would appear at a workers’ rally in the courtyard of the Michelson factory is difficult to say, just as it is difficult to answer questions about who ordered this assassination attempt on her, and who, besides her, participated in it. She had poor eyesight, even though she had been treated, which may explain her miss, although she fired at very close range. The girl was immediately seized and shot after 3 days without trial. After that, her body was doused with gasoline and burned.
The scene of the assassination attempt from the movie *Lenin in 1918*
According to the official version, the shots were fired by Kaplan. Although, apart from her confession, there was no other evidence for this: there were no witnesses, and she had no weapons. The opinion about Kaplan was unequivocal, it was expressed by N. Bukharin in the Pravda newspaper of September 1, 1918: “A narrow-minded fanatical petty-bourgeois woman, who, perhaps, sincerely believes that Lenin ruined Russia; who, perhaps, does not really understand that the hand of those who drive along the 5th alley of New York after business conversations on the street of bankers - Wall Street willed it. One becomes ashamed of these small people, small and insignificant, like road dust.
Fanny Kaplan
According to one version, the attempt was staged by the Bolsheviks themselves: this made it possible to unleash a bloody terror against the Socialist-Revolutionaries and strengthen their own power. Be that as it may, the wounds undermined Lenin's health and became the cause of a serious illness, which caused him to step down from power and die. Already in our time, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation reviewed the case and came to the conclusion: it was Kaplan who shot at Lenin.
August 30 is a special date in the history of Russia. In 1918, 100 years ago, on this day, two assassination attempts were made on prominent Bolshevik leaders in both capitals, which influenced the entire course of the country's life.
Party days
In the morning in Petrograd, on Palace Square, the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, Moses Uritsky, was shot dead. And in the evening in Moscow at the Michelson SR factory Fanny Kaplan shot at Lenin. The leader of the revolution received "two blind gunshot wounds." The best surgeons were involved in the treatment. For a long time, many of the materials of this case were difficult to access.
And just the other day, the Presidential Library in St. Petersburg digitized and published the original documents of the criminal case stored in the State Archives Russian Federation: 105 sheets, which cover the period from August 30 to September 18, 1918. They include testimonies of witnesses, descriptions and photographs of investigative experiments, bulletins about the health of Vladimir Ilyich, directives from the manager of the Council of People's Commissars of Bonch-Bruyevich.
“The debate about what happened on August 30, 1918, has not subsided to this day,” confirmed Doctor of History, Director of the Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences Nikolai Smirnov. - Versions are put forward one more fantastic than the other: the bullets that hit Lenin were poisoned, the murder was “ordered” by Yakov Sverdlov, who was aiming for the role of leader. Some researchers even claim that it was staged to start the Red Terror. Like, Lenin agreed with the Chekists that they would shoot in the air, and he would “theatrically” fall to the ground ... Sometimes it comes to the point of absurdity - for example, that the attempt on Lenin was Kaplan's revenge for a failed romance with Dmitry Ulyanov.
"Three sharp dry sounds"
What happened in reality, and why did Lenin end up at the Michelson plant on the evening of August 30? In fact, everything is more prosaic. August 30, 1918 fell on a Friday, and in Moscow this day was a "party" day, when the leaders of the country and the city met with the people. In the evening, Lenin was to speak at the Michelson factory, where a rally was being prepared on the theme "The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat." When the tragic news about the murder of Uritsky came from Petrograd in the morning, they wanted to cancel the speeches of the members of the Council of People's Commissars, but then they decided to leave everything so that no one would think that the Bolsheviks had faltered.
At the time of the assassination attempt on Lenin, Kaplan was 28 years old. Photo: Public Domain
Lenin, as always, spoke brightly, answered questions clearly. When he finished his speech and left the podium, he was surrounded by workers and so, all together, they went out into the courtyard. The driver Stepan Gil had already started the engine, but then one of the workers stopped Ilyich with another question. In this moment assistant military commissar of the 5th Moscow Soviet Infantry Division Batulin was from the leader at a distance of 15-20 steps. Here is his testimony, presented on the library portal.
