Question by Joshua: Were any of the conspirators in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, Jewish?
I am trying to research a legend in my family that I am related to someone involved in the assassination of the Tsar. I have no idea where this legend came from, but I am trying to figure it out.
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Answer by El
Assassination attempts
On the morning of April 20, 1879, Alexander II was briskly walking towards the Square of the Guards Staff and faced Alexander Soloviev, a 33 year-old former student. Having seen a menacing revolver in his hands, the Tsar fled. Soloviev fired five times but missed;and he was sentenced to death and hanged on May 28.
The student acted on his own, but other revolutionaries were keen to murder Alexander. In December 1879, the Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will), a radical revolutionary group which hoped to ignite a social revolution, organised an explosion on the railway from Livadia to Moscow, but they missed the Tsar’s train.
on March 13 (March 1 Old Style Date), 1881 Alexander fell victim to an assassination plot.
A short young man wearing a heavy black overcoat edged towards the imperial carriage making its way down the street. He was carrying a small white package wrapped in a handkerchief. The youth was Nikolai Rysakov,Police Chief Dvorzhitsky heard Rysakov shout out to someone in the gathering crowd. Realizing there was another young man, Ignacy Hryniewiecki, standing by the canal fence, raised up both arms and threw something at the tsar’s feet.
Later it was learned there was a third bomber in the crowd. Ivan Emelyanov stood ready, clutching a briefcase containing a bomb that would be used if the other two bombs, and bombers, failed.
A second consequence of the assassination was anti-Jewish pogroms and legislation, deriving in part from the fact that one of those implicated in the assassination, Gesya Gelfman, was of Jewish origin. Despite the fact only one Jew was involved in the assassination conspiracy, over 200 Jews who had nothing to do with the murder of Alexander II were beaten to death in these pogroms.
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ramashka_ramesh says
Although Tsar Alexander II was a reformer, introducing the emancipation of Russia’s serfs in 1861 and working on a draft of Russia’s new constitution in 1881, the revolutionaries – and in particular those who came from The Pale, which was not included in the reforms – believed that his new measures were a ruse and that in fact autocratic rule would be continued. They wanted the kind of parliamentary democracy and free speech that they could see in other parts of Europe and the United States.
The reformist movement spawned many revolutionary groups in the last quarter of the 19th century, such “Land and Liberty” in 1876. A failed assassination attempt on the Tsar in 1879 resulted in the execution of 17 conspirators. Censorship was tightened, known reformers were arrested. “Land and Liberty” split in 1879: the majority, who favoured terrorism, established People’s Will. Several attempts to blow up the Tsar failed (the wrong train was blown up, a bridge was destroyed, and a mis-timed bomb under the Tsar’s dining room killed dozens but not him). The police set up a special department, the Okhrana, to catch the terrorists.
“People’s Will” was led by Vera Figner when its previous leaders were arrested. Born to Jewish parents in Kazan, Russia, in 1852, she was oldest of six children and was sent away to a private school in 1863. She was influenced by an uncle who held radical political views. She moved to Switzerland to get medical training. There she met Russian political exiles and was converted to revolutionary socialism. After her medical training she returned to Russia and worked in Samara and Saratov. She joined the “Land and Liberty” group and when it split in 1879, she joined the People's Will. Several figures in the group were arrested and in March 1881, Figner became the leader of the People's Will. She was involved in planning several acts of terrorism, including the successful assassination of the Tsar. She was arrested in 1883 and sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment in Siberia. She was released in 1904 and joined the Socialist Revolutionaries. Figner was critical of the Bolshevik Government after 1917 and was watched by the secret police. She died in 1942.
Gesia Gelfman, the daughter of a Jewish businessman, was born in Mozyr, Russia. She ran away to Kiev to train as a midwife when her father decided to marry her off at 17. She joined the All-Russian Social Revolutionary group. In 1875, she was convicted of distributing illegal literature and put in the St Petersburg Workhouse. In 1879 she was sent to finish her sentence in Siberia. She escaped and joined the People's Will. In 1881 she joined the other conspirators against the Tsar. After the assassination, police raided the house where Gelfman and her lover, Nikolay Sablin, were living. He committed suicide. She was arrested and sentenced to death, although the execution was postponed because she was pregnant. Soon after she gave birth, her daughter was taken from her and put into a foundling home. Gelfman died from peritonitis on 12th October 1882.