Russian roulette is a game of life and death. Swiss-born author Georges Surdez brought this dangerous game of chance to the world’s attention.
Russian roulette is a game of life and death. Swiss-born author Georges Surdez brought this dangerous game of chance to the world’s attention. Pictures: Wikimedia / Swiss National Museum

A Swiss-born author’s dangerous game

Who invented it? Probably Russian soldiers. And who made it world famous? Definitely an author born in Biel-Bienne. The story of Russian roulette.

Beat Kuhn

Beat Kuhn

Beat Kuhn is Regional Editor at the Bieler Tagblatt and pulls out the occasional exciting news story from the archives.

Website: Bieler Tagblatt
Georges Surdez was born in 1900 to a French-speaking middle class family in Biel-Bienne. His father Eugène was a watchmaker, while his mother Marie devoted herself to running the family home and raising the children. She had a mystical side, which found an outlet in reading tarot cards for the neighbours. Georges grew up alongside three older sisters – one of whom was killed in a sledging accident – plus an older and a younger brother. His elder brother would later die after falling from a tree. Two other adult siblings, a brother and a sister, lived in the USA. As a child, Georges liked to read books about William Tell, Swiss history, the life of Napoleon and the French Foreign Legion as well as American adventure stories. When Georges was twelve, the family moved to the United States, where Eugène, by now dissatisfied with his job as a watchmaker, had lived for a while in younger years. In his new home town, New York, Georges stood out as a foreigner and was picked on by his classmates, who called him names like “dirty Swiss”. He left school at age 16. At 19, he emigrated to Africa to start a new life in Côte d’Ivoire, at that time a French colony, from where he made trips to other countries on the continent, including  Morocco and Sudan.
Postcard of Biel, 1912.
In 1912, the Surdez family moved from picturesque Biel-Bienne... e-pics
Photography of New York, 1912.
... to the US metropolis of New York. Wikimedia
Back in New York he discovered two things that were to change his life forever: that you could earn good money writing the kinds of adventure stories that he had so loved reading as a boy, and that he possessed the talent to tell a good tale. These short stories were commissioned and published by magazines like Adventure. This particular magazine became his go-to publisher, accepting more than 100 of his works. Surdez began writing in 1922, initially in his free time, before later becoming a full-time author. His early stories were mainly crime thrillers, but also included a love story set in Africa. This romantic adventure was adapted for the big screen in 1927 by the film production company of a certain Joseph Kennedy – whose son would later go on to become US President. Surdez became a naturalised American citizen in 1928, encouraged by his wife Edith, a much-older schoolteacher he had married in 1922. At first, she did not appear to have a problem with her husband churning out what was commonly referred to as ‘pulp fiction’. But, in 1943, she left him for another man.
Cover of Adventure magazine, January 1926.
Cover of Adventure magazine, January 1926. Wikimedia
Story by Georges Surdez in Adventure magazine, 1934.
Story by Georges Surdez in Adventure magazine, 1934. Internet Archive
Surdez was also fascinated by the world of the Foreign Legion, the elite French army corps in which adventurers from all over the world signed up to serve and continue to do so today. It provided the setting for his story Russian Roulette, the one piece of fiction that was to bring him a certain amount of fame. It appeared on 30 January 1937 in the popular magazine Collier’s Illustrated Weekly. The story concerns a unit of the Foreign Legion stationed in North Africa. Its main protagonists are the Russian Sergeant Burkowski, a compulsive gambler, and the German Sergeant Feldheim, who tries to coax Burkowski out of his addiction. However, Burkowski is playing for more than just money, he is also playing with his life. He survives several rounds of Russian roulette, before finally taking his own life by deliberately shooting himself in the head. In the story, Burkowski claims that the game was invented in 1917 by Russian officers in Romania – during the final days of Russia’s involvement in World War One, when the Tsar's demoralised army was on the retreat. In other words, the game is supposed to be grounded in real-life – or at least appear plausibly so.

Russian roulette

In Russian roulette, a single cartridge is placed in the cylinder of a revolver, which usually has six chambers, i.e. space for six cartridges. After spinning the cylinder so that the player cannot tell which chamber holds the cartridge, the player then aims the gun at their own head and pulls the trigger.
Was Russian roulette actually drawn from reality or was it simply a clever fictional contrivance? There are indeed indications that this dangerous game had a long tradition within the Russian army and could have been played around 1917. But it has yet to be proven. However, it is clear that the practice made its first appearance in writing thanks to Georges Surdez and his 1937 adventure story, as confirmed by the Oxford English Dictionary, the foremost lexicon of the English language. Whether or not Russian roulette existed before Surdez’s story, it certainly did afterwards. For example, in 1954 American rhythm-and-blues singer Johnny Ace died playing the game. The term also made its way into everyday use and nowadays is frequently used as a synonym for a high-risk venture – such as when UN Secretary General António Guterres stated in June 2024 that we are "playing Russian roulette with our planet". Incidentally, the author himself passed away in 1949 of natural causes.
Georges Surdez, sketched for the Blue Book of Adventures for Men, 1941.
Georges Surdez, sketched for the Blue Book of Adventures for Men, 1941. Photo: courtesy
Georges Surdez first put Russian roulette on paper in Collier’s Illustrated Weekly in January 1937.
Georges Surdez first put Russian roulette on paper in Collier’s Illustrated Weekly in January 1937. Photo: courtesy
This post is a shortened version of an article previously published in the Bieler Tagblatt on 9 October 2017. Its full title was: ‘Dem Bieler, der Russisch Roulette bekannt gemacht hat, auf der Spur.

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