In August 1879, the secret organization “People's Will” appeared in Russia. Its leadership - the Executive Committee - included professional revolutionaries. The founders of Narodnaya Volya demanded that the authorities convene a Constituent Assembly and carry out broad democratic reforms. They set the task of “curbing government arbitrariness,” putting a limit to its “interference in people’s life and creating a political system in which activities among the people would not be the filling of the bottomless barrels of the Danaids.” Terror was considered as one of the means of political struggle. On August 26, the Executive Committee passed a death sentence on the Tsar.
In the history of Russia, Alexander II remained a controversial figure. On the one hand, he is known as Alexander the Liberator, who gave freedom to the peasants. Savior of the Balkan Slavs from the Turkish yoke. The initiator of the Great Reforms - zemstvo, judicial, military... On the other hand, he was a persecutor not only of socialist students, participants in “going to the people,” but also of very moderate liberals.
The Narodnaya Volya combat groups began to disperse to their designated cities. They were preparing to attack the Tsar in Odessa, Alexandrovsk (a city between Kursk and Belgorod) and Moscow.
The Moscow group was closest to success. People's Will - Mikhailov, Perovskaya, Hartman, Isaev, Barannikov, Shiryaev and others - built a 40-meter underground passage from a house they bought near the railway. Late in the evening of November 19, a mine exploded under a passing train. The explosion caused a baggage car to overturn and eight others to derail. No harm done. Moreover, it was a train with a retinue, and the royal train followed.
The assassination attempt on November 19 alarmed society. Even the official press noted the skillful and thorough engineering preparation of the mine. In the “Narodnaya Volya” leaflets distributed after the terrorist attack, Alexander II is declared “the personification of hypocritical, cowardly, bloodthirsty and all-corrupting despotism.” The Executive Committee demanded the transfer of power to the national Constituent Assembly. “Until then, fight! The fight is irreconcilable!
In the winter of 1879/1880, when preparations were underway for the 25th anniversary of the reign of Alexander II, the situation in the country was turbulent. The great princes asked the sovereign to move to Gatchina, but Alexander refused.
On September 20, 1879, carpenter Batyshkov got a job at the Winter Palace. In fact, this name was hiding Stepan Khalturin, the son of a Vyatka peasant, one of the founders of the Northern Union of Russian Workers, who later joined Narodnaya Volya. He believed that the tsar should die at the hands of a worker - a representative of the people.
His room with his partner was in the basement of the palace. Directly above it was a guardhouse, and even higher, on the second floor, were the sovereign’s chambers. Khalturin-Batyshkov’s personal property was a huge chest in the corner of the basement - to this day it is not clear why the tsarist police never bothered to look into it.
The terrorist brought dynamite to the palace in small packets. When about 3 poods of explosives had accumulated, Khalturin attempted to assassinate the Tsar. On February 5, he detonated a mine under the dining room, where he was supposed to be royal family. In Zimny, the lights went out and frightened security guards ran in and out. Alas, Alexander II did not go out to the dining room at the usual time, as he was meeting a guest - the Prince of Hesse. As a result of the terrorist attack, nineteen soldiers were killed and another forty-eight were injured. Khalturin managed to escape.
The assassination attempt on February 5 made Narodnaya Volya world famous. The explosion in the royal palace seemed a completely incredible event. At the suggestion of the heir, the Supreme Administrative Commission for the Protection of State Order and Public Peace was established. The tsar appointed Kharkov Governor-General Loris-Melikov as the head of the commission, who subordinated not only the police, but also the civil authorities.
Ruthless repression was applied to participants in the revolutionary movement. Only for distributing leaflets in March were non-commissioned officer Lozinsky and student Rozovsky executed. Even earlier, the same sad fate befell Mlodetsky, who attempted to assassinate Loris-Melikov.
In the spring and summer of 1880, the Executive Committee tried to organize two more assassination attempts on Alexander II (in Odessa and St. Petersburg), but both did not take place. It should be noted that Zhelyabov and Mikhailov advocated the continuation of organizational and propaganda work. They saw regicide as a means to awaken society, move the people, and force the government to make concessions.
By the fall of 1880, the authority of Narodnaya Volya had become extremely high. She had a lot of voluntary and selfless helpers, young people were ready to participate in her most dangerous activities, and money collections were conducted in all layers of society for the needs of the party. Even liberals took part in this action: they believed that the activities of the Narodnaya Volya would force the “liberator” to agree to some concessions, and they began to seriously talk about the draft of the much-desired constitution.
In October 1880, the trial of 16 Narodnaya Volya members, who were betrayed by the traitor Goldenberg, ended. The execution of one of the founders of the organization, A. Kvyatkovsky, and the revolutionary worker, A. Presnyakov, shocked the Narodnaya Volya members. In a proclamation issued on November 6, the Executive Committee called on the Russian intelligentsia to lead the people to victory under the slogan “Death to tyrants.” The Narodnaya Volya members now considered revenge on the tsar not only as a duty. “The honor of the party demands that he be killed,” Zhelyabov said about the upcoming assassination attempt.
This time they decided to eliminate the king at any cost, using, if necessary, several methods of attack at once. An observation detachment of young people monitored the king's travels. Technicians Kibalchich, Isaev, Grachevsky and others prepared dynamite, explosive jelly, and casings for throwing bombs.
Back at the end of 1880, a shop was rented in the semi-basement floor of a house on the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and Malaya Sadovaya. Alexander II passed through these streets on his way to the arena. Under the guise of cheese merchants, Narodnaya Volya members Bogdanovich and Yakimova settled here using false passports. The new owners aroused the suspicion of neighboring shopkeepers and then the police, nevertheless, the revolutionaries began to undermine Malaya Sadovaya.
It seemed like everything had been taken care of. If the Tsar had not been injured in the mine explosion, then the bomb throwers would begin to operate. If the latter failed, Zhelyabov was going to rush at the king with a dagger. But by the end of February, the threat of defeat loomed over the Executive Committee. The betrayal of Okladsky, who was pardoned after the trial of 16, led to the failure of two safe houses and a whole chain of arrests. The accidental arrest of Alexander Mikhailov in November 1880 had serious consequences. Demanding and unforgiving in the implementation of organizational principles and conspiracy, he was a kind of security chief of “Narodnaya Volya”. Mikhailov knew almost all the spies and police officials. It was he who managed to introduce agent Kletochnikov into the III department.
After Mikhailov's arrest, the rules of secrecy were observed with unforgivable negligence, which led to new failures. Following the arrests of K°-Lodkevich and Barannikov, it was Kletochnikov’s turn. The amazement of the gendarmes knew no bounds when they discovered that the executive and quiet official was a secret agent of the revolutionaries.
The government, aware of the preparation of a new assassination attempt, took countermeasures. On February 27, the police received an unexpected gift. Together with the leader of the Odessa circles, Trigoni, who had arrived in St. Petersburg, Zhelyabov was seized in his hotel room with a weapon in his hands, for whom the gendarmes had been searching in vain throughout Russia for more than a year.
Andrei Zhelyabov, the son of a domestic peasant from the Taurida province, expelled from his third year at Novorossiysk University for participating in riots, in 1880 became the de facto head of the Executive Committee and, as a member of the administrative commission, led all terrorist actions. Undoubtedly, if the Narodnaya Volya had succeeded in a political coup, the revolutionary government would have been headed by Zhelyabov.
Loris-Melikov, who two weeks earlier warned the tsar about the impending danger, on the morning of February 28, triumphantly reported to Alexander II about the arrest of the main conspirator. The Tsar became emboldened and decided to go to the Mikhailovsky Manege the next day.
On February 28, a “sanitary commission” headed by engineer general Mravinsky descended on the cheese shop on Malaya Sadovaya. During a superficial inspection, the commission did not find any traces of undermining, and the general did not dare to conduct a search without special permission (for which he was later court-martialed).
In the evening, members of the Executive Committee hastily gathered at Vera Figner’s apartment. Zhelyabov's arrest was a heavy blow for the Narodnaya Volya members. Nevertheless, they decided to go to the end, even if the tsar did not go along Malaya Sadovaya.
Bombs were being loaded all night, a mine was set in the cheese shop, which Mikhail Frolenko was supposed to detonate. Perovskaya took over the management of the metal workers. The daughter of the St. Petersburg governor, she ran away from home at the age of 16, entered women's courses, and then became interested in revolutionary ideas.
On the day of the assassination attempt, March 1, she showed self-control and resourcefulness. When it became clear that the tsar did not go along Malaya Sadovaya, Perovskaya went around the throwers and assigned them new places on the embankment of the Catherine Canal, along which Alexander II was supposed to return
Finally, what the Narodnaya Volya members had been striving for for so long had happened. At three o'clock in the afternoon, two explosions were heard one after another in the city center. The first bomb thrown by Nikolai Rysakov at the feet of the horses only damaged the royal carriage. Two Cossacks from the royal convoy and a boy passing by were killed.
When Alexander II got out of the carriage, Ignatius Grinevitsky threw the second bomb. The tsar and the thrower received mortal wounds in this explosion. Alexander, bloodied, with his legs crushed by the explosion, was taken to the palace. The urgently called doctors could not save the sovereign. On March 1, 1881, at four o'clock in the afternoon, a black flag rose over the Winter Palace.
