Equestrian portrait of Alexander II

As you know, Alexander II ascended the throne in 1855. During his reign, a number of reforms were carried out, including the peasant reform, which resulted in the abolition of serfdom. For this, the emperor began to be called the Liberator.

Meanwhile, several attempts were made on his life. For what? The sovereign himself asked the same question: “ What do they have against me, these unfortunate people? Why are they chasing me like a wild animal? After all, I have always strived to do everything in my power for the good of the people!”

First attempt

It happened on April 4, 1866. This day and this attempt are considered the beginning of terrorism in Russia. The first attempt was made by Dmitry Karakozov, a former student, a native of the Saratov province. He shot at the emperor almost point-blank at the moment when Alexander II was getting into his carriage after a walk. Suddenly, the shooter was pushed by a person nearby (later it turned out that it was the peasant O. Komissarov), and the bullet flew above the emperor’s head. The people standing around rushed at Karakozov and, quite likely, would have torn him to pieces on the spot if the police had not arrived in time.

The detainee shouted: “ Fools! After all, I am for you, but you don’t understand!” Karakozov was brought to the emperor, and he himself explained the motive for his action: “Your Majesty, you offended the peasants.”

Shot by Karakozov

The court decided to execute Karakozov by hanging. The sentence was carried out on September 3, 1866.

Second attempt

It happened on May 25, 1867, when the Russian emperor was in Paris on an official visit. He was returning from a military review at the hippodrome in an open carriage with children and the French Emperor Napoleon III. Near the Bois de Boulogne, a young man, a Pole by origin, emerged from the crowd and, when the carriage with the emperors caught up with him, he fired a pistol twice at point-blank range at the Russian emperor. And here Alexander was saved by an accident: one of Napoleon III’s security officers pushed away the shooter’s hand. The bullets hit the horse.

Second attempt on Alexander II

The terrorist was detained; he turned out to be a Pole, Berezovsky. The motive for his actions was the desire for revenge for Russia’s suppression of the Polish uprising of 1863. Berezovsky said during his arrest: “... two weeks ago I had the idea of ​​regicide, however, or rather, I have nurtured this thought since I began to recognize myself, meaning the liberation of my homeland.”

Terrorist Berezovsky

On July 15, as a result of the consideration of Berezovsky's case by a jury, he was sentenced to lifelong hard labor in New Caledonia (a large island of the same name and a group of small islands in the southwestern part of Pacific Ocean, in Melanesia. This is an overseas special administrative-territorial entity of France). Later hard labor was replaced by lifelong exile. But 40 years later, in 1906, Berezovsky was granted amnesty. But he remained to live in New Caledonia until his death.

Third attempt

On April 2, 1879, Alexander Solovyov made the third attempt on the life of the emperor. A. Solovyov was a member of the “Land and Freedom” society. He shot at the sovereign while he was on a walk near the Winter Palace. Soloviev was quickly approaching the emperor; he guessed the danger and dodged to the side. And, although the terrorist fired five times, not a single bullet hit the target. There is an opinion that the terrorist was simply poor at wielding a weapon and had never used it before the assassination attempt.

At the trial, A. Solovyov said: “ The idea of ​​an attempt on His Majesty’s life came to me after becoming acquainted with the teachings of the Socialist Revolutionaries. I belong to the Russian section of this party, which believes that the majority suffers so that the minority can enjoy the fruits of the people’s labor and all the benefits of civilization that are inaccessible to the majority.”

Terrorist A. Soloviev

Soloviev, like Karakozov, was sentenced to death by hanging, which took place in front of a huge crowd of people.

Fourth assassination attempt

In 1979, the People's Will organization was created, which broke away from Land and Freedom. The main goal of this organization was to kill the king. He was blamed for the incomplete nature of the reforms carried out, the repression carried out against dissidents, and the impossibility of democratic reforms. Members of the organization concluded that the actions of lone terrorists cannot lead to their goal, so they must act together. They decided to destroy the tsar in another way: by blowing up the train in which he and his family were returning from their vacation in Crimea. An attempt to blow up a train carrying the royal family took place on November 19, 1879.

Baggage train crash

One group of terrorists operated near Odessa (V. Figner, N. Kibalchich, then they were joined by N. Kolodkevich, M. Frolenko and T. Lebedeva): a mine was planted there, but the royal train changed the route and went through Aleksandrovsk. But the Narodnaya Volya members also provided for this option; the Narodnaya Volya member A. Zhelyabov (under the name Cheremisov) was there, as well as A. Yakimova and I. Okladsky. Not far from the railway, he bought a plot of land and there, working at night, he laid a mine. But the train did not explode, because... Zhelyabov failed to detonate the mine; there was some technical error. But the Narodnaya Volya members also had a third group of terrorists, led by Sofia Perovskaya (Lev Hartmann and Sofia Perovskaya, under the guise of a married couple, the Sukhorukovs, purchased a house next to the railway) not far from Moscow, at the Rogozhsko-Simonova outpost. And although this section of the railway was especially guarded, they managed to plant a mine. However, fate protected the emperor this time too. The royal train consisted of two trains: one was passenger and the other was luggage. The terrorists knew that the baggage train was coming first - and they let it through, hoping that the next one would be royal family. But in Kharkov the locomotive of the baggage train broke down, and the royal train moved first. The Narodnaya Volya blew up the second train. Those accompanying the king were injured.

After this assassination attempt, the emperor said his bitter words: “ Why are they chasing me like a wild animal?

Fifth assassination attempt

Sofya Perovskaya, the daughter of the St. Petersburg Governor-General, learned that the Winter Palace was renovating the basements, including the wine cellar. The Narodnaya Volya found this place convenient for placing explosives. The peasant Stepan Khalturin was appointed to implement the plan. He recently joined the People's Will organization. Working in the basement (he was covering the walls of a wine cellar), he had to place the bags of dynamite given to him (2 pounds in total were prepared) among the building material. Sofia Perovskaya received information that on February 5, 1880, a dinner would be held in the Winter Palace in honor of the Prince of Hesse, which would be attended by the entire royal family. The explosion was scheduled for 6 p.m. 20 minutes, but due to the delay of the prince's train, dinner was moved. The explosion occurred - none of the senior officials were injured, but 10 guard soldiers were killed and 80 were wounded.

The dining room of the Winter Palace after the assassination attempt in 1879

After this assassination attempt, the dictatorship of M. T. Loris-Melikov was established with unlimited powers, because the government understood that it would be very difficult to stop the wave of terrorism that had begun. Loris-Melikov provided the emperor with a program whose goal was to “complete the great work of state reforms.” According to the project, the monarchy should not have been limited. It was planned to create preparatory commissions, which would include representatives of zemstvos and urban estates. These commissions were supposed to develop bills on the following issues: peasant, zemstvo, and city management. Loris-Melikov pursued a so-called “flirting” policy: he softened censorship and allowed the publication of new printed publications. He met with their editors and hinted at the possibility of new reforms. And he convinced them that terrorists and radically minded individuals were interfering with their implementation.

The Loris-Melikov transformation project was approved. On March 4, its discussion and approval was supposed to take place. But on March 1, history took a different turn.

