Features of ensuring confidentiality during the work of naval agents at the beginning of the 20th century: instructions and the view of contemporaries

Annotation

The relevance of the study is determined by the low level of study of the activities of naval agents at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. The purpose of this study is to study the specifics of ensuring confidentiality when working with naval agents with the information they receive. The sources of information were archival materials of the Russian State Archive of the Navy for the years 1873-1912. The principles of historicism and objectivity, statistical analysis of archival materials made it possible to identify both information indicating the emergence of problems with the security of information received by naval agents, and measures taken to solve it. As a result of the conducted research, it was found that naval agents located in foreign countries have been closely monitored by the special services. There have been known attempts to steal information, seals and ciphers from agents. The problem was extremely serious, since the global political situation indicated that European states were approaching a “big” war for the redistribution of sales markets. In order to solve the problem of the security of confidential information in the hands of agents, ciphers and seals, the leadership of the Naval General Staff proposed to allocate orderlies from among the lower ranks who are on active duty and took the oath. In addition, in order to bring the office work of naval agents to a single denominator, the Naval General Staff was developed and sent for execution to naval agents, including the naval agent in Italy and Austria-Hungary, “Instructions to naval agents for traveling to foreign countries on service”. This document described in sufficient detail the rules of conduct of naval agents when they move through the territory of foreign states, methods of communication with the Naval General Staff, conditions for storing ciphers, seals and documentation. These measures made it possible to codify the rules for handling confidential information, improved professional skills and were supposed to eliminate possible errors.

Keywords

• Austria-Hungary
• germany
• embassy
• naval general staff
• naval agent
• orderly
• instructions
• pocket cipher
• telegraphic communication
• secret documents
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