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This is the first book to portray the history of the Russian secret police - the so-called 'Okhrana' - its personnel, world view and interaction with both government and people during the reigns of Alexander III and Nicholas II. The secret police harassed, infiltrated and subverted Russian radical and progressive society as it struggled to preserve Tsardom's traditional political culture in the face of Russia's rapid socio-economic transformation - a transformation which the forces of order scarcely understood, yet deeply despised.
In 1883, the Russian police established the Foreign Agentura in Paris. The bureau's brief: to forewarn Tsardom of terrorist plans and, if possible, to defuse acts of terrorism against high personages by revolutionaries operating under European sanctuary. As the revolutionary emigration expanded, the Foreign Agentura reacted by spreading its tentacles across Europe and England. With the help of their European colleagues, the Tsar's agents tackled and drove back this terrorist force, proving themselves invaluable in the evolution of political policing.
This book describes how in 1883, the Russian police established the Foreign Agentura in Paris. The bureau's brief: to forewarn Tsardom of terrorist plans and, if possible, to defuse acts of terrorism against high personages by revolutionaries operating under European sanctuary. As the revolutionary emigration expanded, the Foreign Agentura reacted by spreading its tentacles across Europe and England. With the help of their European colleagues, the Tsar's agents tackled and drove back this terrorist force, proving themselves invaluable in the evolution of political policing.
This account describes the development of a secret police force that was rooted in tsarist Russia, but provided a model for Soviet police organizations. Ruud (history, U. of Western Ontario) and Stepanov (history, Russian Independent Institute of Social and Nationality Problems, Moscow) provide a comprehensive study of the tsarist secret police, the Okhranka, which was designed to catch terrorists before they assassinated Russia's leaders, during the period leading up to the Revolution of 1917. The book explores the Okhranka and its allied organization, the Gendarmes, through particular cases rather than in strictly institutional terms. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
This book is a study of the operational center of Tsar Nicholas II's secret police (the Okhrana or Okhranka) during the peak of its activities and notoriety. It explores the gulf between the theory and practice of espionage, whereby attempts to create a rational bureaucratic surveillance machine clash with the unpredictable factor of human nature and its weaknesses. The author also examines the social and political friction aroused by the Okhrana during Imperial Russia's turbulent constitutional experiment. Rather than rehashing the old demonic image of a prototypical totalitarian secret police agency, Russian Hide-and-Seek places the Okhrana in its historical context: as an innovator among the Great Powers in the realms of political intelligence and counter-terrorism, striving to avert the precipitous descents into world war and revolution.
Originally published in 1930, these are the memoirs of the last Tsarist chief of police, Okhrana, who was arrested by the revolutionaries, refused to be a Bolshevik spy, escaped to France, became a railway porter and died penniless. The book tells of the part he played in Rasputin’s death and his experiences during WWI and the Revolutions, and the comparison between the Okhrana and the Cheka, the Soviet secret police, in which he describes a kinder, gentler Okhrana. Richly illustrated throughout.
This book is new in every aspect and not only because neither the official history nor an unofficial history of the KGB, and its many predecessors and successors, exists in any language. In this volume, the author deals with the origins of the KGB from the Tsarist Okhrana (the first Russians secret political police) to the OGPU, Joint State Political Directorate, one of the KGB predecessors between 1923 and 1934. Based on documents from the Russian archives, the author clearly demonstrates that the Cheka and GPU/OPGU were initially created to defend the revolution and not for espionage. The Okhrana operated in both the Russian Empire and abroad against the revolutionaries and most of its operations, presented in this book, are little known. The same is the case with regards to the period after the Cheka was established in December 1917 until ten years later when Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party and exiled, and Stalin rose to power. For the long period after the Revolution and up to the Second World War (and, indeed, beyond until the death of Stalin) the Cheka’s main weapon was terror to create a general climate of fear in a population. In the book, the work of the Cheka and its successors against the enemies of the revolution is paralleled with British and American operations against the Soviets inside and outside of Russia. For the first time the creation of the Communist International (Comintern) is shown as an alternative Soviet espionage organization for wide-scale foreign propaganda and subversion operations based on the new revelations from the Soviet archives Here, the early Soviet intelligence operations in several countries are presented and analyzed for the first time, as are raids on the Soviet missions abroad. The Bolshevik smuggling of the Russian imperial treasures is shown based on the latest available archival sources with misinterpretations and sometimes false interpretations in existing literature revised. After the Bolshevik revolution, Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the first chief of SIS, undertook to set up ‘an entirely new Secret Service organization in Russia’. During those first ten years, events would develop as a non-stop struggle between British intelligence, within Russia and abroad, and the Cheka, later GPU/OGPU. Before several show ‘spy trials’ in 1927, British intelligence networks successfully operated in Russia later moving to the Baltic capitals, Finland and Sweden while young Soviet intelligence officers moved to London, Paris, Berlin and Constantinople. Many of those operations, from both sides, are presented in the book for the first time in this ground-breaking study of the dark world of the KGB
Why did the imperial Russian government fail to prevent revolution in 1917? Were its security policies flawed? This broadly researched study of Russia's security police investigates the government's efforts to maintain order as it struggled against political opposition and threats of violence during the last decade before the Revolution. Historian Jonathan Daly brings to life the men who, often with reformist intentions, took on the task of defending Russia against political dissent and revolution from within. The Watchful State reveals how the security police matched wits with revolutionary activists under Russia's first constitutional government, from 1906 until the collapse of order in 1917. The secret police kept a watchful eye on a large number of the radical political activists who threatened the state order. Such constant scrutiny enabled the secret police frequently to disrupt plots against the government, to set snares to trap conspirators, and to hold the workers' movement within bounds. The security police rarely harassed liberal and moderate activists during the constitutional era, though the regular police administration was not so restrained. The two institutions of law enforcement worked together, forming a security system with one primary goal: to thwart antigovernment forces seeking to undermine the political status quo. Countless times, Russia narrowly escaped breakdowns of order, thanks to the intervention of the police who thwarted political assassinations, troop mutinies, and urban unrest. Yet security police activities were not without cost to the established order. As the educated public expanded and an awareness of civil society grew, tolerance for secretive and often intrusive security apparatus waned. In its battle against its revolutionary adversaries, the late imperial government lost the broader struggle for the hearts and minds of Russians.