Editing Catherine Breshkovsky (section)

==Early life==
[[File:Catherine Breshkovsky Young.jpg|thumb|left|Breshkovsky in her youth]]
Born as Yekaterina Konstantinovna Verigo into the Russian nobility in Ivanovo village, Nevelsky district, Vitebsk province, Breshkovsky grew up on the family estate in [[Chernihiv|Chernigov province]], and was educated at home. Her father, Konstantin Verigo, owned serfs, but—according to her account—treated them well.<ref name=Breshkovsky>{{cite book |editor-last1=Stone Blackwell |editor-first1=Alice  |title=The Little Grandmother of the Russian Revolution: Reminiscences and Letters of Catherine Breshkovsky |url=https://archive.org/details/littlegrandmothe00bresuoft |date=1919 |publisher=Little, Brown, and Company |location=Boston |page=[https://archive.org/details/littlegrandmothe00bresuoft/page/8 8]}}</ref> In 1861, during the [[Emancipation reform of 1861|Emancipation reform]] she helped her father free the serfs on the family estate then worked voluntarily to educate them. In 1868, she married Nikolay Petrovich Breshko-Breshkovsky, a landowner and country magistrate, but left him after two years and moved to [[Kiev]] where she formed a 'commune' with her sister Olga (who died young) and [[Maria Kolenkina]]. The trio followed the anarchist [[Mikhail Bakunin]], when most of the revolutionaries in Kiev were in a group led by [[Pavel Axelrod]], followers of the populist revolutionary [[Pyotr Lavrov]]. Axelrod introduced her to [[Andrei Zhelyabov]], the peasant's son who organised the assassination of Tsar [[Alexander II of Russia|Alexander II]] in 1881.

In February 1874, she gave birth to a son, [[Nikolay Breshko-Breshkovsky]], and left him to be brought up by relatives. She did not see him again until he was aged 22, and learnt that they had nothing in common. He later became a thriller writer, and Nazi sympathiser.<ref name=Sidochik /> In July 1874, she, Kolenkina and [[Yakov Stefanovich]] decided to '[[Going to the People|go to the people]]' and set out with false passports, disguised as itinerants labourers, to settle in a village, where they tried to instill revolutionary ideas in the peasants. Warned of imminent arrest, Kolenkina returned to Kiev, while Breshkovsky and Stefanovich moved to another village, in [[Kherson]] province, where they came into contact with evangelical Protestants, known as the [[Shtundists|Stundists]].<ref name=Shmidt>{{cite book |last1=Shmidt |first1=O.Yu. (chief editor), Bukharin N.I. et al (eds) |title=Большая советская энциклопедия Volume 7 |date=1927 |location=Moscow |page=471}}</ref> Rejected by the Stundists, they moved on to [[Tulchyn]]. After Stefanovich returned to Kiev, Breshkovsky was arrested when a police officer checking her false passport noticed that she did not act as submissively as a peasant normally would.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Stone Blackwell |title=Little Grandmother |page=80}}</ref>