Yevno Azef
Encyclopedia
Yevno Azef was a Russia
n socialist revolutionary
who was also a double agent
working both as an organizer of assassination
s for the Socialist-Revolutionary Party
(also known as SRs or Esers) and a police spy for the Okhrana, the Imperial secret police
. He was an agent provocateur
, carrying out acts of terrorism
, which justified the police's arresting his accomplices.
(now Brest Voblast
, Belarus
) in 1869 to a poor Jewish family. He was the second of seven children.
he received only basic schooling. Later he worked as a journalist and a traveling salesman. He became a revolutionary as a young man. In 1892, when he was about to be arrested, he embezzled
800 rubles
and fled to Germany
, first to Karlsruhe
and then Darmstadt
. There he studied to become an electrical engineer. In those years Sergei Vasilyevich Zubatov
of the Okhrana also recruited him as a police informer.
In Germany he also joined a group of exiled members of the Russian Social Democratic Party and traveled all over Europe to meet other revolutionaries. Azev joined an SR
group in 1894. He travelled widely through Europe, making contact with prominent SRs, gathering information and working his way into the inner circle of the Socialist-Revolutionary movements. Among those who unwittingly paved Azev's way were the respected narodnik
Kh.O. Zhitlovsky and A.A. Argunov
, founder of the 'Northern Union of Socialist-Revolutionaries' in 1896. This was one of the major constituents of the unified PSR, and Azev was its plenipotentiary abroad. He rose in status to become a member of the party's central committee.
In 1899, at the behest of the tsarist Okhrana, Azev returned to Moscow, working as an electrical engineer and making himself indispensable to the PSR. In 1903 he supplied the Okhrana with information which led to the arrest of Grigory Gershuni
, head of the party's Combat Organization (its military branch), enabling Azef to succeed him (with Boris Savinkov
as his deputy). In that position he organized assassinations including those of Vyacheslav Plehve in 1904 and the Tsar's uncle Grand Duke Sergius Alexandrovich in 1905. By 1908, Azef was playing the double role of a revolutionary assassin and police spy who received 1000 rubles a month from the authorities. Sympathizers in the ranks of the police leaked information to the party, but it was not believed, being taken as malicious propaganda.
Eventually, a defector from the police convinced revolutionary Vladimir Burtsev
to begin a long investigation. Burtsev finally spoke to Lopuhin, a former director of the police department, who verified that Azef had been working for them.
Burtsev exposed Azef in February 1909. A Court of Honor was held in Paris to verify Azef's guilt. The SRs decided to let Azef go home after he promised to provide convincing proof of his innocence the following day. Instead, Azef escaped retaliation and fled again to Germany. His wife, Ljuba Mankin, who had been unaware of his double-dealing, divorced him and moved to the United States
.
In Germany, Azef lived with a singer and worked as a corset salesman and stock speculator. During the First World War, he was interned as an enemy alien. In prison he suffered from a kidney disease but was released in December 1917.
Yevno Azef died in Berlin on April 24, 1918. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Wilmersdorf
cemetery.
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n socialist revolutionary
Revolutionary
A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.-Definition:...
who was also a double agent
Double agent
A double agent, commonly abbreviated referral of double secret agent, is a counterintelligence term used to designate an employee of a secret service or organization, whose primary aim is to spy on the target organization, but who in fact is a member of that same target organization oneself. They...
working both as an organizer of assassination
Assassination
To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...
s for the Socialist-Revolutionary Party
Socialist-Revolutionary Party
thumb|right|200px|Socialist-Revolutionary election poster, 1917. The caption in red reads "партия соц-рев" , short for Party of the Socialist Revolutionaries...
(also known as SRs or Esers) and a police spy for the Okhrana, the Imperial secret police
Secret police
Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....
. He was an agent provocateur
Agent provocateur
Traditionally, an agent provocateur is a person employed by the police or other entity to act undercover to entice or provoke another person to commit an illegal act...
