Public thought in the Russian Empire was always inclined toward radicalism. Much like France, which had been shaken by revolutions since the late 18th century, Russia faced armed political violence for a prolonged period. In itself, there was nothing unique about the confrontation between the government and radicals. However, the activity, energy, ingenuity, and resilience of terrorist groups in Russia was unprecedented. Of course, Russian terrorists were not the first radicals in the world – consider the actions of Giuseppe Fieschi, who attempted to assassinate French King Louis Philippe I using a multi-barrel volley gun, or the Gunpowder Plot in Great Britain. However, in Russia, some underground movements persisted for decades, surviving various times and switching their political identity. Terrorists emerged in Russia during the era of Emperor Alexander II’s Great Reforms, and Alexander II himself fell prey to them. The entire history of the late Russian Empire unfolded in the shadow of the bomb.

The revolutionary movement in Russia was multifaceted and complex, and terrorism was merely a part of it. The terrorists were, of course, revolutionaries; but revolutionaries weren’t always terrorists. For example, Vladimir Lenin viewed terrorism with skepticism. The phrase attributed to him, “We shall take a different path,” became cliché in the Russian language, but hardly anyone remembers the context in which it was originally spoken. Lenin’s main idea was that a small, underground organization would not succeed, unlike a mass-based insurgent movement. 

Today, however, we will speak of those who intended to bring down the empire using only bombs and revolvers.

The initial actions of the terrorist movement gave the impression of an uprising in a madhouse. 

Revolutionary terror in Russia emerged as an unexpected side effect of Alexander II’s Great Reforms. The Emperor had inherited the throne from his father – the hardline conservative Nicholas I, a man viewed as a martinet who tried to rule the country as if it were an infantry platoon. Convinced that Russia needed to be dragged out of its archaic state, Alexander launched sweeping reforms.

From his accession to the throne in 1855 until his assassination in 1881, the new Emperor continuously introduced changes that transformed the face of Russia almost beyond recognition. The Emancipation Reform granted freedom to millions of serfs whose condition was not much better than slavery. While this was his most famous reform, it was far from the only one. He reformed everything from the judicial system and military to local self-government and the legal code. Several monarchs in Russian history are known as ‘the Great’, but only one – Alexander II – is known as ‘the Liberator’.

From a broad perspective, the reforms were brilliant. But upon closer inspection, the situation was more complex. Alexander strove to cushion the inevitable shock experienced by a society undergoing such rapid change. While they were noble in intent, the reforms had many unpleasant side effects when put into practice.

For instance, Alexander sought to mitigate the impact of the sudden financial ruin of the landed aristocracy, who could no longer rely on the forced labor of the peasantry. Even after gaining personal freedom, peasants were required to make ‘redemption payments’ to the state (in installments) for the land allotments they received; the state, in turn, compensated landowners for the loss of their serfs. This imposed a heavy additional tax burden on the peasantry; meanwhile, the aristocrats (many of whom were not the smartest individuals) often squandered the money received from the government. Moreover, the nobility retained the best land, though it was now cultivated by hired laborers and tenant farmers rather than serfs.

Many of the social consequences of the reforms were unpleasant. For example, some impoverished nobles turned to crime. Cities saw a surge in prostitution driven by peasant women who had formerly been the mistresses of provincial landowners; this caught the police completely off guard. In short, even a reform as beneficial as the emancipation of the serfs had a wide range of unexpected consequences.

Some viewed the reforms as too drastic, while others considered them insufficient. For a long time, Alexander left the structure of the highest government bodies untouched. He remained the absolute monarch, and his word was law. He didn’t introduce anything resembling a parliament, and there was no constitution. Freedom of the press was also severely restricted by censorship.

It was only a matter of time before radicals emerged. 

‘Raznochintsy’ (people of miscellaneous ranks) were the primary social base of the revolutionary movement. These individuals were neither nobles, merchants, nor peasants; they made their own living and were not in state service. 

