Vladimir Alexandrov

You might be skeptical if this were a novel. As a biography it is fascinating. The most unlikely hero, a Black man born in 1872 to former slaves in Mississippi, not only leaves Mississippi, but heads for Europe where, unlike others, he doesn't remain in Paris but ventures out further afield and ends up in Moscow where he makes a small fortune. Frederick Bruce Thomas had smarts, pluck, and some good luck. He kept testing that luck and in the end, it failed him. But what a wild ride he had along the way!
The parts about his life in the American south are well told, necessary, but not surprising. What was compelling was what he managed to achieve (and how he achieved it) in Russia and later in Constantinople.… (mehr)

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.… (mehr)