Overview

What turns idealists into assassins? Personas of Revolutionary Terror explores the lives, writings, and public images of Russia's revolutionary terrorists before 1917, tracing how self-sacrifice and violence fused into a compelling revolutionary identity. Drawing on memoirs, fiction, and archival sources, this study uncovers how young, educated radicals crafted a mystique that inspired sympathy-even as they turned to bullets and bombs. Bridging literary criticism, history, and political thought, it examines how the revolutionary persona emerged from heroic myth, moral conviction, and nihilist fervor, ultimately shaping modern terrorism's cultural script. In an era marked by political violence, this book offers an urgent reflection on the entanglement of idealism, identity, and the destructive power of belief.

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Reviews

“Harrison’s thought-provoking study of the revolutionary hero persona traces the figure’s development through literary fiction, memoir, and archival documents from the 1860s to 1917, providing an invaluable resource for those seeking to contextualize revolutionary thought in late Russian imperial culture. This book illuminates the myriad connections between discourse and political violence that proved so influential on both Russia’s political and literary histories.” —Dr. Katherine Bowers, Centre for European Studies,The University of British Columbia “Exploring the interplay between personality and performance, imagination and activism, Lonny Harrison presents a compelling narrative of how the idealism of Russian revolutionary terrorists contained the seeds of its own destruction. Weaving together a rich body of literary and archival sources, he traces how terrorism gained momentum in the final decades of tsarist rule, attracting radicals who saw ultimate sacrifice as life’s true purpose. Reevaluating figures like Boris Savinkov and integrating neglected works by believers and critics, Harrison reveals how revolutionary temperament and the performance of terrorism reinforced one another, fostering egotism, despotism, and terror. Within this expanded canon, Harrison demonstrates that even those such as Vladimir Zenzinov, who survived to see the Revolution evolve in ways that hardly resembled their youthful convictions, ultimately remained unable to reject the moral idealism that once had justified revolutionary terrorism.” —Dr. Lara Green, Lecturer in History at Erasmus University Rotterdam

Author Information

Dr. Lonny Harrison is an Associate Professor and Director of the Charles T. McDowell Center for Global Studies at The University of Texas at Arlington. His publications include Archetypes from Underground: Notes on the Dostoevskian Self (2016) and Language and Metaphors of the Russian Revolution: Sow the Wind, Reap the Storm (2020).

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