Vladimir Burtsev and the Russian revolutionary emigration: surveillance of foreign political refugees in London, 1891-1905.
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The thesis describes the early life in emigration of the Russian revolutionary, historian
and radical journalist Vladimir L'vovich Burtsev (17/29 November 1862 - 21 August
1942). Particular emphasis is placed on the nature and extent of the police
surveillance of Burtsev and the émigré community in Europe during the period. The
relationship between the Criminal Investigation Department of London's
Metropolitan Police and their Russian counterparts in Europe - the Zagranichnaia
agentura, ('Foreign Agency') - is examined in detail.
Burtsev's biography has great contemporary relevance, unfolding, as it does, in an
atmosphere of increasing anxiety in Britain (both governmental and non-official)
about growing numbers of foreign anarchists, terrorists, and `aliens' in general (which
would lead, in due course, to the passing of the 1905 Aliens Act) and the increasingly
interventionist police methods of the era. The thesis describes Burtsev's relationship
with the émigré community and its British supporters, examines his (at times extreme)
political views and reviews the radical journalism which led to his trial and
imprisonment in 1898. This, the `Burtsev affair', signalled a major shift in British
government policy towards political refugees on the one hand and to international
counter-terrorist co-operation on the other and it is one of the aims of this thesis to
detail the reasons for these changes.
Authors
Henderson, RobertCollections
- Theses [4495]