The Degaev Affair : Terror and Treason in Tsarist Russia

A committed terrorist in Russia, an admired professor in America: this is the story of Sergei Degaev's double life, told in detail.

Sergei Degaev (1857-1921), a political terrorist in tsarist Russia, disappeared after participating in the assassination of the chief of Russia's security organization in 1883.

Those who later knew and admired the quietly brilliant 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 movement of his homeland.

This volume tells in 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 his subsequent conventional academic career in America.

The historian Richard Pipes uses Russian archives to draw a brilliant psychological, political and sociological portrait of Degaev.

Pipes pursues his protagonist on a twisting journey of changing loyalties and fateful collaborations within the network that provided the model for all modern terrorist organizations. A cunning conspirator, Degaev went on to reinvent himself in the United States as a beloved mathematics professor.

Either of his lives would be considered remarkable; that Degaev lived both is nothing short of amazing.