Secret Agents of the Russian Gendarmerie in the Fight against Espionage at the Beginning of the First World War

Abstract

The article discusses the limited intelligence capabilities of the gendarmerie departments of the Warsaw Governor General (Lomzinska, Warsaw, Kielce, Lublin, and Radom provinces) in the fight against German and Austrian spies in the second half of 1914 and the first half of 1915. One reason for the secret police’s lack of readiness is the reluctance of the gendarmerie-police authorities to organize counter-response work on an appropriate basis. The rare, fragmentary, and not always valuable information received by agents of the investigating authorities did not allow the gendarmes to organize full-scale and successful operational work on a subordinate territory to identify hidden enemies of the state. The low potential, and, in some cases, the complete uselessness of secret service personnel for the interests of the military wanted list led to the fact that most politically disloyal persons were accidentally identified by other special services. In most cases, spies were detected either due to information from army intelligence and counterintelligence agencies, or due to the vigilance of military personnel of the advanced units of the Russian army. The authors conclude that the gendarmerie departments were unable to organize a systematic operational escort of military personnel of the Russian armies deployed in the Warsaw Military District. Despite the fact that the duty of the gendarmerie police included not only criminal procedures, but also operational searches, there was no qualified identification of spies with the help of secret officers.