The Defiant Life of Vera Figner: Surviving the Russian Revolution

5 The Tsar’s Death Sentence

5 THE TSAR’S DEATH SENTENCE More than any ruler in recent Russianhistory,AlexanderIIbelieved that his relationship with his subjects was predicated on feelings of love. He was, after all, the Tsar Liberator, who accomplished what no other Romanov had dared to risk when in 1861 he freed millions of Russian peasants from the bonds of serfdom. Over the subsequent decade, Alexander II complemented the emancipation by instituting a series of educational, military, governmental , and judicial reforms. Though none of his reforms diminished his autocratic authority, Alexander II was convinced that in granting these and a measure of free discourse, he would engender harmony between educated society and the monarchy,1 thereby ensuring the longevity of the autocracy. The unsuccessful attempt on the life of the tsar made by Dmitrii Karakozov in 1866 only reinforced this scenario of love between the ruler and the ruled as the people demonstrated their affection for the autocrat through the wrath they directed at the would-be regicide. But a little more than a decade later, continued repression, a succession of disappointing reforms, and a series of political trials of Russia’s educated youth eroded the patience of society, and the curtain lowered on Alexander II’s scenario of love. No pretense of mutual affection remained. “Love had turned into its antithesis, bitter rage, indulgent to violent revolutionary acts.”2 Thus, as a generation of radicals abandoned peaceful agitation in the countryside to bear arms against their government, they found society strangely receptive to their propaganda by deed, a reaction 92 The Defiant Life of Vera Figner that only reinforced their perception of the morality and justice of their violent agenda. Vera Figner did not leave medical school in 1875 with a bomb in her hand. Her transformation from a young woman with predominantly liberal views and eager to work as a physician among the people to a woman who actively supported the political murder of the autocrat was gradual. It was predicated on experience, frustration, hopelessness, egotistical urgency, and, perhaps most importantly, the apparent sanction of fellow radicals and liberal society. Vera was not a rogue figure. While she consistently displayed an independent streak within all of the groups and subgroups to which she belonged or with which she was affiliated, she essentially embraced the youthful fashion of her friends and the time, whether it was pursuing a medical decree, exploring Socialist theory, working as a populist in the village, or resorting to political violence . As the incidence of terrorism increased in Russia and the bulk of educated society outside government circles failed (or refused) to openly indict such violence, budding radicals, including Vera, interpreted the silence of society as public affirmation of the inherent morality of violent methods. Thus, young revolutionaries viewed terrorism directed against the Russian state as a righteous battle that was both necessary and efficient.3 Alexander Solovev’s assassination attempt against Alexander II did not introduce a previously unfathomable specter of violence into the confrontation between revolutionary idealists and the government. Land and Freedom approved of violence against state officials as a weapon of self-defense, and Vera Zasulich’sattemptonthelifeofGeneralTrepovdemonstratedthepotentialof propaganda by deed. But Solovev’s attempted assassination invariably raised the stakes involved in the use of political violence by refining the target of the revolutionaries’ wrath to the emperor himself. During the late 1870s, regicide experienced a renaissance throughout Europe .AssassinstargetedGermany’sWilhelmI,Spain’sAlfonsoXII,andItaly’s King Umberto in 1878 alone.4 Thus, as Vera Figner contends, the idea of assassinating Alexander II “hung in the air” even before Alexander Solovev’s attempt.5 But after the botched April 2 attack and the intensified pursuit of Russian radicals that ensued, the notion of tsaricide acquired renewed vigor. Equating the Third Department’s attempts to round up anyone even remotely connected to Solovev as just the latest chapter in a long history of governmental persecution, the revolutionaries donned the mantle of the aggrieved party and retaliated. Their decision to utilize violence did not represent “the The Tsar's Death Sentence 93 suspension or absence of moral standards”;6 rather, from their point of view, the revolutionaries understood their turn toward violence as a supremely moral decision that was both selfless and righteous. In an article assessing the relationship between morality and political violence , William Ascher explores the psychology that allows otherwise peaceful citizens to support intergroup violence. Although his study does not consider the case of...