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For thirty-two years (1762-1794) the secret expedition was led by Stepan Ivanovich Sheshkovsky, who, thanks to this, became a very famous person in Russian history. Even during his lifetime, his name was surrounded by many legends in which he appears as a skillful, cruel and insightful investigator-psychologist.

Stepan Sheshkovsky was born in 1727 in the family of a clerk. In 1738, the father attached an 11-year-old boy to the Siberian order. This institution, located in Moscow, was considered real "silver mines" for skilled chisel-makers. Two years later, the youth was taken for a while to the "cases of the Secret Chancellery", and then returned back to the Siberian Order. And it was then that Sheshkovsky committed an act unexpected for a normal careerist-clerk: in February 1743, without the knowledge of his superiors, he left for St. Petersburg and soon returned with a Senate decree to transfer him to the Moscow office of the Secret Chancellery. It is not known how he managed to achieve this, but without the knowledge of A.I. Ushakov, the appointment of a 16-year-old boy to this place seems impossible. Ushakov's successor, A.I. Shuvalov, also liked him, he gave him the following description: "He is able to write, and does not get drunk, and be good at business." In 1754, Sheshkovsky took the key post of secretary of the Secret Chancellery, to whom the entire staff of the detective department was subordinate. By the time the detective was reorganized at the beginning of 1762, before reaching the age of 35, he already had vast experience in detective work.

The head of the Secret Expedition undoubtedly enjoyed the trust of Catherine II, his authority with the empress was high. For interrogations of Pugachev, who was caught in the autumn of 1774, she sent Sheshkovsky, whom she instructed to find out the truth about the origins of Pugachev's imposture and his possible high patrons. Sheshkovsky interrogated Pugachev for many hours in a row, and for this he even settled near his cell in the Old Mint. Sheshkovsky was considered the greatest specialist in extracting information from "difficult", stubborn prisoners. He knew how to convince them, persuade them, intimidate them.

Apparently, Sheshkovsky knew how to present himself favorably to the empress, keeping her away from many secrets of his department. In the above-cited letter dated March 15, 1774, to General A.I. Bibikov, the head of one of the commissions of inquiry, Ekaterina cited Sheshkovsky’s activities as an example, objecting to questions “with prejudice”: “When questioning, what is the need to flog? For twelve years, the Secret Expedition under my eyes did not flog a single person during interrogations, and every case was completely sorted out and always came out more than we wanted to know.

And here we return to the legends about Sheshkovsky. It is not clear from them: were the criminals tortured in the Secret Expedition or not? Catherine II, as we see, wrote that torture was not allowed there. The son of A. N. Radishchev, also not the most impartial person in this matter, reported that Sheshkovsky “performed his position with terrible accuracy and severity. He acted with disgusting autocracy and severity, without the slightest condescension and compassion. Sheshkovsky himself boasted that he knew the means of forcing confessions, namely, he began by grabbing the interrogated person with a stick under the very chin, so that the teeth would crackle, and sometimes even pop out. Not a single accused under such an interrogation dared to defend himself under fear of the death penalty. The most remarkable thing is that Sheshkovsky treated in this way only with noble persons, for the common people were handed over to his subordinates for reprisal. Thus, Sheshkovsky was forced to confess. He executed the punishments of noble persons with his own hands. With rods and whips, he often seceded. With a whip, he whipped with extraordinary dexterity, acquired by frequent exercise.

Radishchev's son never saw Sheshkovsky, and the head of the Secret Expedition seemed to him a sadist, a mighty whip-fighter, which he really was not. On the contrary, “as I remember now,” said one veteran of Catherine’s times, “his small, brainy figure, dressed in a gray frock coat, modestly buttoned up and with his hands in his pockets.” I think that Sheshkovsky was terrible in the same way that all the heads of the secret investigation were terrible to the people of the 18th century: Romodanovsky, Tolstoy, Ushakov, Shuvalov. It is known for sure that neither the whip nor the whip touched the author of the Journey, but, according to the stories of his son, he fainted as soon as he learned that a man from Sheshkovsky had come for him. When you read Radishchev's confessions, his penitential letters to Sheshkovsky, and finally, the testament written in the fortress to the children, you believe this: Radishchev in the Peter and Paul Fortress was overcome by fear, sometimes hysterical panic. Probably, he passed on his feelings from meetings with Sheshkovsky to his son.

It is quite possible that Radishchev was not a coward and a hysteric. "Exhorting" the prisoner, Sheshkovsky was rude, threatened, and possibly gave light cuffs or really poked his chin with a cane, as Radishchev's son described it. For the unbeaten people (and Radishchev had already grown up under the protection of noble privileges and studied abroad), such an appeal was enough to frighten them, make them repent and, saying goodbye to life, write a will to small children. Radishchev was no exception. The playwright Yakov Knyazhnin, a most intelligent and weak man, after being interrogated by Sheshkovsky at the end of 1790, "fell into a cruel illness" and died two weeks later.

I think that Sheshkovsky, who went from clerk to privy councilor and received such powerful power, not without pleasure mocked the timid pillar nobles, liberals, "naughty" secular rake, writers, from whom, as always considered in political investigation, "one harm and debauchery." These gentle, spoiled people never sniffed the air of the casemates of the Peter and Paul Fortress, and after sitting there for a week, they appeared before Sheshkovsky with a grown beard and with trousers falling without a belt (as they were received in the fortress, it will be said below), and the "brainy" head of the Secret Expedition seemed to them a fiend of hell, a symbol of that terrible power of the state, which could do anything with any person.

Sheshkovsky “had been everywhere, he was often met where he was not expected. Having, moreover, secret scouts, he knew everything that happened in the capital: not only criminal plans or actions, but even free and careless conversations. There is no exaggeration in these words, information through voluntary and secret agents always came to the political investigation. Sheshkovsky shared the information he received with the empress, so she was well aware of the personal affairs of many courtiers, knew well what they were saying in the capital, among the people, in high society. Of course, she received this information from court gossips, her secretaries, servants, but also from Sheshkovsky. He, like all heads of political investigation, liked to delve into dirty linen. Sheshkovsky's power was based on the sinister secret that surrounded his department, the goodwill of the empress. To this must be added the exorbitant ambitions of a native from the bottom.

Legends also ascribe to Sheshkovsky the role of a hypocrite-Jesuit, an executioner-moralizer, who interrogated the person under investigation in the ward with images and lamps, spoke unctuously, sweetly, but at the same time ominously: “He usually invited the guilty to his place: no one dared not appear on demand". The fact that Sheshkovsky invited people to his home, for suggestions, was a common thing at that time, many dignitaries "done things" at home. Documents also confirm information about Sheshkovsky's sanctimonious moralizing, which earned him the nickname "confessor" among Petersburgers.

One of the legends tells that Catherine II, outraged by the “intemperance” of the general’s wife M. D. Kozhina, ordered Sheshkovsky to flog the prankster: “She goes to a public masquerade every Sunday, go yourself, taking her from there to the Secret Expedition, lightly punish her physically and bring it back there, with all decency." We cannot find out for sure whether such an incident took place at one of the St. Petersburg balls. But it is known that Sheshkovsky, on the instructions of the empress, conducted with the ladies of high society, as they would say in a later era, "preventive conversations." Under Catherine, the morality of the inhabitants of both capitals was diligently monitored, both from high society and from the lower classes. To do this, the Secret Expedition and the police collected a variety of information. From the case of Grigory Vinsky, it follows that when one bank scam was clarified in 1779, all over St. Petersburg they began to take to the Peter and Paul Fortress (as suspects) young people who littered with money and led a “scattered life”. The first thing Vinsky thought about when he got into the casemate and saw that they were beginning to undress him was the fear that they wanted to flog him.

Vinsky's fears were not unfounded. The legend says: “There was a chair of a special device in Sheshkovsky's office. He asked the invitee to sit in this chair, and as soon as he sat down, one side, where the handle, at the touch of the owner, suddenly moved apart, connected to the other side of the chair and closed the guest so that he could neither free himself nor assume what was being prepared for him. Then, at a sign from Sheshkovsky, the hatch with the chair lowered under the floor. Only the head and shoulders of the guilty person remained above, and the rest of the body hung under the floor. There they took away the chair, exposed the punished parts and flogged. The performers did not see who was being punished. Then the guest was brought back to the previous order and rose from under the floor with an armchair. Everything ended without noise and publicity. But, despite this secret, the rumor spread the name of Sheshkovsky and further increased his actions with false additions.

The very technical idea of ​​a chair that descends under the floor has been known for a long time - lifting tables were used for late dinners without servants. So Sheshkovsky could well have such a mechanical chair; remember that Kulibin came up with more complicated mechanisms. But the notes of those whom Sheshkovsky “educated” in this way have not been preserved. True, in the memoirs of A. N. Sokovnin there is a hint that allows one to suspect that the memoirist went through such a procedure: “This Sheshkovsky was a terrible person, he used to come up so politely, so affectionately ask to come to his place to explain himself ... yes, he will explain himself!”

When Sheshkovsky died in 1794, the new head of the Secret Expedition, A. Makarov, put the frustrated affairs of the decrepit veteran of political detective work in order, and especially developed under Paul I - the new emperor immediately asked the detective a lot of work.

, Russian empire

Stepan Ivanovich Sheshkovsky(November 20 [December 1], St. Petersburg - May 12, St. Petersburg) - Privy Councilor, who was "at special orders from Her Imperial Majesty", who was in charge of the Secret Chancellery.

Not having time to take a break from work during the investigation of the Pugachev case, Sheshkovsky was soon forced to start the investigation again. This time, the case entrusted to him for investigation, although it had no political interest, but personally concerned Catherine, and therefore was considered very important. It consisted in the fact that in St. Petersburg caricatures and lampoons began to appear on the empress. Sheshkovsky was instructed to find their author at all costs. At this time, Sheshkovsky was in the hands of several court ladies, and some of them, such as the maid of honor of Count A. A. Elmpt and Countess E. P. Buturlina, were interrogated with passion. Then Sheshkovsky was instructed to “slightly corporally punish” Major General M. D. Kozhin and search for some more cases, which brought him even closer to Catherine II, and on January 1, 1781, she granted him to the real state councilors and made almost independent of the Attorney General. Of the other well-known cases of the end of the reign of Catherine II, which were entrusted to Sheshkovsky, we point out his business trip to Moscow in 1784 to interrogate Natalia Passek, who asked the Empress to hear from her a very important matter. Then, in 1788, he conducted an investigation into a denunciation of the Irkutsk governor Jacobiy. For some reason, Sheshkovsky tried to blame Yakobiy in this case, and the latter was acquitted only thanks to the energetic intercession of Gabriel Derzhavin. Finally, in 1789, he interrogated Alexander Radishchev, the following year he conducted an investigation into the case of the secretary of the State Collegium of Foreign Affairs, court adviser Valts, who was accused of dealings with foreign ministers, and a year later he conducted an investigation into the case of Nikolai Novikov and students Nevzorov and Kolokolnikov.

All these cases made it possible for Sheshkovsky to distinguish himself before Catherine II, and the latter generously rewarded his work on a secret expedition and granted him the Order of St. Vladimir of the 2nd degree, and in 1791 promoted him to secret advisers. The last award of the Empress for him was a pension granted to him of 2,000 rubles a year. In general, Sheshkovsky's position at court was so influential that many of the highest state dignitaries often fawned over him and sought his friendship. On the other hand, independent or courageous people treated him with undisguised contempt. So, the usual greeting of Potemkin to Sheshkovsky was the question “how are you whipping, Stepan Ivanovich”, to which the latter invariably obsequiously answered: “A little, your grace.” Stories have been preserved that Sheshkovsky had to not only torture others, but also repeatedly experience all the delights of being flogged on his own back. So, A. N. Sokovnin claims that Sheshkovsky, once caught by the cadets of the page corps, was mercilessly flogged by them. Even more often, of course, Sheshkovsky got it from individual daredevils, who, having caught him somewhere in a secluded corner, more than once rewarded him a hundredfold for everything experienced in his dungeon. But on the other hand, where he felt his strength, Sheshkovsky knew how to inspire fear. His name alone often frightened those arrested. Radishchev, for example, arrested for his essay “ Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" and brought to the commander-in-chief in St. Petersburg, Count Yakov Bruce, when he heard that a man "from Sheshkovsky" had come there, then with one hated name for all of Russia, he fainted .

Sheshkovsky died in St. Petersburg on May 12 (23), 1794. His body was buried in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. Two months after his death, Prosecutor General Alexander Samoilov informed his widow that Her Imperial Majesty, remembering the zealous service of her late husband, deigned to extend her highest mercy, and most mercifully ordered to give her and her children 10,000 rubles for the rest of his family.

Literature

• Korsakov A. Stepan Ivanovich Sheshkovsky. (1727-1794). Biographical essay // Historical Bulletin, 1885. - T. 22. - No. 12. - Stb. 656-687.
• Kolpakidi A., Sever A. Special services of the Russian Empire. - M .: Yauza Eksmo, 2010. - S. 81 - 84. - 768 p. - (Encyclopedia of special services). - 3000 copies. - ISBN 978-5-699-43615-6
• Radishchev P. A. Notes. An excerpt about S. I. Sheshkovsky / Soobshch. P. A. Efremov // Russian antiquity, 1870. - T. 2. - Ed. 3rd. - St. Petersburg, 1875 - S. 510-512. - Under the title: Stepan Ivanovich Sheshkovsky.

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Sheshkovsky (Stepan Ivanovich) is a well-known detective master. Born in 1727 (according to other, less reliable sources, in 1720). His father was a clerk who rose to the position of police chief of the city of Kolomna. Sheshkovsky learned to read and write at home, ... ... Biographical Dictionary

Russian statesman. The son of a petty official. in 1757‒62 - Secretary of the Secret Chancellery, from 1762 (officially from 1767) Chief Secretary of the Secret Expedition, confidant of the Empress ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Privy Councilor, who was "at the affairs specially entrusted from her imperial majesty", who was in charge of the Secret Chancellery. Born in 1727, on November 20, in St. Petersburg, where his father at that time served as a clerk in the Governing ... ... Big biographical encyclopedia

The successors of Peter I declared that there were no more important and large-scale political affairs in the state. By decree of May 28, 1726, Empress Catherine I liquidated the Secret Chancellery and ordered all its affairs and servants to be transferred to Prince I.F. There the search was carried out. The order became known as the Transfiguration Office. Of the political affairs of that time, one can name the trials of Tolstoy, Devier and Menshikov himself. But Peter II in 1729 stopped the activity of this body as well, dismissed Prince Romodanovsky. From the office, the most important cases were transferred to the Supreme Privy Council, the less important ones were sent to the Senate.

The activities of special bodies resumed only under Anna Ioannovna.

On March 24, 1731, the Office of Secret Investigations was established at the Preobrazhensky General Court. The new intelligence service was functionally designed to detect and investigate political crimes. The office of secret search affairs received the right to investigate political crimes throughout Russia, which was expressed in the order to send to the office persons who declared "the sovereign's word and deed." All central and local authorities had to unquestioningly follow the orders of the head of the office, Ushakov, and for a "malfunction" he could fine any official.

When organizing the Office of Secret Investigation, undoubtedly, the experience of its predecessors, and first of all the Preobrazhensky Prikaz, was taken into account. The Office of Secret Investigation was a new, higher stage in the organization of the system of political investigation. She was free from many of the shortcomings inherent in the Preobrazhensky order, and above all from multifunctionality. The Chancellery arose as a sectoral institution, the staff of which was entirely focused on investigative and judicial activities in the fight against political crimes.

Like its historical predecessors, the Office of Secret Investigations had a small staff - 2 secretaries and a little more than 20 clerks. The department's budget was 3,360 rubles a year, with the total budget of the Russian Empire being 6-8 million rubles.

A.I. was appointed head of the Office of Secret Investigative Affairs. Ushakov, who had experience in the Preobrazhensky Prikaz and the Secret Chancellery. He was able to get such a high post thanks to the demonstration of exceptional devotion to Empress Anna Ioannovna.

The new institution reliably guarded the interests of the authorities. The means and methods of investigation remained the same - denunciations and torture. Ushakov did not try to play a political role, remembering the sad fate of his former associates Tolstoy, Buturlin, Skornyakov-Pisarev, and remained only a zealous executor of the royal will.

Under Elizabeth Petrovna, the Secret Investigative Office remained the highest body of political investigation of the empire. It was headed by the same Ushakov. In 1746, he was replaced by the real chamberlain P. I. Shuvalov. He led the secret service, "bringing terror and fear to the whole of Russia" (according to Catherine II). Torture, even under Elizaveta Petrovna, remained the main method of interrogation. They even drew up a special instruction “What rite is the accused trying to do”. She demanded, “having recorded torture speeches, to fix it to the judges without leaving the dungeon,” which regulated the design of the inquiry.

