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Rites of Protest: Populist Funerals in Imperial St. Petersburg, 1876–1878

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Tom Trice
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Abstract

Focusing on the funerals of two populist political prisoners, this article examines how Petersburg's radical youth expropriated an allegedly unchanging, sacred ritual to extend the parameters of public discussion and social critique in late imperial Russia. Drawing on their experiences of Russia's religious and revolutionary past, the youth who accompanied their peers to the grave used the special, “sacred” time and space effected by the performance of customary burial rituals to offer their fellow citizens revolutionary alternatives to the existing regime.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , Spring 2001 , pp. 50 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2001

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References

Grants from the International Research and Exchanges Board and the Social Science Research Council aided the research and preparation of this article. I wish to thank Heather Coleman, Diane Koenker, Abby Schrader, Mark Steinberg, Mary Stuart, and the three anonymous referees for Slavic Reviexv for comments and assistance on earlier versions of this paper. I also benefited from the suggestions of participants at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies held in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1996 and at the Midwest Russian History Workshop in Bloomington, Indiana, in 1997, where portions of this article were presented.

1. Published by Petr Lavrov between 1873 and 1877, first in Zurich, then London, Vpered! typically defended its founder's propagandistic model of social revolution against the voluntaristic, conspiratorial models popularized by his contemporaries, Petr Tkachev and Mikhail Bakunin. On the history of the newspaper and Lavrovism in general, see Boris Sapir's essays in Boris Sapir, comp., Vpered! 1873–1877: Materialy iz arkhiva Valeriana Nikolaevicha Smirnova, vol. 1 (Dordrecht, 1970). In an unsigned, undated typescript on the funeral located in the Nicolaevsky archives, participant and former publicist Sergei P. Shvetsov indicated that populist writer Grigorii A. Machtet had a hand in writing some or all of the articles published by Vpered! on the funeral. In honor of the deceased, Machtet also penned the poem “Poslednie prosti,” which first appeared in Vpered! 15 May 1876, 284. The poem became the basis for a popular revolutionary song. See unsigned typescript on Chernyshev's funeral, Archives, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford, California, microfilm The Boris I. Nicolaevsky Collection (Ann Arbor, 1993), vol. 7, reel 233, series 212, box 272, item 15, pp. 1–2; Bogucharskii, V., Aktivnoe narodnichestvo semidesiatykhgodov (Moscow, 1912), 238 Google Scholar; Machtet-Iurkevich, T. G., Introduction to G. A. Machtet: Izbrannoe (Moscow, 1958), 10–11 Google Scholar. Police reports indicated that Machtet may have given a speech at the cemetery as well. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), f. 109, 3d eksp. (1874), d. 144, ch. 125 (“O pokhoronakh byvshego studenta … Pavla Chernysheva“), 1. 101.

2. “Chto delaetsia na rodine? Iz Peterburga,” Vpered! 1 May 1876, 251–52 (emphasis mine).

3. As Vperedl's correspondent noted, it was highly improbable that the twenty-oneyear- old Chernyshev knew Karakozov, who was hanged a decade earlier; far more reasonable was the public's confusion of the deceased with Shevelev, whom the courts had sentenced to ten years hard labor a month earlier for his part in the Paris Commune. See Troitskii, N. A., Tsarskie sudy protiv revoliutsionnoi Rossii: Politicheskie protsessy 1871–1880 gg. (Saratov, 1976), 141, 347Google Scholar. The author of an unsigned article that appeared in Nabat, the underground periodical published in Geneva by the small circle of ‘Jacobins” around Russian emigre socialist Petr Tkachev, claimed that many mourners thought they were burying exiled radical leader Nikolai Chernyshevskii. “Korrespondentsii,” Nabat, no. 6 (May 1876): 8.

