Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky (; 1853 – 1 November 1910) was chief of the Okhrana, the secret police of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

. He was based in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

from 1885 to 1902.

Activities in 1880s–1890s

After the assassination of

Alexander II of Russia Alexander II ( rus, Алекса́ндр II Никола́евич, Aleksándr II Nikoláyevich, p=ɐlʲɪˈksandr ftɐˈroj nʲɪkɐˈlajɪvʲɪtɕ; 29 April 181813 March 1881) was Emperor of Russia, Congress Poland, King of Poland and Grand Du ...

in 1881, the government moved against various

revolution In political science, a revolution (, 'a turn around') is a rapid, fundamental transformation of a society's class, state, ethnic or religious structures. According to sociologist Jack Goldstone, all revolutions contain "a common set of elements ...

ary factions operated by émigrées or hiding out in

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

. Rachkovsky's principal mission was to compromise Russia's growing revolutionary movement. The list of penetration agents hired by Rachkovsky included: * Landesen (Abraham Hackelman), among the Narodnaya Volya terrorists in

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

and

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

* Ignaty Kornfeld, among the

anarcho-communists Anarchist communism is a Far-left politics, far-left political ideology and Anarchist schools of thought, anarchist school of thought that advocates communism. It calls for the abolition of private property, private real property but retention ...

* Prodeus, a well-known revolutionary, reporting on various revolutionary centers * Ilya Drezhner, among the

social democrats Social democracy is a social, economic, and political philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy and a gradualist, reformist, and democratic approach toward achieving social equality. In modern practice, s ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

, Switzerland and France * Boleslaw Malankiewicz, among the Polish anarchists and terrorists in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

* Casimir Pilenas, a spotter for Scotland Yard recruited to work among the Latvian terrorists * Zinaida Zhuchenko, among the socialist revolutionaries and their terrorist fighting unit * Aleksandr Evalenko, assigned to

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for work among the

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

Bundists and terrorists According to journalist Brian Doherty:

"Rachkovsky started as a possibly sincere, possibly duplicitous mover in St. Petersburg's radical underground in the late 1870s, after having been dismissed (for leniency toward political exiles) from a job as a prosecutor for the czar's government. He ended up running the show for the Okhrana, the Russian secret police, in Paris, where so many radicals considered dangerous to the czarist regime had immigrated. From 1885 until 1902, Rachkovsky was responsible for keeping anarchists under surveillance and on the run—and also, in many cases, financed and supplied with ideas... " ominent among his early initiatives were provocations designed to lure credulous émigrés into the most heinous crimes of which they may never have otherwise conceived". Rachkovsky's aim was to
entrap Entrapment is a practice in which a law enforcement agent or an agent of the state induces a person to commit a crime that the person would have otherwise been unlikely or unwilling to commit.''Sloane'' (1990) 49 A Crim R 270. See also agent prov ...
his targets into committing acts that would help ensure that his job seemed of vital importance to the czar. This guaranteed him a solid berth in
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
that was lucrative both in salary and prestige ndin opportunities for corrupt under-the-radar dealings with a French government doing heavy business with Russia."Doherty, Brian (17 December 2010
The First War on Terror
''
Reason Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing valid conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, religion, scien ...
''

By personally winning the goodwill and cooperation of the services of host countries, Rachkovsky indirectly assisted his agents and crowned their efforts. For instance, when a penetration agent in

Geneva Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...

