>>the Okhrana - The Tsarist government's Department for
>>Protecting Public Safety and Order, proving that the Russians had a
>>talent for coming up with colorfully euphemistic names for brutal
>>secret police long before the Bolsheviks came to power.
>
>i thought it was the Tsarina's guard, since "okhrana" roughly
>translates as "protection" and is often used to refer to someone's
>guard detail...

Not as such, in this case. The Okhrana mentioned here was a real agency. Its ostensible purpose was the protection of public order, but in practice what it mainly did was spy on and/or lock up people who were considered threats to the monarchy. So they were sort of the royal family's guards, but only in an abstract sense. They weren't uniformed personnel who physically guarded anything.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
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