Okhrana

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about the secret police of the Russian Empire. For the Slavophone militias in German occupied Macedonia during World War II, see Ohrana. For the security company of the National Guard of Russia, see Federal State Unitary Enterprise Guard (Russia).
Okhrana
Guard Department
Department for Protecting Public Security and Order
Охрана
Охранное отделение
Отделение по охранению общественной безопасности и порядка
Petrograd

The Divison for the protection of the Public Security and Order (Russian: Отделение по охранению общественной безопасности и порядка), usually called the Guard Department (Russian: Охранное отделение) and commonly abbreviated in modern English sources as the Okhrana (Russian: Охрана, IPA: [ɐˈxranə] ⓘ, lit. 'the guard') was a secret-police force of the Russian Empire and part of the police department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) in the late 19th century and early 20th century, aided by the Special Corps of Gendarmes.

Overview

Formed to combat political terrorism and left-wing revolutionary activity,[2] the Okhrana operated offices throughout the Russian Empire, as well as satellite agencies in a number of foreign countries. It concentrated on monitoring the activities of Russian revolutionaries abroad, including in Paris, where the Okhrana agent Pyotr Rachkovsky (1853–1910) was based (1884–1902) before returning to service in Saint Petersburg (1905–1906).

The Okhrana deployed multiple methods, including

Dmitry Bogrov
(1887–1911).

The Okhrana tried to compromise the

Father Gapon.[5][need quotation to verify]) and with the participation of Pyotr Rutenberg
.

Many historians, such as the

Russian historian Mikhail Lepekhine[7] maintain that Matvei Golovinski, a writer and Okhrana agent, fabricated the first edition of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1903). The organization also fabricated documentation connected with the antisemitic Beilis trial
of 1913.

Suspects captured by the Okhrana were passed to the judicial system of the Russian Empire.

The Okhrana was perpetually underfunded and understaffed; before 1914 it had just 49 employees split between seven offices and never had more than 2,000 informants at any one time. It never received more than 10% of the total police budget.[8]

Use of torture

Despite the reforms[9] in the early 19th century, the practice of

Odessa and in a majority of the urban centres.[13]

History

Forerunners of the Okhrana as a Russian security service included the Secret Prikaz (Taynyy Prikaz [ru]) (1654–1676), the Preobrazhensky Prikaz [ru] (1686–1726), the Secret Chancellery [ru] (1731–1762), the Secret Expedition [ru] (1762–1801), and the Third Section of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery (1826–1880).

The first special security department was the Department on Protecting the Order and Public Peace under the Head of

Count Loris-Melikov, established the Department of State Police under Ministry of the Interior (MVD) and transferred part of the Special Corps of Gendarmes and the Third Section of the Imperial Chancellery
to the new body. The position of Chief of Gendarmes was merged with that of the Minister, and Commander of the Corps was assigned as a Deputy of the Minister. Still, these measures did not prevent the assassination of Alexander II in March 1881.

In an attempt to implement preventive security measures, Emperor

Uyezd Directorates. The Emperor also established the Special Conference under the MVD (1881), which had the right to declare a State of Emergency Security in various parts of the Empire (which was actively used in the time of 1905 Revolution
) and subordinated all of the imperial police forces to the Commander of the Gendarmes (1882).

The rise of the socialist movements led to the integration of security forces. From 1898 the Special Section (Особый отдел) of the Department of Police succeeded the Gendarmes in the role of gaining information from domestic and foreign agents and "perlustration". Following the Socialist-Revolutionary Party's assassination of MVD Minister Dmitry Sipyagin on April 2, 1902, the new Minister Vyacheslav von Plehve gradually relieved the Directorates of Gendarmes of their investigation power in favor of Security and Investigation Stations (Охранно-розыскное отделение) under respective Mayors and Governors (who as a matter of fact were subordinate to the MVD Minister).

Pre-1905

The Okhrana used many seemingly unorthodox methods in the pursuit of its mission to defend the Tsarist monarchy; indeed, some of the Okhrana's activities even contributed to the wave of domestic unrest and revolutionary terror that they were intended to quell. Perhaps most paradoxical of all was the Okhrana's collaboration with revolutionary organizations.

Sergey Zubatov. While P.I. Rachkovsky, as head of the Okhrana's Foreign Agency, had long ordered Okhrana agents to infiltrate and influence revolutionary movements abroad, Zubatov brought these tactics to a new level by setting up Okhrana-controlled trade unions, the foundation of police socialism.[16] Perhaps recognizing the same discontent among factory workers that the Bolsheviks sought to exploit to start a revolution, Zubatov hoped the unions would mollify factory workers with improvements in working conditions and thus prevent workers from joining revolutionary movements that threatened the monarchy. To this end, Zubatov set up the Moscow Mechanical Production Workers' Mutual Aid Society in May 1901. After Zubatov became head of the Special Section in 1902, he expanded his trade unions from Moscow to St. Petersburg and to Southern Russia.[17]

Zubatovite trade unions achieved moderate success at channeling workers' political agitations away from revolutionary movements and toward labor improvements, especially in the cities of

