To Break Russia's Chains: Boris Savinkov and His Wars against the Tsar and the Bolsheviks

Abstract

As he did in The Black Russian, his 2013 biography of Frederick Bruce Thomas, the son of formerly enslaved Mississippians who became a millionaire nightclub owner in pre-1917 Moscow, Alexandrov combines brilliant research and brisk storytelling to tell the story of Boris Savinkov (1879–1925), a notorious Russian terrorist of the first quarter of the twentieth century. While today only specialists in modern Russian history and literature are likely to recognize Savinkov's name, in his day he was an international celebrity, feted in the pages of leading European and American newspapers for a lifetime of resistance to both tsarist and Bolshevik tyranny. Although praise for a man who organized the assassination of government ministers and members of the Romanov family may seem perverse to contemporary American readers, especially those who have come of age since 9/11, being reminded that “the past is a foreign country” is always a useful exercise.In fast moving and lively prose, Alexandrov tells the fascinating story of Savinkov's long and complicated journey from a privileged, cultured, and politically progressive upper-middle-class Russian family to the most-wanted list of the Okhrana and the Cheka, the tsarist and Soviet secret police, up to his mysterious death. Because Savinkov was not only a revolutionary but a writer who told and retold his life story in novels and memoirs, his biographer must be equal parts historian, literary critic, and psychologist. It is difficult to imagine a better guide to the multiple complexities of Savinkov's life, times, and works than Alexandrov, B. E. Bensinger Professor Emeritus of Slavic Literatures at Yale. Combining deep historical knowledge, fresh critical insights, and penetrating psychological observations, Alexandrov shows Savinkov's dramatic life story taking shape against the backdrop of a cataclysmic quarter-century of Russian history that included multiple revolutions and wars.Certainly, the most difficult aspect of writing the biography of a terrorist like Savinkov is to imagine how sophisticated people might reasonably conclude that the targeted assassination of political figures could be both politically necessary and ethically acceptable. And while it is inevitable that some will see any attempt to understand political violence in a particular time and place as justifying terrorism always and anywhere, honest biographers have no choice but to try to explain why their subjects made the choices they did. In this context, Alexandrov's judicious treatment of Savinkov's argument that, given the political realities of tsarist Russia, violence could be a moral response to evil is especially valuable. The paradox of Savinkov and the other “moral terrorists” discussed in To Break Russia's Chains is that they justified targeted violence against prominent politicians and influential bureaucrats without rejecting the fifth commandment. According to their reasoning, assassination could be a moral act if the victim was responsible for brutal and unjust policies and if the perpetrator accepted punishment for what was, without question, a sin. Given the reality of tsarist arbitrary rule, the absence of any legal avenues to protest unjust policies, and the terrorists’ belief that inaction meant complicity in a criminal regime, their conclusion that violence and inevitable punishment was the only moral choice is neither incomprehensible nor illogical. Whatever one thinks of Savinkov's personality and methods, and despite his ultimate failure to achieve his goal, there is something undeniably heroic in his devoting his entire adult life to the struggle against the forces of political tyranny in his homeland. Today, when fantasies of redemptive violence have become a staple of the daily news cycle, Savinkov's story is particularly relevant.