In Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, the gloomy fame of the writer Savinkov was comparable to that of the modern head of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden.
It is unlikely that the tsarist officials, exiled in 1902 under supervision to Vologda for his participation in the riots, a student of Petersburg University Boris Savinkov, that they were dealing with a terrible terrorist who was born in the depths of the revolutionary movement.
Thrill lover
The hero of our story was born in the family of a Warsaw lawyer in 1879. His mother was the author of several stories and plays. Her passion was passed on to her son, who combined the professions of a politician and a writer in his life. Becoming a student, Boris immediately enters the Social Democratic circle, publishes his articles in the Rabocheye Delo magazine, to which V. I. Lenin. But very soon Savinkov, inclined to adventurism and thirsting for fame, becomes disillusioned with the methods of parliamentary struggle for power and turns his attention to the program of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, whose militant organization set itself the task of overthrowing the autocracy by means of individual terror.
So, having escaped from administrative supervision, Savinkov ended up in Geneva, where he became a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. On the account of its militants there were already the murders of the Minister of the Interior Sipyagin, the Ufa governor Bogdanovich and the attempt on the life of the Kharkov governor Obolensky. As the next victim, the terrorists identified the new Interior Minister Plehve. Savinkov immediately joined in the preparation of the assassination attempt on him.
On July 15, 1904, on Izmailovsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg, the thrower Yegor Sozonov threw a bomb at the Minister Plehve's carriage passing by him, which put an end to the life of one of the most influential people in Russia. The wounded terrorist was sent to the hospital and subsequently sentenced to hard labor. And Savinkov, who watched the assassination attempt from the side, left on the same day for Warsaw, and from there to Geneva.
The next in the list of those sentenced to death was the Moscow governor-general. Newspapers described the attack as follows: “On February 4, 1905, while Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich was driving in a carriage from Nikolsky Palace on Senate Square, 65 steps from Nikolsky Gate, an unknown attacker threw a bomb into His Highness's carriage. The Grand Duke was killed on the spot by the explosion."
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The performer Ivan Kalyaev was captured and executed in the Shlis-Selburg fortress. Savinkov, by the way, who refused to replace the ill understudy and watched the assassination attempt as a spectator, safely left for Geneva.
On the verge of death
The popular wisdom is right: blood intoxicates. Less than six months later, the fate of the governor-general will be shared by the Moscow mayor, Count Shuvalov, who was shot in his office during a reception by the terrorist Prechistensky. Subsequently, Savinkov's record will include organizing the assassination attempt on the St. Petersburg mayor von der Launitz, the hangman of the participants of the first Russian revolution, Admiral Dubasov, and the Minister of the Interior Durnovo.
But in the end, fortune seemingly turned its back on the terrorist. On May 14, 1906, after an unsuccessful attempt to kill the commandant of the Sevastopol Fortress Neplyuev during the parade, Savinkov, who arrived in the city under the name of Second Lieutenant Subbotin, was detained and escorted to the serf guardhouse. Investigators quickly established the involvement of the "second lieutenant" in organizing the assassination attempt, and four days later the court-martial was supposed to send the arrested person to the gallows.
However, the death sentence was postponed due to bureaucratic delays. Meanwhile, the Socialist-Revolutionaries did not doze. Among the guards in the guardhouse was a soldier of the Lithuanian regiment, who was a member of the Simferopol Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. It was he who helped Savinkov escape from the dungeon on a July night. So the terrorist ended up abroad again and took part in the development of plans for new assassination attempts.
But then Savinkov was overtaken by a crushing blow - his immediate superior and one of the founders of the Social Revolutionary Party, Yevno Azef, was exposed as a secret officer of the police department. In addition, a scandal erupted in 1910. Savinkov could not explain where the 10 thousand rubles allocated for the preparation of terrorist acts had gone. However, for the one-party members who knew him, the reason for the disappearance of this money was more than understandable. The head of the militant organization was a cocaine addict, and he took off stress by playing cards and having love affairs in brothels with prostitutes.
Shocked and disgraced, Boris Viktorovich decided to move away from party affairs and, settling in France, to engage in literary work. This is how the novel “That which did not exist”, the story “The Bled Horse”, “Memories of a Terrorist” and numerous articles in the Russian press signed with the pseudonym “B. Ropshin.
A sharp turn in the life of Savinkov took place after the February Revolution. The émigré writer decided to return from Paris to seething Russia and re-engage in party work.
His last flight
Revolutionary Petrograd received the exile with open arms. Considering past merits, Savinkov even got the post of Deputy Minister of War in the Cabinet of the Provisional Government. After the Bolsheviks came to power, Boris Viktorovich, who did not share their views, found himself on the side of the White Guards. But neither Denikin, nor Kolchak, nor Bulak-Balakhovich paid special attention to the ex-revolutionary, who had no real strength behind his back.
Realizing that no one was going to consider his candidacy as a dictator, the ambitious Savinkov, who had already imagined himself a Russian Napoleon, fell into depression. But, being an energetic person and feeling hatred for the Bolsheviks who had ruined his career, in 1921 he created in Warsaw the People's Union for the Defense of the Motherland and Freedom (NSZRS), whose activities were willingly funded by the British, French, Poles and Czechs. In fact, the union was a sabotage and espionage organization, in which the White Guard officers who fled abroad found work.
Naturally, the activities of the terrorist organization worried the Soviet government. It was decided to lure Savinkov into the USSR and try him in a show trial. This task was entrusted to the counterintelligence department of the OGPU, which developed an operation called "Syndicate-2".
In 1922, while crossing the Soviet-Polish border, a commissioner of the NSZRS, a former colonel of the tsarist army, Leonid Sheshe-nya, was detained. After agonizing thought, he agreed to write
a letter to his patron, in which he informed about the establishment of contact with a well-hidden underground. The cautious Savinkov sent to the USSR to check first one of the leaders of the union - Fomichev, and then his assistant Pavlovsky. For the first, the Chekists organized a "meeting of the leadership of the underground" and sent them back across the cordon. And the second, since he was guilty of the executions of civilians, was arrested and forced to write an invitation to Savinkov to head the leadership of the organization. The terrorist who lost his vigilance accepted the offer, and on August 16, 1924, after crossing the border, he was arrested.
The investigation lasted only two weeks, and already on August 27 Savinkov was brought to trial. An amazing metamorphosis happened to him during this time. Fully admitting his guilt, the defendant made a statement "Why did I recognize Soviet power." Perhaps that is why the court, having first sentenced him to death, replaced him with 10 years in prison. While serving his sentence in the internal prison of the OGPU at Lubyanka, Savinkov continued to engage in literary work. It should be noted that the convict was kept almost in sanatorium conditions, feeling no lack of anything and meeting in prison with his friends and acquaintances. Behind bars, he wrote the novel "The Crow Horse", stories, letters to the leaders of White émigré organizations calling for an end to the struggle against Soviet power.
What happened next is shrouded in mystery to this day. According to the official version, having again fallen into a deep depression, Savinkov threw himself into the flight of the prison stairs in early May 1925. According to other sources, employees of the OGPU helped him to go to the next world on orders from above. This is how the life of one of the most mysterious personalities in the history of terrorism ended.