“I heard three sharp dry sounds, which I took not for revolver shots, but for ordinary motor sounds. Following these sounds, I saw a crowd of people, until then calmly standing by the car, scattering in different sides and saw behind the carriage-car comrade. Lenin lying motionless facing the ground.<…>I was not at a loss and shouted: Hold the murderer comrade. Lenin and with these cries I ran out to Serpukhovka.<…>Near the tree, I saw a woman with a briefcase and an umbrella in her hands, who, with her strange appearance, stopped my attention. She had the appearance of a man fleeing persecution, frightened and hunted. I asked this woman why she came here. To these words she replied: Why do you need it? Then I searched her pockets and took her briefcase and umbrella and asked her to follow me. On the way, I asked her, sensing in her face an attempt on Comrade. Lenin, Why did you shoot Comrade. Lenin?, to which she replied. And why do you need to know this, which finally convinced me of this woman's attempt on Comrade. Lenin.
Was the terrorist waiting for the tram?
Fearing that the woman would not be beaten off by her like-minded people and “the mob would not be lynched over her,” Batulin asked the armed policemen and Red Army soldiers who were in the crowd to accompany them to the Zamoskvoretsky district commissariat. During the interrogation, the woman detained by him “called herself Kaplan and confessed to the attempt on the life of comrade. Lenin.
A few days later, on September 2, a picture of an assassination attempt was simulated on the territory of the plant. The revolutionary Viktor Kingisepp pointed out that the distance from the car to the gate was 8 sazhens 2 feet (slightly more than 18 meters) and admitted that “Kaplan was detained only thanks to proletarian children who did not lose their heads like adults and ran after her shouting: “She shot to Lenin!
Photo: Public Domain / Painting by P. Belousov "Attempt on V.I. Lenin in 1918"
Meanwhile, the figure of the “terrorist number one” of the 20th century, Fanny Kaplan, still raises a lot of questions today. Even with her name, historians cannot fully figure it out. Fanny, she is Fanya, she is Feiga, she is Dora. Kaplan, Royd, Roydman, Roytblat… She became Kaplan in 1906, when during her arrest (for preparing, together with her common-law husband Viktor Garsky, an assassination attempt on the local governor-general in Kyiv), she, a 16-year-old girl, was found to have a fake passport in the name Feige Kaplan. In addition, the Social Revolutionary had frankly poor eyesight, and the assassination attempt took place almost at nine in the evening, when it was already getting dark. How could a short-sighted, almost blind woman at dusk, in a crowd of people, shoot so accurately? Yes, and they detained her at the tram stop, where she stood "with a briefcase and an umbrella in her hands." All this gave grounds to assert that Fanny was seized by mistake.
However, the revolutionary herself put the dots. “The October Revolution found me in a Kharkov hospital,” Kaplan wrote after the assassination attempt. - I was dissatisfied with this revolution, I met it negatively ... I shot at Lenin. I decided to take this step back in February. This idea matured in me in Simferopol, and since then I began to prepare for this step.
This story ended tragically for her. On September 3, without trial, in the yard of the auto-combat detachment at the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, under the roar of running engines, she was shot. The commandant of the Kremlin, Pavel Malkov, and the poet Demyan Bedny, who happened to be at the place of execution, following Sverdlov's instructions not to leave any traces, burned Kaplan's body in an iron barrel. "Revolutionary Justice" has been accomplished.
And two weeks later, on September 18, 1918, the last bulletin on Lenin's condition came out. Contrary to all fears, “as if he had not died”, the wounds healed, the leader recovered and after a month and a half he was in the ranks. A total of 36 bulletins were issued during Lenin's illness. The first was written on August 30, 1918, at 11 pm, the last on September 12, at 8 pm. All of them are digitized by the Presidential Library and presented on its portal. The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, used the death of Uritsky and the wounding of Lenin in order to take revenge on the “enemies of the world revolution” with “red fire”. Already on September 2, the policy of red terror was proclaimed by the head of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Yakov Sverdlov. September 5, 1918 Council People's Commissars approved the decree "On the Red Terror". This is how it started new stage civil war whose effects we are still feeling today.
