Alexander II

by Edvard Radzinsky

  “His maid told me that he had not come home yet.” Korba dropped by again later, and since he was still out, left him a note. Nothing more was done. (She may have been too concerned with the arrest of her lover, Mikhailov, to worry about Kletochnikov.) Kletochnikov went to Kolotkevich’s apartment, where he was arrested.

  On February 27, the head of the fighters, Andrei Zhelyabov, was captured at the apartment of Mikhail Trigoni. They fell, one by one. Which raises the question, how had they survived so long? In countries with a long tradition of autocracy, as soon as there is a threat to the autocratic regime, the most conservative forces form a union with the secret police. Could some conservatives have been using the terrorists as a cat’s paw? The idea of making the People’s Will concentrate on killing the tsar would have suited them. Was that why the police were so useless and why the terrorists lived so freely? Was Russia the first place where terrorists were used by others to destroy an unsuitable monarch?

  Once Loris-Melikov created a parallel police structure, the helplessness of the police instantly stopped. Only the terrorists were helpless. Is my theory correct? I don’t know. But I do know that the strange behavior of the police continued.

  By March, Loris-Melikov had arrested the leadership of the People’s Will. The count had found out about the apartment on Malaya Sadovaya Street. A delegation came to the cheese store: It was headed by a gentleman in a fur coat with a red lining and a general’s cap. He was General Mrovinsky, the inspector of the Police Department and a specialist on explosives. Behind him came a police inspector and the janitor. Their appearance suggested that someone had informed on the plot.

  Bogdanovich, pretending to be a cheese merchant, thought it was the end. There was a barrel in the store filled with earth from the tunnel they were digging and covered with a layer of cheeses. Mrovinsky headed straight for the barrel and asked what it contained. Told it held cheese, he did not even look inside.

  Then the inspector went into the living quarters, where the tunnel began. When the revolutionaries went into the tunnel, they removed the wooden panel of the wall from floor to window, and then replaced it. Mrovinsky went to the wall. Just knocking on it would show that it was a hollow wall. The experienced inspector knocked, so inexpertly (or so expertly?) that there was no telltale hollow sound. He also looked in the back rooms of the store, where there were mounds of dirt, covered with sacking. Here, too, the inspector general found nothing unusual.

  The explosion of the train and the bomb in the Winter Palace were to be repeated. The Third Department was still doing its job. The tsar was doomed.

  Daria Tyutcheva apparently did have basis for her prediction that in three or four months the Winter Palace would be swept clean. The tsarevich’s closest friend, formerly deputy director of the Third Department and now deputy minister of internal affairs, Adjutant General P. A. Cherevin, would later say, “I owe my entire career to Alexander II, but I still say: it’s a good thing they got rid of him, otherwise where would he have led Russia with all his liberalism!”

  Getting rid of unsuitable tsars was a tradition that went back to the palace coups of the guards. Usually the people closest to the sovereign were involved in the conspiracies.

  There was an Iago in the Winter Palace. Minister of the Court Alexander Adlerberg held a hereditary position. His father had been minister of the court under Nicholas I and remained in the position when Alexander II ascended to the throne. His son, the tsar’s childhood friend, succeeded him when he retired. Both Alexanders enjoyed recalling their childhood and their tutor Zhukovsky. Adlerberg was the only one at court to enjoy the privilege of calling the tsar by his diminutive name, Sasha, and to see him without being announced.

  But politics and the tsar’s love came between them. Adlerberg and Peter Shuvalov had taken a passionate part in the counter-reforms, and Alexander’s inability to suppress sedition irritated Adlerberg. The appearance of Loris-Melikov, the coming reform, and Princess Dolgorukaya ended the friendship. Adlerberg joined the camarilla and had been against the tsar’s marriage. The tsar did not forgive him.

  Adlerberg’s career was coming to an end. As War Minister Milyutin subsequently recorded in his diary: “Count Adlerberg told me, ‘Even if the catastrophe of March 1 had not occurred, I still would not be minister of the court now…. The late tsar was completely in the hands of Princess Yuryevskaya, who would have led the tsar to the most extreme irrationality, to shame.”

