Background
Kovalskaya was the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy land owner, who owned both her and her mother. In 1857, Kovalskaya"s father agreed to grant her and her mother their freedom.
Kovalskaya was the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy land owner, who owned both her and her mother. In 1857, Kovalskaya"s father agreed to grant her and her mother their freedom.
Kovalskaya went on to join the Kharkov society for the promotion of literacy. Impressed by the work of Robert Owen, she used one of her inherited houses as a college for young women seeking education. In 1869, she met Sophia Perovskaya and began attending her women"s meeting, both joining Zemlya i volya (The Land and Liberty).
Black Repartition rejected terrorism, while Narodnaya Volya felt that terrorist acts where an appropriate method in forcing reforms.
In 1880, together with Nikolai Schedrin, she took part in organizing the Worker"s Union of Southern Russia in Kiev. In 1882, Kovalskaya was transferred to the Kara katorga.
During the next twenty years, she went through several hunger strikes and made two unsuccessful prison escapes as well as knifed a prison guard. In 1903–1917, she was in exile in Switzerland and France.
She had been married twice and there was never any mention of having children.
She was inspired by the women"s movement in the 1860s and so she was always interested in feminist and socialist views. Kovalskaya worked with Black Repartition to support a socialist propaganda campaign among workers and peasants. She was finally released in 1903, moving to Geneva and joining the Socialist Revolutionary Party.
Although only involved in propaganda work, she was arrested in 1881, found guilty of being a member of an illegal organization and sentenced to an open-ended katorga in 1881. In 1918, Kovalskaya became a research worker at Petrograd Historical Revolutionary Archive and member of the editorial board of the Katorga and Exile magazine.