エリザベータ・コヴァルスカヤ

エリザベタ・ニコラエフナ・コヴァルスカヤ（ロシア語: Елизавета Николаевна Ковальская ; 1851年6月17日/29日- 1943年）は、ロシアの革命家、ナロードニク、黒人解放の創設メンバーであった。

コヴァルスカヤはハルキウ近郊で生まれた。彼女の母親は農奴で、父親のソルンツェフ大佐の所有物だった。彼女が7歳くらいの時、父親にこう問い詰めた。「世の中には地主と農奴がいて、地主は人を売ることができ、父は母を隣の地主に売り、私を別の地主に売ることで母と私を引き離すことができたが、母は父を売ることはできなかった」^{[ 1 ]} 。父親は二人を解放することに同意し、自由市民として登録し、彼女に私立学校に通わせた。父親が予期せず亡くなった時、彼は莫大な財産を非嫡出の娘に残した。彼女は新しい財産を使って女性のための無料の高等教育コースを組織し、ヤコフ・コヴァルスキーという講師を雇い、結婚したが後に離婚した。しかし、警察官がやって来て、やめなければ二人とも逮捕すると脅した。

コヴァルスカヤはその後、ハリコフの識字率向上協会に加わった。1860年代の女性運動に感銘を受けた彼女は、常にフェミニズムや社会主義の思想に関心を持っていた。ロバート・オーウェンの作品に感銘を受けた彼女は、相続した邸宅の一つを、教育を求める若い女性のための学校として利用した。

1869年、彼女はソフィア・ペロフスカヤと出会い、彼女の女性集会に出席するようになり、二人とも「土地と自由」（Zemlya i volya ）に加わった。

1879年にゼムリャ・イ・ヴォーリャが分裂した際、コヴァルスカヤは黒党に加わり、同僚のペロフスカヤは人民党（ナロードナヤ・ヴォーリャ）に加わった。黒党はテロリズムを否定したが、人民党はテロ行為は改革を強制する適切な手段だと考えていた。コヴァルスカヤは黒党と協力し、労働者や農民の間で社会主義の宣伝活動を支援した。

In 1880, together with Nikolai Schedrin, she took part in organizing the Worker's Union of Southern Russia in Kiev.^[2] Although only involved in propaganda work, she was arrested in 1881, found guilty of being a member of an illegal organization and sentenced to an open-ended katorga in 1881. In 1882, Kovalskaya was transferred to the Kara katorga. During the next twenty years, she went through several hunger strikes and made two unsuccessful prison escapes as well as knifed a prison guard. She and Sofya Bogomolets escaped together in February 1882, but were recaptured after about two weeks. According to the American journalist George Kennan, who visited Siberia in the 1880s and interviewed political exiles, a warden named Colonel Soloviev had the two women stripped naked in his presence, then told their male comrades that they were "not much to look at."^[3] Back in prison, Bogolomets protested by ripping up floorboards and was put in a straitjacket. Kovalskaya, who tried to prevent the wardens from binding her, was put in handcuffs. Shchedrin, who was in the same prison, punched Soloviev in the face, for which he was sentenced to death, though the sentence was commuted, and he was chained to a wheelbarrow.^[4] In 1888, she refused to stand up when the Governor General of the Amur region entered her cell. As a punishment, she was stripped naked by males soldiers, forced to wear the convict clothes of a common criminal, and taken 70 miles by stream in a small boat from Ust-Kara to a new place of deportation, Stretinsk. This set off a prolonged protest by other female political prisoners in Ust-Kara, which began with a sixteen day hunger strike and culminated in the flogging of a prisoner, Nadezhda Sigida, and the deaths of five prisoners, who poisoned themselves in protest.^[5]

She was finally released in 1903, moving to Geneva and joining the Socialist Revolutionary Party. In 1903–1917, she was in exile in Switzerland and France.

In 1918, Kovalskaya became a research worker at Petrograd Historical Revolutionary Archive and member of the editorial board of the Katorga and Exile magazine.

She had been married twice, and there was never any mention of her having children.