Scandal and Controversy in Russian literature - Episode 5: Remorse of a terrorist Artwork

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Scandal and Controversy in Russian literature - Episode 5: Remorse of a terrorist

May 15, 2024 • Leiden University Faculty of Humanities • Season 2 • Episode 5

The fifth episode of the podcast is about “The Pale Horse” by V. Ropshin (pseudonym for Boris Savinkov, 1879-1925), published in 1909. Boris Savinkov was a well-known terrorist in late imperial Russia. He was the mastermind behind the deadly bomb attacks on the Minister of Interior and Grand Prince Sergei Alexandrovich. But Savinkov also had literary ambitions and the necessary connections among prominent writers who were quite willing to coach him. The result was the novella “The Pale Horse”, according to one critic the “most Russian book since the publication of Dostoevsky's immortal novels.” Is it an autobiographical confession novel or a revolutionary pamphlet? Did Savinkov the writer show remorse for the blood he had shed as a terrorist or was it just a pose?

Sources used in this episode of "Scandal and Controversy in Russian Literature":

- Geifman, Anna. 1993. Thou Shalt Kill. Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894–1917 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).

- Patyk, Lynn Ellen. 2010. “The Byronic Terrorist: Boris Savinkov’s Literary Self-Mythologization,” in Just Assassins: The Culture of Terrorism in Russia, edited by Anthony Anemone (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press), pp. 163–189.

- Spence, Richard B. 1991. Boris Savinkov. Renegade on the Left (Bolder, CO: East European Monographs).

List of translations used in this episode of "Scandal and Controversy in Russian Literature":

- Savinkov, Boris (V. Ropshin). 2019. The Pale Horse. A Novel of Revolutionary Russia. Translated by Michael R. Katz (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press).

All other translations were done by Otto Boele.