Pyotr Alexeyevich Alexeyev

Pyotr Alexeyevich Alexeyev (Russian: Пётр Алексеевич Алексеев) (26 January {14 January Old Style} 1849-28 August {16 August} 1891) was a Russian revolutionary, one of the first factory workers to join the revolutionary underground, whose speech at his trial was distributed in thousands of copies.

Early life

Alexeyev was born into a peasant family in a village in Smolensk province in south west Russia, and was sent to work in a textile factory at the age of nine. At the age of around 16 or 17, he taught himself to read and write. In 1869, he joined a narodnik circle in Moscow, organised by Sophia Bardina, which conducted propaganda among Moscow workers.[1] The circle named itself the All-Russian Socialist Revolutionary Organisation. Alexeyev's role was to move from one town or village to another, take a job, talk to fellow workers, leave behind illegal literature, and move on.[2] Arrested in February 1875, he was held in prison for two years, then arraigned with other members of the circle at the Trial of the 50, in March 1877.

His trial speech

His speech at his trial, delivered on 10 March, described in vivid language the squalid living conditions of Russia's working class. It concluded: "Russia's working people can rely only on themselves and no-one else, except the young intelligensia...Only they ... will march alongside us, without flinching, until the mighty hand of millions of working people is raised, and the yoke of despotism, ringed by soldiers' bayonets, is scattered to dust."[3]

The speech was very soon printed on illegal printing presses. Three versions were circulating in pamphlet form in St Petersburg by June 1877. It was also smuggled abroad. Parts were printed in English translation in the Pall Mall Gazette on 20 April 1877.[4] In 1900, Lenin lauded the speech as a "great prophecy".[5] By the time of the Russian revolution, in 1917, it had been reprinted illegally more than 20 times by both Marxist and narodnik groups.[6]

In exile

On 14 March, Alexeyev was sentenced to ten years in katorga. He was interned in Novo-Belogorodskaya prison, in European Russia, then transferred in autumn 1880 to Mtsensk political prison, then, soon after the assassination of the Tsar Alexander II, was moved again to Kara, in Yakutsk, in eastern Siberia.[7] In 1891, he was robbed and killed on a road by a Yakut.

gollark: Do I now.
gollark: They *have firmware for* a specific task. They are general purpose computers.
gollark: Well, they can all independently execute code.
gollark: - actual CPU- power management microcontroller on CPU- Intel Management Engine- Intel GuC on CPU (graphics microcontroller)- Intel *H*uC (HEVC microcontroller)- WiFi card microcontroller- Ethernet chip probably has a processor in it- dedicated GPU onboard microcontroller- display panel probably has a processor too, definitely at least an EEPROM- laptop embedded controller for general purpose things- camera microcontroller for debayering and USB- keyboard USB controller
gollark: So do I.

References
  1. Schmidt, O.Yu. (chief editor) Bukharin N.I. et al (eds) (1926). Большая советская энциклопедия. vol 2 Moscow. p. 188.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link) CS1 maint: location (link)
  2. Meadowcroft, Jeff R. "The history and historiography of the Russian worker-revolutionaries of the 1870s" (PDF). University of Glasgow. Retrieved 27 July 2019.
  3. Schmidt, O.Yu. (chief editor) Bukharin N.I. et al (eds) (1926). Большая советская энциклопедия. vol 2 Moscow. p. 188.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link) CS1 maint: location (link)
  4. Meadowcroft, Jeff R. "The history and historiography of the Russian worker-revolutionaries of the 1870s" (PDF). University of Glasgow. Retrieved 27 July 2019.
  5. Lenin, V.I. "The Urgent Tasks of Our Movement". Lenin Collected Works volume 4. Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 27 July 2019.
  6. Otto, Robert (1979). "A Note on the Speech of Peter Alekseev". Slavic Review. 38 (4): 650–654. doi:10.2307/2496568. JSTOR 2496568.
  7. Meadowcroft, Jeff R. "The history and historiography of the Russian worker-revolutionaries of the 1870s" (PDF). University of Glasgow. Retrieved 27 July 2019.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.