Boris Savinkov is a Russian politician and writer. First of all, he is known as a terrorist who was part of the leadership of the combat organization of the Social Revolutionary Party. He took an active part in the White movement. Throughout his career, he often used pseudonyms, in particular, Halley James, B.N., Benjamin, Kseshinsky, Kramer.
A family
Boris Savinkov was born in Kharkov in 1879. His father was an assistant prosecutor in a military court, but was fired for being too liberal. In 1905, he died in a psychiatric hospital.
The mother of the hero of our article was a playwright and journalist, described the biography of her sons under the pseudonym S. A. Chevil. Boris Viktorovich Savinkov had an older brother, Alexander. He joined the Social Democrats, for which he was exiled to Siberia. In exile in Yakutia committed suicide in 1904. The younger brother Victor is an officer of the Russian army, participated in exhibitions of Jack of Diamonds. He lived in exile.
Two sisters also grew up in the family. Vera worked in the magazine Russian Wealth, and Sofia participated in the Social Revolutionary movement.
Education
Boris Savinkov himself graduated from a gymnasium in Warsaw, then studied at St. Petersburg University, where he was expelled after participating in student unrest. He studied in Germany for a while.
For the first time, Boris Viktorovich Savinkov was arrested in 1897 in Warsaw. He was accused of revolutionary activity. At that moment, he was a member of the Workers' Banner and Socialist groups, who referred to themselves as Social Democrats.
In 1899 he was again detained, but was soon released. In the same year, his personal life was adjusted when he married the daughter of the famous writer Gleb Uspensky Vera. From her, Boris Savinkov had two children.
At the beginning of the 20th century, it began to be actively published in the Russian Thought newspaper. Participates in the St. Petersburg Union of the struggle for the liberation of the working class. In 1901 he was again arrested and sent to Vologda.
At the head of the battle organization
An important stage in the biography of Boris Savinkov begins when in 1903 he flees from exile in Geneva. There he enters the Socialist Revolutionary Party, becomes an active member of its Combat Organization.
He takes part in the preparation and implementation of several terrorist attacks in Russia. This is the murder of the Minister of Internal Affairs Vyacheslav Pleve, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. Among them were unsuccessful assassinations of Moscow Governor-General Fedor Dubasov and Minister of the Interior Pyotr Durnovo.
Soon Savinkov becomes deputy head of the Evo Azef Combat Organization, and when he is exposed, he leads it.
In 1906, while in Sevastopol, he was preparing the assassination of the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Chukhnin. He is arrested and sentenced to death. However, Boris Viktorovich Savinkov, whose biography is given in this article, manages to escape to Romania.
Life in exile
After that, Boris Savinkov, whose photo is in this article, is forced to remain in exile. In Paris, he meets with Gippius and Merezhkovsky, who become his literary patrons.
Savinkov at that time was engaged in literature, writes under the pseudonym V. Ropshin. In 1909 he published the book “Memoirs of a Terrorist” and the novel “The Pale Horse”. Boris Savinkov in his latest work talks about a group of terrorists preparing an assassination attempt against prominent statesmen. In addition, it contains discussions about philosophy, religion, psychology and ethics. In 1914, he released the novel "That which was not." The Social Revolutionaries were very skeptical of this literary experience, demanding even to expel Savinkov from their ranks.
When Azef was exposed in 1908, the hero of our article did not believe in his betrayal for a long time. He even acted as an advocate during the court of honor in Paris. After he tried to revive the Battle Organization on his own, but he failed to organize a single successful attempt. In 1911, it was dissolved.
By that time, he already had his second wife, Eugene Zilberberg, from whom he had a son, Leo. With the outbreak of World War I, he receives a war correspondent certificate.
Attempt to become a dictator
A new stage in the biography of Boris Savinkov begins after the February Revolution - he returns to Russia. In April 1917, resumes political activity. Savinkov becomes commissar of the Provisional Government, campaigning for the continuation of the war to a victorious end, supports Kerensky.
Soon he becomes an assistant minister of war, starting to claim dictatorial powers. However, everything turns around in an unexpected way. In August, Kerensky calls him to Headquarters for negotiations with Kornilov, then Boris Viktorovich leaves for Petrograd.
When Kornilov sends troops to the capital, he becomes the military governor of Petrograd. He is trying to convince Kornilov to obey, and on August 30, resigns, disagreeing with the changes in the Provisional Government. In October, he was expelled from the Socialist-Revolutionary Party due to the Kornilov affair.
