Martianov, Petr

Mart’ianov, Petr Alekseevich 

Born 1835 in the village of Promzin’, now Belyi Kliuch, Ul’ianovsk Raion, Ul’ianovsk Oblast; died Sept. 20 (Oct. 2), 1865, in Irkutsk. Russian public figure. Son of a serf.

Mart’ianov worked as a steward for a landlord and bought his freedom. He published patriotic verses in newspapers. In 1861 he went abroad, where he became acquainted with A. I. Herzen and N. P. Ogarev. In April 1862 he printed a letter to Alexander II in Kolokol demanding the convocation of a zemstvo duma. In the same year he published in London the pamphlet The People and the State, in which he developed the idea of a non-estate national monarchy headed by a zemstvo tsar. His Utopian views reflected the democratic hopes of the peasantry and its tsarist illusions. On his return to Russia in April 1863, Mart’ianov was arrested at the border. At a trial before the Senate, he was sentenced to five years of forced labor and subsequent permanent exile in Siberia. He died in a prison hospital.

REFERENCES

Herzen, A. I. “P. A. Mart’ianov i zemskii tsar’.” Sobr. soch., vol. 18. Moscow, 1959.
Lemke, M. K. “Delo P. A. Mart’ianova.” In his book Ocherki osvoboditel’nogo dvizheniia shestidesiatykh godov. St. Petersburg, 1908.
Fedorov, V. A. “Krest’ianskii demokrat-shestidesiatnik P. A. Mart’-ianov.” In the collection Problemy istorii obshchestvennogo dvizheniia i istoriografii. Moscow, 1971.