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From Boris Savinkov by Winston S. Churchill
How do you get on with Savinkov?’ I asked M. de Sazonov when we met in Paris in the summer of 1919.
The Czar’s former Foreign Minister made a deprecating gesture with his hands.
’He is an assassin. I am astonished to be working with him. But what is one to do? He is a man most competent, full of resource and resolution. No one is so good.’
The old gentleman, gray with years, stricken with grief for his country, a war-broken exile striving amid the celebrations of victory to represent the ghost of Imperial Russia, shook his head sadly and gazed upon the apartment with eyes of inexpressible weariness.
’Savinkov. Ah, I did not expect we should work together.’
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Later on it was my duty to see this strange and sinister man myself. The ‘Big Five’ had just decided to support Koltchak, and Boris Savinkov was his accredited agent. I had never seen a Russian Nihilist except on the stage, and y first impression was that he was singularly well cast for the part. Small in stature; moving as little as possible, and that noiselessly and with deliberation ; remarkable gray-green eyes in a face of almost deathly pallor ; speaking in a calm, low, even voice, almost a monotone ; innumerable cigarettes. His manner was at once confidential and dignified ; a ready and ceremonious address, with a frozen, but not a freezing, composure ; and through all the sense of an unusual
personality, of veiled power in strong restraint. As one looked more closely into this countenance and watched its movement and expression, its force and attraction became evident. His features were agreeable ; but though still only in the forties, his face was so lined and crow’s-footed that the skin looked in places—and particularly round the eyes—as if it were crinkled parchment. From these impenetrable eyes there flowed a steady regard. The quality of this regard was detached and impersonal, and it seemed to me laden with doom and fate. But then I knew who he was, and what his life had been.
Boris Savinkov’s whole life had been spent in conspiracy. Without religion as the Churches teach it ; without morals as men prescribe them ; without home or country ; without wife or child, or kith or kin ; without friend ; without fear ; hunter and hunted ; implacable, unconquerable, alone. Yet he had found his consolation. His being was organized upon a theme. His life was devoted to a cause. That cause was the freedom of the Russian people. In that cause there was nothing he would not dare or endure. He had not even the stimulus of fanaticism. He was that extraordinary product—a Terrorist for moderate aims. A reasonable and enlightened policy—the Parliamentary system of England the land tenure of France, freedom, toleration and good will—to be achieved whenever necessary by dynamite at the risk of death. No disguise could baffle his clear-cut perceptions. The forms of government might be revolutionized ; the top might become the bottom and the bottom the top ; the meaning of words, the association of ideas, the roles of individuals, the semblance of things might be change out of all recognition without deceiving him. His instinct was sure ; his course was unchanging. However, winds might veer or currents shift, he always knew the port for which he was making ; he always steered by the same star, and that star was red.
During the first part of his life he waged war, often single-handed, against the Russian Imperial Crown. During the latter part of his life, also often single-handed, he fought the Bolshevik Revolution. The Czar and Lenin seemed to him the same thing expressed in different terms, the same tyranny in different trappings, the same barrier in the path of Russian freedom. Against
that barrier of bayonets, police, spies, gaolers and executioners he strove unceasingly. A hard fate, an inescapable destiny, a fearful doom ! All would have been spared him had he been born in Britain, in France, in the United States, in Scandinavia, in Switzerland. A hundred happy careers lay open. But born in Russia with such a mind and such a will, his life was a torment rising in crescendo to a death in torture. Amid these miseries, perils and crimes he displayed the wisdom of a statesman, the qualities of a commander, the courage of a hero, and the endurance of a martyr.
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In his novel, The Pale Horse,, written under an assumed name, Savinkov has described with brutal candor the part he played in the murders of M. de Plehve and the Grand Duke Serge. He depicts with an accuracy that cannot be doubted the methods, the daily life, the psychological state and the hair-raising adventures of a small group of men and women, of whom he was the leader, working together for half a year in mortal pursuit of a High Personage. From the moment when, posing as a British subject with a passport signed by Lord Lansdowne in his pocket and ‘three kilograms of dynamite under the table,’ he arrives in the town of N., till the murder of ‘the Governor’ who is blown to pieces in the street, and the death, execution or suicide of three out of his four companions, all is laid bare. Most instructive of all is the account given by implication of the relations of the actual Terrorists with the Nihilist Central Committee who lay deep and secure in the underworld of the great cities of Europe and the United States.
