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Titre The Internal Agency : Linchpin of the political police in Russia
Auteur Nurit Schleifmann
Mir@bel Revue Cahiers du monde russe
Titre à cette date : Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique
Numéro volume 24, no 1-2, janvier-juin 1983
Rubrique / Thématique
Dossier
Page 151-177
Résumé anglais Nurit Schleifmann, The Internal Agency: linchpin of the political police in Russia. The purpose of this article is to outline several of the characteristic features of police infiltration into the revolutionary movement by means of the secret agent. These features stem largely from the underlying conception of the Police Department which viewed its cardinal objective as "liquidation": the surveillance of revolutionary groups with the aim of eliminating them at an appropriate moment. Thus the Internal Agency - as the secret agents were collectively dubbed by the Police - had pride of place in the activity of each Okhrana section; the data gathered by the agents were given top priority in appraising the situation and since this information was tendentious, this led to incongruities between the revolutionary tide and the deployment of the police to combat it. Moreover, the underlying conception dictated police concentration on the individual revolutionary act and brought about the erroneous assumption that the larger the revolutionary organization, the greater its menace. Police comprehension of reality determined also their attitude towards the various components of the revolutionary camp. However, the scope of infiltration into a given movement was affected by a combination of three factors: the degree of interest evinced by the police in the movement's activity, the movement's size and the nature of its organization.
Source : Éditeur (via Persée)
Article en ligne http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/cmr_0008-0160_1983_num_24_1_1971