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
208 Hsi-Huey Liang „Die Centralstelle wird mit den für die Überwachung der anarchistischen Bewegung in den auswärtigen Staaten eingesetzten Centralstellen in allen auf die Überwachung der Anarchisten Bezug habenden Angelegenheiten in directe Correspondenz treten ... Die Centralstelle wird sämmtlichen interessierten inländischen Behörden, sowie den obbezeichneten auswärtigen Centralstellen nicht nur über deren Anfragen, sondern auch aus eigenem Antriebe, bezüglich der Anarchistenangelegenheiten Auskünfte er- theilen.. .“46). It should be stated here that the Rome accords were not the only international police measures against anarchism that were adopted in the closing years of the nineteenth century. As the country most exposed to the attacks by terrorists, Russia as early as the 1880’s had taken the initiative to establish bilateral relations between her secret police and certain foreign police authorities, mainly the police of France and Germany47). The Okhrana office at the Russian Embassy in Paris became the headquarters for all Russian police work in Europe. From Paris, Arkadii Harting directed all Russian police contacts to the German police in Berlin, Munich, Darmstadt, and Hamburg. While Germany did not have a significant concentration of revolutionary elements on her territory, she was important for Russian security as the transit territory for Russian revolutionaries travelling between London, Paris, Zurich, and home. With Austria-Hungary Russia also shared a long border in Galicia, but unlike with the German police, the Russians were unable to develop cordial relations with their counterparts in Vienna. According to some documents in the Okhrana files which today are deposited at the Hoover Institute in Palo Alto, California, the Russians in Paris suspected the Vienna Police of having a hand in stirring up trouble for the Russians in the Balkans through surreptitious aid to Bulgarian and Macedonian terrorists. It may be significant, too, that in July 1914, at the height of the war crisis that was to initiate the First World War, the Austrian Foreign Ministry began a belated inquiry through its embassy in Paris about the activities of the Russian Okhrana abroad — an agency with which the police organs of Austria’s closest ally, Germany, had been on intimate terms for many years48). Germany had also collaborated closely with Russia in promoting the international anti-anarchist accord of St. Petersburg in December, 1903. Signed by ten European states including Austria, the accord was weakened by the abstention of a number of smaller states like The Netherlands and Portugal, and it was seriously undermined by the protracted refusal of Great Britain 46) Ibid. fol. 16 r. 47) For a brief study of the Okhrana abroad see Richard J. Johnson Zagranich- naia Agentura: The Tsarist Political Police in Europe in Mosse ed. Police Forces in History (see n. 3) 17-94. 48) Rataiéf to Paris Police Prefect Cavard, Paris, 15 Dec. 1902: Hoover Institution (Palo Alto, Calif. USA) Archives of the Paris Okhrana Index No. Vb Folder 4 Relations with the French Sűreté; and Count Szécsen to Berchtold, Paris, 18 July 1914: HHStA PA I 810 fol. 523r-530r (Szécsen’s report was not very accurate).
