populated by less than 50 people, including in its ranks both men and women. The official membership of the Narodnaya Volya organization during its existence has been estimated at 500, bolstered by an additional number of informal followers. A document listing the movement's participants, including those from the period from 1886 to 1896 when only a small skeleton organization remained, totals 2,200. Assassination of Tsar Alexander II The assassination of Tsar Alexander II on marked the high-water mark of Narodnaya Volya as a factor in Russian politics. While the assassination did not end the Tsarist regime, the government ran scared in the aftermath of the bomb that killed him, with the formal coronation ceremony of Tsar Alexander III postponed for more than two years due to security concerns. The Tsar had been formally sentenced to death by the Executive Committee of Narodnaya Volya on 25 August 1879, on the heels of the execution of former Zemlevolets Solomon Wittenberg, who had attempted to build a mine to sink a ship carrying the Tsar into Odessa harbor the previous year. An initial plan called for the use of dynamite to destroy a train carrying the Tsar, which ended with an explosion that destroyed a freight car and led to a derailment. A February 1880 attempt used a quantity of dynamite to attempt to blow up the Tsar in a palace dining room. The resulting explosion killed 11 guards and soldiers and wounded 56, but missed the Tsar, who was not in the dining hall as expected. A state of siege followed, during which the demoralized Tsar avoided public appearances amidst sensational rumors in the press of additional attacks in the offing. One French diplomat likened the Tsar to a ghost—"pitiful, aged, played out, and choked by a fit of asthmatic coughing at every word". In response to the security crisis the Tsar established a new Supreme Commission for the Maintenance of State Order and Public Peace, under the command of Mikhail Loris-Melikov, a hero of the Russo-Turkish War. Just over a week later, a Narodnovolets terrorist attempted to assassinate Loris-Melikov with a handgun, firing a shot but missing, only to be hanged two days later. Repression was ratcheted upwards, with two Narodnaya Volya activists executed in Kiev the following month for the crime of distributing revolutionary leaflets. Aftermath After the assassination of Alexander II, Narodnaya Volya went through a period of ideological