The history of the emergence of terrorism in Russia. The History of Russian Terrorism in the Russian Empire From "Young Russia" to the Assassination of the Emperor

Some members of the opposition groups of the organization were mainly successful in subversive activities among the social masses of the Russian population in the agitation and propaganda sphere, promoting Western values ​​and Western socialist ideas, which were actively operating for a decade and a half to two decades in the Russian Empire, before the revolution of 1905 took place in Russia. year, their secondary task of the second plan was to indoctrinate and recruit new members for an opposition organization in European and Russian centers. For example, Mikhail Gots and Minor traveled around foreign centers, recruiting fresh forces among students to be sent to revolutionary work in Russia, mostly seasoned revolutionaries relied on romantic and inexperienced youth (young men in Russia began to engage in revolutionary affairs in those years, almost from 15-16 years of age), later recruited students took specialized courses in foreign centers on agitation and propaganda activities, as well as conspiracy.

The rest of the elite members of the opposition organization were structured into a separate combat group, which specialized in careful planning operations with the further implementation of bloody and intimidating sabotage and terrorist acts on the territory of the Russian Empire, the training of this group was carried out by experienced instructors.
Such a scale of subversion, one wonders what was in the Russian Empire.

But the contemporaries of that period correctly said that the All-Russian Emperor Nicholas II was the most humane Emperor of all Europe.

The most important role in the revolutions of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century was played by the mass propaganda of Western socialist ideas among all classes of the Republic of Ingushetia, the propaganda "word" sown in the social strata, and further incitement gave birth to demonstrations, rallies, strikes, strikes, riots with disobedience to the legitimate authorities, which actually led to liberal provocateurs, but this is just a visible iceberg, public calls for active mass terror were added to them, motivating the call by the fact that the goal cannot be achieved peacefully.

In 1904, on July 28, in St. Petersburg, on Izmailovsky Prospekt, near the Varshavsky railway station, the Minister of the Interior Plehve V.K. was killed. socialist-revolutionary, student Yegor Sozonov, who threw a bomb into his carriage

Extremist organizations and parties were engaged in the creation of base centers, which included: printing houses, safe houses, laboratories for the manufacture of explosives and the purchase of chemical materials, workshops for the manufacture of weapons, training of militants by instructors - specialists in the circulation of projectiles, and possession of weapons in schools of the same Several dozen militants were trained in the family, also the assortment of knowledge included the possession of secrecy, the forgery of passports, identity cards, and other documents, prohibited literature in the Russian Empire was smuggled from abroad. (Memoir of the Social Revolutionary Zenzinov V.M. "Experienced" New York. Chekhov Publishing House).

After the explosion at the dacha of P. A. Stolypin (1906)

The operation of the Security Department to detain anarchists in the Russian Empire

Those who completed courses in training bases safely traveled to the cities of the Russian Empire, and in places of deployment they created similar workshops for the production of bombs, in the newspaper reports of Tsarist Russia, and in particular in memoirs, one can find vivid descriptions of those days that such and such a chemical laboratory exploded in such and such an apartment or private house through negligence during the manufacture of a bomb or news of the seizure of bombs with weapons, during a successful police operation.

Organized groups also published on printing presses specialized literature of a methodological nature and recommendations for carrying out sabotage and terrorist acts, the said literature contained special recommendations from professional instructors.

Basket with bombs, located in the Bolshevik laboratory school in the village of Haapala (1907)

An example is the uprising in Nizhny Novgorod on December 8, 1905, right in the shops of the Sormovo plant and almost openly, workers began to make home-made edged weapons and bombs. Turner Parikov assembled a home-made cannon according to pre-made drawings, shells were cast for it in the foundry.

As a result, several armed detachments were formed, the most combat-ready of which was a combat working squad led by Pavel Mochalov, numbering about 200 people. Another such detachment was formed in Kanavina, headed by Sergei Akimov.

The factory inspector who was at the factory directly reported to the local authorities: "The workers are preparing weapons on an enormous scale, the forges and sharpeners are busy, a lot of steel is taken arbitrarily, and files and other things are being altered."

"The situation in Sormovo is extremely dangerous. Tomorrow there may be riots. There are no troops."

On December 12, at 10 am, an uprising began at the plant. Detachments of workers began to take control of the surrounding area. All day skirmishes and skirmishes took place, both sides suffered losses.

On December 13, the chief of the gendarmes, Colonel Levitsky, reported to his superiors: "The operations of the telegraph, telephone, station were forcibly stopped in the hands of a committee headed by Akimov. In Sormov, barricades and telephone poles were cut down." By order of the governor, Cossacks and a company of gendarmes with guns were transferred to Sormovo.

Not only the Social Democrats, but also representatives of other political trends, including the Socialist-Revolutionaries, took part in the uprising, which by no means diminishes the role of the Social Democrats and their active functionaries in its organization, preparation and conduct. The Nizhny Novgorod Committee of the RSDLP remained the inspirer of the uprising, which engulfed the Nizhny Novgorod proletariat, employees, and youth. The main thing for the Social Democrats during the revolution was not who fought on the barricades, but that there were as many belligerents as possible, regardless of their political views and criminal past.

The main Sormovskaya barricade near the Sormovskaya parochial school (1905)

Does anyone remember the October appeal of 1905 by V.I. Ulyanov to the combat committee:

“I am horrified, by God, horrified, I see that they have been talking about bombs for more than half a year and not a single one has been made! .. Let detachments from 3 to 10, up to 30, etc. people immediately but they arm themselves, as best they can, some with a revolver, some with a knife, some with a rag with kerosene for arson ...

Some will immediately undertake the murder of a spy, the blowing up of a police station, others an attack on a bank to confiscate funds ... Let each detachment learn at least by beating up policemen: dozens of victims will more than pay off with what hundreds of experienced fighters will give ...

Even without weapons, detachments can play a serious role... climbing to the top of houses, into the upper floors, etc., and showering the army with stones, pouring boiling water over them...

The murder of spies, policemen, gendarmes, explosions of police stations, the release of those arrested, the seizure of government funds ... such operations are already being carried out everywhere ... "Lenin, October (16th and later) 1905 (Lenin V.I. Poln 11, pp. 336-337, 338, 340, 343.)

The great conspirator Lenin in makeup during the last underground

V. I. Ulyanov often changed fake passports to other names and surnames, traveled all over Western Europe, often lived in Germany, Switzerland and London under the surname Richter.

Pass to the Sestroretsk arms factory in the name of K. P. Ivanov

The scope of terrorism at the beginning of the century According to statistics Anna Geifman, starting from October 1905, 3611 state officials were killed and wounded in the Russian Empire.

By the end of 1907, this number had increased to almost 4,500. Together with 2180 killed and 2530 wounded individuals, Geifman estimates the total number of victims in 1905-1907 as more than 9000 people. According to official statistics, from January 1908 to mid-May 1910, there were 19,957 terrorist attacks and expropriations, as a result of which 732 government officials and 3,051 private individuals were killed, while 1,022 government officials and 2,829 private individuals were injured.

Assuming that a significant part of the local terrorist attacks were not included in official statistics, Geifman estimates the total number of those killed and wounded as a result of terrorist attacks in 1901-1911 at about 17,000 people.

Expropriations became a mass phenomenon after the beginning of the revolution. So, only in October 1906, 362 cases of expropriations were recorded in the country. During the expropriations, according to the Ministry of Finance, from the beginning of 1905 to the middle of 1906, banks lost more than 1 million rubles.

In large cities of Russia, the most active in terrorist actions was the party of socialist revolutionaries.

