Killing a tsar wasn’t enough: Russia’s revolutionaries hit a bloody dead end

They assassinated an emperor and murdered ministers, but bombs and revolvers failed to deliver the revolution they wanted

The assassination of Emperor Alexander II on March 1, 1881, was the most famous action carried out by Russian terrorists. It seemed as though the monarchy was about to collapse simply because of a few dozen individuals armed with bombs, daggers, and revolvers.

However, as the terrorists were about to discover, this was a game two could play.

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The end of Narodnaya Volya

The terrorists of the Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will) organization lost the highly active militant cell that had assassinated the emperor – almost all its members were captured and hanged. However, numerous smaller cells remained.

The novel ‘What Is to Be Done?’ deeply influenced Russian terrorists. Ironically, after Alexander’s death, both sides pondered this question. The sole desire of the terrorists was to assassinate the emperor, but soon, they discovered that nothing had changed: Alexander II was succeeded by Alexander III. Moreover, the new tsar rolled back many of his father’s reforms. A prescient observer might have noted that, in doing so, he was actually hastening the revolution the terrorists so fervently desired. But the radicals themselves did not look that far ahead.

The underground movement saw a massive influx of new recruits. Vera Figner effectively headed the movement. An idealist and intellectual, under different circumstances, she might have become a source of national pride; however, she met anarchist leaders and went underground. Her primary challenge was finding recruits; while the ranks of revolutionaries had swelled, these new terrorists were poorly trained.

On the opposite side of the barricades, a new figure emerged. This was Georgy Sudeykin, an officer of the Corps of Gendarmes, i.e., the security police. Sudeykin was an army officer, but had little desire to spend decades serving in garrisons only to eventually retire as a major. The field of counter-terrorism was just emerging, and Sudeykin saw it as a brilliant opportunity.

RT composite. Georgy Sudeykin and Vera Figner.

© Unknown author / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

He began recruiting agents from among the terrorists. Sudeykin proved to be a skilled psychologist who strove to exploit personal weaknesses. He used intimidation or torture sparingly; far more often, he claimed to be a committed advocate of reform who merely considered the revolutionaries’ methods too radical. And then, he suggested ways that they could help each other out.

This was a simple ploy, and it would not have worked on seasoned terrorists like Figner. However, Sudeykin targeted the ‘younger generation’ and quickly found the right approach with many of those he managed to arrest. He rapidly rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel and assumed a position created specifically for him: inspector of the secret police, effectively the head of the counter-terrorism department.

One day, the police arrested a young man named Sergey Degaev. Degaev was a talented mathematician but had a passion for underground revolutionary activity. Unlike his aptitude for science, however, he possessed no real talent for terrorism. He was captured at an underground print shop that produced banned literature. Sudeykin deployed his full arsenal against him: he made pointed references to the prospect of punitive labor in Siberia while simultaneously flattering Degaev and appealing to his idealism and intellect. Driven by a mixture of fear and ambition, Degaev became a secret agent.

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Sudeykin’s plan for Degaev was quite unconventional. He intended to turn his new protégé into a ‘rat king’ by placing him at the head of the underground movement, only to dismantle it using him as the instrument. To kick things off, a staged escape from custody was arranged for Degaev; this earned him a good reputation among the terrorists and provided a cover story for his sudden freedom. His reappearance sparked jubilation among his comrades, but the celebration was short-lived. Degaev began by betraying Vera Figner, since she might be able to see right through him. Her capture was orchestrated to look like a mere coincidence, and Figner was sentenced to penal servitude in Siberia. Degaev continued to supply a steady stream of names, allowing Sudeykin to round up entire terrorist cells. Within a matter of months, the leadership of Narodnaya Volya had been decimated.

For a time, Degaev rode high. He appeared to be a cunning terrorist who repeatedly eluded the police and rose rapidly through the revolutionary ranks. However, Sudeykin was so good at arresting the revolutionaries (he made about one arrest per week) that many of them finally put two and two together and realized there was a traitor in their midst. Moreover, Degaev had too many ‘miraculous escapes’ behind him. While they didn’t have any proof yet, there were certainly many suspicions.

Sudeykin’s scheme ultimately collapsed in a completely unexpected way. Many members of Narodnaya Volya came from very respectable, well-to-do families. One day, an officer was carelessly discussing official business in front of his daughter. She was not a terrorist herself, but had friends in Narodnaya Volya, and told them about it. They didn’t believe her right away, but it was then that Degaev was first considered a traitor.

