Okhrana
오흐란카
The Tsarist political secret police, operating under the Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Established after the 1866 assassination attempt on Alexander II and formally structured from 1880, it specialized in surveillance, infiltration, and disruption of revolutionary movements, maintaining foreign agencies in Paris and other European cities to track exiled revolutionaries. The Okhrana became notorious for its use of agents provocateurs: most famously Roman Malinovsky, a Bolshevik Central Committee member, and Yevno Azef, who led the Socialist Revolutionary Fighting Organization while on the Okhrana payroll. Its Zubatovite experiment in police-run trade unions sought to channel worker discontent away from revolution but collapsed in the mass upheaval of 1905. It was dissolved by the Provisional Government immediately after the February Revolution of 1917.
Related people
Sources
- Wikipedia (EN) overview of the Okhrana: creation in 1880, structure under MVD Police Department, agents provocateurs including Malinovsky and Azef, Zubatovshchina, dissolution in 1917
- Wikipedia (RU) Russian article: first section established 1866 after Karakozov's attempt, Moscow section 1880, structure and regional network, dissolution by Provisional Government 4 March 1917
- hoover.org Hoover Institution exhibition on the Okhrana Paris archive: files on Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin; archive smuggled to Stanford in 1926; the only major Russian police archive accessible outside the Soviet Union