Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 33. (1980)
LIANG, Hsi-Huey: International Cooperation of Political Police in Europe, 1815–1914. An Essay Based on Some Austrian Archival Sources
204 Hsi-Huey Liang The evident slowness of the Austrian bureaucracy in Lemberg was matched by the unreliability of their opposite numbers on the other side of the frontier. The Austrian reports inform us about the Russian officials’ arbitrariness mellowed by corruption. As the Austrian chargé d’affaires in St. Petersburg rather charmingly phrased it in a despatch dated 10/22 April, 1882, in many deportation cases the individuals caught in the web of Russian local administration eventually found a way to help themselves “car il y a des ac- comodements avec le ciel et la police”39). This is not meant as a criticism of the Tsarist police. The Russian government well understood that the security of the Empire was scarcely endangered by the plight of the foreign ambulatory traders in Bessarabia, and that the activities of Russian subjects on Austrian soil should cause them much greater concern. In August 1887, the Russian consulate in Brody sent a note to the local Austrian Bezirkshauptmannschaft in Tamopol requesting its help in surveying all the Russian subjects residing in the district. The Russians were anxious to know their expatriates’ place of origin, civil status, past education, present means of support, and present activities. Whether the Austrian authorities in Tamopol or in Vienna complied with this request is not apparent from the files, but there can be no doubt about the political gravity of this matter for Russian internal security40). Personal information as detailed as the above-mentioned questionnaire was also sought by the police authorities of the European countries who, a decade later, established a system of direct communications with one another in a. concerted effort to stem the wave of anarchistic attacks throughout Europe in the 1870’s to 1890’s. For by the end of the century the rebellious elements in Europe no longer endangered the political security of the states separately as by and large they had before 1848. Instead, an interconnected revolutionary situation began to cover most of Central and Eastern Europe, which in turn produced important changes in the mechanism of the international balance of power. The new situation had not been entirely unforeseen by Metternich. Had not Metternich’s conservatism amounted to an attempt to usher the European revolution through its most perilous initial stage, when the established forces had to be preserved as long as they remained stronger than the new forces of democracy, and when democratic innovations in one country had to be postponed if they critically affected the security of less advanced states? In the second half of the nineteenth century, due to the introduction of national armies and much more effective government everywhere, “revolution” 39) Freiherr von Trauttenberg to Austrian Foreign Ministry, St. Petersburg, 28 July/ 9 Aug. 1881 and 10/22 April 1882, St. Petersburg: ibid. Konv. 1/2, fol. 43r and fol. llr-12v. For a vivid description of Russian police in Bessarabia during this era see Prince Serge Dmitryevich Urussov Memoirs of a Russian Governor (London-New York 1881). 40) Note, Russian Consulate in Brody to Bezirkshauptmannschaft in Tarnopol, 10/22 Aug. 1887: Adm. Reg. F 52/97 Schubwesen Rußland Konv. I, n. 21980/7.
