Nikolay Bauman

Bauman as a student in the late 19th-century

From 1896 to 1897, he worked in Petersburg, serving a term in the "Petersburg Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class." Bauman was arrested on 22 March 1897, and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, where he was kept in solitary confinement for 19 months.[3] During his stay in the fortress, he was astonishingly allowed to read Karl Marx's Das Kapital.[4]

In 1899, he was exiled to Vyatka Governorate, but he managed to escape abroad the same year. In April 1900, he took part of the second congress of the Emancipation of Labour Group, led by the founder of Russian Marxism Georgi Plekhanov, in Geneva. It was at that congress that Plekhanov's group decided to merge with the Union of Struggle and launch the revolutionary Marxist paper Iskra – "The Spark", which was to be published abroad and smuggled into Russia. After Vladimir Lenin had arrived in Munich in 1900, after serving a term of exile, and took on the management of Iskra, Bauman worked closely with him in getting the project organised.[5] In December 1901, he was sent to Moscow to make contact with the illegal Marxist groups in the region and enlist their help in distributing Iskra. He was soon under observation by the Okhrana, and moved to Kyiv, and then Voronezh, but on the way to Voronezh, noticed that he was being followed, and jumped from a train as it passed through Zadonsky District.[3] Arrested in February 1902, he was held in Lukyanivska Prison in Kyiv. He and three other prisoners, including the future foreign minister Maxim Litvinov, pulled off a daring escape from the prison, using ropes, grappling irons, and false passports, after they had overpowered two of the prison staff.[6]

In the wake of the October Manifesto, the Left started the chain of unrests in big Russian industrial centres, including the city of Moscow.

Bauman, as a member of Central Committee of RSDRP, was very active in assembling and igniting the crowds to march on the Moscow Governorate Prison, from which he himself was released recently, to demand the release of political prisoners under the red banner with the motto: 'Let's level the Russian Bastille to the ground!' While riding a cab with the said banner, Bauman shouted: 'Down with the Tsar! Down with the Empire!'

At one point, 29-year old employee of the Shchapov's Factory — Nikolay Mikhalin, a former soldier with the Emperor's Own Horse Guard Regiment (an elite cuirassier regiment of the Russian Imperial Guards) and a keen monarchist, armed with a cut-out of a steel pipe, got into cab and confronted Bauman, trying to take a red banner from the latter. In the following struggle, Bauman somehow managed to produce a Browning semi-automatic pistol and shot at Mikhalin once, but the latter, a six-feet tall dark-haired man of considerable strength — with the help of his swordsmanship — managed to hit Bauman on the pistol-holding arm with his pipe cut-out, so he missed Mikhalin, who then struck Bauman three times on the head with the same instrument, causing almost instant death (with two hits later described by a doctor as deadly).

According to records of the CPSU, Bauman was the first member of Central Committee of the Bolshevik party to die a violent death. Mikhalin voluntarily gave himself up to the police within an hour of the incident and was sentenced by the Moscow District Court to 18 months of imprisonment for disproportional use of force causing death to the victim. He was never pardoned by Imperial Russia, and later caught by Soviet OGPU in 1925, and records of him since then are unknown, however it is believed he was executed in the same year.[12]

Bauman's death made him a martyr of the Revolution, which effectively 'cleansed him of his sins'. His death enabled the Bolsheviks to play on the sympathies of the masses for the first time in the party's history. As a result, tens of thousands attended his funeral procession, people who saw in Bauman's death 'the fate of the Revolution' if they 'did not unite against' the reactionaries.[13]

Funeral of Nikolay Bauman

Bauman's funeral was a mighty propaganda exercise. His coffin was carried through the streets of Moscow by six leather-cled 'Herculean' party members, with the coffin itself draped in scarlet pall. The procession was led by a party comrade dressed in 'Jesuitical-black', who carried a palm branch which he in time with the music and slow steps swung from side to side. Behind him, the leaders of the party followed, carrying red flags and large velvet banners carrying the 'slogans of their struggle' in gold writing, and wreaths. At their sides they were followed by an 'armed militia' consisting of workers and students. Finally, behind these, over 100,000 mourners followed marching ten abreast in military like formation.[13]

The procession marched all day, only stopping to pick up reinforcements at certain areas of the city. Passing the Conservatory, a student orchestra joined in playing 'You Fell Victim to a Fateful Struggle' – the Revolution's very own 'funeral song' – repeatedly. The procession 'filled the streets with a dark menace', with the heaviness of the procession, the sadness of the music and the military discipline of the long rows of mourners. As night came, several thousand torches were lit; this caused the large red banners achieve a sort of glow, further contributing to the spectacle.[13]

Graveside, the orations were emotional. His self-proclaimed widow Kapitolina Medvedeva (they were not officially married under the law of the Russian Empire) urged the crowds to avenge the death of her husband Nikolay. As the large group made its way back to the city, some fighting broke out with groups of the Black Hundreds.[14]

• Figes, Orlando (2014). A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924. London: The Bodley Head. ISBN 9781847922915.