The Question about the Motives of the Assassination of P. A. Stolypin

Abstract

The assassination attempt on the life of P. A. Stolypin, the chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Empire, on September 1, 1911 in Kyiv, made by D. G. Bogrov, a former member of the Kyivan organization of anarchists-communist and secret agent of the Kyiv Security Section of the Police Department, can be considered one of the most mysterious events in the history of late imperial Russia. Despite a large number of published archival documents on the history of this case, in modern historical science there is no unambiguous answer to the questions about the true motives that pushed D. G. Bogrov to commit this violent murder. According to the author, in the motives of the assassination of P. A. Stolypin by D. G. Bogrov, the factor of nationality of the terrorist played some role. D. G. Bogrov, a typical representative of the assimilated Russian-Jewish intellectuals did not become a convinced revolutionary; instead he lacked public recognition of his personal ambitions to satisfy which having the status of a Jewish citizen appeared to be not so simple. Public suicide in the form of an assassination attempt on the life of the famous Russian reformer became for D. G. Bogrov a tragic finale in his painful processes of finding ways to overcome the crisis of identity.

Keywords: D. G. Bogrov, P. A. Stolypin, Kyiv, Jews, Russian empire, terrorism, anarchism