1. Preface
The present essay was born during the writing of the novel The Gapon Case, which I co-authored with my wife, Olesya Nikolaeva. In our work on the novel, we relied on numerous historical sources. We read hundreds of historical books and studies, archival materials, and memoirs. Fictional prose is quite different from journalistic narrative; its meanings and ideas are usually revealed through artistic imagery—through the actions and words of its characters.
The novel’s intrigue revolves around the investigation of the murder of former priest Georgy Gapon. Because he had ties both to the police and the secret service, as well as to revolutionaries—especially the Socialist Revolutionaries, including members of their combat organization—the special investigator assigned to this high-profile case searches for motives and perpetrators, at times catching the scent of the criminals, only to lose it again.
All this unfolds against the backdrop of an intense confrontation and a steadily escalating struggle between opposition forces, including terrorists, and representatives of the government. Thus, many historical figures appear in the novel—Tsar Nicholas II himself, Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin, chief of the secret police Alexander Vasilyevich Gerasimov, Sergei Yulyevich Witte, and others, as well as victims of terrorist attacks that occurred during the years covered in the novel: Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, Minister of the Interior Plehve, General Trepov, Admiral Dubasov, Admiral Chukhnyin, and the Governor-General of St. Petersburg, von der Launitz, among others.
The Attempt on Stolypin’s Life on Aptekarsky Island
Among the characters in the narrative are also revolutionary terrorists—both those residing in Russia and those conducting subversive activity from abroad: from Vladimir Lenin to Boris Savinkov, from Vladimir Burtsev to the double agent Evno Azev. We could not do without characters representing the liberal press and intelligence agents—from both the Japanese and British services. In short, the novel turned out to be richly populated; real historical figures stand alongside characters born of the authors’ literary imagination.
In terms of genre, the novel is a detective story with elements of a spy thriller, dramatic conflicts, and psychological portraits. To encompass the entire breadth of historical reality would have meant expanding the book to an unrealistic size and, moreover, overburdening its artistic fabric with historical detail—detail that is, nevertheless, of great importance and remains relevant to this day.
It is for this reason that the present book, written as a follow-up to the novel, came into being—not as a mediated expression, but as a direct statement.
2. If It Wasn’t a Revolution in 1905–1907, Then What Was It?
For decades, many thoughtful people—our contemporaries—have sought an answer to the question: what was the cause of the global catastrophe that befell Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century? Thousands of historical, memoir, and journalistic works have been written on the subject, along with a great number of literary and cinematic creations.
During the bloody war with Japan (January 1904–August 1905), Russia lost, by various estimates, between 50,000 and 90,000 soldiers killed and around 100,000 to 150,000 wounded. Of the 21.5 million military and civilian casualties of the First World War, Russia accounted for 7 million dead and wounded. As a result of the revolutions of 1917, foreign interventions, and the ensuing civil war, the country lost between 14 and 18 million people. Approximately 1.5 to 2 million people emigrated from Russia after the revolution.
The period from 1901 to 1910 was not only a time of emerging unrest in the Russian Empire, but also one of careful preparation for a revolutionary apocalypse. Interestingly, V. I. Lenin held the same view; in his 1920 article, “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder, he referred to the events of 1905–1907 as a “general rehearsal,” without which “the victory of the October Revolution of 1917 would have been impossible.” This article by Lenin was studied in Soviet schools and universities.
Without a theological, historical, and political analysis of this period, it is impossible to fully comprehend the subsequent events—including those of our own time. Many researchers, examining historical sources, have been struck by how modern the figures of that era appear—their words, actions, motivations, and, most importantly, the mechanisms for generating chaos in society, employing the tools of terror, using techniques of information warfare, and manipulating “public opinion.”
The first point experts draw attention to is that there was, in fact, no such thing as a “First Revolution of 1905.” There are many definitions of revolution, but by none of these can the events of 1905 be properly classified under that term, since there was no:
1. violent overthrow of the government,
2. change of the existing political regime,
3. collapse of the ruling elite,
4. ideological rupture with the past,
5. fundamental transformation of the socio-economic system,
6. shift affecting the sovereignty of the state, its territorial integrity, or its borders.
And most importantly:
7. The autocracy remained intact, and the army and all state security structures remained loyal to the government.
Widespread unrest and chaos amid the ongoing Russo-Japanese War (January 1904–August 1905) certainly existed across all layers of Russian society. These conditions influenced certain political reforms—for example, the issuance of the October 17 Manifesto, the convocation of the First State Duma, political amnesty, and the legalization of several opposition parties. However, these changes had been conceived by the government prior to 1905 and were implemented “from above,” not “from below.” Therefore, historians should rightly qualify them as evolution rather than revolution.
