Timofey Mikhailov
Timofei Mikhailov
File:Timofai.jpg | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1860 |
| Died | April 3 of 1881 |
Mikhailov, Timofei Mikhailovich (Михайлов, Тимофей Михайлович in Russian) (on January 22 (on February 3) 1859, Smolensk province - April 3, 1881, Saint Petersburg): was twenty-one year old Russian boiler maker who participated in the assassination of tsar Alexander II of Russia.
Early life
Mikhailov was the son of a peasant, born in Smolensk in 1860, he later moved to Saint Petersburg where he found work in a factory. Mikhailov became involved in revolutionary politics and joined the Workers' Section of Narodnaya Volya.
Revolutionary life
In the mid 1870s, Mikhailov worked as a laborer and a steam-boiler operator in a few factories of Saint Petersburg. He attended one of the groups of Zemlya i volya. In 1880, Mikhailov became a member of Narodnaya Volya.
Assassination of the Tsar
In January 1881 he joined the bombthrower unit, created for the purpose of assassinating Alexander II of Russia.
On 1 March 1881, Mikhailov was one of the plotters but when the Tsar decided to pay a brief visit to his cousin, the Grand Duchess Catherine, Mikhailov lost his nerve, took his missile back to Headquarters and went home.
That day, Mikhailov did not throw any bombs at Tsar.
That very day Nikolai Rysakov began to inform against his erstwhile comrades. What he said enabled the police to raid the Telezhnaya quarters the next night. Gesya Gelfman was arrested and Sablin committed suicide. The following morning Timofey Mikhailov was seized after he had wounded three police officers. Rysakov identified both prisoners.
The trial reached its expected denouement at 3 a.m., 29 March, when all the defendants were found guilty, and at 6:30 a.m. they were sentenced to be hanged.
On 3 April Andrei Zhelyabov, Sophia Perovskaya, Nikolai Rysakov, Nikolai Kibalchich, and Mikhailov were hanged. Mikhailov was the second to be hanged. Twice the rope broke under the weight of his big body and he crashed to the floor of the scaffold with a thud. The crowd that had been so hostile to the regicides a few minutes earlier was now buzzing with indignation and saying that it was a sign from heaven that the man should be pardoned. As the rope was about to break the third time, the executioner hastily reinforced it with another noose. It worked. The hanging of the remaining three prisoners went off without a hitch.
The bodies were cut down from the gallows and they were buried in a nameless common grave.
References
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