To the Moscow Security Department of the Political Prisoner Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky Detained at the Central Transit Prison Statement I humbly ask the Security Department to allow me a general walk. Vladimir Mayakovsky. November 18, 1909

security department

Group photo of employees of the St. Petersburg security department. 1905.

Security department, (colloquial security guard common in the Soviet historical literature) - the name of the structural bodies of the police department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire, in charge of political investigation. In system government controlled Russian Empire in late XIX- early XX centuries. they took one of important places.

Story

The first security department was created in 1866 at the office of the St. Petersburg mayor after Dmitry Karakozov's assassination attempt on Emperor Alexander II, it was called " Department for the protection of order and tranquility in the capital". On May 12, 1886, the state of the St. Petersburg Security Department was approved, which from April 9, 1887 became known as " Department for the protection of public safety and order in the city of St. Petersburg". The St. Petersburg Security Department, being an organ of the Police Department of the Ministry of the Interior, was directly subordinate to the St. Petersburg Mayor. The department included a general office, a security team, a Central spy detachment and a Registration Bureau. The general office consisted of eight tables.

The second security department was Moscow, created on November 1, 1880 by order of the Minister of Internal Affairs M.T. Loris-Melikov. At first it existed as Secret Investigation Department at the Office of the Moscow Police Chief» In 1881 it was renamed into « Department for the protection of public safety and order in the city of Moscow". The Moscow Security Department, also being an organ of the Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, was directly subordinate to the Moscow mayor. In a number of cases, the Moscow Security Department in its investigative activities went beyond the boundaries of Moscow and the Moscow province, fulfilling the role of an all-Russian center of political investigation. The direct executor of this task was the so-called " Flying squad fillers" or " Special Squad surveillance agents ", created in 1894 at the Moscow Security Department. The detachment was headed by E.P. Mednikov, the immediate leader of which was the head of the Security Department S.V. Zubatov. In 1902, the "Flying Filer Detachment" at the Moscow Security Department was abolished; it was replaced by permanent search points created under the provincial gendarme departments and the newly formed "Flying Squad" under the Police Department from the most experienced detectives of the Moscow Security Department.

Third Security Department, Department for the protection of public security and order in the city of Warsaw appeared in 1900.

Heads of the Department for the protection of public security and order in the Kholmsky district

Heads of the Department for the Protection of Public Security and Order in Turkmenabat

Heads of the Public Security and Order Department of the China Eastern Railway

De Livron, Pavel Rudolfovich

Heads of the Department for the protection of public security and order in the Orenburg province

Heads of the Department for the protection of public safety and order at the station Petersburg

The security department appeared in Russia in the 1860s, when a wave of political terror swept the country. Gradually, the tsarist secret police turned into secret organization, whose employees, in addition to fighting the revolutionaries, solved their private tasks.

Special agency

one of critical roles the so-called special agents played in the tsarist secret police, whose inconspicuous work allowed the police to create effective system surveillance and prevention of opposition movements. These included filers - "surveillance agents" and informers - "auxiliary agents".

On the eve of the First World War, there were 70,500 informers and about 1,000 fillers. It is known that from 50 to 100 surveillance agents were deployed daily in both capitals.

There was a rather strict selection in place of the filler. The candidate had to be "honest, sober, courageous, dexterous, developed, quick-witted, hardy, patient, persevering, cautious." They usually took young people no older than 30 years old with an inconspicuous appearance.

Snitches were hired for the most part from among doormen, janitors, clerks, passport officers. Auxiliary agents were required to report all suspicious individuals to the district warden who worked with them.
Unlike fillers, informers were not full-time employees, and therefore did not receive a permanent salary. Usually, for information that, when checked, turned out to be “substantial and useful,” they were given a reward from 1 to 15 rubles.

Sometimes they were paid with things. So, Major General Alexander Spiridovich recalled how he bought new galoshes for one of the informants. “And then he failed his comrades, failed with some kind of frenzy. This is what the galoshes did,” the officer wrote.

Perlustrators

There were people in the detective police who did a rather unseemly job - reading personal correspondence, called perusal. Baron Alexander Benckendorff introduced this tradition even before the creation of the security department, calling it "a very useful thing." Especially active reading personal correspondence began after the assassination of Alexander II.

"Black cabinets", created under Catherine II, worked in many cities of Russia - Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv, Odessa, Kharkov, Tiflis. The conspiracy was such that the employees of these offices did not know about the existence of offices in other cities.
Some of the "black cabinets" had their own specifics. According to the newspaper Russian word”for April 1917, if in St. Petersburg they specialized in perusal of letters from dignitaries, then in Kyiv they studied the correspondence of prominent emigrants - Gorky, Plekhanov, Savinkov.

