Russia under the Old regime

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which he stated that the decree of 14 August 1881 caused the fate of the 'entire population of Russia to become dependent on the personal opinions of the functionaries of the political police'. Henceforth, in matters affecting state security there no longer were any objective criteria of guilt: guilt was determined by the subjective impression of police officials.21 Ostensibly 'temporary', with a validity of three years, this law was regularly renewed every time it was about to expire until the very end of the imperial regime. Immediately upon the promulgation of the Decree of 14 August, ten provinces, including the two capital cities of St Petersburg and Moscow were placed under Reinforced Safeguard. The number was increased after 1900, and during the Revolution of 1905 some localities were placed under Extraordinary Safeguard. After the suppression of the revolution, under the prime ministership of P. Stolypin, in one form or another the provisions of this Decree were extended to all parts of the empire with the result that the laws pertaining to civil rights contained in the October Manifesto and in subsequent Duma legislation were effectively nullified.22

After 14 August 1881 Russia ceased to be an autocratic monarchy in any but the formal sense. As defined by Struve in 1903, the real difference between Russia of that time and the rest of the civilized world lay 'in the omnipotence of the political police' which had become the essence of the Russian monarchy; the instant this support were to be withdrawn, he predicted, it would collapse of its own weight no matter who controlled this autocratic power.23 Lopukhin agreed: the police, he wrote, 'constitutes the entire might of a regime whose existence has come to and end'; adding prophetically: 'It is to the police that the regime will turn to first in the event it tries to resuscitate itself." 'The paradox was that the steady encroachment on the rights of individual subjects carried out in the name of state security did not enhance the power of the crown; it was not the crown that benefited but the bureaucracy and police to whom ever greater latitude had to be given to cope with the revolutionary movement. And the absurdity of the situation lay in the fact that the challenge was entirely out of proportion to the measures taken to deal with it. In February 1880, at the height of terror, when Loris-Melikov was given dictatorial powers, the police knew of fewer than 1,000 active cases of anti-state crimes - this in an empire with nearly 100 million inhabitants!26

The extent of police interference in everyday life of late imperial Russia is difficult to convey. One of the most powerful weapons in the hands of the police was its authority to issue certificates of'trustworthiness' [blagonadezhnost') which every citizen was required to have before being allowed to enroll at the university or to assume a 'responsible' post. To have been refused such a certificate, condemned a Russian to the