A political prisoner, Alexei Bogolyubov, had refused…

A political prisoner, Alexei Bogolyubov, had refused in July 1877 to remove his cap in the presence of Colonel Theodore Trepov, the governor of St. Petersburg famous for his suppression of the Polish rebellions in 1830 and 1863.

In retaliation, Trepov had ordered that Bogolyubov be flogged, which had outraged not only revolutionaries, but also sympathetic members of the intelligentsia.

A group of six revolutionaries plot to kill Trepov, but Vera Zasulich is the first to act.

She and her fellow social revolutionary Maria (Masha) Kolenkina are planning to shoot two government representatives, the prosecutor Vladislav Zhelekhovskii in the "trial of the 193" and another enemy of the populist movement; following the Bogolyubov flogging, they had decided that the second target should be Trepov.

Waiting until after the verdict was announced at the Trial of 193, on January 24, 1878, they go for their respective targets.

Kolenkina's attempt against Zhelekhovskii fails, but Zasulich, using a British Bulldog revolver, shoots and seriously wounds Trepov.

At her widely publicized trial the sympathetic jury finds Zasulich not guilty, an outcome that tests the effectiveness of the judicial reform of Alexander II.

In one interpretation, it demonstrates the courts' ability to stand up to the authorities.

However Zasulich has a very good lawyer, who turns the case on its head so that Trepov and the government now appear as the guilty party, demonstrating ineffectiveness in both the courts and the government.

Vera Zasulich was born in Mikhaylovka, Russia, one of four daughters of an impoverished minor noble.

When she was three, her father had died and her mother had sent her to live with her wealthier relatives, the Mikulich family, in Byakolovo.

After graduating from high school in 1866, she had moved to St. Petersburg, where she had worked as a clerk.

Soon becoming involved in radical politics, she taught literacy classes for factory workers until her contacts with the Russian revolutionary leader Sergei Nechaev led to her arrest and imprisonment in 1869.

After Zasulich was released in 1873, she had settled in Kiev, where she joined the Kievan Insurgents, a revolutionary group of Mikhail Bakunin's anarchist supporters, becoming a respected leader of the movement.