Dmitrii Grigor'evich Bogrov (; – ) was a Ukrainian Jewish

lawyer A lawyer is a person who is qualified to offer advice about the law, draft legal documents, or represent individuals in legal matters. The exact nature of a lawyer's work varies depending on the legal jurisdiction and the legal system, as w ...

, known for his assassination of the Russian prime minister

Pyotr Stolypin Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin ( rus, Пётр Аркадьевич Столыпин, p=pʲɵtr ɐrˈkadʲjɪvʲɪtɕ stɐˈlɨpʲɪn; – ) was a Russian statesman who served as the third Prime Minister of Russia, prime minister and the Ministry ...

. Raised in a wealthy Jewish family in

Kyiv Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

, Bogrov developed sympathies for

revolutionary socialism Revolutionary socialism is a political philosophy, doctrine, and tradition within socialism that stresses the idea that a social revolution is necessary to bring about structural changes in society. More specifically, it is the view that revo ...

from an early age and became involved with the Ukrainian anarchist movement while studying law at university. Disillusioned by the local anarchist group's activism, he was hired as an

informant An informant (also called an informer or, as a slang term, a "snitch", "rat", "canary", "stool pigeon", "stoolie", "tout" or "grass", among other terms) is a person who provides privileged information, or (usually damaging) information inten ...

by the

Okhrana The Department for the Protection of Public Safety and Order (), usually called the Guard Department () and commonly abbreviated in modern English sources as the Okhrana ( rus , Охрана, p=ɐˈxranə, a=Ru-охрана.ogg, t= The Guard) w ...

and kept tabs on the group's activities. After graduating, he moved to Saint Petersburg in order to practice law and seek safety from the rising environment of

antisemitism Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...

in the Russian Empire. Disturbed by the

pogroms in the Russian Empire Pogroms in the Russian Empire () were large-scale, targeted, and repeated Antisemitism, anti-Jewish riots that began in the 19th century. Pogroms began to occur after Russian Empire, Imperial Russia, which previously had very few Jews, acquired te ...

and feeling guilty for his collaboration with the police, he began to plot the assassination of the Russian prime minister Pyotr Stolypin, who he held responsible for the attacks. He unsuccessfully attempted to elicit the support of the

Socialist Revolutionary Party The Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR; ,, ) was a major socialist political party in the late Russian Empire, during both phases of the Russian Revolution, and in early Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Russia. The party memb ...

, which caused him to have a

nervous breakdown A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness, a mental health condition, or a psychiatric disability, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. A mental disorder is ...

. After returning to Kyiv, he was confronted by members of his former anarchist group, who had discovered his involvement with the Okhrana and made threats against his life for it. He again resolved to assassinate Stolypin. He told the Okhrana that assassins were planning to kill a government official, convincing them to grant him a ticket to the Kyiv Opera House, where the prime minister was due to attend a play. Having convinced the authorities that he was still on their side, he managed to get close to the prime minister and shot him twice. Stolypin died four days later. Bogrov himself was executed days after his target's death. Bogrov's actions have become the subject of

conspiracy theories A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation), when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources: * ...

, as well as numerous historiographical debates about his motives.

Biography

Early life and activism

Dmitrii Grigor'evich Bogrov was born in

, on , into a wealthy Jewish family. His grandfather was a well-known writer and maskil; and his father was a prominent lawyer in Kyiv, who had converted to Russian Orthodoxy. Despite his father's conversion, Dmitrii himself continued to practice

Judaism Judaism () is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic, Monotheism, monotheistic, ethnic religion that comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Jews, Jewish people. Religious Jews regard Judaism as their means of o ...

, which was the religion that was marked on his school diploma. The Bogrov family was deeply involved in

left-wing politics Left-wing politics describes the range of Ideology#Political ideologies, political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole or of certain social ...

: Dmitrii's cousin was a member of the

Bolsheviks The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

, while his father supported the left of the Constitutional Democratic Party. By the time he was a teenager, Dmitrii Bogrov himself had developed sympathies for

and became involved in revolutionary activities, initially as a supporter of the

Union of Socialists-Revolutionaries-Maximalists Union of Socialists-Revolutionaries-Maximalists () was a political party in the Russian Empire, a radical wing expelled from the Socialist-Revolutionary Party in 1906. The Union united agrarian terrorists, the 'Moscow Opposition' and other radic ...

. He came to identify himself as an " anarchist-individualist", as he resented formal organisation, rejected conventional morality and believed revolutionaries ought to operate alone under their own direction, even once declaring "I am my own party".

