The Beginning of Terror: how the Tsar Liberator was killed
On March 1 (13), 1881, Emperor Alexander II fell victim to the Narodnaya Volya terrorists. In St. Petersburg, on the Catherine Canal, a tragedy occurred that became Russia's largest political assassination of the 19th century. Did the terrorists manage to blow up not only the autocrat, but also Russia? Izvestia recalled the details.
The taste of blood
Alexander II was not a born politician. A lover of life, a secular lion, a lover of amorous adventures and parades. But both from his upbringing and from his experience, he understood that the country needed reforms aimed primarily at increasing the participation of the people in public affairs. The subjects had to be turned into citizens. It took a lot of effort. He initiated Great reforms, including the emancipation of peasants from serfdom and the establishment of a jury trial. The transformations did not go smoothly, and the reforms caused inevitable displeasure among both the peasants and the landlords. "To renovate the vast state entrusted to his administration to the very foundations, to abolish the centuries-old order based on slavery... to establish a court in a country that has never known what justice is, to restructure the entire administration, and to establish freedom of the press... to bring new forces to life everywhere... to put a squeezed and belittled society on its own feet and give it the opportunity to move in the open," Boris Chicherin, a contemporary of the Great Reforms and the first Russian political scientist, assessed his reign.
Emperor Alexander II in his office. The year 1889
One of the consequences of the reforms is the intensification of political life. In the absence of parties, it was "brewed" in the press and underground. In the year of the liberation of the peasants, the first illegal revolutionary narodnik organization in Russia, Zemlya i Volya, appeared. In 1879, it split into two wings. The "moderate", focused on the peasant question, is the "Black Redistribution" and the radical, with a stake in an irreconcilable struggle for power, is the "Narodnaya Volya", which united several hundred underground circles. The Narodnaya Volya adopted guerrilla methods of conspiracy, recruitment and intelligence. In 1879, at an underground congress in Lipetsk, the Narodnaya Volya decided to execute Tsar Alexander.
The assassination of the emperor, who was considered a sacred figure, was supposed to turn life around in the country and give the radicals a chance for revolutionary transformations... "The terrorist struggle is a completely new method of struggle. She is just because she kills only those who deserve it and are guilty. That is why the terrorist revolution seems to be the most just of all forms of revolution. In Russia, the cause of terror will require a number of political assassinations and regicides," Narodnaya Volya's program said.
Decree of Emperor Alexander II dated February 18 (March 3, new style) on the liberation of peasants from serfdom
How did the idea of terror take hold of the minds of freethinkers who dreamed of making society happy by subordinating their lives to the ideals of work, equality and justice? In Nikolai Chernyshevsky's novel "What to Do?", which was a favorite of all Russian revolutionaries, there was not a word about violence, especially about murders. The narodnik Pyotr Zaichnevsky was the first to speak about the harsh methods of underground struggle. While under arrest, in 1862 he wrote the proclamation "Young Russia", in which he was the first Russian freethinker to speak the language of extremism. The revolutionaries of the old school did not accept these ideas, but the youth, to whom Zaichnevsky appealed, saw violence as the surest tool to loudly declare themselves and, as it seemed to them, to shake the foundations of the state.
On April 16, 1866, in the Summer Garden, the volunteer Dmitry Karakozov tried to shoot the autocrat at point-blank range. His hand was pulled away by the hatmaker Osip Komissarov. A year later, in Paris, a Polish terrorist attempted to kill the emperor, again unsuccessfully. Attempts resumed after 12 years.
Dmitry Karakozov is a revolutionary terrorist who shot Alexander II in March 1866.
During this time, Russia has managed to get used to political attacks. Terrorism has spread like an epidemic throughout the country. The threats and actions of Narodnaya Volya became the main events of public life. The real hunt for the tsar has begun. On November 19, 1879, an explosion occurred on the tsar's train near Moscow, when the emperor was returning from the Crimea. On February 5, 1880, an even more daring assassination attempt took place — an explosion in the Winter Palace, prepared by Stepan Khalturin. Providence seemed to be protecting the emperor. He was saved that time only because he started dinner later than usual.
