Around 1860, among the Russian mountain ash and northern pines of Tetyushy Russia, a large black chariot pulled a hangman’s scaffold across the rough terrain. The condemned, a pale-faced woman, sat at the center of the scaffold and a placard placed around her neck loudly announced her crime: Infanticide. Young Vera Figner watched from the living room window of her grandfather’s estate as a group of soldiers escorted the cortege to the public square where the woman would face punishment by method of trading execution – or public execution.