All political affairs were still carried out in the capital, but their echoes reached the provinces. In 1742, the former ruler of the country, Duke Biron, and his family were exiled to Yaroslavl. This favorite of Anna Ioannovna actually ruled the country for ten years. The established regime was called the Bironovshchina. The Duke's opponents were persecuted by servants of the Secret Chancellery (an example is the case of the Cabinet Secretary A.P. Volynsky and his supporters). After the death of the Empress, Biron became regent for the infant king, but was overthrown in a palace coup.

Sometimes Peter took part in the very process of the investigation. The documents of the Preobrazhensky order did not leave any evidence of his own torture; but it is known that he personally interrogated the princesses Sophia, Martha and Catherine, for whom it was inappropriate to appear as accused before subjects.

The king was not distinguished by sentimentality, but he tried in vain not to punish. In 1700, the simple serf women Nenila and Anna Polosukhins complained about the peasants who went to the army. “My husband,” Nenila yelled, “the devil has taken it, and he left me with a robin, who should feed them.” To the remark of one of the neighbors that her husband served the sovereign, Anna blurted out: “To hell with it, and not to the sovereign. We have our own sovereign, who feeds and waters us.” Here began the case of insulting the sovereign; the boyars sentenced the careless woman to death, but the tsar did not approve the sentence. He became interested in why Anna opposed her "sovereign" - the landlord - to the real sovereign; but as soon as he was convinced - after torture - that the woman was talking without intent, he ordered Anna to be replaced by exile without punishment with a whip, and Nenil to be released to the landowner. At that time, this decision can be considered soft. But in other cases, Peter could have toughened the punishment - he ordered not only to cut off the head of the former fiscal Efim Sanin, but to certainly wheel him.

On September 30, 1698, on Red Square in Moscow, Peter took part in the first mass execution of the participants in the Streltsy rebellion. The sovereign, with a huge gathering of people, undertook to personally cut off the heads of the condemned; moreover, his retinue was obliged to take part in this - only foreigners could refuse, dissuaded by the fear of earning the hatred of the crowd. Perhaps the king was inflamed by the sight of the execution - or doubted the professionalism of the kats. After all, it is known that he valued professionalism above all else in people and, having mastered twelve specialties himself, once reprimanded the executioner that the convict's "nostrils were taken out little noticeably" - not to the bone.

The successors of Peter I also showed a special interest in political investigation, often personally participated in the investigation, intervened in its course, got acquainted with the testimony of the accused, and pronounced sentences.

Peter's niece Anna Ioannovna usually affirmed the definitions of the Secret Chancellery unchanged: for example, according to the verdict of the chancellery on the execution of a certain priest Savva, "Her Imperial Majesty deigned to instruct him to commit a raspope, according to the definition, to the marching Secret Chancellery." But there were cases - for example, the case on accusation of soldier Sedov of uttering "obscene words" - when the empress changed the verdict: "Her Imperial Majesty deigned to listen to this extract, and after hearing she deigned to indicate Sedov, instead of death, to send to Okhotsk."

The head of the office, Ushakov, who reported to the empress on investigative cases and carefully recorded her instructions, sometimes recorded the conversations that Anna had with him. One of these records states that Anna ordered an officer with soldiers to be sent to the Kirillov and Iversky monasteries to conduct a search at some convicts, and upon their return to report to her about the results of the search. The case of the Pskov voivode Pleshcheev, who “decorated” in obscene statements, the empress ordered not to investigate - “only Her Majesty deigned to change Pleshcheev from the province from the province, and inform the Senate about the change.”

Sometimes, after hearing the extract, Anna ordered that the accused personally write down his testimony and they be presented to her in the original. In especially important cases, the empress participated in the process and herself conducted interrogations. In a decree dated March 14, 1732, Ushakov recorded that, following a denunciation by a certain kisser Sukhanov against the famous P.I. Yaguzhinsky, she “in front of her” interrogated the witness Afanasy Tatishchev, who testified that she had not heard any obscene words from Count Yaguzhinsky; then Anna ordered that they no longer subject him to interrogations. The interest shown by the empress in this matter is understandable: Yaguzhinsky held a high position, being the most prominent diplomat (later he even became a cabinet minister), Anna did not like him and was even afraid; as soon as the opportunity presented itself, she removed him into an honorable exile - an envoy to Berlin.

The authorities kept in view the fate of not only those under investigation, but also employees of the Secret Chancellery: the rotation of its officials was carried out by special nominal decrees - for example, by a decree of February 20, 1741, Nikolai Khrushchev was transferred to the Moscow office and Tikhon Gulyaev was appointed secretary in his place. In 1743, Elizaveta Petrovna, after listening to Ushakov's message about the death of Secretary Gulyaev, "deigned to command by oral decree" to appoint Ivan Nabokov in his place.

Elizaveta Petrovna, getting acquainted with the affairs of the Secret Chancellery through the extracts brought to her by Ushakov, often influenced the course of the investigation, giving instructions to its head on the direction of the search - for example, to interrogate the convict again: passion, and, what will show, report to her imperial majesty. The emotional empress left her remarks on the papers submitted to her; so, she was outraged to find that her personal physician Armand Lestok, contrary to the ban, met with a foreign “minister”, and inscribed in the margins against his testimony: “Shouldn’t you, like a slave, report to the sovereign that you didn’t know that he is a rogue, then it would be forgiven from me. It was all the more unpleasant for the Empress to learn that the rogue Lestok not only ignored her decree, but also took gifts from the “blameless man”.

Many reports on important matters fell directly into the hands of the empress, who then sent them to the Secret Chancellery. For example, on November 13, 1744, she handed over a certain schismatic to Ushakov, after interrogating him what he “has to declare to Her Imperial Majesty the royal things” (it turned out that he counted faith, hope and love with them), and having a theological debate with him about the need to be baptized three-fingered addition, for this is a symbol of the Trinity.

In 1745, the Secret Chancellery received a denunciation that several nobles in the Russian wilderness in a conversation spoke badly about Elizabeth, praised the deposed ruler Anna Leopoldovna and dreamed of dividing Russia ... for themselves into "princes". The investigation found no real conspiracy; but Elizabeth, having read the extract submitted to her, considered the matter important: “On the 1st of June, the lieutenant Evstafiy Zimninsky and the nobleman Andrian Beklemishev were presented separately before Her Imperial Majesty; and this Zimninsky in front of Her Imperial Majesty said - the same as in the Secret Chancellery with his interrogation he showed; and the aforementioned Beklemishev spoke about that before Her Imperial Majesty, about that to them (who conducted the search for A. I. Ushakov and A. I. Shuvalov. - I. K., E. N.) is unknown, since Her Imperial Majesty deigned to ask Onago Beklemishev in solitude. A week later, the highest investigator sent to the office a handwritten record of Beklemishev’s testimony she had made in private: that one day, when he, Tatishchev and Zykov “were sitting three,” one of them began to regret Princess Anna, to say that it was better with her, that Elizabeth He is not afraid of God - he does not let them go abroad; that it would be easier if John reigned; that in past years there was a certain congress of a large number of people, where it was decided to divide Russia into separate principalities, "and each of them took a reign for himself."

Finally, sometimes the empress herself conducted the affairs and transferred the criminal to the office only for the execution of the sentence. So, in 1748, Count Shuvalov received a decree from her: “the court of Her Imperial Majesty, the footman Ivan Shchukin, for the obscene words he uttered, which Her Imperial Majesty herself knows, exile ‹…› to Orenburg for service”; the office only had to execute the sentence, remaining in the dark about Shchukin's crime. One day, Elizabeth became interested in her own double - on February 18, 1742, she ordered to deliver from Shlisselburg "for her curiosity" the wife of the clerk of the Ladoga office, Kipriyan Markov, Fedor, supposedly similar "word for word like our sovereign." Two days later, the Semyonov soldier brought the stunned "wife" to the palace, but everything ended well for her: Elizabeth looked at her, was pleased - and let Fedor go home with a gift of a hundred rubles.

According to sources, Catherine II also personally delved into all the subtleties of "what concerns the Secret", despite public distancing from "whip" methods. At the beginning of her reign, she felt insecure on the usurped throne; later, being the real ruling empress, Catherine could not leave such an important institution without personal control. However, cares of this kind also fell on the lot of her de facto co-ruler G. A. Potemkin - starting from 1775, the prince received reports from the civil and military authorities of southern Russia subordinate to him with notifications of impostors, "dissenters" and denunciations on political affairs. But still, the decisive word remained with the empress, and the crimes recognized as the most dangerous were "followed" in St. Petersburg.

The papers of the Secret Expedition contain many questions and instructions from Catherine II to investigators and Prosecutor General Vyazemsky. In 1771, when appointing a new commandant of the Revel Fortress, the Empress reminded: “As General Lieutenant von Benckendorff has now been appointed chief commandant in Revel, would you please write to him so that he would be named after Vrali (Andrei Vral) after the removal of Metropolitan Arseny Matseevich of Rostov. - I. K., E. N.) had the same outlook as Tiesenhausen had; otherwise I’m afraid that, having not been entrusted to him, Vral would not start his own tricks in the interregnum, and that they would not become weaker to look after this animal, and we would not pour out new troubles from that. She personally questioned the officer who arrested Vladyka and accompanied him to Moscow: “When he took the bishop from Rostov in 1763, was there a cross with relics on him, and could he not take him with him?” The empress was tormented by suspicions: if during the stay of Metropolitan Arseny in the Korelsky monastery someone sent him holy relics, then he maintains contact with his supporters? The empress reminded the guards not to take their eyes off the prisoner for a minute. She wrote to the commandant of the prison: “You have an important bird in a strong cage, take care that it does not fly away. Hope you don't let yourself down with a big answer. ‹…› His people revere him from time immemorial and are accustomed to consider him a saint, but he is nothing more than a great rogue and hypocrite.

After the capture of Pugachev and his associates in 1774, Catherine sent a letter to Major General P. S. Potemkin in Simbirsk, indicating good knowledge of the investigation conducted by the Secret Expedition and its personnel: “I command you, upon receipt of this, to transfer your stay to Moscow and there, under the direction of Prince Mikhail Nikitich Volkonsky, to continue the trial of this important convict. For a better understanding of the beginning and all ends of this villainous deed, I advise you to transfer Chika from Kazan to Moscow, also from Orenburg, Pochitalin and his comrades, if they are still alive, as I think, are. You can entrust the other convicts, who have matters of less importance to themselves, to two guard officers and give them a secret expedition of secretary Zryakhov, who is in Orenburg, and who is very accustomed to these matters, and then under my eyes for many years; and now I am sending Sheshkovsky to Moscow on a secret expedition, which he has a special gift with ordinary people.

The Empress constantly kept under her control the work of the educator N. I. Novikov, considering it extremely dangerous. By her order, he was imprisoned in a Moscow prison, and soon the commander-in-chief of Moscow, Prozorovsky, and the chief of the Secret Expedition, Sheshkovsky, transported him in deep secrecy - in a closed carriage and under a false name - to one of the most terrible Russian dungeons - the Shlisselburg fortress. The Empress herself developed a route: “In order to hide it from his comrades, then order him to lead to Vladimir, and from there to Yaroslavl, and from Yaroslavl to Tikhvin, and from Tikhvin to Shlyushin and give it to the local commandant. Carry him so that no one can see him. Ekaterina composed questions for Novikov, which Sheshkovsky then asked him; wrote her comments on Novikov's explanations; indicated who to call as witnesses.

As we have seen, there were no objective norms according to which the Privy Office had to refer cases to the supreme authority. Consequently, in many respects, their outcome could depend both on the will of the monarch and on the employees of the chancellery - generals and privates of the political investigation.

The unique position of “acting tsar”, which at the beginning of the 18th century was occupied by Prince Fyodor Yuryevich Romodanovsky, could not be inherited by any of his successors, especially since the emergence of a new system of central government required a clearer delineation of their competence. The cumbersome Preobrazhensky order already at the end of Peter's reign looked archaic.

The creation of the Secret Chancellery and the gradual elimination of the "non-core" functions of the Preobrazhensky Prikaz were a step towards the creation of a specialized system of political investigation. The new "Prince-Caesar" Ivan Romodanovsky remained in Moscow; the tsar treated him with respect, but still, as already mentioned, he cannot be included among the most active and influential persons at the Peter's court. But the case of Tsarevich Alexei put forward Pyotr Andreevich Tolstoy (1645-1729) in the first row of "ministers".

The head of the Secret Chancellery came from an old service family. “My great-grandfather, Ivan Ivanovich Tolstoy, during the time of Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, was a regimental commander in Krapivna, and his brother, and my great-grandfather cousin, Seliverst Ivanovich, under Tsar Vasily Ivanovich in the Moscow siege seat, was a regimental commander in Moscow, in the tract on Truba, where he was killed by enemies, - Tolstoy himself wrote about the merits of his ancestors. - And my grandfather Vasily Ivanovich during the time of Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich in 7141 (1633-m. - I. K., E. N.) was a regimental voivode near Moscow, across the Yauza River, during the war with the Poles and under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, he was formerly a steward and was sent as a voivode to Chernigov, and during the betrayal of the Cossack hetman Bryukhovetsky, he sat in that city for a long time under siege, where and I was with my father, and sat in the siege with him. And my father saved this city from traitors, for which he was granted then to the duma nobles. And my relatives, Mikhailo Andreevich, was a governor in Astrakhan, Ivan Andreevich was a governor in Azov, and my other relatives in noble ranks also showed services to the Russian state.

Tolstoy was related to the boyars Miloslavsky and Princess Sophia, but he saw the young Peter in time - and at the age of 52, in the company of young nobles, he went to Venice to study naval affairs. The “pensioner” learned the Italian language, kept a diary in which he entered impressions of “wonderful” Gothic cathedrals and paintings of “wonderful letters of saints of Italian pictorial skill.” He did not waste time in vain - he mastered naval science, but he was not to serve in the navy, but to master the diplomatic field. Peter appreciated the talents of the elderly steward and appointed him the first permanent Russian ambassador in Istanbul (before that, employees of the Posolsky Prikaz went to foreign lands on one-time missions), where Tolstoy spent more than ten years. Here he showed himself to be a skilled diplomat: he established contacts with Turkish nobles and their servants, at the same time suppressing their attempts to obtain information - he even poisoned the embassy clerk, who was inclined to treason and intended to convert to Islam. Twice he was taken under arrest and kept in the Seven-Tower Castle when Turkey declared war on Russia; but he managed to settle relations between the two powers, compiled a serious and interesting political and geographical description of the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 18th century and, separately, of the Turkish fleet.

Upon his return from Turkey, the 70-year-old Tolstoy became one of the tsar's closest diplomatic advisers. In 1716-1717, he accompanied Peter on a Western European trip, took part in diplomatic negotiations in Amsterdam, Paris, and Copenhagen. He managed, without igniting a diplomatic conflict, to return the fugitive Alexei Petrovich from the Austrian possessions, promising him his father's forgiveness, and then interrogated him, was a participant in his trial and was present at the last torture, which, perhaps, was the cause of the death of the prince.

Tolstoy's merits were duly rewarded: he received generous land grants and became a real secret adviser "for the great service shown so not only to me," the royal decree said, "but more to the whole fatherland in bringing my son by birth, but on business villain and destroyer of the father and fatherland. Pyotr Andreevich became in 1722 a knight of the first Russian order of St. Andrew the First-Called, and at the coronation of the wife of Tsar Catherine in 1724, he was granted the title of count from her.

Count and Chevalier Tolstoy was at the head of the Secret Chancellery for eight years. In 1719, it was captured by the court painter J. G. Tannauer. The portrait depicts an elderly but cheerful man in a dapper caftan and a fashionable wig with an intelligent, strong-willed face and a slightly ironic look in narrowed eyes. A heavy chin, thin pursed lips, thick eyebrows apart - maybe the artist somewhat flattered the model (Tolstoy was then 74 years old), but still he depicted not a weary old man, but a well-knit nobleman in his mind. “A man is very capable, but when dealing with him, you need to keep a stone in your pocket to knock out his teeth if he wants to bite,” it seems that the eyewitnesses did not distort the characterization given to Tolstoy by Tsar Peter, who was well versed in people.

