Nikolay Mezentsov

Nikolay Vladimirovich Mezentsov (Russian: Николай Владимирович Мезенцов; April 4(23) OS(NS), 1827 – August 4(16) OS(NS), 1878) was a Russian statesman, chief of police, adjutant general (1871), and member of the State Council of Imperial Russia (1877), assassinated for having advocated harsh punishment against the constitutional movement.

General Mezentsov Nikolay Vladimirovich

Military Career

Mezentsov began his military career in 1845. He participated in the Crimean War of 1853-1856. In 1864, he was appointed Chief of Staff of the Gendarmery Corps; in 1874, Deputy Chief of Gendarmery; and finally, in 1876, Chief of Gendarmery and Chief of the "Third Department" (Третье отделение; Political Surveillance and Investigations Department) of His Imperial Highness's Personal Chancellery.

Politics and Assassination

Mezentsov was active during the famous Trial of the 193, in which university students were threatened with treason charges for having committed "disobedience". Alexander the Second, considered by some to have been an enlightened monarch, gave light sentences, until Mezentsov, then Chief of State Police, suggested that they should be heavy sentences. The emporer changed the sentences to heavier ones, and in response, Mezentsov was assassinated in 1878 by Sergey Kravchinsky[1], a member of the revolutionary group Land and Liberty.[2][3]

gollark: It's ridiculous to complain that he doesn't know much about rocketry and stuff himself and (THE HORROR) hired competent people who do, and managed to improve the state of space travel a lot.
gollark: I'm not sure what you mean by "apartheid profiting", but generally that seems pretty stupid.
gollark: Unless they have a warrant, you can apparently just tell them to go away and they can't do anything except try and get one based on seeing TV through your windows or something.
gollark: But the enforcement of it is even weirder than that:- there are "TV detector vans". The BBC refuses to explain how they actually work in much detail. With modern TVs I don't think this is actually possible, and they probably can't detect iPlayer use, unless you're stupid enough to sign up with your postcode (they started requiring accounts some years ago).- enforcement is apparently done by some organization with almost no actual legal power (they can visit you and complain, but not *do* anything without a search warrant, which is hard to get)- so they make up for it by sending threatening and misleading letters to try and get people to pay money
gollark: - it funds the BBC, but you have to pay it if you watch *any* live TV, or watch BBC content online- it's per property, not per person, so if you have a license, and go somewhere without a license, and watch TV on some of your stuff, you are breaking the law (unless your thing is running entirely on battery power and not mains-connected?)- it costs about twice as much as online subscription service things- there are still black and white licenses which cost a third of the price

References
  1. Saunders, David (May 2005). "Sergey Mikhailovich Kravchinsky (1851–1895)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online edition. Oxford University Press
  2. Waller, Sally (2015). Tsarist and Communist Russia 1855-1964. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 47. ISBN 978-0-19-835467-3.
  3. Peter Kropotkin (1905-01-01). "The Constitutional Movement in Russia". revoltlib.com. The Nineteenth Century.
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