Yevno Azef (1869–1918) was born in the village of Lyskava near Grodno. He founded the Socialist Revolutionary Party in the Russian Empire and worked as a spy for the Russian Okhrana. He organised terrorist attacks of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and was an agent provocateur.

In 1874, the Azef family moved to Rostov upon Don. Yevno graduated from the local secondary school. In 1889, he joined the Northern Union of Socialist Revolutionaries. In 1892, he fled to Germany to avoid arrest. In 1893, he joined the Polytechnic Institute in Karlsruhe and became a member of a group of Russian socialists. The same year, he offered his services to the Russian police department and worked as a paid agent for 16 years. In 1899, he graduated from the University of Darmstadt, joined the Socialist Revolutionaries Union and returned to Russia.

In 1901, Azef became one of the organisers of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, taking over the management of the party’s combat organisation after several years (his predecessor was G. Gershuni from Kaunas). He was in charge of the preparations for terrorist attacks: in 1904 – on the Minister of the Interior W. Plehve, in 1905 – on the tsar’s uncle, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. At the same time, he informed on party activists to the Okhrana; the denounced were later put to trial. In 1901, he reported on the meeting of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in Kharkiv, in 1905 – on the organising committee of the uprising in St. Petersburg (he also handed over the plans of the uprising). In 1906, he prevented the assassination of Minister of the Interior Dornov, in 1907 – the murder of the tsar; in 1908, he denounced the combat organisation of the Socialist Revolutionaries. Even though he was a spy for the Okhrana, he organised ca. 30 terrorist attacks. Once exposed as a double agent, Azef went into hiding in Germany, Spain, Greece, and Egypt. He settled in Berlin in 1910. In 1916, the German police arrested him as an anarchist terrorist and imprisoned him in the Moabit prison in Berlin; he was later released. Azef did not return to his homeland, he died in Berlin on 24 April 1918. He was buried at a cemetery in the Wilmersdorf district.

Vytautas Toleikis