Socialist Revolutionary Fighting Organization (SRFO), epitomized the Okhrana's inscrutable practice of revolutionary-group infiltration. While the Okhrana managed to imbed many of its agents in revolutionary organizations, the police preferred to slowly gather intelligence and to attempt to interfere with revolutionary work surreptitiously rather than to arrest known revolutionaries immediately. This policy led to numerous dubious acts on the part of police spies, who needed to participate in revolutionary activities to avoid suspicion, as when Yevno Azef, as head of the SRFO, ordered the assassination of V. K. Plehve on July 15, 1904.[21]

The Revolution of 1905

For over twenty years, the Okhrana had focused on interfering with the activities of relatively small, and distinct, revolutionary groups. The Revolution of 1905, characterized by seemingly spontaneous marches and strikes, exposed the Okhrana's inefficacy at controlling mass popular movements.

P.N. Durnovo in late-October ushered in a period of even more vicious repression of the revolutionaries.[24] Indicative of this new period is the head of the St. Petersburg Special Section, A.V. Gerasimov's, strike on the St. Petersburg Soviet. To Emperor Nicholas II's delight, Gerasimov arrested delegates of the Soviet en masse on December 3, 1905. Along with this repression and the end of the Revolution of 1905 came a shift in the political police's mentality; gone were the days of Nicholas I's white-gloved moral police: post-1905 the political police feared that the Russian people were as eager to destroy them as to depose the Emperor.[25]

Following the outbreak of the 1905 Revolution and assassination of Plehve, Pyotr Stolypin, as the new MVD Minister and Chairman of the Council of Ministers, set up a nationwide net of Security Stations. By 1908 there were 31 Stations, and more than 60 by 1911. Two more Special Sections of the Department of Police were organized in 1906. The centralized Security Section of the Department of Police was created[by whom?] on February 9, 1907; it was located at 16, Fontanka, St. Petersburg.

The exposure of

counter-intelligence; however, the efforts of the department were poorly synchronised with counter-intelligence units of the General Staff and of the Army
.

The 1917 Russian Revolution (February Revolution and October Revolution)

Just as the Okhrana had once sponsored trade unions to divert activist energy from political causes, so too did the secret police attempt to promote the Bolshevik party, as the Bolsheviks seemed a relatively harmless alternative to more violent revolutionary groups. Indeed, to the Okhrana, Lenin seemed to actively hinder the revolutionary movement by denouncing other revolutionary groups and refusing to cooperate with them.[26]

To aid the Bolsheviks at the expense of other revolutionaries, the Okhrana helped

Duma in 1912. To this end, the Okhrana sequestered Malinovsky's criminal record and arrested other candidates for the seat.[26]

According to the transcribed recollections of Nikolay Vladimirovich Veselago, a former Okhrana officer and relative of the director of the Russian police department Stepan Petrovich Beletsky, both Malinovsky and Joseph Stalin reported on Lenin as well as on each other although Stalin was unaware that Malinovosky was also a penetration agent.[27][28][29]

Malinovsky won the seat and led the Bolshevik delegation in the Fourth Duma until 1914, but even with the information Malinovsky and other informants provided to the Okhrana, the police were unprepared for the rise of Bolshevism in 1917. Although the secret police had agents within the Bolshevik organization, other factors contributed to the Okhrana's inefficacy at averting the events of 1917. Among these factors was the ban on police spies within the military promulgated by the Deputy Minister of the Interior Vladimir Dzhunkovsky, who found the practice dishonorable and damaging to morale. While the beginning of World War I in 1914 moved the Okhrana's attentions initially from countering revolutionaries to countering German espionage, the focus quickly shifted back as it was revealed[by whom?] that the Germans were heavily funding Russian revolutionary groups in order to destabilize the Russian Empire.[30]

Despite the renewed attention, the Russian Revolution of 1917 took the secret police, and the country, by surprise. Indeed, the Okhrana's persistent focus on revolutionary groups may have resulted in the secret police not fully appreciating the deep-seated popular unrest brewing in Russia.

The revolutionaries identified the Okhrana as one of the main symbols of Tsarist repression, and its headquarters were sacked and burned on 27 February 1917. The newly formed Provisional Government then disbanded the whole organization and released most of the political prisoners held by the Tsarist regime. Revelations of the Okhrana's earlier abuses heightened public hostility towards the secret police after the 1917 February Revolution and made it very dangerous to be a political policeman. That fact, along with the St. Petersburg Soviet's insistence on the dissolution of the regular Tsarist police force, as well as of the political police, meant that the Okhrana quickly and quietly disappeared.[31]

Successor organisations

Some Okhrana functionaries continued their activities in the

White Armies, notably in the OSVAG [ru] (Russian: ОСВАГ - ОСВедомительное АГентство, romanized: OSVAG - OSVedomitel'noe AGentsvo, lit. 'Information Agency').[32]

After the 1917

OGPU) eventually became the KGB (1954–1991) after the death of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in March 1953. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 the KGB split into the FSK (later reorganized into the FSB in 1995) and the SVR
.