Sixth and seventh attempts

It seems that the Narodnaya Volya (daughter of the governor of St. Petersburg, and subsequently a member of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Sofya Perovskaya, her common-law husband, law student Andrei Zhelyabov, inventor Nikolai Kibalchich, worker Timofey Mikhailov, Nikolai Rysakov, Vera Figner, Stepan Khalturin, etc.) failure brought excitement. They were preparing a new assassination attempt. This time the Stone Bridge on the Catherine Canal, through which the emperor usually passed, was chosen. The terrorists abandoned their original plan to blow up the bridge, and a new one emerged - to lay a mine on Malaya Sadovaya. Perovskaya “noticed that at the turn from the Mikhailovsky Theater to the Catherine Canal, the coachman was holding back the horses, and the carriage was moving almost at a walk.” Here it was decided to strike. In case of failure, if the mine did not explode, it was envisaged to throw a bomb at the Tsar’s carriage, but if this did not work, then Zhelyabov had to jump into the carriage and stab the Emperor with a dagger. But this preparation for the assassination attempt was complicated by the arrests of Narodnaya Volya members: first Mikhailov, and then Zhelyabov.

Assassination of Alexander II. Chromolithography performed by F. Morozov

Increased arrests led to a shortage of experienced terrorists. A group of young revolutionaries was organized: student E. Sidorenko, student I. Grinevitsky, former student N. Rysakov, workers T. Mikhailov and I. Emelyanov. The technical part was headed by Kibalchich, who manufactured 4 bombs. But on February 27, Zhelyabov was arrested. Then Perovskaya took over the leadership. At the meeting of the Executive Committee, the throwers were determined: Grinevitsky, Mikhailov, Rysakov and Emelyanov. They “had to throw their bombs from two opposite sides at both ends of Malaya Sadovaya.” On March 1, they were given bombs. “They had to go to the Catherine Canal by known hour and appear in a certain order." On the night of March 1, Isaev laid a mine near Malaya Sadovaya. The terrorists decided to speed up the implementation of their plans. The emperor was warned about the danger that threatened him, but he replied that God was protecting him. On March 1, 1881, Alexander II left the Winter Palace for Manezh, attended the changing of the guards and returned to the Winter Palace through the Catherine Canal. This broke the plans of the Narodnaya Volya members; Sofya Perovskaya urgently restructured the assassination plan. Grinevitsky, Emelyanov, Rysakov, Mikhailov stood along the embankment of the Catherine Canal and waited for Perovskaya’s conditioned signal (wave of a scarf), according to which they were to throw bombs at the royal carriage. The plan worked out, but the emperor was not harmed again. But he did not hastily leave the scene of the assassination attempt, but wanted to approach the wounded. The anarchist Prince Kropotkin wrote about this: “He felt that military dignity required him to look at the wounded Circassians and say a few words to them.” And then Grinevitsky threw a second bomb at the Tsar’s feet. The explosion threw Alexander II to the ground, blood poured from his crushed legs. The Emperor whispered: " Take me to the palace... I want to die there..."

Grinevitsky, like Alexander II, died an hour and a half later in the prison hospital, and the rest of the terrorists (Perovskaya, Zhelyabov, Kibalchich, Mikhailov, Rysakov) were hanged on April 3, 1881.

The “hunt” for Emperor Alexander II was over.

Mournful commemorative medal commemorating the death of Emperor Alexander II

This medal was awarded to persons who accompanied Emperor Alexander II during the assassination attempt on him on March 1, 1881, and to eyewitnesses who were wounded during the explosion. A total of 200 medals were issued.

Place: St. Petersburg, at the gates of the Summer Garden, from where Alexander II headed to his carriage

Executor: D.V. Karakozov, revolutionary terrorist, from the small landed nobility

Exodus: the bullet flew over the emperor's head

Place: Paris, at the exit from the Longchamp racecourse (French: Longchamp)

Executor: A.I. Berezovsky, leader of the Polish national liberation movement, terrorist, son of a poor nobleman

Exodus: bullets hit the horse

Place: St. Petersburg, in the vicinity of the Winter Palace during the emperor's morning walk

Executor: A.K. Solovyov, a revolutionary populist, was born into the family of a collegiate registrar

Exodus: five shots from a revolver, all bullets missed the target

Place: a bomb explosion on a train traveling from Kharkov occurred near Moscow

Executor: members of the People's Will movement

Exodus: there were no casualties

Place: St. Petersburg, first floor of the Winter Palace

Executor: S.N. Khalturin, Russian worker, revolutionary terrorist, from a family of wealthy peasants

Exodus: the explosion killed 11 of the emperor's guards, members of the Life Guards of the Finnish Regiment, and injured 56 people

Place: St. Petersburg, turn from Inzhenernaya street to the embankment

Executor: N.I. Rysakov, Russian revolutionary, son of a sawmill manager

Exodus: more than 20 people were injured, a 14-year-old boy from a butcher shop was killed

Date of: March 1, 1881

Place: St. Petersburg, embankment of the Catherine Canal

Executor: AND I. Grinevitsky, revolutionary, member of the underground revolutionary terrorist organization "People's Will", from a noble family

Exodus: death of Alexander II

"His heart had an instinct for progress..."

“The name of Alexander II belongs to history; even if his reign ended tomorrow, he would still have made the beginning of liberation; future generations will not forget this...”

A.I. Herzen (1812-1870), writer, publicist

“This sovereign is the noblest man in the world, diligent in business, understanding of it, and full of frankness and straightforwardness.”

Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877), historian, President of France

“Not a single tsar after Peter moved Russia so much from the reactionary path of eastern despotism as Alexander II. I remember we were young together. Then he was seething, worked, was generous, believed in people. Oh, if only he remained like that in his old age What a brilliant era he would have brought into ours! national history. His dreams, I still can’t think about them without tears.

We spent entire evenings together when he was heir. In our imagination, all of Russia was covered with schools, gymnasiums, and universities. Literate, free people in a liberated state! And then? It was spoiled by the yard, which, like a bees’ nest, gives honey to some and stings others.”

Count D.A. Milyutin (1816-1912), field marshal, minister of war

“He was called upon to fulfill one of the most difficult tasks that could be presented to an autocratic ruler: to renew to the very foundations the huge state entrusted to his management, to abolish the centuries-old public order established on slavery, and replace it with citizenship and freedom, establish a court in a country that for centuries has not known what justice is, reorganize the entire administration, establish freedom of the press with unlimited power, everywhere call to life new forces and consolidate them with legal order, to raise a suppressed and humiliated society to its feet and give it the opportunity to move in the open. History hardly presents another example of such a revolution..."

B.N. Chicherin (1828-1904), historian, philosopher

“He differed from his immediate predecessors in his lack of inclination to play the Tsar. Alexander II remained himself as much as possible both in everyday life and on weekends. He did not want to appear better than he was, and was often better than he seemed... When a difficult situation arose and a difficult task that gave time for thought, Alexander was overcome by a lingering thought, a suspicious imagination was awakened, picturing possible individual dangers... But in moments of helplessness, Alexander II was rescued by the same character flaw that was so harmful to the entire course of his transformative activity: this cautious suspiciousness of his ... Suspiciousness became a source of determination."

IN. Klyuchevsky (1841-1911), historian

"Alexander II, as a great reformer, knew that Russia must stand on a par with others European states. He understood that she needed freedom, that freedom was vitally necessary for Russia... Freedom for the first time, perhaps in the entire thousand-year history of Russia, became a value, this is the most important thing. And the one who brought it gave his life for it.”

