" Incidentally, Orlov’s ‘neighbors’ from the Razvedupr military intelligence, where the Latvian element played an important role, similarly sought to utilize ethnic ‘underground railroad’ channels for the purpose of espionage. Interestingly, prior to 1917, Baltic Germans played a similar role in the Russian imperial bureaucracy, including the Tsarist secret police, providing the regime with a cadre of a mobilized diaspora to act as an intermediary abroad"