From the history of the Security Departments of the Police Department of the Russian Empire. security department

Intro. article prepared. text and comments. Z.I. Peregudova. T. 1. - M .: New literary review, 2004.

"GUARDS" IN THE EYES OF THE GUARDS

Late 1870s feature Russian life was terrorism populist revolutionaries who fought against the tsarist government. Section III, which carried out the functions of the political police, could not cope with them, and it was decided to carry out transformations in this area.
On August 6, 1880, a new institution arose in Russia - the State Police Department, which became the highest body of the political police in Russian Empire.
Substantiating his proposals, Minister of Internal Affairs M.T. Loris-Melikov pointed out that “clerical work in this (State Police Department. - Z.P.) can be entrusted only to such persons who, having the knowledge and abilities necessary for service in a higher government institution, are fully trustworthy in their moral qualities, consistency of character and political reliability”1. The old cadres were not suitable both in terms of their professional qualities and due to the fact that some of them were gendarmes, military people. Loris-Melikov sought to ensure that the new institution consisted of "lawyers", civilians and those with legal training.
By a decree of November 15, 1880, the State Police Department was entrusted with the leadership of both the political and general police. According to Art. 362 "Institutions of the Ministry", the Department was obliged to deal with the following issues: 1) prevention and suppression of crimes and protection of public safety and order; 2) conducting cases on state crimes; 3) organizing and monitoring the activities of police institutions; 4) protection of state borders and border communications; issuance of passports to Russian citizens, residence permits in Russia to foreigners; expulsions of foreigners from Russia; monitoring all types of cultural and educational activities and the approval of the statutes of various societies2.
An important role belonged to the Special Section of the Department created in 1898. He was in charge of domestic and foreign agents, monitored the correspondence of suspicious persons, supervised the mood of workers, student youth, as well as the search for persons on political issues, etc.
The Police Department and its Special Department carried out their main functions through local institutions subordinate to them: provincial gendarme departments (GZhU), regional gendarme departments (OZhU), gendarmerie-police departments of railways (ZhPU railway), as well as search points, part which was later renamed into security departments.
The first provincial gendarme departments were created on the basis of the Regulations on the Corps of Gendarmes of September 16, 1867. Until the middle of 1868, they arose in almost all provinces. At the same time, gendarmerie observation posts are set up in some localities for a fixed period and abolished as needed.
The head of the provincial gendarme department had several assistants who were in the counties and headed the county gendarmerie departments. As a rule, one assistant to the head of the GZhU was responsible for several counties.
The main purpose of the gendarme departments was the political search, the production of inquiries on state crimes. Until the 1880s, they remained the only institutions of political investigation in the field.
As part of the state police, the GJU was part of the system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. However, being a military unit, they were financed from the budget of the Military Ministry and were subordinate to it in terms of combat, military, economic part. The GZhU were independent from the governors, who were responsible for the security and tranquility in the province; this kind of duality sometimes introduced considerable difficulties in their activities and relations with the authorities.
The police department exercised the political leadership of the GJU, but rarely had the opportunity to influence their personnel; the career of the chiefs of the GZhU depended primarily on the leadership of the headquarters of the gendarme corps.
Since the creation of the capital's GZhU, gendarmerie cavalry divisions were organized under them. The main purpose of the divisions was to carry out patrol service and fight unrest. The number of the division, together with officers and non-combatants, practically did not exceed 500 people.
The gendarmerie-police departments of the railways arose in the early 1860s as a result of the transformation of the gendarmerie squadrons and teams that guarded the first railways.
The original ZhPU railways were subordinate to the Ministry of Railways (through the inspectors of the relevant roads) and only in December 1866 were all police departments removed from the Ministry of Railways and completely subordinated to the chief of gendarmes. The rights and obligations of ZhPU railways were expanded. They had to perform all the duties of the general police, using all the rights assigned to it. The area of ​​operation of the ZhPU railways extended to the entire space alienated by the railways, and to all the buildings and structures located on this lane.
At the head of the ZhPU of the railways were chiefs with the rights of regiment commanders with the rank of major generals or colonels, they were appointed by orders of the Separate Corps of Gendarmes. Until 1906, they did not take part either in the production of inquiries on state crimes, or in political search and surveillance. However, the active role played by the performances of the railroad workers in the October strike of 1905 forced the government to take urgent measures and entrust the ZhPU of the railways with the responsibility of conducting inquiries about all "criminal actions" of a political nature committed in the right of way of the railways. During the production of inquiries, the heads of departments were subordinate to the heads of the local GZhU. A secret agent supervision was also created on the railways, which obliged the ZhPU of the railways to have their own secret agents.
In parallel with the metropolitan provincial gendarmerie departments, security departments operated, to which the main functions of the political police in the field quite quickly passed. First security department, called the Department for the preservation of order and tranquility in the capital, was created in 1866 at the office of the St. Petersburg mayor in connection with the beginning of the assassination attempt on Alexander II. The second was the Moscow (Secret Investigation Department under the office of the Moscow chief police officer), created on November 1, 1880 by order of the Minister of Internal Affairs M.T. Loris-Melikova. The third - created in 1900 in Warsaw.
The activities of the first security departments were, according to the authorities, successful. In connection with the growing revolutionary movement and the weakness of the provincial gendarme departments, the authorities are increasingly thinking about how to improve the political investigation, make it more organized and flexible. In cities where protests by workers and student youth were increasingly taking place, at the initiative of the Police Department, search points (departments) began to be created. From August 1902 they open in Vilna, Yekaterinoslav, Kazan, Kyiv, Odessa, Saratov, Tiflis, Kharkov, Perm, Simferopol (Tavrichesky), Nizhny Novgorod.
These institutions were supposed to carry out political search, conduct surveillance and lead secret agents. In the Regulations on the heads of the search departments, approved on August 12, 1902 by the Minister of Internal Affairs V.K. Plehve noted that "the duties of the heads of departments are the acquisition of secret agents, the management of their activities, as well as the selection and training of surveillance agents"3. In the same year, a "Code of Rules" was sent out in a circular to the heads of security departments, which states that the task of these departments is to search for political affairs, carried out through secret agents and filer surveillance. The duties of the heads of departments also included the recruitment of internal agents. They had to know the history of the revolutionary movement well, follow the revolutionary literature, and, if possible, acquaint their secret collaborators with it, developing in the latter a “conscious attitude to the cause of the service”4. The heads of the search and security departments reported directly to the Police Department, which gave the general direction of their activities, disposed of the personnel.
The creation of a network of new security departments occurred largely as a result of the initiative taken by the head of the Moscow security department, then head of the Special Department of the Police Department S.V. Zubatov. However, his resignation in the fall of 1903 prevented him from realizing his plans in full.
As the number of security departments grows, rivalry arises and intensifies between the provincial gendarme departments and the security departments. In its circulars, the Department repeatedly urges them to "mutual assistance", the exchange of information. To a large extent these conflict situations arose due to the fact that, although the functions of the GZhU and the security departments were separated, in reality, the search activities (for which the security departments were responsible) and the surveillance activities, as well as the conduct of inquiries (which were handled by the GZhU) were closely intertwined. In practice, it was sometimes impossible to separate one from the other. Those leaders of the security departments who passed through the headquarters of the gendarme corps were subordinate to the head of the GZhU in combat terms. The latter, as a rule, was in the rank of colonel or major general. But in relation to the official, he sometimes had to obey the junior head of the security department.
In 1906-1907, on the initiative of the director of the Department, M.I. Trusevich, work is underway to create new security departments, search units, and the entire network of political investigation institutions is expanding. In December 1907, there were already 27 security departments.
On February 9, 1907, Stolypin approved the "Regulations on Security Departments"5. The Regulations also included items relating to relations with the GZhU, the exchange of information between security departments. Gendarmerie and political authorities, receiving information related to the type of activity of the security departments, had to report them to the security department for development, searches, seizures and arrests, which could not be carried out without the knowledge of the head of the security department. In turn, the heads of the security departments were supposed to inform the GZhU about the circumstances that were of interest to the latter in the course of their inquiries.
In 1906-1907 security posts appeared. They are organized primarily in places far from the center, where at that time there was an increase in “fighting” moods among the population. The first security posts were established in Khabarovsk, Penza, Gomel, Vladikavkaz, Yekaterinodar, Zhitomir, Kostroma, Poltava, Kursk and a number of other cities.
Simultaneously with the work on the creation of security posts, at the suggestion of the same Trusevich, completely new institutions are being created in the system of political investigation - district security departments. December 14, 1906 Stolypin approves a special regulation on the district security departments. They were created in order to "successfully combat the revolutionary movement, expressed in a whole series of continuously ongoing terrorist acts, agrarian unrest, intensified propaganda among the peasants, in the army and navy"6. The regulation on the district security departments entrusted them with the task of uniting all the political investigation bodies functioning within the district (covering several provinces). Much attention was paid to the adoption of quick decisions, well-coordinated joint work of security departments and gendarmerie departments, "so that the activity was more lively and systematic." In one of the notes, dated 1913, the director of the Police Department called the district security departments the "branch office" of his Department. It is noteworthy that the regional branches were organized in such a way that their sphere of activity coincided (or almost coincided) with the areas of operation of the district party committees of the RSDLP and other revolutionary parties.
The heads of the local security departments were directly subordinate to the head of the district security department. Provincial and county ZhU and ZHPU railway in matters of search, they also had to be guided by the instructions of the head of the district security department.
Among the main tasks of the district security departments were the organization of internal agents for the "development" of all local party organizations and the management of the activities of agents and searches within the boundaries of the district. To this end, the heads of the district security departments had the right to convene meetings of officers directly involved in the political search. They also had to inform the higher investigative institutions about the state of affairs in the revolutionary movement of the region, to help the corresponding institutions of other regions in the political search. The officers of the district security departments could use all the investigative and intelligence materials of the gendarme departments and security departments. If necessary, they should also have known secret employees - agents under the jurisdiction of one or another officer of the gendarme department and security department.
At the initial stage of their activities, the district security departments played a significant role in defeating party organizations, party committees, and coordinating the activities of detective services in the field. Their successes raised the prestige of investigative activities among the authorities, created the illusion of a possible defeat of the revolutionary organizations.
However, there were also difficulties. As the involvement of the district security departments in the activities of the local police authorities increased, their relationship with the employees of the GZhU became more and more complicated. The periodic circulars issued by the Department with a reminder of the need for joint efforts in the fight against the forces of the revolution and the obligatory mutual information did not help either. Officials of the district security departments sometimes did not show proper tact towards their provincial colleagues. Complaints and dissatisfaction often led to conflicts and slanders, which the Police Department had to deal with. Since 1909, the activities of the district security departments have been weakening, which was largely due to a lull in the activities of revolutionary organizations.
V.F. Dzhunkovsky, appointed in January 1913 as deputy minister of the interior, head of the police, raised the question of the expediency of the existence of security departments. By this time, the Police Department gradually began to abolish the security departments in those areas "where there was no urgent need for such for the suppression of revolutionary movements." Part of the security departments was merged with the provincial gendarme departments. The unification took place in those provinces where the head of the State Bureau of Statistics was sufficiently trained in the search business. Carrying out these activities, the Police Department justified them with “state benefit”, however, as some police officials believed, the main reason was that the Department did not find “another way out of the situation” when clearly “abnormal” situations began between the GZhU and the security department. relations. In his memoirs, V.F. Dzhunkovsky writes in detail about his attitude to security departments. “While still the governor in Moscow,” Dzhunkovsky writes, “I always had a negative attitude towards these regional security departments that arose before my eyes in general and, in particular, to that of the Moscow Central District, observing all the negative aspects of this innovation.<...>All these district and independent security departments were only breeding grounds for provocation; what little benefit they might have been able to bring was completely obscured by the colossal harm they sowed during these few years.
On May 15, 1913, Dzhunkovsky distributed a circular, by which “top secret”, “urgently” the heads of the Baku, Yekaterinoslav, Kyiv, Nizhny Novgorod, Petrokovsky, Tiflis, Kherson and Yaroslavl GZhU, Don and Sevastopol regional gendarme departments were informed about the liquidation of security departments in their provinces. The circular stated: “Having discussed the situation of setting up a search at the current moment, in connection with the manifestations of the revolutionary movement in the Empire and taking into account that security departments, in addition to those established by law (meaning Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw. - Z.P. ), were considered as temporary institutions, I found it expedient, in terms of achieving uniformity in the organization of the search business and managing it, to pour the remaining independent security departments into the local provincial gendarmerie departments "8. Soon, all security departments (except for the capital ones) were liquidated, and their chiefs became leaders of the newly created search units of the GZhU.
Understanding that the measures taken cannot but cause dissatisfaction with the heads of the abolished security departments, Dzhunkovsky wrote in the same circular: “... I consider it necessary to point out that the unification in your person of the activities of both institutions should not be considered as a humiliation of the official dignity of the head of the abolished security department, because the establishment of such an order<...>is caused not by any other considerations, but only by the interests of the most important duties for the ranks of the Separate Corps of Gendarmes, by improving the conditions for conducting a search case.
Following the liquidation of the security departments, Dzhunkovsky proceeds to prepare measures to abolish the district security departments. In 1914, all regional security departments, except for Turkestan and East Siberian, were abolished. The rest operated until 1917. Once again, as before 1902, the GZhU became the central link in the political investigation on the ground.
Thus, an important link in the structure of political investigation was eliminated. As subsequent events showed, the measures taken by Dzhunkovsky did not contribute either to strengthening the political police or to improving the situation in relations between its leading cadres.
The works mentioned above contain a detailed and diverse description of the activities of political detective work in the late 19th - early 20th century. However, they mainly provide an external, "objective" view of the work of the Police Department and security departments. But for understanding these institutions, the subjective side is also very important - the motives and goals of the activities of their employees, the specificity of their vision of the situation, their self-esteem. Indeed, in their service, along with the career side, the mercantile side was also the ideological side, connected with their understanding of the current political situation and their duty, their function in state and public life.
Here, for example, is the “Review of the current conditions of the official position of the provincial gendarme department and a number of considerations regarding the change in their organization and procedure”, prepared by the head of the Voronezh GZhU N.V. Vasiliev. The author critically assessed the state of political investigation and its personnel. He saw a way out of the situation, in particular, in the unification of the Gendarme Corps with the general police, as well as in organizing courses to improve the skills of detective workers.
Before us is a gendarme-philosopher. He writes: “You can’t kill an idea. The evolution of human thought takes place unceasingly, irresistibly transforming the views, beliefs, and then the social structure of peoples' lives. The history of revolutionary movements teaches us that it is impossible to stop the course of major historical events, just as it is impossible for a person to stop the rotation of the Earth. But the same story provides on its pages too full evidence that the pioneers of the revolution, full of energy and enthusiasm, have always been utopians and in their struggle against social inertia, in their desire to recreate new forms of life, usually not only did not contribute to the progress of their homeland, but often served as a brake on the correct course of the development of social self-consciousness. The role of the pioneers in history has been condemned by history itself. It is human nature to err, and the foremost theoreticians, no matter how ideal, apparently, their aspirations, were not and will not be the true leaders of the people ... "
Vasiliev believed that the system, which had “steadfastly withstood the struggle” for half a century, “hardly needs a radical transformation”, but “the existing building of gendarmerie supervision should be completed, adapted to modern requirements” ... But not subjected to “breaking” and “ re-creation"9.
An important source of information on this issue is the memoirs of officials of the Police Department, the gendarmerie, persons associated with the Russian political investigation. However, the vast majority of them were published in exile, and only a few were republished in Russia10. This collection is intended to fill the existing gap. Of the five books of four authors presented in it, only one (A.V. Gerasimova) was published in Russia, and the book by A.T. Vasiliev is published in Russian for the first time.

