A. Kuznetsov: Despite the fact that the attempt on Alexander II was committed on March 1, 1881, Narodnaya Volya passed the sentence on him back in August 1779. Before the March events, several more attempts were made to deprive the autocrat of his life, which he happily avoided.
Andrey Zhelyabov, who was arrested two days before the assassination attempt, was the ideological, rational and all sorts of other inspirer, the organizer of the assassination of the Tsar-Liberator. Sofya Perovskaya, his beloved and faithful follower, took over the leadership in the preparation and completion of what had been started. But at the last moment it turned out that the plan that had been carried out for quite a long time - digging under Malaya Sadovaya Street, a place where Alexander II passed quite often, was not working. On March 1, the emperor changed his route: he stopped by his sister for breakfast at the Mikhailovsky Palace and then followed along the embankment of the Catherine Canal.
Seeing that the tsar's plans had changed, Perovskaya, by a prearranged signal, ordered the "throwers", who were also provided for in Zhelyabov's plan, to change their position. The first bomb under the horses of the emperor's carriage was thrown by 19-year-old Nikolai Rysakov. The projectile did not cause serious damage to the autocrat: he got out of the dilapidated carriage, leaned over to the mortally wounded peddler boy, who was lying on the pavement. And here a very famous, though not documented, episode took place. When one of the officers of the convoy jumped up to Alexander and exclaimed: “Your Majesty, are you alive?! Glory to God!”, then Rysakov allegedly joked gloomily: “Is it glory to God?” And at that moment, Ignatius Grinevitsky threw a second bomb, which turned out to be fatal for both him and the emperor.
Mortally wounded Emperor Alexander II. (wikipedia.org)
S. Buntman: I propose to introduce this eight, which will later be called the "First March".
A. Kuznetsov: In general, the social composition of this eight represents an almost complete picture of Russian society. It was as if they were specially selected ... Formally, two peasants are Zhelyabov and Mikhailov, the first - from peasants to intellectuals, and the second - from peasants to workers. Rysakov - from the middle class. Gelfman is from a wealthy Jewish family.
S. Buntman: From foreigners.
A. Kuznetsov: Perovskaya is in the highest degree well-born Russian nobility. Kibalchich - from the spiritual. Grinevitsky is also a foreigner.
S. Buntman: Both a foreigner and a nobleman.
A. Kuznetsov: Yes. Here is a selection.
So, two - Rysakov and Grinevitsky - were arrested. Plus Zhelyabov, who immediately declared that he had the most direct relation to this case.
On the night of March 1st to 2nd, Zhelyabov was confronted with Rysakov, where he testified: “My personal participation was not physical only because of the arrest; moral participation is complete. And then he wrote a rather interesting statement: “If the new sovereign, having received the scepter from the hands of the revolution, intends to hold out against the regicides of the old system, if they intend to execute Rysakov, it would be a flagrant injustice to save my life, who repeatedly attempted on the life of Alexander II and did not accept physical participation only by a stupid accident. I demand that I join the case on March 1 and, if necessary, I will make revelations incriminating me. I ask you to proceed with my application. Andrey Zhelyabov.
S. Buntman: Why did he do it?
A. Kuznetsov: It is absolutely clear that his plan is to turn the trial of the Narodniks into a platform from which, if possible, to present political views, party programs, and so on.
Kibalchich, Perovskaya and Zhelyabov at trial. (wikipedia.org)
What's next? And then, as the investigators say, Nikolai Rysakov began to sing. Actually, the fact that the police very quickly managed to capture all the main participants in this assassination is thanks to him. Rysakov, still quite a young man, turned out to be a morally unstable person. Realizing that he was seriously threatened by the gallows, and hoping that he was a minor, Nikolai decided to cooperate with the investigation.
Thanks to him, the police quickly went to the safe house, where the spouses Nikolai Sablin and Gesya Gelfman were sitting. During the seizure of the apartment, Sablin committed suicide, and the pregnant Gelfman was arrested. This all happened on March 2nd. On March 3, Timofei Mikhailov, one of the reserve "throwers" on the Catherine Canal, was ambushed.
At the same time, the authorities were in a hurry all the time, trying to organize the process as quickly as possible. They put pressure on the preliminary investigation: faster, faster, faster. And now the investigation is ready to transfer the materials to the court, but on March 10 they take Perovskaya. New interrogations begin, new materials ... And again everything is ready - on the 17th, Kibalchich is detained.
S. Buntman: All over again.
A. Kuznetsov: Yes. That is, the preliminary investigation was resumed twice. However, after the arrest recent participants assassination attempt in a fairly short time it was completed. On March 26, the trial began. The case was considered in the Special Presence of the Governing Senate, which consisted of 9 people. The first present was the hereditary lawyer Eduard Yakovlevich Fuks. It was he who set the tone for the process, determined its format. Fuchs was not like a prosecutor, he was not annoyed by all sorts of patriotic, accusatory philippics. For example, when Zhelyabov, who constantly tried to use the court as a tribune for presenting party views, Eduard Yakovlevich answered: “That's where you start on the wrong path, which I pointed out to you. You have the right to explain your participation in the atrocity of March 1, and you strive to enter into an explanation of the Party's attitude towards this atrocity. Do not forget that you do not actually present for a special presence a person authorized to speak for a party, and this party appears to be non-existent for a special presence when discussing the question of your guilt. I must limit your protection to the limits that are specified for this in the law, that is, the limits of your actual and moral participation in this event, and only yours. However, in view of the fact that the prosecutor's office has outlined the party, you have the right to explain to the court that your attitude to certain issues was different from the attitude of the party indicated by the prosecution.
Execution of the First March. (wikipedia.org)
Returning to the issue of procedural norms. All defendants had defenders. (Zhelyabov refused to defend himself, saying that he would defend himself). Sofia Perovskaya was defended by an experienced lawyer Yevgeny Kedrin. Rysakova - the famous Alexei Mikhailovich Unkovsky. August Antonovich Gerke was Gelfman's defender, and Vladimir Nikolaevich Gerard was Kibalchich's.
The trial of the terrorists lasted three days. Then, on the night of March 29, the judicial presence delivered a verdict. It was officially announced on March 30th. A day was given to file cassation appeals, but none of the defendants did this.
State prosecutor Nikolai Valerianovich Muravyov concluded his speech at the trial in the following way: “There can be no place for them among God's world. Deniers of faith, fighters of world destruction and universal savage anarchy, opponents of morality, merciless corrupters of youth, everywhere they carry their terrible preaching of rebellion and blood, marking their disgusting mark with murders. They have nowhere else to go: on March 1, they overflowed the measure of villainy. Our homeland has suffered enough because of them, which they have stained with precious royal blood, and in your person Russia will execute its judgment on them. May the murder of the greatest of monarchs be the last act of their earthly criminal field.
The sentence for all six was the death penalty by hanging. Gelfman, due to her pregnancy, the execution was postponed until the birth of the child, and then replaced with eternal hard labor, but she soon died from blood poisoning.
On April 3, 1881, Zhelyabov, Perovskaya, Kibalchich, Mikhailov and Rysakov were hanged on the parade ground of the Semyonovsky regiment. Of all the above, Timofey Mikhailov was the most unlucky. If in the case when the Decembrists were executed, the rope broke once for two, then it happened twice for him.
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Chapter 17
First March. “During the ascent to the scaffold of the criminals, the crowd was silent, waiting with tension for the execution.” Vasily Vereshchagin on the Semyonovsky parade ground.
