16 of History's Most Rebellious Women
Nadezhda Krupskaya, Russia
The spirit of protest coursed through Nadezhda Krupskaya's veins early in life. As a girl in late-19th century St. Petersburg, she would play with children outside of the factory where her father worked and ambush the manager with snowballs. Educated at a liberal high school, Krupskaya went on to teach evening classes to industrial workers, and by 1889, she had encountered Marxism in underground circles. Along with fellow radical Vladimir Lenin, she helped set up the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class in 1895. Police arrested them both shortly afterward, and they married while exiled in Siberia. After her release in 1901, she followed Lenin to Munich, Geneva and London, all the while helping run Iskra (the Spark), an international newspaper for Marxists. After World War I, Krupskaya returned to Russia and became a key figure in the Bolshevik Party in Vyborg — a major working-class hub in Petrograd — and pressed the central committee to kick-start the October Revolution in 1917. Her ashes are interred in the Kremlin Wall adjacent to Lenin's Mausoleum in Red Square. —William Lee Adams