Andrei Afanassjewitsch Krassowski

Andrei Krassowski with his wife

Andrei Afanassjevitch Krasovsky ( Russian Андрей Афанасьевич Красовский , Ukrainian Андрій Опанасович Красовський Andrij Opanassowytsch Krassowskyj * April 22 ^jul. / 4. May  1822 ^greg. In Kiev , Kiev Governorate , Russian Empire ; † June 10 ^jul. / 22. June  1868 ^greg. in Transbaikalia , Russian Empire) was a lieutenant colonel in the Imperial Russian Army and a Ukrainian revolutionary democrat.

Life

Andrei Krassowski was born in Kiev as the son of the Ukrainian Cossack general of the Russian army Afanassi Ivanovich Krassowski . Like his father, he entered the military and graduated from the page corps in Saint Petersburg in 1840 . In the 1850s he took part in the Crimean War, where he took part in the Danube campaign as commander of a hussar squadron in 1853 and was seriously wounded in a battle near what is now the Romanian city ​​of Caracal . During fighting in the Caucasus , he again suffered injuries, which he had treated in Kiev. Thereafter Krassovsky served in the Alexandrian Hussar Regiment in Saint Petersburg.

In 1859 he traveled abroad, where he made connections with Polish and Russian emigrants, met Giuseppe Garibaldi and made contact with Alexander Herzen , whose publications of the Free Russian Press he distributed among opposition-minded people in Russia. In addition to banned literature, Krassowski circulated handwritten lists of anti-autocratic poems by Taras Shevchenko . In the fall of 1859 he was assigned to the page corps in Saint Petersburg. He met Taras Shevchenko in Petersburg, which at that time became the center of Ukrainian activity, held talks with Pantelejmon Kulisch , Nikolai Chernyshevsky , Nikolai Dobroljubow , and visited the secret circle around Pavel Makalinsky ( Павел Васильевич Макалич 1834–1899).

From the fall of 1861 he taught, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, at the Vladimir Cadet Corps in Kiev. Krassowski became a member of the revolutionary secret society Zemlya i volja ( Land and Freedom ) and wrote Ukrainian poems, which he wrote under the pseudonym “Дан. Лихий “( Dan. Lychyj ) published. He also took part in ethnographic expeditions in the Kiev governorate and visited Shevchenko's tomb in Kaniw and Warfolomij Shevchenko ( Варфоломій Григорович Шевченко ; 1821-1892) in Korsun , where he intended to buy a house. In the spring / summer of 1862 Krassowski agitated among the peasants in Korsun to induce a general revolt. A reserve battalion of the Zhytomyr Infantry Regiment was deployed to suppress the riots . On the morning of June 17, Krassowski distributed leaflets among the soldiers calling on them not to intervene against the farmers. The next day, his home was searched and incriminating material was found.

On June 18th ^jul. / June 30,  1862 ^greg. He was arrested near Kiev and sentenced to death and deprived of his title of nobility for propaganda among soldiers and peasants in August of the same year. The sentence was reduced to 12 years of forced labor based on a decision by the Emperor Alexander II , who was personally known to Krassowski , which he initially performed in Petrowski Sawod in Transbaikalia in south-east Siberia . Together with Nikolai Tschernyschewski they spent 1867 to Alexandrowski Sawod . From November 1867 he was allowed to live there under police supervision in a private apartment outside the prison, given his poor health. On May 28, 1868, he fled to China, leaving a note in which he wrote that he did not want to submit to Russia "in the name of freedom, equality and holy brotherhood" and intended to continue his fight against political tyranny to continue from abroad . After losing his map on the ride, he took his own life due to his hopeless situation. A few days later his body was found and on June 25th the body was telegraphed to Saint Petersburg, whereupon Emperor Alexander II insisted on another identification. This confirmed that the dead man was Andrei Krassowski, whose last words, written in blood, were "Better to die than fall alive into the hands of the enemy" .

Web links

• Entry to Andrej Krassowskyj in The leaders of the revolutionary movement in Russia Bio-bibliographical Dictionary ( "Деятели революционного движения в России: Био-библиографический словарь: От предшественников декабристов до падения царизма" ) page 1944 (Russian)
• Andrij Krassowskyj in the Small Lexicon of the History of Ukraine (Ukrainian)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry on Andrij Krassowskyj in the Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia ; accessed on December 27, 2018 (Ukrainian)
2. ^ Entry on the Krassovsky family in the Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine ; accessed on December 27, 2018 (Ukrainian)
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Entry on Andrij Krassowskyj in the Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine ; accessed on December 27, 2018 (Ukrainian)
4. ↑ ^{a b c} The history of the Krassowski family from the middle of the 17th to the second half of the 19th century ; Svetlana Potapenko, Mykola Mykhailychenko; in historians.in.ua of October 8, 2013; accessed on December 27, 2018 (Ukrainian)