Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Angel of Vengeance
CHAPTER 1Assassin
Zasulich was not a terrorist. She was the angel of vengeance, and not of terror. She was a victim who voluntarily threw herself into the jaws of the monster in order to cleanse the honour of the party from a moral outrage. Yet this occurrence gave to the Terrorism a most powerful impulse. It illuminated it with its divine aureola, and gave to it the sanction of sacrifice and of public opinion.--SERGEI KRAVCHINSKII, UNDERGROUND RUSSIA1On the evening of January 23, 1878, a few close friends gathered spontaneously at Evtikhii Karpov's small, three-room flat on Rizhkii Street in St. Petersburg. Though sparsely furnished in the typical nomadic revolutionary style, with mismatched creaking chairs and a few wooden-plank beds, Karpov's apartment beckoned with its unending hospitality. On any given night, someone was visiting--taking tea, sharing news, or staying the night on the sitting room floor. The gas stove always had something cooking, and the samovar was always bubbling.On that evening, however, gloom settled over the kitchen table. Gathered around their teacups, Karpov's guests found they had little to say. Vera Zasulich was particularly silent and withdrawn. Only Masha Kolenkina, in her usual irrepressible manner, occasionally made a joke or a comment, though no one responded. Finally, to dispel the gloom, Nikolai Shevyrev poured beer for everyone and proposed a toast to Vera and Masha, wishing them the best of luck. Without a word, everyone clinked glasses.To break the silence, Vera asked Nikolai to sing "High Mountain," a mournful Ukrainian folk tune. Shevyrev obligingly began in his gentle tenor, "Yonder stands a mountain high ...," and was soon accompanied by Sergei Chubarov's melodious baritone. Vera laid her head on Masha's shoulder and closed her eyes. Around the room, many an eye was filled with tears.Masha alone refused to submit to the general melancholy. To lift the spirits of her comrades, she asked that they all join in singing "She Lives On,Our Ukraine," the patriotic Ukrainian tune that, for the group, evoked memories of days spent on the southern steppe lands, preaching revolution to the peasants. Her ploy worked. The conversation turned to reminiscences of those headier times, when Russia seemed poised on the brink of revolt. Soon enough, many began to laugh as Sergei Chubarov regaled the gathering with comical anecdotes about village life in Ukraine.Not one person yet dared to mention what awaited them the next day, though the thought weighed heavily on all of them. On January 24, 1878, Vera and Masha planned to kill two government officials. For that, most likely, they would pay the ultimate price.2
The plot had been months in the making. Vera Zasulich would appear in the office of the governor of St. Petersburg, General Fedor Trepov, during the morning hours when petitioners were granted an audience. This was the best time: While the governor was "receiving," almost any person could walk in off the street and stand in line to present him with a request. And petitioners were invariably a timid, downtrodden lot. An anxious woman would arouse no suspicion in the midst of such company.Her "petition" was simple. She would present herself as Elizaveta Kozlova, a prospective governess, and would carry a request for a certificate of conduct, a document required by those who sought to teach children. She bought a plain but respectable new dress and hat. In the seams of her clothes she carefully sewed the initials EK, so that they would be discovered during the police search. Most important, she purchased a voluminous gray shawl that was appropriate for the icy winter weather and large enough to conceal a gun. Through a comrade she obtained a six-chamber English Bulldog revolver--it was powerful, but easy to handle and small enough to be hidden in the folds of her clothing. She told her landlady that she was leaving for Moscow for good and gave instructions on where to send any remaining personal effects.3Masha's plan was even simpler. She was to visit the prosecutor Vladislav Zhelekhovskii on the same day. Weeks of surveillance revealed that the prosecutor did not have regular receiving hours, so Masha had to bribe one of his servants to let her into his offices at the appointed time. Like Vera, she planned to hide a revolver under her coat, but she decided not to carry a petition with her. She planned to shoot Zhelekhovskii on sight.4Two simultaneous gunshots, aimed at two government officials, would be fired on the same day. The women had no doubt: January 24, 1878, would be remembered in Russian history.On the evening of January 23, after the festivities, Vera and Masha returned to Vera's tiny one-bedroom apartment and made their final arrangements in silence. Vera sat and carefully wrote her formal petition to the governor. Both women laid out their