Confrontation with the Bolsheviks
The October Revolution meets with hostility. He tried to help the Provisional Government in the besieged Winter Palace, but to no avail. After he left for Gatchina, where he received the post of commissioner at the detachment of General Krasnov. On the Don participated in the formation of the Volunteer Army.
In March 1918, in Moscow, Savinkov created the counter-revolutionary Union for the Defense of the Homeland and Freedom. About 800 people who became part of it considered it their goal to overthrow the Soviet regime, establish a dictatorship, and continue the war against Germany. Boris Viktorovich even managed to create several military groups, but in May the plot was uncovered, most of its members were arrested.
For some time he was hiding in Kazan, was in the Kappel troops. Arriving in Ufa, he applied for the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Provisional Government. On behalf of the chairman of the Ufa directory, he went on a mission to France through Vladivostok.
It is noteworthy that Savinkov was a freemason. He was in the boxes in Russia and in Europe when he ended up in exile. In 1919, he participated in negotiations on assistance to the White Movement from the Entente. During the Civil War, he sought allies in the West, personally communicated with Winston Churchill and Jozef Pilsudski.
In 1919 he returned to Petrograd. He was hiding in the apartment of Annensky's parents, at which time his portraits were pasted throughout the city, and a good reward was promised for the capture.
In Warsaw
When the Soviet-Polish war began in 1920, Savinkov settled in Warsaw. Pilsudski himself invited him there. There he created the Russian Political Committee, together with Merezhkovsky published the newspaper "For Freedom!" He tried to stand at the head of anti-Bolshevik peasant uprisings. As a result, in October 1921 he was expelled from the country.
In December, in London, he met with a diplomat Leonid Krasin, who wanted to organize his cooperation with the Bolsheviks. Savinkov said that he was ready for this only subject to the dispersal of the Cheka, recognition of private property, and free elections to the councils. After that, Boris Viktorovich met with Churchill, who at that time was the Minister of the Colonies, and British Prime Minister George, proposing to put forward these three conditions, set forth earlier by Krasin, as an ultimatum when recognizing the Soviet government.
At that time, he finally severed all ties with the White movement, starting to look for ways out for the nationalists. In particular, in 1922 and 1923 he met with Benito Mussolini for this. Soon he was in complete political isolation. During this period, Boris Savinkov writes the novel "The Black Horse." In it, he tries to comprehend the results and results of the ended Civil War.
Homecoming
In 1924, Savinkov illegally came to the USSR. He was able to lure in the operation "Syndicate-2", organized by the GPU. In Minsk, he is arrested along with his mistress Lyubov Dikgof and her husband. The trial of Boris Savinkov begins. He admits defeat in the confrontation with the Soviet regime and his guilt.
In August the 24th he was sentenced to death. He is then replaced with ten years in prison. The prison provides the opportunity to write books to Boris Viktorovich Savinkov. Some even claim that he was kept in comfortable conditions.
In 1924 he wrote a letter "Why I recognized the Soviet government!". He denies that it was insincere, adventurous, and done to save his life. Savinkov emphasizes that the coming to power of the Bolsheviks was the will of the people, which must be obeyed, in addition, "Russia has already been saved," he writes. Different opinions are still being expressed why Boris Savinkov recognized the Soviet regime. Most are convinced that this was the only opportunity for him to save his life.
He sent letters urging him to do likewise from prison to the leaders of the White Movement in exile, calling for an end to the struggle against the USSR.
Death
According to the version held by the authorities, on May 7, 1925, Savinkov committed suicide by taking advantage of the fact that there was no bars on the window in the room where he was taken after the walk. He jumped into the courtyard of the Cheka on the Lubyanka from the fifth floor. He was 46 years old.
According to the conspiracy theories, Savinkov was killed by the GPU. This version is cited by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his novel The Gulag Archipelago. The place of his burial is unknown.
Savinkov was twice married. His first wife, Vera Ouspenskaya, like him, took part in terrorist activities. In 1935 she was sent into exile. Upon returning, she died of starvation in the besieged Leningrad. Their son Viktor was arrested among 120 hostages for the murder of Kirov. In 1934 he was shot. Nothing is known about the fate of Tatyana’s daughter, born in 1901.
The second wife of the leader of the Combat Organization, Eugene, was the sister of the terrorist Lev Zilberberg. Her son Lev was born with Savinkov in 1912. He became a prose writer, poet and journalist. He participated in the Civil War in Spain, where he was seriously wounded. Lev Savinkov in his novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls" mentions the American classic Ernest Hemingway.
