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Presidency Foreign policy Post-leadership | ||
On 7 November 1990, Aleksandr Shmonov attempted to assassinate Soviet leaderMikhail Gorbachev during the1990 October Revolution Parade inMoscow. Shmonov, adissident who was angry at Gorbachev's handling ofdemocratic reforms, attempted to fire two bullets at Gorbachev but was spotted and overpowered by the police. Shmonov was declaredinsane and sent to apsikhushka until his release in 1995.
It was the first direct assassination attempt of a Soviet leader since theattempted assassination of Leonid Brezhnev in 1969, and the last before thedissolution of the Soviet Union a year later.
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Mikhail Gorbachev became theGeneral Secretary of theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985 after the death ofKonstantin Chernenko, making him thede facto leader of theSoviet Union. Gorbachev, seeking to lead the country out of an "Era of stagnation" and away fromauthoritarianism, enacted a number ofliberalisation reforms in order to save the Soviet political and economic system from collapse. These reforms, most notablyglasnost andperestroika, failed to improve thestandard of living and often caused more problems instead of solving them. Ironically, theeconomy of the Soviet Union which had been in a state ofstagnation since the 1970s began to shrink rather than grow. By 1990, Gorbachev was extremely unpopular with bothhardliners andreformers, and there were several failed attempts to oust him from power.
Aleksandr Shmonov [ru] was born on 21 February 1952 inLeningrad to an affluent family. After serving in theSoviet Army, he worked as a mechanic at theIzhora Plant inKolpino.[1] Shmonov was a member of theSocial Democratic Party of Russia, having joined the party in the late 1980s before its official founding, and a strong supporter ofdemocratic reforms in the Soviet Union. He blamed Gorbachev for theApril 9 tragedy inTbilisi in April 1989, and theBlack January massacre inBaku in January 1990. Shmonov was opposed to the upcominginaugural election for thePresident of the Soviet Union (an office which Gorbachev had created) in March 1990. It was anindirect election held by theCongress of People's Deputies with Gorbachev as its sole candidate, which was perceived by some as arigged election. He determined that Gorbachev should be assassinated in order to guarantee democratic presidential elections.
Shmonov meticulously planned the assassination attempt, having purchased a rare shotgun fromGermany with a police permit, which he then manually transformed into asawn-off shotgun.[2] He would regularly practice shooting in the woods, and from March 1990 he began to post leaflets openly calling for the overthrow of the Communist Party and Gorbachev's death.[3] Shmonov, before heading toMoscow to carry out his plan, wrote a letter to theKremlin issuing anultimatum but it was ignored.[4]
On 7 November 1990, during the annualOctober Revolution Parade, Shmonov disguised himself with a fakemoustache and a wig, and joined a column of demonstrators moving towards theLenin Mausoleum, where the Soviet leadership was standing to observe the parade. He was armed with two shotguncartridges, both meant for Gorbachev, although he later admitted that if one had been enough, he would have used the other to killAnatoly Lukyanov, the chairman of theSupreme Soviet, who was accompanying Gorbachev. Shmonov carried a note in his pocket, which he had written in anticipation of his potential death, clarifying that he intended to kill Gorbachev. At approximately 11 AM, when Shmonov was just 47 meters away from the Lenin Mausoleum, he raised his sawn-off shotgun and fired two shots at Gorbachev, but a police officer seized thebarrel mid aim, redirecting the shots skyward, after which a crowd of undercoverKGB agents disguised as civilians overpowered him.[5]
Shmonov was held inpre-trial detention for a year before being declaredinsane andadmitted to a mental institution, where he remained for four years until 1995, even after theSoviet Union had dissolved.[2]
In 1999, Shmonov tried to run for theState Duma in Saint Petersburg, but was rejected by the local election commission. Shmonov has since become ahuman rights activist.[6]
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