Yegor Sozonov

Sozonov was born into the family of a wealthy timber merchant of the Old Believer faith. He studied at the Ufa boys's gymnasium and then entered the Faculty of Medicine of the Imperial Moscow University in 1901. In the same year, Sozonov, who at the time was not involved in revolutionary activity, was one of the organizers of a student protest against the decision of the Imperial University, which expelled 183 students for anti-tsarist activities.[1]

Sozonov after his first arrest

Sozonov was himself expelled from the university and was sent to exile in Ufa. In his exile he started to study socialist and democratic literature. At the behest of his father he was released and later joined the Ural Union of Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries. Shortly after he was once again arrested and thus was exiled to Siberia.[2]

On March 16 (29), 1902, in his family apartment, the police broke in with a search warrant. Sozonov had time to tear some sheets from his personal notebook and chew them, only to realize that in his haste he had destroyed the wrong pages. The police thus found the evidence of the existence in the city of clandestine activity coordinated by the Union. He was held in the Ufa prison where he went on a hunger strike and was later transferred to Yakutsk.[1][2]

In July 1903, on his way to Eastern Siberia, Sozonov fled and left for Switzerland. Abroad, he finally joined the Combat Organization of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. With a fake passport and using a false name, Yegor Sozonov returned to Russia.[3]

Illustration of von Plehve's assassination by Angelo Augsutini

Vyacheslav von Plehve, who was known for his ruthlessness, had already approved of the brutal suppression of many workers's strikes. After the massacre of the Zlatoust miners which left over sixty dead and Plehve's approval of the measure taken by the Governor of Ufa, Nikolai Bogdanovich, this led to the decision of Grigory Gershuni, head of the SR Combat Organization to assassinate him.[4]

Under the leadership of Yevno Azef, Sozonov, Lev Sikorsky, Abram Borishansky and Ivan Kalyayev were sent to assassinate the minister.

On July 15 28th 1904, Sozonov assassinated the Minister of the Interior after throwing a bomb at his carriage in Ismailovsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg which killed him instantly. The other two assassins, Sikorski and Kalyayev, did not use their bombs. Sozonov himself was wounded by the explosion and was immediately arrested and beaten severely by the police.[5]

Sozonov was deprived of all rights and assigned to indefinite detention in a convict prison and was imprisoned in the Shlisselburg Fortress. Then he was transferred to the Butyrka prison, from where he was sent to the Nerchinsk mines for forced labor.

The amnesty of 1905 limited Sozonov's stay in hard labor for a certain period.[6]

Gorny Zerentui prison

At the end of 1907, he was transferred to the Zerentui convict prison. The new head of the prison, I. Vysotsky equated political prisoners with criminal ones and introduced corporal punishment for the first. Having found fault for an insignificant reason, he ordered that political prisoners be flogged. Yegor Sozonov took poison on December 10, 1910, died and was initially buried at the place of death.[7]

After the February Revolution, on May 25, 1917, Sozonov's ashes were brought to Ufa. The reburial took place at the Sergievsky cemetery. A monument was erected on the grave in 1917.