Ivan Platonowitsch Kalyayev

Ivan Kalyayev shortly after the attack he carried out

Ivan Kalyayev ( Russ. : Иван Платонович Каляев * June 24 ^jul. / 6. July  1877 ^greg. In Warsaw , Congress Poland , † May 10 ^jul. / 23. May  1905 ^greg. In Schlüsselburg ) was a Russian poet, Terrorist and member of the Social Revolutionaries . Kaljajew committed an assassination attempt on the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich Romanov in 1905 and was executed for it .

Life

Kaljajew was born in Warsaw in 1877 as the son of a police inspector. From 1897 onwards he attended St. Petersburg University , but quickly became involved in the first student protests. For this he was briefly imprisoned, then expelled from the university and then exiled to Yekaterinoslav . His subsequent attempt to re-enroll at the university was rejected due to his political activities. As a result, Kalyayev joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party at the age of 24, but he quickly broke with it because, in his opinion, the party did not follow its words with deeds. He later moved to Lemberg (then Austria-Hungary ), where he continued his education at the local university . He sought contact with revolutionaries who had emigrated from Russia. Shortly afterwards, Kalyayev was arrested in Berlin because he was in possession of revolutionary literature intended for Russia. The German government transferred him to Russia, where he was returned to prison. After a short stay in Warsaw prison, he was exiled to Yaroslavl .

There he made friends with the ideas of the Social Revolutionaries and got to know the writers Boris Savinkov and Alexei Remisow . Kalyayev decided to devote his life to completely revolutionary actions. He was convinced that terror was the only way to implement his political ideas. Kalyayev met Yevno Asef and persuaded him to carry out assassinations.

Assassination attempt on the grand duke

Kaljajew was initially involved in the assassination attempt on Interior Minister Vyacheslav von Plehwe . The next victim was to be Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich Romanov .

The assassination attempt was planned for February 15, 1905. The Grand Duke wanted to attend a performance at the Bolshoi Theater that day . Kalyayev was supposed to drop a bomb in the carriage when she neared the theater. Shortly before Kaljajew wanted to drop the bomb, he noticed that the Grand Duke's wife ( Elisabeth von Hessen-Darmstadt ) and the Grand Duke's young nephews were also sitting in the carriage. Kalyayev broke off the attack.

Two days later he murdered the Grand Duke and his coachman as their coach approached the Moscow Kremlin . Kalyayev was arrested immediately. A few days after the assassination, he was visited in prison by the Grand Duchess, the widow of his victim. She wanted to make him regret what he had done, but Kalyayev refused. In court he announced:

“I am not a defendant, I am your prisoner. We are two warring parties. You are representatives of the imperial government, the hired servants of capital and violence. I am a popular avenger, socialist and revolutionary. "

- Ivan Kalyayev

Kaljajew was sentenced to death and in the May 23, 1905 Schlüsselburg hanged .

The assassination attempt and, above all, Kalyayev's hesitation in the first attempt later inspired Albert Camus to write his work “ The Righteous ” ( Les Justes , 1949). On the basis of this case, he dealt with the problem of politically motivated assassinations , the sense of which Camus questions but does not completely deny.

literature

• Boris Savinkov: Memories of a Terrorist . New edition: Greno Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Nördlingen 1985

Web links

Commons : Ivan Kalyayev  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Dietrich Geyer: The bombs of the martyrs . In: DIE ZEIT 38/2004 (September 9, 2004)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Psychology of horror , by Alexander Schrepfer-Proskurjakov