For a time, she lived with poor peasants in near Yamburg, and attended the village school, however at the age of fourteen she returned to the orphanage and was assigned to technical work.

[1] Karelina became involved in the Russian labour movement at the age of 20, when she joined a workers' circle led by Fyodor Afanasev.

The circle organised lessons from intellectuals such as Leonid Krasin and Stepan Radchenko, read illegal literature, discussed economic issues, and studied Marxism.

In 1892, Karelina was arrested for participating in International Workers' Day celebrations and attending an illegal political meeting at the Volkovo Cemetery.

She participated in a weavers' strike and, as a representative of the workers' circles, became involved with Vladimir Lenin's League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class.

The circle collaborated with the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDRP) to disseminate illegal literature and thereby became an influential part of the socialist movement in St. Petersburg.

In the early 1900s the Russian authorities, under the initiative of police administrator Sergei Zubatov, sought to combat revolutionary socialism by establishing legal, pro-government trade unions.

[4] In private, he described her as "a woman of extraordinary spiritual power, able to stand at the head of the female proletariat" ("как о женщине необыкновенной духовной силы, способной стать во главе женского пролетариата").

Girls, darlings, do not be afraid of death...On the morning of Bloody Sunday, Karelina and her husband led a section of the march from Vasilyevsky Island to the Winter Palace.