Alexander II

by Edvard Radzinsky

  Mikhail Frolenko arrived soon after. The trio started its dangerous work—they made fuses, dried pyroxylin, and tested the explosive mechanism. Dynamite was extremely sensitive and often blew up on its own, killing the dynamiters. That is what they were called, dynamiters, a new word for a new time.

  The bombs were made. Now they had to place them on the tracks of the tsar’s train. Vera Figner went to see Baron Ungern-Shternberg, son-in-law of Count Totleben, the governor general of Odessa. Her refined society manners and good looks enchanted the baron. Figner asked him to find a job as a railroad guard for her servant, because “the doctors prescribe outdoor work because of his lung disease.” The baron was delighted to be able to help the aristocratic beauty, and he wrote a letter of recommendation to the head of the Odessa railroad. A new guard began work in the little village of Gnilyakovo, outside Odessa. He was Mikhail Frolenko, with his working-class looks.

  But all the work in Odessa was in vain.

  They had an agent in Simferopol, A. Presnyakov. At his youthful twenty-three, he had already been arrested, escaped, and lived abroad. But terror in Russia seemed much more attractive for the revolutionary than gay Paris or wealthy London. Presnyakov sent a coded telegram to Odessa to report that the tsar was not going there, he was traveling to Simferopol. Next his train would go through Alexandrovsk and Moscow.

  In Alexandrovsk the terrorist group was headed by Andrei Zhelyabov, who assumed the role of a merchant come to the town to set up a leather factory. He bought land right next to the railroad tracks. This was at a point where the train traveled on a high embankment. They hoped it would be a bloody run.

  Zhelyabov testified, “The place where the mine was laid was a huge ravine. The bomb was placed there with the intention of taking the entire train…. We knew how many cars there would be in the tsar’s train.” The chosen spot guaranteed the greatest damage. The cars would fall into the ravine. The victims would be not only the tsar and his family, but ordinary people, servants and guards. Of course, the former peasant Zhelyabov no longer worried about them. Revolutionary expediency meant that the end justified the means.

  Every night Zhelyabov and his assistants, dressed in black, worked on the embankment. The ground was frozen, the cold had come early, and a cold autumn rain fell. But he dug tirelessly until the tunnel was ready. Then Zhelyabov did the most perilous part—he moved the armed mine into the tunnel, under the tracks. He had to carry it 200 meters, because the horse could not get any closer. He carried it, expecting it to blow up at any moment.

  Everything was ready. Zhelyabov demanded the honor of connecting the wires for the explosion. His peasant hands would blow up the emperor’s train.

  It was November 18, the day the tsar’s train was to travel through Alexandrovsk. A coded telegram informed Zhelyabov that the train with the tsar’s retinue would come first, followed by the imperial train, and that the tsar would be in the fourth car. At nine that morning Zhelyabov and his comrades went to the embankment and down into the ravine. He dug out the buried ends of the wires and waited.

  The first train roared above them. The imperial train came soon after. Three cars passed over the spot with the mine. Then came the fourth, with the tsar. One of his comrades shouted to Zhelyabov, “Go!”

  Triumphantly, Zhelyabov made the connection. Nothing happened. The train rolled down the track and out of view. They stood there in furious frustration. So much effort for nothing. The EC created a special commission to investigate the reason for the failure. The peasant son Zhelyabov had connected the wires incorrectly.

  The tsar’s train rushed toward Moscow.

  They followed the same scheme in Moscow. A pleasant married couple, the Sukhorukovs, came to the suburbs of the old capital. Stepnyak-Kravchinsky described it this way: “In one of the suburbs of the first Russian capital, where that half-Asian city, no less majestic than ancient Babylon or Nineveh…meets the gardens, orchards, and meadows that surround Moscow on all sides, in that almost rural part of the city stood a dilapidated one-story house with an attic, blackened by age and half in ruins.”

