L | A (Translated with ChatGPT)
By Józef Krzyk
The assassins of Tsar Alexander II anticipated that their act would serve as a catalyst for revolution in Russia. Their expectations were misguided. Nevertheless, the tsar's death carried significant and unforeseen consequences.
The Polish assassin Ignacy Hryniewiecki faced a macabre retribution from the authorities—his severed head was placed in a jar of alcohol and displayed in the lobby of the police headquarters in St. Petersburg.
On March 13, 1881, the Emperor of All Russia, as he did every Sunday, departed at 12:30 PM for the Mikhailovsky Manege to review the parade of soldiers from the St. Petersburg garrison.
An hour later, the procession returned along the same route to the Winter Palace. Traveling in a covered carriage escorted by six Cossacks, the Tsar decided to take a break for tea at the palace of Grand Duchess Catherine Mikhailovna. After an hour, he resumed his journey along the Catherine Canal.
In two sledges following the carriage traveled the head of the security detail, Captain Koch, and the police chief, Colonel Ivan Dvorzhitsky. That morning, Dvorzhitsky had tried to persuade Count Alexander Adlerberg, who oversaw the emperor's security, to cancel the trip to the Manege.
Dvorzhitsky was aware of police reports indicating that revolutionaries from the Narodnaya Volya (People's Will) organization were planning another attempt on the tsar's life. They had already tried several times, with only some conspirators being apprehended.
Alexander II: A Reckless Monarch
Therefore, when Dvorzhitsky heard a deafening explosion near the Horse Guards Bridge, he immediately realized what had happened.
A young blond man in a coat had thrown a small bomb under the carriage, and the shrapnel killed one of the Cossacks, severely wounded another, and injured three passersby. However, the tsar—although the rear part of the carriage was torn apart—was not even scratched.
The attacker tried to flee, but his escape was thwarted by a laborer tinkering nearby despite it being Sunday, who tripped him. When the police apprehended the would-be assassin, he shouted something toward the gathering crowd. Dvorzhitsky immediately understood that this was not the end—that there had to be a second attacker nearby!
Meanwhile, the tsar stepped out of the carriage to confront his would-be murderer. Dvorzhitsky pleaded in vain for the monarch to leave the scene immediately. His efforts achieved only a partial success: Alexander was surrounded by a cordon of Cossacks, joined by soldiers returning from the parade.
They were standing near the crater left by the first bomb when a young man in the crowd threw an identical package directly at the emperor’s feet. The blast severely mangled Alexander’s legs and abdomen, but he remained conscious long enough to order himself taken to the palace. He died at half-past three in the same study where, years earlier, he had signed the manifesto granting freedom to the serfs.
The explosion of the bomb thrown by Ignacy Hryniewiecki
The first bomb thrown on March 13, 1881, damaged the tsar's carriage. Two years later, Tsar Alexander III ordered the construction of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ on this site, which the residents of St. Petersburg refer to as the "Church on the Blood." It narrowly escaped demolition during the Stalinist era.
WHO WAS IGNACY HRYNIEWIECKI?
He came from a Polish noble family in Podlasie and became involved in anti-Tsarist activities when he was a student at the prestigious Technological Institute in St. Petersburg.
In response to his Polish peers, who criticized him for his involvement in the Russian Narodnaya Volya, he said: "Let us help the Russians to abolish despotism, and on its ruins, with the help of our Russian friends, we will rebuild a free Poland."
A Ruler Who Offered Hope
No 19th-century tsar left behind as many reforms, even though it initially seemed unlikely.
Tsar Nicholas I, known as the "Gendarme of Europe" and Alexander's father, raised him under strict discipline. When the heir to the throne turned 18, he sent him on a journey across the empire and later through Western Europe, giving Alexander a clear understanding of how far Russia lagged behind modern nations.
