Attempted assassination of Mikhail Gorbachev

An assassination attempt was made on Soviet president and general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, during the 1990 October Revolution Parade by Aleksandr Shmonov, who fired two bullets before being overpowered by police.

Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987

Background

Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev became the General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985 after the death of Konstantin Chernenko. Seeking to lead the country out of a period of stagnation and to wind down its authoritarian government, he enacted several reforms, most notably glasnost and perestroika. These reforms failed to improve the standard of living, and the economy began to shrink. Over time he became extremely unpopular, and there were several attempts to oust him from power, including a coup attempt in 1991.

Perpetrator

Aleksandr Shmonov [ru] was born on 21 February 1952 in Leningrad to an affluent family. After serving in the Soviet Army, he worked as a mechanic and plumber.^[1] He blamed Gorbachev for the April 9 tragedy in Tbilisi and the Black January massacre in Baku, and determined that he should be executed to guarantee democratic presidential elections. Shmonov meticulously planned the attempt, having purchased a German rifle with police permission, which he then manually transformed into a sawed-off shotgun.^[2] He would regularly practice shooting in the woods, and from March 1990 he began to post leaflets openly calling for the overthrow of the Communist Party.^[3] Before heading to Moscow to carry out the attempt, he wrote a letter to the Kremlin issuing an ultimatum, but it was ignored.^[4]

Attempt

On 7 November 1990, during the annual October Revolution Parade, Shmonov disguised himself with a fake moustache and a wig, and joined a column of demonstrators moving towards the Lenin Mausoleum, where the Soviet leadership was standing to observe the parade. He was armed with two bullets, both meant for Gorbachev, although he later admitted that if one had been enough, he would have used the other to kill Anatoly Lukyanov, the chairman of the Supreme Soviet, who was accompanying Gorbachev. Shmonov carried a note in his pocket, which he had written in anticipation of his potential death, clarifying that he intended to kill Gorbachev. At approximately 11 AM, when he was just 47 meters away from the Mausoleum, Shmonov raised his sawed-off shotgun and fired two shots at Gorbachev, but a police officer seized the barrel mid aim, redirecting the shots skyward, after which a crowd of undercover KGB agents disguised as civilians overpowered him.^[5]

Aftermath

Shmonov was admitted to a mental institution, where he remained for four years until 1995, even after the Soviet Union had dissolved.^[2] In 1999, he tried to run for the State Duma, but was rejected by the local election commission. He has since become a human rights activist.^[6] Gorbachev lost power the following year after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and died in 2022 at the age of 91.

See also

• Attempted assassination of Konrad Adenauer
• Attempted assassination of Leonid Brezhnev