Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia (11 May 1857 – 17 February 1905) was the Governor-General of Moscow Governorate in the Russian Empire from 1891 to 1905 and a Major-General of the Imperial Russian Army. He was assassinated by the SR Combat Organization in 1905.
Biography[]
Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia was born on 11 May 1857, the son of Czar Aleksandr II of Russia and Marie of Hesse and by Rhine. He had a lifelong interest in culture and the arts since his education, and he followed a military career in the Imperial Russian Army during the war with the Ottoman Empire from 1877 to 1878. In 1889, he became a Major-General, and he married Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine. From 1891 to 1905, he served as Governor of Moscow Governorate, and he expelled Moscow's 20,000 Jews at the start of his reign. In 1896, he was responsible for the Khodynka Tragedy, in which 1,389 people died in a stampede during Czar Nicholas II of Russia's coronation, and his extremely conservative policies made him a polarizing figure. On 1 January 1905, he ended his tenure as governor to take command of the Moscow Military District.
Sergei's life was endangered ever since he became governor of Moscow, and the SR Combat Organization sought to assassinate the anti-Semitic and reactionary grand duke. On 17 February 1905, he headed to the governor's mansion in Moscow to finish packing up his belongings there, but SR member Ivan Kalyayev threw a nitroglycerin bomb into the grand duke's carriage, disintegrating the carriage and literally blowing him to pieces; some of his fingers were found on nearby rooftops. The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet was built over his tomb in 1928.