Judging by the abundance of positions and works of Pyotr Andreevich, in these years he was like that - talented, businesslike, cunning, retaining even in old age some free-thinking in the spirit of his century. “He doesn’t have a wife, but he has a mistress, whose maintenance, they say, is very expensive for him,” the young Holstein chamber junker Friedrich Berchholtz described the count’s lifestyle, citing a funny story about his duke’s visit to Tolstoy: the guest “immediately noticed into two completely different paintings hung in opposite corners of his room: one depicted one of the Russian saints, and the other a naked woman. The Privy Councilor, noticing that the Duke was looking at them, laughed and said that he was surprised that His Highness notices everything so soon, while hundreds of faces who visit him do not at all see this naked figure, which is deliberately placed in a dark corner.

Tolstoy not only headed the Secret Chancellery, but also led the Commerce College in 1718-1721, while not leaving the diplomatic service: in 1719 he negotiated in Berlin; in 1721 he traveled with the tsar to Riga; in 1722-1723, he accompanied Peter on the Persian campaign as the head of the field office - at an advanced age and with then very relative comfort.

He did not manage the secret office alone, but was at the head of a kind of collegium, whose members signed sentences together: Maeor Andrey Ivanovich Ushakov of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, captain-lieutenant Grigory Grigoryevich Skornyakov-Pisarev from the guards from the bomber, after listening to the above, sent to the Office of Secret Investigation Cases from the Local Order of the Report, and the petition of Stepan Lopukhin, they were sentenced ‹...›. Documents show that they worked together; everyone could receive a specific royal order on a particular case and proceeded to carry it out with an explanation: “I, Ivan Buturlin, announced this decree of his royal majesty in the Secret Chancellery.” But Tolstoy in this team was the first among equals: he was less often than others in the dungeon, but it was his signature in the documents of the Secret Chancellery that was the first of four; and most importantly, only Tolstoy in those years was a permanent adviser to the sovereign and reported to him on the affairs of his department. Colleagues recognized his superiority (sometimes in the documents they called him “leading”) and, sending extracts of cases to him, asked “what is necessary, according to your prudent reasoning, although to report to his royal majesty.” Tolstoy demanded that his subordinates notify him “only about the most necessary matters” and reported to the tsar “according to his prudent reasoning” what he considered necessary, knowing full well what might be of interest to him in the first place. He wrote to the other “ministers”: “It seems to me that there is no reason to work with the report of the Tsar’s Majesty” - or, on the contrary, he explained that the case of the fiscal Sanin, “... tea, it is necessary to report to the Imperial Majesty, because His Majesty deigned to order me to order Sanin to execute to delay for the fact that his majesty deigned to have then the intention of seeing him himself, Sanin.

Since 1722, Buturlin no longer participated in the affairs of the Secret Chancellery, and the following year, Skornyakov-Pisarev dropped out of its “ministers”. In the last years of the existence of the Petrine Secret Chancellery, it was led by Tolstoy and Ushakov. By a decree of January 13, 1724, Peter ordered, “that under the Senate he would establish a cantor of search affairs, also a special service for emergency cases; and, first, when there is a wanted list in the Senate, then those cases will be there, and another place for such cases as Shafirovo happened. But this place will be without servants, but when the occasion calls; then take the time." Peter was worried about the red tape and carelessness of the work of the Senate office loaded with affairs, where “secret cases were taken out from clerk Cherkasy, and it’s very surprising that both ordinary and secret cases in the Senate are up for grabs.” “For this sake, when you receive this, do it following the example of the Foreign Collegium, so that such stinginess will not be committed in the future,” he demanded from the senators in a decree dated January 16 of the same year.

Thus, the Senate office was to be divided into two parts - general and for secret affairs. This secret part included an office of search cases, as well as a special chamber for emergency cases - investigations into the activities of senior officials, such as Vice-President of the Collegium of Foreign Affairs P.P. death penalty with confiscation of property replaced by exile). The competence of the office, presumably, would include similar searches for less eminent persons under investigation.

In the same January, according to another decree, the Secret Chancellery was to transfer the bulk of the cases and convicts to the Preobrazhensky Prikaz. Perhaps this decree was initiated by her first present, tired of the current and uninteresting work, because most of the crimes were various "obscene words" addressed to the authorities.

In the new scenario, the Preobrazhensky Prikaz would be engaged in interrogations and flogging of careless townsfolk, and Senator Tolstoy would be engaged in really important matters, investigating the abuses of persons of the highest rank. We must pay tribute to the earl's instinct: it was these matters that were most relevant in the last years of the reign and most of all occupied the king; of the 31 dignitaries who were prosecuted under Peter I, 21 people were put on trial - 26 percent of all high-ranking civil servants of that time.

However, the Secret Chancellery was never transferred to the control of the Senate - either Tolstoy found no less influential opponents, or the tsar himself decided not to multiply the investigative bodies and concentrate cases of this kind in the High Court. The decree of April 21, 1724 was of a compromise nature - it demanded that “criminals in lèse majesté or in cases, to the indignation of those inclined, be sent from the Senate and from the Secret Chancellery to the Preobrazhensky Prikaz”, but was silent about the powers of the Secret Chancellery or the planned new secret department of the Senate for part of the investigation of the "third count" cases.

The Office of Investigative Affairs under the Senate was nevertheless created, but conducted only one investigation - on charges of the King of Arms S. A. Kolychev in embezzlement of state money and other abuses; then it was liquidated in connection with the establishment in 1726 of the Supreme Privy Council and the reorganization of the Senate. The fight against corruption in the state apparatus begun by the emperor came to naught under his successors.

Count Tolstoy himself still had to go through the last short-term rise of his career. Proximity to the royal family forced him to make a choice in the dispute over the succession to the throne during the last illness of Peter I. Then, on the night of January 27-28, 1725, prominent senators and presidents of the colleges (P. M. Apraksin, D. M. Golitsyn, N I. Repnin, V. L. Dolgorukov, G. I. Golovkin, I. A. Musin-Pushkin) wanted to enthrone the son of Tsarevich Alexei - Peter II, and leave Catherine as ruler along with the Senate. Tolstoy and Menshikov were against. Representatives of both "parties" had previously put their signatures on Alexei's death warrant. Opponents were divided by something else - Peter's businessmen fundamentally did not accept the new structure of power. “In the position in which the Russian Empire is, it needs a courageous ruler, experienced in business, capable of supporting the honor and glory surrounding the empire with the strength of his power. ‹…› All the required qualities are combined in the empress: she acquired the art of reigning from her husband, who confided to her the most important secrets; she undeniably proved her heroic courage, her generosity and her love for the people, to whom she delivered endless benefits in general and in particular, never doing harm to anyone, ”Tolstoy persuaded the assembled“ persons ”of the first ranks. These speeches (even if they are not presented with protocol accuracy by the French ambassador Campredon) give an idea of ​​Tolstoy's approach to power: for him, the personality of the autocrat was clearly above any law; while his and Menshikov's opponents argued for the superiority of legal institutions over the "strength of persons."

While the nobles were arguing, A. D. Menshikov and I. I. Buturlin brought guards officers to the palace chambers, who decided the outcome of the debate in favor of Catherine. After the death of Peter I and the accession of his widow, P. A. Tolstoy became one of the members of the Supreme Privy Council and, judging by the reports of diplomats, the most influential adviser to the queen. But soon a conflict broke out between the count and his former associate Menshikov: the most illustrious prince planned to marry the son of Tsarevich Alexei (the future Peter II) proclaimed heir to his daughter Maria, as a result of which he himself could become regent under the minor sovereign.

Apparently, Menshikov did not allow the Secret Chancellery to be turned into a special investigative body for cases of corruption. By personal decree of May 28, 1726, it was abolished; all her property “with deeds and with orders” was to be transferred to the Preobrazhensky order under the jurisdiction of I.F. Romodanovsky, which deprived Tolstoy of an important means of influencing the empress and the right of a personal report. By that time, he had already lost his former influence and complained that the queen did not listen to his advice.

Pyotr Andreevich did not reconcile himself - he spoke in support of the rights to the throne of Peter's daughters, discussed the situation with police chief Anton Devier. But it never came to a real conspiracy. Neither Tolstoy nor Devier had "power" capabilities - and such actions were not in the nature of a brilliant diplomat. Menshikov did not allow the conspiracy to “ripen”: while his opponents exchanged “evil intentions and conversations”, and Tolstoy was waiting for an opportunity for the highest audience, on April 24, 1727, the prince obtained a decree from the terminally ill empress to arrest Devier. “On the temple” (rack) after 25 blows with a whip, Devier called his interlocutors. The investigators went with interrogation to Buturlin and Tolstoy. The old count was lucky - he did not personally get acquainted with the practice of his torture chamber (he was interrogated under house arrest), but nevertheless admitted his intention to crown Catherine's daughters.

The investigation into charges of inciting a "great indignation" was conducted in record time. Menshikov did not leave the dying Ekaterina and finally got a verdict from her in the case. The manifesto about the disclosure of the alleged conspiracy was published only on May 27: already on behalf of Peter II, the criminals were accused of intent against his accession and "our matchmaking with Princess Menshikova."

Tolstoy was sent to prison in Solovki with deprivation of rank and confiscation of property. In the summer of 1728, his son Ivan, exiled with him, died; Peter Andreevich himself did not survive him for long - he died on January 30, 1729, at the age of 84, and was buried near the walls of the monastery's Transfiguration Cathedral. Only 13 years later, in 1742, Empress Elizaveta Petrovna returned part of the confiscated estates to the descendants of Tolstoy, and in 1760, the title of count. Devier and Skornyakov-Pisarev were exiled to Siberia; old man Buturlin was removed from command of the guards regiment back in 1726; now he was deprived of his ranks, awards and sent to live out his century in his Vladimir estate - the village of Krutsy. Ushakov was transferred from the capital to a field regiment; however, Andrei Ivanovich soon returned to revive the Secret Chancellery.

Andrei Ivanovich Ushakov (1670–1747) came from a different environment than his predecessor and boss. An orphan from poor Novgorod nobles (four brothers - one serf) had nothing to do with the court and began his career, like many of his contemporaries, as an ordinary Peter's Guard - in 1704 he became a volunteer soldier of the Preobrazhensky Regiment.

For such guardsmen, the service was the only opportunity to get the rank of chief officer and, in a rare case, a “village” (under Peter I, they were given land indiscriminately), and salary was the main source of livelihood. Often they died like this “at the regiment”, being “in battles and in other military needs without a break”; others retired as 60-year-old soldiers, sometimes without a single serf soul. Courage, diligence and diligence made it possible to accelerate the receipt of ranks; but to make a real career, you needed special abilities. After all, the Petrine Guard was not only an elite military unit, but also a school for military and civil administration personnel: in the first half of the 18th century, 40 percent of senators and 20 percent of presidents and vice-presidents of colleges came out of its ranks. Under Peter, the guardsmen formed new regiments, carried out responsible assignments abroad, collected taxes, were appointed auditors and investigators; sometimes a sergeant or lieutenant was vested with more significant powers than a governor or field marshal.

Ushakov, as it turned out, possessed all the necessary qualities. What he didn’t have to do: participate in the suppression of the uprising of ataman Kondraty Bulavin on the Don, fight against the Swedes and their Polish allies, fight the plague and harvest ship timber in the Baltic states, settle border conflicts in Lithuania, inspect the Ukrainian troops of Hetman Skoropadsky, recruit replenishment in guards among the "courtyards", to take out provisions and army property from Poland. But on the other hand, he went out into the people: in 1709 he already became a captain-lieutenant and adjutant of the tsar; and in 1714 - major of the guard and head of the investigative office. This “Recruitment Account Office”, formed to check the supply of recruits from different provinces, to identify abuses that occurred in this case, also investigated financial violations of other institutions, “concealment of souls” during the census and considered cases of theft of officials under the “third paragraph”. In 1717-1718, Ushakov controlled the construction of ships in St. Petersburg, recruited sailors for them and artisans for the new capital, reporting everything to the tsar himself.

Andrei Ivanovich came to the Secret Chancellery already having considerable experience in conducting all kinds of "search" behind him. Therefore, he took the place of the actual boss in it: he spent more time in the presence of his colleagues and regularly informed Tolstoy about his actions and the results obtained. “My gracious sir Pyotr Andreevich,” Ushakov wrote to Tolstoy in November 1722, “I report about the state of the place here: with the help of the Most High, everything is fine. From Moscow I sent two couriers to Your Excellency with extracts on the Levin case, and they arrived before Your Excellency, I don’t know about that and I seriously doubt whether they are alive; ‹…› in the office there are again no important cases, but there are mediocre ‹…›. Only the Novgorod case is very tricky for me, for Akulina is very ill for a long time‹...›, but it came to pass that it was necessary to look for her, and for use she often has a doctor, and a doctor is incessant. There are currently 22 Kolodnikovs on business.” To this letter Tolstoy replied: “My lord Andrei Ivanovich! Your letter, my sovereign, dated January 20, I received the date of yesterday intact, for which I thank you and for the notice on it and hereby I answer. With your doubts, my lord, in the Novgorod case, I am very much in agreement: and what the priest Ignatius says at death, one can be established on that, and according to his last interrogation and the women, a decree to do what they are worthy of; and that's the end of it."

The following year, Ushakov also sent extracts to Tolstoy, for example, with the following cover letter: “My dear sir Pyotr Andreevich! Before Your Excellency, I propose, at the same time, an extract from the Privy Office on irresolvable cases. And what and about what, this means a register, according to which I demand a resolution on what to repair; And so I remain Your Excellency, Andrey Ushakov, the slave.” In response, Tolstoy sent "my sovereign Andrei Ivanovich" the necessary instructions.

If Ushakov himself left Petersburg, he maintained regular correspondence with his subordinates. In 1722, he wrote from Moscow to secretary Ivan Topilsky: “Mr. secretary of Topilskaya. Sent from the office of secret affairs to the house of Vasily Archakovsky's wife, Irina Afanasyeva, daughter, from her questioning speeches and face-to-face confrontations with Baba Akulina of copies, listening, we determined from the office of secret affairs to release her, Irina, to release her until the decree for registration, for this she, Irina, was asked, against the questioning of Akulinin only in one testimonial, but Irina did not show such evidence and therefore remained in the shown words of this Akulina with Archakovskaya, and write in the list how they will ask her Irina in the future, and put her as a painter immediately. Your servant Andrey Ushakov. The secretary, for his part, just as regularly informed his superiors: “Excellent Mr. Major General and Life Guards Major, my gracious sovereign Andrei Ivanovich! I humbly report to Your Excellency: according to the warrant sent to me this May 22, following the announcement of the chamber-collegium of sergeant major Maxim Perov about the words of Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Golitsin, butler Mikhail Podamukov, I follow what 5 people have now appeared, whom I questioned, and according to those inquiries it is necessary, having found, to ask different ranks of people for 9 more people, and these, sovereign, I will ask, and after asking, giving them face-to-face confrontations, what will seem, from that all making an extract, I will inform your excellency in the future. (This is not about simple “obscene words”, but about some suspicious documents allegedly in the possession of Senator Prince D. M. Golitsyn.)

Ushakov served regularly - he conducted an investigation into the case of Alexei and sat in court over him; became a major general in 1721 and received a decent salary - 1,755 rubles a year. In January 1725, together with Tolstoy and Buturlin, he spoke out in support of Catherine's right to the throne. According to Austrian and Danish diplomats, it was Ushakov who said: “The Guard wants to see Catherine on the throne and ‹…› she is ready to kill anyone who does not approve of this decision.” It was not difficult for him, like many other guards "nominees", to make a choice; rather, even such a problem did not exist for him.

Following Leo Tolstoy (in sketches for an unwritten novel about the post-Petrine era), we can attribute Andrei Ivanovich to a certain type of personality and behavior: “Blind devotion. Sanguine. Far from intrigue. Happy finished. Bring out the master. Rough appearance, dexterity. A native of a poor noble family, he could not imagine a world order other than the autocratic one, and was ready to fulfill any order of his emperor with complete peace of mind and even peculiar humor - in a letter to his head of the Secret Chancellery, Tolstoy, he joked: “We whip rogues with a whip and set them free ".

In those days, he was one of the guards closest to Catherine. On January 27, on the basis of a decree from the Cabinet of Catherine on the immediate allocation of 20 thousand rubles to the guards, they were issued from the “commission of the salt board” into the hands of Major Ushakov. Other payments “for some necessary and secret dachas” followed from there: the major of the guard and the manager of the Secret Chancellery, Ushakov, received the most - 3 thousand rubles; General Buturlin - 1,500 rubles; according to another decree, majors S. A. Saltykov and I. I. Dmitriev-Mamonov were given a thousand rubles each.

