SPENCE, Richard B. 1951-

PERSONAL: Born 1951, in Taft, CA. Education: California State University, Bakersfield, B.A., 1973; University of California, Santa Barbara, M.A, 1976, Ph.D., 1981.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—Department of History, Administration Bldg., Room 315, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844-3175. E-mail—rspence@uidaho. edu.

CAREER: Historian and educator. University of Idaho—Moscow, professor of history, 1986—.

WRITINGS:

Boris Savinkov: Renegade on the Left, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1991.

(Editor, with Linda Nelson) Scholar, Patriot, Mentor:Historical Essays in Honor of Dimitrije Djordjevi'c, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1992.

Trust No One: The Secret World of Sidney Reilly, Feral House (Los Angeles, CA), 2003.

Contributor to periodicals, including Historian, Intelligence and National Security, and International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence.

SIDELIGHTS: With an interest in Soviet/Russian history and government intelligence, educator and historian Richard B. Spence has authored several books that focus on early twentieth-century spies Boris Savinkov and Sidney Reilly, two men who traded in political secrets during a tumultuous era that saw Mother Russia overthrow the tsar, buckle under the strain of a brutal modern war, and flirt with Bolshevism, only to eventually accept the restrictions of a communist regime as a means of survival.

In Boris Savinkov: Renegade on the Left, Spence presents a biography of the aristocratic Savinkov, who came to political maturity as an opponent of the tsar during World War I, and in the years following created a terrorist force for the purpose of subverting the plans of Russia's communist rulers through assassinations and other acts of violence. Calling Spence's biography "interesting," Slavic Review contributor Michael Melancon noted the contradictions embodied in the historian's "most enigmatic" subject: an "arch intriguer and survivor who nonetheless [was] . . . a poor judge of character; . . . communism's bitterest enemy who [was] . . . drawn back to the communist motherland like a moth to the flame and, when captured, . . . [made] peace with his former enemies." Based, according to Melancon, on Spence's "wide acquaintance with appropriate western archives and the enormous published literature" available to the author in the late 1980s, the book suffers from bad timing; as Vladimir Brovkin noted in the Russian Review, "the book was finished right when the Soviet archives were opened and scholars could begin to explore some of the unanswered questions on Savinkov's capture and death." Nonetheless, in the opinion of Melancon, Boris Savinkov "should satisfy everyone's curiosity and academic needs."

Published in 2002, several years after the Soviet archives were opened to Western scholars, Spence's second biography takes advantage of this new wealth of information in profiling a colleague of Savinkov's. In Trust No One: The Secret World of Sidney Reilly, Spence draws readers into the tangled web woven by one of the most noted double agents in twentieth-century history. Born Salomon Rosenblum in Russia in 1874 and later dubbed the "Ace of Spies," Reilly passed information between England, the United States, and Russia by way of a complex system based on lies, deceit, and double dealing. Credited with being many things, Reilly has been hailed in England as the model for Ian Fleming's fictional secret agent 007 and in Russia as a key means to access Western intelligence. Basing his study of Reilly on information contained in newly accessible files from British and Russian intelligence agencies, as well as from other sources, Spence creates a scholarly work that provides a compelling personal portrait of Reilly that contains "historical aspects" which readers would find "engrossing," in the opinion of a Publishers Weekly reviewer commenting on Trust No One.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Canadian Slavonic Papers, March-June, 1993, Sava Bosnitch, review of Scholar Patriot, Mentor: Historical Essays in Honor of Dimitrije Djordjevi'c, p. 189.

History, spring, 2003, review of Trust No One: TheSecret World of Sidney Reilly, p. 110.

Publishers Weekly, October 28, 2002, review of TrustNo One, p. 59.

Russian Review, January, 1994, Vladimir Brovkin, review of Boris Savinkov: Renegade on the Left, pp. 144-145.

Slavic Review, winter, 1992, Michael Melancon, review of Boris Savinkov, pp. 813-814; winter, 1994, Philip Shasko, review of Scholar, Patriot, Mentor, pp. 1141-1143.

Slavonic and East European Review, October, 1993, St. K. Pavlowitch, review of Scholar, Patriot, Mentor, pp. 774-775; January, 1995, John Slatter, review of Boris Savinkov, pp. 141-142.

Spectator, June 21, 1993, Caroline Moorehead, review of Trust No One, p. 63.*