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To Break Russia's Chains: Boris Savinkov and His Wars Against the Tsar and the Bolsheviks
A brilliant examination of the enigmatic Russian revolutionary about whom Winston Churchill said "few men tried more, gave more, dared more and suffered more for the Russian people," and who remains a legendary and controversial figure in his homeland today.
Although now largely forgotten outside Russia, Boris Savinkov was famous, and notorious, both at home and abroad during his lifetime, which spans the end of the Russian Empire and the establishment of the Soviet Union. A complex and conflicted individual, he was a paradoxically moral revolutionary terrorist, a scandalous novelist, a friend of epoch-defining artists like Modigliani and Diego Rivera, a government minister, a tireless fighter against Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and an advisor to Churchill. At the end of his life, Savinkov conspired to be captured by the Soviet secret police, and as the country's most prized political prisoner made headlines around the world when he claimed that he accepted the Bolshevik state. But as this book argues, this was Savinkov's final play as a gambler and he had staked his life on a secret plan to strike one last blow against the tyrannical regime.
Neither a "Red" nor a "White," Savinkov lived an epic life that challenges many popular myths about the Russian Revolution, which was arguably the most important catalyst of twentieth-century world history. All of Savinkov's efforts were directed at transforming his homeland into a uniquely democratic, humane and enlightened state. There are aspects of his violent legacy that will, and should, remain frozen in the past as part of the historical record. But the support he received from many of his countrymen suggests that the paths Russia took during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries--the tyranny of communism, the authoritarianism of Putin's regime--were not the only ones written in her historical destiny. Savinkov's goals remain a poignant reminder of how things in Russia could have been, and how, perhaps, they may still become someday.
Written with novelistic verve and filled with the triumphs, disasters, dramatic twists and contradictions that defined Savinkov's life, this book shines a light on an extraordinary man who tried to change Russian and world history.
Although now largely forgotten outside Russia, Boris Savinkov was famous, and notorious, both at home and abroad during his lifetime, which spans the end of the Russian Empire and the establishment of the Soviet Union. A complex and conflicted individual, he was a paradoxically moral revolutionary terrorist, a scandalous novelist, a friend of epoch-defining artists like Modigliani and Diego Rivera, a government minister, a tireless fighter against Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and an advisor to Churchill. At the end of his life, Savinkov conspired to be captured by the Soviet secret police, and as the country's most prized political prisoner made headlines around the world when he claimed that he accepted the Bolshevik state. But as this book argues, this was Savinkov's final play as a gambler and he had staked his life on a secret plan to strike one last blow against the tyrannical regime.
Neither a "Red" nor a "White," Savinkov lived an epic life that challenges many popular myths about the Russian Revolution, which was arguably the most important catalyst of twentieth-century world history. All of Savinkov's efforts were directed at transforming his homeland into a uniquely democratic, humane and enlightened state. There are aspects of his violent legacy that will, and should, remain frozen in the past as part of the historical record. But the support he received from many of his countrymen suggests that the paths Russia took during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries--the tyranny of communism, the authoritarianism of Putin's regime--were not the only ones written in her historical destiny. Savinkov's goals remain a poignant reminder of how things in Russia could have been, and how, perhaps, they may still become someday.
Written with novelistic verve and filled with the triumphs, disasters, dramatic twists and contradictions that defined Savinkov's life, this book shines a light on an extraordinary man who tried to change Russian and world history.