The internal and external enemies of the state claimed credit for these “democratic” reforms and declared them a great victory over tsarism. Yet when compared with previous and subsequent revolutions in Russia and other countries, what took place in early twentieth-century Russia can by no means be called a revolution—or even a coup.
Maxim Gorky The word “revolution” was first used on the evening of January 9, 1905, in an urgent telegram by Guy Beringer, a correspondent for the Reuters news agency, and in a speech by Maxim Gorky at a gathering of the Free Economic Society in St. Petersburg. From then on, the Western press used no other term to describe the events in Russia, and in Soviet historiography, the concept of the “First Russian Revolution” took on phantasmagoric proportions—primarily because V. I. Lenin and other RSDLP figures wrote about it under that title in their articles. Indeed, many people during that period used the word simply as a synonym for any form of political activity by the opposition.
During the Soviet era, January 22 (January 9 Old Style) became a commemorative day for the “First Russian Revolution” and was even declared a public holiday (1918–1951). Yet it was unexpectedly abolished while Joseph Stalin was still alive.
Interestingly, by the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Western historians had completely abandoned the term “revolution” in reference to the first decade of the twentieth century, while Russian historians and publicists continue to refer to the “1905–1907 Revolution” out of habit.
This raises reasonable questions: If it wasn’t a revolution, then what kind of unrest was it? And how can we describe what took place in the first decade of the twentieth century?
The anatomy of Russian unrest—a recurring phenomenon throughout our history—was studied by such historians as N. M. Karamzin, S. M. Solovyov, S. F. Platonov, V. O. Klyuchevsky, and many others. Historians note five civil wars between princes in the tenth–twelfth centuries, conflicts among the descendants of Dmitry Donskoy in the second quarter of the fifteenth century, Cossack uprisings in the seventeenth–eighteenth centuries (Ivan Bolotnikov, Stepan Razin, Kondraty Bulavin, Yemelyan Pugachev), as well as various smaller revolts (the Salt Riot, the Copper Riot, the Streltsy Uprising, the “Khovanshchina,” the Bashkir, Astrakhan, Kizhi, Potato, Plague, and Cholera uprisings, etc.). Distinct among these are the Decembrist Revolt (1825), the Polish uprisings (1830–1831 and 1863–1864), and of course, the Time of Troubles (1604–1618), which shook the very foundations of the Muscovite state.
These rebellions, uprisings, mutinies, and disturbances were usually associated with dynastic crises or economic hardship. They were often aggravated by natural disasters, famine, wars with foreign powers, and deep-rooted distrust of the authorities.
The stages of unrest may be very roughly outlined as follows:
Discontent → protest → disorder → rally → demonstration → strike → walkout → sabotage → riot → anarchy → rebellion → extremism → terrorism → chaos → unrest → coup → revolution → civil war.
Experts clearly distinguish within this sequence between spontaneous and organized phases, the presence or absence of funding for protest activity, and the involvement of social and class groups in the struggle for power. In modern times, one must also consider the involvement of political parties and economic interests, the participation of foreign nations in the conflict, and the way certain events are either amplified or ignored by the press.
Over the last two centuries, a clear pattern has emerged for the deliberate orchestration of chaos and unrest: Pit everyone against everyone else; ideologically justify the necessity of radical reforms and regime change; exploit the weaknesses of the social and governmental system to the fullest; and offer a disoriented society promises of unattainable utopias.
3. Russia—The Cradle of Revolutionary Terrorism
Sergei Yesenin once wrote: “Face to face, a face cannot be seen. Great things are only visible at a distance.” The same can be said of our history. In recent years, a vast array of classified, archival, and memoir materials has been published; newspaper and magazine publications from a century or a century and a half ago have been digitized; and many distorted facts and ideologically skewed studies—once held in high esteem—have now been reexamined and critically reassessed.
From today’s vantage point, the artificially engineered, provocational, and Russophobic surges in the European press throughout the nineteenth century can be seen with clarity. We now recognize the full-scale information war waged by the West during the Crimean campaign (1853–1856), as well as the war against autocracy carried out by the Narodniks (nihilists, anarchists), which was in essence a campaign of terrorism during the 1860s–1880s—actively supported by both Russian and European liberals.
By the early twentieth century, when terrorism and falsehoods about Russia had taken on a systemic and all-encompassing character, nearly all the techniques of political engineering had already been tested for their effectiveness in generating widespread unrest—a fertile ground for the coming revolution.
But while the internal and external enemies of the Russian Empire had gained experience in fomenting public crises, the Russian security services were unprepared for what was to come. Intelligence at the beginning of the twentieth century noted the activity of revolutionary extremist groups in exile, the ferment among liberal opposition circles, and attempts by foreign intelligence services to influence the Russian revolutionary underground. Yet they did not anticipate the scale or the bloodthirsty nature of the emerging terrorist war—a war aimed at annihilation.
