Table Of ContentFontanka 16
The Tsars' Secret Police
Fontanka 16 takes a fresh look at the feared Russian tsarist secret
police, the Okhranka, during the period of the imperial regime leading
up to the Revolution of 1917. It is a fascinating account of the devel-
opment of a secret police organization that was deeply rooted in tsarist
Russia but provided a model for Soviet police organizations.
From police headquarters at Fontanka 16 to the secret offices in
major Russian post offices where specialists opened and read corre-
spondence, the Okhranka blanketed the huge Russian empire with a
network of secret agents and informers. In many cases they were
involved in a desperate effort to track down terrorists before they
could assassinate government officials and members of the imperial
family. Charles Ruud and Sergei Stepanov have mined police archives,
including Moscow's State Archive of the Russian Federation and the
archives of the Hoover Institution, to produce this first post-Soviet
look at the Okhranka's covert operations, which spread as far as
Western Europe.
In many ways Fontanka 16 reveals as much about the enemies of
the tsars as the police who fought them. Although each side saw its
cause as a struggle for good over evil, the authors show that the two
sides strongly resembled one another in method, psychology, and
morality. In this strange nether world of intrigue and deception, police
agents often assisted revolutionaries and a number of former revolu-
tionaries rose through the ranks of the secret police. The authors shed
new light on the supposed anti-Semitism of the imperial government,
as well as the origins of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
CHARLES A. RUUD is professor of history, University of Western Ontario.
SERGEI A. STEPANOV is doctor of history, Russian Independent Insti-
tute of Social and Nationality Problems, Moscow.
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FONTANKA 16
The Tsars'
Secret Police
CHARLES A. RUUD
and
SERGEI A. STEPANOV
McGill-Queen's University Press
Montreal &? Kingston • London • Ithaca
McGill-Queen's University Press 1999
ISBN 0-7735-1787-!
Legal deposit second quarter 1999
Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper
Published simultaneously in the UK, Eire, and Europe by
Sutton Publishing Ltd.
Publication of this book has been assisted by a grant from
the J.B. Smallman and Spencer Memorial Fund,
University of Western Ontario.
McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the
financial support of the Government of Canada through
the Book Publishing Industry Development program for
its activities. We also acknowledge the support of the
Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Ruud, Charles A., 1933-
Fontanka 16: the tsars' secret police
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7735-1787-!
i. Russia. Okhrannyia otdielen iia - History. 2. Police -
Russia — History. 3. Secret service - Russia — History.
i. Stepanov, S. A. n. Title.
HV8227.2.A2R88 1999 363.2.8'3'o947 098-901352-9
Typeset in Sabon 10/12 with American Typewriter display
by Caractera inc., Quebec City
Contents
Preface vii
Illustrations xi
P A R T O N E H I S T O R Y , T R A D I T I O N ,
P R E C E D E N T S
1 Political Investigation in Russia to 1825 3
2 Imperial Security Centres at Fontanka 16,
1826 to the 18705 17
3 From the Third Section to the Department
of Police 38
P A R T T W O S T R U C T U R E ,
M E T H O D S , A G E N T S
4 The Okhranka as a Compiler of
Information 59
5 The Foreign Agency, 1884-1917 79
6 The Challenge of Quelling the Fighting
Squads, 1906-1909 101
P A R T T H R E E D O U B L E A G E N T S
A N D D I S S I D E N T S
7 Azeff, the Super Agent 125
8 Whistle-blowers in the Ranks of the
Okhranka 152
9 The Assassination of Stolypin 173
vi Contents
P A R T F O U R T H E P O L I T I C A L
P O L I C E A N D T H E J E W I S H
Q U E S T I O N
10 Protocols, Masons, Liberals 203
11 The Tsarist Police and Pogroms 225
12 The Beilis Case and Damage Control 246
P A R T F I V E T H E D E C L I N E O F
T H E O K H R A N K A
13 The Struggle for the Okhranka 277
14 Police Officials and Rasputin 290
15 Epilogue for the Okhranka 314
Notes 323
Bibliography 3 69
Index 387
Preface
The address, number 16, on the Fontanka embankment in St Peters-
burg is as well known to Russians as Number 10 Downing Street is
to the English, but it is not known at all in the world outside of
Russia. Russians know about Fontanka 16 because it was the head-
quarters of the tsarist secret political police from sometime in the
18308 until the Revolution of February 1917.