The weaknesses of the tsarist state were laid bare during the Crimean War (1853–1856), fought against Turkey, France, and Great Britain, which Russia lost. When Alexander ascended the throne in 1855 following his father's death, his first task was to extricate the country from the conflict. Many placed great hopes for reform in the coronation of the new tsar, and they were not disappointed.
Alexander pardoned the Decembrists who had been in exile for 30 years, reduced military service from 25 to 15 years, and reformed the judicial system. Defendants were granted the right to legal defense, judges became independent and irremovable, and trials were made public. The tsar prohibited corporal punishment in the military and prisons.
Most notably, on February 19, 1861, he signed the manifesto emancipating the serfs. Subjects called him the Liberator, the Peasants' Tsar, and Alexander the Great.
However, the period of reform soon gave way to retrenchment. Student rights were curtailed, and access to higher education for youth from poorer families was blocked. When protests erupted, the tsar ordered them to be brutally suppressed, with some students being exiled to Siberia.
Overnight, he became an enemy in the eyes of many subjects. From that point on, no achievements—victorious wars, territorial expansion, the suppression of the January Uprising, or the seemingly advantageous sale of Alaska to the United States—could repair his reputation.
In many ways, he laid the groundwork for the assassination that would occur along the Catherine Canal.
How to Change Russia?
The terrorists’ reasoning was straightforward: it was easier to kill the tsar than to overthrow the system. The assassination, they believed, would force reforms upon his successors, ultimately achieving the goal of a new order.
The first to attempt to apply this principle was Sergey Nechayev—a mix of revolutionary and mythomaniac.
He created an organization of like-minded individuals and, to bind them more tightly, orchestrated the murder of one of their own—student Ivan Ivanov. In his great novel Demons, Fyodor Dostoevsky portrayed Nechayev as Pyotr Verkhovensky. The tsar, on the other hand, sentenced Nechayev to life imprisonment in a fortress.
Through his own "perestroika," Alexander unintentionally inspired students from noble families to dream of liberating the people, even though the people themselves were largely uninterested in revolutionary action. In 1879, the revolutionary organization Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will) was formed.
Alexander II
The Tsar of Russia Is Not Untouchable
The first assassination attempt on Alexander was carried out by a man inspired by someone similar to Nechayev.
Nikolai Ishutin, the son of a merchant, gathered a small group upon arriving in Moscow with the aim of sparking a revolution, with the signal being an attack on the tsar. While these grand plans were still just talk, Ishutin's half-brother, Dmitry Karakozov, traveled to St. Petersburg to turn words into action.
On April 16, 1866, Karakozov fired a shot at Alexander while the tsar was strolling through the Summer Garden. However, he missed because someone jostled his arm. The would-be assassin was quickly subdued and arrested. Karakozov paid for his actions with his life, while Nikolai Ishutin was sentenced to life imprisonment.
While thanksgiving prayers were offered in churches for the tsar's survival, one of the few who grasped the significance of the failed assassination was Fyodor Dostoevsky. The tsar had been saved, but the attempt stripped him of his aura of invulnerability. "If someone has already fired once, successors will surely follow," the writer reasoned.
The second assassination attempt on the tsar was carried out by Antoni Berezowski, a Pole and participant in the January Uprising. On June 6, 1867, during the tsar’s visit to France, Berezowski fired at Alexander as he rode through the Bois de Boulogne in an open carriage alongside Emperor Napoleon III. However, he missed his target.
The tsar was outraged that Berezowski was not sentenced to death but instead received life imprisonment, which he served in exile in New Caledonia. Offended, Alexander returned home convinced that Russia should align more closely with Prussia rather than France. Three years later, when Prussia went to war with France, he did not lift a finger to assist the French.
New Caledonia – contemporary view
The Anointed One Flees in Zigzags
Several subsequent attempts to assassinate the tsar also ended in failure. Perhaps the most dangerous attempt occurred on April 14, 1879, nearly at the steps of the Winter Palace. Alexander was returning from his morning walk when a young man passed by and saluted him. The tsar instinctively turned his head, and that motion saved his life—the bullet passed just millimeters from him.
