The Empire's Blue Uniforms

Editorial Note

Issue 59 is dedicated to a major anniversary in Russian history: the bicentenary of the establishment of the Third Section of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery, the central organ of the Empire's regular political police. The Third Section became the forerunner of the Russian security services in the broadest sense of the term. The contributions collected in this issue, however, extend far beyond the commemorative date of 3 July 1826, covering the history of Russia's various political policing institutions during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including the Corps of Gendarmes, the Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the security sections (Okhrana), and the provincial gendarme administrations. Several articles also examine the most challenging target of the tsarist political police – revolutionary terrorism. The volume brings together not only representatives of the Moscow scholarship on the history of political policing but also leading historians from regional academic centers, including Vladivostok, Voronezh, St Petersburg, and Tomsk.

The issue is divided into four thematic sections. The first, General Aspects of Political Investigation, explores the activities of the imperial security apparatus on a country-wide scale. It opens with Marina V. Sidorova's article, On the Officials of the Third Section, which examines the formation of personnel policy and the characteristics of the staff of the nascent political police. Drawing on extensive archival material, the author analyses the social and financial circumstances of Third Section officials, the factors influencing their career advancement or dismissal, and the internal conflicts that arose within the institution.

Yekaterina I. Shcherbakova's article forms a conceptual bridge between the gendarmerie of Nicholas I and the Police Department of Alexander II's reign. Working with information and analytical reports preserved in the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the author investigates one of the principal channels of information in an age of widespread illiteracy – rumours – and their influence on the political climate of the Empire. Alexander V. Peregudov’s article places the reforms of the political police undertaken under Count P.A. Shuvalov in the 1870s within the broader context of Alexander II's Great Reforms. Historians have generally overlooked the aspect of the Emperor's program related to the strengthening of internal security alongside the implementation of liberal reforms. The article vividly demonstrates Shuvalov's personal role in reinforcing the gendarmerie component within the dual structure of the political police. Thematically related is Alexey A. Rubtsov's study, which, on the basis of archival and legislative sources, analyses the impact of the Judicial Reform of 1864 on the conduct of preliminary investigations into state crimes. The author demonstrates how officers of the Corps of Gendarmes – previously functioning largely as an executive body subordinate to the Third Section rather than as an independent investigative institution – came to occupy a central position in this process. Artur V. Ataev's contribution adopts a historical and political science-related perspective, examining the formation of the social foundations and distinctive ethical principles of terrorism in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia. The phenomenon is analyzed both through the motivations and actions of individual terrorists and from a broader theoretical perspective. The section concludes with Yevgenia V. Oksenyuk's study, which considers whether the political police adequately understood the organizational development of the Socialist Revolutionary Party during the First Russian Revolution.

The second section, entitled The Regional Aspect, focuses on the operation of the political police in four strategically important regions of the Russian Empire – Siberia, the Far East, Right-Bank Ukraine, and Crimea – each possessing its own distinctive political and administrative characteristics. The opening article by Lyubov V. Ulyanova is a highly engaging study of the role played by both regional and central political police institutions in the removal from office of the Mayor of Sevastopol, A.A. Maksimov, who was accused of political unreliability. Behind the political intrigue lay the far more prosaic issue of corruption connected with the contract for the construction of the city's tramway system. The affair reached the highest levels of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the author exposes the regrettably common practice of political defamation and the use of the political police to advance private commercial interests.

Working within the framework of the 1830s, Pyotr P. Rumyantsev presents, with a commentary, a memorandum by the Chief of the Siberian Gendarme District advocating the establishment of an institution of higher education in the region. The document reveals gendarme officers not merely as investigators but also as officials concerned with the long-term development and prosperity of Siberia.

Grigory N. Bibikov’s article uncovers a unique historical source: the memoirs of Lieutenant Colonel F.I. Bek concerning the administration in Volhynia Governorate. This text is valuable not only for the richness of their factual content but also for the unusually analytical approach adopted by a gendarme officer in an official report. The publication is significant not merely because it introduces a previously unknown historical source into scholarly circulation, but also because of Bibikov's extensive introduction and commentary, which together are as valuable than the source document itself.

The concluding article, by Vasily K. Azarevich, examines the largely unexplored history of the political police in the Russian Far East. Drawing upon the records of the Vladivostok Security Section, the author reconstructs the establishment of a regional political police institution virtually from scratch and demonstrates how the personal qualities of its chiefs and officers shaped the effectiveness of the organization as a whole. In this respect, the article complements Marina V. Sidorova's work, which opens the current issue and reveals how a staff numbering only several dozen officials succeeded in monitoring political opinion across an immense territory and even within Russian settlements in China.

The third section, Biographical Studies, is more concise than the preceding two and focuses on two notable figures associated with the political policing system. Anna M. Lavryonova's article contributes to the already extensive historiography of the Myasoedov espionage affair by turning to its origins: the development of the antagonism between the gendarme officer S.N. Myasoedov and the future Director of the Police Department, M.I. Trusevich, arising from procedural irregularities committed by the lieutenant colonel during the investigation of the terrorist A.D. Pokotilov. The article by Vladimir V. Hutarev-Garnishevsky, under whose general editorship this issue was prepared, is devoted to the biography of A.I. Guytov, a little-known yet highly remarkable secret agent who worked for several security sections and the Kronstadt Gendarme Administration. Guytov remains the only reliably documented police informant who, after the February Revolution, succeeded in securing the release of his former handlers from arrest and who, during the Civil War, joined the Volunteer Army and headed an independent intelligence station of the Armed Forces of South Russia.

The issue concludes with a Reviews section, featuring Sergey V. Medvedev's assessment of Anna M. Lavryonova's widely discussed monograph The Thin Blue Line: Gendarmes and Society at the Twilight of the Empire. Written by a historian specializing in the political police and the history of Zubatovism, the review considers Lavryonova's attempt to examine the personnel of the Separate Corps of Gendarmes through the lens of their everyday lives and contemporary public opinion. The Editorial Board notes that the opinions expressed in the review are solely those of its author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial board.

Alexey E. Titkov
Editor-in-Chief of The Historical Reporter