Yevno Azef
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Yevno Azef |
Yevno Azef (
1869-
1918, also transliterated as
Evno Azef), was a
Russian
socialist revolutionary who was also a
double agent working for both as an organizer of
assassinations for the
Socialist-Revolutionary Party and a
police spy for
Okhrana. He was an
agent provocateur, carrying out acts of terror which justified the police arresting his accomplices.
Evno Fishelevich Azef was born in
Lyskovo near
Hrodna in 1869 to a poor
Jewish family. After basic schooling, he worked as a journalist and then a traveling salesman. He also became a revolutionary. 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
Colonel Sergei 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. In 1899 he returned to Russia and joined the
Socialist-Revolutionary Party. He rose in status to become a member of the party's central committee and in 1903 succeeded
Grigory Gershuni, head of the party's Fighting Organization, its terrorist branch. 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 a double role of a revolutionary assassin and police spy who received 1000 rubles a month from the police. Sympathizers in the ranks of the police leaked information to the party who refused to believe it, taking it as malicious propaganda.
Eventually a defector from the police convinced revolutionary
Vladimir Burtsev, who began a long investigation. Eventually Burtsev spoke to Lopuhin, a former director of the police department, who verified the 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 in
April 24 1918. He was buried in an unmarked grave in
Wilmersdorf cemetery.
Like
Father Gapon, Azef's true loyalties and principles are something of a mystery. He betrayed his fellow revolutionaries for money, but the assassination of Plehve and the Grand Duke was going a bit far even for the Ochrana, yet they continued to employ him. Was he double-crossing them as well? It is said that after his exposure as a double agent, Azef told an acquaintance that giving half a chance he would even have killed the
Tsar!
* Anna Geifman -
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)
*
Dmitry Galkovsky Berezovsky - between Azef and Parvus (in Russian)
