Mikhail Yulevich Ashenbrenner (Russian: Михаил Юльевич Ашенбреннер) (September 21
O.S. September 9">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Old Style and New Style dates">O.S. September 9 1842 November 11, 1926) was a Russian revolutionary, and one of the leaders of the Military Organisation of the Narodnaya Volya (People's Will), the group that carried out the assassination of the Tsar Alexander II of Russia, Alexander II.
Biography
Mikhail Ashenbrenner was born in Moscow into the gentry. His father was a russified German, who worked as a military engineer, his mother was the daughter of General Mikhail Naumov, a veteran of the
1812 war against the French. He studied with the First Moscow Cadet Corps, and was discharged in 1860, with the rank of lieutenant. As an officer, he and a group of comrades studied the natural sciences, and studied
Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (; 28 July 1804 – 13 September 1872) was a German anthropologist and philosopher, best known for his book ''The Essence of Christianity'', which provided a critique of Christianity that strongly influenced gener ...
,
Darwin, and
Spencer. In 1864, he was deported to Turkestan for refusing to take part in suppressing the
Polish Uprising against Russian rule. He lived in a remote part of
Bessarabia
Bessarabia (; Gagauz: ''Besarabiya''; Romanian: ''Basarabia''; Ukrainian: ''Бессара́бія'') is a historical region in Eastern Europe, bounded by the Dniester river on the east and the Prut river on the west. About two thirds of Be ...
until the outbreak of the
Russo-Turkish War in 1877, and then in
Kherson
Kherson (, ) is a port city of Ukraine
Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers appr ...
province.
From 1880, all his energy was devoted to organising revolutionary groups in the military. His work was assisted by the respect that officers had for him. In 1882, the central military circle in St Petersburg urged local circles to get actively involved in Narodnaya Volya. Ashenbrenner was delegated to go round the military circles across Russia, enlist correspondents for a military-revolutionary journal and recruit delegates for a congress of local groups, but while he was doing so, the military wing of Narodnaya Volya was eliminated by mass arrests, after being betrayed by the police informer,
Sergey Degayev
Sergey Petrovich Degayev (also spelled Degaev; russian: link=no, Серге́й Петрович Дегаев; 1857 in Moscow – 1921 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania) was a Russian revolutionary terrorist, Okhrana agent, and the murderer of inspe ...
.
Ashenbrenner was arrested in March 1883, and was a defendant at the Trial of the 14, alongside
and others, in September 1884. He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He spent 20 years in the
Shlisselburg Fortress, until his release on 20 September 1904. He then lived under police supervision in
Smolensk. After the
Bolshevik Revolution
The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolsheviks, Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was ...
, he was allocated a place in Ilych Home for Revolutionary Veterans. His memoirs were published in the journal Byloe in 1906, and reissued as a separate publication with the title ''The Military Organisation of People's Will'' in 1942.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ashenbrenner, Mikhail
1842 births
1926 deaths
Burials at Novodevichy Cemetery
Narodnaya Volya
Narodniks
Prisoners of Shlisselburg fortress