, carrying out acts of terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
, which justified the police's arresting his accomplices.
Biography
Born as Evno Fishelevich Azef in LyskovoLyskovo
Lyskovo is a town and the administrative center of Lyskovsky District of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia, located on the southern side of the Volga River , opposite the mouth of the Kerzhenets River, southeast of Nizhny Novgorod.. Population: It was first mentioned in 1410...
(now Brest Voblast
Brest Voblast
Brest Voblast or Brest Oblast is a province of Belarus with its administrative center being Brest.Important cities within the voblast' include: Baranovichi, Brest, and Pinsk.-Geography:...
, Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
) in 1869 to a poor Jewish family. He was the second of seven children.
he received only basic schooling. Later he worked as a journalist and a traveling salesman. He became a revolutionary as a young man. In 1892, when he was about to be arrested, he embezzled
Embezzlement
Embezzlement is the act of dishonestly appropriating or secreting assets by one or more individuals to whom such assets have been entrusted....
800 rubles
Russian ruble
The ruble or rouble is the currency of the Russian Federation and the two partially recognized republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Formerly, the ruble was also the currency of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union prior to their breakups. Belarus and Transnistria also use currencies with...
and fled to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, first to Karlsruhe
Karlsruhe
The City of Karlsruhe is a city in the southwest of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, located near the French-German border.Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace, when Germany was a series of principalities and city states...
and then Darmstadt
Darmstadt
Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat...
. There he studied to become an electrical engineer. In those years Sergei Vasilyevich Zubatov
Sergei Vasilyevich Zubatov
Sergei Vasilyevich Zubatov was a famous Russian police administrator. Despite rumors, he was never a Colonel in the Special Corps of Gendarmes...
of the Okhrana also recruited him as a police informer.
In Germany he also joined a group of exiled members of the Russian Social Democratic Party and traveled all over Europe to meet other revolutionaries. Azev joined an SR
Socialist-Revolutionary Party
thumb|right|200px|Socialist-Revolutionary election poster, 1917. The caption in red reads "партия соц-рев" , short for Party of the Socialist Revolutionaries...
group in 1894. He travelled widely through Europe, making contact with prominent SRs, gathering information and working his way into the inner circle of the Socialist-Revolutionary movements. Among those who unwittingly paved Azev's way were the respected narodnik
Narodnik
Narodniks was the name for Russian socially conscious members of the middle class in the 1860s and 1870s. Their ideas and actions were known as Narodnichestvo which can be translated as "Peopleism", though is more commonly rendered "populism"...
Kh.O. Zhitlovsky and A.A. Argunov
Andrei Argunov
Andrei Argunov -Biographical Information:Andrei Aleksandrovich Argunov was a Russian revolutionary. He became involved in the populist movement and joined 'The People's Will' in the 1880s. In 1896 he founded the 'Union of Socialist-Revolutionaries' in Saratov, later transferring its headquarters...
, founder of the 'Northern Union of Socialist-Revolutionaries' in 1896. This was one of the major constituents of the unified PSR, and Azev was its plenipotentiary abroad. He rose in status to become a member of the party's central committee.
In 1899, at the behest of the tsarist Okhrana, Azev returned to Moscow, working as an electrical engineer and making himself indispensable to the PSR. In 1903 he supplied the Okhrana with information which led to the arrest of Grigory Gershuni
Grigory Gershuni
Grigory Andreyevich Gershuni was a Russian revolutionary and one of the founders of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party.-Early life:Born in Kovno, Russia 1870 to Jewish peasants....
, head of the party's Combat Organization (its military branch), enabling Azef to succeed him (with Boris Savinkov
Boris Savinkov
Boris Viktorovich Savinkov was a Russian writer and revolutionary terrorist...
as his deputy). In that position he organized assassinations including those of Vyacheslav Plehve in 1904 and the Tsar's uncle Grand Duke Sergius Alexandrovich in 1905. By 1908, Azef was playing the double role of a revolutionary assassin and police spy who received 1000 rubles a month from the authorities. Sympathizers in the ranks of the police leaked information to the party, but it was not believed, being taken as malicious propaganda.
