Vera Zasulich - The Trepov Incident

The Trepov Incident

In July 1877, a political prisoner, Alexei Bogolyubov, refused to remove his cap in the presence of Colonel Theodore Trepov, the governor of St. Petersburg famous for his suppression of the Polish rebellions in 1830 and 1863. In retaliation, Trepov ordered that Bogolyubov be flogged, which outraged not only revolutionaries, but also sympathetic members of the intelligentsia. A group of six revolutionaries plotted to kill Trepov, but Zasulich was the first to act. She and her fellow social revolutionary Maria (Masha) Kolenkina were planning to shoot two government representatives, the prosecutor Vladislav Zhelekhovskii in the "trial of the 193" and another enemy of the populist movement; following the Bogolyubov flogging they decided that the second target should be Trepov. Waiting until after the verdict was announced at the Trial of 193, on January 24, 1878 they went for their respective targets. Kolenkina's attempt against Zhelekhovskii failed, but Zasulich using a British Bulldog revolver shot and seriously wounded Trepov.

At her widely publicized trial the sympathetic jury found Zasulich not guilty, an outcome that tested the effectiveness of the judicial reform of Alexander II. On one interpretation it demonstrated the courts' ability to stand up to the authorities. However Zasulich had a very good lawyer, who turned the case on its head so that it "very soon became obvious that it was Colonel Trepov rather than his would-be assassin who was really being tried". That Trepov and the government now appeared as the guilty party demonstrated ineffectiveness in both the courts and the government.

Fleeing before she could be rearrested and retried, Zasulich became a hero to populists and the radical part of the Russian society. Despite her previous record, she was against the terror campaign that would eventually lead to the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881.