Nikolai Shchedrin

Born 1858 in Petropavlovsk, in what is now the Kazakh SSR; died Jan. 10, 1919, in Kazan. Russian revolutionary Narodnik (Populist).

The son of a dvorianin (nobleman), Shchedrin studied at the Omsk Military Gymnasium. In 1876 he joined the organization Land and Liberty in St. Petersburg; after it split in 1879, he became a member of the Black Partition. In the spring of 1880 he and E. N. Koval’skaia organized the Southern Russian Workers’ Union in Kiev. Schedrin wrote the union’s program and many proclamations.

In October 1880, Shchedrin was arrested. On May 29, 1881, the Kiev Military District Court sentenced him to death, but the sentence was commuted to life at hard labor. He served the first part of his sentence at the Kara Penal Colony, where he was chained to a wheelbarrow. In 1882 he was transferred to the Aleksei Ravelin, and in 1884, to Shlissel’burg Fortress; soon after his arrival at the fortress he became mentally ill. In 1896, Shchedrin was transferred to the Kazan Psychiatric Hospital, where he remained until his death.