Secret committee of high political surveillance in Russia and Polish emigration (1837–1839)

The article analyzes the history of the creation and the activities of the «Secret committee of high political surveillance» (1837–1839) – the Russian interdepartmental body of international policing in the era of tsar Nicholas I, which is unknown in the historical literature. The paper introduces the minutes of the sessions of this body and the interdepartmental correspondence attached to them from The State Archive of The Russian Federation (GARF). These sources expand on the Russian empire’s system of international policing and highlight the Polish emigration’s history from the viewpoint of the Russian secret police, which wasn’t sufficiently covered in the historiography of the Polish national movement. The Committee examined intelligence on the Polish political emigration, which was formed after the failure of the November Uprising of 1830–1831 in Congress Poland. Alexander Benckendorf, the chief of the III Section of His Imperial Majesty’s Own Chancellery, was the chairman of this committee. The representatives of the War and Foreign Ministries took part in its meetings. The Committee corresponded with Congress Poland’s viceroy Ivan Paskevich and with the governors of the border provinces of Russia, as well as with the Prussian and Austrian authorities. The analysis of the minutes from the sessions of this committee shows that this body was exclusively consultative. It was an attempt to create a unified interdepartmental system of intelligence exchange on the activities of the Polish emissaries.