Andrei Ivanovich, who distinguished himself during the "election" of the Empress, became a senator, holder of the newly established Order of Alexander Nevsky, and in February 1727 - lieutenant general. But his career almost ended because of the same Menshikov: first, Ushakov lost his place in the abolished Secret Chancellery, then he was removed from the Senate, and in April 1727 he came under investigation in the case of Tolstoy-Davier. The rank was not taken away from him, but he lost the 200 yards he deserved in 1718 and was sent, as already mentioned, from the capital to the field regiments - first to Revel, and then to Yaroslavl.

The disgrace of Menshikov himself did not change anything. The supreme rulers exactly repeated his tactics against possible competitors, and none of those exiled by Menshikov was returned, including the participants in the Tolstoy-Devier "conspiracy" Buturlin, Ushakov and others. Ushakov from the provinces followed the events in the capital, where he had true friends -informants. “In the houses of Your Excellency here, by the grace of Christ, everything is safe,” Ivan Topilsky, a former clerk of the Secret Chancellery, informed him of the news on February 27, 1728. – 33 fathoms of firewood was transported here from the seaside yard ‹…›. From this side I inform: by the mercy of the Lord it is in every possible way fair, and all supplies are cheap. Gentlemen, generals here have assemblies, and when foreigners visit, then a real assembly, and if Russians, then deliberately ball. On the 23rd of this month there was an assembly or a ball at Mr. Korchmin's with rich illumination and considerable interpretation; that Hungarian, they say, there was at the same time. And the last ones who were dancing left at 5 o'clock in the afternoon. And yet Andrei Ivanovich would have served to death in the backyards of the empire, if not for the sudden death of the young Peter II and the “conceit” of the Supreme Privy Council to limit the power of Anna Ioannovna invited to the throne.

On January 19, 1730, the Supreme Privy Council compiled a list of “conditions”, which, among other things, provided for “not to be taken away from the nobility and estate and honor without trial”, which gave at least some guarantee against sudden arrests, secret investigation and exile with confiscation of property. Having announced the "conditions", the "supervisors" offered the Russian gentry to present projects for the future state structure. During that short time (six weeks) of Ann's "thaw", several similar projects appeared; one of them, directed against the monopoly on the power of the Supreme Privy Council (the so-called "Project 364", according to the number of those who put their name under it), was also signed by Lieutenant General Ushakov.

However, it is unlikely that Andrei Ivanovich was interested in the procedures for the formation of elected bodies of power defined in it. Sent “under command” to the Vvedensky Tikhvin Monastery, the daughter of General G. D. Yusupov, Praskovya, considered the very events of the winter of 1730 in which her father participated to be the source of her troubles. “Father my deity with others, and with whom she didn’t speak out,” her maid conveyed Praskovya Yusupova’s speeches, “I didn’t want to see the empress on the throne was autocratic. And General de Ushakov is a sweeper, a matchmaker; he, along with others, wanted to put her, the empress, on the throne, to be autocratic. And my father, as soon as he heard about it, he fell ill and went down to the ground from that.

On February 25, 1730, Ushakov, along with other representatives of the generals and the gentry, filed a petition with Anna with a request "to mercifully accept autocracy such as your glorious and laudable ancestors had," after which the empress "graciously deigned to tear up" inappropriate "conditions" and began to reign autocratically.

Andrei Ivanovich did not fail - during the distribution of awards, he, as one of the main participants in those events, received 500 households from the confiscated possessions of the princes Dolgorukov; became general-general, adjutant general, senator and lieutenant colonel of the guard. His talent was in demand: in 1731, the Privy Chancellery was revived and yesterday's disgraced guardsman headed it. By order of the Empress, on March 31, 1731, the senators notified Ushakov that they had ordered “important cases in the Senate and to send the convicts on those cases to you, Mr. , which, according to the aforementioned decree held on April 10, should be sent to you, Mr. General and Cavalier, ‹ ... › and call it the Office of Secret Investigative Affairs.

Life briefly returned to Preobrazhenskoye. However, already at the beginning of 1732, the empress and the court moved to St. Petersburg; Ushakov’s service also moved there - first as a “camping Secret Office of Secret Affairs”, and then, in August of the same year, already on a permanent basis, leaving its branch in Moscow - an office under the “directorate” of the Moscow commander-in-chief, Adjutant General Count Semyon Andreevich Saltykov. Andrei Ivanovich, with his employees and papers, settled down in the "chambers" of the St. Petersburg Peter and Paul Fortress, "where there was a Secret Office in advance," and the usual work began. At the same time, Ushakov remained a general in the states of the Military Collegium and a senator, and in the reports of the Senate to the Empress, his signature was the first.

Ushakov's unpublished correspondence with the famous chief chamberlain, Duke of Courland Ernst Johann Biron, indicates that they communicated almost on an equal footing. Unlike other correspondents of Anna's favorite, Ushakov himself had access to the empress and did not ask Biron for anything; their letters are short and business-like, without compliments or assurances of mutual devotion.

Andrei Ivanovich, who remained “on the farm” in the capital during the departure of the court, first of all reported to Biron for transfer to the empress in Peterhof about the affairs of his department - for example, about the denunciation of tax-farmers or the exact time of the execution of Artemy Volynsky: “A well-known execution has to be carried out this July 27 afternoon at eight o'clock." Not being able to go to the royal residence in person, he sent secretary Khrushchov for a personal report to Anna Ioannovna on the case of the court “Madame” Yaganna Petrova, which was of interest to her. In addition, Ushakov reported on other news: the choice of cloth for the guards regiments, the burial of the capital commandant Efimov in the Peter and Paul Fortress, or the death of Anna's beloved dog "Tsytrinushka", which followed at 10 am on June 18, 1740.

Biron conveyed the empress’s answers: the denunciation is “nonsense of the townspeople” and has “no importance”, and it is better to postpone the issue with the cloth - the empress is not in the spirit: “It’s not a great need to bother me in the village.” At the same time, other royal orders were sent through Biron to Ushakov for transmission to Princesses Anna and Elizabeth or other persons. In some cases, Andrei Ivanovich showed persistence - he suggested, for example, that he still decide on the purchase of cloth in favor of the English, and not the Prussian goods, of which he managed to convince his correspondent.

The executive "general and cavalier" had to carry out other assignments that were not directly related to the investigation. One day in the summer of 1735, Anna demanded that Ushakov find out “where and why the smoke is coming,” which she noticed from the window of the palace. He found out that on the Vyborg side, 12 versts from the capital, "mosses are burning," because irresponsible mushroom pickers "lay out fires to boil these mushrooms at night," and sent soldiers there to put out the fire. Then the empress ordered that a statement be delivered to her, which took into account the number of ships that had passed the Ladoga Canal since the beginning of navigation; then - to urgently send to military service those already released were to retire with the "abshids" of the palace servants - lackeys, mouthguards, haiduks ...

Andrei Ivanovich survived the notorious "Bironism" without loss and took part in all the high-profile trials of Anna's reign: the princes Dolgorukovs, the former leader of the "supreme leaders" Prince Dmitry Golitsyn, Artemy Volynsky. However, immediately after the death of Anna Ioannovna, Biron - at that time the official and sovereign regent of the Russian Empire under the young emperor John Antonovich - doubted his loyalty, since among those dissatisfied with the elevation of the favorite of the officers was Ushakov's adjutant Ivan Vlasyev. But even the Duke's order to establish control over the actions of the Secret Chancellery - the participation of the Prosecutor General Prince Trubetskoy in the consideration of cases "on obscene and malicious reasoning and interpretation of the current government" - did not help the Duke. Three weeks later, Biron's reign ended with his arrest, which, at the head of a detachment of guardsmen, was made by an even more determined German - Field Marshal Burchard Christopher Munnich. He, in turn, "resigned" in March 1741, the new ruler - the mother of the emperor, Anna Ioannovna's niece Princess Anna Leopoldovna. She also made Ushakov a holder of the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called. But already on November 25, 1741, the regent Anna was overthrown with her son by the Transfiguration soldiers, who brought the daughter of Peter I Elizabeth to the palace (in the literal sense of the word) to the kingdom. A few days later, Ushakov received from her a diamond chain to the St. Andrew's Order. True, during the next redistribution of property (which took place during each palace coup), Ushakov lost the village of Shcherbeeva near Moscow, but he immediately looked after himself for compensation and insistently asked to be happy with his choice either by the synodal patrimony - the village of Ozeretskovsky, or the former possession of the princes Dolgorukov - Lykov-Golenishchev. Elizaveta Petrovna ordered him to be with her “incessantly”: the need for his services was so obvious to her that on December 2, 1741, she canceled the appointment of the chief investigator to the active army and put him at the head of the commission of inquiry on the case of the arrested “partisans” of the former rulers, his own bosses - Munnich and Osterman.

All these large and small palace coups had no effect on the department of Andrei Ivanovich - his staff and the nature of the work did not change. All the same, "obscene words" and thoughts were "followed" and punished against every ruling person and her entourage at that moment.

Andrei Ivanovich, according to the established order, continued to make reports to the sixth "Imperial Majesty" in his lifetime. Now he had to consider the cases of hotheads inspired by the ease of overthrowing the rightful monarch from the throne, sincerely believing that “the empress herself is the same person as I am, only she has the advantage that she reigns.” From the empress, he obtained a special decree that made his service beyond the control of anyone except the empress herself: “1743 November 29 in the Office of Secret Investigation Affairs, General and Cavalier ‹ ...> Ushakov announced that on the 29 day of November, Her Imperial Majesty, talking about affairs The Secret Chancellery, in what importance they are, by the highest of her Imperial Majesty, by an oral decree, most mercifully deigned to indicate: henceforth, from now on, there will be no news and information available in the Secret Chancellery and that office in the office, both to the Cabinet of Her Imperial Majesty, and to the Holy Synod , and to the Governing Senate, and in no place without the name of Her Imperial Majesty, after the signing of Her Imperial Majesty's own hand, do not give a decree.

From now on, neither the Senate, influential in the reign of Elizabeth, nor the Synod had the right to demand information or reports from the Secret Chancellery. The Synodal persons, however, tried to fight - to force the chancellery to recognize the subordination of religious affairs to the church department, to which Ushakov firmly replied: he would "follow" all cases - not only "concerning the first two points", but also entrusted to him "exactly according to a special and to that took place the personal decree of Her Imperial Majesty. With other institutions, the Secret Chancellery did not stand on ceremony, even more so. Ushakov allowed himself, without even entering into relations with the Military Collegium, to demand from the Senate to reprimand the generals for “self-will” (they dared to start a case of some “anonymous libelous letters themselves”) and to point out that “this collegium will continue to be such no less than she did not enter important matters that did not belong to her. Thus, the Secret Chancellery and its chief occupied a special and very influential position in the system of Russian state institutions of the 18th century.

The attempts of other researchers to connect the name of Ushakov with specific court groups, as an opponent of Chancellor A.P. Bestuzhev-Ryumin and a “faithful ally” of the Prosecutor General N.Yu. Trubetskoy, are hardly legitimate. In those years, court “conjectures” became the main political science; the “parties” competing at the throne, including both Russians and Germans, fought with the help of appointing their clients and exposing the actions of opponents, not for one course or another, but for favors. Attempts at meaningful political actions, such as the drafting by Artemy Volynsky and his friends of a project of by no means revolutionary, but bureaucratic reforms to improve the system of government, appeared as a dangerous conspiracy to seize the throne and ended with the public execution of the nobleman and his "confidants".

In the new atmosphere, the very intellectual level of the discussions changed. The enlightened Prosecutor General Trubetskoy testified that his political conversations with Volynsky revolved around one topic: “who is canceled and who is in favor” with the Empress, about Volynsky’s quarrels with other dignitaries, about appointments at court and in the army. Trubetskoy indignantly rejected even the possibility of reading books by himself; in his youth, under Peter, "he saw a lot and read, only about what matters, it is not possible to say that now, after much time has passed."

Ushakov fit into this court world. It is difficult to imagine him translating Ovid's Metamorphoses or admiring an impious picture, which was the sin of his predecessor Pyotr Andreevich Tolstoy. We believe that his political views and spiritual needs did not rise too much above the ideas of the brave guardsmen of that era, whose main "universities" were campaigns and business trips to suppress the rebels and "coercion" of local authorities. But compared with the immoderate father and son Romodanovsky, this was also progress: Ushakov did not rage at the table, but, on the contrary, “in societies he was distinguished by charming manners and had a special gift to find out the mindset of his interlocutors.”

Ushakov's "unsinkability" is explained by professional suitability in the absence of any political ambitions; the ability to maintain "access to the body", while remaining outside of all "parties" and without spoiling relations with anyone. For this, he was once again treated kindly - in 1744 he received the title of Count of the Russian Empire and Adjutant General. Ushakov remained in mercy until his death. In honor and rank, the aged head of the Secret Chancellery General-in-Chief, senator, both Russian orders (Alexander Nevsky and Andrei the First-Called) cavalier, lieutenant colonel of the Semenovsky Guards Regiment, Adjutant General Count Andrei Ivanovich Ushakov died on March 26, 1747. According to legend, before his death, he turned to the portrait of Peter I with the words of "gratitude and reverence." On the last journey, he went "with considerable satisfaction" at the expense of the state; many clerics participated in the funeral procession: Archbishop Theodosius of St. Petersburg, Archbishop Mitrofan of Tver, Bishop Vyatka, three archimandrites and clergy of the capital's churches; according to the soul of the deceased, a contribution to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery followed.

The position of chief investigator of the empire passed to a no less dignitary successor, Count Alexander Ivanovich Shuvalov (1710–1771).

Elizabeth's support at the beginning of her reign was the old servants of her father. However, this generation was already leaving the stage: A. M. Cherkassky, S. A. Saltykov, G. A. Urusov, V. Ya. Novosiltsev, G. P. Chernyshev, N. F. Golovin, V. V. Dolgorukov, A. I. Ushakov, A. B. Kurakin, I. Yu. Trubetskoy, A. I. Rumyantsev. They were replaced by new nobles from among the princess's courtiers - Chancellor Alexei Bestuzhev-Ryumin, her favorites Alexei Razumovsky and Ivan Shuvalov, Mikhail Vorontsov, brothers Peter and Alexander Shuvalov. The eldest of them was distinguished not only by ambition, but also by undoubted leadership abilities; his ideas and projects (the destruction of internal customs, the protectionist foreign trade course, the creation of merchant and noble banks, general land surveying, reform of monetary circulation) determined the domestic policy of Russia in the middle of the 18th century.

His younger brother Alexander remained in the shadow of the elder all the time, but also made a career. After the coup, Elizaveta Petrovna rewarded him by making him a real chamberlain and second lieutenant of her personal guard, the Life Company Company of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, which placed her on the throne. In 1744, Alexander Ivanovich, not possessing military talents and not participating in any wars, became a lieutenant of the life company and a lieutenant general, in 1746, together with his brother Peter, he was elevated to the dignity of a count. Then Alexander Shuvalov became adjutant general and general in chief (in 1751) and received the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called (in 1753).

At this time, the elderly A. I. Ushakov began to visit the service less often. Only in especially important cases did he personally conduct interrogations, but usually he “listened” to the reports of the secretaries of the office, and a worthy successor was sought for him. By decree of the Empress in February 1745, Shuvalov was first entrusted "in common with him, the general (Ushakov. - I. K., E. N.) ‹…› in the presence of being” in the case of one of the main participants in the coup on November 25, 1741, ensign of the life company Yuri Grunshtein, who was presumptuous to the point of obscenity; several more similar instructions followed. On November 20, 1745, Ushakov received the highest order: “We have indicated together with you in the Secret Chancellery for all matters to have our actual chamberlain and cavalier Alexander Shuvalov; why do you have this our decree to announce to Shuvalov, and where it is necessary, for knowledge, to report; and to our general and cavalier Count Ushakov to do this according to our decree. Elizabeth." Andrei Ivanovich in his house church took Shuvalov to the oath and ordered the Senate, the Cabinet and other government places to be notified about this. So Shuvalov, together with the boss, began to sign the sentences and protocols of the Secret Chancellery.

After the death of the “general and gentleman,” Shuvalov took over his post, which he retained until the very end of the reign of his patroness; he also took under his command the Semyonovsky regiment of Ushakov. The mechanism of the detective case had already been worked out by his predecessors, and Shuvalov did not introduce any innovations into it. Just like his former boss, he submitted reports and personally participated in investigations that were of particular interest to the empress: he was in charge of the protection of the deposed ruler Anna Leopoldovna, her “Brunswick family” and imprisoned Emperor John Antonovich; personally interrogated in 1758 the arrested Field Marshal Apraksin, then Chancellor Bestuzhev-Ryumin himself, accused of treason, and suspected of espionage in the Russian army that fought on the fields of the Seven Years' War.

