Let's talk about how order was kept in our country during the "deep antiquity". At first everything was simple and uncomplicated. Some prince in the territory subject to him recruited a squad - strong and well-trained guys. They not only collected taxes from the population, but also performed some more serious tasks - catching bandits, suppressing riots, executions - where without it. In general, these were the beginnings of legislative regulation.

After the establishment of more or less centralized power in Russia, then Novgorod, military power begins to be divided into divisions. And we see the results of this even now. For example, the first guardsmen, who were part of the regular army of that time, are now best represented by the militia. But the special squad under the princes, the well-remembered regiments of archers - this is the most direct predecessor of modern special services.

Further, everything developed along the given three trajectories: order within the country, order on the country's borders, and security of state power. The very first Ministry of the Interior controlled the police (including the political police - the gendarmerie), the press, the post office, the telegraph, "managed" military service, dealt with statistics and even spiritual affairs and people's food.

The term "police" for the first time in Russia was introduced by Peter I when in 1718 a special service for supervision of public order was established. Inside the tsarist Ministry of Internal Affairs was the Police Department. His system included:
- city police departments headed by police chiefs,
- police units and districts headed by private and district bailiffs (guards),
- districts headed by district guards.

In 1890, the Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs looked like this:

1. Minister of the Interior, who simultaneously served as chief
corps of gendarmes
2. Deputy Minister
3. The Police Department, headed by the director, which included the departments:
3.1. General (arrangement and supervision of the activities of the police
institutions) 3.2. Personnel 3.3. Protection of state borders.
3.4. Issuance of passports to foreigners.
3.5. Investigation.
3.6. Supervision of drinking establishments.
3.7. Fire fighting.
3.8. Approval and permission of statutory companies and public performances.

Its system included - city police departments headed by police chiefs, police units and stations headed by private and district bailiffs (guards), districts headed by district wardens, and the lower link was the police posts. The policemen wore a black lambskin hat with a black cloth bottom, red piping crosswise and around the circumference, or a black cap with three red piping, with a black lacquered visor, without a chin strap. The overcoat of the policeman was sewn from black overcoat cloth with a hook-and-eye closure, black buttonholes and red edging, on the buttonholes there is a light metal button with a double-headed eagle. The policemen carried their personal weapons in a black holster fastened to the belt.

The city non-commissioned officers, who were subordinate to the police officers, conducted external street supervision. Their posts were located at convenient for observation corners and intersections of streets so that the townsmen of adjacent posts could also hear each other. They stopped swearing and quarrels on the streets, did not allow singing and playing the balalaika, harmonica, guitars, detained drunks and sent them to police stations for sobering up, helped the sick.

Those wishing to become a policeman had to have a good-looking appearance, a strong physique, good diction, height not less than 171 cm, not younger than 25 years old, be in the army reserve and be blameless in behavior. They underwent special training that lasted from two weeks to a month.

Each policeman served 8 hours a day. It was his duty to report daily in the morning and in the evening to the warden about all the riots he noticed, "rumors of the people", meetings, preparations for balls and parties. Law enforcement officers were charged with ensuring that goods brought into the city were sold at places designated by the police. In addition, the police officers monitored the serviceability of the scales, the cleanliness of the shops, especially in the meat and fish rows, and the sale of essential goods at the established rate. For valiant service, many police officers were awarded the silver medal "For Diligent Service." The work of the policemen was well paid.

The chief of police was the immediate head of the provincial police. The chief of police, if he was a major general or a real state adviser, wore a round astrakhan cap of the Kubanka type, white with a red bottom, a silver double-headed eagle was fixed on the cap, and an officer or bureaucratic cockade above it.

A light gray overcoat served as outerwear. Police officers in the ranks of generals sometimes wore overcoats with capes and beaver collars. The everyday uniform of officers and generals of the police was a dark green frock coat of an all-army pattern with a collar of the same color and with red piping along the side, collar, cuffs and back flaps - "leaves".

Police officers wore trousers of three styles: Harem pants and narrowed trousers - in boots or trousers for release - with boots. Boots were certainly worn with spurs, but not always boots. The police officer's dress uniform was the same color as the frock coat, with a single-color collar, but without buttons, and fastened on the right side with hooks. Police officers and generals wore an infantry saber on a silver sling. With a frock coat and a white tunic, sometimes a sword. Police officers also relied on gray capes - capes with a hood of a general officer's cut and color.

