Mikhail Beideman

Born Oct. 10(22), 1839; died Dec. 5 (17), 1887. Russian revolutionary. Descended from members of the dvorianstvo (nobility or gentry) of Bessarabia Province.

Beideman graduated from the Konstantinov Military Academy in St. Petersburg in 1860. In the same year he emigrated to Western Europe. In Italy he fought in Garibaldi’s units. In London he worked (under the name of Dubrovin) as a typesetter in A. I. Herzen’s printing plant. In July 1861, when he heard about the implementation of the Peasant Reform of 1861 and the political events related to it, he decided to return to Russia. At the border he was arrested in Uleåborg. During the search they found on Beideman a forged manifesto, which appealed, in the name of a fictitious Konstantin I, to the people to destroy autocracy and promised land and self-government to the people. Upon an order of Alexander II, he was kept without trial in solitary confinement at the Aleksei ravelin for 20 years. In 1881 he was transferred to an insane asylum in Kazan, where he died. Beideman’s life is described in the novel Clothed With a Stone by O. Forsh.