  The count’s behavior had become quite strange. After the attack by Solovyov, Alexandra Bogdanovich recorded the words of the historian Vassily Bilbasov in her diary: “Five days before the attempt, a German agency sent coded telegrams…. They ended up on Adlerberg’s desk and he never bothered to unseal anything.” The shots took place.

  Before the explosion in the Winter Palace, Governor General Gurko, who knew about the lax discipline at the palace, wanted to take the supervision of the palace out of Adlerberg’s hands. But Adlerberg told the tsar that Gurko wanted to enforce military order at the palace, knowing that the tsar would immediately think of the “delicate circumstances” (i.e., the presence of Princess Dolgorukaya, then his mistress) and would not permit the general in the palace.

  On the eve of March 1, the minister’s actions were very surprising. A. I. Dmitriev-Mamonov (later governor general of Omsk) was head of the bodyguards of the tsar and his family, subordinate not to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but personally to Minister of the Court Count Adlerberg. Only he and Dmitriev-Mamonov knew the routes the tsar took on his travels.

  Dmitriev-Mamonov later told the story to a relative of his, A. Spassky-Odinets, who recorded it. “There was no lack of reports on preparations for an attack, but they were all anonymous. However, on the morning of fateful March 1 there was a signed warning that gave the place and circumstances, which turned out to be completely accurate. Dmitriev-Mamonov, in his words, took the letter to Adlerberg and reported on the need to change the usual route that day. Adlerberg replied: ‘No later than yesterday after dinner and in the presence of the heir, the tsar said in a stern voice, almost shouting, “Listen, Adlerberg! I’ve told you before and I command you now: do not dare tell me anything about attempts being planned on my life. Leave me in peace. Take whatever measures you and Dvorzhitsky think necessary, but I want to live whatever life God has left me in peace!” How could I, after that command, given in such harsh tones, report to His Majesty and insist on changing his trip?’”

  Apparently not everyone in the camarilla was convinced of the need to get rid of the tsar, and there was a struggle in its ranks. The State Archive of the Russian Federation has letters that were received by Princess Yuryevskaya starting in May 1880. The first letter tells the princess that a secret organization of defenders of the monarchy had been created in St. Petersburg that intended to fight with secret organizations of revolutionaries. The organization called itself The Secret Anti-Socialist League, with the Russian acronym TASL. The author of the letter, the Great Leaguer, was its head. He would not tell her his name or the names of the league members. “We swore that no one would ever know our names.”

  Instead, the Great Leaguer gives detailed descriptions of TASL’s ceremonies, which resembled Masonic ones. After a brief service, the members gathered in a hall, dressed in black with silver medallions of the order on their chests and their faces behind black hoods. This would seem no more than game playing if not for the author’s knowledge of the work of the People’s Will.

  The Great Leaguer told her about the structure of the People’s Will, and gave an accurate number of members of its top secret Executive Committee and the number of fighters. This was information only at the disposal of the Administrative Commission of the People’s Will. In May 1880, the Great Leaguer begged Princess Yuryevskaya to persuade the tsar not to attend the changing of the guard and parade in the Mikhailovsky Manege on Sundays. He told her that “probably, a bomb will be thrown at the tsar or the road will be mined.” But it was only in May that the Execu
tive Committee, according to Vera Figner, “came up with the project to rent a store in the part of St. Petersburg where the tsar travels most frequently and to lay a mine to blow him up.”

  Princess Yuryevskaya got the last letter in December 1880. Who wrote those letters? And what was this secret organization that surfaced so mysteriously and vanished as mysteriously?

  Probably there was no TASL; it was just an invention of the writer. And the writer was most likely someone from the Third Department. He was one of the people who intended to use the People’s Will as a cat’s paw to remove the tsar, hence his knowledge of underground Russia. For some reason, he betrayed his fellow conspirators and tried to save the tsar. We can only imagine his reasons.

  The notebook of Captain K. F. Kokh, the chief of the tsar’s convoy, records all the routes taken by Alexander II. They did not change after the May warning from the Great Leaguer. Apparently Alexander II did not take the letters seriously.