Beginning in 1866, cities were divided into police stations. The district police officer was at the head of the section. Police stations, in turn, were divided into districts, which were in charge of district guards.

At the head of the county police department was a police officer.

Geographically, each county was divided into two to four camps, each headed by a bailiff - a police officer, with the rank of captain or captain, less often lieutenant colonel. The closest assistant to the bailiff was a police officer.

The first gendarmerie units on the territory of the Russian Empire were created during the reign of Paul I. Later, the new emperor Alexander I renamed the Borisoglebsky dragoon regiment into a gendarme regiment. The tasks of the corps of gendarmes (KZh) included monitoring the situation on the territory of the empire and carrying out all the work on the political search in the field. In essence, the KJ performed the functions of territorial security agencies that acted in close connection and interaction with the III branch of the Chancellery of His Imperial Majesty. The main operational-search load of the gendarmerie units was reduced to the study of cases through the political search.

The provincial administrations were the main link in the structure of QOL. The staffing for the Olonets GZhU provided for the presence of positions: the head of the department, his assistant, an adjutant and two clerks, as well as eight non-commissioned officers of additional staff positions, through which the gendarmerie stations in the counties were completed. Thus, the GJU staff did not exceed 12-13 people.

Upon entering the service of a non-commissioned officer in the KZh, detailed information was collected about the reliability, behavior, criminal record, religion, the political reliability of the wife, father, mother, brothers, sisters - "with whom he communicates." Received gave a subscription that he undertakes to serve in the gendarmerie for at least five years.

The history of the police of the Russian Empire ended three days after the October Revolution. But that's a completely different story...

In 2017, the history of the police exchanged its second century. On November 10, 1917, the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the RSFSR, under the leadership of Alexei Ivanovich Rykov, adopted a resolution "On the Workers' Militia". This decree served as the legal basis for the creation of the police as a law enforcement agency. Subsequently, November 10 became an official holiday - Police Day.

In fact, the history of the police goes deep into the past. The first predecessors of modern law enforcement agencies appeared in the days of Ancient Russia. Before the creation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it was still far away, but criminals, of course, have always existed, as well as those who fought against them.

An excursion into the history of law enforcement agencies, including the police and criminal investigation, was conducted for us by Alfiya Alkinskaya, deputy head of the Central Museum of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, Honored Worker of Culture of the Russian Federation. About what the first Russian detectives were called, for which in Russia they were executed with molten metal, which of the kings invented the peasant police and what the word “police” means, read below.

“Murder “in robbery” was considered more serious than “at a feast”

The very terms "police", "investigation" and everything connected with them seem to us something relatively modern. But the history of law enforcement agencies in our country has more than one hundred years! Alfiya Aminovna, tell us, when did we get the first semblance of a modern criminal investigation department?

The formation of the detective as a police service really took place in the 19th century, and at the beginning of the 20th century, its legislative, legal design. But before that, domestic detective work has come a long way, almost a millennium long. The very first Russian code of laws was called "Russian Truth". It appeared during the reign of Yaroslav the Wise and operated until the end of the 15th century. This was the first system of laws of the Rurik dynasty.

- And what were the names of people involved in catching criminals in those days? And what exactly were they caught for?

At that time, crimes directed against private individuals were mostly known, so in written documents they were denoted by the word “offense”. And the word "spy" itself, obviously, comes from the Old Russian verb "seek" ("search"). After a crime was committed somewhere, it was announced publicly in some crowded place, for example, in a market square (“at the market”). And this procedure itself was called "cry" - in fact, it was the first stage of the ancient Russian trial. Later, the term "general search" will appear in legislative documents - a survey of all witnesses to establish involvement in a crime. Torture in those days was called experience and thieves and other criminals tatami. In that era, the prince was the head of justice, and everyone was judged in the princely court.

- And what was the name of those who were engaged in the search for criminals?

The prince entrusted these powers chiunam. Those who investigated criminal cases were called virniki.

How was the punishment determined?

Punishments were different, even for the same crime. Historians argue that this depended on how great the role of the evil will of the criminal was.

- You mean malicious intent?

Quite right. Thus, premeditated murder "in robbery" was considered more serious, more serious than, say, "at a feast", where the participants heated up by drinks used to get into a fight. It was believed that in this case it happened through negligence, without malicious intent and in a state of excitement. A lot of time passed before the attitude towards crime changed and it began to be perceived as a phenomenon that harms the whole society, and not just the victim.

