Murder in the Kiev Theater

By Alex Gordon

Alex Gordon, Ph.D

HAIFA, Israel — For 25 years I lived opposite the Opera House in Kiev and many times I was near the scene of this murder, near the first row of the parterre and the orchestra pit. As a lover of classical music, I was a frequent visitor to the Kiev Opera House, where on September 1, 1911, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan by Alexander Pushkin was performed in the presence of Tsar Nicholas II. In the second intermission of the opera, at 11:52 p.m., Dmitri Bogrov, an assistant lawyer, fatally shot the Prime Minister of the Russian Empire, Pyotr Stolypin, with two shots from a Browning.

The audience freezes in horror. When the indignant screams over the shooter, seized and beaten by the audience, stop, the audience in their excitement insists that the hymn be played. The curtain rises. The Tsar approaches the barrier of the Governor General’s box. On the stage, the troupe and orchestra play God Save the Tsar three times. The performers and chorus kneel. Many stretch out their folded hands as if in prayer. On September 5, Stolypin dies in hospital. Eyewitness Pankratov writes: “But all these details are overshadowed by the main thing: Bogrov is a Jew.” The terrible news generates a terrible threat to Jewish life. In a Kiev prison at this time, Mendel Beilis, accused of murdering a Christian boy for ritual purposes, languishes awaiting trial. Calls for revenge against the Jews for Beilis’ “crime” and for Bogrov’s assassination attempt are growing. Never before have Jews been in such a dangerous position. What do they think and feel?

On September 16, 1911, the New York newspaper Pravda, published in Yiddish, wrote: “We hope that the bullet that hit Stolypin, has faithfully hit its target, that it has served its purpose, that a wise bullet has freed Russia from its misfortune, the world from a vile creature, humanity from the great shame. We are not afraid, nor are we frightened by the possibility that the man who shot the non-human was a Jew, that the hand which raised again in Russia the banner of struggle, the banner of freedom, was a Jewish hand. Jewish blood was voluntarily offered on the altar of justice in order to wash away the Jewish blood which the murdered man shed not by streams, but by seas.” Stolypin’s name was associated with the brutal suppression of the 1905 revolution, in response to which he introduced military trials and swift executions of opponents of the tsarist regime. This excerpt of an article from a New York newspaper is saturated with love for Russia and hatred of tyranny. Jews are worried about Russia and applaud the assassination of the prime minister. Their patriotism does not fade even at such a great distance from the empire. They do not think about the risk of pogroms due to participation in other people’s revolutions.

But how did the Jews of Kiev feel? In Kiev in 1911, one in ten residents was a Jew. According to the traditional antisemitic recipe of “all for one,” the city’s Jews had to answer for Bogrov’s crime. On September 7, 1911, the newspaper Rech described the condition of Kiev’s Jews after it was learned that Stolypin had died of his wounds: “The news of Stolypin’s death, which quickly spread around the city, increased the already severe panic. Something unbelievable was happening at the railway station; it was impossible to get through to the station. Thousands of Jews are piled up there. Double trains are leaving in all directions. The mood is extremely depressed.” While in Russia Stolypin, the hero of the fatherland, is being buried, Jews in the United States are celebrating the heroic deed of his murderer. Jews abroad are in solidarity with the terrorist Bogrov, who eliminated a symbol of counterrevolutionary terror. The Jews of Russia are in frightening obscurity.

The newspaper Novoe Vremya reported on September 13, 1911, that on the day of the execution, September 12, Bogrov, who bravely accepted the death sentence, met with Rabbi Aleshkovsky of Kiev. The condemned man told the rabbi, “Tell the Jews that I did not wish them harm, on the contrary, I fought for the good and happiness of the Jewish people.” To Aleshkovsky’s reproaches that Bogrov might have caused a Jewish pogrom by his crime, the convict replied sharply, “A great nation should not, like a slave, grovel before its oppressors.”  The assassination of the prime minister in a heavily guarded theater in the presence of the king seems an unheard of feat.  Who is the hero?