  The Sukhorukovs rented that house, just 150 meters from the Moscow-Kursk Railroad. They were Sofia Perovskaya and Lev Gartman. From their house they started to dig toward the tracks, to lay the mine. They told the owner of the house that they were going to do major repairs and boarded up the windows. Others came to dig: Mikhailov, Barannikov, Morozov, Shiryaev, and their comrades.

  They did not know how to make a tunnel. “Manuals on sappers and mines did not give us anything useful,” recalled Mikhailov. They learned as they went along. They had to dig a shallow tunnel because of the groundwater that quickly rose to the surface. But even at that depth, the floor was constantly damp. Week after week, on all fours, up to their necks in cold wet mud, they worked from early morning until late at night; they covered no more than two meters a day. They reinforced the tunnel with boards. In case the reinforcement didn’t hold and there was a cave-in, they carried poison so that they would not suffer long.

  The police posed a much greater threat. “All the participants knew what awaited them in case of arrest. A bottle of nitroglycerine was kept in the house, to be blown up if the police were breaking down the door,” wrote Stepnyak-Kravchinsky.

  Once, a fire broke out near their house. The neighbors knocked and offered to help carrying things out. They could not let them in, and quick-witted Sonechka Perovskaya saved the day. She grabbed an icon and ran outside, shouting, “Leave everything as it is, it’s God’s will. You can protect yourself from God’s punishment only through prayer!” The neighbors treated that declaration with great respect and left them alone. The girlish figure stood outside holding the icon and blocking the way until the fire was put out.

  “However, despite all the danger, the most sincere merriment reigned in the little house…. At meals, when everyone gathered, we chatted and joked as if nothing were out of the ordinary. Sofia Perovskaya’s silvery laugh pealed most frequently, even though she kept a loaded revolver in her pocket, with which if necessary, she would blow up all and sundry,” the members recalled.

  And so they labored and sincerely made merry, listening to Sonechka’s silvery laughter, before attempting to blow up a trainload of people. The tunnel went through the railroad embankment, right under the bed, and they could listen to the distant rumble of approaching trains. It would increase until the train roared right overhead, the tunnel roof shaking. “The wheels jumped from rail to rail…. Everythings hook around you…earth rained down through the cracks onto your head, into your ears and eyes, and the candles guttered, and yet it was pleasant to greet that mighty force flying past you,” recalled Nikolai Morozov.

  At last, the time came to lay the mine. And here some of them worried that there wasn’t enough dynamite, even though Kibalchich assured them it was more than adequate. They received a telegram from their tireless agent A. Presnyakov: “The price of wheat is two rubles, our price is four.” They knew that the imperial train was traveling second, behind the retinue’s train. And the tsar was in the fourth car. They had plenty of dynamite for one car.

  Goldenberg, impatient for action, went to Odessa to take the unused dynamite from Vera Figner. He put it in a big suitcase and headed back to Moscow.

  He blew his cover at the Odessa train station. Dressed like a dandy, Goldenberg dragged the big and clearly heavy suitcase along the platform himself. He did not use a porter, as an obviously wealthy man would do. This made one of the porters suspicious and he reported him to the police.

  The police sent a wire to the next station, Elisavetgrad, and the police there were waiting for Goldenberg. He tried to run but was immediately surrounded. He pulled out a gun. From the report to the Third Department: “It was not possible to approach him and take him: he cocked his revolver and aimed at whoever came near…thereby outraging the crowd against him.”

  Finally, they got the gun away from him, and the crowd attacked poor Goldenberg. The gendarmes put an end
to the beating. “However, even after that it took six men to tie his hands: he was so strong…and also angry, and he even bit.”

  Grigory Goldenberg’s fate was horrible. At the Fortress of Peter and Paul, Goldenberg was given an experienced investigator, who quickly understood his main trait—monstrous conceit (a reaction to the endless humiliations he suffered as a Jewish child). Listening to Goldenberg’s proud speech about the great and noble goals of the People’s Will, the investigator proposed that he could save Russia. It would take very little—revealing to the government the true lofty aims of their party and describing the noble activists of the revolutionary party, after which, naturally, the government could not persecute such people. “The fault lies in our general confusion. But now he would lead the lost youth of Russia from the darkness of terror and the lost government toward the light of general reconciliation.”

