Leshern von Herzfeld followed him there clandestinely, before giving herself up to the authorities, who allowed her to return to exile in Minusinsk to reunite with her husband.

[2] After an early life of homeschooling, she married the railway engineer Aleksandr Leshern von Herzfeld [ru],[1] with whom she had a child and later divorced.

In June 1876, she helped organise the prison escape of the Narodnik revolutionary Peter Kropotkin, who managed to flee abroad and subsequently became a famous theorist of anarchism.

Taking the new name of Maria Govorova, in May 1878, she settled in the Volsky district of Saratov province, where she lived in the villages of Bulgakovka [ru] and Baltay.

[5] When her false passport was demanded for registration, on 13 March 1879,[7] Leshern von Herzfeld and Ivanchin-Pisarev fled Saratov.

[2] Leshern von Herzfeld's memoirs were collected by Pavel Shchegolev [ru], one of the editors of the historical magazine Byloye.

[3] In 1921, Byloye published a section of Leshern von Herzfeld's memoirs, which revealed her role in Kropotkin's escape from prison.