Blood and Rage_ A Cultural History of Terrorism - Michael Burleigh [39]
II BOLSHEVIKS AND BANDITS
Whereas in the 1870s and 1880s the People’s Will had endeavoured to confine its murderous activities to specific highly placed individuals, its successors indiscriminately attacked anyone connected with the state, or indeed private citizens and their families. Humble constables patrolling the streets were either gunned down or had sulphuric acid thrown in their faces. Innocent civilians who got in the way were killed, regardless of age or gender. As government officials took increased security measures, from installing triple locks and peepholes on doors to hiring thuggish bodyguards or wearing undergarments of chain mail, so terrorists sought them out in such public places as church services or while in transit. Anarchist terrorists, who were especially vicious, targeted entire classes of people, hurling bombs into churches, restaurants, synagogues and theatres, or simply shot anyone whose white gloves signified the bourgeoisie’s mark of Cain. The Bolsheviks similarly used the generic libel that any alleged opponent belonged to the Black Hundreds - that is, what the left claimed was Russia’s proto-fascist movement - as when they threw three bombs into a shipyard workers’ tavern, on the grounds that some of the workers supported the monarchist Union of the Russian People. Those who survived these explosions were shot as they sought to flee outside.
In a further shocking development, the new-wave terrorists resorted to suicide bombings, in addition to attacks that were already a subliminal form of killing oneself. In 1904 terrorists connected to anarchist groups walked into gendarme or secret police buildings and blew themselves up. On 12 August 1906, three terrorists dressed as gendarmes tried to enter prime minister Stolypin’s villa on an island near St Petersburg. The minister’s guards held them in an antechamber, where, shouting ‘Long live freedom, long live anarchy!’, they blew themselves up with sixteen-pound bombs. The explosion was so powerful that it tore the façade off the villa, burying the minister’s horse and carriage. There were human body parts and blood everywhere. Twenty-seven people were killed and thirty-three injured, including many elderly people, women and Stolypin’s four-year-old son and fourteen-year-old daughter. The minister himself suffered no greater indignity than having the inkwell fly from his desk, splashing ink all over his face and shirt front. In 1908 nine members of a terrorist group were arrested for plotting a suicide attack on the justice minister. One of their number was kitted out as a human bomb, the idea being that he would hurl himself beneath the minister’s carriage, simultaneously detonating the bomb. When the police tried to arrest this Conradian figure, he warned: ‘Be careful. I am wrapped around with dynamite. If I blow up, the entire street will be destroyed.’ Seven of this group were sentenced to death and hanged.
In addition to acts of murder, the new terrorists of the 1900s carried out acts of extortion, hostage-seizures and armed robbery, the latter leading to gunfights on city streets that resembled scenes from a Western set amid snow. A man of means would receive a note scrawled: ‘The Worker’s Organisation of the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries in Belostok requires you to contribute immediately… seventy-five rubles… The Organisation warns you that if you fail to give the above-stated sum, it will resort to severe measures against you, transferring your case to the Combat Detachment.’ In the Caucasus where Armenian and Georgian terrorists were notoriously