Trial of the 193

The Trial of the 193 was a series of criminal trials held in Russia in 1877-1878 under the rule of Tsar Alexander II. The defendants were 193 socialist students and other “revolutionaries” charged with populist “unrest” and propaganda against the Russian Empire. The Trial of the 193 was the largest political trial in the history of Tsarist Russia.[1] It coincided with a phase in the Russo-Turkish War when the Russian army was stalled outside Pleven, killing hopes of a swift victory and so undermining support for the government, and there was widespread disgust at the order given by Governor of St Petersburg, General Trepov to flog an imprisoned student, Arkhip Bogolyubov. The Tsar's brother, Grand Duke Konstantin advised postponing the trial, but the Minister for Justice, Count Konstantin Pahlen, ignored his advice.[2]

With the help of a team of skillful defence lawyers, the trial ended in mass acquittals, with only a small percentage being punished with sentences of hard labor or prison,;[3] yet the number of accused and investigated who either "committed suicide, or went mad, or died" during the 4-year period of the investigations and the trial itself rose to 75 by its end;[4] this consequently led to an increase in violent militancy among formerly peaceful revolutionaries.[5]

  1. ^ Billington, James H., Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of Revolutionary Faith,(Transaction Publishers, 1999) p.405
  2. ^ Venturi, Franco (1983). Roots of Revolution, A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth-Century Russia. Chicago: Chicago U.P. pp. 588–89. ISBN 0-226-85270-9.
  3. ^ Hingley, Ronald, Nihilists: Russian Radicals and Revolutionaries in the Reign of Alexander II 1855-81 (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967) p.79
  4. ^ Stepniak, Sergey (1883). Underground Russia: Revolutionary Profiles and Sketches From Life. Internet Archive: Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 33. OCLC 45467155.
  5. ^ Hingley, Ronald, p.79