IV. Instructions of Her Imperial Majesty to the Chief Chamberlain (1730) Her Imperial Majesty, following the example of other well-established courts, most mercifully decided to establish a Chief Chamberlain at her Imperial Court, and besides, such

Appendix 3 Attitude of the Kaluga governor A.L. Lvov to the head of the Military Campaign Office of His Imperial Majesty, gr. To H. A. Lieven dated June 23, 1806 about the situation of the Starichkov family in Kaluga Dear Sir, Count Christopher Andreevich! Your Excellency in

190 years ago - July 3, 1826 - by personal decree of NicholasIwas createdIII A branch of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery, the main task of which was political investigation.

The ranks of the Life Guards of the Gendarmerie Half-Squadron. Hood. A.I. Goebens

In 1880, under the thunder of the Narodnaya Volya terror, the publicist and publisher Mikhail Nikiforovich Katkov delivered a verdict to Section III:

“That this institution was useless is loudly demonstrated by recent history: it did not warn anything, did not stop anything, and the evil with which it was called upon to fight not only did not decrease, but grew and intensified. Upon closer examination, it will turn out that it was not only useless against evil, but itself contributed to its development.” Then, in 1880, it seemed that the whole society greeted with enthusiasm the decree on the abolition of the discredited department, which opponents of the authorities (for example, Alexander Herzen) and was even called the “central office of espionage.”

However, already in March 1881, a few days after the death Alexandra II, Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod K.P. Pobedonostsev a project was submitted to recreate the III Division under a new name - the Supreme Committee. The anonymous author recalled that the III Department “in the first 20 years of its existence had mandatory supervision over the ministers and made them de facto responsible, if not before the law, then before the person of the emperor.”

Reaction to the uprising

In the last years of his reign Alexandra I the powers of the high police were delegated to the Special Chancellery of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which, however, did not prevent the secret police from functioning at the headquarters of the Guards Corps, in the Second Army and southern military settlements. In addition, the Committee for the Protection of General Security, established back in 1807, continued to operate; finally, the chief commander of the Separate Corps of Military Settlements had his own secret agents A.A. Arakcheev and St. Petersburg military governor general M.A. Miloradovich.

However, despite the abundance of secret services, the activities of the Decembrist circles were never stopped. Therefore, when in January 1826, immediately after the Decembrist uprising, Lieutenant General Alexander Khristoforovich Benkendorf, who was one of the most trusted representatives of Nicholas I, proposed reorganizing the political police department in such a way that it would “submit to a system of strict centralization” and “cover all points empire,” the young emperor instructed him to draw up a detailed draft of the corresponding reform. And a little later he entrusted the leadership of the new department.

Subsequently, Nikolai Pavlovich strictly adhered to the principle of unity of command in matters of political investigation. So, in the summer of 1828, when the sovereign went to the theater of military operations with Turkey, the Minister of Internal Affairs A.A. Zakrevsky proposed to temporarily resume the work of the Special Office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but received a rebuke from Benkendorf:

“The Emperor does not allow this at all, it is contrary to the intentions of His Majesty and exceeds the power of the Minister of Internal Affairs, and, finally, the Emperor, having the highest police under my command, prohibits the formation of any other.”

Nicholas I chose to move the secret police department outside the ministerial system. “The highest police power in its narrow, basic sense must emanate from the person of the monarch himself and flow through all branches government structure“- wrote then Benckendorff’s closest assistant, former director of the Special Chancellery Maxim Yakovlevich von Fock.

A personal decree on the establishment of the III Department of the Imperial Chancellery followed on July 3, 1826 - a few days before the execution of the Decembrists.

In this building on the Moika in the 1830s there wasIIIBranch of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery

The bulk of the staff of the new department (15 out of 16 officials) were employees of the abolished Special Chancellery. Benckendorff was appointed chief, and von Fock - manager of Section III. By 1842, the department's staff had grown to 30 people, and its official expenses exceeded 120 thousand rubles per year. But organizationally, Division III was still a small office, whose officials served in one position for decades and did not move to other departments.

