Ivan Yuvachev

Who was Ivan Yuvachev?

Ivan Pavlovich Yuvachev was a narodovolets, i.e., a member of The People's Will revolutionary organization that assassinated Tsar Alexander II, after seven failed assassination attempts. He was a defendant at the Trial of the Fourteen in 1884, where he was found guilty of "terrorist activities".

Yuvachev served four years at Peter and Paul Fortress on the Neva River, and at the Schlusselburg Fortress. He was imprisoned with fellow narodovolet Alexander Ulyanov, brother of Vladimir Lenin, who was hanged there. In this period he experienced a religious awakening, or perhaps a mental breakdown. Rejecting an offer to be released to a monastery, Yuvachev served eight additional years of hard labor on the Sakhalin peninsula. Anton Chekhov came to know Yuvachev well in this period, and later wrote about Yuvachev in a text recalling his time at Sakhalin. Yuvachev emerged from prison a vocal pacifist, and he authored two memoirs and several religious-mystical tracts.

Yuvachev is the father of Russian poet Daniil Kharms. A popular account of Kharm's birth has Yuvachev predicting the precise day of his son's birth in advance, and, from a telephone on Leo Tolstoy's estate, ordering his wife to adhere to the date. She gave birth to her son on the date named by Yuvachev.