[10] After being arrested, flogged, and expelled, Sazonov joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party, organized studies of socialism, and turned against the government.

From now on I dedicate myself to open warfare with the government..."[11] After his expulsion, Sazonov was sent to exile in Ufa, where he started to study socialist and democratic literature.

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.

[13] Abroad, Sazonov finally joined the Terrorist Bridge or Combat Organization of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party.

[13] 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.

[14] Vyacheslav von Plehve, Minister of Interior, known for his ruthlessness, had already approved of the brutal suppression of many workers's strikes.

[15] Under Azef,[16] Gershuni sent Sazonov, Lev Sikorsky, Abram Borishansky, and Ivan Kalyayev to carry out the plan.

The bomb killed the minister instantly and wounded Sazonov, who was immediately arrested and beaten severely by the police.

"[20] Sazonov was deprived of all rights and assigned to indefinite detention in a convict prison and was imprisoned in the Shlisselburg Fortress.

[citation needed] Sazonov was treated as a hero to Jewish and Russian communities in the United States.

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.

In protest against the flogging of other men, Kalyaev drenched himself in kerosene, set himself on fire and burned himself to death.