YES. Medvedev, Prime Minister

"I think about this unfortunate man, simple-minded and kind, who has just passed into another world as a result of a bloody crime. In a word, to free fifty million people and die like a hunted animal in his own capital is an irony of fate, predetermined from above. What a night for him, who will pick up the crown of Monomakh in a pool of blood!.. Look at this martyr! He was a great king and deserved a happier fate. He cannot be called a sage, but he had a noble, exalted soul. He loved his people and tried with all his might to help the humiliated and oppressed ... On the last day of his life he worked on a reform that would set Russia on the path modern development- introduction of a parliamentary system. And so the nihilists killed him! What a dangerous craft this is - a liberator!

Melchior de Vogüet (1848-1910) French writer, diplomat

Taking the rank of autocrat great empire, Alexander II immediately became the target of a group of professional king hunters. The seekers of “happiness for the people”, who went through many years of schooling in Geneva and other most civilized centers of Europe, pronounced a death sentence on him.

Who commanded? Why? By what right?

KARAKOZOV. First call

Both the king and the huntsman have one life. Everyone has their own job. Whatever it is, it must be done.

The Russian Empire lived under Alexander II for 26 years. At the very peak of the battle for Sevastopol and Crimea, he took responsibility for Russia. In a year he will complete Crimean War, agreeing to some losses. Not for a day did I doubt that they would have to be returned. Preferably with a profit.

But Crimea will not give up. He will sacrifice the navy, but Crimea and Sevastopol will remain Russian.

And the fleet will slowly begin to create a new one. Not a wooden one with sails, but an armored one with steam engine traction. We must overcome backwardness. Sevastopol taught.

And officers must be trained professionally, and not according to noble pedigree. And not like himself: on the tenth day after his birth, he was appointed chief of the Life Guards of the Hussar Regiment, and on his seventh anniversary he was promoted to the rank of cornet.

Therefore, he will open the Military Engineering and Artillery Academies.

He will publicly announce the abolition of serfdom and begin implementing a grandiose land reform program.

Then to the reform of secondary education.

Will establish free schools for a completely illiterate Russia.

And on April 6, 1866, the first bell rang: the failed attempt by Dmitry Karakozov on Alexander II. Terrorist Karakozov was executed, 34 accomplices were sentenced to various terms of hard labor.

In the same year, when Karakozov missed, the Russian troops of General D. Romanovsky would cross the Syr Darya River and enter the Bukhara Khanate. And a year before that, Russian soldiers under the command of General M. Chernyaev would take the largest trade and political center of the Kokand Khanate - the city of Tashkent. The commander will receive a reprimand from the tsar for this and will be dismissed from the army, because Tashkent was seized without permission.

And a year after the first assassination attempt, Alexander II will issue a decree on the formation of the Turkestan General Government. In 1882, already during the reign of Alexander III, Chernyaev was appointed Governor-General of Turkestan. This will actually complete the process of entry of states Central Asia part Russian Empire.

DECEMBERISTS. First amnesty

To know that a terrorist system has been created in your country (and the military wing of Narodnaya Volya was just such an organization) and that its main goal is you, the Tsar, the autocrat of the Russian Empire; to know that this system was created specifically for hunting you, the father of twelve children, a man in the very juice, overwhelmed by all human passions, to feel the pupil of an aimed revolver in the back of your head, to catch the movement of a hand to the jacket pocket of every man walking towards the royal carriage - to know and not be able to prevent...

You can go crazy this way.

But he had a job, hard, around the clock and with many unknowns. And in this work, mercy came first. This is the personal specialty of rulers - to show mercy. Not mercy in general, but objectively and personally.

Including those who hunt you.

The first were the Decembrists, whom he granted amnesty. Everyone who remained alive. He was not surprised when he was informed that some of them preferred Baikal to service and refused to return to St. Petersburg. And the choice of further life path left behind everyone.

FIGNER. Last assassination attempt

What does it mean to do with the stroke of a pen something that has been taboo for centuries: to free the peasants, give them freedom and land? But what about the land-soul-owners-nobles? Who will support them?

To do this in one fell swoop is to light the fuse of a popular revolt worse than Pugachev’s. Here, perhaps, everyone will unite against the Tsar-Father.

You need to think and think...

What will break out first - a peasant revolt or revolutionary bombers? In the Third Department, the best bloodhounds were knocked off their feet: the bombers were preparing tunnels, making bombs for him...

On the calendar August 29, 1879. The execution was especially hastened by the great revolutionary Vera Figner. There were four of them, revolutionary sisters from a family of Kazan nobles, brilliantly brought up and educated, but only she became great - Vera Nikolaevna, who survived the last two Russian tsars, lived to see Stalinist socialism and was not included in Yezhov’s list of “enemies of the people.” Although all her like-minded people in the 30s under Stalin, who were still alive, were subjected to repression. For Vera Figner, everything turned out the other way around: according to the decision of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, signed by V.V. Kuibyshev in 1926, she was awarded a lifelong personal pension. And she carefully received it until her death, when Panfilov’s guardsmen had already immortalized themselves in the battle with the fascists near Moscow.

The paths of those who devoted their lives to hunting kings are inscrutable.

On March 1, 1881, Vera Nikolaevna wrote: “When I went to see my friends, who still did not suspect anything, I could hardly say out of excitement that the Tsar had been killed. I cried, like the others: the heavy nightmare that before our eyes had been crushing young Russia for ten years was interrupted: the horrors of prison and exile, violence and cruelty against hundreds and thousands of our like-minded people, the blood of our martyrs - EVERYTHING WAS REDEEMED BY THIS MINUTE. THIS IS THE ROYAL BLOOD WE SHEED; heavy burden was taken off our shoulders; the reaction had to end in order to give way to the renewal of Russia."

On the night of February 28 to March 1, three bombers - Sukhanov, Kibalchich and Grachevsky - worked continuously on the shells for 15 hours so that everything would be ready by 8 am. The tunnel was dug and waiting.

Alexander II the liberator had no more than 6 hours to live. Because they, his subjects, otherwise will run out of patience. How then, already in Soviet time, V. Figner will write in his memoirs about that fateful day: “The personal safety of one or another of us worried us. Our entire past and our entire revolutionary future were at stake on this Saturday, the eve of March 1: a past in which there were six attempts at regicide and 21 capital punishments, which we wanted to end, shake off, forget. And the future - bright and wide, which we thought to win for our generation. None nervous system couldn't stand it for a long time such a lot of tension."

The bright future of the generation - and the nervous itch of Vera Figner comrades, an intelligent girl from a Kazan noble family.

But everything went the other way around: Alexander III began by tightening the reaction.

ALEXANDER III. Tightening the nuts

The entire history of the world is written in the blood of civil strife and revolutions: people fight for a place in the sun. Is it really true that by definition this unspent power must nest in power in order to lift the marked one to the pinnacle of bliss? And to be thrown from there into oblivion? Is there really nothing more attractive in the sublunary world than power?

Apparently not.

What about poetry? What about art? What about healing? And science is the mother of civilizations?..

Of course yes. But all this comes later. After wars and revolutions, which are commanded by leaders. We measure time by the lives of pharaohs, kings, and leaders. We give their names to the eras. The era of Cyrus the Great, Alexander the Great, Genghisids, Rurikovichs, Romanovs, the Paris Commune...

Perhaps Alexander II, more than any of the Romanovs, felt this push of time: in two generations everything and everyone would end. Others will come.

His death at the hands of terrorist conspirators served as a signal for tightening the screws in the country. His successor Alexander III began with the defeat of Narodnaya Volya, the execution and hard labor of Narodnaya Volya terrorists. But this was more revenge for the murder of his father than a sanitary cleansing of civil society from the infection of a custom-made revolution. Time was lost. From a spark a flame ignited - in 1883 the Marxist group “Emancipation of Labor” was formed in Geneva.

