Lev Viktorovich von Goyer: Organizer of Secret Activities in the Far East between 1904 and 1910

This article is devoted to the activities of Lev Viktorovich von Goyer (1875–1939), one of the prominent employees of the so-called “Shanghai agents,” an intelligence service established in April 1904 and operating in close contact with the Russo–Chinese Bank. All aspects of his covert work during the Russo–Japanese War and in the succeeding years after its end have been comprehensively characterized: the collection and analytical processing of intelligence data, the organization of direct intelligence activities and propaganda opposition to Japan through the press published in China, the establishment of communications with the besieged Port Arthur, the participation in secret purchases for his garrison from foreign firms, and the delivery of weapons, medicines, and food to him. The experience gained by Goyer during the war years was realized in his training at the turn of 1905 and 1906, the “Project for the organization of an agency and intelligence activities in the Far East” and active attempts to bring it to life, and his experience as a trade attache and an agent of the Ministry of Finance in China in 1906–1910. Particular attention is paid by the authors to the poorly covered Korean plots of this activity, which are related to general negative view of the prospects for Russian–Japanese relations in the post-war period, formed by L.V. von Goyer. Anticipating on the basis of intelligence that the Japanese would soon annex the “unfortunate, enslaved empire” of Gojong, as a springboard for expansion into mainland Asia, the idea of which Japan would never give up, Goyer at the same time closely followed the struggle of Korean patriots and predicted that “possession of Korea will not be a strength, but a weakness, the Japanese Achilles’ heel.” He retired from active intelligence activities related to the financial operations of the Russo–Chinese Bank only in 1911, becoming an employee of the newly established Russo-Asian Bank.