Text taken from the Live Journal page of (c) Alexander Maysuryan
[ColonelCassad] On November 21, 1905, the most famous Black Hundred organization, the Union of the Russian People (URP), was founded. It was led by the equally famous Dr. Alexander Dubrovin (1855–1921).
In addition to orchestrating Jewish pogroms, the venerable doctor became famous for a new and, for his time, unexpected phenomenon known as "Black Hundred individual terror." Thus, in 1906, by decision of the URP leadership and Dr. Dubrovin, State Duma deputy Mikhail Gertsenstein from the Kadet Party was assassinated. This became the most famous of the Black Hundreds' terrorist attacks.
Gertsenstein incurred the fierce hatred of all right-wingers when, from the rostrum of the State Duma, he uttered the derisive term "illuminations," as he called the peasants' burning of haystacks and estates.
Writer Vladimir Korolenko recalled:
"This was Gertsenstein speaking, a man with a typically Jewish face and a mocking manner. It's hard to imagine the storm of anger that erupted on the right benches at these words. A literal roar was heard. Clenched fists rose above heads, curses erupted, people rushed toward the speaker with threats, while on the left side they applauded."
According to monarchist Vasily Shulgin, "Gertsenstein uttered a careless word that cost him his life." On July 18, 1906, while out for a walk, Black Hundred militants ambushed him. One of the two bullets fired wounded the deputy's daughter in the arm.
As Gendarme General Alexander Gerasimov recalled, St. Petersburg mayor von der Launitz not only knew about the planned assassination attempt but also paid the militants two thousand rubles for it. Of course, bringing Launitz to justice was out of the question.
According to Gerasimov, Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin, upon learning of the incident, "grimaced with disgust":
"I'll tell Launitz to drop this..." (that is, stop assisting the militants). Three years later, three of the perpetrators of the assassination attempt were arrested.
A Finnish court sentenced them to six years in prison. However, a few months later, two of the convicted were pardoned by Tsar Nicholas II.
"Main Directorate of the Black Hundreds and True Russian People. Certificate. Issued to the bearer to certify that he is neither a student nor an intellectual, and therefore is not subject to beating, which we personally certify with our official seal."
And yet, the Black Hundreds were unable to truly unleash terror. They sorely lacked the most essential element—passionate individuals willing to risk themselves in such actions. Risk at least a short prison sentence followed by a sovereign pardon. :)
Well, so... reasoned Dr. Dubrovin and his colleagues, if such people were unavailable, then they could... be borrowed from others. From the revolutionaries, the socialists. :) There was even an overabundance of such people in those circles!
The organizer of the next assassination attempt was Black Hundred member and undercover police officer Alexander Kazantsev. He chose two revolutionary-minded but rather naive workers, V. Fyodorov and A. Stepanov, as the perpetrators. He identified himself as a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Maximalist Party (!).
And Dr. Dubrovin decided to target former Prime Minister Sergei Witte. The Black Hundreds held him responsible for the introduction of the "constitution" in Russia in October 1905. For example, a Black Hundred newspaper called "Vittova Plyaska" (Witt's Dance) was even published, which venomously ridiculed the "constitution." Of course, the revolutionaries also, to put it mildly, disliked the former tsarist prime minister, but they did not plot assassination attempts against him. On January 29, 1907, Count Sergei Witte (1849-1915), a stoker, discovered a box in the stove in his house, suspended by a long rope descending from the chimney. The box turned out to be an "infernal machine" with a clockwork mechanism. A similar device was found in the neighboring chimney.
Economist Alexander Guryev, who was in Witte's house at the time, described what happened:
"It so happened that I did not come to the Count's house for three or four days. When I returned and entered my room, it was so cold that I could not write. I rang the bell and called for the servant to light the fireplace, finding that the wood was already there, and opened the damper.
I was sitting in the center of the room at a round table covered with papers lying in front of me. Suddenly, I heard the servant muttering something. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “I don’t understand who needed to put a rope in the fireplace,” he replied.
I looked into the corner where the fireplace was and saw a long rope on the floor, the other end of which disappeared into the fireplace. Then he pulled something out of the fireplace, which at first I took for a brick. “Sir!” the servant exclaimed, “look, it’s a box!” I approached the stove. And, sure enough, what the servant was holding in his hands was not a brick, but a box wrapped in a rag.
At first, I thought one of the servants had stolen silver from the house and hid it in the fireplace. I asked the servant to bring me a pair of scissors and began to cut the cloth to open the box. When the cloth was removed, I saw that there was a hole in the corner of the box, from which a small bottle was sticking out. “It’s a bomb,” I cried in horror.
“Go downstairs and report to the Count that we found a bomb in the fireplace,” I said to the servant.
He stood there, pale and motionless.
"I dare not report this to His Lordship," he mumbled.
Then I went down to Count Witte's office myself and told him of the strange find and my hypothesis.
"It's definitely a bomb," I said.
"How could a bomb have ended up there?" Count Witte asked calmly.
"I don't know, but the box looks very suspicious.”
"Let's go up and take a look," said the Count.
We climbed the stairs. Remaining completely calm, the Count examined the box and agreed with me that it was indeed a bomb.
The head of the capital's secret police, General Alexander Gerasimov, immediately arrived at the scene. He recalled:
"The clock mechanism was faulty, which is why the explosion could not have happened at all. A quick glance at this 'infernal machine' was enough for me to understand that this was not the work of revolutionaries. Only the SRN vigilantes could have handled the matter so crudely and ineptly."