An assistant lawyer and recent graduate of Kiev University, 24-year-old Dmitry Bogrov came from a wealthy family of assimilated Kiev Jews. Bogrov became an anarchist in 1906 and, after his arrest in 1907, began to play a double game, passing off revolutionaries and anarchists to the gendarmes and receiving money from them. Bogrov was from a wealthy family and did not seem to need the money, but he had great needs and unusual passions for a revolutionary – he was a gambler. A secret agent of the tsarist guard, Bogrov was known as an ardent fighter against autocracy. Anarchists suspected him of collaborating with the police, but could not prove the accusation. But all these details are overshadowed by the main one: “Bogrov is a Jew.” Bogrov, condemned to execution, believed that the proud Jewish people should not fear pogroms. He framed the ideological basis in a Jewish package as his desire to kill the prime minister: “I am a Jew, and let me remind you that we still live under the domination of the Black Hundred leaders. Jews will never forget the Krushevans, the Dubrovins, the Purishkeviches (he names famous Russian anti-Semites at the time. – A.G.) and other villains. […] Where are the hundreds and thousands of other Jews – men, women and children with their bellies cut open, their noses and ears cut off? […] Do you know that Stolypin is the authoritative leader of the savage reaction now underway?”

The assassination elevated Stolypin to the rank of national hero. A year after the assassination attempt, a monument to the murdered prime minister was erected in Kiev, on Duma Square (today’s Maidan). A drama in the Kiev City Theater became a national drama. Alexander Solzhenitsyn and the leadership of modern Russia glorify Stolypin, praise his reforms, and consider his violent demise a colossal loss for the country. The Kiev governor of the time, Alexei Girs, believed, “The bullet that pierced Stolypin’s liver struck at the heart of Russia.” Long before Solzhenitsyn, the academic Rein described the historical significance of the prime minister’s assassination: “Many people think, and I include myself, that if there had been no crime on September 1, there probably would not have been a world war and there would not have been a revolution with its terrible consequences. Stolypin is credited with the statement he repeated many times: “Only war can destroy Russia. – If one agrees with this, then Stolypin’s assassination was not only of all-Russian, but also of world significance.”

Bogrov was a cold-blooded adventurer for whom the revolution and the tsarist police were cards in play. He was interested in the assassination of Stolypin as a big win. He dreamed of making history. Bogrov took great pleasure in his proximity to the devil, the tsarist guards. Bogrov risked the lives of many Jews. He put himself above them all, ruined his parents’ lives, sacrificed Jews, Stolypin, and four police officers who were fired for failing to protect the prime minister. He wanted to experience strong feelings, to rise above people. For exaltation, for a flight to the height of glory, Bogrov needed a game of universal values that revolutionary activity provided, a struggle with it, and a stage from which he could view the powers that be, from this height seeming to him like petty figures, puppets. He laughed at Stolypin’s lop-sided statement to the revolutionaries, “You need great shocks – we need a great Russia.” He himself was a “great upheaval,” and “great Russia” seemed to him a bunch of talentless gendarmes and officials whom he beat with the passionate pleasure of a great player. He also despised the revolutionaries for their inability to do truly great things. Bogrov did not see the pointlessness of the destruction he was making. The meaning of his actions did not interest him either. He recognized only the Game, the most risky, the most dangerous.

In the theatrical performance in Kiev on September 1, 1911, he was perceived as a ball servants of the devil, in which he has the decisive role of deciding the fate of the Empire. He wanted to remove his mask of the double agent in the finale and shock the world. With his shot Bogrov did not kill the autocracy, did not bring the revolution closer. He put at risk the Jewish people, over whom he also wished to rise. As a Jew, Bogrov did not create idols, but he created an anti-idol, the idol of the Russian nationalists. He introduced Stolypin into history, from which he was already leaving. The fact that Bogrov was a Jew embellished the portrait of the “reformist martyr,” the hero of Russia, Peter Stolypin, and increased hatred of Russian Jews.

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Alex Gordon is a native of Kiev, Ukraine, and graduate of the Kiev State University and Haifa Technion (Doctor of Science, 1984). Immigrated to Israel in 1979. Full Professor (Emeritus) of Physics in the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Haifa and at Oranim, the Academic College of Education. Author of 9 books and about 600 articles in paper and online, was published in 79 journals in 14 countries in Russian, Hebrew, English, French, and German.