{"id":527,"date":"2023-01-05T11:36:02","date_gmt":"2023-01-05T11:36:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/exhistoria\/?p=527"},"modified":"2023-01-05T12:21:45","modified_gmt":"2023-01-05T12:21:45","slug":"jamie-bryson-the-russian-empire-and-internal-security-during-the-first-world-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/exhistoria\/2023\/01\/05\/jamie-bryson-the-russian-empire-and-internal-security-during-the-first-world-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Jamie Bryson: The Russian Empire and Internal Security During the First World War"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Jamie Bryson<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

University of Exeter<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Background and Overview of the Project<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the early twentieth century, tsarist Russia\u2019s inflexible and repressive political system was facing sustained opposition and the growth of mass violence. After an illusory patriotic upsurge with the outbreak of the First World War, the strains of the conflict and military defeat caused overwhelming internal unrest, eventually unravelling the Russian Empire. The First World War in Russian history has typically been marginalised by the revolutionary era and Civil War. Some studies have explored military campaigns, the breakdown of the authority in the borderlands, the social and economic history of the war, and high politics in relation to the coming of revolution, but the war itself remains broadly understudied, especially from the perspective of the state.[1]<\/sup><\/a>  It is the purpose of the intended research to investigate this unrest from the perspective of the tsarist state and show its security officials understood Russia\u2019s challenges to a greater degree than they are typically given credit for. The keystone of the state\u2019s security was its political police known as the Okhrana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like its predecessor, the Third Section, which was created after the Decembrist revolt of 1825, the Okhrana was established at a time of crisis. The assassination of Alexander II in 1881 demanded a more streamlined and dedicated political police force to combat revolutionary terror. The Okhrana was not an official body in the Russian Empire, but rather a diverse range of agencies inside the Department of Police, with responsibilities for intelligence gathering, policing, and security during the period 1881-1917.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Department of Police itself was divided into a number of secretariats some of which performed familiar police functions. For example, there was a personnel office, a legal department, and a criminal investigation department. However, some of the secretariats also had political policing duties. The fifth secretariat dealt with exile and a seventh secretariat watched legal political parties like the Social Democrats and the Socialist Revolutionaries. There were continual administrative reshuffles during the period 1881-1917, with some secretariats being subsumed by others then later re-emerging with different functions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 1914, the most significant organ of the Okhrana was one of these ten secretariats inside the Department of Police. This was the Special Section, created in 1898 and closed off from the rest of the Department. It processed intelligence from across the empire, watched political parties, monitored the army and maintained an archive of persons of interest amongst other duties. Despite administrative reshuffles, the prevailing trend was toward a specialisation of the Special Section as regards political intelligence, freeing it from other duties.[2]<\/sup><\/a> Its physical headquarters were at Fontanka 16, St Peterburg. This was the closest thing the Okhrana had to a Langley, Virginia, or a Vauxhall Cross, London, to use contemporary examples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Special Section received information from \u2018Security Sections\u2019 which carried out surveillance, infiltration, and arrests of revolutionaries. They were established outside the three capitals of the Empire (Warsaw, St Petersburg and Moscow) from 1902.[3]<\/sup><\/a> They reported directly to the Special Section and these entities together make up what we call the \u2018Okhrana\u2019. There was also a \u2018Court Okhrana\u2019 created in 1905. This was concerned with the personal protection of the tsar and was subordinate to the Ministry of Imperial Courts rather than the Department of Police.[4]<\/sup><\/a> The Okhrana was headed by the Director of the Department of Police, who in turn was answerable to the Deputy Minister of the Interior.[5]<\/sup><\/a> Its purpose was not to fight crime, but to protect the monarchy and the established order. It was independent of the regular police who could be called on by Provincial Governors.[6]<\/sup><\/a> The Okhrana could impose punishments like administrative exile without recourse to the normal legal regime.