Security Services in Imperial and Soviet Russia

Zinaida Ivanovna Peregudova, Politicheskii sysk Rossii, 1880-1917 [Political Investigation in Russia, 1880-1917]. Moscow: Rosspen, 2000. 431 pp. ISBN 5-8243-0063-1.

Frederic S. Zuckerman, The Tsarist Secret Police in Russian Society, 1880-1917. New York: New York University Press, 1996. xvii + 345 pp. ISBN 0-8147-9673-7. $50.00.

Anna Geifman, Entangled in Terror: The Azef Affair and the Russian Revolution. Scholarly Resources, 2000. x + 247. ISBN 0-8420-2651-7. $19.95 (pap).

Leonid Grigor'evich Praisman, Terroristy i revoliutsionery, okhraniki i provokatory [Terrorists and Revolutionaries, Political Policemen and Provocateurs]. Moscow, Rosspen, 2001. 432 pp. ISBN 5-8243-0164-6. $26.00.

Sergei Galvazin, Okhrannye struktury Rossiiskoi imperii: Formirovanie apparata, analiz operativnoi praktiki [Political Police Organizations in the Russian Empire: Formation of an Apparatus, Analysis of Operations]. Moscow: Sovershenno sekretno, 2001. 192 pp. ISBN 5-8904-8094-4.

Nikolai Vladimirovich Grekov, Russkaia kontrrazvedka v 1905-1915 gg.: Shpionomaniia i real ' nye problemy [Russian Counter-intelligence, 1905-1915: Spy Mania and Real Problems]. Moscow: Moskovskii obshchestvennyi nauchnyi fond, 2000. 355 pp. ISBN 5-8955-4171-2.

V. K. Vinogradov et al., eds., Boris Savinkov na Lubianke: Dokumenty [Boris Savinkov in the Lubianka: Documents]. Moscow: Rosspen, 2001. 574 pp. ISBN 5-8243-0200-6.

The history of the late imperial Russian security police has recently become something of a cottage industry, though the Zaionchkovskiis, Avrekhs, Chermenskiis, Diakins, Ganelins—even the Startsevs—have steered clear of the subject. Before 1989, when sensitive archival materials were declassified, it was technically impossible to illuminate the inner workings of the system, but now that those materials are available, it seems that no major historian wants to delve into the tawdry details of the institutionalized betrayal that stood at the heart of the system, of which the secret informant was the "linchpin," as one Western historian has rightly asserted. ¹ Without the secret informant, argued a senior gendarme officer for operations, "the security police is blind." ² And it was precisely the documents relating to the deployment of secret informants (along with those relating to plainclothes surveillance and the interception of mail—the other two key methods of intelligence gathering) that had long been denied to researchers. Surely no self-respecting, morally sensitive historian would deign to probe the evidence of human depravity lurking within those files. Self-respecting historians, no, but, ironically, one of Russia's greatest poets—yes. In 1917, as part of the team of researchers set by the Provisional Government to investigate the "crimes and abuses" of the former government, Aleksandr Blok read reams of police materials and observed the interrogation of dozens of police officials. He concluded that the police apparatus was "the only properly functioning institution that took into account the political situation and understood how dangerous the organized educated public was for a government in disarray," but "the dying regime could not hear their loud voice any more." ³

In the last decade or so, the Russian-language historical literature concerned with just these questions has mushroomed. The first major investigations of the imperial Russian security police were Soviet kandidat dissertations. ⁴ They remain highly valuable and largely unpublished. ⁵ A few book-length studies and collections of chapters on the Russian security police have appeared in the past ten years, ⁶ to say nothing of numerous articles. The author of one of the most important dissertations, Zinaida Ivanovna Peregudova, is the foremost Russian historian of the security services of late imperial Russia and the most prolific. For years she headed the section on pre-revolutionary opposition and social movements at the State Archive of the Russian Federation (formerly the Central State Archives of the October Revolution) in Moscow, enjoying access to an enormous range of archival materials that were closed to most researchers. In addition to sharing her expertise with countless Soviet, Russian, and Western researchers, her position required her to pronounce Solomonic judgment...