4. In many respects, the level of student activism was seen as a measure of the revolutionary movement's vitality, for as Susan K. Morrissey has observed in her study of student radicalism in St. Petersburg, beginning in the 1860s, students united by a general devotion to social and political justice and their own sense of shared community (studenchestvo) played a role in Russia's revolutionary movement disproportionate to their numbers. Morrissey, , Heralds of Revolution: Russian Students and the Mythologies of Radicalism (Oxford, 1998), 22–24.Google Scholar

5. See Schorske, Carl E., “The Idea of the City in European Thought: Voltaire to Spengler,“ in Handlin, Oscar and Burchard, John, eds., The Historian and the City (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), 95–114 Google Scholar, and Geertz, Clifford, “Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power,” in Wilentz, Sean, ed., Rites of Power: Symbolism, Ritual, and Politics since the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 1985).Google Scholar

6. Timofeev, M. A., “Perezhitoe: Otryvok iz vospominanii o semidesiatykh godakh,“ Katorga i ssylka, 1929, nos. 57–58:96–97.Google Scholar

7. Bibergal', A. N., “Vospominaniia o demonstratsii na Kazanskoi ploshchadi,” Krasnyi arkhiv, 1926, no. 28:24.Google Scholar

8. See Richard S. Wortman's discussion of Nicholas I's funeral in Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 1, From Peter the Great to the Death of Nicholas I (Princeton, 1995), 413–14, as well as similar analyses of how European dynasties employed funerals and other rites of passage to legitimate the transfer of power from one ruler to another—for example, Giesey, Ralph E., The Royal Funeral Ceremony in Renaissance France (Geneva, 1960)Google Scholar, and Woodward, Jennifer, The Theatre of Death: The Ritual Management of Royal Funerals in Renaissance England, 1570–1625 (Woodbridge, Eng., 1997).Google Scholar

9. Orlando Figes and Boris Kolonitskii have produced a fascinating analysis of similar contests taking place within existing cultural repertoires over the meanings and uses of words, symbols, rites, and so on during the Russian Revolutions of 1917. Figes, and Kolonitskii, , Interpreting the Russian Revolution: The Language and Symbols of 1917 (New Haven, 1999)Google Scholar. On Dobroliubov's funeral, see Dm. Averkiev, “Russkii publitsist (Pamiati N. A. Dobroliubova),” Russkii invalid, 1 December 1861, 1105; Shilov, A., “N. G. Chernyshevskii v doneseniiakh agentov III otdeleniia (1861-1862 gg.),” Krasnyi arkhiv, 1926, no. 1:90–92 Google Scholar; Panaeva, Avdot'ia, Vospominaniia (Leningrad, 1927), 414–15Google Scholar; Nikitenko, Aleksandr, The Diary of a Russian Censor, trans, and ed. Jacobson, Helen Saltz (Amherst, 1975), 243 Google Scholar; and N. V. Shelgunov et al., Vospominaniia v dvukh tomakh, vol. 1, Vospominaniia N. V. Shelgunova (Moscow, 1967), 210; on Pisarev, see GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1868), d. 180 (“Delo ob areste knigotorgovtse F. F. Pavlenkova …“), pt. 1; Shelgunov et al., Vospominaniia, 209–10; for a discussion of similar funerary practices by French socialists, see Kselman, Thomas A., Death and the Afterlife in Modern France (Princeton, 1993), chap. 3.Google Scholar

10. S. Stepniak [pseud. Sergei Kravchinskii], Podpol'naia Rossiia (St. Petersburg, 1906), 27.

11. Kertzer, David I., Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven, 1988), 114.Google Scholar

12. The phrase comes from sociologist Lindsay Prior, who discusses similar expropriations of rites and corpses by Northern Ireland's Protestant and Catholic factions. Prior, The Social Organization of Death: Medical Discourse and Social Practices in Belfast (New York, 1989), 188–89. As Katherine Verdery explains, the ambiguity and materiality of dead bodies makes them especially effective political symbols, for at one and the same time they “are concrete, yet protean.” Verdery, , The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change. (New York, 1999), 28 Google Scholar. Peter I's display of corpses around Moscow following the 1698 strel'tsy rebellion, not to mention the highly public nature of both capital and corporal punishment in Russia into the nineteenth-century, provided Petersburg populists with a set of historical referents. See Hughes, Lindsey, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (New Haven, 1998), 454 Google ScholarPubMed, and Schrader, Abby M., The Languages of the Lash: Corporal Punishment and the Construction of Identity in Imperial Russia (DeKalb, 111., 2001), chap. 2.Google Scholar