Later, some of the transformed and modernized political parties and groups described below entered the State Duma of the Russian Empire (Manifesto of August 6, 1905, Emperor Nicholas II established the State Duma).

Grand opening of the State Duma and the State Council. Winter Palace. April 27, 1906. Photographer K. E. von Gunn

Tauride Palace

Rights:

Russian collection (1900-1917).
Union of the Russian people (1905-1917).
Union of Russian people (1905-1911, formally until 1917).
Russian Monarchist Party (1905-1917, since 1907 - Russian Monarchist Union).
United nobility (1906-1917).
Russian People's Union named after Michael the Archangel (1907-1917).
All-Russian National Union (1908-1912).
Moderate Right Party (1909-1910).
All-Russian Dubrovinsky Union of the Russian people (1912-1917).
Patriotic Union (1915-1917).
Union on October 17 (1905-1917).

Centrist:

Constitutional Democratic Party (1905-1917). Leader - P. N. Milyukov.
Trade and Industrial Union of the Russian Empire (1905).
Progressive Economic Party of the Russian Empire (1905).
Commercial and industrial party of the Russian Empire (1905-1906).
Legal Order Party (1905-1907). Leader
Party of Peaceful Renewal (1905-1907).
Democratic Reform Party (1906-1907).
Progressive Party (1912-1917).

Left:

Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (since 1898).
Bolsheviks.
Mensheviks.
Group "Forward" (1909-1913).
Inter-district organization of united social democrats (1913-1917).
Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (1902-1921).
Labor People's Socialist Party (1905-1918, People's Socialists, Popular Socialists).
Union of Socialist-Revolutionaries-Maximalists (1906-1911, Socialist-Revolutionary Maximalists).
Labor group (1906-1917).
People's Will
Black redistribution
Young party "People's Will"
Earth and will
freedom or death
Avengers
Young Russia
Group "Forward"
Group of Nikolaev, Belevsky, Serebryakov. P. Nikolaev
Group of Popko, Lizogub, Osinsky
Combat organization
Flying Combat Detachment of the Northern Region
Flying Combat Detachment of the Central Region
Moscow opposition to the Socialist Revolutionary Party
Union of Socialist Revolutionaries Maximalists
Fighting squad of the Bolsheviks.
agricultural terrorism.
Anarchoterrorism.
A group of communist anarchists.
A group of anarchist-communists "Terror".
United group of anarchists and maximalists.
A group of anarchist-communists "Hunhuzy".
Anarchy group.
A group of anarchist-communists "Red Hundred".
Black Raven Group.
Group "Red Banner".
Flying detachment of anarchist-communists.
Free group of political terrorists.
Chernoznamenets

Ukrainian:

Ukrainian Socialist Party (1900-1904).
Revolutionary Ukrainian Party (1900-1905).
Ukrainian People's Party (1902-1907).
Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (1903-1918).
Ukrainian Democratic Party (1904).
Ukrainian Radical Party (1904-1905).
Ukrainian Social Democratic Union ("Spilka" 1904-1913).
Melenevsky. She was a member of the RSDLP (Menshevik).
Ukrainian Democratic-Radical Party (1905-1908).
Ukrainian Social Democratic Labor Party (1905-1918).
Ukrainian National Democratic Party.
Ukrainian revolutionary party ("independents").
Ukrainian Radical Democratic Party.

Belarusian:

Belarusian socialist community (1902-1918).

Constitutional Catholic Party of Lithuania and Belarus. This conservative-clerical party during the years of the revolution of 1905-1907. operated on the territory of Belarus. It was created on the initiative of the clergy and the Poles living in Belarus. The ideological basis of the party was Catholicism. The program of the party (1906) proclaimed the main task of uniting all Catholic Poles, Lithuanians, Belarusians “into one powerful party” in order to fight the tsarist government “for the development and welfare of the region”. Protecting the religious feelings of believers from Orthodox religious expansion was the main task of the party. In 1907, the Governor-General of Vilna dissolved it.

Jewish:

General Jewish workers' union in Lithuania, Poland and Russia "Bund" (early 1890s-1921).
Jewish Social Democratic Labor Party "Poalei Zion" (1900-1928).
Zionist-Socialist Workers' Party (1904-1917).
Socialist Jewish Workers' Party (SERP, 1906-1917).
Volkspartey (People's Party, 1906-1917).
Jewish Territorialist Labor Party.
United Jewish Socialist Workers' Party (1917-1920).

Armenian:

Social Democratic Party Hnchakyan (since 1887).
Armenian Revolutionary Federation "Dashnaktsutyun" (since 1890).
Armenian Social Democratic Labor Organization.
Dfi.
Mudafe.
Ittifag.
Eshams.

Muslim:

Muslim Social Democratic Party "Gummet" (Azerbaijani, 1904-1920).
Ittifaq al-Muslimin ("Union of Muslims") (1905-1907).
Muslim Democratic Party "Musavat" (Azerbaijani, 1911-1920).
Ichtimai-e-Amiyun (Social Democracy, 1906-1916).
Adalat ("Justice", 1916-1920).
Party Alash (Kazakh, 1917-1920).

Polish:

International Social Revolutionary Party "Proletariat" (First or Great Proletariat, 1882-1886.
Social-revolutionary party "Proletariat" (Second or Small Proletariat, 1888-1893 ..
PPS-Proletariat (Third Proletariat, 1900-1909). Leader - L. S. Kulchitsky.
Polish Socialist Party (since 1892).
Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (since 1893).
National Democratic Party of Poland (since 1897).
Polish Progressive Democratic Union (since 1904).
Realpolitik Party (since 1905).
Polish Socialist Party - Leftist (since 1906).
Polish Socialist Party - revolutionary faction (1906-1909).
"Warsaw combat squad".
enlightenment of the people
Polish League,
People's Treasury,
People's Workers' Union,
Polish Union of the White Eagle
Polish People's Union
Polish State Party,
National Education Union,
Union for the Revival of the Polish Nation,
Union of Polish Youth,
Union of Polish Workers,
Circle of struggle with Russia.

Finnish:

Fennomani (XIX century).
Svekomany (Svekomany, 1860s-1906).
Liberal Club (1877-1880).
Finnish party (1879-1918).
Liberal Party (1880-1918).
Swedish party (1882-1906).
Finnish Women's Union (1892-1938).
Young Finnish Party (1894-1918).
Social Democratic Party of Finland (since 1899). Leader - V. Tanner.
Constitution Party (1902-1918).
Finnish Active Resistance Party (Party of Activists, 1904-1908).
Finnish coalition party (1905-1907).
Finnish Progressive Party (1905-1908).
Rural Workers Union (1905-1915)
Finnish People's Party (1905-1918).
Swedish People's Party (since 1906).
Agrarian Union (1906).
Workers' Christian Union of Finland (1906-1923).
People's Socialist Party of Finland (1913-1915).

Lithuanian:

Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (lit. Lietuvos socialdemokratų partija, LSDP). Common name: Lithuanian Social Democracy. The oldest political party in Lithuania. It was established in 1896.

Lithuanian Democratic Party (lit. Lietuvių demokratų partija, LDP). 1902-1920. She advocated the autonomy of Lithuania in the Russian Empire, for national unity, in support of wealthy peasants. During the First World War, it experienced several splits and became inactive. Officially dissolved in 1920.

Lithuanian Peasants' Union (lit. Lietuvos valstiečių sąjunga, LVS). 1905-1922. Created by a group of members of the Lithuanian Democratic Party. He took left-liberal positions, advocating that the land belonged only to those who worked on it. United in the Lithuanian Peasant People's Union.

