In
1869, two Russian writers, Mikhail Bakunin
and Sergi Nechayev published the
book Catechism of a Revolutionist.
It included the famous passage: "The Revolutionist is a doomed
man. He has no private interests, no affairs, sentiments, ties, property
nor even a name of his own. His entire being is devoured by one purpose,
one thought, one passion - the revolution. Heart and soul, not merely
by word but by deed, he has severed every link with the social order
and with the entire civilized world; with the laws, good manners,
conventions, and morality of that world. He is its merciless enemy
and continues to inhabit it with only one purpose - to destroy it."
The book
had a great impact on young Russians and in 1876 the group Land
and Liberty was formed. Most of the group shared Bakunin's anarchist
views and demanded that Russia's land should be handed over to the
peasants and the State should be destroyed. It remained a small secret
society and at its peak only had around 200 members.
Some reformers
favoured a policy of terrorism to obtain reform and on 14th April,
1879, Alexander Soloviev, a former schoolteacher,
tried to kill Alexander II. His attempt
failed and he was executed the following month. So also were sixteen
other men suspected of terrorism.
The government
responded to the assassination attempt by appointing six military
governor-generals that imposed a rigorous system of censorship on
Russia. All radical books were banned and known reformers were arrested
and imprisoned.
In October,
1879, the Land and Liberty split into two
factions. The majority of members, who favoured a policy of terrorism,
established the People's Will. Others, such
as George Plekhanov formed Black
Repartition, a group that rejected terrorism and supported a socialist
propaganda campaign among workers and peasants.
Soon afterwards
the People's Will decided to assassinate Alexander
II. The following month Andrei Zhelyabov
and Sophia Perovskaya 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 Sophia 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 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 Sophia
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.
It is estimated
that about a third of the people in People's Will
were women. In Russia at this time women remained subject to the absolute
authority of their husbands or fathers. Furthermore no education beyond
the secondary school level was available to women in Russia. Women
felt a particular feeling of being oppressed and felt the need to
rebel. Women who emerged as leaders of the various revolutionary groups
included Vera Figer, Sophia
Perovskaya, Vera Zasulich, Praskovia
Ivanovskia, Olga Liubatovich,
Gesia Gelfman, Elizabeth
Kovalskaia, Catherine Breshkovskaya,
Alexandra Kollontai and Nadezha
Krupskaya.
In 1901
Catherine Breshkovskaya, Victor
Chernov, Gregory Gershuni, Nikolai
Avksentiev, Alexander Kerensky and
Evno Azef, founded the Party
of Socialist Revolutionaries (SR). The main policy of the SR was
the confiscation of all land. This would then be distributed among
the peasants according to need. The party was also in favour of the
establishment of a democratically elected constituent assembly and
a maximum 8-hour day for factory workers.
The Socialist
Revolutionaries also
had a terrorist wing, the SR
Combat Organization. Membership
of this group was secret and independent of the rest of the party.
Gregory Gershuni, became its head and
was responsible for planning the assassination of the Minister of
the Interior, D. S. Sipyagin. The following year he arranged the assassination
of N. M. Bogdanovich, the Governor of Ufa.
Gregory
Gershuni was unaware that his deputy, Evno
Azef, was in the pay of the Okhrana.
In 1904 Azef secretly provided the secret police with the information
needed to arrest and try Gershuni with terrorism.
After the
arrest of Gershuni, Evno Azef became the
new leader of the SR
Combat Organization and
organized the assassination of Vyacheslav
Plehve in 1904 and Father
Gregory Gapon in 1906. At the same time
he was receiving 1,000 rubles a month from the Okhrana.
Several members of the police leaked information to the leadership
of the SR about the undercover activities of Azef. However, they refused
to believe the stories and assumed the secret service was trying to
undermine the success of the terrorist unit.
The Socialist
Revolutionaries continued to infiltrated by agents employed by Okhrana.
Between 1911 and 1914, Dmitri Bogrov supplied
information about the party. However, in what appeared to be an act
of remorse, Bogrov entered the Kiev
Opera House on 1st September, 1911, and assassinated the
Minister of the Interior, Peter
Stolypin.
Andrei
Zhelyabov, Sophia
Perovskaya, Nikolai
Kibalchich, Timofei Mikhailov
and Nikolai Rysakov being executed on
3rd April, 1881.
(1)
Mikhail Bakunin and Sergi
Nechayev, Catechism of a Revolutionist (1869)
The
Revolutionist is a doomed man. He has no private interests, no affairs,
sentiments, ties, property nor even a name of his own. His entire
being is devoured by one purpose, one thought, one passion - the revolution.
Heart and soul, not merely by word but by deed, he has severed every
link with the social order and with the entire civilized world; with
the laws, good manners, conventions, and morality of that world. He
is its merciless enemy and continues to inhabit it with only one purpose
- to destroy it.
He
despises public opinion. He hates and despises the social morality
of his time, its motives and manifestations. Everything which promotes
the success of the revolution is moral, everything which hinders it
is immoral. The nature of the true revolutionist excludes all romanticism,
all tenderness, all ecstasy, all love.
(2)
When Vera Zasulich met Sergi
Nechayev he immediately tried
to recruit her into the revolutionary movement.
Nechayev began to tell me his plans for carrying out
a revolution in Russia in the near future. I felt terrible: it was
really painful for me to say "That's unlikely," "I
don't know about that". I could see that he was very serious,
that this was no idle chatter about revolution. He could and would
act - wasn't he the ringleader of the students?
