This book tells for the first time the extraordinary story of Sergei Degaev, a political terrorist in tsarist Russia who disappeared after participating in the assassination of the chief of Russia’s security organization in 1883. Those who knew and admired Alexander Pell at the University of South Dakota never guessed that he was actually Degaev, a revolutionary who had reinvented himself as a quiet mathematics professor.
“An amazing story, part Dostoevsky, part Conrad. . . . Remarkable.”—Michael J. Ybarra, Wall Street Journal
“One of the most distinguished historians of Russia . . . [gives] us a real-life thriller that is also a cautionary tale rich with insight into depths of the human psyche.”—David Pryce-Jones, Commentary
“Absorbing, brilliantly researched. . . . [A] fascinating display of scholarly detective work.”—Raymond Carr, Spectator
“Pipes is the finest historian of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia. . . . [His] Degaev Affair takes the reader through the dark and terrifying alleyways of the historical underworld. As a story, it ranks as a true-life version of Conrad’s Under Western Eyes.”—Nikolai Tolstoy, Literary Review
“A brilliant history of treason, deception, terror, and academe in the underworld of Imperial Russia and the respectability of midwestern U.S. universities.”—Simon Sebag Montefiore, Financial Times
“Fascinating.”—Orlando Figes, New York Review of Books