On August 30, 1918, at the Michelson plant in the capital, 28-year-old Social Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan attempted to assassinate Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
First organized assassination attempt on Vladimir Lenin took place on the first day of the new year 1918. Lenin was returning from a rally in the Mikhailovsky Manege, where he spoke to the Red Army soldiers who were leaving for the front. On the Simeonovsky bridge from the side of the Fontanka, his car was fired upon. The body was perforated by bullets, some of them went right through the front glass. Lenin was not hurt. The terrorists, and there were 12 of them, fled.
In the future, there were several more attempts to assassinate Lenin.
The most famous happened on August 30, 1918 at the Michelson factory in the Zamoskvoretsky district of Moscow, where Lenin spoke at a workers' rally. After a rally in the courtyard of the factory, Lenin was wounded by three shots fired by Socialist-Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan. She fired four bullets at the leader. Despite a dangerous wound in the neck, Lenin survived. On the same day, Fanny Kaplan was caught and interrogated. She never said who was behind the organization of the assassination, the case was closed on this. Without trial, she was shot on September 3, 1918 in the courtyard of the Moscow Kremlin to the sound of car engines, her corpse was doused with gasoline and burned in an iron barrel in the Alexander Garden by the Kremlin commandant Pavel Malkov.
Lenin's wounds were not life-threatening, and soon the "leader of the revolution" recovered.
This is one of the most mysterious assassination attempts in history. Until now, historians are arguing whether it really was, or is it just a skillful staging of the Bolsheviks. And if the attempt was really real, then who was behind it, and who still shot. The official version is the Social Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan, however, this version has been questioned more than once, if only because a woman with very poor eyesight (which is medically confirmed) could not make accurate shots from a sufficiently large distance.
On the day of the assassination attempt, four mercenaries were on duty in the city.
The Social Revolutionaries carefully prepared an attempt on the leader. At that time, Lenin spoke at rallies almost every day. The terrorists' agents knew in advance several alleged places for the leader's performances. There were four key places, respectively, one performer was on duty in each. By the way, they are all women. However, it was decided to send Kaplan to the Michelson plant. There was the best chance for Lenin to come. And Kaplan, like no one else, was obsessed with killing the leader.
Children helped to detain Fanny Kaplan.
After Kaplan fired the shots, she dropped her weapon and began to make her way through the crowd. The children helped to detain Kaplan. During the revolutions, children completely lost their fear of shots, so the volleys that were heard did not frighten them. While the adults were running in all directions, the boys who were running around in the yard during the assassination attempt ran after Kaplan and shouted, showing where she had disappeared.
Bullets fired at the leader were poisoned.
During interrogation, one of the organizers of the assassination attempt, Grigory Semenov, admitted that the bullets loaded in the pistol for greater destruction were incised and poisoned with curare poison. Doctors also spoke about the incision of bullets, who noted uncharacteristic wounds on the body of the leader. As for the presence of poison, it still remains a mystery. However, experts argue that all the properties of the poison were in any case destroyed by high temperature (from heating, bullets flying out of a pistol).
The incredible willpower of the leader.
Immediately after the assassination attempt, Lenin was taken to the Kremlin. According to the recollections of the driver of the leader, Vladimir Ilyich independently climbed to the third floor along a rather steep staircase. In addition, the wounded Lenin undressed himself and went to bed. By the way, some historians have repeatedly used this fact as evidence that the assassination attempt was staged. However, medical evidence still suggests otherwise. In addition, after some time, Lenin was taken to the Botkin hospital, where he underwent surgery. By the way, at present, a memorial plaque hangs next to the ward where Vladimir Ilyich lay.
Fanny Kaplan - Lenin's "murderer"?
Fanny Efimovna Kaplan was born in 1890 in the Volyn province in Ukraine. Her real name and surname is Feiga Khaimovna Roydman, under this surname she lived until she was 16 years old. Her father was a melamed teacher of a cheder, a Jewish elementary school. The family was large - Fanny had three sisters and four brothers. Elementary education Feiga got the house from her father. Being a pious and loyal person to the authorities, Nachum Roidman did not even suspect that his daughter would become a revolutionary and a terrorist.
