Yegor Sazonov

{{Infobox person

| honorific_prefix =

| name = Yegor Sazonov

| honorific_suffix =

| image = SozonovEgor.jpg

| image_upright =

| landscape =

| alt =

| caption = Yegor Sazonov (undated)

| native_name =

| native_name_lang =

| pronunciation =

| birth_name = Yegor Sergeevich Sazonov

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1879|6|7}}

| birth_place = Petrovskoe, Vyatka Governorate, Russian Empire

| death_date = {{Death date and age|1910|12|10|1879|6|7}}

| death_place = Zabaikalskaya Oblast, Russian Empire

| education =

| alma_mater = Imperial Moscow University Faculty of Medicine

| occupation = professional revolutionary, cab driver (cover)

| years_active = 1901–1910

| era =

| employer = Socialist-Revolutionary Party's Terrorist Brigade (Combat Organization)

| organization =

| known_for = assassination of Vyacheslav von Plehve

| notable_works =

| title =

| term =

| predecessor =

| successor =

| party = Socialist-Revolutionary Party

| otherparty =

| movement =

| opponents =

| criminal_charges = murder

| criminal_penalty = imprisonment

| criminal_status =

| spouse =

| partner =

| family =

| awards =

| website =

}}

Yegor Sergeyevich Sazonov

{{cite book

| first = Boris

| last = Savinkov

| author-link = Boris Savinkov

| translator = Joseph Shaplen

| title = Memoirs of a Terrorist

| publisher = A. & C. Boni

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=fWZkAAAAMAAJ

| pages = 30, 54, 59

| date = 1931

| isbn = 9780527790509

| access-date = 23 December 2021}}

{{cite book

| first = Victor

| last = Serge

| author-link = Victor Serge

| title = Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 1901-1941

| publisher = Oxford University Press

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=5u1oAAAAMAAJ

| page = 25

| date = 1963

| access-date = 23 December 2021}}

{{cite book

| first = Vladimir

| last = Alexandrov

| author-link =

| title = To Break Russia's Chains: Boris Savinkov and His Wars Against the Tsar and the Bolsheviks

| publisher = Simon & Schuster

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=NdEHEAAAQBAJ

| page =

| date = 7 September 2021

| isbn = 9781643137193

| access-date = 23 December 2021}}

{{cite book

| first = Aleksandr

| last = Solzhenitsyn

| author-link = Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

| title = The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Book 3

| publisher = Harper & Row

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=NqraAAAAMAAJ

| pages = 96, 544, 546

| date = 1974

| isbn = 9780060139124

| access-date = 23 December 2021}} or Sozonov

{{cite book

| first = J.

| last = Paxton

| author-link =

| title = Imperial Russia: A Reference Handboo

| publisher = Springer

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=7MKADAAAQBAJ

| page = 208

| date = 17 November 2000

| isbn = 9780230598720

| access-date = 23 December 2021}} ({{langx|ru|Его́р Серге́евич Созо́нов}}; 7 June [O.S. 23 May] 1879 – 10 December [O.S. 27 November] 1910) was a Russian revolutionary and a member of the Terrorist Brigade or SR Combat Organization who threw the bomb that assassinated Russian Minister of the Interior Vyacheslav von Plehve in 1904.

{{cite book

| first = Randall D.

| last = Law

| title = The Routledge History of Terrorism

| publisher = Routledge

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=3ZCsBwAAQBAJ

| page = 105

| date = 2015

| isbn = 9781317514879

| access-date = 23 December 2021}}

{{cite book

| first = Richard E.

