Maidan 1905 of the year
In the 1905 year, in the midst of the war with Japan, Alexander Kuprin's story “Headquarters Captain Rybnikov” was published. It was one of the first political detectives, where the main character is a cunning and clever Japanese spy who was operating under the personal Russian army officer.Curiously, even in our times, the liberal writer of detective stories, Boris Akunin, did not disdain to shamelessly borrow this story of the Russian classics for his book The Silver Chariot. There, he also appears headquarters captain Rybnikov, and also - a Japanese spy. However, leaving aside this problem of obvious plagiarism (Kuprin cannot no longer bring claims to Akunin), let us say that even 110 years ago the problem of spies and foreign interference in the internal affairs of Russia was already very acute.
Around - spies
In 1944, another book came out - a compilation specially prepared for the NKVD “Japanese espionage in Tsarist Russia”, reprinted today. It said: “There was everything here - and thorough preparation even before the war, disguised officers of the General Staff, who did not disdain to maintain brothels, engage in crafts, perform servant and cook duties for the highest Russian authorities; and extremely complete and ingenious reconnaissance (meaning engineering reconnaissance of facilities and communications; then its methods are listed). " Agents were recruited from the local population: "and a medical assistant, and Chinese magicians, and healers, and merchants, and wandering musicians ...". "Foreign trade firms, military and commercial agents of America, England and China, Chinese and Korean merchants, landlords of Chinese brothels, Hunhuzes, some Chinese and Koreans, a landlord in Vladivostok of an American brothel (a favorite place of all kinds weapons the garrison), pupils of her boarding house, numerous Russians of the most diverse range. ”
"Before the start of the war, the Japanese had secret agents not only in all the more or less important points of the planned theater of war, but also in the inner provinces of Russia, thanks to which they were well aware of the real state of affairs."
In St. Petersburg, for example, the Vasiliev and Dementiev tea shop was lively selling right on Nevsky Prospect. However, his servants Shiratori and Tokaki were Japanese spies. They ideally owned Russian, and Shiratori led the informative heading “Japanese Evenings” in the newspaper “Rus”, and Tokaki was an excellent draftsman, and therefore, as if in between times, portrayed warships. When these gentlemen were arrested, these drawings were included in the number of incriminating materials - along with port schemes, drawings of new mines, maps of ships.
Money for revolution
However, the task of Japanese intelligence was not at all in one collection of spy information. Her plans also included the undermining of political stability in the country, the promotion of turmoil and backstage assistance to revolutionaries. So it’s not by chance that 110 years ago, in 1905, in the midst of the war with Japan, a revolution broke out in Russia. In October, an all-Russian political strike took place, there were clashes with troops and Cossacks, among the strikers were killed and wounded. Following Moscow, the strike spread to Petersburg and other major cities and by October 26 covered the main industrial centers of the country. Stopped the work of factories, factories, transport, power plants, post office, telegraph, institutions, shops, educational institutions. The number of strikers reached 2 million. The October All-Russian political strike developed under revolutionary slogans: “Down with the tsarist government!”, “Long live the armed uprising!”.
The prototype of Kuprinsky Rybnikov was not the captain, but Colonel Motoziro Akashi, an employee of the intelligence department of the General Staff of Japan, who was abandoned in St. Petersburg back in 1902, when the Land of the Rising Sun had already begun active preparations for a future war with Russia. True, Akashi did not know Russian, and he had to use translators. The Russian counterintelligence service spotted him in time, the informants of the colonel in Petersburg were arrested.
Immediately after the start of the war, the Japanese embassy, including Akashi, left St. Petersburg and continued to weave their networks from Stockholm, and the colonel moved to Vienna, the then center of international espionage. It was there that Akashi developed a plan to help Russian revolutionaries with money and weapons. His idea was to arrange an armed uprising in Russia, or even better, several national riots on the outskirts of the Russian empire - in Georgia, Poland and the Baltic states. Already in the middle of 1903, the memorandum of the Japanese Imperial General Staff was pointed out at the Russian socialist movement as a possible ally when conducting subversive actions in the Russian rear. The idea was to aggravate the internal political situation in Russia in such a way that tsarism could not simultaneously wage a big war on two fronts.
To this end, the Japanese handed over to the revolutionaries about 1 million yen - a huge sum for those times.