13. P. V. and Z. I. Bykov, “Istoricheskii sbornik posviashchennyi studencheskomu dvizheniiu v Mediko-Khirurgicheskoi (Voenno-Meditsinskoi) Akademii” (unpublished manuscript, Russian National Library, Manuscript Division, f. 118, d. 1299, 11. 18-18ob., 19ob. This view is corroborated in part by Daniel J. Brower's survey of several hundred Petersburg radicals, the majority of whom, beginning in the 1870s, attended either this elite academy or the Technological Institute; by statistical profiles of Chernyshev and other defendants in the Trial of the 193; and by the minutes of the so-called Special Conference— the ad hoc group of tsarist ministers convened in late March 1878 to devise special measures for combating revolution—whose members proposed a reduction in the medical school's enrollments because of its students’ leading role in revolutionary activities. See Brower, , Training the Nihilists: Education and Radicalism in Tsarist Russia (Ithaca, 1975), 72 Google Scholar; Obzor sotsial'no-revoliutsionnogo dvizheniia v Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1880), 230–31Google Scholar; and Zaionchkovsky, Peter A., The Russian Autocracy in Crisis, 1878–1882, trans, and ed. Hamburg, Gary M. (Gulf Breeze, Fla., 1979), 37).Google Scholar

14. On Chernyshev see GARF, f. 109,3d eksp. (1874), d. 144, pt. 125,11. 11–1 lob. and Bykov manuscript, 11. 19ob.–21; “Chto delaetsia na rodine? P. F. Chernyshev,” Vpered! 15 August 1876, 502–5; A. A. Shilov and M. G. Karnaukhova, comps., Deiateli revoliutsionnogo dvizheniia v Rossii: Bio-bibliograficheskii slovar', vol. 2, pt. 3, Semidesiatye gody (1933; reprint, Leipzig, 1974), cols. 1950-51; on his circle of Samartsy, see Protsess 193-kh (Moscow, 1906), 53–57; Bazilevskii, B. [Bogucharskii, V.], ed., Gosudarstvennye prestupleniia v Rossii v XlXveke (St. Petersburg, 1906), 3:74–77, 148–49, 203, 212, 214–15, 217Google Scholar; and Iakimova, A., “'Bol'shoi protsess', ili ‘protsess 193-kh': O revoliutsionnoi propagande v imperii,“ Katorga i ssylka, 1927, no. 37:14–15.Google Scholar

15. In Tsarizmpodsudomprogressivnoiohshchestvennosti 1866-1895gg. (Moscow, 1979), 139, 141, N. A. Troitskii makes a similar point, indicating that students kept up with the fate of populist prisoners by circulating transcripts from their trials; see Venturi, Franco, Roots of Revolution: A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth-Century Russia, trans. Haskell, Francis (Chicago, 1960)Google Scholar for a detailed account of the “To the People“ movement and Daniel Field's intriguing reassessment of the reasons for the movement's failure in “Peasants and Propagandists in the Russian Movement to the People of 1874,“ Journal of Modern History 59 (1987): 415–38; for a discussion of the student protests that began in 1874, see Aptekman, O. V., Iz istorii revoliutsionnogo narodnichestva: “Zemlia i Volia“ 70-kh godov (Rostov-na-Donu, n.d.), 62–63 Google Scholar. Aleksandr N. Bibergal', a contemporary of these student disturbances, explicitly links them with Chernyshev's funeral. Bibergal', “Vospominaniia,” 23.

16. Bykov, “Istoricheskii sbornik,” 1. 18ob.; “Chto delaetsia na rodine? P. F. Chernyshev,“ 502–3. In his memoirs, radical publicist Vladimir G. Korolenko says it was a prosecutor's admission that authorities had incarcerated the majority of populist youth simply in order to ferret out the “chief malefactors,” which drove youth to stage “unexpected and unprecedented” demonstrations like Chernyshev's funeral. Korolenko, V. G., Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 6 htoriia moego sovremennika (Moscow, 1954), 195 Google Scholar. Sergei Kravchinskii makes a similar point in Russia under the Tzars, trans. William Westfall (New York, 1885), 94.