“At every step one could meet a man with a cut off ear”

- Punishments, presumably, were much more severe and cruel than now?

During the reign of Ivan III, under which the first Sudebnik was created (1497), people were often branded, their limbs were cut off - this is how criminals were registered. Therefore, in Muscovite Russia, at every step one could stumble upon a person with a cut off ear, nose, and without a tongue. So the guilty could easily be identified in the crowd. Hallmarking was abolished only in the 19th century.

- The inhabitants believe that the most severe punishments were in the era. Is it so?

Ivan Vasilyevich, on the one hand, grew up on atrocities. On the other hand, he was a richly gifted man, well educated. He did not tolerate bribe-takers, drunkards and flatterers. But his desire to create the most just legal system was simply unbridled. It was often expressed in cruelty, including with the help. In 1550, Grozny adopted a new code of laws, consisting of 100 articles. It contained new norms of criminal law. By the way, it was under Grozny that a state system for combating criminality began to take shape in our country. There were so-called orders - bodies of central control.

- And what crimes were considered the most terrible and most severely punished?

First, crimes against the church, then against the state and the order of government, and only then - against the individual. The death penalty was envisaged in 30 cases. They were executed in different ways: by hanging, beheading, burning too, burying alive in the ground ... Even pouring metal into the throat was practiced - this is how counterfeiters were punished. Such was the century, and such, as they say, were morals.

“Policemen were jokingly called “Arkharovites””

What has changed since coming to power? In history, he was known as an innovator king. Perhaps his reforms also affected the judicial system?

Undoubtedly, his reign brought many changes to Russian legislation. First of all, Peter I formed the administrative system. It was a special class of officials who controlled all spheres of life and activity of society. In 1718, the Chief of Police Office appeared in St. Petersburg. It was headed by the personal batman and favorite of the king, the former naval cabin boy Anton Devier. The police and the military were involved in the service in the office. Later, since there were not enough personnel, on-duty assistants began to be allocated from each yard to help the police. It should be noted that under Peter the police were only in the capital. And already during the reign of Catherine II, law enforcement officers appeared in other Russian cities. In 1775, she created a rural police force made up of peasants and villagers. By the way, although Catherine was a supporter of European values, she did not cancel branding.

- Today, we are well aware of the names of the great legislators, but have the names of famous detectives come down to us?

Of course, and since the most ancient times. Known, for example, the names of some of the boyars who led the orders. So, in the Belozersky lip charter, the name of the head of the Robbery Order "boyar Ivan Danilovich Penkov and his comrades" is mentioned. When the Time of Troubles ended, the people elected the "Council of the whole earth." This provisional government also had a Rogue Order. One of its leaders after the end of the Time of Troubles was the Russian national hero -. In the era of Catherine II, there were also many wonderful detectives. Thanks to one of them, the famous term "Arkharovets" even appeared.

- It means "hooligan", "swindler". What's with the detectives?

In the old days, police agents were called so jokingly. The word arose thanks to the chief police chief of Moscow, Nikolai Petrovich Arkharov. He was a very clever detective: he had a lively logical thinking and loved to unravel complex cases. His assistant is also known - the famous Moscow detective Maxim Ivanovich Schwartz.

N.P. Arkharov

- And when did the Ministry of Internal Affairs appear in Russia?

Alexander I was already its founder. The creation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was one of his innovations. The emperor entrusted the leadership of the new department to his close friend and colleague in the reformist policy, V.P. Kochubey. Subsequently, the ministry was led by many outstanding personalities, but the issue of creating an independent criminal investigation service within the ministry remained unresolved for a long time. This happened only after the peasant reform of 1861. It was a time of great reforms in Russia, within which educational, financial, military and judicial reforms successfully fit. In the context of judicial reform, there was a separation of the accusatory power from the judiciary.

How did this affect the police?

Investigative functions were removed from the competence of the police. Such a narrowing of its activities was due to the incompetence of the police in investigative practice, the reason for which was the absence of an independent detective service in the operational structure.

“Dzerzhinsky brought rations and uniforms to the police”

The revolution turned life upside down in the country and, of course, had to affect the criminal investigation. What changed with the coming to power of the Bolsheviks?