Expeditions and "forwarders"

Cases in the III Division were carried out on four expeditions. The first was responsible for “all subjects of the highest surveillance police”, “monitoring the general opinion and national spirit”, collecting “detailed information about all people under the supervision of the police, expulsion and placement of suspicious and harmful persons”. This expedition was supposed to prevent malicious intent against the emperor and look for secret societies; cases of abuses in government institutions, during recruitment, and in elections to noble assemblies passed through it.

The competence of the second expedition included “news of discoveries on false banknotes, coins, stamps, documents”, observation of sects, obtaining information about various inventions and improvements, consideration of complaints in family matters, as well as questions personnel III Departments. Later she was also assigned to oversee four prisons for state criminals.

The third expedition controlled the passage of foreigners to Russia, monitored their stay and dealt with issues of deportation. Finally, the fourth expedition was in charge of “all general incidents in the state,” that is, it submitted to the highest discretion monthly statistics of epidemics, fires, unrest and murders in the provinces. In 1842, a fifth expedition appeared, which included censorship matters, mainly in the theater.

Portrait of A.Kh. Benckendorf, chiefIIISection, chief of gendarmes, in the uniform of the Life Guards of the Gendarmerie half-squadron. Hood. E.I. Botman

A small apparatus of officials prepared notes to the chief commander of Section III, as well as all-subtle reports. The number of incoming papers from other departments was constantly growing: from 198 in 1826 to 2564 in 1840, and this is not counting the numerous complaints and petitions of private individuals, censorship materials, reports of agents and gendarmerie officers.

The agent network of the III Division in the time of Nicholas was unbranched: its sphere of attention was limited mainly to the two capitals and the Caucasus. There were no special instructions for agents. The simple methods of his work as an official on special assignments ON THE. Kashintsev described it like this:

“Having comprehended the sublime significance of useful observations, I am ready to continue it with zeal, to report everything that reaches me, reporting, as always, sincerely: what is mine is mine, what is reported is someone else’s; that the truth is true, that a rumor is a rumor. I can’t answer for someone else’s and hearsay, but if I wrote that it’s true, then believe that it’s true based on the incident.”

Investigations based on intelligence reports were rarely carried out. Benckendorff himself was of the opinion that secret agents could not serve as the main source of information for the higher police. In 1832, he opposed the establishment of secret agents in Warsaw, since “the general methods for secret supervision of the morals and behavior of people consist in approaching the most well-behaved of them and enjoying general trust, who usually act on the said occasion not out of self-interest, but solely out of noble competition for the public good."

At the same time, during the Nikolaev reign, the network of inspection points at post offices, which had existed since the time of Catherine II. In the second quarter of the 19th century, such “black offices” operated in five to eight cities, and extracts from opened letters began to flow into Section III.

Corps of Gendarmes

The most important component of the reform of the secret department was subordination to the head of the III Department of the Paramilitary Police - the Corps of Gendarmes formed in 1826-1827.

The corps included provincial, port and fortress gendarme teams, gendarme divisions in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and a little later the Life Guards Gendarme Half-Squadron and the Gendarme Regiment (army police) - in total over 4 thousand combat ranks. According to the “Regulations on the Corps of Gendarmes” of 1836, these teams were engaged in capturing thieves, pursuing robbers, pacifying “disobedience and riots,” apprehending fugitives and deserters, escorting recruits, criminals, prisoners and prisoners. All this did not matter direct relationship to the affairs of the high police, but related to the traditional activities of the “classical” Napoleonic gendarmerie, according to the model of which the paramilitary police were also formed in Spain, Italy and some German states in the first half of the 19th century.