Law education and informant activities

In the wake of the

1905 Russian Revolution The Russian Revolution of 1905, also known as the First Russian Revolution, was a revolution in the Russian Empire which began on 22 January 1905 and led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy under the Russian Constitution of 1906, th ...

, Bogrov enrolled in the law school of Kyiv University. As the government began cracking down on the revolution, Bogrov's parents sent him abroad to study at the

University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich, LMU or LMU Munich; ) is a public university, public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Originally established as the University of Ingolstadt in 1472 by Duke ...

. There he familiarised himself with the works of

Mikhail Bakunin Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin. Sometimes anglicized to Michael Bakunin. ( ; – 1 July 1876) was a Russian revolutionary anarchist. He is among the most influential figures of anarchism and a major figure in the revolutionary socialist, s ...

and

Peter Kropotkin Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (9 December 1842 – 8 February 1921) was a Russian anarchist and geographer known as a proponent of anarchist communism. Born into an aristocratic land-owning family, Kropotkin attended the Page Corps and later s ...

, before returning in 1906 to resume his studies in Kyiv. By December 1906, he had joined an anarchist communist group in Kyiv, but soon became disillusioned with their activities. Although his father paid for his education and provided him with a generous allowance, Bogrov started to experience financial difficulties due to his

gambling Gambling (also known as betting or gaming) is the wagering of something of Value (economics), value ("the stakes") on a Event (probability theory), random event with the intent of winning something else of value, where instances of strategy (ga ...

habit. In February 1907, he took a job as an

for the

. Working under the pseudonym of "Alensky", he supplied the police with information on the Kyiv anarchists' activities. Many the group's members were imprisoned or deported to

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

during this period, including its leaders and Naum Tysh, although it's uncertain how many of these were due to Bogrov's reports. By 1908, some of the group's members began to suspect that Bogrov was an ''

agent provocateur An is a person who actively entices another person to commit a crime that would not otherwise have been committed and then reports the person to the authorities. They may target individuals or groups. In jurisdictions in which conspiracy is a ...

''. Naum Tysh and Peter Liatkovskyi accused him of betraying them to the police, but he was defended against the charges by Sandomirskyi. He also managed to convince and Juda Grossman that he was innocent of the charges against him. In July of that year, Bogrov supplied the Okhrana with information about the bomb-manufacturing activities of the Maximalists, although he would later claim that he deliberately kept the exact address from them in order to prevent a police raid from taking place. In September, he informed the police of a Maximalist plot to break Naum Tysh out of prison, resulting in the arrest of all conspirators. Bogrov himself took the opportunity to go abroad, where he told the editor of an anarchist newspaper that either Tsar Nikolai II or prime minister

ought to be assassinated. He returned to Kyiv in April 1909. After graduating from university in February 1910, he decided to move away from Kyiv in order to work as a lawyer's apprentice in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

, believing the city was safer for Jewish people than either Kyiv or Moscow, due to the rising environment of

and

. By this time, he had ceased all contact with the Okhrana in Kyiv. After a few months in Saint Petersburg, he again approached the Okhrana and was hired as an agent, working under the pseudonym "Nadezhdin". But this time, he provided the police with unvaluable and even fabricated information, later claiming he did this "for revolutionary purposes, so that I could make close contacts in these institutions and learn how they work."

Assassination plot and motivation

In June 1910, Bogrov contacted Egor Lazarev, informing him of his intention to assassinate the prime minister Pyotr Stolypin. He claimed that his motivations were both personal and ideological, although he concealed his feelings of guilt over his past role as an informant. According to Lazarev, Bogrov claimed that he sought revenge for the antisemitic pogroms that had been carried out in the Russian Empire and held Stolypin to be responsible. He requested the official sanction of the

, declaring that he wished "to have the certainty that, after my death, there will remain people and a party who will interpret my conduct correctly, explaining it on the basis of a social and not from a personal motive." Although Lazarev himself was worried about Bogrov's apparent indifference towards his own life, he took the proposal to the party. The SRs were initially divided over their enthusiasm for the plan, but ultimately deciding against it, fearing that it would bring repression against the party. Bogrov was devastated by the party's rejection and subsequently suffered from a

. On the advice of his physician and his parents, he went abroad to

Nice Nice ( ; ) is a city in and the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative city limits, with a population of nearly one millionThe Tale of Tsar Saltan at the Kyiv Opera House, where Stolypin was due to attend and where Bogrov claimed the assassin planned to carry out his attack.