A memorial plaque installed at the site of the final congress of “Land and Liberty” in Voronezh. The concept of “terrorism,” though frequently encountered in journalistic writing and even listed as a separate entry in the dictionaries of V. Dahl and S. I. Ozhegov, was still very vague. The Narodnik terrorist underground achieved the unthinkable—it rehabilitated the notion of terrorism in the minds of the liberal elite as a legitimate form of protest. A modern analysis of the two waves of terrorist activity in the Russian Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century (Land and Liberty, People’s Retaliation, Freedom or Death, People’s Will, Black Repartition) offers much food for thought.
First of all, behind the romanticized veneer of “going to the people” and enlightening the peasantry stood very concrete terrorist actions: assassinations of high-ranking state officials, manufacturing explosives, purchasing weapons, mining infrastructure targets, arson of estates, blackmail of political opponents, and creating a climate of fear in society.
Secondly, these so-called “romantic terrorists” and “nihilists” pursued clear geopolitical aims: the overthrow of the autocracy, the convening of a Constituent Assembly, the abolition of private property, the dismemberment of the state, the secession of its national borderlands (Little Russia, Poland, Lithuania, the Caucasus), the replacement of the standing army with a people’s militia, the eradication of religion, the destruction of the family as the basic unit of society, and the “abolition of marriage as an inherently immoral institution” (as stated in the proclamations of Young Russia by the populist revolutionary Pyotr Zaichnevsky, 1862).
Altogether, these organizations numbered around 10,000 members, among whom about 500 were actively involved (and notably well-concealed). Yet it was precisely in these decades that all the methods of revolutionary struggle later employed by early 20th-century revolutionary parties were developed. It is enough to know that the 1876 charter of Land and Liberty includes in its ninth clause the phrase: “The end justifies the means.” These tactics were artistically reflected in the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky (who was the first to call terrorists “devils”), Nikolai Leskov, Alexei Pisemsky, Vsevolod Krestovsky, and to some extent in the works of Ivan Turgenev (Fathers and Sons) and Alexander Herzen (Who is to Blame?).
N. N. Ge. Portrait of A. I. Herzen. 1867 The role of Alexander Herzen in the mid-nineteenth-century Russian unrest has been thoroughly studied. There was not a single calumny or provocation against Russia that he did not amplify through his Free Russian Press (1853–1868). Funded by Baron James Rothschild, it published not only the almanac Polar Star, the newspapers The Bell and The Common Assembly, but also terrorist proclamations and leaflets intended for distribution within Russia. During the Crimean War, Herzen openly called upon Russian soldiers to defect to the enemy. His press also published the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels, translated by Mikhail Bakunin, and The Revolutionary Catechism by the terrorist Sergey Nechayev.
Thus, in the nineteenth century, Russia became the birthplace of mass terrorism. According to historians, between 1851 and 1900, forty state figures in Europe and the United States fell victim to terrorist attacks (assassinations or assassination attempts). By contrast, in Russia alone, over the course of just twenty-five years, thirty-five attacks claimed the lives of around 100 people. Tsar Alexander II survived 11 assassination attempts before finally being killed on March 1, 1881. Alexander III survived 6 attempts on his life.
Lithograph by V. Cutler illustrating the assassination of Serbian Prince Michael Obrenović and his cousin (1868) It is striking that assassinations and attempts—such as those against Serbian Prince Michael Obrenović (1868), German Emperor Wilhelm I (1878), Bismarck (1866 and 1874), French President Carnot (1894), Spanish Prime Minister Cánovas (1897), U.S. Presidents Garfield (1881) and McKinley (1901), Austrian Empress Elisabeth (1898), and King Umberto I of Italy (1900)—were universally condemned, even by our own revolutionaries. And yet, the campaign of mass terror in Russia was justified in the West, with all blame laid at the feet of the Russian Tsar.
Throughout the twentieth century, efforts were made to establish clear criteria for the term “terrorism.” Of the seventy-seven definitions discussed at the United Nations in 2004, only a few points remained uncontested and were included in the final formulation:
“Criminal acts, including those against civilians, committed with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury, or the taking of hostages, with the purpose of creating a state of terror in the general public or in a specific group of persons…”
In this sense, Russian legislation over the past twenty years has gone significantly further. It incorporates a nuanced classification of terrorism according to:
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its ideological foundation and domain of manifestation,
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its scale,
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the types of means employed,
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its form,
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the forces and resources involved,
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and its goals and objectives.
The emergence and development of terrorism in Russia is influenced by a complex array of political, economic, social, ethnonational, and legal factors. Terrorism is also fostered by war and military conflicts, as well as the existence of secret or semi-secret societies and organizations—particularly of a religious or sectarian nature. Russian legal scholars have made especially notable advances in the development of preventive measures for countering terrorism.
