A gymnasium student who stepped into the revolution: the initial stage of revolutionary activity of the Bolshevik Serafima Ivanovna Deryabina (1904–1908)

Serafima Ivanovna Deryabina (18881920) is known as a revolutionary who acted in the Ural-Volga region in the early 20th century, starting from the period of the first Russian revolution and ending with the events of the Civil war. The heyday of her revolutionary, organizational and party activities occurred at the Samara stage of life (19151918), but this was preceded by a significant period of formation of the revolutionary woman in the conditions of the first Russian revolution and then in the years of post-revolutionary political reaction. This paper attempts to analyze the conditions for the formation of revolutionary views and the beginning of the underground activities of S.I. Deryabina in 19041908. The author attempts to establish her role among the Bolshevik organizations of Yekaterinburg at that time and to consider the details of the arrests of the young Bolshevik woman. To achieve this goal documents from the Federal (the State Archive of the Russian Federation and the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History) and regional (the state archive of the Sverdlovsk Region, the center for documentation of public organizations in the Sverdlovsk Region and the Samara Regional State Archive of Socio-Political History) archives were used. These archives as well as published sources help the author to reconstruct the activity of the revolutionary woman within the framework of the historical period and region under study.