Russia, late 19th century. Is it possible to be happy when the people are suffering? No, answers an elderly Tolstoy, who exhorts the parasite-aristocrats to give up their lives of luxury and to earn their keep by the sweat of their brow.
Like many other young people, Natasha Klimova (1885-1918), daughter of a nobleman from Riasan, embraces the great writer’s ideas. But dressing low-key, washing her own dishes, scrubbing the floor and giving up meat aren’t enough for her. Young Natasha is consumed by “inertia and doubt,” until the day she meets a man of the people, a real farm laborer, who leads her into the clandestine life of a terrorist organization. Having participated in the most deadly attack of the new century (some 30 or more victims, in August 1906), she is arrested and sentenced to death… So begins the story of the Red Flower.
Based on archives from the czar’s secret police, eyewitness accounts and, above all, Natacha Klimova’s letters to her friends and family, Maud Mabillard offers us the first biography of this uncommon woman.
Her prison years on death row, her spectacular escape, then her exile to France, Switzerland and Italy, where the former terrorist gives birth to her first child.
As a backdrop, a key period in Russian history: 1905-1917, World War I and the two revolutions of 1917.