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{{short description|Secret police force of the Russian Empire}}
{{About|the secret police of the Russian Empire|the Slavophone militias in German-occupied Macedonia during World War II|Ohrana|the security company of the National Guard of Russia|Federal State Unitary Enterprise Guard (Russia)}}
{{use dmy dates|date=April 2024}}
{{Infobox government agency
| agency_name = Okhrana<br/>Guard Department<br/><small>Department for the Protection of Public Safety and Order</small>
| nativename = {{lang|ru|Охрана}}<br/>{{lang|ru|Охранное отделение}}<br/>{{lang|ru|Отделение по охранению общественной безопасности и порядка}}
| nativename_a = 
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| logo = Emblem of the Ministry of the Interior of the Russian Empire.svg
| logo_width = 
| logo_caption = Emblem of the Ministry of the Interior
| seal = 
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| picture = File:Okhranka group photo.jpg
| picture_width = 300px
| picture_caption = Okhrana group photograph in [[St. Petersburg]], [[Russian Empire]] in 1905
| formed = {{Start date and age|1881}}<ref name=AQA>{{cite book|last1= Corrin|first1= Chris|last2= Feihn|first2= Terry|title= AQA A-level History Tsarist and Communist Russia: 1855–1964|date= 31 July 2015|publisher= Hachette UK; Hodder Education; Dynamic Learning|isbn= 9781471837807|page= 44|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=YjTrCQAAQBAJ&pg=PT90|access-date= 8 November 2015|quote= In 1881 a new secret police – the ''Okhrana'' – was established.}}</ref>
| preceding1 = 
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| dissolved = {{End date and age|1917}}
| superseding = [[Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee|PVRK]]
| jurisdiction = {{flag| Russian Empire}}
| headquarters = [[Petrograd]]
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The '''Department for the Protection of Public Safety and Order''',{{efn|{{langx|ru|Отделение по охранению общественной безопасности и порядка|Otdelenie po okhraneniyu obshchestvennoy bezopadnosti i poryadka}}}} usually called the '''Guard Department'''{{efn|{{langx|ru|Охранное отделение|Okhrannoye otdelenie}}}} and commonly abbreviated in modern English sources as the '''Okhrana''',{{efn|{{lang-rus |Охрана|p=ɐˈxranə|a=Ru-охрана.ogg|t= The Guard}}}} was a [[secret police]] force  of the [[Russian Empire]] and part of [[Police Department of Russia|the police department]] of the [[Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire|Ministry of Internal Affairs]] (MVD) in the late 19th century and early 20th century, aided by the [[Special Corps of Gendarmes]].

==Overview==
Formed to combat political terrorism, [[left-wing politics]] and revolutionary activity,<ref>[http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9056920/Okhranka#275729.hook Okhrana] ''Britannica Online''</ref> the Okhrana operated offices throughout the Russian Empire, as well as satellite agencies in a number of foreign countries. It concentrated on monitoring the activities of Russian revolutionaries abroad, including in Paris, where Okhrana agent [[Pyotr Rachkovsky]] (1853–1910) was based 1884–1902 before he returned to service in Saint Petersburg 1905–1906.

The Okhrana deployed multiple methods, including assassination, clandestine and covert operations, counterintelligence, espionage, HUMINT, manhunt for the capture or kill of high-value targets, and [[Wikt:perlustration|"perlustration"]]—the reading of private correspondence. The Okhrana's Foreign Agency also monitored revolutionary activity.<ref>
{{cite book
 | last1 = Fischer
 | first1 = Ben B.
 | year = 1997
 | title = Okhrana: The Paris Operations of the Russian Imperial Police
 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=szO2W7zF69kC
 | publisher = DIANE Publishing
 | publication-date = 1999
 | page = 6
 | isbn = 9780788183287
 | access-date = 10 May 2019
 | quote = The opening in 1883 of the Okhrana's Foreign Bureau, centred in Paris, was prompted by the shift of Russian revolutionary activity from the Russian Empire to Western and Central Europe.
}}
</ref> The Okhrana became notorious for its [[agent provocateur|agents provocateurs]], including [[Jacob Zhitomirsky]] (born 1880, a leading [[Bolshevik]] and close associate of [[Vladimir Lenin]]), [[Yevno Azef]] (1869–1918), [[Roman Malinovsky]] (1876–1918) and [[Dmitry Bogrov]] (1887–1911).