Usually, they were poor but rather well-educated – and often highly ambitious. A famous example is Rodion Raskolnikov from Dostoevsky’s novel ‘Crime and Punishment’. Another source of recruits for revolutionary circles was the impoverished nobility. Legitimate discussion groups were severely restricted at the time; consequently, would-be terrorists gathered at illicit meetings, lending their groups the aura of secret societies.

Some of these societies were quite harmless – essentially nothing more than ordinary, small discussion clubs. Others, however, embraced a bloodthirsty idealism. They championed utopian socialism as their social ideal, viewing mass uprisings as the means to achieve it. Yet they ran up against a dismal reality: Amid the emancipation from serfdom and rapid urban growth, the vast majority of Russian people were concerned with things like property, money, social standing, and in urban areas, education as a means of achieving social status. 

But then, in 1866, an event occurred that foreshadowed ominous and dark times. 

Dmitry Karakozov was a typical young man of the reform era. Born into a family of the petty nobility, he lacked financial means; after completing two years of university, he was expelled from the law department for being unable to pay his tuition. He worked as a low-level clerk with no career prospects, and enjoyed attending meetings organized by his cousin, who founded an organization aptly called ‘Hell’. People of similar social standing gathered there to discuss the textbook demands of young Russian radicals: the need to build schools and hospitals, educate the peasantry, and… assassinate the Tsar.

The last point was discussed very vigorously, but it was pure fantasy: The group fantasized about a clandestine terrorist organization with its own far-reaching intelligence network. Yet Karakozov turned out to be the only member of the group who took this ‘Dungeons & Emperors’ role-playing game seriously. At a certain point, he decided that there was no reason to wait any longer, bought a revolver, and set out to assassinate the emperor. 

Security measures at the time were archaic. Emperor Alexander often walked the streets of St. Petersburg without any security. One can still stroll through the Summer Garden where Karakozov fired his shot. The place hasn’t changed much. Karakozov fired at the emperor but missed and was seized on the spot. Alexander was utterly astonished and thought the man was simply insane. Karakozov was hanged. The police arrested the entire underground group. In theory, they were all fierce radicals, but when one person took their blather at face value, they were no more prepared for it than for an invasion by Martians. Some members of the group were exiled to Siberia. Furthermore, censors closed down the publications read by Karakozov, deeming them politically unreliable. Even fellow revolutionaries were unimpressed by Karakozov’s actions. As for the peasants, they didn’t get why anyone would champion their cause in this manner. Of course, land was important, and redemption payments were burdensome – but what did shooting the Tsar have to do with it?

However, others soon followed in Karakozov’s footsteps. While Karakozov was from the impoverished nobility, another terrorist, Sergey Nechaev, was from a very different background. He was born into a destitute family that sacrificed everything to ensure that he received an education. Nechaev was a course auditor at the university. But he wasn’t just preoccupied with taking lecture notes; he drafted a document that served as a sort of charter for the revolutionary sect. It demanded total self-abnegation and absolute fanaticism from the revolutionaries. Nechaev’s writings abound with terms such as ‘annihilation’ and ‘extermination’. He meticulously compiled a list of individuals who had to be killed for the triumph of revolutionary socialism – some of them right away, others later; his planning would have impressed even the likes of Arya Stark.

While recruiting followers, Nechaev portrayed himself as the leader of a powerful underground movement, but this was a complete fabrication. He found a few people willing to listen to his misanthropic nonsense, but the organization was short-lived. When a student named Ivan Ivanov objected to one of Nechaev’s ‘brilliant’ ideas, Nechaev and a couple of friends lured him to a secluded spot and murdered him. Nechaev died in prison, and the story inspired Dostoevsky’s masterpiece, the novel ‘Demons’, which is based on the story of Nechaev and his group.

Nechaev and Karakozov had quite a few followers. For the time being, they set aside the idea of assassinating the emperor. Instead, a new concept took hold within the circles of young radicals. Many of them were decent people who sincerely sympathized with the common folk – people who worked relentlessly yet lived in poverty. From the desire to help and a sense of guilt toward those less educated and more burdened by life’s hardships emerged the ‘Going to the People’ populist movement. Initially, the main idea was for the activists (propagandists) to move to rural areas disguised as peasants and agitate for a general uprising.

