Kletochnikov, Nikolai

Born Oct. 20 (Nov. 1), 1846, in Penza; died July 13 (25), 1883. Russian revolutionary figure of the 19th century. Populist.

Kletochnikov was from a noble family. He studied at Moscow University (1863–64), the University of St. Petersburg (1864–65), and the Medical Surgery Academy (1877). Following the instructions of Land and Liberty, he entered the service of the Third Section in January 1879. After Land and Liberty broke up in August 1879, he became an agent for the executive committee of People’s Will, to which he reported almost daily with information about the actions of the police. Kletochnikov was arrested in January 1881 in St. Petersburg. He was sentenced to death at the “trial of the twenty” in 1882. This was commuted to a life sentence at hard labor in the Aleksei Ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress, where he died after a hunger strike.