The young man who had saluted fired, and Alexander immediately began to flee. He zigzagged toward the palace while the assassin fired at least five more shots at the tsar before Captain Koch, head of the tsar's security, knocked him down with a saber.
The would-be assassin turned out to be Alexander Soloviev, the son of a medical assistant who had recently been studying at the university at the expense of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, the wife of Alexander's youngest brother. He was a member of Narodnaya Volya. He volunteered to kill the tsar and bought an American-made, large-caliber revolver for this purpose.
He was highly determined and assumed he would not survive the assassination. He had a cyanide capsule in his mouth, but he never had the chance to bite into it. On May 28, he was hanged. After this attempt, the tsar stopped going for walks and no longer ventured anywhere without an escort.
The General's Daughter Planted Bombs
In late 1879, a group, of which Soloviev was a member, planted an explosive device beneath the railway tracks on which a Tsarist train, returning from Crimea to the capital, was expected to travel. Uncertain until the last moment about the monarch's chosen route, the assassins positioned themselves at two separate locations.
In the Ukrainian town of Aleksandrovsk, posing as merchants, the conspirators purchased land right next to the tracks and, without interference, planted explosives beneath them.
The derailed train was supposed to plunge into a deep ravine. However, the bomb did not explode because the mastermind of the operation, Andrei Zhelyabov, had improperly connected the wires.
It wasn't until December 1st, on the outskirts of Moscow, that everything went according to plan. The second operation was led by Zhelyabov's lover, Sophia Perovskaya, the daughter of a former governor-general of St. Petersburg. The explosive detonated under the speeding train, but it turned out that the Tsar's train had passed earlier.
No one was killed in the blast—only fruit was being transported. The conspirators, however, remained at large and were preparing their next operation.
Assassination Attempt at the Winter Palace
The next attempt occurred on February 5, 1880, when Stepan Khalturin, also a member of Narodnaya Volya, carried out the attack. He had previously taken a job as a carpenter at the Winter Palace and, using this opportunity, smuggled over one hundred kilograms of dynamite inside.
The bomb he constructed was set to explode while the Tsar and his guests were having dinner. It was detonated, severely damaging the palace walls, but Alexander had not yet descended to the dining room. The massacre claimed the lives of nearly 70 guards and servants.
Khalturin managed to escape. He was caught and hanged only two years later.
The Bomb Under the Bridge
The Tsar never learned about the sixth assassination attempt on his life. It was carried out by the same members of Narodnaya Volya who had previously derailed the train carrying fruit.
On August 17, 1880, they planted dynamite beneath a bridge near the Winter Palace, which was frequently crossed by the Tsar’s carriage. Once again, Zhelyabov's operation ended in failure. Although the wires were correctly connected, the conspirator assigned to detonate the charge overslept and arrived at the site too late.
The Deadly Throw
Zhelyabov and Perovskaya did not give up. They made a striking pair—he, with the build of a bear, and she, slender with a girlish face. She was the mastermind behind most of the operations. When, on February 27 (March 11), 1881, the police accidentally arrested her lover, she kept her composure and decided to see the matter through to the end.
It was Perovskaya who came up with the idea to use homemade seven-pound bombs for the assassination of the Tsar, positioning several conspirators along the route at intervals to carry out the attack.
For the decisive operation, she sent the worker Timofey Mikhaylov and two students—Nikolai Rysakov and the Pole Ignacy Hryniewiecki. She herself was to observe the situation and, if necessary, signal for the attack to proceed.
Although Mikhaylov did not arrive at the designated time, Perovskaya did not cancel the operation. The first bomb, which killed only one member of the Tsar’s escort, was thrown by Rysakov. It was he whom Alexander, to his misfortune, chose to focus on.
Alexander II on His Deathbed
The second bomb was thrown by Hryniewiecki, who was severely injured in the attack and died in the hospital several hours after Alexander. The police were unable to identify him and only learned his name from a communiqué by Narodnaya Volya.