Activists who attempted to spread the propaganda among urban workers (these were often peasants who had recently migrated to the cities) weren’t received well. However, they soon shifted to a more sensible approach: teaching workers literacy and skilled trades, and establishing mutual aid funds. In short, they ended up organizing a humanitarian initiative which had little to do with the revolution. The majority of the propagandists, however, headed for rural areas as planned; certain liberal-minded landowners allowed them to get started on their estates.

It is surprising that Russian TV has never produced a series based on this story. Young nobles and ‘raznochintsy’ would try to pass themselves off as peasants, traveling to villages and fairs to agitate for an uprising. They usually wrote their own propaganda literature, attempting to mimic the style of folk tales. Initially, their strategy resembled network marketing: If each agitator could recruit three peasants per month, and each peasant could recruit three others, at that rate, a nationwide uprising could be launched within a couple of years.

In practice, however, the speech, daily habits, and behavior of the propagandists bore no resemblance to those of actual peasants. Sure, the peasants disliked the flaws of the reforms. But the masquerade raised obvious questions, like: Who is this guy who claims to be a farmer but doesn’t know how to handle a scythe? Many of the revolutionaries looked like they had robbed a costume shop and were dressed as shepherds from a play.

Even when the revolutionaries spoke bluntly, the peasants had many questions. “Fine,” they said, “suppose we overthrow the Tsar and redistribute the landowners’ wealth. But if we rob them, what’s going to stop someone else from robbing us the same way?” The unfailing common sense of the peasants stupefied the propagandists. 

And when the populists encountered Old Believers – adherents of an ultra-conservative branch of the Orthodox Church – things went even worse. For the Old Believers, continuous labor and Bible study were the highest good; consequently, they were prosperous and did not consider themselves oppressed. As for the atheistic propaganda, it was best not even to broach the subject with them.

Quite a few young revolutionaries, however, found themselves unexpectedly fond of the common people. Some even settled in the villages and – dropping all pretense – began working as doctors, teachers, veterinarians, or even blacksmiths and locksmiths. And they unexpectedly found themselves showered with people’s affection. They made many friends and settled in rural areas; in the country, a skilled doctor was treated almost like a local saint. The ‘downside’, of course, was that these individuals often lost their revolutionary zeal.

However, many of those who had ‘gone to the people’ returned to the cities with a new mindset.

Meanwhile, darker moods were brewing within the revolutionary movement. Those who had been overzealous in spreading revolutionary propaganda were arrested and imprisoned. Among those who evaded the police was a young woman named Vera Zasulich. Her background was typical for a revolutionary: She came from an impoverished noble family, had a good education, an unprestigious job with no career prospects, and was infatuated with radical ideas.

In 1877, Dmitry Trepov, the governor-general of St. Petersburg, ordered a propagandist named Bogolyubov to be flogged for refusing to remove his hat in the presence of the official. Corporal punishment had been abolished, making Trepov’s action illegal; the incident caused a public outcry but was swept under the rug.

Feeling outraged by the injustice, Vera Zasulich bought a revolver (which was legal), secured an appointment with Trepov, and shot him. He was critically wounded but survived, and Zasulich was put on trial.

However, no one could have foreseen what happened in the courtroom. Trepov had behaved abominably, and it was foolish to shield him. But the government assumed that, in the eyes of the jury, the attempted murder would overshadow Trepov’s abuse of power. That might well have happened. However, the prosecution, convinced that the verdict was already in the bag, handled the case in a sloppy, incompetent manner. 

Meanwhile, the defense attorney, Pyotr Alexandrov, played his hand brilliantly. He stressed the point that Trepov embodied brute, unpunished force, and this compelled Zasulich to act the way she did. 

There was certainly an element of manipulation in his speech, but this was natural for a defense attorney doing his job. The prosecution, on the other hand, failed to do their job. Aleksandr Koni, the presiding judge – a highly experienced and respected jurist – shrugged off attempts to coerce him into playing along with the prosecution, implying that he was an honest judge who would not rig the proceedings merely because the outcome might displease the government. If the prosecution wants to win the case, it should handle it better!