Portrait of Major General L.V. Dubelt, chief of staff of the Corps of Gendarmes. Hood. A.V. Tyranov

Meanwhile, at the same time, according to the project of Benckendorff, who in June 1826 was approved as chief of gendarmes, the European part of Russia was divided into five gendarmerie districts with headquarters in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Vitebsk, Kyiv and Kazan. By the end of the 1830s, the gendarmerie network covered the entire empire, including Siberia, the Kingdom of Poland and Transcaucasia, although the latter two districts were primarily subordinate to the governors. By the mid-1830s, a separate gendarmerie staff officer was sent to each province. It was these officials who were entrusted with the tasks of the higher police.

Benckendorff compiled two secret instructions for the guidance of provincial headquarters officers. His boss defined the idea of ​​​​establishing the Corps of Gendarmes as follows:

“To establish the well-being and tranquility of all classes in Russia, to see them protected by laws and to restore perfect justice in all places and authorities.”

For this purpose, the headquarters officer was charged with the duty to pay Special attention to “abuses, riots and acts contrary to the law”, to ensure that the rights of subjects are not violated by “anyone’s personal power or the predominance of strong persons.” And of course, the staff officer should always remember the chief’s main wish:

“The purpose of your office should be first of all to prevent and avert all evil.”

The instructions - a kind of “moral code of the gendarme” - soon began to circulate from hand to hand. Opposition-minded writer Mikhail Dmitriev recalled how he “obtained, with great difficulty, the instructions that Benckendorff gave to his secret agents.” “The institution had the goal of secretly finding the guilty and the right, the vicious and the virtuous, in order to punish the former and reward the latter, especially to prosecute bribe-takers,” the memoirist noted. “And this right of the gendarmes was based ... on their own virtue and on the purity of their hearts, probably on the assumption that anyone who puts on a blue uniform of the color of heaven immediately becomes an angel in the flesh!” A secret cart that delivered two exiled Poles to Irkutsk, 6,000 miles from St. Petersburg. Hood. EAT. Korneev

For his part, journalist and writer Thaddeus Bulgarin, who actively collaborated with the III Department, already in February 1827 reported to Benckendorff: “The instructions to the gendarmes are passed around. It is called the charter of the Union of Welfare. It amazed me and made me happy.”

The legend of the scarf

At the same time, the authorities sent a certain signal to society: gendarmerie officers should be perceived as conductors of the will of the emperor, standing in defense of justice and called upon to help everyone whose rights are violated. It is no coincidence that the “legend of the scarf”, which first existed among the gendarmerie, became widespread. This story is beautiful:

“In response to the boss’s repeatedly repeated request for instructions, instead of answering, the Emperor once handed him a white handkerchief, saying: “Don’t miss the opportunity to wipe away the tears of the unfortunate and offended - here are your instructions.”

The gendarmerie officers also sought to imbue themselves with the spirit of the high mission ahead of them. For example, in January 1830, then retired colonel Leonty Vasilievich Dubelt wrote to his wife:

“Don’t be a gendarme,” you say, but do you understand... the essence of the matter. If, upon joining the corps of gendarmes, I become an informer, an earpiece, then my good name, of course, will be tarnished. But if, on the contrary, I... will be a support for the poor, a defense of the unfortunate; If I, acting openly, force justice to be given to the oppressed, I will see that in places of justice they give legal cases a direct and fair direction, then what will you call me?.. Will I not then be worthy of respect, will not my place be the best? excellent, most noble? Reception room of Count A.Kh. Benckendorf. Unknown artist. Late 1820s

Benckendorff's colleague during the Napoleonic Wars, the Decembrist prince Sergei Volkonsky argued that the idea of ​​​​creating such a “cohort of good-thinking people” came to Benckendorff in France. Even the Soviet historian Nathan Eidelman noticed that “Bencendorff invited almost “everyone” to his department and was especially glad to see yesterday’s freethinkers, who, he knew, were smarter, more lively than their tongue-tied antipodes, and would serve better if they went.”

