Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova was born on 6th February 1878 in Simbirsk and was the youngest child of Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov and his wife Maria Alexandrovna. She was given the nickname "Manyasha" by her family. She studied first in the Simbirsk gymnasium, in Simbirsk, where she graduated from in 1893. In 1895 she applied to the physicochemical department of the mathematical faculty of the Higher women's courses in St. Petersburg. However she was not accepted, and she had to enrol in 1896 for a two-year course in Moscow. After her graduation, she received a diploma as a home teacher. Since 1898, Maria had been a member of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party. She conducted propaganda in workers' circles, delivered illegal literature, and acted as a liaison officer. She was arrested several times. In September 1899, after the arrests of members of the Moscow RSDLP, she was sent under police supervision to Nizhny Novgorod. On the night of March 1, 1901, she was arrested and imprisoned in solitary confinement in the Taganskaya prison, after a seven-month sentence she was deported to Samara. The third time she was arrested was in January 1904, and then released on bail in June of the same year, after which she left for Switzerland. In 1905, Maria returned to St. Petersburg, where she worked as secretary of the Vasileostrovsky District Committee of the RSDLP. On May 2, 1907, she was arrested. In 1908, after liberation, she moved to Moscow and worked in the Moscow Party organization. In 1908-1909 she lived in Paris and studied at the Sorbonne, where she received a diploma of a teacher of French. In the summer of 1910, hiding from arrest, she worked as a home teacher in the village of Leppenino near the station Terijoki. She was arrested again in May 1912, imprisoned. She was later deported to Vologda. From February to April 1915 in Moscow she studied at the courses of Sisters of Mercy. In the summer of 1915 she went to the Western Front with a medical-nutritious detachment. Since 1915 in the Moscow organization of the RSDLP, correspondent with the Foreign Bureau of the Central Committee. After the February Revolution of 1917, she was co-opted into the Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. She took an active part in the development of the Social Democratic and then the Communist press in Russia. From 1900 until 1917 she worked for Iskra, in 1917-1929 she was a member of the editorial board of Pravda. Since 1903 - in the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. Member of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP from 1917. Maria was a member of the Central Control Commission of the CPSU from 1925 to 1934, a member of the Presidium of the CCC of the CPSU, then a member of the Soviet Control Commission under the SNK of the USSR from 1935. In 1935, she was appointed to the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union. Maria Ilinichna Ulyanova died on June 12, 1937 of heart disease in Moscow. The urn with her ashes in is buried in the Kremlin wall.