  Goldenberg believed it and wrote one hundred fifty pages, giving names, addresses, events, facts, and brief biographies of one hundred forty-three “noble members of the People’s Will.” However, at one of the interviews he warned, “Bear in mind that if even one hair falls from the heads of my comrades, I will not forgive myself.”

  “I don’t know about hair…but I can promise you that heads will fall for sure,” the investigator said, laughing.

  Goldenberg hanged himself in his cell.

  In Moscow, the revolutionaries learned about Goldenberg’s arrest, but they were sure that he would not inform on them. A new blow awaited them on November 18, when they heard that the train got through Alexandrovsk without problem. They attributed that to an arrest, as well. They thought that Zhelyabov and his comrades had been caught, which might mean that the police were on their trail. They expected them to show up at any moment. Sonechka’s pistol was ready, and their nerves were strained to the limit.

  Things were still quiet on November 19, when the train was to pass by. The arrival of the trains of the retinue and the tsar was expected at 10:00 and 11:00 P.M. All the diggers left the house. Nikolai Morozov took a rock from the deadly tunnel as a memento. “We discussed who should stay in the apartment to await the train and set up the explosion. We decided that Gartman and Perovskaya would stay to the end. The role of the person who would do the explosion was merely to make the connection,” said Shiryaev.

  Thus, Sonechka would keep watch outside, and as the tsar’s fourth car came by, she would signal Gartman in the house, who would connect the wires. The mine would explode and the imperial train would fly into the air.

  The historic moment arrived—the first train was barreling down the track. As the telegram had informed them, it was the entourage, and Sonechka let it go by. About half an hour later, the imperial train came into view. The cars rattled by, one at a time. There it was, the fourth car. She gave Gartman the sign. He connected the wires and a powerful blast shook the sleepy town of Rogozhskaya Zastava. The car was tossed into the air and it fell, wheels up. The other cars were derailed.

  Perovskaya and Gartman quickly fled the scene. The tsar surely was dead.

  War Minister Milyutin, who was in the imperial train, wrote, “The imperial train usually travels a half hour behind the other one, usually called the retinue train. This time it went ahead of the retinue train. It was due to mechanical problems with the retinue train. The tsar did not want to wait while they changed the locomotive, and the imperial train went first.”

  Perovskaya had let the tsar’s train go by, and they blew up the retinue train. “The baggage car with fruit from the Crimea was blown up. There were no human casualties,” Milyutin wrote.

  It was dark when Alexander reached Moscow. Troops were lined up at the station, and music played. When he left the station, the echo of a distant explosion could be heard.

  He stayed at the Nikolayevsky Palace in the Kremlin, where he had been born sixty-one years earlier.

  Milyutin wrote: “Around ten that evening, we moved into the Kremlin palace and had not yet settled into our rooms when we learned that the second train, traveling a half hour behind the first, with part of the retinue, servants, and baggage, just as it reached the outskirts of Moscow crashed because of a secret mine. Obviously, this villainous attack had been intended for the tsar’s train; a completely random circumstance (change of trains) led the villains into confusion…. The locomotive got past, but the two baggage cars behind it fell on their side; the other cars were also derailed, but fortunately were undamaged and not a single person was hurt.”

  The tsar was unpacking when minister of the court Alexander Adlerberg came in. He told the tsar that the retinue train had been blown up. “The fourth car of the retinue train has been turned into marmalade,” Adlerberg said. “There was nothing in it but fruit from the Crimea.”

  The emperor must have turned white with the realization that his was the fourth car in the imperial train. He now knew that they knew everything, the order of the trains and even the secret number of his car. Someone who was very well informed was feeding them information. His helpless response was reported: “What do those scoundrels want with me? Why are they badgering me like a wild animal?”

  From Moscow he sent a telegram to the empress: “Arrived safely in Moscow, where it is 14 below zero. I am saddened that you are in the same condition. I feel good and not tired. Tender kisses.”

