Sergey Petrovich Degayev (also spelled Degaev; ; 1857 in Moscow – 1921 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania) was a Russian revolutionary terrorist, Okhrana agent, and the murderer of inspector of secret police Georgy Sudeykin. After emigrating to the United States, Degayev took the name Alexander Pell and became a prominent American mathematician, the founder of school of Engineering at the University of South Dakota. The Dr. Alexander Pell scholarship is named in his honor.
Russian revolutionary and Okhrana agent
Family Sergey Degayev was born in Moscow to the family of a military physician, state counsellor Peter Degayev. p.5 His maternal grandfather was a prominent Russian writer, Nikolai Polevoy. His father died in the 1860s, and Degayev's mother became the head of the family; she was, for her time, a well-educated woman, whose interests included reading and learning foreign languages. When the court sentenced pregnant revolutionary Hesya Helfman to death, she tried, unsuccessfully, to adopt the baby, despite a possible conflict with the authorities. p.9
Degayev had three sisters—Marie, Nathalie, and Elizabeth—and a brother Vladimir, who was seven years his junior. While Marie was much older than Sergey, married early and did not play a large role in the life of the family, Nathalie (after marriage Makletsova) and Elizabeth (Liz) were very close to him. Natalie was a musician, while Elizabeth was a poet. Both sisters were involved in the Narodnaya Volya revolutionary movement. Vladimir was also deeply involved with Narodnaya Volya. As the oldest son, Sergey had to provide financial support for the family.
Military officer, student and engineer
At the age of nine, Sergey entered a Moscow Cadet school. After graduation, Sergey entered the Mikhailovskaya Artillery Academy in Saint Petersburg. He was accused of organizing anti-government underground "circles" in Saint Petersburg and Kronstadt. The accusations were never proven, but in 1879, Degayev was nevertheless expelled from the Academia. He briefly served as a military officer and was discharged from the Army with the rank of Staff captain in the same year. p.10
Degayev was enrolled to the Saint Petersburg Institute for Rail Road Engineering in 1880. During his studies, he became acquainted with Andrei Zhelyabov and members of his circle; and in 1880, he became a full-fledged member of Narodnaya Volya, a revolutionary organization that turned to terrorist methods. After the 1879 Lipetsk Congress of Narodnaya Volya, which "sentenced" tsar Alexander II to death, most of the organization's resources were directed to the tsar's assassination. Degayev took an active part in an unsuccessful assassination attempt by digging and mining a tunnel under Malaya Sadovaya Street in Saint Petersburg. Some sources also suggest that Degayev had a role in the successful assassination of the tsar on 1 March 1881 and even observed the explosion that killed him. pp. 12–30 Degayev was among those arrested in connection with the assassination, but his guilt was not proven; he returned to his institute and received his degree in June 1881.
After graduating Degayev obtained an engineering position in Arkhangelsk. There he met Lyubov Ivanova, a young woman who shared his political views; he fell in love and married her on their trip to Saint Petersburg in November 1881.
Georgy Sudeykin and Vladimir Degayev
At that time, Gendarme Lieutenant Colonel Georgy Sudeykin was among the most dangerous enemies of Narodnaya Volya. He had eliminated the Kiev division of Narodnaya Volya almost entirely and was appointed the Head of the Secret Department of police of Saint Petersburg, responsible for coordination of all the secret agents in the capital of the Russian Empire. Later he would be appointed a special position of the Inspector of the Secret Police, a post specially created for him. As the primary hunter of Narodnaya Volya, he was also a main target of their assassination attempts. Sudeykin rarely lived in the same place for more than a few weeks; he used several passports and several uniforms of different governmental departments. He even temporarily lodged his wife and children in a Saint Petersburg prison, given that he felt it was the only safe place in the whole Empire. pp. 33–39
Sudeykin was an avid supporter of using agent provocateurs inside the revolutionary movements not only to catch the active members but also to instigate quarrels and disputes, spread false rumours, and transmit the opinion that all the leading revolutionaries were spies or provocateurs. He was proud of his successes in recruiting his agents among the revolutionaries claiming that every member of an anti-government movement is either corrupt or naive: the corrupt can always be recruited by promise of money or by threats while the naive can always be recruited by appeal to their idealism.
Around November 1881 Vladimir, the younger brother of Degayev, was arrested for his participation in the Narodnaya Volya movement. He was interrogated by Sudeykin, who offered Vladimir freedom in exchange for collaboration with the Okhrana. Vladimir managed to inform the executive committee of Narodnaya Volya about the offer. Degayev participated in the discussions and proposed a plan: that Vladimir should accept Sudeikin's offer, and after becoming a police informer should arrange a secret meeting with Sudeykin at which Narodnaya Volya would kill Sudeykin. In March 1882 the plan was adopted by the Executive Commission of Narodnaya Volya. Vladimir agreed to work as an Okhrana agent, was released from prison and arranged a few meetings between Sudeykin and Sergey Degaev, who was charged with preparing for the assassination. However, soon most of Petersburg's Narodnaya Volya members were arrested. Sergey Degayev moved to Tiflis to avoid the arrests and work on the Tiflis-Baku railway. Vladimir Degayev abandoned the plan of killing Sudeykin and was soon removed from the list of Okhrana agents "for inactivity."