When selecting gendarmerie ranks, the emphasis was placed on participants in the Napoleonic Wars, known for their military merits. As a gendarme general wrote at the beginning of the 20th century Alexander Ivanovich Spiridovich:

“What other environment could provide the appropriate contingent of people to perform such a high task? Only the Russian army, for the most part, has always served its sovereigns faithfully.”

The competence and responsibilities of provincial headquarters officers, even in an unspoken document, were formulated very vaguely, and therefore their official position turned out to be peculiar. Without legally defined powers, the gendarmes could not give orders or instructions to local authorities and even demand files and certificates from provincial government institutions. But through their boss they had a direct channel of communication with the emperor. At the same time, the vagueness of the gendarmerie’s powers was part of the general plan of the “cohort of good-thinking people.”

“The power of the gendarmes,” wrote Benckendorff in 1842, “in my opinion, should not be executive; its actions should be limited to observations alone, and here the more independent they are, the more useful they can be... Gendarmes should be... like envoys to foreign powers: if possible, see everything, know everything and not interfere in anything.”

So if we call the provincial headquarters officers the political police, we must not forget that they acted quite openly (hence the “blue uniforms”) and did not receive funds to create an agent network in Nikolaev’s time.

Channel feedback

Nicholas I demanded from the highest police vigilant supervision over the exiled Decembrists, guards, students and literary circles. In the second quarter of the 19th century, through the first expedition of the III Division, famous cases of students of the brothers took place Petra, Mikhail And Vasily Kritskikh, mug Nikolai Sungurov, “About persons who sang libelous poems” (that is, the first case of Alexander Herzen and Nikolai Ogarev), about the Polish uprising of 1830–1831. The overwhelming majority of such cases concerned Poles - participants in the uprising and exiles, but in the general series of archival folders of the III Division, political cases did not occupy the first place.

The sphere of interests of the higher police gradually emerged. Over the years, Section III has become a kind of receiving power or, as they say now, a feedback channel between the government and society.

With the expansion of university education and the formation of the intelligentsia, public opinion turned into a factor in political life. The first chief of gendarmes believed that the government's targeted influence on public sentiment was absolutely necessary. “Public opinion is for the authorities the same as topographic map for the commander of the army during the war,” we read in the very first report of the III Department.

The printed word became the main channel for developing public opinion, and the highest police could not remain aloof from the literary process of the era. The censorship and even repressive measures of Section III in this area have been thoroughly studied, but there was another aspect of the participation of the high police in literary affairs.

Thus, Benkendorf’s secretary was the prose writer and poet A.A. Ivanovsky, and the writer V.A. served as an adjutant to Dubelt, who became the chief of staff of the Gendarme Corps. Vladislavlev; officials of the III Division in the 1840s were the poet V.E. Verderevsky, writer P.P. Kamensky, son of the director Imperial theaters M.A. Gedeonov. The department on the Fontanka used the services of “Northern Bee” F.V. Bulgarin and N.I. Grech and actively collaborated with a number of publications. Articles and notes commissioned by the III Department were written by N.A. Polevoy, M.N. Zagoskin, P.A. Vyazemsky, for financial support in the III Department in different years contacted A.S. Pushkin and N.V. Gogol.

However, the “literary aristocracy” sought greater independence. In 1831, Pushkin made a proposal to the chief of gendarmes: “I would gladly take on the editorship of a political magazine... I would unite writers with talents around it and thus bring useful people closer to the government, who are still shy, in vain believing it to be hostile to enlightenment." But this idea never found a response.

Benckendorff, who at the same time served as commander of the Imperial Headquarters from 1826, accompanied the sovereign on all trips to Russia and Europe. On such trips, subjects of the Russian Empire often submitted complaints, petitions and notes to the highest name. These papers then went to the III Department: they were sorted and transferred to the responsible departments, and the III Department controlled the outcome of the case.

