Revolutionaries

Ilya Repin painted They Did Not Expect Him in the 1880s: a political exile walking back into a family room. Later oil, Tretyakov, not a police file. Use it for the return that conspiracy made ordinary in educated houses, then return to dates. A rug and a doorway are not 1 March on the Catherine Canal. The last article closed on statutes without a parliament. This page is the youth who read that ceiling as a wall. The emancipation had been received with bitter disappointment. During the 1860s small revolutionary groups began to appear. The outstanding figure was the socialist writer N. G. Chernyshevsky. The extent of his involvement in revolutionary action remains a subject of controversy; of his influence on generations of young Russians there can be no doubt.

In 1861–62 revolutionary leaflets were distributed in St Petersburg, ranging from the demand for a constituent assembly to a passionate appeal for insurrection. The Polish uprising of 1863 strengthened the forces of repression. The relaxation of Russian rule in Poland, which Alexander’s life records as part of the thaw, had led to patriotic street demonstrations, attempted assassinations, and finally to a national uprising that was only suppressed with some difficulty — and under threat of Western intervention on behalf of the Poles. Even more serious, from the tsar’s point of view, was the spread of nihilistic doctrines among Russian youth, producing radical leaflets, secret societies, and the beginnings of a revolutionary movement. The government, after 1862, had reacted increasingly with repressive police measures.

A climax was reached in the spring of 1866, when Dmitry Karakozov, a young revolutionary, attempted to kill the emperor. Alexander — who bore himself gallantly in the face of great danger — escaped almost by a miracle. The attempt, however, left its mark by completing his conversion to conservatism. For the next eight years the tsar’s leading minister, maintaining his influence at least in part by frightening his master with real and imaginary dangers, was Pyotr Shuvalov, the head of the secret police. The first article of this chapter already named 1866 as a hinge. This page narrates the shot. It does not steal the railway mileage or the thaw. Those remain the man’s opening. This is the weather that followed when the incomplete reforms met a generation that wanted more than a zemstvo.

A later print reconstructs the Winter Palace after the 1880 explosion. Use it as the bomb inside the house, then return to People’s Will. Smashed plaster is not 13 March on the canal. It is one of the unsuccessful attempts Britannica lists before the successful one.

In the 1870s revolutionary activity revived. Its centre was the university youth, increasingly influenced by a variety of socialist ideas derived from Europe but adapted to Russian conditions. These young people saw in the peasantry the main potential for revolutionary action. In 1873–74 hundreds of the youth, including women, went to the people, invading the countryside and seeking to rouse the peasants with their speeches. The peasants did not understand, and the police arrested the young revolutionaries. Some were sentenced to prison, and hundreds were deported to remote provinces or to Siberia. It became clear that no progress could be expected from overt action. Conspiratorial action was the only hope.

In 1876 a new party was founded that took the title Zemlya i Volya, Land and Freedom. Some of its members favoured assassination of prominent officials in reprisal for the maltreatment of their comrades and also as a means to pressure the government in order to extract Western-type political liberties. Experience had shown them that, while the peasants were physically too scattered to be an effective force and were in any case too apathetic, the workers in the new industrial cities offered a more promising audience. This faction was opposed by others in the party who deprecated assassination, continued to pay more attention to peasants than to workers, and were indifferent to the attainment of political liberties. In 1879 the party split. The politically minded and terrorist wing took the name Narodnaya Volya, People’s Will, and made its aim the assassination of Alexander II.

After several unsuccessful attempts to shoot him, to derail his train, and finally to blow up the Winter Palace in St Petersburg itself, Alexander, who under personal attack had shown unflinching courage based on a fatalist philosophy, entrusted supreme power to a temporary dictator. The minister of the interior, Count Mikhail Loris-Melikov, was charged with exterminating the terrorist organisation while at the same time conciliating moderate opinion, which had become alienated by the repressive policies pursued since 1866. At the same time, following the death of the empress in 1880, the tsar had privately married Yekaterina Dolgorukaya, who had borne him three children, and was planning to proclaim her his consort. To make this step palatable he intended to couple the announcement with a modest concession to constitutionalist aspirations. There were to be two legislative commissions including indirectly elected representatives.

