Sergei Mikhailovich Stepniak-Kravchinsky
Сергей Михайлович Степняк-Кравчинский
1851–1895
✕ Struck by a train at a crossing
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.
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