A powerful explosion is tearing the air. Pieces of glass and furniture torn to pieces are flying everywhere, hurting the guests of the confectionery. There are four dead men on the ground and a dozen wounded writhing in pain. No, this is not another attack in Baghdad or Kabul, but the aftermath of the actions of the only suicide terrorist under the PPS banner.
It was a beautiful morning on May 19, 1905 when Tadeusz Dzierzbicki left his apartment. He carried an innocent looking box of chocolates under his arm . Its contents, however, were lethal. It contained a several-kilogram bomb, which was to be used to send the Warsaw governor-general Konstantin Maksymowicz into the afterlife. The long-prepared plan to assassinate the tsarist official seemed perfect, but everything went wrong.
Spoils, Spoils everywhere
Members of the PPS Combat Organization ( read more about Polish revolutionaries in another article! ) for weeks, they watched every step of the extremely cautious general. They tried to get to know his habits as closely as possible. In the end, they concluded that it was best to launch the attack while the Russian was driving from Belvedere to the Sunday service in the church on the corner of Długa and Miodowa Streets.
Tadeusz Dzierzbicki volunteered to be the perpetrator of the attack. An engineer from Paris recently who runs a party bomb lab.
During the revolution of 1905, the PPS chose terror as an effective method of fighting tsarism.
It was - as quoted in Wojciech Lady's book "Polish terrorists" recalled one of the members of the Polish Socialist Party: A boy of extraordinary abilities, a burning head, full of ideas, and energy and will made of steel . Unfortunately, a few months earlier the Cossacks had shot his brother and now he only wanted revenge .
According to the plan, Dzierzbicki was to calmly wait for his victim in the confectioner's garden at 4 Miodowa Street. It was assumed that when the carriage with Maksymowicz reached this place, our hero would throw a bomb at it and then disappear in the confusion that would arise after the explosion. In case of any troubles, he was to be supported by a protective group consisting of experienced fighters under the command of Bronisław Żukowski.
Everything looked beautiful on paper, but the reality painfully verified the ambitious assumptions of PPS members. They did not suppose that in their ranks was the provocateur of Tsarist Ochrana . As soon as he found out about the planned large-scale socialist action, he reported everything to his superiors.
Although the officers from Ochrana did not know who the target was, they immediately realized that it must be Governor-General Maksymowicz. They decided to start large-scale operations immediately.
Better to die than get captured
Hundreds of agents and ordinary policemen set out on the streets of Warsaw, whose only task was to catch the bomber. Fortunately for Dzierzbicki, the security forces did not have his description, so the ignorant fighter calmly arrived at the designated place.
m fortune turned away from him. His nervous behavior aroused the suspicions of the priest cooperating with the Protector who indicated the young engineer to the tsarist intelligence agents.
Two undercover policemen immediately approached the table where Dzierzbicki was sitting, demanding that he go with them. Now everything happened very quickly. This is how Kazimierz Pollak, a journalist from Warsaw, quoted in the book, remembered it by the Warsaw journalist Kazimierz Pollak, who was an accidental witness to the whole event:
Then the thud of a package knocked off the table was heard, and then a terrible roar shook the air - clouds of smoke enveloped the patisserie porch and part of the street. As the smoke began to spread , among the torn iron and shards of glass, they saw three dead bodies with torn bellies .
A photo showing the effects of Tadeusz Dzierzbicki's suicide attack on Miodowa Street.
It was the remains of the body of the bomber and the two agents following him. In the street strewn with shards of glass lay the body of a fourth man, and a dozen badly injured people groaned on the sidewalk.
thus Tadeusz Dzierzbicki did not let himself be taken alive and became the only terrorist-suicide in the turbulent history of the Polish Socialist Party . For this, Ochrana fell into Żukowski, who was horribly beaten in retaliation for the deaths of two agents.
As for the would-be victim of the attack, Konstantin Maksymowicz was so scared that he holed up in the Zegrze fortress and did not move out of it . After a few months, the cowardly governor-general was dismissed from his post. So, in a way, the attack was successful.