Degaev was also pondering his situation. He was well off…but that totally depended on Sudeykin. But what would happen when he was no longer useful? To be sure, Sudeykin lavished him with praise, but what guarantee was there that Degaev wouldn’t end up in Siberia next to the very people he had betrayed? And what if the terrorists figured out who the traitor was? It wouldn’t take them long to deduce it simply by a process of elimination.

RT composite. Lev Tikhomirov and Sergey Degaev.

© Unknown author / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Degaev headed to Europe. There, he sought out Lev Tikhomirov. Tikhomirov had emigrated to avoid arrest, yet members of Narodnaya Volya still regarded him as a seasoned and authoritative underground figure. Degaev told him everything.

Tikhomirov gathered a few like-minded émigrés and consulted with them. While they had a strong urge to strangle Degaev, doing so would only prompt Sudeykin to recruit someone else. Therefore, they decided to use Degaev to get close to Sudeykin.

Tikhomirov had an experienced and not yet imprisoned terrorist available for the task: German Lopatin. Lopatin organized the hunt – this time, for the hunter himself.

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The plan was to lure Sudeykin to a safe house for a meeting with his agent and kill him there. Since silent weapons had not yet been invented, the terrorists armed themselves with crowbars. Degaev did as instructed and called Sudeykin to the meeting. Sudeykin arrived, accompanied by only one young officer.

As Sudeykin entered the apartment, terrorists wielding crowbars sprang from their hiding place. “Shoot them with your revolver!” Sudeykin shouted to his companion, but the officer had already been struck on the head. Sudeykin tried to lock himself in the restroom, but they broke down the door and beat him to death with crowbars. Then, the terrorists merely washed themselves and Degaev, who was vomiting uncontrollably, and left the apartment.

They did not kill Degaev, but politely asked him to leave for a place where their paths would never cross again. Degaev took the hint and moved to the United States, where, under the name of Alexander Pell, he became a successful mathematician and lived out his days as a respected professor.

A seething cauldron

The terrorist underground in Russia suffered a devastating blow the effects of which lasted for decades. The police rounded up almost all the remaining terrorists. The underground movement had become incredibly weak and Narodnaya Volya fell apart. Among the last to be arrested was a young man named Alexander Ulyanov, the older brother of Vladimir Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin. Ulyanov had planned an assassination attempt on the new Tsar, Alexander III, and was hanged in accordance with the full severity of the law. Capital punishment was extremely rare in Russia, but it was readily applied in cases of attempts on the Tsar’s life. It is reported that Vladimir Ulyanov, who had not yet adopted the pseudonym Lenin, remarked, “We shall take a different path.” In other words, he would focus not on terrorism, but on mass uprisings – a revolution in the true sense of the word. The future Lenin was still very young and likely never actually said this, though as a mature politician, he did indeed choose to build a mass party.

RT composite. Aleksandr Ulyanov and German Lopatin.

© Unknown author / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

In general, many figures within the Russian revolutionary movement viewed terrorism as a foolish dead end that only resulted in bloodshed. The Bolsheviks – who, as we know, ultimately seized power and ruled Russia from 1917 to 1991 – considered terrorism a senseless waste of both human lives and effort.

Alexander III died in 1894, and Nicholas II ascended the throne. No one yet knew that he would be the last Russian tsar. However, it was already clear that the country had changed profoundly.

By the turn of the 20th century, Russia bore little resemblance to the country it had been just 20 years earlier. The abolition of serfdom and the Industrial Revolution had caused a tectonic shift. The number of industrial workers was growing by the day. Peasants were articulating new demands, including a call for political representation.

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The nobility was becoming marginalized. By the 1900s, a noble title didn’t reveal much about a person. Nobles remained a formal pillar of the empire, yet in real life they were losing their estates. Forced labor no longer existed, and the image of a Catherine the Great-era landowner – living a life of leisure while others toiled for him – no longer reflected reality. Anton Chekhov’s play ‘The Cherry Orchard’ addresses a very specific and widespread social phenomenon: the aristocrats were losing their estates to people of the ‘nouveaux riches’ class who were far more adept at commerce. At the same time, the ranks of urban professionals and the intelligentsia were expanding – as, of course, was the working class.

