5. Spies and Trials

This chapter examines Volkhovskii’s career from the middle of the 1890s down to the end of the century. The Russian government were intensely nervous about the activities of all Russian exiles abroad, and the Paris branch of the tsarist secret police (Okhrana) played a key role in monitoring developments in Russian émigré communities across Europe. The head of the Paris agentura, Petr Rachkovskii, was particularly exercised by developments in London. While most attention was given to the activities of Stepniak and Vladimir Burtsev, numerous reports were also compiled about Volkhovskii, who was seen as a key figure in efforts to win support in Britain for Russian revolutionaries. Rachkovskii was also concerned about the likely consequences should Stepniak and Volkhovskii prove successful in building great unity between the various elements in the Russian revolutionary movement abroad. Following the death of Stepniak in 1895, Volkhovskii became the formal editor of Free Russia, and continued to play a leading role in the Russian Free Press Fund. He was however generally unsuccessful in his efforts to build closer ties both with Russian liberals and other Russian revolutionaries living abroad. Volkhovskii also for a time found himself at odds with leading members of the Free Press Fund including Nikolai Chaikovskii and Egor Lazarev. He nevertheless took a leading role in organising the defence of Vladimir Burtsev when he was tried in London for publishing a journal that supported regicide as a legitimate tactic in the fight against the tsarist regime.