  CHAPTER 16

  Death of the Tsar

  Following a tradition established by his murdered great-grandfather, Paul I, the emperor observed the changing of the guard and parade every Sunday, in the enormous Mikhailovsky Manege, which could hold several cavalry squadrons. Often it was attended by the grand dukes, adjutant generals of the retinue, and ambassadors (if they had military titles). As February came to an end, the whole route traveled by the emperor’s carriage was lined by police guarding him and by observers from the People’s Will.

  Almost all the participants of the assassination would later be arrested and give detailed testimony. Their words shed light on the event, which is still not clear in many respects.

  The tunnel from the cheese shop on Malaya Sadovaya was completed by late February, and required only the mine to be laid. Four volunteers were found to throw bombs if the tsar took the route via the Catherine Canal. They were Nikolai Rysakov, a student at the Mining Institute (he was only nineteen, a minor under tsarist law), the aristocrat Ignati Grinevitsky, a student at the Technological Institute, twenty-four, and two young workers, Timofei Mikhailov and Ivan Emelyanov.

  The four met at an illegal apartment, where the chief dynamiter Kibalchich explained how the bombs worked. Rysakov stated, “As he left, Kibalchich asked us not to frequent places where we might be arrested…. Usually, at such moments, arrests are more likely somehow, he explained.”

  Mikhailov, Barannikov, and Kolotkevich were already behind bars. Andrei Zhelyabov was now in charge of the People’s Will. He sensed approaching danger. Rysakov continued, “I noticed a feverishness in the actions of my comrades, which was explained by the frequency of arrests. Zhelyabov told us, ‘We must hurry.’”

  In late February Zhelyabov told them, “You must come to the conspiracy apartment on Sunday March 1, to get the mines and necessary instructions.” They understood that the assassination was set for that day, and that it would probably be the last day of freedom for them, and perhaps of their lives.

  They never saw Zhelyabov again. The next day, February 27, the police came to the room of Mikhail Trigoni, who rented a room on Nevsky Prospect, and arrested him and Andrei Zhelyabov, who was visiting him. The giant did not even have time to reach for his revolver. In prison, Zhelyabov repeated his line, “If you kill us, there will be others…lots of people are being born these days.”

  The next morning at the Winter Palace, the tsar received Loris-Melikov and Milyutin (he saw them daily) and Nikolai Girs, head of the Asian Department (who was expected to replace elderly Gorchakov as minister of foreign affairs). Loris-Melikov proudly reported the arrest of Zhelyabov and Trigoni. Later the tsar told Milyutin, “Congratulate me twice: Loris told me that the last conspirator has been captured and that they will persecute me no more!”

  That evening, the tsar made notes as usual: “28 February. 11:00 A.M. reports of Milyutin, Girs, Loris. Three important arrests: including Zhelyabov.”

  Those were the happy results of the penultimate day of his life.

  On that same day, the remaining members of the Executive Committee met in an illegal apartment near Voznesensky Bridge. None of the original leaders was left. They were all in the Fortress of Peter and Paul. The organization was in disarray. “And on top of it, we learned to our horror that not one of the four bombs was ready. The next day was March 1, Sunday, and the tsar might drive along Sadovaya, where the mine was still not placed in the tunnel,” wrote Vera Figner.

  Sofia Perovskaya led the meeting. The petite young woman took charge of the bewildered men. She believed that a popular rebellion would follow the death of the tsar, and then Zhelyabov, who was in prison, would be saved. It would be a complete misunderstanding, however, to think that his release was her primary motivation. She wanted to achieve the party’s main goal, their maniacal dream, to kill the tsar, so that the revolution would begin.

  With her rampant faith and fierce energy, Perovskaya fired up the men’s spirits. The women turned out to be the ones with the greatest courage at this meeting—Alexandra Korba, Alexandra Mikhailova, and Vera Figner, who all wanted to free Russia.

  After Perovskaya’s inspiring speech, the men perked up. “Agitated, we were imbued with one feeling, one sentiment…. Everyone present declared unanimously: ‘Act. Tomorrow no matter what, we act!’ The mine had to be placed. The bombs had to be ready by morning,” Figner wrote.

  It was around three in the afternoon on Saturday. They had under twenty-four hours.