Gerasimov's memoirs, small in size, were first published in 1934 in German and French. Alexander Vasilyevich Gerasimov was born on November 7, 1861, was educated at the Kharkov real school, then graduated from the Chuguev infantry cadet school in the first category. After graduating from college, he entered military service in 1883 with the rank of ensign, which he served in the 61st Reserve Infantry Battalion. In November 1889, he transferred to the Gendarme Corps and rose from lieutenant to major general. His first place of service was associated with Samara, where he was sent as an adjutant of the Samara provincial gendarme department. Two years later, he continued his service in Kharkov, at first also as an adjutant, and then as an assistant to the head of the Kharkov provincial gendarme department (since September 1894)11.
The correspondence of the Police Department highly appreciates the diligence and diligence of Captain A.V. Gerasimov. One of the certificates about his activities stated that Gerasimov "attracted attention to himself with his abilities and diligence", during his three years of service in the GZhU "provided very significant services in matters of political investigation." Gerasimov was periodically sent to various localities to provide assistance to colleagues, and sometimes for inspections, and he always “carried out the assignments entrusted to him with excellent success, fully justifying the trust placed in him”12.
In 1902, when security departments began to be created, Gerasimov was appointed head of the Kharkov security department. The already cited document stated that “from the first steps of his leadership of the department, Captain Gerasimov managed to put the business entrusted to him to the proper height, which resulted in the constant successful activity of the department, in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bwhich, in addition to the city of Kharkov, other cities of the Kharkov province were included. In addition, the named officer quite successfully fulfilled the instructions assigned to him to organize search and surveillance in other areas outside the surveillance area. In 1903, Gerasimov "outside the rules" was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. In February 1905, on the proposal of the director of the Police Department A.A. Lopukhin, he took the post of head of the St. Petersburg security department. The service record indicated that his appointment took place as an officer who distinguished himself by "tried experience, deep knowledge of the matter and rare devotion to duty ...".
In St. Petersburg, he actively gets down to business, putting things in order in the security department itself and actively engaging in the fight against the revolutionary movement. Major General D.F. Trepov, extremely pleased with his actions, believed that thanks to his "extremely skillful diligence and energy,<...>all the main managers of unrest”, “workshops of explosive shells were discovered, a number of actions were warned”, and “all the work was carried out under the constant threat from the revolutionaries”.
In June 1905, "outside the rules" Gerasimov received the rank of colonel, in 1906 the Order of St. Vladimir 3rd degree, on next year, in 1907, he was awarded the rank of Major General, in 1908 he was awarded the highest gratitude, and on January 1, 1909 he was awarded the Order of St. Stanislav 1st degree.
The constant attention and benevolence of Trepov, then Stolypin, fueled Gerasimov's ambitions: the St. Petersburg security department, which he headed, was one of the largest in Russia; he achieved independent reports to the minister (which had not happened before).
Four years lasted his service as head of the St. Petersburg security department. His memoirs are mainly devoted to this period. Correspondence between the Police Department and the Ministry of the Interior indicated that over the years he had undermined his health, often turning to doctors.
In April 1909, Gerasimov transferred to the Ministry of the Interior as a general for special assignments under the minister. He often travels on business trips to check the activities of political investigation institutions and the work of individuals.
Working at one time with Stolypin, Gerasimov intended to get the post of Deputy Minister of the Interior, head of the police. But after the death of Stolypin and the departure of A.A. Makarov, from the post of Minister of the Interior, the thread that firmly connected him with this ministry broke. And the appointment of V.F. Dzhunkovsky in January 1913 as Deputy Minister of the Interior, head of the police, finally destroyed his plans. New people came to the ministry, with whom Gerasimova had practically nothing to do with. His service career ended in early 1914, after he submitted a letter of resignation in December 1913. Upon his retirement, he was given the rank of lieutenant general for his previous services.
Gerasimov's memoirs are devoted almost exclusively to the fight against one direction in the revolutionary movement - terror. One of the leaders of the Social Revolutionary movement V.M. Chernov, having read Gerasimov’s book, wrote: “Only after they left (on German) the memoirs of General Gerasimov, we finally found out the general picture of the catastrophe that befell our combat work, just at the very time when Bo (military organization. - Z.P.), according to the plans of the party, was to bring its attacks on the tsarist regime to maximum energy "fourteen. Gerasimov's memoirs are also interesting in that they reflected a very important moment in the life of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, its "inside out" and the crisis that it was going through in connection with the betrayal of Azef.
Another author whose memoirs are included in the collection is Pavel Pavlovich Zavarzin. While in exile, he was one of the first in 1924 to publish his memoirs, The Work of the Secret Police. Six years later, in 1930, he published a second book - "Gendarmes and Revolutionaries", which partially repeats and partially supplements the first.
Zavarzin was born on February 13, 1868 in a family of noblemen of the Kherson province. He received a general education at the Odessa Real School, then graduated from the Odessa Infantry Junker School in the first category. In 1888, with the rank of second lieutenant, he entered the service in the 16th Rifle Battalion of His Majesty and served there for 10 years. As part of this battalion, he is in Livadia during the death of Alexander III, guarded the Hessian Princess Alix (future Empress Alexandra Feodorovna) on the days of her arrival in Russia, in Livadia, for which he was awarded the Cavalry Cross of the 2nd class of the Hessian Order of Philip the Magnanimous.
In May 1898, with the rank of lieutenant, he transferred to the Gendarme Corps. Initially, Zavarzin served as an adjutant in the Bessarabian GZhU, from August 1899 an adjutant in the Tauride GZhU, where he received the rank of captain. A few months later, in May 1900, he was transferred as an assistant to the head of the Volochissky branch of the Kyiv gendarmerie and police department of the railway. At the end of the year, in December, he receives the rank of captain. In June of the following year, he was transferred to the post of head of the Lubensky branch of the Moscow-Kyiv gendarmerie-police department, and two years later he was seconded to the Bessarabian GZhU and appointed to the post of head of the newly created Bessarabian security department.
The following year, from June 1904, he was transferred to the post of assistant chief of the Mogilev GZhU in the Gomel district. The revolutionary events of 1905 in Russia and the dramatic situation in Odessa required the fortification of this area by experienced personnel familiar with this city and the situation. Therefore, Zavarzin, who had not served even a month in his new position, was transferred to Odessa as the head of the security department, and from July 7, 1905, he headed the Don Regional Security Department, on August 11, 1906 he was transferred to the head of the public security department in Warsaw15.
Service in Warsaw lasted almost three and a half years. It was a rather difficult period of Zavarzin's activity, since the revolutionary organizations in Warsaw were very strong, they had a well-established conspiracy.
Based on his already fairly extensive experience, Zavarzin was able to effectively use the work of secret officers who worked in the Warsaw Security Department. Unfortunately, Zavarzin talks very sparingly about his secret agents, mostly mentioning only those who died before the revolution.
The successful implementation of the political investigation in Chisinau, Odessa, Rostov-on-Don and especially in Warsaw ensured Zavarzin a reputation as a high-class specialist, and at the end of 1909 he was appointed head of the Moscow Security Department (lieutenant colonel from December 6, 1906)16.
Zavarzin was the initiator of the creation of the Instructions of the Moscow Security Department for organizing and maintaining internal agents. It was based on the secret Instruction of the Police Department, published in 1907. The reason that prompted him to write "his" instruction was that the instruction of the Department was published in a limited number of copies and sent only to the heads of eight district security departments. Many chiefs of the GZhU saw her only from the hands of the leaders of the district secret police. The instruction was strictly classified, because they were afraid that it might fall into the hands of the revolutionaries, who would reveal all the "tricks" of the secret police.
The instruction of the Moscow Security Department, prepared by Zavarzin, was more interesting, written in a more accessible language and gave specific advice on acquiring secret agents, communicating and working with these agents, concretized various categories of secret employees: auxiliary agents, craftsmen, etc.17 However, its text was not agreed with the Police Department. And when, at the beginning of 1911, through the Minister of Internal Affairs, the instruction came to the head of the Special Department of the Police Department A.M. Eremin, who was one of the developers of the instruction of the Police Department, she led him into indignation. The director of the Department18 was also indignant.
Zavarzin's normal, and even sometimes friendly, relations with the Moscow authorities contrasted sharply with the increasingly tense relations with the Police Department. In July 1912, Zavarzin was transferred to Odessa as the head of the gendarme department. This was not considered a demotion, but in reality meant that the peak of his career was left behind.
Describing Zavarzin, Martynov writes in the memoirs published in this collection: “I must say that Colonel Zavarzin, despite all the primitiveness of his nature, insufficient general development, so to speak, “lack of culture”, nevertheless, after fourteen years of service in the gendarmerie corps, he had the practice search case." Paying tribute to his professionalism, Martynov at the same time believes that he was dismissed from the post of head of the Moscow Security Department not only for omissions in implementing the measures of the Police Department, but simply because of the inadequacy of this difficult position.
However, one cannot agree with Martynov on everything. Zavarzin really did not have enough stars from the sky, but he was hardworking and diligent, did not conflict with his colleagues, knew his business and left his department to Martynov in excellent condition.
On June 2, 1914, the family of Nicholas II was returning from Romania through Odessa. This trip royal family was planned as a secret bride of the heir to the Romanian throne. There were rumors that he was tipped to be the husband of the eldest Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna. The princess was not told anything about this, but the prince clearly did not impress not only Olga Nikolaevna, but the whole family.
The meeting of the emperor in Odessa was well organized. "For the excellent order in Odessa during the stay of His Imperial Majesty Nicholas II and the august family" Zavarzin was declared "Highest Favor"19.
