Criminals - General & Miscellaneous - Biography, Revolutionaries - Biography, 1689 - 1916 (Imperial Russia) - History, Imperial Russia - 1881-1917
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Overview
Readers opening the New York Times on the morning of February 7, 1909, saw the headline: Police and Reds Both Hunt Azeff. "Where is Azeff?" the report began. "Who will get to him first? Who will be his executioner, the Russian police or the revolutionists?" Russian anticzarist terrorists had sentenced the missing man to death for being a Secret Police spy - while the czarist authorities were hunting him down for being a revolutionary! True to form, Azef eluded all his pursuers until his death in Berlin in 1918 - and just as successfully eluded the subsequent attempts of journalists, historians, and novelists to make sense of his character and motives. Who was this man who betrayed scores of revolutionaries to the czarist police while at the same time organizing the assassination of the powerful minister of the interior as well as that of Grand Duke Sergei - and coming within a hair's breadth of orchestrating the killing of the czar himself? How could - and why would - anyone play such a deadly double game? Richard Rubenstein, an expert on political violence, is the first writer to make Azef comprehensible both as a political figure and as a human being. Drawing on materials that illuminate every side of the case, Rubenstein has created a singularly compelling and evocative portrait of a man, a way of thinking, and an endlessly fascinating place and time.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
One of history's most intriguing double agents, Yevno Azef, a Russian Jew born into poverty, operated simultaneously as a spy for the Czarist secret police and as leader of an antigovernment terrorist group in Russia. Purportedly he was not only responsible for the liquidation of countless Czarist ministers, officials and high-ranking military officers (he came close to pulling off the ultimate terrorist act of his day, the assassination of Czar Nicholas II) but also betrayed many of his comrades in the Fighting Organization of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Exposed as a double agent in 1909, Azef fled to Berlin with his German mistress, a nightclub entertainer, supported himself as a stockbroker and corset retailer, and died a free man in 1918 at the age of 48. Rubenstein, a professor of public affairs at George Mason University, speculates on the motivations of this treacherous figure, but fails to render him any less enegmatic. Readers will find what Azef did of great interest without learning why he did it. Photos. (July)Brian McCombie
Rubenstein details the fascinating life of Yevno Azef, a spy for both the czarist police and the many revolutionaries of turn-of-the century Russia. He describes Azef as a man whose "search for freedom, security, and power led him to the dark heart of the underground civil war." That is, Azef was able to play all sides of the political spectrum for his own emotional and financial profit. He took money from the czarist police as an informant, and did indeed provide vital information. Yet he was also a key figure in the assassinations of scores of government officials. Azef had a love for playing many roles, and enjoyed the danger of the game within the game. But the agenda he followed ultimately was his own, one which included a fascination for terrorism as a tool of political change. A spy story and character study, and well worth the read.Book Details
Published
July 1, 1994
Publisher
New York : Harcourt Brace & Co., c1994.
Pages
316
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780151528950