clothing for the next day. Then they went to bed.5Up until the moment she laid her head on the pillow, Vera had been remarkably calm. This was no last-minute impulse but a long-deliberated decision, and she had no regrets. She was not afraid. She fully expected that the worst consequences would follow her act: imprisonment, exile, even death. Long before this night, she had mentally forsaken everything in her life. Her only desire was to pass through this "transitional state" so that she could embrace her fate.But trepidation could not be delayed forever. Sleep eluded Vera that fateful night, as she struggled against a heavy spiritual weight that felt as if it were crushing her chest. Unbidden images flitted through her mind: The governor would approach her, perhaps look her right in the eyes. Mere feet would separate them. Then she would have to pull out the gun, point it at him, and pull the trigger. Despite her anger and hatred, despite her hard determination, that one act suddenly seemed "deathly difficult." It was as if she realized for the first time that she was about to kill a human being.When she finally drifted into sleep, she was swept into a recurrent nightmare. She dreamed that she was lying in her bed, as if awake, fully conscious of losing her mind. In the dream, something pulled at her, dragged her into a dark corridor and compelled her to scream with all of her might; the urge was so relentless, she ran out of the room and began to scream and scream. Masha woke her up: Vera had cried out in her sleep. She closed her eyes again, but the dream reappeared, enveloping her, dragging her back into the corridor.Relief only came with the first gray light of dawn. The women quickly got up and began to dress. Vera's thoughts and movements were now mechanical, as if previously rehearsed. She put on her old clothing, so that the new clothes would not arouse the curiosity of the landlady. The large gray shawl was particularly striking, and the landlady, who was up at all hours, would be sure to notice, and to remember when the newspaper accounts appeared. Masha accompanied Vera to the train station and helped her to change her clothes. The two women embraced briefly, and then Vera boarded the train to St. Petersburg. Masha would follow later. They did not know when they would see each other again, if ever.Vera's thoughts were now silenced, except for the single observation that the streets of the city seemed empty, cold, and dark on that January morning in 1878.
Nineteenth-century travelers to St. Petersburg found a curious mix of the ordinary and the exotic. The city was born in the imagination of Tsar Peter the Great in the very early years of the eighteenth century, when that indomitable ruler decided to take a swamp and transform it into nothing less than a "window to Western Europe." Peter wanted his new city to be thoroughly European--he patterned its streets and canals on the city layout of Amsterdam--and the tsars that followed him remained faithful to his plan, importing architects and masons from Italy and other parts of Europe to design and build graceful mansions, palaces, and gardens. In 1712, when Peter unilaterally declared St. Petersburg the new capital of Russia and summarily ordered a thousand aristocrats to move there, it was widely considered a disease-ridden backwater. But by the end of the nineteenth century, visitors regularly compared St. Petersburg to Paris and London.6By 1878, the city had become a first-rank European capital. Opportunityseeking Russians and Europeans flocked to it in droves. The streets teemed with all classes and ethnic groups. Modest clerks mingled with aristocrats; high-ranking officials and destitute migrant workers often lived on different floors of the same building. From all over the growing Russian Empire, representatives from subject nationalities came to the capital to do business. 7Nevskii Prospekt, St. Petersburg's main thoroughfare, was appropriately grand and opulent, running in a straight line from the Aleksandr Nevskii Monastery at one end to the Admiralty building on the other. Even the most sophisticated of Europeans remarked on the street's "bejeweled" magnificence. Enormously wide, Nevskii was flanked on either side by rows of neatly constructed, pale stucco buildings. Gilded letters on azure or crimson backdrops adorned storefronts, and within the stores, discerning customers could find anything from costly jewels to Persian carpets, silver weapons from the Far East, leather boots, and European artwork. Food was imported from all over the world, and shops sought to tempt passersby with their exotic fruits and varieties of caviar heaped high in the windows.8Nevskii was St. Petersburg's main promenade, the center of the city's social life. By noon on winter days it overflowed with humanity, as if everyone in the city had crowded onto one street. El...
Report an issue with this product or seller