On the intricacies of the bureaucratic system

It was clear to Nicholas I that he had inherited from his older brother a long-standing problem - the disorder of the central and local apparatus management. He was worried that the strengthening bureaucracy was gathering all the threads of control in its hands, while a “bureaucratic mediastinum” was growing between the highest authorities and its subjects. Section III reported to Nikolai about the officials:

“They are the ones who rule, and not only individual, the largest of them, but, in essence, everyone, since they know all the intricacies of the bureaucratic system.”

In this situation, the III Department and the gendarmes were tasked with collecting information about central departments and provincial officials (especially in remote provinces) and supervising their activities. Observant "Decembrist without December" Nikolai Turgenev noted in this regard that “the need for secret surveillance is characteristic of almost all autocratic sovereigns and can only be explained by complete ignorance of what is happening around.”

In February 1832, all provincial headquarters officers received a secret circular, which ordered “to pay the most vigilant attention to those gentlemen, officials, landowners, merchants and other classes who, by their rank, or wealth, connections, intelligence, education, or other merits, have bad or good influence on others and even on high-ranking officials.” The statements had to be submitted twice a year: the secret supervision of the provincial bureaucracy became systematic.

Landowner politicians. Hood. K.A. Trutovsky

In the III Department, a huge card index has been collected: many gendarmerie characteristics of the officials of the empire allow us to “materialize” the world of Gogol’s “The Inspector General”. For example, the chairman of the Yaroslavl treasury chamber “is not content with those benefits of his place, which, so to speak, are sanctified by time and, as it were, included in the permanent budget, but concentrated in his hands the entire revenue part of the chamber’s branches, thus depriving the advisers of most of the benefits that they could use it.” The emperor learned the following about the Kazan governor, Major General Albert Karlovich Pirkh:

“The governor does not have due respect. I would not dare to rely on rumors for such a respectful person in the province, but I myself am an eyewitness to everything; In addition to the daily lunches of the merchants, and after dinner at the theater, he is also burdened with hibernation. It’s impossible to keep up with business in such a life.”

The gendarmes reported cases of abuse that required an immediate response in urgent reports. Nicholas I, based on Benckendorff’s report, could immediately make an administrative decision - to transfer, remove or bring the official to trial. But more often the notes were transferred to the responsible ministry, after which a lengthy interdepartmental correspondence arose, the outcome of which was difficult to predict. However, to clarify all the circumstances, the emperor could send auditors to the province. As a result of gendarmerie reports, more than ten governors and hundreds of officials of various ranks were dismissed during the Nikolaev era. The conflict with the local gendarmes also cost the positions of higher-ranking officials, in particular the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia V.Ya. Rupert and Governor General of Western Siberia P.D. Gorchakov.

The nature of gendarmerie supervision is illustrated by the case of the Orenburg civil governor I.D. Talyzin. In 1841, a local gendarmerie staff officer accused the governor of numerous abuses, as well as drunkenness and indecent behavior. The head of the Kazan gendarme district, however, denied this information. The secret police found themselves in a quandary. “Being confused about which of the information that has reached me, which contradicts one another, to believe,” Benckendorf asked for the opinion of the Orenburg military governor, Lieutenant General V.A. Perovsky.

Perovsky took Talyzin’s side, but the gendarmerie officer presented a new note about the governor’s riotous lifestyle. The matter was reported to the emperor. To clarify all the circumstances, Nicholas I sent a senator-auditor to Orenburg, who ultimately accused the gendarme of spreading ridiculous rumors (“instead of taking care, as a gendarmerie staff officer, to eliminate all grumbling and distrust of the government”). The gendarme was immediately dismissed. Years later, as a private citizen, he became aware of facts that confirmed Talyzin’s abuses and pointed to the bias of the senatorial report, and this time the new military governor of Orenburg did not defend the civilian governor. A resolution was preserved in the margins of the former gendarme's note Alexey Fedorovich Orlov, chief of gendarmes since 1845:

“It’s a pity, my heart hurts, but I can’t help it.”