Lithuanian Christian Democratic Union (lit. Lietuvių krikščionių demokratų sąjunga, LKDS). 1905-1906. Not having received the support of the Catholic Church, the party disintegrated.

National Democratic Party (lit. Tautiškoji demokratų partija, TDP). 1905-1913. Created by a group of nationalist-minded members of the Lithuanian Democratic Party, led by Jonas Basanavičius. She advocated the political autonomy of Lithuania, democratic governance and self-government, the exclusive rights of Lithuanians, the Lithuanian language and culture. After 1907, the activity of the party almost ceased. The future president of Lithuania, Antanas Smetona, was a member of the party.

National Progress Party (lit. Tautos pažangos partija, TNP). 1916-1924. Merged with the Union of Lithuanian Landowners to form the Union of Lithuanian Nationalists.

Estonian:

Estonian National Progressive Party (Est. Eesti Rahvameelne Eduerakond, ERE; 1905-1917). The first Estonian political party founded by the lawyer, public figure and publisher Jaan Tõnisson during the Russian Revolution of 1905. Constitutional monarchy, autonomism, Estonian nationalism. Ally of the Constitutional Democratic Party. Reorganized into the Estonian Democratic Party.

Estonian Social Democratic Workers Association (Eesti Sotsiaaldemokraatlik Tööliste Ühendus; 1905). Social democracy, federalism, autonomism. In fact, it was crushed during the suppression of the First Russian Revolution of 1905-1907, the leaders were subjected to repression or emigrated.

Baltic Constitutional Party (Est. Balti Konstitutsiooniline Partei; 1905-1917). Created by the Baltic Germans. Another name is the Constitutional Party of Estonia (Est. Eestimaa Konstitutsiooniline Partei). Constitutional monarchy, conservatism.

Estonian Socialist Revolutionary Party (Est. Eesti sotsialistide-revolutsionääride Partei, ESRP; 1905-1919). Created as a branch of the Russian Socialist-Revolutionary Party. Independent party since September 1917. It split over the issue of Estonian independence, after which the left wing joined the communists. She joined the Independent Socialist Workers' Party.

Latvian:

Party of Revolutionary Socialists of Latvia (until 1913 - the Latvian Social Democratic Union). It was founded in 1900. The main program ideas were the social and national liberation of the working people of Latvia, the creation of an independent Latvian state.

As can be seen from the subsequent events of the 1917 revolution, in addition to the internal problems of the Russian Empire, there were additional ones - Russian liberal opposition organizations that have been operating for decades within the Russian Empire and beyond, in particular abroad in Switzerland (Geneva), the center of Russian political emigration and the main headquarters of the Russian revolution, skillfully manipulating and inciting national, religious, and social strife, skillfully playing on the shortcomings of the system of the Russian Empire, they nevertheless succeeded in undermining the integrity of the mighty Russian Empire, propagating the ideas of Western socialism in all segments of the population of the Republic of Ingushetia.

Image copyright RIA News Image caption Dmitry Karakozov a few months before the assassination attempt

On September 3 (15), 1866, Dmitry Karakozov was hanged on Vasilyevsky Island in St. Petersburg for the attempt on Alexander II.

"This shot cut Russian history in two. It was destined to open a new era for a tall, fair-haired, gloomy-silent young man with a long horse face, a low voice and a heavy look. The bullet he prepared for the emperor did not reach the goal; but it was she who brought death to Sipyagin and Stolypin, Volodarsky and Uritsky, Nicholas II, Mirbakh, Kirov, countless victims of the Civil War and Stalinist repressions,” wrote historian Andrzej Ikonnikov-Galitsky.

A small pebble brings down an avalanche. The impetus for the process, the consequences of which are felt after 150 years, was given, according to contemporaries and later researchers, by an ordinary person.

Shot past

Unsuccessful assassination attempt on Alexander II

• May 25, 1867: During a visit to Paris, when the Russian Tsar and Emperor Napoleon III were returning from a military review in an open carriage, the Pole Anton Berezovsky shot twice at the guest. The security officer pushed the attacker, the bullets hit the horse. Napoleon said: "Now we will find out who they were aiming at. If an Italian, then at me, if a Pole, at you." Berezovsky was sentenced to life imprisonment in New Caledonia, replaced by eternal exile, and pardoned after 40 years.
• April 2, 1879: A half-educated student Alexander Solovyov fired three shots from a revolver at close range at the emperor, who was taking a morning walk around the Winter Palace. He missed, was captured at the scene of the assassination, convicted and hanged.
• November 19, 1879: An attempt to blow up the royal train near Moscow on the way from Livadia. The Narodnaya Volya, led by Andrey Zhelyabov and Sophia Perovskaya, knew that the baggage train should go first, but in Kharkov its engine broke down, and the royal train moved first. When a mine exploded under the baggage train, several people were injured. The organizers were later arrested and hanged.
• February 5, 1880: Narodnaya Volya member Stepan Khalturin, who got a job as a carpenter in the Winter Palace, laid two pounds of dynamite under the hall where a dinner was to be held in honor of the arrival of the Prince of Hesse. Due to the delay of the prince's train, the bomb went off when there were no high-ranking persons in the room. 11 were killed and 56 servants and soldiers were injured. Khalturin was captured in 1882 at the time of the murder by him and another Narodnaya Volya of the Odessa prosecutor Strelnikov, refused to name himself, and his identity was established only after the execution.

On April 4, at about four in the afternoon, Alexander II finished his usual walk in the Summer Garden and went out to the Nevsky Embankment.

There was no security under the emperor in those days, only a policeman was walking along the sidewalk from the outside of the gate, and a gendarme non-commissioned officer was waiting near the carriage, who stood at attention at the sight of the king.

Passers-by, as always, lingered to stare at the sovereign.

Alexander, having picked up the long floors of his overcoat, was preparing to sit in the carriage. At that moment, eyewitnesses heard a loud bang and saw a young man running. The policeman and the gendarme rushed after him, knocked him down, took away a heavy double-barreled pistol and began to beat. Covering his face with his hands, the man shouted: "Fool, because I'm for you, but you don't understand!"

The tsar first of all asked the shooter if he was a Pole. Having not received a convenient explanation, he asked why he did it. The terrorist replied: "Your Majesty, you offended the peasants!" (such was the inertia of habit that even the regicides called the monarch "majesty" and "sovereign" to his eyes and behind his eyes).

Alexander went to a thanksgiving service at the Kazan Cathedral, and the criminal went for interrogation to the Third Department on the Fontanka.

In his pocket they found a copy of the proclamation “To Friends-Workers!” composed by him: “It was sad, hard for me that my beloved people were dying, and so I decided to destroy the tsar-villain. I will die with the thought that I have benefited my dear friend, the Russian I believe that there will be people who will follow my path."

Written in a deliberately vulgar language, the appeal contained mainly attacks on the rich and calls for property equality, which, according to the author, is paradise.

The arrested person called himself a peasant Alexei Petrov and refused further testimony. But they found a medical prescription on him, contacted the doctor, who knew about the patient that he had come from Moscow, and, most importantly, indicated the hotel where he was staying. During a search in the gendarmes' room, they found an unsent letter to his cousin Nikolai Ishutin and learned from him the real name of the terrorist.

"Savior"

A few hours later, at a reception in the Winter Palace, the head of the Third Department, Prince Dolgorukov, reported a sensation: it turns out that the bullet flew over the emperor’s head, because the peasant Osip Komissarov, who happened to be nearby, “withdrew the villainous hand.”