| last = Rubenstein

| title = Comrade Valentine

| publisher = Harcourt Brace

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=mOFJAAAAMAAJ

| pages = 85, 98–99

| date = 1994

| isbn = 9780151528950

| access-date = 23 December 2021}}

{{cite book

| first = Fitzroy

| last = Maclean

| title = Take Nine Spies

| publisher = Weidenfeld & Nicolson

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=E5YsAAAAYAAJ

| pages = 77–80

| date = 1978

| isbn = 9780297773856

| access-date = 23 December 2021}}

{{cite book

| first = Marc

| last = Sageman

| title = Turning to Political Violence: The Emergence of Terrorism

| publisher = University of Pennsylvania Press

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=56LKDgAAQBAJ

| pages = 277–288, 292, 303, 312

| date = 5 May 2017

| isbn = 9780812293821

| access-date = 23 December 2021}}

Background

File:Ufa prokudin.jpg (here, in 1910), also site of his first exile (from the Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii Collection at the Library of Congress)]]

Yegor Sergeevich Sazonov was born on June 7 [O.S. May 26] 1879, in Petrovskoe, Urzhumsky Uyezd, Vyatka Governorate. His father was a wealthy timber merchant of the Old Believer faith in Ufa.

{{Cite web|title=Sozonov, Yegor Sergeevich (Russian)

|url=http://www.hrono.ru/biograf/sozonov.html

|access-date=2021-07-10

|website=www.hrono.ru}}

Career

Sazonov was initially deeply religious and monarchist as a student, wanting to become a doctor.{{citation needed|date=December 2021}} Sazonov studied at the Ufa boys' gymnasium. In 1901, he entered the Faculty of Medicine of the Imperial Moscow University, where he helped organize a student protest against the decision of the university, which expelled 183 students for anti-tsarist activities.

File:Sozonov Egor 1902.jpg

=Socialist Revolutionary party=

After being arrested, flogged, and expelled, Sazonov joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party, organized studies of socialism, and turned against the government. He said "It is not easy to reject the fundamental laws of humanity, but I have been forced to it. From now on I dedicate myself to open warfare with the government..."

{{cite book

| title=Turning to Political Violence: The Emergence of Terrorism

| author=Marc Sageman

| publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press

| year=2017

| page=227

| isbn=9780812293821

| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=56LKDgAAQBAJ&q=Igor+Sazonov&pg=PA277}}

After his expulsion, Sazonov was sent to exile in Ufa, where he started to study socialist and democratic literature. At the behest of his father he was released and later joined the Ural Union of Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries. Shortly after he was once again arrested and thus was exiled to Siberia.{{Cite web|date=2014-04-26|title=Информационно-публицистический еженедельник "Истоки": Эсеры в Уфе|url=http://istoki-rb.ru/index.php?article=4122|access-date=2021-07-10|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140426214650/http://istoki-rb.ru/index.php?article=4122|archive-date=2014-04-26}}

On March 16 (29), 1902, the police broke into his family's apartment with a search warrant. Sazonov had time to tear some sheets from his personal notebook and chew them, only to realize that in his haste he had destroyed the wrong pages. The police thus found the evidence of the existence in the city of clandestine activity coordinated by the Union. He was held in the Ufa prison where he went on a hunger strike and later transferred to Yakutsk. In July 1903, on his way to Eastern Siberia, Sazonov fled and left for Switzerland.

{{Cite web

|title=Уржум " В. Столбов. "Идущий до конца"

|url=http://urzhumlib.ru/kraevedenie/trudy-kraevedov/vladimir-borisovich-karpov/v-stolbov-idushhij-do-konca/

|access-date=2021-07-10

|language=ru-RU}}

=Terrorist Brigade=

Abroad, Sazonov finally joined the Terrorist Bridge or Combat Organization of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. With a fake passport and using a false name, he returned to Russia. The leaders of the Terrorist Brigade were Yevno Azef (a double agent and agent-provocateur working for the Russian secret police), Grigory Gershuni, and Boris Savinkov. Sazonov learned the trade of cab-driver in St. Petersburg.

