Mikhail Ashenbrenner

Ashenbrenner, Mikhail Iul’evich 

Born Sept. 9 (21), 1842, in Moscow; died Nov. 11, 1926, in Moscow. Russian revolutionary, member of People’s Will. Son of a military engineer.

Ashenbrenner graduated from a cadet school in 1860. In 1863 he refused a commission in a guards regiment that was assigned to quell the uprising in Poland. While serving in Nikolaev in 1870–82, he organized officers’ circles, which joined People’s Will in 1881. In the fall of 1882 the combat center of People’s Will sent him out to consolidate provincial military circles; this mission took him to Pskov, Minsk, Riga, Vilkomir, and Smolensk. He was arrested in Smolensk on Mar. 29, 1883. In the “Trial of the 14” (1884), he was sentenced to death, but the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in Shlissel’burg Fortress. He was released in 1904. He lived in Smolensk until 1917 under police surveillance. In 1924, Ashenbrenner—a veteran of the revolutionary movement in the army—was awarded the title Senior Red Army Soldier by order of the USSR Revolutionary War Council.

WORKS

Voennaia organizatsiia Narodnoi voli i drugie vospominaniia (1860–1904). Moscow, 1924.