Okhrana

The secret police of tsarist Russia, 1881–1917.

Description based on the International Spy Museum glossary, which gives the name in the English transliteration Okhrana and describes it as the secret police of the Russian tsars.¹

The Okhrana stands at the start of the chain of Russian and Soviet services that the International Spy Museum describes in separate entries: after the revolution the Bolsheviks set up the Cheka in 1917, one of the many predecessors of the KGB; during the Second World War the counterintelligence organisation SMERSH was active (1943–1946); and after the break-up of the USSR foreign intelligence was taken over by the SVR (18 December 1991).¹