Indiana University Press Memoirs of a Terrorist by Boris Savinkov: A New Translation

Early 20th-century Russia suffered frequent revolutionary violence, including many bouts of political terrorism. As a leader of the Russian Socialist-Revolutionary Party's Combat Organization, Boris Savinkov helped organize and execute a series of notorious attacks, including two bomb blasts that killed senior officials in 1904 and 1905. During his various periods of exile and imprisonment, Savinkov also wrote fiction and memoirs describing the methods and operations of Russia's revolutionary terrorists and exploring problems with the representation of violence, the ethics of terrorism, and the subjective world of the terrorists themselves. Drawing on an unpublished introduction and annotations that Savinkov wrote in a Soviet prison in 1924, Jonathan Daly and Scott B. Smith have prepared an exciting new translation of the most detailed personal account―written in 1909 but first published in 1917―by a Russian revolutionary terrorist. The editors have preserved the matter-of-fact style of the original text, which juxtaposes violence and chaos with businesslike pragmatism as Savinkov recounts how he joined the Combat Organization, recruited assassins, and planned and carried out attacks. With a thorough introduction and detailed textual notes and commentary, "Memoirs of a Terrorist" by Boris Savinkov is a captivating read for general readers and specialists alike.