Well aware of the inner workings of the capital's ministries and departments, the chief of gendarmes, through his most loyal reports and notes, had a direct influence on the emperor's personnel policy. Benckendorff was behind a number of important reshuffles, for example, the resignation of the Minister of Internal Affairs A.A. Zakrevsky and Minister of Justice A.A. Dolgorukov, as well as for the appointment of S.S. as Minister of Public Education. Uvarov.

"Moral Police Chiefs"

Based on the results of observations, the gendarmes transferred various projects to the III Department - from provincial reform to wine farming reform. Thus, Section III has accumulated a unique array of information about the internal state of the empire. Based on these materials, employees of the high police compiled annual all-subject reports, which have long attracted the attention of historians with non-trivial judgments about the political and social life of the country (among them one of the most famous is “serfdom is a powder magazine under the state”).

It is worth noting that the political police department was the least bureaucratic institution in the management system created by Nicholas I. For example, in 1848, gendarmerie colonel A.V. Vasiliev did not hesitate to accuse his own boss L.V. of abuses in his memo. Dubelta. And for Vasiliev this trick remained without consequences.

A good illustration is the published notes of the Simbirsk staff officer Erasmus Ivanovich Stogov. He happened to be involved in the reconciliation of the bride and groom, amicably resolving stories with gambling losses; once he stood up for a local architect, whom the governor threw out of his house. In relation to employees of the judicial chambers, Stogov acted as follows:

“...secretaries, clerks, assessors and the like came across complaints: they take bribes - take them, God be with them, that’s why they are nettle seeds, otherwise they are greedy, they will take from one and take from the enemy, the offended party complains.<…>The culprit comes, I most kindly say that I am at a loss in one matter and turn to his experience; I ask his advice and invite him into the office, lock the doors - and there is an explanation that will take three soaps off your head! Seeing cowardice and repentance, a promise to immediately return the money and an oath not to do this again, leaving the office, I politely thank him for his smart and experienced advice. Things didn’t go further than the office. I don’t remember a case where there were repeat offenders. The goal was achieved without insult.” Stogov himself called himself a “moral police chief.”

There was no secret police in this form anywhere in the world; its indispensable feature was the absolute, unshakable trust of the tsar in the chief of the gendarmes - the entire system of secret surveillance was built “under Benckendorff.” Thus, Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky, after a long conversation with Nicholas I, wrote in his diary: the emperor “believes that Benckendorff cannot be deceived.”

The role of the III Division declined already under Alexei Orlov, who was also his closest friend and right hand Nicholas I, but treated the affairs of the higher police rather coolly. And during the reign of Alexander II, six chiefs of the high police were replaced. By this time, their status in the informal court hierarchy had become incomparably lower. With the weakening of government control of the press and with the zemstvo reform of the 1860s, the secret supervision of the III Department over the provincial administration and society already looked like a clear anachronism: indeed, it would be extremely difficult to imagine the chief of gendarmes of the era of Alexander II in the role of the personal censor of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky . The provincial gendarmes, in turn, were ill-prepared to confront the underground circles of revolutionaries.

Returning to the words Mikhail Katkov, it is worth mentioning that at the end of his invective against the Third Section, he quite rightly added: “It had meaning and could act in its own sense when it was part of the system corresponding to it.” By and large, the system that Katkov wrote about collapsed with the death of Nicholas I. Section III never managed to climb out from under its rubble.

