08/06/2025
On January 21, 1876, Olga Taratuta was born, Ukrainian anarchist militant, founder of the Cross black Anarchist and known as the "grandmother" of the Russian anarchist movement.
"Jarkov's comrades, with the heroic personality of Olga Taratuta leading, gave themselves to the Revolution, fought in front of them, endured the punishment of the whites, persecution and imprisonment of the Bolsheviks." Nothing frightened his revolutionary fervor and his anarchist faith." (Living My Life Emma Goldman)
Elka Ruvinskaia was born in the village of Novodmitrovka, near Kherson, in Ukraine, on January 21, 1876 (or possibly 1874 or 1878). His family was Jewish and his father owned a small shop. After her studies she worked as a teacher.
She was arrested on "political suspicion" in 1895. In 1897, he joined a social-democratic group around the brothers Abram and Iuda Grossman (who later became anarchists) in Elizavetgrad, and distributed his propaganda. In 1898-1901 he was a member of the Elizavetgrad committee of the Social Democratic Party and the Workers' Union of South Russia.
In 1901 he fled abroad, living in Germany and Switzerland, where he met Lenin and Plejanov and worked for the newspaper "Iskra".
In 1903, in Switzerland, he became an anarchist-communist. In 1904 he returned to Odessa and joined the group "No compromise", which was formed by anarchists and disciples of Polish socialist Machajski.
She was arrested in April 1904 and in the fall was released for lack of evidence. Then he joined the Odessa Anarchist Communist Workers Group who distributed propaganda and organized workers circles.
She began to gain a reputation as one of the most prominent anarchists in Russia. She used the pseudonym of "Babushka" (Grandma), a strange alias considering she was only about thirty years old!
In early October 1905, she was re-arrested, but was released on October's amnesty. He joined the Battle Detachment of the Anarchist Communist Group of South Russia, which used the tactic of "terror without reason": attacks on institutions and representatives of the autocratic regime instead of specific individuals.
He helped prepare for the infamous Libman cafe attack in December 1905. She was arrested and sentenced to 17 years in prison in 1906.
He escaped from prison on December 15 and fled to Moscow. In December 1906 she joined the Moscow anarchist organization "Buntar" (Rebel) and was agitator in labor centers.
After the arrest of the group members in March 1907, she and a few others fled to Switzerland, where they edited a newspaper of the same name.
In the fall of 1907 Olga returned to Ekaterinoslav and Kiev and then moved to Odessa.
Prepared an attack on General A.V. Kaulbars, the commander of the Odessa military region, and General Tolmachov, Governor of Odessa, and an explosion in the Odessa court.
At the end of February 1908 he went to Kiev to prepare the blowout of Lukianovka prison walls and organize the escape of the anarchists arrested there. However, all the members of the group were detained, but Olga managed to escape.
She was arrested in Ekaterinoslav and at the end of 1909 she was sentenced to 21 years in prison. She was released from Lukianovka prison in March 1917. As Paul Avrich says in his book "The Russian Anarchists", she was now "a tired and dead woman in the late forties", and at first she kept away from the movement.
In May 1918 he organized the Political Red Cross in Kiev, which helped imprisoned revolutionaries regardless of their political affiliations, and once even helped the Bolsheviks.
Now their former revolutionary zeal had returned, shot by their growing indignation at the way anarchist revolutionaries were being treated by the Bolsheviks.
In 1919 he moved to Moscow. In June 1920 he was part of the organization of "Golos Truda" (Voice of Labor). In late September 1920, after signing the pact between the Soviet government and the Maknovists, he returned to Ukraine.
In Gulyai Polye, Maknovist commanders gave him 5 million rubles. With this money he went to Jarkov and founded the Anarchist Cross black who helped imprisoned and repressed anarchists. In November, Olga was elected representative of the maknovists in Kharkov and Moscow.
During the wave of repression against anarchists and maknovists in Ukraine, Olga was arrested. The Cross black was closed and its center destroyed. In January 1921 she was taken to Moscow with 40 other Ukrainian anarchists.
She was one of the imprisoned anarchists whom the Bolsheviks allowed to attend Kropotkin's funeral. At the end of April 1921 she was transferred to Orlov Prison. In May 1921, the Soviet Attorney General proposed to Olga that she could be released if she withdrew from her ideas in public.
In the summer of 1921 he joined the 11-day hunger strike of arrested anarchists. In March 1922, Velikii Ustiug was exiled for 2 years.
Liberated in early 1924 he moved to Kiev. He ceased all activity, but maintained personal contact with several anarchists. In mid-1924, she was arrested for making anarchist propaganda, but was soon released. In 1924 he moved to Moscow.
In 1927 he supported the campaign for Sacco and Vanzetti (see the biography of Nikolai Rogdaev). In 1928-1929 he wrote many letters about the need to organize an international campaign for anarchists imprisoned in the Soviet Union.
In 1929 she moved to Odessa, where she was arrested for trying to create anarchist cells among railways. (During this period in the 1920s she was involved with Odessa anarchists in the illegal smuggling of anarchist literature to the USSR). He got two years in the "political isolation".
She was liberated in 1931 and returned to Moscow. He became a member of the Society of Former Political Prisoners and Exiles who tried to get pensions for the old, impoverished and sick revolutionaries, but unsuccessfully.
In 1933 she was re-arrested and sentenced. In 1937 she lived in Moscow and worked in a metal processing factory as a driller.
She was re-arrested on November 27, 1937 and accused of anarchist and anti-Soviet activity.
On February 8, 1938 Olga was sentenced to death by the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union. She was executed on the same day.