Then her parents left for America, and the girl changed her passport data, confusing this fact in her biography to such an extent that no one has yet established for sure: what surname did she choose? And later she “borrowed” her passport from the Socialist-Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan.
Left without parental care, she chose the profession of seamstress. And at the same time she leaned into the revolution: she carried out various assignments with pleasure - most often she transported seditious literature, and even bombs, from city to city. With the latter and was caught in Kyiv tsarist secret police. On December 30, 1906, the court-martial sentenced the revolutionary to death penalty, replaced due to the minority of the terrorist with indefinite hard labor.
At first, F. Kaplan was in the Maltsev hard labor prison, and then in the Akatui prison in the Nerchinsk mountain district of Transbaikalia. In Akatui, she met the famous leader of the revolutionary movement Maria Spiridonova. Under the influence of Spiridonova, F. Kaplan's views on hard labor changed: from an anarchist, she became a socialist-revolutionary (socialist-revolutionary). 
In prison, twenty-year-old Fanny (by the way, in revolutionary circles she was known under the name Dora) began to go blind from a head wound received while still at large. This shocked her so much that she wanted to commit suicide. The tsar's manifesto of 1913 reduced the term of her penal servitude by twenty years, and the order of the Minister of Justice A.F. Kerensky of March 3, 1917 granted the failed suicide full freedom.
Fanny Kaplan got to Moscow only in April, from the hardships and unrest of the road, her eyesight again deteriorated sharply. But there was another convict friend nearby. Socialist-Revolutionary Anya Pigit was a relative of the owner of the Dukat tobacco factory, on whose order the famous house No. 10 on Bolshaya Sadovaya, known today as Bulgakovskiy, was built. And then the Muscovites called it Pigit's house - after the name of the owner and the main tenant. A wealthy relative provided Anya with apartment No. 5, which immediately acquired a reputation among residents as “bad” - its inhabitants were poorly dressed, smoked continuously, strewn with ashes not only in their apartments, but also in the front staircase, street dirt from their broken shoes soiled the polished floor of the lobby.
In the house on Sadovaya Fanny recovered a little, but her eyesight continued to deteriorate. The newly created Bureau of Resort and Sanatorium Assistance gave Kaplan a referral to Evpatoria, to the House of Convicts - that was the name of one of the best sanatoriums there. Before leaving for the Crimea, Fanny thought about how she should live on. She no longer had relatives in Russia - the entire extensive Roidman family had lived in America since 1911. A letter with a new address then arrived in the Akatui prison, but Kaplan decided not to go to her relatives: the only close people for her during the years of prison were her revolutionary friends.
In Evpatoria, Fanny again learned to enjoy life. About 40 people comfortably accommodated in the House of Convicts, anarchists, socialist-revolutionaries and Bolsheviks coexisted peacefully here. Kaplan quickly got acquainted with everyone, her sociability and cheerful disposition gradually returned to her. Even her appearance changed: Fanny recovered, her sunken cheeks were slightly rounded, even a blush appeared. The male population of the sanatorium considered her very attractive, some even tried to look after her. Simultaneously with Kaplan, Dmitry Ulyanov, the brother of Vladimir Lenin, was resting in the sanatorium. True, they practically did not communicate with each other, which did not prevent later rumors about a romance between Kaplan and Ulyanov Jr.
It was especially emphasized that it was thanks to Dmitry Ulyanov that Fanny was able to regain her sight again. Allegedly, it was Lenin's brother who sent Kaplan to Kharkov, to the eye clinic of the famous Leonard Girshman, and even wrote a letter to the professor with a request to accept the former convict for treatment. This is a legend. Girshman was famous for the fact that he operated on all poor patients for free. But Fanny heard about the miracle doctor in the sanatorium, so after the rest in Moscow she did not return, but went to Kharkov. After the operation in the Hirshman clinic, vision was restored almost completely. Kaplan was not going to stay in Ukraine for a long time - she wanted to go to Moscow, she yearned for her friends. 
