In 1917 she was one of the ten women elected to the Constituent Assembly, the country's first female parliamentarians.

[1] She studied extracurricular education abroad and became head of a Sunday school and the Society for the Organisation of Public Readings.

In 1898 she married Viktor Chernov; the couple emigrated the following year, and in 1901 were founders of the Socialist Revolutionary Party.

[3] After the Bolsheviks forced the Constituent Assembly to be dissolved, she was subsequently arrested on several occasions and imprisoned in 1921.

In 1938 she was included in Stalin's shooting lists, but died in prison before her case could be heard.