17. “Chto delaetsia na rodine? Iz Peterburga,” 251–52. According to a contemporary of these events, the funeral was expressly intended as a protest against the tsarist government's brutal treatment of political prisoners. Chernavskii, M. M., “Demonstratsiia 6 dekabria 1876 goda: Po vospominaniiam uchastnika,” Krasnyi arkhiv, 1926, no. 28:10.Google Scholar

18. GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1874), d. 144, pt. 125,11. 45–46ob., 57–57ob., 65-68, 70-70ob.; see also, Bibergal', ‘Vospominaniia,” 24. Maria Wawrykowa claims that the funeral organizers were Chaikovtsy, members of the somewhat amorphous populist group, which included many leading figures of Russia's socialist movement. Venturi implied a similar connection. Wawrykowa, , “Kobiety polskie w rosyjskim ruchu rewolucyjnym w latach siedemdziesiatych XIX stulecia,” in Bazylow, Ludwik et al., eds., Z dziejów wspólpracy reivolucyjnej Polaków i Rosjan w drugiejpolowie XIX wieku, (Wroclaw, 1956), 271 Google Scholar, and Venturi, Roots of Revolution, 568.

19. GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1874), d. 144, pt. 125, 11. 1–lob., 50–51, 53, 54, 59, 63; Aptekman, Osip, Obshchestvo “Zemlia i Volia” 70-kh gg. po lichnym vospominaniiam, 2d rev. ed. (Petrograd, 1924), 185–86Google Scholar; Chernavskii, “Demonstratsiia,” 10; and S. Marusin [pseud. Sergei P. Shvetsov], “Iz proshlogo: Pervye ulichnye demonstratsii v Peterburge,” Narodnyi vestnik, 1906, no. 2:48–50.

20. GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1874), d. 144, pt. 125,11. 53–55. The Secret Section within the city prefect's office apparently issued burial permits for political prisoners. The prefect also served as chief of the municipal police and, in the case of the capital, typically maintained close ties with the head of the Third Department, or political police (in this instance, Nikolai Mezentsov). The latter also wore two hats, as it were, serving as chief of the gendarme corps, or military police, whose trusted officers were the Third Department's chief enforcers. See Sheiman, P., “Politsiia,” Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ (St. Petersburg, 1898), vol. 24 Google Scholar; “Gendarmes in Russia,” and Weissman, Neil B., “Police Reform in Tsarist Russia,“ in Wieczynski, Joseph L., ed., The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History (Gulf Breeze, Fla., 1979 and 1982), vols. 12 and 28Google Scholar. My thanks as well to Vivien E. Thiele for helping me clarify the relationship between these various police forces. These authorities typically dispatched municipal police, gendarmes, and undercover agents to accompany large funeral processions, especially if they expected them to attract “politically unreliable elements.” See Thomas Reed Trice, “The ‘Body Politic': Russian Funerals and the Politics of Representation, 1841–1921” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 1998). All three police forces participated in the investigation of the funerals of Chernyshev and Padlewski either as principals or investigators, generating brief memoranda, testimonies, and secret reports, which were retained in the archives of the Third Section.

21. The earliest (30 March) unsigned account of the funeral appearing in political police files attributed the funeral's size to “the large number of curiosity-seekers” attracted by the mourners’ unusually loud singing. GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1874), d. 144, pt. 125,1. lob. The quote appears in an unsigned note in police files. GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1874), d. 144, pt. 125,1. 15. Nabat's anonymous correspondent and Shvetsov confirm that mourners repeatedly told onlookers that they were burying a political prisoner, while Aptekman and Korolenko (whose brother participated in this event), recount that mourners explained “the meaning” of the demonstration to curious bystanders. See “Korrespondentsii,“ 8; Marusin, “Iz proshlogo,” 51; Aptekman, Obshchestvo, 185-86; Korolenko, htoriia moego sovremenniha, 195.

22. GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1874), d. 144, pt. 125, 11. 50–51, 68ob., 71; “Korrespondentsii,“ 8; “Chto delaetsia na rodine? Iz Peterburga,” 251; “Chto delaetsia na rodine? Pokhorony Pavla Chernysheva,” Vpered! 1 June 1876, 325.

23. GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1874), d. 144, pt. 125, 11. 2–2ob., 4, 55-55ob.; “Korrespondentsii,“ 8; “Chto delaetsia na rodine? Iz Peterburga,” 251; “Chto delaetsia na rodine? Pokhorony Pavla Chernysheva,” 325; Aptekman, Obshchestvo, 185–86; Bibergal', “Vospominaniia,“ 24; Bykov, “Istoricheskii sbornik,” 6; Chernavskii, “Demonstratsiia,” 10-11; Marusin, “Iz proshlogo,” 51; Korolenko, Istoriia moego sovremennika, 195.

24. GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1874), d. 144, pt. 125,11. 60ob.

25. Ibid., 11. 60, 63,71.

26. Marusin, “Iz proshlogo,” 50 (emphasis in the original).

27. When asked about this incident by police investigators, Stanislaw Belski, one of the alleged ringleaders of the demonstration, indicated that he and other mourners had merely adhered to Orthodox custom by observing a litany before the deceased's last “home.” GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1874), d. 144, pt. 125,1. 66ob.

28. Marusin, “Iz proshlogo,” 51.

29. Ibid., 52.

30. All quotes are from “Chto delaetsia na rodine? Pokhorony Pavla Chernysheva,“ 324, and Marusin, “Iz proshlogo,” 51. Police investigators were never even able to confirm that anyone gave a speech, much less what was said; but former student leader and political prisoner Petr P. Viktorov indicated that he had been the chief orator. See GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1874), d. 144, pt. 125, 1. 4; Viktorov, “Avtobiograficheskaia zapiska P. P. Viktorova,“ Katorga i ssylka, no. 1930, no. 66:206. In Marusin, “Iz proshlogo,” 52, Shvetsov mistakenly attributed the speech to Grigorii Machtet, an error he later corrected. Unsigned typescript on Chernyshev's funeral, Archives, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford, California, microfilm The Boris I. Nicolaevsky Collection, vol. 7, reel 233, series 212, box 272, item 15, pp. 1–2.

31. “Chto delaetsia na rodine? Pokhorony Pavla Chernysheva,” 324; quote is from Marusin, “Iz proshlogo,” 52.

32. GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1874), d. 144, pt. 125, 11. 4–4ob. (quote), 14–15, 48ob., 62–62ob., 67ob.–68, 71–71ob.; “Chto delaetsia na rodine? Pokhorony Pavla Chernysheva,“ 324; Marusin, “Iz proshlogo,” 52.

33. Barbara Alpern Engel argues that Orthodoxy “endowed humility and selfsacrifice with special meaning, providing women with considerable moral authority within the family.” Engel, , Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Cambridge, Eng., 1983), 4 Google Scholar. As Engel points out, many of the young women of the 1860s and 1870s, as well as their male peers, thought that it was imperative that they deploy these qualities and the moral authority that accompanied them on behalf of populism and other radical causes dedicated to serving society as a whole, finding surrogate families in Russia's revolutionary circles (107-8).

34. “Martirolog novogo vremeni” and “Chto delaetsia na rodine? Iz Peterburga,” 250 and 251–52, respectively.

35. “Chto delaetsia na rodine? Pokhorony Pavla Chernysheva,” 325.

36. “Chto delaetsia na rodine? P. F. Chernyshev,” 504–5.

37. GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1874), d. 144, ch. 125, 1. 7. The very same day an investigator for the political police compiled the first report on the funeral (11. l–4ob.), which was then distributed to the ministers of war and justice according to the tsar's instructions (11. 8–10ob.).

38. GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1874), d. 144, ch. 125, 11. 16–17ob. In an unsigned note of 2 April, police investigators were informed that students were indeed planning a customary memorial meal (pominki) at the grave on 9 April (11. 14ob.–15). A subsequent investigative report of 29 April indicated that all three women had been expelled by their school inspector (1. 71ob.).

39. GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1874), d. 144, ch. 125,11. 24–24ob.

40. Ibid., 11. 25–26ob.

41. Ibid., 1.28.

42. Ibid., 11. 74ob.–78ob.

43. Ibid., 11. 88–89ob., 90ob.–92ob. Under interrogation by police, Aleksei Stepanov, a second-year student at the Military Medical Academy, admitted that he and several other classmates had stopped off at a tavern on the way to the cemetery. Ibid., 1. 67ob.