The English journalist Dillon wrote in his book “The Decline of Russia”: “The Japanese distributed money to Russian revolutionaries of known shades, and significant sums were spent on this. I must say that this is an indisputable fact. ”
In addition to the Japanese, the revolutionaries were also subsidized by the Americans, who donated many millions of dollars to subversive work in Russia. The furious Russophobe Jacob Schiff, the owner of the Kuhn, Leeb & Co. banking house in New York, which was a division of the Rothschild financial empire, was especially notable in this regard. Thus, the total amount of funds transferred from abroad to the “revolution” in Russia was not less than 50 million dollars - a colossal amount of money at that time.
One of Akashi’s loyal agents for organizing the “revolution” in Russia was the Finnish “revolutionary” Connie Celliacus. In his papers, Russian counterintelligence found a note listing the number of weapons handed over to the revolutionary parties: “8 thousand rifles to Finnish nationalists, 5 thousand rifles to Georgian nationalists, one thousand to Social Revolutionaries, 8 thousand to other socialist parties and also 500 to other Mauser’s for distribution. between Finnish nationalists and Socialist-Revolutionaries. " In 1917, Social Revolutionary Socialist Party Boris Savinkov wrote: “A member of the Finnish party of active resistance, Connie Celliacus, told the Central Committee of the Social Revolutionary Party that through him a donation of one million francs from American millionaires came to the Russian revolution, and the Americans put a condition on this money to be used by the people and distributed among all the revolutionary parties. "
Connie Celliacus purchased a large batch of weapons in Hamburg for smuggling to Russia. Agathi agents were chartered ship "John Grafton". The team consisted mainly of Finns and Latvians. They managed to unload some of the weapons and ammunition in Finland twice, but in September of 1905, “John Grafton” ran aground and was blown up to hide the ends in water. However, the Russian authorities soon recovered an entire arsenal from the sunken ship - about 10 thousand Vetterly rifles, ammunition and other military equipment. Such rifles were in the hands of the revolutionaries in Krasnaya Presnya. And if you hit all this huge arsenal into the hands of revolutionaries, it’s not known what the outcome of the 1905 riots would be.
Soon, the ship Sirius was purchased for Japanese money to deliver weapons to the Caucasus. Part of the weapon was unloaded in the area of Poti and Gagra, and part of it was intercepted by Russian border guards.
The stake was made, as already noted, to incite national hatred and separatism in a multinational state. The Georgian Socialist-Federalist-Revolutionary Party, the Polish Socialist Party, the Finnish Active Resistance Party and other similar organizations were financed.
“We are ready,” said Akashi to the revolutionaries, “to help you financially for the purchase of weapons, the most important thing is to prevent this movement from cooling down and bringing into Russian society an element of constant agitation and protest against the government.”
Promotion bet
Helped not only the supply of weapons. In one of the first places was political anti-government propaganda. In July, 1904, Akashi, through terrorist woman Vera Zasulich, established contacts with Plekhanov and Lenin. Already in January, 1905, using Japanese money, Lenin released the first issue of the Bolshevik newspaper, “Forward,” calling for the overthrow of the state system in Russia.
Backstage investors of the Russian revolution 1905, for the first time, developed a propaganda plan among prisoners of war. In interrogation, Christian Rakovsky told 1938 that “Jacob Schiff, the head of the bank house“ Kun, Leeb and Co. ”, had such power that the USA, which themselves had colonies in Asia, to the detriment of their national interests, did everything to strengthen Japanese empire. They reorganized the Japanese camps for Russian prisoners of war into camps for the preparation of revolutionary militants (and there were several tens of thousands of prisoners of war). “Who taught them?” Rakovsky asked himself and answered: “The instructors were sent from the USA ...”. The instructors are revolutionary emigrants.
Again as we see story it repeats: even then, the current scheme of “revolutionary Maidans”, aimed at overthrowing regimes objectionable to the West: foreign money to revolutionaries, instructors from the US, was being worked out ...
Agent Parvus
The ominous role in the Russian revolution 1905 of the year was also played by a native of Odessa, who made a fortune in Germany I. Gelfand, who went down in history as Alexander Parvus, who set his life as the aim of overthrowing tsarist power in Russia. His apartment in Munich at the end of 1890 became the center of gravity for both German and Russian revolutionaries. Often visited by Parvus and Lenin.
