Pyotr Alexeyevich Alexeyev (; – ) was a

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

revolutionary, one of the first factory workers to join the revolutionary underground, whose speech at his trial was distributed in thousands of copies.

Early life

Alexeyev was born into a peasant family in a village in

Smolensk province Smolensk Province () was a province of Riga Governorate, Russian Empire. The province was created in 1713 when Smolensk Governorate was abolished with its territory divided between Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of ci ...

in south west Russia, and was sent to work in a textile factory at the age of nine. At the age of around 16 or 17, he taught himself to read and write. In 1869, he joined a

narodnik The Narodniks were members of a movement of the Russian Empire intelligentsia in the 1860s and 1870s, some of whom became involved in revolutionary agitation against tsarism. Their ideology, known as Narodism, Narodnism or ,; , similar to the ...

circle in Moscow, organised by Sophia Bardina, which conducted propaganda among Moscow workers. The circle named itself the All-Russian Socialist Revolutionary Organisation. Alexeyev's role was to move from one town or village to another, take a job, talk to fellow workers, leave behind illegal literature, and move on. Arrested in February 1875, he was held in prison for two years, then arraigned with other members of the circle at the Trial of the 50, in March 1877.

His trial speech

His speech at his trial, delivered on 10 March, described in vivid language the squalid living conditions of Russia's working class. It concluded: "Russia's working people can rely only on themselves and no-one else, except the young intelligensia...Only they ... will march alongside us, without flinching, until the mighty hand of millions of working people is raised, and the yoke of despotism, ringed by soldiers' bayonets, is scattered to dust." The speech was very soon printed on illegal printing presses. Three versions were circulating in pamphlet form in St Petersburg by June 1877. It was also smuggled abroad. Parts were printed in English translation in the

Pall Mall Gazette ''The Pall Mall Gazette'' was an evening newspaper founded in London on 7 February 1865 by George Murray Smith; its first editor was Frederick Greenwood. In 1921, '' The Globe'' merged into ''The Pall Mall Gazette'', which itself was absorbed i ...

on 20 April 1877. In 1900,

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

lauded the speech as a "great prophecy". By the time of the Russian revolution, in 1917, it had been reprinted illegally more than 20 times by both Marxist and narodnik groups.

In exile

On 14 March, Alexeyev was sentenced to ten years in

katorga Katorga (, ; from medieval and modern ; and Ottoman Turkish: , ) was a system of penal labor in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union (see Katorga labor in the Soviet Union). Prisoners were sent to remote penal colonies in vast uninhabited a ...

. He was interned in Novo-Belogorodskaya prison, in European Russia, then transferred in autumn 1880 to

Mtsensk Mtsensk () is a town in Oryol Oblast, Russia, located on the Zusha River (a tributary of the Oka) northeast of Oryol, the administrative center of the oblast. Population: 28,000 (1970). History It was first mentioned in the Nikon Chronic ...

political prison, then, soon after the assassination of the

Tsar Tsar (; also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar''; ; ; sr-Cyrl-Latn, цар, car) is a title historically used by Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word '' caesar'', which was intended to mean ''emperor'' in the Euro ...

Alexander II, was moved again to

Kara Kara or KARA may refer to: Geography Localities * Kara, Chad, a sub-prefecture * Kára, Hungary, a village * Kara, Uttar Pradesh, India, a township * Kara, Iran, a village in Lorestan Province * Kara, Republic of Dagestan, a rural locality in ...

, in

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 eastern Siberia. In 1891, he was robbed and killed on a road by a Yakut.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Alexeyev, Pyotr Alexeyevich Revolutionaries from the Russian Empire 1849 births 1891 deaths