44. Ibid., 11. 116–18.

45. The tsar's comment appears in the margins of Mezentsov's report. Ibid., 1. 117ob.

46. Ibid., 1. 72. In a report of 10 April, police investigators indicated that Belski, along with two of his classmates who also took part in the funeral, had participated in student protests at the Military Medical Academy a year and a half earlier. Ibid., 1. 35. Belski, in addition to his activities in St. Petersburg, organized a populist propaganda circle in Grodno that ceased functioning sometime in 1876. Snytko, T. G., Russkoe narodnichestvo i pol'skoe obshchestvennoe dvizhenie 1865–1881 gg. (Moscow, 1969), 184.Google Scholar

47. Chernavskii, “Demonstratsiia,” 11.

48. G. V. Plekhanov, Sochineniia, ed. D. Riazanov, 3d. ed. (Moscow-Leningrad, 1928), 3:150; Chernavskii, “Demonstratsiia,” 10.

49. Bibergal', “Vospominaniia,” 24–25; Chernavskii, “Demonstratsiia,” 12–16; Plekhanov, Sochineniia, 3:150–57; Baron, Samuel H., Plekhanov: The Father of Russian Marxism (Stanford, 1963), 18–19 Google Scholar; Pamela Sears McKinsey, “The Kazan Square Demonstration and the Conflict between Russian Workers and Intelligenty,” Slavic Review 44, no. 1 (Spring 1985): 88–89.

50. Lavrov, P. L., “Sotsialisticheskoe dvizhenie,” Katorga i ssylka, 1925, no. 14:56–58 Google Scholar. Professor Alphons Thun of Freiburg University expressed similar views about Chernyshev's funeral, stressing the element of surprise and police unpreparedness over socialist organization. Thun, Geschichte der Revolutiondren Bewegungen in Russland (1883; reprint, New York, n.d.), 128.

51. “Nekrologi. Anton Aleksandrovich Podlevskii,” Obshchina 5 (May 1878): 14–15; Shilov and Karnaukhova, comps., Deiateli revoliutsionnogo dvizheniia, vol. 2, pt. 3, Semidesiatye gody, 1208–9; Śliwowska, Wiktoria, “Udzial Polaków w revolucyjnym ruchu narodnickim lat siedemdziesiatych XIX wieku w Rosji,” in Bazylow, Ludwik et al., eds., Zdziejów ivspólpracy rewolucyjnej Polakow i Rosjan w drugiej potowie XIX wieku (Wroclaw, 1956), 230 Google Scholar. Padlewski's final stay in the hospital is recounted by a hospital employee in Chertkov, V. G., Dezhurstvo v voennykhgospitaliakh: Stranitsa iz vospominaniiakh (Moscow, 1917), 31.Google Scholar

52. GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1878), d. 133 (“Delo ob antipravitel'stvennoi demonstratsii na pokhoronakh A. A. Podlevskogo …“), 11. 1–lob., 21–22.

53. Ibid., 11. 2ob.–3ob., 5–5ob., 8, 25–27ob., 35.

54. Ibid., 11. 3ob., 8–8ob.

55. Ibid., 11. 3ob., 8ob.; “Dve smerty,” Obshchina 3–4 (March-April 1878): 24; “Pokhorony A. A. Podlevskogo v Peterburge,” Nachalo 1 (March 1878), reprinted in Bazilevskii, B. [Bogucharskii, V.], ed., Revoliutsionnaia zhurnalistika semidesiatykh godov (Rostovna-Donu, n.d.), 23–24 Google Scholar. Nachalo's reporter claimed that on at least four previous occasions police had buried the bodies of political prisoners at night without notifying their next of kin. Writing of Padlewski's funeral years later, Petr Lavrov claimed that, as a result of the Chernyshev incident, tsarist officials had issued an order in April 1877 requiring that all political prisoners dying in hospitals be buried at night. Lavrov, “Sotsialisticheskoe dvizhenie,“ 58. Most sources allude to mourners’ suspicion that police planned such a ruse in this instance, but none went so far as funeral participants M. Popov and I. I. Popov, who not only claimed that Padlewski had died at Villie Clinic, but also that political police, upon learning of a student plan to stage a “demonstrational funeral,” had transferred his corpse to the hospital in preparation for a secret burial. See M. Popov, “Iz moego revoliutsionnogo proshlogo: Ocherk vtoroi (1878–1879 gg.),” Byloe 7 (July 1907): 242–43, and I. I. Popov, Minuvshee i perezhitoe: Vospominaniia za 50 let, pt. 1, Detstvo i gody bor'by (Leningrad, 1924), 41–42.

56. GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1878), d. 133,1. 29.

57. Ibid., 11. 3ob., 8ob.; “Pokhorony A. A. Podlevskogo v Peterburge,” 24; “Dve smerty” and “Pokhorony Podlevskogo,” Obshchina 3-4 (March-April 1878): 24 and 25, respectively.

58. GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1878), d. 133,11. 5ob., 8ob.; “Dve smerty” and “Pokhorony Podlevskogo,” 24 and 25, respectively; “Nekrologi. Anton Aleksandrovich Podlevskii,” 15; “Pokhorony A. A. Podlevskogo v Peterburge,” 24; “Rossiia,” Severnyi vestnik, 25 February 1878, 2; Tikhomirov, Lev, Nachala i kontsy: Liberaly i terroristy (Moscow, 1890), 96 Google Scholar. The official police report on the funeral offered a different account of these events, indicating that police had intentionally refrained from accosting the mourners for fear that the latter would toss the coffin on the ground “in order to stir up false rumors and criticisms against the authorities.” GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1878), d. 133,11. 38–38ob.

59. “Pokhorony A. A. Podlevskogo v Peterburge,” 24. The reporter was Nikolai Bukh, who apparently did not witness this incident firsthand. In his memoirs he says that he first spotted the procession on Kirochnaia Street, at which point he noted the militant atmosphere but saw no police. See G. [pseud. Bukh, Nikolai K.], Vospominaniia (Moscow, 1928), 161 Google Scholar. Severnyi vestnik offered a different version of this particular event, indicating that police told bystanders the youth had seized the corpse illegally. “Rossiia,” Severnyi vestnik, 25 February 1878, 2.

60. “Nekrologi. Anton Aleksandrovich Podlevskii,” 15.

61. GARF,f. 109, 3d eksp. (1878),d. 133,11. 3ob., 6,9. Quote is from “Pokhorony A. A. Podlevskogo v Peterburge,” 24; in their memoirs, funeral participant 1.1. Popov and Polish writer Waclaw Sieroszewski both claim that at this point Padlewski's mourners sang the revolutionary dirge composed from Grigorii Machtet's 1876 poem in honor of Chernyshev. I. I. Popov, Detstvo i gody bor'by, 42; Waclaw Sieroszewski, Pamietniki Wspomienia, vol. 16 of Ihieta (Kraków, 1959), 214.

62. GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1878), d. 133,1. 9.

63. Participants M. Popov and I. I. Popov argued that Padlewski had at one time been held at the House of Preliminary Detention, an assertion that is supported by the profile of Padlewskii in Shilov and Karnaukhova. Other sources suggest otherwise, however, including the police's own report, which indicates that the young man was held at gendarme stall headquarters until he was transferred to the hospital. M. Popov, “Iz moego,” 242; I. I. Popov, Detstvo i gody bor'by, 38; Shilov and Karnaukhova, comps., Deiateli revoliutsionnogo dvizheniia, vol. 2, pt. 3, Semidesiatyegody, 1208–9; and GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1878), d. 133,1.4.

64. GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1878), d. 133,11. 3ob.–4, 6–6ob., 9–9ob., 38ob.; quote is from “Pokhorony Podlevskogo,” 25; “Pokhorony A. A. Podlevskogo v Peterburge,” 24. “Sviatyi bozhe/Świety Boże,” a liturgical supplication of early Christian origin common to Orthodox and Catholic traditions, was often sung by Poles “in periods of natural disaster and national adversity.” Wietka Internetowa Encyklopedia Multimedialna, URL: http://www.encyklopedia.pl/wiem/00f561.htmland/00al20.html; last consulted 4 November 2000.

65. Quote is from the account of Padlewski's funeral, which appeared under the title “Rossiia” in the newspaper Severnyi vestnik, 25 February 1878, 2.

