Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped)

• WOMEN'S RIGHTS ACTIVIST
• Born into a wealthy family, she started a school for impoverished children at age 19, but met with significant opposition from local bureaucrats
• Moved to Moscow after five years of teaching and joined the Society for Improving the Lot of Women, becoming its president within a year
• Opened the Shelter for Downtrodden Women, where prostitutes could be rehabilitated
• Also wanted to start a newspaper and Sunday school dedicated to working women, but local authorities again prevented her
• Cast off her high-class status and her allegiance to the Tsar, and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, which was illegal at the time
• Arrested three times and exiled to northern Russia
• Fled to Paris in December 1908 and became a prominent member of Vladimir Lenin's entourage, running his Committee of Foreign Organizations, lecturing at his school, and acting as liaison with the French Socialist Party
• Finally got to establish a women's newspaper, editing Rabotnitsa (Woman Worker), as well as organized the Third International Conference of Socialist Women
• Spoke French and German as well, and translated many of Lenin's writings into those languages, but wasn't afraid to disagree openly with some of his theories
• Lenin derided her attempts to inject her own feminist writings, including essays on marriage and family, into the Bolshevik literature
• Served on several government councils and committees, including chair of the Moscow Provincial Economic Council, member of the Soviets' Central Executive Committee, and FIRST director of the Women's Section of the Central Committee
• Campaigned tirelessly for a woman's right to work outside of the home and for women's equality

Bibliography: Elwood, Carter. "Armand, Inessa." The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History, Vol. 1, Oxford University Press, 2008, 137-138.

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