Assassination of Stolypin

On the evening of 1 September, while police agents staked out Bogrov's flat, he went to the theatre and was questioned on the whereabouts of the assassins. He pretended to return to his flat and claimed that the assassin was still eating supper. Bogrov went to his seat in the seventeenth row, while Stolypin arrived and took his seat in the front row. Also among the attendees were Tsar Nikolai II, his daughters Olga and Tatiana, and the Bulgarian crown prince Boris. The performance started at 21:00. During the first intermission, Bogrov stayed back, as Stolypin was surrounded by other people. During the second intermission, at 23:30, Bogrov was ordered to return to his flat and keep tabs on the assassins. Noticing that Stolypin was standing alone, he decided that was the moment to act. He made his way down the aisle towards the front row and all the way up to the prime minister. When he arrived in front of Stolypin, Bogrov drew his revolver and shot him twice. One bullet ricocheted off Stolypin's wrist into the orchestra pit and hit a violinist's leg, the other hit Stolypin in his chest, piercing through a medallion of

Vladimir the Great Vladimir I Sviatoslavich or Volodymyr I Sviatoslavych (; Christian name: ''Basil''; 15 July 1015), given the epithet "the Great", was Prince of Novgorod from 970 and Grand Prince of Kiev from 978 until his death in 1015. The Eastern Orthodox ...

. As those around the prime minister were left stunned by the attack, Bogrov calmly walked away towards the exit, making it halfway down the aisle before he was apprehended. He was disarmed and removed from the theatre by the police, while people attempted to aid the dying prime minister. Stolypin was taken away to a clinic, but died four days later. When the police raided Bogrov's flat, they found nobody there. Russian nationalists in Kyiv responded by calling for a pogrom, but the authorities refused to support their invocation, as the Tsar was still in the city. In order to pre-empt such a pogrom from taking place, Kyiv's Jewish community denounced Bogrov's actions and held a special service wishing health for the Tsar's family and to Stolypin. For its part, the Socialist Revolutionary Party publicly denied taking part in the assassination.

Interrogation, trial and execution

When he was interrogated about the attack, Bogrov confessed that he had fabricated the story of the two assassins so that he could get access to Stolypin. He claimed that he had been threatened by revolutionaries due to their discovery of his past as an ''agent provocateur''; he thought that this revelation alone was "worse than death" and desired to free himself from the guilt he felt due to his collaboration with the police. He also repeatedly identified himself as a member of the Jewish faith and claimed that he was acting in the interests of the Jewish people. He declared that he had not attempted an attack against the Tsar, as he feared it would have provoked further antisemitic pogroms. On , Bogrov was tried by a court martial, which found him guilty of murder and sentenced him to death by

hanging Hanging is killing a person by suspending them from the neck with a noose or ligature strangulation, ligature. Hanging has been a standard method of capital punishment since the Middle Ages, and has been the primary execution method in numerou ...

. He was executed on , in Lysa Hora. He died in the presence of thirty witnesses, including representatives of reactionary groups such as the Black Hundreds. The religious representative at Bogrov's execution was Iakov Aleshkovskii, the

Chief Rabbi Chief Rabbi () is a title given in several countries to the recognized religious leader of that country's Jewish community, or to a rabbinic leader appointed by the local secular authorities. Since 1911, through a capitulation by Ben-Zion Meir ...

of Kyiv. In his final words to Aleskhovskii, Bogrov asked him: "Please tell the Jews that I did not want to harm them in any way, on the contrary, I struggle for their good and for the happiness of the Jewish people." His death was mourned by young Jewish and Ukrainian radicals, who had sympathised with his motives for assassinating Stolypin.

Legacy and historical debate

Bogrov's assassination of Stolypin was the last major attack in a sustained period of

terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war aga ...

in the Russian Empire, which had started in 1866 with Dmitrii Karakazov's attempted assassination of Alexander II. The assassination of Stolypin further destabilised the Empire, leading to its ultimate collapse in the 1917 Revolution. Bogrov's actions have been compared to those of

Marinus van der Lubbe Marinus van der Lubbe (; 13 January 1909 – 10 January 1934) was a Dutch communist who was tried, convicted, and executed by the government of Nazi Germany for setting fire to the Reichstag building—the national parliament of Germany—on ...

and

Lee Harvey Oswald Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 – November 24, 1963) was a U.S. Marine veteran who assassinated John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, on November 22, 1963. Oswald was placed in juvenile detention at age 12 for truan ...