66. See Jelavich, Barbara, A Century of Russian Foreign Policy, 1814–1914 (Philadelphia, 1964), 172–81Google Scholar, and McReynolds, Louise, The Netvs under Russia's Old Regime: The Development of a Mass-Circulation Press (Princeton, 1991), 81–87.Google Scholar

67. See Venturi, Roots of Revolution, chap. 20. On Nekrasov's funeral, see Golos, 31 December 1877, 2; “Rossiia,” Severnyi vestnik, 1 January 1878, 3; Na pamiat’ Nicolae Alekseeviche Nekrasove (St. Petersburg, 1878); and Plekhanov, G. V., “Pokhorony N. A. Nekrasova,” in Bel'chikov, N. F., ed., Iskusstvo i literatura (Moscow, 1948), 642–44Google Scholar. For an account of the funeral protest by Cartridge Factory workers, see Plekhanov, Sochineniia, 3:157–60. Lev Tikhomirov explicitly linked Padlewski's funeral with many of these events, arguing that youth flocked to his funeral bier, “not because the deceased was well known, but because it was a pretext for a demonstration.” Tikhomirov, Nachala i kontsy, 99. Wiktoria Śliwowska appears to privilege “the Zasulich affair,” suggesting that the funeral was another “antigovernment demonstration against the tormenting of prisoners.” Śliwowska, “Udzial Polaków,“ 234.

68. M. Popov, “Iz moego,” 241.

69. See the excellent discussion of tsarist language policies among Poles in Bohdan Winiarski, Ustrój polityczny ziem Polskich w XIX wieku (Poznań, 1923), which includes a reference to the tsarist government's later (1887) ban on the singing of funeral dirges in Polish (173), and Paul Robert Magocsi's discussion of the highly restrictive language policies imposed on Ukrainians under the Valuev decree (July 1862) and Ems ukaz (May 1876) in A History of Ukraine (Toronto, 1996), 368–71, 376–77.

70. Liturgical services in general, and religious music in particular, have long been part of a Polish national tradition that stresses suffering and martyrdom. See Chrostowski, Waldemar, “The Suffering, Chosenness and Mission of the Polish Nation,” Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe 11, no. 4 (1991): 6 Google Scholar; Orekhov, A. M., ed., Obshchestvennoe dvizhenie na pol'skikh zemliakh: Osnovnye ideinye techeniia i politicheskie. parlii v 1864–1914 gg. (Moscow, 1988), 19–23 Google Scholar; andjan Prosnak, “Powstanie Styczniowe v muzyce 1863–1963,“ Muzyka 8, nos. 1–2 [28–29] (1963): 127–69.

71. “Pokhorony Podlevskogo,” 25; “Trupokrady,” Obshchee delo 10 (April 1878): 16. This emphasis on the student corporation (studenchestvo) is not surprising, given Morrissey's astute analysis of how it served as a “surrogate family” for youth who came to the capital for an education. Morrissey, Heralds of Revolution, 24. Elena Nekrasova, a student of the Women's Medical Courses (and probable participant in Padlewski's funeral) may have put it best, when she stated in her memoirs that she and other women were generally treated as members of one, “big academic family.” E. Nekrasova, “Zhenskie vrachebnye kursy v Peterburge,“ Vestnik Evropy 17, no. 12 (December 1882): 828–29. For similar comments regarding the role of revolutionary circles in young women's lives, see Engel, Mothers and Daughters.

72. “Nekrologi. Anton Aleksandrovich Podlevskii,” 15; “Trupokrady,” 16. These newspaper accounts of Padlewski's family history are born out by materials compiled on his younger brother and fellow socialist activist, Stanislaw (1857–1891). See “Padlewski, Stanislaw,” Polski Slownik Biograficzny (Wroclaw, 1935).

73. GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1878), d. 133,1. 37.

74. Ibid.,11. 6–6ob.

75. Ibid., 11. 48–50. As Nekrasova noted in her short history of the Women's Medical Courses, she and other participants in this program were accustomed to having their moral character questioned by family, friends, and foes, and thus became all the more determined to prove their detractors wrong. Nekrasova, “Zhenskie vrachebnye kursy,” 827–32, 840.

76. It was specifically recommended that Nikoforov be exiled to his native Tambov province to live with his mother. GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1878), d. 133, 11. 14–15ob. Both Rakuza and Voskresenskaia were later sentenced to administrative exile for participating in other revolutionary activities. See Shilov and Karnaukhova, comps., Deiateli revoliutsionnogo dvizheniia, vol. 2, pt. 3, Semidesiatye gody, 1307–08, and vol. 3, pt. 1, Vosmidesialye gody, 668–69, respectively.

77. GARF, f. 109, 3d eksp. (1878), d. 133,11. 46–46ob.

78. Heryng, Zygmunt, “W zaraniu socjalizmu polskiego,” Niepodlegtošč 3, no. 1 [5] (1931): 59–60.Google Scholar