had supplied the essential information about a gathering of terrorists there and external agents had located by surveillance their clandestine printshop and weapons store, Rachkovsky could call on Swiss security units to help destroy the underground and arrest the ringleaders. This happened in 1887; it was repeated in 1888, then again and again in other countries. His powers of persuasion were sufficient to recruit Lev Tikhomirov, one of the leading terrorists, when he had been softened by contrived exposure, and get him to write an anti-revolutionary book. Rachkovsky's political action operations, often highly successful, were exclusively his personal effort. He devised some plans for using others, but in every major instance, he was the sole operator. He befriended a Danish journalist, Jules Hansen, during his first visit to Paris in 1884. Besides being one of the bright lights of his profession, Hansen was a counselor in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a friend of Minister Théophile Delcassé. He became the principal channel for promoting a friendly press for Russia in western Europe, and he made contacts for Rachkovsky with leading ministers and politicians, including even President Émile Loubet. On the other hand, Rachkovsky also cultivated important personages in the imperial government and at court. In these activities, he was, as revolutionary writers accused him of being, a manipulator behind the scenes preparing the ground for acceptance, both in Paris and at Saint Petersburg, of the Franco-Russian Alliance signed in 1893. Rachkovsky devised and developed access to several other governments besides the French. The files contain copies of dispatches about an audience he had with Pope Leo XIII and a proposed exchange of diplomats between Russia and the Vatican with a particular view to the unrest in

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

. Advisers to the Tsar in Saint Petersburg turned down the proposal, but the idea of combating the insurrectional campaign in Poland by using religious interests clearly illustrates Rachkovsky's high-level concept of political action. Rachkovsky's major provocation operation was primarily in support of political action. In 1890, Arcadiy Harting, having promoted among the revolutionaries in Paris an elaborate plot to kill the Tsar, arranged that after one underground meeting a large number of the terrorists would each have on their persons their weapons and written notes on the parts they were to play. The French police, tipped off through cutouts by Rachkovsky, arrested the entire group, and that summer they were tried and sentenced, Landesen in absentia. Rachkovsky thus scored a victory not only over the enemies of the state but against those in Saint Petersburg who had opposed the Franco-Russian Alliance on the grounds that France was too soft on subversives. The stern police and court action proved to Saint Petersburg that France too had a strong government capable of dealing with internal enemies. Rachkovsky may have also played a role in amplifying the carnage of

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

: "Rachkovsky's bosses in Russia and his hosts in Paris both feared the radicals, allowing the Russian agent to tighten the ties between the two nations. He succeeded so well that historian Alex Butterworth argues he was partly to blame for the Franco-Russian Alliance that helped make World War I such a bloody mess."

Role in the creation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

These faction fights provide the backdrop to the infamous ''

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'' is a fabricated text purporting to detail a Jewish plot for global domination. Largely plagiarized from several earlier sources, it was first published in Imperial Russia in 1903, translated into multip ...

''. Many authors maintain that it was Rachkovsky's agent in Paris, Matvei Golovinski, who authored the first edition in the early 1900s. The text presented the impending Russian Revolution of 1905 as a part of a powerful global Jewish conspiracy and fomented

anti-Semitism Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...

to deflect public attention from Russia's growing social problems. Another agent of Rachkovsky, Yuliana Glinka, is often cited as the person who sent the forgery from France to Russia via her uncle General Pyotr Vasilyevich Orzhevsky.'Madame Blavatsky Revisited' by Joseph Howard Tyson, 2006, pg. 315
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Career after 1905

After the Revolution of 1905, martial law was introduced in Saint Petersburg. Rachkovsky was brought back to head the entire Okhrana, first as MVD Special Commissioner and then as the Deputy Director of Police. Rachkovsky had the reputation of being an unrivaled master of intrigues and provocation. In 1902, he faked a letter by the leader of the Russian social democrats Georgy Plekhanov that accused Narodnaya Volya leaders of cooperation with the British Intelligence Service. This allowed the police to exploit mutual distrust and recrimination between the factions.

In popular culture

He was portrayed in "The Appointment", the eighth episode of the 1974 BBC production '' Fall of Eagles'', by Michael Bryant., who played

Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

in Nicholas and Alexandra. He appears in the novel '' The Prague Cemetery'' and is mentioned in '' Foucault's Pendulum''. He is also a character in Will Thomas's detective novel, ''Dance with Death.''

References

External links