13. People’s Will Went After The Russian Tsar With All the Determination of Wile E. Coyote to Get the Road Runner
People’s Will called for violence from the outset and announced an ambitious program of terrorism and assassination to break the government. It issued a proclamation in which a death sentence was declared against Tsar Alexander II, who was to be executed as an enemy of the people. The organization established clandestine cells in major cities and within the Russian military, and began to publish underground revolutionary newspapers and leaflets targeted at industrial workers. People’s Will tried to kill the Tsar in December 1879, with explosives on a railway, but due to a blunder, they missed his train.
They tried again two months later and planted a bomb in his palace. To their consternation, Alexander II was not in the room when the explosives went off. The frightened Tsar declared a state of emergency and set up a commission to repress the terrorists. Within a week, a People’s Will assassin attempted to kill the commission’s head. The repression was ramped up, and People’s Will activists who were caught with illegal leaflets were hanged. However, in a display of determination equal to that of Wile E. Coyote to get the Road Runner, the group doggedly persisted with its relentless efforts to assassinate the Tsar. Unlike the cartoon coyote, they would get their man.
