Zubatov emphasised that case officers must win their agents' trust, protect them from discovery, assist them in adversity and increase their faith in the Russian monarchy. He urged his officers, according to one of them, to treat their informants as 'a beloved woman with whom you have entered into illicit relations. Look after her like the apple of your eye. One careless move and you will dishonour her . . . Take this to heart: treat these people as I am advising, and they will understand your needs, will trust you, and will work with you honestly and selflessly.'[86]
The number of informants was never great, and before Zubatov they were few indeed. Nikolai Kletochnikov, a revolutionary infiltrator who had access to the security police's most sensitive files in 1879-80, found a record of only ii5 permanent informants in the whole empire - at the height of terrorist attacks against the emperor and his officials.[87] Later, part-time police informants worked within nearly every major social group and profession, although even the security bureau in St Petersburg never employed more than 94 informants. The most important ones were students in the 1880s and 1890s and members of the two principal revolutionary parties (the Socialist-Revolutionaries and
Social Democrats) after the turn ofthe century. People became informants for a variety of reasons. Some agreed to inform in order to take revenge upon their erstwhile comrades (Zubatov claimed this of himself), some sought adventure or took a liking to their case officers, probably all feared punishment and desired material benefits. A few earnestly wished to serve their government in its struggle against the onslaught of revolutionary sedition.[88] Wages ranged from 5-10 roubles to 100-200 roubles (or up to 1,000 for a few 'stars') monthly. (By contrast, surveillants and skilled metalworkers earned 50 roubles per month.) Valuable, long-time informants could hope to receive a solid annual pension (from 1,000 to 3,000 roubles) or a one-time lump-sum subsidy (as much as 5,000 roubles).
Zubatov's development of new police methods, especially the systematic and extensive employment of informants, was undoubtedly the most significant advance in Russian political policing since the creation of the Third Section. It also set him at odds with the majority of Russian security policemen, the gendarmes. Such policemen, even when lacking precise information about criminal activity, sometimes arrested dozens of people in order to discover a few political criminals: that is, not on the basis of evidence of political wrongdoing, but in order to obtain evidence. Zubatov argued, by contrast, that suspects should be arrested or exiled administratively only upon discovery of strong evidence of their involvement in political crime, to avoid creating innocent victims and alienating the population from the government. Zubatov preferred to wait patiently for an underground group to come into possession of incriminating evidence (illegal literature, forged passports, explosives or weapons) or for the arrival of a major revolutionary leader from abroad, before arresting its members. The point was to let the group reveal its purposes in order both to learn more about the broader movement of which it was a part and to catch it in flagrante delicto.
If Zubatov's methods were more effective and fruitful in the long run, they were also more dangerous. By allowing the revolutionaries room to manoeuvre, the police risked letting them perpetrate crimes. Likewise, informants were obliged to participate more fully in the work of the illegal organisations, laying them open to charges of provocation. Given the difficulties and dangers inherent in the new approach, it is hardly surprising that many gendarmes continued to prefer the older, more heavy-handed methods. Yet Zubatov was surely right that by the mid-i890s the security police had to ascend to a higher level of professional sophistication. Whereas the opposition 'movement' had comprised a few dozen members under Nicholas I and only a few thousand under Alexanders II and III, it fell to Nicholas II's lot to rule an empire plagued by mass social discontent. The security system was no longer equipped to punish or otherwise neutralise all such 'suspicious' people in Russia. Furthermore, as a former radical himself, Zubatov was convinced that much popular discontent was justified.
The massive strikes of 1896-7 underscored these points. Moreover, the Social Democrats were enjoying considerable success in spreading their revolutionary theories and agitation among the ranks of the industrial workers. In this context, Zubatov conceived of an astonishing programme: to organise industrial workers on behalf of the government and to strive to improve the material conditions of their life in order to win them away from the revolutionary opposition. He argued that only the absolutist monarchy, an institution above classes and estates, could advance the industrial workers' interests. The revolutionaries, he asserted, wished to use them only to further their own political goals. The patronage of Moscow's powerful governor-general, the emperor's uncle, Grand Duke Serge Aleksandrovich, permitted him to implement this bold policy.[89]
Apparently in response to a coalescing of revolutionary organisations in the late 1890s, in January 1898 the Police Department created a Special Section for co-ordinating security policing operations throughout the empire. The Special Section's staff of five assistants, seven clerks and three typists (1900) were nearly all civilians until 1905, when a few gendarme officers took important positions. The institution was cloaked in secrecy, its offices hidden, and its chief and his assistants, a few of them erstwhile informants, claiming to be professors, writers or merchants. While the actual fighting against the revolutionary opposition was left to Zubatov in Moscow, the Special Section in St Petersburg analysed, classified and interpreted data furnished by police institutions, informants andperlustration; surveyed the various opposition groups and movements and prepared assessments of their strength and significance; compiled, organised and indexed information on social disorders, students, workers and the general mood of the Russian population; and co-ordinated the search for political criminals.
The Social Democrats held their first congress in Minsk on 1-2 March 1898, but the police immediately arrested every delegate - save three whom Zubatov deliberately left at liberty, in the hope that they would lead him to their colleagues in revolution. Both police repression (Vladimir Lenin, Julius Martov and Aleksandr Potresov were exiled to Siberia) and philosophical and programmatic differences among Social Democrats delayed the convocation of a second party congress until 1903. In the meantime, there erupted in February 1899 student disorders that marked the beginning of Russia's revolutionary era. They radicalised the bar by expanding the number of radical law students, stimulated the publication of the Social Democrat newspaper Iskra and promoted the formation of the Socialist-Revolutionary party and of the Liberation Movement by awakening Marxists, neo-Populists and left-wing liberals to the immense power available to opponents of the imperial government if only they roused the population against it. The government first overreacted to the student unrest, then relented: it conscripted into the army and expelled hundreds of students from the universities, only to readmit them in the fall.[90]The message was clear: the government was arbitrary and repressive, but not overly to be feared by committed radicals.
88
The best place to start exploring the lives ofinformantsis Leonid Men'shchikov,
89
On Zubatov's approach to workers, see Jeremiah Schneiderman,
90
On the student unrest see Samuel D. Kassow,