On June 3, 1916, Zavarzin was appointed head of the Warsaw provincial gendarme department. However, in connection with the war and the evacuation of the Warsaw GZhU, he moved to Petrograd. There he is temporarily seconded to the Petrograd GZhU and placed at the disposal of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Periodically, the Ministry and the Police Department send him on business trips around Russia.
The events of February 1917 found him in Petrograd. Like most of the highest Petersburg officials, Zavarzin was arrested in the early days of the February Revolution by the Extraordinary Investigative Commission to investigate the actions of former ministers and other officials. He was imprisoned for a little over a month and was soon able to leave Russia.
The most detailed memoirs (“My service in the Separate Corps of Gendarmes”) were left by the youngest representative of this gendarme cohort, Colonel A.P. Martynov. They were written later than his colleagues did; the author worked on them intermittently for five years (1933-1938). Therefore, perhaps, they are more thoughtful, and sometimes more frank in their assessments, likes and dislikes. They were published in 1972 in the USA after his death.
Martynov was born on August 14, 1875 in Moscow into a noble family. He was educated in the 3rd Moscow Cadet Corps, then graduated from the 3rd Alexander School in the first category. He served in the 2nd Sofia Infantry Regiment, then in the 7th Samogitsky Grenadier Regiment. At that time, his older brother Nikolai was already serving in the Gendarme Corps, and the author of the memoirs also had a constant desire to join the Gendarme Corps, where he was admitted in May 1899.
All of it life path before the October Revolution - service in the GZhU and security departments - can be traced through his memoirs. Therefore, we restrict ourselves to only brief information about it. Immediately after entering the Corps, he was appointed as a junior officer in the Moscow Gendarmerie Division. After passing the courses of the headquarters of the Gendarme Corps, he served as an adjutant in the St. Petersburg GZhU, in January 1903 he was transferred as an assistant to the head of the Petrokovsky GZhU, in February 1903 he returned to the St. Petersburg GZhU; began independent work in the Saratov security department, where he was sent in July 1906 as the head of the department. After six years in this position, he was transferred (July 12, 1912) to Moscow as the head of the Moscow Security Department.
Giving a general assessment of the work and business qualities of Martynov and petitioning in May 1916 for awarding him the Order of Prince Vladimir of the 4th degree “out of all rules”, the Moscow mayor, Major General V.N. Shebeko wrote: “From the first reports made to me personally by Colonel Martynov about the vigorous activity that the ranks of the Department have shown and are showing in the fight against anarchy, I was convinced of the personal remarkable abilities and energy of the aforementioned staff officer, who constantly tirelessly personally leads all political search in such a difficult place as the city of Moscow, the maintenance of order in which is reflected in the activities of revolutionary organizations throughout the Empire<...>the ranks of the Branch, despite the overwhelming mass of occupations, especially increased due to the circumstances experienced by their homeland, work willingly with excellent zeal - thanks to the ability of Colonel Martynov to settle among his subordinates the spirit of striving for honest performance of official duties.<...>The systematic and persistent work of Colonel Martynov in the fight against revolutionary leaders, with the undoubted availability of outstanding abilities for searching and with great ability to work, had as a result the complete disorganization of the Moscow underground organizations of these leaders.
On the very first day of unrest in Petrograd (and they immediately became known in Moscow), on February 28 Martynov turned to the accounting department of the treasury of the Moscow city government with a request to issue 10,000 rubles for the expenses of the security department. The money was distributed to the employees of the department as an advance payment for the month of March. In 1918, he was prosecuted for this act and accused "of embezzlement and misappropriation of state money entrusted to him by position." But all the witnesses confirmed the receipt of the money, which was also proved by the financial documentation. For himself, Martynov left 1,000 rubles, "keeping them also at the expense of his maintenance for the month of March." He was acquitted. In his conclusion of May 11, 1918, signed by E.F. Rozmirovich and N.V. Krylenko, it was said: “Under the circumstances of that time” this was caused by “a simple everyday necessity, in view of the special official position of the officers of the security department” and the need to “ensure their existence in the near future”21.
A few days after the uprising in Petrograd, unrest broke out in Moscow. On March 1, 1917, breaking into the premises of the security department and Martynov's apartment, located in the same building, the crowd broke cabinets, file cabinets, threw documents into the street and kindled fires. Files, albums, catalogues, photographs were on fire22. Judging by Martynov's memorandum dated March 13, 1917, he was not in the city at that time, but some believe that he was in Moscow and even took part in this action. In any case, during the pogrom one felt "one's own" hand. The materials of all divisions of the Moscow Security Department were practically not touched, except for one - the intelligence department, where the materials of intelligence reports were stored, the card index of the intelligence department, by which it was possible to identify secret employees of the Moscow Security Department. Some photographs and documents were later taken from the desk of the head of the Okhrana.
In the first days of March, the new authorities were looking for Martynov, but, as he later wrote, it was difficult for him to return to Moscow. Upon his return, he wrote a report submitted to the Commissar of Moscow on March 13, 1917. The report is interesting not only from the point of view of purely official relations, but also as a document containing a political assessment of what was happening. Considering the situation difficult and especially difficult for the former head of the security department, he writes: “First of all, I consider it my duty to declare my complete subordination to the present government and that I have not taken and never will take any measures or actions that could cause him any harm, from the very beginning of his assuming power, stopping all work of the department entrusted to me.<...>I must also report that since the last days of February of this year, when no instructions were received from Petrograd in the town authorities, but it was definitely known that the Provisional Government had taken control of the country into its own hands - any opposition to it only complicated the situation, so I ordered according to the Department, so that no arrests are made, so that those arrested who were listed as being held in custody by the mayor would be released.<...>I am deeply convinced that not one of my subordinates, both from the officer corps and from officials and lower employees, would not take any measures leading to harm for the Provisional Government, since it was completely clear that it was pointless, harmful to go against the general desire and could only create highly undesirable complications, especially in the difficult times we are all going through. The incredible blindness in which the old government was, unable to listen to those warning reports that were repeatedly made to it, indicating both the decline in the prestige of the dynasty and general indignation, made it impossible to serve under this regime. It is worth noting that Martynov's reports were carefully read by the direct management, but many materials of this kind were put together by the Minister of Internal Affairs Protopopov "under the cloth."
Further in the report, Martynov speaks of his desire and the desire of his subordinates to go to the front - "to join the army on a common basis both by his service and in its ranks and by virtue of being the real defenders of the motherland and faithful servants of the Provisional Government"24.
In early April 1917, A.P. Martynov was arrested. Initially, he was kept in the palace guardhouse in the Kremlin, in June he was transferred to the Moscow provincial prison. He was interrogated at the Commission for the Provision of the New System. The questions concerned his direct service in political investigation and his leadership and secret agents. Martynov issued his testimony in the form of a "Note on the organization of the system of political investigation." To the question about specific secret employees, and in particular, about the presence of agents among the military in the Moscow security department, Martynov answered orally. “As far as I remember,” he said, “there were no detectives of military agents in the Saratov security department, just as there were none with me in the Moscow security department. Regarding the list presented to me (Martynov was presented with a list of auxiliary agents of the MOO, dated 1911 - Z.P.) I can’t say anything, then I did not serve. I did not accept military agents from Zavarzin and did not start one myself, personally taking this negatively, believing that a political search from the military environment is useless and can be delivered if needed from outside. It is worth noting that Martynov's negative attitude towards the establishment of secret agents among the military coincided with the position of the former comrade of the Minister of Internal Affairs V.F. Dzhunkovsky, who also sharply opposed the presence of agents in the army and by his order abolished it26. However, if Martynov considered the establishment of agents in the army to be useless, then Dzhunkovsky motivated his decision with ethical considerations, considering denunciation of colleagues and superiors in the military environment as an immoral phenomenon.
One of the main tasks of the Commission for Ensuring the New System, which interrogated Martynov, was to identify the secret agents of the Moscow Security Department. The materials of the intelligence department were practically destroyed by fire, so the lists of secret employees were compiled according to indirect data, and then specified, much was restored based on the materials of the Police Department, during interrogations of Okhrana officers. Judging by Martynov's answers, he did not hide the names of those agents with whom he worked, he gave information about the appearance of some employees, their business qualities. Judging by the protocols, he sought to leave an impression of himself as a specialist whose knowledge could still be useful to the new authorities.
Circumstances were favorable for him, including after the October Revolution. In November 1917, the opportunity arose to be released on bail. His wife Evgenia Nikolaevna deposited a deposit of 5,000 rubles with the Moscow Treasury, and the judicial investigator important matters Moscow District Court D.P. Evnevich signed a decree on the release of Martynov from prison. Even earlier, his son Alexander, who was arrested with him, was released.
However, it was clear to him that it was impossible to remain in Russia.
In the spring of 1918, Martynov and his family managed to escape to the south. He joined the White Army, served in counterintelligence in the Black Sea Fleet, then left the Crimea for Constantinople. Together with the former head of the Moscow detective department A.F. Koshko organized a private detective bureau in Constantinople.
In 1923, Martynov and his family moved to the United States, where for some time he worked in New York to protect banks, offices, etc. In 1951 he moved to California and died soon after in Los Angeles.