[7]<\/sup><\/a> The Okhrana had considerable power to influence many areas of social and political life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though there is no systematic study of the ethnic origins of Okhrana personnel, many were \u2018social outsiders\u2019, or came from the Empire\u2019s many national minorities. This gave them the sense of a personal connection to the autocracy that they otherwise would have lacked.[8]<\/sup><\/a> S.E. Vissarionov was a converted Jew who served as Assistant Director of the Okhrana in 1912. A.V. Brune de St Hippolite, a Frenchman, served as Director of Police in 1914. S.P. Beletsky (Director of the Department of Police and later Assistant Minister of the Interior until February 1916) was Ukrainian and not from the nobility, but nevertheless became, in the words of one author, \u2018the quintessential spy master\u2019.[9]<\/sup><\/a> The Secret Police did not attract men whose positions in society were secure (landowners, for instance), as they disliked the morally questionable connotations of working for state security.[10]<\/sup><\/a> Konstantin Globachev was the head of the Petrograd Security Bureau during the war, but his family only became part of the hereditary nobility in 1869, with no land or titles.[11]<\/sup><\/a> The work of the Okhrana also necessitated a political awareness and an understanding of tsarism\u2019s overall trajectory. They needed a sense of the pace of reform and modernisation. This encouraged a stronger ideological commitment to monarchism. This commitment was greater than regular army officers whose \u2018monarchism\u2019 was an acceptance of the status quo and a denial of the need for politics.[12]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surveillance During the War<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To construct a picture of internal unrest during the war years, this research will examine surveillance reports and descriptions of \u2018population moods\u2019 (svodki<\/em>). Existing literature exploring these types of sources focuses on Stalin\u2019s NKVD rather than the Okhrana. Soviet reporting was very detailed and as such has received considerable attention, yet tsarist equivalents were rapidly evolving.[13]<\/sup><\/a> From as early as October 1915, provincial and district officials were required to produce reports covering population moods.[14]<\/sup><\/a> It is surprising they have not been examined more closely, given both sides during the later Civil War produced reports that reflected a shared political culture inherited from the total war experience. Peter Holquist shows that reports produced by Reds and Whites exhibited the same concerns with the political reliability of local populations, showing that the First World War had inculcated the idea that surveillance was a key tool of government.[15]<\/sup><\/a> The war was a crucible for many practices of mass mobilisation and state building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Svodki, <\/em>and reports on unrest more generally, can help us see how regimes thought on the inside, illuminating the political and ideological frameworks of those who made them. Indeed, the type and nature of the information that advances up the bureaucratic chain \u2018reflects the political and social climate in which those bureaucracies operate\u2019.[16]<\/sup><\/a> The tsarist regime in its total war footing can be reconceptualised by examining what the authorities classed as subversive and what they considered the limits of the political sphere.[17]<\/sup><\/a> Such reports also reveal a great deal about a regime\u2019s internal discourse, as Donald Raleigh has shown in studies of the Saratov Bolsheviks. His work shows the genuine fragility of Soviet power and the siege mentality of Bolshevik leaders, in stark contrast to the \u2018external language\u2019 of the party press which took a heroic tone, simply denying anything that contradicted this.[18]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By their nature, svodki<\/em> focused on negative issues and threats. Indeed, by early 1916, the Okhrana was already presenting a pessimistic picture of Russian society. Moscow Security Section warned that any semblance of stability should be ignored as this was a \u2018self-deception\u2019. To judge Russian society by \u2018surface manifestations\u2019 (small-scale strikes and disturbances) was a pointless exercise. In fact, the situation was \u2018significantly more alarming\u2019.[19]<\/sup><\/a> Minor disturbances were merely \u2018symptoms\u2019 of a wider, \u2018painful\u2019 process that was affecting the \u2018whole body\u2019. This reflects recent scholarship which has highlighted the use of \u2018medicalised language\u2019 in government and society. The idea of the nation as a politico-social body, though normally associated with Soviet ideas concerning the purgation of unwanted elements, finds antecedents in some of these reports. By the late nineteenthcentury, ideas of a decaying social order were expressed in clinical language found not just within literary and journalistic writings, but also official discourse. Notions of subversive moods, moral contagion and corruption were commonplace in Russia, as in the rest of Europe.