Okhrana

Intrigues Between World Powers 1900

Introduction

The Department for the Protection of Public Safety and Order, usually called the Guard Department and commonly abbreviated in modern English sources as the Okhrana, 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 politics and revolutionary activity, 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 Okhrana agent Pyotr Rachkovsky (1853–1910) was based 1884–1902 before he returned to service in Saint Petersburg 1905–1906.

The Okhrana deployed multiple methods, including assassination, clandestine and covert operations, counterintelligence, espionage, HUMINT, manhunt for the capture or kill of high-value targets, and "perlustration"—the reading of private correspondence. The Okhrana's Foreign Agency also monitored revolutionary activity. The Okhrana became notorious for its agents provocateurs, including Jacob Zhitomirsky (born 1880, a leading Bolshevik and close associate of Vladimir Lenin), Yevno Azef (1869–1918), Roman Malinovsky (1876–1918) and Dmitry Bogrov (1887–1911).

The Okhrana tried to compromise the labour movement by setting up police-run trade unions, a practice known as zubatovshchina. The Communists blamed the Okhrana in part for the Bloody Sunday event of January 1905, when Tsarist troops killed hundreds of unarmed protesters who were marching during a demonstration organized by Father Gapon and with the participation of Pyotr Rutenberg.

Many historians, such as the German Konrad Heiden and the Russian historian Mikhail Lepekhine 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.

Use of torture

Despite the reforms in the early 19th century, the practice of torture was never truly abolished. Possibly, the formation of the Okhrana led to increasing use of torture, due to the Okhrana using methods such as arbitrary arrest, detention and torture to gain information. Claims persisted the Okhrana had operated torture chambers in places like Warsaw, Riga, Odessa and most of the urban centres.

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 St. Petersburg, set up in 1866 after a failed assassination attempt on Emperor Alexander II, with a staff of 12 investigators. Its street address, Fontanka, 16, was publicly known in the Russian Empire. After another failed assassination attempt, on August 6, 1880, the Emperor, acting on proposals made by 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 Alexander III (r. 1881–1894) immediately set up two more Security and Investigation (охранно-розыскные) secret-police stations, supervised by Gendarme officers, in Moscow and Warsaw; they became the basis of the later Okhrana. The Imperial Gendarmerie still operated as security police in the rest of the country through their Gubernial and 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).

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana

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