3,257
edits
Changes
→Later Russia
In late 19th century Romanov Russia, a new department was developed to create a modern espionage service. This was the Department for Protecting the Public Security and Order, or Okhrana, which was also mostly a secret police organization. The department was created as a reaction to the attempted assassination of Alexander II in 1866. While most of their activity was to protect the Russian state, they increasingly were concerned with revolutionary ideas that had begun to spread in Europe. This included concerns about communism and left-leaning groups that began to openly oppose the tsar. Their activities often involved infiltrating groups abroad that were opposed to the Russian regime, thus exposing them to working in foreign countries more. Foreign espionage was still rudimentary but the experiences of having a professional body for domestic espionage enabled Russian services to better learn on applying spying activities abroad.
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 seen as a counter weight to other leftist violent groups. Lenin was opposed to many of the other opposition parties, leading Okhrana to silently supporting him as a counterweight. This also 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, as it saw military espionage as not honorable. Many of the revolutionaries ultimately came from the military.
==Rise of the Soviet Spy System==