Social and political tensions within the empire were mounting rapidly. Workers who had migrated from the countryside to the cities in search of employment lived in appalling conditions, enduring grueling working schedules, meager wages, and a humiliating status. Meanwhile, the peasantry demanded land. This land was in the hands of the wealthiest individuals and the few aristocrats who had managed to survive the changing times and expand their fortunes. Furthermore, the population was growing. There was a collective demand for political rights, freedom of the press, the right of assembly, and representative government.

The government underestimated the speed and force of these changes. Nicholas II possessed personal qualities that were endearing in an individual but highly detrimental in a ruler. He genuinely cared for Russia’s wellbeing as he understood it – viewing that wellbeing as the consolidation of an autocratic monarchy rooted in Orthodox Christianity. His fervent love for the people resembled that of an authoritarian mother who is convinced she always knows what is best. The revolutionary movement was dismissed as a handful of fringe figures. The top posts in the Ministry of Internal Affairs were held by men who had helped crush the Narodnaya Volya movement during the era of Degaev and Sudeykin. They believed that terrorists – and revolutionaries in general – lacked a social base, and that it was sufficient to arrest (or hang) the movement’s core activists.

Nicholas II and his family in Crimea, 1913.

© Boasson and Eggler / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

In reality, by the turn of the 20th century, the landscape was teeming with revolutionary organizations, including the entire spectrum of left-wing and radical-left opposition. Russia has historically gravitated toward the left side of the political spectrum; consequently, the far right and conservatives were a rarity. However, a wide variety of people rallied under the red banners. There were the intellectuals, who would have preferred a legal parliamentary struggle. There were radicals, including Lenin. Moreover, the radicals were divided into several factions. Anarchists sought to destroy the state as such; the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks represented two wings of the underground Marxist movement in Russia; the split between them, however, was based more on tactical issues and the clash of personalities. Finally, the most popular left-wing opposition movement was that of the Socialist-Revolutionaries (SRs).

Politically, they demanded sweeping democratization: universal suffrage without restrictions based on class or property ownership, extensive local self-government, the federalization of Russia, universal education, a people’s militia to replace the regular army, a progressive income tax, various social reforms, the transfer of factories and plants to the workers, and the nationalization of land.

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Some of these demands seem highly radical, while others are natural from the modern standpoint. The SRs did not shy away from legal political struggle.

However, alongside its ‘visible’ wing, the SR party maintained another branch established under the leadership of Boris Savinkov, Grigory Gershuni, and Yevno Azef. This faction inherited certain methods from the Narodnaya Volya movement.

One day in February 1901, Pyotr Karpovich arrived to see the Minister of Public Education, Nikolai Bogolepov, to request admission to the St. Petersburg Technological Institute. As Bogolepov took the petition, the young man pulled out a revolver and shot him. Bogolepov died 16 days later. Karpovich was seized on the spot and sentenced to penal servitude in Siberia.

A new era of revolutionary terrorism had begun in Russia.

A new wave

Karpovich shot the minister in response to the mass expulsion of politically active students. It was the act of a lone wolf, but soon others joined him – and those were real professionals.

In the early years of the 20th century, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party (SRs) emerged from a multitude of small socialist circles. Its core consisted of individuals who envisioned engaging in either legal political struggle or mass uprisings. Yet, alongside the party itself, there existed a Combat Organization – a group of ‘romantics’ and fanatics led by the pharmacist Grigory Gershuni. The terrorist organization enjoyed a high degree of autonomy; in fact, the ‘parent’ party did not always know what its militant wing was up to. Gershuni established the style that would come to characterize this new wave of terrorism.

RT composite. Grigory Gershuni; Socialist Revolutionary Party faction in the Second State Duma, 1907.

© Unknown author / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

The terrorists tried to draw as little money as possible from the party coffers. They devoted themselves entirely to terrorism, much like members of a sect. Funds were obtained either through legitimate work under assumed names or seized during robberies (known in their jargon as ‘exes’ – short for ‘expropriations’). Speaking of jargon, one of their terms has survived to this day. The word ‘boevik’ (militant, member of a terrorist group) originally referred to a member of an anti-government combat organization; today, it carries a pejorative connotation – for example, members of ISIS are referred to as ‘boeviki’ in Russian. But to the revolutionaries, the word sounded proud and romantic.

