A DON JUAN BORGIA.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19529, 11 July 1925, Page 9

A DON JUAN BORGIA.

WRECKER OE' MEN AND WOMEN. BOLD, BAD AND UGLY. DEATH LEAP FROM HIGH GAOL WINDOW. From Moscow Reuter’s A gene}’ learns that Boris fSavinkoff, the famous revolutionary, lias committed suicide by throwing himself from the fifth floor of his prison. This act followed upon the refusal of Dzorj insky, tho head of the Secret Police (Ghoka) to release him. Savinkoff was one of the most remarkable of tho many morbid and brillialil characters which the revolutionary movement in Russia produced. He lived for power and adventure, and stopped at nothing to gain his ends. In tho Czar's days Savinkoff was a loading terrorist, and was an organiser of assassination, a desperate man if ever there was one. Later ho was a Minister in tho Kerensky Government, and subsequently took part in counter-revolutionary activities. lie organised and led bands of “whites” in tho field, and shot many Bolshevists with his 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, ho exercised considerable personal magnetism over men and women, particularly the latter. He was as remorseless as a Borgia, and as adventurous as a Don Juan. Few people have directly made more broken hearts and broken heads than Savinkoff did. Ho was a small man physically, and not at all good looking. After ho escaped from Bolshevist Russia ho lived for a long time as an exile in Paris, paying frequent visits to London. BACK TO INTRIGUE. But exile did not suit this reckless character. Last August ho was seized (or pretended to bo seized) with the idea that those who loved Russia must recognise the Soviet Power. Thereupon he came to an arrangement with the Bolshevist authorities abroad that he should cross tho frontier, be formally arrested and tried and sentenced —and, after a while liberated. Up to a point this programme was carried out. At the trial in Moscow Savinkoff, as. 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. He hoped to be released soon, according to tho plans agreed upon. But the Bolshevists deceived him—as ho had deceived so many others. They lured him into Russia, and then kept him securely under lock and key. No doubt they had good grounds for their distrust. Savinkoff imagined that oneo in Russia he would mould men and affairs to suit his own ends. AMBITION O’ERLEAPS ITSELF. His ambition knew no bounds; bis aim was no less than to become tho new ruler of Russia—the second Lenin. Once he learnt that lie had been deceived ho preferred extinction to existence, and leapt from a window-sill 60ft to death. And so ended one of the bravest if one of the most sensational and unscrupulous characters which tho Great War and its consequences brought into prominence.