Fontanka 16: The Tsars’ Secret Police, by Charles A. Ruud and Sergei A. Stepanov

Abstract

16: The Tsars' Secret Police, by Charles A. Ruud and Sergei A. Stepanov. Montreal, Quebec, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999. ix. 394 pp: $39.95 Cdn (cloth). In late nineteenth-century St. Petersburg, the address Fontanka 16 became a shorthand for From the 1830s until 1917, the tsarist secret political police, the Okhranka, was headquartered there. In co-operation with the military police -- the Corps of Gendarmes -- the Okhranka worked to detect and counteract subversion against the Russian state. By the time of the collapse of the Russian autocracy in February 1917, Okhranka informants kept watch virtually everywhere. This wide-ranging study, a revised version of the authors' 1994 Russian-language work, focuses on the activities of the Okhranka and the Gendarmes from the 1880s to 1917. Charles A. Ruud and Sergei A. Stepanov have mined a rich collection of memoirs and archival materials to explore the psychology and workings of the secret police. They offer an illuminating picture of the Okhranka side in the cat-and-mouse game that the revolutionaries and the tsarist state played from the mid nineteenth century on. Indeed, a central theme of the book is the symbiotic relationship that existed between revolutionaries and police, and the considerable cross-over of personnel and methods between the two categories. Ruud and Stepanov open by reviewing the evolution of the tsarist apparatus from the sixteenth century through the formation of the first comprehensive secret police service under Nicholas I in 1826. The infamous Third Section of His Majesty's Own Chancellery tracked public opinion through censorship, the opening of mail, Gendarme investigations, and denunciations received from the public. However, the rise of revolutionary terrorism in the 1870s forced a reorganization of operations in 1880. The many physical attacks on high officials by radical populists made the system look weak. In response, Alexander II abolished the Third Section and a Department of State Police was founded within the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Its Division for the Protection of Order and Social Security, the Okhranka, provided increased surveillance of the public through both detective work and through a great expansion of the use of inside agents infiltrating subversive groups. Policies designed to make the process of collecting and analyzing information more systematic and secretive were also implemented. After the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, new emergency legislation permitted the use of intensified security against attacks on the state or if the interior minister deemed such attacks to be imminent. Although originally introduced for a three-year period, this law remained in force until 1917 and considerably strengthened the hand of the secret police. After laying out the origins of the Okhranka, Ruud and Stepanov turn to an interesting analysis of secret police techniques for compiling information. …