Nikolai Andreyev

Nikolai Andrejew (* 1890 in Odessa ; † 1919 ) was a Russian contract killer .

Murder of Count von Mirbach-Harff

After the Peace of Brest-Litowsk , Wilhelm Graf von Mirbach-Harff became counselor in Moscow in 1918. As an assassination shooter, together with his accomplice Jakow Bljumkin , the Left Social Revolutionaries ' central committee commissioned Count von Mirbach-Harff, the extraordinary envoy and authorized minister of the German Reich in Soviet Russia, to assassinate the Lenin government in Brest -Litovsk signed peace treaty with the German Reich to sabotage.

The opening of the 5th All-Russian Congress of Soviets in the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow was planned as the time of the murder . On the afternoon of July 6, 1918, Bljumkin drove with Andreyev, who was working as a photographer in his department, to the building of the German embassy in Moscow's Deneschny pereulok No. 5. Bljumkin gained entry with the help of a fictional story about a nephew of the ambassador who is in danger. Von Mirbach welcomed visitors who identified themselves as Cheka men.

Right at the beginning of the brief meeting, Bljumkin pulled the revolver and fired three shots: Mirbach, the Legation Councilor Kurt Riezler , who was also present, and the interpreter Leonhard Müller missed the target three times. Mirbach wanted to flee and Andrejew threw an explosive device that did not detonate. Andrejew shot Mirbach and hit him fatally. Bljumkin took the device and threw it again. The murderers jumped out through the now shattered window and crossed the garden to their car. The murder of the German ambassador was the signal for the uprising of the Left Social Revolutionaries , which was quickly suppressed by the Bolsheviks . The entire faction of the Left Social Revolutionaries was arrested in the Bolshoi Theater, the party was banned and persecuted.

Bljumkin and Andreyev escaped after the fact, but were sentenced in absentia to imprisonment with three years of forced labor. Andreev died of typhus in 1919 .

Web links

• Boris Chavkin : The murder of Count Mirbach. Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt