Larissa Mikhailovna Reissner (; 13
Old Style and New Style dates">O.S. 1 May">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Old Style and New Style dates">O.S. 1 MayMay 1895 – 9 February 1926) was a Russian writer and revolutionary.
She is best known for her leadership roles on the side of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War that followed the October Revolution and for her friendships with several Russian poets of the early 20th century.
Biography
Larissa Reissner was born in
Lublin
Lublin is List of cities and towns in Poland, the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the centre of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin i ...
,
Congress Poland
Congress Poland or Congress Kingdom of Poland, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland, was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It was established w ...
, to
Mikhail Andreevich Reisner, a jurist of
Baltic German
Baltic Germans ( or , later ) are Germans, ethnic German inhabitants of the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, in what today are Estonia and Latvia. Since Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950), their resettlement in 1945 after the end ...
origin, then on the staff of the nearby
Puławy
Puławy (, also written Pulawy) is a city in eastern Poland, in Lesser Poland's Lublin Voivodeship, at the confluence of the Vistula and Kurówka River, Kurówka Rivers. Puławy is the capital of Puławy County. The city's 2019 population was Cen ...
Agricultural Institute, and his wife Ekaterina of the Russian noble
Khitrovo family.
She spent her early childhood in
Tomsk
Tomsk (, ) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and the administrative center of Tomsk Oblast in Russia, on the Tom (river), Tom River. Population:
Founded in 1604, Tomsk is one of the oldest cities in Siberia. It has six univers ...
, where her father was appointed professor of law at the university in 1897. Between 1903 and 1907, she and her family resided in
Berlin, Germany
Berlin ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the highest population within its city limits of any city in the European Union. The city is also one of the states of ...
, where the family fled because of the father's political activity, with Larisa attending a primary school in the
Zehlendorf district. In the aftermath of the
Russian Revolution of 1905
The Russian Revolution of 1905, also known as the First Russian Revolution, was a revolution in the Russian Empire which began on 22 January 1905 and led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy under the Russian Constitution of 1906, t ...
, they moved to
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...
, where she passed her final school exams with a gold medal in 1912 and went on to study at St. Petersburg University, including studying courses at the Faculty of Law and Philology as well as psychoneurology at the
Bekhterev Research Institute.
During the
First World War
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
, she published an anti-war literary journal, ''Rudin'', financially supported by her parents who pawned their possessions to fund it.
[Radek, K. (1977) "Larissa Reisner" In Reissner, L. ''Hamburg At the Barricades and Other Writings of Weimar Germany'' London: Pluto pg.189]
Affair with Gumilyov
At the age of 20, Reisner met the poet
Nikolai Gumilyov, then aged 29, in the audience at a cabaret called the 'Comedian's Halt', which opened in October 1915, and they became lovers, with nicknames for one another. She called him 'Gafiz'; he called her 'Lefi'. He was her first lover; she idolised him, and tried to imitate his poetry. She also met Gumilyov's wife, the poet
Anna Akhmatova
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko rus, А́нна Андре́евна Горе́нко, p=ˈanːə ɐnˈdrʲe(j)ɪvnə ɡɐˈrʲɛnkə, a=Anna Andreyevna Gorenko.ru.oga, links=yes; , . ( – 5 March 1966), better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova,. ...
, at the Comedian's Halt (or Stray Dog according to Larissa Reissner "Autobiographic Novel") and burst into tears of gratitude when Akhmatova shook hands with her. Akhmatova later said: "What was this all about? ... How could I have known then that she was having an affair with Gumilyov? And even if I had known — why wouldn't I have given her my hand?" He wrote passionate letters to her while he was away on war service, and may also have offered to marry her, but during 1916 she learnt that he was simultaneously having an affair with another woman. They met for the last time in April 1917, and in his last postcard to her, he urged her not to get involved in politics.
Revolution and the Civil War
After the February Revolution, Larisa began to write for Maxim Gorky's paper ''
Novaya Zhizn'' (New Life).
She also took part in the Provisional Government's spelling reform programme, teaching at workers' and sailors' clubs in Petrograd.
A week after the
Bolshevik Revolution
The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of two revolutions in Russia in 1917. It was led by Vladimir L ...
, Reisner helped the newly appointed People's Commissar
Anatoly Lunacharsky
Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky (, born ''Anatoly Aleksandrovich Antonov''; – 26 December 1933) was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and the first Soviet People's Commissariat for Education, People's Commissar (minister) of Education, as well ...
to issue an appeal to
Petrograd's artists and cultural workers to assemble at an evening meeting in the
Smolny Institute
The Smolny Institute () is a Palladian edifice in Saint Petersburg that has played a major part in the history of Russia, notably as a center of women's education, and the headquarters of the Bolsheviks during the early stages of the October Re ...