Alexander, of course, wished to see him and immediately elevated him to the nobility under a thunderous "cheers".

Many contemporaries suspected this was a PR stunt, especially because Komissarov turned out to be from the Kostroma province, like Ivan Susanin.

“I find it very political to invent such a feat,” wrote Pyotr Cherevin, a gendarmerie officer and participant in the investigation into the Karakozov case, and Pyotr Valuev, Minister of the Interior, noted that Komissarov’s role was not confirmed by the investigation data.

Komissarov was rewarded with money, presented with a house, and began to be invited to countless official and social events, where he amazed everyone with his stiffness and tongue-tiedness.

His wife began to go to expensive shops and ask for gifts, modestly introducing herself: "I am the Savior's wife."

About six months later, Komissarov disappeared from public space and subsequently died of alcoholism.

Path to terror

After the partial abolition of serfdom in 1861, the intelligentsia decided that the peasants had been robbed and deceived.

• Half liberation

One of those who did not want to wait, and even considered Herzen a conciliator, was the son of small landed Penza nobles, 25-year-old Dmitry Karakozov.

Enough to rejoice! Muse whispered to me. - It's time to move forward. The people are liberated, but are the people happy? Nikolai Nekrasov, poet

Later, Nechaev, Zhelyabov, Savinkov, Gershuni, Azef - "demons of the revolution", versatile talents, cold-blooded prudent adventurers, born leaders will come to Russian terror.

Most of the terrorists of the first wave were losers with unsettled destinies and unstable mentality, easily passing from euphoria to depression, with unsatisfied ambitions and resentment towards the whole world.

"The French revolution happened after Corneille and Voltaire on the shoulders of Mirabeau, Bonaparte, Danton, encyclopedists. And we have expropriators, murderers, bombers - these are mediocre writers, students who have not completed the course, lawyers without trials, artists without talent, scientists without science," - wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Many were distinguished in adolescence by exaggerated religiosity, from which they moved on to an equally exalted atheism, replacing God with an Idea. It seems that they wanted not so much to strike the victim and achieve some result, but to be worthy of martyrdom.

Karakozov went into the revolution under the influence of his peer Ishutin, who was left an orphan at an early age and was brought up by his parents.

After studying a little at Kazan University, Karakozov transferred to Moscow. Ishutin listened to lectures there as a volunteer, since he did not graduate from the gymnasium either.

According to the recollections of their mutual friend, later the famous court journalist Elena Kozlinina, Ishutina was "forced to climb into heroes" by love for a certain girl of extraordinary beauty, combined with the young man's inability to prove himself in science.

“Karakozov was even grayer and even more embittered than Ishutin: he could not study positively, and, not being able to adapt to anything, he migrated from one university to another. And everywhere he was oppressed by hopeless need. their failures," Kozlinina said.

Narodism perished not under the blows of the police, but because of the mood of the then revolutionaries, who, at all costs, wanted to take revenge on the government for persecution and, in general, to enter into a direct struggle with it Georgy Plekhanov, Marxist

According to the doctors who examined Karakozov after his arrest, he suffered from chronic colitis due to malnutrition, and constantly suffered from stomach pains.

Passionately wanting to be a leader, Ishutin founded a student circle, which he called simply and uncomplicatedly: "Organization". The goal was to promote socialism and help poor students by creating a bookbinding workshop on an artel basis.

Inside the "Organization" a conspiratorial, however, clumsily, core arose under the pretentious name "Hell".

During gatherings over tea with a bit of sugar and cheap sausage, Ishutin talked about regicide, which would cause a "general great revolt"; told stories about an acquaintance who allegedly poisoned his father in order to give his inheritance to the cause of the revolution; fantasized that he was in the leadership of a powerful international committee preparing a coup in all of Europe.

“Many knew about the existence of Hell, but they treated it as the chatter of young people,” Kozlinina stated in her memoirs.

As the historian Edvard Radzinsky suggests, the gendarmes could not help but be aware of what was happening, but they were not averse to the members of the circle throwing out something loud and giving a reason to tighten the screws.

According to the testimonies of the arrested Ishutins, Karakozov, who joined them in 1865, mostly kept silent at the gatherings. And then, without saying anything to anyone, he went to Petersburg to kill the tsar.

According to the testimony of Dr. Kobylin, who prescribed him medicines, he had been on the verge of a nervous fever for the last few days.

Vperveseafter Pugachev

According to reports, they wanted to declare Karakozov insane: a Russian person, being in his right mind, cannot encroach on the sovereign. Alexander rejected the offer.

Most of the time in the Alekseevsky ravelin, Karakozov prayed.

On August 10, the trial began in the Supreme Criminal Court, chaired by Prince Pyotr Gagarin - in the same house of the commandant of Petropavlovka, where the Decembrists were tried exactly 40 years ago.

Karakozov wrote to the tsar: "I ask you for forgiveness as a Christian to a Christian and as a man to a man."

The next day he was told: "His Majesty forgives you as a Christian, but as a Sovereign he cannot forgive."

Karakozov was hanged on the Smolensk field of Vasilyevsky Island with a large gathering of people. It was the first public execution in Russia since Yemelyan Pugachev.

A sketch of the condemned on the scaffold was drawn by 22-year-old Ilya Repin.

Ishutin was announced that the execution would be replaced by life imprisonment, having already thrown a hoodie over him. He was imprisoned in the Shlisselburg Fortress and died in 1879 in Kariya penal servitude in a state of gloomy insanity.

Reaction

Alexander II was furious and offended. I gave them freedom, but I got a bullet for it? When the father did not dare to utter a word! In vain Brother Constantine reminded the emperor of his own words: "No weakness, no reaction."

What terrible people have risen from their graves! Petersburg was dying. Everything was remembered and avenged. Herds of "well-intentioned" rushed from everywhere Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, writer

Count Mikhail Muravyov, nicknamed "Hangman Ants", was appointed head of the commission of inquiry. After the ruthless suppression of the Polish uprising in 1863, he became a monster in the eyes of Europe and liberal Russia and was sent into an honorable retirement on the principle: "The Moor has done his job." Now the iconic character has returned to politics.

During the royal audience, Muravyov demanded a purge of the government. "They are all cosmopolitans, adherents of European ideas," he said. Thus, for the first time in Russia, the word "cosmopolitan" was used as a political label, which later fell in love with Stalin.

St. Petersburg Governor-General Alexander Suvorov (grandson of the great commander), chief of gendarmes Vasily Dolgorukov and Minister of Education Alexander Golovnin, who had "dismissed the youth", immediately lost their posts.

They were replaced by well-known retrogrades: Fyodor Trepov, who 12 years later will be shot by Vera Zasulich, Pyotr Shuvalov, who essentially received the premier's powers, and Dmitry Tolstoy, who was soon nicknamed "the curse of the Russian school."

Overselling loyalist statements becomes tiresome. Local authorities imprudently excite them with clerical tricks Pyotr Valuev, Minister of the Interior

The Sovremennik magazine was closed, although the editor-in-chief Nikolai Nekrasov tried to save his offspring by composing an ode to Muravyov, which he repented to death.

Immediately after the “miraculous rescue”, the patriots, who had drunk to celebrate, began to tear off the hats from passers-by, who, in their opinion, were not jubilant enough, and beat the long-haired (this is how students walked).

Muraviev died two days before Karakozov was sentenced, but the tsar still did not want to hear about liberalization.

Lost time

"It is dangerous to start reforms in Russia. But it is much more dangerous to stop them," writes Radzinsky.