​​For the most part, SR boeviks – members of the Combat Organization – had no time for personal life; they dedicated themselves entirely to training and combat operations. Boeviks generally lived ascetic lives, paying little heed to domestic comforts, unless their cover story required otherwise. Roles within the organization were clearly defined: the armorer manufactured powerful homemade bombs; the organizer handled the primary planning, command, and the group’s funds; and the instructor trained the boeviks. Weapons were kept in secret caches, and the members lived in safe houses. These apartments had to meet a specific set of criteria: they needed to offer a good vantage point, possess emergency exits, and allow for the door to be quickly barricaded.

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Before carrying out an attack, the terrorists meticulously studied the victim’s routine and habits. Preparations for and execution of the attacks were carried out under the guise of ordinary civilian professions – a terrorist could actually work as a cab driver or a petty merchant; this allowed him to watch the target without arousing suspicion. The boeviks often disguised themselves as government officials or military officers when carrying out attacks. In one instance, two SR members posed as a couple in love, meeting repeatedly in a park; another female terrorist would meet her comrade in a church to exchange information. There were many women in these groups, yet romantic relations between male and female operatives were rare.

The Combat Organization itself was merely the tip of the iceberg. Regional SR branches also formed their own combat squads; while operations there were less sophisticated, such groups were numerous. Gershuni drafted a program for the organization, in which he directly stated that its goal was the physical elimination of government officials and the preparation of armed uprisings.

A classic terrorist attack carried out by the organization was the 1902 assassination of Minister of the Interior Dmitry Sipyagin. A former student named Balmashev arrived at the Mariinsky Palace (which housed the State Council in St. Petersburg) dressed in an officer’s uniform. When Sipyagin entered the building, Balmashev shot him with a pistol. Notably, he made no attempt to escape. Usually, the assassin was expected to remain at the scene so he could make political statements during his trial. One should not assume that the terrorists hoped for a miraculous rescue; they knew they would be hanged.

Another characteristic example was the assassination of Grand Duke Sergey Alexandrovich, a relative of the emperor. He was killed by Ivan Kalyaev. Kalyaev was not entirely devoid of human feelings; on the first occasion when he could have killed the Grand Duke, he didn’t do so – he let the carriage pass because the Grand Duke’s young nephews were sitting alongside him. However, in the winter of 1905, on his second attempt, he hurled a bomb at the Grand Duke’s carriage right inside the Kremlin. The Grand Duke was literally torn apart by the explosion and died instantly. At his trial, Kalyaev refused to ask for clemency, vowed that more blood would be shed, and died fully satisfied with himself.

Assassination of Grand Duke Sergey Alexandrovich in the Kremlin, Moscow, February 17, 1905.

© Unknown author / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Gershuni was arrested and sentenced to penal servitude, but this did not stop the terrorists. In general, revolutionary activity was intensifying in a wide variety of forms. By 1905, there were many revolutionary organizations. If a minister or governor was assassinated, the perpetrator was most often a Socialist-Revolutionary. However, there were also nationalist movements in Poland, the Baltic region, Finland, and the Caucasus, as well as anarchist groups. Anarchists posed a massive problem because they acted without a specific motive (political agenda) and deemed it necessary to kill anyone belonging to classes they viewed as hostile; for example, they could blow up people in a café. Socialist-Revolutionaries and nationalists generally targeted government officials. And then there was the Armenian party Dashnaktsutyun, which simultaneously fought against the government, the Turks, and the Azerbaijanis.

In total, the SRs assassinated two ministers of the interior and a minister of education; Prime Minister Stolypin was assassinated by an anarchist from a different movement. Six governors, a Grand Duke, seven generals and admirals, as well as hundreds of police and military personnel, dozens of entrepreneurs and bankers, dozens of landowners, and a multitude of minor officials also fell prey to the terrorists. In December 1905 and January 1906, fierce street fighting raged in Presnya, an industrial district of Moscow. Today, the people sitting in cafés housed in the former Trekhgornaya Manufactory likely have no idea that, over a century ago, the army stormed these very buildings using artillery.

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Incidentally, when the terrorists fled abroad, they staged bloody massacres in those countries as well. For example, following the revolutionary clashes of 1905, a group of Latvian anarchists escaped to London. There, they replenished their funds by staging a midnight raid on a jewelry shop. When the authorities attempted to arrest them, the Scots Guards had to be called in with a cannon. During the Siege of Sidney Street and related events, three Latvians and several London police officers and firefighters died, and the house where the terrorists were hiding burned to the ground.

What is truly astonishing is that the top leader of the Combat Organization was also a police informant.

