Pyotr Alexeyevich Alexeyev (russian: Пётр Алексеевич Алексеев; – ) was a
Russian 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 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 (russian: народники, ) were a politically conscious movement of the Russian intelligentsia in the 1860s and 1870s, some of whom became involved in revolutionary agitation against tsarism. Their ideology, known as Narodism, ...
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 on 20 April 1877. In 1900,
Lenin 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 ( rus, ка́торга, p=ˈkatərɡə; from medieval and modern Greek: ''katergon, κάτεργον'', "galley") was a system of penal labor in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union (see Katorga labor in the Soviet Union). Prisoner ...
. He was interned in Novo-Belogorodskaya prison, in European Russia, then transferred in autumn 1880 to
Mtsensk political prison, then, soon after the assassination of the
Tsar
Tsar ( or ), also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar'', is a title used by East Slavs, East and South Slavs, South Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word ''Caesar (title), caesar'', which was intended to mean "emperor" i ...
Alexander II, was moved again to
Kara, in
Yakutsk, in eastern Siberia.
In 1891, he was robbed and killed on a road by a Yakut.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Alexeyev, Pyotr Alexeyevich
Russian revolutionaries
1849 births
1891 deaths