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The Degaev Affair: Terror and Treason in Tsarist Russia
This book tells for the first time the extraordinary story of Sergei Degaev, a political terrorist in tsarist Russia who disappeared after participating in the assassination of the chief of Russia’s security organization in 1883. Those who knew and admired Alexander Pell at the University of South Dakota never guessed that he was actually Degaev, a revolutionary who had reinvented himself as a quiet mathematics professor.
“An amazing story, part Dostoevsky, part Conrad. . . . Remarkable.”—Michael J. Ybarra, Wall Street Journal
“One of the most distinguished historians of Russia . . . [gives] us a real-life thriller that is also a cautionary tale rich with insight into depths of the human psyche.”—David Pryce-Jones, Commentary
“Absorbing, brilliantly researched. . . . [A] fascinating display of scholarly detective work.”—Raymond Carr, Spectator
“Pipes is the finest historian of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia. . . . [His] Degaev Affair takes the reader through the dark and terrifying alleyways of the historical underworld. As a story, it ranks as a true-life version of Conrad’s Under Western Eyes.”—Nikolai Tolstoy, Literary Review
“A brilliant history of treason, deception, terror, and academe in the underworld of Imperial Russia and the respectability of midwestern U.S. universities.”—Simon Sebag Montefiore, Financial Times
“Fascinating.”—Orlando Figes, New York Review of Books
“An amazing story, part Dostoevsky, part Conrad. . . . Remarkable.”—Michael J. Ybarra, Wall Street Journal
“One of the most distinguished historians of Russia . . . [gives] us a real-life thriller that is also a cautionary tale rich with insight into depths of the human psyche.”—David Pryce-Jones, Commentary
“Absorbing, brilliantly researched. . . . [A] fascinating display of scholarly detective work.”—Raymond Carr, Spectator
“Pipes is the finest historian of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia. . . . [His] Degaev Affair takes the reader through the dark and terrifying alleyways of the historical underworld. As a story, it ranks as a true-life version of Conrad’s Under Western Eyes.”—Nikolai Tolstoy, Literary Review
“A brilliant history of treason, deception, terror, and academe in the underworld of Imperial Russia and the respectability of midwestern U.S. universities.”—Simon Sebag Montefiore, Financial Times
“Fascinating.”—Orlando Figes, New York Review of Books
167 pages, Paperback
First published March 11, 2003
About the author
Richard Pipes
118 books154 followersBorn in Poland, Richard Pipes fled the country with his family when Germany invaded it in 1939. After reaching the United States a year later, Pipes began his education at Muskingum College, which was interrupted in 1943 when he was drafted into the Army Air Corps and sent to Cornell to study Russian. He completed his bachelor's degree at Cornell in 1946 and earned his doctorate at Harvard University four years later.
Pipes taught at Harvard from 1950 until his retirement in 1996, and was director of Harvard's Russian Research Center from 1968-1973. A campaigner for a tougher foreign policy towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War, in 1976, he led a group of analysts in a reassessment of Soviet foreign policy and military power. He served as director of Eastern European and Soviet affairs at the National Security Council from 1981 until 1983, after which he returned to Harvard, where he finished his career as Baird Professor Emeritus of History.
Pipes taught at Harvard from 1950 until his retirement in 1996, and was director of Harvard's Russian Research Center from 1968-1973. A campaigner for a tougher foreign policy towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War, in 1976, he led a group of analysts in a reassessment of Soviet foreign policy and military power. He served as director of Eastern European and Soviet affairs at the National Security Council from 1981 until 1983, after which he returned to Harvard, where he finished his career as Baird Professor Emeritus of History.
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November 3, 2013
The Russian Empire circa 1880 had no legitimate outlet for political activity. There was no parliament, no national elections, no free press; industrial strikes were suppressed with soldiers. The 1845 penal code punished "creating and distributing written or printed works and making public speeches that, although do not directly call for an uprising against the government, attempt to argue against or cast doubt on its legitimacy or brazenly insult the lawful mode of governance or succession to the throne" with 4 to 6 years of hard labor. There was, however, a lively revolutionary scene. The most important group of revolutionaries was an organization called Narodnaya Volya, which can be translated either People's Freedom or People's Will. The audacity of the latter meaning is breathtaking; by what right did the 500-some revolutionaries, directed by a 30-member executive committee, claim that they bade the will of the 100-some million subjects of the empire? They didn't vote for them. Of course no one voted for the Tsar either. Although most members spent their time propagandizing industrial workers and soldiers, Narodnaya Volya was most famous for assassinations. After seven failed attempts, it killed Emperor Alexander II.
