Shiriaev, Stepan

Shiriaev, Stepan Grigor’evich 

(pseudonym, Tekhnik). Born 1856 in the village of Tavolozhka, in what is now Petrovsk Raion, Saratov Oblast; died Aug. 18 (30), 1881, in the Aleksei Ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress, St. Petersburg. Russian revolutionary Narodnik (Populist).

Shiriaev, the son of a serf, studied at the Kharkov Veterinary Institute. In 1873 he carried on revolutionary propaganda in Saratov. He lived in London and Paris from 1876 to 1878 and studied electrical engineering under P. N. Iablochkov. In 1878 he joined a Russo-Polish circle of socialist propagandists in Paris that included P. L. Lavrov and T. Uziemblo. In 1878 he traveled to Russia as an emissary of the group.

In 1879, Shiriaev became a member of the Narodnik group Liberty or Death and took part in the Lipetsk Congress; he served as a member of the Executive Committee of the People’s Will and set up its first workshop for the manufacture of dynamite. On Nov. 19,1879, Shiriaev, together with S. L. Perovskaia, tried to assassinate Emperor Alexander II near Moscow. Shiriaev was arrested on Dec. 3, 1879, and condemned to death in the Trial of the 16, a sentence that was commuted to life at hard labor.

REFERENCES

Mainov, I. I. S. G. Shiriaev. [Moscow, 1930.]
Kantor, R. M. “Avtobiograficheskaia zapiska S. Shiriaeva (note).” Krasnyi arkhiv, 1924, no. 7.