  Only the ones with work to do remained in the apartment by five. Three dynamiters led by Kibalchich and Vera Figner labored until morning, making the bombs. It was very dangerous work, especially done in haste. These sensitive bombs often went off by themselves. Figner wrote, “I persuaded Sofia Perovskaya to lie down, to gather strength for the next day, and I helped the workers, wherever they needed a hand, even though I was inexperienced; I cut up kerosene tins I had bought to serve as wrappers for the bombs. Our lamps and the fireplace were lit all night. At two in the morning I left the comrades, because my services were no longer needed.”

  That same night, the student Ignati Grinevitsky (nicknamed “Kotik”) wrote his last will and testament. “Alexander II must die. His days are numbered. He will die and we, his enemies, his killers, will die with him…. History will show that the luxuriant tree of freedom demands human sacrifices…. Fate has doomed me to an early death, and I will not see victory, I will not live a single day, a single hour in the radiant time of triumph…. But I believe that with my death I will have done everything I had to do, and no one in the entire world can demand more of me.”

  Perovskaya and Figner slept. “When Perovskaya and I awoke at eight, the men were still working, but two bombs were ready, and Perovskaya took them [to the other apartment where the bomb throwers were supposed to get them].” Figner helped fill the other two bombs, and Kibalchich took them to the apartment. That is how they greeted the morning of March 1.

  Rysakov’s apartment, early on the morning of March 1. His landlady testified, “That morning he got up after 7:00: hearing noise in his room, I got up, too. He came to the kitchen and said, ‘See how early I got up today; I should get up this early on weekdays.’…He was so touching, he started talking to me, before he almost never spoke.”

  He was small and round-shouldered, with a pale fuzz on his upper lip. He looked like a high school student. Rysakov testified: “Around 9:00, I came to the conspiracy apartment to get the bombs and for the explanation of the assassination plan. At about the same time Kotik, Ivan Emelyanov, and Timofei Mikhailov showed up. Then came a blonde, who had carried a rather big parcel…. Those were the bombs. She first handed them out and then explained the action plan, sketching on an envelope the approximate location. And who should be where.”

  The final plan had two versions. The first was if the tsar returned from the Manege along Malaya Sadovaya Street. Then the mine in the tunnel near the cheese shop would go off. This part of the operation was called Central Blow.

  At the same time all f
our bomb throwers were to be at both ends of Malaya Sadovaya Street. If the explosion was unsuccessful (that is, if it went off too soon or too late), they had to throw their bombs at the carriage. The plan had also called for Zhelyabov to attack the tsar bodily, and stab him to death with his dagger, if the bombs all failed. But now Zhelyabov was in prison, Sofia Perovskaya was in charge, and they had to give up on the stabbing.

  The second version was if the tsar went back to the palace via the Catherine Canal. Then it was up to the bomb throwers alone. All four had to leave Malaya Sadovaya Street and hurry to the canal, on the signal that would come from Perovskaya.

  “The signal was a light flutter of a ladies’ lace hankie,” Vera Figner wrote poetically, many years later. That fluttering lace hankie became part of many works of history and poetry. But in fact, as Rysakov testified during the investigation, the historic signal was much more prosaic. “The blonde [Perovskaya] would take out a handkerchief and blow her nose, and that would show us we had to go to the canal.”

  Usually, when Alexander took the Catherine Canal, he stopped along the way to visit his cousin at the Mikhailovsky Palace. That would give them time to take their places on the canal.

  March 1, early morning in the Chancellery of the city governor. A. I. Dvorzhitsky, the chief of police who accompanied the tsar to the Mikhailovsky Manage, explained what happened: “At nine in the morning of the horrible day of March 1, 1881, the city governor General Fedorov gathered all the police chiefs of the district precincts and told us that everything was going well, that the main activists of the anarchists, Trigoni and Zhelyabov, were arrested, and only two or three people remained to be captured to end the war on sedition, and that the emperor and the minister of internal affairs were totally satisfied with the work of the police. Despite this faith on the part of the city governor on the success of suppressing anarchy, many of us remained in great perplexity. I personally did not share the city governor’s conviction, based on the information that was continually reported to him, and I felt it my duty right after General Fedorov’s speech to go to see my acquaintance chamberlain Count Perovsky, a man who was close to the Imperial Highnesses Grand Dukes Vladimir Alexandrovich and Alexander Alexandrovich.”