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Espionage in Russia, with its long history of political turmoil, developed to become one of the most effective espionage services by the 20th century when the Soviet Union emerged. The road to that development, however, was long and full of intrigue and sometime bloody conflict. Espionage, within and outside of Russia, also created fear in Russia's adversaries and population alike.

====Early Espionage in Russia====

They are historically known to have mostly repressed the population to maintain control of the state as Ivan began to accrue greater power and centralize the state towards himself. The group was known to be ascetic and Ivan had peculiar demands that they, outwardly at least, appear like monks in austerity but in reality were given to excesses. While the mostly acted like a state police organization, they also conducted espionage on the population to inform Ivan on possible uprisings or rebellions against his actions (Figure 1).<ref>For more on Ivan IV and the Oprichnik, see: Yanov, Alexander. 1981. <i>The Origins of Autocracy: Ivan the Terrible in Russian History</i>. Berkeley: University of California Press, pg. 304.</ref>

====Later Russia====

Foreign intelligence gathering became established professionally by 1810 in Russia through the creation of what eventually became called the Special Bureau. Initially, foreign gathering intelligence was part of the military. This was seen as crucial for Russia to keep enemies such as the Ottoman Empire and European states away. This tradition of developing the main spying services as serving as part of the larger military structure has stayed with Russia to this day, as the GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate) carried out most of the spying that occurred in the Soviet Union days and after the fall of the Soviet Union.<ref>For more on the Special Bureau and related agencies that eventually helped form the GRU, see: Pringle, Robert W. 2006. <i>Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence</i>. Historical Dictionaries of Intelligence and Counterintelligence Series 5. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press.</ref>

The Okhrana were unprepared for the 1905 Russian Revolution, where their actions may have even made events even worse for the regime. Often, agents worked in small groups and did not coordinate activities. This meant information was not well shared and it was not able to properly identify a large, national-level movement had been launched. Reforms after 1905 included creating spy stations in various cities in Russia that would enable the Okhrana, which was within the wider policing structure of the Russian state, to try to centralize information and be better prepared to root out conspiracies. One role the Okhrana became involved with was promoting counter groups to offset revolutionary groups. In fact, the Bolsheviks were, initially at least, seen as a counterweight to other leftist violent groups that were often seen as a greater threat to the state.

Nevertheless, prominent members, who later became well known communists, such as Stalin, were detained by the Okhrana at various times for subversive activity or even simple criminal activity (Figure 2). However, Lenin was opposed to many of the other opposition parties, leading Okhrana to silently support him as a counterweight. This, overall, helped make Okhrana less able to see the rise of the Bolsheviks as a major threat. In fact, in the events of 1917 that led to the overthrow of the Russian monarch, Okhrana's failure was to not monitor the military, where the Bolsheviks and other revolutionaries had many sympathizers, as it saw military espionage as not honorable. Despite its shortcomings, the succeeding Soviet agencies initially modeled themselves after the Okhrana, specifically the Cheka which became the first secret police after the fall of the Russian Empire. The use of local spy bases and networks that were better coordinated did serve as a useful model for later secret police.<ref>For more on the failure of the Russian spying services to stop the 1917 overthrow, see: Lee, Stephen J. 2006. <i>Russia and the USSR, 1855-1991: Autocracy and Dictatorship</i>. Questions and Analysis in History. London ; New York: Routledge, pg. 73.</ref>

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