"Protection - the Russian secret police" - this is the name given to his memoirs by the last director of the Police Department A.T. Vasiliev. The word "protection" in these memoirs had a rather capacious meaning and denoted both the political police as a whole and its constituent parts: the governing body - the Police Department, provincial gendarmerie departments and security departments. "Protection" is practically a synonym for the word "Okhrana", which was widespread at that time.
Vasiliev, the only memoirist presented in the book, was not a military man and did not belong to the Gendarme Corps. However, according to his official duties, he had to fight the opposition forces, like the gendarmes.
The post of director of the Police Department was the peak of Vasiliev's service career. In the future, he was supposed to become a deputy minister of the interior, but February Revolution In 1917, he managed to become only acting deputy minister. Of all four memoirists, Vasiliev held the highest position, was at the center of events, but turned out to be less perspicacious than his colleagues. Evidence of this can be the words spoken by Vasiliev at an audience with Empress Alexandra Feodorovna in October 1916 when he was appointed to the post of director of the Department. When asked by the empress about the unrest, he replied that “revolution is absolutely impossible in Russia. Of course, among the population there is a certain nervous tension due to the ongoing war and the heavy burden it has caused, but the people trust the king and do not think about rebellion,” and further added that any uprisings would be quickly suppressed.
A.T. Vasiliev was born in 1869 in Kyiv. In the same place, in 1891, he graduated from the law faculty of the University of St. Vladimir and entered the public service in the prosecutor's office in the Kyiv judicial district. In 1894, he was appointed an investigator in the city of Kamenetz-Podolsk, and a year later he moved to the position of assistant prosecutor of the Lutsk District Court. In this position, Vasilyev later worked in Kyiv (1901-1904), then was transferred to St. Petersburg. In the first years of his service in the prosecutor's office, Vasilyev was mainly involved in criminal cases, and in St. Petersburg he worked in close contact with the St.
In 1906, Vasiliev moved from the department of the Ministry of Justice to the Ministry of the Interior; He served in the Police Department as a Special Assignment Officer, 5th Class. Due to the fact that during this period there were difficulties in the selection of leaders of the most responsible division of the Police Department - the Special Department, he was in charge of this department for several months. At the same time, by order of Comrade Minister of Internal Affairs P.G. Kurlov and Minister of the Interior P.A. Stolypin, he inspected a number of security departments, institutions of political investigation.
As an officer for special assignments, he oversaw the work of the Special Section, sometimes acting as vice director of the Police Department. Vasiliev worked in the Department for two years and returned to the prosecutor's office. In 1908 he was appointed to the St. Petersburg Court of Justice, from 1909 he held the former position of Deputy Prosecutor of the St. Petersburg District Court. Four years later, Vasiliev returns to the Police Department to his former position as an official for special assignments, but already in the 4th grade and acts as vice director of the Police Department for political affairs.
In many ways, this return was facilitated by the new comrade of the Minister of Internal Affairs V.F. Dzhunkovsky. In his memoirs, he wrote: “... I invited Comrade Prosecutor State Councilor Vasilyev to correct the post of vice director for managing a special department of the Department. I didn’t know him, but he was recommended to me as a noble and honest person, and besides, I was seduced by the fact that at one time he already served in the Department of Political Affairs, therefore, he was familiar with the mechanism of this case. Further, Dzhunkovsky, however, supplements this characterization with by no means flattering words: “Then I had to repent greatly of this appointment, to admit my mistake, I was too hasty. Vasiliev turned out to be lazy and little capable of his position and was not alien to the negative methods of protection, although he was a completely decent person.
On November 3, 1915, Vasiliev was appointed a member of the Council of the Main Directorate for Press Affairs. But Vasiliev parted with the Department for only a year. The new Minister of Internal Affairs A.D. Protopopov had a friendly disposition towards him and soon after his appointment invited him to take the post of director of the Department. On September 28, 1916, the highest personal decree on the appointment of Vasiliev followed. This appointment was unexpected for many and, judging by the testimony of Vasiliev, for himself. In an interview with journalists immediately after his appointment, he said: “I spent almost all my service in the prosecutor's office, law and law are the only guiding principles. These principles, which I strove to carry out throughout my previous service, I intend to lay at the foundation of my present activity as Director of the Police Department. - In all particular individual cases, I will treat the interests of the population with complete benevolence, but, of course, to the extent that this will allow the observance of public benefit. I have no bias, no bias. In the foreground should be the observance of the highest state interests and the benefit of the many millions of the population of the Empire.
Judging by the reviews of people who knew him well, Vasiliev was a benevolent person, an experienced lawyer, he liked to advise, "train" his colleagues. But in difficult situations did not take on much. In this regard, his interview given to the correspondent of the Kolokol newspaper about his plans is characteristic: “I, the director of the Police Department, have no special program. All the activities of the Department subordinate to me are reduced to the execution of orders from above. The Minister, in charge of which the Department is located, has his own program, and I must adhere to this program ... "28
In his written explanations given to the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry, he expressed his attitude to the work more clearly: “I have always believed that the Police Department should not play any independent role, but should serve as a center where certain information is concentrated, essentially which only the Minister of the Interior should operate in one way or another. That is why I promised the latter when I took office: diligence, truthfulness and the complete absence of any business that would be done without him, the minister, knowledge.
I was convinced that I was one of the many directors of the central offices, that no special advantages were assigned to me, and that I would not, and could not, engage in any special politics, since I was not inclined to this by the nature of my character. I believed that I would only be the head of the institution, to whom I would try to instill decent principles, and that if such intentions of mine did not correspond to the types and desires of the authorities, then I would leave the post without any regret.
Such a view of one's duties explains a lot in the activities of Vasiliev himself and the institution subordinate to him in the months preceding the revolution.
These statements sound all the more unexpected since Protopopov was the Minister of the Interior at that time, a person who was not experienced in the affairs of the Police Department and in organizing a system of political investigation. Historian P. Shchegolev wrote that Vasiliev acted as a second person, played along with his minister and, apparently, assisted him in using the Police Department for personal purposes. Sending an agent to find out what is being said about the minister in government circles, reading letters from people who are of interest to the minister - this is the daily work of the director of the Police Department under Protopopov30.
This characteristic is confirmed by the statement of S.P. Beletsky, former director of the Police Department, then Deputy Minister of the Interior. In his testimony given to the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry, he wrote that Protopopov became close to Vasiliev thanks to Kurlov and Badmaev. "In Vasiliev<...>Protopopov, as he personally told me, valued mainly the exclusive devotion to his personal interests, to which Vasiliev had recently sacrificed even his old friendly ties with P.G. Kurlov"31.
There were rumors that other comrades of the minister did not want to take on the responsibility of managing the police32. In this case, obviously, Protopopov did not want to have any figure between himself and Vasiliev, preferring direct contact.
In October 1916, newspapers reported on the redistribution of powers between the Minister of the Interior and the Director of the Police Department. If earlier the director of the Department was subordinate to the Deputy Minister of the Interior, who was in charge of the Police Department, now - directly to the Minister of the Interior. In addition, “according to a special report, it was supposed to grant Vasiliev the rights of a deputy minister”33. And indeed, the highest command on this issue was soon published: “On November 25, 1916, His Imperial Majesty graciously commanded deigned to entrust the duties of Comrade Minister of the Interior in charge of the police department to the director of the department, real state adviser Vasiliev, with the right to be present for the minister in the governing Senate and the highest state institutions, as well as the right to sign papers on this department and decide current reports of an estimated and administrative nature of the Police Department”34.
The February Revolution brought many surprises to Vasiliev. In early March, he came with a letter to M.V. Rodzianko to the State Duma, in which he wrote: “I consider it my duty to bring to your attention that only today, having recovered from the events I have endured, I will come to the State Duma to place myself at the disposal of the Provisional Executive Committee of the State Duma.” On the same day, together with the letter, he was arrested and taken to the Taurida Palace35.
Subsequently, Vasiliev was kept in the Trubetskoy bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress. On September 5, due to a “morbid condition,” he was transferred to the surgical department of the Petrograd solitary prison, and in October he was released on bail36.
Subsequently, he and his wife managed to go abroad.
Vasiliev's memoirs were written in France. He spent the last years of his life in the "Russian House" in Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois, where the poor Russian emigrants of Paris found refuge.
He died in 1930, the same year that his memoirs were published in London in English. The book was written in Russian, then translated into English. Unfortunately, the Russian original could not be found, so the book is published in reverse translation. Obviously, the specifics of the book were difficult for the English translator, who was not strong enough in Russian terms relating to the police, and, perhaps, did not know all the nuances and complexities of the work of the Russian special service.

