Chapter 13: The Formation of Narodnaya Volya

Zhelyabov arrived at Lipetsk, along with Mikhailov, on June 13, 1879. Using their false names and passports, they took a room together. Gradually the other extremists began to filter into town. Eleven in all attended.363 Among them was Nikolai Morozov, son of a wealthy noble landowner, who was a gifted writer and one of the intellectuals of the movement. Morozov had just published an incendiary article in the newspaper of Zemlya i Volya that stoked the raging controversy between the party’s moderates and its terrorists. Entitled “Political Killings,” it espoused a sophisticated rationale and justification of terrorism. Morozov wrote:

Political killing is, above all, an act of vengeance. Only when it has avenged the comrades that have perished can a revolutionary organization look its enemies straight in the eye; only then can it rise to the moral heights that a champion of freedom must attain to be able to lead the masses. Political killing is the only means of self-defense in the present conditions, and one of the best ways of agitating. By striking at the very center of the government organization it shakes the whole system with terrifying force. The blow radiates instantly throughout the state like an electric current and disrupts all its functions. When the advocates of freedom are few in number, they always shut themselves up in secret societies. This secrecy endows them with tremendous strength. It has given mere handfuls of daring men the ability to fight millions of organized but overt enemies . . . But when to this secrecy is added political killing as a systematic means of struggle, such people will become truly terrible to their enemies. The latter will live in constant fear of their lives, never knowing from one minute to the next when or whence vengeance will come. Political killing is the realization of revolution in the present. 364

At Lipetsk, the budding terrorists pretended to be tourists walking in the woods. Their meetings gave the appearance of chance encounters, in meadows far from any habitations, where spies could be seen hundreds of yards away. In the course of these meetings, they went straight to the Nechaev playbook. They formed themselves into a real life version of the “Executive Committee” which Osinski, and before him Nechaev, had contrived as a terrorist strategem. Positions were assigned to the members according to their inclination and ability. The glib, charismatic Zhelyabov took the role of the fiery, moving speaker. His code name was “Boris.” He would rapidly become the group’s perceived leader.

Another key leadership role was assumed by the portly Alexander Mikhailov. He was the organizational wizard and chief of security. Due to his passion for keeping the Committee’s operations “clean,” his code name was “the Janitor.”

Nikolai Morozov was placed in charge of published propaganda. Slender and willowy, and with a soft, childlike voice,365 he was nicknamed “Sparrow.” Before long, “Sparrow” would come into intellectual conflict over anarchist principles with Perovskaya’s erstwhile fictitious fiancé, Lev Tikhomirov. Tikhomirov seemed aged beyond his years. He was known as “Starik” or the “Ancestor.” The “Ancestor” was also a writer, and he was named party theoretician. Tikhomirov put a philosophy of terrorism into terms even more simplified than those of Morozov. “Terrorism is a very pernicious idea, absolutely chilling. It is capable of transforming weakness into force.”³⁶⁶ Frolenko, who was not a political philosopher, stated the prevailing argument more crassly. “We’re all going to be killed, aren’t we? There’s no other possibility. We shall die, and that’s a fact. But we can die for a mere nothing, or we can die doing something big. So the obvious thing is to do something big.”³⁶⁷

A test for entrance into the new group was unanimously agreed. The candidate was to be asked: “Are you ready at once to offer your life, your personal freedom and all that you have?” If he or she said “yes,” then they could be taken on. Membership of the committee was made irrevocable. Once accepted, a candidate was committed to never resign, to “admit of no ties of friendship, affection or relationship” and to “devote his or her whole self to the service of the party.” The conference concluded with an “indictment” of the Tsar for unforgivable sins. The “Janitor” recounted the grounds, from the terrorists’ point of view, which consisted mainly of the history of repression culminating in the beating of Bogolyubov, the retraction of lenient sentences after Vera Zasulitch’s shooting of Trepov, and the executions of terrorists that had occurred in Kiev and in St. Petersburg.³⁶⁸ Lipetsk broke up and its enthused participants filtered into Voronezh to carry out the Executive Committee agenda for the “party congress” of Zemlya i Volya.