Alexander Ivanovich turned out to be a diligent investigator, but no more. There was no zeal and corrosiveness in him, and no readiness to take on any business, which distinguished Ushakov, who had gone through the harsh Peter's school. Shuvalov did not need to curry favor - he accepted the Secret Chancellery, already being showered with favors by the courtier and general. He attended the investigations less often than his predecessor - he spent more time in the palace "on duty", especially after he was appointed to be with the heir to the throne, Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich and his wife, the future Catherine II.

However, at the same time, he did not shine with secular charm, and his wards were afraid of him. “Alexander Shuvalov, not by himself, but by the position he held, was a thunderstorm for the entire court, city and entire empire: he was the head of the State Inquisition Court, which was then called the Secret Chancellery. His occupations were said to have caused him a kind of convulsive movement, which took place on the whole right side of his face, from the eye to the chin, every time he was excited by joy, anger, fear or dread. It's amazing how this man with such a disgusting grimace was chosen to keep him constantly face to face with a young pregnant woman; if I had a child with such an unfortunate tic, I think that the Empress (Elizabeth. - I. K., E. N.) would be very angry about this; meanwhile, this could happen, since I saw him constantly, always reluctantly and for the most part with a feeling of involuntary disgust caused by his personal qualities, his relatives and his position, which, of course, could not increase the pleasure of his company, ”recalled later, Empress Catherine II was impressed by Shuvalov.

But the count performed his official duties diligently. “Their Imperial Highnesses deigned to wake up. By the grace of God, everything is fine, and after lunch, the sender will be sent to the solar station. Your Imperial Majesty, the most loyal slave Count Alexander Shuvalov, ”he sent similar news about the life of the“ young court ”to the Empress every day. At the same time, he did not forget to remind her of the postponement of paying his 70,000th debt to the treasury or to ask for the addition of the palace parish in Medynsky district to his own metallurgical plants. In addition, he had to sit in the Conference at the highest court (since 1756), the Military Collegium and the Senate (since 1760). Therefore, there was less and less time left for other official cares. Reports, extracts, extracts, interrogatory speeches - all these documents of the Secret Chancellery are made with him less lengthy and more meager in content.

Moreover, Alexander Ivanovich participated in the struggle of the court "parties", which Ushakov did not allow himself. In the last year of the reign of Elizabeth, there were rumors about the possible removal of her nephew Pyotr Fedorovich from the inheritance and the transfer of the crown to his little son Pavel Petrovich, of which the Shuvalov clan was suspected. Later, Catherine herself reported that “several time” before the death of the Empress, Ivan Shuvalov suggested that the tutor of the heir N.I. Panin “change the inheritance” and “make the reign in the name of the Tsarevich”, to which Panin refused.

However, Catherine herself, a few years earlier, discussed with Bestuzhev-Ryumin his plan, according to which, after the death of the empress, she became the “co-ruler” of her husband, and the chancellor became the president of the three “first” colleges and the commander of the guards regiments. At the same time, she arranged a secret meeting with Alexander Shuvalov. His influential brother Peter in August 1756 informed Catherine of his readiness to serve her, and she herself wrote to him about Bestuzhev's "betrayal" and the desire to "throw into your arms."

At that time - in 1756-1757 - these negotiations did not lead to anything; and a few years later, the Elizabethan favorite Ivan Shuvalov, with all his merits, was no longer suitable for an open struggle for power, while his eldest relative, Peter Ivanovich Shuvalov, capable of everything, was already mortally ill. But, according to Catherine, in the last months or even weeks of the life of the Empress, the Shuvalovs nevertheless managed to gain confidence in the heir with the help of the director of the gentry corps A.P. Melgunov. Support from the Shuvalovs - together with the loyalty of Grand Duchess Catherine and the efforts of Pyotr Fedorovich himself to win over the guards officers - provided a way out of another "revolutionary" situation.

However, with the death of P.I. Shuvalov in January 1762, the influence of his clan began to wane. On December 28, 1761, Emperor Peter III, who took the throne, promoted Alexander Ivanovich to field marshal general, granted him two thousand serfs and appointed him a colonel of the Semenovsky regiment - but at the same time abolished the Secret Chancellery, which he led for many years. On February 17, 1762, before the appearance of the tsar's manifesto, the humble count announced to his subordinates that their institution was ordered to "not be" anymore, and on February 19, the last protocol of interrogation was drawn up in the office.

The last time Shuvalov demonstrated court talent was on the day of the coup on June 28, 1762, when, together with M. I. Vorontsov and N. Yu. sit in the Senate. After the accession of Catherine II, he was present at her coronation in Moscow, but his career was already over. In January 1763, Count Shuvalov retired with an award of another two thousand peasant souls.

After the manifesto on the destruction of the Privy Chancellery, adopted on February 23, 1762, a lesser known decree of the Senate was issued that all clerks and officials of the Privy Chancellery "be on the same salary as they now receive", until "the cases have been given and the cash stocks have been considered will"; from now on, all these officials were to be "at the Senate", and in Moscow - "at the Senate office." In the same decree, a special clause was made: “However, from among them, assessor Sheshkovsky, having renamed the same rank as the Senate Secretary, is now really assigned to the expedition that established for this under the Senate.” This was the name of the new actual head of this institution under Catherine II.

The coup that brought Catherine to the throne showed that the “mercy for all good and faithful subjects” declared by the late Peter III in the manifesto on February 21 was somewhat premature, since “intentions against our imperial health, person and honor” turned out to be by no means “vain and always to their own death converting villains."

The guards soldiers and officers, whose hands the coup was carried out, in those days sincerely saw themselves as "king-makers" and looked forward to rewards. Gingerbread, as usual, was not enough for everyone. And then the brave guardsman, who squandered the received handful of rubles, could look with understandable disapproval at the chosen lucky ones. Envy and discontent, together with the apparent ease of making a "revolution", gave rise to a desire to "correct" the situation. This trend was expressed by one of the persons closest to Catherine, Nikita Ivanovich Panin: “For more than thirty years we have been turning in revolutions on the throne, and the more their power spreads among vile people, the bolder, safer and more possible they have become.” In practice, this meant that in the 1760s, Catherine constantly had to deal with attempts - albeit not very dangerous - a new conspiracy. In addition, at this time, the struggle of the court "parties" for control over the foreign policy of the empire and for influence on the empress intensified.

At first, Catherine entrusted the supreme supervision of the political investigation to Prosecutor General A. I. Glebov, a dishonest businessman appointed to this post by Peter III and successfully cheating on his benefactor. The Empress first placed Glebov under the control of N.I. Panin, and then fired him. In February 1764, Prince Alexander Alekseevich Vyazemsky, who was appointed in his place, was ordered by a secret decree in February 1764 to manage secret affairs together with Panin. He remained in this post until his death in 1792; after which these cases were in charge of the new prosecutor general and relative of Potemkin, A.N. Samoilov, and the state secretary of the Empress, V.S.

In two years, the staff of the Secret Expedition was finally formed. On December 10, 1763, by personal decree, the Senate Secretary Sheshkovsky was appointed to be “on some cases entrusted from us under our senator, Privy Councilor Panin, Prosecutor General Glebov” with an annual salary of 800 rubles.

From that time on, Stepan Ivanovich Sheshkovsky (1727–1794) became for 30 years the actual head of the Secret Expedition under several successive aristocratic bosses. Now the leadership of the political investigation of imperial Russia, in a certain sense, "forked", as the very "spirit of the times" has changed.

In the Petrine and post-Petrine era, not only a general or a senator, but also an aristocrat-Rurikovich considered it not only possible, but also a worthy deed to perform the functions of an investigator in a dungeon; only torturing or executing oneself was not accepted - but, perhaps, not for moral reasons, but simply considered “inappropriate”: there were serfs for dirty work. Although Peter's associates, led by the tsar, personally chopped off the heads of archers ...

After one or two generations, Peter's enlightenment bore fruit: such behavior was no longer acceptable for a noble nobleman. The disappearance of “slavish fear” noted by contemporaries indicates that during the calm 1740-1750s, representatives of the noble society grew up, more enlightened and independent than their fathers during the “Bironovshchina” were: studies even allow us to speak of a special “cultural-psychological type » of the Elizabethan era. They were replaced by the peers and younger contemporaries of Catherine II: generals, administrators, diplomats and a whole layer of nobles who knew how to express their patriotic feelings without getting drunk to the point of unconsciousness in the palace and without assuring their inability to read books. Class honor and dignity now no longer allowed their personal participation in interrogations with prejudice and torture procedures.

From now on, the head of the secret police was still a "noble person" who enjoyed the personal trust of the sovereign - for example, A. Kh. Benkendorf under Nicholas I or P. A. Shuvalov under Alexander II. But she did not stoop to routine interrogations and police tricks - except on special occasions and with equals. The "dirty" work was performed not by aristocrats, but by plebeians of the detective - experts in their field, not included in the secular and court circles.

The department itself at this time not only changes its name. The secret expedition "is removed" from the person of the sovereign, ceases to be a continuation of his personal office; it becomes part of the state apparatus - an institution that protects the "honor and health" of any Russian monarch.

In this sense, Panin and Vyazemsky played the role of bosses - as they said in the 18th century, they took the Secret Expedition under their "direction". Sheshkovsky, on the other hand, was very suitable for the role of a trusted and responsible executor, although the attitude towards him was different. The names of the later figures of political investigation are known, at best, to specialists, while Stepan Sheshkovsky already during his lifetime became a legendary, sinister figure; “jokes” were made about him, the authenticity of which is now difficult to verify.

His father, Ivan Sheshkovsky, a descendant of one of the Polish-Lithuanian captives during the wars of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, was a petty court servant, and then, with the beginning of the Petrine reforms, “he became involved in business in different places” as a clerk. In this capacity, he replaced a dozen offices and offices, but for 40 years of impeccable service he received only the lowest, 14th rank of a collegiate registrar and ended his life as a Kolomna police chief. His eldest son Timothy also served there: “he was in different parcels from the office to fix roads and bridges and gates and mileposts on them along the high highways and to detect and eradicate thieves and robbers and unspecified wine huts and taverns in the Kolomensky district.”

The younger offspring continued the family tradition, but he was more fortunate: the eleven-year-old "clerk's son" Stepan Sheshkovsky began his service in 1738 in the Siberian order, and two years later, for some reason, he was temporarily seconded "on business" to the Secret Chancellery. The young copyist liked the new place so much that in 1743 he arbitrarily left for St. Petersburg, and the orderly authorities demanded that the fugitive clerk be returned. Sheshkovsky returned to Moscow - but already as an official, who "by decree of the Senate was taken to the office of secret search cases." In the department of secret investigation, he remained until the end of his life. Perhaps acquaintance with the head of the institution played a role here - in St. Petersburg, the Sheshkovsky family lived "in the house of his Count Excellency Alexander Ivanovich Shuvalov, near the Blue Bridge."

In 1748, he still served as a sub-clerk in Moscow, but soon a capable official was transferred to St. Petersburg. His Moscow boss, an old businessman of Peter's training, Vasily Kazarinov, flattered his subordinate: "he is able to write, and does not get drunk, and be good at business." In February 1754, Shuvalov reported to the Senate that “in the Office of Secret Investigative Affairs there is an archivist Stepan Sheshkovsky, who is impeccable and in a good state and acts honestly and zealously in correcting important cases, which is why he, Sheshkovsky, is worthy to be a recorder.” Three years later, Shuvalov reported to the empress herself about Sheshkovsky’s diligent service, and she “graciously welcomed Stepan Sheshkovsky to the Secret Office of the recorder for his respectable deeds in important matters and exemplary work in the Secret Office as a secretary.”

In 1761, he became a collegiate assessor, that is, he got out of the raznochintsy into hereditary nobles. Secretary Sheshkovsky successfully survived both the temporary liquidation of political investigation under Peter III, and another palace coup that brought Catherine II to the throne. In the 1760s, her position was precarious, and Sheshkovsky's service turned out to be more in demand than ever. He, one way or another, participated in the investigation of the most important cases: Archbishop Arseny Matseevich of Rostov (1763), who protested against the secularization of church lands; lieutenant Vasily Mirovich, who planned to enthrone the imprisoned Emperor John Antonovich (1764), and disgruntled guardsmen. His abilities did not go unnoticed: in 1767 Sheshkovsky became a collegiate adviser and chief secretary - in fact, he led the daily activities of the Secret Expedition.

By that time, he was already well known to Catherine, and in 1774 she considered it possible to involve him in the interrogations of the main political criminals - Emelyan Pugachev and his associates, who were transported to Moscow, as she was sure that he had a special gift - he knew how to talk with simple people. people "and always very successfully dismantled and brought the most difficult trials to accuracy." Sheshkovsky immediately left Petersburg for Moscow. On November 5, 1774, he was already interrogating Pugachev at the Mint "from the beginning of his vile birth with all the circumstances until the hour he was tied up." The interrogations lasted 10 days, and the Moscow commander-in-chief, Prince M.N. Volkonsky, in a report to the empress, paid tribute to the efforts of the investigator: “Sheshkovsky, the most merciful sovereign, writes history of the villains day and night, but could not finish yet.” Catherine expressed concern - she wished "that this matter should be brought to an end as soon as possible"; but the researchers should be grateful to Sheshkovsky - thanks to his efforts (he personally kept the protocol, carefully recording the testimony), we can now get acquainted with the detailed narrative of the leader of the uprising about his life and adventures.

After the end of the investigation, the court sentenced Pugachev to a painful execution; Sheshkovsky, Vyazemsky and Volkonsky announced their verdict on January 9, 1775. The next day, the rebel leader was executed, but the chief investigator continued interrogating other Pugachevites for several more months. At the end of the year, a well-deserved award awaited him - the rank of State Councilor.

Subsequently, he just as zealously fulfilled his duties and enjoyed the confidence of the empress - in 1781 he received the "general" rank of real state councilor; the Prosecutor General A. A. Vyazemsky himself, in a special letter, allowed him in 1783 to get acquainted with all the papers received “in my name” and to make personal reports to the empress on “necessary and dependent on the highest consideration” cases. Sheshkovsky interrogated Radishchev in 1790, in 1791 - the spy and official of the Collegium of Foreign Affairs I. Waltz, in 1792 - the famous publisher and freemason N. I. Novikov. Stepan Ivanovich ended his career as a privy councilor, owner of estates and holder of the Order of St. Vladimir, 2nd degree. In 1794 he retired with a pension of 2,000 rubles.

Already during his lifetime, he became an ominous landmark of St. Petersburg, about which numerous stories were told: as if Sheshkovsky had a special room in the Winter Palace for “work” on the instructions of the Empress herself. It seems that he personally whipped the defendants, and the interrogation of the stubborn prisoner began with a blow to his very chin with such force that he knocked out his teeth. It was said that the room where the massacre was carried out was completely filled with icons, and Sheshkovsky himself, during the execution, read with tenderness an akathist to Jesus or the Mother of God; at the entrance to the room, attention was drawn to a large portrait of Empress Catherine in a gilded frame with the inscription: "This portrait of Majesty is the contribution of her faithful dog Stepan Sheshkovsky."

Many believed that the chief secretary was an omniscient person; that his spies were present everywhere, listening to popular rumor, recording careless speeches. There were rumors that in Sheshkovsky's office there was a chair with a mechanism that locked the person who sat down so that he could not free himself. At a sign from Sheshkovsky, the hatch with the armchair lowered under the floor, and only the head and shoulders of the visitor remained at the top. The performers, who were in the basement, removed the chair, exposed the body and flogged, and could not see who exactly they were punishing. During the execution, Sheshkovsky instilled in the visitor the rules of behavior in society. Then he was put in order and raised with a chair. Everything ended without noise and publicity.

In the same way, several overly talkative ladies from the highest circle allegedly visited Sheshkovsky, including the wife of Major General Kozhina Marya Dmitrievna. According to one of the collectors of "jokes" about the time of Catherine, envying the "case" of one of the favorites of the Empress A. D. Lanskoy, whose family she knew, the general's wife "indiscreetly opened in the city rumor that Pyotr Yakovlevich Mordvinov would end up at court in strength. Guards of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, Major Fyodor Matveyevich Tolstoy (Catherine's favorite reader during her vacation, and whom his wife received rich diamond earrings as a gift), out of envy for Prince Potemkin, who recommended Lansky, who paid him ingratitude, really sought, with the help of others, to nominate Mordvinov. The Lanskys pass it on to their brother, and he to the Empress. They teach guard officers Alexander Alexandrovich Arsenyev and Alexander Petrovich Yermolov to complain about Tolstoy in his bad behavior; although Catherine knew this, she always favored him, and then she changed from a disposition towards Lansky. Tolstoy falls into disfavor. Mordvinov is dismissed from the guard, and Kozhina is exposed to anger. Catherine ordered Sheshkovsky to punish Kozhin for intemperance: “She goes to a public masquerade every Sunday, go yourself, take her from there to the Secret Expedition, punish her lightly and bring her back there with all decency.” A more optimistic version of this story said that some young man, who once experienced the procedure of sitting in an armchair with Sheshkovsky, being invited again, not only did not want to sit in a chair, but taking advantage of the fact that the meeting with the hospitable host took place face to face, seated him in the unit and forced him to go underground, he himself hastily disappeared.