[20]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Predicting 1917?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The diagnosis for the condition of Russian society in 1916 was a general loss of faith in the supreme authority. This was not the result of republican principles, but a personal feeling \u2013 \u2018an acute anger with the Emperor\u2019.[21]<\/sup><\/a> This was further described as a uniform sentiment impacting the bourgeoisie, as well the \u2018underbelly of society\u2019 and all encouraged by the liberal Kadet<\/em> party. This more personal loss of faith reflected the traditional, paternal light in which the tsar was viewed. The declining prestige of the monarchy seemed to be happening in an arena the secret police had little control over and had previously not needed to regulate. The street was a place where wild rumours were exchanged that were doing more to undermine the monarchy than the work of the most \u2018intemperate revolutionary.\u2019[22]<\/sup><\/a> This would have come as a shock to an organisation that was accustomed to combatting a small, dedicated revolutionary underground. The street was undermining the empire\u2019s most sacred institution in a way the police could not have predicted. Though rumoured to consist of a million names by 1917, the Okhrana\u2019s vast card index of suspects was a tool designed to catalogue individual troublemakers and not combat the circulation of damaging stories amongst the masses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The damage dealt to the image of the Emperor was in part due to the imperial family\u2019s association with Grigori Rasputin, the famous mystic. In February 1916, the dismissal of Alexander Samarin as procurator of the Holy Synod was attributed to Rasputin\u2019s intrigues, causing fresh outrage. A former associate of Rasputin, the hieromonk Iliodor, produced a book on the \u2018holy devil,\u2019 passages of which were exchanged on the streets and intersections in Moscow, fuelling \u2018dirty gossip\u2019. Details about the circumstances of Samarin\u2019s dismissal were circulated in this manner.[23]<\/sup><\/a> Count Kokovtsov, the former Minister of Finance, reflected that in 1916 the public talked incessantly of \u2018\u201cdark forces\u201d and the inefficiency of the administration\u2019.[24]<\/sup><\/a> For the security police, this atmosphere of wild rumour was an \u2018ace in the revolutionary game\u2019.[25]<\/sup><\/a> What concerned security officials was that these sentiments were laying the groundwork for greater unrest, and that they could be hijacked and capitalised on by organised revolutionaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reports and dire warnings of security officials were not listened to, and this has provoked various explanations. Some of the primary material indicates that the Ministers of the Interior did not take their responsibilities seriously. Maklakov (December 1912- June 1915) avoided meetings with the Okhrana chiefs, while Globachev claimed he had to explain the structure of the Police Department to Alexander D. Protopopov (September 1916-February 1917). He suspected that Prototpopov, amongst others, did not read his reports.[26]<\/sup><\/a> Ruud and Stepanov also give the impression that the Deputy Ministers of the Interior were tied up in intrigues hoping to secure the continued approval of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and benefit from the influence of Rasputin. For instance, the Okhrana Chief Dzhunkovsky, as a staunch opponent of the \u2018holy fool\u2019, was removed in August 1915 with Beletsky returning to power with the patronage of the Rasputin clique.[27]<\/sup><\/a> The instability of wartime higher Russian government in some sense undermined the flow of information at a crucial moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Okhrana and the wider Security Apparatus represent a significant vantage point to view the erosion of authority in the Russian Empire, and to examine how an intelligence agency operates in a time of total war and revolution. Russia\u2019s problems were not exceptional but assumed more complex dimensions due to the more precarious social and political situation in the tsarist empire compared to the other great powers. The growth of unrest and warnings of disaster draw attention to the contingencies on the road to revolution and structural weaknesses within the tsarist state. This demonstrates the perceptiveness of officials and shows that while they ultimately failed to prevent revolution, security personnel had a stronger grasp of the socio-political climate than they are usually given credit for in traditional historiography and the more up to date institutional histories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bibliography<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Primary Sources<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cherniavsky, Michael, ed. Prologue to Revolution: Notes of A.N. Iakontov on the Secret Meetings of the Council of Ministers 1915<\/em>.New York, 1967.