576 pages, Hardcover
Published September 7, 2021
6 people are currently reading
129 people want to read
About the author
Vladimir Alexandrov
4 books26 followersI grew up in New York City in a Russian émigré family and wanted to be a scientist from an early age. However, after getting bachelor's and master's degrees in geology, I decided that I'd learned enough about the natural world but didn't understand myself or other people. My solution was to switch to studying literature and the humanities, which resulted in my getting a Ph. D. in Comparative Literature from Princeton. This helped, and the quest continues. After teaching in the Slavic Department at Harvard, I moved to Yale in 1986, where I continue to teach courses on Russian literature and culture. I’ve published academic books and many articles on various Russian writers and topics. The Black Russian was my first book for a general audience, and I found the process of researching and writing it so fascinating and compelling that I want to do another one like it. I’m now investigating several topics: some involve the American Civil War; others--the Russian Revolution and the civil war that followed it.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
December 10, 2021
This is an excellent book for defining late 19th and early 20th century terrorism as well as a detailed guide for explaining pre-revolution Russian politics. The author very adeptly skirts hero worship of Savinkov.
May 4, 2025
Boris Savinkov is a fascinating figure and his life in the final years of the Russian empire then during the revolution and civil war is good enough for a novel, indeed his life is described as a tale '...filled with the triumphs, disasters, dramatic twists and contradictions...' unfortunately what this biography is not is '...written with novelistic verve...' that '...shines a light on an extraordinary man who tried to change Russian and world history.' Unfortunately while this book does cover Savinkov's life fully it also manages to be almost undearably boring. The author's leaden prose is a struggle to get through. How you manage to make the life of a life as varied and fascinating as Savinkov's dull I don't know. Maybe it is because the author has turned from writing about Russian literature to writing Russian history. I couldn't help feeling that although he has consulted a wonderful array of Russian archival and recent historical works on Savinkov he is never quite at home as a writer of history. He never seems to know what should or should not be left out.
For example we get in tedious length the story of the visit of the widow the grand duke Serge to the anarchist who had blown that creepy individual (responsible for the Khodynka Tragedy and some horrible pogroms) to bits. Although this 'visit' is reported as 'fact' there are in fact no contemporary or archival sources listed. There are many ocassions throughout the book where the author either explains too much or too little. He just doesn't seem comfortable writing history. He is very good when he discusses Savinkov's literary work and relationship with Russian literary figures like Zainida Gippius and I would have liked to know more, particularly about his works translated during his lifetime.
Over all the information anyone would want is here and the author is too good an academic to question his conclusions (Though his use of third rate works by secondary authors like John van dir Kiste and Christopher Warwick is a blot on this work.
But the problem is that as a biography it doesn't 'sing'. I don't know if that makes sense but it was what I thought as I read on and on through nearly 500 pages. I wanted to love this biography but it came close to boring me to death.
Because it is a fount of knowledge I can't shelve as bad but because it fails to be good and interesting I can only award three stars.
For example we get in tedious length the story of the visit of the widow the grand duke Serge to the anarchist who had blown that creepy individual (responsible for the Khodynka Tragedy and some horrible pogroms) to bits. Although this 'visit' is reported as 'fact' there are in fact no contemporary or archival sources listed. There are many ocassions throughout the book where the author either explains too much or too little. He just doesn't seem comfortable writing history. He is very good when he discusses Savinkov's literary work and relationship with Russian literary figures like Zainida Gippius and I would have liked to know more, particularly about his works translated during his lifetime.
Over all the information anyone would want is here and the author is too good an academic to question his conclusions (Though his use of third rate works by secondary authors like John van dir Kiste and Christopher Warwick is a blot on this work.
But the problem is that as a biography it doesn't 'sing'. I don't know if that makes sense but it was what I thought as I read on and on through nearly 500 pages. I wanted to love this biography but it came close to boring me to death.
Because it is a fount of knowledge I can't shelve as bad but because it fails to be good and interesting I can only award three stars.
December 23, 2021
I love Russia and that is why I do what I do. I love the revolution and that is why I do what I do.
-Boris Savinkov
The convictions and the man are two very different things.
-Ivan Shatov, Demons
When I had first heard of the premise of the biography, my first comparison was to Dostoyevsky's own novel about revolutionaries or terrorists (Savinkov's own choice of word) and their own convictions or inner emotional turmoil. A better comparison is G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. Alexandrov cites Chesterton in an epigraph.
