In 1880
the Russian Police Department established a special section that dealt
with internal security. This unit eventually became known as the Okhrana.
Concerned by the attempts by Russian workers to form trade unions,
Okhrana units were formed in the industrial centres of St. Petersburg,
Moscow and Warsaw.
The Okhrana
was under the control of the Minister of the Interior. Okhrana agents
worked under cover and their main task was to expose political crimes
before they were committed. To do this agents joined political organizations
that were campaigning for social reform. Some of these undercover
agents reached positions of leadership in these organization. This
included Evno Azef, head of the SR
Combat Organization
and Roman Malinovsky, a member of
the Bolshevik Central Committee.
Sometimes
Okhrana agents joined revolutionary groups to spy on their members
and eventually became converted to the cause. They then became double-agents
who provided information to both Okhrana and the revolutionaries.
Two of these double-agents were responsible for the assassinations
of two Ministers of the Interior, Vyacheslav
Plehve and Peter
Stolypin.
In
1895 Sergei Zubatov was appointed as
head of the Moscow section of Okhrana. He gradually introduced several
modern methods of detection including photographic files, a systematic
registration of suspects and a flying squad to deal with acts of terrorism.
Zubatov also trained his in revolutionary theory and conspiratorial
methods.
Zubatov
also used his agents to set up the Mutual Assistance League of Workers
in the Mechanical Industry. His agents became the leaders of this
trade union and they attempted to persuade
the workers not to make demands for higher wages and better working
conditions. This proved unsuccessful and by 1903 the union had to
be disbanded because its members had began to take part in strikes.
In some
cases, revolutionaries were arrested and then offered the opportunity
to become a double-agent. First they had to sign a detailed confession
of their activities and a statement of repentance. The prisoner was
then pardoned and released to spy on his comrades. The confession
would be used against the agent if he ever tried to change his mind
about working for the Okhrana.
The Okhrana
also recruited members of illegal organization. as paid informers.
In 1912 over 26,000 people in Russia were receiving money from the
Okhrana. The average informer received 100 rubles a month, a sum that
was well above the average industrial wage at the time. Evno
Azef, Okhrana's leading undercover agent, was paid over 2000 rubles
a month.
Some of
the organization. that Okhrana were interested in were illegal and
were based outside Russia. To deal with revolutionaries living in
exile, Okhrana sections were also established in major European cities
such as Paris and London.
After the
October Revolution an examination of
police files suggested that around 26,000 people were killed without
trial by the Okhrana.
(1)
Victor Serge, Year One of the Revolution
(1930)
Between 1872 and 1882 there were six attempted assassinations
(three of these successful) against high officials, four against police
chiefs, four against Alexander II, nine executions of informers, and
twenty-four cases of armed resistance to the police. Thirty-one revolutionaries
were hanged or shot.
On 14th
April 1879, the student Soloviev fired five pistol-shots at Alexander
II. On 1st December the same year an explosion derailed the Imperial
train not far from Moscow. On 17th February 1880, the dining-room
in the Winter Palace exploded seconds before the Imperial family was
due to enter it.
On 1st
March 1881, Alexander II at last met his death in St. Petersburg,
mangled by bombs. His five executioners, Sophia Perovskaya, Zhelyabov,
Kibalchich, Mikhailov and Russakov, were hanged. With these casualties
the party lost its finest leaders, some of them the finest revolutionary
personalities known to history.
At his
accession, the new Tsar, Alexander III, proclaims the autocracy to
be unshakable: the establishment of the Okhrana follows, a political
police force armed with extensive powers and funds. A press law lays
down preventive censorship for journals suspected by the authorities;
they can even be suppressed.
(2)
David Shub was a member of the Social
Democratic Party in Russia. He later wrote about his experiences
in a book published in 1948.
In August
1913 the Bolshevik leaders were summoned to a new Central Committee
conference in a village near Zakopane in Galicia. There were twenty-two
Bolsheviks present, including Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Troyanovsky,
Shotman, Ganetsky, Malinovsky and the other Bolshevik deputies in
the Duma. Five of these men later proved to be Okhrana agents.
(3)
Shornikova, was one of the secret agents planted by the Okhrana in
the Social Democratic Party.
I met every member of the Central Committee then in
St Petersburg, and all the members of the military organization; I
knew all the secret meeting places and passwords of the revolutionary
army cells throughout Russia. I kept the archives of the revolutionary
organization in the Army; I was present at all the district meetings,
propaganda rallies, and party conferences; I was always in the know.
All the information I gathered was conscientiously reported to the
Okhrana.
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