Grinevitsky died in terrible agony, maintaining his composure to the end. A few minutes before his death, he came to his senses. “What is your name?” – the investigator asked him. “I don’t know,” was the answer. The name of the revolutionary was found out only during the trial on March 1.
Grinevitsky was born into an impoverished noble family in the Grodno province. The best student at the Bialystok Real Gymnasium, he dreamed of devoting himself to science. In 1875, Ignatius entered the Technological Institute in St. Petersburg, but soon became a revolutionary. In the late autumn of 1880, Grinevitsky joined Perovskaya’s “observation detachment”.
A few days before his death, Grinevitsky wrote a will in which he foresaw his fate. “Alexander II must die. His days are numbered. I or someone else will have to deal a terrible final blow, which will resound throughout Russia and echo in its most remote corners. The near future will show this. He will die, and with him we will die, his enemies, his murderers. I will not have to participate in the last struggle. Fate has doomed me to an early death, and I will not see victory, I will not live a single day or hour in the bright time of triumph, but I believe that with my death I will do everything I had to do, and more. No one, no one in the world can demand from me. The job of the revolutionary party is to ignite the combustible material that has already accumulated, throw a spark into the gunpowder and then take all measures to ensure that the resulting movement ends in victory and not in a general massacre the best people countries…"
On the morning of March 1, Grinevitsky, at the direction of Perovskaya, took the most important place on Manezhnaya Square, but when the Tsar changed the route, he ended up second on the Catherine Canal...
For several weeks, St. Petersburg was under martial law. There were policemen, soldiers, and spies scurrying around everywhere. Popular unrest was expected, and many revolutionaries believed that Narodnaya Volya was "beginning to acquire a reputation as a force capable of resisting the forces of the government." They were especially afraid of protests by workers - Rysakov treacherously reported about an entire organization in their midst. Cossack outposts cut off the working outskirts from the center.
The Narodnaya Volya members had the strength to compose an appeal from the Executive Committee to the Russian people and to European society, publish and distribute the “Letter of the Executive Committee to Alexander III.” The letter contained demands for an amnesty for all political prisoners, the convening of representatives from the entire Russian people, and, to ensure their elections, freedom of the press, speech, and electoral programs.
In the factories and factories, Narodnaya Volya workers were waiting for a call for strikes and demonstrations, or even for open struggle, for an uprising. But none of the leaders appeared. The proclamation of "Narodnaya Volya" received on the third day did not contain specific calls for action. In essence, the Executive Committee in its terrorist struggle remained a narrow, strictly closed conspiratorial circle. Immediately after March 1, Gelfman, Timofey Mikhailov, Perovskaya, Kibalchich, Isaev, Sukhanov, and then Yakimova, Lebedeva, Langans After March 1, friends advised Perovskaya to flee abroad, but she chose to stay in St. Petersburg.
Zhelyabov decided that in the interests of the party he should personally participate in the trial, propagating the ideas of Narodnaya Volya. He wrote a statement to the prosecutor of the judicial chamber in which he demanded to “involve himself in the case of March 1st” and expressed his readiness to give incriminating evidence. This is an unusual request was satisfied.
The trial of the Pervomartovites took place on March 26–29 under the chairmanship of Senator Fuchs and under the supervision of the Minister of Justice Nabokov and those close to the new Tsar Alexander III.
At the beginning of the meeting, a resolution of the Senate was read out rejecting Zhelyabov’s application submitted the day before that the case was not under the jurisdiction of the special presence of the Senate and transferring the case to a jury trial. Zhelyabov, Perovskaya, Kibalchich, Gelfman, Mikhailov and Rysakov were accused of belonging to a secret society aimed at the violent overthrow of the existing state and social system and participation in the regicide of March 1.
On March 29, the court pronounced the verdict: death penalty for all defendants. The pregnant Gelfman's execution was replaced by a link to hard labor, but she died soon after giving birth.
Only two people decided to ask Alexander III to spare and forgive his father’s murderers in the name of the gospel covenants. Writer Leo Tolstoy and philosopher Vladimir Solovyov. But the king upheld the sentence.
On the morning of April 3, two high black platforms rolled out of the gates of the pretrial detention house on Shpalernaya. Zhelyabov and the repentant Rysakov on the first, Mikhailov, Perovskaya and Kibalchich on the second. On each person’s chest hung a plaque with the inscription: “Kingslayer.” They were all hanged...
MURDER OF THE LIBERER
The struggle between the Winter Palace and the revolutionary populists was coming to an end, and its sad ending was inevitable, despite the fact that the conservatives tried to take their own measures against the terrorists. At the beginning of 1881, thirteen figures, whose names remained unknown to contemporaries and historians, united into the Secret Anti-Socialist League (T.A.S.L.) “Our motto,” wrote one of these figures, ““God and Tsar,” our The coat of arms is a star with seven rays and a cross in the center. Nowadays we... number about two hundred agents, and their number is continuously growing in all corners of Russia.” As for the number of T.A.S.L. agents, two hundred is a clear exaggeration, although we know that the league was patronized by Princess Yuryevskaya herself, who tried to save her crowned husband at any cost. In general, amateur legionnaires were unable to play on a foreign field (conspiracy, terror) with real professionals. Apparently, this is why the emperor never received any real help from the League.
Meanwhile, around the monarch not only was the ring of “hunters” shrinking, but also semi-mystical clouds of signs and omens were gathering. About two weeks before his death, Alexander Nikolaevich began to find killed and torn to pieces pigeons on the bedroom windowsill every morning. It turned out that it was huge predatory bird settled on the roof of the Winter Palace, but all attempts to catch her were in vain. Finally, they set a trap. The bird was still unable to control it in flight and fell onto Palace Square. The predator turned out to be a kite of such gigantic proportions that its stuffed animal was placed in the Kunstkamera. Later, the epic with the predator will be remembered as a gloomy and final omen of Alexander’s reign, but all this will happen later...
Once a fortune teller predicted to Alexander II that he would have a difficult life, full of mortal dangers. In general, you don’t have to be a seer to prophesy to the autocrat difficulties and dangers for his life path. However, the lady who told fortunes to Alexander Nikolaevich told him that he would die from the seventh attempt made on his life. If you have the desire, count how many assassination attempts the emperor survived, including Rysakov’s bomb, and it turns out that the fortune teller was right. She, however, could not (or did not want) to tell him about the assassination attempts that were being prepared, but for one reason or another did not take place. But there was something like this...
Alexander Mikhailov has long been attracted to the Stone Bridge spanning the Catherine Canal. The imperial carriage, traveling from Tsarskoye Selo station to the Winter Palace, could not possibly pass this bridge. When Mikhailov shared his observations with his comrades, the idea arose to mine this bridge and blow it up under the royal crew. The implementation of this plan was, of course, entrusted to Zhelyabov.
The experience of underground work taught the Narodnaya Volya people, first of all, thoroughness. A whole expedition went out to investigate the mining of the bridge: Makar Teterka at the helm of the boat, Zhelyabov at the oars. Besides them, Barannikov, Presnyakov, Grachevsky. We examined the powerful supports and measured the bottom under the bridge. It turned out that dynamite must be placed in the bridge supports, which can only be done under water. The most convenient way to explode is from the walkways on which the washerwomen rinsed the laundry. Kibalchich calculated that a successful assassination attempt would require seven pounds of explosives. He also came up with a shell for it - four gutta-percha pillows. They were lowered from the boat to the bridge supports, the wires were brought under the washermen's walkways. However, later they decided to abandon the explosion of the bridge supports, since there was no one hundred percent confidence in the success of the assassination attempt, and the Narodnaya Volya members did not need any extra victims. However, this did not mean that the radicals once and for all abandoned bombings in crowded places.
Malaya Sadovaya Street, the house of Count Mengden, in which the basement is for rent. On January 7, 1881, the “peasant Kobozev family” - members of the Narodnaya Volya Executive Committee Anna Yakimova and Yuri Bogdanovich - opened a cheese shop there. Another tunnel, a narrow gallery-half-grave, fear of a possible collapse, the threat of an unexpected visit to the apartment by the police. The latter is the most realistic. The police in St. Petersburg are not the same, and the janitors are not the same. They became more fearful, more wary, more experienced. So the janitor brought an audit to the Kobozevs at the end of February: a local police officer and a well-known technician, Major General Mravinsky, a police expert.
The smell of cheeses that had accumulated in the basement filled his nose so much that the general couldn’t wait to get out into the fresh air. Apparently, that’s why he only inquired about the wall paneling, knocked on the floorboards in several places with his heel, and asked about the origin of the damp spot in the pantry. “They spilled sour cream, your honor,” answered Bogdanovich. And here there were cheese barrels filled with earth from the mine; a pile of earth lay on the floor near the wall, covered with matting and torn rugs. The general did not have time to delve into these “little things.” However, the terrorists did not need the tunnel.
On March 1, 1881, Alexander Nikolaevich told his wife how he intended to spend the current day: in half an hour he was going to the Mikhailovsky Manege to remove the guards, from there he was going to his cousin, Grand Duchess Ekaterina Mikhailovna, who lived near the arena. At a quarter to three, the monarch promised to return home and take his wife for a walk in the Summer Garden.