Alexander lost his main support - sensible supporters of progress within the framework of stability.

The ideas of the radicals were dubious, and their methods sometimes terrible, but their sacrifice aroused sympathy, and the policy of the authorities annoyed.

Nobody supports the government now Nikolai Milyutin, Minister of War

Karakozov's prediction about the people who will follow him came true one hundred percent.

In 1869, Nechaev composed the macabre Catechism of a Revolutionary, which inspired Fyodor Dostoevsky's visionary novel The Possessed and Vladimir Lenin's to create a "party of a new type."

In 1878, the jury defiantly, to the applause of even parts of the high society, acquitted Vera Zasulich - despite the fact that the jury, of course, was not nihilists.

In 1877-1878, the emperor tried to rally society with a war for "the liberation of the Slavic brothers from the Ottoman yoke."

Enthusiasm arose, but quickly evaporated when the Bulgarians did not show much gratitude, England and Germany reaped the geopolitical fruits, and Russia received only Annina's checkers for the adjutant wing, and endless rows of graves of ordinary soldiers, in the cynical expression of General Dragomirov, "holy cattle."

Only in 1880, Alexander, who by that time had survived five assassination attempts, returned to the path of reforms, placing Mikhail Loris-Melikov at the head of the government with his "dictatorship of the heart."

But the emperor-hunting machine has already gained momentum.

Like all over the world

Terrorism as a means of political struggle is a relatively new phenomenon.

Ancient and medieval history remembered only two such organizations, both of which operated in the Middle East: the Jewish Sicarii in the 1st century AD and the Shiite sect of the Nizari (“Assassins”), which in the 12th-13th centuries terrified the crusaders and local Sunni rulers.

Probably, the aristocracy found murders from around the corner a base thing, and ordinary people did not know how to create effective conspiratorial structures. The weapon of the first was war, the second was rebellion.

A new type of revolutionary began to be developed. A gloomy figure was outlined, illuminated as if by a hellish flame, which, with a gaze breathing defiance and revenge, began to make its way among the terrified crowd. It was a terrorist! Sergei Kravchinsky, People's Will

Terrorism flourished in the 19th century with the emergence of an educated middle class. Russia was no exception and was by no means ahead of the rest in this matter.

Only before 1900 British Prime Minister Spencer Percival and his Japanese colleague Tosimichi Okubo, US Presidents Abraham Lincoln and James Garfield, French President Sadi Carnot, Austro-Hungarian Empress Elizabeth (Sissi), Persian Shah Nasser ad-Din and the Italian king became victims of political terror. Umberto I, not counting smaller figures.

Between former and present terrorism there is an important difference not in favor of modernity.

Russian Narodnaya Volya and Western anarchists and nationalists killed the rulers and their high-ranking henchmen, who, with more or less reason, were considered tyrants and enemies of society. To blackmail the authorities, blowing up and capturing innocent and uninvolved inhabitants, then no one came to mind.

Original taken from pravdogovorun in

It is described below how terrorists are made out of ordinary people, young guys, and suicide bombers out of women. It's really scary. And more and more Russians fall into their networks.

It seems to be wild and, in fact, the reasons are wild, but it works after all ... Horror is just ... And what is most terrible, sometimes all these processes take place before our eyes. When agitators, without hiding, "broadcast" in the center of Moscow, for example. And that raises big questions.

In the large cities of Russia today there is an extensive network for the recruitment of terrorists.

The ideologists of death focused their attention on educated young people. The national composition of future militants is also changing. Now these are not only and not so much people from the North Caucasus and not even representatives of other Muslim peoples of Russia.

Russians are becoming the main breeding ground for the bandit underground. How do boys and girls from wealthy families turn into fanatics and murderers? Recruitment technology on the example of Volgograd. In the Dagestan village of Gunib, where Naida Asiyalova was born and lived for a long time, those who knew her cannot come to their senses. Neighbors, family friends, acquaintances, teachers of the school that Naida once graduated from. Everyone remembers - there was an ordinary girl, she grew up in love, in care. They were brought up mainly by my grandmother and grandfather, my mother, a postman by profession, worked very hard.

According to friends, the girl was not particularly religious, she dressed in a modern way, then she married a Turk and left for Moscow. And then something happened, and Naida completely went into religion. She began to visit the mosque and wear a headscarf, which, however, is quite consistent with traditional Islam. However, there was a kind of obsession in her religiosity. And it was not at all like the girl that everyone knew before.

The mother of Naida Asiyalova was interrogated all day today at the investigative committee in Makhachkala. They say that when the operatives came to her in the evening, she could not even talk, she was so shocked by her daughter's act. In the town of Dolgoprudny near Moscow, the parents of Asiyalova's husband, student Dmitry Sokolov, are also in a state of shock. They say that young people met about two years ago. Parents even liked the girl, calm, well-mannered, and nothing that she was older than her son. Parents rented an apartment for them in the house opposite. Dmitry became interested in Islam, began to visit the Moscow mosque in the Otradnoye district. Some parishioners and sellers of shops at the mosque remember Sokolov.

And soon strange things began. The son began to come home late: at two or three in the morning. He said that he communicates with friends, young Muslims. Then I went to Arabic courses. They are located in the south of Moscow. Today it was closed, there were no classes. However, the courses are still running. After one of the classes, Dmitry Sokolov did not return home.

Dmitry Sokolov was found in Dagestan, where Naida had previously left, and a little later the young man took the name Abdul Jabar and joined a gang. According to investigators, Naida Asiyalova was just a recruiter of militants, and her acquaintance with Sokolov was not at all accidental. In fact, throughout Russia there is a well-established network for recruiting young Muslims into terrorist cells - it does not matter even Russians, Avars, Tatars or Chechens. They work through social networks, a group appears at a university or somewhere else and begins to lure. If this is a guy, then they are attracted by romance. You don't like cops? And we do kill them.

Recruiters are excellent psychologists. They carefully select the candidate. It is desirable that he has few friends, that he is closed, even better - that there are problems in the family, so that there is a need to make up for the lack of communication, and increase self-esteem. They explain to the guy that there is correct Islam, this one that is right here, in their small group, and wrong. And then he is offered the first task - to transfer, for example, a parcel to some friend. Further, the tasks are already more specific - to hand over the weapon, overtake the car, then the terrorist attack, and that's all - there is no turning back. It is bound by blood and collective responsibility. Moreover, Russians began to appear more and more often among the militants of the middle and top levels.

Among the militants and commanders, there are more Russians than Tatars, Ingush and Chechens combined. With girls, the situation is slightly different. They are immediately considered as potential suicide bombers. Usually, the girl is first treated according to the same scheme, they are told about right and wrong Islam. Then she becomes a wife, or rather a cohabitant of some militant or field commander. After his inevitable death, she becomes the wife of another member of the gang underground. And then a new stage begins - preparation for self-detonation.

She is told that he is in heaven, this militant, and she can reunite with him by performing such a heroic deed, as she is told. That is, by blowing up himself and a certain number of infidels. Almost all of the female suicide bombers involved in the attacks of the last ten years were widows of militants. Moreover, one should not think that agitation and recruitment are carried out somehow secretly, under the cover of night. Everything happens quite openly. Here are the shots taken just in that metropolitan mosque in Otradnoye, which Sokolov visited. After the prayer, people come out, and an agitator stands on the porch. Moreover, they listen to him and respond approvingly to his words.

After the speech, the agitator calmly leaves.

It is possible that Dmitry Sokolov also spoke with some similar recruiter before leaving for Dagestan and becoming a bomber.

