Sophia
Perovskaya,
the daughter of governor-general of St. Petersburg, was born in 1854.
She did not get on well with her authoritarian father and spent much
of her early life on her mother's estate in the Crimea.
In 1869
Perovskaya enrolled in the Alarchin Women's College in St Petersburg.
She joined the women's circle and gradually became involved in the
revolutionary movement.
Arrested
she was put on trial but was acquitted. She joined the the Land
and Liberty group and when it split into two in October, 1879,
she joined the People's Will, the faction
who favoured a policy of terrorism.
Soon afterwards
the People's Will decided to assassinate Alexander
II. The following month Perovskaya and Andrei
Zhelyabov attempted to use nitroglycerine to destroy the Tsar
train. However, the terrorist miscalculated and it destroyed another
train instead. An attempt the blow up the Kamenny Bridge in St. Petersburg
as the Tsar was passing over it was also unsuccessful.
The next
attempt on Alexander's life involved a carpenter, Stefan
Khalturin, who had managed to find work in the Winter Palace.
Allowed to sleep on the premises, each day he brought packets of dynamite
into his room and concealed it in his bedding.
On 17th
February, 1880, Khalturin constructed a mine in the basement of the
building under the dinning-room. The mine went off at half-past six
at the time that the People's Will had calculated
Alexander would be having his dinner. However, his main guest, Prince
Alexander of Battenburg, had arrived late and dinner was delayed and
the dinning-room was empty. Alexander was unharmed but sixty-seven
people were killed or badly wounded by the explosion.
The People's
Will contacted the Russian government and claimed they would call
off the terror campaign if the Russian people were granted a constitution
that provided free elections and an end to censorship. On 25th February,
1880, Alexander II announced that
he was considering granting the Russian people a constitution. To
show his good will a number of political prisoners were released from
prison. Loris Melikof, the Minister of the Interior, was given the
task of devising a constitution that would satisfy the reformers but
at the same time preserve the powers of the autocracy.
At the
same time the Russian Police Department established a special section
that dealt with internal security. This unit eventually became known
as the Okhrana. Under the control of
Loris Melikof, the Minister of the Interior, undercover agents began
joining political organizations that were campaigning for social reform.
In January,
1881, Loris Melikof presented his plans to Alexander
II. They included an expansion of the powers of the Zemstvo.
Under his plan, each zemstov would also have the power to send delegates
to a national assembly called the Gosudarstvenny Soviet that would
have the power to initiate legislation. Alexander was concerned that
the plan would give too much power to the national assembly and appointed
a committee to look at the scheme in more detail.
The People's
Will became increasingly angry at the failure of the Russian government
to announce details of the new constitution. They therefore began
to make plans for another assassination attempt. Those involved in
the plot included Perovskaya, Andrei Zhelyabov,
Gesia Gelfman, Nikolai
Sablin, Ignatei Grinevitski,
Nikolai Kibalchich, Nikolai
Rysakov and Timofei Mikhailov.
In February,
1881, the Okhrana discovered that their
was a plot led by Andrei Zhelyabov
to kill Alexander II. Zhelyabov was
arrested but refused to provide any information on the conspiracy.
He confidently told the police that nothing they could do would save
the life of the Tsar.
On 1st
March, 1881, Alexander II was travelling
in a closed carriage, from Michaelovsky Palace to the Winter Palace
in St. Petersburg. An armed Cossack sat with the coach-driver and
another six Cossacks followed on horseback. Behind them came a group
of police officers in sledges.
All along
the route he was watched by members of the People's
Will. On a street corner near the Catherine Canal Perovskaya gave
the signal to Nikolai Rysakov and Timofei
Mikhailov to throw their bombs at the Tsar's carriage. The bombs
missed the carriage and instead landed amongst the Cossacks. The Tsar
was unhurt but insisted on getting out of the carriage to check the
condition of the injured men. While he was standing with the wounded
Cossacks another terrorist, Ignatei Grinevitski,
threw his bomb. Alexander was killed instantly and the explosion was
so great that Grinevitski also died from the bomb blast.