Voronezh began on a note of evident discord. Plekhanov opened by reading with unconcealed scorn Morozov’s essay on “Political Killings.” He expected to be joined in general criticism of the article. Instead, his mocking reading was greeted with a stony silence. Sensing that the tide had turned against him, Plekhanov promptly walked out of the conference to return to St. Petersburg, where he would try to muster support among moderates there. But his discomfiture did not end the Voronezh conference.369

Sofia Perovskaya, who was admired and respected by both sides for her degree of “moral elevation and boundless devotion,”³⁷⁰ stepped up into leadership after Plekhanov’s departure. She had arrived at Voronezh determined to work for unity within Zemlya i Volya. She felt strongly that the beleaguered party needed every possible ounce of strength. She spoke out in opposition to Zhelyabov’s advocacy of a top-down “central committee” structure. This “constitutional” model was not in keeping with Sonia’s personal political views, which were strongly influenced by Chernyshevsky’s vision of a post-apocalyptic society peopled by anarchist communes.³⁷¹ In her statements to the gathering at Voronezh, she criticized the Lipetsk faction for leaving the peasants in the background. With Vera Figner, Sonia was the main force in hammering out a note of accord on which the conference ended. Under this compromise, Zemlya i Volya would continue its propaganda role in rural villages, but would give one third of its total funds to the support of armed revolt.

Impressed with Sonia’s prominent, outspoken role in opposing him at Voronezh, Zhelyabov uncharacteristically shut up and stopped making speeches. Instead, he made vigorous efforts behind the scenes to cultivate Sonia, and to win her over to the Executive Committee’s side, that is, the path of terrorism. To assuage her concern that the “peasant cause” was being sacrificed and ignored, he constantly reminded her of his own serf parentage, and the difference from her royal antecedents. For several months, Sonia carried on with her efforts at diplomacy and cultivation of the moderates. But the vision of abandoning her life to a final, desperate act of violence in support of an adopted cause struck a sweet spot in Sonia’s personality. A more moderate Russian activist who opposed terrorism characterized her as “the most brilliant” of those embraced the path of violence, because she was filled with a sense of indignation and disdain against the “terrorism of the government itself.”372 Inside, Perovskaya was boiling with fury over the fate of those who had been hanged, and over the fate of those such as Myshkin who were rotting in prison.

By the end of summer, although she still claimed formally to be neutral with respect to the party split, Sonia’s comments and actions were those of a woman who had thoroughly embraced the idea of terrorism. And, once she finally went over, she would prove to be the most terrible terrorist of them all.³⁷³ It was almost as if she had a dual personality. Kravchinsky wrote: “This woman, with such an innocent appearance and with such a sweet and affectionate disposition, was one of the most dreaded members of the Terrorist party.”³⁷⁴

At the St. Petersburg suburb of Lesnoi, near the end of August, occurred the final dismantling of Zemlya i Volya. Lesnoi was, at the time, the main location of radical “safe houses” in which the illegals resided. As stated by Figner, the conference at Voronezh had not removed, but only stifled, the dissension within the party. The greatly outnumbered Plekhanov announced his intention of leaving both politics and Russia, to concentrate on Marxist studies. With him went most of the moderate faction, including Vera Zasulitch. Interestingly, upon returning to Russia she had established herself as one of the most prominent opponents of terror. It was agreed that the two factions would henceforth be totally autonomous, and that neither of them would continue to use the old name. The moderates, who were awarded the old organization’s printing press, reorganized themselves under the name Cherny Peredel, which roughly translates as “Black Partition.” The terrorist faction adopted the name Narodnaya Volya, meaning the “Will of the People.” As one of its first official acts, Narodnaya Volya proclaimed a “death sentence” against Alexander II on August 26, 1879. The Executive Committee decided to abandon attacks on all other military and political leaders and to use all of its energy to go after the Tsar himself.

Still hoping for a reconciliation, Sonia spent much of her time lobbying the moderates, even after Lesnoi. Her political beliefs still inclined to those of the “villagers,” as their opponents called them. But her personality was all for fighting back against the administration. She was, according to one of the moderates, “the incarnation of the spirit of revolt. She was determined that official brutalities must not be left unanswered. In a small, almost childish voice she proclaimed the necessity of terror.” Sonia was angered when Plekhanov suggested she leave the country in order to avoid arrest. She was determined to stay in Russia and die for the cause. The attraction of martyrdom was, for her, a sucking vortex. To one of her fellow feminists who was supporting Cherny Peredel, she commented, “there’s nothing real about your people. We’re alive.”375 Sonia eagerly agreed to Mikhailov’s request that she go to Moscow to pose as the wife of Lev Hartman in connection with Narodnaya Volya’s latest plan to assassinate Alexander. Her actions indicate that she had made up her mind to die for the cause. She wound up her affairs in St. Petersburg, and she handed over “all her money and contacts” to representatives of Cherny Peredel.³⁷⁶

The Emperor was far bigger game for the terrorists than the unsuspecting government officials they had previously assassinated. Signs of the cunning Mikhailov are all over their battle plan, which featured a new and dramatic weapon just added to the terrorist arsenal – dynamite.377 It was decided at Lesnoi to kill Alexander by blowing up his train when he returned to St. Peterburg after spending the fall in the Crimea.

