54 The New York Reviewmy review includes— was 171,694. Add the
intra- American trade that I overlooked
and the total is 186,923, a difference of 8.9
percent— noteworthy, even significant, but
hardly vast. The suggestion that my review,
in seeking accurate statistics, gravely mini-
mizes both the barbaric US slave trade and
the immensely larger overall trade is false.
It’s true that the US was the third- largest
slave trader in the Atlantic world from 1798
through 1807, but the statement can mis-
lead. By then, the letter writers should have
mentioned, three countries alone com-
manded more than 90 percent of the trade,
and the US trailed the leaders, Portugal and
Great Britain, by a factor of roughly three.
Finally, the letter writers should recon-
sider seriously their claims about an “expo-
nential growth” in enslaved arrivals to the
US after the Revolution, with a “dramatic”
reconstitution of the trade in the 1790s.
Their sources actually reveal the opposite,
contravening Holton. The Continental
Congress’s ban on importing enslaved Afri-
cans during the Revolution can make mar-
ginal increases after the Revolution look
“exponential.”
More important, the sources indicate a
drastic decline in arrivals during the post-
revolutionary decades compared to pre-
revolutionary America. The total for the
twenty years ending in 1776, as calculated
by slavevoyages.org, was 113,142. Over
the twenty years starting in 1783, the fig-
ure was 41,549— an astonishing drop by
nearly two thirds. The undramatic growth
after the Revolution was erratic, not “expo-
nential,” briefly peaking in 1784–1785 and
1795–1797. The sharp spike to which my re-
view alludes— two thirds of the total since
1783— only came between 1803 and 1807,
nearly a generation after the Constitution
was ratified, anticipating abolition in 1808.
There was a steadier rise in the numbers
carried by US- flagged ships between 1783
and 1808, chiefly to foreign ports, with
another spike in 1803–1807. But numbers
alone can deceive. As too few note, the
Constitution permitted Congress to restrict
the US slave trade short of abolition before- This included banning US involve-
ment in the foreign slave trade, which Con-
gress, pushed by black and white abolition-
ists, enacted in 1794 and 1800. Enforcement
proved difficult, but still: How much can
anyone say the Constitution “facilitated”
the larger slave trade when it empowered
Congress to outlaw the US part of that
trade, which Congress did?
Quibbling about statistics aside, the larger
point is that, contrary to Holton, the Con-
stitution’s authorization to abolish the
American transatlantic slave trade in 1808,
although a hard- fought compromise, was
fundamentally an antislavery accomplish-
ment in 1787– 1788, the first serious blow
ever against the Atlantic trade in the name
of a national government. We are left, with-
out illusions, as the letter writers conclude,
to reflect on the importance of the Consti-
tution in opening “a venue for Congress to
end the transatlantic slave trade.”
A HERO OF HIS TIME?To the Editors:I write in response to Gary Saul Morson’s
egregious misrepresentations in his review
of my biography of Boris Savinkov [“Falling
in Love with Terror,” NYR, January 13]. His
tactic is consistently to ignore all the abun-
dant evidence I adduce that contradicts his
preconception of Savinkov. But he also goes
much further when he makes an ad homi-
nem attack on me by claiming that I am an
uncritical apologist for Savinkov’s terrorism.
An especially offensive aspect of Morson’s
attack is that he bases his false claim on my
ethnicity, something I did not think I would
see in your pages. Morson begins by stat-
ing that Russia was “the first country where
‘terrorist’ became an honorable... profes-
sion, one that could be passed down in fam-
ilies for generations”; then he identifies me
as having grown up in “a Russian émigréfamily”; and finally, he claims that the “pur-
pose” of my book is “to exalt the Russian
terrorist movement in general and Savinkov
in particular” (all italics are mine).
Why is my ethnicity even mentioned in
this review instead of some other, stan-
dard academic identifiers? Is it to suggest
that I cannot be objective about terrorism
because of my Russian background? In
the context of the review’s misrepresenta-
tions, this is the only possible conclusion.
Whether Morson’s animus is intentional or
an unconscious slip, it echoes the recent no-
torious slur by former director of national
intelligence James Clapper that Russians
“are almost genetically driven to co- opt,
penetrate, gain favor, whatever.”
Because I do not have enough space to
cite all the evidence that disproves Morson’s
claims about my book and me, I refer read-
ers to my response on valexandrov.com/
nyrb. Below is a sketch of just some of the
points.
Savinkov’s disinterest in the subtleties of
revolutionary ideology is hardly evidence
of his indifference to “alleviating people’s
suffering,” as Morson absurdly claims,
and there are dozens of places in my book
where I describe Savinkov’s lifelong fight
for the Socialist Revolutionary (SR) Party’s
ideals of land to the people, free elections,
and self- determination for all subject na-
tionalities of the Russian Empire.