Many recruiters are such civilized uncles.

Based on materials from Vesti.ru.

February 1 (according to the Orthodox "Julian" calendar) - the anniversary of the birth of B.V. Savinkov and L.A. Tikhomirov

ROBBERS ON GOLGOTHA

…my strength is broken.
I walked, staggered.
The fireball exploded...
And already heavy was rising
Joy. Joy from the century -
Joy that I killed a man.

The future preacher and "aristocrat" of Russian terror, Boris Viktorovich Savinkov, was born on January 19 (O.S.) 1879 in the city of Kharkov in the family of a provincial judge.

At the age of 24, he became one of the founders of the Fighting Organization of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, which unleashed a monstrous hunt for representatives of the state power of the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. Under the direct supervision of Savinkov, the Minister of the Interior Plehve and the Governor-General of Moscow, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, were killed. But this is just the tip of the bloody iceberg. The total number of victims of the SR terror by 1907 reached more than 6,000 people. And this is not counting the killers themselves, their parents, wives and children, who also became victims of terror. How to understand in the name of what they distorted their lives?
In those years, Savinkov wrote about it this way: “The will of the people is the law. This was bequeathed by Radishchev and Pestel, Perovskaya and Yegor Sazonov. Whether my people are right or wrong, I am only his obedient servant. I serve him and obey him. And everyone who loves Russia cannot think otherwise.”

Today, as well as 100 years ago, it is beneficial for some to present Savinkov and his associates as a gang of soulless cosmopolitans who happily destroyed Russia with Jewish money. As you can see, this is not entirely true. Many of them sincerely believed that by killing officials they were helping the Motherland.

“We grew up in greenhouses, in prison or in the cherry orchard. For us, the book was a revelation. We knew Nietzsche, but we did not know how to distinguish winter crops from spring crops; they “saved” the people, but they judged them by the Moscow “Vanki”. We were bars, people-lovers from the nobility, ”Savinkov later wrote.

Decisive measures taken by Prime Minister Stolypin in 1907 finally stopped the wave of terror and forced Savinkov to flee Russia. In exile, a new disappointment awaited him. His teacher, chief and creator of the military organization Yevno Azef turned out to be a provocateur, a double agent of the very tsarist secret police, for the sake of fighting which Savinkov initially went into terror.

Life is nothing

Savinkov decided to leave the revolution for literature. Wrote Memoirs of a Terrorist and several other books. But his conscience was forever stained with blood. He did not live, but suffered: “As a child, I saw the sun. It blinded me, burned with a radiant glow. As a child, I knew love - motherly caress. I innocently loved people, joyfully loved life. I don't love anyone now. I do not want and do not know how to love. Cursed is the world and desolate for me in one hour: all lies and vanity. For the rest of his life, Savinkov felt this curse on him. He suffered from godlessness. But he could not, did not want to seek protection from his Creator.

“Which god should I pray to not leave me? Where is my protection and who is my patron? I am alone. And if I don't have a god, I'm my own god. I don't want the prayers of slaves... Let Christ kindle a light with a word. I don't need quiet light. May love save the world. I don't need love. I am alone. I'll leave the boring booth." Having written these terrible words, he lived another 15 years. He tried to reconcile with his country during the First World War, to help its new, precocious leaders after the February Revolution, and even to protect it from communism after the October Revolution. He arranged new conspiracies and wrote new books about them. But all these years, despair gnawed at his soul: “I have no home and no family. I have no loss, because there is no wealth. And I'm indifferent to many things. I don't care who exactly goes to Yar - a drunken Grand Duke or a drunken sailor with an earring: after all, it's not about Yar. I don't care who exactly "gets rich", that is, steals - a tsarist official or a "conscious communist": after all, man does not live by bread alone. I don't care whose government owns the country - the Lubyanka or the Security Department: after all, who sows badly, reaps badly ... What has changed? Only the words have changed.

In 1924, Boris Savinkov fell into the hands of the Chekists while illegally crossing the border. At the trial, he, unexpectedly for many, recognized Soviet power. The Bolsheviks sentenced him to 10 years in prison. But on May 7, 1925, he brought it to himself and carried it out, throwing himself into the staircase of the Lubyanka prison.

Long before his death, he wrote: “I do not believe in heaven on earth, I do not believe in heaven in heaven. I don't want to be a slave, even a free slave. My whole life is a struggle. I can't help but fight. But what I'm fighting for, I don't know.

Underground career

But Savinkov had another way out. He had only to step over himself, through his despair, pride, fear ...

Could he do it? Could. He was given enough time and energy. And most importantly, before his eyes was a living example of a man who also devoted all his youth to terror, but found the courage to repent. Exactly 27 years before the birth of Savinkov, on January 19, 1852, in the military fortification of Gelendzhik in the Caucasus, the great Russian thinker Lev Aleksandrovich Tikhomirov was born into the family of a military doctor.
“The Russian government has no moral influence, no support among the people, which is why Russia gives rise to so many revolutionaries, which is why even such a fact as regicide arouses joy and sympathy among a huge part of the population! There can be two ways out of this situation: either a revolution, absolutely inevitable, which cannot be averted by any executions, or a voluntary appeal of the supreme power to the people. The Executive Committee is advising Your Majesty to elect a second." When Tikhomirov wrote these lines, he was 29 years old. A member of the Executive Committee of the terrorist party "Narodnaya Volya" and editor of the party newspaper, by this time he enjoyed unquestioned authority among Russian radicals. His fellow conspirators finally made the seventh, "successful" attempt on the liberator Tsar Alexander II. Russia froze in horror. And here he, together with his comrades, wanting to “seize the moment”, threatens and boldly sets conditions for the son of the just murdered Emperor Alexander III. How insensitive do you have to be to dare that?

“From early youth,” Tikhomirov later recalled, “I adopted the worldview that then dominated the “progressive” strata of Russian society. Like everyone else, I took these views back when I had no independent observations of life, no independence of criticism, and I also did not have a mind ripe enough for work ... Like everyone infected with a “progressive” worldview, I learned life first from books ” .

Less than a year later, Narodnaya Volya, which threatened the throne with a revolution, was completely defeated. Tikhomirov secretly went abroad. He intended to set up a production of subversive anti-government literature there, with the help of which it would be possible to seduce the new young generation of Russian citizens with terror. However, life in free Europe and the mood among the Russian revolutionary emigration disappointed him as much as later Savinkov. “My personal practice as a conspirator, my gradually increasing visual acquaintance with the reality of French politics, my finally theoretical, also accumulating knowledge of social phenomena - everything convinced me that our ideals, liberal, radical, socialist, are the greatest insanity, terrible a lie, and a stupid lie," he wrote.

Renegade or realist?

Tikhomirov did not immediately change his convictions. It was not enough for him to be convinced of the absurdity of revolutionary theories; his active soul longed for a new real faith.

Christians know that soul-purifying sorrows are often sent to a person who is in a spiritual search. They should not only humble the sinner, but also help him regain his connection with God through prayer. Such an event for Lev Tikhomirov was the serious illness of his son (later Bishop Tikhon; † 1955. - Ed.).