{{cite book

| title=Comrade Valentine

| author=Richard E. Rubenstein

| publisher=Harcourt Brace & Company

| year=1994

| page=78

| isbn=9780151528950

| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mOFJAAAAMAAJ&q=igor+sazonov+russia}}

=Assassination of von Plehve=

Image:EM S. PETERSBURGO — Assassinato do Sr. Plehwe, ministro do interior.jpg by Sazonov and fellow members of the Terrorist Brigade]]

Vyacheslav von Plehve, Minister of Interior, known for his ruthlessness, had already approved of the brutal suppression of many workers's strikes. After the massacre of the Zlatoust miners (which left over sixty dead) and Plehve's approval of that measure (taken by the Governor of Ufa, Nikolai Bogdanovich), Gershuni, then head of the SR Combat Organization, targeted von Plehve for assassination.

{{Cite web

|title=I. Егор Сазонов // Н. Ростов

|url=https://scepsis.net/library/id_3378.html

|access-date=2021-07-10

|website=scepsis.net}} Under Azef,{{cite book

| title=The Russian secret police: Muscovite, Imperial Russian, and Soviet political security operations

| author=Ronald Hingley

| publisher=Simon and Schuster

| year=1970

| page=92

| isbn=9780671208868

| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8bgiAAAAMAAJ&q=Igor+Sazonov+russia}} Gershuni sent Sazonov, Lev Sikorsky, Abram Borishansky, and Ivan Kalyayev to carry out the plan.{{citation needed|date=December 2021}}

The assassination took place at Ismailovsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg, on July 15, 1904.

{{cite book

| title=Critical perspectives on Ngugi wa Thiong'o

| author=G. D. Killam

| publisher=Three Continents Press

| year=1984

| page=110

| isbn=9780894100642

| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wEggAQAAIAAJ&q=igor+sazanov}} The terrorists used seven-kilogram bombs,{{cite book

| title=St Petersburg: The Rough Guide

| author=Dan Richardson, Rob Humphreys

| publisher=Rough Guides

| year=1998

| page=225

| isbn=9781858282985

| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mozWAAAAMAAJ&q=yegor+sazanov

}}i by a local professor named Rouher.{{cite book

| title=To Kill a Sultan: A Transnational History of the Attempt on Abdülhamid II (1905)

| editor=Houssine Alloul |editor2=Edhem Eldem |editor3=Henk de Smaele

| publisher=Springer

| year=2017

| page=44

| isbn=9781137489326 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=o4w9DwAAQBAJ&q=Igor+Sazonov+russia&pg=PA44

}} Two other assassins, Sikorski and Kalyayev, did not use their bombs. Sazonov succeeded in throwing his bomb under von Plehve's carriage. The bomb killed the minister instantly and wounded Sazonov, who was immediately arrested and beaten severely by the police. After assassinating Von Plehve, when asked by another revolutionary how he felt, Sazonov responded, "Pride and joy... only that."{{cite book

| title=Turning to Political Violence: The Emergence of Terrorism

| author=Marc Sageman

| publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press

| year=2017

| page=282

| isbn=9780812248777

| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wNPGDgAAQBAJ&q=sazonov+bomb&pg=PA282}}

Sazonov was deprived of all rights and assigned to indefinite detention in a convict prison and was imprisoned in the Shlisselburg Fortress.{{citation needed|date=December 2021}} Then he was transferred to the Butyrka prison, from where he was sent to the Nerchinsk mines for forced labor.{{citation needed|date=December 2021}} The amnesty of 1905 limited Sozonov's stay in hard labor for a certain period.