The events of March 1, 1881 are known textbook: on this day, the Narodnaya Volya managed to successfully complete their long-term hunt for Alexander II, the emperor was mortally wounded near the Catherine Canal, after which he died. Then there were the investigation, arrests, trial and - the death sentence.
Six people were sentenced to death by hanging: Gesya Gelfman, Andrei Zhelyabov, Nikolai Kibalchich, Timofei Mikhailov, Sofya Perovskaya, Nikolai Rysakov; since Gelfman was pregnant at the time of her sentencing, she was legally granted a reprieve.
Immediately after the verdict was passed, a discussion arose in society about the death penalty in general and the execution of the First of March in particular. Leo Tolstoy and Vladimir Solovyov appealed to the new Emperor Alexander III with an appeal to pardon the regicides. The Chief Prosecutor of the Synod, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, appealed to the monarch in response: “Fear is already spreading among the Russian people that they can present perverted thoughts to Your Majesty and convince you of pardoning criminals ... Can this happen? No, no, and a thousand times no - it cannot be that you, in the face of the entire Russian people, forgive the murderers of your father, the Russian sovereign, for whose blood the whole earth (except for a few who have weakened in mind and heart) demands revenge and grumbles loudly that it slows down."
On this letter, the emperor wrote with his own hand: "Be calm, no one will dare to come to me with such proposals, and that all six will be hanged, I vouch for this."
But here is the morning of the execution, April 3, 1881: the shameful chariot, under a reinforced escort and accompanied by many onlookers, is moving along the streets of St. Petersburg to the Semyonovsky parade ground. In the memoirs of the St. Petersburg writer Pyotr Gnedich, who then lived on Nikolaevskaya Street, there is an episode related to this morning: “The procession did not move at a slow pace, it walked at a trot.
Several rows of soldiers rode ahead, as if clearing the way for the cortege. And then two chariots followed. People, with their hands tied back and with black boards on their chests, sat high above. I remember Perovskaya's full, bloodless face, her broad forehead. I remember Zhelyabov's yellowish, bearded face. The rest flashed before me imperceptibly, like shadows.
But they were not terrible, not the convoy that followed the chariots, but the very tail of the procession.
I do not know where it was recruited from, what kind of rags it was. In the past, on Sennaya Square, at the "Vyazemskaya Lavra", such figures were grouped. In normal times, there are no such geeks in the city.
They were bare-haired, sometimes barefoot people, ragged, drunk, despite the early hour, joyful, animated, rushing forward with cries. They carried with them - in their hands, on their shoulders, on their backs - stairs, stools, benches. All this must have been stolen, stolen somewhere.
These were “places” for those who wanted to, for those curious people who would buy them at the place of execution. And I realized that these people were animated because they expected rich profits from the enterprise of places for such a highly interesting spectacle.
Nothing fundamentally new, as the reader already knows, but for Gnedich this picture turned out to be the strongest impression: “Forty too many years have passed since then, and I definitely see this procession in front of me now. It's the most horrible sight I've ever seen in my life."
Of course, there were people that morning who expressed sympathy for the condemned, sometimes at the risk of their own well-being. Two episodes are described by the memoirist Lev Antonovich Planson, then cornet of the Life Guards of the Cossack regiment, called upon to maintain order (the reader can get acquainted with the text of his memoirs at the end of the book), some details are also in the diary of General Bogdanovich, a diligent chronicler of the St. Petersburg executions of that time: “One a woman for greeting Perovskaya was captured. She flew from the crowd into the house along Nikolayevskaya; the porter locked the door behind her in order to save her, but the mob, having broken down the door, beat the porter, as well as this lady”; “only one person said that he saw people expressing sympathy for them; everyone unanimously says that the crowd wanted their execution.”
So, the procession, two chariots, five people with the tablets “Kingslayer” hung on their chests. At 8:50 they are already on the Semyonovsky parade ground; the official report reports that "when criminals appeared on the parade ground under a strong escort of Cossacks and gendarmes, a dense crowd of people visibly swayed." From the balcony of her apartment at Nikolayevskaya, 84, the actress of the Alexandrinsky Theater Maria Gavrilovna Savina is watching what is happening (as lawyer Karabchevsky talks about in her memoirs): “The famous actress M.G. Savina, who lived at that time at the end of Nikolaevskaya Street, saw from her balcony the whole sad cortege. She claimed that, except for one of the condemned, Rysakov, the faces of the others who were being taken to execution were brighter and more joyful than the faces around them. Sophia Perovskaya blushed with her round, freckled childish face and simply shone against the dark background of the gloomy procession.
It is known that on that morning the Semyonovsky parade ground was still covered with snow "with large melting places and puddles."
In the official report, the picture of what is happening is described in full: “A myriad of spectators of both sexes and all classes filled the vast place of execution, crowding in a tight, impenetrable wall behind the tapestries of the troops. A wonderful silence reigned on the parade ground. The parade ground was in places surrounded by a chain of Cossacks and cavalry. Closer to the scaffold, first mounted gendarmes and Cossacks were located in the square, and closer to the scaffold, at a distance of two or three fathoms from the gallows, were the infantry of the Life Guards of the Izmailovsky Regiment.
At the beginning of the ninth hour, the mayor, Major General Baranov, arrived on the parade ground, and shortly after him judicial authorities and persons of the prosecutor's office: the prosecutor of the court chamber Plehve, the acting prosecutor of the district court, Plushchik-Plyushchevsky, and the comrades of the prosecutor Postovsky and Myasoedov ... "
Let's interrupt the description for a second, pay attention to Vyacheslav Konstantinovich Plehve, who then held a rather modest prosecutorial position, but soon made a high-profile career: director of the police department, senator, minister of internal affairs. In 1904, he, too, would become a victim of political terror: not far from the Obvodny Canal, Socialist-Revolutionary Yegor Sozonov would throw a bomb at his carriage.
And further: “Here is a description of the scaffold: a black, almost square platform, two arshins high, surrounded by small, black-painted railings. The length of the platform is 12 arshins, the width is 9 ½. Six steps led to this platform. Opposite the only entrance, in a recess, stood three pillars of pillory with chains on them and handcuffs. These pillars had a small elevation, which was reached by two steps. In the middle of the common platform was a stand necessary in these cases for the executed. On the sides of the platform there were two high pillars, on which a crossbar was laid with six iron rings for ropes on it. Three iron rings were also screwed on the side pillars. Two side pillars and a crossbar depicted the letter "P" on them. This was the common gallows for the five regicides. Behind the scaffold were five black wooden coffins with shavings in them and canvas shrouds for criminals sentenced to death. There was also a wooden simple dummy ladder. At the scaffold, long before the executioner arrived, there were four prisoners in unsheathed sheepskin coats - Frolov's assistants.
Behind the scaffold were two prison wagons in which the executioner and his assistants were brought from the prison castle, as well as two carts with five black coffins.
Shortly after arriving on the parade ground of the mayor, the executioner Frolov, standing on a new unpainted wooden staircase, began to attach ropes with loops to five hooks. The executioner was dressed in a blue undercoat, as were his two assistants. The execution of the criminals was carried out by Frolov with the help of four soldiers of the prison companies, dressed in gray prison caps and unsheathed sheepskin coats.
Blue outfit, not red, as in the old days. It is not known why Frolov decided to change his appearance: perhaps the red color was already acquiring a stable revolutionary meaning at that time. Be that as it may, the well-known and now kept in the Tretyakov Gallery painting by the Soviet artist Tatyana Nazarenko, dedicated to the execution of the First of March, is inaccurate in detail: it shows an executioner in a red shirt attaching a rope, standing on a scaffold made of unpainted wood (in fact, as we know , it was painted in the traditional black color).