The Okhrana tried to compromise the [[labour movement]] by setting up police-run [[trade union]]s, a practice known as [[Sergei Zubatov|''zubatovshchina'']]. The Communists blamed the Okhrana in part for the [[Bloody Sunday 1905|Bloody Sunday]] event of January 1905,{{citation needed|date= May 2019}} when Tsarist troops<ref>{{cite book | title= Black Night White Snow | author= Salisbury, Harrison E. | publisher= Da Capo Press | year= 1981 | isbn= 0-306-80154-X | pages= 122–123}}</ref> killed hundreds of unarmed protesters who were marching during a demonstration organized by [[Father Gapon]].<ref>Evans, Charles T. Father Gapon</ref>{{request quotation|date=October 2020}}) and with the participation of [[Pinhas Rutenberg|Pyotr Rutenberg]].

Many historians, such as the German [[Konrad Heiden]]<ref name=Freund2000>[https://reason.com/archives/2000/02/01/forging-protocols "Forging Protocols"] by Charles Paul Freund. ''Reason Magazine'', February 2000</ref> and the [[Russian people|Russian]] historian Mikhail Lepekhine<ref>{{cite news |last1 =Bishop |first1= Patrick |title= 'Protocols of Zion' forger named |url= https://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1999/11/19/wzion19.html |access-date= 8 November 2015 |work= [[The Daily Telegraph]] |issue= 1638 |date= 19 November 1999 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080528005157/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=%2Farchive%2F1999%2F11%2F19%2Fwzion19.html |archive-date= 28 May 2008 |url-status= dead |location= [[Paris]] |quote= Research by a leading Russian historian, Mikhail Lepekhine, in recently opened archives has found the forgery to be the work of [[Mathieu Golovinski]], opportunistic [[wikt:scion|scion]] of an aristocratic but rebellious family who drifted into a life of [[espionage]] and [[propaganda]] work.}}</ref> maintain that [[Matvei Golovinski]], a writer and Okhrana agent, fabricated the first edition of ''[[The Protocols of the Elders of Zion]]'' (1903).  The organization also fabricated documentation connected with the [[History of antisemitism|antisemitic]] [[Menahem Mendel Beilis|Beilis trial]] of 1913.

Suspects captured by the Okhrana were passed to the [[judicial system of the Russian Empire]].

The Okhrana was perpetually underfunded and understaffed; before 1914 it had just 49 employees split between seven offices and never had more than 2,000 informants at any one time. It never received more than 10% of the total police budget.<ref>
{{cite book
 | last1 = Lauchlan
 | first1 = Iain
 | chapter = The Okhrana: security policing in late imperial Russia
 | editor1-last = McKean
 | editor1-first = Robert B.
 | editor2-last = Thatcher
 | editor2-first = Ian D.
 | title = Late Imperial Russia: Problems and Prospects
 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=g7s8kE1aObAC
 | series = Manchester University Press Series
 | date = 3 September 2005
 | location = Manchester
 | publisher = Manchester University Press
 | publication-date = 2005
 | page = 50
 | isbn = 9780719067877
 | access-date = 10 May 2019
 | quote = The high level of secrecy meant that revolutionaries could only guess at the size and nature of the Okhrana. Consequently the opposition seem to have over-estimated the omniscience of the secret police. Most thought that there was a Black Cabinet in every city and even many towns of the empire. When one Soviet historian dredged the archives he only found evidence of seven such offices with a grand total of 49 employees before 1914; reports of others, he noted, 'were sheer hallucinations'. Activists in the political underground imagined the cities to be infested with watchers and informers, and feared that their ranks were riddled with traitors. Early detractors of the Okhrana estimated that it employed up to 40,000 spies and referred to it as the most important prop to the tsarist regime. Yet when the police archives fell into the hands of the Provisional Government in 1917 they only managed to uncover 600 informers. Recent surveys of the archives have revealed that the Department of Police never employed more than 2,000 informers at any one time and most of these were not high-level spies. The entire Okhrana budget usually accounted for less than 10 per cent of the total expenditure on police, reaching a peak of around five million rubles in 1914 [...].
}}
</ref>

