Landowners of noble origin, Yekaterina Barteneva and her husband Viktor Ivanovich Bartenev (1838–1918) left Russia in 1867 for Geneva, where they were part of Bakunin's anarchist movement for a few years, before joining the Russian section of the First International with Nikolai Utin in 1869.

[1] The Bartenevs were in Paris during the Commune, where they were acquaintances with Pyotr Lavrov, Anne and Victor Jaclard, Elisabeth Dmitrieff, Louise Michel, and Georges Clemenceau, among others.

[2] In July 1876, she gave her properties in the provinces of Kostroma and Yaroslavl to the peasants and went to live in Buy with her friend Natalia Armfeldt.

On her return to Saint Petersburg in September, she joined the illegal social democratic circle founded by Mikhail Brusnev and met, among others, Olga and Vladimir Ulyanov (the future Lenin).

Reduced to poverty, she died of cancer on 1 September 1914 at the Eleninskaya Hospital [ru] for poor women in Saint Petersburg and was buried in Novoderevenskoye cemetery.