However, this organization was destroyed by a lieutenant colonel of the gendarmes named Georgy Sudeikin. A keen psychologist, he diligently tracked down revolutionaries and judged, which could be bought, which could be persuaded that terrorism is counterproductive, and which were confused and naive and should be let go. He scored a major coup in the person of reserve staff captain Sergey Degaev, a revolutionary close to the leadership of Narodnaya Volya. Arrested in possession of an illegal printing press and threatened with perhaps 15 years' imprisonment, Degaev betrayed the names and addresses of his comrades to Sudeikin, which allowed the police to arrest them.
Sudeikin was an avid reader of adventure stories, and he liked Alexandre Dumas's novel The Vicomte of Bragelonne, where D'Artagnan kidnaps a man who would prevent the English Restoration. He asked Degaev to go to Switzerland to meet revolutionary Lev Tikhomirov, and persuade him to go to Germany, from where he could be extradited to Russia. Upon meeting Tikhomirov, Degaev confessed his betrayal. He was told that he deserved death, but should try to kill Sudeikin in order to expiate his guilt. Degaev agreed.
Degaev returned to Russia and saw Sudeikin running the revolutionary movement: printing and personally censoring its newsletter, organizing spurious meetings. Degaev and Sudeikin became great friends, and Sudeikin confessed to him that he would like to use the revolutionaries to assassinate the Minister of the Interior and the Tsar's brother, which would drive fear into the Tsar's heart, and advance the career of Sudeikin the terrorist fighter. One could look from revolutionary to policeman, and from policeman to revolutionary, and from revolutionary to policeman again; but already it was impossible to say which was which. However, these plans were not to be. With two crowbar-wielding associates, Degaev killed Sudeikin and stunned the policeman who accompanied him.
After the killing, Degaev fled Russia with a false passport. Abroad, he learned that emigre revolutionaries did not in fact think that his killing of Sudeikin expiated his betrayal of their comrades. He decided to start his life again from a blank slate, emigrated to the United States, changed his name to Alexander Pell, earned a doctorate in mathematics at John Hopkins University, and became a professor at the University of South Dakota. Degaev-Pell spent the rest of his life as a research mathematician working at several American universities. Little did the colleagues of this Timofey Pnin know about his early life!
However, this organization was destroyed by a lieutenant colonel of the gendarmes named Georgy Sudeikin. A keen psychologist, he diligently tracked down revolutionaries and judged, which could be bought, which could be persuaded that terrorism is counterproductive, and which were confused and naive and should be let go. He scored a major coup in the person of reserve staff captain Sergey Degaev, a revolutionary close to the leadership of Narodnaya Volya. Arrested in possession of an illegal printing press and threatened with perhaps 15 years' imprisonment, Degaev betrayed the names and addresses of his comrades to Sudeikin, which allowed the police to arrest them.
Sudeikin was an avid reader of adventure stories, and he liked Alexandre Dumas's novel The Vicomte of Bragelonne, where D'Artagnan kidnaps a man who would prevent the English Restoration. He asked Degaev to go to Switzerland to meet revolutionary Lev Tikhomirov, and persuade him to go to Germany, from where he could be extradited to Russia. Upon meeting Tikhomirov, Degaev confessed his betrayal. He was told that he deserved death, but should try to kill Sudeikin in order to expiate his guilt. Degaev agreed.
Degaev returned to Russia and saw Sudeikin running the revolutionary movement: printing and personally censoring its newsletter, organizing spurious meetings. Degaev and Sudeikin became great friends, and Sudeikin confessed to him that he would like to use the revolutionaries to assassinate the Minister of the Interior and the Tsar's brother, which would drive fear into the Tsar's heart, and advance the career of Sudeikin the terrorist fighter. One could look from revolutionary to policeman, and from policeman to revolutionary, and from revolutionary to policeman again; but already it was impossible to say which was which. However, these plans were not to be. With two crowbar-wielding associates, Degaev killed Sudeikin and stunned the policeman who accompanied him.