The Emperor left the Winter Palace at three quarters past midnight in a carriage accompanied by six Terek Cossacks. The seventh was sitting on the box, to the left of the coachman. Three policemen, led by police chief A.I. Dvorzhitsky, followed the carriage in a sleigh. After the guards were cleared, the sovereign, together with Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich, went to his cousin, and at two o’clock ten minutes he left her and got into the carriage, saying to the coachman: “The same road home.” Having passed Engineering Street and turning onto the Catherine Canal, he greeted the guard from the 8th naval crew returning from the divorce. The coachman set his horses at a trot along the embankment, but did not have time to travel even a hundred meters when a deafening explosion was heard, damaging the emperor's carriage. We will not try to fictionalize further events and will give the floor to Police Chief Dvorzhitsky as the main witness of what happened.
“Having driven a few more meters after the explosion,” he wrote, “His Majesty’s carriage stopped, I immediately ran up to the sovereign’s carriage, helped him get out and reported that the criminal had been detained. The Emperor was completely calm. To my question about the state of his health, he replied: “Thank God, I’m not wounded.” Seeing that the sovereign's carriage was damaged, I decided to invite His Majesty to ride in my sleigh to the palace. To this proposal, the sovereign said: “Okay, just show the criminal.” The coachman Frol also asked the sovereign to get into the carriage and go further, but His Majesty, without saying anything to the coachman’s request, returned and headed... along the sidewalk, to his left the Cossack Mochaev , who was on His Majesty's goats, behind Mochaev were 4 dismounted Cossacks with horses. After walking a few steps, the sovereign slipped, but I managed to support him.
The Tsar approached Rysakov. Having learned that the criminal was a tradesman, His Majesty, without saying a word, turned and slowly headed towards the Theater Bridge. At this time, His Majesty was surrounded on one side by a platoon of the 8th naval crew, and on the other by Cossack escorts. Here I again allowed myself to turn to the sovereign with a request to get into the sleigh and leave, but he stopped, lingered a little, and then replied: “Okay, just show me the place of the explosion first.” Fulfilling the will of the sovereign, I turned obliquely to the place of the explosion, but did not have time to take even three steps when I was stunned by a new explosion, wounded and knocked to the ground.
Suddenly, among the smoke and snowy fog, I heard His Majesty’s weak voice: “Help.” Assuming that the sovereign was only seriously wounded, I lifted him from the ground and then saw with horror that His Majesty’s legs were crushed and blood was flowing heavily from them...” Let's face it, the emperor's security was carried out extremely poorly, and this was no secret to the highest ranks of the then police. One of them said that the Governor-General of St. Petersburg was obliged to always personally accompany the emperor and not allow him to leave the carriage in such a critical situation. However, since the time of A.E. Zurov (late 1870s), it was considered indecent for a guards officer to ride for the sovereign, and this task was entrusted to the chief of police. Dvorzhitsky, according to the same source, “looked at his main duty as a task that would be done by itself” - he showed off more in front of passers-by than he thought about the safety of the sovereign.
Alexander II, like his killer Ignatius Grinevitsky, died at the same time, one in Winter Palace, the other in the prison hospital. Alexander Nikolaevich sacredly fulfilled one of his father’s behests. “The head of a monarchical state,” Nicholas I told him, “loses and disgraces himself by giving in one step to the uprising. His duty is to support by force the rights of his own and his predecessors. It is his duty to fall, if destined, but... on the steps of the throne...” At 15:35 on March 1, 1881, a black and yellow imperial standard crept down from the flagpole of the Winter Palace. And at the coffin of his grandfather stood the 12-year-old Grand Duke Nikolai Alexandrovich, who was to become last emperor Russia and meet no less martyrdom...
And everything was mixed up in the Russian state. According to the newspaper “Novoye Vremya”, about 200 innocent citizens were arrested on the Vyborg side of St. Petersburg alone. In the provinces, crowds of commoners beat up landowners and intellectuals, saying: “Oh, you are glad that the tsar was killed, you bribed him to kill him because he freed us.” It was proposed to lay anti-mine discharge cables near the most important buildings in St. Petersburg; slingshots were installed around the residence of the new emperor and patrols were constantly on duty. The panic at the top really reached its climax. From this point of view, the instructions given to Alexander III by his longtime mentor K.P. Pobedonostsev are characteristic: “When you are going to bed, please lock the doors behind you, not only in the bedroom, but in all subsequent rooms, right up to the day off. A trusted person should carefully monitor the locks and ensure that the internal latches of the swing doors are closed.”
The turn has come for fantastic descriptions of the activities of insidious and cunning revolutionaries, like Ulysses. There was talk of mysterious poison pills allegedly sent to the emperor from abroad; about three young men who ordered caftans for court singers from a tailor and apparently intended to enter the Winter Palace not in order to serenade the ladies-in-waiting; about millions of sums of money allegedly found on Zhelyabov during his arrest. However, some plans of the Narodnaya Volya outstripped the wildest imagination of ordinary people.
Since the twentieth of March, the IK has been developing an operation to release comrades arrested and convicted “in the March 1 case.” They were supposed to be repulsed on the way to the place of execution by 200-300 workers, divided into three groups. The workers were to be supported by all St. Petersburg and Kronstadt officers who were members of the military organization of the People's Will. The groups of attackers were planned to be placed on three streets facing Liteiny Prospekt.
When the cortege with the regicides passed the middle group, all three - at a signal - had to rush forward, dragging the crowd with them. The side groups should have distracted the attention of part of the troops with noise so that the officers going to middle group, could reach the convicts and hide with them in the crowd.
It is not known whether the Narodnaya Volya members had the required number of workers at their disposal, but as for the officers, they agreed to participate in the attack on the motorcade with the convicts. The Executive Committee abandoned its plan at the last moment, since the five convicts were surrounded by an unprecedented convoy (in total, from 10 to 12 thousand soldiers were involved in cordoning off the execution site). On April 3, A. Zhelyabov, S. Perovskaya, N. Kibalchich, A. Mikhailov and N. Rysakov were hanged on the Semenovsky parade ground. This was the last public execution in Russia.
In general, from the very beginning of the reign of the new emperor, his relationship with “ People's will" and other populist circles took on the character of irreconcilable military actions, and victory in them increasingly leaned towards the side of the government. Yes, the terrorists managed to force the monarch to move from the Winter Palace to Gatchina, but this can hardly be considered a significant success for the revolutionaries. The reason the emperor changed his residence was not so much fear (personal courage Alexander III showed not only before, during the Russian-Turkish War of 1877-1878, but will also show it later, say, during the crash of the Tsar’s train in Borki), but also the desire to protect the country from shocks that would be inevitable in the event of a second successful attempt on head of state.
And what Alexander Alexandrovich was thinking about in Gatchina was not at all projects of constitutional reform, as the Narodnaya Volya members who continued to threaten him demanded, but proposals for the complete eradication of sedition and the establishment of peace and order in the empire. Gendarmerie Lieutenant Colonel G.P. Sudeikin recommended fighting the revolutionaries with their own weapons, and responding to the creation of an anti-government underground by establishing an underground operating under police control (later similar tactics were used by the famous S.V. Zubatov). The lieutenant colonel's project was approved by the Highest, and soon the Narodnaya Volya members who remained free could not say with confidence which of the circles was formed by them and which was controlled by Sudeikin.
By the spring of 1882, revolutionary populism was over: all members of the “great IC” were either arrested or forced to emigrate. This did not mean that the life of the emperor was not threatened by assassination attempts by revolutionaries; the infection of political terror penetrated deeply into the radical movement and over the years again gave ugly shoots. However, the assassination attempts for some time lost their organized party character, becoming, as in the 1860s, an individual matter, that is, quite random. Over the next twenty years, the danger of assassinating the monarch decreased sharply; later it disappeared altogether, as militant groups of Socialist Revolutionaries concentrated their fire against prominent ministers of Nicholas II.
Let us return, however, to 1881. Immediately after the murder of Alexander Nikolaevich, Loris-Melikov turned to the new monarch with a question: should he, according to the instructions received the day before from the late emperor, order the publication of the Manifesto on the convocation of a commission and elected officials? Without the slightest hesitation, Alexander III replied: “I will always respect my father’s will. Order it to be printed tomorrow.” However, late at night from March 1 to 2, Loris-Melikov received an order to suspend the printing of the Manifesto. A new reign was beginning, the star of the emperor was rising, who professed completely different methods than Alexander II for solving the pressing problems facing Russia.
Who is to blame for the tragedy that happened on Ekaterininskaya Embankment? Who is to blame for the failures that befell Alexander II in the second half of his reign? Who is guilty? - any work devoted to the history of Russia can hardly do without this question. The problem can be formulated more softly: why did this become possible? The essence will not change from this. It is unlikely that my interlocutors will be satisfied if the initiator of the conversation gets away with simply stating the fact that Alexander Nikolaevich’s loneliness is to blame for everything. You can, of course, try to blame some public camp for what happened. But G. Heine mocked such attempts when he wrote:
This is all the fruit of revolution,
This is her doctrine.
It's all Jean Jacques Rousseau's fault,
Voltaire and the guillotine...
Well, we will try to give a more intelligible, although not final, summary.