Leader of Narodnaya Volya and Okhrana Agent In summer 1882, Degayev worked in Tiflis as a railroad engineer and organized Narodnaya Volya circles among Tiflis military officers. He presented himself as a member of the executive committee of Narodnaya Volya although he was not a member at that time. In autumn 1882, most of the Narodnaya Volya members in Tiflis were arrested and Degayev was ordered by the Narodnaya Volya leader Vera Figner to move to Odessa and organize an underground press there. On 18 December 1883 Degayev and the whole of his group was arrested.
After interrogation by Georgy Sudeykin, Degayev agreed to become an Okhrana informant. Almost all information about the deal came from Degayev himself, in an explanation he gave to his sister Natalia and to a Narodnaya Volya "court." According to Degayev, Sudeykin had appealed to his vanity and idealism. Sudeykin promised that in a few years they both would be de facto rulers of the Russian Empire by using the Okhrana to remove Degayev's superiors in Narodnaya Volya and by using Narodnaya Volya to remove Sudeykin's superiors in the Okhrana. He also promised Degayev secret meetings with tsar Alexander III, the police chief Vyacheslav von Plehve and the influential Ober-Procurator of the Holy Synod Konstantin Pobedonostsev so that Degayev could present to them his plan of state reforms. According to Degayev, he indeed met Plehve and Pobedonostsev but not the tsar. However, research in the Soviet Union suggested that Degayev started to work as an Okhrana informant a few years earlier purely for financial reasons. Researcher Yu.F. Ovchenko states that Degayev started to work as an Okhrana informant in 1882 after his wife was arrested by Sudeykin. His cooperation with the Okhrana was a condition of Lyubov's release At any rate the agreement with Sudeykin provided a handsome monetary compensation for Degayev: 300 Russian roubles monthly plus 1000 roubles for each trip abroad. p.84
Sudeykin staged Degayev's escape from prison. Information obtained from Degayev allowed the Okhrana to arrest the leader of Narodnaya Volya Vera Figner, to almost completely destroy the military wing of the organization, to arrest almost all members in the Tiflis, Nikolaev, and Kharkov organizations. After those arrests Degayev became a de facto leader of Narodnaya Volya. p.78 Information obtained from Degayev and from subsequent arrests allowed police to assure the tsar that his coronation ceremony would be safe. Alexander III was crowned on 27 May 1883. pp. 87–91
Inspired by Alexandre Dumas's novel The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later, Sudeykin sent Degayev to Switzerland to lure two remaining Narodnaya Volya leaders, Lev Tikhomirov and Peter Lavrov, to Russia to be arrested. Tikhomirov and Lavrov suspected foul play and refused to move but kept their suspicions to themselves for a while. p.81 Trying to deflect suspicions from Degayev, Sudeykin decided to sacrifice police informer Fyodor Shkryaba, a member of Narodnaya Volya recruited by the Okhrana who still provided information of low interest to the Okhrana. Sudeykin planted evidence of Shkryaba being an informant and Narodnaya Volya blamed all the recent arrests on Shkryaba. Subsequently, Degayev organized the assassination of Shkryaba.
In June 1883 Narodnaya Volya resumed publication of Listok Narodnoy Voly, an underground newspaper, as a demonstration that the organization was alive. Degayev published an article praising pogroms against Jews and urging members to incite more pogroms. At the time, Narodnaya Volya had an ambivalent position on antisemitism. Some theoreticians applied Marxist analysis and saw pogroms as a manifestation of the class struggle between oppressed peasants and oppressive Jewish petite bourgeoisie. On the other hand, many Narodnaya Volya members saw pogroms as incited by the tsarist Government and as one of the most revolting of the regime's crimes. The question of antisemitism was rendered even more divisive by the fact that many members were ethnic Jews. Richard Pipes speculated that the article was a part of Sudeykin's plan to transform Narodnaya Volya from an anti-government to an ultra-nationalist organisation similar to the later Black Hundreds. pp. 85–86
Toward the middle of 1883, Sudeykin and Degayev established quite friendly relations. Sudeykin regularly visited the apartment of his agent and even used the apartment for his extramarital affairs. Sometimes they had wagers: once, Degayev announced that there was a person of interest to police in Saint Petersburg at the moment and claimed that Sudeykin would not be able to catch him without Degayev's help. Sudeykin answered that he had enough agents besides Degayev. The pair had a monetary bet that Sudeykin would not be able to effect an arrest: Sudeykin lost.
At that time Sudeykin was frustrated with his superiors. He did not like their attempts to put legal constraints on the actions of his secret police. He also considered his rank of Lieutenant Colonel (the seventh in the Table of Ranks) to be absurdly low for a person of his importance within the state security apparatus. Sudeykin proposed to Degayev a plan . Sudeykin would resign from his position, stating that he did not have enough powers to do his job properly. Soon Narodnaya Volya would assassinate the tsar's brother Grand Duke Vladimir and the tsar's aide Konstantin Pobedonostsev. The double assassination would frighten the tsar into accepting all Sudeykin's demands over the powers of secret police and might, too, make the tsar more responsive to Degayev's suggestions about government reforms. Sudeykin also gave Degayev information about the movements of Sudeykin's own boss, the Minister of Interior Dmitry Tolstoy considering that the killing might free a deserved position for Sudeykin. Unexpectedly the tsar refused Sudeykin's letter of resignation, causing the pair to postpone assassination plans to 1884.