During the investigation, it was revealed that the conspirators had an alternative plan. They had intended to detonate a powerful explosive in a rented building, where they had set up a shop as a cover, when the Tsar's procession would pass by. A few days before the assassination, the police had inspected the shops but failed to notice anything suspicious.
It was no surprise that after Alexander's death, when this information reached the public, speculation arose that a more powerful conspiracy might have been behind Narodnaya Volya's assassination attempt.
Hryniewiecki did not reveal anything before his death, but Rysakov eventually confessed. As a result, within a few days, the police apprehended all those involved in planning the attack. Zhelyabov, already in custody, joined them in the dock.
You Believe in Another Christ
The trial took place under the strictest precautions between April 8 and 11, 1881. Zhelyabov, from the defendants' bench, delivered a speech about the despotism and cruelty of the Tsarist regime, while the conspirators were defended by Leo Tolstoy. The great writer addressed the new Tsar, Alexander III, in a plea, appealing to his Christian sentiments.
He asked for the conspirators to be set free, given money for travel abroad, and for the Tsar to declare himself a Christian ruler, acting as Christ did—repaying the murderers of his father with good for evil.
The Tsar responded to Tolstoy coldly: "After reading your letter, I have come to the conclusion that your faith is different from mine and the Church's, and that our Christ is not your Christ."
Three Times Hanged
On April 15, 1881, five convicts were hanged in the crowded Semyonovsky Square in St. Petersburg. The executed were Andrei Zhelyabov, Sophia Perovskaya, Nikolai Kibalchich, Nikolai Rysakov, and finally Timofey Mikhaylov, whose rope broke twice under his weight, forcing the executioner to hang him three times.
Hesya Helfman, who had assisted the conspirators but did not take part in the attack, was also sentenced to death. However, her execution was postponed as she was in her fourth month of pregnancy. Various individuals petitioned for her clemency, but shortly after giving birth, Helfman developed peritonitis and died. Her daughter was sent to an orphanage.
The authorities took a grotesque revenge on Hryniewiecki—his severed head was placed in a jar of alcohol and displayed in the lobby of the police headquarters in St. Petersburg. It was meant to serve as a warning—everyone summoned for interrogation had to pass by the jar.
The leaders of Narodnaya Volya, who had long believed that the assassination of the Tsar would spark a revolution, finally realized that this reasoning was flawed. Their calls for the overthrow of the monarchy went unanswered, unless one considers the pogroms against Jews, which occurred when it was revealed that Hesya Helfman was Jewish.
The successor of the murdered Alexander II, Alexander III, took a reactionary course from the very beginning and reversed many of his father's reforms. He abolished judicial transparency, placed schools and universities under strict supervision, and intensified censorship.
LETTER FOUND WITH HRYNIEWIECKI
Ignacy Hryniewiecki
"Alexander II must die. His days are numbered. I, or someone else, will strike the final, terrible blow, one that will reverberate throughout all of Russia and echo in its most distant corners. This will happen in the near future. He will perish, and with him, we—his enemies, his murderers—will also meet our end."
"This is essential for the cause of liberty, for this act will simultaneously shake the very foundations of what the cunning call monarchist rule, absolute, while we call it despotism."
"What will happen next? How many more victims will our unfortunate, beloved homeland require from her sons for her liberation? For me, condemned to destruction and standing with one foot in the grave, the thought that the struggle will still demand many more dear sacrifices in the future, and even more in the final life-and-death clash with despotism, is terrifying."
"In my conviction, this moment is approaching, and the fields and furrows of our homeland will be drenched in blood, because, sadly, history shows that the magnificent tree of liberty demands human sacrifice."
"I will not take part in the final battle. Fate has condemned me to an early death, and I will not live to see freedom, not for a single day, nor even for an hour in the glorious time of victory. But I believe that with my death, I will have done everything I was supposed to do, and no one, no one in the world, can ask more of me."
