Yevno Azef
| Evno Azef | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
Evno Fishelevich Azef 1869 Lyskava, Russian Empire |
| Died | 1918 Berlin, German Empire |
Yevno Azef (Russian: Евгений Филиппович (Евно Фишелевич) Азеф, also transliterated as Evno Azef, 1869–1918), was a Russian socialist revolutionary who was also a double agent and agent provocateur, working both as an organizer of assassinations for the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and a police spy for the Okhrana, the Imperial secret police. He rose in the ranks to become the leader of the party's terrorist branch, the SR Combat Organization, from 1904 to 1908.
After having been found out by the revolutionary Vladimir Burtsev in 1909, he fled to Germany where he died in 1918.
Born as Evno Fishelevich Azef in Lyskava (now Brest Region, Belarus) in 1869 to a poor Jewish family. He was the second of seven children.
He received only basic schooling. Later he worked as a journalist and a traveling salesman. He became a revolutionary as a young man. 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 Sergei Vasilyevich 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. Azef joined an SR group in 1894. He travelled widely through Europe, making contact with prominent SRs, gathering information and working his way into the inner circle of the Socialist-Revolutionary movements. Among those who unwittingly paved Azef's way were the respected narodnik Kh.O. Zhitlovsky and A.A. Argunov, founder of the 'Northern Union of Socialist-Revolutionaries' in 1896. This was one of the major constituents of the unified PSR, and Azef was its plenipotentiary abroad. He rose in status to become a member of the party's central committee.
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