Grigory Bibikov,
Candidate of Historical Sciences

STOGOV E.I.. Notes of a gendarmerie staff officer from the era of Nicholas I. M., 2003
BIBIKOV G.N. OH. Benckendorff and the politics of Emperor Nicholas I. M., 2009
Oleinikov D.I. Benkendorf. M., 2009 (series “ZhZL”)

Introduction 2

Chapter 1 “Education of the III department” 6

Chapter 2 “Activities of the III department” 12

Conclusion 17

Appendix 18

INTRODUCTION

Rationale for the topic:

Several generations of our compatriots grew up in captivity of a well-thought-out mythology that excluded independent judgments. In “historical” studies we were offered a strictly verified set of “heroes” and an equally carefully selected set of “villains”. Almost the entire 19th century still remains a blank spot for us, and even more so such a topic as the history of the Russian political police. This topic was not thoroughly studied by pre-revolutionary historians, while Soviet researchers approached the archives of the III Department and the Police Department only as material on the history of the revolutionary movement. Meanwhile, elucidating the social nature and functions of the police organization is extremely important for understanding the policy of the tsarist government. This problem has not yet been resolved. It is all the more difficult to give an outline of the history of even a limited period of time in the life of the political police. I do not pretend to give an exhaustive description of the III Department of the times of Nicholas I. My task is to make a quick summary of the material already known about the III Department in separate essays, and, if possible, to present the general outlines of this institution.

Historiography

The history of the Russian political police remains not fully studied. Pre-revolutionary historians did not thoroughly study this topic. Created on July 3, 1826, the III Department of His Imperial Majesty's own chancellery was created by the famous Russian historian, contemporary of Emperor Nicholas I, author of a 29-volume collected works, Soloviev S.M. gives only a superficial assessment, characterizing general structure Nikolaev apparatus.

Another no less famous our historian V.O. Klyuchevsky. in his “Course of Russian History” gives a cursory description of the III department, without revealing the essence of the organization’s activities.

Unlike the two above-mentioned historians, the founder of populism, A.I. Herzen, also a contemporary of Nicholas I, in his works gives detailed description structures of the III Department, calling it the “central spy office” 1 and cruelly denouncing its figures: Benckendorff and even the emperor himself. Herzen, who hated Nicholas with that soul-searing force with which one can only hate a tyrant, argued that the emperor was constantly testing whether his gaze had the property of a rattlesnake - to stop the blood in the veins. From the above quote it becomes clear what Herzen’s assessment was.

The work “History of the Ministry of Internal Affairs” by N. Varadinov, published in St. Petersburg in 1859, is of an exclusively descriptive nature. The author does not go beyond the presentation of events, without attempting to make any analysis, generalizations, or conclusions at least on the main directions of the work of the III department.

It is also impossible not to mention Baron M.A. Korf, whose sarcastic assessment of Benckendorf, who has been at the head of the III department for a long time, makes it possible to look at the problem under study from a completely different angle.

An important place among works devoted to 19th century and directly activities III department, is occupied by the book of the historian Schilder “Emperor Nicholas. His Life and Reign", first published in 1903. A detailed study of the formation of the III department, its structure and activities, as well as the use of memoir sources (Benckendorff's letters to the III department) makes this book truly unique in the study of this issue.

The positions of Soviet historians differ significantly from the positions of noble historians. In the 20th century, the history of the III department is considered in line with the revolutionary movement and social inequality, which leads far away from studying the very essence of the issue.

A look at the history of the III branch as the history of the revolutionary movement and political struggle in the first half of the 19th century is illuminated in the work of S.V. Mironenko. "Pages from the secret history of autocracy." And despite the fact that the position with which the author speaks does not entirely correspond to the spirit of the era under study, the widespread use of memoirs and documents of that time makes this book undeniably interesting for historical science.

The work of historian Trotsky I.M. “III Department under Nicholas I,” republished in 1990, is devoted to a little-studied topic - the detective and provocateur activities of the political police in the first half of the 19th century. The figures of the leaders of the notorious III Department are vividly described: Benckendorff, Dubelt, von Fock, and the emperor himself. Trotsky's research proves that the activities of the political police always reflect the fundamental features of the regime they protect.

On a wide background Russian history events in the work of two are revealed modern authors: Golovkova G. and Burina S. - “The Office of Impenetrable Darkness”, published in Moscow in 1994. Based on numerous documents and materials, including little-known ones, historians explore the relationship between the Russian revolutionary movement and the political police, their interpenetration and interchange.

