Yevno Fischelevich Asef

Jewno Asef

Jewno Fischelewitsch Asef (also Evno Asew , Russian Евно Фишелевич Азеф ; * 1869 in Lyskowo near Grodno , Belarus ; †  April 24, 1918 in Berlin ) was a Russian terrorist and police spy. He was co-founder of the regime of the Czar directed Social Revolutionary Party and was involved in a variety of attacks against representatives of the Tsarist involved government. At the same time he was secretly working as agent provocateur for the tsarist secret police Ochrana , to which he handed over his accomplices.

Life

Asef was born in 1869 into a poor Jewish family. After graduating from elementary school, he first worked as a journalist and traveling salesman. During this time he apparently joined the revolutionary opposition to the tsarist regime . When he was about to be arrested in 1892, he embezzled an amount of 800 rubles and settled in Germany , where he first lived in Karlsruhe and then began studying electrical engineering in Darmstadt . He also met Sergei Zubatov , a colonel of the Okhrana, who recruited him as a police spy.

In Germany, too, he made the acquaintance of some members of the Social Democratic Labor Party who had had to flee Russia. He joined this party and soon traveled all over Europe to meet other members. In 1899 he returned to Russia and joined the Social Revolutionary Party there. He rose quickly within the party and became a member of the Central Committee. In 1903 he finally succeeded Grigori Gerschuni as head of the armed arm of the party, which Boris Savinkov also belonged to. Asef thus became the leader of the terrorist branch of the Social Revolutionary Party. In this position he was involved in the organization of assassinations. The best-known assassinations under his leadership are the assassination of the Russian interior minister Vyacheslav von Plehwe in 1904 and the assassination attempt by Ivan Kaljajew on the Grand Duke Sergei Romanov , an uncle of the tsar, in 1905.

Until 1908, Asef played a double role as a revolutionary murderer on the one hand and as a police spy with a salary of 1000 rubles per month on the other. Although sympathizers within the police pointed out his role to comrades Asefs, this information was not believed; they were dismissed as harmful propaganda .

discovery

Ultimately, the Social Revolutionary Vladimir Burzew , who was probably made suspicious by a rogue police officer, decided to get to the bottom of the matter. He began an in-depth investigation which ended in a conversation with the former head of a police department. This confirmed that Asef had been working for the police for years.

When Burzew announced the result of his investigations against Asef within the party in February 1909, a court of honor was convened against Asef in Paris to rule on his offense. However, he was allowed to go home for one night after promising to produce evidence to prove his innocence the next day. Instead of appearing again in court the next morning, Asef avoided the threat of revenge from his comrades by fleeing to Germany again. His wife Ljuba Mankin , who had no idea about his work for the police, then divorced him and traveled to the United States .

Last years

In Germany, Asef lived with a singer and made a living as a corsetry dealer and stock market speculator. During the First World War he was interned as an enemy alien . While in captivity, he developed kidney disease and was released in December 1917.

Asef died completely impoverished on April 24, 1918 in Berlin. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the Wilmersdorf cemetery.

Conclusion

The background to Asef's actions and his real intentions remain in the dark. Although he betrayed his party comrades for money, he also participated in the murder of high-ranking members of the tsarist regime. Even by the standards of the Okhrana, the murder of one of the tsar's uncle might have gone too far for a covert operation . Nevertheless, the Ochrana held fast to Asef; maybe because Asef betrayed her too. When making an assessment, it would have to be taken into account that contacts with the other side can also be useful when living underground. So also were Stalin and even Lenin contacts rumored to Okhrana. After his exposure as a police spy, Asef is said to have told an accomplice that he would have killed the tsar if he had had the slightest chance to do so. The Ochrana achieved a similar success with the recruitment of Roman Malinowski , who infiltrated the Bolsheviks.

Hannah Arendt cites Asef in her book " Element and Origins of Total Dominance " as an example of the career of double agents: They used their position in illegal organizations and, on the other hand, in the police apparatus to eliminate rivals on the other side with the help of one side.

literature

• Leo Deutsch : The lure Asew and the terrorist tactics. German by S. Grumbach . Verlag der Buchhandlung Volksstimme, Maier, Frankfurt am Main 1909.
• G. Pevsner: La Doppia Vita di Evno Azev (1869-1918). Milano: Mondadori. 1936. 315 pp.
• Anna Geifman: Entangled in Terror. The Azef Affair and the Russian Revolution. Scholarly Resources, Wilmington DE 1999, ISBN 0-8420-2650-9 .
• Harald Harden: Lockspitzel Asew. Story of a traitor. Verlag der Freizeit-Bibliothek, Hamburg 1962.
• Jean Longuet , Georgi Silber: The bomb killed the Grand Duke on the spot. Terrorists and secret police in old Russia (= AtV 8019) From the Russian and with an afterword by Hans-Jürgen Lehnert. Aufbau-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-7466-8019-0 .
• Boris Nikolajewski : Asew. The story of a betrayal. The Bücherkreis GmbH, Berlin 1932.
• Richard E. Rubenstein: Comrade Valentine. Harcourt Brace and Company, New York NY 1994, ISBN 0-15-152895-0 .
• Boris Savinkov : Memories of a Terrorist . bahoe books, Vienna 2017, ISBN 978-3-903022-42-3

Movie

• Lockspitzel Asew , 1934 ( Fritz Rasp in the leading role. Director: Phil Jutzi )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Leo Deutsch: The Lockspitzel Asew and the terrorist tactics. 1909.

Web links

Commons : Jewno Asef  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Jewno Fischelewitsch Asef in the catalog of the German National Library