Chapter 6: A Shot that Changed Russia Forever

At 4 p.m. on April 4, 1866 Tsar Alexander II, after taking his daily walk in the St. Petersburg summer garden near the Imperial Palace, was saying goodbye to two of his friends. He prepared to climb into a waiting carriage. As was usual in those days, he had no special security detail. A small crowd of persons had gathered nearby, eager for the opportunity to see their ruler. One of these onlookers suddenly drew a flintlock pistol from his pocket and pointed it at the Tsar. A man standing next to him saw the outstretched pistol. Crying out, “What are you doing?” he made a grab at the assailant’s arm. This jostled the assailant’s elbow enough to cause his shot to barely miss its target. For an instant, everyone was frozen in shocked silence as the shooter tried to flee the scene. He did not get far before police pounced on him.

The Tsar’s savior, a peasant named Osip Komissarov, became an overnight celebrity. He was elevated to the nobility and was given a new, more noble name, Komissarov-Kostromskoi. He became a marketing sensation. Within two weeks, Russian consumers could eat Komissarov pies, candies, and chocolates, drink specially issued Kostromskoi beer, and smoke “Komissarov-Kostromskoi cigarettes.”208

Immediately after his arrest, the would-be assassin posed as a peasant, Alexei Petrov. That he was not really a peasant was soon obvious to the police from his manner of speaking and vocabulary, as well as his ability to read and write in a correct manner. It took days of feverish investigation to uncover his real identity: Dmitri Karakozov, a landowner’s son from Saratov province. Karakozov was a graduate of Penzenskaia gymnasium, and an ex-student of the Kazan and Moscow university law faculties. Once his real identity was finally uncovered, the authorities quickly also learned that in the summer of 1865, after dropping out of law school, Karakozov had become preoccupied with his health. He had eventually entered the Moscow University clinic, where he was diagnosed with several ailments, including gonorrhea. During his two month stay in the hospital, Karakozov appeared to be severely depressed and tried to commit suicide. After his discharge from the hospital in January 1866, less than three months prior to his attempt on Alexander, those around him continued to perceive him as quiet, solitary and a hypochondriac who was convinced that he was soon to die.²⁰⁹

The fact that an assassination attempt was made blatently in public without any effort to hide it caused unease. The fact that Karakozov was an unknown loner was a source of extreme nervousness. It was also troubling that the accused was educated. Although the authorities initially maintained silence, and although their theories on Karakozov kept shifting, they never could accept that he was just a stray, senseless lunatic. Conspiracy was the only theory given any credence. No one found the attempted assassin quite believable in the role he professed, that of a melancholic suicide. Evidently, it was far more natural to suspect that Karakozov was part of a conspiracy.210

Alexander’s conservative counselors at first made an effort to tie Karakozov to the Polish nationalist cause. Deeper investigation revealed another connection. Karakozov was linked to a small circle of nihilists inspired by What Is to Be Done?, whose members called themselves mortusy (which means “dead men”). The mortusy were a splinter group from a larger organization of radicals called, whimsically enough, “The Organization.” The name of the splinter group has been most frequently translated as “Hell.” Hell’s goal: tsaricide and the annihilation of authority with murder and poison.

Whether Karakozov’s assassination attempt really was sponsored, or even sanctioned, by Hell remains a deserving subject of controversy. Although Karakozov knew of Hell, he also, on his own, independently advocated tsaricide. A consistent theme in Karakozov’s ideation was that he was ill and destined to die soon, so he wanted to be “useful” in his death. “A death for a death,” as he put it.²¹¹ One of Karakozov’s close connections was Ivan Khudiakov. Khudiakov was one of the founders of Hell. Khudiakov, however, did not personally favor immediate tsaricide. Instead, Khudiakov’s efforts at the time were devoted to a plot to rescue Chernyshevsky from his captivity in Siberia.²¹²

The most tangible clues to his mind frame were items found on Karakozov upon his arrest. Turning out the pockets of his peasant style overcoat, the arresting officers discovered extra bullets and gunpowder, two powdery substances, a small, pear-shaped vial containing a sticky liquid, a scrap of paper bearing the word “Kobylin,” a letter, and two copies of a printed pamphlet entitled “To My Worker Friends.” The powders were identified as morphine and strychnine, the liquid, hydrocyanic acid. These were all strong organic poisons intended to enable a quick suicide, without antidotes, and difficult to trace post mortem. “Kobylin” turned out to be Alexander Kobylin, a St. Petersburg doctor who was a political liberal with probable connections to a faction of palace schemers that favored the elevation of Konstantin to the throne. Although he was acquitted of involvement in Karakozov’s crime, there is evidence to indicate that Dr. Kobylin had helped Karakozov financially, that he had provided him with the poisons found on his upon his arrest, and that he had allowed the penniless Karakozov to stay in his home for several days immediately prior to the assassination attempt.213

The letter, phrased in terms that were deliberately veiled and ambiguous, was written by Karakozov to Nikolai Ishutin, a Moscow member of Hell. To the government, this cemented a link between Karakozov and Hell, although it remained unclear to what extent Hell had approved of Karakozov’s timing and method.