The new power formation was given a sentence several times shorter than the royal one.

XXI CENTURY. Memory and lessons

Today, in free conversations, citizens are trying to draw parallels between the transformations of Alexander II and the current reforms. It is not correct. Between us are not only two centuries, two revolutions, two world wars plus perestroika, but also a scientific and technological revolution.

There are no parallels between the past and the future. There is only memory.

And there are historical lessons.

Of the 20 million peasants freed from serfdom, only a few could immediately pay for the lands provided to them, while the state came to the aid of the vast majority. For many, even this relaxation was beyond their power. The redemption of all allotment lands of former landowner peasants was supposed to end in 1932! But on January 1, 1907, as part of the Stolypin agrarian reform, redemption payments were stopped: the Russian state treasury took over all the land debts of the freed peasants and paid them off. Land reform was truly an outstanding tsarist victory.

What does it have in common with the reform of the 90s of the 20th century, which liquidated collective and state farms and left peasants completely without land? What does the education reform of Alexander II have in common with the post-perestroika disruption of academic science initiated by officials? The general thing is that we do not want to learn from the victories of the past. But even less - on mistakes.

In 1988, M. Gorbachev repeated the mistake of Alexander II, ordering the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan - their place was immediately taken by American troops. And the Russian Tsar in October 1878 refused to help Afghanistan, a friendly neighbor to the south, when he was at war with England - he withdrew his mission from Kabul. True, forcing the British to sign an agreement in exchange to preserve the integrity of Afghanistan.

And maybe only with Crimea we acted as wisely as Alexander II did in his time, returning the peninsula home without firing a single shot...

STROKE TO THE PORTRAIT

Order of military honor

IN Russian army During the times of Alexander II, military honor was placed above all else. When the Emperor awarded the rank of Field Marshal to 74-year-old General M.S. Vorontsov for his length of service, the whole army knew what kind of “length of service” was valued so highly. While serving as commander of the occupation corps in Paris, Vorontsov learned that Parisian restaurateurs had billed Russian officers for one and a half million rubles. Despite the fact that according to unwritten laws, the victors from time immemorial dined for free in the restaurants of the vanquished.

The general quietly paid the debts of his officers from his own funds and did not tell anyone to talk about this.

Assassination attempts on Alexander II

Narodnaya Volya terrorists made 10 attempts on the life of Emperor Alexander II.
The most significant of them are listed and described below.

• April 4, 1866- the first attempt on the life of Alexander II. Committed by revolutionary terrorist Dmitry Karakozov. The thought of killing the Tsar had been spinning in Karakozov’s head for a long time when he was in his village, and he longed for the fulfillment of his plan. When he arrived in St. Petersburg, he stayed at a hotel and began to wait for an opportune moment to commit an assassination attempt on the Tsar. A convenient opportunity presented itself when the Emperor, after a walk, with his nephew, the Duke of Leuchtenberg, and his niece, the Princess of Baden, sat in a carriage. Karakozov was nearby and, having successfully squeezed into the crowd, fired almost point-blank. Everything could have ended fatally for the emperor if master Osip Komissarov, who happened to be nearby, instinctively hit Karakozov on the arm, causing the bullet to fly past the target. People standing around rushed at Karakozov and if not for the police he could have been torn to pieces. After Karakozov was detained, he resisted and shouted standing people:Fools! After all, I am for you, but you don’t understand! When Karakozov was brought to the emperor and he asked if he was Russian, Karakozov answered in the affirmative and, after a pause, said: Your Majesty, you have offended the peasants. After this, Karakazov was searched and interrogated, after which he was sent to the Peter and Paul Fortress. Then a trial was held, which decided to execute Karakozov by hanging. The sentence was carried out on September 3, 1866.

• May 25, 1867- the second most significant attempt on the life of the tsar was made by Anton Berezovsky, a leader of the Polish national liberation movement. In May 1867, the Russian emperor arrived on an official visit to France. On June 6, when, after a military review at the hippodrome, he was returning in an open carriage with children and the French Emperor Napoleon III, in the area of ​​​​the Bois de Boulogne, a young man, Pole by origin, stood out from the jubilant crowd and, when the carriage with the emperors appeared nearby, he twice point-blank fired a pistol at Alexander. It was possible to avoid the bullets hitting the emperor only thanks to the courage of one of Napoleon III’s security officers, who noticed a man with a weapon in the crowd and pushed his hand away, as a result of which the bullets hit the horse. This time the reason for the assassination attempt was the desire to take revenge on the Tsar for the suppression of the Polish uprising of 1863. During the assassination attempt, Berezovsky's pistol exploded and injured his hand: this helped the crowd instantly capture the terrorist. After his arrest, Berezovsky stated: I confess that today I shot at the emperor during his return from the review, two weeks ago I had the thought of regicide, however, or rather, I nurtured this thought since I began to realize myself, having in mind the liberation of my homeland On July 15, Berezovsky's trial took place, the jury considered the case. The court decided to send Berezovsky to lifelong hard labor in New Caledonia. Subsequently, hard labor was replaced by lifelong exile, and in 1906, 40 years after the assassination attempt, Berezovsky was amnestied. However, he remained to live in New Caledonia until his death.
• April 2, 1879— the assassination attempt was committed by Alexander Solovyov, a teacher and member of the “Land and Freedom” society. On April 2, the emperor was walking near his palace. Suddenly he noticed young man, who was quickly walking towards him. He managed to shoot five times, and then was captured by the royal guards, although not a single bullet hit the target: Alexander II managed to successfully evade them. During the judicial investigation, Solovyov stated: The idea of ​​an attempt on His Majesty’s life came to me after becoming acquainted with the teachings of the Socialist Revolutionaries. I belong to the Russian section of this party, which believes that the majority suffers so that the minority can enjoy the fruits of the people's labor and all the benefits of civilization that are inaccessible to the majority. As a result, Solovyov was sentenced to death by hanging.

• November 19, 1879- an attempt to blow up a train on which the emperor and members of his family were traveling. In the summer of 1879, the People's Will organization was created, breaking away from the populist Land and Freedom. The main goal of the organization was the murder of the tsar, who was accused of repressive measures, bad reforms and suppression of the democratic opposition. In order not to repeat old mistakes, members of the organization planned to kill the Tsar in a new way: by blowing up the train on which the Tsar and his family were supposed to return from their vacation in Crimea. The first group operated near Odessa. Here, Narodnaya Volya member Mikhail Frolenko got a job as a railway guard 14 km from the city. At first everything went well: the mine was laid, there was no suspicion on the part of the authorities. But then the plan to blow up here failed when the royal train changed its route, traveling through Aleksandrovsk. The Narodnaya Volya had such an option, and therefore at the beginning of November 1879, the Narodnaya Volya member Andrei Zhelyabov came to Aleksandrovsk, introducing himself as the merchant Cheremisov. He bought a plot of land near the railway with the intention of allegedly building a tannery there. Working at night, Zhelyabov drilled a hole under the railroad and planted a mine there. On November 18, when the royal train appeared in the distance, Zhelyabov took a position near the railway and, when the train caught up with him, he tried to activate the mine, but after connecting the wires nothing happened: the electrical circuit had a malfunction. Now the hope of the Narodnaya Volya was only in the third group, led by Sofia Perovskaya, whose task was to plant a bomb at the Rogozhsko-Simonova outpost, near Moscow. Here the work was somewhat complicated by the guarding of the outpost: this did not make it possible to lay a mine on the railway. To get out of the situation, a tunnel was made, which was dug despite difficult weather conditions and the constant danger of being exposed. After everything was ready, the conspirators planted the bomb. They knew that the royal train consisted of two trains: one of which contained Alexander II, and the second contained his luggage; the train with luggage is half an hour ahead of the train with the king. But fate protected the emperor: in Kharkov, one of the locomotives of the baggage train broke down and the royal train was launched first. The conspirators did not know about this and let the first train pass, detonating a mine at the moment when the fourth carriage of the second train was passing over it. Alexander II was annoyed by what happened and said: What do they have against me, these unfortunate people? Why are they chasing me like a wild animal? After all, I have always strived to do everything in my power for the good of the people! After the failure of this attempt, the Narodnaya Volya began to develop a new plan.

