Savinkov, Boris Viktorovich.

Sixteen autograph letters and one typed letter signed (some signed with his pseudonym Ropsin), to Zinaida Gippius and Dimitry Merezhkovsky (some addressed to them jointly) or to their secretary Filosofov,

Savinkov was condemned to death for his part in organising the assassination of Grand Duke Sergius in 1905, but escaped to Switzerland, returning to Russia in 1917 where he became deputy minister of war in Kerensky's government. He opposed the Bolsheviks and settled for a time in Paris. On his second return to Russia he was again condemned to death. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, but he committed suicide in prison in 1925.

In his earlier letters Savinkov pesters Gippius to give her opinion of his novel Three Brothers, which he fears will lead to his expulsion from the [anti-Bolshevik] Party, but when she criticises it, he takes issue with her. Writing from Warsaw to Filosofov, he discusses his plans for a Russian-Polish union, and the need to replace Denikius by Tchaikovsky ("...there is no doubt that in the spring there will be a new campaign against the Bolsheviks..." [13 March 1920]). It appears that his correspondents did not share his enthusiasm for a coup, and he complains that they have betrayed him ("...that you would betray us sooner or later, I knew, even as early as when you were leaving for Danzig. But I could not foresee that you would betray us and our cause so self-confidently and so lightly..."). He gives a long list of grudges against them for their behaviour in Poland, where they failed to support the cause as they had promised, and points out that he has saved the "last anti-Bolshevist cause" and that thanks to him less blood was spilt on the march than anywhere else. Despite their quarrel, he protests that he still considers them as friends, but cannot forget his disappointment with them ("...you are careless friends... we needed your support, your help, your prayers, but they never came...").