Before Nicholas I claimed the throne in late 18x5, imperial political
police had been variously housed. Centralizer that he was, Nicholas
had at once founded his own contingent, the Third Section, and, to
have them near at hand, seated them for a short while in an office
facing the Moika Canal and then in building Number 16 on the
Fontanka. Also quartered there was the next and final tsarist security
force, the Okhranka. Because many easily learned what went on
within its walls, Fontanka 16 came to mean secret police in and
beyond the capital at least by the 188os.
Anyone who walks along the Fontanka Embankment to find
Number 16 will confront gardens, trees, and a series of elegant struc-
tures in early eighteenth-century classical design; for Trezzini, as archi-
tect and city planner for Peter the Great, designated lots on the banks
of the Fontanka for some of the great gentry palaces built in Peter's
new capital, including those of the Yusupov, Sheremetev, and
Vorontsov families. During the reign of Catherine II, then-chief plan-
ner A.V. Krasov enhanced the canal itself by lining with granite this
channel for the Fontanka river, a tributary of the Neva. A number of
graceful spans across the waterway were added next, including the
Tsepnoi bridge that can be seen as one reaches the address that titles
this book.
N.V. Veselago, an officer in the Department of Police from 1911 to
1913, left a diagram of the layout of Fontanka 16. On it he shows
viii Fontanka 16
that the Special Section occupied an entire floor of the main building
and that a separate taller building at the rear housed four of the
special secretariats that served the far-flung political police organiza-
tion known as the Okhranka.
This study concentrates on the Okhranka and its allied organiza-
tion, the Gendarmes, over the last forty years or so of the Imperial
1
regime. To describe the two forces only in organizational terms would
present an incomplete picture, for their members regularly interacted
to conduct political investigations on an ad hoc basis. This study
therefore describes how the officers and agents of the Okhranka and
Gendarmes worked and behaved in particular cases.
With respect to nomenclature, the general term "police" rightly
applies to the Okhranka, as the Okhranka was a part of the Depart-
ment of Police. It was a unique branch, however, in that its mandate
was to detect and counteract subversives at home and abroad, prefer-
ably before they took steps to undermine the state. Thus the
Okhranka, precisely defined, were the "political" police.
Archival and printed materials constitute the foundation of this
book. Its main sources came from the collection of documents on the
Okhranka at the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow,
and, for the Foreign Okhranka, from the Hoover Institution in Stan-
ford, California. One or other of the authors also worked in archives
in Kiev, St Petersburg, at the New York Public Library, and at Yale
University.
From among the vast published materials on political investigation
in Russia, several books by former Okhranka officials have provided
valuable insights for this study. They include the works of Gerasimov,
Men'shchikov, Spiridovich, Zavarzin, Novitsky, Vassilyev - to cite the
main ones. Other rich sources for this work are books and documents
published by S.G. Svatikov and P.E. Shchegolev, investigators of the
Okhranka for the Provisional Government; Vladimir Burtsev's Byloe
(The Past); and Padenie tsarskogo rezbima (The Fall of the Tsarist
Regime), edited by Shchegolev, which is a verbatim record of the
interrogations of former police and other high officials by the investi-
gators of the Provisional Government.
The authors wish to express their thanks to all those who so greatly
assisted in the preparation of this book. They include the librarians,
archivists, and historians who work at the libraries and archives
1. This work is a revised version of Fontanka, 16: Politicheskii ssysk pri tsariakh, published by Mysl'
Press in Moscow in 1994.
ix Preface
mentioned in the introduction. We wish to give special thanks to
Diane Mew of Toronto and Marjorie Ruud of London for their
outstanding editorial work. We wish to acknowledge permission
granted by Charles Schlacks, Jr., to use sections of Charles Ruud's
"A.A. Lopukhin, Police Insubordination and the Rule of Law," pub-
lished in Russian History 20, nos. 1-4 (1993).
The Library of Congress system of transliteration has been followed,
except that the "ii" ending of Russian surnames has been rendered as
"y." All Russian dates are according to the Julian calendar, in effect
in Russia until March 1918.