• February 5, 1880 An explosion was carried out in the Winter Palace. Through friends, Sofya Perovskaya learned that the basements in the Winter Palace were being renovated, which included a wine cellar, which was located directly under the royal dining room and was a very convenient place for a bomb. The implementation of the plan was entrusted to a new member of the People's Will, the peasant Stepan Khalturin. Having settled in the palace, the “carpenter” lined the walls of the wine cellar during the day, and at night he went to his colleagues, who handed him bags of dynamite. The explosives were skillfully disguised among building materials. During the work, Khalturin had a chance to kill the emperor when he was renovating his office and was face to face with the tsar, but Khalturin did not raise his hand to do this: despite the fact that he considered the tsar a great criminal and an enemy of the people, he was broken by the kind and Alexander’s courteous treatment of the workers. In February 1880, Perovskaya received information that a gala dinner was scheduled for the 5th at the palace, at which the tsar and all members would be present. imperial family. The explosion was scheduled for 6:20 pm, when, presumably, Alexander should have already been in the dining room. But the plans of the conspirators were not destined to come true: the train of the Prince of Hesse, a member of the imperial family, was half an hour late and delayed the time of the gala dinner. The explosion caught Alexander II not far from the security room, which was located near the dining room. The Prince of Hesse spoke about what happened : The floor rose as if under the influence of an earthquake, the gas in the gallery went out, complete darkness fell, and an unbearable smell of gunpowder or dynamite spread in the air. No high-ranking persons were injured, but 10 soldiers from the Finnish Guard Regiment were killed and 80 wounded.

• March 1, 1881- the last attempt on Alexander II's life, which led to his death. Initially, the Narodnaya Volya plans included laying a mine in St. Petersburg under the Stone Bridge, which stretched across the Catherine Canal. However, they soon abandoned this idea and settled on another option - to lay a mine under the roadway on Malaya Sadovaya. If the mine suddenly did not go off, then four Narodnaya Volya members who were on the street should have thrown bombs at the Tsar’s carriage, and if Alexander II was still alive, then Zhelyabov would personally jump into the carriage and stab the Tsar with a dagger. Not everything went smoothly during the preparation of the operation: either a search was carried out in the “cheese shop” where the conspirators were gathering, then arrests of important Narodnaya Volya members began, among whom were Mikhailov, and already at the end of February 1881 Zhelyabov himself. The arrest of the latter prompted the conspirators to take action. After Zhelyabov’s arrest, the emperor was warned about the possibility of a new assassination attempt, but he took it calmly, saying that he was under divine protection, which had already allowed him to survive 5 assassination attempts. On March 1, 1881, Alexander II left the Winter Palace for Manezh, accompanied by a rather small guard (in the face of a new assassination attempt). After attending the changing of the guards and drinking tea with his cousin, the emperor went back to Winter Palace through the Catherine Canal. This turn of events completely disrupted the plans of the conspirators. In the current emergency Perovskaya, who headed the organization after Zhelyabov’s arrest, hastily reworks the details of the operation. According to the new plan, 4 Narodnaya Volya members (Grinevitsky, Rysakov, Emelyanov, Mikhailov) took up positions along the embankment of the Catherine Canal and waited for a signal (wave of a scarf) from Perovskaya, according to which they should throw bombs at the royal carriage. When the royal cortege drove onto the embankment, Sophia gave a signal and Rysakov threw his bomb towards the royal carriage: a powerful explosion was heard, after traveling some distance, the royal carriage stopped and the emperor Once again not injured. But the further expected favorable outcome for Alexander was spoiled by himself: instead of hastily leaving the scene of the assassination attempt, the king wished to see the captured criminal. When he approached Rysakov, unnoticed by the guards, Grinevitsky threw a second bomb at the Tsar’s feet. The blast wave threw Alexander II to the ground, bleeding profusely from his crushed legs. The fallen emperor whispered: Take me to the palace... I want to die there... Then came the consequences for the conspirators: Grinevitsky died from the consequences of the explosion of his bomb in the prison hospital, and almost simultaneously with his victim. Sofya Perovskaya, who tried to go on the run, was caught by the police, and on April 3, 1881, she was hanged along with the main functionaries of Narodnaya Volya (Zhelyabov, Kibalchich, Mikhailov, Rysakov) on the Semyonovsky parade ground.

Literature

• Korneychuk D. Hunt for the Tsar: six attempts on the life of Alexander II.
• Nikolaev V. Alexander II.
• Zakharova L. G. Alexander II // Russian autocrats, 1801 - 1917.
• Chernukha V. G. Alexander III // Questions of history.

From the article "Biography of Alexander II" by Dmitry KORNEICHUK

Let us note that the police, well aware of the existence of various revolutionary circles, did not perceive them as a serious danger, considering them just another talkers, unable to go beyond the scope of their revolutionary demagoguery. As a result, Alexander II had practically no security, except for the escort required by etiquette, consisting of several officers.

On April 4, 1866, Alexander II went for a walk with his nephews in the Summer Garden. Having enjoyed the fresh air, the tsar was already getting into the carriage when a young man came out from the crowd of onlookers watching the sovereign’s walk and pointed a pistol at him. There are two versions of what happened next. According to the first, the one who shot at the tsar missed due to his inexperience in handling weapons, according to the other, the barrel of the pistol was pushed away by a peasant standing nearby, and as a result the bullet flew next to the head of Alexander II. Be that as it may, the attacker was captured, and he did not have time to fire a second shot.

The shooter turned out to be nobleman Dmitry Karakozov, who had recently been expelled from Moscow University for participating in student riots. He called the motive for the assassination attempt the tsar’s deception of his people by the reform of 1861, in which, according to him, the rights of the peasants were only declared, but not actually implemented. Karakozov was sentenced to death by hanging.

The assassination attempt caused great unrest among representatives of moderate radical circles, concerned about the reaction that could follow from the government. In particular, Herzen wrote: “The shot on April 4 was not to our liking. We expected disaster from it, we were outraged by the responsibility that some fanatic took upon himself.” The king's answer was not long in coming. Alexander II, until this moment completely confident in the support of the people and gratitude for his liberal undertakings, under the influence of conservative-minded members of the government, reconsiders the extent of freedoms given to society; liberal-minded officials are removed from power. Censorship is being introduced and reforms in education are being suspended. The period of reaction begins.

But it was not only in Russia that the sovereign was in danger. In June 1867, Alexander II arrived on an official visit to France. On June 6, after a military review at the Longchamps hippodrome, he was returning in an open carriage with his children and the French Emperor Napoleon III. In the area of ​​the Bois de Boulogne, among the jubilant crowd, a short, black-haired man, Anton Berezovsky, a Pole by origin, was already waiting for the official procession to appear. When the royal carriage appeared nearby, he fired a pistol at Alexander II twice. Thanks to the brave actions of one of Napoleon III’s security officers, who noticed a man with a weapon in the crowd in time and pushed his hand away, the bullets flew past the Russian Tsar, hitting only the horse. This time the reason for the assassination attempt was the desire to take revenge on the Tsar for the suppression of the Polish uprising of 1863.

