29 Facts About Dmitrii Bogrov

Dmitrii Bogrov unsuccessfully attempted to elicit the support of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which caused him to have a nervous breakdown.

Dmitrii Bogrov told the Okhrana that assassins were planning to kill a government official, convincing them to grant him a ticket to the Kyiv Opera House, where the prime minister was due to attend a play.

Dmitrii Bogrov's actions have become the subject of conspiracy theories, as well as numerous historiographical debates about his motives.

Dmitrii Bogrov's grandfather was a well-known writer and maskil; and his father was a prominent lawyer in Kyiv, who had converted to Russian Orthodoxy.

The Bogrov family was deeply involved in left-wing politics: Dmitrii's cousin was a member of the Bolsheviks, while his father supported the left of the Constitutional Democratic Party.

Dmitrii Bogrov came to identify himself as an "anarchist-individualist", as he resented formal organisation, rejected conventional morality and believed revolutionaries ought to operate alone under their own direction, even once declaring "I am my own party".

Dmitrii Bogrov managed to convince Ivan Knizhnik and Juda Grossman that he was innocent of the charges against him.

Dmitrii Bogrov himself took the opportunity to go abroad, where he told the editor of an anarchist newspaper that either Tsar Nikolai II or prime minister Pyotr Stolypin ought to be assassinated.

In June 1910, Dmitrii Bogrov contacted Egor Lazarev, informing him of his intention to assassinate the prime minister Pyotr Stolypin.

Dmitrii Bogrov claimed that his motivations were both personal and ideological, although he concealed his feelings of guilt over his past role as an informant.

When Dmitrii Bogrov asked how he could prevent this and "rehabilitate" himself, they demanded that he assassinate a Tsarist official.

Dmitrii Bogrov again committed himself to his plan to assassinate Stolypin, who he considered to be the "source of all evil in Russia".

Dmitrii Bogrov was provided with a ticket to a performance of The Tale of Tsar Saltan at the Kyiv Opera House, where Stolypin was due to attend and where Bogrov claimed the assassin planned to carry out his attack.

Dmitrii Bogrov pretended to return to his flat and claimed that the assassin was still eating supper.

Dmitrii Bogrov went to his seat in the seventeenth row, while Stolypin arrived and took his seat in the front row.

Dmitrii Bogrov made his way down the aisle towards the front row and all the way up to the prime minister.

When he arrived in front of Stolypin, Dmitrii Bogrov drew his revolver and shot him twice.

Dmitrii Bogrov was disarmed and removed from the theatre by the police, while people attempted to aid the dying prime minister.

When he was interrogated about the attack, Dmitrii Bogrov confessed that he had fabricated the story of the two assassins so that he could get access to Stolypin.

Dmitrii Bogrov claimed that he had been threatened by revolutionaries due to their discovery of his past as an agent provocateur; he thought that this revelation alone was "worse than death" and desired to free himself from the guilt he felt due to his collaboration with the police.

Dmitrii Bogrov repeatedly identified himself as a member of the Jewish faith and claimed that he was acting in the interests of the Jewish people.

Dmitrii Bogrov declared that he had not attempted an attack against the Tsar, as he feared it would have provoked further antisemitic pogroms.

Dmitrii Bogrov died in the presence of thirty witnesses, including representatives of reactionary groups such as the Black Hundreds.

The religious representative at Dmitrii Bogrov's execution was Iakov Aleshkovskii, the Chief Rabbi of Kyiv.

Bogrov's assassination of Stolypin was the last major attack in a sustained period of terrorism in the Russian Empire, which had started in 1866 with Dmitrii Karakazov's attempted assassination of Alexander II.

Dmitrii Bogrov's actions have been compared to those of Marinus van der Lubbe and Lee Harvey Oswald, who likewise acted individually, but whose acts were nevertheless subject to widespread conspiracy theories.

The most common explanation for the assassination is that Dmitrii Bogrov was motivated by the threats against his life by the revolutionary anarchist group, a version which is supported by historians Abraham Ascher, Anna Geifman, George Tokmakoff, and Jonathan Daly.

Geifman further suggested that Dmitrii Bogrov, known to have suffered from depression, had decided to commit suicide by way of homicide.

Solzhenitsyn alleged Dmitrii Bogrov to have been working as a double agent for the Okhrana.