January 14, 1919

I have taken a night off and I spent it with Savinkov. At night he is fearless and will go anywhere, but, like the bats and the owls, with the coming of the sun he disappears. He explains that many men are seeking to kill him. In restaurants and cafés he invariably sits with his back to the wall and facing the entrance. And the Browning he always carries is near at hand. He told me this evening the story of Aseff, the spy, and if you want to know a revolutionist, this one was certainly quite a contrast to my good friends of the earlier days, Stepniak and Prince Kropotkin.

“He was not a bloodthirsty man,” maintained Savinkov. “Out of pure malice he would not kill a fly. He assassinated Plehve, Minister of the Interior, to get a much-needed bonus from the Revolution, and he safeguarded the Tsar to secure a reward from the police. He had to live, and as he lived on a large scale, he had to have money—quite a lot of money. No, I don’t think you met him in our hide-away in the Tartar Market in 1906, where you met so many of the ‘comrades.’ You were lucky, as most of the men assembled there he later brought to the gallows.

“I think, however, you must have met Stalin; he is from the Caucasus and at birth was handicapped by a name as long as the Volga. So, they called him Stalin—and hard as steel he is, but true? Certainly not true as steel, I would not say so. Many of the new comrades fear him, and not without reason. Now he has left us and he is working against the only people who can save Russia; but I admit, he is a man of infinite resource, tiens, let me tell you about that. You have heard of the looting of the Tiflis Bank. It happened while you were in Moscow. That was a great coup and it came at an opportune moment for us. There wasn’t a sound kopek or even a* counterfeit note in our treasury. Stalin heard that a million rubles were coming from Moscow for the monthly pay-off and he determined to intercept it. He contrived the whole business, but physically he decided he did not want to take an active part in it; he was the executive of the affair.

“One of the guards of the treasure wagon was in his pay, and at a signal from Stalin, who stood on the sidewalk, he ran a knife in the heart of the driver. Just at that moment, most unfortunately, a file of gardevois (transport police) came around the corner and took in the situation. And so did Stalin. You would think a thing like that would rattle a man, but not one of Stalin’s caliber. He grabbed one of his own men and, as the treasure wagon was driven away by his other confederate, he shouted, ‘Comrades, I have him!’ And indeed, he had. Speechless with amazement, the fellow was delivered to the police. When he recovered his rattled wits, the victim, his fellow conspirator, charged Stalin with being the ringleader; but the police paid no attention to his protestations, and when he began to bore them, they stood him up against a wall and filled him full of lead. Yes, Comrade Stalin is a quick thinker, a man of infinite resource.¹

“Well, I have almost forgotten to tell you—they got away with the wagon and the booty was distributed where it was needed. With the small notes, that was not difficult; but there were also big notes, five-thousand-ruble notes, and that was not easy; so, they passed them along to Comrade Litvinoff, who had traveled abroad, who could speak languages, who knew his way about and could eat soup without making too much noise. But they caught him the first time he tried to change a note in Paris. You see the Bank of Russia had advised the French authorities of the numbers; and it was now that Litvinoff made his debut in diplomacy. He explained that the democratic groups in Russia had sent him to pay at least part interest on the loans that in happier days the French people had made to the Russians, and that the note he had been caught trying to change was but to meet his paltry living expenses while on this noble mission. They sent him to prison for six months, but he was pardoned out in a few weeks by a radical minister of the interior, who was convinced, or pretended to be, that he was the only Russian who had ever attempted to pay interest on the Russian loan! Keep an eye on him, and on Stalin. They will go far if they do not have their throats cut.”

Then Savinkov resumed his revelations as to Aseff, so long his idol.