The memoirs of four representatives of the political police of tsarist Russia in the last years of its existence included in the book are not equal in content and volume, in some details they complement each other, in some they demonstrate a different assessment of the same events. Without any doubt, such a "discordance" allows you to feel more deeply the complexities and contradictions, including contradictions of a personal nature, which left a significant imprint on the nature and activities of the detective services.
All four authors talk about the same events, deeds and people: about the methods of work of the political police, about the attitude towards provocation and what they consider a provocation, about Azef, Rasputin, the murder of Karpov, the murder of Rasputin. But each of them brings his own vision of events, additional nuances, his own attitude to persons and facts. As a result, the reader receives a multidimensional, three-dimensional picture of what happened.
Drawing without embellishment and competently a picture of the local political investigation of Russia, the authors enable the reader to see real people and real institutions of this investigation, and at the same time to discard the primitive clichés that were imposed on him in the recent past.

I thank O.V. Budnitsky, D.I. Zubareva, G.S. Kana, K.N. Morozova, G.A. Smolitsky, A.V. Shmelev, M. Shrubu for information and consultations, and Professor of the University of Chicago J. Daley for copies of books published abroad and used in the preparation of this edition.

Z. Peregudova

Read here:

Zavarzin P.P. Gendarmes and revolutionaries. In the book: "Protection". Memoirs of leaders of political investigation. Volume 2, M., New Literary Review, 2004.

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On August 14, 1881, Russian Tsar Alexander III signed a decree on the creation of a new secret service - the security department. The Okhrana became the successor to the third department of the Ministry of the Interior and the detective police of the Russian Empire.
The security departments reported directly to the Police Department of the Ministry of the Interior, which gave the general direction of the search activities of the departments and disposed of their personnel.
In the system of state administration of the Russian Empire in the late XIX - early XX century, it occupied one of the most important places.

Tasks of the security department

The main task of the Okhrana was to centralize the service of the gendarmerie and the police in order to more effectively persecute anarchists, terrorists and nihilists who threatened the very foundations of tsarism. A foreign intelligence department was set up to monitor them abroad.

Location of the security department

The headquarters of the security department was located in St. Petersburg, on the Fontanka Embankment, 16.

Okhrana structure

On May 12, 1886, the staff of the St. Petersburg Security Department was approved, which from April 9, 1887 became known as the "Department for the Protection of Public Security and Order in the City of St. Petersburg."
The St. Petersburg Security Department, being an organ of the Police Department of the Ministry of the Interior, was directly subordinate to the St. Petersburg Mayor. The department included:
- general office (consisted of eight tables),
- security team
- Central spy squad,
- Registration office.

On November 1, 1880, by order of the Minister of Internal Affairs M.T. Loris-Melikov, the Moscow Security Department was created. For some time it existed as the “Secret Investigation Department under the Office of the Moscow Chief Police Chief”, and in 1881 it was renamed the “Department for the Protection of Public Security and Order in the City of Moscow”.
The Moscow Security Department, also being an organ of the Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, was directly subordinate to the Moscow mayor.
In 1900, the Department for the Protection of Public Security and Order was established in the city of Warsaw. .
On August 13, 1902, Security Departments were created in the cities: Vilna, Yekaterinoslav, Kazan, Kyiv, Odessa, Saratov, Tiflis, Kharkov.
The Police Department placed at the direct disposal of the heads of the security departments the necessary sums for the maintenance of the office, secret and surveillance agents, and other costs of the search.
In 1913, on the initiative of the Deputy Minister of the Interior, the head of the police, V.F. Dzhunkovsky, the liquidation of security departments began. By the February Revolution of 1917, only three of them remained: the Petrograd, Moscow and Warsaw Security Departments.
At the head of the Security Departments were the headquarters officers of the Separate Corps of Gendarmes (officers with a rank not lower than a lieutenant colonel or colonel).

The chief of the Moscow bureau was an assistant to the head of the security department.
Headquarters of the foreign intelligence department The Okhrana, created in 1883, was located in France - in Paris, at the consulate on Rue Grenelle. This department monitored Russian emigrants.
An experienced policeman, Piotr Rachkovsky, who headed the foreign intelligence department from 1884 to 1902, extended the surveillance network to the whole of Western Europe and modeled his department on the model of French counterintelligence.
The Russo-Japanese War of 1905 forces the Okhrana to cooperate with military intelligence. So, General Komissarov was instructed to create a department that would monitor foreign embassies in Moscow too: in particular, to extract data from code books.

Number of security departments

The total number of employees of all security departments was less than 1000 people, of which 200 worked in St. Petersburg. In most of the provinces there were no more than 2-3 employees of the security department.
In addition to the official staff, the security department had special agents - sleuths who conducted surveillance, and informants who were sent to political parties.
There was a rather strict selection in place of the filler. The candidate had to be "honest, sober, courageous, dexterous, developed, quick-witted, hardy, patient, persevering, cautious." They usually took young people no older than 30 years old with an inconspicuous appearance.
As for informers, according to the instructions for recruiting secret agents, preference was given to "suspected or already involved in political affairs, weak-willed revolutionaries who were disillusioned or offended by the party." Payments for secret agents ranged from 5 to 500 rubles per month, depending on the status and benefits.
Persons who were held accountable for state crimes, as well as those who were secret employees, could not hold positions in the security departments.

Abolition of the Okhrana

Immediately after the February Revolution of 1917, by the decision of the Provisional Government, all security departments were abolished on March 4, 1917. Part of their archives perished in fires in the February days.

Information sources:

1. Wikipedia site
2. Faligo, Coffer " The World History intelligence services"
3. “What did the Okhrana do in Tsarist Russia”

For acquaintance I offer documentary material in the memoirs of the last head of the Petrograd Security Department of the Police Department of the Russian Empire, Major General Globachev K. I. "The Truth about the Russian Revolution: Memoirs of the Former Head of the Petrograd Security Department":

Petrograd security department.

Short description: His organization, undercover part, investigative part, searches, office. Outdoor surveillance, Security team, Central spy detachment, Registration department, Head of the Department, Tasks of the Security department, Revolutionary and labor movement, Public sentiments.

I was appointed head of the Petrograd security department in January 1915. Its official name was: "Department for the protection of the general neck security and order in Petrograd", It was the largest of the local political search bodies in RUSSIA. It consisted of up to 600 employees and was divided into the following departments:

1) the Security Department itself.
2) Security team.
3) Central detachment.
4) Registration department.

Actually, the Security Department had the following organization: an intelligence unit, an investigative unit, surveillance, an office and an archive.
The undercover unit was the base of the entire political search, since all the materials received directly from undercover sources were concentrated here. The work was distributed among experienced gendarmerie officers and officials, who were in charge of each part of the intelligence coverage assigned to him. So, several officers were in charge of covering the activities of the Social Democrat Bolshevik Party, several - the Social Democrats Mensheviks, several Socialist Revolutionaries and People's Socialists, several - social movement, several anarchist groups and a special officer - the labor movement in general.

The building of the St. Petersburg City Administration. Gorokhovaya street, 2.

Each of these officers had his own secret collaborators who served as sources of information; he had personal meetings with them in safe houses and led these employees in such a way as to, on the one hand, protect them from the possibility of failure, and on the other hand, he monitored the correctness of the information given and the prevention of provocation. The information received, for each organization, was specially checked by external observation and personal agents, and then developed in detail, that is, clarifications and installations of persons and addresses were made, connections and relations were determined, etc. Agent information, after verification and development was completed, was acquired in such a way way the nature of complete certainty and reliability. When this organization was sufficiently examined, it was liquidated and all the material seized during the searches was delivered to the Security Department, namely, to its undercover department, where it was put in order, that is, everything criminal, having the nature of physical evidence, was selected for further consequences. Systematized material, lists of searched and arrested persons, as well as an undercover note on this case, were transferred to the investigative unit.

In the investigative unit, the detainees and witnesses were interrogated, material evidence was presented, examined, additional clarifications were made, and if necessary, searches and arrests, and then the entire case was transferred to the judicial investigator, to the provincial gendarmerie department or to the military authority, depending on which the direction accepted the case: that is, whether an investigation was initiated, or an inquiry in the order of 1035 Art. of the Charter of criminal proceedings, or in an administrative order. All investigations were carried out within the time limits established by law, and the cases arrested along with the transfer were transferred to further detention for the persons liable.

House of the St. Petersburg Mayor, Gorokhovaya 2.

The conduct of the searches itself was entrusted to the police, sometimes with the participation of officials of the Security Department (in more serious cases) and always with the participation of attesting witnesses; all selected material was named in the protocols, sealed, and in this form was delivered from the local police station to the Security Department.

In order to quickly identify persons and set addresses, each police station in the capital had its own special police officer who carried out this work and who, in addition, was charged with the duty of twice a day by telephone to report to the Security Department about the slightest incidents in the area of ​​​​the station, and in emergency and serious cases, he made a report immediately. All current correspondence, telegraph communications, monetary reporting, treasury, business management, etc. were concentrated in the office, which was in charge of the clerk of the Department.

The office had an archive and a card alphabet, which constituted a very significant part of the office, since all the persons who had ever been on the affairs of the Department were entered into the alphabet, with references to case and page numbers. For several years, the alphabet represented a very solid registration of persons who had passed on cases and, thus, if it was necessary to make an inquiry about any person, it would take no more than five minutes. the most detailed information. Information about persons who did not pass through the cases of the Petrograd Security Department was obtained just as easily with the help of their police officers or by telegraph inquiries to local search authorities throughout the Russian Empire.

The Surveillance Department consisted of 100 full-time observers, or filers, two heads of groups of officials, two of their assistants, and a small office (installations, reports, etc.). The fillers accepted people who had completed military service, mainly from non-commissioned officers, literate, developed and of good moral qualities. For convenience of management and work, the fillers were divided into two groups, each of which was subordinate to its head of external surveillance. Each group was given observation tasks, according to which the number of observation posts was determined. Some of the lieutenants conducted observation on cabbies, for which the Security Department kept several cabby horses with teams. The significance of the spy detachment was very important, since it was a verification apparatus for intelligence information and the development of such, and, moreover, auxiliary for examining the activities and relations of a given organization. All observational data were recorded in diaries and reported daily by the group leaders to the head of the Department.

The internal order of the Department, office work and supervision were the responsibility of the assistant head of the Department. Throughout the day and night, the Department was on duty: one officer, two police guards, an official on duty in the office, and attendants and filers on duty.

The security team consisted of 300 security officers and two officers and was subordinate to the second assistant to the head of the department. She occupied a special room at Morskaya Street, No. 26, where there were special classes for instructing the ranks of the team in their duties. The purpose of the security team was: the protection of His Majesty along the paths of His following in the capital, the protection of the imperial theaters, the protection of the highest persons and the protection of some dignitaries as needed. Selected persons of the best reputation were accepted into the security team, from those who had passed the ranks of the army in the positions of non-commissioned officers, well literate and developed.

The central spy detachment consisted of 75 spotter observers under the command of a special officer subordinate to the head of the department. The detachment was made up of specially selected and experienced fillers and was intended to examine serious organizations not only in the capital, but also outside it. Parts of it were sometimes sent to the provinces at the disposal of local search authorities for the more careful and successful development of any case. In addition, the ranks of the detachment carried out especially secret tasks of observation and protection. At the highest passages, they were entrusted with the task of monitoring the line of travel. The central detachment possessed all the means to successfully carry out the tasks assigned to it, such as: makeup, costumes and accessories of small street vendors, newspapermen, etc. There were people with higher education, there were both ordinary women and ladies.

Office of the head of the St. Petersburg security department.

The registration department consisted of 30 (the number fluctuated) police officers and an officer - the head of the department, subordinate to the head of the Security Department. The purpose of the department was to observe and register an unreliable element coming to the capital and living in hotels, furnished houses, rooms, etc. To do this, the whole city was divided into districts, which included several police stations and which were under the jurisdiction of a special police supervisor . The latter, in all the premises entrusted to his supervision, had his own agents of hotel servants, managers, porters, janitors, etc. In this way, it was possible not only to collect information about the identity of the suspected person, but also to carry out the most thorough inspection of all his property, without inciting there is no suspicion on his part. In addition, the registration department checked in detail and by telegraph inquiries at the places of registration the authenticity and legality of the personal documents of suspected persons. This work was very productive and gave the Security Department very valuable information about the people arriving in the capital. The ranks of the registration department, and often the head of it, during the highest trips for temporary residence in the provinces, were sent there in advance to register the local population and to help the local search agency.