Boris Viktorovich Savinkov was born in 1879 in Warsaw, to a family of comfortable nobility. He became radicalized while in school, and soon joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party, an agrarian socialist political party. What did that mean? For Savinkov, it meant being assigned to, and playing a major part in, the Combat Organization. Their goal was the assassination of Tsarist officials. Alexandrov writes that he and his fellow terrorists would "never get over their sense of guilt" over failed assassination attempts or bailing out when there were innocent civilians nearby, he calls them "paradoxically, ‘moral’ terrorists.” Here, I have to wonder what Alexandrov is getting at. "Terrorists", whether self-described or assigned that label by someone else, tend to have some cause which they use to justify their actions - though some minority are just in it for the violence.
Savinkov played a role in the assassination of the Minister of the Interior, and the Tsar's own cousin. For this, Savinkov was arrested and imprisoned. He escaped and fled the country to avoid recapture. He went on to write novellas about disillusioned revolutionaries, be feted by artists, conspire about filled airplanes with explosives and ram them into the Winter Palace. Meanwhile, the head of the Combat Organization, a Mr. Evno Azef, was revealed to be an agent of the Tsarist secret police.
That last twist is a biographical leitmotif. For Savinkov's life, he had ambitions to remake Russian society by violence; but in almost all instances he was only a piece in someone else's game. When the old Russian Empire disintegrated in 1917, Savinkov rushed back into the maelstrom to sign up with the new Provisional Government. He became entwined in the power struggle between the political leadership, under Alexander Kerensky, and its military aims, under General Lavr Kornilov. But he was again caught in a power struggle - he was fired from his spot as Minister for War, and Kerensky soon was forced out by Lenin.
Savinkov was again exiled. He then drifted to the far-right and got an audience with Mussolini, who demurred at his proposals. Admiration of Mussolini was a common fault in the 1920s, but it does lead me to cast doubts on what Savinkov's plans were. But then, even later, rumors of a dissolute band of rebels against the Soviets who needed a leader soon filtered out to him. He thought it was an opportunity, his friends thought it was a trap, and they were right. He was soon captured by the Soviets, put on an elaborate show trial, recanted everything, and then died in captivity or fell out of a window. The latter can often mean the former.
The author tells the story well, and I omit many details. The book reads quickly, it is skillfully told. It is thorough. Alexandrov writes that Savinkov was famous and infamous for the "major roles he played in all the cataclysmic events that shook his homeland" and he finds room for them. The book fills a sorely needed gap - the last English language biography of Savinkov I can find is decades old. This is a biography of a man born in the 19th century, and died in the early 20th, and some of the details echo with some familiarity in the 21st. There is a last question of the author's interpretation - if Savinkov's plans against the Red Army had succeeded in the late 1910s, if he had survived into the 1920s, if he had assassinated some of the Bolshevik leadership like he planned... The author compares it to the fluttering of a leaf. I am deeply jaundiced over what might have resulted. Maybe more assassinations. Still, if you are interested in the Russian Revolution at all, this is worthy of a serious look.
-Boris Savinkov
The convictions and the man are two very different things.
-Ivan Shatov, Demons
When I had first heard of the premise of the biography, my first comparison was to Dostoyevsky's own novel about revolutionaries or terrorists (Savinkov's own choice of word) and their own convictions or inner emotional turmoil. A better comparison is G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. Alexandrov cites Chesterton in an epigraph.
Boris Viktorovich Savinkov was born in 1879 in Warsaw, to a family of comfortable nobility. He became radicalized while in school, and soon joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party, an agrarian socialist political party. What did that mean? For Savinkov, it meant being assigned to, and playing a major part in, the Combat Organization. Their goal was the assassination of Tsarist officials. Alexandrov writes that he and his fellow terrorists would "never get over their sense of guilt" over failed assassination attempts or bailing out when there were innocent civilians nearby, he calls them "paradoxically, ‘moral’ terrorists.” Here, I have to wonder what Alexandrov is getting at. "Terrorists", whether self-described or assigned that label by someone else, tend to have some cause which they use to justify their actions - though some minority are just in it for the violence.