===Use of torture===
Despite the reforms<ref>
Russia disallowed the use of torture in 1774: [https://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/%D0%AD%D0%A1%D0%91%D0%95/%D0%9F%D1%8B%D1%82%D0%BA%D0%B0 8 ноября 1774 г. последовало секретное Высочайшее повеление о том, чтобы присутственные места ни под каким видом не допускали при допросах телесных истязаний «для познания о действиях истины».]
</ref>
in the early 19th century, the practice of [[torture]] was never truly abolished.<ref name="PT13">{{cite book
|author= Malcolm D. Evans, Rod Morgan
|title= Preventing Torture
|url= https://archive.org/details/preventingtortur0000evan
|url-access= registration
|publisher= Oxford University Press
|year= 1999
|page= [https://archive.org/details/preventingtortur0000evan/page/13 13]
|isbn= 0-19-826257-4
}}</ref> Possibly, the formation of the Okhrana led to increasing use of torture,<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.hrsolidarity.net/mainfile.php/2002vol12no04/2228/ |title=Patterns of Torture |access-date=2008-04-24 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090114024536/http://www.hrsolidarity.net/mainfile.php/2002vol12no04/2228/ |archive-date=2009-01-14 |url-status=usurped | quote = After 1881, the Russian czar Alexander III created a secret police, the Okhrana, to fight terrorism, and the use of torture increased even more. }}</ref> due to the Okhrana using methods such as [[arbitrary arrest and detention|arbitrary arrest]], detention and torture to gain information.<ref>[http://www.hsc.csu.edu.au/modern_history/national_studies/russia/russia_concept/page101.htm Russia and the Soviet Union 1917–1941: Glossary] {{Webarchive|url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080803114257/http://hsc.csu.edu.au/modern_history/national_studies/russia/russia_concept/page101.htm |date= 2008-08-03 }} ''[[Charles Sturt University]]''</ref> Claims persisted the Okhrana had operated [[torture chamber]]s in places like [[Warsaw]], [[Riga]], [[Odessa]] and most of the urban centres.<ref name=Marxist>
[http://www.marxists.org/archive/serge/1926/repression/ch1b.htm The Russian Okhrana] ''[[Marxists.org]]'' – Section XVIII: "The cost of an execution" – "After 1905, the Okhrana had torture chambers in Warsaw, Riga, Odessa and apparently in most of the great urban centres."
</ref>

==History==
Forerunners of the Okhrana as a Russian security service included the Secret Prikaz ({{ill|Taynyy Prikaz|ru|Тайный приказ}}) (1654–1676), the {{ill|Preobrazhensky Prikaz|ru|Преображенский приказ}} (1686–1726), the {{ill|Secret Chancellery|ru|Тайная канцелярия}} (1731–1762), the {{ill|Secret Expedition|ru|Тайная экспедиция }} (1762–1801), and the [[Third Section of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery]] (1826–1880).