And again a report, a terrible procedure in every detail: “Zhelyabov, Perovskaya and Mikhailov were put to the three pillory; Rysakov and Kibalchich remained standing at the extreme near the railing of the scaffold, next to the other regicides. The convicted criminals seemed rather calm, especially Perovskaya, Kibalchich and Zhelyabov, less Rysakov and Mikhailov: they were deathly pale. The apathetic and lifeless, as if petrified, physiognomy of Mikhailov stood out in particular. Unflappable calmness and spiritual humility were reflected on Kibalchich's face. Zhelyabov seemed nervous, moved his arms and often turned his head towards Perovskaya, standing next to her, and once or twice towards Rysakov, being between the first and second. There was a slight blush on Perovskaya's calm, yellowish-pale face; when she rode up to the scaffold, her eyes wandered, feverishly gliding through the crowd, and then when, without moving a single muscle of her face, she gazed at the platform, standing at the pillory. When Rysakov was brought closer to the scaffold, he turned around to face the gallows and made an unpleasant grimace, which twisted his wide mouth for a moment. The criminal's light reddish long hair flowed over his broad, full face, escaping from under a flat black convict cap. All the criminals were dressed in long prison black coats.
During the ascent to the scaffold of the criminals, the crowd was silent, waiting with tension for the execution.
After the condemned were placed in the pillory, the command "on guard" sounded and the reading of the verdict began. Those present bared their heads. Then the small drum beat - and the very last preparations for the inevitable began: “The condemned almost simultaneously approached the priests and kissed the cross, after which they were each led by the executioners to their own rope. The priests, having overshadowed the condemned with the sign of the cross, descended from the scaffold. When one of the priests let Zhelyabov kiss the cross and signed him with the sign of the cross, Zhelyabov whispered something to the priest, kissing the cross passionately, shook his head and smiled.
Cheerfulness did not leave Zhelyabov, Perovskaya, and especially Kibalchich, until the minute they put on a white shroud with a hood. Before this procedure, Zhelyabov and Mikhailov, approaching Perovskaya a step, kissed her goodbye. Rysakov stood motionless and looked at Zhelyabov all the time while the executioner put on his comrades of a terrible crime the fateful long shroud of hangmen. The executioner Frolov, taking off his undercoat and remaining in a red shirt, “began” with Kibalchich. Putting a shroud on him and putting a noose around his neck, he pulled it tightly with a rope, tying the end of the rope to the right post of the gallows. Then he proceeded to Mikhailov, Perovskaya and Zhelyabov.
Execution of the People's Will. Engraving from an English magazine. 1881
Zhelyabov and Perovskaya, standing in the shroud, repeatedly shook their heads. Last in line was Rysakov, who, seeing the others fully dressed in shrouds and ready for execution, visibly staggered; his knees buckled as the executioner quickly threw a shroud and hood over him. During this procedure, the drums, without ceasing, beat a small but loud fraction.
And the finale: “At 9:20, the executioner Frolov, having finished all the preparations for the execution, approached Kibalchich and led him to a high black bench, helping him up two steps. The executioner pulled back the bench, and the criminal hung in the air. Death befell Kibalchich instantly; at least his body, having made several weak circles in the air, soon hung without any movement or convulsions. The criminals, standing in one row, in white shrouds, made a heavy impression. Mikhailov turned out to be the tallest.
After the execution of Kibalchich, Mikhailov was the second to be executed, followed by Perovskaya, who, having fallen violently from the bench in the air, soon hung motionless, like the corpses of Mikhailov and Kibalchich. The fourth was Zhelyabov, the last was Rysakov, who, being pushed off the bench by the executioner, tried to stick to the bench with his feet for several minutes. The executioner's assistants, seeing Rysakov's desperate movements, quickly began to pull the bench from under his feet, and the executioner Frolov gave the criminal's body a strong push forward. Rysakov's body, having made several slow turns, also hung quietly, next to the corpse of Zhelyabov and other executed people.
How detailed the official report is in describing the preparations for the execution, he is just as stingy with words when it comes to the execution itself. One can guess about the reasons: the hanging of the First of March was accompanied by dramatic circumstances, which had never happened before in the history of St. Petersburg executions. Timofey Mikhailovich Mikhailov was hanged three times! When for the first time the executioners knocked out a bench from under his feet, the rope broke, and Mikhailov collapsed onto the platform; at the second attempt at hanging, when Mikhailov himself climbed onto the bench again, the rope broke again.
Lev Antonovich Planson recalled: “It is impossible to describe that outburst of indignation, cries of protest and indignation, abuse and curses that erupted from the crowd flooding the square. If the scaffold with the gallows were not surrounded by a comparatively impressive outfit of troops armed with loaded rifles, then, probably, nothing would be left of the gallows with the scaffold, and from the executioners and other executors of the sentence of the court in an instant ...
But the excitement of the crowd reached its climax when they noticed from the square that they were going to hang Mikhailov on the gallows again ...
More than thirty years have passed since that moment, and I still hear the roar of the fall of Mikhailov’s heavy body and see his dead mass lying in a shapeless heap on a high platform! ..
However, from somewhere a new, third in a row, rope was brought by completely bewildered executioners (after all, they are also people! ..)
This time it turned out to be stronger ... The rope did not break, and the body hung over the platform on a rope stretched like a string.
In the diary of Alexandra Viktorovna Bogdanovich, another version is given, even more terrible: according to her, Mikhailov was actually hanged four times. “The first time he broke off and fell to his feet; the second time the rope came undone and he fell to his full height; for the third time the rope was stretched; the fourth time he had to be lifted up, so that death would soon follow, since the rope was loosely tied. Doctors kept him in this position for 10 minutes.
And from her own diary: “Zhelyabov and Rysakov had to suffer for quite a long time, since the executioner Frolov (the only executioner in all of Russia) was so shocked by the failure with Mikhailov that he put the noose on both of them badly, too high, close to the chin, which slowed down the onset of the agony. I had to lower them a second time and turn the knots directly to the spinal bone and, tying them tighter, again leave them to their terrible fate.
It was impossible to write about all this in an official report, designed to demonstrate the impeccable execution of the royal will!
It all ended at 9:30. The drumming stopped, five black coffins were brought onto the scaffold, in which the bodies of the executed were placed; This procedure began with the body of Kibalchich. “The coffins were filled with shavings at the head,” the compiler of the official report informs us for some reason. After examining the bodies, the coffins were sent to the Preobrazhenskoye cemetery: first by carts, then by rail to the nearby Obukhovo station. The former caretaker of the cemetery, Valerian Grigoryevich Sagovsky, recalled how, in the early morning of April 3, a steam locomotive with a freight car attached to it arrived at the station, how the Cossack hundred arrived to guard the funeral, how the burial itself took place: “They brought boxes with the bodies of the executed to the grave and began to lower them. The boxes were so bad before, so hastily knocked down, that some of them immediately broke. The box in which the body of Sophia Perovskaya lay was broken. She was dressed in a teak dress, the very one in which she was hung up, in a padded jacket.
There was an eerie silence as the coffins were lowered into the grave. No one uttered a single word ... Immediately the bailiff gave the order to fill up the grave, level it with the general level of the earth.
AT Soviet years almost at the burial site, the buildings of a house-building plant grew.
And on the parade ground already at 10 o'clock in the morning the mayor gave the order to dismantle the scaffold, which was carried out by specially hired carpenters. Meanwhile, the executioners - according to eyewitnesses - opened a trade in pieces of ropes taken from the gallows, and there were many who wanted to buy them "for good luck".