Let's start with the fact that the uniqueness of the post of the monarch led to the struggle of revolutionaries not with reactionaries and not with conservatives, but with the emperor, as a symbol of the old Russia, hated by the “progressives”. Opportunities for compromise in this struggle were very rare, in particular, the peaceful resolution of issues, theoretically possible in the early 1860s, was left far behind. Now the parties absolutely did not understand each other, and could not understand, since they carefully concealed the true goals of their actions from the enemy.
The Winter Palace sincerely believed that it had benefited the peasantry, took care of the introduction of a modern judicial system in the country, and strengthened military power state, raised its education and culture to a new level of development, without forgetting about the interests of the first estate. However, the “tops” diligently hid the fact that they considered the reform activities to be largely completed. The reform of the highest bodies of power and the change in the way they were governed were not planned and could only happen by chance, under the pressure of emergency circumstances. The revolutionaries seemed to proceed from the fact that tsarism deceived the peasantry, ruined it and did not actually equalize its rights with other classes; from their point of view, he got rid of society with pitiful handouts, keeping his power intact.
These accusations lay on the surface and served, so to speak, as slogan support for the actions of revolutionary organizations. The main thing was that the ideal of equality and justice was seen by the populists in a free communal structure future Russia, outside the community this ideal did not exist. The emperor, with his reforms, perhaps unwittingly, gave a signal for the more rapid development of capitalism, which primarily destroyed the peasant community. Therefore, in the clash between revolutionaries and the authorities, it was not just about deceiving the people and society, but about depriving them of a bright future - what kind of compromises are there!?
As for the terrorist method of struggle chosen by the populists, here, too, everything is not so simple. Let’s immediately discard talk about special bloodthirstiness or other pathologies allegedly characteristic of Russian revolutionaries. Otherwise, we will have to turn not to historians, but to psychiatrists. By the way, don’t you think that it was not the radicals who started the attempts on the lives of the crown bearers? Justifying the removal of Ivan Antonovich from the throne, Peter III, Paul I, their successors created a dangerous precedent for the dynasty. After all, the illegal killings of monarchs in these cases were interpreted as “correct,” logical, and therefore seemingly legal. It is unlikely that after this one could seriously count on the fact that society would constantly adhere to the principle proclaimed by the ancient Romans: “What is allowed to Jupiter is not allowed to the bull.” But it's not only that. It would be interesting to know why individual assassination attempts carried out on specific occasions (Karakozov - the deception of peasants by the reform of 1861; Berezovsky - the defeat of the Polish uprising of 1863, Solovyov - the government’s reprisal against peaceful propagandists) became a matter of principle for the populists of the late 1870s, method of rebuilding the country?
Is it because the emperor and members of his government at one time did not want to listen to the just demands, not even the proposals, of society (including its revolutionary part)? After all, the same populist terror in the 1870s went through a number of stages and at some of them it could have been easily and painlessly stopped. Trepov suffered because he violated the laws of the Russian Empire; the highest police ranks - because the rules for keeping arrested and convicted persons were not observed in prisons and exiles; police agents and traitors were killed, since “Land and Freedom” and “Narodnaya Volya”, being underground organizations, were forced to defend themselves against failure, which threatened their members with many years of imprisonment in very remote places. Could the government at these stages have contributed to the end of revolutionary terror? Of course, it could, but it didn’t want to, didn’t dare, didn’t believe in the romantic idealism of its opponents. When terror became a method for the reorganization of society for the populists, no agreements between them and the authorities were any longer possible.
The reasons for the “hunt for the Tsar” or “for the red beast” organized by “Narodnaya Volya” were not only that the emperor was a unique figure, a symbol of something... Stop! Let's ask ourselves: what did Alexander II symbolize in the late 1870s? Besides everything else, he was also a symbol of the underdevelopment of Russian political life, its lack of civilization. For any country experiencing a period of radical reforms and rapid changes in all spheres of life, the most important thing in public life is the political center, and the most reasonable line of behavior is the policy of centrism. This is not at all because this policy is perfect and meets the interests of all sectors of society. The fact is that without the creation of a center protected by all public camps, an essentially unproductive clash between the extreme right and extreme left forces very quickly occurs. The most hopeless thing about this development of events is that even the seemingly final victory of one or the other does not lead to the establishment of calm in the country. Sooner or later, a “crushing” victory is followed by an equally crushing defeat, bringing the country a new political crisis.
On the other hand, true centrism cannot be throwing from side to side in attempts to connect the incompatible. It represents a search from the right and left for acceptable constructive solutions that can lead society to its intended goal and at the same time reconcile the warring parties in specific work. The political center becomes a shield against extremism, irrepressible social fantasies that are not and cannot be supported by sensible forces. In the political battles that raged in the empire, Alexander II tried to occupy an exceptional, unique position - he wanted to personify the center of public life, which was designed to absorb the actions of the extreme right and extreme left forces.
As a result, he was subjected to harsh and, as it turned out, deadly attacks from both sides. The political position, in contrast to the sacred post of the monarch, is by no means sacred, and Alexander Nikolaevich, having tried to become, in addition to the autocrat, also one of the political figures of Russia, actually became a target for his opponents. First targeted at figuratively this word, and then... And again we return to the personal life of our hero. His persistent desire to emphasize the rights of his human self, the desire to be seen not only as an autocrat, but also as a person, bore fruit. For wide sections of society, it has truly become closer, more understandable and, I would say, more accessible in every sense of the word. Time, of course, takes its toll. For many Decembrists, say, raising a hand against the monarch meant taking aim at something sacred, at least consecrated by centuries-old tradition. For the populists, such problems no longer existed, after all, half a century had passed, and what half a century! , distinguished from ordinary subjects...
Alexander Nikolaevich, of course, was not a doctrinaire; during the years of his reign he had to give up a lot and reconsider established views and positions. At the end of his life, the emperor seemed to be convinced that a person, no matter the level and scale of his personality or the post he occupied, could not alone be the political center of social forces. Even such a generally external thing as the gradual fragmentation of his own environment pushed him to this conclusion. Princess Yuryevskaya is difficult to compare with Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna; Shuvalov, Tolstoy, Plehve - with an inspired and professionally trained cohort of figures of the late 1850s - early 1860s.
The Emperor was changing. It seemed that in just a little while a means would be found to establish, if not an alliance, then normal civilized relations between government and society. It's not meant to be. The loneliness that surrounded Alexander Nikolaevich with three almost impenetrable rings may be more than one thing to blame for tragic death monarch, but it was precisely this that made the fate of this man unique.
Tsar Liberator. Tsar-Hangman. Unhappy king...
Notes
2. In addition to Alexander II and Grinevitsky, twenty people were injured from the explosion on the embankment of the Catherine Canal. Two of them died from their wounds.
3. In the early 1880s. both the government and the revolutionary camp found themselves at another crossroads. The authorities could try to do what Alexander II did not dare to do for so long - to bring the socio-economic and political order in the country into some kind of conformity. Another path involved a final return to the attempts of Nicholas I to stabilize the situation in the country using traditional authoritarian methods, which ultimately led to a distortion of the historical meaning of the transformations of the 1860-1870s. The Russian press also felt the urgency and turning point of the moment. In the editorial of "Moskovskie Vedomosti" dated January 1, 1881, the previous year was called "the year of crisis and transition... a year that did not say its word and will now pass on an unknown legacy to its successor." The legacy turned out to be so unpredictable that the Moskovskie Vedomosti journalist could hardly have imagined it even in a nightmare.
The revolutionary camp also had two options for further action. He could remain on his previous populist positions, trying to rouse the village to the socialist revolution. However, in 1882-1883, after the final defeat of the populist circles, this option turned out to be unviable. The second path was associated with changes in the ideological foundations of the radical movement, its tactics with a focus on the proletariat as the main force of the revolution. The choice of the government and revolutionary camps is known as well as its results, which brought neither prosperity nor peace to Russia.
4. Cursing revolutionaries for being revolutionaries, or demanding that revolutionary organizations be banned (if they are not trying to destroy the foundations of a proper civil society) is a completely useless exercise. The revolutionary movement is just the most acute manifestation of the clearly felt discontent of society, it is the most drastic reaction to the lack of rights of society, the blatant social insecurity of the masses, violation of individual rights, etc. It is possible to demand that the revolutionary movement take more or less adequate forms only if the country has a proper civilized political life. The Russia of Alexander II did not even begin to approach civil society, and therefore political terror turned out to be quite adequate to the framework of the system that existed in the state.
5. The greatest trouble from the rampant terror in Russia was that both government and revolutionary terror became a destructive force for the moral health of society. They merged into a single chain of increasing repressions and assassinations, accustoming people to blood, violence, cheapness human life. They stopped shocking people with their inhumanity and uncivilization. As a result, the sense of the uniqueness of the human person has atrophied, let alone the value of its rights...
Source Leonid Lyashenko. Alexander II, or the Story of Three Solitudes
MOSCOW, YOUNG GUARDS, 2002
In the final issues of 2013, dedicated to the 400th anniversary of the accession to the throne of the Romanov dynasty, we continue the conversation about the fate of the rulers from this dynasty.
