In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, covert surveillance was also considered part of the police’s covert operations.
Unlike overt surveillance, which served as a measure of suppression and punishment, covert surveillance was a preventive measure. Since it was carried out in ways that prevented the person under surveillance from knowing they were being watched, the person being monitored was not restricted in their freedom of movement, lifestyle, or choice of activities, as was the case with overt surveillance.
If you’re interested, you can find quite a few files on this topic at the State Archives of the Kharkiv Region. The information they contain is extremely interesting.
Thus, in June 1885, the Kharkiv police chief received an order marked “confidential” from the head of the Kharkiv Provincial Gendarmerie Administration.
It turns out that an unknown individual had arrived in our city, and we needed to find him, track him down, and apprehend him. A photograph was included to aid in the search. Judging by the photo, the man was indeed extremely dangerous. Although, as they say, you can’t judge a book by its cover…
The assignment itself was very much like, “Go there without knowing where, and bring back I don’t know what.” Given that there was only one photo and our city is large, this kind of manhunt proved too much for the Kharkiv law enforcement agencies. As a result, they were, of course, unable to find and arrest this person.
Glafira Nikolaevna (Gitlya Nisovna) Dikanskaya came under covert surveillance (that is, spying) from 1898 to 1901 as an unreliable individual and the wife of a merchant’s son. The fact that her husband is credited with designing more than 10 magnificent architectural structures in our city is still open to debate. But the fact that she was under surveillance—that is not. After all, there is an entire file on this subject in the archives.
The police kept a close watch on her movements around the city. It is particularly interesting that the reports submitted list a number of addresses where the Dikansky couple lived. None of these mansions appear on the list of buildings attributed to “architect” Dikansky, and he himself is listed in the case file as “engaged in commercial affairs.”
The first half of the 20th century was eventful, and the number of “untrustworthy” individuals, as well as the number of political cases, grew steadily. In the State Archives of the Kharkiv Region, one can find quite a few books like these, whose entries were kept in detail and with great care:
Many people found themselves under covert surveillance at that time: ordinary peasants, priests, midwives, factory workers, nobles, and… even young high school students.
The situation sometimes reached the point of utter absurdity. For example, in 1914, governors, mayors, heads of provincial gendarmerie departments, and branches of the Ministry of Internal Affairs received an extremely interesting circular. The authorities had noticed that in recent years there had been a massive influx of Chinese into the country. They arrived as small-scale merchants and scattered throughout the country. Upon detention, some turned out to be German spies, others Japanese, and still others were not Chinese at all, but Japanese. Consequently, it was decided at the highest level in the provinces to place them under the closest and most thorough surveillance in order to ascertain their true occupations and the purposes of their stay in the empire. In our beloved city, this circular was interpreted in its own way. The then-governor of Kharkiv simply ordered that all Chinese be immediately detained and searched.
In response, the Chinese ambassador filed a complaint with the Ministry of the Interior. A letter was sent from there to the governor of Kharkiv, after which the practice of arbitrarily detaining all Chinese nationals in Kharkiv and the province ceased—though surveillance of them did not. Particular scrutiny was directed at those Chinese nationals who traded near barracks and facilities associated with the military-industrial complex.
As for those whose involvement in espionage could never be proven, they were issued an official document like this one.
All national—or, more precisely, nationalist—organizations in our city were also under special surveillance. Their leaders and members were covertly monitored, and informants were planted within the organizations themselves. Their reports to the police documented absolutely everything: from meetings to speeches given by members of these groups. Today, documents related to Ukrainian organizations are of particular interest because of the unique details they contain. But I’ll write about that some other time.
These days, it has become very fashionable to talk about Polish patriots in Kharkiv before 1917. When doing so, people mainly mention Józef Klemens Piłsudski. But as the saying goes, Piłsudski wasn’t the only one.
From September 27 to 30, 1911, Catholic Bishop Ioann (Jan) Tseplyak visited Kharkiv as part of an episcopal visitation of churches. Not only the parishioners of the Roman Catholic church but also the local authorities were actively preparing for his arrival. And the reason for these preparations lay by no means in the high rank of the visiting guest.
During the bishop’s visits to other provinces, the local Polish population actively organized national demonstrations, and churches and homes were decorated with red-and-white flags. The bishop himself did not oppose this; on the contrary, as evidenced by denunciations, he even encouraged it. During his stay in the Minsk province, he committed—in the authorities’ view—a terrible crime. Specifically, he failed to pray for the health of the emperor and his family during the service, and in his sermons he criticized the Orthodox Church and the government.
The church in Kharkiv was placed under surveillance. It was reported that on September 27, while preparing for the bishop’s visit, parishioners decorated the church with white and red fabrics. The Kharkiv police chief asked the church’s rector to remove these decorations and replace them with garlands of greenery. This was done. However, the ever-present journalists from the newspaper *Moskovskie Vedomosti* arrived at the church first, and in their article, the garlands were described as flags, turning the situation into a minor scandal.
From the very first moments after Bishop John arrived in Kharkiv on the 5:00 p.m. train on September 27, he was placed under close surveillance. His every move and word (right down to a brief summary of each sermon) were recorded in reports that the governor of Kharkiv read personally. A list of the 18 people who attended the informal banquet in honor of the bishop’s arrival, held at the Polish House, was also attached to the report.
In 1913, for belonging to the Moscow branch of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, Mikhail Ivanovich Bulakh, the son of the provincial secretary, was exiled from the capital for two years by decision of the Special Council (with a choice of place of residence) and placed under police supervision. Police supervision was imposed on morally and politically unreliable individuals when it was possible to avoid more severe punishment and limit the measures to a warning.
Because Bulakh chose our beloved city as his place of residence—or, more precisely, as his place of exile—his files have been perfectly preserved in the archives. It remains unclear what kind of politician Bulakh was. Nor is it known whether he engaged in revolutionary activities in our city or not.
On the other hand, we know absolutely everything about his appearance and physique. After all, the document contains excellent photographs, which reveal a great deal about the methods used for surveillance and for maintaining a file on individuals deemed undesirable by the authorities.
These stories are just a small fraction of what time has preserved for us. I am certain that documents detailing the lives of political, religious, social, and cultural figures are eagerly awaiting the arrival of researchers who will reveal them to the world.
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