failed to defeat populist revolutionary movements such as Narod-
naya volya(People’s Will), which assassinated a number of senior
tsarist officials in the late 1870s. The Third Section had poor relations
with other security bureaucracies and was incompetent against an or-
ganized terrorist organization. Worse yet, it was often penetrated by
the terrorist organizations it was sworn to defeat. In 1880 Tsar Alek-
sandr II abolished the organization, replacing it with a secret
chancery under Count Loris-Melikov. But it was too late: in 1881
Narodnaya Volyaassassinated the tsar, still poorly served by his se-
cret service. The failure of the Third Section to defeat political radi-
calism, and the escalation of political terrorism in 1880–1882, led to
the formation of the Division for the Protection of Order and Social
Security, better known as Okhrana.TRADECRAFT.Tradecraft can best be defined as the art or science of
spying. The Russian word konspiratsiya is usually rendered as
“tradecraft.” Russian intelligence from the late 19th century on has
generally practiced outstanding tradecraft. In the last decades of the
tsarist regime, the Okhranadeveloped more sophisticated intelli-
gence tradecraft than any other intelligence service. In matters of
cover, surveillance, safe houses, and clandestine communications,
the tsarist service was light-years ahead of the rest of the world.
Agents were bought or frightened into collaborating with the service,
but then were run with care and were paid well. The Okhrana ran as
an agent Roman Malinovskiy, the leader of the Bolshevikfaction in
the Duma, for several years. So sure were the Okhranaof Mali-
novskiy’s bona fides that they allowed him to travel abroad to meet
with a journalist whose specialty was “outing” tsarist agents in the
revolutionary parties.
Soviet intelligence tradecraft was derived in part from the under-
ground activities of the Bolshevik Party and in part from the
Okhrana. Many of the initial Cheka, GPU, and OGPU illegals had
served as couriers and political agents in radical underground move-
ments. They had studied the activities of the Okhranaand other Eu-
ropean services and developed a style of konspiratsiyathat allowed
them to survive on the streets of Europe, Asia, and the United States.
Many of these men and women had served time in tsarist prisons and
were not intimidated by the counterintelligenceservices of the West.TRADECRAFT• 26306-313 P-Z.qxd 7/27/06 7:57 AM Page 263