The fate of police officers after 1917 was quite dramatic. Many had to emigrate. So, for example, did the head of the detective service of Moscow and the Russian Empire, Arkady Frantsevich Koshko. He invested so much love, energy and strength in his profession, and in the end he became an exile of the Motherland. And in general, an incredibly high wave of revolutionary terror touched very many representatives of the department. The fate of Koshko was nevertheless better than that of many others. Let us recall the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, who was killed by terrorists, the Ministers of the Interior von Plehve or Sipyagin. The fate of Sergei Alexandrovich's adjutant, General Dzhunkovsky, who was appointed governor of Moscow after the death of the Grand Duke, was also terrible. He was Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, during the First World War he commanded an army corps. After the October Revolution, he was transferred from one prison to another, and in 1937 he was shot.

- How was the fight against criminals carried out in Soviet Russia?

After the revolution, the new apparatus for combating crime became known as the NKVD. It was headed by such famous people as Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky. He certainly made a significant contribution to the development of our department. With his direct participation, the most important normative acts for that time were developed. For example, on April 3, 1919, the decree of the Council of People's Commissars "On the Soviet Workers' and Peasants' Militia" was adopted. However, it is worth noting that this document was developed even before Dzerzhinsky, but significant changes in the life of the police began to occur when he was appointed People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the RSFSR. Thus, the content of the militia was now carried out according to the estimate of the NKVD (that is, it was transferred to the state budget), which meant a new design - the final subordination of the militia to the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. The personnel were now provided with rear rations and uniforms. In addition, having headed the NKVD, Dzerzhinsky, with his iron will, managed to educate there the people he needed for the “cause of the revolution”, on whom he wanted to rely in the NKVD.

"Police” means "armed people"” »

- And where did this name come from - "police"?

According to the decree "On the workers' militia", which was adopted by the first People's Commissar Alexei Ivanovich Rykov, the militia was not a regular body. In fact, these were armed formations of workers. Hence the name: the word "militia" means "armed people". The resolution on the creation of the militia was adopted on November 10, 1917. This day subsequently began to be considered a professional holiday of the police - born of the revolution, as they began to talk about it. So it is, however, it is. But the activities of these formations in the conditions of the class struggle, devastation, in the context of the world and civil wars and the aggravated criminal crisis very soon demonstrated their unviability. And the militia became a professional body only on October 12, 1918, when the Instruction of the NKVD and the People's Commissariat of Justice "On the organization of the Soviet workers' and peasants' militia" appeared.

You can approve or scold the revolution in Russia indefinitely, everything here is very ambiguous. But if we talk specifically about law enforcement agencies, then what did this coup bring more - harm or good?

- Here, as you said, not everything is clear. An objective understanding of all facets of revolutionary events requires a sober and honest assessment. On the one hand, in the new country, the new authorities did not need the old staff, including representatives of the law enforcement system. It was bitter by human standards and unwise and inefficient from an economic point of view. Indeed, in those years, in conditions of very high criminal tension, the issue of training new police personnel and criminal investigation urgently required immediate resolution. But the modernization of personnel was impossible without trained specialists. However, along with the previous system of ranks and awards, which were put under the knife immediately after the revolution, the entire previous composition of the police unit was also rejected. They got rid of the former specialists in various ways, including by shooting representatives of law enforcement agencies. On the other hand, new people came to the internal affairs bodies for various reasons - often because of unemployment, often at the call of the heart. They learned the basics of fighting crime in a combat situation, during difficult events. They risked their lives, rejoiced at the success of their comrades. They managed to defeat criminal banditry. Tempered professionally together with the internal affairs bodies, helped to create and form the main units and police services. They always had a hard time - in the NKVD and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a difficult financial situation constantly reigned. But they survived, having endured all the troubles.

It is interesting that even after the militia was renamed back to the police, many in our country continue to use the former name. Apparently, it has become somehow native ...

Yes, after all, the Soviet militia, together with the people, went through a difficult path connected with all stages of the construction and development of a socialist state. The police gave our society a lot of wonderful heroes and good specialists who, during the war years and in peacetime, demonstrated their best qualities, laid down, among other things, by their distant ancestors. And militia veterans continue to do a lot of good today. Believe me, these are amazing examples of kindness and decency: they conduct scientific research, take part in military excavations to search for the graves of soldiers of the Great Patriotic War who remained nameless in the land, establish the names of the buried, restore monuments, patronize orphanages and schools ... In a word, provide real help. Their knowledge and experience should fall on fertile ground. There, where there is no place for an ideology that turns them into unnecessary "former", as it was 100 years ago. I think this time should teach us a lot.