After the killing, Degaev fled Russia with a false passport. Abroad, he learned that emigre revolutionaries did not in fact think that his killing of Sudeikin expiated his betrayal of their comrades. He decided to start his life again from a blank slate, emigrated to the United States, changed his name to Alexander Pell, earned a doctorate in mathematics at John Hopkins University, and became a professor at the University of South Dakota. Degaev-Pell spent the rest of his life as a research mathematician working at several American universities. Little did the colleagues of this Timofey Pnin know about his early life!
February 17, 2025
This is the second time I read this book - the first was in 2007. Here is what I wrote in my blog then:
For some time now I have been a student of the decades long secret war between Russian revolutionaries and the tsarist police. (Attentive readers of this website will be aware that my research culminated a decade ago in a book about the possibility that Stalin had been a tsarist police agent.) From time to time, new books come out about the Okhrana, though these are usually aimed at academic audiences. Not so Richard Pipes’ 2003 volume, The Degaev Affair: Terror and Treason in Tsarist Russia.
From its very cover, you can tell that Pipes (or his publisher) was aiming a larger audience. The text on the back cover is what enticed me to pick this one up yesterday. “Those who knew and admired Alexander Pell at the University of South Dakota never guessed that he was actually [Sergei] Degaev, a revolutionary who had reinvented himself as a quiet mathematics professor.”
Pipes, the author of several dozen books, in this short volume aimed to look at the two personalities — the dangerous Russian double agent who eventually murdered his police controller and the quiet mathematics professor — but really, the book is almost entirely about the former and about the underground war that raged in Russia in the late 1870s and early 1880s between the Party of the People’s Will (these guys had great imagination in their names) and the tsarist regime.
Pipes makes one or two guarded references to terrorism in general and considers the People’s Will to be the first terrorist organization ever. But any hint that there is some kind of historic link between the Russian revolutionaries of that time and Islamic terrorism today should be dismissed at once. The forerunners of Al Qaeda are not to be found in the secular and idealistic fighters against tsarist oppression but, perhaps, in earlier times, among fanatics who gave the world the term “assassins”.
That having been said, Pipes writes clearly and his research is comprehensive. (He even photographed the toilet in the apartment Degaev used to murder his police boss in 1883.)
What struck me was how old was the tsarist police strategy of “provocation” really was. We tend to associate this strategy — which involved “turning” genuine revolutionaries not only into informers, but actually to use them to gain control over revolutionary organizations — with a later period, during the struggle against the SRs and Bolsheviks.
But apparently as early as a quarter century before the notorious cases of Azef and Malinovsky, the police were already playing a dangerous game. Pipes seems convinced that with all its danger, the game actually worked. The Party of the People’s Will, its very cool name notwithstanding, couldn’t stand up the onslaught and withered away.
In some senses, it makes one question whether such a strategy would work today. Following Pipes’ own assertion that there is some kind of continuity in terrorism, should the West be infiltrating groups like Al Qaeda, “turning” its members into informers, and seeking to sow mistrust within its ranks? Is this something that is already taking place?
It is also a warning that this is indeed a dangerous game. Lt. Col. Sudeikin, Degaev’s victim, had himself hatched an incredible scheme that involved making himself indispensable to the tsar by arranging the murder by terrorists of key tsarist officials. A generation later, the Okhrana would be doing this as a matter of course, and its super-moles like Azef would play a double and triple game of informing while simultaneously carrying out a terrorist campaign against the regime.
A very readable volume (I love short books) and a real contribution to our understanding of the decades-long war in the shadows between the tsarist regime and its opponents.
For some time now I have been a student of the decades long secret war between Russian revolutionaries and the tsarist police. (Attentive readers of this website will be aware that my research culminated a decade ago in a book about the possibility that Stalin had been a tsarist police agent.) From time to time, new books come out about the Okhrana, though these are usually aimed at academic audiences. Not so Richard Pipes’ 2003 volume, The Degaev Affair: Terror and Treason in Tsarist Russia.
From its very cover, you can tell that Pipes (or his publisher) was aiming a larger audience. The text on the back cover is what enticed me to pick this one up yesterday. “Those who knew and admired Alexander Pell at the University of South Dakota never guessed that he was actually [Sergei] Degaev, a revolutionary who had reinvented himself as a quiet mathematics professor.”