The attack featured three almost wholly independent prongs. Vera Figner headed up the Odessa effort. Nikolai Kibalchich, Narodnaya Volya’s home grown explosives expert, posed as her husband. Resort was made to the same stratagem that had worked in the past. Frolenko would take a job in a sensitive position, this time, as a railroad guard. Figner successfully posed as an aristocratic lady, approaching a local official in order to help him obtain the job. The plan worked well once again, with Frolenko handling his sub rosa employment with his usual aplomb. But ultimately, due to windy, rainy cold weather, the Emperor decided not to travel by boat to Odessa, but instead to take a train directly from the Crimea to St. Peterburg. Thus, his travel route would no longer take him through Odessa.³⁷⁸

The second attack was headed up by Zhelyabov. Anna Yakimova, a member of the Narodnaya Volya Executive Committee, posed as his wife. Aided by some of his recent recruits, Zhelyabov worked tirelessly for nights on end to dodge police patrols along the tracks and lay lengthy concealed wires leading to two explosive-laden brass cylinders positioned underneath the railroad tracks near Alexandrovsk, a small town outside Kharkov. The work was greatly hindered by cold, rainy weather as well as Zhelyabov’s own illness and night blindness. With difficulty, Zhelyabov got the wires and cylinders placed in time. But when the moment of the Tsar’s train transit arrived, the charges failed to detonate.³⁷⁹

The third, and most successful, attack was the one led by Perovskaya. With 1,000 rubles of “revolutionary” funds, Mikhailov had bought a house in a poor neighborhood near the tracks, approximately 14 kilometers from downtown Moscow. The area was mainly waste land, rubbish heaps, and little market gardens, with here and there a ramshackle one storied cottage. Perovskaya and Lev Hartmann, a member of the Executive Committee, moved in posing as husband and wife under the name of “Sukhorukov.” Mikhailov took rooms in town from which to help direct the operation. Two other narodniki, Aronchik and Chernyavskaya, in the guise of another young married couple, established themselves in a flat which was to serve as conspiratorial quarters. Other collaborators took rooms, or put up at cheap hotels, and work began.

The plan was to drive a gallery from the cellar of the house to the railway embankment some fifty yards away and there lay a charge under the line. The first main preoccupation was not to arouse the suspicion of the neighbors. The locals in the neighborhood, market gardeners or else day laborers in factories in the town, were mostly Old Believers. They felt it was a sin for a man to shave his beard, thus defacing the image in which man had been created. The Old Believers tended to be suspicious of newcomers. However, the terrorists benefitted because they were equally aloof and suspicious of the police.380

Hartmann gave himself out to be a workman employed in the town. It was natural that he was not visible during the day. The main brunt of contact with the outside world thus fell on Perovskaya. In the middle of October, Goldenberg arrived from the South. Mikhailov took him to the house and set him to work. Goldenberg later said, “as I was new to it, I did the simple work. I cleared the earth from the gallery to the hatch and from the hatch to the store house. I used to help Perovskaya with the housework.”

None of the terrorists had expertise in tunneling. Although Hartmann had some knowledge of how to construct a mine shaft, there were no skilled manual workers among them. Their tools were primitive. They had a short pointed “English spade” to pick out the dirt at the gallery head, and two shovels to pull it back. They had a cheap compass for keeping the tunnel straight, but as a matter of fact they did not keep it very straight. As the gallery advanced Hartmann fixed up wooden rails along the floor and a little truck on wheels, worked by a rope on a pulley, to get the earth back out of the tunnel.

The tunnel they dug was about one meter high by 78 centimeters across. Its mouth, in the wall of the cellar, was boarded up to prevent discovery in case of a stranger making his way down. There was a hatch in the boarding to let the workers in and out and for the earth to be removed. An iron pipe was installed for ventilation. One man worked at the head of the gallery; another shoveled the earth onto the truck. A third stood at the hatch to receive it. A great problem was the disposal of the earth removed from the tunnel. The capacity of the storehouse was limited. They piled it up in the cellar, they put it under the floor boards of the living room. Finally they had to spread it over the yard at night or dump it in nearby rubbish heaps. It was hard work. The frail “Sparrow” cracked up from the strain and had to return to St. Petersburg.

