Emperor Alexander II Thanks God For Narrow Escape From One Assassin, Is Immediately Killed by Second Assassin
19th century Russia was marked by great discontent and political turmoil, as reformers ran against the oppressive instincts of Russia’s imperial government. Without political freedom, and with free expression severely restricted, many reformers grew disgusted with the system and turned into revolutionaries dedicated to its overthrow. One such group formed a secret organization, Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will), which sought to overthrow the autocratic Russian government by acts of violent propaganda calculated to spark a mass revolt. A terrorist organization, in short.
People’s Will emerged from radical student study circles in the 1870s, which tried to spread socialist ideas to peasants and industrial workers. However, they were easily repressed by the imperial secret police, the Okhrana, who swiftly arrested and jailed the agitators. That led the radical students to rethink their strategy and tactics. Eventually, a consensus emerged that the only way to overthrow the imperial government was via revolutionary violence. More clandestine and aggressive tactics were called for – specifically, “propaganda of the deed”, or terrorism.
The result was Zemlya i Volya (Land and Liberty), a radical organization that preached political assassinations as self-defense, and justified revenge against oppressive officials. However, it stopped short of deeming terror a means of political struggle against the government. Some members had no such scruples, and in 1879 they splintered off to form People’s Will after Zemlya i Volya was almost wiped out by the secret police following a failed assassination attempt on the Emperor. People’s Will was far more radical, and saw terrorism as a proactive tool for overthrowing the regime, not simply as a reactive means of retaliation.
People’s Will called for violence, announced an ambitious program of terrorism and assassination to break the government, and decreed a death sentence against Emperor Alexander II, who was to be executed as an enemy of the people. They established clandestine cells in major cities and within the Russian military, and began publishing underground revolutionary newspapers and leaflets targeted at industrial workers.
People’s Will tried to kill the Emperor in December of 1879 with explosives on a railway but missed his train. They tried again two months later, by planting a bomb in his palace. However, Alexander II was not in the room when the explosives went off. A frightened Emperor declared a state of emergency and set up a commission to repress the terrorists. Within a week, a People’s Will assassin attempted to kill the commission’s head. The repression mounted, and People’s Will activists caught distributing illegal leaflets were hanged. Undaunted, the group doggedly persisted with its relentless efforts to kill the Emperor.
They finally got their chance on March 1st, 1881. A People’s Will assassin waited in ambush along a route taken by the Emperor every week, and threw a bomb under his carriage when it passed by. The explosion killed a guard and wounded others, but the carriage was armored, and the Emperor was unhurt. A shaken Emperor emerged from the carriage, and crossed himself as he surveyed the damage. Unbeknownst to him, there was a second assassin concealed in the gathering crowd. Shouting at the Emperor “it is too early to thank God!“, the second assassin threw another bomb, which landed and went off directly beneath Alexander II’s feet. There was a third assassin in the crowd, ready with yet another bomb if the first two failed. However, his explosives proved unnecessary.
Alexander II died of his wounds, and the assassins were arrested and hanged. In the aftermath, intensified repression effectively wrecked People’s Will, as nearly all its members were rounded up and executed or jailed. Terrorism in Russia was kept in check for years afterward, but the repression created even more enemies for the regime. Lacking legal means for expressing dissent, many opponents were driven into underground clandestine resistance, as the Russian Empire was transformed into a pressure cooker. It finally erupted into revolution in 1905, and into an even greater revolution that finally did away with the imperial government in 1917. Surviving veterans of People’s Will, who began emerging from prisons at the turn of the century as their sentences expired, played important roles in both revolutions.