Evno Azef,
the son of poor Jewish
parents, was
born in Lyskovo, in 1869. In an attempt to improve their fortunes, the
family moved to Rostov-on-Don in 1874.
Educated at
the local school, Azef worked as a journalist before becoming a
travelling salesman. He became a revolutionary and in 1892, facing
arrest for his political activities, he stole 800 rubles and escaped to
Karlsruhe, Germany. He moved to Datmstadt where he successfully studied
for a diploma in electrical engineering.
While in
Germany he joined a group of exiled members of the Social Democratic
Party. Unknown to his fellow comrades, he also became a paid police
informer. In order to obtain the information that the Okhrana
required, Azef toured Europe where he met all the leading Russian
revolutionaries living in exile.
Azef was paid
100 rubles a month and in 1899 it was suggested by Okhrana
that he would be more effective working in Russia. On his return he
joined the Socialist
Revolutionary Party where
he advocated of armed terrorism. He was appointed a member of the
party's Central Committee and in 1903 replaced Gregory
Gershuni, as head of the SR Combat
Organization.
Azef
organized the assassination of Vyacheslav
Plehve in 1904 and Father
Gregory
Gapon in 1906. At the same time he was receiving 1,000 rubles a
month from the Okhrana.
Several members of the police leaked information to the leadership of
the Socialist
Revolutionary Party about
the undercover activities of Azef. However, they refused to believe the
stories and assumed the secret service was trying to undermine the
success of the terrorist unit.
Eventually a
police defector managed to persuade V. L. Burtsev that Azef was a police
spy. He investigated the case and found confirmation in the accusation
when he interviewed a former director of the Police Department in 1912.
When Azef
heard the news he escaped to Germany. During the First World War
Azef was arrested by the German authorities but was released in
December, 1917. Evno Azef died in Berlin in 1918.
(1) Victor
Serge, Year One of the Revolution (1930)
The SR Battle Organization was founded by
Gregory Gershuni in 1902; its first act, in the same year, was the
execution of the Minister of Education Sipyagin by the student Balmashev
(who was later hanged). On the day after the murder, the SR party
published under a similar verdict. The arrest of Gershuni, who was
delivered to the police by Azef, caused the latter's promotion to the
top leadership of the terrorist detachment. A man named Boris Savinkov,
for whom terrorism was a vocation and whose courage was indomitable, now
found himself under the orders of the agent-provacateur. In 1904 the
Prime Minister, Plehve, fell mutilated by Yegor Sazonov's bomb. Sazonov
had organized the assassination on instructions from Azef.
(2) Edward Judge,
Plehve: Repression and Reform in Imperial Russia
(1983)
Azef sat in a
very dangerous position, especially after Gershuni's arrest, and he had
to think first of his own safety. A continual series of arrests, and a
long train of assassination attempts gone awry, could only help convince
his SR colleagues that they had a traitor in their midst. If he were
found out, his game would be over, and so, most probably, would be his
life. On the other hand, if he could successfully plan and accomplish
the murder of Plehve, his position among the SRs would be secured. Azef
had little love for Plehve: as a Jew, he could not help but resent the
Kishinev pogrom and the minister's reputed role.
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