The terrorists understood that they faced the gallows the moment they were discovered. Almost with gaiety, their entire faith was placed in nitroglycerine. They were determined never to be taken alive. Sonia put out, to be ready for use on a moment’s notice, a bottle of nitroglycerine that the terrorists felt sufficient to blow up the whole house. In case they were discovered, everyone knew and agreed that Sonia was the person entrusted to explode the fatal bottle with a pistol shot. Despite this explicit awareness of their own impending death, the “Sukhorukov” household remained in unflagging good spirits. At dinner time, they all talked and joked as if nothing were at stake. “Sonia was the one who most frequently delighted the company with her silvery laugh.” Comic verses were composed to make light of the vicissitudes and incidents of the mining work.381

Those lodging in town would arrive at the house just before daylight. They worked from six to eight, had tea, then continued until two in the afternoon, which was dinner time. They had a short rest after dinner and then worked on until 10 o’clock at night. When things were going well the diggings progressed at the rate of 30 centimeters per hour of work. There were frequent alarms. They had been working a week when the former occupant came around looking for some jam which she said she had left in the storehouse. By this time the storehouse was full of earth and props for timbering the gallery. Perovskaya said she had lost the key. Later she took the jam to the woman herself.

A few days afterwards, the storehouse caught fire. Neighbors ran to help. It was fatal if they were to see the contents of the storehouse, jammed as it was with soil from the excavation. Thinking very fast, Sonia jumped in front and held out her arms to keep them away. She cried out that God had brought about the fire. If it was His will, he would put it out himself. The sentiment appealed to the Old Believers. With this bit of ingenuity, Sonia managed to keep them away. Time and again the venture was saved by Perovskaya’s resourcefulness. She did the shopping. As the quantity of provisions was far more than what two young people could consume, at one point the volume of her purchases elicited the well-meaning interest of gossiping neighboring housewives. She then made use of a cat that had attached itself to the conspirators. She blamed the cat for the amount of food she had to buy, spinning an elaborate yarn around its appetite, ingenuity, and capacity for breaking crockery.382

There were other close calls. The laboring terrorists came to the base of a telegraph pole and had to divert the gallery around it. It rained long and hard, the same rain that was causing the Emperor to change his travel plans, and that was hindering Zhelyabov at Alexandrovsk. Water collected in the gallery and began to rise. The conspirators had no pump. Incessant bailing doubled the work and brought them nearer to complete exhaustion. Mikhailov would later describe the situation as being “like working while buried alive, using the last superhuman efforts in the fight against death.”383 Finally, due to continuous rain and faulty timbering, the roof of the gallery fell in. The subsidence from this event formed a big crater on the surface. This crater was right next to a trail alongside the track where railway police patrols regularly passed. But no patrols came by on the afternoon of the collapse, nor did anybody else notice the crater. That night, the conspirators managed to fill the crater. One of the diggers from that point forward carried a dose of poison, so he could commit suicide in case he was buried by another sudden collapse.

When the terrorists reached the railway embankment, progress again became harder. Instead of soft soil, the conspirators now encountered large stones that had been laid within the bed of the tracks. Removing them would bring the risk of another collapse. They decided that they needed a drill to cut a hole in the stones. But there were no more funds on hand for buying one. The conspirators made a bold decision to mortgage the house. Hartmann went into town and found a wealthy widow who was willing to lend money.³⁸⁴ The lender sent out an official of the housing department and a policeman to inspect the property. This was a very anxious moment. Perovskaya, however, pulled it off smoothly. She also bargained hard. Six hundred rubles were successfully borrowed. The conspirators bought a drill and kept moving.

The use of the drill led to a modification of the plans for the actual mine itself. The terrorists began to fear that they did not have enough dynamite. The frenetic Goldenberg was dispatched to get more dynamite from the abandoned Odessa project. Goldenberg arrived in Odessa and picked up a suitcase full of explosive from Frolenko. Kibalchich, the explosives expert, was then in South Russia. Instead of just concentrating on transporting the dynamite to Moscow, Goldenberg decided to meet Kibalchich to discuss the situation. They exchanged telegrams, but the result was a mixup. On November 12, Goldenberg wound up waiting at Odessa for Kibalchich, while Kibalchich was waiting at Kharkov for Goldenberg. The two managed to communicate, probably by telegraph, and arranged to meet in Elizavetgrad, closer to Odessa and approximately one fifth of the way to Moscow. Goldenberg’s incongruous actions in pretending to be a wealthy traveler, while insisting on carrying his own baggage, generated suspicion. A porter notified the police.385 When Kibalchich arrived he found a stir at the station. Kibalchich made out that a young man had been arrested with a small but very heavy trunk. It was Goldenberg. He had been caught with the dynamite.

On November 14, the party at the Sukhorukov house heard about Goldenberg’s arrest. Three days later, they received a telegram from Simferopol. In crude code, the message indicated that the Emperor was riding in the fourth coach of the second train. “Price of flour two rubles our price four.” On that day the conspirators held a final conference. It was decided that Sonia would watch and give the signal for Hartmann to press the lever to trigger the explosion. All the 18^th of November, the conspirators hung about waiting for news from Alexandrovsk. None came until evening, when they heard the Emperor had arrived at Kharkov. That meant Alexandrovsk had been a failure.³⁸⁶