Having survived two assassination attempts in two years and miraculously survived, Alexander II firmly believed that his fate was completely in the hands of God. And the fact that he is still alive is proof of the correctness of his actions towards the Russian people. Alexander II does not increase the number of guards, does not lock himself in the palace turned into a fortress (as his son Alexander III would later do). He continues to attend receptions and travel freely around the capital. However, following the well-known truth that God protects those who are careful, he gives instructions to carry out police repressions against the most famous organizations of revolutionary youth. Some were arrested, others went underground, others fled to the Mecca of all professional revolutionaries and fighters for high ideas - to Switzerland. For a while, there was a calm in the country.

The new intensity of passions in society dates back to the mid-70s. A new generation of young people is coming, even more intransigent to power than their predecessors. The populist organizations, which preached the principle of bringing the word to the masses, encountered severe repression by the state, and gradually transformed into clearly defined revolutionary terrorist groups. Unable to democratically influence the governance of the country, they go on the warpath with government officials. The murders of governors-general, high-ranking police officials begin - all those with whom, in their opinion, autocracy is associated. But these are minor pawns ahead the main objective, the basis of the very principle of the regime they hated was Alexander II. The Russian Empire is entering an era of terrorism.

On April 4, 1879, the sovereign was walking in the vicinity of his palace. Suddenly he noticed a young man walking quickly towards him. The stranger managed to shoot five times before he was captured by the guards - and, lo and behold, Alexander II managed to evade the deadly messengers. On the spot they found out that the attacker was teacher Alexander Solovyov. At the investigation, he, without hiding his pride, stated: “The idea of ​​an attempt on His Majesty’s life arose after becoming acquainted with the teachings of the Socialist Revolutionaries. I belong to the Russian section of this party, which believes that the majority suffers so that the minority can enjoy the fruits of the people’s labor and all the benefits of civilization that are inaccessible to the majority." The court's verdict was execution by hanging.

If the first three attempts on the life of Alexander II were carried out by unprepared individuals, then since 1879 the goal of destroying the Tsar has been set to an entire terrorist organization. In the summer of 1879, Narodnaya Volya was created, breaking away from the populist Land and Freedom. The formed executive committee (EC) of the organization was headed by Alexander Mikhailov and Andrey Zhelyabov. At their first meeting, the members of the EC unanimously sentenced the emperor to death. The monarch was accused of deceiving the people with meager reforms, bloody suppression of the uprising in Poland, suppressing signs of freedom and repression against the democratic opposition. It was decided to begin preparations for an assassination attempt on the Tsar. The hunt has begun!

Having analyzed previous attempts to kill the Tsar, the conspirators came to the conclusion that the surest way would be to organize an explosion of the Tsar’s train when the Tsar was returning from vacation from Crimea to St. Petersburg. In order to avoid accidents and surprises, three terrorist groups were created, whose task was to lay mines along the route of the royal train.

The first group operated near Odessa. For this purpose, member of Narodnaya Volya Mikhail Frolenko got a job as a railway guard 14 km from the city. The operation proceeded smoothly: the mine was successfully planted, there was no suspicion on the part of the authorities. However, the royal train changed its route, traveling not through Odessa, but through Alexandrovsk.

This option was provided for by the terrorists. Back in early November 1879, Andrei Zhelyabov arrived in Aleksandrovsk under the name of merchant Cheremisov. He bought a plot of land near the railroad tracks, ostensibly for the construction of a tannery. Working at night, the “merchant” drilled into the railroad tracks and laid a mine. November 18 appeared in the distance royal composition. Zhelyabov took a position behind the railway embankment, and when the train caught up with him, he connected the wires leading to the mine... But nothing happened. The electrical circuit of the fuse did not work.

All hope remained with the third group, led by Sofia Perovskaya, whose task was to plant a bomb at the Rogozhsko-Simonova outpost, not far from Moscow. Here the work was complicated by the guarding of the outpost, which made it impossible to plant a mine in the railway track. There was only one way out - a tunnel. Operating in complex weather conditions(it was a rainy November), the conspirators dug a narrow hole and planted a bomb. Everything was ready for the “meeting” of the king. And again heavenly forces intervened in the fate of Alexander II. The Narodnaya Volya knew that the imperial cortege consisted of two trains: Alexander II himself and his retinue were traveling in one, and the royal luggage in the second. Moreover, the train with luggage is half an hour ahead of the royal train. However, in Kharkov, one of the locomotives of the baggage train broke down - and the royal train went first. Not knowing about this circumstance, the terrorists let the first train through, detonating a mine under the fourth carriage of the second. Having learned that he had once again escaped death, Alexander II, according to eyewitnesses, sadly said: “What do they have against me, these unfortunates? Why are they chasing me like a wild animal? After all, I have always strived to do everything in my power.” forces, for the good of the people!"

The “unhappy” people, not particularly discouraged by the failure of the railway epic, after some time began preparing a new assassination attempt. This time it was proposed to get the beast in its own lair, thereby showing that there were no barriers for the Narodnaya Volya. The Executive Committee decided to blow up the emperor's chambers in the Winter Palace.

Through her friends, Perovskaya learned that the basement rooms in the Winter Palace were being renovated, in particular the wine cellar, located directly under the royal dining room and which was a convenient place for a hidden bomb. One of the new members of the organization, Stepan Khalturin, was assigned to carry out the operation.

Having settled down to work in the palace, the newly minted “carpenter” lined the walls of the wine cellar during the day, and at night he went to meet his fellow People’s Volunteers, who handed him bags of dynamite. The explosives were hidden among the building materials. Once Khalturin was assigned to carry out minor renovation work in the emperor's office. Circumstances were such that he managed to be left alone with Alexander II. Among the "carpenter's" tools was a heavy hammer with a sharp end. It seems like an ideal chance to simply, with one blow, do what the Narodnaya Volya members so passionately strived for... However, Khalturin was unable to deliver this fatal blow. Perhaps the reason should be sought in the words of Olga Lyubatovich, a colleague who knew Khalturin well: “Who would have thought that the same person, having once met Alexander II face to face in his office... would not dare to kill him from behind simply with a hammer in his hands?... Considering Alexander II was the greatest criminal against the people, Khalturin involuntarily felt the charm of his kind, courteous treatment of the workers."

In February 1880, the same Perovskaya received information from her acquaintances at court that a gala dinner was scheduled for the 18th at the palace, at which all members of the imperial family would be present. The explosion was scheduled for six twenty minutes in the evening, when Alexander II was supposed to be in the dining room. And again, chance confused all the cards for the conspirators. The train of one of the members of the imperial family, the Prince of Hesse, was half an hour late, delaying the time of the gala dinner. The explosion found Alexander II near the security room, located near the dining room. The Prince of Hesse described what happened: “The floor rose as if under the influence of an earthquake, the gas in the gallery went out, complete darkness fell, and an unbearable smell of gunpowder or dynamite spread in the air.” Neither the emperor nor any of his family members were harmed. The result of the next assassination attempt was ten killed and eighty wounded soldiers from the Finnish regiment guarding Alexander II.

