Professor Moriarty of the Socialist-Revolutionary terror: how an agent of the Okhrana headed an organization of revolutionaries

The head of the Fighting Organization of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and part-time secret police agent Evno Azef became (anti)the hero of the new book by Valery Shubinsky. The legendary provocateur remains a mysterious figure to this day, despite numerous attempts to discover some more complex and contradictory motives in his dark soul, other than banal greed. Critic Lidia Maslova presents the book of the week specifically for Izvestia.

Valery Shubinsky

"Azef. The antihero of the Russian Revolution"

Moscow: Individuum, Eksmo, 2025. — 544 p.

"They don't write books in such quantities about ordinary low scoundrels," says Shubinsky, who uses the observations of his first biographer Boris Nikolaevsky, modern researchers Leonid Preisman and Anna Geifman, as well as writers Mark Aldanov, Alexei Tolstoy, and Roman Gul in his portrait of Azef. an extraordinary, albeit odious, character.

"Publicists and biographers of Azef vied with each other against attempts to romanticize and demonize his image," Shubinsky summarizes the experience of his predecessors, separately objecting to Aldanov with his radical definition of Azef as "a transitional step from a man to a boa constrictor." Shubinsky himself distances himself from this dehumanization of his antihero, trying to see in him nevertheless a representative of our biological species, among which there are also not such specimens: "He was a man, although, of course, not the best of people. Azef's story is a very strange, but purely human story."

Nevertheless, the idiom "like a boa constrictor on a rabbit" quite often comes to mind when Shubinsky describes the magnetic, almost hypnotic effect that Azef often produced on people. These almost witchcraft charms are especially impressive, coupled with the extremely unattractive appearance of Azef, mentioned as a separate item in the list of failures, according to Shubinsky, who pursued his hero from birth.

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Firstly, "he was born in the Russian Empire into a family of the Jewish faith — with all the well-known legal consequences," secondly, he chose an unsuccessful era for his birth (the great reforms of Alexander II ended, and the "counter-reforms" of Alexander III began), thirdly, the family of Azef— the son of a tailor from a small From a small Belarusian town, she was not rich or happy at all, and to top it all off, the fat and lisping little Evno was bullied at school. "The fairy placed only one gift in his cradle," writes Shubinsky, finally laying out the only trump card in the hopeless scenario of Azef's bitter fate. — Only one quality was given to him, a quality that no one could deny for him even after his exposure. Mind. Tenacious practical mind."

Azef's chess mind is repeatedly mentioned in the book, including according to the testimonies of people who personally knew him, for example, one of the Socialist Revolutionary leaders Viktor Chernov, who was amazed by Azef's working methods during the development of another terrorist attack: "I would use this process to analyze the impossible combination that experienced players make in a chess game. All possible cases were discussed extremely precisely, all possible minute details were provided for, all possible deviations from the plan."

Photo: IZVESTIA/Sergey Lantyukhov

Noting the analytical mind of the chess player, which allowed him to calculate complex combinations, solve several problems simultaneously and predict the moves of rivals and colleagues (who could quickly turn the tables in the case of Azef, balancing on two extremely unstable chairs), Shubinsky adds to the portrait of his hero and the adventurer's craving for a dangerous game, using not only chess, but also Card analogies: in Azef's adventurous life, there were frequent periods when, "like a joker, he played for one suit or another, influencing the outcome of the game with his unpredictable intervention." At the same time, as the author of the book admits, the most difficult thing for a biographer is to understand what was behind this or that tricky sequence of Azef's moves: "Impeccable chess calculation, spontaneous game of an adventurer... or maybe some kind of dark Dostoevschism, an intoxication of power over people and betrayal? Or both, and the other, and the third at once? ".

Shubinsky notes Azef's obvious resemblance to the famous historical figure of the 18th century, Ivan Osipov, known as Vanka—Cain, "a dashing robber chieftain and at the same time a high-ranking agent of the detective department," who for 15 years was "the king of Moscow thieves and Moscow detective." "No one knew that Vanka would return a century and a half later and in the most unexpected guise one could think of: as an obese Jew with a higher technical education, a reader of Kant and a lover of cafe chantan," Shubinsky notes the amazing fact of the transmigration of souls, emphasizing that it was not enough to transform Azef into Vanka-Cain. only natural inclinations, but it also took a certain logic of fate, which pushed him to transform.

Photo: TASS

The complexes that led Azef to the revolutionary circle played a role: "The revolution was the guard of the generation, its elite, its knightly order. Or so it seemed to most. And so a fat, ugly guy with about five grades in a real school, a beggar, a reluctant, sneaky loser with no particular occupation and an unimportant reputation joins this "order", the order of those who die for the great cause of love, and I'm glad they took him." And when his comrades in the Rostov underground tricked Azef out of other people's money, his fascination with the revolution was replaced by resentment and a desire for revenge: "Of course, he had the makings of an adventurer, a deceiver, a double player. But they had to be woken up. This honor went to the Rostov Marxist circle. If only the boys knew what they had woken up to."

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For a more voluminous, comprehensive characterization of Azef, Shubinsky uses not only historical, but also literary analogies, for example, when he opposes Maxim Gorky, who called Azef a monstrously simple man. No, Shubinsky is sure that "monstrous simplicity" does not fit in with such a sophisticated mind, it can only be about moral primitiveness: "But, of course, he was a low man. Low, but yearning for the high, reaching for the high, trying to imitate it in the ways available to him. And most importantly, those who seek to make "tall" people dependent on themselves and thus assert themselves. A kind of Nabokovian "Monsieur Pierre," the executioner of Cincinnatus C., in love with his victim."

Photo: RIA Novosti

However, more often than not, Shubinsky mentions another literary villain with a megamind in connection with Azef, Professor Moriarty. In relation to him, the "Sherlock Holmes of the Russian revolution" is the publicist, publisher and historian Vladimir Burtsev, who played a fatal role in the fate of Azef and largely contributed to his final exposure, which the Social Revolutionaries did not dare for a long time, as well as the execution of the provocateur, who lived out his days under another guise — a peaceful German burgher.

Shubinsky's book, which ends with Azef's death from kidney failure in a Berlin clinic in 1918, provides a detailed panorama of Russian socio-political life and many psychological portraits of the most prominent figures, including not only heroes of the revolutionary terror, but also party leaders, police chiefs and prime ministers. It reads not only as a historical drama, but also as a spy thriller, where Azef's story is "part of a tangled and intertwined tangle of semi—detective stories. And when you start to unravel it, you suddenly realize that some part of Azef was in many venerable and revered political (and not only political) figures of that time," Shubinsky sums up, believing that Azefism reflected much of the "spirit of the times" and the "spirit of the place" in a country shaken by revolutionary events. the fevers of Russia in the early twentieth century.