By Józef Krzyk
The assassins of Tsar Alexander II anticipated that their act would serve as a catalyst for revolution in Russia. Their expectations were misguided. Nevertheless, the tsar's death carried significant and unforeseen consequences.
The Polish assassin Ignacy Hryniewiecki faced a macabre retribution from the authorities—his severed head was placed in a jar of alcohol and displayed in the lobby of the police headquarters in St. Petersburg.
On March 13, 1881, the Emperor of All Russia, as he did every Sunday, departed at 12:30 PM for the Mikhailovsky Manege to review the parade of soldiers from the St. Petersburg garrison.
An hour later, the procession returned along the same route to the Winter Palace. Traveling in a covered carriage escorted by six Cossacks, the Tsar decided to take a break for tea at the palace of Grand Duchess Catherine Mikhailovna. After an hour, he resumed his journey along the Catherine Canal.
In two sledges following the carriage traveled the head of the security detail, Captain Koch, and the police chief, Colonel Ivan Dvorzhitsky. That morning, Dvorzhitsky had tried to persuade Count Alexander Adlerberg, who oversaw the emperor's security, to cancel the trip to the Manege.
Dvorzhitsky was aware of police reports indicating that revolutionaries from the Narodnaya Volya (People's Will) organization were planning another attempt on the tsar's life. They had already tried several times, with only some conspirators being apprehended.
Alexander II: A Reckless Monarch
Therefore, when Dvorzhitsky heard a deafening explosion near the Horse Guards Bridge, he immediately realized what had happened.
A young blond man in a coat had thrown a small bomb under the carriage, and the shrapnel killed one of the Cossacks, severely wounded another, and injured three passersby. However, the tsar—although the rear part of the carriage was torn apart—was not even scratched.
The attacker tried to flee, but his escape was thwarted by a laborer tinkering nearby despite it being Sunday, who tripped him. When the police apprehended the would-be assassin, he shouted something toward the gathering crowd. Dvorzhitsky immediately understood that this was not the end—that there had to be a second attacker nearby!
Meanwhile, the tsar stepped out of the carriage to confront his would-be murderer. Dvorzhitsky pleaded in vain for the monarch to leave the scene immediately. His efforts achieved only a partial success: Alexander was surrounded by a cordon of Cossacks, joined by soldiers returning from the parade.
They were standing near the crater left by the first bomb when a young man in the crowd threw an identical package directly at the emperor’s feet. The blast severely mangled Alexander’s legs and abdomen, but he remained conscious long enough to order himself taken to the palace. He died at half-past three in the same study where, years earlier, he had signed the manifesto granting freedom to the serfs.
The explosion of the bomb thrown by Ignacy Hryniewiecki
The first bomb thrown on March 13, 1881, damaged the tsar's carriage. Two years later, Tsar Alexander III ordered the construction of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ on this site, which the residents of St. Petersburg refer to as the "Church on the Blood." It narrowly escaped demolition during the Stalinist era.
WHO WAS IGNACY HRYNIEWIECKI?
He came from a Polish noble family in Podlasie and became involved in anti-Tsarist activities when he was a student at the prestigious Technological Institute in St. Petersburg.
In response to his Polish peers, who criticized him for his involvement in the Russian Narodnaya Volya, he said: "Let us help the Russians to abolish despotism, and on its ruins, with the help of our Russian friends, we will rebuild a free Poland."
A Ruler Who Offered Hope
No 19th-century tsar left behind as many reforms, even though it initially seemed unlikely.
Tsar Nicholas I, known as the "Gendarme of Europe" and Alexander's father, raised him under strict discipline. When the heir to the throne turned 18, he sent him on a journey across the empire and later through Western Europe, giving Alexander a clear understanding of how far Russia lagged behind modern nations.