On March 2, 1881, Archpriest John Yanyshev, later the teacher of Orthodoxy of Princess Alice of Hesse, the future Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, and then the rector of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, said the following words before the funeral service in St. Isaac's Cathedral in memory of the deceased Emperor Alexander II: “The Emperor not only died, but was also killed in his own capital... the martyr’s crown for His sacred Head was woven on Russian soil, among His subjects... This is what makes our grief unbearable, the illness of the Russian and Christian heart - incurable, our immeasurable misfortune is our eternal shame!
Emperor Alexander II (1818-1881) went down in Russian history as an outstanding reformer and Tsar Liberator. During his reign, such large-scale reforms as the abolition of serfdom, the establishment of zemstvos, reform of the judicial and military systems, limitation of censorship, and others were carried out. Russian empire significantly expanded its borders under him by annexing the Central Asian possessions, the North Caucasus and Far East. On the morning of March 1, 1881, having signed the so-called project. The “Zemstvo Constitution,” which allowed zemstvo self-government to participate in the preparation of reforms, the Tsar Liberator died at the hands of terrorists who allegedly acted in the interests of the peasants he liberated.
This murder was not the result of the first attempt on the life of the Tsar. Certain social ideas brought from the West in the middle of the 19th century captured the minds of people who called themselves revolutionaries or nihilists - as a rule, young, frivolous or mentally unstable, with incomplete education and no permanent occupation. With the help of underground agitation and terrorist acts, they persistently tried to cause anarchy in Russian society, and also, following the example of Western socialists and anarchists, repeatedly organized assassination attempts on members of imperial family and the sacred person of the king.
Depending on whether the actions of individual conspirators are combined into one terrorist act or not, there are six, seven or eight cases of attack on Alexander II. The first attempt was made in April 1866 by 25-year-old Dmitry Karakozov, who had recently been expelled first from Kazan and then from Moscow universities for participating in student riots. Considering the tsar personally responsible for all the misfortunes of Russia, he came to St. Petersburg with the obsession of killing Alexander II and shot him at the gate Summer Garden, but missed. By official version, his hand was pushed away by a peasant standing next to him. In memory of the miraculous deliverance of Emperor Alexander II, a chapel was built in the fence of the Summer Garden with the inscription on the pediment: “Do not touch My Anointed One,” which was demolished by the Bolshevik authorities in 1930.
Alexander II was shot the second time the following year, 1867, when he arrived at the World Exhibition in Paris. Then the French Emperor Napoleon III, who was riding with the Russian Tsar in an open carriage, allegedly remarked: “If an Italian shot, then it means at me; if he’s a Pole, then it’s in you.” The shooter was 20-year-old Pole Anton Berezovsky, who was taking revenge for the suppression of the Polish uprising by Russian troops in 1863. His pistol exploded from too strong a charge, and the bullet was deflected, hitting the horse of the horseman accompanying the crew.
In April 1879, the sovereign, who was taking his usual morning walk in the vicinity of the Winter Palace without guards or companions, was shot at by a member of the revolutionary society “Land and Freedom,” Alexander Solovyov, allegedly acting on his own initiative. Having good military training, Alexander II opened his overcoat wide and ran in zigzags, thanks to which four of Solovyov’s shots missed the intended target. He fired another, fifth shot at the gathered crowd during the arrest. However, the populist revolutionaries always cared little about possible accidental victims.
After the collapse of the Land and Freedom party in 1879, an even more radical terrorist organization called Narodnaya Volya was formed. Although the claims of this group of conspirators to be massive and express the will of the entire people were unfounded, and in fact they did not have any popular support, the task of regicide for the benefit of this notorious people was formulated by them as the main one. In November 1879, an attempt was made to blow up the imperial train. In order to avoid accidents and surprises, three terrorist groups were created, whose task was to lay mines along the route royal composition. The first group laid a mine near Odessa, but the royal train changed its route, traveling through Aleksandrovsk. The electric fuse circuit of the mine planted near Aleksandrovsky did not work. The third mine was waiting for the imperial motorcade near Moscow, but due to a breakdown of the luggage train, the royal train passed first, which the terrorists did not know about, and the explosion occurred under the carriage with the luggage.
The next plan of the regicide was to blow up one of the dining rooms of the Winter Palace, where the emperor's family dined. One of the Narodnaya Volya members, Stepan Khalturin, under the guise of a facing worker, carried dynamite into the basement under the dining room. The result of the explosion was dozens of killed and wounded soldiers who were in the guardhouse. Neither the emperor himself nor his family members were harmed.
To all the warnings about the impending new assassination attempt and recommendations not to leave the walls of the Winter Palace, Alexander II replied that he had nothing to fear, since his life was in the hands of God, thanks to whose help he survived previous attempts.
Meanwhile, the arrest of the leaders of Narodnaya Volya and the threat of liquidation of the entire conspiratorial group forced the terrorists to act without delay. On March 1, 1881, Alexander II leaves the Winter Palace for Manege. On that day, the Tsar, as usual during his trips, is surrounded by a personal escort: a non-commissioned officer of the Life Guards sits on the box, six Cossacks in magnificent colorful uniforms accompany the royal carriage. Behind the carriage are the sleighs of Colonel Dvorzhitsky and the chief of security, Captain Koch. In front and behind the royal carriage gallop horse-drawn Life Guards. It seems that the emperor's life is completely safe.
After the guards are relieved, the tsar goes back to the Winter Palace, but not through Malaya Sadovaya, which was mined by the Narodnaya Volya, but through the Catherine Canal, which completely ruins the plans of the conspirators.
The details of the operation are being hastily processed: four Narodnaya Volya members take up positions along the embankment of the Catherine Canal and wait for the signal to throw bombs at the royal carriage. Such a signal should be the wave of Sofia Perovskaya’s scarf. At 2:20 pm the royal cortege leaves for the embankment. Standing in the crowd, a young man with long light brown hair, Nikolai Rysakov, throws some small white bundle towards the royal carriage. A deafening explosion is heard, thick smoke covers everything for a moment. When the fog clears, a terrible picture appears to the eyes of those around: the carriage in which the tsar was sitting sat on its side and was badly damaged, and on the road two Cossacks and a boy from a bakery were writhing in pools of their own blood.
The royal coachman, without stopping, drove on, but the emperor, stunned, but not even wounded, ordered the carriage to stop and got out of it, swaying slightly. He approached Rysakov, who was already being held by two grenadiers of the Preobrazhensky regiment, saying to him: “What have you done, crazy?” The crowd, meanwhile, according to an eyewitness, wanted to tear the criminal into pieces, shouting: “Don’t touch me, don’t hit me, you unfortunate, misguided people!” At the sight of bombed, bloodied and dying people, Alexander II covered his face with his hands in horror. “Is Your Imperial Majesty not injured?” – asked one of his associates. "Thank God no!" - answered the monarch. To this Rysakov, grinning, said: “What? God bless? See if you made a mistake?” Not paying attention to his words, the sovereign approached the wounded boy, who, dying, was writhing in the snow. Nothing could be done, and the emperor, bowing, crossed the boy and walked along the channel grate to his crew. At that moment, the second Narodnaya Volya member, Ignatius Grinevitsky, a young man of 30, ran up to the walking monarch and threw his bomb right at the feet of the sovereign. The explosion was so strong that people on the other side of the canal fell into the snow. The maddened horses dragged what was left of the carriage. The smoke did not clear for three minutes.
What later met the eye, an eyewitness recalls, was difficult to describe: “Leaning on the canal grate, Tsar Alexander was reclining; his face was covered with blood, his hat, his overcoat were torn to pieces, and his legs were torn off almost to the knees. They are naked, and blood is gushing out of them. white snow... Opposite the monarch in almost the same position lay the regicide. About twenty seriously wounded people were scattered along the street. Some try to rise, but immediately fall back into the snow mixed with dirt and blood.” The blown up Tsar was placed in the sleigh of Colonel Dvorzhitsky. One of the officers held the severed legs up to reduce blood loss. Alexander II, losing consciousness, wanted to cross himself, but his hand did not give in; and he kept repeating: “It’s cold, it’s cold.” The Emperor’s brother, Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich, who arrived at the scene of the tragedy, asked with tears: “Do you recognize me, Sasha?” - and the king quietly answered: “Yes.” Then he said: “Please, hurry home... take me to the palace... I want to die there.” And then he added: “Cover me with a handkerchief,” and once again impatiently demanded to cover it.
People standing along the streets along which the sleigh with the mortally wounded king rode, bared their heads in horror and crossed themselves. While the doors were being opened at the entrance of the palace, where the bleeding monarch was brought, a wide ditch of blood formed around the sleigh. The Emperor was carried in his arms to his office; a bed was hastily brought there, and the first one was provided here health care. All this was, however, in vain. Severe loss of blood accelerated death, but even without this there would have been no way to save the sovereign. The office was filled with august members of the imperial family and high dignitaries.
“Some kind of indescribable horror was expressed on everyone’s face, they somehow forgot what happened and how, and saw only a terribly crippled monarch...” Here comes the Tsar’s confessor, Fr. Christmas with the Holy Sacrament, and everyone kneels.
