Dmitry Bogrov

Dmitry Bogrov was born in Kyiv on 10 February 1887 into a wealthy Jewish family; his father was a barrister and a major property owner. He finished the First Kyiv Gymnasium, studied at the University of Munich and graduated in law from Kyiv University in 1910.

Drawn to anarchism, Bogrov at the same time became, from 1906–1907, a paid informer of the Kyiv Okhrana (the tsarist secret police) under the alias “Alensky”; his reports led to arrests in Kyiv’s anarchist circles. It was this double role that gave him access to his target.

In September 1911 Tsar Nicholas II and his government came to Kyiv to unveil a monument to Alexander II. On the evening of 14 September (1 September Old Style) the City Theatre staged Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tale of Tsar Saltan in the Tsar’s presence. Bogrov entered with a ticket obtained from the Okhrana and, during the second interval, shot Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin twice. Stolypin died on 18 September and was buried in the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra.

A military court sentenced Bogrov to death on 22 September, and on the night of 25 September 1911 he was hanged near the Lysa Hora fort of the Kyiv Fortress. Whether he acted on his own, out of revenge, or as a pawn in police intrigue is still debated by historians.