March 1917: convicts after their release. Fanny Kaplan in the middle row near the window
In Kharkov, Kaplan learned about the October Revolution, which she perceived negatively. From there she returned to the Crimea, where for some time she worked as the head of courses for the training of workers of volost zemstvos. It is possible that their paths crossed again with Dmitry Ulyanov at that time. According to Kaplan herself, it later became known that it was then in the Crimea that she came to the conclusion that it was necessary to kill Lenin as a traitor to the revolution. With this thought, she went to Moscow in 1918, where she discussed the assassination plan with the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Another thing - did she still shoot at the leader of the world revolution?
Fanny was again traveling on a false passport, now she was again Dora Roydman. Making her way through all of Russia to Moscow, she became more and more convinced that the Bolshevik dictatorship had strangled the revolution. Fanny almost reached the capital when an uprising of the Left SRs led by Maria Spiridonova broke out in Moscow. Kaplan rushed to help her friend, but a few days later a message came - the rebellion was suppressed, Spiridonova was arrested. Fanny decided to continue the fight, but now she had to act differently. It was necessary to eliminate the main figure in the Bolshevik camp - Lenin ...
The last month and a half of Fanny Kaplan's life is unlikely to ever be restored. She passed through August Moscow like a shadow, leaving no traces, only versions. I was looking for SRs. It seems to be. But found or not - it is impossible to say. As if she was at one of the headquarters, she offered to organize an assassination attempt on Lenin. But again, no evidence, only rumors and speculation. Where was, with whom did Kaplan meet? All assumptions on this score remain versions. One thing is known for certain - on August 30, 1918, Fanny appears in the courtyard of the Michelson factory, where the leader of the world proletariat was supposed to come to a workers' rally.
All the events of that day are scheduled minute by minute, all the materials of the case have been studied many times, both then and years later. The only conclusion that could be drawn was the impossibility of reliably answering whether Fanny herself decided to eliminate the dictator of the revolution or acted in a group of conspirators? Did she distract her pursuers or did she shoot? Of the four bullets, two hit the target, but two missed. Although a blind man would not have missed from such a distance, and Fanny had by then undergone a course of treatment, her eyesight improved. Supporters of the Kaplan version of innocence explain it by the fact that Fanny did not know how to handle weapons, but she saw and held weapons in her hands during the first revolution, back in Odessa. And probably knew how to fire a shot.
But here new incomprehensible moments arise, for example, the phrase uttered by Kaplan at the time of his arrest. By the way, she stood alone in the confused crowd quite calmly and did not try to hide. But what exactly did she say? Her words are conveyed exactly the opposite. In the first case, Fanny allegedly said: “I didn’t do it,” according to another version, she immediately confessed to the attempt. At the same time, the Left SR Alexander Protopopov was detained, he was shot the next day, the investigation was practically not carried out. In the case of Fanny, the interrogations began immediately, but the matter only got confused - there were two Brownings: one in Kaplan's purse, the second was brought in a couple of days by the factory workers. It turned out that there was another victim - one of the women, who was next to Lenin, was wounded by another bullet. 
Investigative experiment of the assassination attempt on V. I. Lenin in 1918:
1. Lenin stood here.
2. Here is a worker who was hit by one of the bullets.
3. The driver Stepan Gil watched what was happening from the car.
4. And from this position, Fanny Kaplan allegedly shot at Vladimir Ilyich.
So how many shots were there? How many shooters? And most importantly, on the same day Uritsky was killed in Petrograd. The murderer, Leonid Kannegiser, by a strange coincidence, also turned out to be a terrorist SR and also a loner. The Chekists could not believe in such a coincidence, it was necessary to grab onto the tip of the thread and unravel the pattern of the new Socialist-Revolutionary conspiracy. Fanny's testimony became more and more important, and she carried some kind of nonsense - she recalled the soap she bought in Kharkov, about the shawl of Maria Spiridonova ... Kaplan answered all questions, and each answer cut off all the hopes of the investigators.
She confessed that she shot at Lenin out of conviction… she came from the Crimea… she is not connected with anyone in Moscow. “I won’t say who gave the revolver”, “I won’t say who gave the money”, “I don’t remember where I got the Tomilino-Moscow ticket”, “I found the trade union ticket” ... The inquiry reached a dead end. The only clue was an envelope with a stamp, which for some reason was in Kaplan's shoe. It turned out that nails were sticking out of a broken shoe, Fanny went into the first institution she came across, asked for an envelope and put it under her heel so that she could move around.
