Among the kings, presidents, prime ministers, murderous dictator, statesmen, and generals included in Winston Churchill’s Great Contemporaries, published in 1937, the Russian nihilist and terrorist Boris Savinkov seems to be an odd inclusion. Unlike the others profiled in the collection of short biographies, he was little known even at the time of the book’s publication and had in no way impacted world events as the others included in the volume. Thornton Butterworth, the book’s publisher, questioned the inclusion of the Savinkov essay. While he reminded his publisher that the essay contributed to the volume’s word count, Churchill also “always thought [Savinkov] was a great man and a great Russian patriot, in spite of the terrible methods with which he has been associated.”
To Break Russia’s Chains: Boris Savinkov and His Wars Against the Tsar and the Bolsheviks by Vladimir Alexandrov (Yale and author of The Black Russian) is a superb biography of the Russian revolutionary, who Churchill described as a “strange and sinister man” whose “whole life had been spent in conspiracy.” In pursuit of the cause of the freedom of the Russian people, he assassinated senior figures in the Czarist regime and waged war against the Bolsheviks. Savinkov and Churchill first met in 1919 in Paris where the Russian was seeking support for the White Russians. Then Secretary of War in Lloyd George’s government, Churchill would be the “most important European statesman with whom Savinkov developed a relationship.” Although he was aware of his terrorist background, Churchill was, nonetheless, impressed with him. Alexandrov comments that what Churchill liked most about the Russian was that he used radical methods to achieve down-to-earth goals, or as Churchill expressed it, “the essence of practicality and good sense expressed in terms of nitro-glycerine.” During 1919, Savinkov came to London several times to meet with Churchill and plan assistance to the White Russians. Churchill was a “genuine ally” and fully supported Savinkov’s ideas and proposals. As Alexandrov writes Churchill’s “pronouncements at the time indicate that if he could have set British policy toward Russia entirely by himself, he would have implemented everything that Savinkov wanted, including a major military intervention.” Decisive aid to the anti-Bolshevik Russians was not forthcoming from the Lloyd George government. As the Bolsheviks consolidated control of Russia, Savinkov, however, continued to wage his counter revolutionary campaign from Poland and France until was lured back to Russia and captured in 1924 by the Bolsheviks in an elaborate intelligence operation. He died in a Moscow prison, either killed or by suicide.