After another unsuccessful attempt, the Narodnaya Volya took, saying modern language, time out in order to thoroughly prepare for the next attempt. After the explosion in Zimny, Alexander II began to rarely leave the palace, regularly leaving only to change the guard at the Mikhailovsky Manege. The conspirators decided to take advantage of this punctuality of the king.

There were two possible routes for the royal cortege: along the embankment of the Catherine Canal or along Nevsky Prospekt and Malaya Sadovaya. Initially, on the initiative of Alexander Mikhailov, the option of mining the Kamenny Bridge, which stretches across the Catherine Canal, was considered. Demolitionists led by Nikolai Kibalchich examined the bridge supports and calculated the required amount of explosives. But after some hesitation, they abandoned the explosion, since there was no one hundred percent guarantee of success.

We settled on the second option - to lay a mine under the roadway on Malaya Sadovaya. If for some reason the mine did not explode (Zhelyabov remembered his bitter experience in Aleksandrovsk!), then four Narodnaya Volya members who were on the street should have thrown bombs at the royal carriage. Well, if after this Alexander II is still alive, then Zhelyabov will jump into the carriage and stab the king with a dagger.

We immediately began to bring the idea to life. Two members of Narodnaya Volya - Anna Yakimova and Yuri Bogdanovich - rented a semi-basement space on Malaya Sadovaya, opening a cheese shop. From the basement, Zhelyabov and his comrades have been digging a tunnel under the roadway for several weeks. Everything is ready to lay the mine, on which the genius of chemical sciences Kibalchich worked tirelessly.

From the very beginning of the organizational work on the assassination attempt, the terrorists encountered unforeseen problems. It all started with the fact that a “cheese shop”, completely unfrequented by customers, aroused the suspicions of the janitor of a neighbor’s house, who contacted the police. And although the inspectors did not find anything (though they didn’t really try to look!), the very fact that the store was under suspicion raised concerns about the failure of the entire operation. This was followed by several heavy blows to the leadership of Narodnaya Volya. In November 1880, the police arrested Alexander Mikhailov, and a few days before the date of the planned assassination attempt - at the end of February 1881 - Andrei Zhelyabov. It was the arrest of the latter that forced the terrorists to act without delay, setting the date of the assassination attempt on March 1, 1881.

Immediately after Zhelyabov’s arrest, the sovereign was warned about a new assassination attempt planned by the Narodnaya Volya. He was advised not to travel to the Manezh and not to leave the walls of the Winter Palace. To all the warnings, Alexander II replied that he had nothing to fear, since he firmly knew that his life was in the hands of God, thanks to whose help he survived the previous five assassination attempts.

On March 1, 1881, Alexander II left the Winter Palace for Manege. He was accompanied by seven Cossack guards and three policemen, led by Chief of Police Adrian Dvorzhitsky, following in separate sleighs behind the royal carriage (not too many guards for a person expecting a new assassination attempt!). After attending the guard duty and having tea with his cousin, the Tsar went back to Zimny ​​through... the Catherine Canal.

This turn of events completely ruined all the plans of the conspirators. The mine on Sadovaya became a completely useless pile of dynamite. And in this situation, Perovskaya, who headed the organization after Zhelyabov’s arrest, is hastily processing the details of the operation. Four Narodnaya Volya members - Ignatiy Grinevitsky, Nikolai Rysakov, Alexey Emelyanov, Timofey Mikhailov - take positions along the embankment of the Catherine Canal and are waiting for a conditioned signal from Perovskaya, according to which they should throw bombs at the royal carriage. The wave of her scarf should have been such a signal.

The royal cortege drove to the embankment. Further events developed almost instantly. Perovskaya's handkerchief flashed - and Rysakov threw his bomb towards the royal carriage. There was a deafening explosion. After traveling some distance, the royal carriage stopped. The Emperor was not injured. However, instead of leaving the scene of the assassination attempt, Alexander II wanted to see the criminal. He approached the captured Rysakov... At this moment, Grinevitsky, unnoticed by the guards, throws a second bomb at the Tsar’s feet. The blast wave threw Alexander II to the ground, blood gushing from his crushed legs. With the last of his strength, he whispered: “Take me to the palace... There I want to die...”

On March 1, 1881, at 15:35, the imperial standard was lowered from the flagpole of the Winter Palace, notifying the population of St. Petersburg about the death of Emperor Alexander II.

The further fate of the conspirators was sad. Grinevitsky died from the explosion of his own bomb in the prison hospital almost simultaneously with his victim. Perovskaya, who tried to go on the run, was caught by the police and on April 3, 1881, hanged along with Zhelyabov, Kibalchich, Mikhailov, and Rysakov on the Semenovsky parade ground.

The hope of the Narodnaya Volya members to undermine the foundations of the monarchy by killing the tsar was not justified. There were no popular uprisings, because the ideas of the “People's Will” were alien to the common people, and the majority of the intelligentsia who had previously sympathized with them recoiled from them. The Tsar’s son, Alexander III, who ascended the throne, completely abandoned all his father’s liberal undertakings, returning the train of the Russian Empire to the track of absolute autocracy...

A Alexander II entered Russian history as a conductor of large-scale reforms.
During his reign, he survived several assassination attempts and eventually died from the last of them. The gypsy told him six unsuccessful attempts and that he would die from the seventh and in red boots. The emperor's red boots always amused me, but that's exactly what happened... further about all the assassination attempts in detail and with links...

First attempt happened April 4, 1866- Dmitry Karakozov shot at the emperor, heading to his carriage at the gates of the Summer Garden, I wrote about this in detail

In tsarist times there was this joke:
"- Mama, who shot the Tsar?
- Nobleman.
- And what did they do with him?
- He was hanged, darling.
-Who saved the king?
- Peasant.
- And what did they do with him?
- He was made a nobleman..."

Just a year later May 25, 1867 happened second attempt- Polish emigrant Anton Berezovsky in France on the Longchamp field shot at the Russian emperor, when Alexander was returning from a military review in an open carriage, but missed and hit a horse. He committed the assassination attempt out of revenge for the suppression of the Polish uprising. Berezovsky was sentenced to eternal hard labor and exiled to Cayenne. In 1906 he was granted amnesty.

It should be noted that during the war with the Turks (after the victory in which Bulgaria became an independent state), the emperor was not afraid of death and was often on the front line among the troops, coming under fire. God kept him...

Third attempt happened April 2, 1879. The People's Volunteer Soloviev tried again against Alexander II. The emperor forbade the guards to protect themselves. And as a result, the terrorist simply ran and shot in the back of the emperor while he was walking around, and the emperor ran away from him, dodging... five shots in the back and not a single hit! I wrote in detail about this assassination attempt

Apparently the terrorists decided that they couldn’t take the emperor with a bullet. And after this assassination attempt they tried to blow him up.
Fourth assassination attempt took place in winter, on the third verst of the Moscow-Kursk railway.

At the beginning of November 1879, revolutionary Alexander Zhelyabov was sent to Aleksandrovsk, who introduced himself there as Cheremisov. He bought a plot next to the railway under the pretext of building a tannery. Zhelyabov, who was working under cover of darkness, managed to drill a hole under the tracks and plant a bomb there. On November 18, when the train caught up with the Narodnaya Volya, he tried to detonate the mine, but the explosion did not happen because the electrical circuit had a malfunction.

“People's Will” formed a third group, led by noblewoman Sofya Perovskaya, to carry out the assassination of the Tsar. She was supposed to plant a bomb on the tracks near Moscow.

