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62 2 The Po­ lit­ i­ cal Mas­ que­ rade Im­ per­ so­ na­ tion, Na­ tional Iden­ tity, and Power In Rec­ ol­ lec­ tions of a Ter­ ror­ ist (1909), Boris Sa­ vin­ kov de­ scribes how Yevno Azef, ­ leader of the Com­ bat Or­ gan­ iza­ tion of the Party of So­ cial Rev­ o­ lu­ tion­ ar­ ies (PSR), to which both be­ longed, des­ ig­ nated a night­ time mas­ que­ rade at the Saint Pe­ ters­ burg ­ Merchant’s Club as the venue for their clan­ des­ tine meet­ ing. Sa­ vin­ kov ­ writes, “Azef ar­ ranged for us to meet at none other than the mas­ que­ rade out of, as he put it, con­ spir­ a­ to­ rial con­ sid­ er­ a­ tions.”1­ Azef’s fore­ most “con­ spir­ a­ to­ rial con­ sid­ er­ a­ tion” at this meet­ ing to plot Min­ is­ ter of the Inter­ ior Vi­ a­ ches­ lav Kon­ stan­ tin­ o­ vich von­ Plehve’s as­ sas­ si­ na­ tion was dis­ cre­ tion: he in­ sisted that Or­ gan­ iza­ tion mem­ bers take max­ i­ mal pre­ cau­ tions to avert sus­ pi­ cion, in­ clud­ ing the up­ keep of in­ con­ spic­ u­ ous ap­ pear­ ance. In this re­ gard the mas­ que­ rade was an ideal back­ drop for their se­ cre­ tive prep­ ar­ a­ tions. Abuzz with petty in­ trigues and sen­ sory pleas­ ures that oc­ cu­ pied the at­ ten­ tion of the­ masked ­ guests, the pub­ lic mas­ que­ rade was a mael­ strom of com­ mo­ tion, din, and un­ rec­ og­ niz­ able faces that ef­ fec­ tively ­ shielded the ter­ ror­ ists from scru­ tiny. At the mas­ que­ rade, the cos­ tum­ ing and ­ role-playing that Azef, Sa­ vin­ kov, and fel­ low ac­ ti­ vists em­ braced as part of their de­ fen­ sive and of­ fen­ sive com­ bat strat­ e­ gies were com­ mon prac­ tice among all those­ present. ­ Through their lit­ eral and meta­ phor­ i­ cal mas­ que­ rades, the The Political Masquerade 63 ter­ ror­ ists dem­ on­ strated the po­ lit­ i­ cal ­ agency de­ rived from prac­ tices of con­ struct­ ing so­ cial iden­ tity. The meet­ ing ­ between Sa­ vin­ kov and Azef at the ­ Merchant’s Club mas­ que­ rade high­ lights the inter­ lac­ ing of dis­ guise and per­ for­ mance with acts aimed at sub­ vert­ ing po­ lit­ i­ cal order. Such late ­ nineteenth- and early ­ twentieth-century works of Rus­ sian lit­ er­ a­ ture as ­ Dostoevsky’s De­ mons (1872), ­ Savinkov’s The Pale Horse (1909), and ­ Bely’s Pe­ ters­ burg (1913) re­ flect this re­ al­ ity and the theat­ ri­ cal­ ity of dis­ si­ dent grass­ roots po­ lit­ i­ cal ac­ tion. This chap­ ter ex­ am­ ines the theme of mas­ que­ rade to re­ veal the dif­ fer­ ences ­ between the waves of ter­ ror­ ism in the 1860s and early years of the twen­ ti­ eth cen­ tury. ­ Whereas Dos­ toev­ sky used the cos­ tumed quad­ rille in De­ mons as part of his at­ tempt to dis­ credit the po­ lit­ i­ cal rad­ i­ cal­ ism of his day, Sa­ vin­ kov and com­ pany de­ lib­ er­ ately as­ so­ ciated them­ selves with the mas­ que­ rade as part of their ­ covert op­ er­ a­ tions. ­ Within the his­ tor­ i­ cal con­ text of po­ lit­ i­ cal im­ per­ so­ na­ tions, as well as the ­ sovereign ’s use of mas­ que­ rade balls and cos­ tumes to af­ firm or chal­ lenge Rus­ sian state­ hood, the ­ present chap­ ter dem­ on­ strates the inter­ con­ nect­ ed­ ness of na­ tional iden­ tity con­ struc­ tions in the pub­ lic ­ sphere and the strug­ gle over po­ lit­ i­ cal ideol­ ogy ­ around the year 1905. Tsar­ ist Mas­ que­ rades In Han­ nah ­ Arendt’s phil­ o­ soph­ i­ cal work On Rev­ o­ lu­ tion she pre­ sented the idea of a pub­ lic per­ sona as a con­ structed mask, which she ­ deemed “le­ git­ i­ mate ar­ ti­ fice.” For ­ Arendt, the po­ lit­ i­ cal ­ player’s mask ­ serves an es­ sen­ tial func­ tion: it ­ presents a sta­ bi­ lized pub­ lic rep­ re­ sen­ ta­ tion...

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