Golovinskii, Vasilii
Golovinskii, Vasilii Andreevich
Born in 1829: year of death unknown. Russian public figure. Member of the Petrashevskii circle.
Golovinskii served in the Senate. He frequented the S. F. Durov circle and, in April 1849, the Friday meetings at M. V. Petrashevskii’s, where he argued for the immediate emancipation of the peasantry by means of a popular uprising. He was sentenced to be shot in the Petrashevskii affair, but the sentence was commuted to service as a soldier in the Orenburg Corps. In 1857, having reached the rank of noncommissioned officer, he went into retirement. Golovinskii struggled against the local serfowners in Simbirsk during the period of the preparation of the peasant reform of 1861. He practiced law. was active in peasant affairs, and was often subjected to administrative persecution and exile. Police surveillance of Golovinskii was ended in 1874.