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"...and now I am what I am: an underground activist; only don't go thinking that I acted in the name of social utopias or in the name of your railway mentality: your categories remind me of rails, and your life is a carriage that flies on the rails; at that time I was a desperate Nietzschean. We are all Nietzscheans: I mean, you too-an engineer of your railway line, the creator of a scheme—you too are a Nietzschean; only you will never admit it..."
-Bely, Petersburg*
Despite their talents for disguise, the assassins frequently entered and exited the city to lessen the risk of apprehension. In this way, their plan depended heavily on the modern transportation system, which allowed them to step on and off the staging ground for the murder and retreat into the wings when necessary.
Begining at 8 a.m. on the day of the murder, Savinkov met Sazonov and Kaliaev--traveling from Moscow--at Nikolaevsky Station (below) and then hurried met his other arriving coconspirators Sikorsky and Borishansky at Warsaw Station. They were coming from Dvinsk.
The railway system not only helped to protect the assassins, it also provided them with the ideal means for eliminating Plehve and making a quick escape: "In general, our systematic observation gave us the assurance that it would be easiest to kill Plehve on Thursday, while he was on his way from Aptekarsky Island to the Tsarskoselsky (Warsaw) railway station (below)."
"It was mid-June. Convinced that our work was progressing, Azef left Petersburg. The Tsar moved to Petergof, and Plehve made his Thursday trips not to the Tsarskoselsky station but to the Baltic Station (below). Our surveillance work was complete, and it was clear that must carry out the assassination soon."**
On the day of the murder, the assassins disguised themselves as railway porters in order to blend in to the surroundings of Baltic Station. They wore uniforms much like those of actual railway porters, pictured below at Nikolaevsky station.
*Petersburg, 106.
**Vospominaniia terrorista, 65.
