Piotr Hernienko (died 1912) was a Russian anarchist who was affiliated with the Bonnot Gang in Paris, France during the 1910s. In 1912, he assassinated French banker Casimir Cagne and Russian aristocrat Duke Aleksandr Bolkonsky before being shot dead by police.
Biography[]
Piotr Hernienko was born in the Russian Empire, and he was tortured and deported to Paris, France after becoming involved in anarchist resistance against Czar Nicholas II of Russia's oppressive regime. While working as an electrician, Hernienko became a member of Jules Bonnot's anarchist gang, of which fellow Russian emigre Constance Bolkonsky was also a member; he was introduced to the gang by Tanpisev, a Russian doctor. Hernienko became addicted to pervitine and was known for his violence, which Bonnot disapproved of. He took part in several of the gang's robberies (including the theft of the corrupt banker Casimir Cagne's ledger) before Bonnot's death, after which he attempted to exact justice upon Cagne himself. He interrogated Cagne at his mansion and forced him to decode the names in his ledger for him, incriminating several high-ranking politicians in embezzling billions of dollars' worth of fifteen million people's Russian bonds. Afterwards, Hernienko cut Cagne's throat, and he then infiltrated the production crew of the opera Ivan the Terrible, where he planned to assassinate Duke Aleksandr Bolkonsky (Constance's husband), who was in Paris to sign the Triple Entente alliance pact with President Raymond Poincare and English dignitary Lewis Hollingworth. Former policemen Gustave Pujol and Paul Valentin discovered Hernienko's identity from the imprisoned Raymond Callemin, a fellow member of the Bonnot Gang, and they attempted to arrest him so that they could bring about the Duke's downfall the right way. Hernienko disagreed with Constance's insistence that the signing of the Triple Entente must go ahead, as she believed that the alliance would unravel once her husband's corruption was exposed, while Piotr said that his idol, Ivan the Terrible, didn't settle for a mere scandal to crush the oppressive boyars, but instead burned them alive. He choked Constance when Constance berated Ivan as a "tyrant", but he hid when policeman Achille Bianchi entered her room to ask her about Piotr. When he recognized her from an earlier raid on Bonnot's hideout, where he had bumped into her, Piotr charged out of a cabinet and strangled Bianchi, who was stabbed in the back by Constance with a pair of scissors. Constance then sat with her husband at their box as Piotr prepared the bomb hidden in the lightbulb, but Pujol stormed the power room and shot Hernienko. A mortally wounded Hernienko pushed Pujol against the level, causing an explosion which killed Duke Bolkonsky, before he died of his wounds.
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