Office of the head of the St. Petersburg security department.

All departments of the Security Department were personally led by the head of the Security Department, and he also established the order of work. Heads of departments, officers in charge of agents, and officials in charge of external surveillance made daily reports in person or by telephone to the head of the Security Department, receiving all tasks and instructions from him. Not a single detail of the daily life of the capital should have escaped him.

The opinion was rooted in society that the power of the head of the Security Department, especially in Petrograd, was unlimited. This opinion is completely wrong. All the rights and duties of the head of the Security Department were strictly regulated, and in the field of preventing and suppressing state crimes, his power was extremely limited; firstly, by law, and secondly, by the power of various influences of persons who are in an official position above him. This second circumstance positively tied the hands of the head of the Security Department when he applied completely legal measures in the fight against the revolutionary movement. The initiative to liquidate criminal organizations and individuals, of course, was in his hands, but the execution of the liquidation itself required the sanction of at least a Deputy Minister of the Interior or even the Minister himself, and such a sanction was easily given when it came to the underground, workers' circles or nothing. not significant persons, but it was a completely different matter if among the persons scheduled for arrest there was at least one person who occupied any official or public position; then all sorts of frictions, delays began, irrefutable evidence of guilt was required in advance, ties, immunity by the rank of a member of the State Duma, and so on, were taken into account. and so on. The case, despite the interests of state security, was postponed, or a categorical "veto" was imposed. If the head of the Security Department, due to exceptional urgency, carried out the liquidation without a preliminary report, then, firstly, it was put on his mind, and secondly, if among the arrested persons there were persons of the above-mentioned category, then they were released in the shortest possible time by order top management. Naturally, in this order of things, in the process in which the revolutionary and rebellious mood grew, it was mainly the workers' circles and the periphery that were responsible, while the leading intelligentsia slipped away and continued to do their criminal work.

Officers and lower ranks of the St. Petersburg police.

On the exact basis of the law and the highest approved Regulations on the protection and on areas declared under martial law, each detainee was charged within the first day and the arrested person was held in custody for no more than two weeks - under guard and no more than one month - under martial law , during what periods he was either released due to the lack of sufficient data revealing his guilt, or transferred on the basis of the Charter of Criminal Procedure to the person who carried out further investigation and sent the case to the appropriate court, that is, to the judicial investigator or the head of the provincial gendarme department . Those arrested in exceptional cases were kept for a day or two at the Security Department, but in conditions far better than in general places of detention, and then transferred to city prisons or arrest houses. Thus, the head of the Security Department did not play the role of an accuser or a judge and could not detain anyone indefinitely, as was commonly thought, but arrested only active revolutionaries, and even then with great discrimination, and brought them to legal responsibility.

The security department with all departments was officially subordinate to the Petrograd mayor, but the latter did not enter into the essence and technique of work. The head of the Security Department was the Police Department and mainly the Deputy Minister of the Interior, the head of the political department, sometimes the Minister himself. The tasks of the Security Department were very broad: active struggle against the revolutionary movement, information about the moods of different sections of the population, monitoring the labor movement, statistics of daily incidents, registration of the population, protection of the highest persons and dignitaries. In addition, the Security Department was assigned special secret tasks that were not directly related to the listed duties, depending on the requirements of the Police Department, the Minister of the Interior, a person of the imperial family, and sometimes the military authorities. Based on all the information material received by the Security Department, reports were compiled and presented to: the Police Department, Deputy Minister of the Interior, Minister, Mayor, Commander-in-Chief of the Petrograd Military District and the Palace Commandant. Thus, all these persons were aware of the political situation and moods of the current moment. The nature of these reports can be partly familiarized with the passages quoted in Blok's article published in Volume IV of the Archive of the Russian Revolution. From these excerpts it can be judged that there was almost no issue that was not covered by the Security Department as it was in reality, and that the inevitability of the imminent catastrophe was clear.

In addition to written reports, daily oral reports were also made by the head of the Security Department:

Director of the Police Department, Mayor and Deputy Minister of the Interior. In urgent cases, the Minister and the Commander-in-Chief.

Office of the 2nd police station of the Spassky part of St. Petersburg. Photo by K. Bulla. Around 1913.

The security department, like all other bodies of political investigation in the empire, was a technically well-organized apparatus for actively fighting the revolutionary movement, but it was completely powerless to fight the ever-growing public revolutionary mood of the awakening intelligentsia, for which other measures of a nationwide nature were needed. , independent of the Security Department. In this area, the Security Department gave only exhaustive information, advice and wishes, which stubbornly kept silent.
As for the fight against the underground revolutionary movement, this was carried out by the Security Department very productively and successfully, and it can definitely be said that the work of secret communities and organizations in Russia has never been so weak and paralyzed as at the time of the coup.

In Petrograd, in the last two years before the revolution, the following revolutionary organizations were active: the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, the Russian Social-Democratic Party of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, and various anarchist groups. The first eked out a miserable existence until 1916, from which time as an active organization it completely ceases to exist. Social-Democratic Party Bolsheviks, the most vital, a number of successive liquidations led to complete inactivity, but still had an impact on the working environment and fought for its existence. Social-Democratic Party The Mensheviks mainly used legal opportunities, such as: trade unions, cultural and educational societies, the Central Military Industrial Committee, etc. With the entry of the Mensheviks into the latter, their influence on the working circles of Petrograd increased significantly. Anarchist groups arose from time to time, and their number increased as the moment of revolution approached. These groups were positively completely liquidated, and at the time of the upheaval almost all of their members were kept in prisons awaiting trial. The revolution automatically freed all anarchists and the criminal element related to them from custody, which explains the growth of the anarchist movement under the Provisional Government; suffice it to recall black cars, the Durnovo dacha, the Moscow outpost, etc.

When, already after the revolution, members of the former imperial government and I were detained in the Ministerial Pavilion of the State Duma, those who had been arrested for belonging to various political organizations and released from places of detention in a revolutionary manner visited us and expressed surprise why the coup had taken place so successfully. that this is a real surprise for them and that they cannot take it personally. And really, what kind of forces did they possess at the time of the coup? Everything that was talented and most energetic among them was in exile, in exile, or was placed in prisons. It was only after the coup that all this rushed to the capital, fearing to be late, so to speak, to the division of the public pie or the hat analysis. Of the more prominent Bolshevik figures, for example, who later occupied official posts under the government of Lenin, there were in Russia: Podvoisky, who served in the city government, but was arrested in 1916, and Alexander Shlyapnikov, who arrived shortly before the coup from abroad, an illegal immigrant who lived in Petrograd on someone else's passport, but he was scheduled for detention in the shortest possible time.

The work of all underground organizations was based on the working masses of Petrograd. The number of workers in the capital during the war, and especially by 1917, increased significantly in comparison with the pre-war period due to the fact that almost all large enterprises and small, significantly expanded ones, worked for defense. The total number of workers in Petrograd reached 300,000 people. The mood of the working masses changed in accordance with our successes or defeats in the theater of war, and it was as sensitive as the mood of all other sections of the population to external successes. Already from the beginning of 1915, very favorable ground was being created for revolutionary propaganda, but since the underground organizations were not strong enough to completely lead the working class, agitation was conducted mainly for improving the material situation with a gradual transition to purely political demands.

The economic situation of the country, which is in crisis due to a war unprecedented in its size, fully contributed to this agitation. 1915 and 1916 marked by a progressive struggle between workers and employers through economic strikes. But factories and factories went on strike separately: some ended the strike, others started; sometimes whole groups of enterprises went on strike; the number of strikers sometimes reached 200,000, but the strike never turned into a general strike. Strikes almost always ended in the satisfaction of the demands of the workers, that is, wages increased. There were also political one-day strikes, but they were not particularly successful and did not capture the entire working mass. These strikes were usually timed to coincide with the anniversaries of various political events, for example, January 9 - the memory of the revolution of 1905, April 4 - the memory of the Lena events, etc.
After the Zimmerwald and Kienthal socialist conferences of 1915, new defeatist slogans adopted at these conferences penetrated into the working masses of Petrograd under the influence of agitation. All the Bolshevik Social Democrats and a part of the Socialist Revolutionaries headed by Kerensky joined the defeatist movement. All the working groups that joined the defeatist movement under the slogan "war against war" nevertheless did not abandon work for the defense and did not even sabotage them. In general, stubbornness in strikes was unprofitable, since otherwise than those liable for military service had to go to the front.

But in general, the mood of the working masses could not be called hostile to the existing order, and if there were defeatists among them, the majority still sincerely believed in victory, and not out of fear of being sent to the front, but out of a consciousness of duty to the Motherland and brothers. The material situation of the Petrograd workers was very satisfactory, for, in spite of the growing cost of living, wages progressed and did not lag behind its demands. It can be said that, in material terms, the Petrograd workers were in a much better position. best conditions than the rest of the population of the capital. For example, a contingent of employees public service was much less wealthy than the workers.
With the progressive high cost, petty officials literally starved, and if their salaries were sometimes raised, then the increases always almost lag behind the needs of life. This was partly the reason for the creation of a whole class of embittered bureaucratic proletariat.

The population of Petrograd, which before the war numbered barely one million people, increased by the end of 1916 to three million (including the surrounding area), which, of course, created, along with the progressive high cost, very difficult and other living conditions (housing problem, food, fuel, transport and etc.). All the spiritual interests of this three million population naturally focused on the course of hostilities and on the internal economic and political situation of the country. The population reacted sensitively to any changes at the front, to everything that was said among the people, in the markets, in the State Duma, the State Council, in the press, what was done at the Court and in the government. Each new news and rumor varied and was discussed by each according to his own speculation and desire. Society for the most part fed on all sorts of absurd and false rumors, where the truth was deliberately distorted.

Any failures, both external and internal, were almost always due to treason or betrayal, and all misfortunes were attributed to the Sovereign, his Court and his ministers. The State Duma set the tone for everything and used the difficult time of state life to revolutionize the people. It was not a business-like representative body, obliged to raise patriotic feelings in such difficult moments and unite everyone on the desire to help the Sovereign and his government, but on the contrary, it was that opposition center that used the moment of exceptional tension in the country to revolutionary excite all classes of the population against existing order. When a "progressive bloc" was formed from members of the State Duma and the State Council, it became clear that a cruel war had been declared on the Russian government and the throne from within. Not only Petrograd, but the whole of Russia, listened to the opinion of these people's representatives, believing that at the same time a war was being waged against an external and internal enemy in the person of the monarch and his government. In a word, one could safely say that by the end of 1916 such a mood had arisen that there was almost no one in the government camp, and that in the event of a decisive attack on it, no one would defend it.