During the Second World War he participated in the French Resistance. He died in Paris in 1987.
Creative activity
For many, Savinkov is not only a terrorist and a Social Revolutionary, but also a writer. He began to study literature seriously in 1902. Gorky criticized his first published stories, written under the influence of the Polish prose writer Stanislav Pshibyshevsky.
In 1903, in his novel "At Twilight," a revolutionary first appeared who was disgusted with what he was doing, worried that killing was a sin. In the future, on the pages of his works one can regularly observe a peculiar dispute between the writer and the revolutionary about the admissibility of extreme measures in order to achieve the goal. In the combat organization, the Social Revolutionaries were extremely negative about his literary experience, as a result they became one of the reasons for his overthrow.
Since 1905, Boris Savinkov writes many memoirs, describing literally in hot pursuit the famous terrorist attacks carried out by the Socialist Revolutionary Organization. For the first time, these Memoirs of a Terrorist were published in a separate edition in 1917, after which they were repeatedly reprinted. The revolutionary Nikolai Tyutchev noted that in these memoirs, the writer Savinkov desperately argues with the revolutionary Savinkov, ultimately proving his innocence, the inadmissibility of extreme measures to achieve the goal.
In 1907, begins to closely communicate in Paris with Merezhkovsky, who becomes a kind of mentor in all the subsequent activities of the writer. They actively discuss religious views and ideas, and attitudes towards revolutionary violence. It was just under the influence of Gippius and Merezhkovsky that Savinkov wrote the novel "The Pale Horse" in 1909, which he published under the creative pseudonym V. Ropshin. The plot is based on real-life events with him or in his environment. For example, this is the murder by the terrorist Kalyaev of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, whom Savinkov himself directly directed. The author gives the described events a very apocalyptic coloring, which is already set in the title of his story. He conducts a thorough psychological analysis of the average terrorist, drawing a parallel with the superman Nietzsche, but who is heavily poisoned by his own reflection. In the style of this work, one can observe the clear influence of modernism.
Among the Social Revolutionaries, the story aroused deep discontent and criticism. Many considered the image of the protagonist as slanderous. This hunch was fueled by the fact that Savinkov himself, until recently, supported the previous leader of the Azef Combat Organization, exposed at the end of 1908.
In 1914, for the first time, the novel "That which was not" was published as a separate publication. He is again criticized by party associates. This time, taking into account the weaknesses of the leaders of the revolution, the themes of provocations and the sinfulness of terror, Savinkov makes the repentant terrorist the main character, as in his early story "At Dusk."
In the 1910s, Boris Savinkov’s poems appeared in print. They are printed in various collections and magazines. They are dominated by Nietzschean motifs of his early prose works. It is noteworthy that during his life he did not collect his own poems, after his death in 1931, the collection under the uncomplicated title "Book of Poems" was released by Gippius.
Khodasevich, who at that moment was in a confrontation with Gippius, emphasized that in the verses Savinkov reduces the tragedy of a terrorist to the tantrum of a weak middle-aged loser. Even Adamovich criticizes the poetic work of Boris Viktorovich, who was close to the aesthetic views of the Merezhkovsky.
From 1914 to 1923, Savinkov almost completely abandoned fiction, concentrating on journalism. His famous essays of that period are “In France during the War,” “To the Kornilov Affair,” “From the Field Army,” Fighting the Bolsheviks, “For the Motherland and Freedom,” “On the Eve of the New Revolution,” “On the Way to the Third "Russia", "Russian People’s Volunteer Army on the Campaign."
In 1923, while in Paris, he wrote a continuation of the novel "The Pale Horse," entitled "The Black Horse." The same main character acts in it, again apocalyptic symbolism is guessed. The action was postponed during the Civil War. Events unfold in the rear and on the front line.
In this work, Colonel Georges calls Savinkov his main character. The plot is based on the campaign of Bulak-Balakhovich to Mazyr, which took place at the end of 1920. Savinkov then commanded the First Regiment.
The second part is based on the stories of Colonel Sergei Pavlovsky, whom the writer himself appointed in 1921 at the head of rebel and partisan detachments on the Polish border.
The third part concludes the story, which is devoted to the underground work of Pavlovsky in Moscow in 1923.
Savinkov's latest work was a storybook written in a prison on Lubyanka. In it, he satirically describes the life of Russian migrants.