I could
imagine no greater pleasure than serving the revolution. I had dared
only to dream of it, and yet now he was saying that he wanted to recruit
me, that otherwise he wouldn't have thought of saying anything. And
what did I know of "the people"? I knew only the house serfs
of Biakolovo and the members of my weaving collective, while he was
himself a worker by birth.
(3)
In 1876 Vera
Zasulich attempted to kill the police chief,
General Trepov after he had given the order to beat fellow revolutionary,
Alexei Bogoliubov.
Now Trepov and his entourage were looking at me, their
hands occupied by papers and things, and I decided to do it earlier
than I had planned - to do it when Trepov stopped opposite my neighbour,
before reaching me.
And suddenly
there was no neighbour ahead of me - I was first.
"What
do you want?"
"A
certificate of conduct."
He jotted
down something with a pencil and turned to my neighbour.
The revolver
was in my hand. I pressed the trigger - a misfire.
My heart
missed a beat. Again I pressed. A shot, cries. Now they'll start beating
me. This was next in the sequence of events I had thought through
so many times.
I threw
down the revolver - this also had been decided beforehand; otherwise,
in the scuffle, it might go off by itself. I stood and waited.
Suddenly
everybody around me began moving, the petitioners scattered, police
officers threw themselves at me, and I was seized from both sides.
(4)
In October, 1879, Vera Figner joined
the People's Will.
I was invited to become an agent of the Executive
Committee of the People's Will. I agreed. My past experience had convinced
me that the only way to change the existing order was by force. If
any group in our society had shown me a path other than violence,
perhaps I would have followed it; at the very least, I would have
tried it out. But, as you know, we don't have a free press in our
country, and no ideas cannot be spread by the written word. And so
I concluded that violence was the only solution. I could not follow
the peaceful path.
(5)
Olga
Liubatovich was in Geneva with Vera
Zasulich when news arrived that Alexander Soloviev had attempted
to kill Alexander II.
In the spring of 1879, the unexpected news of Alexander
Soloviev's attempt on the life of the Tsar threw Geneva's Russian
colony into turmoil. Vera Zasulich hid away for three days in deep
depression: Soloviev's deed obviously reflected a trend toward direct,
active struggle against the government, a trend of which Zasulich
disapproved. It seemed to me that her nerves were so strongly affected
by violent actions like Soloviev's because she consciously (and perhaps
unconsciously, as well) regarded her own deed as the first step in
this direction.
Other émigrés
were incomparably more tolerant of the attempt: Stefanovich and Deich,
for example, merely noted that it might hinder political work among
the people. Kravchinskii rejected even this objection. All of us knew
from our personal experience, he argued, that extensive work among
the people has long been impossible, nor could we expect to expand
our activity and attract masses of the people to the socialist cause
until we obtained at least a minimum of political freedom, freedom
of speech, and the freedom to organize unions.
(6)
Elizabeth Kovalskaia
was a member of Land and Liberty and later
joined the Black Repartition faction.
In the spring of 1879, after Governor Krapotkin was
assassinated, there was a wave of searches and arrests in Kharkov.
I had to flee and go understanding for good. I spent brief periods
of time in various cities, reaching St. Petersburg in the fall of
that year. By this time, Land and Liberty had split into the People's
Will and Black Repartition. Firmly convinced that only the people
themselves could carry out a socialist revolution and that terror
directed at the centre of the state (such as the people's Will advocated)
would bring - at best - only a wishy-washy constitution which would
in turn strengthen the Russian bourgeoisie, I joined Black Repartition,
which had retained the old Land and Liberty program.
(7)
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.
(8)
Members of the People's Will were constantly
being arrested by the Okhrana.
Although leader of the group, Vera Figner
managed to avoid capture for many years.
Occasionally, they stumbled on the trial of people
who actually had been involved in the Moscow Organization's work;
in other instances, however, they contrived to tie in people who were
not implicated at all. That's how the "Trial of the Fifty"
came about. It included eleven of the women who had studied in Zurich;
a twelfth, Keminskaia, was not brought to trial, ostensibly because
she became mentally disturbed during her preliminary detention. There
was a rumour that the quiet melancholia from which she suffered would
not have saved her from trial if her father hadn't given the police
5,000 rubles. After her comrades were sentenced. Kaminskaia's thwarted
desire to share their fate led her to poison herself by swallowing
matches.
(9)
Victor Serge, Year
One of the Revolution (1930)
The SR
Battle Organization was founded by Gregory Gershuni in 1902; its first
act, in the same year, was the execution of the Minister of Education
Sipyagin by the student Balmashev (who was later hanged). On the day
after the murder, the SR party published under a similar verdict.
The arrest of Gershuni, who was delivered to the police by Azef, caused
the latter's promotion to the top leadership of the terrorist detachment.
A man named Boris Savinkov, for whom terrorism was a vocation and
whose courage was indomitable, now found himself under the orders
of the agent-provacateur. In 1904 the Prime Minister, Plehve, fell
mutilated by Yegor Sazonov's bomb. Sazonov had organized the assassination
on instructions from Azef.
(10)
Edward Judge, Plehve: Repression
and Reform in Imperial Russia (1983)
Azef sat
in a very dangerous position, especially after Gershuni's arrest,
and he had to think first of his own safety. A continual series of
arrests, and a long train of assassination attempts gone awry, could
only help convince his SR colleagues that they had a traitor in their
midst. If he were found out, his game would be over, and so, most
probably, would be his life. On the other hand, if he could successfully
plan and accomplish the murder of Plehve, his position among the SRs
would be secured. Azef had little love for Plehve: as a Jew, he could
not help but resent the Kishinev pogrom and the minister's reputed
role.
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