A convinced Jacobin, she believed in the need for a revolutionary organisation to overthrow the Tsarist autocracy and establish a centralised government that could direct a political and social revolution.

Maria Nikolaevna Olovennikova was born in 1852, into a Russian noble family,[1] in the village of Pokrovskoye in the Oryol Governorate.

[2] She left her daughter in the care of her mother in 1875,[2] allowing her to move to Saint Petersburg, where she studied as a paramedic and became a supporter of Pyotr Tkachev.

[2] When a provocative pamphlet published by Zaichnevsky led to a wave of arrests, Olovennikova was forced into hiding at her family's estate in Oryol, where she met Alexander Barannikov, a fellow Narodnik activist.

She believed that a revolutionary conspiracy ought to seize state power, in order to form a centralised government that could direct a political and social revolution, although she lost her faith in Zaichnevsky's hope for this to be a "perfect organisation".

[11] The conference agreed that "peaceful propaganda" was pointless while they still lived without civil liberties under the Tsarist autocracy, which it declared should be overthrown "by any means necessary".

[5] Under her influence, the organisation put out Jacobin appeals for the formation of a revolutionary dictatorship to radically transform the economy and abolish private property, only after which could a constituent assembly be formed and safely take over political power.

She also became increasingly worried about her comrades imprisoned in Shlisselburg Fortress and began to feel she too should be locked up, eventually resulting in a nervous breakdown that saw her committed to a psychiatric hospital.