Though much has been written about the origins and functions of the Okhrana, how exactly did the Russian security services operate? Who belonged to the organization and who were their quarries? With the publication of this volume, Vartkes Yeghiayan provides readers with a glimpse of the entire apparatus at work.

Comprised of more than fifty documents from the Russian archives, the collection he has assembled here finds the imperial security organs in their prime and caught in a struggle that pitted them against the empire's ethnic Armenian subjects, who, though having lived peacefully under Russian rule for a century, found themselves at odds with its domestic policies.

The documents reveal not only the work of the Russian law enforcement and legal bodies, but also the tactics employed by their adversaries. It provides a vivid palette on law, politics, revolution and the dynamic environment Russia, Europe, the Middle East and the Armenians occupied in the years leading up to World War I.