Gestapo (State secret police)- the main body of political investigation and counterintelligence in fascist Germany, created in 1933, first in Prussia, then in other lands of Germany, as the main weapon in the fight against the political opponents of fascism and soon also turned into ... ...

POLICE, police, pl. no, female (French police from Greek politeia). 1. In the capitalist countries, a state organization for the protection of the existing bourgeois order (pre-revolutionary and foreign). Royal Police. Detective police. Secret police. ||… … Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov

POLICE- - a system of special organs of state administration in exploiting states, carrying out, in the interests of the ruling classes, the protection of the bourgeois state and the procedures established by it and acting by methods of direct coercion and ... ... Soviet legal dictionary

I Contents: I. The police, its activities, history, character and classification. Definition of the science of police law. II. The science of police law and its main directions: 1) in Germany, 2) in France, 3) in England and 4) in Russia. III. Organization, ... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron

- (Geheime Feldpolizei (inf.) GFP GFP, “Geheime Feldpolizei”) military police of the Third Reich. (Another version of the translation is secret military police.). Groups and teams of the GUF were executive bodies ... ... Wikipedia

Police- (police), state corps. employees whose task is to carry out law enforcement activities, protecting people and property, bringing violators to justice and at the same time deterring crime (crime). National police forces first appeared in ... ... Peoples and cultures

- ... Wikipedia

SFG (Secret Field Police)- the executive body of the military counterintelligence of Nazi Germany in the army. In peacetime, it did not work. The GUF was led by the Abwehr department abroad, which included a special abstract of the FPDV (field police of the armed forces). ... ... Counterintelligence Dictionary

The secret service is an unofficial (not available in the texts of legislative acts of Russia and other countries) a term that, since the second half of the 20th century, can be used in the narrow sense of "special service for intelligence operations" or ... ... Wikipedia

A special service is a structure and (or) activity structured (organized) in accordance with special requirements. The term is often used in the narrow sense of "a special service for organizing and conducting intelligence ... ... Wikipedia

Books

• Secret History of the Gestapo, Yuri Bem. The most secret and closed department of the Third Reich. The most terrible special service that terrified the whole of Europe. Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei - state secret police) - this word itself ...
• Abwehr, security police and SD, secret field police, department "Foreign armies - East" in the western regions of the USSR. Strategy and tactics. 1939-1945, E. G. Ioffe. There are still many "blank spots" in history. One of them is the activity of the German special services on the western borders of the USSR during the Second World War. This book reveals a subversive…

The security department appeared in Russia in the 1860s, when a wave of political terror swept the country. Gradually, the tsarist secret police turned into a secret organization, whose employees, in addition to fighting the revolutionaries, solved their private tasks ...

Special agency

One of the most important roles in the tsarist secret police was played by the so-called special agents, whose inconspicuous work allowed the police to create an effective system of surveillance and prevention of opposition movements. These included filers - "surveillance agents" and informers - "auxiliary agents".

On the eve of the First World War, there were 70,500 informers and about 1,000 fillers. It is known that from 50 to 100 surveillance agents were deployed daily in both capitals.

There was a rather strict selection in place of the filler. The candidate had to be "honest, sober, courageous, dexterous, developed, quick-witted, hardy, patient, persevering, cautious." They usually took young people no older than 30 years old with an inconspicuous appearance.

The informers were hired for the most part from among the porters, janitors, clerks, and passport officers. Auxiliary agents were required to report all suspicious individuals to the district warden who worked with them.

Unlike fillers, informers were not full-time employees, and therefore did not receive a permanent salary. Usually, for information that, when checked, turned out to be “substantial and useful,” they were given a reward from 1 to 15 rubles.

Sometimes they were paid with things. So, Major General Alexander Spiridovich recalled how he bought new galoshes for one of the informants. “And then he failed his comrades, failed with some kind of frenzy. That's what the galoshes did," the officer wrote.

Perlustrators

There were people in the detective police who did a rather unseemly job - reading personal correspondence, called perusal. Baron Alexander Benckendorff introduced this tradition even before the creation of the security department, calling it "a very useful thing." The reading of personal correspondence became especially active after the assassination of Alexander II.