, who likewise acted individually, but whose acts were nevertheless subject to widespread

. Since the assassination, there has been some historical debate about Bogrov's motives for the assassination and whether or not he acted on behalf of one group or another. Although Bogrov acted alone, he was variously accused of acting on behalf of

revolutionaries A revolutionary is a person who either participates in, or advocates for, a revolution. The term ''revolutionary'' can also be used as an adjective to describe something producing a major and sudden impact on society. Definition The term—bot ...

, reactionaries or even the police. In his book '' A People's Tragedy'', British historian Orlando Figes commented that this variety of possible explanations for Bogrov's actions stemmed from Stolypin having had enemies on all sides of the political spectrum: "Long before Bogrov's bullet killed him, he tolypinwas politically dead." Documents regarding the assassination were also published in a heavily redacted form in 1914; it took until 2003 for a complete volume of more than 700 pages of evidence to finally be published by ROSSPEN. The most common explanation for the assassination is that Bogrov was motivated by the threats against his life by the revolutionary anarchist group, a version which is supported by historians Abraham Ascher, Anna Geifman, George Tokmakoff, and Jonathan Daly. Geifman further suggested that Bogrov, known to have suffered from depression, had decided to commit

suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Risk factors for suicide include mental disorders, physical disorders, and substance abuse. Some suicides are impulsive acts driven by stress (such as from financial or ac ...

by way of

homicide Homicide is an act in which a person causes the death of another person. A homicide requires only a Volition (psychology), volitional act, or an omission, that causes the death of another, and thus a homicide may result from Accident, accidenta ...

. Russian historian Sergei Stepanov and American historian Victoria Khiterer have also theorised that Bogrov sought revenge for the recent

. American historian Norman Naimark depicted the actions of Bogrov and other Jewish assassins of the period as having resulted from the direct antisemitic oppression that they faced and a consequential disillusionment with the results of assimilation. American historian

Paul Avrich Paul Avrich (August 4, 1931 – February 16, 2006) was an American historian specializing in the 19th and early 20th-century anarchist movement in Russia and the United States. He taught at Queens College, City University of New York, for his ...

also considered the assassination to have been a "personal act" by Bogrov, rather than having been influenced by his associations with the police or revolutionary groups. In his historical fiction novel '' The Red Wheel'',

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Soviet and Russian author and Soviet dissidents, dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag pris ...

suggested that Bogrov was motivated by protecting the interests of his Jewish family against rising

Russian nationalism Russian nationalism () is a form of nationalism that promotes Russian cultural identity and unity. Russian nationalism first rose to prominence as a Pan-Slavism, Pan-Slavic enterprise during the 19th century Russian Empire, and was repressed duri ...

. The 2012 Russian docu-drama ''Stolypin: A Shot at Russia'' likewise highlighted Bogrov's Jewish background as a motivation for the assassination, while also portraying his character as a

gambler Gambling (also known as betting or gaming) is the wagering of something of value ("the stakes") on a random event with the intent of winning something else of value, where instances of strategy are discounted. Gambling thus requires three ele ...

and insect collector. This "Jewish motivation" has been disputed by Ascher and Geifman, as well as Simon Dixon, who each highlighted the assimilation of Bogrov's family into the Russian elite. Other hypotheses included that of Stolypin's own brother , who speculated that

Grigori Rasputin Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin ( – ) was a Russian Mysticism, mystic and faith healer. He is best known for having befriended the imperial family of Nicholas II of Russia, Nicholas II, the last Emperor of all the Russias, Emperor of Russia, th ...

had directed the assassination, although there is no evidence that Rasputin and Bogrov were ever in contact. The hypothesis of police manipulation claims that the Tsar had become jealous of Stolypin's popularity and pressed the Okhrana to have him eliminated; but the Tsar himself had the power to dismiss ministers, so he could have already done so. Solzhenitsyn also alleged Bogrov to have been working as a

double agent In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organi ...

for the Okhrana.

Yakov Protazanov Yakov Alexandrovich Protazanov (; 4 February (Old Style, O.S. 23 January ) 1881 – 8 August 1945) was a Russian and USSR, Soviet film director and screenwriter, and one of the founding fathers of cinema of Russia. He was an Honored Artist of the ...

's 1928 film '' The White Eagle'' also makes allusions to the culpability of the Tsarist government in Bogrov's assassination of Stolypin. But allegations of a

conspiracy A conspiracy, also known as a plot, ploy, or scheme, is a secret plan or agreement between people (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder, treason, or corruption, especially with a political motivat ...

on the part of the police are disputed, with evidence pointing to police incompetence rather than malice.

References

Bibliography

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