Narodnaya Volya assassinates Alexander II; CCWV.LIFE

On 13 March 1881 members of Narodnaya Volya, the People's Will, assassinate Tsar Alexander II in St Petersburg. The organization's members came out of the nihilist and populist milieu, and the killing marks the point where the denial of the old order turns to systematic political terror; the repression that follows scatters the movement.

Tagged: Nihilism

The Event

Date: 1881 (exact)
Era: The Word and the Nineteenth Century; Standard periodization of the nihilist movement and idea
Location: St Petersburg; today St Petersburg, Russia
Traditions: Nihilism
Streams: Nihilism
Key figures: Alexander II, Andrei Zhelyabov, Sophia Perovskaya

How the Tradition Tells It

Historians differ on the label: Narodnaya Volya called itself socialist and populist, and nihilism names the milieu it came from rather than its whole program. The record states both.

Connections

Illustration for Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done?

History Event Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done? 1863 the assassins' generation was formed on the nihilist literature

Primary Sources

The trial records of the Pervomartovtsy, St Petersburg, 1881.

Secondary Sources

Crosby, Donald A. The Specter of the Absurd: Sources and Criticisms of Modern Nihilism. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988.
Gillespie, Michael Allen. Nihilism Before Nietzsche. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Nishitani, Keiji. Religion and Nothingness. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
Reginster, Bernard. The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.

Provenance: HIST-1351; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.