Post hoc: Gesya Gelfman passed the fate of her comrades, but her life also ended tragically. She gave birth in prison, and although, under pressure from the European public, the emperor commuted her death sentence to indefinite hard labor, Gelfman soon died: both the difficult birth that took place without medical assistance and the loss of the child had an effect - he was taken from his mother shortly after birth.
And one more detail, not known to everyone: in the mid-1880s, the famous Russian battle painter Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin wrote the “Trilogy of Executions”; the first picture depicted a crucifixion in ancient Roman times, the second "exploding from cannons in British India", and the third was simply called: "Execution by hanging in Russia."
This picture is also called "The Execution of the People's Will" or even more specifically - "The Execution of the First March". On April 3, 1881, Vereshchagin was not present at the Semyonovsky parade ground; apparently, he visited the place of execution later. The work on the triptych was helped by the fact that Vereshchagin nevertheless observed the executions with his own eyes, this is known for certain. The famous pre-revolutionary journalist Alexander Amfiteatrov retold one monologue of a battle-painter in this way: “Calmly, without trembling, vigilantly like a lion, grasping everything, observing, he was present at such scenes from which terror seized.
He talked about the execution of political:
- When the bench is pulled out, the person will spin. He will begin to quickly, quickly sort out his legs, as if he is running. And with the elbows of his bound hands he makes upward movements, like a slaughtered bird beats. The rope is spinning. It spins, stops and starts spinning. Slowly at first, then faster, then slowly again. Stop again. And then it starts spinning the other way. And so it is in one direction, then in the other direction, all slower, shorter, and finally the body hangs. A puddle forms under it. And when the execution is done, representatives of the "better society" rush for a piece of rope "for luck in the cards." They tear at each other.
He told how he painted his paintings.
In every cruel detail."
Five gallows in the painting by Vereshchagin. Square crowded with people. Snowy winter. Not quite an accurate depiction of the circumstances, to be sure.
Although, perhaps, this liberty was allowed by him consciously - for the then censorship reasons?
Chapter 18
Abolition of the public death penalty. “Further down this path, we may eventually come closer to abolishing the death penalty itself.” The execution of Nikolai Sukhanov in Kronstadt. Shlisselburg fortress, execution place of the capital. "After removing the corpses of the above-mentioned executed criminals, Shevyrev and Ulyanov were brought out." Executioner Alexander Filipiev.
The dramatic incidents during the execution of the First of March, as well as the wide public reaction to the public execution, made the authorities think again: are these public executions really necessary?
The Ministry of Justice, headed by Dmitry Nikolayevich Nabokov, made an official presentation on the abolition of the public death penalty. Having considered this document, the State Council formulated an “opinion”, which it submitted for approval to Emperor Alexander III:
“By changing the subject articles of the Code of Laws, decide:
1. Sentences on the death penalty, not excluding those cases when it is replaced by political death,<…>are carried out not publicly, within the prison fence, and if this is impossible, in another place indicated by the police authorities;
2. When the execution is carried out, the following must be present: a person of prosecutorial supervision, the Chief of the local police, the Secretary of the Court and a doctor, and if the execution takes place within the prison fence, then the Warden of the place of detention;
3. Regardless of the persons specified in Article 2, the defender of the convict and local residents, not more than ten people, may be present during the execution, at the invitation of the city public administration. The non-arrival of these persons does not stop the execution;
4. In cases where the execution is carried out outside the prison where the convicted person is kept, he is delivered to the place of execution in a closed wagon;
5. A protocol is drawn up on the subsequent execution, which is signed by all persons present at it.
On May 26, 1881, the emperor "deigned to approve and ordered to execute" this decision. For cases under the jurisdiction of military courts, a similar procedure for the execution of the death penalty was extended by decree of January 5, 1882.
So the shameful chariots and crowds of many thousands watching how their fellow citizens die are gone. The Russian press, it must be said, reacted to the decision approvingly, and sometimes simply enthusiastically; an article was published in the newspaper Order with the following words: “There is no doubt that our government has thereby embarked on a path that leads to a softening of our public morals; going further along this path, we can eventually come closer to the very abolition of the death penalty, which for ordinary criminal cases we have long ago abolished.
The newspaper's logic is understandable and quite transparent, but life has not backed it up. Moreover, the rejection of the public death penalty untied the hands of the authorities, allowing them to tighten the screws on the repressive mechanism more strongly. It is one thing to execute criminals in public, in the center of the city, under the eyes of thousands of citizens, including critical ones, and quite another to carry out the sentence away from prying eyes, in a well-protected area. As a result, the flywheel of executions gradually began to gain momentum, by the beginning of the 20th century acquiring deadly power, unprecedented even during the time of Empress Anna.
And this despite the fact that the public was not silent at all. Each specific fact of the death sentence and the corresponding executions, even if far from the eyes of the curious, still became public knowledge, was widely discussed, and sometimes caused wide and heated discussions. The closest example of this was the year 1882, when another trial in the case of the Narodnaya Volya caused a response even outside of Russia. This trial went down in history as the "Trial of Twenty", the accused were members of the Executive Committee and agents of the "Narodnaya Volya". The verdict, handed down on February 15, turned out to be severe: the death penalty for ten convicts.
The most famous of the suicide bombers who came out in defense was, undoubtedly, the French classic Victor Hugo. His ardent appeal was full of emotions: “Now we have before us boundless darkness, in the midst of this darkness there are ten human beings, of which two are women (two women!), Doomed to death ... And ten others should be swallowed up by the Russian crypt - Siberia. For what? What is this gallows for? What is this imprisonment for? Leo Tolstoy was also worried about the fate of the condemned, in a letter to his wife he asked: “What about the condemned? Do not go out of my head and heart. And it torments, and indignation rises, the most painful feeling.
The excitement of the public played a role: the emperor commuted the sentence, retaining the death penalty for only one convict - fleet lieutenant Nikolai Evgenievich Sukhanov - as "who had betrayed military duty." It was not hanging that awaited him - execution.
This execution took place on March 19, 1882, and not in the center of St. Petersburg - in Kronstadt, where Sukhanov served. Early morning under escort, in a gray prisoner's overcoat, he was sent from the Peter and Paul Fortress to the place of execution: first in a closed carriage, then by train to Oranienbaum, and from there by sea to his destination.
The execution took place at 8:45 am. Narodovolets Esper Alexandrovich Serebryakov described - from other people's words, of course - the events of that morning: “Nikolai Evgenievich behaved during the execution boldly, but at the same time modestly. When he got out of the carriage, he looked around at everyone present. Later, during the entire preparation for the execution, he no longer looked at the audience, as if afraid to compromise one of his friends with his gaze. After reading the verdict, he himself put on a shirt with long sleeves, but when they tied him to a post and began to blindfold, he said something to the sailor, who, having straightened the bandage, walked away.
“We all seemed to freeze, fixing our eyes on Sukhanov,” an eyewitness told me. - Suddenly there was a volley, Sukhanov's head sank to his chest, and I felt something break in my chest; tears came to my eyes, and I, afraid of bursting into tears, had to leave quickly.
The fact that Nikolai Sukhanov behaved with dignity in his last minutes was also mentioned in the official reports on the execution.
... By that time, the construction of a new prison of “the most severe solitary confinement”, which was supposed to replace the Alekseevsky ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress, was already in full swing. They were built far outside the capital, on Orekhovy Island at the source of the Neva, within the walls of the Shlisselburg fortress - the very one where Emperor John Antonovich was once kept and where Lieutenant Mirovich staged his rebellion.