Pipes, the author of several dozen books, in this short volume aimed to look at the two personalities — the dangerous Russian double agent who eventually murdered his police controller and the quiet mathematics professor — but really, the book is almost entirely about the former and about the underground war that raged in Russia in the late 1870s and early 1880s between the Party of the People’s Will (these guys had great imagination in their names) and the tsarist regime.
Pipes makes one or two guarded references to terrorism in general and considers the People’s Will to be the first terrorist organization ever. But any hint that there is some kind of historic link between the Russian revolutionaries of that time and Islamic terrorism today should be dismissed at once. The forerunners of Al Qaeda are not to be found in the secular and idealistic fighters against tsarist oppression but, perhaps, in earlier times, among fanatics who gave the world the term “assassins”.
That having been said, Pipes writes clearly and his research is comprehensive. (He even photographed the toilet in the apartment Degaev used to murder his police boss in 1883.)
What struck me was how old was the tsarist police strategy of “provocation” really was. We tend to associate this strategy — which involved “turning” genuine revolutionaries not only into informers, but actually to use them to gain control over revolutionary organizations — with a later period, during the struggle against the SRs and Bolsheviks.
But apparently as early as a quarter century before the notorious cases of Azef and Malinovsky, the police were already playing a dangerous game. Pipes seems convinced that with all its danger, the game actually worked. The Party of the People’s Will, its very cool name notwithstanding, couldn’t stand up the onslaught and withered away.
In some senses, it makes one question whether such a strategy would work today. Following Pipes’ own assertion that there is some kind of continuity in terrorism, should the West be infiltrating groups like Al Qaeda, “turning” its members into informers, and seeking to sow mistrust within its ranks? Is this something that is already taking place?
It is also a warning that this is indeed a dangerous game. Lt. Col. Sudeikin, Degaev’s victim, had himself hatched an incredible scheme that involved making himself indispensable to the tsar by arranging the murder by terrorists of key tsarist officials. A generation later, the Okhrana would be doing this as a matter of course, and its super-moles like Azef would play a double and triple game of informing while simultaneously carrying out a terrorist campaign against the regime.
A very readable volume (I love short books) and a real contribution to our understanding of the decades-long war in the shadows between the tsarist regime and its opponents.
August 3, 2014
As a graduate of the University of South Dakota, I've always wanted to learn more about the man with the reputation of a Russian spy and a scholarship named after him. Once I started reading, I couldn't put it down, and it's a gripping tale not just about Degaev-Pell, but the people he was associated with and how the People's Will was turned upside down. I highly recommend it!
February 13, 2021
Sergei Degaev was a one time member of a Russian terrorist organisation who turned informer. His treachery was discovered and he only avoided death by helping in the assassination of the Tsar’s secret police. He fled to the USA under an assumed name where he became a well loved member of the faculty at South Dakota University.
Richard Pipes is an avowed anti communist and his writings are, to a greater or lesser extent, driven by this. Normally in his historical work the need to at least give an approximation of balance can rescue the reader from his opinions and declarations. Unfortunately this is not one of those works.
We are told early on that the nature of Degaev’s activities did not leave much documentary evidence so perhaps in that case we might expect a more biographical approach but no, Pipes has a tune and we must all dance to it.
Communism equals terrorism and nothing excuses terror. So abject living conditions, despotic rule and judicial abuses should be borne by all. The intellectual had no business complaining because the peasant majority didn’t care. The fact that they were uneducated and oppressed didn’t matter, in fact those who struggled for a more equal society were elitist and immoral. From here Pipes sees fit to condemn groups in 1960s and 1970s USA and Western Europe as ungrateful and driven by destructive urges rather than ideals.
Naturally Communist regimes get short shrift and his distaste for it and its forebears drips from every page.
The fact that all Pipes prejudices and opinions are set out in a book of only 125 pages tells you how little there is of Sergei
Degaev. He undoubtedly was a complex individual and the bare facts of his life should be the basis for a compelling and interesting book, unfortunately this is not it.
Richard Pipes is an avowed anti communist and his writings are, to a greater or lesser extent, driven by this. Normally in his historical work the need to at least give an approximation of balance can rescue the reader from his opinions and declarations. Unfortunately this is not one of those works.
We are told early on that the nature of Degaev’s activities did not leave much documentary evidence so perhaps in that case we might expect a more biographical approach but no, Pipes has a tune and we must all dance to it.