The first special security department was the Department on Protecting the Order and Public Peace under the Head of [[Saint Petersburg|St. Petersburg]], set up in 1866 after a failed assassination attempt on Emperor [[Alexander II of Russia|Alexander II]], with a staff of 12 investigators.  Its street address, [[Fontanka Embankment|Fontanka]], 16, was publicly known in the Russian Empire.  After another failed assassination attempt, on August 6, 1880, the Emperor, acting on proposals made by [[Count Loris-Melikov]], established the Department of State Police under [[Ministry of Internal Affairs (Russia)|Ministry of the Interior (MVD)]] and transferred part of the [[Special Corps of Gendarmes]] and the [[Third Section of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery|Third Section of the Imperial Chancellery]] to the new body. The position of Chief of Gendarmes was merged with that of the Minister, and Commander of the Corps was assigned as a Deputy of the Minister. Still, these measures did not prevent the assassination of Alexander II in March 1881.

In an attempt to implement preventive security measures, Emperor [[Alexander III of Russia|Alexander III]] ({{reign | 1881 | 1894}}) immediately set up two more Security and Investigation (охранно-розыскные) secret-police stations, supervised by Gendarme officers, in [[Moscow]] and [[Warsaw]]; they became the basis of the later Okhrana.  The Imperial Gendarmerie still operated as security police in the rest of the country through their [[Guberniya|Gubernial]] and [[Uyezd]] Directorates. The Emperor also established the Special Conference under the MVD (1881), which had the right to declare a State of Emergency Security in various parts of the Empire (which was actively used in the time of [[Russian Revolution of 1905|1905 Revolution]]) and subordinated all of the imperial police forces to the Commander of the Gendarmes (1882).

The rise of the socialist movements led to the integration of security forces. From 1898 the Special Section (Особый отдел) of the Department of Police succeeded the Gendarmes in the role of gaining information from domestic and foreign agents and "{{linktext|perlustration}}". Following the Socialist-Revolutionary Party's assassination of MVD Minister [[Dmitry Sipyagin]] on April 2, 1902, the new Minister [[Vyacheslav von Plehve]] gradually relieved the Directorates of Gendarmes of their investigation power in favor of Security and Investigation Stations (Охранно-розыскное отделение) under respective Mayors and Governors (who as a matter of fact were subordinate to the MVD Minister).

===Pre-1905===
The Okhrana used many seemingly unorthodox methods in the pursuit of its mission to defend the Tsarist monarchy; indeed, some of the Okhrana's activities even contributed to the wave of domestic unrest and revolutionary terror that they were intended to quell. Perhaps most paradoxical of all was the Okhrana's collaboration with revolutionary organizations.<ref>Fredric S. Zuckerman, "Political Police and Revolution: The Impact of the 1905 Revolution on the Tsarist Secret Police", ''Journal of Contemporary History'' 27 (1992): 281.</ref>  Early Okhrana agents to work alongside revolutionaries included Lieutenant-Colonel [[Georgy Sudeykin]] of the [[St. Petersburg]] Special Section, who, in 1882, set up an illegal printing operation to publish the revolutionary [[Narodnaya Volya|People's Will]] literature with Okhrana funds. Sudeykin and his colleague, a revolutionary-turned-police-informant named [[Sergey Degayev]], passed drafts of the publication through Okhrana censors before printing. This episode marked the beginning of the Okhrana's efforts to surreptitiously observe, but also influence and undermine, revolutionary movements.<ref>[[Ronald Hingley]], ''The Russian Secret Police: Muscovite, Imperial Russian, and Soviet Political Security Operations'' (New York: Dorset, 1970), 75–6.</ref>  This focus on infiltrating and influencing revolutionary groups, rather than merely identifying and arresting their members, intensified with the innovations of one Okhrana bureau chief, [[Sergei Vasilyevich Zubatov|Sergey Zubatov]]. While [[Pyotr Rachkovsky|P.I. Rachkovsky]], as head of the Okhrana's Foreign Agency, had long ordered Okhrana agents to infiltrate and influence revolutionary movements abroad, Zubatov brought these tactics to a new level by setting up Okhrana-controlled trade unions, the foundation of police socialism.<ref>Richard J. Johnson, "Zagranichnaia Agentura: The Tsarist Political Police in Europe", ''Journal of Contemporary History'' 7 (1972): 226.  Hingley, ''Russian Secret Police'', 87.</ref>  Perhaps recognizing the same discontent among factory workers that the Bolsheviks sought to exploit to start a revolution, Zubatov hoped the unions would mollify factory workers with improvements in working conditions and thus prevent workers from joining revolutionary movements that threatened the monarchy. To this end, Zubatov set up the Moscow Mechanical Production Workers' Mutual Aid Society in May 1901. After Zubatov became head of the Special Section in 1902, he expanded his trade unions from Moscow to St. Petersburg and to Southern Russia.<ref>Hingley, ''Russian Secret Police'', 88–89.</ref>