Explosion on the canal
The Narodnaya Volya, having studied the routes of the emperor, decided to lay a mine on Malaya Sadovaya Street, along which he returned to the palace from the Mikhailovsky Manege, where he visited the guards guards. The day before the assassination attempt, the head of the technical service of the Metropolitan police, Major General Konstantin Mrovinsky, checked the route of the imperial carriage for review. He noticed a mine mine, but did not report it. Later, this raised suspicions that representatives of the ruling elite were involved in a conspiracy against the "liberal emperor" in order to establish a strict police regime in the country after his death. But rather, we can talk about ordinary negligence here.
The assassination attempt was scheduled for Sunday, March 1 (13 new style). On that day, the emperor, as usual, attended a review of the troops, admired the changing of the guard in the arena. The ceremony was attended by the Ambassadors of Germany, Austria-Hungary and France. On the way back to the Winter Tsar, he changed his route and did not go along Malaya Sadovaya, where Mina was waiting for him. The royal carriage was moving along the embankment of the Catherine Canal. The terrorists had to resort to a backup plan. The bombers Nikolai Rysakov, Ignaty Grinevitsky, Ivan Yemelyanov and Timofey Mikhailov, whose actions were led by Sofia Perovskaya, stood in the way of the emperor. An imperial carriage appeared on the embankment, accompanied by a Cossack escort, followed by several sleighs, including those with policemen. Rysakov was the first to throw the bomb — at 14:15. Alexander Maleichev, a Cossack of the Life Guards of the Tersk squadron of His Majesty's own convoy, took over the blast wave.
Alexander II got out of the carriage and went to Rysakov, who was captured by the police. The emperor was persuaded to change into a sleigh, but he refused. While they were talking, Grinevitsky stepped towards the tsar from the side of the canal and threw a second bomb wrapped in a napkin at him.
Lithograph "The villainous assassination attempt on Emperor Alexander II on March 1, 1881"
Everyone was horrified to see a column of snow and dust, and the emperor fell. His legs were crushed. He managed to say: "To the palace... to die." The wounded tsar was loaded onto a sledge and taken to the Winter Palace. Medicine was powerless... His relatives came to say goodbye to him. This went on for forty minutes. At 3:35 p.m., the emperor died. A minute later, the imperial standard was lowered from the flagpole of the Winter Palace. This heralded the death of the autocrat. Besides Alexander, the victims of the terrorist attack were Maleichev and a peasant named Grigory Zakharov, a fourteen-year-old teenager who worked in a butcher shop. Grinevitsky also died from the explosion of his own bomb.
"The martyrdom of the emperor may have prevented new reckless acts and saved a brilliant reign from an inglorious and humiliating ending," wrote Alexander Adlerberg, Minister of the Imperial Court. What did he mean by that? Most likely, the reform that was being prepared, which was supposed to turn the Russian autocracy into a constitutional monarchy. After the tragedy on the Catherine Canal, she had to be hidden under a cloth. Among the consequences of this tragedy is the curtailment of the zemstvo reform. Russia remained an autocratic monarchy.
Painting by Konstantin Makovsky "Portrait of Alexander II on his deathbed"
The inviolability of the political system was proclaimed in a special royal manifesto. The terrorists failed to achieve their goal. The royal throne did not waver after the death of Alexander II. The trial of the "Pervomartovites" — the organizers of the assassination of the emperor — was short-lived. On April 15, five people's volunteers were hanged, and the execution of one of the participants in the terrorist attack, Gesi Gelfman, was postponed due to her pregnancy. It took the police two more years to defeat Narodnaya Volya.
The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood was built on the site of the emperor's murder, resembling St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow.
The terrorist impasse
Executed murderers were considered martyrs in the revolutionary milieu, and they sang about them.: "You fell a victim in a fatal struggle in selfless love for the people..." This had to be overcome by understanding the deadly nature of terrorism. Is it possible to step towards universal happiness by stepping over innocent bloodshed? Time has shown that this is an unrealizable utopia, a dead end.
"One of two things: either there are political forces capable of overthrowing this regime, or there are not. In the first case, there is no need for political assassinations, in the second they will lead to nothing. The idea of intimidating any government without having the power to overthrow it is completely chimerical," argued publicist Lev Tikhomirov, a volunteer, emigrant, who later became a conservative. But it took decades for the rejection of terrorist methods of political struggle to become firmly established in society, even in its radical part. During the First World War and in 1917, terror played no role in the fate of the revolution.
The author is the deputy editor—in-chief of the magazine "Historian"
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