And so, to thunderous applause, Vera Zasulich walked free from the courtroom, acquitted of all charges. From our standpoint, it is difficult not to have mixed feelings about her acquittal: After all, she had attempted murder. Yet the Russian Empire was governed by the rule of law to such an extent that, in a trial concerning a terrorist act, a jury could acquit the defendant and the government would comply.

‘Let justice be done, though the heavens fall’, the Latin legal maxim goes. Justice was done. And soon enough, the heavens did fall.

The government soon had to deal with the Zemlya i Volya (Land and Liberty) organization – the first truly radical group (from which another group, Narodnaya Volya, soon emerged, that directly carried out assassinations). The members of this group retained the frenzied fanaticism of Nechaev and Karakozov but were far more pragmatic. While they envisioned the same ideals of collectivism and socialism, they believed that the growth of the bourgeoisie and ongoing reforms might render a revolution unnecessary; consequently, they felt they had to act fast. A key tenet of their program was the “extermination of the most harmful or prominent figures within the government and, in general, the individuals who uphold the order we loathe.” The Going to the People movement had left them disillusioned, yet they chose to alter their tactics rather than the underlying concept.

Sergey Kravchinsky – one of the first propagandists of the Going to the People movement – stabbed the chief of the Gendarme Corps (the political police), Mezentsev, to death. A wave of attacks on officials ensued. These assaults typically involved revolvers or daggers: After delivering a couple of shots or blows, the terrorist would quickly flee, vanishing in the alleyways.

Many of these new terrorists had met during the Going to the People campaign and now formed fully fledged militant cells. Their numbers were small; the entire terrorist underground likely numbered no more than a few hundred people – including everyone who provided the slightest assistance. As to those who were directly prepared to carry out terrorist acts, there were only a few dozen people. Yet the Russian Empire lacked any counter-terrorism service; the police had no understanding of counter-terrorism, and top officials were quite negligent about their own security.

Here’s an example. In April 1879, Emperor Alexander II was taking a walk through St. Petersburg, accompanied by only one officer armed with a saber. 

Near Palace Square, Aleksandr Solovyov (a member of the Land and Liberty movement) stepped out to confront him. The group’s previous assassination attempt had failed because the bullets had lodged in the bulky fur coat of the prosecutor who was the intended target. Mindful of that incident, Solovyov had purchased a massive bear-hunting revolver. On hearing the shots, the Emperor started running along the embankment in a zigzag pattern. Meanwhile, the recoil of the powerful weapon kept throwing off Solovyov’s aim. Ultimately, after five shots were fired, the Emperor’s bodyguard struck him down with his saber.

It soon emerged that Solovyov was not a lone madman like Karakozov; there was a whole organization behind him.

Terrorists from the Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will) organization were headed by two people from very different backgrounds. Andrey Zhelyabov was the son of serfs who had risen through the ranks thanks to his exceptional intellect and had become captivated by revolutionary socialism while attending a prestigious gymnasium. Sofya Perovskaya, by contrast, was the daughter of a wealthy and influential official; she broke with her father for the sake of her convictions. In fact, there were quite a few women in the movement; the terrorists disdained prejudices based on social class, gender, or anything else.

The movement launched a true hunt for Alexander II.

In the autumn of that same year, they attempted to blow up the Emperor’s train with dynamite. They rented a house near the tracks, dug a tunnel, and planted the explosives. However, the train didn’t arrive on schedule. It turned out that instead of the imperial carriage, they blew up a different train. Fortunately, the blast only destroyed a baggage car and no one was killed.

The next step was an attempt to assassinate the Tsar inside the royal residence, the Winter Palace. To this end, another terrorist, Stepan Khalturin, secured a job in the Winter Palace. Khalturin was a carpenter and found work in the palace using forged documents.

At the time, palace security was as inadequate as the personal security of Alexander II. Khalturin managed to smuggle 30 kilograms of dynamite into his tiny room, hiding the explosives beneath dirty laundry.

A blast! And… another failure for the terrorists: It turned out that Alexander had stepped into an adjacent room just moments before the blast. However, 11 guardsmen on duty were killed.

