Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence

previous experience in foreign espionage, and he was concerned

about arousing the ire of Beria. After Joseph Stalin’s death and Be-

ria’s purge in 1953, Savchenko was demoted. In 1955 he was ousted

from the KGBfor incompetence.

SAVINKOV, BORIS VIKTOROVICH (1879–1925).As a member of

the Battle Organization of the Socialist Revolutionary Party,

Savinkov carried out a number of terrorist acts under the direction of

Yevno Azev. After being imprisoned in a Sevastopol prison,

Savinkov escaped with the aid of a dissidentsailor and made his way

300 kilometers in an open boat to Romania. Following the February

1917 revolution, Savinkov returned to Russia to serve as deputy min-

ister of war in the provisional government. The civil warforced

Savinkov to emigrate, and he worked with a number of Western gov-

ernments against Moscow. As a result of a clever Chekaprovocation,

the Trust, Savinkov was lured back into the country in 1924. He was

immediately arrested, and he made a full confession of his crimes at

a public trial. Shortly after his trial, Savinkov committed suicide or

was murdered in the Lubyankaprison.

Savinkov was a revolutionary polymath, at home in terrorist plan-

ning rooms as well as Winston Churchill’s offices. His novel Pale

Horseis an excellent description of the prerevolutionary terrorist

movement.

SECOND CHIEF DIRECTORATE.SeeKGB ORGANIZATION.

SECRET SPEECH. On the evening of 25 February 1956, in what be-

came known as the Secret Speech, Nikita Khrushchevspoke for

several hours at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party on

Joseph Stalin’s “Cult of Personality.” The speech was not approved

by Khrushchev’s colleagues, who feared the opening of the historical

record. Khrushchev told 2,000 party leaders that Stalin used the se-

curity services to imprison and murder millions of party officials and

military officers who had aroused his suspicion. He noted that almost

all those who perished had been innocent. Khrushchev quoted docu-

ments in which Stalin ordered the police to torture confessions out of

doctors accused of poisoning party leaders. The Secret Speech, how-

ever, did not absolve the Old Bolsheviksshot in the 1930s. It made

232 •SAVINKOV, BORIS VIKTOROVICH (1879–1925)

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