The Okhrana
The Okhrana had humble beginnings, starting as two separate police posts, but as the number of Marxist and anarchist groups expanded in the 1890s, so too did the number of Okhrana. By 1911 there were more than 60 security stations scattered around Russia, and even in European cities like Paris, where Russian revolutionaries in exile were known to be active. Secondly the assassination of Stolypin in 1911 and other internal scandals led to a winding back of the Okhrana just prior to World War 1. A significant amount of counter revolutionary then shifted to specialist military units and branches of the gendarmes. Thirdly, the Okhrana often infiltrated revolutionary groups by using double agents they had captured. Father Gapon a big supporter of the proletariat was believed to be one of these double agents.
MACK
MACK
Halliday states “suppression breeds opposition.” The actions of the Okhrana in engaging opponents of the tsarist order in “a constant battle against the police state,” as Figes puts, “engendered a special kind of mentality” in those opponents. By 1917, the average Bolshevik member had spent nearly four years in jail, while Menshevik activists spent five – prison time gave revolutionaries a personalised motive to overthrow the regime and gain revenge. The fact that “the whole of St Petersburg [was] aware that its letters [were] read by the police,” as Countess Vorontsova complained to Nicholas II, gave rise to discontent in the capital towards tsarism. Finally, Figes describes the “penal rigours of the tsarist regime,” demonstrated in prisons such as Orel, “notorious for its sadistic tortures,” as responsible for provoking the “terrorism of the revolutionaries.” As the Okhrana embodied the oppressive nature of autocracy as its secret police, their actions and existence contributed to a revolutionary situation.
VIVIAN
VIVIAN