“When Sasha’s illness subjected me to real torture, on the one hand, I felt a surge in myself to fight to the extreme, on the other, I had something like a prayer,” the revolutionary later recalled. - I did not pray with generally accepted signs, but I addressed someone in my soul, in my heart. To whom? I didn’t know, and even knew that I didn’t address anyone, but still I turned ... I begged someone for mercy, I made vows to someone. I sometimes said to myself: Lord, if You exist, help me... And faith poured into me every day, faith is disordered, unclear, faith is unknown in what. I had nowhere to take a clear, dogmatic faith, and I still thought little about it ... My mysterious conversations with the Gospel for the most part concerned purely higher questions of world outlook. Really? What is my duty? But it happened, I was looking for consolation and advice with my hopeless financial situation. And at one such moment I come across the answer: "... and delivered him from all his sorrows, and gave him wisdom and the favor of the king of the Egyptian pharaoh." This answer came across to me stubbornly many times, on different days. He impressed me with his perseverance.”

In 1888, revolutionary circles were stirred up by unprecedented news. A former member of the executive committee of Narodnaya Volya publicly turned to the Russian tsar ... with a penitent request for pardon: “In the middle of the year, I published in Paris in French a separate edition of Confessions of a Terrorist. In Russian, the same pamphlet was published under the title "Why did I stop being a revolutionary?". It was a bomb that shattered the revolutionary anthill to the ground. Without naming anyone, I exposed the underground, its skills, techniques, foul play, harmful tactics, self-interest, careerism; I repented of my mistakes and put an end to the past, urging my former comrades to work not against the state, but together with the state, for the people.”

This act of Tikhomirov was discussed for a long time in Russia and abroad. Some were indignant, others suspected fraud. But Alexander III believed the word of honor of the one who threatened to kill him seven years ago. Tikhomirov received a full forgiveness.

Returning to Russia, he could leave politics forever. But the newfound faith inspired in him the consciousness of the need to atone for his former revolutionary sins. The former atheist became one of the most ardent and profound defenders of Orthodoxy and autocracy. He wrote hundreds of articles criticizing atheism, socialist and liberal doctrines, and his fundamental work Monarchic Statehood became a reference book for every enlightened defender of the throne.

Lev Tikhomirov died quietly in Sergiev Posad in 1923. The victory of the socialist revolution, to which he once devoted many years, did not rejoice, but did not horrify him either. He ended his second major work, The Religious and Philosophical Foundations of History, with the following words: “Humanity decides by its free will whether to go to God or to abandon Him. As long as there are people among people who want to be with God, and God always knows this, the end of the world will not come.

There have been times in history with such a strong tension of evil that it seemed there was no need for the world to continue to exist. Such epochs, to which ours also belongs, actually constitute the “end times” by their nature. But the Lord does not reveal to people the terms of the life of the world, so that our free will is not bound by considerations - “not soon” or “it’s already too late anyway”, for our work for the Kingdom of God should be determined not by such applied considerations, but by the free search for good or evil, free will to work for the Lord or reject Him.”

Tikhomirov and Savinkov were born on the same day. The beginning of their life also turned out to be very similar. But they ended their days in very different ways. Perhaps for many of us, this difference will serve as an occasion to once again think about our lives and try to understand where the paths chosen since childhood will lead us.

Terrorism was originally the work of romantics, eager to remake the life of the people in their own way, for the better, but today's terrorists are far from that. Terror came to Russia, like many other things, from the West. Russian theorists of revolutionary violence (M. A. Bakunin, P. L. Lavrov, P. N. Tkachev, S. M. Stepnyak-Kravchinsky and others) formed their views on terrorism in emigration at the end of the 18th century, based on on the experience of the French Revolution and other European radical uprisings. Bakunin's concept of the "philosophy of the bomb" was developed in his "theory of destruction", and the anarchists put forward the already mentioned doctrine of "propaganda by deed". P. A. Kropotkin defined anarchism as "constant excitement with the help of oral and written words, a knife, a rifle and dynamite."

Our theoreticians marveled at the exploits of the Western rebels, their secret organizations and tactical forms of forcible change in the social order. Everything seemed relatively simple and efficient. And already in 1866, D. V. Karakozov made an attempt on Alexander II, which failed. The criminal was hanged. Ten years later, in Paris, the Polish emigrant A. Berezovsky makes an attempt on the life of the tsar. A year later, the gendarmerie general Mezentsev was killed. The process has intensified. In 1879, the Kharkov governor Kropotkin (cousin of the famous anarchist) was killed and at the same time the terrorist organization Narodnaya Volya was created, which pronounced the "death sentence" on Alexander II. Eight attempts were made, the last of which, carried out on March 1, 1881, succeeded. The heir received an ultimatum demanding profound political change. However, the people did not follow the terrorists, and soon the terrorist organization collapsed.

The peasantry in Russia, which constituted the majority of the population, as a rule, did not share the ideas of terrorist bombers. A different position was taken by the educated part of society, which was due to the social injustice that existed at that time in Russia, with which the peasant mass put up with. However, it must be admitted that the majority of educated people who sympathize with terrorists, as it turned out later, were poorly aware of the consequences of terrorism. Their sympathy could be due to the ambivalent Russian mentality, which M. Tsvetaeva very accurately expressed: "If I see violence, I am for the victim, and if the rapist runs away, I will give him asylum."

It is important to note that a distinctive feature of pre-revolutionary Russian terrorism was the benevolent attitude towards terrorists of an educated society. People who rejected terror tactics on moral or political grounds were in an absolute minority. Arguments to justify revolutionary terror were drawn from crushing assessments of Russian reality. The terrorists were seen as devotees of the idea, sacrificing their lives in the name of lofty goals. This was facilitated by the acquittal of the jury in the case of populist Vera Zasulich, who made an attempt on the life of the St. Petersburg mayor F. F. Trepov for cruel treatment of political prisoners. Excited by the message about the unjust punishment of the political prisoner Bogolyubov, committed on the orders of Trepov, Zasulich fired at the mayor. The defender's speech ended with the words: "Yes, she can come out of here convicted, but she won't come out dishonored..." A significant part of the educated society admired the terrorists. And Zasulich subsequently became the organizer of the Emancipation of Labor group and a member of the editorial boards of Iskra and Zarya.

At the beginning of the reign of Nicholas II (1894-1917) there was a consolidation of revolutionary forces of various orientations - socialist-revolutionaries, socialist-revolutionaries, anarchists, nationalists.

The Socialist-Revolutionary Party, formed in 1901, adopted the tactics of terrorism, and in the same year the Fighting Organization of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party (which collapsed in early 1907) was created. The first political assassination in Russia was committed by a student, Pyotr Karpovich, who was expelled from the university. On February 4, 1901, he mortally wounded the Conservative Education Minister H. P. Bogolepov, who advocated sending students into soldiers. In April 1902, the Socialist-Revolutionary S. V. Balmashov killed the Minister of the Interior D. S. Sipyagin, the inspirer of the Russification policy in the national outskirts and the initiator of cruel punitive measures against popular movements. And in July 1904, the Socialist-Revolutionary E. S. Sazonov killed Sipyagin's successor in this post - V. K. von Plehve, who was an extreme reactionary. In February 1905, this stage of terrorism ended with the assassination of the tsar's uncle, the Moscow Governor-General, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. These were the most notorious terrorist attacks. A special place in the history of Russian terrorism in these years is occupied by the case of Azef.

Evno Azef, the son of a Jewish tailor, offered his services to the Police Department in 1892 as a student at a polytechnic institute in Germany. Returning to Russia, he became a prominent figure in the Social Revolutionary movement, following the instructions of the Minister of the Interior Plehve. In 1908, Azef was exposed and declared a provocateur.