Eventually, a defector from the police convinced revolutionary Vladimir Burtsev
Vladimir Burtsev
Vladimir L'vovich Burtsev , was a revolutionary activist, scholar, publisher and editor of several Russian language periodicals. He became famous by exposing a great number of agents provocateurs, notably Yevno Azef in 1908...
to begin a long investigation. Burtsev finally spoke to Lopuhin, a former director of the police department, who verified that Azef had been working for them.
Burtsev exposed Azef in February 1909. A Court of Honor was held in Paris to verify Azef's guilt. The SRs decided to let Azef go home after he promised to provide convincing proof of his innocence the following day. Instead, Azef escaped retaliation and fled again to Germany. His wife, Ljuba Mankin, who had been unaware of his double-dealing, divorced him and moved to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
In Germany, Azef lived with a singer and worked as a corset salesman and stock speculator. During the First World War, he was interned as an enemy alien. In prison he suffered from a kidney disease but was released in December 1917.
Yevno Azef died in Berlin on April 24, 1918. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Wilmersdorf
Wilmersdorf
Wilmersdorf is an inner city locality of Berlin, formerly a borough by itself but since Berlin's 2001 administrative reform a part of the new borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf.-History:...
cemetery.
Books
- Nikolajewsky, B.Boris NicolaevskyBoris Ivanovich Nicolaevsky was a revolutionary Russian Marxist activist, archivist, and historian. Nicolaevsky is best remembered as one of the leading Menshevik public intellectuals of the 20th Century.-Early years:...
Azeff the Spy: Russian Terrorist and Police Stool. Garden City, NY, 1934. - Anna GeifmanAnna GeifmanAnna Geifman is an American historian. She is a student of political extremism, terrorism and the history of the Russian revolutionary movements.-Biography:...
Entangled in Terror: The Azef Affair and the Russian Revolution. Scholarly Resources, 1999. - Richard E. Rubenstein Comrade Valentine: The True Story of Azef the Spy—The Most Dangerous Man in Russia at the Time of the Last Czars. Harcourt Brace and Company, 1994.
- Shukman, H. (ed.) The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the Russian Revolution. Oxford, 1988.
- Hildermeier, M. Die sozialrevolutionäre Partei Russlands. Cologne, 1978.
Novels
- Rebecca WestRebecca WestCicely Isabel Fairfield , known by her pen name Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, DBE was an English author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. A prolific, protean author who wrote in many genres, West was committed to feminist and liberal principles and was one of the foremost public...
's The Birds Fall Down (1966) is a spy thriller based on the deeds of Azef. - Roman GulRoman Borisovich GulRoman Borisovich Gul was a Russian émigré writer who was prominent in the White Movement.-Biography:...
's novel Azef (originally General B.O., 1929; later edition ) hewed closely to the facts, according to Allen DullesAllen Welsh DullesAllen Welsh Dulles was an American diplomat, lawyer, banker, and public official who became the first civilian and the longest-serving Director of Central Intelligence and a member of the Warren Commission...
. - Joseph ConradJoseph ConradJoseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
's novel Under Western EyesUnder Western EyesUnder Western Eyes is a novel by Joseph Conrad. The novel takes place in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Geneva, Switzerland, and is viewed as Conrad's response to the themes explored in Crime and Punishment; Conrad being reputed to have detested Dostoevsky...
(1911) used elements of the Azef story.
External links
- Berezovsky - between Azef and Parvus by Dmitry GalkovskyDmitry GalkovskyDmitry Yevgenyevich Galkovsky is a Russian novelist, essayist, journalist, philosopher, blogger. Most famous as author of the novel The Infinite Deadlock .-Biography:...