Frederic S. Zuckerman, The Tsarist Secret Police in Russian Society, 1880-1917 (New York: New York University Press, 1996).

Bluntly speaking, The Tsarist Secret Police in Russian Society is unreliable. Assuming this would be obvious to potential reviewers, I twice declined invitations to review the book myself. In the interest of collegiality, I also omitted to draw attention to the book’s serious flaws in my own monograph on the subject. Yet since no reviewer has pointed them out, and because the book continues to be cited as authoritative, I consider it my responsibility to set the record straight. It is an unpleasant but necessary duty, for if we cannot reasonably expect scholars to cite their sources accurately, then scholarship becomes impossible. Scholars should worry that someday a colleague may systematically verify their references; this thought will help keep us honest and scrupulously accurate.

Although I verified only a small portion of Zuckerman’s references, because my time was limited and many of his sources were unavailable to me, I found 37 separate mis-citations where his assertions in the text found absolutely no corroboration (or were contradicted) in the cited sources, either in the pages indicated or in adjacent pages. I also found 34 instances where Zuckerman bases assertions on sources that cannot support them. In some cases he cites one concrete informational directive from the Police Department to support general conclusions about police behavior or operations. In other cases he cites prescriptive police regulations as descriptive sources. In yet others he relies on former police officials or revolutionary activists for information on which they were far from authoritative or were self-serving or about which they were simply not in a position to know anything substantive. In general, Zuckerman places more trust than is warranted in several authors lacking credibility in regard to Russian security police affairs, including former police officials M. E. Bakai, V. N. Russsianov, and N. V. Veselago, as well as radical activists who hastily produced studies of the security police in 1917 and 1918.

There are moreover at least 16 important assertions lacking any referential basis. Finally, in eight cases Zuckerman puts forth general statements about Russian security police institutions and operations for which no authoritative evidence is available or for which further archival research would be required.

The book also contains well over 100 factually inaccurate or exaggerated claims and assertions. Specifically, I discovered 46 false assertions, 33 exaggerated assertions, 32 misinterpretations of evidence, 10 cases where the author contradicts himself, and 20 minor factual errors.

I believe the book to be unusable as a work of scholarship. The level of knowledge and understanding of the Imperial Russian security police one would have to assume in a reader seeking illumination on the subject from this monograph, but wishing to distinguish fact from fiction, would exceed that of all but a tiny handful of scholars in the world.

12. Assassination of Alexander on 2 March 1881 [it was 1 March] “caused panic” [only one memoir cited: Suvorin].

His murder “convinced even the dullest tsarist official that a dedicated group of hardened revolutionaries existed in Russia [Loris-Melikov was painfully aware of that]

13. “the political police by the mid-1880s already operated beyond the control of the regular bureaucracy” [no references supplied; I don’t see how the author can know this]

14.“administrative justice” [this technical term Zuckerman misuses several times; he means punishments by administrative process, not judicial oversight over administrative personnel, its proper meaning]

“not once, however, after 1887 did the MVD interfere with the arbitrary infliction of administrative justice on the population by the local authorities” [Zuckerman himself admits that the MVD, or Interior Ministry, repeatedly urged local officials to use more care in applying administrative measures]

The distinction between vysslka and ssylka is not correctly stated [they were often used interchangeably]; the sole cited reference does not discuss this matter [and where it does, on pp. 17-20, it does not support Zuckerman’s point]

In regard to people under glasnyi politseiskii nadzor “the police could . . . at any time . . . seize their property” [Apparently not true, but no reference given]

20. “In Russia the police existed for only two purposes, the maintenance of the political status quo and the enforcement of intellectual stagnation.” [The bulk of police funding was for regular policing].

23. The security law of 1881 gave “the police wider powers than it had ever held before” [in fact the police had had far greater powers before the adoption of the Judicial Statutes in 1864, and the 1879 law on governors general had given the police wider powers than under the 1881 law]

27. Fontanka and the Gendarme Corps “perceived themselves to be the personal instruments of the tsar” [this assertion is an exaggeration; gendarme officers swore an oath of loyalty to the emperor, but in practice they had no direct contact with him and the orders they carried out almost never made any mention of him]

31. “large group” of people under secret police surveillance [author gives no idea of how many or when]

32. Mednikov and his assistant, von Koten, “guided the Moscow security bureau’s detective bureau and subsequently became its chief” 33. “an applicant entered the Moscow detective school and came under von Koten’s wing” [impossible: Mednikov retired in May 1906 and von Koten came to the security bureau in Moscow in April 1907]

33. Mednikov was better informed about the revolutionary leadership’s activities “than any other police official” [surely not than Zubatov]

35. Most of the detailed description of the activities of surveillants on pp. 35-36 is taken from an instruction detailing what their activities should be, apparently with embellishments by Zuckerman (e.g. he imagines the fears and concerns of cab driver surveillants. He also supposes that there were lots of such cab drives, which seems highly unlikely).

36. “anthropomorphic” instead of “anthropometric,” which is not apropos: photo albums carried by surveillants included physical descriptions but not anthropometric data.

37. The author uses a 1913 circular directive to show that most surveillants were reduced to petty thievery because of law pay [they were in fact paid as much a skilled laborers, on average fifty rubles per month, plus expenses], plus he states that they never enjoyed the right to receive pensions [starting in 1906 many won that right]

“The Special Section reprimanded its detectives without respite” [only one circular directive is cited]

“officers of the Special Section, none of whom had ever been members of the detective service” [false: Mednikov was a surveillant in the 1880s and then served in the Special Section in 1902-1906]

38. “by 1910 the shortage of the number of recruits [surveillants] became so severe . . .” but “Finally, the Special Section prevailed” [the reference here is to 1903, clearly not chronologically apropos]

“even some revolutionaries . . . wrote contemptuously of the filery [or plain-clothes surveillants]” [cites only Shliapnikov; I have seen no other cases]

Surveillants “despite the abuse universally heaped upon them and their low pay and long hours were among the most loyal of Tsardom’s servants.” [why? In fact: not universal abuse and not low pay].

39. Zuckerman translates sotrudniki here, which means simply “employee” as “collaborator”

40. Zuckerman claims that Gimnazii (high schools) and universities “were choice recruiting grounds” for informants [he cites only Agafonov, yet the proportion of student-informants depended on the period: it was higher in the 1880s than after 1900; recruiting in high schools was banned in 1913]

41. Interrogators never used blackmail [signed statement was a form of blackmail; Zuckerman himself notes on p. 55 that once a revolutionary betrayed his cause “there was no turning back”]

42. Zhuchenko “from the safety of her modest Moscow apartment defiantly wrote Bursev” in 1909 [no, she lived in Berlin]

43. Zuckerman claims we will probably never know the number of informants employed by the Police Department. [We now know: it was roughly 10,000 from 1880 to 1917 Z. I. Peregudova, Politicheskii sysk Rossii, 1880-1917 (Moscow: Rosspen, 2000), 232-35]

Zuckerman calls A. Volkov a “historian” [he was a publicist]; cites his claim that there were several informants in every organization, association, and institution of Russian society.