The press, intended to reflect the sentiments of society, actually created these sentiments in a decidedly oppositional and revolutionary direction. Even such semi-officials as Novoye Vremya took the side of the notorious public and took the path of fighting the government; what can we say about other newspapers that were in the right hands of the people of the left camp. Military censorship, which seized part of the printed material after it was set, forced newspapers to come out with a large number of passes (white spaces), which made them even more popular as bodies supposedly fighting for law and truth.
This is the situation in which the work of the Security Department in Petrograd proceeded. When not only the public, but even government bodies, the ministers themselves, the military authorities, representative bodies and even those surrounding the Sovereign, not only did not sympathize with the struggle against the ever-growing revolutionary movement, but on the contrary, some consciously, while others unconsciously pushed Russia into the abyss.

February coup 1917.

Subsequently, in the first days after the coup, Kerensky and his closest associates tried to explain the shooting from machine guns by saying that the machine guns had allegedly been placed in advance on the orders of Khabalov, Protopopov, Balk and mine, and that the police allegedly fired from the machine guns, but such an accusation did not withstand any criticism. and he had to give up this stupidity,
since he did not collect any evidence, but, it seems, on the contrary, all the data were collected that at first the workers fired from machine guns.

Kerensky needed to launch such an accusation in order to stir up as much as possible the hatred of the dark masses against the old order in general and against the police in particular.

Those atrocities that were committed by the rebellious mob during the February days in relation to the ranks of the police, the corps of gendarmes and even combat officers, defy description. They are in no way inferior to what the Bolsheviks subsequently did with their victims in their Chekas.

I speak only of Petrograd, without even mentioning what, as everyone now knows, went on in Kronstadt. The policemen, hiding in basements and attics, were literally torn to pieces, some were crucified at the walls, some were torn into two parts, tied by the legs to two cars, some were chopped up with bumps. There were cases when the arrested officers of the police and some of the officers of the police did not have time to change into civilian clothes and hide, they were so mercilessly killed. For example, one bailiff was tied with ropes to a couch and burned alive with her. The bailiff of the Novoderevensky district, who had just undergone a severe operation to remove appendicitis, was dragged out of bed and thrown out of the mud into the street, where he immediately died. The crowd that broke into the provincial gendarmerie department severely beat the head of the department, Lieutenant General Volkov, broke his leg, and then dragged him to Kerensky in the State Duma. Seeing the wounded and disfigured Volkov, Kerensky assured him that he would be in complete safety, but he did not leave him in the Duma and sent him to the hospital, which he could do, but ordered him to be taken to one of the temporary places of detention, where on the same night the drunken chief of the guard shot him. Combat officers, especially in senior ranks, were arrested on the streets and beaten. I personally saw Adjutant General Baranov, who was severely beaten on the street during his arrest and brought to the State Duma with a bandaged head.

These days, unknown groups of persons wandered around the city, carrying out almost general searches, accompanied by violence, robbery and murder, under the guise of allegedly searching for counter-revolutionaries. Some apartments were completely plundered, and the stolen property, including furniture, was frankly loaded onto carts and taken away in front of everyone. Not only government institutions were completely destroyed, but very often private houses and apartments. For example, Count Frederiks's own house was looted and completely burned.
Any number of such examples could be cited. Kerensky called all this at that time "the wrath of the people."

Konstantin Ivanovich Globachev (April 24 (May 6), 1870 - December 1, 1941, New York, USA) - Russian police administrator, head of the Petrograd security department, major general. Brother of Colonel V. I. Globachev and Major General N. I. Globachev.

He graduated from the cadet corps and the 1st military Pavlovsk school, two classes of the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff. In OKZH from 1903 - adjutant of the Petrokovsky GZhU, in reserve at the Baku and Grodno GZhU (1904), head of the ZhU in Lodz and Lassky counties (since 1905), head of the Warsaw security department (since 1909), head of the Nizhny Novgorod GZhU (since 1912) , head of the Sevastopol ZhU (since 1914), head of the Petrograd security department (since 1915), in 1915 - major general.

Reference materials:

1) Globachev K. I. The truth about the Russian revolution: Memoirs of the former head of the Petrograd security department. - M.: Russian Political Encyclopedia (ROSSPEN), 2009.
2) Newspaper illustrations "Petrogradskaya Gazeta" from the Presidential Library.
3) Some of the photographs were borrowed from the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, and the State Museum of the Political History of Russia.

The security department appeared in Russia in the 1860s, when a wave of political terror swept the country. Gradually, the tsarist secret police turned into a secret organization, whose employees, in addition to fighting the revolutionaries, solved their own private tasks.

Special agency

One of the most important roles in the tsarist secret police was played by the so-called special agents, whose inconspicuous work allowed the police to create an effective system of surveillance and prevention of opposition movements. These included filers - "surveillance agents" and informers - "auxiliary agents".

On the eve of the First World War, there were 70,500 informers and about 1,000 fillers. It is known that from 50 to 100 surveillance agents were deployed daily in both capitals.

There was a rather strict selection in place of the filler. The candidate had to be "honest, sober, courageous, dexterous, developed, quick-witted, hardy, patient, persevering, cautious." They usually took young people no older than 30 years old with an inconspicuous appearance.

The informers were hired for the most part from among the porters, janitors, clerks, and passport officers. Auxiliary agents were required to report all suspicious individuals to the district warden who worked with them.
Unlike fillers, informers were not full-time employees, and therefore did not receive a permanent salary. Usually, for information that, when checked, turned out to be “substantial and useful,” they were given a reward from 1 to 15 rubles.

Sometimes they were paid with things. So, Major General Alexander Spiridovich recalled how he bought new galoshes for one of the informants. “And then he failed his comrades, failed with some kind of frenzy. This is what the galoshes did,” the officer wrote.

Perlustrators

There were people in the detective police who did a rather unseemly job - reading personal correspondence, called perusal. Baron Alexander Benckendorff introduced this tradition even before the creation of the security department, calling it "a very useful thing." The reading of personal correspondence became especially active after the assassination of Alexander II.

"Black cabinets", created under Catherine II, worked in many cities of Russia - Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv, Odessa, Kharkov, Tiflis. The conspiracy was such that the employees of these offices did not know about the existence of offices in other cities.
Some of the "black cabinets" had their own specifics. According to the Russkoye Slovo newspaper of April 1917, if in St. Petersburg they specialized in reading letters from dignitaries, then in Kyiv they studied the correspondence of prominent emigrants - Gorky, Plekhanov, Savinkov.

According to data for 1913, 372,000 letters were opened and 35,000 extracts were made. Such labor productivity is astonishing, considering that the staff of illustrators was only 50 people, who were joined by 30 postal workers.
It was quite a long and laborious work. Sometimes letters had to be deciphered, copied, exposed to acids or alkalis in order to reveal the hidden text. And only then suspicious letters were forwarded to the search authorities.

Yours among strangers

For more effective work of the security department, the Police Department has created an extensive network of "internal agents" that infiltrate various parties and organizations and exercise control over their activities. According to the instructions for recruiting secret agents, preference was given to "suspected or already involved in political affairs, weak-willed revolutionaries who were disillusioned or offended by the party."
Payments for secret agents ranged from 5 to 500 rubles per month, depending on the status and benefits. The Okhrana encouraged their agents to move up the party ladder and even helped them in this matter by arresting higher-ranking party members.

With great caution, the police treated those who voluntarily expressed a desire to serve as the protection of state order, since there were many random people among them. As a circular from the Police Department shows, during 1912 the Okhrana refused the services of 70 people "as untrustworthy." For example, the exiled settler Feldman recruited by the Okhrana, when asked about the reason for giving false information, answered that he was without any means of subsistence and went on perjury for the sake of reward.

Provocateurs

The activities of the recruited agents were not limited to espionage and the transfer of information to the police, they often provoked actions for which members of an illegal organization could be arrested. The agents reported the place and time of the action, and it was no longer difficult for the trained police to detain the suspects. According to the creator of the CIA, Allen Dulles, it was the Russians who raised provocation to the level of art. According to him, "this was the main means by which the tsarist secret police attacked the trail of revolutionaries and dissidents." The sophistication of Russian agents provocateurs Dulles compared with the characters of Dostoevsky.

The main Russian provocateur is called Yevno Azef - both a police agent and the leader of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. It is not without reason that he is considered the organizer of the murders of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and Minister of the Interior Plehve. Azef was the highest paid secret agent in the empire, receiving 1,000 rubles. per month.

A very successful provocateur was Lenin's "comrade-in-arms" Roman Malinovsky. The Okhrana agent regularly helped the police to locate underground printing houses, reported on secret meetings and secret meetings, but Lenin still did not want to believe in the betrayal of his comrade. In the end, with the assistance of the police, Malinovsky achieved his election to the State Duma, moreover, as a member of the Bolshevik faction.

Strange inactivity

The activities of the secret police were connected with events that left an ambiguous judgment about themselves. One of them was the assassination of Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin. On September 1, 1911, at the Kiev Opera House, an anarchist and a secret informer of the Okhrana, Dmitry Bogrov, without any interference, mortally wounded Stolypin with two shots point-blank. Moreover, at that moment, neither Nicholas II nor members of the royal family were nearby, who, according to the plan of events, were supposed to be with the minister
.

On the fact of the murder, the head of the Palace Guard Alexander Spiridovich and the head of the Kyiv security department Nikolai Kulyabko were involved in the investigation. However, on behalf of Nicholas II, the investigation was unexpectedly terminated.
Some researchers, in particular Vladimir Zhukhrai, believe that Spiridovich and Kulyabko were directly involved in the murder of Stolypin. Many facts point to this. First of all, suspiciously easily experienced Okhrana officers believed in Bogrov's legend about a certain Social Revolutionary who was going to kill Stolypin, and moreover, they allowed him to get into the theater building with a weapon in order to allegedly expose the alleged killer.

Zhukhrai claims that Spiridovich and Kulyabko not only knew that Bogrov was going to shoot Stolypin, but also contributed to this in every possible way. Stolypin, apparently, guessed that a conspiracy was brewing against him. Shortly before the murder, he dropped the following phrase: "They will kill me and the members of the guard will kill me."

Okhrana abroad

In 1883, a foreign secret police was created in Paris to monitor Russian emigre revolutionaries. And there was someone to follow: these were the leaders of the People's Will, Lev Tikhomirov and Marina Polonskaya, and the publicist Pyotr Lavrov, and the anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin. It is interesting that the agents included not only visitors from Russia, but also French civilians.

From 1884 to 1902, the foreign secret police was headed by Pyotr Rachkovsky - these were the heydays of its activity. In particular, under Rachkovsky, agents defeated a large Narodnaya Volya printing house in Switzerland. But Rachkovsky was also involved in suspicious connections - he was accused of collaborating with the French government.

When the director of the Police Department, Plehve, received a report about Rachkovsky's dubious contacts, he immediately sent General Silvestrov to Paris to check on the activities of the head of the foreign secret police. Silvestrov was killed, and soon the agent who reported on Rachkovsky was also found dead.

Moreover, Rachkovsky was suspected of involvement in the murder of Plehve himself. Despite compromising materials, high patrons from the environment of Nicholas II were able to ensure the immunity of the secret agent.