, where the Bolsheviks had their headquarters, to show support for the regime. The turnout was so poor that "there was enough room to sit on one sofa" — but it included three major figures in Russian culture, the poets
Alexander Blok
Alexander Alexandrovich Blok ( rus, Алекса́ндр Алекса́ндрович Бло́к, p=ɐlʲɪˈksandr ɐlʲɪˈksandrəvʲɪtɕ ˈblok, a=Ru-Alyeksandr Alyeksandrovich Blok.oga; 7 August 1921) was a Russian lyrical poet, writer, publ ...
and
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky ( – 14 April 1930) was a Russian poet, playwright, artist, and actor. During his early, Russian Revolution, pre-Revolution period leading into 1917, Mayakovsky became renowned as a prominent figure of the Ru ...
and the theatre director
Vsevolod Meyerhold
Vsevolod Emilyevich Meyerhold (; born ; 2 February 1940) was a Russian and Soviet theatre director, actor and theatrical producer. His provocative experiments dealing with physical being and symbolism in an unconventional theatre setting m ...
, who spent hours discussing how to organise the intelligentsia. Later, she worked at the
Smolny Institute
The Smolny Institute () is a Palladian edifice in Saint Petersburg that has played a major part in the history of Russia, notably as a center of women's education, and the headquarters of the Bolsheviks during the early stages of the October Re ...
with Lunacharsky, cataloguing art treasures.
In 1917, as part of
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (; ), was a Russian and Soviet writer and proponent of socialism. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Before his success as an aut ...
's team, she helped the Jewish plea, presented by
Joseph Kruk, whom later testified for this episode, to avoid confiscating weapons that Jews had gathered in the times of the Tsarist regime as part of Jewish organizing for self-defence in response to threats made by
The Black Hundreds and also after the revolution. With her intermediation, Gorky ensured that
Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...
would attempt to prevent anti-Jewish rioting.
She became a member of the
Bolshevik Party
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),. Abbreviated in Russian as КПСС, ''KPSS''. at some points known as the Russian Communist Party (RCP), All-Union Communist Party and Bolshevik Party, and sometimes referred to as the Soviet ...
in 1918, marrying
Fyodor Raskolnikov in the summer of that year. During the
Civil War
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...
, she was a soldier and a political commissar of the
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...
. She served as chief of an intelligence section of the Volga River flotilla in August 1918 battle for Sviazhsk. During 1919, she served as the Commissar at the Naval Staff Headquarters in
Moscow
Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...
.
Relations with poets
Reisner was on friendly terms with
Osip Mandelstam
Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam (, ; – 27 December 1938) was a Russian and Soviet poet. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school.
Osip Mandelstam was arrested during the repressions of the 1930s and sent into internal exile wi ...
, who prevailed upon her in 1918 to accompany him in approaching
Felix Dzerzhinsky
Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (; ; – 20 July 1926), nicknamed Iron Felix (), was a Soviet revolutionary and politician of Polish origin. From 1917 until his death in 1926, he led the first two Soviet secret police organizations, the Cheka a ...
, head of the feared
Cheka
The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( rus, Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия, r=Vserossiyskaya chrezvychaynaya komissiya, p=fsʲɪrɐˈsʲijskəjə tɕrʲɪzvɨˈtɕæjnəjə kɐˈmʲisʲɪjə, links=yes), ...
, to plead for the life of an aristocratic art historian — whom neither of them knew — who was under sentence of death. Mandelstam was evidently impressed both by her determination — he described her as "heavy artillery" — and by elegance of her movements. "She danced along like a wave on the sea," he said. In 1921, Reisner invited Mandelstam and his wife
Nadezhda to accompany her to Afghanistan. They wanted to go, but Raskolnikov, who did not like Mandelstam, vetoed the idea.
In 1920, she took revenge on Gumilyov for his infidelity, by arranging for the rations he was receiving from the Baltic Fleet to be cancelled. She sent a bag of rice to Anna Akhmatova, who was close to starvation, and met her to complain bitterly about how Gumilyov had treated her. After the meeting, in Reisner's flat overlooking the Neva, she gave Akhmatova a lift home in her horse drawn cab, and told her: "I would give everything, absolutely everything to be Anna Akhmatova." She presumably meant that she wished she had Akhmatova's poetic gift, but Akhmatova was not flattered. She told
Lydia Chukovskaya: "stupid words, aren't they? What does that mean — everything? Three windows on the Neva?" While she was in Kabul, Reisner learnt that Blok had died, and wrote a passionate letter to Akhmatova, saying: "Now, when he no longer exists, your equal, your only spiritual brother... Most tender poet. are you still writing poems?... don't be silent — do not die while still alive."