The weaknesses of the tsarist state were laid bare during the Crimean War (1853–1856), fought against Turkey, France, and Great Britain, which Russia lost. When Alexander ascended the throne in 1855 following his father's death, his first task was to extricate the country from the conflict. Many placed great hopes for reform in the coronation of the new tsar, and they were not disappointed.
Alexander pardoned the Decembrists who had been in exile for 30 years, reduced military service from 25 to 15 years, and reformed the judicial system. Defendants were granted the right to legal defense, judges became independent and irremovable, and trials were made public. The tsar prohibited corporal punishment in the military and prisons.
Most notably, on February 19, 1861, he signed the manifesto emancipating the serfs. Subjects called him the Liberator, the Peasants' Tsar, and Alexander the Great.
However, the period of reform soon gave way to retrenchment. Student rights were curtailed, and access to higher education for youth from poorer families was blocked. When protests erupted, the tsar ordered them to be brutally suppressed, with some students being exiled to Siberia.
Overnight, he became an enemy in the eyes of many subjects. From that point on, no achievements—victorious wars, territorial expansion, the suppression of the January Uprising, or the seemingly advantageous sale of Alaska to the United States—could repair his reputation.
In many ways, he laid the groundwork for the assassination that would occur along the Catherine Canal.
How to Change Russia?
The terrorists’ reasoning was straightforward: it was easier to kill the tsar than to overthrow the system. The assassination, they believed, would force reforms upon his successors, ultimately achieving the goal of a new order.
The first to attempt to apply this principle was Sergey Nechayev—a mix of revolutionary and mythomaniac.
He created an organization of like-minded individuals and, to bind them more tightly, orchestrated the murder of one of their own—student Ivan Ivanov. In his great novel Demons, Fyodor Dostoevsky portrayed Nechayev as Pyotr Verkhovensky. The tsar, on the other hand, sentenced Nechayev to life imprisonment in a fortress.
Through his own "perestroika," Alexander unintentionally inspired students from noble families to dream of liberating the people, even though the people themselves were largely uninterested in revolutionary action. In 1879, the revolutionary organization Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will) was formed.
Alexander II
The Tsar of Russia Is Not Untouchable
The first assassination attempt on Alexander was carried out by a man inspired by someone similar to Nechayev.
Nikolai Ishutin, the son of a merchant, gathered a small group upon arriving in Moscow with the aim of sparking a revolution, with the signal being an attack on the tsar. While these grand plans were still just talk, Ishutin's half-brother, Dmitry Karakozov, traveled to St. Petersburg to turn words into action.
On April 16, 1866, Karakozov fired a shot at Alexander while the tsar was strolling through the Summer Garden. However, he missed because someone jostled his arm. The would-be assassin was quickly subdued and arrested. Karakozov paid for his actions with his life, while Nikolai Ishutin was sentenced to life imprisonment.
While thanksgiving prayers were offered in churches for the tsar's survival, one of the few who grasped the significance of the failed assassination was Fyodor Dostoevsky. The tsar had been saved, but the attempt stripped him of his aura of invulnerability. "If someone has already fired once, successors will surely follow," the writer reasoned.
The second assassination attempt on the tsar was carried out by Antoni Berezowski, a Pole and participant in the January Uprising. On June 6, 1867, during the tsar’s visit to France, Berezowski fired at Alexander as he rode through the Bois de Boulogne in an open carriage alongside Emperor Napoleon III. However, he missed his target.
The tsar was outraged that Berezowski was not sentenced to death but instead received life imprisonment, which he served in exile in New Caledonia. Offended, Alexander returned home convinced that Russia should align more closely with Prussia rather than France. Three years later, when Prussia went to war with France, he did not lift a finger to assist the French.
New Caledonia – contemporary view
The Anointed One Flees in Zigzags
Several subsequent attempts to assassinate the tsar also ended in failure. Perhaps the most dangerous attempt occurred on April 14, 1879, nearly at the steps of the Winter Palace. Alexander was returning from his morning walk when a young man passed by and saluted him. The tsar instinctively turned his head, and that motion saved his life—the bullet passed just millimeters from him.