In official documents, such stories, even if they corresponded to the truth, of course, were not reflected. Perhaps much in these stories is exaggerated, something based on rumors and fears; but it is characteristic that such stories did not develop about any of the chiefs of the secret police. All of them paint the appearance of a real professional detective and investigation, who served not for fear, but for conscience, which, apparently, was Stepan Ivanovich Sheshkovsky, who became a legendary person during his lifetime.

The real Sheshkovsky, of course, was a trusted person, but he was directly removed from the figure of an enlightened monarchine-legislator. On cases of particular interest to the empress (for example, during the investigation of N. I. Novikov and the Moscow “Martinists”), he was sometimes invited to the palace for a personal report, like his predecessors. But usually the reports of the Secret Expedition came through the Prosecutor General or the Secretaries of State, who transmitted Catherine's instructions and resolutions to Sheshkovsky. Catherine did not appoint him to the senators. And even more so, he did not appear either at court receptions and festivities, and even more so at the “Hermitage” evenings of the Empress. But, apparently, he did not strive for this, being well aware of his place in the system of Catherine's "legitimate monarchy". The mocking Potemkin, as they said at court, asked the chief secretary at a meeting: “How are you whipping, Stepan Ivanovich?” “Little by little, Your Grace,” answered Sheshkovsky, bowing.

The legendary head of the Secret Expedition died in 1794 and was buried in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra; the inscription on the grave monument read: “Privy Councilor and St. Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir of the 2nd degree Cavalier Stepan Ivanovich Sheshkovsky was buried under this stone. His life was 74 years, 4 months and 22 days. Served the Fatherland for 56 years. Two months after Sheshkovsky's death, Prosecutor General Samoilov notified his widow that "Her Imperial Majesty, remembering the zealous service of her late husband, deigned to extend her highest mercy and most graciously ordered to give her and her children ten thousand rubles for the rest of his family."

With the death of Empress Catherine, great changes took place. The retired Samoilov was replaced as Prosecutor General by Prince Alexei Borisovich Kurakin. After the departure of the Sheshkovsky case of the Secret Expedition, those who found themselves in “disorder” were put in order by his successor, collegiate adviser Alexei Semenovich Makarov (1750–1810). He entered the service in 1759, was a secretary under the Riga Governor-General Yu. Yu. Brown, then served in St. Petersburg under the Prosecutor General Samoilov. Under Paul I, he remained the manager of the Secret Expedition, and in 1800 he became a senator; the established procedures for conducting investigations and punishments did not change under him. Makarov, like his predecessor, rose to the rank of secret adviser, but he was not a fanatic of the investigation and did not leave a terrible memory of himself even in the harsh times of Pavlov's reign.

The future governor of the Caucasus, and in those years a young artillery officer Alexei Yermolov, who was arrested in the case of several officers of the Smolensk garrison accused of conspiracy, was graciously forgiven, and then demanded with a courier to the capital: “In St. Petersburg they brought me directly to the house of the Governor-General Peter Vasilyevich Lopukhin. After being interrogated for a long time in his office, the courier received an order to take me to the head of the Secret Expedition. From there they escorted me to the St. Petersburg fortress and put me in a casemate in the Alekseevsky ravelin. During my two-month stay there, I was once demanded by the Prosecutor General: explanations were taken from me by the head of the Secret Expedition, in which I unexpectedly met Mr. Makarov, a noble and generous man who, serving under Count Samoilov, knew me in my youth and finally his adjutant. He knew about the forgiveness granted to me, but about the capture of me another time, he only found out that, by order of the sovereign, a courier on duty in the palace was sent, and the reason for his absence was shrouded in mystery. I set out my explanations on paper; they were corrected by Makarov, of course not seduced by my style, who was not softened by a sense of rightness, unjust persecution. Yermolov, and many years later, remembered the "unfair persecution", but still considered the investigator a noble and generous person. It fell to Makarov to liquidate the Secret Expedition. In April 1801, he prepared for deposit the archive of his department "in perfect order" - with cases sorted into bundles by year with inventories and "an alphabet about people who were in touch." He took care not only of the papers, but also of his subordinates: he noted their “zeal for service”, which they carried “in uninterrupted non-stopness at all times”, and asked to be awarded ranks and assigned to the desired by each of the officials a new place of work.

Now, perhaps, it's time to get acquainted with the personnel of the detective department, whose modest efforts ensured its continuous work, and thousands of cases were left for historians with the fates of persons “touched” to this institution imprinted in them.

As already mentioned, initially the Secret Chancellery was created as another temporary "search" commission and was formed in a similar way: having received a royal decree, the major of the guards appointed several officers as assistants, recruited clerks in various orders, received money, paper, ink, and proceeded to work. So, according to the decree of Peter I in the spring of 1718, it was “ordered‹…> Tolstoy in the search case (Tsarevich Alexei. - I. K., E. N.) to investigate immediately and report to His Majesty, for which the research was ordered to be the clerk Ivan Sibilev, and the clerk to the old 2, young 6 man ", which were taken for a while from various institutions. For such an important mission, they chose experienced people - clerks T. Palekhin and K. Klishin, renamed on the occasion of moving to St. Petersburg into clerks. Palekhin - Tolstoy and Ushakov addressed him “Mr. clerk - after the end of the investigation he returned to Moscow, where he worked for a long time. According to the staff of 1723, the Secret Chancellery consisted - already permanently - of the secretary Ivan Topilsky; clerks Tikhon Gulyaev, Yegor Rusinov, Ivan Kirilov, Semyon Shurlov; assistant clerks Vitelev and Basov - only seven people, and even the doctor Daniel Volners. In 1719, they were supposed to receive a salary from those institutions from which they were seconded, “for the fact that these clerks were taken to the aforementioned office for a while.” But, as you know, there is nothing more permanent than temporary. So this commission soon turned into one of the most important institutions of the empire with a permanent staff and even its own bureaucratic dynasties. In addition to officials, it included a military team “for guarding the treasury and wells”, which consisted in 1720 of 88 chief and non-commissioned officers and soldiers, and three years later increased by another 50 people.

The main figure in the "presence" after the bosses was the secretary - the ruler of the affairs of the entire office, under whose leadership all current work and office work went on. He received and placed the convicts, interrogated them, but did not torture them on his own - he sent a memorandum about the first interrogation and asked, "from now on, about what to repair." He also constantly reported to the "ministers" on the state of affairs, supervised the preparation of extracts and extracts, and then acted with those under investigation in accordance with the instructions received from the authorities.

The secretary was a non-public figure, but all the work of the institution rested on him. It is no coincidence that these officials were appointed and moved by personal decrees and received high salaries: in 1761, Secretary Sheshkovsky received 500 rubles a year, and Chief Secretary Mikhail Khrushchov - 800. As a rule, people who had extensive experience in relevant work were appointed to this position. Sometimes they had a good career. For example, Ivan Ivanovich Topilsky (1691–1761), having started his service as a clerk of the Discharge Order, ended up in the Recruitment Office of the Senate, and from there - perhaps under the patronage of her boss Ushakov - he moved after him to the Secret Office, where he worked as a secretary. When the institution was temporarily abolished in 1726, an experienced official did not remain idle and received a promotion - he became secretary of the office of the Supreme Privy Council. From there, I. I. Bibikov, president of the Revision Board, begged him to come to him. Then Topilsky was secretary of the Senate, served in the College of Economy and served the nobility, becoming an assessor of the Justice Office. He ended his career as a respected state councilor and head of the Moscow office of the Collegium of Foreign Affairs, until the last days of his life working on putting its rich archive in order.

The subsequent secretaries of the Secret Chancellery did not have such “walks” around the offices. Under Anna Ioannovna, Nikolai Mikhailovich Khrushchev was appointed to this position in 1732. A native of an old but seedy noble family, he began his career as a Petrovsky clerk; he served in the Preobrazhensky Prikaz from 1719 and "for his many works" rose to the rank of collegiate adviser in 1741 with an unusually large salary of a thousand rubles, after which he was transferred to a quieter job in Moscow at the College of Economy. According to genealogical investigations, the venerable official retired with the rank of State Councilor and died at a ripe old age in 1776.

After Khrushchev was transferred from the Secret Chancellery, another old colleague of Ushakov, Tikhon Gulyaev, took his place. He began as a clerk in the Secret Chancellery in 1720, and after its closure ended up in provincial Yaroslavl. Andrey Ivanovich found him there and achieved a transfer to the Moscow branch of the Secret Chancellery under the authority of an equally reliable manager - adviser Vasily Grigorievich Kazarinov. Dyak Kazarinov worked together with Ushakov since 1715 as the secretary of the Recruitment Office, then moved with the boss to the Secret Office, and from May 1723, for more than a quarter of a century, he headed the Moscow Office of the Secret Investigation. In his letters to the "ministers" of the Secret Chancellery in St. Petersburg, Kazarinov reported in detail on the progress of the search, attaching reports and interrogative speeches, and asked for further instructions; the leadership instructed him how to conduct an investigation, what questions to ask which of the convicts. The authorities trusted Kazarinov and even demanded that the bulk of the cases be resolved on the spot; Once Ushakov and Tolstoy reprimanded the old clerk for sending all his affairs and convicts to St. Petersburg, which resulted in "loss of money and turmoil for people."

After the death of Gulyaev, Ushakov submitted to Empress Elizabeth a "report" on the appointment of Ivan Nabokov as secretary, who had served in this department for more than ten years and had gone from under-clerk to registrar. After the highest permission, the new secretary took the vacant position, but then was transferred to Moscow. In 1757, the recorder S. I. Sheshkovsky received this position “for his kind and decent deeds and diligent work in important matters”; at the same time, Vasily Prokofiev, who had risen from the under-clerks, was secretary. In the Secret Expedition under Sheshkovsky, the place of secretary was occupied by Ilya Zryakhov, Andrei Yeremeev, court councilor Sergei Fedorov (who died right at his workplace in 1780), and after him, until the liquidation of the Secret Expedition, collegiate adviser Pyotr Molchanov.

In the Moscow branch of the Secret Chancellery, since 1732, Stepan Patokin served as secretary. Since 1738, the secretary was increasingly sick, but his superiors appreciated him and in 1741 granted him the title of chief secretary with a salary of 600 rubles, giving two assistants - T. Gulyaev and I. Nabokov.

Then the secretary was Alexei Vasiliev - also a native of the former clerks of the same office; in 1749, after his “abdication” from office, Mikhail Nikitich Khrushchov was appointed in his place - most likely a cousin of the above-mentioned Nikolai Khrushchev. He began his career as a copyist in the Moscow office; in 1732 he was transferred to St. Petersburg, where he first became a sub-chancellor, then a clerk, by 1743 he became a recorder, and then a secretary of the Secret Chancellery. Following Nabokov, M. Khrushchev ended up in Moscow - such a rotation of personnel between the capitals was common.

During the census of officials in 1754, the chief secretary and collegiate adviser Mikhail Khrushchov, who at that time headed the Moscow office of the Secret Chancellery, spoke about his career. “In the service of a finder, and since 727 in the Serpukhov voivodship office at the judicial and search affairs as a copyist, and since the last 732 in the Secret Office for secret affairs. And besides the Privy Office, especially in other self-necessary and important commissions, there was. And according to the definitions of the Secret Chancellery, he was promoted in the past year 739 as a sub-clerk, in the 741st - as an clerk, in the 743rd year of September 6th - as a protocol clerk. Yes, according to the highest personal names of Her Imperial Majesty, by decree he was granted in August 29, 749, 29, and on February 13, 754, the chief secretary. And he, Khrushchov, is four and ten years old. He, Khrushchov, has no male sex children. His homeland is in the Taruska district. And the male half of the souls of people and peasants has behind him not in the section with his brother Evo, the Main Police Secretary Fyodor Khrushchev - thirty-three souls, ”the census official wrote from his words.

Mikhail Nikitich, obviously, was a God-fearing person - either by nature, or his work suggested appropriate thoughts. When, at the end of 1758, the chief secretary fell seriously ill, he “made an indispensable intention to go to Rostov to the relics of St. Demetrius of the Rostov Prayer,” for which he asked Shuvalov for leave “with a trip of ten days.” However, he was able to go on a pilgrimage only "through the spring air" in May 1759 - again with the special permission of the authorities and on the condition - service is service - that the recorder Poplavsky would replace him in all cases.

Prayers and doctors helped: Khrushchev recovered, "immaculately" performed his duties until the end of the Elizabethan reign, and then, together with his colleagues, went on to the Secret Expedition. According to her documents, he died in the line of duty in her Moscow office on May 30, 1771, after forty years of service, which was reported to Prosecutor General A. A. Vyazemsky with regret by the Moscow commander-in-chief, Count P. S. Saltykov.

Under Catherine II, the Moscow branch was headed by one of its oldest employees, Alexei Mikhailovich Cheredin. His father, assistant clerk Mikhail Cheredin, brought him to the office. In November 1757, Cheredin-son filed an application for admission to the service, in which he said that "he was trained in Russian to read and write, but he has not yet been determined to do business and wants to be in business in the Secret Office." The young clerk was accepted as a copyist with an annual salary of 25 rubles, and the authorities noted in their resolution that he was “able to do business,” and they were not mistaken - the budding official was already promoted in 1759. After the abolition of the Secret Office in 1762, the younger Cheredin was transferred to the Secret Expedition. Here he also served successfully and again attracted the attention of his superiors: in 1774 he was sent to Kazan to work on the commission that conducted the investigation into the Pugachev case, where he served as a collegiate secretary. In 1781, “on the excellent recommendation” of the Moscow commander-in-chief, Prince V. M. Dolgorukov, A. Cheredin was assigned to a secretarial position with the rank of collegiate assessor, in 1793 he was granted a collegiate councilor, and in 1799, by personal decree, he was promoted to state councilor with salary of 1200 rubles. In the eyes of the young nobles of the late 18th century, this “great faster, who always read the apostle in church, and at home the Lenten Triodion and the Fourth Minion,” was already some kind of fossil from another, ancient era - but at the same time, the inexorable guardian of the “rite” of his sinister departments, the prospect of getting into which - not even as an accused - frightened far from timid people.

“For half an hour or more we knocked on the iron gate; finally, inside the gate, the voice of the guard asked: “Who is knocking?” - the young officer Alexander Turgenev recalled his visit to the Moscow office of the Secret Expedition. - I answered the guardsman: “Report to his Excellency: the adjutant of Field Marshal Turgenev was sent at the personal command of His Imperial Majesty.” Aleksey Cheredin, who appeared at the knock with the guards, “importantly ordered:“ Guards, get down to business! He asked the courier in an undertone: “Who are they?” The courier answered: “We don’t know, your pr-in.” “I understand, sir, I understand,” said Cheredin, and turning to me: “The matter is subject to the deepest secrecy and investigation!”

I was silent; he ordered the guards to lead the prisoners in front of him to the waiting room, he said to me and the couriers: “I ask you to go up with me,” that is, to the same waiting room. The convicts went up the steep staircase, under a canopy of vaults, followed by Cheredin, myself, and the courier into the reception hall. He examined the prisoners, counted them and asked the courier: "Are all the prisoners present?" The couriers answered: “There must be everyone, we were handed over tied wagons, they told us to take the prisoners to Moscow as soon as possible, without saying how many of them, or who they were; Your Excellency, if you please know, we are forbidden to speak with the prisoners, it is strictly forbidden to question them about anything, not to allow anyone to approach them! We ourselves now just, as you deigned to order to pull them out of the tents, saw the prisoners!

Cheredin, after a silence for about three minutes, uttered the words with a sigh: “Substantial negligence! How not to attach a memorial about the number of prisoners! I don’t need them before their rank, but the bill, how much has been sent, is necessary. ”

Turning to me, he said: “In the presence of you, Mr. Adjutant, and those who delivered the prisoners, a protocol should be drawn up about the incident,” and ordered the guard: “The secretary here!”