Morson is wrong that a morbid preoc-
cupation with violence was all that moved
Savinkov and his comrades. As I explain in
detail, Dora Brilliant could not overcome
her sense of guilt for participating in the
murder of imperial grandees, even though
she believed their deaths were necessary to
free the Russian people. As a result, she,
and other members of the SR Combat Or-
ganization, including Savinkov, saw their
own possible deaths during assassinations,
or their executions after being captured, as
atonement for their sins. Morson omits this
context when quoting Dora Brilliant’s “I
must die.”
Morson regularly misrepresents my book
by cherry- picking quotations. For example,
he cites Savinkov’s “chuckle” about SR
theoretician Chernov but leaves out a pas-
sage just five lines lower which shows that
Savinkov not only supported the SR Party’s
commitment to the peasantry but urged a
comrade to do so as well. To paint Savinkov
as unprincipled, Morson quotes Savinkov’s
statement to Gippius that he would work
with “anyone” but omits Savinkov’s ex-
planation in the same letter that this means
those who are committed to patriotism and
“the Constituent Assembly,” the democrat-
ically elected body that Lenin scattered at
gunpoint in January 1918. To implicate me
in irresponsible admiration for Savinkov,
Morson quotes only the part of a sentence
about Savinkov not killing anyone, thus
misrepresenting my point about Savinkov’s
paradoxical nature. Morson claims that
Savinkov makes only a “rather qualified
‘condemnation’” of Bulak- Balakhovich’s
anti- Semitism during his military incursion
into Belarus but ignores what I summarize
seven lines lower about Savinkov insisting
“it is the duty of every honest man to de-
fend the Jews, who as a people are as inno-
cent of being Communists as the Russians
are of being Bolsheviks.”
Even bigger omissions abound. Although
I admire Savinkov and some of his closest
SR comrades for their commitment to the
Russian people, I also detail many criti-
cisms of Savinkov during all periods of his
life. But Morson mentions none of these in
his desire to make it seem as if I view Sav-
inkov as a “secular saint.” And when Mor-
son criticizes my explanations of Savinkov’s
behavior he does not engage any of the doc-
umentary evidence I provide and, instead,
refers to individuals and historical events
that have no direct relation to Savinkov.
Morson even conceals that, in the spirit of
objectivity, I cite evidence against my own
interpretations. When he attempts to refute
my conclusion that Savinkov committed
suicide while in a Soviet prison he refers
to several remarks by others that Savinkovwas murdered, as if this were evidence of
which I was unaware. But all of it (and
more) is in my book. Morson’s carelessness
extends to inventing that Savinkov replaced
guns with bombs, even though I explain
that it was the notorious Evno Azef.
Morson also makes a historical gaffe
when he tries to fault me for not mention-
ing Ignatiev’s recollection of Stalin, which
he presents as if it clinches the case against
Savinkov’s suicide. Morson does not realize
that Lenin could not have ordered Dzer-
zhinsky to throw Savinkov out of a prison
window because Lenin died eight months
before Savinkov was imprisoned, as I de-
scribe in my book.
Morson concludes by quoting with ap-
proval Lenin’s denigration of terrorism and
his attacks on those who romanticize revo-
lution. Considering the unbeatable records
that the Bolsheviks established in both
realms, this is both highly ironic and histor-
ically blind. Immediately following Fanny
Kaplan’s attempt on his life in 1918, Lenin
and his followers launched their “Red
Terror,” which slaughtered some 200,000
people. When Lenin recovered from his
wounds his closest associates immediately
started deifying him. The first Mausoleum
on Red Square was built, and Lenin’s mum-
mified corpse placed in it, in 1924, the year
he died. And we all know how state terror
and the cult of Lenin developed in subse-
quent decades.Vladimir Alexandrov
B. E. Bensinger Professor Emeritus
of Slavic Languages and Literatures
Yale University
New Haven, ConnecticutGary Saul Morson replies:In my review of To Break Russia’s Chains,
I cite Alexandrov’s assertion that Russian
terrorism in the early twentieth century, in-
cluding that undertaken by the PSR (Party
of Socialist Revolutionaries), to which
Savinkov belonged, was entirely different
from what that word means today. “The
[PSR] assassins called themselves ‘terror-
ists’ proudly, but what they meant by this
bears no resemblance to what the word
means now,” Alexandrov explains, because
today’s terrorists kill people randomly and
“attack almost any national, social, or cul-
tural group chosen by chance and engaged
in any pastime.... Had the Socialist Rev-
olutionaries known of such events, they
would have condemned them as unequivo-
cally criminal.”
