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. "a superb true detective-story of terrorism and mystery by one of the great historians of Russia" Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Sunday Telegraph "absorbing, brilliantly researched" Raymond Carr, The Spectator "Richard Pipes is the first historian of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia ...The Dagaev Affair takes the reader through dark and terrifying alleyways of the historical underworld." Nikolai Tolstoy, Literary Review "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