AHC: Borges' *Theme of the Traitor and the Hero* in Real Life

The theme, much oversimplified, is this: a group of revolutionary conspirators in an oppressed country discover that their beloved leader is a traitor--an informant for the government. They sentence him to death--but allow him to make it seem that it is the oppressive government which killed him. Thus, not only will he be allowed to save his reputation (after all, the revelation of his treason would be devastating to the cause's popularity among the general public) but his assassination may actually provoke the long-sought revolution. This is discovered a century later by the hero/traitor's great-grandson--who ultimately decides not to reveal it. http://hartzog.org/j/themetraitorhero.html

Borges sets the story in Ireland but acknowledges that it could take place in any "oppressed and tenacious country: Poland, Ireland, the Venetian Republic, some South American or Balkan state..." http://hartzog.org/j/themetraitorhero.html Thus, Bertolucci was justified in adapting it to Fascist Italy in *The Spider's Stratagem* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spider%27s_Stratagem

My challenge is to have something like this happen in real life. It can be either before or after 1900.

(Maybe the Bolsheviks do this with Malinovsky in 1912 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Malinovsky though he hardly possessed the prestige of Borges' Fergus Kilpatrick...)
 
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