Anne Jaclard

Anne Jaclard, born Anna Vasilyevna Korvin-Krukovskaya (1843–1887), was a Russian socialist and feminist revolutionary.

As young women they read the materialist literature then popular—books by Ludwig Büchner, Carl Vogt and others—and the writings of nihilist and Narodnik social critics like Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Peter Lavrov.

Although Dostoyevsky had sympathised with utopian socialist ideas in his youth and had even been banished to Siberia for his involvement in the Petrashevsky circle, by the 1860s he was becoming increasingly religious and conservative.

In 1869, she left Russia under the pretext of being chaperoned by her younger sister, Sofia, who had undertaken a nominal marriage with a young Russian radical, Vladimir Onufryevich Kovalevsky, together with her husband.

The fall of Napoléon III in 1870 had enabled Jaclard to return to France, and the two of them entered into a common law relationship.

Anne Jaclard, as she was then known, collaborated closely with other leading feminist revolutionaries in the Commune, including Louise Michel, Nathalie Lemel, the writer André Léo, Paule Mink and her fellow Russian, Elisaveta Dmitrieva.

When the Paris Commune was suppressed by the Versailles government of Adolphe Thiers, Anna and Jaclard were arrested.

Neither Dostoyevsky's earlier efforts at courting Anna nor their strong political differences with the Jaclards prevented cordial and regular contact between them.