The carpenter-revolutionary who bombed the Winter Palace and founded Russia's first political workers' organization
"From this path there is no return," he once told workers, with tears in his eyes, begging them to reject terror — then he himself packed the Winter Palace cellar with dynamite.
A carpenter from Vyatka, Khalturin co-founded the Northern Union of Russian Workers in 1878, Russia's first political workers' organization. In 1880 he infiltrated the Winter Palace as a joiner and detonated dynamite beneath the imperial dining room; Alexander II survived only because his guest was late. Elected to the Narodnaya Volya Executive Committee after March 1881, he was captured and hanged in Odessa in 1882 for the assassination of Prosecutor Strelnikov; Lenin kept Khalturin's haut-relief alongside Marx in his Kremlin office.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1874–1875Entered Vyatka teachers' seminary; expelled for poor grades; trained as a cabinetmaker
- 1875–1877Moved to St. Petersburg, worked as carpenter in factories; joined revolutionary circles; went underground after the Kazan demonstration (1876)
- 1878Co-founded the Northern Union of Russian Workers with Viktor Obnorsky, drafting its program — Russia's first political workers' organization
- 1879.9Hired as a joiner at the Winter Palace under the alias Stepan Batyshkov; smuggled dynamite in daily under his bedding
- 1880.2.5Detonated a mine beneath the Winter Palace dining room; the tsar escaped due to a delayed dinner, but 11 guards died and 56 were wounded
- 1880–1881Escaped to Moscow; continued propaganda work among workers
- 1881.3Elected to the Narodnaya Volya Executive Committee
- 1882.3.18Participated in the assassination of Prosecutor Strelnikov in Odessa with Nikolai Zhelvakov; disguised as a cabman, both were captured
- 1882.3.22Court-martialed and hanged in Odessa under a false name, unidentified as the Winter Palace bomber
Organizing and work of the Northern Union of Russian Workers
The Northern Union of Russian Workers emerged from workers' circles in St. Petersburg in December 1878. Separate from the people who first organized those circles, Stepan Khalturin, Viktor Obnorsky, and Pyotr Moiseenko soon became its leaders. The Union was a secret society rather than a party. In December 1878 it adopted a constitution and program, published the following January as a leaflet, “To the Russian Workers!” Its program called for the overthrow of autocracy, democratic freedoms, and social change. It established branches in workers’ districts, with a worker at the head of each branch participating in a central circle, and organized an illegal library and a loan-and-savings fund.
The Union had about 200 members and sought to guide strikes and expand into an all-Russian organization. It opened branches in Moscow and Helsinki. In February 1880 it began operating an underground press, producing leaflets and the first issue of a workers’ newspaper, Workers’ Dawn. Police raided the press while the issue was being set, and the authorities dismantled the Union that year. Some members who escaped arrest joined Narodnaya Volya. Khalturin’s organizing combined political propaganda among workers with practical organization, but the Union’s secret-society structure and police repression curtailed its work.