The first prisoners appeared in the new prison in August 1884. And already in September, the Shlisselburg Fortress added itself to the mournful list of Russian places of execution - and although it was located far from St. Petersburg, it is present in our book quite legally, because here they dealt primarily with those who were sentenced to death in the capital. It is no coincidence that now the Oreshek fortress is a branch of the Museum of the History of St. Petersburg.
Yegor Ivanovich Minakov was the first to be executed within the Shlisselburg walls: this happened on September 21, 1884. Before getting to the island, he had already wandered around the prisons a lot, even tried to escape, but the transfer here deprived him of any hope for the future. Another prisoner of Shlisselburg, Vera Nikolaevna Figner, later recalled: “Minakov did not want to slowly die in the new Bastille -“ a deck of rot that fell into the mud, ”as he put it in his poem. He demanded correspondence and a visit with his relatives, books and tobacco, went on a hunger strike, and then slapped the prison doctor.”
This slap was interpreted by the prison authorities as "a blow to the face"; Minakov was brought to a military court, which sentenced the obstinate violator of the regime to death - for "insulting by action." Justice ignored the fact that Minakov suffered from mental disorders; The sentence was carried out without delay.
Less than a month later - a new execution. In the St. Petersburg Military District Court, the next trial in the case of the Narodnaya Volya, known as the "Trial of the Fourteen" just ended; Eight people were sentenced to death, including Vera Figner, but after the death row was pardoned, two remained, the rest went to hard labor. On October 10, 1884, lieutenant Nikolai Mikhailovich Rogachev and fleet lieutenant Baron Alexander Pavlovich Shtromberg were brought to the island, and their execution by hanging took place on the same day.
In 1885 tragic fate Yegor Minakov was fully repeated by another prisoner of the Shlisselburg fortress, Ippolit Nikolaevich Myshkin, one of the most prominent figures in the history of the Russian revolutionary movement. Vera Figner wrote: “Almost ten years have passed in Myshkin’s transitions from one dungeon to another, and now, after all the ordeals and wanderings, he finds himself in the most hopeless of the Russian Bastille. This exceeded the strength of even such a firm man as Myshkin was. He decided to die - to insult the prison warden and go to court, go out to expose the cruel secret of Shlisselburg, expose, as he thought, to all of Russia and, at the cost of his life, achieve relief from the fate of his comrades in prison.
On the first day of Christmas 1884, Myshkin threw a copper plate at the warden, after which he was put on trial. The verdict turned out to be exactly what Myshkin was counting on: for insulting an official in the line of duty - execution. The sentence was approved on January 18, 1885, and carried out on the morning of January 26. According to the official report, Ippolit Nikolayevich "joined and behaved calmly."
As Vera Figner testifies, some relaxations in the regime after that were indeed made: the weakest of the prisoners were allowed to walk together.
The next replenishment in the list of those executed on the territory of the Shlisselburg fortress happened in the spring of 1887, after the completion of the case of preparing an assassination attempt on Emperor Alexander III. Fifteen defendants were then brought to trial, each of whom was given the most severe sentence: death by hanging. True, the emperor commuted the sentence for ten of the defendants, but for five the death sentence remained in force: for students of St.
On May 5, they were all delivered to the Shlisselburg fortress; the execution took place three days later. Ivan Grigoryevich Shcheglovitov, at that time a modest comrade of the prosecutor, and later the country's Minister of Justice and the last chairman, was responsible for the execution of the sentence. State Council Russian Empire. (Years later, he himself will become a target of terrorists, fortunately, then the threat will bypass him, and after the revolution he will be shot in Moscow among the first victims of the red terror.)
Shcheglovitov reported to the Minister of the Interior, Count Dmitry Andreyevich Tolstoy, that until the last moment the condemned had hoped for pardon, but “when they announced to them half an hour before the execution, namely at 3½ in the morning, about the upcoming execution of the sentence, they all remained completely calm and refused confession and acceptance of St. Secret."
The minister himself reported to the emperor: “In view of the fact that the area of the Shlisselburg prison did not provide an opportunity to execute all five at the same time, the scaffold was arranged for three people, and the Generals, Andreiushkin and Osipanov were initially taken out to carry out the execution, who, after hearing the verdict, said goodbye to each other, kissed to the cross and cheerfully entered the scaffold, after which Generalov and Andreyushkin said in a loud voice: “Long live Narodnaya Volya!” Osipanov intended to do the same, but did not have time, as a bag was thrown over him. After removing the corpses of the above-mentioned executed criminals, Shevyrev and Ulyanov were taken out, who also cheerfully and calmly entered the scaffold, and Ulyanov venerated the cross, and Shevyrev pushed the priest's hand away.
Emperor Alexander II, who went down in history with the nickname "Liberator" for the abolition of serfdom, was far from popular among his contemporaries. In particular, he was especially disliked by representatives of radical revolutionary democratic organizations. He became the first Russian emperor to have so many assassination attempts - before the tragic day of March 1, 1881, there were five of them, and together with the last two explosions, the number of assassination attempts increased to seven.
The executive committee of the organization "Narodnaya Volya" in 1879 "sentenced" the emperor to death, after which he made two attempts to assassinate him, both ended in failure. The third attempt at the beginning of 1881 was prepared with particular care. Various options for the assassination attempt were considered, two of them were most actively prepared. Firstly, it was supposed to blow up the Stone Bridge across the Catherine Canal: this was the only bridge through which the emperor's carriage could get to the Winter Palace when Alexander II was returning from the Tsarskoselsky railway station. However, this plan was technically difficult to implement, was fraught with numerous victims among the townspeople, moreover, in the winter of 1881, the tsar practically did not go to Tsarskoye Selo.
The second plan provided for the creation of a tunnel under Malaya Sadovaya Street, along which one of the tsar's permanent routes ran, with a subsequent explosion. If the mine suddenly did not work, then four Narodnaya Volya were supposed to throw bombs into the royal carriage, and if Alexander II remained alive after that, then the leader of the People's Will, Andrei Zhelyabov, personally had to jump into the carriage and stab the king. To implement this plan, house No. 8 on Malaya Sadovaya had already been rented, from which they began to dig a tunnel. But shortly before the assassination attempt, the police arrested many prominent members of Narodnaya Volya, including Zhelyabov on February 27. The arrest of the latter prompted the conspirators to take action. After the arrest of Zhelyabov, the emperor was warned of the possibility of a new assassination attempt, but he reacted calmly to this, saying that he was under divine protection, which had already allowed him to survive 5 assassination attempts.
After Zhelyabov's arrest, the group was headed by Sophia Perovskaya. Under the leadership of Nikolai Kibalchich, 4 bombs were made. On the morning of March 1, Perovskaya handed them over to Grinevitsky, Mikhailov, Emelyanov and Rysakov.
1 (13 new style) March 1881 Alexander II left Winter Palace in the Manege, he was accompanied by a rather small guard (in the conditions of a new assassination attempt). The emperor was present at the dispensation of the guards in the Manege. And then he went to the Mikhailovsky Palace for tea with his cousin.
Alexander III and his time Tolmachev Evgeny Petrovich
7. JUDGMENT OF THE KINGKILLERS AND THEIR EXECUTION
7. JUDGMENT OF THE KINGKILLERS AND THEIR EXECUTION
On March 26-29, 1881, the trial of the Narodnaya Volya members, the organizers and executors of the assassination of Alexander II, took place:
A. Zhelyabov, S. Perovskaya, T. Mikhailov, N. Kibalchich, G. Gelfman and N. Rysakov. He became the last major political process in Russia XIX century, which was attended by correspondents of domestic and foreign newspapers. There were also artists in the courtroom, in particular, K. E. Makovsky and A. A. Nesvetevich, who left sketches of the participants in the process.
