He killed the tsar's gendarme chief with a dagger, then introduced the Russian revolution to the West with his pen
On the eve of assassinating Mezentsov in 1878, Kravchinsky wrote: 'Long enough have we preached love — the time has come to call forth hatred. Merciless, bloody vengeance shall henceforth be the answer to your crimes.'
A writer and revolutionary who served as a bridge between the Russian Narodnik movement and the West. After activity in the Chaikovsky Circle he assassinated gendarme chief Mezentsov with a dagger in 1878 and fled into exile; in London he published Underground Russia (1883), introducing the Russian revolutionary movement to the West for the first time, and founded the Russian Free Press Fund and the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom, becoming the hub of émigré anti-tsarist agitation.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1872–1873Joined the Chaikovsky Circle; conducted socialist propaganda among St. Petersburg workers
- 1873–1874Went to the People — agitated peasants in Tver and Tula, arrested and escaped
- 1875–1876Fought in Herzegovina uprising against Ottoman rule; wrote for Bakuninist journal Rabotnik in Geneva
- 1877Joined the Benevento insurrection with Malatesta and Cafiero; arrested and amnestied
- 1878Joined Land and Liberty, edited its journal; assassinated Mezentsov on 4 August; fled abroad in November
- 1883Published Underground Russia — the West's first comprehensive account of the Russian revolutionary movement
- 1889Published The Career of a Nihilist (Andrei Kozhukhov), a novel of revolutionary life
- 1890–1895Founded the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom and Russian Free Press Fund; edited monthly Free Russia
London Exile and the Record of the Russian Revolution
After the 1878 assassination of Mezentsov, Kravchinsky remained in Russia and wrote for the underground newspaper of Zemlya i Volya (Land and Liberty). He left Russia in autumn that year, stayed briefly in Switzerland, and later settled in London. Underground Russia, published in London in 1882, assembled revolutionary portraits and accounts of underground activity for Western European readers. Historian Alfred Senn describes it as one of the early records of the Russian revolutionary movement produced by a revolutionary for a Western audience. The commercial publishing market in Western Europe offered a means to convey material that tsarist censorship would not permit. The contents of the 1883 New York edition ranged across propaganda, terrorism, revolutionary biographies, and secret presses; its preface was by Pyotr Lavrov.
In London, Kravchinsky established the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom and organized the Russia Free Press and its fund; he also worked on the Society's journal, Free Russia. This activity went beyond writing: it circulated information about the Russian revolutionary movement and connected émigré opponents of tsarism with British supporters. He continued publishing on the condition of the peasantry, nihilism, and life in Russia. Although he had initially believed individual political violence could prompt democratic reform by the tsar, in his later years he turned toward constitutional methods. In King Stork and King Log (1895), he approved of Liberal politicians' efforts to pursue reform through argument and peaceful agitation.