Yegor Sergeyevich Sazonov or Sozonov (; 7 June O.S. 23 May">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Old Style and New Style dates">O.S. 23 May1879 – 10 December [O.S. 27 November] 1910) was a Russian revolutionary and a member of the Terrorist Brigade or SR Combat Organization who threw the bomb that assassinated Russian Minister of the Interior Vyacheslav von Plehve in 1904.

Background

Yegor Sergeevich Sazonov was born on June 7 O.S. May 26">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/> O.S. May 261879, in Urzhumsky District">Petrovskoe, Urzhumsky Uyezd">Old Style and New Style dates">O.S. May 261879, in Urzhumsky District">Petrovskoe, Urzhumsky Uyezd, Vyatka Governorate. His father was a wealthy timber merchant of the Old Believers, Old Believer faith in Ufa.

Career

Sazonov was initially deeply religious and monarchist as a student, wanting to become a doctor. Sazonov studied at the Ufa boys' gymnasium. In 1901, he entered the Faculty of Medicine of the

Imperial Moscow University Imperial Moscow University () was one of the oldest universities of the Russian Empire, established in 1755. It was the first of the twelve imperial universities of the Russian Empire. Its legacy is continued as Lomonosov Moscow State Universit ...

, where he helped organize a student protest against the decision of the university, which expelled 183 students for anti-tsarist activities. Sozonov Egor 1902

Socialist Revolutionary party

After being arrested, flogged, and expelled, Sazonov joined 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 ...

, organized studies of socialism, and turned against the government. He said "It is not easy to reject the fundamental laws of humanity, but I have been forced to it. From now on I dedicate myself to open warfare with the government..." After his expulsion, Sazonov was sent to exile in Ufa, where he started to study socialist and democratic literature. At the behest of his father he was released and later joined the Ural Union of Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries. Shortly after he was once again arrested and thus was exiled to Siberia. On March 16 (29), 1902, the police broke into his family's apartment with a search warrant. Sazonov had time to tear some sheets from his personal notebook and chew them, only to realize that in his haste he had destroyed the wrong pages. The police thus found the evidence of the existence in the city of clandestine activity coordinated by the Union. He was held in the Ufa prison where he went on a hunger strike and later transferred to

Yakutsk Yakutsk ( ) is the capital and largest city of Sakha, Russia, located about south of the Arctic Circle. Fueled by the mining industry, Yakutsk has become one of Russia's most rapidly growing regional cities, with a population of 355,443 at the ...

. In July 1903, on his way to

Eastern Siberia Eastern Siberia is a part of Siberia that incorporates the territory located between the Yenisei River in the west and the Pacific Ocean divides in the east. Its area is equal to 7.2 million sq. km.Galina Samoylova (Г. С. Самойлова)В� ...

, Sazonov fled and left for

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

Terrorist Brigade

Abroad, Sazonov finally joined the Terrorist Bridge or Combat Organization of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. With a fake passport and using a false name, he returned to Russia. The leaders of the Terrorist Brigade were

Yevno Azef Yevno Fishelevich (Yevgeny Filippovich) Azef (; 1869–1918) was a Russian socialist revolutionary who also operated as a double agent and agent provocateur. He worked as both an organiser of assassinations for the Socialist Revolutionary Party ...

(a double agent and agent-provocateur working for the Russian secret police),

Grigory Gershuni Grigory Andreyevich Gershuni (; – ) was a Russian revolutionary and one of the founders of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. Early life Gershuni was born in Kaunas, in the Kovno Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Lithuania), to a ...

, and

Boris Savinkov Boris Viktorovich Savinkov (; 31 January 1879 – 7 May 1925) was a Russian revolutionary, writer, and politician. As a leading figure in the Socialist Revolutionary Party's (SR) Combat Organization in the early 20th century, he was a key organ ...

. Sazonov learned the trade of cab-driver in St. Petersburg.

Assassination of von Plehve

Vyacheslav von Plehve, Minister of Interior, known for his ruthlessness, had already approved of the brutal suppression of many workers's strikes. After the massacre of the Zlatoust miners (which left over sixty dead) and Plehve's approval of that measure (taken by the Governor of Ufa, Nikolai Bogdanovich), Gershuni, then head of the SR Combat Organization, targeted von Plehve for assassination. Under Azef, Gershuni sent Sazonov, Lev Sikorsky, Abram Borishansky, and

Ivan Kalyayev Ivan Platonovich Kalyayev (; 6 July 1877 – 23 May 1905) was a Russian poet, a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. He is best known for his role in the assassination of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, which was an operation of th ...

to carry out the plan. The assassination took place at Ismailovsky Prospekt in

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...