Yevno Azef was a very poor young man of Jewish descent. He approached the police on his own initiative, driven by a need for money. He joined the Combat Organization already as a police agent. After the group’s founder, Gershuni, was arrested, Azef rose to a leading role within the organization. Unlike Degaev, he needed no help with his work. The situation was paradoxical: Azef was exceptionally conscientious and effective both as a terrorist and as a police agent. With one hand, he planned terrorist attacks against government ministers and members of the Imperial family; with the other, he betrayed the energetic, bloodthirsty, yet naïve boeviks to the police. Remarkably, despite his repulsive and even loathsome appearance and the fact that few people actually liked him, he inspired trust in everyone. He managed to convince the police that he was unaware of the preparations for specific attacks (which was sometimes even true), while simultaneously assuring his comrades of his absolute loyalty. Furthermore, Azef succeeded in befriending Colonel Gerasimov, whom he reported to, and spent long hours in conversation with him. One might even speculate that he had a psychological disorder – or perhaps an intoxication with the power he held over people’s lives.

RT composite. Alexander Gerasimov and Yevno Azef.

© Unknown author / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

It was through Azef that the police learned of the plot to assassinate Justice Minister Ivan Shcheglovitov. Gerasimov personally orchestrated the capture of this terrorist cell. Apparently, Russian terrorists were the first to invent the explosive belt, because during the arrest, it turned out that Vsevolod Lebedintsev, the leader of the terrorist cell, had strapped himself with dynamite and prepared to assassinate the minister. Lebedintsev and his comrades were apprehended right at their staging positions. The boeviks were hanged, and the incident prompted Leonid Andreyev to write his famous psychological horror story, ‘The Seven Who Were Hanged’.

Azef even plotted what would have been the world’s first terrorist attack using an airplane. However, in 1908, this “super-terrorist” and “super-traitor” was unexpectedly exposed by the journalist Vladimir Burtsev.

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Burtsev moved in radical circles and was known for his incredible tenacity. He meticulously cross-referenced everything he knew about the various failures of terrorist cells. Taken separately, the ‘coincidences’ didn’t amount to much. But Burtsev was struck by the number of times when a terrorist whose hideout was known to only three to five people was arrested; and Azef always happened to be among that small group. He then managed to get a high-ranking retired police official to open up. The resulting scandal was massive; Prime Minister Stolypin himself had to address parliament, while Azef fled using forged documents. Ultimately, the First World War brought Azef down; the Germans arrested him as a precaution and held him in prison for two years, during which time his health deteriorated, and he died.

Terrorist activity in Russia declined sharply after 1908. On the one hand, the Azef affair drastically reduced the number of people willing to turn to terrorism. On the other hand, the authorities managed to curb the wave of attacks by arresting or eliminating many of the terrorists.

Terrorism never completely vanished in the lead-up to the 1917 revolution, although in 1914 it was nearly stifled due to wartime laws. By that time, the number of assassination attempts had already dropped to 1-3 per year; terrorist networks were swiftly dismantled by the police or simply withered away and disintegrated on their own.

Politically, terrorism was a dead end. It is difficult to say what was actually achieved by these individuals who dedicated their lives to murder, toiling over bombs in secret workshops and stalking ministers with revolvers in hand. While they created an atmosphere of nervous tension throughout the Russian Empire, ultimately, they merely paved the way for revolutionary movements that relied on the masses.

It all came to an end when the SRs – who had spent years destabilizing the edifice of the Russian Empire – died beneath its ruins. In the summer of 1918, having suffered a radical rift with the Bolsheviks, the SRs attempted to carry out a series of classic terrorist attacks, this time targeting Soviet leaders. Several officials of the new regime were killed, and the leader himself, Vladimir Lenin, was gravely wounded. The SRs’ uprisings were suppressed, and the party dragged out a wretched existence until the Bolsheviks finally disbanded it.

The SRs’ final act of terror was highly unusual for the party. In the summer of 1918, as WWI was drawing to a close, SRs in Kiev assassinated Field Marshal Eichhorn, the commander of German occupation forces in Ukraine. He was killed in the classic manner of the terrorists: Boris Donskoy, an SR operative disguised as a cab driver, hurled a bomb at the Field Marshal’s feet right on the street. Eichhorn and his adjutant were killed, and Donskoy was executed. As usual, he made no attempt to flee and was easily captured: the terrorist act was a political gesture.