Nadezhda Suslova

Nadezhda Prokofyevna Suslova was Russias first female physician and the sister of Polina Suslova. She worked as a gynecologist in Nizhny Novgorod, and was involved in many charity efforts.

Nadezhda was born in Panino village, Nizhny Novgorod guberniya, the second of three children. Her father, Prokofii, and her mother, Anna, were serfs for the Sheremetev family, but Prokofii was able to succeed as a merchant and manufacturer. He decided to give a proper education to his daughters, Polina and Nadezhda. At home they had a governess and a dancing teacher. Later she entered Penichkau boarding school in Moscow, where she learned several foreign languages. Like other young people at that time, Nadezhda was fond of reading, enjoyed the works of Nikolay Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov and befriended revolutionary democrats. In 1859 the Suslov sisters moved to Saint Petersburg. In 1861 her short stories Rasskaz v pismah and Fantazyorka were published in Sovremennik. These stories espoused a feminist, nihilist philosophy that would later cause her political trouble. In the 1860s Nadezhda Suslova joined the revolutionary organization Land and Liberty.

Source: Wikipedia