This so-called Loris-Melikov Constitution, if implemented, might possibly have become the germ of constitutional development in Russia. But on the day when, after much hesitation, the tsar finally signed the proclamation announcing his intentions, 1 March 1881, 13 March New Style, he was mortally wounded by bombs in a plot sponsored by People’s Will. All the main leaders of the group were caught by the police, and five of them were hanged. Keep the names of the five out of this page unless a source used here lists them. The Russia history names the organisation and the date. Alexander’s life names the organisation and the date. Do not invent scaffold speeches. Do not invent the bomb-thrower’s last words. The dated hunt is enough.

They went to the people and were not understood. They turned to conspiracy and killed the man on the day he signed a modest concession.

The previous title’s zemstvo was a county allowed to spend on schools. This title’s youth wanted a constituent assembly or an insurrection. Between those wants sit leaflets, a Polish war, a miracle in 1866, Shuvalov’s police, a summer in the villages, a split in 1879, a palace dining room in pieces, and a canal in March. Alexander’s first article left him an autocrat who would reform. This article leaves him dead on the day a modest concession was signed. The next emperor would cancel the ukaz before it was published. That cancellation is the next title’s first act. This page should not steal it. It should end with five hangings and an unsigned future.

Do not invent Chernyshevsky’s cell conversation. Do not invent a peasant’s reply beyond Britannica’s they did not understand. Do not invent the membership count of Land and Freedom. Do not write 1917 into 1881. The intelligentsia’s later religion of revolution is a fact of the 1890s economic pages, not a speech on this canal. People’s Will is a party with an aim. The aim was achieved. The concession died with the man. That is the tragedy the sources already write. This site does not need to decorate it.

Decembrists had stood on a square in 1825 and failed in a morning. This generation took two decades and a bomb. The book’s earlier martyrs were officers. These were students, including women, who had found the village deaf and the city more promising. The industrial working class as a mass basis is the 1890s. Name the turn toward workers in 1876–79. Do not write a soviet. Stop before Pobedonostsev. The tutor of the next emperor is the next page’s weather. This page’s weather is disappointment, going to the people, terror, and 13 March.

Konstantin Makovsky painted Alexander II on his deathbed in 1881. Later oil of a body, not a photograph from the canal and not the smashed dining room already used above. Use it as the end of the reign, then put it aside. A pillow is not Loris-Melikov’s unsigned commissions. It is the successful attempt after the shots, the derailments, and the palace bomb had failed, on the day the modest concession was signed.

Stop this page before the manifesto of accession that reaffirmed autocracy without change. The next title is Alexander III. Revolutionaries here are Chernyshevsky’s influence, leaflets, Poland, Karakozov, the going to the people, Land and Freedom, the split, People’s Will, the Winter Palace, 13 March, five hanged. Repin’s doorway is the family after conspiracy. The smashed palace is the failed bomb. The deathbed is the successful one. The serfs had been disappointed. The youth made disappointment into a hunt. The hunt ended the huntsman on the day he reached for a small reform. Shuvalov’s eight years of police after 1866 had not ended the story. They had only taught the next party to stop going to a village that did not understand and to aim at one man.

Peter had killed a son and built a city. This emperor freed persons and was killed by the children of the education his zemstvos had begun to pay for. That irony is not a source sentence. Leave it unsaid, or say only what the dates already say: the man of 1861 died in 1881 at the hands of a party named for the people’s will. The people of 1874 had not understood. The party of 1879 did not wait to be understood. Experience had shown them that peasants were too scattered and too apathetic, and that workers in the new industrial cities offered a more promising audience. The next reign would try not to be understood at all, except as Orthodoxy, autocracy, and narodnost, written harder than Nicholas I had written them.