“If I were not held here by a still more important duty, I would go after Aseff because I was hoodwinked by him and because many of my comrades were delivered by him to the hangman, partly, at least, as a result of my sponsorship. The man was an artist in his line, which was double-dealing. I can think of no one in history to compare with him. It is now clear that he betrayed all of us to the police. You probably met at our hideaway Gershuni, an artist in terror if there ever was one. He had the power of influencing people to an extraordinary degree. Some thought he was an adept in black magic— perhaps it was only hypnotism. He was sold out by Aseff in our first attempt to murder Plehve. He, our chief, yielding to our insistence, retired to Vilna, there to await the news of our success. But the coup failed, and many were gathered in and died to whom Aseff had given the kiss of death.

“At this time, our master plotter fell under the suspicion of some of the comrades, most unjustly, I thought. Indeed, I threatened to withdraw from the organization unless he was given a clean bill of health. Under this suspicion Aseff decided that Plehve must die. This was necessary if he were to retain the confidence of both his employers. I also think the Ochrana [the Tsar’s secret police] had been short-sighted and stingy; they had not given him a bonus at all commensurate with his betrayal of all those involved in the first attempt.

“You should not think that I am the only one of the comrades who was fascinated by Aseff, the master spy. No, there were many of them, although perhaps I am the only one alive today. Gershuni, that apostle of the Terror, the young man with the ikon face, worshipped the very ground he walked on. While still a student, Gershuni had been sent to Siberia for revolutionary activities, but he soon made his escape. He was smuggled out of the prison yard in a barrel of sauerkraut and he made his way to America via Vladivostok. In grateful memory of the vehicle of escape he assumed and ever after bore the name of Kapusta, or ‘Mr. Cabbage.’ Once back in our circle he volunteered for most dangerous duty in connection with the second and successful attempt to kill Plehve, the hated Minister of the Interior. In taking his leave of us he asked for one favor and it was, of course, granted.

“ ‘If I fail, and in that case I shall not return,’ he said, ‘I ask that you restore Aseff to your full confidence and make him your leader. He is the master mind of the revolutionary movement and we shall not succeed until he is given full powers.’

“As a general practice Aseff would turn suspicion from himself to others, and it was at his suggestion that Gershuni and I killed Comrade Tataroff in Warsaw. Yes, we killed him, although it was Gershuni who wielded the dagger. No, I have no remorse. True, he was not guilty of the crimes with which Aseff, to shield himself, charged him, but he was an informer and should have been put out of the way.

“After the first and the second attempts to kill Plehve had failed, doubtless through the information which Aseff furnished the police, many more of our group became suspicious. Aseff recognized that his complete rehabilitation required that he must at last pull off a big coup. He went about among us saying, ‘Plehve must die. His responsibility for the Kichenew pogrom makes him our outstanding enemy. His execution will please the Jews throughout the world and from them will come the sinews of war we are in such great need of.’ “Aseff was not a Jew,” explained Savinkov, “but as an abandoned child he was adopted into a Jewish family and he had a grateful remembrance of their kindness.”

Some weeks later Savinkov came in to see me again. He seemed depressed and so, unwisely, I asked him if he had news of the great spy. “Yes,” he answered, “bad news. He has escaped me. He is dead. His last coup was to escape my dagger.” Then, at some length, which I shall condense, he gave me the last chapter of this strange history.

“We have now learned what happened to him. When he saw that even my faith in him was wavering, by night he fled from Paris, taking with him all our funds. With a stout lady of his choice, he sailed for months through the isles of Greece. Then he established himself in Berlin as a stockbroker under the name of Alexander Neumeyer. He was quite successful and was doing very well until the war came. His money was in Russian bonds; at first their sale was forbidden and then they became valueless. With the stout lady he opened a corset business and was again doing well when the German police gathered him in. They said they were holding him because he was an anarchist, but after some months they offered to let him out but merely for the purpose of transferring him to a Russian concentration camp. Aseff knew what fate would overtake him there, so he prevailed on the Germans to keep him in prison. When all Germans began to starve, they turned him loose and starvation and gallstones ended his career in the spring of 1918. The scoundrel has escaped my dagger. The great cheat; he has even cheated the gallows!”