Of the
other conspirators, Nikolai Sablin committed
suicide before he could be arrested and Gesia
Gelfman died in prison. Sophia
Perovskaya,
Andrei Zhelyabov, Nikolai
Kibalchich, Nikolai Rysakov and Timofei
Mikhailov were hanged on 3rd April, 1881.
Andrei
Zhelyabov, Sophia
Perovskaya, Nikolai
Kibalchich, Timofei Mikhailov
and Nikolai Rysakov being executed
on 3rd April, 1881.
(1)
Elizabeth
Kovalskaia first met Sophia Perovskaya at a party held in the
home of Alexandra Kornolova in 1869.
She was short and strongly built, with close-cropped
hair, and she wore an outfit that seemed almost to have the become
the uniform for the advocates of the woman question: a Russian blouse,
cinched with a leather belt, and a short, dark skirt. Her hair was
pulled back revealling a large, intelligent forehead, and her large
grey eyes, in which one sensed exceptional energy, radiated cheerfulness.
In general she looked more like a young boy than a girl.
The group
began to disperse long after midnight. Alexandra Kornolova, who lived
in the apartment, made me stay. When everyone but the girl in grey
had gone, she introduced us: the girl was Sophia Perovskaya. Perovskaya
suggested that I join a small circle of women who wanted to study
political economy, and I agreed.
(2)
Olga
Liubatovich wrote about meeting Sophia Perovskaya
in her autobiography published in 1906.
I had spent the night at Malinovskaia's apartment.
Around noon, a modestly dressed young woman appeared at the door.
Her striking face - round and small, but for the large, childlike
forehead - stood out sharply against the background of her black dress,
trimmed with a broad white turn-down collar. She radiated youth and
life.
Perovskaya
introduced herself and greeted us in the open, direct fashion of an
old friend, although she had never met either of us. We clustered
around her: obviously, she was pleasantly excited about something.
The rapid walk to our apartment had left her breathless, but she immediately
began to tell us the story of her escape at the railroad station in
Novgorod - a simple story, but it made me tremble.
(3)
Praskovia
Ivanovskaia
joined the People's Will and often visited the home of Sophia
Perovskaya and Andrei Zhelyabov.
In the intervals between printing jobs, we visited
Sofhia Perovskaya's apartment. She shared the place with Andrei Zhelyabov,
and when we stayed late, we saw him, too. To us, the visits to Perovskaia
were like a refreshing shower. Sophia always gave us a warm, friendly
welcome; she acted as if we were the ones with stimulating ideas and
news to share, rather than the reverse. In her easy and natural way,
she painstakingly helped us to make sense of the complicated muddle
of everyday life and the vacillations of public opinion. She told
us about the party's activities among workers, about various circles
and organizations, and about the expansion of the revolutionary movement
among previously untouched social groups. Perovskaia spoke calmly,
without a trace of sentimentality, but there was no hiding the joy
that lit up her face and shone in her crinkled, smiling eyes - it
was as if she were taking about a child of hers who had recovered
from an illness.
(4)
In her memoirs Olga
Liubatovich described the reactions of Sophia
Perovskaya after the failure to assassinate Alexander II in November,
1879.
A few days after the Moscow explosion, Sophia Perovskaya
appeared at one of the party's secret apartments in St. Petersburg.
The words began to spill out and she emotionally told us the story
of the Moscow attempt. On November 19, it was she who waited in the
bushes for the Tsar's train to approach and then gave the signal for
the explosion that blew up the tracks. But there had been too little
dynamite, she told us; how she regretted that so much had been sent
to the operation in the south, instead of concentrating it all in
Moscow! There was a catch in her voice as she spoke, and in her face
reflected intense suffering; she was shaking, either from a chill
produced by her bare wet hands or from a painful feeling of failure
and long-suppressed emotion. There was nothing I could do to comfort
her.
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