At this time, real pandemonium began in front of the palace. Thousands of people stood waiting for information about the condition of their emperor. At 15:35, the imperial standard was lowered from the flagpole of the Winter Palace and a black flag was raised, notifying the population of St. Petersburg about the death of Emperor Alexander II. People, sobbing, knelt down, constantly crossed themselves and bowed to the ground.
The young Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, who was at the bedside of the dying emperor, described his feelings in those days: “At night, sitting on our beds, we continued to discuss the catastrophe of last Sunday and asked each other what would happen next? The image of the late Sovereign, bending over the body of a wounded Cossack and not thinking about the possibility of a second assassination attempt, did not leave us. We understood that something incommensurably greater than our loving uncle and courageous monarch had gone with him irrevocably into the past. Idyllic Russia with the Tsar-Father and his loyal people ceased to exist on March 1, 1881.”
In memory of the martyrdom of Alexander II, schools and charitable institutions were subsequently founded. At the site of his death in St. Petersburg, the Church of the Resurrection of Christ was erected.
The article was prepared by Yulia Komleva, Candidate of Historical Sciences
Literature
The truth about the death of Alexander II. From the notes of an eyewitness. Edition by Karl Malkomes. Stuttgart, 1912.
Lyashenko L. M. Tsar – Liberator: the life and deeds of Alexander II. M., 1994.
Alexander II. The tragedy of the reformer: People in the destinies of reforms, reforms in the destinies of people: Sat. articles. St. Petersburg, 2012.
Zakharova L.G. Alexander II // Russian autocrats. M., 1994.
Romanov B.S. The Emperor, who knew his fate, and Russia, which did not. St. Petersburg, 2012.
Assassination of Alexander II.
The eldest first of the grand duke, and from 1825 of the imperial couple Nicholas I and Alexandra Feodorovna (daughter of the Prussian king Frederick William III), Alexander received a good education.
Alexander II
His mentor was V.A. Zhukovsky, teacher - K.K. Merder, among the teachers - M.M. Speransky (legislation), K.I. Arsenyev (statistics and history), E.F. Kankrin (finance), F.I. Brunov (foreign policy).
Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky
Mikhail Nestorovich Speransky
The personality of the heir to the throne was formed under the influence of his father, who wanted to see in his son a “military man at heart,” and at the same time under the leadership of Zhukovsky, who sought to raise in the future monarch an enlightened man who would give his people reasonable laws, a monarch-legislator. Both of these influences left a deep mark on the character, inclinations, and worldview of the heir and were reflected in the affairs of his reign.
In the center of the lithograph is the heir to the Tsarevich Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich (future Emperor Alexander II), and at his feet is the Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich.
Artist Vasilievsky Alexander Alekseevich (1794 - after 1849)
Tsarevich Alexander Nikolaevich in cadet uniform
Tsarevich Alexander Nikolaevich in the uniform of the Ataman Regiment.
Having ascended the throne in 1855, he received a difficult legacy.
Not a single one of the cardinal issues of his father’s 30-year reign (peasant, eastern, Polish, etc.) was resolved, in Crimean War Russia was defeated. Not being a reformer by vocation or temperament, Alexander became one in response to the needs of the time as a man of sober mind and good will.
The first of his important decisions was the conclusion of the Paris Peace in March 1856.
Paris Congress of 1856
With the accession of Alexander, a “thaw” began in the socio-political life of Russia. On the occasion of his coronation in August 1856, he declared an amnesty for the Decembrists, Petrashevites, and participants in the Polish uprising of 1830-1831, suspended recruitment for three years, and in 1857 liquidated military settlements.
Coronation of Alexander II
Partisan detachment of Emilia Plater
Realizing the primary importance of resolving the peasant question, for four years (from the establishment of the Secret Committee to the adoption of the Manifesto on March 3, 1861) he showed unwavering will in striving to abolish serfdom.
Adhering to the “Bestsee option” of landless emancipation of peasants in 1857-1858, at the end of 1858 he agreed to the purchase of allotment land by peasants into ownership, that is, to a reform program developed by the liberal bureaucracy, together with like-minded people from among public figures (N.A. Milyutin , Ya.I. Rostovtsev, Yu.F. Samarin, V.A. Cherkassky, etc.).
With his support, the Zemstvo Regulations (1864) and City Regulations (1870), Judicial Charters (1864), military reforms of the 1860-1870s, reforms of public education, censorship, and the abolition of corporal punishment were adopted. Alexander II was unable to resist traditional imperial policies.
Decisive victories in Caucasian War were won in the first years of his reign
He gave in to the demands of moving into Central Asia (in 1865-1881, most of Turkestan became part of the Empire). After long resistance, he decided to go to war with Turkey (1877-1878).
After the suppression of the Polish uprising of 1863-1864 and the assassination attempt by D.V. Karakozov on his life in April 1866, Alexander II made concessions to the protective course, expressed in the appointment of D.A. to senior government posts. Tolstoy, F.F. Trepova, P.A. Shuvalova.
The first attempt on the life of Alexander II was made on April 4, 1866 during his walk in the Summer Garden. The shooter was 26-year-old terrorist Dmitry Karakozov. He shot almost point blank. But, fortunately, the peasant Osip Komissarov, who happened to be nearby, pulled away the killer’s hand.
Dmitry Vladimirovich Karakozov
Reforms continued, but sluggishly and inconsistently; almost all reform figures, with rare exceptions (for example, Minister of War D.A. Milyutin, who believed that “only consistent reforms can stop the revolutionary movement in Russia”), received resignations. At the end of his reign, Alexander was inclined to introduce limited public representation in Russia under the State Council.
Attempt by D.V. Karakozov on Alexander II
Art.Greener
Several attempts were made on Alexander II: D.V. Karakozov, Polish emigrant A. Berezovsky in 1867 in Paris, A.K. Solovyov in 1879 in St. Petersburg.
In 1867, the World Exhibition was to be held in Paris, to which Emperor Alexander II came. According to Berezovsky himself, the ideas of killing the Tsar and liberating Poland with this act arose in him from early childhood, but he made the immediate decision on June 1, when he was at the station in the crowd watching the meeting of Alexander II. On June 5 he bought for five francs double-barreled pistol and the next day, June 6, after breakfast, he went to seek a meeting with the king. At five o'clock in the afternoon, Berezovsky, near the Longchamp racecourse in the Bois de Boulogne, shot at Alexander II, who was returning from a military review (along with the tsar, his two sons, Vladimir Alexandrovich and Alexander Alexandrovich, were in the carriage, i.e. the future Emperor Alexander III, and also Emperor Napoleon III). The pistol exploded due to too strong a charge, as a result of which the bullet was deflected and hit the horse of the equestrian accompanying the crew. Berezovsky, whose hand was severely injured by the explosion, was immediately seized by the crowd. “I confess that I shot the emperor today during his return from the review,” he said after 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, having in mind the liberation of my homeland.”
Anton Iosifovich Berezovsky
The Sovereign Emperor deigned to leave the Winter Palace on April 2, at just after nine o'clock in the morning, for his usual morning walk and walked along Millionnaya, past the Hermitage, around the building of the Guards headquarters. From the corner of the palace, His Majesty walked 230 steps to the end of the headquarters building, along the sidewalk, on the right side of Millionnaya and to the Winter Canal; turning to the right, around the same headquarters building, along the Winter Canal embankment, the Emperor reached the Pevchesky Bridge, taking another 170 steps. Thus, the Sovereign Emperor walked 400 steps from the corner of the palace to the singing bridge, which required an ordinary walk of about five minutes. At the corner of the Winter Canal and the square of the Guards headquarters there is a policeman’s booth, that is, a policeman’s room for overnight stay, with a stove and a warehouse for a small amount of firewood. The policeman himself was not in the booth at that time; he was at his post not far away, in the square. Turning around the main headquarters building, from the Winter Canal and the Pevchesky Bridge, to the Alexander Column, that is, back to the palace, the Sovereign Emperor took another fifteen steps along the narrow sidewalk of the headquarters.
Here, standing opposite the fourth window of the headquarters, the Emperor noticed a tall, thin, dark-haired man with a dark brown mustache, about 32 years old, walking towards Him, dressed in a decent civilian coat and a cap with a civilian cockade, and both hands of this passer-by were in his pockets coat. Paramedic Maiman, standing at the gate of the headquarters building, shouted at a passerby who dared to go straight to meet His Majesty, but he, not paying attention to the warning, silently walked further in the same direction. At 6-7 steps, the villain quickly took a revolver from his coat pocket and shot at the Tsar almost point-blank.
Assassination attempt by A.K. Solovyov on Alexander II
The villain's movements did not escape His Majesty's attention. The Sovereign Emperor, leaning forward a little, then deigned to turn at a right angle and with quick steps walked across the site of the headquarters of the guard troops, towards the entrance of Prince Gorchakov. The criminal rushed after the retreating Monarch and after Him fired three more shots, one after the other. The second bullet hit the cheek and exited at the temple of a civil gentleman, a native of the Baltic provinces, named Miloshkevich, who was following the Tsar.
Solovyov's assassination attempt on Emperor Alexander II on April 2, 1879. April 2, 1879, attempt to assassinate the Tsar by Solovyov. Drawing by G. Meyer.
