The Assassination of Tsar Alexander II
Radicalism and Revolution Confront the Russian Autocracy
Jan 5, 2009
Tsar Alexander II was murdered by an assassin’s bomb March 1, 1881, just days after he agreed to sign a Manifesto liberalizing government with the creation of a State Council. This was the seventh attempt by members of the People’s Will (Narodnaia Volia). Rather than achieving revolution and reform, the assassination of Alexander II brought to the throne his reactionary son, Alexander III under whose autocratic leadership both reform and revolution would be ruthlessly eliminated.
Revolutionary Populism and the People’s Will
Emerging out of a rural populist movement, Land and Liberty, members of the People’s Will saw the path to reform through violence, beginning with the murder of the Tsar. Numbering no more than 40 or 50 out of a total population of fifty million, the People’s Will carried out a series of attempted assassinations and bombings, turning the Russian state into an armed camp.
Under General Loris-Melikov, a Supreme Committee was established to deal with the crisis. Loris-Melikov, himself a victim of an attempted assassination, reformed the state security apparatus but also reformed provincial government. It was Melikov who convinced Alexander II to introduce a limited form of elective representation.
A small faction within the “Executive Committee” of the People’s Will, led by Alexander Zheliabov and Sophia Perovskaia, carried out two significant bombings. Attempting to blow up the Imperial train traveling from St. Petersburg to Moscow, the terrorists only succeeded in destroying several cars of the Tsar’s baggage train at Kursky Station in Moscow. The Imperial family was unharmed.
A spectacular attempt involved blowing up the Winter Palace dining room at a time when the Imperial family was thought to be dinning. However, due to unforeseen circumstances, the family arrived late, descending the grand staircase as the bomb detonated.
The Tsar Emancipator and Reformer
Alexander II became Tsar in 1855 at the end of the Crimean War. Unlike his father Nicolas I, known as the “Iron Tsar,” Alexander II embarked on a series of military and social reforms that included the emancipation of serfs, the abolition of corporal punishment, the institution of juries, and the establishment of equal justice. Alexander enlarged Russia’s domains and enhanced her prestige internationally.
At the same time, Alexander was an enigma, carrying on a long affair with the Princess Catherine Dolgorouky, many years younger than the Tsar. The affair was well known but became a matter of imperial scandal after the death of the Empress Marie and Alexander secretly married Catherine. Catherine and their children were already living in the Winter Palace, to the consternation of the heir, Tsarevich Alexander.
The People’s Will, influenced by the anarchism of Mikhail Bakunin and the ultra-revolutionary writings of Sergei Nechaev (Catechism of the Revolutionary), got their opportunity on March 1, 1881 at the Ekaterinskii Canal in St. Petersburg. By a mere chance the Tsar’s entourage had taken a detour to the Winter Palace. This decision brought the Tsar’s carriage to the conspirators, who could not believe their luck. One of the assassins threw a bomb at the carriage, bringing it to a stop.
Ignaty Grinevitskii, watching the Tsar leave the carriage to attend to the wounded Cossack escort, threw a second bomb toward the Tsar. The explosion shattered the Tsar’s legs and ripped open his abdomen. Mortally wounded, he was taken to the palace to die. Perhaps the most liberal of the autocrats, Alexander II was assassinated by revolutionaries that rejected imperial reforms as dangerous to their own radical programs.
Sources:
Edward Crankshaw, The Shadow of the Winter Palace: The Drift to Revolution 1825-1917 (Penguin Books, 1976)
Virginia Cowles, The Russian Dagger: Cold War in the Days of the Czars (Harper & Row, 1969)
David MacKenzie, Violent Solutions: Revolutions, Nationalism, and Secret Societies in Europe to 1918 University Press of America, 1996)
W. E. Mosse, Alexander II and the Modernization of Russia (Collier Books, 1962)
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