Evno Azef in the novel Solomennaya Storozhka by Yuri Davydov: the motifof political double-dealing

In the historical and documentary novels by Yuri V. Davydov(1924-2002), the motive of political double-dealing plays a very important role closely connected withthe categories of provocation, betrayal, and treachery. Considering contradictions of the historicalprocess over the last four decades of the Empire of the Romanovs, the writer sharply confronts in hisliterary plots the historical figures of high-minded and tragic figures of the Russian revolutionarymovement (Herman Lopatin, Vladimir Burtsev) against the figures of agent provocateurs and doubledealers(Sergei Degaev, Sergei Nechaev, Evno Azef) who reflected the essence of the phenomena ofpolitical double-dealing, and moral and ethical faithlessness unmasked by the author. Being defined asdegaevshina, nechaevshina, and azefovshina, these phenomena are an integral part of the artisticreality in such novels by Yu. Davydov as The Silent Time of the Fall (1969-1970), Two Bundles ofLetters (1986) (in the first edition entitled Two Bundles of Letters. The Story of Herman Lopatin(1982)) and The Bestseller (1998).In the novel Two Bundles of Letters a special plot clearly characteristic of sensation and detectivestories is devoted to smoking out Evno F. Azef who acted as both an agent of the political secret policeand a member of a revolutionary terrorist group for 15 years. The former member of Narodnaya VolaVladimir L. Burtsev was the first to smoke out Super-Judas and gathered the evidence against thesuspect Azef/Raskin from Herman Lopatin, Luba Menkina, Boris Savinkov, and Aleksei Lopukhin.Thanks to Lopukhin, the former director of the political secret police department, he got to know thereal surname of Azef acting as a super agent and a regular co-operator.Focusing on the stages of life and activities of the king of the troublemakers, Yuri Davydovtried to expose in the protagonist such characteristic features as selfishness, self-esteem, self-love,impunity, cynicism, moral nihilism, passion etc. which contributed to making Azef an agentprovocateur and a traitor.The analysis presented in this paper shows that Evno Azef, the leader of a secret terroristorganization of socialist revolutionaries, remains a symbol of political decline, moral degradation, andhuman improbity, and carries the responsibility for numerous murders, assassinations and acts offerreting out problem activists resulting from his double-dealing and criminal provocative activities inthe Russian revolutionary movement on the turn of the 19th century.

Keywords

Authors

References