With the beginning of the Russian-Japanese war, Parvus published a series of articles entitled “War and Revolution” in Iskra, in which, calling the war “bloody dawn of the upcoming great achievements”, predicted the inevitable defeat of Russia and, as a result, the revolution. Parvus enthusiastically received the news of the beginning of the revolution and in October 1905 of the year, with the beginning of the all-Russian strike, arrived in Petersburg on a forged passport. Following him, Trotsky appeared in Russia.
Trotsky and Parvus, supplied with Western money, took a direct part in the creation of the Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies and entered into its Executive Committee.
Together with Trotsky, Parvus rented a “penny newspaper” (“Russkaya Gazeta”), which was engaged in incitement and quickly gained popularity: the circulation in a month reached 500 thousand copies.
According to G.L. Sobolev, 1905 year became the "star hour" of Parvus; he wrote articles and proclamations, was one of those who defined the strategy and tactics of the Petersburg Council and drafted its resolutions, delivered fiery speeches in the Council and at factories, was popular and influential. However, when the revolution was suppressed, Parvus, like Trotsky, was arrested and exiled. Known for his loud revelations, Burtsev later wrote about him in the newspaper Rech: “Parvus is not an agent provocateur, he is an agent of Wilhelm II”.
Saved determination
The 1905 revolution of the year was suppressed because, unlike the 1917 year, the authorities still managed to show determination. When the revolutionaries seized the trans-Siberian highway, a detachment of General Rennenkampf moved from Harbin, and a troop of General Meller-Zakomelsky moved towards him. These generals acted firmly and mercilessly. Agitators, who do not know how to get into his train, Meller – Zakomelsky ordered to throw out at full speed. Without trial and investigation, a machinist was shot, refusing to lead the Meller-Zakomelsky train and calling for soldiers to disobey. The same fate befell a telegraph operator, who did not miss telegrams that were of state importance.
“Shots carried out without hesitation saved many hundreds, and possibly thousands of lives! - writes Nikolay Starikov in his book “Who Finances the Collapse of Russia”. - And this is not an ode to violence and murder - it is iron logic and simple arithmetic. When the "principled opponents of violence" from the Provisional Government fires up the revolution in 1917, it will go to thousands and even millions of victims! ”
Meller – Zakomelsky then reported to the emperor: “My appearance on the Trans-Baikal road immediately raised the prestige of power and undermined the significance of the strike committee. Moving along the Trans-Baikal road to Chita, I incidentally made arrests of those responsible for resisting the authorities. The main culprits, telegraph operators and members of the strike committee, taken with arms in their hands, after an exact determination of their guilt and their own confession, were shot by me at Art. Cape - 5 man and at st. Mogzon - 7 people. Other telegraph operators, less guilty and minors, were punished with whips. ” “So much for the revolution! It is enough to shoot a 12 man, and it is already gone! ”Exclaims N. Starikov.
Yes, there you have a lesson for Yanukovych and all the others who believe that the heated crowd who has taken up arms must be persuaded and “humanism” must be shown.
That is why the “Maidan 1905 of the Year” in Russia, already prepared with the active support of Japan and the West, failed.
Telegrams mikado
Amazingly, the “educated society” in St. Petersburg at that time with some kind of pathological gloating wanted to defeat their own country in the war with Japan. “A common secret prayer,” wrote German journalist G. Ganz, who lived in St. Petersburg at that time, “was not only liberals but moderate conservatives at the time:“ God help us to be defeated! ”“ The pitiful remnants of victorious legions laid down arms legs of the winner! ", - Our Our Days liberal newspaper wrote maliciously when Port Arthur fell. A prominent liberal A.I. Petrunkevich) frankly admitted: “What will the Russian people lose if its fleet and army are defeated? He will lose confidence that royal power is unbreakable. And what will the Russian people lose if their army comes out victorious from this war? He will lose everything! He will lose the last ray of hope for liberation, as the government, fed by victory, will get stronger and strengthened so that any attempt at protest will be impossible. ”
Things reached the point that the Russian liberals sent telegrams to the Japanese emperor with wishes for a speedy victory. Just like today’s modern home-grown liberals are asking the West to punish Russia for the Crimea.
Yes, more than a hundred years have passed, but this audience has not changed at all! Their attitude to what was happening and is happening in the Donbass, and now in Syria is the same: they are again furiously craving for defeat and the collapse of Russia.
Information