Europeans and Russians in the Service of the Tsarist Secret Police: the Detectives and Undercover Agents in Exile

Abstract

The work of the Paris chancery staff and the case officers assigned to the Foreign Agentura was merely routine compared to the burden of service placed upon the shoulders of the Foreign Agentura’s detectives and undercover agents. The detectives (who for the most part were out of necessity West Europeans) and the undercover agents adhered to the same basic procedures as did their brethren within the Empire. Yet the lives and jobs of these men and women were made different from their colleagues within Russia — more complicated and (for the sotrudniki in particular) rendered far more dangerous — by their location within the unfriendly political surroundings of western Europe, far away from the security of the homeland. Those differences gave some of the Foreign Agentura’s operations a unique complexion. The Paris Office’s sotrudniki and detectives themselves, like the chancery staff discussed in the previous chapter were expected to be (though by no means were all of them) more innovative and generally more talented than the mass of their co-workers inside Russia. They carried out their duties effectively as the abundant reports within the Foreign Agentura archive overwhelmingly confirm.¹