Russian Intelligence during the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–05

Abstract

The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 marked a clear turning point in the development of modern military intelligence. Intelligence played a major role in the conflict, as acknowledged by both sides and by many international observers at the time. Russian commentators attributed many of Russia's military and political reverses in the conflict both to their own military intelligence failures and to the sophistication (and broad-ranging scope) of Japanese intelligence activities. As a result, in the wake of the conflict, Russia set out to reorganize her whole intelligence structure via deep and broad-ranging reform, initiating developments that would ultimately culminate in the Soviet Union becoming one of the premier‘panoptic’ surveillance states of the twentieth century in terms of the measures it took to guard against both internal and external ‘hidden forces’.