Political spying in the Southern Urals in the period of the revolution 1905-1907: improvement of organization and methods of work

The article reveals the issues of the regional history of political investigation during the first Russian revolution. A detailed historiographical survey of studies devoted to the activities of security departments in the Urals region is proposed. The author draws attention to the peculiarities of the organization of internal and external observation, mechanisms for collecting information, the introduction of new methods of agent work, including provocative ones, their effectiveness in combating the political underground and the impact on the moral condition of Russian society. Attraction of materials of not only central, but also local archives allows to specify a place of political secret police in system of punitive organs of Russian empire, to reveal real problems of mutual relations between law enforcement departments.