• DOI:10.1111/hisn.12503
• Corpus ID: 148924679

Dark Tourism and the Death of Russian Emperor Alexander II, 1881–1891

@article{Rowley2017DarkTA,
  title={Dark Tourism and the Death of Russian Emperor Alexander II, 1881–1891},
  author={Alison Rowley},
  journal={The Historian},
  year={2017},
  volume={79},
  pages={229 - 255}
}

• Alison Rowley
• Published 1 June 2017
• History
• The Historian

ON THE MORNING of 1 March 1881, Russian Emperor Alexander II went to church in St. Petersburg, as he had done most Sundays during his life. At 12:45, after hugging his young second wife and their children goodbye, he left for the Mikhailovsky Riding School where he was due to watch the Imperial Cavalry exercise. Forty minutes later, the emperor stopped in to pay a call on his cousin Grand Duchess Ekaterina Mikhailovna (1827–94), who lived nearby. After their chat, he stepped into his carriage for the ride back to the Winter Palace; he did not know that his route was lined with a handful of people— members of a group called People’s Will (Narodnaia Volia)— intent on killing him. It was Nikolai Rysakov (1861–81) who threw the first bomb under the wheels of his carriage. While the ensuing explosion damaged the vehicle, Alexander II emerged dazed but unscathed. People standing on the street as he passed by, as well as some of his Cossack guards, did not fare so well, and the Emperor stopped to offer comfort to the victims and to survey for himself the devastation wrought by the bomber. As he stood on the street, Ignaty Grinevitsky (1856–81) approached and detonated a second bomb at his feet. When the smoke cleared, Grinevitsky was dead and the emperor lay gravely wounded in the snow with his legs shattered. The men charged with ensuring his security did not know what to do. As one historian notes, if “they had taken him to the military hospital nearby, they might have stopped the bleeding and saved his