Aleksandr Bolkonsky (died 1912) was a Russian duke, a cousin of Czar Nicholas II of Russia, and the husband of Constance Bolkonsky, whom he married in 1907. He was assassinated by Russian anarchist Piotr Hernienko during a performance of the opera Ivan the Terrible in Paris, where he planned to sign an alliance treaty with France and Britain on behalf of the Russian Empire.
Biography[]
Aleksandr Bolkonsky was born in the Russian Empire, a distant cousin of Czar Nicholas II of Russia. Bolkonsky inherited the title of Duke from his father, and he married Constance Bolkonsky in 1907; his wife quickly came to hate him due to his inner evil. Bolkonsky and his wife publicly engaged in philanthropy, advocating for the interests of the Russian diaspora in Europe during the early 20th century.
However, while Bolkonsky was a staunch monarchist who believed in the suppression of free speech, his wife harbored anarchist sympathies and was secretly the lover of French anarchist and criminal Jules Bonnot. In 1912, Duke Bolkonsky visited Paris to sign the Triple Entente alliance with President Raymond Poincare of France and English dignitary Lewis Hollingworth at a performance of an opera about Ivan the Terrible.
His arrival was met with protests by the Russian community in Paris, with one of them, an anarchist associated with the Bonnot Gang, throwing a severed dog's head at Bolkonsky and his wife. Bolkonsky later attended the final shootout between the anarchist Jules Bonnot (his wife's secret lover) and the law, doing so alongside Casimir Cagne, with whom he embezzled Russian bonds.
He discovered his wife's treachery after Cagne's ledger was stolen, Cagne's associates implicated in their and the Duke's embezzlement of Russian loans, and Cagne was murdered, but he was unaware of his wife's desire to kill him. Before the stage performance of Ivan the Terrible, Russian anarchist Piotr Hernienko planted a bomb in the lightbulb above the Duke's box, and the Duke was killed when Hernienko detonated the bomb, burning to death.
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