The Revolutionary Response

Abstract

The fact that secret agents — agents provocateurs — had penetrated to the very heart of the revolutionary movement hardly came as a bolt from the blue to the SRs or to other revolutionaries. This was one of the police methods in the anti-revolutionary struggle, with which they were well acquainted, not only from everyday life, but also from the Degaev affair, a part of the tradition of the Narodnaia Volia with which the Socialist Revolutionaries felt a close affiliation. Their derogatory term for it — Degaevshchina — reflected not only their revulsion at the method itself, but also their recognition that, despite its extreme nature, the Degaev affair was a typical example of the Police Department’s method of combating the underground revolutionary movements.