v Primary Sources v

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.

^ Main Article ^

(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.