…Degeneration, moreover, does not always take the same forms. The Combat Organization set up within the Socialist Revolutionary party in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth-century carried out terrorist operations on an unprecedented scale. Its victims included, besides the grand Duke Sergius, two ministers of the interior and an impressive list of high police officials and provincial governors. A large number of its members succeeded, however, in maintaining a relatively high standard of professional morality- for that particular profession.
—The job paid extremely well, had fun perks like ass stabbing and everything was smooth sailing until he was instructed to penetrate the Social Revolutionary Party.
And then, shit got real…
Azef discovered the Combat Organization, a terrorist sub-group of the Revolutionary Party that assassinated government officials. While still on the payroll of the secret police, he joined the terrorist group and quickly rose through the ranks. Eventually he set up the leader and ultimately replaced him,
Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_17540_5-spies-with-bigger-balls-than-james-bond_p2.html#ixzz2HUIZzd7y
But little by little, terrorism, instead of being considered a mere adjunct to other forms of revolutionary activity, came to be thought of as an end in itself. The resulting obsession with security and conspirational technique facilitated the rise to leadership within the Combat Organization of a crack professional named Evno Azev, who encouraged the tendency to make violence for the sake of violence the group’s only goal.
Azev was a thick chested, bushy-bearded engineer and undoubtedly an artist, even a genius, in his own line. He had been planted in the party as an agent provocateur by the Okhrana, the political and security section of the czarist police, with the specific mission of penetrating its terrorist wing. He succeeded so well that he eventually became its top planner. Azev failed to mention this promotion to his police employers, though he did betray into their hands a number of his comrades, and for years the Okhrana never realized that its own prize agent had planned and instigated the assassination of the czar’s uncle and of its departmental chief, V.K. Plehve. Azev often sabotaged terrorist operations of secondary importance by giving the Okhrana accurate advance warning, but on the big spectaculars his information was too vague or to late to save the victim.
Even when the organization hatched plots to assassinate Nicholas II, Azev, though he reported the news, held back vital details that were needed to assure the czar’s protection. It was only through a series of accidents that the plot aborted. Finally unmasked as a double-agent, first by the revolutionaries, and later by the Okhrana, Azev evaded the vengeance of both. ( to be continued)…
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