Three days later, a decision was made: to stop the investigation, since there is the main thing - an admission of guilt. By personal order of Sverdlov, she was sentenced to death. Fanny was transported from the Lubyanka to the Kremlin, and on September 3, 1918, at 4:00 pm, the commandant of the Kremlin, sailor Pavel Malkov, shot Kaplan in the back of the head with his own hand. She was 28 years old, and she spent 10 of them in prison. The investigators and executioners from Lubyanka still had one more problem: where to bury? Decided - nowhere. They put the body in an iron barrel, doused it with gasoline and burned it. The proletarian poet Demyan Bedny helped to add gasoline and even gave the sailor a lit match. But when it smelled of burnt meat, he still fainted.
She took her secret to her grave. Yes, this woman certainly went down in history. After all, they wrote about her in all Soviet textbooks. There was even a movie. “Lenin in 1818”, where in one of the scenes an angry crowd of workers at the Michelson plant tore apart the “killer of Lenin”. But her inglorious end serves good example what a departure from tradition and a passion for the ideas of "universal equality and happiness" can be fraught with. 
Writer Demyan Bedny (right) loved the leader so much that he personally attended the execution of Fanny Kaplan in the Kremlin garage
Two days later, on September 5, 1918, the Bolsheviks unleashed a large-scale terror, its wheel crushed thousands of lives, and then overtook those who launched it ... All subsequent years, the myth of Fanny Kaplan acquired new details - during the years of great terror, several Fanny Kaplan. The few Socialist-Revolutionaries who survived the repression assured that they met her on Solovki, she appeared under the surname both Roytblat and simply Royt. There were rumors about Fanny's pardon on Lenin's personal order, about organizing an escape and leaving for America ... But these speculations are unlikely to matter. Fanny Kaplan acted at her own peril and risk, her half-blind eyes saw the danger in the dictatorship of the Bolsheviks, Fanny decided to eliminate Lenin, save freedom and revolution.
So she went down in history, and the attempt on Lenin became one of the most famous episodes revolutionary era, the same as the shot of the Aurora and the famous phrase of the sailor Zheleznyak: “The guard is tired!” From the very beginning, those distant events began to turn into a legend, which is worth at least the version of the poisoned bullets that the gloomy SR fanatic shot at Ilyich. No matter how much historians, doctors, and memoirists refute this legend, faith in the mighty power of poisoned bullets is still alive today. Indeed, these little bits of lead have proved to be an essential argument on the scales of history. The wounds undermined Lenin's health, becoming one of the main reasons for his serious illness, almost complete resignation from power, and then death. 
The assassination attempt on Lenin, carried out by the Socialist-Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan, was the loudest attempt to eliminate the leader of the revolution. Interest in this event, as well as in the fate of the terrorist, does not fade to this day.
One goal
The real name of Fanny Kaplan is Feiga Khaimovna Roitblat. She was born in Volyn in a poor Jewish family. An ambitious girl quite early connected her life with revolutionary activities, and already at the age of 16 she landed in hard labor for an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the Kyiv Governor-General Vladimir Sukhomlinov.
She was released as a half-blind, sick, noticeably aged woman, although she was only 27. Thanks to the care of the Provisional Government, Kaplan was treated in the health resort of Evpatoria, and with the assistance of Dmitry Ulyanov, the younger brother of the one whom she would soon point her gun at, Fanny received referral to an eye clinic in Kharkov. She could not fully regain her sight, but at least she could distinguish the silhouettes of people.
In October 1917, the socialist revolution, which Fanny Kaplan, like many of her comrades, did not accept. Declared a traitor by former comrades-in-arms, Lenin was now under the gun of merciless criticism, as well as weapons. Joining the ranks of the right SRs, Fanny decided to act.