Zubatovite trade unions achieved moderate success at channeling workers' political agitations away from revolutionary movements and toward labor improvements, especially in the cities of [[Minsk]] and [[Odessa]], with one high-ranking official noting that many revolutionaries and workers were joining the unions.<ref>Jonathan W. Daly, ''Autocracy Under Siege: Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1866–1905'' (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1998), 138.</ref>  However, Zubatov, if not police socialism, became discredited in the summer of 1903 after the Okhrana officer in charge of the Odessa union allowed a strike to get out of hand, causing a mass movement which paralyzed the region.<ref>Hingley, Russian Secret Police, 89.</ref>  Although the police-run unions continued to operate after Zubatov's ousting, without Okhrana funding, they proved more a liability than an asset. The Assembly of Working Men, a police-run union with about 6,000–8,000 members, formed by the alleged Okhrana agent [[Georgy Gapon|Father Georgy Gapon]], sparked the [[Bloody Sunday (1905)|Bloody Sunday massacre]] of January 1905, a milestone in the [[Revolution of 1905]] when union members marched peacefully on the [[Winter Palace]] in St. Petersburg and were fired upon by Imperial soldiers.<ref>Hingley, Russian Secret Police, 94–5.</ref> The Okhrana complemented police socialism and other projects to prevent the conditions in which revolutionary movements could take hold by pursuing initiatives to curtail the activities of existing organizations. [[Yevno Azef]], the notorious Okhrana [[Agent provocateur|provocateur]] who became the head of the [[Socialist-Revolutionary Party|Socialist Revolutionary]] Fighting Organization (SRFO), epitomized the Okhrana's inscrutable practice of revolutionary-group infiltration. While the Okhrana managed to imbed many of its agents in revolutionary organizations, the police preferred to slowly gather intelligence and to attempt to interfere with revolutionary work surreptitiously rather than to arrest known revolutionaries immediately. This policy led to numerous dubious acts on the part of police spies, who needed to participate in revolutionary activities to avoid suspicion, as when Yevno Azef, as head of the SRFO, ordered the assassination of [[Vyacheslav von Plehve|V. K. Plehve]] on July 15, 1904.<ref>Hingley, ''Russian Secret Police'', 92.</ref>

