Paul Gorguloff, originally Pavel Timofeyevich Gorgulov (; 29 June 1895 – 14 September 1932), was a Russian émigré who shot and fatally wounded the French president Paul Doumer at a book fair at the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild in Paris on 6 May 1932.
Early life
Gorguloff was born in Labinskaya, a Cossack stanitsa in the Kuban Oblast of Russia's Caucasus Viceroyalty. He was abandoned after birth, with the possibility that his reported birth date (coinciding with the feast day of his namesake) was actually the date he was found. On 31 January 1902, the local ataman, Yakov Dmitrievich Malama, arranged for the boy's adoption by Timofey Nikolaevich Gorgulov, the village chief of Labinskaya, and Varvara Astakhova; Beginning in 1913, Gorguloff studied medicine at Yekaterinodar military paramedic school and later Moscow University's medical faculty. He served in World War I in which he was badly wounded when grenade shrapnel injured his head, after which he was demobilised and resumed his studies at Rostov State Medical University. In 1916, Gorguloff contracted syphilis.
During the Russian Revolution, he served as a nurse with the White Russian Army against the Bolsheviks, spending time in Kuban and Crimea. By 1921, he reportedly served under Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz's army in Minsk and later Warsaw, as a subordinate of Boris Savinkov, before leaving the territories for Czechoslovakia. Before linking up with Savinkov in Poland, Gorguloff had already left behind his first wife of four months, fellow medical student Marie Pagorgeloff.
Between 1925 and 1930, Gorguloff resided in Czechoslovakia illegally until he received a Nansen passport. He completed his studies at Charles University in 1926 and lived in Přerov and Hodonín for the next two years, performing abortions, which was illegal at the time.
Between 1928 and 1930, Gorguloff lost his medical practice licence in Moravia for medical malpractice, relating to drunkenness, dubious work ethic, his illegal abortion service, which had been linked to several deaths, and accusations of rape by two of his patients. Colleagues of Gorguloff described him as an uneducated charlatan who frequently peddled quack medicine for incurable conditions at exorbitant prices.
French authorities had initially allowed Gorguloff an extension to his visa, but rejected a request for an identity card in February 1931. A second attempt on 15 November while passing through Nice revealed Gorguloff's continued unregistered presence, as well as his fraudulent medical practice, with Gorguloff receiving an ultimatum to voluntarily leave France by 30 December or face forcible deportation.
Ideology
Gorguloff followed an esoteric set of beliefs revolving around an idealized version of the ancient Scythian culture of the steppes, agrarianism, and ultranationalism. Most knowledge of Gorguloff's ideology stems from his writings when he was in Paris. One of these writings, The National Peasant's, outlines his ideal system of government for Russia: a totalitarian rule under a hyper-militarized Green party. This state would be led by a "green dictator", similar to the Nazi concept of the Führerprinzip. Gorguloff was an emphatic supporter of fascism, and his ideological beliefs are considered an early form of what is known in the modern era as eco-fascism. His last book, which police found when arresting him, was entitled Memoirs of Dr. Pavel Gorgulov, Supreme Chairman of the Political Party of Russian Fascists, Who Killed the President of the Republic. Gorgulov was an outspoken Russian supremacist, and believed that all non-Russians and those who didn't adhere to Russian Orthodoxy, especially Jews, should not be citizens. To this end, Gorguloff was a firm believer in the Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy theory. Despite his fervent anti-socialism, he despised both monarchism and free market capitalism, which he viewed as anti-peasant.
Despite Gorguloff's self-admitted fascist leanings, once proclaiming his hatred for both communists and tsarists, the court's prosecution, along with the Democratic Republican Alliance and its allies, which included former president Alexandre Millerand and incumbent Prime Minister André Tardieu, alleged that he was a communist agent of the Soviet secret police. Conversely, the French Communist Party and other left-wing parties claimed that the assassination was a false flag operation organised by Tardieu to justify a war with the Soviet Union.