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daly, Jonathan, and Leonid Trofimov. Russia in War and Revolution: Documentary History<\/em>. Indianopolis, 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Globachev, Konstantin. The Truth of the Russian Revolution<\/em>: The Memoirs of the Tsar\u2019s Chief of Security and his Wife<\/em>. Albany, 2017.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grave, Berta Borisovna. Burzhuaziia nakanune Fevral<\/em>\u02b9<\/em>sko<\/em>\u012d<\/em> revoliutsii.<\/em> Moscow, 1927.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hickey, Michael, ed. Competing Voices from the Russian Revolution<\/em>. Santa Barbara, 2010, p. 47.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kowalski, Ronald, ed. The Russian Revolution<\/em> 1917-21.<\/em> London, 1997.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vasiliev, Aleksei T. The Ochrana<\/em>. edited by Rene Fulop Miller. London, 1930.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secondary Sources<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daly, Jonathan. \u2018An Impossible Dream Becomes Reality: A.I. Spiridovich and the Personal Security of Nicholas II.\u2019 The Historian<\/em>76, no.1, (2014):  50-70<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daly, Jonathan. \u2018The Russian Police and War and Revolution.\u2019 In  European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War<\/em>, edited by Jonas Campion, Laurent L\u00f3pez and Guillaume Payen, 257-271. Champaign, 2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. Stalin’s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village After Collectivization.<\/em> New York, 1994.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Irvin, Dakota. \u2018Surveillance Reports.\u2019 In Reading Russian Sources: A Student’s Guide to Text and Visual Sources from Russian History<\/em>, edited by George Gilbert, 111-127. London, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gatrell, Peter. Russia\u2019s First World War: A Social and Economic History.<\/em> Harlow, 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Holquist, Peter. \u2018Anti-Soviet Svodki from the Civil War: Surveillance as a Shared Feature of Russian Political Culture.\u2019 The Russian Review<\/em>56, no. 3 (1997): 445-450<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Holquist, Peter. \u2018Information is the Alpha and Omega of our Work\u2019: Bolshevik Surveillance in its Pan-European Context.\u2019 Journal of Modern History<\/em>69, no. 3, (1997): 415-50<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kenez, Peter. \u2018Russian Officer Corps before the Revolution: The Military Mind.\u2019 The Russian Review<\/em>, 31, no. 3, (1972): 226-236<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lauchlan, Iain. Russian Hide and Seek: The Tsarist Secret Police in St Petersburg 1906-1914<\/em>. Helsinki, 2002.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lauchlan, Iain. \u2018Separate Realm? The Okhrana Myth and Imperial Russian \u2018Otherness\u2019 1881-1917.\u2019 In Imperial and National Identities in Pre-Revolutionary, Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia<\/em>, edited by Chris J. Chulos and Johannes Remy, 70-98. Helsinki, 2002.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lauchlan, Iain. \u2018The Okhrana: Security Policing in Late Imperial Russia.\u2019 In Problems and Prospects in Late Imperial Russia<\/em>, edited by Iain Thatcher, 44-63. Manchester, 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raleigh Donald J. \u2018Languages of Power: How the Saratov Bolsheviks Imagine their Enemies.\u2019 Slavic Review<\/em>57, no. 2 (1998):320-349<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruud, Charles and Sergei Stepanov. Fontanka 16: The Tsar\u2019s Secret Police. <\/em>Montreal and Kingston, 1999.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanborn, Joshua. Imperial Apocalypse: The Great War and the Destruction of the Russian Empire.<\/em> Oxford, 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stone, Norman. The Eastern Front 1914-1917<\/em>. New York, 1975.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Squire, P.S. \u2018Nicholas I and the Problem of Internal Security in Russia in 1826.\u2019 The Slavonic and East European Review<\/em>38, no. 91 (1960): 431-458<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thurston, Robert. \u2018The Police and the People in Moscow 1906-1914.\u2019 The Russian Review<\/em>39, (1980): 320-338<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zuckerman, Frederic. The Tsarist Secret Police in Russian Society, 1880\u20131917<\/em>. London, 1996.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> Norman Stone, The Eastern Front 1914-1917<\/em>, (New York, 1975); Joshua Sanborn, Imperial Apocalypse: The Great War and the Destruction of the Russian Empire,<\/em> (Oxford, 2014): <\/a>1-3; Peter Gatrell, Russia\u2019s First World War: A Social and Economic History,<\/em> (Harlow, 2005).