"Black cabinets", created under Catherine II, worked in many cities of Russia - Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv, Odessa, Kharkov, Tiflis. The conspiracy was such that the employees of these offices did not know about the existence of offices in other cities.

Some of the "black cabinets" had their own specifics. According to the Russkoye Slovo newspaper of April 1917, if in St. Petersburg they specialized in reading letters from dignitaries, then in Kyiv they studied the correspondence of prominent emigrants - Gorky, Plekhanov, Savinkov.

According to data for 1913, 372,000 letters were opened and 35,000 extracts were made. Such labor productivity is astonishing, considering that the staff of illustrators was only 50 people, who were joined by 30 postal workers.

It was quite a long and laborious work. Sometimes letters had to be deciphered, copied, exposed to acids or alkalis in order to reveal the hidden text. And only then suspicious letters were forwarded to the search authorities.

Yours among strangers

For more effective work of the security department, the Police Department has created an extensive network of "internal agents" that infiltrate various parties and organizations and exercise control over their activities.

According to the instructions for recruiting secret agents, preference was given to "suspected or already involved in political affairs, weak-willed revolutionaries who were disillusioned or offended by the party."

Payments for secret agents ranged from 5 to 500 rubles per month, depending on the status and benefits. The Okhrana encouraged their agents to move up the party ladder and even helped them in this matter by arresting higher-ranking party members.

The Okhrana, (until 1903 it was called the "Department for the Protection of Public Security and Order"), a local body of political investigation in pre-revolutionary Russia, subordinate to the Police Department. The main task of the security departments was to search for revolutionary organizations and individual revolutionaries. The security departments had extensive special agents of both "surveillance" - snitches, and secret agents (passive informers and active participants in the activities of revolutionary organizations - provocateurs).

With great caution, the police treated those who voluntarily expressed a desire to serve as the protection of state order, since there were many random people among them. As a circular from the Police Department shows, during 1912 the Okhrana refused the services of 70 people "as untrustworthy."

For example, the exiled settler Feldman recruited by the secret police, when asked about the reason for giving false information, answered that he was without any means of subsistence and went on perjury for the sake of reward.

Provocateurs

The activities of the recruited agents were not limited to espionage and the transfer of information to the police, they often provoked actions for which members of an illegal organization could be arrested. The agents reported the place and time of the action, and it was no longer difficult for the trained police to detain the suspects.

According to the creator of the CIA, Allen Dulles, it was the Russians who raised provocation to the level of art. According to him, "this was the main means by which the tsarist secret police attacked the trail of revolutionaries and dissidents." The sophistication of Russian agents provocateurs Dulles compared with the characters of Dostoevsky.

Evno Fishelevich Azef is a Russian revolutionary provocateur, one of the leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and, at the same time, a Secret Officer of the Police Department.

The main Russian provocateur is called Yevno Azef - both a police agent and the leader of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. It is not without reason that he is considered the organizer of the murders of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and Minister of the Interior Plehve. Azef was the highest paid secret agent in the empire, receiving 1,000 rubles. per month.

A very successful provocateur was Lenin's "comrade-in-arms" Roman Malinovsky. The Okhrana agent regularly helped the police to locate underground printing houses, reported on secret meetings and conspiratorial meetings, but Lenin still did not want to believe in the betrayal of his comrade.

In the end, with the assistance of the police, Malinovsky achieved his election to the State Duma, moreover, as a member of the Bolshevik faction.

Strange inactivity

The activities of the secret police were connected with events that left an ambiguous judgment about themselves. One of them was the assassination of Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin.

On September 1, 1911, at the Kiev Opera House, an anarchist and a secret informer of the Okhrana, Dmitry Bogrov, without any interference, mortally wounded Stolypin with two shots point-blank. Moreover, at that moment, neither Nicholas II nor members of the royal family were nearby, who, according to the plan of events, were supposed to be with the minister.

On the fact of the murder, the head of the Palace Guard Alexander Spiridovich and the head of the Kyiv security department Nikolai Kulyabko were involved in the investigation. However, on behalf of Nicholas II, the investigation was unexpectedly terminated.

Some researchers, in particular Vladimir Zhukhrai, believe that Spiridovich and Kulyabko were directly involved in the murder of Stolypin. Many facts point to this. First of all, the suspiciously easily experienced Okhrana officers believed in Bogrov's legend about a certain Social Revolutionary who was going to kill Stolypin, and moreover, they allowed him to get into the theater building with a weapon in order to allegedly expose the alleged killer.

