ABSTRACT
Aleksandr Khristoforovich the best known of the Benckendorff's, was a personal friend to the most hated Russian emperor, Nicholas I. As the founder of the Russian political police he achieved a unique notoriety in Russian history. Nathalie and Olga Benckendorff severed their tenuous ties to Russia after they married a German and an Italian nobleman respectively, but Aleksandr Konstantinovich Benckendorff and his brother Pavel Konstantinovich settled in Russia when they reached the age of service. When the young Benckendorff joined the ministry, it consisted of the Chancellery responsible for political correspondence and three departments namely: Internal Department; Asiatic Department and Staff and Household Department. The old diplomacy and European nobility deliberately kept personal honour and ties of affection separate from political or national considerations. Prior to Washington, Secretary Jean Jusserand was Benckendorff's colleague at Copenhagen. Benckendorff's confidential letters to Vladimir Lamsdorff by 1899 already convey his boredom with the rustic pleasures of the Danish capital.