Communism equals terrorism and nothing excuses terror. So abject living conditions, despotic rule and judicial abuses should be borne by all. The intellectual had no business complaining because the peasant majority didn’t care. The fact that they were uneducated and oppressed didn’t matter, in fact those who struggled for a more equal society were elitist and immoral. From here Pipes sees fit to condemn groups in 1960s and 1970s USA and Western Europe as ungrateful and driven by destructive urges rather than ideals.
Naturally Communist regimes get short shrift and his distaste for it and its forebears drips from every page.
The fact that all Pipes prejudices and opinions are set out in a book of only 125 pages tells you how little there is of Sergei
Degaev. He undoubtedly was a complex individual and the bare facts of his life should be the basis for a compelling and interesting book, unfortunately this is not it.
March 6, 2025
I believe books should speak for themselves so in the absence of a decent synopsis on GR let me quote from the flyleaf of this marvellous little book:
"Sergei Degaev (1857-1921), a leading political terrorist in tsarist Russia, disappeared after participating in the assassination of the chief of Russia's security organisation in 1883. Those who later knew and admired the quietly learned mathematics professor Alexander Pell at the University of South Dakota never guessed this was actually Degaev, who had triple-crossed friends and associates while entangled in the revolutionary movements of his homeland. This book is the first in any language to tell in extensive detail the extraordinary story of one of the world's most intriguing revolutionaries, his role in building and betraying the earliest political terrorist network, and hus subsequent conventional academic career in America."
That says it all and Professor Pipes has scoured the archives for every bit of information available and it is astounding what is there. To be honest the amount of 'personal' information on Degaev, particular in his American years is limited but Pipes has done a greater service in presenting a more concentrated, and brief, portrait of both revolutionary terrorism in Russia and the tsarist okhranna (secret police) policies of 'turning' captured terrorists.
Prof. Pipes is too good, and also too much of an old school historian to get bogged down with the habit of younger readers to ahistorically read into the past their post 9/11 terrorist phobias. Reading the knee-jerk reaction of many younger, mostly American, reviewers to the concept of having any 'understanding' of terrorism I can't help but smile at the memory of the people killed in the UK via American financed terrorist bombs in the 1980s.
But if you want to grasp the utter bankruptcy of the tsarist regime long before the events of 1917 then this is an excellent place to start. Even if you are determined to read today's terrorism through the past (see my footnote *1 below) it will provide with a foundation in 19th century terrorist and counter terrorist actions.
Anyone with an interest in pre-revolutionary Russia that goes beyond navel-gazing at the good old days at the Alexander Palace should read this fascinating book.
*1 Very difficult when you consider that terrorist like Degaev, but unlike Bin Laden, were committing acts against their own governments and in their own countries. For the parallel to be in anyway Degaev and other People's Will terrorists would have needed to commit terrorist attacks in France, the major financial prop of the tsarist regime or Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda would have had to commit their terrorist acts in Saudia Arabia and its polity.
"Sergei Degaev (1857-1921), a leading political terrorist in tsarist Russia, disappeared after participating in the assassination of the chief of Russia's security organisation in 1883. Those who later knew and admired the quietly learned mathematics professor Alexander Pell at the University of South Dakota never guessed this was actually Degaev, who had triple-crossed friends and associates while entangled in the revolutionary movements of his homeland. This book is the first in any language to tell in extensive detail the extraordinary story of one of the world's most intriguing revolutionaries, his role in building and betraying the earliest political terrorist network, and hus subsequent conventional academic career in America."
That says it all and Professor Pipes has scoured the archives for every bit of information available and it is astounding what is there. To be honest the amount of 'personal' information on Degaev, particular in his American years is limited but Pipes has done a greater service in presenting a more concentrated, and brief, portrait of both revolutionary terrorism in Russia and the tsarist okhranna (secret police) policies of 'turning' captured terrorists.
Prof. Pipes is too good, and also too much of an old school historian to get bogged down with the habit of younger readers to ahistorically read into the past their post 9/11 terrorist phobias. Reading the knee-jerk reaction of many younger, mostly American, reviewers to the concept of having any 'understanding' of terrorism I can't help but smile at the memory of the people killed in the UK via American financed terrorist bombs in the 1980s.
But if you want to grasp the utter bankruptcy of the tsarist regime long before the events of 1917 then this is an excellent place to start. Even if you are determined to read today's terrorism through the past (see my footnote *1 below) it will provide with a foundation in 19th century terrorist and counter terrorist actions.
