Sergey Degayev
After emigrating to the United States, Degayev took the name Alexander Pell and became a prominent American mathematician, the founder of school of Engineering at the University of South Dakota.
[3] His father died in the 1860s,[2] and Degayev's mother became the head of the family; she was, for her time, a well-educated woman, whose interests included reading and learning foreign languages.
When the court sentenced pregnant revolutionary Hesya Helfman to death, she tried, unsuccessfully, to adopt the baby, despite a possible conflict with the authorities.
While Marie was much older than Sergey, married early and did not play a large role in the life of the family, Nathalie (after marriage Makletsova) and Elizabeth (Liz) were very close to him.
He briefly served as a military officer and was discharged from the Army with the rank of Staff captain in the same year.
Degayev took an active part in an unsuccessful assassination attempt by digging and mining a tunnel under Malaya Sadovaya Street in Saint Petersburg.
[7] Some sources also suggest that Degayev had a role in the successful assassination of the tsar on 1 March 1881 and even observed the explosion that killed him.
[7] Degayev was among those arrested in connection with the assassination, but his guilt was not proven; he returned to his institute and received his degree in June 1881.
There he met Lyubov Ivanova, a young woman who shared his political views; he fell in love and married her on their trip to Saint Petersburg in November 1881.
[1] At that time, Gendarme Lieutenant Colonel Georgy Sudeykin was among the most dangerous enemies of Narodnaya Volya.
He even temporarily lodged his wife and children in a Saint Petersburg prison, given that he felt it was the only safe place in the whole Empire.
Vladimir agreed to work as an Okhrana agent, was released from prison and arranged a few meetings between Sudeykin and Sergey Degaev, who was charged with preparing for the assassination.
Vladimir Degayev abandoned the plan of killing Sudeykin and was soon removed from the list of Okhrana agents "for inactivity.
[3] However, research in the Soviet Union suggested that Degayev started to work as an Okhrana informant a few years earlier purely for financial reasons.
Ovchenko states that Degayev started to work as an Okhrana informant in 1882 after his wife was arrested by Sudeykin.
[3][12] Information obtained from Degayev and from subsequent arrests allowed police to assure the tsar that his coronation ceremony would be safe.
[13] Inspired by Alexandre Dumas's novel The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later, Sudeykin sent Degayev to Switzerland to lure two remaining Narodnaya Volya leaders, Lev Tikhomirov and Peter Lavrov, to Russia to be arrested.
[13] In June 1883 Narodnaya Volya resumed publication of Listok Narodnoy Voly, an underground newspaper, as a demonstration that the organization was alive.
On the other hand, many Narodnaya Volya members saw pogroms as incited by the tsarist Government and as one of the most revolting of the regime's crimes.
Richard Pipes speculated that the article was a part of Sudeykin's plan to transform Narodnaya Volya from an anti-government to an ultra-nationalist organisation similar to the later Black Hundreds.
Unexpectedly the tsar refused Sudeykin's letter of resignation, causing the pair to postpone assassination plans to 1884.
Interrogated by Lev Tikhomirov, Degayev confessed that he was an Okhrana agent and offered to help kill Sudeykin.
To lure Sudeykin to the next meeting Degayev told him a story that he had a woman from Narodnaya Volya staying in his apartment who had planned to assassinate the tsar but who could possibly be persuaded to become an Okhrana agent.
The gunshots and cries were heard all across the building; however, when the concierge reported to the local police they told him that they had instructions not to interfere with the apartment whatever happened there.
At a winter 1884 meeting, Narodnaya Volya, led by V. A. Karaulov, Lev Tikhomirov and German Lopatin, fulfilled its end of the bargain and granted Degayev his life on the condition that he never again appear in the Russian Empire.
[3] Both Vladimir and Sergey Degayevs were registered in the USA under the name Polevoi after their maternal grandfather Nikolai Polevoy.
In 1895 Alexander was enrolled into a PhD program in Johns Hopkins University with majors in mathematics and astronomy and a minor in English.
They both returned to Vermillion where Anna taught classes in the theory of functions and differential equations and Alexander was the Dean of Engineering.
The same year the Pells moved to South Hadley, Massachusetts where Anna taught at Mount Holyoke College.
After the October Revolution and beginning of the Red Terror he wrote: "Accursed Russia: even after liberating herself, she does not let people live".
