Secret Police Department

The activities of the political police in the Russian Empire were based on the use of intelligence information collected through external surveillance and “internal lighting” ^[1] . Outdoor surveillance agents were called fillers and were on the staff of security departments and other search institutions. For “internal lighting”, “internal agents” were used, whose representatives were called “secret agents” or “secret employees”. These persons were not on the staff of the search agencies, and their cooperation with the police was secret ^[1] . In most cases, secret officers were recruited from among the participants in revolutionary organizations and, remaining inside them, informed the police about their activities. In some cases, secret employees infiltrated revolutionary organizations from outside or entered into trusting relationships with their participants, from whom they received the necessary information. Each secret employee received a payment for his work and information delivered, and the size of the payment depended on the quality of the information that he supplied ^[2] . The highest paid secret employee in the Russian Empire was Evno Azef , who, at the peak of his career, received 1,000 rubles a month, that is, 12,000 rubles a year ^[3] . All secret employees were registered with the Police Department, each of them had a special case containing information about his personality, profession, membership in revolutionary organizations, party nicknames, etc. A card file with information about secret officers was kept in the Special Department of the Police Department. . After the February Revolution, the archives of the Police Department were opened and the names of secret officers made public. According to the calculations of historians, from 1880 to 1917, about 10 thousand secret officers were in the archives of the Police Department ^[2] .

The motives for secret cooperation with the Police Department were different. In most cases, people went to cooperation out of self-interest or out of fear of punishment . Some came to employees out of a sense of revenge on party leaders. At the same time, among the secret employees there were also ideological people who sincerely believed that by their service they benefit the state. An example of such an ideological collaborator is Zinaida Zhuchenko , exposed by V.L. Burtsev, a “provocateurs hunter”. Zhuchenko was a convinced monarchist who saw revolutionaries as enemies of the state and voluntarily entered the secret service. In 1895, she revealed to the police the terrorist group of I. Rasputin, who was preparing an attempt on the king . After his meeting with Zhuchenko, Burtsev recognized her as an honest opponent and shook her hand in parting ^[1] . The great master of acquiring ideological employees was the head of the Moscow Security Department, Sergei Zubatov . In his youth, Zubatov himself was in secret service, where he entered from personal enmity towards revolutionaries ^[4] . Having become an officer of the security department, he redefined the recruitment of secret agents. Zubatov did not look at recruitment as a simple sale. During conversations with the arrested, he tried to break them ideologically, to convince that the goals of the revolutionaries are false and they will bring more benefit to the state if they agree to cooperate with the authorities. Thanks to this approach, Zubatov gained many employees who worked not for fear, but for conscience, and the Moscow Security Department became the country's leading search agency ^[1] . There were opposite cases when people entered secret service with the aim of tricking the police and using their position for revolutionary purposes. Among such insincere collaborators V. L. Burtsev included the maximalist S. Ya. Ryss , the Socialist Revolutionary A. A. Petrov and the anarchist D. G. Bogrov ^[5] .

In Soviet historiography, secret officers of the Police Department were called "provocateurs." The term "provocateurs" was coined by revolutionaries and subsequently transferred to the Soviet tradition. Initially, "agents-provocateurs" were persons who organized provocations, that is, incited revolutionaries to criminal actions . A police agent, introduced into the organization, suggested that his comrades set up an underground printing house or bomb workshop, and then he reported to all its participants to the police. Certain cases of this kind have given occasion to extend the concept of "provocateur" to all, without exception, police agents, including simple informants . According to P. A. Stolypin , this method was intentional and had the goal of casting a shadow over the entire tsarist government, accusing him of combating the revolution with criminal methods ^[6] . In fact, provocations by secret employees were strictly prohibited by law and were considered a crime. The instructions of the Police Department to the heads of search institutions indicated that secret officers should not participate in the illegal activities of revolutionaries and, moreover, incite others to it. After the February Revolution , in 1917, the Provisional Government established an Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry to investigate the crimes of the tsarist regime. One of the issues considered by the commission was the issue of police provocations ^[2] . In this regard, dozens of witnesses were questioned, including many former leaders of the tsarist police. During interrogations, witnesses confidently replied that provocations were prohibited by law, and the fact of using secret agents does not contain anything criminal, since it is used by all states of the world without exception. As a result, it was not possible to prove a single fact of the police provocation of the commission ^[7] .

The fight against secret police officers was one of the urgent tasks of the revolutionaries. Initially, this struggle was of a makeshift nature, since the revolutionaries did not know the tactics or methods of work of the secret police. In the early 1900s, the famous revolutionary, former Narodovolets Vladimir Burtsev , was engaged in exposing the secret agents. Burtsev came to the conclusion that the struggle with the Police Department requires knowledge of the methods of its work ^[8] . To study these methods, he began to collect materials on the history of the revolutionary movement, which he published in the journal Byelo published by him. Under the pretext of studying the history of the revolution, Burtsev made contacts with a number of former employees of the Police Department, from whom he received the information he needed ^[8] . Gradually, Burtsev managed to identify a number of people who collaborated with the tsarist police. The most high-profile case of Burtsev was his exposure in 1909 to Yevno Azef , a secret officer of the Police Department, who headed the Socialist Revolutionary Organization . Burtsev’s activity was the beginning of a series of revelations. In 1911, Leonid Menshchikov, a former official of the Special Department of the Police Department, went to Europe. Dismissed from service, Menshchikov took with him abroad copies of numerous documents with information about secret employees of the Department. Here he began to publish lists of secret employees and transmit them to representatives of revolutionary organizations ^[9] . In total, Menshikov announced several hundred names of secret officers, which dealt a serious blow to the Police Department. The last stage of the revelation began after the February Revolution . In 1917, the Provisional Government created several commissions to investigate the activities of the tsarist police. These included the “Commission for the Analysis of the Affairs of the Former Police Department,” the “Commission for the Maintenance of the New System,” the “Committee for the Analysis of the Archives of Former Foreign Agencies,” and others. These commissions and their successors ^{[ what? ]} all the archives of the tsarist police were examined and detailed file cabinets of secret officers were created ^[2] .

• Z. I. Peregudova. Political investigation in Russia. 1880-1917 . - M .: ROSSPEN , 2000 .-- 431 p.
• A.I. Spiridovich. Notes of the gendarme . - Kharkov: "The Proletariat", 1928. - 205 p.
• V. L. Burtsev. In pursuit of provocateurs. - M .: "Contemporary", 1989. - 272 p.
• V.K. Agafonov. Overseas security. - Pg. : Book, 1918. - 388 p.
• L.P. Menshchikov. Guard and revolution. - M .: Publishing House All-Union Society of Political Prisoners, 1925-1932. - T. 1-3.