Terrorism in Russia has a long history starting from the time of the Russian Empire. Terrorism, in the modern sense,See the "Etymology" section means violence against civilians to achieve political or ideological objectives by creating extreme fear.
Terrorism was an important tool used by revolutionaries in the early 20th century to disrupt the social, political, and economic system and enable rebels to bring down the Tsarist government of the Russian Empire.
Starting from the end of the 20th century, significant terrorist activity has taken place in Russia, most notably the Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis, the 1999 apartment bombings, the Moscow theater hostage crisis, the Beslan school siege, and most recently the Crocus City Hall attack and the 2024 Dagestan attacks. Many more acts of terrorism have been committed in major Russian cities, as well as the regions of Chechnya and Dagestan.
19th century German Social Democrat Karl Kautsky traces the origins of terrorism, including the terrorism seen in the Russian Empire, to the "Reign of Terror" of the French Revolution.Terrorism and Communism by Karl Kautsky. Kautsky said: "It is, in fact, a widely spread idea that Terrorism belongs to the very essence of revolution, and that whoever wants a revolution must somehow come to some sort of terms with terrorism. As proof of this assertion, over and over again the great French Revolution has been cited." (Chapter 1)The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Others emphasize the role of Russian revolutionary movements during the 19th century, especially Narodnaya Volya ("People's Will") and the Nihilist movement, which included several thousand followers. "People's Will" organized one of the first political terrorism campaigns in history. In March 1881, it assassinated the Emperor of Russia Alexander II, who twenty years earlier had emancipated the Russian serfs.
Important ideologists of these groups were Mikhail Bakunin and Sergey Nechayev, who was described in Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Possessed.Edvard Radzinsky Stalin: The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives (1997) Nechayev argued that the purpose of revolutionary terror is not to gain the support of the masses, but on the contrary, to inflict misery and fear on the common population. According to Nechayev, a revolutionary must terrorize civilians in order to incite rebellions. He wrote:
"A revolutionary must infiltrate all social formations including the police. He must exploit rich and influential people, subordinating them to himself. He must aggravate the miseries of the common people, so as to exhaust their patience and incite them to rebel. And, finally, he must ally himself with the savage word of the violent criminal, the only true revolutionary in Russia".
"The Revolutionist is a doomed man. He has no private interests, no affairs, sentiments, ties, property nor even a name of his own. His entire being is devoured by one purpose, one thought, one passion – the revolution. Heart and soul, not merely by word but by deed, he has severed every link with the social order and with the entire civilized world; with the laws, good manners, conventions, and morality of that world. He is its merciless enemy and continues to inhabit it with only one purpose – to destroy it."
According to historian and writer Edvard Radzinsky, Nechayev's ideas and tactics were widely used by Joseph Stalin and other Russian revolutionaries.
Early 20th century
The SR Combat Organization was founded in 1902 and operated as an autonomous branch of the Socialist Revolutionary Party responsible for assassinating government officials, was led by Grigory Gershuni and operated separately from the party so as not to jeopardize its political actions. SRCO agents assassinated two Ministers of the Interior, Dmitry Sipyagin and V. K. von Plehve, Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich, the Governor of Ufa N. M. Bogdanovich, and many other high-ranking officials.Anna Geifman. Entangled in Terror: The Azef Affair and the Russian Revolution, Wilmington, Scholarly Resources Inc., 2000, 247 pp. It has been estimated that all together in the last twenty years of the Tsarist regime (1897–1917) more than 17,000 people were killed or wounded in terror attacks.
Soviet Union 1977 Moscow bombings
A series of three bombings in Moscow on 8 January 1977 killed seven people and seriously injured 37 others. No one claimed responsibility for the bombings, although three members of an Armenian nationalist organization were executed early in 1979 after a KGB investigation and a secret trial. Some Soviet dissidents said that the bombings were allegedly organized by KGB to frame-up Armenian nationalists who were executed.Chronicle of Current Events, 44.15, "Concerning the explosions in Moscow" (15 March 1977) .Andrew, Christopher M., Oleg Gordievsky. KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev. HarperCollinsPublishers; 1st edition (1 May 1992). . p. 546.M. Heller and A. Nekrich, History of Russia 1917–1995; seven volumes; London, 1982, Russian text online , Quote (Russian): "армянские националисты были приговорены к смертной казни закрытым судом и несмотря на то, что алиби обвиняемых было подтверждено многими свидетелями." (Armenian nationalists were to death in a closed trial, and despite the fact that the alibi of the accused was confirmed by many witnesses)
State-sponsored international terrorism
The Soviet Union and some of its allies had sponsored international terrorism on numerous occasions, especially during the Cold War.