“exaggerated statement by Volkov may be closer to the truth than is commonly believed” [even in 1996 there was no persuasive basis for this supposition (in my dissertation, for example, I correctly estimated that the total number of informants in 1917 “could not have exceeded two thousand”: “The Watchful State,” 147]

45. Discrepancy between figures cited for expenditures on undercover operations by St. Petersburg security bureau in table (80,700 rubles per year) and in text (75,000)

46. Paris security bureau spent “the phenomenal total of 600,000 rubles on undercover operations.” [no reference supplied. When? in fact, some 360,000 FF were spent in 1910 for that purpose, that is, roughly 180,000 rubles. See GARF, f. 102, D-1, 1910, d. 8, l. 11. This compared with some 280,000 rubles spent for undercover operations by the St. Petersburg security bureau in 1908. See GARF, f. 102, D-1, 1908, d. 70, ll. 94-95.]

“Some of these well-placed agents were pieceworkers” [never]

“with several sotrudniki carrying out more than one assignment at a time” [reporting on different groups; not carrying out different assignments].

After major liquidations, security chiefs “treated the successful agents to an extraordinary evening” [only a couple of such cases are known]

“massive expenditure on the Internal Agency” [the Interior Ministry budget in 1908 was 145 million rubles, of which 59 million for all police institutions (I. P. Pokrovskii, Gosudarstvennyi biudzhet Rossii za poslednie desiat’ let (1901-1910) [St. Petersburg: B.M. Vol’fa, 1911], 52, 57). In 1908 expenses for undercover work totaled just over 1.7 million, or 2.5 percent of all expenditures for policing in Russia and 1.1 percent of the Interior Ministry budget (GARF, f. 102, D-1, 1908, d. 70, ll. 94-95)]

“a few OO [security bureau] chiefs” guided informants [we don’t know for sure]

47. “Karpov was not entirely sure of his assassin’s loyalty” [but he thought he could trust him completely]

Viktor Russiian [V. N. Russiianov] “remembered that sotrudniki were extremely secretive” [Why only one reference?]

The murder of Karpov “is just one example of what could happen to an unwary case officer.” [instances of violence by informants against case officers were extremely rare]

48. broad generalizations about informants (“piecemeal deception” and “schemers”) all drawn from M. E. Bakai, a former security bureau employee with an ax to grind.

49. Newly hired informants were “as a matter of policy” placed under surveillance; “filery found this to be a frustrating assignment” [one obscure reference supplied; we have no proof of either assertion]

“In the end” the security police prevented informants from knowing about police operations and other police officials. [no references; this had long been the policy]

The special section “did its best to ensure that prospective sotrudniki were sufficiently stable to handle the tremendous power it placed in their hands” [Russiian quoted; he’s a very dubious source]

50. Zuckerman cites Bakai on “One of the most common schemes used by sotrudniki and winked at by their superiors” called the “arrest of anarchists with bombs” where a bomb was planted by the agent on an innocent [such actions were rarely winked at]

Cites Zhiliniskii citing A. P. Martynov “without good 51. provocateurs it is not possible to make a career” [Zhilinskii used “provokatory” where Martynov meant “sotrudniki”]

51.Russiian: “Sotrudniki believed themselves to be beyond the control of either their fellow revolutionizes or their police employer” [very rare]

“headquarters forbade sotrudniki from spending any of the money they received” from the police ostentatiously [there were no formal prohibitions of this sort]

unmasked sotrudniki knew they “could expect only one form of justice at the hands of his former friends in the revolutionary movement” [unmasked informants were treated in a variety of ways; some were killed; others were not]

52. informants “measured the quality of their bureau chief on how well he hid their identities” [we have almost no idea of what informants thought]

In discussing the problem of policemen arranging the escape of prospective informants, Zuckerman doesn’t mention the strict separation of executive and judicial powers; though he notes on p. 54 that the emperor had to pardon one informant to get him released from the criminal justice system.

54. The “largest pension so far awarded had been 1,800 rubles” to a retired informant [M. I. Gurovich had been awarded 2,000 rubles (GARF, f. 102, op. 316, 1907, d. 694, l. 9) and Zhuchenko was given 3,600 (GARF, f. 102, op. 316, 1906, d. 1019, l. 103).].

57. “Serebriakova served until the end of 1905 [she retired in fact only in 1908 and was very active in 1906 (GARF, f. 102, op. 316, 1907, d. 69, ll. 1-2 ob., 5 ob.)]

58. “brutal, corrupt band, the dregs of tsarist officialdom . . . M.S. Komissarov . . . and A. A. Makarov, to be sure, fit the mold.” [Zuckerman is throwing together a very shady gendarme officer and a graduate from law school who served honorably]

“Very few police officials enjoyed the camaraderie and close friendships usually associated with a small professional elite” [cites only N. V. Veselago, interviewed by Edward Ellis Tennant; we don’t really know since only a handful of police officials wrote memoirs]

Cites Russiian on extremely unrealistic expectations about the required qualities of security officers [not corroborated by other evidence]

65. “The education of the officer corps was abysmal” [according to recent scholarship, military education improved after 1900: Iu. Galushko and A. Kolechikov, Shkola rossiiskogo ofitserstva: Istoricheskii spravochnik (Moscow: Russkii mir, 1993)]

66. Cites the experience of Martynov in 1901 of gendarme officer training; “Gendarme officers subsequently discovered the nuances of dealing with subversion only through trial and error” [Yet there were great improvements after 1905]

67. “Zubatov . . . intended to lure those [better] officers . . . with rewards for performance” [Zubatov indeed offered such rewards, but the sources cited would have no idea about this: Gurko and a minor police department employee]

the railroad gendarme service was “a prestigious service” [Compared to what? According to whom? Security officers like Zubatov and Martynov certainly did not think so. It was a cushy job with very little to do with security policing]

Spiridovich was “forced to leave the directorship of the Kiev OO” [no, he chose to leave]

68. “only one man strove to inherit Zubatov’s role as a political police instructor,” namely, Spiridovich [in fact, Gerasimov in 1912 presented the lecture on the “theory of security policing” to gendarme officer trainees (GARF, f. 102, OO, 1912, d. 309, l. 35)].

69. The “military code of honor in Spiridovich’s teachings . . . forbade them from using the same effective tactics as their opponents” [Spiridovich, in his memoirs, admitted that Zubatov’s point of view overcame their squeamishness]

the military code of honor “bred a clannishness among OO gendarme officers” [what about the supposed absence of “the camaraderie and close friendships” mentioned on p. 58?]

“It was likely . . . that General Spiridovich” even when he was in charge of the emperor’s security service “was better informed about political police operations” than the director of the Police Department or the deputy interior minister [but he had been intimately involved with security policing, whereas they were nearly always jurists and bore responsibility for huge bureaucracies]

70. “Within the confines of Fontanka clientelism of kinship and monarchical proximity did exist” [in fact, hardly at all]

71. Lists five gendarme officers, who all graduated from the Polotskii Cadet school, whose “tenure in executive positions overlapped each other.” “The placement of these officers could not possibly be a coincidence.” Yet Zuckerman himself writes that client-patron relations were paramount, and clearly these officers did not rise and fall together: M. N. Volkov was assistant director of the St. Petersburg security bureau from late 1914; K. I. Globachev became the director in February 1915, but Volkov being his subordinate could not have influenced this decision (indeed V. F. Dzhunkovskii selected Globachev). E. K. Klimovich became Police Department director in March 1916 thanks to S. P. Beletskii who recalled Kommisarov from virtual exile in Viatka (in 1915 and not in 1916, as Zuckerman writes), but before he selected Klimovich and apparently without any influence by Globachev. As for von Koten, he was already in disgrace by April 1914 (Zuckerman has him still in office in early 1915). It is true that shared experiences in school (though more often in military regiments) bound officials together, and we know from A. P. Martynov that von Koten and Klimovich “supported each other in everything” (Martynov, Moia sluzhba, 276).

Being deputy interior minister “pretty well guaranteed these officeholders eventual appointment to the Senate” [only four of the last six]

72. The assertion that Vissarionov was the sort of official who “knew how to issue arrest orders” is erroneous: he was a police supervisor, not a policeman in the field.

73. Vissarionov “was stunned by the masses of paperwork” [but there are examples of officials in St. Petersburg who did not work very hard (e.g. A. T. Vasil’ev), but also A. P. Martynov who found the “Petersburg way of doing things” very languid: see p. 78.];.

74. P. S. Statkovskii “wisely decided that his military career was at an end and he resigned from the army” [no, he was forced to resign]

Statkovskii “volunteered to become an undercover agent” [sounds more like they pressured him: he was arrested three times in 1885-1887].

75. “remuneration was decidedly greater the further an officer was posted from St. Petersburg or Moscow” [this is almost certainly not true; plus the cited source does not say this; plus on p. 76 Zuckerman remarks that the “every gendarme officer interested in political police work had one goal: appointment as chief of the Moscow, St. Petersburg or Warsaw Oos” which “paid very well”]

A. P. Martynov “volunteered for service in the political police in 1906" [no: he volunteered for the gendarme corps in 1898 and joined the corps in 1899]

76. Martynov was appointed to Moscow security bureau in 1912, not 1911.

The whole of the lengthy biographical sketch on Martynov is based entirely on Martynov’s memoir, yet there are plenty of service records in the archives

Russiian quoted: security officers were often “rewarded” by being appointed finally to some “out of the way province where he could ‘rest on his laurels’” [I can think only of Zavarzin’s appointment to Odessa, which was a definite demotion]

“The most noticeable quality of some OO chiefs and their deputies was their ineptitude.” [Zuckerman cites one circular directive. This assertion is far too broad.]

77. Rapid turnover of senior police officials “precluded the stability required for the development of effective counter-revolutionary programs” [Zuckerman himself admits the system worked very effectively against revolutionary activists]

78. Many gendarmes considered Zubatov and Gurovich “criminals” [only Novitskii wrote that;

Spiridovich never “sniped” at Zubatov: he revered him; he sniped at Gurovich but not because he was a former radical, but because he thought him unsavory]

“OO [security bureau] officers themselves recognized that these low-lifes [Zubatov and Gurovich] were much more adept at conducting political police affairs” [only Zavarzin cited; the assertion is to sweeping]

“their hostility toward the generalists-those involved in administration-of Vissarionov’s ilk . . . was unrestrained” [far too sweeping; based only on Martynov’s memoir]

79. “Martynov’s and his colleagues view of their inferior status within Fontanka,” since few military men occupied senior posts [only Martynov cited; plus the Police Department was supposed to be dominated by jurists, and had been since 1880].

^b “the St. Petersburg OO was the most powerful political police bureau in tsarist Russia” [not in 1896-1902 when S. V. Zubatov headed the security bureau in Moscow]

80. Klimovich “most certainly” owed his final rank of Lt General of Infantry to his wife’s influence at court. This seems plausible, yet not “certain.” Gerasimov also rose to that rank without court connections.

83. “Liberation Movement” [should be “Union of Liberation”]

The Beseda circle “who met several times a year between 1902 and 1905" [in fact it began its meetings in fall 1899]

85. “Azef . . . kept the Special Section fully informed of Gershuni’s daily activities and was well aware of Gershuni’s plot to assassinate Sipiagin” [yet Azef never breathed a word to the police about the plot (Praisman, Terroristy, 36)]

86. “The MVD in particular scorned the Separate Corps of Gendarmes” [no proof of this is supplied, nor is suggested who specifically in the MVD]

Bakai, an often unreliable source, is quoted calling gendarme officers’ “mental output” “intellectual squalor”

87. Zubatov denied gendarme officers “access to OO reports on revolutionary activity [there is no reason why gendarme officers not employed at Zubatov’s bureau would have had access to such reports]

Quotes A. V. Bogdanovich to undergird his assertion that “the tsar . . . thought so highly of the gendarmes that he wished to re-establish the Third Section” [not only is this assertion highly dubious, the Gendarme Corps and the Third Section were two separate institutions]

Zuckerman attributes to Plehve an assertion (“he came to realize”) that in fact Gurko said of him

89. In discussing Plehve, Zuckerman suggests he was a “conservative” bureaucrat of the type of which Raeff wrote that they were “educated at court and in the military [but Plehve received a gold medal from his gymnasium and then took a law degree]

90. “Zubatov must have struck Plehve as a reincarnation of Sudeikin” [yet Plehve disliked and distrusted Sudeikin, whereas he liked and trusted Zubatov]

91. Zuckerman asserts that Plehve removed Zubatov from Moscow because he had angered Grand Duke Sergei [no mention of this at all in the source cited. There is, in other sources not cited, evidence that Plehve wanted his expertise in St. Petersburg and that he wanted to undermine his experiment in Moscow with “police socialism”]

Zuckerman asserts that Plehve favored Zubatov’s program of “mass persuasion” [yet by transferring him to St. Petersburg he undermined the program]

92. “Zubatov had long harbored plans for the restructuring and expansion of the political police” [Gerasimov and Novitskii cited; neither would have known this]

Zuckerman’s claims about Lopukhin’s supposed reform plans are based on Lopukhin’s later testimony, when he was trying to appear as liberal as possible.

93. Zubatov’s plan “would permit Plehve to swell the size of the political police to ministerial proportions” [huge exaggeration; the growth was quite modest], “making him the most powerful man in Russia next to the tsar” [after Witte’s removal in 1903, Plehve was decidedly the most powerful official, but not because of his control of the security police, which was only a tiny part of the huge Interior Ministry bureaucracy]

“the tsar appreciated the spectacular arrest more than low key, mundane, intelligent police work” [no evidence supplied, but this was probably true of most monarchs]

“On 12 August 1902, Fontanka issued a circular that changed forever the nature of political police institutions in the twentieth century.” [Zuckerman is referring to the creation of a dozen security bureaus; but this was hardly earthshaking, especially since they were all abolished a dozen years later]

“The Special Section could ordain new OOs at will under Plehve’s precedent while the 94. proliferation of Gendarme Directorates was inhibited by law.” [Yet the security bureaus could just as easily be abolished (and they were), whereas the gendarme stations, which numbered many dozen, could not].

94. “Plehve still intended to follow the plan so ardently favored by Zubatov-that of curtailling the Corps of Gendarmes’ political police functions altogether [no: the cited source, Lopukhin, states that it was considered to abolish the political police altogether, though he claims this was his initiative, not Zubatov’s]

“a proliferation of new regulations restricting the Gendarme Directorate’s duties [not corroborated in the cited source]

“Plehve replaced . . . many of the Gendarme Directorate’s chiefs and lesser gendarme officers” [not corroborated in the cited sources]

“the MVD spent five million rubles . . . building his and Zubatov’s bulwark against subversion [not corroborated in the cited source]

95. “grand regional OOs of which Kiev, Warsaw, Moscow, and St. Petersburg were the largest. These institutions ruled over vast territory” [this is untrue; even when the regional bureaus were created in 1907, they did not “rule” over vast territory, but had only a “supervisory” role]

“An integral part of any OO was its Black Cabinet” [no: the perlustration offices reported directly to the Main Post Office in St. Petersburg; local security chiefs could request to see specific letters or to peruse mail more generally, but the perlustration operation was not “part of” the security bureaus]

Zuckerman falsely suggests that former revolutionaries were commonly employed by the security bureaus. In fact, such employees were rare (Zubatov, Gurovich, Statkovskii, and Men’shchikov pretty much exhaust the list]

There was no “okhrannoe otdelenie” in Zhitomir, but rather an “okhrannyi punkt” [Peregudova, Politicheskii sysk, 121]

96. Description of the Kishinev security bureau [no references supplied; I know of none available]

Many provincial assistant security bureau chiefs “did not have the slightest idea of the requirements of their position” [based on a report dealing with the Caucasus only; as a general statement, this is far too sweeping]

Plehve’s reforms of the security police had “the aim of preventing the Gendarme Directorates from conducting any investigations in depth” [this was not true: first, because security bureaus were created in only a handful of places, and elsewhere the gendarme stations continued to conduct all the political investigations; and second because the main purpose of the reforms was to improve the gathering of political intelligence]

97. “Their punishment was not its concern” [implies that gendarmes punished (alleged) criminals, which was not the case]

“The chiefs of the Gendarme Directorates came to hate the OOs and did their best to obstruct OO operations.” [too sweeping; surely only a few gendarme chiefs did so]

“OOs refused to despatch regular detailed reports to the Special Section” [cited source does not corroborate this assertion; plus it cannot be true, otherwise directives complaining about it would be abundant]

98. “the number of OOs in operation by the regime’s end was uncertain” [we know that there were five: Moscow, Warsaw, St. Petersburg, Turkestan, and Eastern Siberia (A. A. Miroliubov, "Polticheskii sysk Rossii v 1914-1917 gg." Kand. diss., Moskovskii gosudarstvennyi istoriko-arkhivnyi institut, 1988, 42)]

Inherent contradiction: “Plehve’s reforms . . . grew and grew without reason and without explanation” yet “the political police . . . spread its tentacle throughout Russia, reaching into the core of Russia’s subversive movements”

100. one author “recently defined zakonnost’ as” [the book appeared in 1982]

102. Of Plehve Zuckerman wrote, “adopting repressive tactics he crushed all public initiative” [Zuckerman cites only one memoir for this assertion, which is far too sweeping]

103. “As Tim McDaniel writes . . .” [no reference to that author in the relevant footnote]

107. “Zubatov ghosted a major memorandum on the labor question” [L. A. Tikhomirov ghosted it for Zubatov]

108. “Zubatov, in 1900 while still chief of the Moscow OO, imported the Bertillon identification system from France” [an unsubstantiated rumor; the Bertillon system had been adopted in 1890 by the regular criminal police in Russia (see Daly, Autocracy, 70]

109. “The Bertillon cataloguing procedure permitted the Special Section to register and to identify almost any intelligent person who . . . was overheard to utter . . . seditious statements” [Zuckerman misunderstands the Bertillon system which was for identifying people by physical measurements of their members and body parts; also, the cited sources do not mention either Bertillon or the registration of views]

110. “Plehve, above all, evaluated every one of his programmes for its capacity to improve his position within the government” [too sweeping; no evidence offered; no sources cited to corroborate this assertion]

111. “Zubatov plotted openly with Witte and Prince Meshcherskii for Plehve’s removal” [certainly not openly; on p. 113, Zuckerman himself writes that “Zubatov’s betrayal of Plehve was almost public knowledge” (italics supplied)].

Zuckerman suggests that Lopukhin investigated the economic conditions of the workers in Odessa, Kiev, and Nikolaev in order to help Zubatov in summer 1903 [no evidence provided to corroborate this assertion, which is probably false]

115. “On 6 May Gershuni murdered Ufa Governor Bogdanovich” [not personally: he was not even in Ufa at the time (R. A. Gorodnitskii, Boevaia organizatsiia partii sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov v 1901-1911 gg. [Moscow: Rosspen, 1998], 71-72)]

“The Socialist-Revolutionaries’ promotion of Azef as Gershuni’s replacement as chief of the BO gave a particularly sweet flavor to Plehve’s victory” [this was probably true, but on p. 123, Zuckerman uncritically cites Lopukhin’s assertion that only in September 1904 did he realize that Azef was a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary leadership]

118. “During Plehve’s first two years as minister of internal affairs, the number of state criminal cases recorded by the Ministry of Justice expanded four-fold” [Table 7.1 gives data for 1901, 1902, and 1903. Plehve was appointed minister in 1902, so the largest gain (from 1901 to 1902) cannot be counted. Even calculating the increase from 1902 to 1903 is impossible, based on this table, since Plehve was appointed in April 1902. And even if he had been appointed in January 1902, the increase in the number of state criminal cases would have been only one-fold.]

119. “The revised [criminal] code, however, like its predecessor again emphasized the preservation of law and order rather than civil rights.” [Criminal codes by definition emphasize preserving law and order and not civil rights.”]

“the Criminal Code of 1903 built upon the foundations of its predecessor in moving Tsardom a little closer to the realization of the modern police state.” [the code only increased the range of state crimes and more carefully defined them; surely a “police state” is characterized by a lack of judicially defined guidelines binding police forces]

The law of 7 June 1904 combined with the new criminal code “institutionalized the extra-legal procedures of administrative justice within a systematic judicial framework” [a “systematic judicial framework” by definition must render administrative procedures less arbitrary]

By means of the 7 June 1904 law “the Russian government had promulgated a legal fiction . . .” [no, the law really did restrict the recourse to administrative punishments and constituted the first step toward the abandonment of administrative exile; then the 1905 revolution intervened. Or as Joerg Baberowski has noted, the new code provided for severe punishments for group participation in antigovernment activities, but only when single perpetrators were not discovered, which lessened the need for administrative punishments (Autokratie und Justiz, 734)]

124. “Fontanka covered up the entire mess [Azef’s involvement with the murder of Plehve]” [if so, then why was Azef reined in only in April 1906?]

Lopukhin “presented a facade of solidarity with” Plehve [how does Zuckerman know?]

“Lopukhin was deeply disappointed by Plehve’s failure to fulfil his promise to implement major reforms” [this is based on Lopukhin’s testimony after 1917, so it’s probably largely self-serving]

125. The author incorrectly characterizes Lopukhin and P. D. Sviatopolk-Mirski as “liberal officials”; they were moderates at the very most

126. “internal security agencies formed such a large and essential part of the institutions of law and order” [as noted above, in 1908 expenses for undercover work totaled just over 1.7 million, or 2.5 percent of all expenditures for policing in Russia and 1.1 percent of the Interior Ministry budget]

Zuckerman cites Gurko as suggesting that Mirskii gave full oversight of the Police Department to K. N. Rydzevskii, the deputy interior minister for police, and made Lopukhin responsible solely for security police matters. “In effect he had become Zubatov’s replacement.” [Gurko does not suggest this, nor does any other authority I know of. It was customary for the deputy interior minister for police to oversee all police operations and for the Police Department director to oversee the entire department with a special concern for security policing. Moreover, Zubatov’s replacement was N. A. Makarov, who worked carefully to ensure that security police operations remained within the bounds of legality (Peregudova, Politicheskii sysk, 78-79)]

127. “The Special Section’s deepest fear was that the worker and peasant movements would unify with Russia’s disgruntled intelligentsia under a single revolutionary banner” [no relevant reference supplied]

128. “Although the moderate-monarchist D. N. Shipov still led the movement, radicals such as I. I. Petrunkevich and N. N. L’vov began to supplant the monarchists among them, Shipov’s influence becoming more nominal than real. The political police noted this fact.” [the cited reference, a memoir by Spiridovich, does not mention these men by name and does not suggest what the police knew at the time]

129. “Andrew Verner in a recent dissertation” [it was defended in 1986; the 1990 book based on it is not cited at all]

132. “Lopukhin’s rule over the political police undermined its confidence and paralyzed its operations.” [The only reference, Spiridovich, “Pri tsarskom rezhime,” 187, does not mention this at all]

140. “After Bloody Sunday the appointment of officials who would be affiliated with the political police . . . was based upon the principle of assigning tough political police specialists to critical posts within the internal security agencies” [this assertion clashes with the statement on p. 143 that “During 1905 the political police system suffered under the indecisive and inept guidance of two men: Dmitrii Fedorovich Trepov and Peter Ivanovich Rachkovskii”]

145. “Even those OOs which remained calm during the early stages of the revolution and which endeavored to take swift action against dissidents were demoralized by cautious or frightened superiors who refused to permit them to do so.” [not corroborated by the sole reference cited, Zavarzin, who could not have known about how the entire system was functioning]

Rachkovskii “was a devious, even sinister man, completely amoral in his dealings with colleagues and Russian society alike” [this may well have been true, but he was a shadowy figure about whom we possess little concrete documentation; Zuckerman supplies very little evidence of value; for example, he cites Burtsev writing that “Lopukhin considered him to be ‘the most malicious provocateur.’”]

146. “Rachkovskii did not have any strategy . . . he persisted in his tactics of limited arrests and close surveillance . . . so inapplicable to a nationwide . . . revolution” [actually, this tactic seems quite reasonable for a security police in the face of a revolution; certainly it did not bespeak the methods of a partisan of a “police state”]

Much of Zuckerman’s diatribe against Rachkovskii derives from Gerasimov’s memoir (i.e. footnotes numbers 27, 28, 30, 31). None of the memoirs by prominent security policemen are entirely reliable; Gerasimov’s seems to me the most self-serving.

149. Zuckerman claims that Rachkovskii’s position depended “upon the goodwill of Nicholas II,” yet he wrote on p. 146 that Rachkovskii had many “powerful enemies” including Nicholas II.

Rachkovskii’s rise “signified the beginning of Fontanka’s removal from the control of the MVD and its decline into the murky phantasmagorical milieu of the court camarilla” [Zuckerman cites one disseration whose topic has nothing to do with the security police of Russia]

“Gerasimov showed himself to be a no-nonsense officer, who believed in the destruction of subversive activity wherever he found it.” [to make this assertion, Zuckerman would need to consult either the archives in Moscow or to find memoirs by police officials who corroborate Gerasimov’s own assertions about himself; unfortunately, such memoirs are unavailable]

151. “a young revolutionary turned sotrudnik recruited by Rachkovskii” [so he was not only a schemer?]

152. Assessment of Trepov and Rachkovskii [again based entirely on Gerasimov]

154. Instructions to the security police in 1905 “solely took the form of harsh criticisms of their performance” [Zuckerman has not seen those in the Police Department archives in Moscow, only the much smaller number in the Okhrana archives at the Hoover Institution. He also apparently did not consult A. M. Pankratova, ed. Revoliutsiia 1905-1907 gg. v Rossii: Dokumenty i materialy, 8 vols. (Moscow: Izd. Akademii nauk, 1955), which contains many directives as well]

“The OOs and Gendarme Directorates that continued to function seemed to spend every minute of their time occupied with smashing printing presses, uncovering bomb factories,” etc. [based entirely on the memoir by Zavarzin who could not have known about the operations all across the country]

162. “The Separate Corps of Gendarmes had only recently-7 June 1904-acquired enhanced power over the investigation of political crimes, dispensing with the remaining, but by 1904, mostly pro forma guarantees against arbitrary arrest.” [This is a wholly mistaken reading of the law of 7 June. Since 1871 the gendarmes had been the principle investigators of state crimes. What the 7 June law did was to revoke the justice minister’s authority to recommend the administrative resolution of state-crime cases ( Slukhotskii, L. "Ocherk deiatel'nosti Ministerstva iustitsii v bor'be s politicheskimi prestupleniiami." Istoriko-revoliutsionnyi sbornik 3 (1926): 179-82)]

“A political policeman trained to consider the most minor expression of dissent as worthy of investigation and prosecution” [some security policemen may have had this attitude, but it certainly was not part of their training]

164. Trepov’s “inability to offer the Department of Police strong, decisive leadership further undermined the confidence of Fontanka and its political police.” [only Gerasimov is cited; this is an inadequate source-base for such a sweeping assertion]

165. “The near hysterical reaction of the political police to the events of late October” 1905 [no evidence supplied to support this assertion]

168. Characterization of P. N. Durnovo’s attitude toward police repression relies entirely on Gerasimov who tended to tout his own prescience at the expense of everybody else’s.

172. “Durnovo and Minister of Justice Akimov . . . continued the practice of issuing ukazy designed to gradually limit the peoples’ [sic] right to protest to the point where no political opinion whatsoever could be expressed” [wildly exaggerated assertion]

“rule by secret circular . . . added immeasurably to the powers of the political police” [the security police gained no significant powers beyond those conferred by the security law of 1881; the endless secret circulars were aimed only at instructing and invigorating them]

“The Special Section’s field bureaus and the Gendarme Directorates interpreted the contents of the circulars as they saw fit-treating them as laws to be obeyed or choosing to think of them only as advice, or ignoring them entirely.” [How does the author know this? He supplies no concrete evidence. Moreover, this assertion would suggest that the circulars conferred less power than he earlier indicated].

173. Such powers, even in the post-October 1905 period, argues Zuckerman, made “it extremely difficult for such organizations as the professional unions and the Peasant Union to continue operations.” [this was not at all the case before 3 June 1907]

The author confuses secret circulars to the security police with directives to administrative officials, in this case Governor Osorgin of Tula province. These were very different officials with different duties and powers.

174. “beneath their ruthless behavior every political policemen and police bureaucrat felt a burgeoning fear of their own people” [fear there may well have been-though Zuckerman provides no evidence to substantiate his assertion-yet we also have very little proof that gendarme officers (the vast majority of security policemen) were ruthless in their treatment of political opponents of the government (see my Autocracy under Siege, 50)]

“the diabolical brutality of a life and death struggle between police and people” [aside from the fact that Zuckerman here cites only one secret police circular to support his assertion, it should be clear that the security police were too few in number to seek to combat the whole Russian people; the revolutionary leadership was their primary target]

175. “incident shattered the OO chief’s nerves” [no, the Martynov in question, Petr Pavlovich, was an employee of the Moscow gendarme station at the time, not the OO chief (Spisok obshchego sostava chinov Otdel'nogo Korpusa Zhandarmov (St. Petersburg: Tip. Shtaba Otdel'nogo Korpusa Zhandarmov, 1913), 468]

“The MVD’s most astute officials understood that Russian society and politics had irrevocably changed for the worse” [only some staunch monarchists thought that; D. N. Liubimov, whom Zuckerman cirtes, thought only that the new order was hard to comprehend]

176. “Rachkovskii’s schemes” [we know next to nothing about them]

“The 1905 revolution somewhat ironically served as a catalyst for conservative renovation on a grand scale” [conservative reactions to bouts of social and political upheaval are quite common and scarcely “ironic”]

177. “In all probability Rachkovskii himself was a founder of the . . . Union of Russian People” [Zuckerman offers no proof to corroborate this assertion]

Rachkovskii “launched a massive propaganda campaign” [Zuckerman offers no proof; there was in fact only a quite modest campaign]

“When Chief of the Special Section N. A. Makarov returned to his post . . . he discovered Rachkovskii’s pogrom-baiting operations” [Zuckerman is confusing two separate incidents: Rachkovskii’s operation, which Lopukhin reported to Witte, and the printing of anti-Jewish leaflets by an official in Ekaterinoslav, which Makarov reported to Rachkovskii (see “K istorii nashei kontrrevoliutsii,” Pravo [14 may 1906], no. 19:1762-64)]

Rachkovskii devoted “considerable time” to “plotting with the infamous sotrudnik Evno Azef” [Zuckerman supplies no proof for this assertion; in general, it seems that Rachkovskii pretty much left Azef to his own devices]

180. “Stolypin’s achievements in the name of repression went far beyond those even contemplated by Plehve” [presumably because during Stolypin’s tenure a revolution was still raging, whereas Plehve died before the revolution started]

“the polity Stolypin defended so resolutely was not the one Fontanka’s leadership fought to preserve . . . The forces of order [here Zuckerman apparently means “political police”] quixotically fought to retain the old Russia” [yet Stolypin’s Police Department director, M. I. Trusevich was clearly in charge of “Fontanka”; moreover, the Police Department issued many directives urging security policemen to operate within the legal bounds of the new order]

“The political police . . . made no secret of their hatred of most elements of Russian life residing beyond the walls of tsardom’s traditional institutions” [Zuckerman provides no proof for this assertion; it is also far too sweeping and probably, on balance, false]

“unlike P. N. Durnov, Stolypin couched his tough language in more measured tones” [Durnovo was interior minister when the state was all but collapsing; Stolypin became interior minister after the upheaval had come down from its peak]

182. “the Kadets controlled . . . the new Duma” [exaggeration]

184. Zuckerman notes that the Police Department and its Special Section were overwhelmed in 1906: “information arrived in waves and there was insufficient staff to cope with it.” [Yet he does not mention A. T. Vasil’ev’s reorganization of the Special Section’s record-keeping system in summer 1906, presumably because Vasil’ev fails to mention it in his memoirs]

“For the entire year of 1906 Russia’s political police chiefs . . . ‘wrote, wrote, and wrote,’ and did little else” [Zuckerman relies for this on E. P. Mednikov, who retired in May 1906 and who by that point was suffering from nervous exhaustion]

Zuckerman suggests that “The failure of the intelligence processing system” enabled terrorists to kill more people in 1906 [in fact, the high incidence of political terrorism in 1906 and 1907 was less a problem of intelligence than of huge revolutionary fervor]

“Gerasimov confined Nicholas II to the grounds at Peterhof” [Gerasimov had no authority to do such a thing; he urged Stolypin to urge the emperor to move around as little as possible]

“The majority of the terror’s victims were tsarist officials” [the majority were in fact simple policemen and ordinary citizens]

Zuckerman cites Gerasimov asserting that he “unofficially played the role of assistant minister” so that Stolypin “de facto transferred the management of political investigation away from the Special Section to the St. Petersburg OO.” [the only source Zuckerman cites to corroborate this assertion states only that Gerasimov did not always report to the Police Department, not that he had taken over its functions]

186. “Provocation became an officially sanctioned tactic in the campaign against subversion” [it depends on how one defines it, but certainly senior police officials would have rejected that assertion]

“Stolypin proclaimed ‘it is the duty of all [political police bureaus] to acquire provocateurs and increase investigations in every direction’” [the cited source refers to “Stolypin’s instruction,” even though he would not have in fact either written or signed it (interior ministers signed instructions to governors but not to police officials); it could not have used the term “provocateurs,” which was the abusive term opponents of the government used to refer to secret informants]

187. “this was not the BO [Socialist-Revolutionary combat organization] of 1902 to 1905" [the main difference, which Zuckerman does not mention, is that Azef beginning in late spring 1906 was largely working for the police, though he was still helping the revolutionaries]

189. “Azef continued his work well into 1908 undermining Socialist-Revolutionary terrorists at every opportunity” [Zuckerman does not mention on this page Azef’s involvement with two plots to kill Nicholas II in 1908, though in the corresponding footnote (on p. 294) he does mention “three attempts to kill the tsar,” referred to by Boris Nicolaevsky]

190. “By 1906 the people understood that political terror had become counter-productive” [political terror was not “of the people”]

191. Zuckerman asserts that Trusevich shifted the blame for the Apteka Island bombing to Gerasimov [but he cites only Gerasimov and Burtsev, who apparently got his version of the story from Gerasimov]

“Trusevich never forgave Gerasimov for exposing his foolishness.” [Trusevich does not assert this in the cited source]

“Trusevich’s Instruktsiia contained one critical modification to similar previous documents” [Zuckerman does not cite such previous documents]

192. “okhrannye okrugi” [obviously Zuckerman means “raionnye okhrannye otdeleniia”]

Zuckerman implies that Trusevich created the regional security bureaus largely in order to undermine the position of Gerasimov, which seems absurd.

193. Kurlov “besmirched the reputations of Stolypin and Gerasimov before the tsar’s courtiers. He intercepted Stolypin’s correspondence and openly countermanded his orders” [Zuckerman here cites only Gerasimov and Conroy’s 1964 dissertation (and not the 1974 book, which is in the bibliography; in her book Conroy, citing an obscure archival memoir, claims that “Kurlov intercepted Stolypin’s correspondence and oppsed his efforts to reform the police department”; there is no mention of “countermanding orders” openly or otherwise; neither is there in Gerasimov’s memoir, which is also cited)]

“The explanation for Stolypin’s behavior vis-a-vis Kurlov is to be found in his sadly mistaken belief that Gerasimov’s control of Russia’s political police system made Fontanka and Kurlov irrelevant 194. to Tsardom’s and Stolypin’s own requirements and in his renowned lackadaisical management of subordinate departments.” [these assertions are not corroborated by the cited sources]

194. Zuckerman provides no evidence to substantiate his claim that Karpov, Klimovich, and Kurlov were all aligned against Stolypin.

195. “In 1908 while still a vice-director of police, Kurlov made it clear that he wished to replace Gerasimov with Colonel Karpov. Gerasimov contends that under these circumstances he requested Stolypin’s permission to reign, claiming that Makarov and Stolypin refused to let him go.” [the cited source, Gerasimov’s testimony in 1917, says only that in 1908 he tendered his resignation but was held back by Makarov and Stolypin; he added that he did not care who replaced him, and he did not assert that Kurlov pushed for Karpov]

196. Zuckerman provides scant evidence that Trusevich was out to get Gerasimov

197. Zuckerman’s assertion that the authority over Gerasimov’s network of secret informants “passed from Gerasimov . . . to the men at 16 Fontanka Quai” is entirely unsubstantiated. Not even Gerasimov made that claim.

“The assassination of Karpov, Gerasimov’s successor at the Moika, prevented Kurlov from completely subordinating the Petersburg OO to his will” [to corroborate this assertion, Zuckerman cites a directive from 1912, which urged senior officials, traveling to St. Petersburg, not to appeal to the security bureau, but rather to the Police Department, for protection. It is unclear why this would suggest either that Kurlov was seeking to subordinate the security bureau or that it previously had been insubordinate]

198. “The exceedingly slow headway of the Makarov Commission [on police reform] must be laid at the doorstep of Assistant Minister of Internal Affairs Kurlov” [in fact, many factors slowed the work, including the Finance Ministry parsimoniousness and entrenched bureaucratic interests; the Duma also sat on the draft-bill for three years (see Z. I. Peregudova, Nesostoiavshaiasia reforma politsii: Po materialam Komissii senatora A. A. Makarova, vol. 14 [Moscow: Glavnyi informatsionnyi tsentr MVD Rossii, 1992], 6-23)]

199. “Only in 1913, with active support from N. A. Maklakov, the new minister of internal affairs, . . . did the MVD review the proposals of the Makarov Commission for revamping the police.” [no, Maklakov pulled the bill in order to weaken it]

200. Kurlov, Verigin, and Kuliabko “escaped their crime [failure to prevent the assassination of Stolypin] with impunity” [no, all three lost their jobs; only Kurlov returned to public service, in 1914]

“The outcome of the Stolypin murder, therefore, bound the court circles and the upper echelons of the law and order bureaucracy closer together than ever before” [the cited sources do not corroborate this assertion, which seems largely exaggerated]

202. “The Social Democrats . . . suffered less violent . . . repression than the Socialist-Revolutionaries” [the repression against the leaders of the revolutionary parties was not very violent; there were rarely shoot-outs or scuffles between them and the police]

203. “Stolypin’s coup d’etat of 3 June 1907, which stripped the laboring masses of a legal public platform for the expression of their grievances” [this is far too strong, especially given Zuckerman’s assertion several lines down, saying] “The voicing of public opinion continued to grow in sophistication and spread itself more deeply through and across the layers of Russian society”

“Both Gerasimov in the capital and Martynov in Moscow agreed that 1909 was the quietest year they could remember” [Martynov was appointed chief of the security bureau in Moscow only in 1912]

204. Zuckerman contradicts himself again, writing that “Fontanka focused its hatred upon [the Duma]” but also that “Forays against the Duma as an institution were rarely undertaken by the political police”

“The Special Section considered the liberal intelligentsia the backbone of the revolutionary movement” [no evidence is provided for this assertion]

I. K. Globachev, the chief of the security bureau in St. Petersburg during the war, “claimed that his OO was geared to battle revolutionaries, but not the liberal intelligentsia, and he placed the blame for the collapse of Tsardom squarely on its shoulders and on the Duma which served as its fortress.” [in fact, Globachev does not blame them; he just asserts that the security police could not thwart their actions, which “required measures of a general political nature”]

The St. Petersburg security bureau “created a new corps of sotrudniki who specialized in infiltrating editorial offices” [only one, not very credible, source cited; it seems unlikely more than a handful of such agents was recruited]

206. “the Special Section initially favored” the “continued existence” of trade-unions [the cited source does not mention the Special Section]

207. “Fontanka would not permit [the political police to liquidate the trade-unions] . . . in an October 1913 memorandum . . . Fontanka argued the liquidation of professional organizations . . . would ‘only hasten an outburst of the strike movement.’” [no, the cited source was von Koten, the chief of the security bureau in St. Petersburg, reporting his own view to Beletskii]

209. “Beletskii was not satisfied with simply spying on society, he wanted to control it as well” [unsubstantiated assertion]

210. “an analysis of the political police mind sets which universally influence political police attitudes toward dissent” [no such “mind sets” have ever been adequately analyzed or defined]

211. Zuckerman seems to confuse or to conflate the “Special Section,” the “monarchy,” the “bureaucracy,” and “Fontanka”

“vociferous advocates of ‘this unconscious alliance’” [how can one vociferously advocate an unconscious alliance?]

212. “By 1911 . . . unease over the possibility of the Social Democrats taking advantage of growing labor unrest permeated throughout Fontanka” [to corroborate this sweeping assertion, Zuckerman cites only one Police Department directive for 1911 and one report from the Perm’ gendarme station for 1910]

“the Special Section decided” and “Fontanka decided” [these designations seem to be used interchangeably here; plus there is no attempt to understand which particular officials were involved]

213. Beletskii “was angry with his field bureaus” [he was director of the Police Department, not chief of the Special Section]

“Beletskii ordered that sotrudniki be placed as close to the leadership of workers’ organizations as possible so that they could unmask the leadership of the strike movement and determine its causes.” [No: Beletskii wrote of the need to get “solid informants” in the Socialist-Revolutionary and especially the Social Democrat party by secretly studying how strikes took place in one to two major factories and secretly to recruit informants from among the strike leaders]

“Fontanka eventually reported to Beletskii on the findings of the political police” [no: it was the Special Section reporting to gendarme and security officers]

215. “Beletskii proclaimed to his OOs that they must not fail ‘to take all measures agreed upon by “Fontanka’ to preserve social calm and order at that significant moment” [this was a typical exhortation to security policemen in the field]

“Russia’s political police chiefs responded accordingly” [the cited source does not state that they went out and did anything differently, just that they did indeed have some informants and used them]

“Bolshevik organizations had been so thoroughly infiltrated that OO chiefs considered them to be merely extensions of OO chanceries” [this is a patent exaggeration]

Speeches by Malinovskii, according to Zuckerman, were “sometimes written my Beletskii” [we know he sometimes edited them, but it is highly unlikely he ever actually wrote any of them]

216. Beletskii “removed Malinovskii’s file from Fontanka’s records, literally erasing his criminal record [the cited source states only that “they did not send his police record to the government commission charged with vetting the candidates”; moreover, the only authority that Zuckerman cites, Maurice Laporte, provides no references for any of his assertions about the election of Malinovskii, though he apparently did consult the Police Department’s archives]

218. “After all, two of the main criteria established by Fontanka for identifying ‘a revolutionary situation’-rural unrest and heavy reliance on the army to restore order” [not so clearly defined in the cited source]

219. “Beletskii’s sang-froid evaporated” [not suggested in the cited text]

Beletskii “now ordered his political police to drive its sotrudniki harder and to process the intelligence gathered from them and elsewhere with greater speed” [the cited text states rather that revolutionary organizations had grown more active, and therefore the directive’s author ordered security policemen to liquidate the organizations as soon as informants supplied precise information, to recruit better informants, and “to proceed to more energetic and deeper analysis of information supplied by informants”]

“All [trade-] unions were closed” in June 1914 [this is false; some trade-unions continued to function during the war]

221. “Dzhunkovskii despised the Separate Corps of Gendarmes” [in fact, he proudly wore the gendarme uniform in the Duma; the cited texts state only that he wanted to remove from the gendarme corps security policing functions]

“He was powerless to tamper with the Warsaw, Moscow, and St. Petersburg Oos, all of which had been constituted under law” [none of them was constituted by a law promulgated by the Senate, but the rules governing the bureau in St. Petersburg were set out in a secret directive of 1887, while an ordinance apparently approved by the emperor in 1883 granted the Interior Ministry the right to create a network of security bureaus (see Istoriia politsii dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii [Moscow: Moskovskaia vysshaia shkola militsii, 1981], 61)]

“In Dzhunkovskii’s boldest alteration to the political police structure the Special Section was subsumed by Fontanka’s Sixth Secretariat” [this was a purely cosmetic change that did not persist after Dzhunkovskii’s ouster]

222. “Russia’s political police officers . . . cooperated with Dzhunkovskii as little as possible during [his] tenure in office” [the cited sources do not corroborate this assertion]

Zuckerman asserts that Dzhunkovskii hated “stool pigeons among the tsar’s soldiers” [which was true, but then Zuckerman goes on (without supplying any references) to state that Beletskii and Vissarionov] “considered spying on the officer corps essential to the survival of the regime” [which was almost certainly untrue]

225. “During the war the political police had access to vast resources” [their funding increased only by 5.8 percent in two years, up to 3,543,317 in 1916, despite galloping inflation (A. A. Miroliubov, "Dokumenty po istorii Departamenta politsii perioda pervoi mirovoi voiny," Sovetskie arkhivy, no. 3 [1988]: 81)]

Zuckerman goes through a huge list of extra work the security police had to help perform during the war-all with very little extra funding-then he asserts that “despite this effort the political police system was remarkably ineffective in sustaining even the tradition role it perceived for itself” [little wonder]

Zuckerman states that after Dzhunkovskii’s ouster in August 1915 “Fontanka . . . re-established the Internal Agency to its former pre-eminent position . . . including the policy of placing undercover agents in high schools and generally releasing its sotrudniki from the restrictions” imposed by Dzhunkovskii [the cited sources do not corroborate these assertions; in fact they are false]

226. “Briun-de-Sent-Ippolit (who was dismissed a few days after his mentor [Dzhunkovskii])” [in fact, he was dismissed before Dzhunkovskii]

227. “General Spiridovich, the then current doyen of Russia’s political police chiefs” [no, Spiridovich was then in charge of the emperor’s personal security, not a political police job]

236. “Mistaking opposition rhetoric for programmes of action, the Special Section did not evaluate the capacity of these groups to implement their threats-it just assumed that they would” [but the rhetoric sometimes inspired rebellion]

239. Zuckerman’s comparison of reports by Martynov and Globachev in 1916, where he seeks to show that Martynov had a keener view of the political situation, is based upon a mistaken reading of the reports. Both officials emphasized that the main source of popular discontent was the food crisis.

“once set in 240. motion became ‘unconditionally and clearly political’” [the cited text uses the future tense “will become”]

241. Zuckerman cites Globachev’s memoir uncritically where he claims to have been aware as early as October 1916 that a revolution was coming

242. The reports of V. V. Ratko, the head of the Imperial court police agency, “were still worthy of the monarch’s serious attention, which unfortunately they were not given” [the cited sources do not substantiate this claim; nor have I seen any evidence supporting it]

244. Zuckerman supposedly quotes a report of 26 February by Globachev who “held nothing back from his chief”; “The uprising,” he supposedly wrote, “has risen into a blaze . . .” [in fact, Zuckerman is quoting from the report of a secret informant, one of several, which Globachev, if he had had time, would undoubtedly have woven into a report]

246. In regard to the Provisional Government, Zuckerman refers to “commissars whom it dispatched to the countryside” [in fact, most commissars in outlying areas were simply deputized local elected officials who were already on hand]

247. Zuckerman lists seven former police officials, “to name a few,” who ended up living in emigration after 1917 [in fact, there were very few more]

251. “Sergei Zubatov and A. A. Lopukhin would have been proud of the recent KGB” [this seems ridiculous]

259n20. Zuckerman quotes from a directive to illustrate the “mania for time-wasting detail,” yet the quoted instructions seem perfectly reasonable

261n46. “If, however, you count all sorts of informers there may have been as many as 700 people in the political police’s employ in Moscow alone” [this is patently false]

264n51. “Azef . . . was acquainted with . . . Stolypin” [I have never seen any evidence for this; no reference is supplied here]

268n75. Klimovich’s wife “used her descent from the famous conservative poet Fedor Tiutchev to gain entrée to the court” [more importantly, she was related to S. I. Tiutcheva, a lady-in-waiting]

278n24. Zuckerman repeated cites (e.g.) “protocol no. 22" of various dates but never gives a full bibliographical citation of any of them

294n47. Nurit Schleifman’s book published in 1988 “arrived too late to be used as a source for this chapter”

299n44. “Beletskii never considered Fontanka more than a stepping stone in furthering his career” [Zuckerman cites Martynov; but why would he know about that?