December 1 (November 19), 1879 they successfully blew up the train. But an accident intervened - the royal train was traveling in two trains: the first was carrying luggage, and the second was carrying the emperor and his family. In Kharkov, due to a malfunction of the baggage train, the Alexander II train was launched first, which the terrorists mistook for a freight train and allowed it to pass. As a result, the second freight train was blown up. No one from the royal family was injured. The monument to this “noblewoman” still stands in her homeland.

Fifth assassination attempt took place February 17 (5), 1880. At 6:30 p.m., in the basement of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Stepan Khalturin, a carpenter for the palace repair team, detonated a 32-kilogram dynamite bomb. The fact that many innocent people would die did not bother him.

The attempt was again unsuccessful. The explosion caused the vaults of the basement to collapse, destroying the guard room, in which 10 soldiers were killed and 44 were wounded.

In the royal dining room, under which the explosion took place, window panes flew out, a main wall collapsed, and the floor was damaged. At the time of the explosion, the sovereign and his august family were just approaching the dining room. Contrary to the routine, according to which the emperor and his family sat down for dinner at 18 o'clock, on this day there was a delay due to the arrival of the empress's brother. Being late for dinner turned out to be a saving grace for Alexander II and his family.

More details about this assassination attempt and the fate of the terrorist under the link -

Till March 1881 For years, attempts on the emperor's life ended in failure. The government and the gendarmerie wasted no time: they mobilized all their police and detective forces. "Narodnaya Volya" suffered heavy losses. All the forces of the organization were concentrated on one thing - to kill the emperor before the organization was destroyed. The Narodnaya Volya believed that the regicide would lead to a revolution and would be a signal for its beginning.

During this period, his wife died and he secretly married his common-law wife and his great love. The court did not recognize this marriage, but no one dared to openly oppose the will of the emperor.

Alexander II, whom they were hunting, felt doomed. One day he arrived at the House of Pre-trial Detention and spent several hours alone in an empty cell. He wanted to feel the state of a person imprisoned in solitary confinement, to understand the reasons for the hatred of the revolutionaries.

Sixth attempt“Narodnaya Volya” prepared especially carefully. March 13 (1), 1881 Princess Yuryevskaya, second beloved ex common-law wife Alexandra I, with whom he had already secretly married by that time (his wife had died), very much asked her husband not to go to the withdrawal of troops, to beware of possible assassination attempts. But, as he was leaving, he light-heartedly answered her that the fortune teller had predicted his death during the seventh attempt, and now, if it happens, it will only be the sixth.

But on this day, Alexander II was mortally wounded on the embankment of the Catherine Canal in St. Petersburg by a bomb thrown by the Narodnaya Volya member Grinevitsky. And the gypsy was not mistaken. The Emperor escaped death in time. He was not injured by the thrown bomb, but for some reason he went to talk to the terrorist, and then flew to the people affected by the explosion. And then they committed an assault on him seventh attempt- fatal! The bomb was thrown right at their feet. He had no chance to survive. I wrote about this assassination attempt in detail here -

The assassination attempts were caused by reforms carried out by Emperor Alexander II. Many Decembrists wanted a revolution and a republic, some wanted a constitutional monarchy. Paradoxically, they did this with the best intentions. The abolition of serfdom led not only to the liberation of the peasants, but also to the impoverishment of most of them due to high redemption payments and cuts in land plots. So the intellectuals decided to free the people and give them land with the help of a popular revolution. However, the peasants, despite their dissatisfaction with the reform, did not want to rebel against the autocracy. Then the followers of P. Tkachev’s ideas decided to organize a coup d’etat, and to make it easier to carry out it, kill the tsar.

On April 4, 1866, after another meeting, the sovereign in a great mood walked from the gate summer garden to the carriage waiting for him. Approaching her, he heard a crash in the linden bushes and did not immediately realize that this crack was the sound of a shot. This was the first attempt on the life of Alexander II. The first attempt was made by a twenty-six-year-old lone terrorist, Dmitry Karakozov. Standing nearby, the peasant Osip Komissarov hit Karakozov’s hand with a pistol, and the bullet flew over the head of Alexander II. Until this moment, emperors walked around the capital and other places without special precautions.

On May 26, 1867, Alexander arrived at the World Exhibition in France at the invitation of the French Emperor Napoleon III. At about five o'clock in the afternoon, Alexander II left the ipadrome, where a military review was being held. He rode in an open carriage with his sons Vladimir and Alexander, as well as with the French emperor. They were guarded by a special unit of the French police, but unfortunately the increased security did not help. While leaving the hippodrome, Polish nationalist Anton Berezovsky approached the crew and shot the Tsar with a double-barreled pistol. The bullet hit the horse.

On April 2, 1879, when the emperor was returning from his morning walk, a passerby greeted him. Alexander II responded to the greeting and saw a pistol in the hand of a passerby. The Emperor immediately ran away in zigzag leaps to make it more difficult to hit him. The killer followed closely behind him. It was a thirty-year-old commoner Alexander Solovyov.

In November 1879, Andrei Zhelyabov's group planted a bomb with an electric fuse under the rails along the route of the Tsar's train near the city of Aleksandrovsk. The mine didn't work.

Sofia Perovskaya's group planted a mine on railway to Moscow. The terrorists knew that the train with their retinue was coming first, but by chance this time the royal train passed first. The attempt failed. Alexander Nikolaevich was already accustomed to constant danger. Death was always somewhere nearby. And even the increased security did not help.

The sixth attempt was made by Narodnaya Volya member Stepan Khalturin, who got a job as a carpenter in the winter palace. During his six months of work, he managed to smuggle thirty kilograms of dynamite into the royal basement. As a result, during an explosion on February 5, 1880 in the basement, which was located under the royal dining room, 11 people were killed and 56 people were injured - all soldiers on guard duty. Alexander II himself was not in the dining room and was not injured as he was greeting a late guest.

On March 1, after visiting the guard service at the Mikhailovsky Manege and communicating with his cousin, at 14:10 Alexander II got into the carriage and headed to the Winter Palace, where he was supposed to arrive no later than 15:00 as he promised his wife to take her for a walk . Having passed Engineering Street, the royal crew turned onto the embankment of the Catherine Canal. Six Cossack convoys followed nearby, followed by security officers riding on two sleighs. At the turn, Alexander noticed a woman waving a white handkerchief. It was Sofya Perovskaya. Having driven further, Alexander Nikolaevich noticed a young man with a white package in his hand and realized that there would be an explosion. The perpetrator of the seventh attempt was twenty-year-old Nikolai Rysakov, a Narodnaya Volya member. He was one of two bombers on duty on the embankment that day. Throwing a bomb, he tried to escape, but slipped and was captured by officers.

Alexander was calm. The commander of the guard, Police Chief Borzhitsky, invited the Tsar to go to the palace in his sleigh. The emperor agreed, but before that he wanted to come up and look his would-be killer in the eyes. He survived the seventh assassination attempt, “Now it’s all over,” Alexander thought. But because of him, innocent people suffered and he went to the wounded and dead. Did not have time great emperor Alexander II the Liberator took only two steps when he was again stunned by a new explosion. The second bomb was thrown by twenty-year-old Ignatius Grinevitsky, blowing himself up along with the emperor. Due to the explosion, the sovereign's legs were crushed.

Let's imagine such an incident in modern times. Suddenly and completely covertly, like a terrorist attack. And now for those times where there was no such development high level security. At that time it was not possible to completely ensure the safety of the emperor. There are either restrictions (blocking streets and complete disconnection, which was not possible), or restrictions on the movement of the autocrat, which would be completely unrealistic.