Breshkovsky, Catherine

Breshkovsky, Catherine brĕshkôfˈskē [key], 1844–1934, Russian revolutionary, called “the little grandmother (babushka) of the Russian Revolution.” Of a noble family, she began on her father's estates the education of the peasants and other social reforms. These, carried into a larger field, brought her over 30 years of imprisonment and exile in Siberia. Released from exile by Kerensky after the Revolution of 1917, she returned to Russia, but found herself out of sympathy with the Bolshevik regime and left the country. Her letters and memoirs were edited by Alice Stone Blackwell with the title Little Grandmother (1917).

See her autobiographical Hidden Springs of the Russian Revolution (1931).

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