Ippolit Nikitich Myshkin ( Russian: Ипполит Никитич Мышкин; 3 February 1848 - 7 February 1885) was a Russian revolutionary and political prisoner, who was executed after a violent confrontation with a prison warder.

Early life

Myshkin was born in

Pskov Pskov ( rus, Псков, a=pskov-ru.ogg, p=pskof; see also names in other languages) is a city in northwestern Russia and the administrative center of Pskov Oblast, located about east of the Estonian border, on the Velikaya River. Population ...

. His father was a

non-commissioned officer A non-commissioned officer (NCO) is a military officer who has not pursued a commission. Non-commissioned officers usually earn their position of authority by promotion through the enlisted ranks. (Non-officers, which includes most or all enli ...

; his mother, a peasant. Educated at a local school in

Kiev Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the List of European cities by populat ...

, he entered a teacher training college in Saint Petersburg in 1860, but despite being the best student in his year, he was barred from becoming a teacher because of his lowly birth, or as he put it, he was “suddenly expelled, disgraced, just because I am a soldier’s son.” After graduating in 1864, he worked for the General Staff Academy of the Imperial Army, and learnt shorthand. In 1868, he started work as a court reporter, and used money saved from his salary to set up an illegal printing press in Moscow, which was used to print revolutionary literature.

Revolutionary career

In 1875, Myshkin set out on a lone mission to rescue the writer, Nikolai Chernyshevsky, from exile. He travelled more than 3,200 miles to

Irkutsk Irkutsk ( ; rus, Иркутск, p=ɪrˈkutsk; Buryat language, Buryat and mn, Эрхүү, ''Erhüü'', ) is the largest city and administrative center of Irkutsk Oblast, Russia. With a population of 617,473 as of the 2010 Census, Irkutsk is ...

, where he enlisted as a police officer, created forged documents that instructed him to accompany Chernyshevsky to Blagoveshchenka, stole a captain’s uniform, and travelled to Vilyuysk, where Chernyshevsky had been exiled. He aroused suspicion because it would have been highly unusual for so prominent a prisoner to be moved with just a single escort, and he was told that he would have to get written authorisation from the provincial governor, in

Yakutsk Yakutsk (russian: Якутск, p=jɪˈkutsk; sah, Дьокуускай, translit=Djokuuskay, ) is the capital city of the Sakha Republic, Russia, located about south of the Arctic Circle. Fueled by the mining industry, Yakutsk has become one of ...

. He was accompanied on the road by three armed Cossacks, but broke free, wounded one of them in an exchange of shots, and hid out in the Siberian forest for a week, before he was captured. After several months of solitary confinement in a prison in Irkutsk, Myshkin was taken under heavy guard to Saint Petersburg, where he was a defendant at the Trial of the 193. In court, he made a defiant speech, that was subsequently published and distributed illegally. He said: He continued speaking, despite being ordered by the President of the court to be quiet. The upshot, according to a fellow revolutionary,

Vera Figner Vera Nikolayevna Figner Filippova (Russian: Ве́ра Никола́евна Фи́гнер Фили́ппова; 7 July ld Style and New Style dates, O.S. 25 June1852 – 25 June 1942) was a prominent Russian revolutionary political activis ...

, was that "the court retired; the gendarmes rushed to Myshkin to take him out of the hall, and the defendants rushed to defend their comrade. So, among the general scream and hysterical sobbing of women, there was a scuffle, unheard of in the annals of the court." Myshkin was sentenced to ten years’ hard labour, and was sent to

Kharkiv Kharkiv ( uk, wikt:Харків, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city and List of hromadas of Ukraine, municipality in Ukraine.

Siberian exile

Myshkin was one of a group of political prisoners transferred from Kharkiv to Kara, in East Siberia. One of the group, named Dmokhovsky, died on the way. During his funeral serviced in the prison church in Irkutsk, Myshkin made an impromptu speech, praising the dead man and quoting lines by the poet

Nikolay Nekrasov Nikolay Alexeyevich Nekrasov ( rus, Никола́й Алексе́евич Некра́сов, p=nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɐlʲɪkˈsʲejɪvʲɪtɕ nʲɪˈkrasəf, a=Ru-Nikolay_Alexeyevich_Nekrasov.ogg, – ) was a Russian poet, writer, critic and publi ...

. For making what was regarded as a revolutionary speech in a sacred building, he was sentenced to a further 15 years.

George Kennan George Frost Kennan (February 16, 1904 – March 17, 2005) was an American diplomat and historian. He was best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly histo ...

, an American who visited Siberia in the 1880s, was told that Myshkin was “a born orator who never made but two speeches in his life; one cost him ten years of penal servitude, the other fifteen.” He was incarcerated in Kara prison, where he organised a break out by eight political prisoners in April 1882. Most were quickly recaptured, but Myshkin and a worker named Nikolai Khrushchev, reached

Vladivostok Vladivostok ( rus, Владивосто́к, a=Владивосток.ogg, p=vɫədʲɪvɐˈstok) is the largest city and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai, Russia. The city is located around the Zolotoy Rog, Golden Horn Bay on the Sea ...

, more than 1,000 miles away but were arrested there. Back in Kara, Myshkin acted as spokesman for 73 political prisoners who went on hunger strike, in July, in protest against the flogging of a fellow prisoner, a common criminal, and on tightened restrictions in the prison. In retaliation, the authorities removed eight of the prisoners to the

Peter and Paul Fortress The Peter and Paul Fortress is the original citadel of St. Petersburg, Russia, founded by Peter the Great in 1703 and built to Domenico Trezzini's designs from 1706 to 1740 as a star fortress. Between the first half of the 1700s and early 1920s i ...

, in Saint Petersburg.

Death

In 1884, Myshkin was transferred to the Shlisselburg Fortress, where prisoners were held in solitary confinement, and a notice in their cells warned that they would be executed if they resisted the prison staff. According to a fellow prisoner,

: Myshkin had apparently staged the incident expecting to be executed, but hoping that it would stir up resistance by other prisoners and that he would be given a public trial in which he could draw attention to conditions in the fortress. In the event, according to Figner, the other prisoners did not know what was happening because they were not allowed to communicate with each other or the outside world. Myshkin was executed by firing squad on 7 February 1885.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Myshkin, Ippolit 1848 births 1885 deaths 19th-century executions by the Russian Empire Executed revolutionaries People from Pskov Narodniks Prisoners of Shlisselburg fortress Escapees from Russian detention Prisoners of the Peter and Paul Fortress