Yevno Azef - Biography

Biography

Born as Evno Fishelevich Azef in Lyskava (now Brest Voblast, 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. Azev 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 Azev'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 Azev was its plenipotentiary abroad. He rose in status to become a member of the party's central committee.

In 1899, at the behest of the tsarist Okhrana, Azev returned to Moscow, working as an electrical engineer and making himself indispensable to the PSR. In 1903 he supplied the Okhrana with information which led to the arrest of Grigory Gershuni, head of the party's Combat Organization (its military branch), enabling Azef to succeed him (with Boris Savinkov as his deputy). In that position he organized assassinations including those of Vyacheslav Plehve in 1904 and the Tsar's uncle Grand Duke Sergius Alexandrovich in 1905. By 1908, Azef was playing the double role of a revolutionary assassin and police spy who received 1000 rubles a month from the authorities. Sympathizers in the ranks of the police leaked information to the party, but it was not believed, being taken as malicious propaganda.

Eventually, a defector from the police convinced revolutionary Vladimir Burtsev to begin a long investigation. Burtsev finally spoke to Alexei Lopukhin, a former director of the police department, who verified that Azef had been working for them.

Burtsev exposed Azef in February 1909. A Court of Honor was held in Paris to verify Azef's guilt. The SRs decided to let Azef go home after he promised to provide convincing proof of his innocence the following day. Instead, Azef escaped retaliation and fled again to Germany. His wife, Ljuba Mankin, who had been unaware of his double-dealing, divorced him and moved to the United States.

In Germany, Azef lived with a singer and worked as a corset salesman and stock speculator. During the First World War, he was interned as an enemy alien. In prison he suffered from a kidney disease but was released in December 1917.

Yevno Azef died of renal failure in Berlin on April 24, 1918. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Wilmersdorf cemetery.