Vera; or, The Nihilists: Summary

At Peter Sabouroff's inn in the Russian countryside in 1795, Peter complains to Michael, a young peasant who loves his daughter Vera, that his son Dmitri went to Moscow to study law and has not written for months. A Colonel arrives with soldiers escorting Nihilist prisoners along the new road to Siberia, and warns that a peasant girl who can read and write is a dangerous woman. Vera gives the Sergeant her mother's necklace so that the prisoners may sit and eat, and discovers that the man hiding his face is Dmitri. He tells her he joined the Nihilists after hearing men talk of liberty and was caught printing their paper. As the prisoners file out he drops a note at her feet. Peter recognises his son too late and collapses, and Vera reads the note, an address in Moscow and the Nihilist oath, and swears to keep it.

In 1800 the Nihilists meet masked in a garret at 99 Rue Tchernavaya in Moscow under their President, Peter Tchernavitch, and Michael recites the full oath. Michael distrusts Alexis, a student of medicine who seems to know too much about the palace. Vera arrives late from the Grand Duke's ball with a proclamation stolen from one of Prince Paul's secretaries: the Czar means to put Russia under martial law, and a council will meet the next day to sign it. Alexis begs her not to leave for Novgorod, since the police are watching every train, and vows to plead with the Emperor himself. In an aside, Vera admits that if she had not sworn the oath she might have loved him.

Michael then accuses Alexis before the whole meeting: he followed him one night to the palace, which Alexis entered by a private door with his own key, and he never came out. The conspirators draw their knives, but Vera stands in front of Alexis, who admits the story but denies being a spy. Soldiers break in under General Kotemkin, the Colonel of the prologue, and Vera passes the company off as strolling players rehearsing a tragedy. When the General demands that they unmask, Alexis reveals himself as the Czarevitch, calls the meeting a prince's whim and sends him away. Kotemkin leaves bragging about the twenty thousand roubles on Vera's head, never knowing she was in the room.

The next afternoon the council gathers in the palace. Prince Paul Maraloffski, the Prime Minister, trades epigrams with the other ministers and with the bitter Czarevitch, who has just watched three Nihilists hanged. The Czar enters in terror, suspecting plots on every side. News comes that the Governor of Archangel has been shot by a woman, and Prince Paul has the Marquis de Poivrard sent there that night as governor, promising to keep his wife company. Raging against Vera Sabouroff, the Czar calls for martial law; Prince Paul produces proclamations he printed six months before and is made Marechale of the Empire.

As the Czar takes up the pen, Alexis puts his hands on the paper and pleads for the people who have won his father's wars and been given nothing. Asked why he dares to speak so, he answers 'Because I am a Nihilist!' The Czar has him arrested, tramples his sword and declares war on his own people. Feeling stifled, he opens the window and steps on to the balcony. A voice in the street cries 'God save the people!', the Czar is shot, and he staggers back into the room, calls his son a murderer and dies.

Three days later the Nihilists meet again. A masked stranger who mocks their creed proves to be Prince Paul, whom the new Czar Alexis has banished to Paris and stripped of his estates. He wants revenge, so he takes the oath and hands over the young Czar's reforming proclamation, a plan of the palace and the key to a private door. Michael, hailed as the man who killed a king, insists the son must die that night, before his reforms win over the people. Alexis has ignored the summons to the meeting, and the conspirators condemn him because he wears a crown.

Vera pleads for a week's grace, but Michael accuses her of loving Alexis and reminds her of Dmitri in chains and of her father, who died of a broken heart three weeks after she left him. Vera calls for the lots, draws the marked one and chooses the dagger. The plan is that she will stab the Czar in his room and, when the clock strikes twelve, throw the bloody dagger from his window to the conspirators waiting in the street; if she does not, they will break in and kill him themselves. She ends the act dedicating herself to Liberty.

In the palace the old ministers mock the young Czar's reforms: an amnesty for political prisoners, cheap salt for the people, a parliament, lighter taxes. Alexis overhears, banishes them all and confiscates their estates. He dismisses his guards and his page and falls asleep by a brazier, meaning to take his sledge to Vera within the hour. Vera finds him asleep and raises the dagger, but he wakes, tells her he kept the crown only for her, that he has recalled Dmitri from Siberia, and asks her to be his Empress. When she answers that a Nihilist cannot wear a crown, he offers to give up the throne and live among the common people. She breaks her oath and admits she loves him.

They speak of their wedding night while the conspirators murmur in the street below. As the clock strikes twelve, Vera stabs herself with the poisoned dagger. Alexis snatches it from her and refuses to throw it out, saying they will die together. She makes him turn round, seizes the dagger and flings it through the window. The conspirators cheer 'Long live the people!', and Vera dies with the words 'I have saved Russia'.