Anyone with an interest in pre-revolutionary Russia that goes beyond navel-gazing at the good old days at the Alexander Palace should read this fascinating book.
*1 Very difficult when you consider that terrorist like Degaev, but unlike Bin Laden, were committing acts against their own governments and in their own countries. For the parallel to be in anyway Degaev and other People's Will terrorists would have needed to commit terrorist attacks in France, the major financial prop of the tsarist regime or Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda would have had to commit their terrorist acts in Saudia Arabia and its polity.
April 27, 2013
The incredible life of Alexander Pell is where drama, politics, vengeance and split personalities achieve their highest manifestation. At the rather late age of forty, the Russian immigrant Pell gained a doctorate in mathematics from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
He was a success, an immensely popular teacher and a good friend to his students. He and his wife were showered with affection in Vermillion, and he himself performed good quality research. When his wife died in 1908, he moved to Chicago where he married one of his students, Anna Johnson, who later became known as one of America's top mathematicians. He died in 1921 and his wife created a fund that, to this day, pays a modest scholarship to students at Vermillion's university. All along, the genial man was beloved by everyone. Nobody sought to find out what his earlier life in Russia had been, and why he had emigrated.
In this book, Richard Pipes describes the life of Sergei Degaev, terrorist, anarchist, abettor to the assassination of Czar Alexander II, police informer and treacherous friend. A thoroughly shifty man, he escaped his lower middle-class origins by joining the anarchist group The People's Will, where he was embittered by his failure to rise to the top of the organisation. Arrested by the police for conspiracy, he turned informer and secured his freedom by betraying his former colleagues. When they later came after him for revenge, he averted disaster by helping them murder the chief of the Czarist secret police. Later, he emigrated to America and changed his name to Alexander Pell.
What a life of contrasts! A ruthless self-serving murderer in his youth, Degaev appears to have completely changed his personality around when he made a new life for himself in the USA. Was he schizophrenic? Or, as Peregrine Worsthorne wonders in his review of the book, was Degaev's character in his twenties, moulded by the exigencies of existence in Russia, deliberately jettisoned once he matured and no longer had to fight for survival? Or was he trying to atone in later life with good works for the villainy he had committed in his youth?
He was a success, an immensely popular teacher and a good friend to his students. He and his wife were showered with affection in Vermillion, and he himself performed good quality research. When his wife died in 1908, he moved to Chicago where he married one of his students, Anna Johnson, who later became known as one of America's top mathematicians. He died in 1921 and his wife created a fund that, to this day, pays a modest scholarship to students at Vermillion's university. All along, the genial man was beloved by everyone. Nobody sought to find out what his earlier life in Russia had been, and why he had emigrated.
In this book, Richard Pipes describes the life of Sergei Degaev, terrorist, anarchist, abettor to the assassination of Czar Alexander II, police informer and treacherous friend. A thoroughly shifty man, he escaped his lower middle-class origins by joining the anarchist group The People's Will, where he was embittered by his failure to rise to the top of the organisation. Arrested by the police for conspiracy, he turned informer and secured his freedom by betraying his former colleagues. When they later came after him for revenge, he averted disaster by helping them murder the chief of the Czarist secret police. Later, he emigrated to America and changed his name to Alexander Pell.
What a life of contrasts! A ruthless self-serving murderer in his youth, Degaev appears to have completely changed his personality around when he made a new life for himself in the USA. Was he schizophrenic? Or, as Peregrine Worsthorne wonders in his review of the book, was Degaev's character in his twenties, moulded by the exigencies of existence in Russia, deliberately jettisoned once he matured and no longer had to fight for survival? Or was he trying to atone in later life with good works for the villainy he had committed in his youth?
October 10, 2022
A true story about a prominent 19th-century Russian terrorist who fought the tsarist regime and who collaborated as an informer with that regime's security apparatus. After fleeing abroad, he was able to keep his early life hidden under the name Alexander Pell from 1897-1908 as a mathematics professor at the University of South Dakota. There he founded the university's engineering program.
You really ought to read it!
You really ought to read it!
May 24, 2007
I read this book for a Russian Anarchism and literature class as an undergrad, and thought it was great. It's a true story of a man who led a double life, was a member of a secret revolutionary/anarchist circle, plotted to kill the tsar, and all the workings of the secret police system of that time. It's good and makes you want to graffiti an anarchist "A" on something.
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