Pyotr Rachkovsky
Encyclopedia
Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky was chief of Okhrana, the secret service
in Imperial Russia. He was based in Paris
from March 1885 to November 1902.
in 1881, the government moved against various revolution
ary factions operating in emigration or hiding out in Russia. Rachkovsky's principal mission was to compromise Russia's growing revolutionary movement
. The list of penetration agents hired by Rachkovsky included:
According to journalist Brian Doherty
:
By personally winning the good will and cooperation of the services of host countries, Rachkovsky indirectly assisted his agents and crowned their efforts. For instance, when a penetration agent in Geneva
had supplied the essential information about a gathering of terrorists there and external agents had located by surveillance their clandestine printshop and weapons store, Rachkovsky could call on Swiss security units to help destroy the underground and arrest the ringleaders. This happened in 1887; it was repeated in 1888, then again and again in other countries. His powers of persuasion were sufficient to recruit Lev Tikhomirov
, one of the leading terrorists, when he had been softened by contrived exposure, and get him to write an anti-revolutionary book.
Rachkovsky's political action operations, often highly successful, were exclusively his personal effort. He devised some plans for using others, but in every major instance he was the sole operator. He befriended a Danish journalist, Jules Hansen, during his first visit to Paris in 1884. Besides being one of the bright lights of his profession, Hansen was a counsellor in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a friend of Minister Delcassé. He became the principal channel for promoting a friendly press for Russia in western Europe, and he made contacts for Rachkovsky with leading ministers and politicians, including even President Loubet. On the other hand, Rachkovsky also cultivated important personages in the imperial government and at court. In these activities he was, as revolutionary writers accused him of being, a manipulator behind the scenes preparing the ground for acceptance, both in Paris and at Petersburg, of the Franco-Russian alliance signed in 1893.
Rachkovsky devised and developed access to several other governments beside the French. The files contain copies of dispatches about an audience he had with Pope Leo XIII
and a proposed exchange of diplomats between Russia and the Vatican
with particular view to the unrest in Catholic
Poland
. Advisers to the Tsar in Petersburg turned down the proposal, but the idea of combatting the insurrectional campaign in Poland by using religious interests clearly illustrates Rachkovsky's high-level concept of political action.
Rachkovsky's major provocation operation was primarily in support of political action. In 1890 agent Landesen, having promoted among the revolutionaries in Paris an elaborate plot to kill the Tsar, arranged that after one underground meeting a large number of the terrorists would each have on their persons their weapons and written notes on the parts they were to play. The French police, tipped off through cutouts by Rachkovsky, arrested the entire group, and that summer they were tried and sentenced, Landesen in absentia. Rachkovsky thus scored a victory not only over the enemies of the state but against those in Saint Petersburg
who had opposed the Franco-Russian alliance on the grounds that France was too soft on subversives. The stern police and court action proved to Petersburg that France too had a strong government capable of dealing with internal enemies.
Rachkovsky may have also played a role in amplifying the carnage of World War I
: "Rachkovsky’s bosses in Russia
and his hosts in Paris
both feared the radicals, allowing the Russian agent to tighten the ties between the two nations. He succeeded so well that [historian Alex] Butterworth argues he was partly to blame for the Russo-French alliance
that helped make World War I
such a bloody mess."
. Many authors maintain that it was Rachkovsky's agent in Paris, Matvei Golovinski
, who in the early 1900s authored the first edition. The text presented the impending Russian Revolution of 1905
as a part of a powerful global Jewish conspiracy
and fomented anti-Semitism
to deflect public attention from Russia's growing social problems. Another Rachkovsky agent, Yuliana Glinka
, is often cited as the person who brought the forgery from France to Russia.
was introduced in Saint Petersburg. Rachkovsky was brought back to head the entire Okhrana, first as MVD Special Commissioner and then as the Deputy Director of Police.
Rachkovsky had the reputation of being an unrivalled master of intrigues and provocation.
In 1902 he faked a letter by the leader of the Russian social democrats Georgy Plekhanov that accused Narodnaya Volya leaders of cooperation with the British Intelligence Service. This allowed the police to exploit mutual distrust and recriminations between the factions.
---- Biography and documents at hrono.ru Петр Иванович Рачковский // Брачев В. С. Богатыри русского политического сыска
Secret service
A secret service describes a government agency, or the activities of a government agency, concerned with the gathering of intelligence data. The tasks and powers of a secret service can vary greatly from one country to another. For instance, a country may establish a secret service which has some...
in Imperial Russia. He was based in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
from March 1885 to November 1902.