According to data for 1913, 372,000 letters were opened and 35,000 extracts were made. This productivity is astonishing, given that the staff of illustrators was only 50 people, who were joined by 30 postal workers.
It was quite a long and laborious work. Sometimes letters had to be deciphered, copied, exposed to acids or alkalis in order to reveal the hidden text. And only then suspicious letters were forwarded to the search authorities.

Yours among strangers

For more effective work security department The Police Department has created an extensive network of "internal agents" infiltrating various parties and organizations and exercising control over their activities. According to the instructions for recruiting secret agents, preference was given to "suspected or already involved in political affairs, weak-willed revolutionaries who were disillusioned or offended by the party."
Payments for secret agents ranged from 5 to 500 rubles per month, depending on the status and benefits. The Okhrana encouraged their agents to move up the party ladder and even helped them in this matter by arresting higher-ranking party members.

With great caution, the police treated those who voluntarily expressed a desire to serve as protection public order, since in their environment there were many random people. As a circular from the Police Department shows, during 1912 the Okhrana refused the services of 70 people "as untrustworthy." For example, the exiled settler Feldman recruited by the Okhrana, when asked about the reason for giving false information, answered that he was without any means of subsistence and went on perjury for the sake of reward.

Provocateurs

The activities of the recruited agents were not limited to espionage and the transfer of information to the police, they often provoked actions for which members of an illegal organization could be arrested. The agents reported the place and time of the action, and it was no longer difficult for the trained police to detain the suspects. According to the creator of the CIA, Allen Dulles, it was the Russians who raised provocation to the level of art. According to him, "this was the main means by which the tsarist secret police attacked the trail of revolutionaries and dissidents." The sophistication of Russian agents provocateurs Dulles compared with the characters of Dostoevsky.

The main Russian provocateur is called Yevno Azef - both a police agent and the leader of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. It is not without reason that he is considered the organizer of the murders of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and Minister of the Interior Plehve. Azef was the highest paid secret agent in the empire, receiving 1,000 rubles. per month.

A very successful provocateur was Lenin's "comrade-in-arms" Roman Malinovsky. The Okhrana agent regularly helped the police to locate underground printing houses, reported on secret meetings and secret meetings, but Lenin still did not want to believe in the betrayal of his comrade. In the end, with the assistance of the police, Malinovsky achieved his election to State Duma, and as a member of the Bolshevik faction.

Strange inactivity

The activities of the secret police were connected with events that left an ambiguous judgment about themselves. One of them was the assassination of Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin. September 1, 1911 in Kiev opera house anarchist and secret informer of the Okhrana Dmitry Bogrov, without any interference, mortally wounded Stolypin with two shots at close range. Moreover, at that moment, neither Nicholas II nor members of the royal family who, according to the action plan, were to be with the minister
.

On the fact of the murder, the head of the Palace Guard Alexander Spiridovich and the head of the Kyiv security department Nikolai Kulyabko were involved in the investigation. However, on behalf of Nicholas II, the investigation was unexpectedly terminated.
Some researchers, in particular Vladimir Zhukhrai, believe that Spiridovich and Kulyabko were directly involved in the murder of Stolypin. Many facts point to this. First of all, suspiciously easily experienced Okhrana officers believed in Bogrov's legend about a certain Social Revolutionary who was going to kill Stolypin, and moreover, they allowed him to get into the theater building with a weapon in order to allegedly expose the alleged killer.

Zhukhrai claims that Spiridovich and Kulyabko not only knew that Bogrov was going to shoot Stolypin, but also contributed to this in every possible way. Stolypin, apparently, guessed that a conspiracy was brewing against him. Shortly before the murder, he dropped the following phrase: "They will kill me and the members of the guard will kill me."

Okhrana abroad

In 1883, a foreign secret police was created in Paris to monitor Russian emigre revolutionaries. And there was someone to follow: these are the leaders " People's Will» Lev Tikhomirov and Marina Polonskaya, and publicist Pyotr Lavrov, and anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin. It is interesting that the agents included not only visitors from Russia, but also French civilians.

From 1884 to 1902, the foreign secret police was headed by Pyotr Rachkovsky - these were the heydays of its activity. In particular, under Rachkovsky, agents defeated a large Narodnaya Volya printing house in Switzerland. But Rachkovsky was also involved in suspicious connections - he was accused of collaborating with the French government.

