The target didn’t stand a chance. Tsar Alexander II of Russia had already survived eight serious assassination attempts by the beginning of 1881; six of them alone since February 1880. But he never escaped the ninth attempt on his life. On Sunday, March 1, 1881, half a dozen men with bombs, pistols and knives were sent for him. A woman was in command: Countess Sofia Perovskaya (1853–1881).
A home-made grenade, thrown by the student Ignati Ioakhimowitsch Grinewizki, exploded in front of the tsar’s feet as he got out of his carriage – the almost 63-year-old had no chance. The countess had given the order to attack.
At the time of the attack she was 27 years old. Her father, the longtime governor of St. Petersburg Lev Nikolayevich Perovsky, had so brutally oppressed his entire family that they grew unbridled hatred of the ruling regime. Sofia joined one of the numerous anarchist groups flourishing in Russia’s petty bourgeoisie at the time. She was arrested, convicted and went to the provinces to work as a medical assistant.
But that wasn’t enough for her. Perovskaya returned to St. Petersburg and from June 1879 grew into the leading role of the terrorist group Narodnaya Volya (roughly: people’s will). The choice of their victim shows that their fanaticism was hardly clouded by reason. Eventually, Alexander II initiated numerous reforms, including the abolition of serfdom. But that wasn’t enough for the terrorists. Their goal was the annihilation of the tsarist autocracy. Perovskaya organized the attack of March 1, 1881, in which six assassins waited in pairs for the tsar’s carriage – because he could take three different routes.
The partner of the assassin killed in the detonation Grinewizki, a certain Nikolai Rysakov, had been arrested and quickly collapsed under the certainly violent interrogation. Now, in a few days, the Tsarist police raided the entire cell. Sofia Perovskaya was also arrested on March 10.
Shortly before the hastily scheduled trial, she wrote her mother in a letter: “I beg you to remain calm and not to mourn for me. My destiny does not affect me in the slightest and I will face it with complete calm because I have waited for it for a long time and I have known that it must come to this sooner or later.” She added the confession: “I have lived by my conviction, and it would have been impossible for me to live otherwise.”
Along with four accomplices, including her husband Andrei Ivanovich Shelyabov, Sofia Perovskaya was sentenced to death as expected in a four-day trial in St. Petersburg. A sixth defendant escaped the maximum sentence because she was pregnant and her fate was discussed in the newspapers of Western Europe. On April 3, 1881, the fallen countess had to climb the gallows at Chelyabov’s side.
In the Soviet Union she was considered a model heroine, but she was always overshadowed by her husband. It was not until May 30, 2018 that the “New York Times” dedicated an obituary to her – as an act of reparation after “white men” had dominated the obituary page of the most important US newspaper for more than 150 years. It remains to be seen whether it was wise to grant this gesture to a fanatical terrorist of all people.
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This article was first published in March 2021.