The Morality of Terror: Contemporary Responses to Political Violence in Boris Savinkov's The Pale Horse (1909) and What Never Happened (1912)

Abstract

SEER, Vol.85,No. I,Januagy 2007 The Morality of Terror: Contemporary Responses to Political Violence in Boris Savinkov's The Pale Horse (I 909) and What Never Happened (1912)* DANIEL BEER WRITING in Russkaia mysl'in I913, the liberal publicist, A. S. Izgoev claimed that 'the historyof our generationis entrustedwith the taskof coming to termsmorally with terror'.Whilstthe firstwave of revolutionaryterrorin Russia,which had claimed the life of AlexanderII in I88I, had been all but extinguished by the mid-i88os, it had only been 'defeatedin practice, not morally,and that is why fifteenyears later, it has been resurrected.[...] In the I88os people could not even raisethe issue as a moralproblem in such broad terms'.' Izgoev was pointing to the fact that the violence directed by the revolutionarieshad, prior to the experience of 1905, been comprehended primarilyin terms of politics, that is, a social rather than an individualmorality.Whilst the impulse to revolt in the I870s and I88os had been firmly rooted in a moral rejectionof the existingorder and a conviction that a revolution would institutea morejust and harmonioussociety, the actual deployment of violence was understoodin terms of practicalpolitics. Revolutionary violence in the form of assassinationswas generally subsumed in a language of political struggle. From the perspective of many radicals and liberalsthere was no significantdisjuncturebetween acts of violence themselvesand the political and moral narrativesthat gave Daniel Beer is a lecturer in Modern European History at Royal Holloway, University of London. * I am very grateful to the three anonymous reviewers of SEER for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. Funding for the research and writing of this article was generously provided by Downing College, Cambridge. l A. S. Izgoev, 'Na perevale. Preodolenie terrora', Russkaiamysl, January I9I3, pt. 2, pp. io8-i8 (hereafter, 'Na Perevale. Preodolenie terrora') (p. io8). 26 THE MORALITY OF TERROR: BORIS SAVINKOV them meaning.There was nothingprivateabout the motivesthat impelledterrorists to kill.2 Evenbeforethe crescendoof terrorism in the late I87os and early I88os therehad, however,been scrutinyof the relationship between personal morality andviolence.FedorDostoevskii's Crime and Punishment (i866) and TheDevils(I87I) had both examined the philosophicaljustificationsand psychological reasonsfor murder.Yet the contemporary terrorcampaign hadremained insulated fromsuchscrutiny in asmuch as thepersonalmotivesandmoralityof itspractitioners hadnot fallen substantially withinthearenaofpublicdebate.The notorious example of SergeiNechaevwhosemurderofa fellowrevolutionary hadinspired TheDevilswas remarkable for its exceptionalism.3 The dignityand defiancewithwhichthe assassins of AlexanderII wentto the gallows onlyreinforced formanytheimageof selflessandheroicrevolutionariesstruggling , perhaps misguidedly butnonetheless idealistically, forthe overthrowof the autocracy,an imagecanonizedin SergeiStepniakKravchinskii 's novel of I889, Andrei Kozhukhov.4 Rightlyor wrongly, revolutionaries wereinspired bya desireforrevolution, notbyanything else. Therehad, of course,been fiercedebateson the revolutionary left about the strategicsignificanceof individualacts of terror:many 2 Personal morality had of course been raised as an explicit issue in the terror campaign waged by Zemliai Voliaand NarodnajaVoliabetween I878 and i88i. Yet, on the left, it was firmly subordinated to an overriding ethical-political imperative of revolt. The trial of Vera Zasulich for her attempt on the life of the Governor of St Petersburg on 24January I878 was a case in point. Zasulich's violation of the Christian imperative, 'thou shalt not kill', was seen as a justifiable transgression in the face of the overwhelming and sustained abuses of the tsarist state, embodied in the person of Trepov. Franco Venturi points to the context of the killing: the harsh sentences meted out in the 'trial of the hundred and ninety-three' against the propagandists who had been agitating in the Russian countryside, Trepov's own reputation as a venal bully, public outrage at the flogging of Bogoliubov, which all combined to produce an atmosphere in which Zasulich's acquittal was greeted with popular enthusiasm (Franco Venturi, Rootsof Revolution: A Histoy of thePopulistand Socialist Movements inNVineteenth-Centugy Russia,London, I960, p. 605). On the history of revolutionary terrorism before the turn of the century, see also Norman M. Naimark, Terrorists andSocial Democrats: 7The RussianRevolutionagy Movement under Alexander III, Cambridge, MA, I983; Derek Offord, TheRussianRevolutionagy Movementin the i880os, Cambridge, I986; Anna Geifman, 7hou Shalt Kill: RevolutionayTerrorism in Russia, I894-I917, Princeton, NJ, I993 (hereafter, ThouShalt Kill);Jonathan Daly, AutocracyUnderSiege:SecuriyPoliceand Opposition in Russia, I866-I905, DeKalb, IL, I998 (hereafter, Autocracy UnderSiege);0. V. Budnitskii, Terrorizm v rossiiskom osvoboditel 'nomdvizhenii: Ideologiia, etika...