I and the courier, having entered the wide courtyard of the Trinity Compound, were like siskins in a trap; the iron gates behind us whinnied again at the same moment, the bolts were barred and closed with large padlocks. We, that is, I, courier, coachmen, could disappear, go missing in this cavern of hell! Cheredin was subordinate to no one, he owed responsibility to no one, except for the top authorities of the Secret Chancellery, and where and in whom this authorities were concentrated, no one except Cheredin knew about this. His Excellency submitted to the field marshal a weekly report on the number of prisoners, indicating neither their rank nor what class they belonged to; he himself did not know about many who were kept under constipation in a gloomy, cramped prison! The dog in the kanura lived incomparably happier: the light of God was not taken away from it.

After examining and searching the "guests" stripped naked, the pedantic Cheredin demanded that the couriers sign the "list" for the acceptance of the prisoners; having released the servicemen, he categorically refused to release the author of the notes. Seeing the surprise and fear of the brave officer, he solemnly declared that he should be an eyewitness: “Yes, it is said: punish mercilessly, who will be the witness that they were really mercilessly punished?

“What do I care about punishment?”

Cheredin objected to me: “Young man, do not be stubborn, in our monastery even the Field Marshal General will not dare to change our charter, and we will not listen to his orders; do not be stubborn, do what you are told; I’ll file a report, then it will be too late, but if you want it, you don’t want it, you will be during the execution, you won’t escape from here!

The Moscow military governor, Field Marshal I.P. Saltykov, recommended the honored official to Prosecutor General A.A. Bekleshov in a letter on April 22, 1801: service, success in business and his excellent behavior absolutely deserves respect, and therefore I entrust him to the special mercy of Your Excellency. Saltykov reported to the Prosecutor General the request of the old secretary: "because of the weakness he felt in health" to dismiss him from the service and ask for "highly royal mercy" - to keep until his death a pension in the amount of the salary he received on the Secret Expedition. Emperor Alexander I granted the petition and appointed a pension.

The chief secretary of the Secret Office in Moscow was remembered for a long time. In the 80s of the 19th century, reporter V. A. Gilyarovsky recorded the story of an old-time official: “I have been living here for forty years and found people who remembered both Sheshkovsky and his assistants - Cheredin, Agapych and others who even knew Vanka Kain himself . He remembered better than others and told me the horrors of the son of the senior watchman of that time, who lived here in those days as a teenager, then our official. Under him, the torture was less frequent. And as soon as Paul I reigned, he ordered the release from these prisons of the Secret Expedition of all those who had been imprisoned by Catherine II and her predecessors. When they were taken out into the yard, they did not even look like people; who screams, who rages, who falls dead. ‹…› In the yard the chains were removed from them and some were taken somewhere, mostly to a lunatic asylum. ‹…› Then, already under Alexander I, they broke the rack, the torture machines, cleaned the prisons. Cheredin was still in charge of everything. He lived here, still with me. He told how Pugachev was tortured in his presence - my father still remembered that.

Cheredin was awarded not in vain: for 44 years of service in a responsible position, he was never on vacation. However, until the end of the century there were no vacations in the modern sense - this was the name of a temporary absence for personal reasons without saving maintenance. For example, in 1720, P. A. Tolstoy personally allowed the assistant clerk Tikhon Gulyaev to take a vacation only at his “boring request” so that he could bring his wife from Kazan. Secretary Nikolai Khrushchev, in 1740, after ten years of service, was given leave for the first time in order to settle the matter with the inheritance after the death of his uncle. But another secretary, Alexei Vasiliev, had to wait a whole year until the authorities deigned to let him go for trials about the fugitive peasants. And the executioner Fyodor Pushnikov in 1743 was released to Moscow for medical treatment only after another “shoulder master” arrived from there to replace him - Matvey Krylov.

After the secretaries, the clerks were in second place in the service hierarchy. Since this position was outside the Table of Ranks, by the Senate decree of 1737, it was equated with the military rank of sergeant. Each of the clerks was in charge of his "howling", that is, a separate office work. Usually one of them was appointed "to be at the parish and at the expense" - to manage the monetary affairs of the office.

Below were the under-clerks (by the same decree they were equated with corporals), who made up all business papers, and copyists. According to the General Regulations of 1720, “copyists must write everything that is sent to the office in white; for this sake, good and serviceable scribes are chosen to be, that is, it was desirable for them to have good handwriting. However, according to existing documents, it is difficult to single out the specific scope of duties of a particular clerk or the principle of division of duties between them.

Usually, orders for "secret" service were not taken from the street. The 1737 census of officials showed that the employees of the Secret Chancellery were recruited from the old clerks of the Preobrazhensky Prikaz: not only the secretaries N. Khrushchev and T. Gulyaev began their service there under Peter I, but also the clerks Mikhail Kononov and Fyodor Mitrofanov, the sub-clerks Ivan Strelnikov, Vasily Prokofiev, Ivan Nabokov, Mikhail Poplavsky. In the future, if necessary, the staff was looked for in other institutions - the Chief Police Office, colleges, customs; Ushakov, using his official position, sought the transfer of intelligent officials to his department. However, it happened that other nimble clerks themselves filed applications for enrollment in the service of the Secret Chancellery. This was done in 1739 by Aleksey Yemelyanov, a sub-clerk of the Kashira voivodship office, and was accepted, was in good standing, and even released for 10 days to look for his fugitive peasants from the Novgorod village.

In the time of Anna Ioannovna, each of the employees, upon enrollment, signed a non-disclosure of state secrets: “Under pain of death, that he, being in the Secret Chancellery at work, kept himself in all firmness and order and about the affairs in the Secret Chancellery, and specifically, in what matter they are composed, and he didn’t only talk about anything decent with anyone, but under no circumstances would he ever mention it, and would keep it all in the highest secret, ”and a promise to serve disinterestedly:“ No matter what kind of bribes, under any guise, he did not touch. Under Catherine II, these obligations were supplemented by the requirement that the candidate for the position “also not give any extracts or copies of cases, with definitions and in one word, for anything for nothing, nor verbally retold anything” .

The service was not for everyone. Some young officials, such as Mikhail Khrushchov and Ivan Nabokov, mentioned above, were promoted relatively quickly "for a lot of ordered work" in their positions and ranks. From simple copyists, they became a clerical "white bone". So, in ten years, Khrushchev went through all the steps of the order ladder and was appointed recorder of the office with a salary "against collegiate recorders, and nominally 250 rubles a year." The next was a secretarial position, and a successful official developed a dandy, with curlicues, painting "Secretary (then" chief secretary ") Mikhail Khrushchev."

Nabokov also served successfully, but became ill. Count A. I. Shuvalov himself from St. Petersburg consoled his subordinate with a personal letter dated November 8, 1753: “It is not unknown to me that you are in an illness, from which you cannot fasten sentences or vacations in cases of a secret office.” Shuvalov graciously allowed the secretary to get sick and transfer his functions to the protocol clerk Poplavsky, but ordered: "As soon as you are able to strengthen, you have a finder in the position." True, the resolution was late - the secretary died. The father's work was successfully continued by the son, but after 15 years of "immaculate" service, the same opportunity happened to him. Sub-clerk Andrei Nabokov in 1757 asked "because of the headaches and other diseases that I have, from which I am very weak in my health, and due to the severity of that office of affairs, I am no longer able to", make him a collegiate registrar and release him to serve in Yamskaya office, less "strict" and unhealthy.

Not without pride characterized his detective work in the track record compiled during the census of officials in 1754, veteran clerk Nikita Nikonovich Yarov (Yaroy). He began serving in 1716 as a 15-year-old clerk of the Preobrazhensky Prikaz, survived its abolition in 1729, and was again accepted by Ushakov, on his general's "representation", as a subclerk of the Moscow office of the Secret Chancellery. He turned out to be an intelligent worker and often traveled “on secret matters of the guard under the chief officers” - he visited both Ukraine and Siberian Berezov (the disgraced Dolgorukov family was in exile there); “And he corrected those cases with zeal and zeal, respectfully, as is known in the Secret Chancellery.” Upon his return from Siberia, “for the considerable work incurred in distant sendings and secret affairs,” he was promoted to clerk, and in 1744, for “immaculate” service, to recorder. In subsequent years, Yarov worked just as zealously: he went on secret assignments to the provinces, in 1749 he was sent "on some secret business" to Voronezh at the head of his own "team". However, he never rose to the rank of secretary in the office, although in 1745-1746 he “ruled the secretary position”. In his declining years, having 37 years of experience, Yarov received the rank of collegiate secretary and a place in the Siberian order; but he sent his son Ivan to serve in his native Secret Office and learned with satisfaction that the offspring had already become a sub-clerk.

Other ordinary servants of political investigation, who did not show any abilities or acumen, performed their duties for years without a raise or salary increase - and in the end asked for dismissal or transfer to other institutions, as Stepan, who was “hardened in the clerkship” and lost hope for further advancement, did. Ivanov in 1743. They were released on condition that they signed a non-disclosure agreement “under no circumstances” about their previous work.

It happened that officials were unsuitable for a specific service. Under-clerk Andrei Khodov was transferred to another job “because of weakness” - perhaps he turned out to be overly sensitive; his colleague Fyodor Mitrofanov was dismissed "due to illness", and the copyist Vasily Turitsyn was seen "in festivities and idleness." However, it must be said that there are few such cases - apparently, the selection for the Secret Chancellery was thorough.

In the census of 1737, there are often characteristics of officials from other institutions: “he writes very quietly and badly”; “he is very incapable in business, for which he was punished”; "old, weak and drunkard"; “in clerical matters, he has knowledge and art, only he gets drunk”; “He always absented himself from the affairs entrusted to him and drank, from which he did not refrain, although he was given enough time for this,” etc. The last “illness” was something like a professional ailment of clerks with the usual “medicine” in the form of batogs. Particularly distinguished by immoderation in drunkenness were the clerks of the St. Petersburg Voivodship Office, where in 1737 17 officials went on trial for bribes and embezzlement. From these service characteristics it follows that two out of five clerks, both sub-clerks and 13 out of 17 copyists “exercised” immoderate drinking. Therefore, the head of the entire police force of the empire was forced to ask the Cabinet of Ministers to send at least 15 sober clerks to him in the Chief Police Office, since those available “because of drunkenness and lack of diligence are very faulty.”

Such bastards were not taken to the Secret Chancellery. It seems that the only outrageous person for the entire time of its existence was the copyist Fyodor Tumanov, who distinguished himself in 1757 not only by “not attending” the service, but by the fact that he was sent after him “in the quarter to take him to the office of the soldier beat”; brought by force "to office" and put in shackles - "breaking those glands, he ran repeatedly." The traditional admonition by the batogs did not help: it turned out that the violent copyist “has no fear in himself ‹…> and does not feel the punishment inflicted on him for his insolence”; for such immunity, he ended up in the soldiers.

The rest understood in what place they served, and did not show such “fearlessness”. Copyist Ivan Andreev in 1735 happened to be guilty in his youth: he met a friend from his former service, bought wine ... not to catch the eye of the kindest Andrey Ivanovich Ushakov. But it was all in vain - after three months, colleagues "figured out" an unlucky copyist, who immediately confessed to everything. However, the clerical chiefs did not scatter personnel, even if they had certain vices. The same Ivan Andreev was brought to reason with whips, fined a third of his salary, but recognized as "capable of doing business"; he, like the reveler Turitsyn, was left in the service, since there was no one to replace them - suitable employees have not yet been found. But when Andreev again went on a spree - now for a week - in August 1737, he was ruthlessly expelled from the Secret Office "to other matters." The assistant clerk Pyotr Serebryakov was also fired - although he was a non-drinker, he “went very lazily” to business.

The detective department made high demands on the executioners who were on its staff. As can be judged from the internal documents of the office, the most experienced professionals from other institutions were usually transferred here - in contrast to the province, where real labor dynasties sometimes took shape. For example, in the provincial town of Alatyr, representatives of several generations of the same family served as shoulder masters for a century, which was reflected in the documents of the first census-“revision” in 1724.

The executioner's craft was not easy. Vasily Nekrasov, who worked in the Secret Office, during a business trip to Kyiv on the way back, “due to extreme frosts, his left leg shivered, and the toes of that leg fell away,” besides, “he was blind with his eyes and sees little.” For health reasons, he was forced to ask for dismissal "for his livelihood." Mikhailo Mikhailov, who replaced him, after several years of service, fell ill with consumption, which was stated by the doctor Kondraty Julius. New personnel had to be sought in the then criminal investigation department - the Detective Order. From there, the Secret Office demanded another "shoulder master"; they accepted him into the service with a written commitment, "so that he lives constantly, and does not drink, and does not know the thieves' people, and does not eat anything, and without the permission of the cantor to Moscow and does not go anywhere far away."

In the Secret Chancellery, more strictly than in other institutions, they controlled not only discipline, but also "cleanliness of hands." The secretary of the Moscow office, Alexei Vasiliev, for example, was even arrested “on some suspicion” - in 1746, the captain of the Ryazan infantry regiment Nikolai Sokolnikov accused him, the clerk Fyodor Afanasyev and the under-clerk Mikhail Cheredin of bribery. Sokolnikov, being arrested (as he believed, unreasonably) in the criminal case of the murder of a courtyard man, fleet captain Gavrila Lopukhin, toiled along with other convicts of the Justice College, until, “not enduring” the conclusion, he declared “word and deed” only then, to be able to explain the fallacy of his arrest. But instead of the expected freedom, he ended up in an even stricter prison in another department. Here the captain realized the mistake and, through friends and relatives, began to look for ways to alleviate his plight. The inmate's mother, Elena Sokolnikova, and his friend Avram Klementiev, a horse guard reytar, intervened in the case. The latter informed the prisoner in a letter (attached to the file) that “the secretary Alexei Fedorovich Vasiliev had asked about you, so that where you should be sent, and he told me to give it something.”

As a result, the matter was coordinated; but the offended Sokolnikov filed a petition with the Senate, in which, with accounting accuracy, he spoke about the “price” of release: according to him, Vasilyev received 20 rubles from him, from Klementyev - a bucket of wine, a “set” (roll) of damask and three rubles and from his mother - another "set" of damask, fox fur and "quarter pewter". According to him, considerable offerings were also made to the clerk Fyodor Afanasyev (45 rubles, two buckets of wine, eight arshins of atlas) and the sub-clerk Mikhail Cheredin (25 rubles). It can be seen from the case that Muscovites - both inmates and investigators - were united by a network of family and friendly ties, and it was not so difficult to achieve relief for a moderate bribe - but only in cases of "unimportant" and not related to sinister "points".

In this case, all those who had been agreed upon were “dismissed from business” and taken under investigation. But it did not lead to any revelations - Afanasiev and Cheredin tightly “locked themselves”: they “did not take anything from anyone”. Sokolnikov blamed them, allegedly exclusively "for malice", since they did not allow the prisoner to go home and did not allow him to "leak". On the other hand, the final extract said that the complainant had already stated a false “word and deed” and, moreover, lied in the petition that he had been in custody for a year and eight months, although in reality he had spent only six months in the Secret Office, and therefore he “cannot be trusted ". For some reason, there is no evidence in the case. In the end, the clerks were found to be honest; only the secretary Vasiliev suffered - in 1749 he was “deprived” of service completely, although with an “increase in rank”.

Ushakov not only controlled, but also protected his subordinates. In 1744, in a personal letter, he reprimanded the secretary of the Moscow office, Ivan Nabokov, for daring to send the clerk Alexei Yemelyanov to Novgorod on the basis of a lawsuit filed by some provincial clerk. According to Andrei Ivanovich, Yemelyanov was “not guilty” - not to consider such a “battle” and other insults that the provincial clerk complained about.

The stationery papers at our disposal “by personnel” indicate that in the first half of the 18th century, employees of political investigation, with rare exceptions, not only did not seek to change jobs, despite the severity of their “secret” service, but also brought themselves to change of children and younger relatives. It can be assumed that the decisive role in this was played not so much by money (not that very large), as by the prestige and status of the guardians of the sovereign's life and honor. In the documents of the office, we did not find information about the identified cases of corruption of its personnel; cases on accusations of officials of taking bribes from the convicts were sometimes started, but internal investigations did not confirm such facts, although other offenses (absenteeism, “indiscretion”) were punished.

The staff of the clerks of the Secret Chancellery changed little over the course of a century. According to the data of 1737, in addition to Ushakov himself, the secretary Nikolai Khrushchov, two clerks (Mikhail Kononov and Fyodor Mitrofanov), five sub-clerks (Vasily Prokofiev, Ivan Nabokov, Mikhail Poplavsky, Stepan Ivanov and Ivan Strelnikov) and six copyists (Mikhail Khrushchev, Yakov Yeltsin, Grigory Eliseev, Andrey Khodov, Vasily Turitsyn and Ivan Andreev) - a total of 14 "order servants", ten of whom have worked since its re-creation in 1731, and seven, as already mentioned, began serving in Preobrazhensky order.

