Petersburg. On Sunday, March 3d, 1881, the streets by which he usually returned to the Palace had been undermined at two places, and on an alternative route several conspirators were posted with hand-grenades concealed under their great coats. The Emperor chose the alternative route. Here, at a signal given by Sophia Perovski, the first grenade was thrown by a student called Ryssakoff, but it merely wounded some members of the escort. The Emperor stopped and got out of his sledge, and as he was making inquiries about the wounded soldiers a second grenade was thrown by a youth called Grinevitski, with fatal effect. Alexander II. was conveyed hurriedly to the Winter Palace, and died almost immediately.
By this act the members of the Executive Committee proved their energy and their talent as conspirators, but they at the same time showed their shortsightedness and their political incapacity; for they had made no preparations for immediately seizing the power which they so ardently coveted--with the intention of using it, of course, entirely for the public good. If the facts were not so well authenticated, we might dismiss the whole story as incredible.
A group of young people, certainly not more than thirty or forty in number, without any organised material force behind them, without any influential accomplices in the army or the official world, without any prospect of support from the masses, and with no plan for immediate action after the assassination, deliberately provoked the crisis for which they were so hopelessly unprepared. It has been suggested that they expected the Liberals to seize the Supreme Power, but this explanation is evidently an afterthought, because they knew that the Liberals were as unprepared as themselves and they regarded them at that time as dangerous rivals. Besides this, the explanation is quite irreconcilable with the proclamation issued by the Executive Committee immediately afterwards. The most charitable way of explaining the conduct of the conspirators is to suppose that they were actuated more by blind hatred of the autocracy and its agents than by political calculations of a practical kind--that they acted simply like a wounded bull in the arena, which shuts its eyes and recklessly charges its tormentors.
The murder of the Emperor had not at all the effect which the Narodovoltsi anticipated. On the contrary, it destroyed their hopes of success. Many people of liberal convictions who sympathised vaguely with the revolutionary movement without taking part in it, and who did not condemn very severely the attacks on police officials, were horrified when they found that the would-be reformers did not spare even the sacred person of the Tsar. At the same time, the police officials, who had become lax and inefficient under the conciliatory regime of Loris Melikof, recovered their old zeal, and displayed such inordinate activity that the revolutionary organisation was paralysed and in great measure destroyed. Six of the regicides were condemned to death, and five of them publicly executed, amongst the latter Sophia Perovski, one of the most active and personally sympathetic personages among the revolutionists. Scores of those who had taken an active part in the movement were in prison or in exile. For a short time the propaganda was continued among military and naval officers, and various attempts at reorganisation, especially in the southern provinces, were made, but they all failed. A certain Degaief, who had taken part in the formation of military circles, turned informer, and aided the police. By his treachery not only a considerable number of officers, but also Vera Filipof, a young lady of remarkable ability and courage, who was the leading spirit in the attempts at reorganisation, were arrested. There were still a number of leaders living abroad, and from time to time they sent emissaries to revive the propaganda, but these efforts were all fruitless. One of the active members of the revolutionary party, Leo Deutsch, who has since published his Memoirs, relates how the tide of revolution ebbed rapidly at this time. "Both in Russia and abroad," he says, "I had seen how the earlier enthusiasm had given way to scepticism; men had lost faith, though many of them would not allow that it was so. It was clear to me that a reaction had set in for many years." Of the attempts to resuscitate the movement he says: "The untried and unskilfully managed societies were run to death before they could undertake anything definite, and the unity and interdependence which characterised the original band of members had disappeared." With regard to the want of unity, another prominent revolutionist (Maslof) wrote to a friend (Dragomanof) at Geneva in 1882 in terms of bitter complaint. He accused the Executive Committee of trying to play the part of chief of the whole revolutionary party, and declared that its centralising tendencies were more despotic than those of the Government. Distributing orders among its adherents without initiating them into its plans, it insisted on unquestioning obedience. The Socialist youth, ardent adherents of Federalism, were indignant at this treatment, and began to understand that the Committee used them simply as chair a canon. The writer described in vivid colours the mutual hostility which reigned among various fractions of the party, and which manifested itself in accusations and even in denunciations; and he predicted that the Narodnaya Volya, which had organised the various acts of terrorism culminating in the assassination of the Emperor, would never develop into a powerful revolutionary party. It had sunk into the slough of untruth, and it could only continue to deceive the Government and the public.