But everyone knew about such events. I
cite evidence from Anna Geifman’s author-
itative study Thou Shalt Kill: Revolutionary
Terrorism in Russia, 1894–1917 that Rus-
sian terrorism took the lives of thousands
of bystanders and private citizens; that
“robbery, extortion, and murder became
more common than traffic accidents”; that
terrorist groups “competed...to see who
had committed the greatest number of rob-
beries and murders, and often exhibited
jealousy over others’ successes”; and that
they also competed in devising sadistic tor-
tures, which Geifman describes in stomach-
turning passages. These terrorists also in-
vented suicide bombing, which would seem
to link them to more recent terrorists. In his
letter, Alexandrov does not bother to ad-
dress these facts, or other counterevidence
I cite from Geifman and other historians.
On the first page of his book, Alexandrov
asserts, without qualification, that Savinkov
himself “chose terror out of altruism.” This
proponent of “freedoms” (as Alexandrov
describes Savinkov in his first sentence) col-
laborated with Mussolini, excused his impe-
rial ventures, and praised fascism (“Fascism
is close to me psychologically and ideologi-
cally”). When his party condemned another
group (the Maximalists) for an assassination
attempt that killed twenty- seven bystanders
and wounded thirty others, Savinkov wrote
that he “did not approve” of the condem-
nation. At one point he offered to join with
the Maximalist leader, explaining that ide-
ology made no difference to him: “Whycannot we work together?... It is all the
same to me whether you are a Maximalist,
an anarchist, or Socialist Revolutionist. We
are both terrorists. Let us combine our or-
ganization in the interests of terror.” Does
this not sound as if terror (not just “altru-
ism”) was a goal in itself, and that Lynn
Ellen Patyk’s portrait of a Byronic Savinkov
(which I describe) makes more sense than
Alexandrov’s description of a noble man
guided only by pure and humane motives?
Does Alexandrov represent Savinkov as
a sort of secular saint? “All his [Savinkov’s]
efforts,” he writes, “were directed at trans-
forming his homeland into a uniquely dem-
ocratic, humane and enlightened country.”
All his efforts, terrorism out of altruism, an
“absolute commitment to personal and po-
litical freedom,” suicide chosen as the only
honorable course of action when he could
not deliver on his plan to assassinate top
Bolsheviks—such descriptions (and there
are more) sound like a revolutionary ver-
sion of “secular sainthood” to me.
Alexandrov writes, “Morson even con-
ceals that, in the spirit of objectivity, I cite
evidence against my own interpretations.”
But I provide such evidence several times,
for example: “According to Alexandrov, a
woman Savinkov tried to recruit for terror
‘concluded that terrorism for its own sake
had eclipsed all other considerations for
Savinkov.’” I also mention how PSR leader
Victor Chernov was irritated when “Sav-
inkov...‘with a chuckle,’ in Alexandrov’s
words...expressed indifference to the par-
ty’s defining commitment to the peasantry.”
My purpose in citing Stalin’s line about
Savinkov’s suicide, along with the confes-
sion Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn heard from
a secret police agent who claimed to have
participated in Savinkov’s defenestration,
and Savinkov’s own statement that “if you
hear that I’ve laid hands on myself—don’t
believe it” was to point out how murky the
whole issue is and that murder was at least
as likely as suicide. We just don’t know.
Alexandrov is perfectly sure that the rea-
son the review mentions that he is “a prom-
inent scholar...who grew up in a Russian
émigré family” is that I hate Russians and
agree with James Clapper that Russians
“are almost genetically driven to co- opt,
penetrate, gain favor, whatever.” Alexan-
drov is so certain of my hatred for Russians,
to whose great literature I have devoted my
life, that “this is the only possible conclu-
sion”! As it happens, the phrase in question
was supplied by editors at The New York
Review, not me. They wanted to make clear
that Vladimir Alexandrov, despite his evi-
dently Russian name, is not a Russian but
an American. In fact, this sort of biographi-
cal information is far from rare in the pages
of The New York Review. Even if that had
not been the case, surely Alexandrov might
allow that some other explanation is pos-
sible. This sort of simplistic reasoning also
characterizes his book.CORRECTIONIn David S. Reynolds’s review of Clint
Smith’s How the Word Is Passed: A Reck-
oning with the History of Slavery Across
America [NYR, February 24], American
taxpayers spent at least $40 million to sup-
port Confederate monuments between
2008 and 2018, not in 2018 alone.Letters to the Editor: [email protected]. All other
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