The young man who had saluted fired, and Alexander immediately began to flee. He zigzagged toward the palace while the assassin fired at least five more shots at the tsar before Captain Koch, head of the tsar's security, knocked him down with a saber.
The would-be assassin turned out to be Alexander Soloviev, the son of a medical assistant who had recently been studying at the university at the expense of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, the wife of Alexander's youngest brother. He was a member of Narodnaya Volya. He volunteered to kill the tsar and bought an American-made, large-caliber revolver for this purpose.
He was highly determined and assumed he would not survive the assassination. He had a cyanide capsule in his mouth, but he never had the chance to bite into it. On May 28, he was hanged. After this attempt, the tsar stopped going for walks and no longer ventured anywhere without an escort.
The General's Daughter Planted Bombs
In late 1879, a group, of which Soloviev was a member, planted an explosive device beneath the railway tracks on which a Tsarist train, returning from Crimea to the capital, was expected to travel. Uncertain until the last moment about the monarch's chosen route, the assassins positioned themselves at two separate locations.
In the Ukrainian town of Aleksandrovsk, posing as merchants, the conspirators purchased land right next to the tracks and, without interference, planted explosives beneath them.
The derailed train was supposed to plunge into a deep ravine. However, the bomb did not explode because the mastermind of the operation, Andrei Zhelyabov, had improperly connected the wires.
It wasn't until December 1st, on the outskirts of Moscow, that everything went according to plan. The second operation was led by Zhelyabov's lover, Sophia Perovskaya, the daughter of a former governor-general of St. Petersburg. The explosive detonated under the speeding train, but it turned out that the Tsar's train had passed earlier.
No one was killed in the blast—only fruit was being transported. The conspirators, however, remained at large and were preparing their next operation.
Assassination Attempt at the Winter Palace
The next attempt occurred on February 5, 1880, when Stepan Khalturin, also a member of Narodnaya Volya, carried out the attack. He had previously taken a job as a carpenter at the Winter Palace and, using this opportunity, smuggled over one hundred kilograms of dynamite inside.
The bomb he constructed was set to explode while the Tsar and his guests were having dinner. It was detonated, severely damaging the palace walls, but Alexander had not yet descended to the dining room. The massacre claimed the lives of nearly 70 guards and servants.
Khalturin managed to escape. He was caught and hanged only two years later.
The Bomb Under the Bridge
The Tsar never learned about the sixth assassination attempt on his life. It was carried out by the same members of Narodnaya Volya who had previously derailed the train carrying fruit.
On August 17, 1880, they planted dynamite beneath a bridge near the Winter Palace, which was frequently crossed by the Tsar’s carriage. Once again, Zhelyabov's operation ended in failure. Although the wires were correctly connected, the conspirator assigned to detonate the charge overslept and arrived at the site too late.
The Deadly Throw
Zhelyabov and Perovskaya did not give up. They made a striking pair—he, with the build of a bear, and she, slender with a girlish face. She was the mastermind behind most of the operations. When, on February 27 (March 11), 1881, the police accidentally arrested her lover, she kept her composure and decided to see the matter through to the end.
It was Perovskaya who came up with the idea to use homemade seven-pound bombs for the assassination of the Tsar, positioning several conspirators along the route at intervals to carry out the attack.
For the decisive operation, she sent the worker Timofey Mikhaylov and two students—Nikolai Rysakov and the Pole Ignacy Hryniewiecki. She herself was to observe the situation and, if necessary, signal for the attack to proceed.
Although Mikhaylov did not arrive at the designated time, Perovskaya did not cancel the operation. The first bomb, which killed only one member of the Tsar’s escort, was thrown by Rysakov. It was he whom Alexander, to his misfortune, chose to focus on.
Alexander II on His Deathbed
The second bomb was thrown by Hryniewiecki, who was severely injured in the attack and died in the hospital several hours after Alexander. The police were unable to identify him and only learned his name from a communiqué by Narodnaya Volya.