Russian Federation
The First Chechen War (1994–1996) and the Second Chechen War (2000–2009) saw Chechen nationalism transformed into jihadism. In later years, the conflict extended beyond Chechnya, inspiring jihadist movements in Dagestan and Ingushetia. Since the First Chechen war, there has been a number of attacks by jihadists in various Russian cities, with the Doubrovka Theatre hostage crisis in Moscow (over 150 dead, including 130 hostages, in 2002) and the Beslan school siege in North Ossetia (334 dead, including 186 children, in 2004) peaking. There have been numerous other bloody jihadist terrorist attacks, notably at airports and in the Moscow and St Petersburg metros, with dozens of deaths.Moscow Attack: Russia Confronts Islamist TerrorismIntelBrief: Radicalization and Extremism in Russia's North Caucasus Region
1999 Russian apartment bombings
The Russian apartment bombings were a series of bombings in Russia that killed 300 & injured over 1,700. And, together with the Dagestan War, led the country into the Second Chechen War. The four bombings took place in the Russian cities of Buinaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk during early days of September 1999.
The bombings were followed by a controversial episode when a suspected bomb was found and defused in an apartment block in the Russian city of Ryazan on 22 September, which was then explained to be an exercise by the Russian security services, the FSB.
An official investigation of the bombings was completed only three years later, in 2002. Seven suspects were killed, six have been convicted on terrorism-related charges, and one remains a fugitive. According to the investigation, the Moscow and Volgodonsk bombings were organized and led by Achemez Gochiyaev, who headed a group of "Karachai Wahhabis", while the Buinaksk bombing was organized and perpetrated by a different group of "Dagestani Wahhabis".
The Russian Duma rejected two motions for parliamentary investigation of the Ryazan incident. An independent public commission to investigate the bombings chaired by Duma deputy Sergei Kovalev was rendered ineffective because of government refusal to respond to its inquiries. Two key members of the Kovalev Commission, Sergei Yushenkov and Yuri Shchekochikhin, both Duma members, have since died in assassinations in April 2003 and July 2003 respectively. The commission's lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin was arrested in October 2003 to become one of the better-known political prisoners in Russia.
21st century 2002
The Moscow theater hostage crisis (also known as the 2002 Nord-Ost siege) was the seizure of a crowded Dubrovka Theater by 40 to 50 armed Chechens on 23 October 2002 that involved 850 hostages and ended with the deaths of at least 170 people.
2004
A suicide bombing in downtown Moscow Metro killed 41 people on 6 February.
Simultaneous suicide bombings brought down two passenger aircraft within one hour of leaving from the Domedodovo airport, Moscow, killing 90 people total on 24 August.
Chechen terrorists seized over 1,000 hostages at a school in Beslan, North Ossetia on 1 September. The siege ended on 3 September, with more than 300 people dead, most of them children.
2006
The 2006 Moscow market bombing occurred on 21 August 2006, when a self-made bomb with the power of more than 1 kg of TNT exploded at Moscow's Cherkizovsky Market frequented by foreign merchants. The bombing killed 13 people and injured 47. In 2008, eight members of the neo-Nazi organization The Saviour were sentenced for their roles in the attack.Russian court jails market bombers Al Jazeera. 15 May 2008.
2010
In March 2010 suicide bombings were carried out by two women who were aligned with Caucasus Emirate and Al-Qaeda. The terrorist attack happened during the morning rush hour of 29 March 2010, at two stations of the Moscow Metro (Lubyanka and Park Kultury), with roughly 40 minutes interval between. At least 38 people were killed, and over 60 injured.
2011
The Domodedovo International Airport bombing was a suicide bombing in the international arrival hall of Moscow's Domodedovo International, in Domodedovsky District, Moscow Oblast, on 24 January 2011.
The bombing killed 37 people and injured 173 others, including 86 who had to be hospitalised. Of the casualties, 31 died at the scene, three later in hospitals, one en route to a hospital, one on 2 February after having been put in a coma, and another on 24 February after being hospitalised in grave condition.
Russia's Federal Investigative Committee later identified the suicide bomber as a 20-year-old from the North Caucasus, and said that the attack was aimed "first and foremost" at foreign citizens.
2013
In December 2013, two separate suicide bombings a day apart targeted mass transportation in the city of Volgograd, in the Volgograd Oblast of Southern Russia, killing 34 people overall, including both perpetrators who were aligned to Caucasus Emirate and Vilayat Dagestan. The attacks followed a bus bombing carried out in the same city two months earlier.
On 21 October 2013, a suicide bombing took place on a bus in the city of Volgograd, in the Volgograd Oblast of Southern Russia. The attack was carried out by a female perpetrator named Naida Sirazhudinovna Asiyalova (Russian: Наида Сиражудиновна Асиялова) who was converted to Islam by her husband, she detonated an explosive belt containing 500–600 grams of TNT inside a bus carrying approximately 50 people, killing seven civilians and injuring at least 36 others.
2014
On 5 October 2014 a 19-year-old man named Opti Mudarov went to the town hall where an event was taking place to mark Grozny City Day celebrations in Grozny coinciding with the birthday of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. Police officers noticed him acting strangely and stopped him. The officers began to search him and the bomb which Mudarov had been carrying exploded. Five officers, along with the suicide bomber, were killed, while 12 others were wounded.