Boris Savinkov: Russian Terrorist

Boris Savinkov (born January 19, 1879)

Just looking at Boris Savinkov’s portrait is enough to make the blood run cold – thin, pursed lips, an intense gaze without a hint of a smile. But, then again we know that he was a terrorist. Perhaps if Savinkov had become a writer, his portrait would make a completely different impression.

And he could have been a writer. The several novels he penned under the pseudonym V. Ropshin may not have been masterpieces of Russian literature, but they are well written and interesting. One of the revolutionary’s friends recalled that, during an outing to a restaurant, a bet was made to see who could write a poem before dessert was served. Savinkov claimed that this would be easy, and that he would, in fact, write three poems. Indeed, before the main course arrived he had already written one, after the main course he completed another, and he managed a third before dessert was served. And all three were decent poems – one permeated with political idealism, another lyrical, and the third decadent.

Who was this man? Should we remember him as a merciless terrorist, the brains behind the assassinations of several prominent tsarist officials, whose victims included Vyacheslav von Plehve, Minister of Internal Affairs, and the tsar’s uncle, Grand Prince Sergey Alexandrovich?

Savinkov gave his actions an ideological underpinning in his Memoirs of a Terrorist, featuring pale beauties whose sole passion was terror and young men with penetrating eyes who refused to throw a bomb at a carriage because their target was unexpectedly accompanied by children. (The Rider Named Death, a film based on his memoir is available with English subtitles.)

But in his later books, the same Savinkov, who for many years headed the combat branch of the Social Revolutionary Party, betrays a weariness and disappointment with former terrorists. And not just in his later books – even in 1909, as one of his female comrades in arms recalled, he shocked all his friends in the party by wondering out loud “Why is it all right to kill a minister, but it isn’t all right to kill your lover’s husband? If it’s all right to kill a person, then what difference does it make who and with what motive?” It says something that the woman who recalled this episode felt that such words proved the speaker’s profound amoralism and added “All our SR youth were deeply troubled by this.”

Savinkov is primarily associated with the Social Revolutionary Party, or SRs, although in his youth he had been closer to the Marxists and, by 1917, after many stormy years with the SRs, he had lost all respect for his former friends. That is when the country – and Savinkov’s life – fell into a state of chaos. He served in the Provisional Government and, during the summer of 1917, was commissar on the southwest front. In other words, he was the person in charge of convincing soldiers who were falling apart before his eyes to continue fighting and not listen to Bolshevik propaganda. It must have been around this time that it struck Savinkov that only a strong leader (“strong revolutionary leader” were his exact words, but “revolutionary” is a word that means different things to different people) could save the country.

At the time, the only person who seemed truly strong to him was Lavr Kornilov, who demanded that strict order be restored in the country and insisted on introducing the death penalty. So Savinkov, a man who in 1906 had been condemned to death and managed to escape, now aligned himself with Kornilov and tried to put pressure on the irresolute Kerensky to install a strong-armed, “revolutionary” dictatorship.

Kornilov had the backing of the Cossacks, who at that time were unambiguously seen as one of the main buttresses of the tsarist regime, people who hardly seemed suitable allies for a revolutionary with underground and émigré credentials. But the Cossacks represented strength, and Savinkov joined forces with them. When Kornilov’s attempt to take control in August 1917 failed, Savinkov was called before the Central Committee of the SR party to account for his role in the coup attempt.

By this point in his life, Savinkov could not have cared less what his party comrades thought of him, despite the fact that, just a few years earlier, he had said that the most important aspect of a revolutionary’s work was creating a sense of comradeship. Even then, those around him had been surprised to hear such words from someone they sensed was a lone wolf, would never be part of a group, and was unwilling to take orders from anyone. By now, in 1917, the SRs held no interest for him whatsoever, and he ceased to be one of them. Savinkov simply ignored the Central Committee’s summons, scornfully stating that the Social Revolutionary Party had lost whatever influence it once had.

Then the Civil War broke out, and Savinkov was caught up in a series of dreadful and unexpected maelstroms. Together with the Cossacks, he attempted to take the Winter Palace from the Bolsheviks. It was quite a gamble, and if it had succeeded, Russian history might have played out very differently. But the Bolsheviks had put a sure defense in place and Savinkov was forced to leave Petrograd. He followed Kornilov to the Don and took part in establishing the White Army. Several months later, Savinkov was in Moscow, where he attempted to found his own Union for the Defense of the Motherland and Freedom. This was also a failure, and he headed east to Siberia, which, by the summer of 1918, had become the main center of the White movement. Savinkov fought in the Urals and in Siberia, all the while, his books suggest, struggling with depression and disillusionment.

At this point he was sent on a diplomatic mission to France. Abroad, he found that he was highly regarded among the émigré community, and people with the most varied views and convictions collaborated with him. Apparently, he had been forgiven both his past deeds as a terrorist and his rather murky role in the Kornilov Affair.

But his own thoughts were moving farther and farther away from those of his émigré allies. He could be heard with increasing frequency expressing the opinion that it was pointless to fight the Bolsheviks. In 1917, he had seen Lenin’s takeover as a power grab by “a small group of people.” But now, in the twenties, what he saw in the Bolsheviks was strength – and strength had always attracted him.

Nevertheless, Savinkov continued his strange fight, for which even he had little use at this point. Then again, we will never know how far this fight would have gone. Stalin might have been just the kind of “strong revolutionary leader” this freedom fighter would have been willing to work with – only to later find himself rotting away in a Lubyanka basement in the mid-thirties, as was the fate of so many émigrés who decided to return to the USSR.

But Savinkov did not live that long. In 1924, he was told of an underground organization in the Soviet Union called The Trust, the members of which were gradually taking over important posts in the government and who wanted Savinkov to serve as their leader. He immediately set out for the Soviet Union, but it all turned out to be a hoax orchestrated by Dzerzhinsky. Savinkov was arrested as soon as he crossed the border. At his trial, this resolute man admitted his guilt and the senselessness of resistance. He was sentenced to be shot, but the sentence was commuted to a prison term. Even though he knew about his reduced conviction, Savinkov threw himself from a prison window…

Such was the mysterious end of a mysterious man. To this day, no one knows for certain whether Savinkov actually believed there was an Operation Trust, or if he entered Soviet Russia for his own reasons… Or whether Savinkov really committed suicide, something you might expect from a disillusioned decadent who had seen and done so many awful things in his life. Perhaps he was thrown down a flight of stairs by Chekists who were trying to get rid of an old acquaintance (there were plenty of former SRs working in the secret police, and the Bolsheviks knew perfectly well who they were dealing with). Some even alleged that there had been no trial and no sentence, that Savinkov was simply murdered as soon as he crossed the border and the rest was staged. That also seems plausible. Why fool around with a sworn enemy?

Perhaps he should have stuck to writing.