Russia has given the world a classic example of provocation. The Azef case thundered throughout Europe and strongly discredited both the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and the Russian police. A man for over 15 years served as a secret police agent to fight the revolutionary underground and at the same time for over five years was the head of the largest terrorist organization in Russia.
His very name became synonymous with betrayal, everyone hated him. Yevno Azef handed hundreds of revolutionaries into the hands of the police and at the same time organized a number of major terrorist attacks, the success of which attracted the attention of the world community. He became the organizer of the assassination of the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire Plehve, the Moscow Governor-General, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and a number of other leading dignitaries of the Russian state. Azev was preparing an attempt on the life of Tsar Nicholas II, which was not realized due to his exposure.
It is interesting that, acting splendidly in two worlds, in the world of special services and in the world of the “fifth column,” the revolutionary terrorist underground, Azef never fully associated himself with either of them. He always pursued only his own goals and, accordingly, with this his worldview, he either betrayed the revolutionaries to the police, then deceived the police by committing acts of terrorism. The case of Azef is also interesting because the story of one traitor can be understood a lot in the events of the first Russian revolution.
Young Judas
Evno Fishelevich Azef (usually used the Russified version - Evgeny Filippovich) was born in 1869 in the town of Lyskovo, Grodno province, into a poor Jewish family. Later the family moved to Rostov-on-Don, where Evno graduated from high school in 1890. In 1892, in hiding from the police (a dark story of theft), he fled to Germany, where he studied electrical engineering in Karlsruhe. What means he left, studied and lived in Germany is unknown. The Social Revolutionaries have not yet financed it, nor the police.
In 1893, the young man appeared in Switzerland, where, in communication with political emigrants, he showed himself to be a decisive supporter of terror. He considered acts of terrorism to be the main method of political “work”. Apparently, in order to improve his financial situation, Azef sent a letter to the Police Department of the Russian Empire, where he offered to hand over the young revolutionaries. Evno Fishelevich established ties with the revolutionary underground back in Rostov. It was then a fashionable phenomenon among students. The police decided to establish cooperation with the young man and gave him a monthly salary of 50 rubles. It was very good money, as Russian workers in the 1890s received an average of 12-16 rubles a month. Thus, Evno Fishelevich simultaneously aroused interest from both the revolutionaries and the Russian police.
Double life
For the next six years, the young traitor promptly sent information from Germany about the members of foreign revolutionary organizations and their activities. Thus, he earned his authority in the Police Department. At the same time, he gained confidence in the members of the revolutionary underground, revolutionary-minded youth. In 1899, Evgeny Filippovich received an engineering degree and arrived in Moscow. He worked in his specialty and was actively involved in the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR).
Then this party, which arose on the foundation of the People's Will movement, was the leading force of the revolutionary movement in Russia. Unlike their competitors from the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Social Democrats, future Bolsheviks and Mensheviks), the Social Revolutionaries believed that the main driving force of the revolution would not be the workers, but the peasants, who made up the overwhelming part of the agrarian Russian Empire. Their main slogan is "Land for the peasants!" After the 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks borrowed it.
The Social Revolutionaries were engaged in revolutionary propaganda, the "education" of the peasants, they tried to organize peasant uprisings, but their most famous method was terror. By eliminating the leading statesmen and military leaders of the Russian Empire, the most initiative and decisive, loyal to the tsarist throne, the revolutionary terrorists tried to "rock the boat", destabilize the situation, and cause a revolutionary explosion. The fighting organization of the Social Revolutionaries, headed by Grigory Gershuni, created in 1902, committed more than 250 high-profile terrorist attacks. As a result of the activities of the Combat Organization, two ministers of the interior (Sipyagin and Pleve), 33 governor-general, governor and vice-governor (including Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, governor of the Ufa province Nikolai Bogdanovich), 16 mayors, 7 generals and admirals, etc., died. etc.
Azef successfully infiltrated the Socialist Revolutionary Party, gained confidence in the leader of the Gershuni Fighting Organization and himself became one of the prominent members of the party. From that time on, Euno began to hide some information from the police, helping the formation of the Combat Organization and engaging in terror. He began a double game: he continued to hand over the participants in the revolutionary movement and at the same time was one of the "architects" of the great terror in Russia, soon the main one.