’M. le Minister,’ he said to me, ‘I know them well, Lenin and Trotsky. For years we worked hand in hand for the liberation of Russia. Now they have enslaved her worse than ever.’
Between Savinkov’s first forlorn war against the Czar and his second against Lenin there was a brief but remarkable interlude. The outbreak of the Great War struck Savinkov and his fellow revolutionary, Bourtzev, in exactly the same way. They saw in the cause of the Allies a movement towards freedom and
democracy. Savinkov’s heart beat in sympathy with the liberal nations of the West, and his ardent Russian patriotism, put to the test, sundered him from the cold Semitic internationalists with whom he had been so long associated. Even under the Czar, Bourtzev was invited back to Russia, and threw himself into the task of national defense. Savinkov returned with the Revolution. In June, 1917, he was appointed by Kerensky, then Minister for War, to the post of Political Commissar of the 7th Army on the Galician front. The troops were in mutiny. The death penalty had been abolished. German and Austrian agents had spread the poison of Bolshevism through the whole Command. Several regiments had murdered their officers. Discipline and organization were gone. Equipment and munitions had long been lacking. Meanwhile the enemy battered ceaselessly on the crumbling front.
Here was the opportunity for his qualities. No sincere revolutionary could impugn his blood-dyed credentials of Nihilism. No loyal officer could doubt his passion for victory. And when it came to political philosophy and the interminable arguments with which the Russians beguiled the road to ruin, there lived no more accomplished student or devastating critic of Karl Marx than the newly-appointed Commissar. Alone, though not unarmed, he visited regiments who had just killed their officers, and brought them back to their duty. On one occasion he is reported to have shot with his own hand the delegates from a Bolshevik Soldiers’ Council who were seducing a hitherto loyal unit. Meanwhile his organizing gifts amid a thousand difficulties repaired the administrative structure. In a month he had put a new heart into the discouraged Army Commander and his staff, and had so far redisciplined the Army as to enable it to take the offensive and win a notable action at Brzezany early in July.
Kerensky, becoming aware of Savinkov’s good work, having himself seen evidence of it on a visit to the 7th Army front, appointed him forthwith chief Commissar for the Army Group of the South Western front, then commanded by General Gutor. Savinkov had no sooner reached the scene than the front was broken by the Germans at Tarnopol (July 16-19, 1917). The military disaster was followed by wholesale desertions to the enemy,
mutinies, massacres of officers and widespread revolt among the civil population. At the instance of Savinkov, Gutor was replaced on the 20th July by General Kornilov. We now approach one of the great mischances of Russian history. In Kornilov Savinkov believed that he had found the man who was to be the complement to his own character, a simple, obstinate soldier, popular among officers and men, with rigid views upon discipline, with no class prejudices, a sincere love of Russia and a knowledge of how to carry through schemes propounded by others. Together with Kornilov, who in all Army matters shared his views, Savinkov demanded the reimposition of the death penalty for cowardice, desertion or espionage, both behind the line and among the fighting troops. Kerensky thus had at his disposal at this most fateful moment in Russian destinies both the political and the military man of action whom the crisis demanded ; and both these men were heart and soul together. Here already at the summit of power was the triumvirate that could even at the eleventh hour have saved Russia from the awful fate which impended, which could have gained at a stroke both Russian victory and Russian freedom. Those who united could have retrieved all were in the event destroyed separately.
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Space does not allow me to unravel the melancholy tangle of ill luck and cunning devices by which Kornilov was separated from Kerensky, and Savinkov rendered powerless to prevent the breach. For a time all marched in the right direction. Kornilov became Commander-in Chief of all the Russian armies, and Savinkov Deputy Minister of War. Here with one hand upon the vain, doctrinaire, but none the less forceful and well-meaning head of the Government, and the other on the loyal bull-dog soldier, Savinkov seemed to be the appointed agent of Russian salvation. A little more time, a little more help, a little more confidence, a few more honest men, the blessing of Providence and a rather better telephone service—;all would have been well ! But
the tides of chaos mounted swiftly, the German artillery thundered on the front, and the Bolshevik infection spread behind the lines. Profound and adroit intrigues divided the doubting Kerensky from the headstrong Kornilov. On September 9 the General claimed by a coup d’é’tat dictatorial powers and was arrested at Kerensky’s orders. Savinkov, although exonerated after an inquiry of all complicity in the attempt and placed in full command of Petrograd during the crisis, became the target of the extremist element and was driven to resign. Loyal to Kerensky, loyal to Kornilov, loyal above all to Russia, he lost the control of affairs at the very moment when his was the only hand that could have averted the impending ruin.
