Society of Former Political Prisoners and Exiled Settlers

The Society of Former Political Prisoners and Exiled Settlers was a public organization in the Soviet Union that worked in 1921–1935.

Among them were prominent participants in the revolutionary movement, like Vladimir Vilensky (Sibiryakov), Vera Figner, Lev Deich, Nikolai Tyutchev, Felix Kon, Mikhail Frolenko, Anna Yakimova-Dikovskaya, Alexander Pribylev, Anna Pribyleva-Korba, Fedor Petrov, Vadim Bystryansky, Nikolai Skrypnik, Ivan Theodorovich, Vladimir Zhdanov.

Former political prisoners rested in the Mikhailovskoye estate, which belonged to Count Sergei Sheremetyev before the revolution.

The society published the magazines "Hard Labour and Exile" and "Bulletin of the Central Council of the All-Union Society of Former Political Prisoners and Exiled Settlers" and the series "Historical and Revolutionary Library" and "Classics of the Revolutionary Thought of the Pre-Marxist Period".

Compositions and materials were also published on the life and work of Alexander Herzen, Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Nikolai Dobrolyubov, Mikhail Bakunin, Pyotr Tkachev, and Figner; five volumes of the bio-bibliographic dictionary "Figures of the Revolutionary Movement in Russia"; and memoirs and documents about the Decembrists, Narodism, the labor movement, the royal prison, penal servitude and exile.

One of the oldest political prisoners in Tsarist Russia, Vera Figner, wrote in response to a proposal to join the society after its reorganization due to the increasing role of the bolsheviks:[4] Your notice of July 8 threw me into embarrassment and encourages me to explain to you why until now, in principle, I have not joined the Society.

I am a principled opponent of the death penalty and twice together with some old comrades in the revolutionary movement filed a petition to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee to abolish it.