Victor von Wahl was an Imperial Russian Army

Imperial Russian Army

The Imperial Russian Army was the land armed force of the Russian Empire, active from around 1721 to the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the early 1850s, the Russian army consisted of around 938,731 regular soldiers and 245,850 irregulars . Until the time of military reform of Dmitry Milyutin in...

 general, mayor of St. Petersburg, and governor of Vilnius

Vilnius

Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...

. He came from Baltic German

Baltic German

The Baltic Germans were mostly ethnically German inhabitants of the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, which today form the countries of Estonia and Latvia. The Baltic German population never made up more than 10% of the total. They formed the social, commercial, political and cultural élite in...

 aristocracy. He had also been a director of the Xenia Institute, an exclusive school for aristocratic women.

Von Wahl became the governor of Vilna in the autumn of 1901. Von Wahl ordered arrest and humiliating flogging of a number of Jewish and Polish workers who had taken part in the May Day

May Day

May Day on May 1 is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival and usually a public holiday; it is also a traditional spring holiday in many cultures....

 parade in 1902. Because of the cruel practices of his administration, plots for his assassination began to be formed soon after his arrival. In 1902, a Bundist worker, Hirsh Lekert

Hirsh Lekert

Hirsh Lekert was a Jewish socialist activist and member of the Bund.- Life :...

carried out an unsuccessful assassination attempt directed at him, wounding him in the leg and arm. Lekert was tried by military court, sentenced to death and executed.

Assistant Minister of the Interior and Commander of the Gendarme Corps (1902). Member of the State Council (1903).