===The Revolution of 1905===
For over twenty years, the Okhrana had focused on interfering with the activities of relatively small, and distinct, revolutionary groups. The Revolution of 1905, characterized by seemingly spontaneous marches and strikes, exposed the Okhrana's inefficacy at controlling mass popular movements.<ref>Zuckerman, ''Political Police and Revolution'', 281.</ref>  Not only did the Okhrana lack the capacity to prevent the mass movements of 1905, or even to contain them once they began, the Okhrana's misguided attempts may even have worsened the unrest. [[Dmitri Feodorovich Trepov|D. F. Trepov]], the Assistant Minister of the Interior in charge of police affairs, and P. I. Rachkovsky, now in charge of all domestic political-police operations, attempted to mount an aggressive offensive against those they believed to be responsible for the unrest, namely ''[[zemstvo]]'' employees, in May 1905, but backed down three months later.<ref>Zuckerman, ''Political Police and Revolution'', 282, 5.</ref>  In October of that year, Trepov again attempted a violent repression of the revolution, only to call off the effort for lack of manpower. Since these attempts at repression never reached fruition, they only served to aggravate the already enraged Russian populace and to deepen their distrust of the Imperial government. Trepov's replacement by [[Pyotr Durnovo|P.N. Durnovo]] in late-October ushered in a period of even more vicious repression of the revolutionaries.<ref>Daly, ''Autocracy Under Siege'', 173.</ref>  Indicative of this new period is the head of the St. Petersburg Special Section, A.V. Gerasimov's, strike on the St. Petersburg Soviet. To Emperor [[Nicholas II]]'s delight, Gerasimov arrested delegates of the Soviet ''en masse'' on December 3, 1905. Along with this repression and the end of the Revolution of 1905 came a shift in the political police's mentality; gone were the days of [[Nicholas I of Russia|Nicholas I]]'s white-gloved [[Third Section of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery|moral police]]: post-1905 the political police feared that the Russian people were as eager to destroy them as to depose the Emperor.<ref>Zuckerman, “Political Police and Revolution,” 285, 287, 289–290.</ref>

Following the outbreak of the 1905 Revolution and assassination of Plehve, [[Pyotr Stolypin]], as the new MVD Minister and Chairman of the Council of Ministers, set up a nationwide net of Security Stations. By 1908 there were 31 Stations, and more than 60 by 1911. Two more Special Sections of the Department of Police were organized in 1906. The centralized Security Section of the Department of Police was created on February 9, 1907; it was located at 16, Fontanka, St. Petersburg.

The exposure of [[Yevno Azef]] (who had organized many assassinations, including that of [[Vyacheslav von Plehve|Plehve]]) and [[Dmitri Bogrov]] (who assassinated [[Pyotr Stolypin|Stolypin]] in 1911) as Okhrana [[double agent]]s put the agency's methods under great suspicion; the organisation was further compromised by the discovery of many similar [[double agent]]s-provocateur. In Autumn 1913, all of the Security Stations except the original Moscow, St Petersburg and Warsaw ones were dismissed. The start of [[World War I]] in 1914 marked a shift from anti-revolutionary activities of the Department of Police to [[counter-intelligence]]; however, the efforts of the department were poorly synchronised with counter-intelligence units of the General Staff and of the [[Imperial Russian Army|Army]].

===The 1917 Russian Revolution (February Revolution and October Revolution)===

Just as the Okhrana had once sponsored trade unions to divert activist energy from political causes, so too did the secret police attempt to promote the Bolshevik party, as the Bolsheviks seemed a relatively harmless alternative to more violent revolutionary groups. Indeed, to the Okhrana, [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]] seemed to actively hinder the revolutionary movement by denouncing other revolutionary groups and refusing to cooperate with them.<ref name="ReferenceA">Hingley, ''Russian Secret Police'', 105</ref>

To aid the Bolsheviks at the expense of other revolutionaries, the Okhrana helped [[Roman Malinovsky]] (a police spy who had managed to rise within the Bolshevik hierarchy and gain Lenin's trust) in his bid to become a Bolshevik delegate to the [[State Duma of the Russian Empire|Duma]] in 1912. To this end, the Okhrana sequestered Malinovsky's criminal record and arrested other candidates for the seat.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

According to the transcribed recollections of Nikolay Vladimirovich Veselago, a former Okhrana officer and relative of the director of the Russian police department [[Stepan Petrovich Beletsky]], both Malinovsky and [[Joseph Stalin]] reported on Lenin as well as on each other although Stalin was unaware that Malinovosky was also a penetration agent.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Dziak |first1=John J. |title=Chekisty: A History of the KGB |date=1988 |publisher=Lexington Books |isbn=978-0-669-10258-1 |page=8 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yyIFAQAAIAAJ&q=Veselago+stalin+okhrana |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Hyde |first1=H. Montgomery |title=Stalin |date=21 March 1982 |publisher=Da Capo Press |isbn=978-0-306-80167-9 |page=618 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KGnvAAAAMAAJ&q=Stalin+okhrana+agent |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Brackman |first1=Roman |title=The Secret File of Joseph Stalin: A Hidden Life |date=23 November 2004 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-75840-0 |pages=369 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PY2RAgAAQBAJ&dq=Nikolay+Veselago+stalin&pg=PA369 |language=en}}</ref>

