At the end of the Soviet era in Leningrad, Alexander Shmonov attempted to assassinate the first and only president in the history of the USSR.
On 7 November 1990, the evening edition of the television programme Vremya broadcast a sensational report from TASS.
‘During a festive demonstration on Red Square near GUM, shots were fired. According to the press service of the USSR State Security Committee, a Leningrad resident who fired two shots into the air from a sawn-off hunting rifle has been detained. There were no casualties. An investigation is underway.’
Alexander Shmonov, who dared to fire shots on Red Square, spent a year in prison and then another four years in a psychiatric hospital. Now, almost 16 years later, he lives in the suburb of Kolpino near St. Petersburg and is involved in business. He recently agreed to tell his story to reporters.
At the time, he was not yet 40 years old. He worked at the Izhora factory. It was there that he joined the ranks of the Free Democratic Party of Russia. Shmonov considered Gorbachev guilty of establishing a totalitarian regime, of the deaths of 21 people at a rally in Tbilisi on 9 April 1989, and of the shooting of 131 people in Baku on 20 January 1990. That is why he decided to ‘remove’ him in order to make the election of a new president possible.
He prepared seriously for the terrorist attack, read a lot of literature on the subject of assassinations, and came to the conclusion that it would be best to carry out his plan alone. ‘Someone could slip up or get caught by the special services,’ he explained, ‘but it’s harder to expose a lone wolf if no one knows about his intentions.’
The most difficult thing was to get to Gorbachev, but on 1 May and 7 November he always appeared on the podium of the Mausoleum — and the terrorist decided to take advantage of this. He immediately rejected the idea of using an explosive device or a Kalashnikov assault rifle, as innocent people could be hurt. He decided to shoot with a pistol.
Learning that a Makarov pistol cost 2,500 roubles on the black market, he sold the currants he had grown at his dacha and bought a pistol and ammunition. However, while testing the weapon in the forest, he discovered that it was defective — he had been cheated. Shmonov then went to a shop to buy a rifle. There, however, he was asked for a hunting licence — he had to collect certificates from a psychiatric and drug treatment centre, join the Union of Hunters of the USSR, and only then go to the shop. But the German 16-gauge double-barrelled shotgun for 1,800 roubles was absolutely reliable. True, he had to spend another 500 roubles on bullets.
It is worth noting that during his military service, Shmonov was the best marksman in his platoon. He could hit a nine with a Kalashnikov assault rifle from a distance of 100 metres. But eight years had passed since then, and he had to brush up on his shooting skills, so he started frequenting the shooting range.
Two weeks before the November holidays, he cut off the stock of his rifle and bought a loose-fitting, long coat under which it was easy to hide the sawed-off rifle. During training, the rifle’s front sight caught on the lining of the coat, so he sawed it off as well. It took several days to make a special cover and straps to comfortably secure the weapon to his body.
‘I had to think carefully about how to get the barrel out onto Red Square,’ says Shmonov. “I had to plan everything down to the smallest detail. To avoid arousing suspicion, I decided to cough loudly and blow my nose into a large handkerchief at the right moment, then reach into my breast pocket as if to put it there, and at that moment pull out the sawed-off shotgun.
On 17 October, Shmonov resigned from the Izhora Plant so as not to cause trouble for the people he worked with, and on 5 November he left for Moscow. The disassembled rifle was in his suitcase. On 6 November, he checked his suitcase into a luggage storage facility and rented a room from one of the women offering this service at the train station. He asked the landlady if it would be possible to get to Red Square tomorrow morning to see Gorbachev. The woman replied that access to Red Square was always blocked until the end of the demonstration, and that Gorbachev could be admired on television.
Shmonov did not argue and went to the station to retrieve his suitcase. On the way, he bought an evening edition of Moskovsky Komsomolets and studied the reports on the gathering places of the festive columns of the capital’s residents. He cut out the article from the newspaper and put it in his pocket.
On the morning of 7 November, he loaded the right barrel of his rifle with a Poleva bullet and the left barrel with a Sputnik bullet (their lethal force can kill a moose or a wild boar from a hundred metres away) and went to the gathering place for the column in the Baumansky district. KGB and police officers in plain clothes were prowling around there, but he still managed to blend into the crowd.
At 11:09, the motorcade approached the Mausoleum. When they were about 50 metres from the podium, Shmonov pulled out a sawn-off shotgun, aimed at Gorbachev’s head and pulled the trigger, but someone nearby managed to knock his elbow, and the first bullet flew into the sky, while the second lodged in the wall of the GUM department store. In the next moment, he was wrestled to the ground, lifted up and carried away from the square face down.
Mikhail Gorbachev, who was very embarrassed by this incident, described it as follows: “I was standing on the Mausoleum and saw that some kind of brawl had broken out during the demonstration. I heard a bang coming from the GUM department store. Later, I was told that it was an attempt on my life. To be honest, I don’t know if it was staged to influence Gorbachev. After all, passions were already running high in the country, the situation was tense and volatile, and perhaps they just wanted to scare the president?”
‘During my four years in the mental hospital, they forcibly pumped me full of several buckets of medication,’ says the failed terrorist. “Every time after taking the pills, they carefully checked to see if I had left any under my tongue or behind my cheek — they rummaged around in my mouth with sticks. They gave me many painful injections, ignored everything I said, and released me as a disabled person. But I gradually regained my strength, started working as a plumber, and after a few years, I started my own repair company. When asked if he considers his actions at that time to have been a mistake, Shmonov replies: “No, I don’t. Even now, I disagree with those who think that Gorbachev gave the country freedom.
The people themselves chose the path to democracy, and the general secretary of the Communist Party simply could not prevent it.
