In 1878 it was decreed that in future political prisoners should be tried by courts martial, and in the following year the Tsar appointed Governors General of St. Petersburg, Kharkoff, and Odessa, and gave additional and formidable powers to the Governors of Moscow, Warsaw, and Kieff. The system of repression was to be drastically pursued. The revolutionaries retorted by attempting to blow up the train in which Alexander returned from a visit to the Crimea. Three mines were laid. Near Moscow Sophia Perovskaia and a few associates had worked for two months digging a tunnel to the line from a house they had taken. The preparations were in this case perfect, but the Tsar escaped. The police had arranged three trains, and, as the Tsar changed train on approaching Moscow, leaving the middle for the first train, he was allowed to pass unharmed, and it was the second train that was blown to pieces. Sophia Perovskaia and her associates escaped and returned to their plotting. The heads of the revolutionary movement had decreed the death of Alexander II.
For the next fifteen months there was a thrilling war between the revolutionaries and the “Third Section.” Time and again the Tsar’s advisers declared that only a few dozen rebels were left, and the country was substantially loyal. But, although hundreds were arrested annually, though bribes and spies and all the ignominious machinery of the police were brought into play, the “red terror” held the field against the “white terror.” In February, 1880, not only the Tsar, but all the imperial family, had a narrow escape. A revolutionary named Halturin entered the service of the Winter Palace as waiter. He discovered that the waiters’ quarters were, with an intervening floor occupied by troops, directly underneath the dining-room, and he proposed to fire a mine there. Day by day he smuggled into the palace small quantities of dynamite and stored them with his belongings. The police discovered a plan, on which the imperial dining-room was marked with a cross, and they searched the floors beneath it. They did not find the explosive, but from that day a stricter watch was kept, and no more dynamite could be introduced. Halturin believed that he had enough, and on February 17th he fired the mine at a time when the imperial family ought to be assembled for a festive dinner. But the Tsar was late for dinner, and again he escaped unhurt.