Malinovsky won the seat and led the Bolshevik delegation in the Fourth Duma until 1914, but even with the information Malinovsky and other informants provided to the Okhrana, the police were unprepared for the rise of Bolshevism in 1917. Although the secret police had agents within the Bolshevik organization, other factors contributed to the Okhrana's inefficacy at averting the events of 1917. Among these factors was the ban on police spies within the military promulgated by the Deputy Minister of the Interior [[Vladimir Dzhunkovsky]], who found the practice dishonorable and damaging to morale. While the beginning of World War I in 1914 moved the Okhrana's attentions initially from countering revolutionaries to countering German espionage, the focus quickly shifted back as it emerged that the Germans were heavily funding Russian revolutionary groups in order to destabilize the Russian Empire.<ref>Hingley, ''Russian Secret Police'', 106–9</ref>

Despite the renewed attention, the [[Russian Revolution]] of 1917 took the secret police, and the country, by surprise. Indeed, the Okhrana's persistent focus on revolutionary groups may have resulted in the secret police not fully appreciating the deep-seated popular unrest brewing in Russia.

The revolutionaries identified the Okhrana as one of the main symbols of [[Tsarist autocracy|Tsarist repression]], and its headquarters were sacked and burned on 27 February 1917. The newly formed [[Russian Provisional Government|Provisional Government]] then disbanded the whole organization and released most of the political prisoners held by the Tsarist regime. Revelations of the Okhrana's earlier abuses heightened public hostility towards the secret police after the 1917 [[February Revolution]] and made it very dangerous to be a political policeman. That fact, along with the [[Petrograd Soviet]]'s insistence on the dissolution of the regular Tsarist police force, as well as of the political police, meant that the Okhrana quickly and quietly disappeared.<ref>Hingley, ''Russian Secret Police'', 111.
</ref>

=== Successor organisations ===
Some Okhrana functionaries continued their activities in the [[Russian Civil War|civil-war period]] (1917–1923) within the [[White Armies]], notably in the {{ill|OSVAG|ru|ОСВАГ}} ({{langx |ru| ОСВАГ – ОСВедомительное АГентство | translit = OSVAG – OSVedomitel'noe AGentsvo | translation = Information Agency}}).<ref>
{{cite book
 |last1                = Ehrenburg
 |first1               = Ilya Grigoryevich
 |author-link1         = Ilya Ehrenburg
 |translator-last1     = Bostock
 |translator-first1    = Anna
 |translator-last2     = Kapp
 |translator-first2    = Yvonne
 |translator-link2     = Yvonne Kapp
 |orig-date            = 1960–1967
 |title                = Men, Years – life
 |year = 1962
 |url                  = https://books.google.com/books?id=mmUUAAAAIAAJ
 |volume               = 2
 |location             = London
 |publisher            = MacGibbon & Kee
 |publication-date     = 1962
 |page                 = 93
 |access-date          = 21 January 2022
 |quote                = In the White Army there were men of the Black Hundreds, former members of the Okhrana (Tsarist secret police), gendarmes, hangmen. They occupied important posts in the administration, the counterintelligence and the Osvag.
}}
</ref>

