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The execution of the other five was set for 3 April. The previous day Rysakov offered his services to the police in a last desperate effort to save his neck. His plea was ignored. Kibalchich composed a long communication to the Czar in an effort to suggest 'a peaceful way out of the present impossible situation.' Sofya Perovskaya's last extant letter is addressed to her mother. 'Believe me, dearest Mummy,' she wrote, 'my lot is not at all such a dark one. I have lived as my convictions have prompted me; I could not do otherwise; therefore I await what is in store for me with a clear conscience.'

In the evening the Church offered its ministrations. Both Zhelyabov and Perovskaya refused to see a priest. Kibalchich engaged the Father in a dispute and would not be shriven. Mikhailov made his confession. Rysakov confessed and received the Eucharist.

The next morning the hangman and his assistant placed the condemned in two tumbrils and strapped them to their seats with their backs to the horses. On the chest of each hung a placard with the single word: 'Regicide.' By eight o'clock the carts were jolting over the cobblestones, on their way to Semenovsky Square, where the execution was to take place. Rysakov^ head was bent, the others appeared self-possessed. A disdainful smile contorted Perovskaya's pinched, slightly flushed face. Mikhailov, his massive form bulking large, kept bowing to the people, as was customary for those on their way to the scaffold. He shouted to them, but his words were drowned out by the drummers who formed part of the military convoy. To at least one sympathetic eye-witness the condemned looked like victors riding in triumph. Carriages occupied by five priests brought up the rear of the procession. The mood of the crowd that lined the route of the cortege was far from friendly. Indeed, two young women who waved handkerchiefs at the condemned would have been torn to pieces by the mob, if not for the intervention of the police.

At eight-fifty the tumbrils reached the square, a vast un-paved plaza, and a muffled murmur rose from the crowd, estimated at a hundred thousand by the correspondent of the London Times. Lumbering down an aisle flanked by Cossacks, the cart? drew up in front of a scaffold surmounted by gallows, which loomed black against a clear, pale sky. The wooden structure was surrounded by troops. The hangman, with four helpers, unstrapped the prisoners and led them to the pillories in the rear of the scaffold. Zhelyabov kept turning his head to Perovskaya, who stood next to him. The air of detachment and imperturbable calm did not abandon Kibalchich. Rysakov was deathly pale. Big Mikhailov wore a petrified look.

An official read the verdict from a low platform nearby, the paper shaking in his hand. The priests mounted the scaffold. All the condemned kissed the crucifix, and the priests, having signed them with the cross, withdrew. Then they kissed each other good-bye, but Perovskaya turned away from Rysakov. The hangman and his helpers slipped over each of the condemned a loose garment which covered the head and face. Rysakov's knees gave way. All the while the drums kept up a steady rumble. The hangman took off his blue peasant coat, revealing his red shirt. He was ready for business.

The first to be hanged was Kibalchich. Mikhailov was second. Twice the rope broke under the weight of his big body and he crashed to the floor of the scaffold with a thud. In the half century and more that had elapsed since the execution of the Decembrists the efficiency of the executioners had not noticeably increased. The crowd that had been so hostile to the regicides a few minutes earlier was now buzzing with indignation and saying that it was a sign from heaven that the man should be pardoned. As the rope was about to break the third time, the executioner hastily reinforced it with another noose. It worked. The hanging of the remaining three prisoners went off without a hitch. Rysakov had to witness the execution of all his companions before being dispatched to his own death.

At nine-fifty the bodies were cut down from the gallows and placed in the black wooden coffins that had been waiting for them. They were buried in a nameless common grave.

(from Avrahm Yarmolinsky, Road to Revolution: A Century of Russian Radicalism, 1956)