Savinkov played a role in the assassination of the Minister of the Interior, and the Tsar's own cousin. For this, Savinkov was arrested and imprisoned. He escaped and fled the country to avoid recapture. He went on to write novellas about disillusioned revolutionaries, be feted by artists, conspire about filled airplanes with explosives and ram them into the Winter Palace. Meanwhile, the head of the Combat Organization, a Mr. Evno Azef, was revealed to be an agent of the Tsarist secret police.
That last twist is a biographical leitmotif. For Savinkov's life, he had ambitions to remake Russian society by violence; but in almost all instances he was only a piece in someone else's game. When the old Russian Empire disintegrated in 1917, Savinkov rushed back into the maelstrom to sign up with the new Provisional Government. He became entwined in the power struggle between the political leadership, under Alexander Kerensky, and its military aims, under General Lavr Kornilov. But he was again caught in a power struggle - he was fired from his spot as Minister for War, and Kerensky soon was forced out by Lenin.
Savinkov was again exiled. He then drifted to the far-right and got an audience with Mussolini, who demurred at his proposals. Admiration of Mussolini was a common fault in the 1920s, but it does lead me to cast doubts on what Savinkov's plans were. But then, even later, rumors of a dissolute band of rebels against the Soviets who needed a leader soon filtered out to him. He thought it was an opportunity, his friends thought it was a trap, and they were right. He was soon captured by the Soviets, put on an elaborate show trial, recanted everything, and then died in captivity or fell out of a window. The latter can often mean the former.
The author tells the story well, and I omit many details. The book reads quickly, it is skillfully told. It is thorough. Alexandrov writes that Savinkov was famous and infamous for the "major roles he played in all the cataclysmic events that shook his homeland" and he finds room for them. The book fills a sorely needed gap - the last English language biography of Savinkov I can find is decades old. This is a biography of a man born in the 19th century, and died in the early 20th, and some of the details echo with some familiarity in the 21st. There is a last question of the author's interpretation - if Savinkov's plans against the Red Army had succeeded in the late 1910s, if he had survived into the 1920s, if he had assassinated some of the Bolshevik leadership like he planned... The author compares it to the fluttering of a leaf. I am deeply jaundiced over what might have resulted. Maybe more assassinations. Still, if you are interested in the Russian Revolution at all, this is worthy of a serious look.
July 22, 2023
Boris Savinkov was certainly a name that I had some awareness of before I started this work, if only from the old "Reilly - Ace of Spies" TV show, and from when I was doing most of my reading about the collapse of Czarist Russia and the creation of the Soviet Union. That said, while I like this book, I can't say I love it. Alexandrov does "cover all the bases," but I'm still left with the feeling that this work has a schematic quality, as the author gallops through the events of Savinkov's life. One reality that comes through is that Savinkov was probably not the person who was cut out for the business at hand, as his sense of honor did not equip him with the ruthlessness to deal with players who were going for the main chance, nor did he have a vision that might have attracted the rank and file of Russian society, and in 1917 Lenin did. It is telling that Savinkov might have genuinely been interested in Mussolini's fascist politics, and suggests what might have happened to the man had he not made his last desperate mission into the USSR.
If one had the option, I would have given the book a "3.5."
If one had the option, I would have given the book a "3.5."
June 24, 2022
I don't read too many biographies, but this was excellent! Exhaustively researched and very well written. This was a pleasure to read even at over 500 pages. This serves not only as a comprehensive biography of a fascinating individual but also works as a general overview of Russian history and politics from around 1900 through 1925. Highly recommended!
