Talk:Karla (character)

Who is Beria?
In the phrase "with an extraordinary composure and ascetic habits, not unlike Beria himself" "Beria" has not been previously mentioned on this page. Who is Beria? If a phantom from a previous edit, then remove that reference as well. Otherwise, introduce properly. ZoneAlarm5 (talk) 21:58, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Presumably, Lavrentiy Beria - not a totally obscure personage in the context of the Cold War. Opera hat (talk) 01:15, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Also, Beria was not known for his 'ascetic habits', being a serial rapist. --Marjaliisa (talk) 02:19, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Character history
"...first for the Czarist Okhrana and later for the Bolshevist Cheka (a considerable endorsement of his skills, if he was allowed to serve two such radically different regimes)"

This is a erroneous assumption - many Okhranka officers and agents changed sides (some repeatedly) throughout its history (see Rudd & Stepanov, Fontanka 16, Sutton Publishing 1999). And as that book shows, the two organisations were actually surprisingly similar - in purpose, methods and performance.

BTW Okhrana refers to the imperial palace guard. The secret police service was the Okhranka. 212.159.59.5 (talk) 09:43, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't the reference to the Japanese occupation of Siberia be to the Russian Civil War rather that the Russian-Japanese War as given here? That makes no sense, the Russian-Japanese war (1904-1905) was fought in Manchuria, not Siberia. However, it is true that Japan occupied much of eastern Siberia from 1918 to 1922, which would make more sense, especially given the reference of Karla being an "young man" in the Spanish Civil War.--A.S. Brown (talk) 09:01, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
 * With all due respect, the assumed continuity of Russian/Soviet history being made above is wrong. Contrary to what is being implied above, Imperial Russia was not a police state. Yes, it had a secret police, the Okhrana, but the mere existence of a secret police force is not the same thing as a police state. The Okhrana, which was founded after the assassination of the Emperor Alexander II had its mandate investigating revolutionary groups committed to overthrowing the Russian state. The Okhrana did not have as its mandate monitoring the entire population of the Russian empire as did the Soviet secret police. The Okhrana only had offices in few cities such as St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, and Warsaw. Outside of those cities, the Okhrana did not exist. The activities of the vast majority of the empire's subjects went quite unnoticed by the Okhrana. By contrast, by 1980 the point had been reached that 1 out of 15 people in the Soviet Union was working as a full time KGB informer. It is easy to make this assumption about the continuity of Russian/Soviet history as for most of its existence, Imperial Russia was an autocratic state with no legal limits on the power of the emperor. Only in 1905 was a constitution brought in due to the Revolution of 1905 that imposed some limits on the power of the emperor. But just because a state claims absolute power is not the same thing as actually having absolute power. To start with, the police forces of the Russian empire were quite small and underpaid. A typical rural uyezd (county) in the Russian empire around about 1900 would usually have about 15, 000 people and a police force of about 10-12 officers. Granted, the government called up the men of the Cossack Hosts to serve as a mounted para-military police force, but they tended to be concentrated in either the big cities or along the frontiers. Likewise, the Russian government tended to rule the country very much like it was a colony and governors in the provinces had to perform their duties in a manner very similar to the way that a British colonial official stationed as a "resident" in some protectorate had to operate. It was important for Russian provincial governors to uphold the authority of the state, but at the same time they had exercise what was called "service tact". The government was well aware if a governor pushed around people in his province too much, it would provoke a rebellion, which the government could put down by calling out the Army, but that cost a lot of money, which the stingy and tight government hated to spend. To a surprising extent provincial governors in the Russian empire after serfdom was abolished in 1861 used their "service tact" and tried to negotiate with local elites in their provinces, which is a very different from the situation in the Soviet Union where a local Communist Party boss was dependent upon the approval of "Moscow Centre" for his career prospects. It is true that are some continuities-the nomenklatura system in the Soviet Union was a copy of the Tabel' o rangakh (Table of Ranks) in Imperial Russia, and the Stalin personality cult used much Tsarist iconography and imagery. But there also discontinuities. One might check out the 1988 book Chekisty by John Dziak where he argues with much evidence that the assumed "unbroken line between tsarist repression and Soviet terror" does not exist. Between 1862-1917, about 25, 000 people were executed in the Russian empire or died in prisons; by contrast in the years 1917-1923, the Cheka executed about 200, 000 people. Through it is true that the Cheka did recruit some people who served in the Okhrana, mostly for technical skills such as code-breaking, by and large the Cheka did not recruit from the same people who formerly hounded the Bolsheviks for understandable reasons. If the character of Karla is a brutal fanatic, that has more to do with his experiences of the Soviet secret police than with any service under the Okhrana. In the books, Karla first showed up in 1936 in Spain as an "young man" would suggest that he spent his formative years in early Stalin years, which must had influenced far more than the heritage of Imperial Russia. Moreover, if Karla was a former Okhrana officer, he would not have been an "young man" in the Spanish Civil War. --A.S. Brown (talk) 04:45, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

Agent Running in the Field Acrostic
The article references an acrostic on page 94 of Agent running in the field. This appears to reference a tweet made by London Review Bookshop which appears to be a spoof. The quoted text does not appear in Agent Running in the field and should probably be removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elaverick (talk • contribs) 14:37, 11 November 2019 (UTC)