According to those present, the proceedings of the court were very solemn. To a certain extent, this “was facilitated by the full-length portrait of the late emperor, which was hanging in the courtroom, covered with black crepe.
Senator E. Ya. Fuks was appointed presiding judge of the Special Presence of the Governing Senate, and N. V. Muravyov performed prosecutorial duties. All the defendants, except for Zhelyabov, had lawyers.
During the trial, the regicides did not deny their belonging to the "Narodnaya Volya", they were convinced that they fought for the liberation of their people, they tried to prove the moral strength of their struggle.
In his keynote speech at the trial, Zhelyabov specifically noted that “Russian people-lovers did not always act with projectiles,” but only after their “movement for the purpose of peacefully propagating socialist ideas ... completely bloodless, rejecting violence” was suppressed.
“It was very entertaining to listen to these unfortunate fanatics,” D. A. Milyutin wrote in his diary, “calmly and almost boastfully talking about their villainous tricks, as if about some kind of exploits and merits. Most of all, Zhelyabov was drawn; this person is outstanding. He gave us a whole lecture on the organization of socialist circles and would have developed the whole theory of the socialists if the chairman (Senator Fuchs) had given him the freedom to speak. Zhelyabov did not deny his leading participation in assassination attempts on regicide: both in 1879 near Alexandrov, and in a dig in Malaya Sadovaya, and, finally, on March 1 on the Catherine Canal. Perovskaya also presented herself with cynicism as an active participant in a whole series of criminal acts; the persistence and hard-heartedness with which she acted was striking in contrast to her frail and almost modest appearance. Although she is 26 years old, she looks like an undeveloped girl. Then Kibalchich spoke fluently, with energy and outlined his role in the organization of the conspiracy - a specialist technician. He openly announced that, by his nature, he did not consider himself capable of an active role, nor of murder, but, sympathizing with the goals of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, he took upon himself the manufacture of trains and shells necessary to carry out their plans. Mikhailov looked like a simple artisan and presented himself as a fighter for the liberation of the working people from the heavy oppression of the capitalists, patronized by the government. The Jewess Gelfman spoke colorlessly; she did not take a direct part in the March 1 crime. Finally, Rysakov, who looked like a boy, spoke like a schoolboy taking an exam. It was obvious that he succumbed to the temptation out of frivolity and was an obedient executor of the orders of Zhelyabov and Perovskaya. It is remarkable that all the defendants spoke decently and very fluently; Zhelyabov is especially eloquent and self-confident” (187, vol. 4, p. 48).
The entry in the diary of State Secretary E. A. Peretz is very close to this assessment: “I spent three days in the trial of the intruders on the first of March,” he writes. - Rysakov is a blind tool. This is an unfortunate young man who had excellent inclinations, completely confused and off the straight path by the socialists. Mikhailov is a fool. Kibalchich is a very smart and talented, but embittered person ... The soul of the matter is Zhelyabov and Perovskaya. The first of them looks like a clever clerk from Shchukin's court, uttering loud phrases and showing off; Perovskaya is a blonde of small stature, decently dressed and combed, must have remarkable willpower and influence on others. The crime of March 1, prepared by Zhelyabov, was carried out after his arrest according to her plan and thanks to her remarkable energy” (208, p. 54).
The impassioned accusatory speech of N. V. Muravyov, which lasted almost five hours, attracted everyone's attention. Milyutin called it "excellent". “Muravyov,” the Minister of War remarked, “is a very talented young man, an orator in the full sense of the word” (ibid., p. 49). Peretz also highly appreciated this speech: “The speech of the prosecutor Muravyov was very good, even brilliant” (208, p. 55).
According to democratic publications, his speech was "pompous" and "pretentious", filled with "fables". It must be admitted that at that time the prosecutor's speech in the case of the murder of the reformer tsar, recognized by all, could not have been otherwise. At the same time, both the prosecutor and the chairman of the court were under the vigilant eye of the authorities. “Gentlemen senators, gentlemen class representatives! - the prosecutor began his speech, - called to be the accuser of the greatest atrocity that has ever been committed on Russian soil, I feel completely overwhelmed by the mournful grandeur of the task that lies before me. In front of the fresh, barely closed grave of our beloved monarch, in the midst of the general weeping of the Fatherland, which lost so unexpectedly and so terribly its unforgettable Father and Transformer, I am afraid not to find in my weak forces a sufficiently bright and powerful word worthy of that great grief, in whose name I I now appear before you to demand justice, to demand retribution for the guilty, and satisfaction to Russia, who has been desecrated by them, cursing them! (107a, p. 78). In his speech, Muravyov treated the defendants extremely harshly and severely: “... Deniers of faith, fighters of world destruction and general wild anarchy, opponents of morality, merciless corrupters of youth, everywhere they carry their terrible preaching of rebellion and blood, marking their disgusting mark with murders” (there same, from 102).
The sentence was the same for everyone - the death penalty by hanging. Only Rysakov and Mikhailov applied for clemency, which were rejected.
On graduation day litigation Professor of Philosophy V. S. Solovyov delivered a lecture "Criticism of modern education and the crisis of the world process" in the hall of the Credit Society. Solovyov ended his speech with an appeal to the tsar to pardon the participants in the assassination of Alexander II (see 367, 1906, No. 3). For most of the audience, this trick caused an explosion of applause. But another part of the audience nearly beat the philosopher.
It is also known that even before the trial, in March, L. N. Tolstoy wrote a letter to Alexander III, in which, based on the Gospel, he asked for pardon for the murderers and urged the young crowned not to start his reign with a bad deed, but to try to strangle evil with good and only good. Alexander III ordered to convey to Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy that if an attempt was made on himself, he could pardon, but he has no right to forgive his father's murderers. All the attackers were executed on Friday, April 3, 1881, on a cold, gray, gloomy morning on the Semenovsky parade ground of St. Petersburg (now the area where the Theater of the Young Spectator and Bryantsev Street are located). Only for Gesya Gelfman, who was expecting a child, the execution was delayed. She died a few months later in childbirth in the prison hospital.
Before the execution, the regicides were kept in the house of preliminary detention. Lieutenant Colonel Dubyssa-Krachak received the criminals from the house of pre-trial detention and accompanied them under escort to the place of execution along Liteiny Avenue, Shpalernaya (now Voinova St.), Kirochnaya (now Saltykov-Shchedrin St.), Nadezhdinskaya (now Mayakovsky St.) and Nikolaevskaya (now Marata street) to Semyonovsky parade ground. He had at his disposal eleven police officers, several district guards, policemen and, moreover, local police of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th sections of the Foundry part and the 1st and 2nd sections of the Moscow part. The convoy that accompanied the criminals consisted of two squadrons of cavalry and two companies of infantry.
Maintaining order on the Semyonovsky parade ground, at the place of execution with the streets adjacent to it, was entrusted to Colonel Esipov, who had at his disposal six police officials, many other persons, as well as the local police of the 3rd and 4th sections of the Moscow part and the 3rd section of Alexandro - Nevsky part. At the house of preliminary detention, along the way and on the Semyonovsky parade ground, there were, in addition, reinforced outfits of mounted gendarmes.