Despite the fact that attempts were made on Lenin repeatedly, he still moved around without protection. On August 30, 1918, the Bolshevik leader spoke to the workers of the Michelson plant (today the Moscow Electromechanical Plant named after Vladimir Ilyich in Zamoskvorechye). They tried to dissuade Lenin from appearing in public, referring to the murder of Moses Uritsky, which occurred in the morning of the same day, but he was adamant. After the speech, Ulyanov went to the car, when suddenly three shots rang out from the crowd.
Fanny Kaplan was caught on Bolshaya Serpukhovskaya Street, at the nearest tram stop. She confirmed to the worker Ivanov who seized her that she was the culprit of the assassination attempt. To Ivanov’s question “On whose orders did you shoot?” she, according to the worker, replied: “At the suggestion of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. I have done my duty with valor and I will die with valor."
Arranged by myself
However, the police arrested Kaplan denied any involvement in the incident. But after a series of interrogations, she confessed. Although no threats could force the terrorist to extradite the accomplices or organizers of the assassination. “I arranged everything myself,” Kaplan repeated.
The revolutionary woman frankly stated everything that she thinks about Lenin, the October Revolution and Brest world, stating in passing that her decision to kill the leader matured in Simferopol in February 1918, after the idea of the Constituent Assembly was finally buried.
However, apart from Kaplan herself, no one else was sure that it was she who shot at Lenin. A few days later, one of the Mikhelson workers brought to the Cheka a Browning with inventory number 150489, which he allegedly found in the factory yard. The weapon was immediately brought to the case.
It is curious that the bullets subsequently removed from Lenin's body did not fit this pistol. But by that time, Kaplan was no longer alive. She was shot on September 3, 1918 at 4 pm behind the arch of building No. 9 of the Moscow Kremlin. The verdict (actually an oral order from Y. Sverdlov) was carried out by the commandant of the Kremlin, a former Baltic citizen Pavel Malkov. The body of the executed woman was pushed into an empty tar barrel, doused with gasoline and burned there.
It is known that Yakov Yurovsky, who arrived from Yekaterinburg and organized the execution a month earlier, was involved in the investigation. royal family. Historian Vladimir Khrustalev draws a very obvious analogy between the destruction of the corpse of Fanny Kaplan and an attempt to eliminate the bodies of the Romanovs. In his opinion, the Kremlin may have used the experience gained by the Bolsheviks near Yekaterinburg.
There should be no doubt
Immediately after the capture of Fanny Kaplan, Yakov Sverdlov stated that he had no doubts about the involvement in the cause of the right SRs, who were hired either by the British or the French. However, today the version is being actively exaggerated that Kaplan has nothing to do with it - poor eyesight would not allow her to carry out her plans. The attempt was allegedly made by the wards of the head of the Cheka Felix Dzerzhinsky, Lydia Konoplyova and Grigory Semyonov, and Yakov Sverdlov himself was its initiator.
A supporter of this version, the writer and lawyer Arkady Vaksberg, notes that there is no evidence confirming the involvement of Fanny Kaplan in the August 30, 1918 incident. And he explains the motives of Ilyich’s comrades-in-arms with a banal struggle for power: “the leader of the revolution”, they say, was very tired of his comrades “in common cause”, so they decided to deal with him, exposing a defenseless girl to a blow.
One way or another, but in our time, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation conducted its own investigation into the assassination attempt on Vladimir Ulyanov and confirmed the guilt of Fanny Kaplan. To date, this case is officially considered closed.
Regarding the fate of Fanny Kaplan, there is an even bolder version. According to her, the murder was staged: in reality, Kaplan was sent to prison, where she lived until 1936. There is also an opinion that the terrorist spent the rest of her life on Solovki. There were even witnesses.
However, in his memoirs, Pavel Malkov insists that Kaplan was shot by him personally on the territory of the Kremlin. The memoirs of the poet Demyan Bedny, who claims to have witnessed the execution and liquidation of the body of Kaplan, have also been preserved.
In 1922, a massive stone was erected at the site of the assassination attempt, which was supposed to be replaced by a monument in the future. However, the idea was never implemented. This monument is the first one erected in honor of the leader of the world proletariat. The stone can still be seen today in the park next to the house at Pavlovskaya street, 7.