January 22, 2022
Fascinating book. Boris Savinkov was a anti Tsarist terrorist, a SR ( socialist revolutionist) , a member of Alexander Kerensky’s cabinet, an opponent of Lenin’s Bolsheviks. Lured back to Russia after trying desperately to seek help from the west , his trial in 1924 was the first of the show trials.
Somerset Maugham met and admired him. He perhaps described him best, that if he had succeeded Lenin would have been the one relegated to a footnote in history. “ There is no more sometimes than the trembling of a leaf between success and failure “
I also have to comment on the author’s brilliant writing. The book is beautifully written and added 2 new words to my vocabulary palimpsest and lacuna
Somerset Maugham met and admired him. He perhaps described him best, that if he had succeeded Lenin would have been the one relegated to a footnote in history. “ There is no more sometimes than the trembling of a leaf between success and failure “
I also have to comment on the author’s brilliant writing. The book is beautifully written and added 2 new words to my vocabulary palimpsest and lacuna
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 28, 2024
To Break Russia's Chains is exquisitely written, painstakingly researched (what was the weather like on a given day over 100 years ago in Paris?) and also nuanced in a way that biographies/life stories rarely are--we hear about Savinkov's actions and words accompanied by elucidating analysis of whether these truly reflected his mindset, or might have happened in the moment or, in the latter, heartbreaking sections of the book, been coerced. It is humane and thoughtful and puts you right in the action--at some points, I felt as if I were following a tsarist official's carriage on a snowy evening or crossing the border into my native country and rejoicing at breathing the air after a long absence. It's a complex study of a complicated character who not only lived through but sought to remake his times, and the many colorful fellow travelers that joined him, fought with him, loved him and betrayed him. It is at once a great story, a historical work with moments of profound literary analysis (the author is a Professor Emeritus of Russian Literature at Yale) and a sensitive study in human psychology. Highly recommended.
December 9, 2024
I initially started becoming interested in this enigmatic character called ‘Boris Savinkov’ after playing the mod called ‘Kaiserreich’ on Hearts of Iron IV.
Oh the comedy when I realized how far I’ve fallen deep into this rabbit hole of Savinkov.
Savinkov is genuinely one of the most interesting characters I’ve read in the history of Russian Civil War. A Socialist-Revolutionaries Member turned White Army Officer turned Proto-Fascist Nationalist.
A paradoxically principled but also highly ruthless terrorist. I’ve came to admire how determined Savinkov was at his ideal of fighting against Bolsheviks.
I recommend this book if you know the basic background and historical context of Russian Civil War. It’s not exactly a beginner book for history lovers. Boris Savinkov is definitely someone you won’t know unless you’re deep into Kaiserreich or Russian Civil War history.
Oh the comedy when I realized how far I’ve fallen deep into this rabbit hole of Savinkov.
Savinkov is genuinely one of the most interesting characters I’ve read in the history of Russian Civil War. A Socialist-Revolutionaries Member turned White Army Officer turned Proto-Fascist Nationalist.
A paradoxically principled but also highly ruthless terrorist. I’ve came to admire how determined Savinkov was at his ideal of fighting against Bolsheviks.
I recommend this book if you know the basic background and historical context of Russian Civil War. It’s not exactly a beginner book for history lovers. Boris Savinkov is definitely someone you won’t know unless you’re deep into Kaiserreich or Russian Civil War history.
February 1, 2022
A fantastic inside look at the story of one of Russia’s most notorious and at the same time “principled” and “honorable” terrorists. Goes to show just how difficult it was and is to move Russia in the direction of democracy. Savinkov is a fascinating figure and the book both reads like a novel and is painstakingly, exhaustively researched. Hard to put down.
August 17, 2023
This books is far more than just entertaining. It asks and answers persistent questions. Why the hell the Bolsheviks won in 1921 and the Whites and Entente lost? Read the book to find out. It's history but as everyone knows history repeats itself even as we write book reviews.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews