Exposures as a Political Tactic

Abstract

Many of the SRs were fully aware of the damage wrought by the Party’s preoccupation with the provocation issue. According to this view, the detrimental effect of the exposures and the inquiries was far greater than any benefits they could possibly bring. The police too were kept fully abreast about the party’s internal disintegration and about the part played in this process of social and ideological degeneration by the exposure of secret agents. In its detailed reports the Foreign Agency described the depressed atmosphere, the poisonous relations among party members, and the near total paralysis of the Paris group’s activity.¹ Wide coverage was given to the growing voices that linked the party’s gloomy state to its obsession with the provocation issue on the one hand, and to the terrorist tactics that made it a principal police target on the other hand. Indeed, according to these reports, some party members blamed terrorism not only for the disaster that had struck the party, but for the reactionary regime in Russia.² The reports singled out ranking figures such as Fundaminskii and Avksentiev as decrying the use of terrorism. The history of the Battle Organization also features prominently in the abundant reports, which held that its activity had now ceased almost completely due to internal squabbling, and most strikingly because of suspicions of provocation which had led to the suicide of two agents.³