Who were the victims of the 1907 Tiflis bank robbery?
score:5
Short answer
From the available evidence, it would appear that maybe as many as half of the (around 40) fatalities were passersby. This can be tentatively deduced from the likely number of non-passersby in the two carriages attacked. However, other police placed around side streets were also targeted by the Bolsheviks gunmen. The only named victims are the two bank officials.
Details
The most detailed accounts available of the attack in Yerevansky Square, Tiflis (Tbilisi) seem to be in Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiori and Stalin: An Unknown Portrait by Mikl¢s Kun, who cite the Okhrana (Tsarist secret police) archives. Even in the archives, the number is only approximate, but Montefiori does have some of what you are looking for, naming the two bank officials who were killed as Kurdyumov, the State Bank’s cashier, and Golovnya, an accountant. The following excerpt gives a few more details:
The bodies of three Cossacks, the bank officials and some innocent passers-by lay in pieces. The censored newspapers kept casualties low but the Okhrana’s archives reveal that around forty were killed. Dressing-stations for the wounded were set up in nearby shops. Twenty-four seriously wounded were taken to hospital. An hour later, passers-by saw the funereal progress of a ghoulish carriage carrying the dead and their body-parts down Golovinsky...
"A fragment of the 1913 map of Tiflis, highlighting Erivansky [Yerevansky] Square and adjacent streets." Source: Wikipedia
The grenades or bombs (at least 8 according to Stephen Kotkin) were thrown under both carriages. The attackers also had guns. The lead carriage carried the two bank officials and two or three guards. The following phaeton (an open carriage) had more soldiers; none of the academic sources give a specific number, but a fictionalized account in the 1958 historical novel Suicide (or 'Suicides') by Mark Aldanov gives five soldiers. For a phaeton this number seems reasonable, and Aldanov clearly researched the robbery (here is an English translation of the robbery section of the novel). Then there were five mounted Cossacks ("two in front, two behind and another alongside the two carriages" according to Montefiore). Including (presumably) two coach drivers, this gives a total of around 16 non-passersby (of whom only one is known to have survived).
The phaetons would have offered little protection against the grenades, and the attackers also had guns. They would presumably have targeted any of the armed guards still alive after the explosions. We know that one of the coach drivers survived (he was later caught trying to pocket some the money the robbers dropped), but it seems likely that few, if any, of the others did, so there may have been as many as 15 deaths in total in the two carriages.
The number of police around the square / at corners of the side streets, and how many of them were killed by Bolshevik gunmen, is unknown. The high number of fatalities among passersby was almost certainly due to the powerful grenades used. The explosions broke doors and window panes over a large area and even toppled some chimneys; many would have been killed by shrapnel. It is also more than possible that some of the grenades were not thrown very accurately; the attackers were not known for worrying about collateral damage. Mikl¢s Kun states that the
robbers threw eight, or according to certain sources ten, bombs into the square in all directions.
If Kun's account is correct, this would certainly explain the high number of casualties among passersby in a crowded square.
The New York Times article of June 27, 1907 (image in the 1907 Tiflis bank robbery Wikipedia article mentions only that "two employees of the bank were killed". Scanning of other books on Stalin failed to turn up any accounts with the amount of detail given by Montefiori and Mikl¢s Kun. Even Stephen Kotkin's massive Stalin, Vol. I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 (976 pages) makes no mention of the bank officials or anyone else killed.
All emphasis is mine.
-2.jpg){kind=link}
More post
- 📝 What kind of education would a 12th/13th century English knight get?
- 📝 "No sane man will dance."? When / where / about-what did Cicero say this?
- 📝 How were knee injuries treated in Ancient Greece?
- 📝 Identify uniform worn in photograph
- 📝 How did they cook on ancient ships?
- 📝 Did 9/11 change people's behavior during the playing of the national anthem?
- 📝 Was Churchill's "backwards" victory symbol a rude gesture to Hitler?
- 📝 Did the Romans eat breakfast?
- 📝 Nazis and Khazar Theory of Ashkenazi Jews
- 📝 Why did people in the USSR participate in elections?
- 📝 What did Central America export in the early 20th century other than coffee and bananas?
- 📝 Why did Sir William Stanley support Perkin Warbeck?
- 📝 How common were horses at the beginning of the 20th century?
- 📝 When did Germany pay the full amount of reparations of the Versailles treaty?
- 📝 Where was the Turkish Navy based in July 1914?
- 📝 Could someone identify this uniform? The photograph is a tintype
- 📝 Were soldiers in the World Wars paid?
- 📝 What type of people were most likely to be suspected of witchcraft in Salem?
- 📝 Why did wheat become the dominant food culture?
- 📝 WWII - Russian victory over Germany
- 📝 World War 1: Why did Italy not fight until 1915?
- 📝 What is the real story of the Lion of Gripsholm Castle?
- 📝 About what percent of people died on the Oregon Trail?
- 📝 Inflation rates in Spain and Portugal during the 16th century
- 📝 Was there ever a war mission where the personnel were instructed to surrender when the mission complete?
- 📝 How did one look for missing people in the 19th century?
- 📝 Why was the Marian reforms' inclusion of landless masses necessary?
- 📝 To what degree is Simone Weil correct in arguing that the third Reich under Hitler was merely a revival of imperial Rome?
- 📝 Is there a British equivalent in architectural history to American cabins?
- 📝 Where can I find information on a Polish castle dismantled by Sweden?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Who were the victims of the 1907 Tiflis bank robbery?
- 📝 Were there women who were against giving women the right to vote?
- 📝 Why were Albanians the only nation in the Balkans who converted to Islam during the Ottoman occupation?
- 📝 Who were the Huns and/or Xiongnu?
- 📝 Who were the pre-Celtic inhabitants of Western Europe?
- 📝 What were the 52 kinds of victims persecuted by the Nazis?
- 📝 Are there any historians who believe that the crusades were not motivated as a distraction from internal conflicts?
- 📝 Were there any westerners who entered the soviet bloc to escape capitalism?
- 📝 Who were the target audiences of this propaganda lithograph?
- 📝 Were doctors who were drafted in the 1950/1960 years, compelled to take an officer's oath of allegiance?
- 📝 Who were the Wright brothers' competitors?
- 📝 Who were the four US Federal Deputy Marshals escorting Ruby Bridges?
- 📝 Who were the first "businessmen" to rival the kings throughout the world?
- 📝 Who were the successors of the Roman Empire?
- 📝 Who were the first people to get divorced in Western* Christendom?
- 📝 Who were the candidates in the consular elections for 80 BC in Rome?
- 📝 Who were the Deer Touchers?
- 📝 Who were the "tyrants" that Charles Martel "crushed"?
- 📝 Who or what were the Nassadista?
- 📝 In the British Invasion of Greece, what happened to the British troops who were not captured?
- 📝 Who were the traders involved in the triangular slave trade in France?
- 📝 Who were the "international statesmen" Hitler referenced in his last will as having started the war?
- 📝 Who were some of the specific people in the Renaissance who wrote about their period being different from the Middle Ages?
- 📝 Who were the Catholic popes before Francis I who used names not of Latin, Greek or Jewish origin?
- 📝 Who were the first two democratically elected leaders of Russia?
- 📝 After the fall of Constantinople, were the Christians who lived in the Ottoman Empire treated fairly?
- 📝 Did the people who initiated the trans-Atlantic slave trade think they were doing something new?
- 📝 Were there any pharaohs who believed in any of the Abrahamic religions?
- 📝 What type of workers were there who built the pyramids in Egypt?
- 📝 How big was the percentage of white people in the USA who were not against granting the blacks equal rights?