Fontanka 16: The Tsars' Secret Police.

Fontanka 16: The Tsars' Secret Police. Charles A Ruud and Sergei A. Stepanov. Sutton Publishing. [pounds]20.00. 394 pages. ISBN 0-7509-2159-5. This book is a Russo-Canadian venture because Prof. Ruud teaches in the University of Western Ontario and Dr Stepanov works in Moscow's Independent Institute of Social and Nationality Problems. 'Fontanka 16' was the address of the Tsarist secret police from sometime in the 1830s to 1917. From this office operated a police force that spread throughout the vast Russian Empire gathering information and by 1917 these agents were reporting that a revolution was in the offing. This book shows how the use of a secret police force had been part of Russian imperial life from its very beginnings to its end. It makes use of information hitherto denied writers to show how the police and their revolutionary enemies worked in opposition to one another. The Communist secret police which supplanted that of the Tsars only confirmed that the maintenance of a vast, unified Russian Empire seemed to require secret agents. Historians of the future may wonder if the end of the secret police and the dissolution of the Communist Empire were not in some way related. If they do they will find this an invaluable source.