During the investigation, it was revealed that the conspirators had an alternative plan. They had intended to detonate a powerful explosive in a rented building, where they had set up a shop as a cover, when the Tsar's procession would pass by. A few days before the assassination, the police had inspected the shops but failed to notice anything suspicious.
It was no surprise that after Alexander's death, when this information reached the public, speculation arose that a more powerful conspiracy might have been behind Narodnaya Volya's assassination attempt.
Hryniewiecki did not reveal anything before his death, but Rysakov eventually confessed. As a result, within a few days, the police apprehended all those involved in planning the attack. Zhelyabov, already in custody, joined them in the dock.
You Believe in Another Christ
The trial took place under the strictest precautions between April 8 and 11, 1881. Zhelyabov, from the defendants' bench, delivered a speech about the despotism and cruelty of the Tsarist regime, while the conspirators were defended by Leo Tolstoy. The great writer addressed the new Tsar, Alexander III, in a plea, appealing to his Christian sentiments.
He asked for the conspirators to be set free, given money for travel abroad, and for the Tsar to declare himself a Christian ruler, acting as Christ did—repaying the murderers of his father with good for evil.
The Tsar responded to Tolstoy coldly: "After reading your letter, I have come to the conclusion that your faith is different from mine and the Church's, and that our Christ is not your Christ."
Three Times Hanged
On April 15, 1881, five convicts were hanged in the crowded Semyonovsky Square in St. Petersburg. The executed were Andrei Zhelyabov, Sophia Perovskaya, Nikolai Kibalchich, Nikolai Rysakov, and finally Timofey Mikhaylov, whose rope broke twice under his weight, forcing the executioner to hang him three times.
Hesya Helfman, who had assisted the conspirators but did not take part in the attack, was also sentenced to death. However, her execution was postponed as she was in her fourth month of pregnancy. Various individuals petitioned for her clemency, but shortly after giving birth, Helfman developed peritonitis and died. Her daughter was sent to an orphanage.
The authorities took a grotesque revenge on Hryniewiecki—his severed head was placed in a jar of alcohol and displayed in the lobby of the police headquarters in St. Petersburg. It was meant to serve as a warning—everyone summoned for interrogation had to pass by the jar.
The leaders of Narodnaya Volya, who had long believed that the assassination of the Tsar would spark a revolution, finally realized that this reasoning was flawed. Their calls for the overthrow of the monarchy went unanswered, unless one considers the pogroms against Jews, which occurred when it was revealed that Hesya Helfman was Jewish.
The successor of the murdered Alexander II, Alexander III, took a reactionary course from the very beginning and reversed many of his father's reforms. He abolished judicial transparency, placed schools and universities under strict supervision, and intensified censorship.
LETTER FOUND WITH HRYNIEWIECKI
Ignacy Hryniewiecki
"Alexander II must die. His days are numbered. I, or someone else, will strike the final, terrible blow, one that will reverberate throughout all of Russia and echo in its most distant corners. This will happen in the near future. He will perish, and with him, we—his enemies, his murderers—will also meet our end."
"This is essential for the cause of liberty, for this act will simultaneously shake the very foundations of what the cunning call monarchist rule, absolute, while we call it despotism."
"What will happen next? How many more victims will our unfortunate, beloved homeland require from her sons for her liberation? For me, condemned to destruction and standing with one foot in the grave, the thought that the struggle will still demand many more dear sacrifices in the future, and even more in the final life-and-death clash with despotism, is terrifying."
"In my conviction, this moment is approaching, and the fields and furrows of our homeland will be drenched in blood, because, sadly, history shows that the magnificent tree of liberty demands human sacrifice."
"I will not take part in the final battle. Fate has condemned me to an early death, and I will not live to see freedom, not for a single day, nor even for an hour in the glorious time of victory. But I believe that with my death, I will have done everything I was supposed to do, and no one, no one in the world, can ask more of me."
