15. The Nineteenth-Century Russian Revolutionaries Who Set Out to Blow Up the System
Narodnaya Volya, Russian for “People’s Will”, was an underground nineteenth-century revolutionary organization. It sought to overthrow the Tsarist autocracy by acts of violent propaganda calculated to spark a mass revolt. They were the early forerunners of bigger and more effective anarchist and socialist organizations. People’s Will are best known for their repeated attempts to assassinate Tsar Alexander II. In a nearly comical display of dogged tenacity, they tried to do him in time after time and met with failure on each occasion.
They finally succeeded in 1881 when, in what turned out to be a blunder, the Russian ruler gave them another shot to take him out in the immediate aftermath of yet another failure to kill him. It was a remarkable feat for an organization that had its genesis just a few years earlier in radical student study circles in the 1870s, that sought to spread socialist ideas to peasants and industrial workers. They were quickly repressed by the Tsarist secret police, the Okhrana, who swiftly arrested and jailed the agitators. They bounced back, more determined than ever.