List of sources

Memoirs:

1. Nikitenko A.V. Notes and diary. T.1. St. Petersburg, 1905.

2. Milyutin D.A. Memoirs of Count D.A. Milyutina. M., “Studio TRITE Nikita Mikhalkov “Russian Archive”. 1997.

Office work:

3. Reitblat A.I. Letters and agent notes of F.V. Bulgarin to the III department. M., “New Literary Review”. 1998.

.

CHAPTER 1

EDUCATION III DEPARTMENTS.

Even before the end of the trial of the Decembrists, Emperor Nicholas I took a very important measure, which put a certain stamp on all the subsequent years of his reign and was in direct connection with the events

December 14, 1825: we are talking about the establishment of the III department of His Imperial Majesty's own chancellery and the appointment of Adjutant General Benckendorff as chief of the gendarmes.

In January 1826, Benckendorff presented a note on the establishment of the higher police, proposing to name its head the Minister of Police and Inspector of the Corps of Gendarmes. This note was followed by others about the organization of the gendarme corps. However, Emperor Nicholas did not want to give the planned new institution the name of the Ministry of Police; this was probably prevented by the memories of the Napoleonic era associated with the names of Fouche and Savary. A new, hitherto unprecedented name was finally invented for the new institution: the Third Department of His Majesty’s Own Chancellery.

On June 25, 1826, on the birthday of Emperor Nicholas, the highest order appeared appointing the head of the 1st Cuirassier Division, Adjutant General Benckendorff, chief of the gendarmes and commander of the imperial headquarters.

Mikhail Maksimovich Fok, an undoubtedly intelligent, well-educated and secular man, was appointed director of the office of the III department. Extensive acquaintance and connections in high St. Petersburg society gave him the opportunity to see and know what was being done and said among the then aristocracy, in literary and other circles of the capital's population. At the same time, Fok enjoyed the most helpful friendship and trust of Adjutant General Benckendorff, as evidenced by the surviving correspondence.

On July 3 (15), 1826, an imperial decree was issued addressed to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Lansky, on the basis of which the special office of this ministry was destroyed and transformed into the III department of His Majesty’s own office, and it was ordered to destroy the necessary orders for this purpose. In pursuance of this decree, Messrs. to the heads of the provinces, so that on subjects included in the said Department, they would report not to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but directly to His Imperial Majesty.

Adjutant General Benckendorff explains in his notes the emergence of the III Department as follows; he writes: “Emperor Nicholas sought to eradicate the abuses that had crept into many parts of government, and was convinced from the suddenly discovered conspiracy, which stained the first minutes of the new reign with blood, of the need for widespread, more vigilant supervision, which would finally flock to one center; The sovereign chose me to form a higher police force that would protect the oppressed and monitor evil intentions and people prone to them. The number of the latter has increased to a terrifying degree since many French adventurers, having mastered the education of their youth in our country, brought the revolutionary principles of their fatherland to Russia, and even more since last war, through the rapprochement of our young officers with the liberals of those European countries where our victories took us. Having never thought of preparing for this type of service, I had only the most superficial concept of it, but the noble and beneficent motives that gave rise to this institution, and the desire to be useful to our new sovereign, did not allow me to shy away from accepting the position created by him, to which he called His trust is high in me.

It was decided to establish a corps of gendarmes under my command.

Founded at the same time time III The department, under my command, represented the focus of this new department and together with the highest secret police, which, in the person of secret agents, was supposed to help and facilitate the actions of the gendarmes. The Emperor, in order to make this position more pleasant in my eyes, was pleased to add to it the title of commander of his main apartment.

I immediately set to work, and God helped me fulfill my duties to the satisfaction of the sovereign and without stirring up public opinion against myself. I succeeded in doing good, doing many favors, discovering many abuses, and, above all, preventing and averting much evil.” 1