The first Russian revolution (1905–1907) began with a powerful surge of terrorism from consolidated terrorist organizations of various kinds. It covered the whole country. From October 1905 until the end of 1907, 4,500 government officials were killed and maimed, 2,180 were killed and 2,530 private individuals were wounded. In 1907, terrorists accounted for an average of 18 victims per day. In 1907 the revolution began to recede. From January 1908 to May 1910, 19,957 terrorist attacks and revolutionary robberies were recorded. It was not professional terrorists who killed policemen, blew up houses, expropriated (plundered for the needs of the revolution) in houses, trains and ships, but hundreds and thousands of those who were captured by the revolutionary elements. The principle of "propaganda by action" worked. A classic guerrilla war was unfolding in Russia.

Only the practice of military courts, introduced by the energetic Prime Minister P. A. Stolypin, was able to bring down the wave of revolutionary terror. As Minister of the Interior, and then Chairman of the Council of Ministers (since 1906), in the era of reaction he determined the government's course, was the organizer of the counter-revolutionary coup on June 3, 1907, and the leader of the agrarian reform, called Stolypin's. Stolypin began to develop the project "Nationalization of Capital" - a system of protective measures against Russian enterprises. Therefore, the hunt for him was serious. In August 1906, the Maximalist Socialist-Revolutionaries blew up Stolypin's dacha. 27 people were killed, the children of the Prime Minister were injured. The last major case in the history of pre-revolutionary terrorism was the assassination of Stolypin. On September 1, 1911, compromised by connections with the security department, anarcho-communist Dmitry Bogrov mortally wounded the prime minister in the building of the Kyiv Opera in front of the tsar and 92 security agents. The killer was soon hanged, but that didn't change much. The hope of Russia, P. A. Stolypin, died on September 5, without having carried out the most important reforms for Russia.

The Social Democrats declared their rejection of systematic terror, considering this tactic unpromising. However, the practical Bolsheviks adopted the practice of expropriations, in addition, they practiced the destruction of informants and terror against the supporters of the "Black Hundreds".

This position was shared by Lenin and other leaders of the party and state. The main direction of Bolshevik terrorism in those years was expropriation. This direction was led by L. B. Krasin. The most active activity developed in the Caucasus. A group led by Semyon Ter-Petrosyants (Kamo) carried out a series of expropriations. The loudest act was the "Tiflis ex" on June 12, 1907, when the Bolsheviks blew up two postal carriages with money and seized 250,000 rubles, which were directed to the needs of the "Bolshevik center" abroad. Terrorism also developed on the outskirts of the empire, in Poland, on the territory of Lithuania and Belarus, in the Caucasus, in Armenia and Georgia. The centers of anarchist terror were Bialystok, Odessa, Riga, Vilna, Warsaw. Anarchist terror was distinguished by its orientation against the propertied classes and the widespread use of suicide bombers.

The February revolution and the Bolshevik coup (1917) marked a new stage in the history of Russian terrorism. In establishing their power, the Bolsheviks faced opposition from a broad coalition of political and social forces. Opponents of Soviet power, of course, turned to the tactics of terrorism. But then an important detail came to light, which was confirmed in the subsequent years of Soviet power: terrorism is effective only in a society following the path of liberalization. The totalitarian regime opposes the scattered terrorism of anti-government forces with systematic and crushing state terror. During the Civil War, the German ambassador, Count Mirbach (1918), the communists M. S. Uritsky (1918) and V. M. Zagorsky (Lubotsky) (1919) were killed. In 1918, an attempt was made on Lenin. In 1918–1919 there were several explosions in public places. The Red Terror quickly destroyed the anti-Soviet underground. The terrorist movement lost both personnel and support in society. Criticism of the government and sympathy for terrorists is a luxury available to a person living in a more or less free society. In addition, the communist regime has created a powerful and well-thought-out system of protection of the highest officials of the state. Terrorist attacks against the leaders became practically impossible. After the end of the Civil War, there were several terrorist attacks abroad: the Soviet diplomatic courier Theodor Nette was killed in Latvia (1926) and the plenipotentiary P. L. Voikov in Poland (1927). The Soviet secret services also solved this problem. By the end of the 1930s, a significant part of the emigration was brought under control. The tradition of Russian terrorism was destroyed.

The high-profile case of the mid-1930s - the murder of S. M. Kirov (1934) - served as the impetus for a wave of repressions that swept the country, but it was most likely organized by the secret services of the USSR at the direction of Stalin. During these years, the country was seized by mass political repressions (political state terror). After the war, terrorist activity continued in the form of offensive and retaliatory terrorism in the Baltic States and Western Ukraine. Partisan movements operating in the Baltic States and Western Ukraine carried out terrorist attacks both against representatives of Soviet authorities and against Soviet activists from local residents. By the beginning of the 1950s, anti-Soviet insurgent movements that used terrorist methods of struggle were destroyed there too.

Thus, terrorism leaves the life of Soviet society for decades. In the 60-80s of the XX century. terrorist attacks were isolated: in 1973 - the explosion of an airplane flying from Moscow to Chita; in 1977 - three explosions in Moscow (in the metro, in a store, on the street) committed by Armenian nationalists - members of the illegal Dashnaktsutyun party Zatikyan, Stepanyan, Baghdasaryan; in 1969, an army lieutenant, later declared mentally ill, fired a pistol at Leonid Brezhnev, who was driving in an open car; in addition, several attempts were made to hijack an aircraft to Israel during the 1970s.

In 1990, A. Shmonov, who tried to fire a shot at M. Gorbachev, was declared insane. Perhaps it was beneficial for the authorities not to reveal the real dissatisfaction of the people with the leadership of the country. Several terrorist attacks were committed during the years of perestroika, among them an attempted hijacking by the Ovechkin family (“Seven Simeons”) in 1988.

A new wave of terrorist attacks begins only in the second half of the 1990s. The collapse of the USSR, the weakening of state institutions, the economic crisis, the formation of a black market for weapons and explosives, the rapid growth of criminal violence (the so-called "showdowns", contract killings), uncontrolled migration flows, the war in Chechnya and other factors created the preconditions for another powerful surge of terrorism . Separate acts of terrorism are carried out by small groups of a radical communist orientation, for example, the explosion of the monument to Nicholas II near Moscow (1998), the explosion at the reception of the FSB of Russia in Moscow (1999), the mining of the monument to Peter I in Moscow. All these actions took place without human casualties.

The subsequent series of terrorist acts connected with the war in Chechnya was much more dangerous. These are explosions of houses, explosions in the streets and markets, the seizure of public buildings and hostages. Acts of terrorism are committed in Dagestan, Volgodonsk, Moscow. Among the most high-profile actions was the seizure by a terrorist detachment led by Shamil Basayev of a maternity hospital in the city of Budyonnovsk in the summer of 1995. The terrorist attack ended in humiliating negotiations by the Russian authorities and the return of terrorists to territory not controlled by the Russian army. The capture of the Theater Center on Dubrovka in Moscow by a detachment led by Movsar Baraev in the autumn of 2002 ended with an assault, the destruction of the terrorists and the release of the hostages.

During the period of perestroika, the collapse of the Soviet state and the inconsistent democratic and market reform of Russia and other countries formed in the post-Soviet space at the turn of the century, violent terrorist activities of ethno-political, separatist, nationalist and religious motivation became widespread (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan , Chechnya, etc.), which was considered in detail by the author based on the study of criminal cases and other documentary sources in separate chapters of previous works. This terrorist act, perhaps for the first time in our country, showed cruelty towards innocent people. According to the terrorists, they fought against the Soviet system and took revenge on the Russians "it doesn't matter who exactly: women, children, the elderly - the main thing is Russian" (Bobkov F.D. Kremlin and power. M., 1995. S. 290).