Blood and Rage_ A Cultural History of Terrorism - Michael Burleigh [34]
Alexander II, including the pair who ran the phoney cheese shop on Little Garden Street. Soon Vera Figner was the sole surviving member of the Executive Committee, although its associated Military Organisation - consisting of dissident army officers - was in better shape, having been kept aloof from terrorism.
A fatal new development, the Degaev affair, unfolded in a bizarre period during which the People’s Will offered the new tsar Alexander III a truce, provided he permit an elected assembly and release political prisoners. Although this offer was rejected, some members of the government, and a rather ineffective clandestine counter-terror grouping called the Sacred Band, thought that negotiations with People’s Will might at least defer the latter’s assassination attempts until after the new tsar’s coronation. Nothing came of these talks - which took place in Geneva - because the regime had discovered that People’s Will was a shambles. The coronation went ahead in May 1883 without incident.
The reason why the authorities were so accurately apprised of the state of the revolutionary underground can be traced back to Vera Figner’s decision to appoint a capable former artillery officer, Serge Degaev, to run the military wing of People’s Will on behalf of the decimated Executive Committee. Degaev had impeccable revolutionary credentials, having helped dig the tunnel from the cheese shop in Little Garden Street. His mother and siblings were all involved in the wider movement. This proved Figner’s undoing because, when Degaev’s young brother Vladimir was arrested for sedition, he began to receive visits in his cell from major Sudeykin, the most capable of the tsar’s policemen. Appearing to be sympathetic to the cause, Sudeykin offered Vladimir his freedom if he would merely keep him abreast of general trends within the underground. He required no names. Vladimir agreed to these arrangements, confidently boasting to his associates that he was the one really in charge. In December 1882, Serge Degaev himself was arrested in Odessa with the apparatus of the clandestine press of the People’s Will. He recalled his brother Vladimir’s dealings with Sudeykin as he grimly contemplated fifteen years’ hard labour. Upon receiving a letter from Degaev, Sudeykin hastened south to see him. Some sort of murky deal developed in which, in return for ratting on the remnants of People’s Will, Sudeykin would recommend to the tsar that Degaev be allowed to lead a radical party committed to non-violent reform. Sudeykin offered Degaev a chance to meet the tsar in person, although that was impossible since Sudeykin himself was too lowly in rank to have such access himself. What Sudeykin actually wanted was to control the revolutionary movement through Degaev.
A few weeks later, Degaev miraculously escaped from a carriage escorting him to the railway station, kicking one guard out of the door, and throwing snuff into the eyes of his colleague, before vanishing into the snow. He re-established his contacts with People’s Will. Meeting him, Vera Figner forgot that Degaev was no snuff-user and that prisoners were usually manacled in transit. He appeared more concerned with her safety, inquiring whether her apartment had a rear exit. Two days later she left the front door of the apartment