Abstract
Peter Ivanovich Rachkovskii’s name has become synonymous with the most corrupt and venal aspects of the reigns of Alexander III and Nicholas II. A man of stupendous talent and ambition, completely amoral, he rose to become Tsardom’s most influential political police official during the 1905 Revolution.1
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Notes
Fredric S. Zuckerman, The Tsarist Secret Police in Russian Society, 1880–1917 (Basing-stoke: Macmillan — now Palgrave Macmillan, 1996), 156–7, 159, 162–4, 167–70.
Ibid., 15–17; E. K. Semenoff, The Russian Government and the Massacres (London: 1907), 146.
V. K. Agafonov, Zagranichnaia okhranka (Petrograd: 1917), 18.
Jean Galtier-Boissière, Mysteries of the French Secret Police, Donald Leslie-Melville trans. (London: Stanley Paul & Co. Ltd., 1938), 237 and Chapter 5 herein.
Ibid., 7; E. A. Taratuta, EteV Lilian Voinich: Sud’ba pisatelia i sud’ba knigi, 2nd edn, (Moscow: 1964), 101
E. A. Taratuta, S. M. Stepniak-Kravchinskii revoliutsioner i pisatel’ (Moscow: 1973), 475.
N. Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (London: Eyre and Spotteswood, 1967), 88. Rachkovskii actually established such a league (La ligue pour le salut de la patrie russe) in 1902 without the prior approval of the MVD. See: Rachkovskii, The Nikolaevsky Collection, no. 132, Box 1.
Leonid Menshchikov, Russkii politicheskii sysk za granitsei (Paris: 1914), 151.
Volkhovskii arrived in London in 1890 and began to work with Kravchinskii on Free Russia. During the remainder of Kravchinskii’s lifetime Volkhovskii was regarded as his alter ego. They were amazingly similar in habits and personality and although they differed in degree on several tactical and ideological points they became fast friends. Donald Senese, S. M. Stepniak-Kravchinskii: The London Years, Russian Biography Series, 33, (Newtonville Mass.: Oriental Research Partners, 1987), 50–1.
B. Porter, The Origins of the Vigilant State: The London Metropolitan Police Special Branch Before the First World War (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987), 143; H. Brust, I Guarded Kings: The Memoirs of a Political Police Officer (London: Stanley Paul & Co., n.d.), 64.
B. Porter, ‘The British Government and Political Refugees, c. 1880–1914’, in From the Other Shore: Russian Political Emigrants in Britain, ed. J. Slatter (London: Frank Cass, 1984), 37.
V. Burtsev, Bor’ba za svobodnuiu Rossiiu: Moi vospominaniia (1882–1912 g.) (Berlin: 1912), 1: 127–8.
A. V. Bogdanovich, Tri poslednikh samoderzhtsa. Dnevnik A.V. Bogdanovich[a] (Moscow-Leningrad: 1924), 247.
M. La Porte, Histoire de l’Okhrana la police secrète des tsars, 1880–1917 (Paris: 1935), 27, 187.
Sergei IU. Witte, Vospominaniia: Tsarstvovanie Nikolaia II, (Berlin: 1922), 1: 150–1; Vechernee Vremia, no. 155, 28 May 1912.
‘Razoblachennyi Azef’, Byloe, n.s., 1917, no. 2 [30]: 211; Vechernee Vremia, no. 153, 25 May 1912.
A. A. Polovtsov, ‘Dnevnik A. A. Polovtsova’, KA, 1923, no. 3: 153.
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© 2003 Fredric S. Zuckerman
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Zuckerman, F.S. (2003). P. I. Rachkovskii: Adventure, Intrigue and the Foreign Agentura, 1884–1902. In: The Tsarist Secret Police Abroad. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230514935_7
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