When the director of the Police Department, Plehve, received a report about Rachkovsky's dubious contacts, he immediately sent General Silvestrov to Paris to check on the activities of the head of the foreign secret police. Silvestrov was killed, and soon the agent who reported on Rachkovsky was also found dead.

Moreover, Rachkovsky was suspected of involvement in the murder of Plehve himself. Despite compromising materials, high patrons from the environment of Nicholas II were able to ensure the immunity of the secret agent.

August 14, 1881 Russian tsar Alexander III signed a decree establishing a new secret service- security department. The Okhrana became the successor to the third department of the Ministry of the Interior and the detective police Russian Empire.
The security departments reported directly to the Police Department of the Ministry of the Interior, which gave general direction investigative activities of the departments and disposed of their personnel.
In the system of state administration of the Russian Empire in the late XIX - early XX century, it occupied one of the most important places.

Tasks of the security department

The main task of the Okhrana was to centralize the service of the gendarmerie and the police in order to more effectively persecute anarchists, terrorists and nihilists who threatened the very foundations of tsarism. A department was created to monitor them abroad. foreign intelligence.

Location of the security department

The headquarters of the security department was located in St. Petersburg, on the Fontanka Embankment, 16.

Okhrana structure

On May 12, 1886, the staff of the St. Petersburg Security Department was approved, which from April 9, 1887 became known as the "Department for the Protection of Public Security and Order in the City of St. Petersburg."
The St. Petersburg Security Department, being an organ of the Police Department of the Ministry of the Interior, was directly subordinate to the St. Petersburg Mayor. The department included:
- general office (consisted of eight tables),
- security team
- Central spy squad,
- Registration office.

On November 1, 1880, by order of the Minister of Internal Affairs M.T. Loris-Melikov, the Moscow Security Department was created. For some time it existed as the “Secret Investigation Department under the Office of the Moscow Chief Police Chief”, and in 1881 it was renamed the “Department for the Protection of Public Security and Order in the City of Moscow”.
The Moscow Security Department, also being an organ of the Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, was directly subordinate to the Moscow mayor.
In 1900, the Department for the Protection of Public Security and Order was established in the city of Warsaw. .
On August 13, 1902, Security Departments were created in the cities: Vilna, Yekaterinoslav, Kazan, Kyiv, Odessa, Saratov, Tiflis, Kharkov.
The Police Department placed at the direct disposal of the heads of the security departments the necessary sums for the maintenance of the office, secret and surveillance agents, and other costs of the search.
In 1913, on the initiative of the Deputy Minister of the Interior, the head of the police, V.F. Dzhunkovsky, the liquidation of security departments began. By the February Revolution of 1917, only three of them remained: the Petrograd, Moscow and Warsaw Security Departments.
Headquarters officers were at the head of the Security Departments. Separate building gendarmes (officers with a rank not lower than lieutenant colonel or colonel).

The chief of the Moscow bureau was an assistant to the head of the security department.
Headquarters of the foreign intelligence department The Okhrana, created in 1883, was located in France - in Paris, at the consulate on Rue Grenelle. This department monitored Russian emigrants.
An experienced policeman, Pyotr Rachkovsky, who headed the foreign intelligence department from 1884 to 1902, extended the surveillance network to the entire Western Europe and modeled his department after French counterintelligence.
The Russo-Japanese War of 1905 forces the Okhrana to cooperate with military intelligence. So, General Komissarov was instructed to create a department that would monitor foreign embassies in Moscow too: in particular, to extract data from code books.

Number of security departments

The total number of employees of all security departments was less than 1000 people, of which 200 worked in St. Petersburg. In most of the provinces there were no more than 2-3 employees of the security department.
In addition to the official staff, the security department had special agents - sleuths who conducted surveillance, and informants who were sent to political parties.
There was a rather strict selection in place of the filler. The candidate had to be "honest, sober, courageous, dexterous, developed, quick-witted, hardy, patient, persevering, cautious." They usually took young people no older than 30 years old with an inconspicuous appearance.
As for informers, according to the instructions for recruiting secret agents, preference was given to "suspected or already involved in political affairs, weak-willed revolutionaries who were disillusioned or offended by the party." Payments for secret agents ranged from 5 to 500 rubles per month, depending on the status and benefits.
Persons who were held accountable for state crimes, as well as those who were secret employees, could not hold positions in the security departments.

Abolition of the Okhrana

Immediately after the February Revolution of 1917, by the decision of the Provisional Government, all security departments were abolished on March 4, 1917. Part of their archives perished in fires in the February days.

Information sources:

1. Wikipedia site
2. Faligo, Coffer " The World History intelligence services"
3. “What did the Okhrana do in Tsarist Russia”