Nikolai Sablin

Born Feb. 10(22), 1849, in Vologda; died Mar. 2 (14), 1881, in St. Petersburg. Russian revolutionary; Narodnik (Populist).

The son of a member of the dvorianstvo (nobility or gentry), Sablin studied at Moscow University. He belonged to the Moscow group of the Chaikovskii circle and was an adherent of the “going to the people” movement. In November 1874 he emigrated; abroad, he became a member of the First International and edited the newspaper Rabotnik. Upon returning to Russia, he was arrested on Mar. 12, 1875. He was one of the defendants in the Trial of the 193 (1877–78). In 1879 he became a member of the People’s Will and an agent of the organization’s executive committee. He was also on the editorial staff of the newspaper Rabochaia gazeta. Sablin maintained a secret apartment used by the executive committee. Sablin was a party to attempts on the tsar’s life. He shot himself as he was being arrested.

Sablin was a popular poet in the revolutionary circles of the 1870’s and 1880’s. A number of his poems were published in the collection Free Russian Poetry of the Second Half of the 19th Century (Leningrad, 1959).