Comrade Valentine: Russian Terrorist and Master Spy

by Richard E. Rubenstein

Book Overview

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0151528950
• ISBN13: 9780151528950
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P
• Length: 316 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Was He A Double Agent or Wasn't He?

Yevno Azef, who penetrated the Combat Brigades of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR), has become one of the most fascinating enigmas of 20th Century history. These Combat Brigades carried out a series of spectacular terrorist attacks in Czarist Russia, their most prominent victims being Interior Minister von Plehve and the Czar's own uncle, Grand Duke Sergei. The SR's believed that these attacks would show the Russian people how vulnerable the ruling Czarist clique really was and inspire the masses to overthrow this corrupt, repressive group and introduce democracy to Russia. The problem for the modern historian is that Azef's role was ambiguous, leaving many to conclude that he was actually a double agent...sometimes betraying his comrades to the Okhrana Czarist police, whereas at other times he supposedly orchestrated these head-line grabbing assassinations. Azef did inform on terrorists, but at other times he withheld information about them from the Okhrana. Thus, we get a major split among the historians. Rubenstein, who wrote this book, claims that Azef really was a maverick, working for himself, and enjoying the money get got as a informant as well as the thrill of being involved in eradicating important Czarist officials, whom he despised as antisemites and tyrants. Rubenstein says he used John Le Carre's book "A Perfect Spy" as inspiration for trying to untangle the varied threads of Azef's life. However, other writers, especially Professor Anna Geifman, emphatically deny that Azef was a double agent and that he loyally informed the police about the terrorist activities of the SR's. Geifman does admit that he withheld information from the police, but she says he did this out of a fear of having his cover blown and it is normal procedure for police informants to do this in order to protect themselves, and their police contacts are aware of this. Rubenstein's view seems more logical, because Azef, as a Jew, suffered a lot during his youth from Czarist oppression and antisemitism, so his working as an "independent" both for and against the regime could be reconciled in his mind. Geifman's belief that he was a loyal informant is harder to reconcile with his hatred for the antisemitic regime and she attributes his motives for serving that regime to complex psychological factors. In any event, Rubenstein's book is an interesting read and can be persuasive regarding his views about Azef (he quotes Geifman and attempts to refute her viewpoing) but even he points out mysteries regarding Azef's behavior that are hard to explain according to his "double-agent" theory. It is fascinating to see how history can so strongly influenced by one lone, disturbed man, who ended up discrediting the SR's peasant-based political movement and clearing the way for Lenin's proletarian Bolsheviks.

Important and little known page in history

Most people even to-day at least heard of the Russian Revolution, and of the names like Lenin and Stalin. Numerous books were written on each of these subjects. How did it happen that the great Russian Empire fallen so quickly and irreversibly to an insignificant group of radical revolutionaries led by V. Lenin? There is no simple answer to this question, but one of the pieces of the puzzle is provided by Rubenstein in this book. This is the sinister personality of the quintessential traitor: Yevno Azef, who had the effect on the history of the past century and on our own far beyond of what is usually recognized, and probably far beyond his talents. By the combination of fate and his own ambitions Yevno Azef got close to the leading Russian Revolutionaries of the beginning of century - and they were not Lenin and his tiny band, but a well-established and organized party of Socialist Revolution, known to-day mostly only to the historians of the period. There is little doubt that the Socialist Revolution party was in an excellent position to lead the post Revolution Russia, and little doubt that the world history would have been different had it done so instead of the Lenin's party. Except, there was this insignificant person, Yevno Azef, who betrayed most of the leaders of the Socialist Revolution Party to the Czarist Russian authorities, leading to confusion and disorganization of the party, and opening the opportunity to Lenin. Thus, singlehandedly, Yevno Azef changed the course of the world history. A fascinating story of how this happened, and a portrait of the man himself is very well presented in this book. Interesting times, interesting life, and a real page turner.