Activities in 1880s-1890s
After the assassination of Alexander II of RussiaAlexander II of Russia
Alexander II , also known as Alexander the Liberator was the Emperor of the Russian Empire from 3 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881...
in 1881, the government moved against various revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
ary factions operating in emigration or hiding out in Russia. Rachkovsky's principal mission was to compromise Russia's growing revolutionary movement
Revolutionary movement
Revolutionary movement is a specific type of social movement dedicated to carrying out a revolution. Charles Tilly defines it as a social movement advancing exclusive competing claims to control of the state, or some segment of it. An example of a revolutionary movement is the Armenian...
. The list of penetration agents hired by Rachkovsky included:
- Landesen (Abraham Hackelman), among the Narodnaya Volya terrorists in FranceFranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and SwitzerlandSwitzerlandSwitzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition.... - Ignaty Kornfeld, among the Anarcho-Communists
- Prodeus, a well-known revolutionary, reporting on various revolutionary centers
- Ilya Drezhner, among the Social Democrats in GermanyGermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Switzerland, and France - Boleslaw Malankiewicz, among the PolishPolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
anarchists and terrorists in LondonLondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its... - Casimir PilenasCasimir PilenasCasimir Pilenas, a.k.a. Casimir Palmer, and a.k.a., Casimir Palmer-Pilenas, was a private investigator, a British intelligence agent, and a "spotter" for Scotland Yard.- Biography :According to study by Rita T...
, a spotter for Scotland YardScotland YardScotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
recruited to work among the LatviaLatviaLatvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
n terrorists - Zinaida Zhuchenko, among the Socialist Revolutionaries and their terrorist Fighting Unit
- Aleksandr Evalenko, assigned to New York CityNew York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
for work among the Jewish Bundists and terrorists
According to journalist Brian Doherty
Brian Doherty (journalist)
Brian Doherty is an American journalist. He is a Senior Editor at Reason magazine. He is the author of This Is Burning Man: The Rise of a New American Underground , Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement and Gun Control on Trial: Inside the...
:
"Rachkovsky started as a possibly sincere, possibly duplicitous mover in St. Petersburg’s radical underground in the late 1870s, after having been dismissed (for leniency toward political exiles) from a job as a prosecutor for the czar’s government. He ended up running the show for the Okhrana, the Russian secret policeSecret policeSecret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....
, in ParisParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, where so many radicals considered dangerous to the czarist regime had immigrated.
From 1885 until 1902, Rachkovsky was responsible for keeping anarchistsAnarchismAnarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
under surveillance and on the run—and also, in many cases, financed and supplied with ideas. . . . “[P]rominent among his early initiatives were provocationsEntrapmentIn criminal law, entrapment is conduct by a law enforcement agent inducing a person to commit an offense that the person would otherwise have been unlikely to commit. In many jurisdictions, entrapment is a possible defense against criminal liability...
designed to lure credulous émigrés into the most heinous crimes of which they may never have otherwise conceived.” Rachkovsky’s aim was to entrapEntrapmentIn criminal law, entrapment is conduct by a law enforcement agent inducing a person to commit an offense that the person would otherwise have been unlikely to commit. In many jurisdictions, entrapment is a possible defense against criminal liability...
his targets into committing acts that would help ensure that his job seemed of vital importance to the czar. This guaranteed him a solid berth in ParisParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
that was lucrative both in salary and prestige [and] in opportunities for corrupt under-the-radar dealings with a French governmentFrench Third RepublicThe French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...
doing heavy business with RussiaRussiaRussia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
."
By personally winning the good will and cooperation of the services of host countries, Rachkovsky indirectly assisted his agents and crowned their efforts. For instance, when a penetration agent in Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
had supplied the essential information about a gathering of terrorists there and external agents had located by surveillance their clandestine printshop and weapons store, Rachkovsky could call on Swiss security units to help destroy the underground and arrest the ringleaders. This happened in 1887; it was repeated in 1888, then again and again in other countries. His powers of persuasion were sufficient to recruit Lev Tikhomirov
Lev Tikhomirov
Lev Alexandrovich Tikhomirov , originally a Russian revolutionary and one of the members of the Executive Committee of the Narodnaya Volya, following his disenchantment with violent revolution became one of the leading conservative thinkers in Russia...
, one of the leading terrorists, when he had been softened by contrived exposure, and get him to write an anti-revolutionary book.
Rachkovsky's political action operations, often highly successful, were exclusively his personal effort. He devised some plans for using others, but in every major instance he was the sole operator. He befriended a Danish journalist, Jules Hansen, during his first visit to Paris in 1884. Besides being one of the bright lights of his profession, Hansen was a counsellor in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a friend of Minister Delcassé. He became the principal channel for promoting a friendly press for Russia in western Europe, and he made contacts for Rachkovsky with leading ministers and politicians, including even President Loubet. On the other hand, Rachkovsky also cultivated important personages in the imperial government and at court. In these activities he was, as revolutionary writers accused him of being, a manipulator behind the scenes preparing the ground for acceptance, both in Paris and at Petersburg, of the Franco-Russian alliance signed in 1893.
Rachkovsky devised and developed access to several other governments beside the French. The files contain copies of dispatches about an audience he had with Pope Leo XIII
Pope Leo XIII
Pope Leo XIII , born Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci to an Italian comital family, was the 256th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, reigning from 1878 to 1903...
and a proposed exchange of diplomats between Russia and the Vatican
Holy See
The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...
with particular view to the unrest in Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. Advisers to the Tsar in Petersburg turned down the proposal, but the idea of combatting the insurrectional campaign in Poland by using religious interests clearly illustrates Rachkovsky's high-level concept of political action.
Rachkovsky's major provocation operation was primarily in support of political action. In 1890 agent Landesen, having promoted among the revolutionaries in Paris an elaborate plot to kill the Tsar, arranged that after one underground meeting a large number of the terrorists would each have on their persons their weapons and written notes on the parts they were to play. The French police, tipped off through cutouts by Rachkovsky, arrested the entire group, and that summer they were tried and sentenced, Landesen in absentia. Rachkovsky thus scored a victory not only over the enemies of the state but against those in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
who had opposed the Franco-Russian alliance on the grounds that France was too soft on subversives. The stern police and court action proved to Petersburg that France too had a strong government capable of dealing with internal enemies.
Rachkovsky may have also played a role in amplifying the carnage of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
: "Rachkovsky’s bosses in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
and his hosts in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
both feared the radicals, allowing the Russian agent to tighten the ties between the two nations. He succeeded so well that [historian Alex] Butterworth argues he was partly to blame for the Russo-French alliance
Franco-Russian Alliance
The Franco-Russian Alliance was a military alliance between the French Third Republic and the Russian Empire that ran from 1892 to 1917. The alliance ended the diplomatic isolation of France and undermined the supremacy of the German Empire in Europe...
that helped make World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
such a bloody mess."
Role in the creation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
These faction fights provide the backdrop to the infamous fraud The Protocols of the Elders of ZionThe Protocols of the Elders of Zion
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a fraudulent, antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for achieving global domination. It was first published in Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the twentieth century...
. Many authors maintain that it was Rachkovsky's agent in Paris, Matvei Golovinski
Matvei Golovinski
Matvei Vasilyevich Golovinski was a Russian-French writer, journalist and political activist. Critics studying the Protocols of the Elders of Zion have argued that he was the author of the work...
, who in the early 1900s authored the first edition. The text presented the impending Russian Revolution of 1905
Russian Revolution of 1905
The 1905 Russian Revolution was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. Some of it was directed against the government, while some was undirected. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies...
as a part of a powerful global Jewish conspiracy
Conspiracy theory
A conspiracy theory explains an event as being the result of an alleged plot by a covert group or organization or, more broadly, the idea that important political, social or economic events are the products of secret plots that are largely unknown to the general public.-Usage:The term "conspiracy...
and fomented anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
to deflect public attention from Russia's growing social problems. Another Rachkovsky agent, Yuliana Glinka
Yuliana Glinka
Yuliana Dmitrievna Glinka was a Russian occultist born to a prominent family in Orel, Russia.Her grandfather, Colonel Fyodor Nikolaevich Glinka was investigated as a leader of "a secret society of mystics" during Prince Alexander Nikolaevich Galitzine's investigation of masonic lodges following...
, is often cited as the person who brought the forgery from France to Russia.
Career after 1905
After the Revolution of 1905, martial lawMartial law
Martial law is the imposition of military rule by military authorities over designated regions on an emergency basis— only temporary—when the civilian government or civilian authorities fail to function effectively , when there are extensive riots and protests, or when the disobedience of the law...
was introduced in Saint Petersburg. Rachkovsky was brought back to head the entire Okhrana, first as MVD Special Commissioner and then as the Deputy Director of Police.
Rachkovsky had the reputation of being an unrivalled master of intrigues and provocation.
In 1902 he faked a letter by the leader of the Russian social democrats Georgy Plekhanov that accused Narodnaya Volya leaders of cooperation with the British Intelligence Service. This allowed the police to exploit mutual distrust and recriminations between the factions.
Further Reading
- The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Police by Alex Butterworth (Pantheon Books, 2010)
External links
- Paris Okhrana 1885-1905 CIA historical review program (Approved for release 22 September 1993)
- The Paris Operations of the Russian Imperial Police by Ben B. Fischer. History Staff Center for the Study of Intelligence, CIA (declassified). 1997
---- Biography and documents at hrono.ru Петр Иванович Рачковский // Брачев В. С. Богатыри русского политического сыска