Anna Yakimova

[1] In spring 1880, Yakimova was sent to Odesa, where she and Grigori Isaev were delegated to construct a bomb, which was going to be detonated in a tunnel under Italyanska Street, on the route that the Tsar was expected to take as he travelled from Odessa station to the wharf where his steam boat was docked.

Yakimova and Yuri Bogdanovich, using false passports that identified them as a married couple named Kobozev, rented a shop at 56 Malaya Sadovaya, saying that they wanted to run a business selling cheese, while a team led by Andrei Zhelyabov dug a tunnel under the street, which they expected the Tsar to use.

Her child was also constantly ill, and unable to care for him properly, she arranged for him to be adopted by a family who had been sent to Siberia as administrative exiles.

She was released in September 1892, and permitted to settle in Kara, where she married a fellow exile, M.A.Dikovsky, by whom she had a daughter, Elizabeth, who died in infancy, and a son, Andrei, who became a scientist.

[1] In December 1904, Yakimova returned illegally to St Petersburg to join the Socialist Revolutionary Party, in time to take part in the 1905 revolution.

But she was betrayed by the police spy, Yevno Azef,[6] and arrested at a train station in August 1905, and sent back to Chita, where she spent eight months in prison.