  The next day the rumor spread through Moscow that the explosion was the work of students. A crowd rushed the university, but the police were already in place. At the Cathedral of the Assumption, a thanksgiving service was held for the health and miraculous rescue of the tsar. “God saved me again,” Alexander said. He did not know that God had saved him twice on that terrible voyage.

  “The event of November 19 brought a grim color to our entire stay in Moscow,” wrote Milyutin. “We were still under that horrible impression during the trip to St. Petersburg. All measures were taken to protect the imperial train from new dangers. We did not let them know in St. Petersburg when the tsar would arrive. The troops of the imperial garrison, all the officers, officials, and even imperial family waited for several hours in the streets and at the station, in extremely and unusually cold weather. All telegraph service was suspended. To make matters worse, there was a blizzard in the night. The emperor got to St. Petersburg only around three in the afternoon. He was sad and serious.”

  His heir was waiting for him in the palace. He was grim. His eyes conveyed his desire, “Destroy sedition.” He wrote in his diary: “22 November. Father back from Livadia, after two days in Moscow, where there was another attempt on his life…. It’s horrible, what a sweet time we live in!”

  Now not only the tsar’s coach was guarded when he moved within his own capital, but also the entire railroad when the imperial train was traveling. Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, who came to St. Petersburg with his father, the viceroy of the Caucasus, described his surprise: “The Moscow–St. Petersburg line, all 605 kilometers, was lined by troops. Throughout the entire journey we saw the glimmer of bayonets and soldiers’ greatcoats. At night thousands of campfires lit our way. At first we thought this was part of the ceremony of greeting the Viceroy, but then we learned that the Tsar was planning to visit Moscow in the near future, and therefore the government was taking extreme measures to protect his train from attack by villains. This saddened us greatly. Apparently, the political situation was taking on an extremely tense character, if even the train of the Emperor of All Russia needed every inch of road between the two capitals guarded. This was very unlike the days when Emperor Nicholas I traveled almost without guards through the most remote areas of his vast empire. Our father was very troubled and could not hide his agitation.”

  In the meantime there was a police report. They had found the tunnel under the tracks. It led to the house of a certain Sukhorukov, which was only 150 meters from the railroad bed. The house was empty, but when the police arrived, the stove was filled with glowing embers, the samovar was still warm, and a candle was burning. The man who called himself
Sukhorukov was not only a terrorist, he was also a con man. Just before the explosion, he borrowed a large sum of money from a widow, using the house he had rented as collateral.

  The terrorists’ proclamation was brought to the tsar. “On November 19 of this year, near Moscow on the Moscow-Kursk railroad line, on the orders of the Executive Committee, an attempt was made on the life of Alexander II by blowing up the tsar’s train. The attempt failed. The reasons for the mistake and failure we do not find necessary to publish at the present time.

  “We are certain that our agents and our entire party will not be discouraged by the failure, but will draw from this incident confidence in their strength and the possibility of successful struggle. Appealing to all honest Russian citizens for whom the road is free, for whom the people’s will and the people’s interests are sacred, we once again proclaim that Alexander II is the main representative of the usurpation of the people’s sovereignty, the main pillar of reaction, the main perpetrator of court murders…. In order to break despotism and return to the people their rights and power, we need general support. We demand it and expect it from Russia.”

  The most inexplicable aspect of this story is the behavior of the tsarist police. On November 14, right after Goldenberg was arrested in Elisavetgrad, a telegram was sent to the Third Department: “Today at the Elisavetgrad Station the gendarmes arrested an unknown man arriving on the Odessa train. He resisted arrest. His baggage held more than thirty-six pounds of explosives. Under interrogation he declared himself to be a socialist. I am reporting this.”

  “Was he preparing for the imperial train?” wrote Drenteln, chief of the Third Department, on this information. But what a strange question. It’s unlikely he was carrying dynamite for his own amusement. It was obvious that terrorists were preparing to blow up the imperial train. They should have telegraphed the train, perhaps stopped it, checked the railroad bed. They should have done something. But nothing was done. Only fate saved the tsar.