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.
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