Year Thirteen,
If you click here you will get to an article from the New York Times about Sophia Perovskaya – one of the five members of the People’s Will who assassinated Alexander II, and changed the direction of the Tsarist government.
“The first woman to be executed for a political crime in Russia, Perovskaya is credited with pushing the empire down the road to revolution and was later given the mantle of martyrdom. Tolstoy called her an “ideological Joan of Arc.”
Indeed, the execution of “Russia’s first female terrorist” matched the drama of the assassination. On April 15, she and her fellow militants were driven through the streets of St. Petersburg in tumbrels, dressed in black robes, with their hands tied behind them and black placards reading “Czaricide” hung around their necks. The cortege, under military escort, moved to the beat of drums through the throngs lining the streets.“
Mr Kydd.