The topic is of course well-known, but suddenly someone will be surprised by the scale of all this, as well as the actual efficiency and result.

It is possible that one of the reasons for the Stalinist repressions of the 1930s was the search for a part of the “enemies of the people” from among the provocateurs of the tsarist secret police. By 1917, the Okhrana had only full-time agents of about 10 thousand people among the revolutionary parties. Taking into account temporary, freelance agents ("tricksters") - more than 50 thousand. For example, among the Bolsheviks, including the top of the party, there were more than 2 thousand of them. Okhrana agents permeated all opposition movements in tsarist Russia.

At Soviet power in the 1920s, some of them were tried, and then the scale of infiltration by agents of the Okhrana opposition was revealed.

Between 1880 and 1917, there were about 10,000 secret agents in the archives of the Police Department. And this is not a complete list. Several times even before the Revolution, when the leadership of the department changed, part of the files on agents were destroyed. A significant part of the documents on them was destroyed in February-March 1917 during the pogrom of police archives. The total number of agents introduced into the environment of the opposition parties could reach 20 thousand people. Those. those who received money for their activities. And this is not counting the so-called. "stuffers" - secret employees of the gendarmerie departments, who supplied information sporadically, or broke with the secret police after completing a small number of cases. Together with them, the number of Okhrana agents in the revolutionary parties could reach 50 thousand people.

This fact must be taken into account when we talk about the causes of repressions in the 1920s and 30s (and even in the 1940s and 50s). It was only after October 1917 that the scale of the infiltration of agents into the environment of the opposition, including the Bolsheviks, was revealed. Paranoia overtook the top of the Bolsheviks, especially considering the fact that, as mentioned above, some of the cases against provocateurs were destroyed. Everyone could suspect the other that he was a secret agent of the Okhrana, especially by that time - by the mid-1920s - it was already known about the case of the provocateur Malinovsky, who headed the Bolshevik faction in the State Duma, Lenin's favorite, as well as about the cases of dozens more provocateurs. Part of the Bolsheviks even suspected Stalin that he was a secret agent of the gendarmerie, and what can we say about the less significant figures of the Bolshevik Party.

Moreover, many of the provocateurs were double agents - both Russian secret police and foreign intelligence services. This is also in the future, in the 1920s and 30s, it gave the OGPU / NKVD a reason to look for "spies under the beds."

The book by Vladimir Ignatov "Scammers in the history of Russia and the USSR" (published by "Veche", 2014) tells about the setting up of a system of secret agents in the Russian Empire and the USSR. One of the chapters of the book tells how this system functioned in late tsarist times. We present a small excerpt from this chapter.

***
Contrary to popular belief, only a small part of them (secret agents) managed to be uncovered before the overthrow of the autocracy.
The Social Democrats have faced police provocations before. What was new and unexpected for many of them was the involvement in provocative activities of the leading workers who had come to the fore during the period of the first revolution. Just as the participants in the "going to the people" once idealized the peasantry, the Marxist intellectuals did not escape the idealization of the workers. In 1909, Inessa Armand stated with bitterness and bewilderment: provocateurism is becoming massive, it is spreading "among intelligent workers, who, in fact, as opposed to personal interests, undoubtedly, have a conscious class instinct." “Some of the comrades here,” she wrote, referring to Moscow, “even claimed that it was precisely among the intelligent workers that this phenomenon was now most widespread.”

(The destruction of the police archive in Petrograd (Ekaterininsky Canal, 103) during the days of the February Revolution)

In Moscow, the Okhrana recruited such well-known party workers in the revolutionary environment as A.A. Polyakov, A.S. Romanov, A.K. Marakushev. There were workers provocateurs in St. Petersburg, for example, V.M. Abrosimov, I.P. Sesitsky, V.E. Shurkanov, who actively worked in the union of metalworkers. The informers were registered with the Police Department, and a file was filed against each of them, containing information about his personality, profession, membership in revolutionary organizations, party nicknames, etc. A file with information about secret employees was kept in the Special Section of the Police Department.

He did not spare money for "information". For example, the provocateur R.V. Malinovsky, a member of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, had a salary of 700 rubles. per month (the governor's salary was 500 rubles). The writer M.A. Osorgin, who analyzed the archives of the Okhrana after February, reports a curious incident: two Bolshevik underground members who belonged to different trends in the party met by chance and argued. Both wrote a report to the secret police about the conversation and about the interlocutor - both were provocateurs. And in the party there were only 10 thousand people for the whole of Russia! (Of these, as mentioned above, only 2070 Okhrana agents were documented).

The activities of Anna Yegorovna Serebryakova, a secret agent, are known, the experience of cooperation with the Moscow Security Department totaled 24 years. Serebryakova (born in 1857) graduated from the Moscow Higher Women's Courses of Professor V.I. Guerrier, led the political department for foreign literature in the newspaper "Russian Courier". Participated in the work of the Red Cross Society for political prisoners. She supplied the visitors of her club-salon with Marxist literature, provided an apartment for meetings. The Bolsheviks A.V. Lunacharsky, N.E. Bauman, A.I. Elizarova (the elder sister of V.I. Lenin), V.A. Obukh, V.P. Nogin, legal Marxist P.B. Struve and many others. The Moscow Committee of the RSDLP met in her house in 1898. From 1885 to 1908 she was a secret employee of the Moscow Security Department. Undercover aliases "Mamasha", "Ace", "Subbotina" and others. After the arrest of her husband, the head of the Moscow security department G.P. Sudeikin, under the threat of arrest, forced her to agree to work as an agent for the Police Department.

She handed over to the Okhrana several revolutionary groups, the Social Democratic organization Workers' Union, the governing bodies of the Bund, the Social Democratic organization Southern Workers, and the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP. In her "asset" is the liquidation of the illegal printing house "People's Law" in Smolensk and many other "merits", including the arrest in 1905 of the leaders of the committee for the preparation of the uprising in Moscow. Throughout her career as an agent, Serebryakova received monthly large sums of maintenance from the funds of the Police Department.

The leaders of the Moscow Security Department, the Police Department and the Minister of Internal Affairs P. Stolypin highly appreciated the activities of Serebryakova as an agent in the fight against the revolutionary underground. On their initiative, she was paid lump-sum allowances. For example, in 1908, 5000 rubles. In February 1911, at the request of the Minister of the Interior, Emperor Nicholas II approved the appointment of Serebryakova for a lifetime pension of 100 rubles a month.

After the October Revolution, when the new government began searching for and prosecuting former agents of the Police Department, Serebryakova was exposed. Court hearings in her case were held in the building of the Moscow District Court from April 16 to April 27, 1926. Given her advanced age and disability, the court sentenced Serebriakova to 7 years in prison, including the time served in the pre-trial detention center (1 year 7 months). "Mamasha" died in prison.

(Anna Serebryakova during a trial in 1926)

***
After the revolution, one of the Bolshevik scammers wrote a letter of repentance to Gorky. There were such lines: "After all, there are many of us - all the best party workers." Lenin's inner circle was literally stuffed with police agents. The director of the police department, already in exile, said that every step, every word of Lenin was known to him to the smallest detail. In 1912, in Prague, in an atmosphere of the greatest secrecy, Lenin held a party congress. Among the selected, "faithful" and verified 13 participants, four were police agents (Malinovsky, Romanov, Brandinsky and Shurkanov), three of whom submitted detailed reports to the police about the congress.

***
A Bolshevik recruited by Garting, a member of the Foreign Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, Yakov Abramovich Zhitomirsky (party pseudonym Fathers), before starting to work for the Russian police, worked for the Germans. He was recruited by the German police in the early 1900s while studying at the medical faculty of the University of Berlin, where he organized a social democratic circle. In 1902, Zhitomirsky occupied a prominent place in the Berlin Iskra group. In the same year, he was recruited by Harting and became an agent for the Police Department's overseas agents. He informed the police about the activities of the Berlin group of the Iskra newspaper and at the same time carried out the instructions of the editorial office of the newspaper and the Central Committee of the party, making trips to Russia on her instructions. Living in Paris from the end of 1908 to 1912, he was in Lenin's inner circle. Informed the Police Department about the activities of the Social Democrats, Socialist Revolutionaries and representatives of other leftist parties in exile. On the basis of information sent to the Police Department by Zhitomirsky, the well-known Bolshevik S. Kamo, agents of the RSDLP, who were trying to sell banknotes expropriated from one of the Russian banks, were arrested.

Zhitomirsky took part in the work of the 5th Congress of the RSDLP (1907), in the plenary meetings of the Central Committee of the RSDLP in Geneva (August 1908) and in the work of the 5th All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP in Paris (December 1908). At the conference, he was elected to the Foreign Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, and later became a member of the foreign agents of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. During the First World War, Zhitomirsky remained in France, where he served as a doctor in the Russian expeditionary force. After the February Revolution, when the documents of the Parisian agents of the Police Department fell into the hands of the revolutionaries, he was exposed as a provocateur and fled from the inter-party court in one of the countries of South America.

***
Some revolutionaries were recruited by the police literally in exchange for life. So, shortly before the execution, Ivan Fedorovich Okladsky (1859-1925), a worker, a Russian revolutionary, a member of the Narodnaya Volya party, agreed to cooperate with the police. In the summer of 1880, Okladsky participated in an assassination attempt on Emperor Alexander II under the Stone Bridge in St. Petersburg. He was arrested on July 4, 1880 and sentenced to death at the trial of 16. He behaved with dignity at the trial, however, being on death row, he agreed to cooperate with the Police Department. In June 1881, Okladsky's indefinite hard labor was replaced by a reference to a settlement in Eastern Siberia, and on October 15, 1882, by a reference to the Caucasus. Upon arrival in the Caucasus, he was enrolled as a secret agent in the Tiflis gendarme department.

(Ivan Okladsky during a trial in 1925)

In January 1889, Okladsky was sent to St. Petersburg and became an unofficial employee of the police department with a salary of 150 rubles. Having established ties with the leaders of the St. Petersburg underground, he betrayed the circle of Istomina, Feit and Rumyantsev, for which on September 11, 1891, according to the report of the Minister of Internal Affairs, he received a full pardon, with the renaming of Ivan Aleksandrovich Petrovsky and transfer to the estate of hereditary honorary citizens. Okladsky served in the Police Department until the February Revolution. His betrayal was revealed in 1918.

In 1924, Okladsky was arrested and on January 14, 1925, the Supreme Court of the RSFSR was sentenced to death, which was commuted to ten years in prison due to his advanced age. He died in prison in 1925.

***
Judging by the number of provocateurs infiltrated into the revolutionary parties, the Bolsheviks were not leaders in terms of radicalism, which aroused the main interest of the Okhrana. Of the 10,000 uncovered agents, about 5,000 were part of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Approximately the same as the Bolsheviks had the number of agents in the Jewish (Bund and Paole Zion) and Polish left parties (2-2.2 thousand).

sources
http://ttolk.ru/articles/sistema_iz_10_tyisyach_provokatorov_tsarskoy_ohranki_i_paranoyya_stalinskih_repressiy