, on July 15, 1904. The terrorists used seven-kilogram bombs, by a local professor named Rouher. Two other assassins, Sikorski and Kalyayev, did not use their bombs. Sazonov succeeded in throwing his bomb under von Plehve's carriage. The bomb killed the minister instantly and wounded Sazonov, who was immediately arrested and beaten severely by the police. After assassinating Von Plehve, when asked by another revolutionary how he felt, Sazonov responded, "Pride and joy... only that." Sazonov was deprived of all rights and assigned to indefinite detention in a convict prison and was imprisoned in the

Shlisselburg Fortress The Oreshek Fortress (; Schlüsselburg Fortress, ) is one of a series of fortifications built in Oreshek (now known as Shlisselburg) on Orekhovy Island in Lake Ladoga, near the modern city of Saint Petersburg in Russia. The first fortress was bui ...

. Then he was transferred to the Butyrka prison, from where he was sent to the Nerchinsk mines for forced labor. The amnesty of 1905 limited Sozonov's stay in hard labor for a certain period.

Death

At the end of 1907, he was transferred to the Zerentui convict prison. The new head of the prison, I. Vysotsky, equated political prisoners with criminal ones and introduced corporal punishment for the first. Having found fault for an insignificant reason, he ordered that political prisoners be flogged. On December 10 . S. November 271910, Sazonov committed suicide in a prison in Gorny Zerentui, Trans-Baikal region, "in protest fthe cruel prison regime in the men's prisons of Nerchinsk," followed by mass protest at the prison. Sources differ on his caused of death, which include poison and self-immolation by kerosene.

Legacy

Sazonov was initially buried at his place of death, but after the

February Revolution The February Revolution (), known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and sometimes as the March Revolution or February Coup was the first of Russian Revolution, two revolutions which took place in Russia ...

, on May 25, 1917, his ashes were brought to Ufa. The reburial took place at the Sergievsky cemetery. A monument was erected on the grave in 1917. Sazonov was treated as a hero to Jewish and Russian communities in the United States. He received so much applause that the ''Chicago Daily News'' said that "the Cubs should hire him as a pitcher." In his 1911 novel '' Under Western Eyes'',

Joseph Conrad Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, ; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Poles in the United Kingdom#19th century, Polish-British novelist and story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the Eng ...

may have modeled the character "Victor Haldin" after Sazonov. In 1923, his superior Boris Savinkov, when accused of terrorism against the Soviet Union, defended himself by saying he was too revolutionary to be accused, because he was once "comrade of Yegor Sazonov." Before his own death in 1941,

Victor Serge Victor Serge (; born Viktor Lvovich Kibalchich, ; 30 December 1890 – 17 November 1947) was a Belgian-born Russian revolutionary, novelist, poet, historian, journalist, and translator. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks in Janu ...

wrote about Sazonov in ''Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 1901-1941'', published posthumously in 1963. In his 1952 memoir ''Witness'',

Whittaker Chambers Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer and intelligence agent. After early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), he defected from the Soviet u ...

named Sazonov as one of three people whom he most admired as he joined the CPUSA, along with Felix Djerjinsky and

Eugen Leviné Eugen Leviné (; 10 May 1883 – 5 June 1919), also known as Dr. Eugen Leviné, was a German Communism, communist revolutionary and one of the leaders of the short-lived Second Bavarian Soviet Republic. Background Eugen Leviné was born on 10 ...

The Russian was not a Communist. He was a pre-Communist revolutionist named Kalyaev. (I should have said Sazonov.) He was arrested for a minor part in the assassination of the Tsarist prime minister, von Plehve. He was sent into Siberian exile to one of the worst prison camps, where the political prisoners were flogged. Kalyaev sought some way to protest this outrage to the world. The means were few, but at last he found a way. In protest against the flogging of other men, Kalyaev drenched himself in kerosene, set himself on fire and burned himself to death. That also is what it meant to be a Communist.

Between 1958 and 1968 while living in the

GULAG The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...

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 ...

wrote about Sazonov in his book ''

The Gulag Archipelago ''The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation'' () is a three-volume nonfiction series written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Soviet dissident. It was first published in 1973 by the Parisian ...

''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sazonov, Igor 1879 births 1910 suicides 1910 deaths People from Urzhumsky District People from Urzhumsky Uyezd Old Believers Socialist Revolutionary Party politicians SR Combat Organization members Assassins from the Russian Empire Prisoners of Shlisselburg fortress Russian people convicted of murder Russian people who died in prison custody Murderers who died by suicide in prison custody People convicted of murder by Russia Prisoners who died in Russian Empire detention Suicides in the Russian Empire