Dmitrii Karakozov

Born Oct. 23 (Nov. 4), 1840, in the village of Zhmakino, Serdobskii District, Saratov Province, present-day Penza Oblast; died Sept. 3 (15), 1866, in St. Petersburg. Participant in the Russian revolutionary movement, member of a secret revolutionary society in Moscow.

Karakozov, whose family belonged to the lower dvorianstvo (nobility), studied at the University of Kazan (from 1861) and Moscow University (from 1864). In early 1866 he became a member of the revolutionary Ishutin Circle, which had been founded by his first cousin N. A. Ishutin in Moscow in 1863. Karakozov arrived in St. Petersburg in the spring of 1866 with the intention of assassinating the tsar. He distributed handwritten copies of his proclamation “To Our Worker Friends,” summoning the people to revolution. On Apr. 4, 1866, Karakozov shot at Emperor Alexander II at the gates of the Summer Garden. Sentenced to death by the Supreme Criminal Court, he was hanged at Smolensk Field in St. Petersburg.