However, there were no arrests or trials in this case. However, Witte tried to repay Dubrovin in his memoirs. In them, he repeatedly called him a "mazurik," "a convict," "a court tavern keeper," "a hero of the stinking market," and so on.
After the failure in the Witte case, the terrorists went to Moscow, where Kazantsev declared that it was necessary to execute the "traitor" who had stolen party money. On March 14 (27), Vasily Fyodorov shot this man—the editor of the liberal "Russkiye Vedomosti" and also a former deputy of the First State Duma, Cadet Grigory Iollos. At the time of the assassination attempt, he did not even know his name.
The killer, Fyodorov, later described the event as follows:
"Iollos walked thoughtfully, not paying attention to what was happening around him. Fyodorov, three or four steps away, stands directly in front of him and looks him straight in the eyes. He shoots Iollos right in the face, lip, and head. Iollos continues to stand in front of him for a few moments, but a black hole already gapes on his face...
Then he falls like a sheaf at the feet of his killer. The killer quickly escapes, soon finding himself in the arms of the security guard, Kazantsev, who congratulates him, thanks him, and showers him with kisses.
It was after this murder that the workers, despite their naivety, began to suspect something was wrong. They read the name of the man they had killed in the newspapers; it somehow didn't fit with Kazantsev's legend. They began to question Kazantsev's inability to speak like revolutionary agitators.
"Here I realized a little," Fedorov said, "that it seemed I'd ended up with the Black Hundreds instead of the Maximalists."
Finally, the workers discovered lists of members of the Union of the Russian People in their leader's papers... Everything became clear.
In May, the terrorists went to the forest on the outskirts of St. Petersburg to load dynamite bombs for future assassination attempts. When Kazantsev was busy filling the bombs, Fedorov approached him from behind and killed him with a dagger. Fedorov soon went abroad and published a detailed account of the affair...
Until the February Revolution, Dr. Dubrovin and his Union remained a kind of bully for the liberal intelligentsia and both major liberal parties: the Cadets (considered left-liberals) and the Octobrists (right-liberals), close to the government. The prominent Octobrist publicist Gromoboi wrote in November 1909:
“The uncertainty that weighs upon all of Russia, hanging over us like some kind of nightmare... What if tomorrow the entire government is replaced by another and we find ourselves under the boot of Doctor Dubrovin? Which way are we sailing? Any day we can wake up... on the other side of October 17th.”
Curiously, by a coincidence, Dr. Dubrovin witnessed the explosion at Prime Minister Stolypin’s dacha on Aptekarsky Island. The explosion was carried out in August 1906 by the very same Maximalist Socialist Revolutionaries whom Dubrovin’s comrades in the SRN later claimed to be.
So, there was an explosion. They shouted, “Doctors!” And one of those present said, “I am a doctor. ”
And indeed it was a doctor... Doctor Dubrovin, chairman of the Union of the Russian People. :) Both Stolypin and Dubrovin survived the explosion.
Monarchist Vasily Shulgin wrote: “Forty people died in that explosion. The house was reduced to rubble. Corpses and groaning people were carried out from under these ruins. A soldier carried the minister’s seriously wounded daughter, Natasha, in his arms. Waking from a faint, the girl asked: “Is this a dream?” Stolypin himself emerged from the rubble bloodied, covered in shreds of walls and people, but unharmed. When he was recognized, a random doctor rushed to him:
“Are you wounded? ”
“No, no, I’m not wounded...”
A random doctor (it had to be Dubrovin, the famous founder of the Union of the Russian People, the leader of the extreme right, an opponent of all reforms) scooped up some water from the river and helped the minister wash. And perhaps it was precisely because Stolypin recognized Dubrovin that he said, wiping his hands with a towel and looking at the shapeless heap that had been his home a few minutes earlier:
“And yet they will not be able to disrupt the reforms!!!”
At least, that is how Dubrovin himself recounted this scene...
Eventually, a split occurred within the SRN. More "moderate" Black Hundreds—such as the well-known State Duma deputies Nikolai Markov II and Vladimir Purishkevich—split from the supporters of Dr. Dubrovin and his... harsh methods. In 1911, Dubrovin founded a new Black Hundred organization, called the "All-Russian Dubrovin Union of the Russian People."
After the February Revolution, Dubrovin was arrested. The poet Alexander Blok was a member of the Provisional Government's investigative commission, which interrogated Dubrovin, among others. He visited him in the Peter and Paul Fortress and wrote:
"Dubrovin, who burst into sobs and rushed to kiss the hand of [the chairman of the Extraordinary Investigative Commission Nikolai] Muravyov, then fell sobbing onto his cot (the old man's eyes were vile)."
Well, the look of someone's eyes is, of course, a purely subjective impression...
But what happened to the venerable doctor after October?
Oddly enough, at first... nothing. He was released from prison for health reasons on the eve of October 25th. During the first years of Soviet power, he worked as a doctor at the 1st Lefortovo Soviet Outpatient Clinic. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, which confidently claimed in 1972 that Dubrovin was executed in September 1918, immediately after the declaration of the Red Terror, was clearly mistaken.
In fact, the Bolsheviks only got their hands on the old Black Hundred member at the end of 1920, when he was arrested again. And only in 1921 was he sentenced to death for "murder, pogroms, and fighting the liberation movement in Russia."