In addition to them, the executioner Fyodor Pushnikov was on the staff - he was demanded to St. Petersburg from Moscow in 1734 after the "regular" executioner Maxim Okunev broke his leg when he fought with the professor of the St. Petersburg garrison regiment Naum Lepestov - you can imagine how exciting it was a competition of two whip-fighters! After an unsuccessful duel, Okunev was treated for a long time and, upon recovery, was not fired, but “for a lot of being at the Secret Chancellery” was sent to the Moscow office. The indispensable doctor should also be included among the staff - this humane duty was performed in 1734 by Martin Lindwurm, and after that by Prokofy Serebryakov, until his death in 1747.

In 1741, the secretary-assessor Nikolai Khrushchov served in the Secret Chancellery; four clerks - Ivan Nabokov, Yakov Yeltsin, Semyon Gostev and Mikhail Poplavsky; five sub-clerks - Mikhail Khrushchov, Ivan Strelnikov, Vasily Prokofiev, Stepan Ivanov, Alexei Yemelyanov; three copyists and one "shoulder master" - a total of 14 people.

After more than 20 years, in 1761, the staff was reduced to 11 people; the list of positions included a recorder (Matvey Zotov, who came to the service in 1738 as a copyist), a registrar (Ilya Emelyanov) and a doctor Christopher Genner. Vasily Prokofiev rose to the rank of assessor in 20 years and retired, while his colleague Mikhail Poplavsky grew only to the level of a recorder - and then not in St. Petersburg, but in the Moscow office. The executioner Pushnikov was replaced by another master of the whip - Vasily the Moguchy; he served until the liquidation of the Secret Chancellery in 1762 and was transferred with a commendable certification to work in the St. Petersburg Provincial Chancellery.

The Moscow office of the Secret Office, and then the Secret Expedition, had approximately the same structure: in 1732, the secretary Stepan Patokin, the clerks Semyon Gostev, Andrey Telyatev and Fedor Efremov worked in it; under-clerk Andrey Lukin, Nikita Yaroy and Ivan Anfimov; copyists Semyon Chicherin, Fedor Afanasiev, Ivan Nemtsov, Petr Shurlov, Alexei Vasiliev, Osip Tatarinov and Samson Dmitriev. There were also three watchmen and a “shoulder master” in the state - a total of 18 people. In 1756, it had a little more employees - 16 "order people", and new positions appeared: two actuaries (in the rank of collegiate registrar - 14th class according to the Table of Ranks) and a recorder (usually in the rank of 13th class - provincial secretary The first, according to the General Regulations, were engaged in the registration of incoming and outgoing documentation and provided employees with paper, pens, ink, candles and similar items necessary for clerical work. The second position provided - in addition, of course, keeping minutes of meetings - drawing up a list of unresolved and resolved cases.

Formally, the local commander-in-chief supervised the work of the Moscow branch; directly at the head of it was the secretary (in the second half of the 18th century - the chief secretary), in whose hands all office work was concentrated.

The fate of far from all officials of the detective department can be traced from the surviving documents. But, for example, in 1750, Ilya Zinovievich Zryakhov, a young raznochinets “from officer’s children”, began his service as a copyist (either his father was a personal nobleman - without the right to transfer the nobility by inheritance, or he was born even before the parent received hereditary nobility). By 1761, Zryakhov was listed as a subclerk, and ten years later he became a secretary, and was personally known to Empress Catherine II. It was he who she recommended in 1774 to General P. S. Potemkin, who was conducting an investigation of the participants in the Pugachev uprising, “as he was very accustomed to these things, and then under my eyes for many years.” Zryakhov served for a long time and in 1794, at the suggestion of the same Potemkin (the general appreciated an intelligent official), he received the “colonel” rank of collegiate adviser and was appointed chairman of the chamber of the civil court of the Caucasian viceroy. In his service record it is noted: “Although he was not in campaigns and in the case against the enemy, however, according to the highest will of her imperial majesty, he was in many commissions and parcels known to her imperial majesty, which amounted to crossings up to 30,000 miles.”

So, we see that after a short break in 1726-1731, the activity of the political investigation bodies successfully recovered. The personnel structure has gained stability and continuity. The old Petrine servants became the main support and bearers of the traditions of this institution and passed on the experience to their students, who became younger relatives - the Khrushchevs, Cheredins, Nabokovs, Shurlovs, Kononovs, Yarovs. The officials of the new generation were also well-trained, differed "in diligence and accurate performance of the tasks assigned to them" and were in the service "in uninterrupted non-stopness at all times." A rare black sheep for "drunkenness and failure to attend office" was immediately expelled, like the clerk Dmitry Voilokov in 1768.

The staff of the Secret Expedition did not fundamentally change even at the beginning of the 19th century. Under A. S. Makarov, it consisted of nine class officials: collegiate adviser Pyotr Molchanov, court adviser Anton Shchekotikhin, collegiate assessor Alexander Papin, collegiate assessor Pavel Iglin, secretary of the 8th grade Fyodor Lvov, collegiate secretary Pavel Bogolepov, secretary of the 9th class Ivan Alexandrov, titular adviser Mikhail Fedorov and the staff doctor court adviser Gass. Documents on the liquidation of the Secret Expedition are not named other "order servants" - but they indicate that it was in charge of the guard in the Alekseevsky ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress (non-commissioned I. Stepanov and 26 ordinary veterans of the Lithuanian regiment) and in Shlisselburg (two non-commissioned officers and 69 privates). At the same time, only the head of the Secret Expedition and sometimes the secretary were mentioned in the official directory-index of all officials of the Russian Empire (“Address-calendar”), the names of other officials appeared there only if they transferred to another institution. However, at that time there were no detective "dynasties" in the service.

The well-known German writer August Kotzebue (1761–1819), a graduate of the University of Jena, in his youth worked in Russia as a secretary with the Prussian envoy, then as an assessor of the Court of Appeal in Reval, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and in 1795 served for border. To his misfortune, he decided to visit the children who remained in Russia. But during the stormy reign of Paul I, he was considered a dangerous political agitator, as a result of which, on the border of the Russian Empire, the unsuspecting writer was met in April 1800 by an official with an imperial order to be sent to live in Tobolsk. Kotzebue captured on the pages of his memoirs the appearance of one of the employees of the Secret Expedition: “The court adviser Shchekotikhin was about forty years old, had dark brown, almost black hair and a face reminiscent of a satyr; when he wanted to give his physiognomy a friendly expression, two oblong wrinkles crossed his face to the very corner of his eyes and gave him an expression of contempt; the coolness of his manners meant that he had been in the military before, and some deviations from the rules of decency showed that he had never attended good society and had not received a proper education - for example, he very rarely used a handkerchief, drank straight from a bottle, although in front of him stood a glass, etc.; with the grossest ignorance, he combined in himself all the outward signs of great piety; he was so ignorant of literature that the names of Homer, Cicero, Voltaire, Shakespeare, Kant were completely alien to him; he did not show the slightest desire to learn anything, but on the other hand he knew how, with extraordinary dexterity, to overshadow his forehead and chest with the sign of the cross whenever he woke up, whenever he noticed a church, a bell tower or any image from a distance.

As for Kant and Homer, the German writer sent to Siberia for no reason, perhaps, quipped in vain - the members of the Secret Expedition did not need such knowledge. But they knew their business very well. For example, the same Shchekotikhin (he began his service in the detective as an ensign of the guard, but moved forward in a few years) could stay awake for days, during delays at post stations he spewed a “stream of indecent words” and famously beat insufficiently agile coachmen. On the way, he showed “dexterity and ingenuity”: he quickly organized the search for Kotzebue who was trying to escape, stopped all his attempts to keep notes or send a letter from the road, at the same time not embarrassed to eat the supervised’s provisions, wear his boots and use other things. However, he also stopped the frightened horses that carried the carriage, and when driving through a burning forest or crossing a flooded river on a flimsy raft, with his “fearlessness in dangers”, he aroused involuntary respect from the prisoner.

In general, in Catherine's time, the employees of the Secret Expedition rose in rank, became more "noble", and their careers were more diverse and were not associated with political investigation from an early age. Yes, and they were rewarded better - the same Shchekotikhin became not only a court adviser, but also the owner of 500 souls, about which he proudly informed the supervised officer.

A different kind of personnel also appeared in the political investigation, who no longer went to the dungeons and were not engaged in interrogations and drafting papers, they were entrusted with special missions that required appropriate training, education and secular education. In 1795, Yegor Borisovich Fuchs (1762–1829), a court adviser, entered the service of the Secret Expedition. He began his career in the diplomatic office of Count A. A. Bezborodko, and then became an agent of the political investigation and at the same time adjutant and secretary of A. V. Suvorov. Going with the commander and his army to Italy, Fuchs carried out a special task: “to make an accurate and strict observation in an inconspicuous way about the officers, <...> in what kind of true connections, opinions and relations they have, and whether foreign nasty suggestions have any effect and seductive books.

The command knew that in the Russian corps, which fought against the Napoleonic troops in Italy, there were free-thinking officers, and they were afraid that the French would distribute revolutionary brochures in the regiments. Fuchs (by that time already a state adviser), upon arrival in the foreign army, took up his duties and informed the expedition that “according to the content of the instructions given to me, I immediately used all possible ways to reconnoiter the mindset of the Italian corps and the behavior of the officers.” Acquainted with the official, Suvorov took him to him, instructing him to maintain "foreign correspondence, military and diplomatic affairs, as well as a journal of military operations." The zealous adjutant regularly informed St. Petersburg of all Suvorov's meetings with generals and officers and copied his boss's correspondence. “Now I have the honor,” he wrote in his secret report, “to enclose herewith copies of three letters from His Roman Imperial Majesty and two responses to those of the Field Marshal.”

Nevertheless, Fuchs "had the honor" - he did not abuse his trust, and he did not convey any information that put the commander in an unfavorable light and could cause displeasure of the emperor. He wrote that everything was going well in the army and there were no signs of revolutionary propaganda; on the contrary, soldiers and officers fight successfully - "thanks to the transformations of the sovereign, who brought military art to the highest degree of perfection." But he sharply criticized the allied Austrian command for "the great negligence of the Austrians about our food" and unwillingness to provide true data on the number of their troops and losses. Fuchs reported that he could not regularly keep a journal of military operations, because "there is an obstacle to compiling a journal on the part of the Austrians, because they do not provide any information."

Then Fuchs showed his abilities as director of the military office of another famous commander - Field Marshal M.I. Kutuzov during the Patriotic War of 1812. In peacetime, he became the author of the popular works The History of the Russian-Austrian Campaign of 1799 (St. Petersburg, 1825–1830); "The History of Generalissimo Count Suvorov-Rymniksky" (St. Petersburg, 1811) and "Anecdotes of Count Suvorov" (St. Petersburg, 1827), in which he told about the oddities of the famous commander: bath, throwing himself into a river or into the snow, who never wore a fur coat, except for his uniform, jacket and tattered parental overcoat, could endure terrible warmth in the upper room. In this, Prince Alexander Vasilievich resembled our peasants in huts. Like them, he loved to be in complete negligee. I, and many with me, suffered in his greenhouse. Often the sweat from me rolled onto the paper during the reports. Once I dropped a report, although its content was not very pleasant to him. “Here, Your Excellency, I am not guilty,” I told him, “but your Etna,” pointing to the stove. “Nothing, nothing,” he replied. - In St. Petersburg they will say either that you work to the sweat of your face, or that I sprinkled this paper with a tear. You are sweating and I am tearful.” In the same way, the Austrian quartermaster general Tzach became inflamed to the point that, while working with him in his office, he took off his tie and uniform. The field marshal rushed to kiss him with these words: "I love who treats me without fashion." “Forgive me,” he cried out, “you can burn here.” Answer: What to do? Our craft is to always be near the fire; and therefore I do not wean myself from it here either.

In the Moscow office of the Secret Expedition, the staff was not at all large: the court adviser Alexei Porokhovshchikov, the titular adviser Pavel Gorlov, the clerk Pavel Lvov worked here. For special assignments, the state councilor Yuri Alexandrovich (or Alekseevich) Nikolev was at the office. By the will of fate and his superiors, his name also turned out to be associated with Suvorov's biography: it was Nikolev who brought him an order in April 1797 to be removed from the army and exiled to Konchanskoye; he was also in charge of monitoring the disgraced field marshal and reported to the prosecutor general on all his "visits and exercises." Later he complained that for five months he lived at his own expense in a simple hut and ate whatever he got; “With his present position, in zeal for the service of His Imperial Majesty, he is heartily satisfied, but is without salary,” and asked for a cash allowance. For diligence, he was granted 5 thousand rubles and a career was opened - in a short time he became a full state adviser. As you know, the field marshal's disgrace was short-lived. Suvorov went with Fuks to the Italian campaign, and Nikolev was enrolled in the staff of the Secret Expedition as an investigator for especially important cases. In this capacity, he was sent to the Yaroslavl province to check the rumors about the preparation of the "indignation" of the peasants during the passage of the emperor. Then he investigated the abuses of the Kaluga governor and officials, went to the Don to check an anonymous complaint against two generals Ilovaisky, to the Ukrainian Baturin in the case of the former hetman Kirill Razumovsky and his entourage, to the Belarusian Shklov in the case of counterfeiters acting under the auspices of General Zorich. He carried out all these instructions without abusing his powers and without trying at any cost to discover a conspiracy and "outrage". However, in one of his reports from Moscow, he stated: "Everyone is afraid of me and they run away from me." Nikolev retired in 1801 after the liquidation of the Secret Expedition.

Alexander Porohovshchikov "from the chief officer's children" began his career as a copyist in the Senate, where he rose to the rank of registrar. After his dismissal from the Senate, on the proposal of General-in-Chief M.N. Krechetnikov, he was assigned to the Tula upper massacre (which tried state peasants) as a secretary, but in reality he worked in the general's field office. There he became a lieutenant of the Izyum Light Horse Regiment; then he served in the cuirassier regiment of Prince Potemkin and participated in campaigns in Poland. But still, in the army of Porohovshchikov he did not take root and in 1794 “due to illnesses that had happened, at the request of Evo, he was dismissed with the rank of captain,” after which he got a job in the Moscow police. In this service, he did not suffer at all during the stormy Pavlovian reign and even received the next two ranks, and ended his career in the Secret Expedition, where he was transferred by the highest command in 1799.

Titular adviser Pavel Gorlov "from the Russian nobles" at the beginning of his bureaucratic career also served as a copyist - in the Office of the guardianship of foreigners; then he became a clerk in the St. Petersburg provincial government, got into the Counting Expedition of the Military Collegium, and from there he moved to the office of the Moscow commander-in-chief A. A. Prozorovsky and, finally, in 1793 he was assigned to the Moscow office of the Secret Expedition. Prozorovsky, "famous" for the arrest of the famous publisher and educator N. I. Novikov, appointed the clerk Pavel Lvov "from ordered children" to the detective service; the young man served diligently and proved "capable and worthy" of promotion, as recorded in his official list.

In addition to officials, the Moscow office included two watchmen from retired soldiers for a meager salary of 20 rubles a year and “two years later a uniform against Senate watchmen.” There was also a guard at the office, consisting of a non-commissioned officer and twenty soldiers of the Senate company - the veteran soldiers of the Moscow Preobrazhensky battalion who had previously carried this service under Catherine were replaced by soldiers of "different field regiments."

The staff of the Secret Expedition still had a doctor, but neither in St. Petersburg nor in Moscow there was any longer a "shoulder master" - after the official liquidation of the Secret Chancellery, the executioner Vasily Moguchiy was "released" under the jurisdiction of the St. Petersburg Provincial Chancellery. Perhaps now the executioner was sent to carry out the necessary "executions" from another "team" or these duties were taken over by volunteers from among the non-commissioned officers and guard soldiers.

Another innovation at the very end of the 18th century was the use - so far very little - of secret agents-informers. They were not on the staff; but their work was paid - either on a permanent basis (Cornet Semigilevich and Major Chernov received 400 rubles in 1800), or on completion of a specific task (thus, unnamed "people" - most likely servants - were paid 10 rubles per delivered information). The documents also contain other references to expenses “on secret matters specially entrusted from His Imperial Majesty, concerning some people in different provinces.”

After the abolition of the Secret Expedition, its employees were assigned to new places, taking into account their wishes and without losing wages.