In April 1902, the Minister of the Interior Dmitry Sipyagin, a staunch conservative and monarchist who resolutely fought the revolutionary movement, was assassinated. Soon Azev informed the police about the organizers of the assassination attempt. After an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the Chief Prosecutor of the Synod, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Gershunia and other members of the Combat Organization went underground. In June 1902, terrorists made an attempt on the life of Ivan Obolensky, the governor of the Kharkov province. He was rescued by his wife, who intercepted the hand of the shooting terrorist. As a consequence, it became known that the police had been warned in advance by Yevno Azev about the impending assassination attempt, but did not take any measures.
In May 1903, the governor of the Ufa province, Nikolai Bogdanovich, was killed, who became notorious after the suppression of a strike of workers in Zlatoust (then dozens of people, including women and children, died). Gershuni was hiding in Kiev and Azef gave him over to the police. The Military District Court in St. Petersburg sentenced Gershuni to death, but she was commuted to life imprisonment. At first he was in the Shlisselburg prison, then in hard labor in Eastern Siberia. In 1906, as a valuable cadre of the "fifth column", they organized an escape for him, transferred from Vladivostok to Japan, and from there to the USA. Interestingly, until his death in 1908, Gershuni believed that Azev was innocent and even wanted to come to Russia and kill Emperor Nicholas II with him.
The leader of the terrorists
Azef became the head of the Combat Organization and the successor of the Gershuni cause. He took the organization to a new level: he gave up firearms, replaced them with bombs. Explosive devices were manufactured in Switzerland, where several laboratories were set up. It should be noted that the rear bases of the Russian "fifth column" were Switzerland, France, England and the United States. That is, the real masters of the "Russian" revolutionary movement were the so-called. "World behind the scenes" - "financial international", which by any means tried to destroy the Russian autocracy and the Russian state.
Azev also strengthened discipline, increased secrecy, separating the Combat Organization from the general party environment. The main provocateur said: "… with a high prevalence of provocation in organizations of a mass character, communication with them for a military cause will be disastrous …" And he knew what he was talking about. Preparations for terrorist attacks were improved: now the targets of attacks were preliminarily monitored. Observers, weapons makers and terrorist bombers were separated, they didn't have to know each other. Boris Savinkov, a talented revolutionary terrorist who fled from Vologda exile to Switzerland, became Azef's deputy. The backbone of the organization was made up of young people, often dropout students, convinced of their work. Preparations for terrorist attacks were carried out in France and Switzerland, and they hid there after the assassination attempts. Active revolutionary terrorists could live without work for a long time, rest, everything was paid. Such activities required serious financial investments, but the terrorists did not experience problems with funds. The masters of the West were interested in their vigorous activity. The powerful machine of the SR terror was well financed.
In addition, the terrorists received complete freedom of movement. After each case, they easily left for Switzerland, France or England, and held meetings there. They freely moved around the European capitals and the cities of Russia. They had first-class documents, passports, real and not Russian. From the same source and weapons, dynamite. As a result, a rather small group of fanatical terrorists (several dozen active members) kept the whole empire in fear.
Evno Fishelevich became famous for his high-profile operations. In July 1904, the Minister of Internal Affairs Vyacheslav Konstantinovich Pleve was blown up in St. Petersburg, who resolutely fought against the revolutionary movement. In February 1905, the Moscow Governor-General, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, was killed by a bomb. In June 1905, the Moscow mayor, General Pavel Shuvalov, was shot dead. After that, the police stepped up their activities, many active members of the terrorist organization were arrested. Azef was also behind the decline of the Combat Organization.
However, after the suppression of the December Uprising in Moscow, the Combat Organization was restored. In December and April 1906, attempts were made on the life of the Moscow governor-general Fyodor Dubasov (he was wounded); in August 1906, a convinced monarchist, commander of the Semyonovsky Life Guards Regiment (with whom he crushed the uprising in Moscow), General Georgy Min, was killed; in December 1906, the mayor of St. Petersburg, Vladimir von der Launitz, was shot dead. In December 1906, the chief military prosecutor of Russia and the head of the Main Naval Directorate, Lieutenant General Vladimir Petrovich Pavlov, was killed. He was the initiator of the law on courts martial, which helped to bring down the wave of revolutionary terror in Russia.