Shortly afterwards, she heard that Gumilyov had been executed, and wished that she had been on hand to intervene and save his life. Her mother, who was in Russia, also bitterly regretted not realising the danger Gumilyov was in when she heard that he had been arrested. Nadezhda Mandelstam believed that Reisner might have saved Gumilyov, because "the one thing Larisa could not overcome was her love of poetry... Larisa not only loved poetry, but she also secretly believed in its importance, and for her the only blot on the Revolution's record was the shooting of Gumilyov... I somehow believe that if she had been in Moscow when Gumilyov was arrested, she would have got him out of jail, and if she had been alive and still in favour with the regime during the time when M. (Osip Mandelstam) was being destroyed, she would have moved heaven and earth to try and save him."
International affairs
In 1921, while married to Raskolnikov, she and her husband traveled to
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...
as representatives of the Soviet Republic, carrying out diplomatic negotiations.
In October 1923 she traveled illegally to Germany to witness the revolution there first-hand and write about it, producing collections of articles entitled ''Berlin, October 1923'' and ''Hamburg at the Barricades''.
During her stay in Germany she had become
Karl Radek
Karl Berngardovich Radek (; 31 October 1885 – 19 May 1939) was a revolutionary and writer active in the Polish and German social democratic movements before World War I and a Communist International leader in the Soviet Union after the Russian ...
's lover. On her return to Russia she and Raskolnikov divorced in January 1924. The failure of the German revolution provoked furious arguments in the USSR about whose fault it was. Aino Kuusinen, wife of
Otto Kuusinen, secretary of the
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second Internatio ...
, described one such dispute that broke out when visitors gathered in her husband's flat:

It has also been suggested that she was briefly the lover of
Liu Shaoqi
Liu Shaoqi ( ; 24 November 189812 November 1969) was a Chinese revolutionary and politician. He was the chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress from 1954 to 1959, first-ranking Vice Chairman of the Chinese Communis ...
, who rose to be the third most powerful leader in the communist China. This story appears to have originated from a biography of Liu by a German communist named Hans Heinrich Wetzel, a book scathingly likened by one reviewer to Ian Fleming's novel ''From Russia with Love''. Reisner was in Kabul during the entire time that Liu was in Moscow, where the 'affair' is supposed to have been conducted.
Final years
During 1924–1925, she worked as a special correspondent for ''
Izvestiya'', first in the Northern
Urals
The Ural Mountains ( ),; , ; , or simply the Urals, are a mountain range in Eurasia that runs north–south mostly through Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the river Ural (river), Ural and northwestern Kazakhstan. where she adopted a boy by the name of Alyosha Makarov. Her later writings came from
Hamburg
Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...
, whilst she was visiting a malaria clinic near
Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden (; ) is the capital of the German state of Hesse, and the second-largest Hessian city after Frankfurt am Main. With around 283,000 inhabitants, it is List of cities in Germany by population, Germany's 24th-largest city. Wiesbaden form ...
. She also wrote articles on a corruption scandal in
Byelorussia.
During this time, she also worked on
Leon Trotsky
Lev Davidovich Bronstein ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky,; ; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky'' was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and political theorist. He was a key figure ...
's Commission for Improvement of Industrial Products.
Larissa Reissner died on 9 February 1926, in the
Kremlin Hospital, Moscow, from
typhoid
Typhoid fever, also known simply as typhoid, is a disease caused by ''Salmonella enterica'' serotype Typhi bacteria, also called ''Salmonella'' Typhi. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often ther ...
; she was 30 years old.
Tributes
In his autobiography ''
My Life'', the Bolshevik leader and founder of the Red Army
Leon Trotsky
Lev Davidovich Bronstein ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky,; ; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky'' was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and political theorist. He was a key figure ...
paid tribute to her:
Almost every memoirist who knew Reisner, apart from Trotsky, felt moved to remark on her beauty. Anna Akhmatova described her as "a beautiful young woman" later remarking: "No-one would ever have imagined I would outlive Larisa... She wanted so much to live; she was cheerful, healthy, beautiful." Nadezhda Mandelstam remembered her as "beautiful in a heavy and striking Germanic way." The critic
Viktor Shklovsky
Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky ( rus, Ви́ктор Бори́сович Шкло́вский, p=ˈʂklofskʲɪj; – 6 December 1984) was a Russian and Soviet literary theorist, critic, writer, and pamphleteer. He is one of the major figures asso ...
variously described her as "the young lovely", and "beautiful"
Alexander Barmine described her as "a slender young woman with auburn curls and the beauty of a Minerva without her helmet."
Alexander Voronsky wrote that "her noble face was both strong-willed and feminine, reminding one of the legendary Amazons, and was framed by chestnut... this beautiful and truly rare example of the human species."
References
External links
''Larissa Reisner'' by Karl RadekWomen and Marxism: Larissa Reissner
{{DEFAULTSORT:Reisner, Larisa
1895 births
1926 deaths
Writers from Lublin
People from Lublin Governorate
Bolsheviks
Soviet people of German descent
People of the Russian Revolution
Commissars
Women in the Russian and Soviet military
Deaths from typhoid fever
German revolutionaries
Russian revolutionaries
Female revolutionaries