More than 15 units were allocated to assist the police along the route from the troops: a company on Shpalernaya Street, near the house of pre-trial detention, a company on Liteiny Prospekt, from the side of the arsenal, a company on the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and Nikolaevskaya Street, a company along Nikolaevskaya Street, near the meat market. At the disposal of the chief of police, Colonel Esipov, were four companies and two hundred Cossacks on the Semyonovsky parade ground; two companies at the entrance from Nikolaevskaya street to the parade ground; two companies at the entrance from Gorokhovaya Street (now Dzerzhinsky Street) to the parade ground; one company at Tsarskoye Selo railway and one company along the Bypass Canal.
The troops assembled on the Semyonovsky parade ground were commanded by the head of the 2nd Guards Cavalry Division, Adjutant General Baron Drizen.
At 7:50 a.m., the gates leading out of the house of pre-trial detention on Shpalernaya Street opened, and a few minutes later the first shameful chariot pulled by a pair of horses drove out of them. Two criminals were placed on it with their hands tied to the seat: Zhelyabov and Rysakov. They were in black prison overcoats made of soldiers' cloth and the same caps without visors. On the chest of each hung a black board with a white inscription: "Kingslayer". Young Rysakov, Zhelyabov's student, seemed very agitated and extremely pale. Finding himself on Shpalernaya Street, he glanced over parts of the concentrated troops and the mass of the people and hung his head. His teacher Zhelyabov did not seem more cheerful either. Anyone who was at the trial and saw him flaunting there would, of course, hardly recognize this leader of the regicides - he has changed so much. However, this was partly facilitated by the change of costume, but only in part. Zhelyabov, both here and all the way, did not look at his neighbor Rysakov, and, apparently, avoided his glances.
Soon after the first one, the second shameful chariot with three criminals left the gates: Kibalchich, Perovskaya and Mikhailov. They were also dressed in black prison robes. Sofya Perovskaya was placed in the middle, between Kibalchich and Mikhailov. They were all pale, but especially Mikhailov. Kibalchich and Perovskaya seemed more cheerful than the others. A slight blush could be seen on Perovskaya's face, which flared up instantly at the exit to Shpalernaya Street. Perovskaya had a black bandage on her head like a bonnet. On the chest of all also hung boards with the inscriptions: "Regicide." No matter how pale Mikhailov was, no matter how he seemed to have lost his presence of mind, but as he was going out into the street he shouted something several times. What exactly - it was quite difficult to make out, because at that very time the drums were beaten. Mikhailov made similar exclamations along the way, often bowing to either side of the solid mass of people gathered along the entire path. Behind the criminals were three carriages with five Orthodox priests, dressed in mourning robes, with crosses in their hands. The clergy were placed on the goats of these carriages. These five Orthodox priests arrived at the pre-trial detention house the previous evening at the beginning of the eighth hour to give parting words to the condemned.
Rysakov willingly received the priest, talked with him for a long time, confessed, and communed with St. secrets. On April 2, Rysakov was seen crying; before, he often read St. Gospel. Mikhailov also received the priest, talked to him for quite a long time, confessed, but did not partake of St. secrets. Kibalchich discussed twice with the priest, refused confession and communion; he finally asked the priest to leave him. Zhelyabov and Sophia Perovskaya categorically refused to accept the confessor.
The last night for them from 2 to 3 April, the criminals spent apart. Perovskaya went to bed at the end of the eleventh hour in the evening; Kibalchich a little later - he was busy writing to his brother, who is currently, they say, in St. Petersburg. Mikhailov also wrote a letter to his parents in the Smolensk province. This letter was written completely illiterate and did not differ in any way from the letters of Russian commoners to their relatives. Perovskaya sent a letter to her mother a few days ago. Zhelyabov wrote a letter to his relatives, then undressed and went to bed at the end of the eleventh hour of the night. According to some indications, Rysakov spent the night anxiously. Perovskaya and Kibalchich seemed the calmest of all...
At 6 o'clock in the morning all the criminals, with the exception of Gesia Gelfman, were awakened. They were offered tea. After tea, they were brought one by one to the administration of the house of preliminary detention, where in a special room they changed into official clothes: linen, gray trousers, sheepskin coats, over which the prisoner's black coat, boots and a cap with headphones. They put on Perovskaya a teak dress with small stripes, a short fur coat, and also a black prisoner's overcoat.
At the end of the dressing, they were taken out into the courtyard, where two shameful chariots were already standing. The executioner Frolov with his assistant from the prison castle seated them on the chariot. The arms, legs and torso of the offender were fastened with straps to the seat. Executioner Frolov the night before, at about 10 o'clock, arrived at the house of pre-trial detention, where he spent the night. Having finished the operation of seating the criminals on the chariots, Frolov and his assistant went in a carriage, accompanied by policemen, to the place of execution, and after him two shameful chariots drove out of the gate of the house of pre-trial detention on Shpalernaya Street.
A gloomy shameful procession followed the above-named streets. Rumbling heavily along the pavements, high chariots made a heavy impression with their appearance. The criminals sat two fathoms above the pavement, swaying heavily on every bump. The shameful chariots were surrounded by troops. The streets along which they were taken were filled with people.
This was partly facilitated by both the late hour of the execution and the warm spring weather. Already from eight o'clock in the morning the sun illuminated with its rays the huge Semyonovsky parade ground, still covered with snow with large melting places and puddles. An innumerable number of spectators of both sexes and all classes filled the vast place of execution, crowding in a tight impenetrable wall behind the tapestries of the troops. An ominous silence reigned at the place of execution. The parade ground was in places surrounded by a chain of Cossacks and cavalry. Closer to the scaffold, first mounted gendarmes and Cossacks were located in a square, and nearby, at a distance of two or three fathoms from the gallows, the infantry of the Life Guards of the Izmailovsky Regiment.
At the beginning of the ninth hour, the mayor, Major General Baranov, arrived on the parade ground, and soon after him the judicial authorities and persons of the prosecutor's office: the prosecutor of the Plehve Court of Justice, the acting prosecutor of the district court Plyushchik-Plyushchevsky, and the comrades of the prosecutor Postovsky and Myasoedov, the chief secretary Semyakin.
The scaffold was a black, almost square, platform two arshins high, surrounded by small railings painted with black paint. Six steps led to this platform. Opposite the only entrance, in a recess, were three pillory pillars, with chains on them and handcuffs.
On the sides of the platform there were two high pillars, on which a crossbar was laid with six iron rings for ropes on it. Three iron rings were also screwed on the side pillars. Two side pillars and a crossbar on them depicted the letter P. This was the common gallows for five regicides. Behind the scaffold were five black wooden coffins, with shavings in them and canvas shrouds for those sentenced to death. At the scaffold, long before the arrival of the executioner, there were four prisoners in naked sheepskin coats - Frolov's assistants.
Behind the scaffold were two prison wagons, in which the executioner and his assistants were brought from the prison castle, as well as two carts for coffins.
Upon arrival at the parade ground of the mayor, the executioner Frolov, standing on a new wooden unpainted staircase, began to attach ropes with loops to five hooks. The executioner was dressed in a blue undershirt, as were his two assistants. The execution of the criminals was carried out by Frolov with the help of four soldiers of the prison companies, dressed in gray prison caps and unsheathed sheepskin coats.
A small platform for persons from the judicial and police departments was located not far from the scaffold. On this platform during the execution were representatives of the highest military and judicial world, as well as correspondents of Russian and foreign newspapers, a military agent of the Italian embassy and some junior members of the embassy missions. Behind the platform left side the scaffold is a circle of military various weapons.
Starting from the place where Nikolaevskaya Street ends, on the parade ground, right up to the scaffold, Cossacks were arranged in two trellises, between which shameful chariots followed across the parade ground to the scaffold to the place of execution.