The Bolshevik revolution of October followed. Kerensky and his supine Government vanished from the scene. Savinkov, eluding his foes, joined General Alexiev on the Don and drew the sword against the new tyranny. This desperate and ultimately van struggle occupied the rest of his life. He became the official representative of the Russian cause in Europe, first to Alexiev, then to Koltchak, and lastly to Denikin. Responsible for all the relations with the Allies and with the not less important Baltic and Border States which formed at that time the ‘Sanitary Cordon’ of the west, the ex-Nihilist displayed every capacity whether for command or intrigue. Finally, when in 1919 resistance on the soil of Russia was beaten down and the new armies raised in her defense shattered or destroyed, Savinkov on Polish territory formed armies of his own. This last feat was little short of miraculous.
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Without funds, staff or equipment, with only his old friend Pilsudski as protector, with an authority among the anti-Bolshevik Russians always doubtful and disputed, he nevertheless had by September, 1920, collected 30,000 officers and men and formed them into two organized corps. This last effort, prodigious as it had been, was also doomed to failure. The consolidation of the Bolshevik power, the increasing inclination of the Great Powers to make arrangements with the successful despotism, the pressure of events upon the small Border States, the internal dissensions of his poverty-stricken army, dissipated the last vestiges of strength. Forced to quit Poland, Savinkov continued the fight from Prague.
All hopes of invading Russia with an armed power having vanished, he organized the widespread guerrilla of the Green Guards—a sort of Robin Hood warfare—throughout broad areas of Soviet territory. Gradually, with every circumstance of ruthless terrorism and butchery, all resistance to the Bolsheviks in Russia was stamped out, and the past populations from the Pacific to Poland and from Archangel to Afghanistan congealed into the long night of another glacial period.
It was little before the final failure that I saw him for the last time. Mr. Lloyd George sought information on the Russian situation, and I was authorized to bring Savinkov to Chequers. We motored there together. The scene upon arrival must have been a novel experience for Savinkov. It was Sunday, The Prime Minister was entertaining several leading Free Church divines, and was himself surrounded by a band of Welsh singers who had traveled from their native Principality to do him choral honors. For several hours they sang Welsh hymns in the most beautiful manner. The Prime Minister argued that revolutions like diseases run a regular course, that the worst was already over in Russia, [Yah. (WPT)] that the Bolshevik leaders confronted with the responsibilities of actual government would quit their Communistic theories or that they would quarrel among themselves and fall like Robespierre and St. Just, that others weaker or more moderate would succeed them, and that by successive convulsions a more tolerable regime would be established.
’Mr. Prime Minister,’ said Savinkov in is formal way, ‘you will permit me the honor of observing that after the fall of the Roman Empire there ensued The Dark Ages.’
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In the end the Bolshevik revenge was complete. [Follows an account of Savinkov’s being lured into the U.S.S.R. and trapped.]
Physical torture was not applied. For their arch-enemy they had reserved more ingenious and refined cruelties. Later events have made us familiar with these, and their effect in extorting confessions. Tormented in his prison cell with false hopes and shifting promises, squeezed by the most subtle pressures, he was at length induced to write his notorious letter of recantation and to proclaim the Bolshevik Government as the liberator of the world. Thus shamed before history, branded by his friends as a Judas, he could feel each week the rigors of his confinement sensibly increasing ; and his final appeal to Djerjinski was answered only by mockery. Whether he was quietly shot in prison or committed suicide in his despair, is uncertain and unimportant. They had destroyed him body and soul. They had reduced his life’s efforts to meaningless grimace, had made him insult his cause, and had fouled his memory forever. Yet when all is said and done, and with all the stains and tarnishes there be, few men tried more, gave more, dared more and suffered more for the Russian people.
Great Contemporaries by The Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill
New York : Putnam's Sons, 1937, pages 103 - 110.
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