After the 1917 [[October Revolution]], the government of the [[RSFSR]] under [[Vladimir Lenin]] replaced the Okhrana with a Soviet security organisation – the much larger and more efficient [[Cheka]] in December 1917, supplemented by the  [[GRU (Soviet Union)|GRU]] (military intelligence) from November 1918. The Cheka and its [[Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies|successor organizations]] (notably the [[State Political Directorate|GPU]] and the [[Joint State Political Directorate|OGPU]], and most infamously the [[NKVD]]) eventually became the [[KGB]] (1954–1991) after the death of the Soviet leader [[Joseph Stalin]] in March 1953. After the [[dissolution of the Soviet Union]] in December 1991, the [[KGB]] split into the [[Federal Counterintelligence Service|FSK]] (later reorganized into the [[Federal Security Service|FSB]] in 1995) and the [[Foreign Intelligence Service (Russia)|SVR]].

==See also==
* [[Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies]]
* [[Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee]] (October–December 1917)
* [[Cheka]] (1917–1922)
* [[State Political Directorate|GPU]] (1922–1923)
* [[Joint State Political Directorate|OGPU]] (1923–1934)
* [[NKVD]] (1934–1946)
** [[NKGB]] (1943–1946)
* [[Ministry for State Security (Soviet Union)|MGB]] (1946–1953)
* [[Ministry of Internal Affairs (Soviet Union)|MVD]] (1953–1954)
* [[KGB]] (1954–1991)
* [[Federal Counterintelligence Service|FSK]] (1991–1995)
* [[Federal Security Service (Russia)|FSB]] (1995–present)
* [[Foreign Intelligence Service (Russia)|SVR]] (1991–present)

==Notes==
{{Notelist}}

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Further reading==
* Jonathan Daly, [http://www.niupress.niu.edu/niupress/scripts/book/bookResults.asp?ID=46 Autocracy under Siege: Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1866–1905] (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1998). {{ISBN|978-0-87580-243-5}}
* Jonathan Daly, [http://www.niupress.niu.edu/niupress/scripts/book/bookResults.asp?ID=219 The Watchful State: Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1906–1917] (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004). {{ISBN|978-0-87580-331-9}}
* Catherine Evtuhov, Stephen Kotkin; ''The Cultural Gradient: the transmission of ideas in Europe, 1789–1991''; Rowman & Littlefield, 2003 {{ISBN|0-7425-2063-3}}
* Charles A. Ruud, Sergei A. Stepanov; ''Fontanka 16: The Tsars' Secret Police''; McGill-Queen's University Press (paperback, 2002) {{ISBN|0-7735-2484-3}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20070613034033/https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/okhrana-the-paris-operations-of-the-russian-imperial-police/art1.pdf Paris Okhrana 1885–1905] [[CIA]] historical review program (Approved for release 22 September 1993)

==External links==
{{commons category|Okhrana}}
* [http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt538nf189/ Guide to the Okhrana Records] and [https://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/54048 photographs of activities and suspects online] at the [http://www.hoover.org/library-and-archives Hoover Institution Archives].
* Official history of the [[MVD]] of Russia: [https://web.archive.org/web/20050227171228/http://mvdinform.ru/index.php?docid=364 1857–1879] [https://web.archive.org/web/20050227171241/http://mvdinform.ru/index.php?docid=365 1880–1904] [https://web.archive.org/web/20050227171136/http://mvdinform.ru/index.php?docid=366 1905–1916] (in Russian)
* [http://www.spartacus-educational.com/RUSokhrana.htm "Okhrana"] in [[Spartacus Educational]] encyclopedia
*[https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/okhrana-the-paris-operations-of-the-russian-imperial-police/5474-1.html Okhrana: The Paris Operations of the Russian Imperial Police] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121220144449/https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/okhrana-the-paris-operations-of-the-russian-imperial-police/5474-1.html |date=2012-12-20 }}

{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Okhrana personnel|*]]
[[Category:1881 establishments in the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:1917 disestablishments in Russia]]
[[Category:Branches of the secret services of the Russian Empire]]
[[Category:Government agencies established in 1881]]
[[Category:Organizations disestablished in 1917]]
[[Category:Secret police]]