Despite the terrorist attacks, Alexander was preparing to initiate political reforms. Mikhail Loris-Melikov was working on the draft of a constitution. He was an aged aristocrat of Armenian descent who had served as both a military commander and a civil administrator during his career. Alexander greatly valued his administrative talents and interpersonal skills. Loris-Melikov combined two qualities: He was an official deeply embedded in the Russian establishment, yet also a man of moderate political views who was prepared to reform the political system without dismantling it – an approach that perfectly aligned with Alexander’s own outlook. Moreover, Loris-Melikov was developing a program to alleviate the plight of the peasantry; he intended to rectify the imbalances of the earlier reforms and bring to completion the work Alexander had begun.

All this sounded excellent, but time was running out. The terrorists hated the tsarist regime, and to them, Alexander embodied the very idea of autocracy.

This time, Perovskaya and Zhelyabov planned a complex operation involving an entire group of terrorists. They meticulously studied the Tsar’s departure schedule from the Winter Palace. The new assassination attempt was to be carried out by several people armed with homemade dynamite hand bombs.

The police found and arrested Zhelyabov at a safe house. However, this setback only spurred Perovskaya on. The terrorists even planted a command-detonated mine along the Emperor’s usual route, and four volunteers were tasked with hurling homemade bombs as he passed in the carriage. In other words, the plan was multi-layered. The homemade devices lacked shrapnel; they were not like modern grenades. Yet they were powerful in their own right – with a blast force equivalent to up to 1.5 kilograms of TNT. Visually, they resembled simple tin cylinders.

On March 13, Alexander left the Winter Palace on official business. He inadvertently bypassed the mine that had been planted. However, Perovskaya had enough time to reposition the terrorists and lie in wait for the Emperor on his return journey.

In the middle of the day, on the embankment of the Catherine Canal, Nikolay Rysakov hurled a bomb at the carriage. The vehicle was wrecked, but Alexander was not even wounded. Rysakov was seized. A delivery boy was killed on the embankment, and two Cossack guards were wounded. A police colonel who arrived on the scene urged the Tsar to leave at once. But Alexander wanted to first say a few words to his wounded bodyguards – and also, to the terrorist.

That delay cost him his life.

Ignaty Grinevitsky managed to run up and hurl a bomb right at Alexander’s feet. The terrorist was critically wounded, and Alexander’s legs were shattered.

In a bizarre twist, another terrorist – Ivan Yemelyanov – helped carry the Emperor to the carriage; he assisted in seating him, all the while holding, in his other hand, a bomb that he never used. 

By the time Alexander was brought to the palace, he had lost a lot of blood. Amid the chaos and panic, by the time a surgeon reached Alexander, the Emperor was already in a state of deep shock, and the blood loss was irreversible. There was no time for a transfusion, and amputation was pointless.

One of the high-ranking officials remarked to Loris-Melikov as he entered, “There it is – your constitution!”

At 3:35 PM, Alexander II passed away. His assassin died a few hours later.

Since the first bomber, Rysakov, had been captured alive and did not suffer serious injuries, he was immediately interrogated. The young terrorist cracked right away. Two days later, police stormed the apartment where terrorist Gesya Gelfman was hiding. A few hours later, an ambush team left at the apartment captured yet another terrorist. Within a few days, the core of the terrorist group was captured.

Interestingly, many people – even including Leo Tolstoy – appealed for clemency, urging that the terrorists not be sentenced to death.

However, the matter was already decided. Alexander II’s son, Emperor Alexander III, declared that he might have pardoned his own assassins, but not his father’s.

Five of the terrorists, including Zhelyabov, were hanged. Gesya Gelfman escaped execution because she was pregnant; she later died from postpartum complications.

Plans for constitutional reform were abandoned, and political reforms were derailed. Alexander III was far more conservative than his father, and the horrific death of Alexander II further convinced him that those who sought reforms were dangerous propagandists and assassins. The popular uprising anticipated by the terrorist group never happened. 

Meanwhile, Russia was hurtling toward a new wave of terror.