From My Recent Past

From My Recent Past is a memoir written by Russian revolutionary Grigory Gershuni (1870–1908), the infamous mastermind behind the Combat Organization (CO) of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR). Grigory Gershuni envisioned himself a knight fighting the dragon of injustice, a believer in a Russian revolution that would sweep away an autocratic “regime that made killers of its own children!” In his view, his personal mission was to cut off the head of that dragon, i.e. eliminate the cruelest, corrupt, and lawless agents of the repressive tsarist regime. Over the course of nine years (from 1902 to 1911), he engaged seventy-eight members of his Combat Organization to commit 263 terrorist acts, including the assassination of two government ministers, thirty-three governors-general, a vice-governor, as well as several admirals and generals.

This book depicts his revolutionary activities, his arrest, and proceedings before a military tribunal, a death sentence verdict that was replaced at the last minute by a life sentence, and years of imprisonment in the Peter and Paul and Shlisselburg fortresses. It is presented here in English translation by Katya Vladimirov, with an introduction by Katya Vladimirov and an afterword by John P. Moran.