The wounded Miloshkevich, bleeding profusely, rushed at the villain who was shooting at the sacred person of the Sovereign Emperor. Having fired two more shots, and the bullet hit the wall of the headquarters building, the villain saw that his four shots at point-blank range did not hit the Emperor, and rushed to run across the square of the Guards headquarters, heading towards the sidewalk of the opposite building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Fleeing, the villain threw off his cap and coat, apparently to hide unrecognized in the crowd. He was overtaken by a young soldier of the 6th company of the Preobrazhensky Regiment and a retired sergeant-major guardsman Rogozin, who were walking by chance, not far behind the Emperor. They were the first to grab and throw the criminal to the ground. While defending himself, the criminal bit the hand of one woman, the wife of a court servant, who, along with others, rushed at the villain. The people who came running tried to tear the villain to pieces. The police arrived in time and saved him from the hands of the indignant crowd and, surrounding him, took him under arrest.
The Emperor maintained complete calm of spirit. He took off his cap and reverently made the sign of the cross. Meanwhile, the military men living there ran out of the headquarters building in what they were, without coats and caps. senior officials, and the Emperor was handed a private carriage that accidentally arrived at the entrance; but the Emperor got into it only when the villain had already been captured and disarmed. Having asked the palace police officer, non-commissioned officer Nedelin, whether the criminal had been arrested and whether he was safe, the Tsar got into the carriage and slowly returned to the palace, among the enthusiastic crowd that saw Him off. The bullet hit the headquarters building, knocking off the plaster down to the bricks. Miloshkevich was first taken to the palace for dressing, then placed in the court hospital (Konyushennaya Street), and he was provided with all the necessary benefits with remarkable speed.
The passage of Emperor Alexander II through the streets of St. Petersburg after the unsuccessful assassination attempt by Solovyov.
The criminal was immediately tied up, put into a random carriage and sent to the mayor's house, on Gorokhovaya Street. He was brought there, as they say, in an almost completely unconscious state. The senior police doctor, Mr. Batalin, who was immediately invited, at first mistook this condition of the criminal for arsenic poisoning, especially since he began to have terrible vomiting, as a result of which milk was poured into the poisoned man’s mouth; but other doctors arrived at the same time, including famous expert Poisons, former professor of the Medical-Surgical Academy, Privy Councilor Trapp, identified potassium cyanide poisoning, which is why, without wasting time, he was given the appropriate antidote. It is not known exactly when the criminal took the poison, before or after the shots. There is reason to believe that he swallowed the poison a few moments before the shots, or immediately after the first shot, because after the 4th shot the criminal staggered, and after the fifth he began to foam at the mouth and have convulsions. During the search, another ball of the same poison was found in the criminal’s pocket, enclosed in a nut shell and covered in wax. Potassium cyanide, belonging to the group of hydrocyanic acid, the poison of bitter almonds, is one of the most terrible poisons, which can kill a person in a few moments due to paralysis of the heart and lungs. The undergarment of the attacker did not at all correspond to the outer garment. He was wearing a black shabby frock coat, the same trousers and a dirty White shirt, but for that the outer dress was distinguished by its impeccable appearance. The cap that was on his head is completely new, and the elegant gloves, they say, were not made here. Several rubles were found in his wallet and a copy of a St. Petersburg German newspaper in his pocket.
Alexander Konstantinovich Solovyov
The executive committee of the Narodnaya Volya party put an end to political activity the emperor and in his life. He also put an end to the hopes of the Russian people for the introduction of a constitutional monarchy in the country.
What did the Narodnaya Volya party provide? It was a centralized, deeply secret organization. Most of its members were professional revolutionaries who were in an illegal situation.
The party charter obliged its members to be prepared to endure hardships, prison, and hard labor. They made a commitment to sacrifice their lives. Peter Kropotkin wrote: “It was believed that only moral developed people can participate in the organization. Before accepting a new member, his character was discussed at length. Only those who did not raise any doubts were accepted. Personal shortcomings were not considered minor.”
The activities of Narodnaya Volya were divided into propaganda and terrorist. At the first stage, propaganda work was carried out great importance, but soon more and more attention began to be paid to terror.
“People's Will” played a certain role in the social movement of Russia, but, having moved from political struggle to conspiracy and individual terror, it made a gross miscalculation. The Narodnaya Volya did not set themselves the goal of creating an independent workers' party, but they were the first in Russia to begin organizing revolutionary circles among the workers.
In the fight against the revolutionary movement, the government either tried to appeal to society for support, or placed this society under sweeping suspicion. Liberal press organs were severely punished. The inconsistent and chaotic actions of the authorities did not bring calm. They aroused opposition even in previously well-intentioned noble circles.
Meanwhile, the growing internal political crisis in the country raised hopes for the success of Narodnaya Volya, which turned political murder into the main weapon of its struggle. The death sentence, conditionally passed on the Tsar at the Lipetsk Congress, was finally approved on August 26, 1879, and in the fall of 1879 the executive committee of Narodnaya Volya began to implement its plan.
8 assassination attempts were prepared against Alexander II. The first terrorist attack was attempted by D. Karakozov near the Summer Garden on April 4, 1866. On April 2, 1879, during the emperor’s walk along Palace Square, A. Soloviev fired five shots almost point-blank.
In the same year, three attempts were made to crash the royal train.
The explosion in the Winter Palace (18:22; February 5, 1880) is a terrorist act directed against the Russian Emperor Alexander II, organized by members of the People's Will movement. Khalturin lived in the basement of the Winter Palace, where he carried up to 30 kg of dynamite. The bomb was detonated using a fuse. Directly above his room there was a guardhouse, and even higher, on the second floor, there was a dining room in which Alexander II was going to have lunch. The Prince of Hesse, brother of Empress Maria Alexandrovna, was expected for lunch, but his train was half an hour late. The explosion caught the emperor, who was meeting the prince, in the Small Field Marshal's Hall, far from the dining room. A dynamite explosion destroyed the ceiling between the ground and first floors. The floors of the palace guardhouse collapsed (modern Hermitage Hall No. 26). The double brick vaults between the first and second floors of the palace withstood the impact of the blast wave. No one was injured in the mezzanine, but the explosion lifted the floors, knocked out many window panes, and the lights went out. In the dining room or Yellow Room of the Third Spare Half of the Winter Palace (modern Hermitage Hall No. 160, the decoration has not been preserved), a wall cracked, a chandelier fell on the set table, and everything was covered with lime and plaster.
Stepan Khalturin (1856-1882)
As a result of the explosion in the lower floor of the palace, 11 servicemen who were on guard that day in the palace of the lower ranks of the Life Guards of the Finnish Regiment, stationed on Vasilyevsky Island, were killed, and 56 people were injured. Despite their own wounds and injuries, the surviving sentries remained in their places and even upon the arrival of the called shift from the Life Guards of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, they did not give up their places to the newcomers until they were replaced by their distributing corporal, who was also wounded in the explosion. All those killed were heroes of the recently ended Russian-Turkish war.
Explosion in the Winter Palace 02/05/1880
In the autumn of 1880, the hunt for the emperor continued with amazing persistence. The main organizer of the preparation of the assassination attempt was Andrei Zhelyabov, but on February 27 he was arrested and he was unable to take part in the last terrorist act.
Andrey Ivanovich Zhelyabov
The assassination attempt on Alexander II on March 1, 1881 was planned as follows: an explosion on Malaya Sadovaya; if it did not produce results, then four throwers would have to throw bombs at the Tsar’s crew. If the tsar had remained alive after this, Zhelyabov, armed with a dagger, would have stabbed him.
The king's movements were constantly monitored. S. Perovskaya recorded his results. When turning onto the Catherine Canal, the coachman held the horses. Perovskaya noted that this was the most convenient place for an explosion. Mikhailov, Grinevitsky, Emelyanov were appointed as perpetrators of the terrorist act.
Timofey Mikhailovich Mikhailov Ivan Paiteleymonovich Emelyanov
Usually, preparations for the Tsar’s passage began at 12 noon, by which time mounted gendarmes appeared at both ends of Malaya Sadovaya. Traffic froze, traffic on the street stopped. However, on March 1, the tsar, influenced by rumors about the dangers of this route, went to the traditional Sunday review of guard units at the Mikhailovsky Manege another way - along the Catherine Canal. Perovskaya reacted quickly to the changed situation and gathered the throwers in one of the confectionery shops on Nevsky Prospekt. Having received instructions, they took up new positions. Perovskaya took a place on the opposite side of the channel in order to give a signal for action at the right moment.
Sofia Lvovna Perovskaya
The verdict describes this event as follows:
“... When the sovereign’s carriage, accompanied by a regular convoy, passed by the garden of the Mikhailovsky Palace, at a distance of about 50 fathoms (11 meters) from around the corner of Inzhenernaya Street, an explosive shell was thrown under the horses of the carriage. The explosion of this shell injured some people and destroyed the rear wall of the carriage, but the sovereign himself remained unharmed.
The man who threw the shell, although he ran along the canal embankment, towards Nevsky Prospekt, was detained a few fathoms away and initially identified himself as the tradesman Glazov, and then revealed that he was the tradesman Rysakov.
Nikolai Ivanovich Rysakov
Meanwhile, the sovereign, having ordered the coachman to stop the horses, deigned to get out of the carriage and go to the detained criminal.
