Source: Soviet Russia Pictorial, March, 1923.
A FOUR-LINE news item in some of the foreign language dailies records the end of one of the most spectacular careers in the Russian revolutionary movement. It comes from Germany and refers to the death of Yevno Azev.
Yevno Azev’s last days were spent obscurely as an engineer in some German factory. His death has passed almost unnoticed. No doubt this is due to the fact that in reality he has been dead since 1909 when it was discovered that he was an agent of the Tsar’s police.
Azev took part in the Russian revolutionary movement since the second part of the nineties. A member of the party of the Socialist Revolutionists almost since its foundation, he soon became one of its most influential leaders. Consolidation of various fragments into one centralized body, foundation of a central organ and a theoretical review, smuggling of literature to Russia, organization of the Agrarian Socialist League and the elaboration of the terrorist campaign plan of the party—they were all tasks in which he took a most prominent part.
But his real greatness lay in the terrorist branch of the activities. His ascension to supreme power in the fighting organization dated from the arrest of Gregory Gershuni in December, 1903. Gershuni was the soul of the terrorist activities. Like Zheliabov, in the times of Narodnaya Volya (mistakenly recorded in history under the name of Nihilism). Gershuni was the leading spirit in all terrorist enterprises directed against Sipiagin, Obolensky, Bogdanovich and other ministers and governors of the Tsar. But the most spectacular deeds occurred after his arrest when Azev, who no doubt occasioned it, introduced more “efficient” methods. He brought up a whole pleiad of fearless and skilled terrorists who net to work according to regular strategical plans—in daring and ingenuity often surpassing the imagination of the author of the “Three Musketeers.” His chief lieutenant was Boris Savinkov, who later became minister of war under Kerensky and still later, after leaving his party, became one of the leaders of the White Counter-revolutionists.
The successful terroristic attempts against the life of the Russian Minister of the Interior, Von Plehve, by Yegor Sazonov, and against the Tsars uncle, the Grand duke Sergey, by Ivan Kalaiev, were both organized by Azev. These achievements earned hint unbounded admiration and influence in his party . . . and during all this time, nay, since his early student years, he was in the employ of the police and delivered uncounted active comrades to the gallows.
Sometimes the attempt was made to present Azev as a kind of Jekyll and Hyde who, although serving the police, was at the same time a revolutionist whose acts against Plehve and Sergey were inspired by genuine hatred for his masters. But those who took this view forgot that there were always conflicting groups in the Tsarist camp. Plehve and Sergey at that given moment were obnoxious to the chiefs of the secret service and other powerful groups behind the curtains. Their removal by some self-sacrificing revolutionist could only be welcome to them at the same time increasing the importance of the police and emphasizing its necessity for the protection of the government.
Azev was unmasked in the beginning of 1909. It was Vladimir Burtsev, now a worthy comrade of Savinkov, who first voiced suspicions to this effect upon the indications given to him by a certain Bakal, a “repentant” spy formerly in the service of the Warsaw police. The information was later confirmed to Burtsev by Lopukhin, Conner police director of Petrograd, who, after 1905, began to show ‘liberal’ leanings. Lopukhin was sent to Siberia for his indiscretion while Burtsev was menaced with death by Savinkov and other worshippers of Azev who refused to believe that for so many years they had been the dupes of a provocateur. Finally, the members of the Central Committee of the party could not resist the evidence, particularly as Azev failed to give plausible explanations for some of his movements. Azcv fled and settled in Germany whence the news of his death came recently.
The case of Azev was not the only one where a police spy occupied an important position in a revolutionary organization. In fact, there hardly ever was in history a subversive movement that was not infested with traitors and spies. The names of Degaiev of the Narodnoya Yolya of twenty-five years before and that of Malinovsky. important member of the Bolshevik Party who was unmasked a few years after Azev, are sufficient proofs to that effect.
But there is a distinction between the activities of the agents provocateurs in a predominantly terrorist party like that of the Social Revolutionists, and in an organization relying exclusively on mass action. In the latter, the provocateur, though betraying from time to time, individual members or groups, is nevertheless useful through his propaganda in strengthening the mass movement. In the former, the whole party becomes a puppet in the hands of the department of police. In subsequent issues we will treat some other cases of famous provocateurs in the Russian revolutionary movement.
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