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Concept
Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky
Summary
Sergey Mikhaylovich Stepnyak-Kravchinsky (Серге́й Миха́йлович Степня́к-Кравчи́нский; July 1, 1851 – 23 December 1895), known in the 19th century London revolutionary circles as Sergius Stepniak, was a Ukrainian revolutionary mainly known for assassinating General Nikolai Mezentsov, the chief of Russia's Gendarme corps and the head of the country's secret police, with a dagger in the streets of St Petersburg in 1878.
Stepniak was the son of an army doctor and of a noblewoman, born July 1 (O.S.; July 13 N.S.), 1851 in Novy Starodub (then part of the Alexandrovsky Uyezd, Kherson Governorate of Ukraine). He received a liberal education, and when he left school, he went on to attend Military academy and graduate from the Mikhailovsky Artillery Institute before joining the Imperial Russian army. He reached the rank of second lieutenant before resigning his commission in 1871.
His sympathy lay with the peasants, among whom he had lived during his boyhood in the country. This experience would develop in him a democratic and later revolutionary opinions. He would join the Circle of Tchaikovsky, a group of like-minded Narodnik philosophers and political activists whose ultimate goal was the "liberation of the people." Stepniak would be a member of the original St. Petersburg branch of the Circle, where he would join thirty other men and women of education, including Pyotr Kropotkin.
As a member of this Circle, he began secretly to sow the sentiments of democracy and the ideals of the Narodniks among the peasants. To this end, he would participate in a precursor to the Going to the People, where members of the Narodnik movement would disguise themselves as peasants and laborers to spread the idea of revolution. Stepniak, accompanied by another member of the Circle, Dmitry Rogachev, would appear in a Tver village as woodcutters in the autumn of 1873. In November, they would be tracked down by the rural police, but would escape at first, swearing to each other that they would dedicate their lives to the people.
Official source
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