When the king was returning back to the site of the explosion along the canal panel, a second explosion followed, the consequence of which was to inflict several extremely severe wounds on the king, with both legs below the knees being crushed...
Peasant Pyotr Pavlov testified that the second explosive shell was thrown unknown person, standing leaning against the embankment grating, he waited for the king to approach at a distance of no more than two arshins and threw something on the panel, which caused a second explosion.
The man indicated by Pavlov was picked up at the crime scene in an unconscious state and, when taken to the court hospital of the Stable Department, died there 8 hours later. During the autopsy, he was found to have many wounds caused by the explosion, which, according to experts, should have occurred at a very close distance, no more than three steps from the deceased.
This man, having come to his senses somewhat before his death and answered the question about his name - “I don’t know,” lived, as was discovered by the inquiry and judicial investigation, on a false passport in the name of the Vilna tradesman Nikolai Stepanovich Elnikov and among his accomplices was called Mikhail Ivanovich and Kotik (I.I. Grinevitsky)."
Few monarchs in history have been honored with the epithet “liberator.” Alexander Nikolaevich Romanov deserved such an honor. Alexander II is also called the Tsar-Reformer, because he managed to get off the ground many old problems of the state that threatened riots and uprisings.
Childhood and youth
The future emperor was born in April 1818 in Moscow. The boy was born on a holiday, Bright Wednesday, in the Kremlin, in the Bishop's House of the Chudov Monastery. Here, on that festive morning, the entire Imperial family gathered to celebrate Easter. In honor of the boy’s birth, the silence of Moscow was broken by a 201-volley cannon salute.
Archbishop of Moscow Augustine baptized the baby Alexander Romanov on May 5 in the church of the Chudov Monastery. His parents were Grand Dukes at the time of their son's birth. But when the grown-up heir turned 7 years old, his mother Alexandra Feodorovna and father became the imperial couple.
The future Emperor Alexander II received an excellent education at home. His main mentor, responsible not only for training, but also for education, was. Archpriest Gerasim Pavsky himself taught sacred history and the Law of God. Academician Collins taught the boy the intricacies of arithmetic, and Karl Merder taught the basics of military affairs.
Alexander Nikolaevich had no less famous teachers in legislation, statistics, finance and foreign policy. The boy grew up very smart and quickly mastered the sciences taught. But at the same time, in his youth, like many of his peers, he was amorous and romantic. For example, during a trip to London, he fell in love with a young British girl.
Interestingly, after a couple of decades, it turned into the most hated European ruler for the Russian Emperor Alexander II.
The reign and reforms of Alexander II
When Alexander Nikolaevich Romanov reached adulthood, his father introduced him to the main state institutions. In 1834, the Tsarevich entered the Senate, and the following year - into the Holy Synod, and in 1841 and 1842 Romanov became a member of the State Council and the Committee of Ministers.
In the mid-1830s, the heir made a long familiarization trip around the country and visited 29 provinces. In the late 30s he visited Europe. And it was also very successful military service and in 1844 became a general. He was entrusted with the guards infantry.
The Tsarevich headed military educational institutions and chaired the Secret Committees on Peasant Affairs in 1846 and 1848. He delves quite well into the problems of the peasants and understands that changes and reforms are long overdue.
The outbreak of the Crimean War of 1853-56 becomes a serious test for the future sovereign on his maturity and courage. After martial law was declared in the St. Petersburg province, Alexander Nikolaevich assumed command of all the troops of the capital.
Alexander II, having ascended the throne in 1855, received a difficult legacy. During his 30 years of rule, his father failed to resolve any of the many pressing and long-standing issues of the state. In addition, the country's difficult situation was aggravated by the defeat in the Crimean War. The treasury was empty.
It was necessary to act decisively and quickly. Foreign policy Alexander II's goal was to use diplomacy to break through the tight ring of blockade that had closed around Russia. The first step was the conclusion of the Paris Peace in the spring of 1856. The conditions accepted by Russia cannot be called very favorable, but the weakened state could not dictate its will. The main thing is that they managed to stop England, which wanted to continue the war until the complete defeat and dismemberment of Russia.
That same spring, Alexander II visited Berlin and met with King Frederick William IV. Frederick was the emperor's maternal uncle. They managed to conclude a secret “dual alliance” with him. The foreign policy blockade of Russia was over.
Domestic policy Alexandra II turned out to be no less successful. The long-awaited “thaw” has arrived in the life of the country. At the end of the summer of 1856, on the occasion of the coronation, the tsar granted amnesty to the Decembrists, Petrashevites, and participants in the Polish uprising. He also suspended recruitment for another 3 years and liquidated military settlements.
The time has come to resolve the peasant question. Emperor Alexander II decided to abolish serfdom, this ugly relic that stood in the way of progress. The sovereign chose the “Baltsee option” of landless emancipation of peasants. In 1858, the Tsar agreed to the reform program developed by the liberals and public figures. According to the reform, peasants received the right to purchase the land allocated to them as their own.
The great reforms of Alexander II turned out to be truly revolutionary at that time. He supported the Zemstvo Regulations of 1864 and the City Regulations of 1870. The Judicial Statutes of 1864 were put into effect and the military reforms of the 1860s and 70s were adopted. Reforms took place in public education. Corporal punishment, which was shameful for a developing country, was finally abolished.
Alexander II confidently continued the traditional line of imperial policy. In the first years of his reign, he won victories in the Caucasian War. Successfully advanced in Central Asia, annexing most of Turkestan to the territory of the state. In 1877-78, the tsar decided to go to war with Turkey. He also managed to fill the treasury, increasing the total income of 1867 by 3%. This was done by selling Alaska to the United States.
But in last years During the reign of Alexander II, the reforms “stalled.” Their continuation was sluggish and inconsistent. The emperor dismissed all the main reformers. At the end of his reign, the Tsar introduced limited public representation in Russia under the State Council.
Some historians believe that the reign of Alexander II, for all its advantages, had a huge disadvantage: the tsar pursued a “Germanophile policy” that did not meet the interests of the state. The monarch was in awe of the Prussian king - his uncle, and in every possible way contributed to the creation of a united militaristic Germany.
A contemporary of the tsar, chairman of the Committee of Ministers Pyotr Valuev, wrote in his diaries about the strong nervous disorder sovereign in the last years of his life. Romanov was on the verge nervous breakdown, looked tired and irritated. “Crown half-ruin” - such an unflattering epithet given by Valuev to the emperor, accurately explained his condition.
“In an era where strength is needed,” the politician wrote, “obviously, one cannot count on it.”
Nevertheless, in the first years of his reign, Alexander II managed to do a lot for the Russian state. And he really deserved the epithets “Liberator” and “Reformer”.
Personal life
The emperor was a passionate man. He has many novels to his credit. In his youth, he had an affair with his maid of honor Borodzina, whom his parents urgently married off. Then another novel, and again with the maid of honor Maria Trubetskoy. And the connection with the maid of honor Olga Kalinovskaya turned out to be so strong that the Tsarevich even decided to abdicate the throne for the sake of marrying her. But his parents insisted on breaking off this relationship and marrying Maximilianna of Hesse.
However, the marriage with, nee Princess Maximiliana Wilhelmina Augusta Sophia Maria of Hesse-Darmstadt, was a happy one. 8 children were born there, 6 of whom were sons.
Emperor Alexander II mortgaged the favorite summer residence of the last Russian tsars, Livadia, for his wife, who was sick with tuberculosis, by purchasing the land along with the estate and vineyards from the daughters of Count Lev Pototsky.
Maria Alexandrovna died in May 1880. She left a note containing words of gratitude to her husband for a happy life together.
But the monarch was not a faithful husband. The personal life of Alexander II was a constant source of gossip at court. Some favorites gave birth to illegitimate children from the sovereign.
An 18-year-old maid of honor managed to firmly capture the heart of the emperor. The Emperor married his longtime lover the same year his wife died. It was a morganatic marriage, that is, concluded with a person of non-royal origin. The children from this union, and there were four of them, could not become heirs to the throne. It is noteworthy that all the children were born at a time when Alexander II was still married to his first wife.
After the tsar married Dolgorukaya, the children received legal status and a princely title.
Death
During his reign, Alexander II was assassinated several times. The first assassination attempt occurred after the suppression of the Polish uprising in 1866. It was committed in Russia by Dmitry Karakozov. The second is next year. This time in Paris. Polish emigrant Anton Berezovsky tried to kill the Tsar.
A new attempt was made at the beginning of April 1879 in St. Petersburg. In August of the same year, the executive committee of Narodnaya Volya sentenced Alexander II to death. After this, the Narodnaya Volya members intended to blow up the emperor’s train, but mistakenly blew up another train.
The new attempt turned out to be even bloodier: several people died in the Winter Palace after the explosion. As luck would have it, the emperor entered the room later.
To protect the sovereign, the Supreme Administrative Commission was created. But she did not save Romanov’s life. In March 1881, a bomb was thrown at the feet of Alexander II by Narodnaya Volya member Ignatius Grinevitsky. The king died from his wounds.
It is noteworthy that the assassination attempt took place on the day when the emperor decided to launch the truly revolutionary constitutional project of M. T. Loris-Melikov, after which Russia was supposed to follow the path of the constitution.