Activities and affiliations

Political and party leadership Narodnaya Volya 1851–1881 ✕ Executed

The Narodnaya Volya leader who organized the assassination of Alexander II and declared his party's creed to the court that condemned him

"I have served the cause of the people's liberation. This is my sole occupation, to which I have devoted my entire being for many years" — at the preliminary investigation, 1881.

Born a serf, Zhelyabov became the de facto leader of the Narodnaya Volya Executive Committee. He masterminded the assassination of Alexander II. Arrested two days before, the attack succeeded without him. At trial he declared his sole occupation was the people's liberation, and he was hanged in April 1881.

Social movements and organizing Narodnaya Volya 1853–1881 ✕ Executed

Narodnaya Volya's chief explosives expert who designed the bombs that killed Alexander II and sketched a manned rocket from his death cell

"I believe in the practicability of my idea and this belief sustains me in my appalling situation… I will then calmly meet death, knowing that my idea will not die with me" — from his prison letter, March 1881.

A Russian revolutionary who served as Narodnaya Volya's chief explosives technician, designing the hand-thrown bombs used in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. While awaiting execution in prison, he drafted the world's first design for a manned rocket-propelled flying apparatus, incorporating powdered propellant, gimbaled thrust control, and stabilizer wings, which was rediscovered by Bolshevik researchers in 1918 and later recognized by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky as his greatest predecessor.

Social movements and organizing Narodnaya Volya 1853–1881 ✕ Executed

Narodnaya Volya leader who directed the tsar's assassination with a white handkerchief; first woman executed for a political crime in Russia

"We have begun a great undertaking. Perhaps two generations will have to lie down upon it, but it must be done" — to her comrades.

Born to the governor of St. Petersburg, she left her aristocratic family at 17 and co-founded the Narodnaya Volya Executive Committee. After Zhelyabov's arrest in 1881, she commanded the assassination of Alexander II, signaling the bomb-throwers with a white handkerchief. She refused to name her comrades and was hanged at 27.

Social movements and organizing Narodnaya Volya 1854–1946 ○ Natural causes

Narodnaya Volya theorist of terror who became a scientist during 25 years in prison

At a sanatorium in the mid-1930s, when asked "Are there any Party members here?", the old man replied: "I am a Party member. Member of the 'Narodnaya Volya' Party."

Nikolai Morozov was a member of the Narodnaya Volya Executive Committee and a leading theorist of revolutionary terrorism in Russia. In his 1880 pamphlet The Terrorist Struggle, written in Geneva, he argued that small independent terrorist groups could bring down the autocracy, a position his comrades considered radical but which left a lasting mark on the terrorist strategy of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. After 25 years of imprisonment in the Peter and Paul and Shlisselburg fortresses, he emerged from amnesty in 1905 a transformed figure, devoting himself to the popularization of science, pioneering Russian aviation, and becoming an honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1932.

Social movements and organizing Narodnaya Volya 1866–1887 ✕ Executed

Lenin's elder brother: a gold-medal zoologist who turned from studying worms to building bombs for the assassination of Alexander III

To his mother, who urged him to petition for clemency: "Imagine, Mama, two men standing in a duel. One has already fired at his opponent, the other has not. The one who has already fired cannot ask his opponent not to use his weapon."

Elder brother of Vladimir Lenin. A brilliant zoology student who won a gold medal at St. Petersburg University for his dissertation on segmented worms, Ulyanov abruptly turned to revolutionary politics in 1886, becoming the main ideologue and bomb-maker of the 'Terrorist Faction' of Narodnaya Volya. He masterminded the attempted assassination of Tsar Alexander III on 1 March 1887, the 'Second First of March', and was arrested, tried, and hanged at Shlisselburg Fortress on 8 May 1887, aged 21. His execution shattered his family and drove his 17-year-old brother Vladimir onto the revolutionary path that would lead to 1917.

Social movements and organizing Narodnaya Volya 1856/1857–1882 ✕ Executed

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.