See also

Notes

  1. ISBN 9781471837807
    . Retrieved 8 November 2015. In 1881 a new secret police – the Okhrana – was established.
  2. ^ Okhrana Britannica Online
  3. ^ Fischer, Ben B. (1997). Okhrana: The Paris Operations of the Russian Imperial Police. DIANE Publishing (published 1999). p. 6.
    ISBN 9780788183287
    . Retrieved 10 May 2019. The opening in 1883 of the Okhrana's Foreign Bureau, centred in Paris, was prompted by the shift of Russian revolutionary activity from the Russian Empire to Western and Central Europe.
  4. ISBN 0-306-80154-X
    .
  5. ^ Evans, Charles T. Father Gapon
  6. ^ "Forging Protocols" by Charles Paul Freund. Reason Magazine, February 2000
  7. Mathieu Golovinski, opportunistic scion of an aristocratic but rebellious family who drifted into a life of espionage and propaganda
    work.
  8. ^ Lauchlan, Iain (3 September 2005). "The Okhrana: security policing in late imperial Russia". In McKean, Robert B.; Thatcher, Ian D. (eds.). Late Imperial Russia: Problems and Prospects. Manchester University Press Series. Manchester: Manchester University Press (published 2005). p. 50.
    ISBN 9780719067877
    . Retrieved 10 May 2019. The high level of secrecy meant that revolutionaries could only guess at the size and nature of the Okhrana. Consequently the opposition seem to have over-estimated the omniscience of the secret police. Most thought that there was a Black Cabinet in every city and even many towns of the empire. When one Soviet historian dredged the archives he only found evidence of seven such offices with a grand total of 49 employees before 1914; reports of others, he noted, 'were sheer hallucinations'. Activists in the political underground imagined the cities to be infested with watchers and informers, and feared that their ranks were riddled with traitors. Early detractors of the Okhrana estimated that it employed up to 40,000 spies and referred to it as the most important prop to the tsarist regime. Yet when the police archives fell into the hands of the Provisional Government in 1917 they only managed to uncover 600 informers. Recent surveys of the archives have revealed that the Department of Police never employed more than 2,000 informers at any one time and most of these were not high-level spies. The entire Okhrana budget usually accounted for less than 10 per cent of the total expenditure on police, reaching a peak of around five million rubles in 1914 [...].
  9. ^ Russia disallowed the use of torture in 1774: 8 ноября 1774 г. последовало секретное Высочайшее повеление о том, чтобы присутственные места ни под каким видом не допускали при допросах телесных истязаний «для познания о действиях истины».
  10. ISBN 0-19-826257-4
    .
  11. ^ "Patterns of Torture". Archived from the original on 2009-01-14. Retrieved 2008-04-24. After 1881, the Russian czar Alexander III created a secret police, the Okhrana, to fight terrorism, and the use of torture increased even more.
  12. ^ Russia and the Soviet Union 1917–1941: Glossary Archived 2008-08-03 at the Wayback Machine Charles Sturt University
  13. ^ The Russian Okhrana
    Marxists.org
     - Section XVIII: "The cost of an execution" - "After 1905, the Okhrana had torture chambers in Warsaw, Riga, Odessa and apparently in most of the great urban centres."
  14. ^ Fredric S. Zuckerman, "Political Police and Revolution: The Impact of the 1905 Revolution on the Tsarist Secret Police", Journal of Contemporary History 27 (1992): 281.
  15. ^ Ronald Hingley, The Russian Secret Police: Muscovite, Imperial Russian, and Soviet Political Security Operations (New York: Dorset, 1970), 75–6.
  16. ^ Richard J. Johnson, "Zagranichnaia Agentura: The Tsarist Political Police in Europe", Journal of Contemporary History 7 (1972): 226. Hingley, Russian Secret Police, 87.
  17. ^ Hingley, Russian Secret Police, 88–89.
  18. ^ Jonathan W. Daly, Autocracy Under Siege: Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1866–1905 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1998), 138.
  19. ^ Hingley, Russian Secret Police, 89.
  20. ^ Hingley, Russian Secret Police, 94–5.
  21. ^ Hingley, Russian Secret Police, 92.
  22. ^ Zuckerman, Political Police and Revolution, 281.
  23. ^ Zuckerman, Political Police and Revolution, 282, 5.
  24. ^ Daly, Autocracy Under Siege, 173.
  25. ^ Zuckerman, “Political Police and Revolution,” 285, 287, 289–290.
  26. ^ a b Hingley, Russian Secret Police, 105
  27. ISBN 978-0-669-10258-1
    .
  28. ISBN 978-0-306-80167-9
    .
  29. ISBN 978-1-135-75840-0
    .
  30. ^ Hingley, Russian Secret Police, 106–9
  31. ^ Hingley, Russian Secret Police, 111.
  32. ^ Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigoryevich (1962) [1960–1967]. Men, Years - life. Vol. 2. Translated by Bostock, Anna; Kapp, Yvonne. London: MacGibbon & Kee. p. 93. Retrieved 21 January 2022. In the White Army there were men of the Black Hundreds, former members of the Okhrana (Tsarist secret police), gendarmes, hangmen. They occupied important posts in the administration, the counterintelligence and the Osvag.

References

External links

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