“Russian Spy” Schweitzer: An Attempt at Biography Reconstruction. Agent of the High Military Secret Police in Warsaw (1819–1831)

Abstract

In the early 1830s, in order to wage a political and information war on Polish emigrants and the European opposition, the formation of Russian foreign intelligence as a unified state service with an extensive network of agents on the basis of the Third Section began. The head of the Russian residence in Germany from 1833 to 1839, Baron Karl Ferdinandovich von Schweitzer, was one of its founders. The structure he created, as well as the forms and methods of intelligence work he put in place, had a major impact on the subsequent development of the security services in Russia. However, little is still known about the man. Even his real name and date of birth remain unknown to scholars. He surrounded himself with secrecy already during his lifetime. This applies first and foremost to the first period of it, associated with his service with the Higher Military Secret Police in Warsaw in the 1820s. In the absence of direct evidence of his life and work, the author makes a first-ever attempt in historiography to reconstruct the circumstances of Schweitzer's biography and service in the secret police of the Viceroy of the Kingdom of Poland up to 1831, based on circumstantial evidence. Using the example of Schweitzer's undercover work, the author attempts to reconstruct the structure of the Russian foreign intelligence service, methods of conspiracy, recruitment, surveillance and analytical processing of the information obtained. The article also provides examples of the most successful operations in which the agent, who at that time bore the name of de Schwegrois, was involved. The study draws on archival documents of the Third Section and the Higher Military Secret Police in Warsaw, as well as memoirs of contemporaries and publications in the Polish émigré press.