When criminals appeared on the parade ground at 8:50 under a strong escort of Cossacks and gendarmes, a dense crowd of people visibly swayed. A dull and prolonged rumble was heard, which stopped only when two shameful chariots drove up to the very scaffold and stopped one after the other between the scaffolding, where the gallows was built and the platform on which the authorities were. Somewhat before the arrival of the criminals, a carriage with five priests drove up to the scaffold.
With the arrival of the chariots, the authorities and members of the prosecutor's office took their places on the platform. When the chariots stopped, the executioner Frolov climbed onto the first chariot, where Zhelyabov and Rysakov were tied next to each other. Having first untied Zhelyabov, then Rysakov, the executioner's assistants led them by the arms up the stairs to the scaffold, where they placed them side by side. In the same order, Kibalchich, Perovskaya and Mikhailov were removed from the second chariot and brought to the scaffold. To the three pillory were placed: Zhelyabov, Perovskaya and Mikhailov. Rysakov and Kibalchich remained standing at the extreme near the railing of the scaffold next to the other regicides. The convicts seemed rather calm, especially Perovskaya, Kibalchich and Zhelyabov, less Rysakov and Mikhailov, who were deathly pale. Among them stood out the apathetic and lifeless, as if petrified physiognomy of Mikhailov. An imperturbable calm and spiritual humility was reflected on Kibalchich's face. Zhelyabov seemed nervous, moved his arms and often turned his head towards Perovskaya, standing next to her, and once or twice towards Rysakov, being between the first and second. There was a slight blush on Perovskaya's calm, yellowish-pale face when she rode up to the scaffold; her eyes wandered, feverishly glided through the crowd even when she, without moving a single muscle of her face, gazed at the platform, standing at the pillory. When Rysakov was brought closer to the scaffold, he turned around to face the gallows and made an unpleasant grimace, which twisted his wide mouth for a moment. The young man's light red, long hair flowed over his broad, full face, breaking out from under a flat black cap of a prisoner. All the criminals were dressed in long black coats. During the ascent to the scaffold of the terrorists, the crowd was silent, waiting with tension for the execution.
As soon as the criminals were tied to the pillory, a military command “On guard!” was heard, after which the mayor informed the prosecutor of the Plehve Court Chamber that everything was ready for the last act of earthly justice.
The executioner and his two assistants remained on the scaffold, standing at the railing, while Chief Secretary Popov read the verdict. The reading of the short sentence lasted several minutes. Everyone present bared their heads. After the verdict was read, the drums were beaten with small fractions; the drummers lined up in two lines in front of the scaffold facing the convicts, forming a living wall between the scaffold and the platform on which the prosecutor, the mayor and other officials stood. During the reading of the verdict, the eyes of all the criminals were turned to Mr. Popov, who clearly read the verdict. A slight smile was reflected on Zhelyabov’s face when, at the end of the reading of the verdict, the executioner approached Kibalchich, giving way to the priests, who, in full dress, with crosses in their hands, ascended the scaffold. The condemned almost simultaneously approached the priests and kissed the cross, after which they were each led by the executioners to their own rope. The priests, having overshadowed the condemned with the sign of the cross, descended from the scaffold. When one of the priests let Zhelyabov kiss the cross and signed it with the sign of the cross, he whispered something to the priest, kissed the cross passionately, shook his head and smiled.
The feigned vivacity did not leave Zhelyabov, Perovskaya, and especially Kibalchich until the moment he put on a white shroud with a hood. Before this procedure, Zhelyabov and Mikhailov, approaching Perovskaya a step, kissed her goodbye. Rysakov stood motionless and looked at Zhelyabov all the time while the executioner put on the comrades of a terrible crime a fateful long shroud of hangmen.
The executioner Frolov, taking off his undershirt and remaining in a red shirt, began with Kibalchich. Putting a shroud on him and putting a noose around his neck, he pulled it tightly with a rope, tying its end on the right post of the gallows. Then he proceeded to Mikhailov, Perovskaya and Zhelyabov. Zhelyabov and Perovskaya, standing in the shroud, repeatedly shook their heads. Last in line was Rysakov, who, seeing the others dressed in shrouds and ready for execution, visibly staggered; his knees buckled as the executioner quickly threw a shroud and hood over him. During this procedure, the drums, without ceasing, beat a small but loud fraction. At 9:20, the executioner Frolov, having finished all the preparations for the execution, approached Kibalchich and led him to a high black bench, helping him to enter two steps. The executioner pulled back the bench and the criminal hung in the air. Death befell Kibalchich instantly; at least his body, having made several weak circles in the air, soon hung without any movement or convulsions.
The convicts, standing in one row in white shrouds, made a heavy impression. Mikhailov turned out to be the tallest.
After the execution of Kibalchich, Mikhailov was executed second. It was more difficult for him. He was hanged, as it were, four times. The first time his rope broke and he fell to his feet. The second time the rope came loose and he fell flat. The third time the rope stretched. For the fourth time, he had to be lifted up so that death would soon come, since the rope was loosely tied.
He was followed by Perovskaya, who, having fallen heavily in the air from the bench, soon hung motionless, like the corpses of Mikhailov and Kibalchich.
Zhelyabov was executed fourth, Rysakov was the last. These two had to suffer more. Frolov put the loops on both of them too high, close to the chin, which delayed the onset of agony. I had to lower them a second time, turn the knots directly to the spinal bone and tie them tighter. Moreover, Rysakov, being pushed off the bench by the executioner, tried to stick to the bench with his feet for several minutes. The executioner's assistants, seeing Rysakov's desperate movements, quickly began to pull the bench from under his feet, and the executioner Frolov gave the criminal's body a strong push forward. Rysakov's body, having made several slow turns, also hung quietly next to the corpse of Zhelyabov and other executed.
The execution ended at 9:30. Frolov and his assistants got off the scaffold and stood to the left, by the stairs. The drums have stopped beating. The noisy talk of the crowd began. Two carts covered with tarpaulins drove up to the scaffold from behind. The corpses of the executed hung for no more than 20 minutes. Then five black coffins were brought onto the scaffold, which the executioner's assistants placed under each corpse. The coffins were filled with shavings at the head. Then a military doctor entered the scaffold, who, in the presence of two members of the prosecutor's office, examined the corpses of the executed who had been removed and placed in the coffin. The first was removed from the gallows and placed in the coffin of Kibalchich, and then the other executed. After examining the corpses, the coffins were immediately covered with lids and boarded up. Then they were placed on carts with boxes and taken under strong escort to the railway station to bury the bodies of the executed in the Transfiguration cemetery.
The whole procedure ended at 9 hours 58 minutes. At 10 o’clock, the mayor gave the order to dismantle the scaffold, which was immediately executed by the carpenters who were there, after the executioner Frolov, or, as he calls himself, the “shoulder master,” and his assistants were taken to the prisoner’s “economic wagons of the prison department" to the Lithuanian castle.
At the beginning of the eleventh hour, the troops went to the barracks; the crowd began to disperse. Mounted gendarmes and Cossacks, forming a flying chain, surrounded the area where the scaffold stood, preventing the mob and stowaways from approaching it. The more privileged spectators of this execution crowded around the scaffold, wanting to satisfy their superstition - to get a piece of the rope on which the criminals were hanged.
Alexandra Viktorovna Bogdanovich noted in her diary on the day of the execution: “We had a lot of people, each came with different details. Only one person said that he saw people, they (terrorists. - E. T.) expressing sympathy - all unanimously say that the crowd longed for their execution "(73, p. 55).
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