Vladimir Lvovich Burtsev (1862-1942) - an active participant in the revolutionary movement: in the 80s, Narodnoye, later was close to the Socialist Revolutionaries and Cadets. As a publicist and publisher, he gained fame for exposing the provocateurs of the tsarist secret police operating in Russia and abroad, in particular E.F. Azef and R.V. Malinovsky. Being a white emigrant, he participated in the creation of the anti-Soviet "National Committee. "The preface to the book was written by Sergei Andreevich Piontkovsky (1891-1937), a prominent Soviet historian who died during the Stalinist repressions.