The pamphlet “To My Worker Friends” contained a proclamation that was in essence Karakozov’s terrorist manifesto:²¹⁴

It saddened and burdened me that my beloved people is perishing like this and thus I decided to annihilate the tsar-villain and die for my beloved people. If my intention succeeds, I will die with the idea that my death will be useful to my dear friend the Russian muzhik. If not, then I nonetheless believe that there will be people who will take my path. If I do not succeed, they will. My death will be an example for them and inspire them. Let the Russian people recognize their main, mightiest enemy be he Alexander II, Alexander III, and so forth, that’s all the same. Once the people makes short work of their most important enemy, the petty remainder of his landowners, grandees, officials, and all the rest of the rich folk will become afraid, for their numbers are not at all noteworthy. And then there will be real freedom.

On September 3, 1866, Karakozov’s suicidal wish was fulfilled as he was publicly hanged on a scaffold before a huge crowd in St. Petersburg.215 Karakozov’s failed assassination attempt accomplished one very tangible result -- a sudden, sharp and lasting lurch to the right in the power structure of imperial Russia. His attempt on the Emperor brought to a grinding halt what progressive tendencies lingered from Alexander’s era of great reforms. Karakozov’s attempt inaugurated an era of political reaction so severe that it has gone down in history as the “White Terror.” Many arrests took place. No one with a liberal bent of mind felt safe. Thousands in the empire’s major cities were censored, searched, questioned, arrested, and harassed.²¹⁶

A major shakeup ensued in St. Petersburg. Any of the Tsar’s ministers who was tainted with even a hint of liberalism were immediately fired and replaced with conservatives. Alexander A. Suvorov, the progressive governor- general of St. Petersburg, was among the officials dismissed. The governor-general position was abolished; in its place General Fyodor Trepov, director of the brutal Warsaw reprisals, was made prefect of police in St. Petersburg.²¹⁷ Another official who lost his job at the same time was Suvorov’s protégé and associate, Lev Nikolaevitch Perovsky.²¹⁸ Lev Nikolaevitch was removed from his position as civil governor and reassigned to a desk job in the ministry of the interior. The family was required to vacate the governor’s house. The demotion was a major humiliation which sent Lev Nikolaevitch into a tailspin of depression. It would soon lead to the breakup of the Perovsky family.

Lev Nikolaevitch and Varvara Stepanovna decided to live apart. Varvara sought, and Lev granted, the Russian equivalent of a legal separation. Varvara returned with the two girl children to Kilburun in the Crimea. There Sonia spent the next three years reading books from her grandfather’s library, as well as more contemporary works brought to her on visits by her older brother Vasily, who was busy attending university in St. Petersburg and developing into a fairly typical Sixties Generation radical. When arrested and asked, years later, about her upbringing, she would respond, “Educated at home, by my parents.” Sonia was basically self-educated.

From her reading, Sonia eagerly absorbed the utopian world view of Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done?219 She also read works of other progressive Russian writers, including Nekrasov and Turgenev, as well as the English utilitarian John Stuart Mill. The pastoral setting of the family estate gave her the opportunity to engage in physical pursuits at which she excelled, such as swimming and horseback riding.²²⁰

Meanwhile, living in St. Petersburg Lev had serious financial problems, the details of which are not fully revealed to history. He acquired a mistress and a penchant for card games, both of which were likely contributing factors to his mounting insolvency. After three years, his financial situation was so bad that he had to put Kilburun and other family properties up for sale to pay his creditors. As a result of the sale, the family in 1869 was required to rejoin Lev Nikolaevitch in an apartment in St. Petersburg. To travel there, Sonia, her brother Vasily and her mother Varvara first took a boat from the Crimea to Odessa. Along the way, they met a young radical named Anna Vilberg, eight years older than Sonia, who was also traveling to St. Petersburg. Anna was the first in a series of “nihilist” women who became Sonia’s friends and companions during her late teen years. Sonia’s stormy family atmosphere, her pensive nature and the difficult complex relationship between her father and mother caused her to reflect at length on the position of women in Russian society.²²¹ She returned to a St. Petersburg environment that was swirling with protest and the continuing repression of the White Terror.