Among the victims of Yevno Azefa was another famous provocateur - Gapon. The Social Revolutionaries learned about his cooperation with the Vice-Director of the Police Department Petr Rachkovsky and sentenced him to death. The action was to be carried out by Gapon's comrade Socialist-Revolutionary Peter Rutenberg. In March 1906, the assassins strangled a former priest.
All this time, the Police Department did not even suspect that the biggest assassination attempts were made by “engineer Ruskin” (as Azef was called in police documents). Evno Fishelevich continued to regularly supply the police with important information, handed in revolutionaries, but kept silent about the actions, where he himself played a prominent or leading role. Raskin skillfully prepared operations. He led part of it in secret from the police, so that they succeed and high-profile cases create for him unshakable authority in the party and in the entire revolutionary movement. He was simply adored. Therefore, until the very last moment, Ruskin was above suspicion. How can a person who almost personally eliminated Plehve and Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich be a provocateur !? The great provocateur turned over the other part of the operations to the police, and there was no suspicion there either. Since 1905, he began to surrender his own comrades, members of a terrorist organization, whom he himself taught terror. Yevno handed over to the police the group that was preparing the assassination attempt on the king and reported the plan of the explosion to the State Council. For this, Azef received a huge salary - 500 rubles a month (comparable to a general's salary), and at the end of his career - up to 1,000 thousand rubles.
Exposure
Until 1908, Evno Fishelevich masters managed to hide his essence. Thus, in 1906, an officer of the Police Department, L. P. Menshchikov, informed the Socialist-Revolutionaries that there were two police informants in the party leadership. The party commission concluded that the traitor was the Socialist-Revolutionary Nikolai Tatarov. He really was an agent of the secret police, and according to his information, members of the Combat Organization were arrested, who were preparing an attempt on the life of a comrade (as the deputy ministers were called at that time), the Minister of Internal Affairs, the head of the police and the gendarme corps Dmitry Trepov. But suspicions also fell on Azef. However, the authority of Yevno Azef was indisputable at that time, and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, not believing Tatarov's assertions that he was not a traitor, but Azef, believed Raskin. The head of the Combat Organization managed to shift all the blame on Tatarov and achieve his elimination.
Perhaps he could have continued to lead the police and his party by the nose, if he had not been brought out into the open by the former Narodnaya Volya, publicist and publisher Vladimir Burtsev. In 1906, he received information that the Socialist-Revolutionary Party had an agent provocateur named Raskin. Having studied all the available information, evidence previously obtained and rejected by the Social Revolutionaries, the publicist came to the conclusion that Raskin is Azef. In the fall of 1908, Burtsev met with the former head of the Police Department, Alexei Lopukhin. Impressed by what Azef was doing, being a secret police agent, Lopukhin confirmed that Raskin was Evno Fishelevich.
At the internal party proceedings of the Central Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, Burtsev presented all the facts, including the testimony of Lopukhin. In January 1909, Azef-Raskin was sentenced to death. However, he fled to Germany, where he lived a quiet life as a burgher. Played in casinos, spent huge sums. Azef has always loved a beautiful life: expensive restaurants and women. Only with the outbreak of the world war did he start having problems. The German authorities "cleaned out" a potential "fifth column", and Yevno Azef from 1915 to 1917. was in jail. He died in April 1918.
Why did the Socialist-Revolutionaries, who carried out a series of major terrorist attacks killing princes, governors, mayors, admirals and generals, not kill an ordinary German burgher? There were funds, people, a well-oiled method of preparation and implementation of operations. The answer, apparently, is that Azef-Raskin was fulfilling the will of the masters of the West. He was a typical double agent of foreign intelligence services. He completed his task perfectly. In Russia, at an accelerated pace, they created a powerful revolutionary party, launched a large-scale terror, worked out the method of plunging the country into turmoil, controlled chaos. They removed the most loyal to the Russian throne, personally to the tsar, statesmen, on whom one could rely in the conditions of a new revolution. The police department has been successfully misinformed and discredited, and its activities have been paralyzed. Therefore, Yevno Azev was allowed to live in peace, he fulfilled his task.