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> Iain Lauchlan, Russian Hide and Seek: The Tsarist Secret Police in St Petersburg 1906-1914<\/em>, (Helsinki, 2002),85-90<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a> Iain Lauchlan, \u2018The Okhrana: Security Policing in Late Imperial Russia,\u2019 in Problems and Prospects in Late Imperial Russia<\/em>, ed. Iain Thatcher (Manchester, 2005), 48.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/a> Lauchlan, Russian Hide and Seek,<\/em>. 93.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/a> For a chart showing this structure, see Iain Lauchlan, Russian Hide and Seek, <\/em>94<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/a> For regular police see Robert Thurston, \u2018The Police and the People in Moscow 1906-1914,\u2019 The Russian Review<\/em>, 39 (1980): 320-338<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[7]<\/a> See Jonathan Daly, \u2018On the Significance of Emergency Legislation in Late Imperial Russia,\u2019 Slavic Review, <\/em>54, no. 3, (1995):  602-629<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[8]<\/a> Iain Lauchlan, \u2018Separate Realm? The Okhrana Myth and Imperial Russian \u2018Otherness\u2019 1881-1917,\u2019 in Imperial and National Identities in Pre-Revolutionary, Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia<\/em>, eds., Chris J. Chulos and Johannes Remy (Helsinki, 2002), 74<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[9]<\/a> Charles Ruud and Sergei Stepanov, Fontanka 16: The Tsar\u2019s Secret Police, <\/em>(Montreal and Kingston, 1999), 281<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[10]<\/a> Lauchlan, Russian Hide and Seek, <\/em>p. 27<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[11]<\/a> Konstantin I. Globachev, The Truth of the Russian Revolution<\/em>: The Memoirs of the Tsar\u2019s Chief of Security and his Wife<\/em>, (Albany, 2017), 5<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[12]<\/a> Peter Kenez, \u2018Russian Officer Corps before the Revolution: The Military Mind,\u2019 The Russian Review<\/em> 31, no. 3, (1972): 234<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[13]<\/a> For an example of the use of svodki<\/em> by a Soviet historian see Sarah Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin\u2019s Russia: Terror, Propaganda, and Dissent 1934\u20131941<\/em> (Cambridge, 1997).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[14]<\/a> Holquist, \u2018Bolshevik Surveillance,\u2019 427.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[15]<\/a> Peter Holquist, \u2018Anti-Soviet Svodki from the Civil War: Surveillance as a Shared Feature of Russian Political Culture,\u2019 The Russian Review<\/em> 56, no. 3, (1997): 445-50.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[16]<\/a> Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village After Collectivization<\/em> (New York, 1994), 327.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[17]<\/a> Dakota Irvin, \u2018Surveillance Reports\u2019, in Reading Russian Sources: A Student’s Guide to Text and Visual Sources from Russian History<\/em>, ed., George Gilbert (London, 2020), 111, 123.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[18]<\/a> Donald Raleigh, \u2018Languages of Power: How the Saratov Bolsheviks Imagine their Enemies,\u2019 Slavic Review<\/em>,57, no. 2 (1998):  321-22, 336-38.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[19]<\/a> Grave, Fevral\u2019skoi revoliutsii<\/em>, 75<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[20]<\/a> Peter Holquist, \u2018State Violence as Technique: The Logic of Violence in Soviet Totalitarianism,\u2019 in Landscaping the Human Garden: Twentieth Century Population Management in Comparative Framework<\/em>, ed., Amir Weiner (Stanford, 2003); Daniel Beer, Renovating Russia: The Human Sciences and the Fate of Liberal Modernity 1880-1930<\/em>, (Cornell, 2008), 12-14.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[21]<\/a> Grave, Fevral<\/em>\u02b9<\/em>skoi revoliutsii<\/em>, 77<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[22]<\/a> Ibid, 77<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[23]<\/a> Ibid, 77<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[24]<\/a> Vladimir Nikolaevich Kokovtsov, Out of My Past: The Memoirs of Count Kokovtsov: Russian Minister of Finance, 1904-1914, Chairman of the Council of Ministers, 1911-1914<\/em> (Stanford, 1935<\/a>), 474<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[25]<\/a> Grave, Fevral<\/em>\u02b9<\/em>sko<\/em>\u012d<\/em> revoliutsii<\/em>, 78<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[26]<\/a> Globachev, The Truth of the Russian Revolution<\/em>, 99-100.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[27]<\/a> See Ruud and Stepanov, Fontanka 16<\/em>, 297-312.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jamie Bryson University of Exeter Background and Overview of the Project By the early twentieth century, tsarist Russia\u2019s inflexible and repressive political system was facing sustained opposition and the growth of mass violence. 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