{{Cite book

|title=Combat Organization of the SRs in the Years 1901-1911

|year=1998

|location=Moscow}}

Death

File:Gornyj Zerentuj prison.jpg

At the end of 1907, he was transferred to the Zerentui convict prison. The new head of the prison, I. Vysotsky, equated political prisoners with criminal ones and introduced corporal punishment for the first. Having found fault for an insignificant reason, he ordered that political prisoners be flogged.{{citation needed|date=December 2021}}

On December 10 [O. S. November 27] 1910, Sazonov committed suicide in a prison in Gorny Zerentui, Trans-Baikal region, "in protest [of] the cruel prison regime in the men's prisons of Nerchinsk," followed by mass protest at the prison.{{cite book

| title=Narodniki women: Russian women who sacrificed themselves for the dream of freedom

| author=Margaret Maxwell

| publisher=Pergamon Press

| year=1990

| page=218

| isbn=9780080374628

| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=svAiAQAAIAAJ&q=yegor+sazanov}} Sources differ on his caused of death, which include poison

{{Cite web

|title=Узник Горного Зерентуя

|url=https://ufa-gid.com/ocherki/uznik-gornogo-zerentuya.html

|access-date=2021-07-10

|website=ufa-gid.com}} and self-immolation by kerosene.{{Cite book

| first = Whittaker

| last = Chambers

| author-link = Whittaker Chambers

| title = Witness

| publisher = Random House

| location = New York

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=b1F3AAAAMAAJ&q=editions:97pjkJV4vkcC

| pages = 6

| date = May 1952

| isbn = 9780895269157

| access-date = 28 September 2021}}

Legacy

Sazonov was initially buried at his place of death, but after the February Revolution, on May 25, 1917, his ashes were brought to Ufa. The reburial took place at the Sergievsky cemetery. A monument was erected on the grave in 1917.{{citation needed|date=December 2021}}

Sazonov was treated as a hero to Jewish and Russian communities in the United States. He received so much applause that the Chicago Daily News said that "the Cubs should hire him as a pitcher."{{cite book

| title=Looking Backward: True Stories from Chicago's Jewish Past

| author=Walter Roth

| publisher=Chicago Review Press

| year=2005

| page=37

| isbn=9780897338271

| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kinQAwAAQBAJ&q=igor+sazanov&pg=PA37

}}

In his 1911 novel Under Western Eyes, Joseph Conrad may have modeled the character "Victor Haldin" after Sazonov.

{{cite book

| first = Eloise Knapp

| last = Hay

| title = The Political Novels of Joseph Conrad: A Critical Study

| publisher = University of Chicago Press

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=FCvuAAAAMAAJ

| page = 269

| date = 1963

| isbn = 9780226320410

| access-date = 23 December 2021}}

{{cite book

| first = Joseph

| last = Conrad

| contribution = introduction, editing, notes by Jeremy Hawthorn

| author-link = Joseph Conrad

| title = Under Western Eyes

| publisher = Oxford University Press

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=I2Cr6xjoDCwC

| page = 287

| date = 2003

| isbn = 978-0-19-280171-5

| access-date = 23 December 2021}}

In 1923, his superior Boris Savinkov, when accused of terrorism against the Soviet Union, defended himself by saying he was too revolutionary to be accused, because he was once "comrade of Yegor Sazonov."{{cite book

| title=Soviet Union Review

| author=Soviet Union Information Bureau

| publisher=USSR

| year=1923

| page=155

| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bkDjAAAAMAAJ&q=yegor+sazanov&pg=RA1-PA155

}}

Before his own death in 1941, Victor Serge wrote about Sazonov in Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 1901-1941, published posthumously in 1963.

In his 1952 memoir Witness, Whittaker Chambers named Sazonov as one of three people whom he most admired as he joined the CPUSA, along with Felix Djerjinsky and Eugen Leviné:

The Russian was not a Communist. He was a pre-Communist revolutionist named Kalyaev. (I should have said Sazonov.) He was arrested for a minor part in the assassination of the Tsarist prime minister, von Plehve. He was sent into Siberian exile to one of the worst prison camps, where the political prisoners were flogged. Kalyaev sought some way to protest this outrage to the world. The means were few, but at last he found a way. In protest against the flogging of other men, Kalyaev drenched himself in kerosene, set himself on fire and burned himself to death. That also is what it meant to be a Communist.

Between 1958 and 1968 while living in the GULAG, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote about Sazonov in his book The Gulag Archipelago.