A DON JUAN BORGIA

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 15 July 1925, Page 3

A DON JUAN BORGIA

WRECKER OF MEN AND WOMEN BOl.l). BAD ANI) UGLY DEATH LEAP FROM HIGH GAOL WINDOW I 1 rum .Moscow Reuter's Agency learn.', that Boris Savinla.O the famous revolutionary. has committed suicide by throw, irg himself from the fifth floor of his pr.-ri.

Tlii >'i act followed upon the refusal of Dzerjinsky. the head of the Secret I’oliee iCheka )to release him. Savinkoft was one of the most remarkable ot the many .morbid and brilliant, characters which the revolutionary movement in Russia produced. He lived for power and adventure, and stopped at nothing to ga.in his ends.

In the Czar's days Savinkoff was a leading terrorist, and wae an organiser of assassination, a desperate man if ever there was one. Later he was a Minister in the Kerensky Government, and subsequently took part in counter-revolutionary activities. lie organised and led bands of ‘whites’ in the field, and shot many Bolshevists with bis own hands.

HAVOC AMONG BOTH SEXES A temperamental magalomaniac with a passionate love of romance. a welleducated man and a gifted speaker, an ardent politician and a theatrical egoist, he exorcised considerable personal magnetism over men and women, particularly the latter.

He was as remorseless n,-i a Borgia and adventurous as a Don Juan.

Few people have directly made more broken heart and broken headsi than Savinkoft did.

lie was a small man physically, and not at. all good looking. After lie escaped from Bolshevist Russia he lived for a long time as an exile in Pai I :.'- 1 . paying frequent visits to London

BACK TO INTRIGUE Bui exile did not suit this reckless , haraeter. Last August he was seized (or pretended to be nei/.ed) with the idea that those who loved Russia must recognise the Soviet Power

1 hereupon hr came to an arrangement with the Bolshevist authorities abroad that he should cross the frontier, be formally arrested and tried and sentenced—and. after a while liberated. U” to a point this programme was carried

onf. At the trial in Moscow Savinkoff. ns doubtless prearranged, revealed all his secret anti-Bolshevist conversations with the Allied statesmen. His sentence of death was commuted to a term of imprisonment for 10 years. PEERING THROUGH DUNGEON BARS

lie hoped to ho released soon, according to the plans agreed upon. But the Bolshevistj.- deceived him—aei lie had deceived so many others. They lured him into Russia, and then kept him focuvely under lock and key. No doubt they had good grounds for their distrust.

Savinkoff imagined that once in Russia lie would mould men and affairs to suit h':;s own ends.

AMBITION O’ER LEAPS ITSELF

llis ambition knew no bounds; his aim wan no less than to become the new ruler of Burma- -the second Lenin. Once he inarm that lie had been deceived he preferred extinction to existence. and leapt from a window-sill 6Cft to death.

And so ended one of the bra-vests if one of the most sensational and unscrupulous characters which the Great War and its consequences brought into prominence.