«An institution where fear and horror are in charge»: Arkhangelsk provincial gendarmerie department in 1908-1915

The paper analyzes the peculiarities of the development of political investigation in the Arkhangelsk province in 1908-1915, when the Provincial Gendarmerie Department was headed by Colonel, later Major General, Nikolai Illarionovich Mochalov. For such a position, it was a very long period of leadership, which was characterized by three stages: the active struggle of the gendarmes and police against the revolutionary movement during the “Stolypin reaction”, then some stabilization of the situation by 1914, and the first years of the World War. The purpose of the paper is to substantiate the decisive importance of N.I. Mochalov’s personality as an experienced functionary of political investigation, who was quite effective in relieving social tension that had been growing in the region since the end of the XIX century and reached its apogee during the Revolution of 1905-1907. During wartime the aggravated espionage, combined with the problems of the complicated service, made the figure of N.I. Mochalov inconvenient for the Gendarmerie and Police authorities. Methods of combating the “internal threat” in peacetime turned out to be irrelevant in the war period due to the need to qualitatively increase the activity of the gendarmes and cooperation with the military authorities.