16. Russia’s Deadly Rosalia
Russian revolutionary Rosalia Zemlyachka (1876 – 1947) has often been labeled “history’s deadliest woman”. Surprisingly, relatively little is known about her, because most of her notoriety can be traced to a period of revolutionary upheaval, during which record-keeping was spotty at best. Much of what did exist was destroyed in the turmoil that engulfed the country during her lifetime. Also, being a woman, neither her Bolshevik Party nor English-speaking Soviet scholars and historians, have put that much effort into researching her activities.
Be that as it may, Zemlyachka was one of the key figures in the abortive 1905 Russian Revolution. Twelve years later, during the Russian Civil War, she emerged as one of the main organizers of the Red Terror after the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917. Particularly in 1920 – 1921, she played a key role in mass killings that claimed the lives of tens of thousands at the low end of estimates, and hundreds of thousands at the high end.