The case of the murderer of Stolypin - a secret agent of the Kyiv security department Dmitry Bogrov.

Zhukhrai claims that Spiridovich and Kulyabko not only knew that Bogrov was going to shoot Stolypin, but also contributed to this in every possible way. Stolypin, apparently, guessed that a conspiracy was brewing against him. Shortly before the murder, he dropped the following phrase: "They will kill me and the members of the guard will kill me."

Okhrana abroad

In 1883, a foreign secret police was created in Paris to monitor Russian emigre revolutionaries. And there was someone to follow: these were the leaders of the People's Will, Lev Tikhomirov and Marina Polonskaya, and the publicist Pyotr Lavrov, and the anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin. It is interesting that the agents included not only visitors from Russia, but also French civilians.

From 1884 to 1902, Pyotr Rachkovsky headed the foreign secret police - these were the heydays of its activity. In particular, under Rachkovsky, agents defeated a large Narodnaya Volya printing house in Switzerland. But Rachkovsky was also involved in suspicious connections - he was accused of collaborating with the French government.

Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky - Russian police administrator, head of foreign intelligence, organizer of political investigation in Russia.

When the director of the Police Department, Plehve, received a report about Rachkovsky's dubious contacts, he immediately sent General Silvestrov to Paris to check on the activities of the head of the foreign secret police. Silvestrov was killed, and soon the agent who reported on Rachkovsky was also found dead.

Moreover, Rachkovsky was suspected of involvement in the murder of Plehve himself. Despite compromising materials, high patrons from the environment of Nicholas II were able to ensure the immunity of the secret agent.

One of the common myths about Tsarist Russia is the description of it as a police state.

In books about the revolution or the life of revolutionaries, policemen, gendarmes, fillers, and detective agents flicker on every page. In my time, in school literature textbooks, there was a phrase attributed to General Yermolov: “In Russia, everyone wears a blue uniform, and if not a uniform, then a blue lining, if not a lining, then a blue patch.” After reading this, the students should have been imbued with the feeling of total police control in old Russia.

And what was really? Let us give the floor to an unusual witness - First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev. Speaking in 1953 at the July plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU with criticism of the Soviet state security agencies, he recalled: “Comrades, I saw a gendarme for the first time when I was probably already twenty-four years old. There was no gendarme in the mines. We had one Cossack policeman who walked and drank. There was no one in the volost, except for one sergeant.” Let's leave on the conscience of the Secretary General a message about the unworthy behavior of a police officer, and we will take into account his information about the size of the police apparatus.

And here is another example - while still heir to the throne, the future Emperor Alexander III was met at the pier of the city of Uglich by a huge crowd of townspeople and peasants from the surrounding villages. For a long time, the Tsarevich and his retinue could not pass through the dense mass of people to the city cathedral, and there was no one to clear the way for him, since there were only 2 (two !!) police ranks in the entire county town of Uglich.

When, after the "Uglich pandemonium", Tsarevich Alexander met with the Yaroslavl military governor, Vice Admiral I.S. Unkovsky and asked him a question about the small number of police in Russia, he received an unexpectedly simple answer: “The police in Russia have a purely symbolic meaning; it does not protect anything, because it cannot protect anything: it exists only to testify to the power of the Russian God over Russia and every corner of it. As a force, the police is only a mockery of the force, this is such a police as the one that appears in other plays in theaters. But at the same time, the improvement in Russia of the right to life and property is supported by it, if not by the power of the Russian God! - that is, the conscience of the Russian people.


Officers and lower ranks of the St. Petersburg police

Let's turn to the documents. In December 1862, the county and city police were merged into one structure - the county police department ("Temporary rules on the organization of the police"). The counties were subdivided into camps, headed by bailiffs. Cities were controlled by city and district bailiffs, as well as police officers.

Police institutions were subject to double control: "vertically" - from the Department of Police and "horizontally" - from the governor and provincial government.

From the end of 1889, to help the county police department, the bailiffs were given foot and horse officers, with the preservation in the villages of Sotsky and Ten. In cities not under the jurisdiction of the county police, city police departments are created, headed by chiefs of police and their assistants with a salary of 1,500 and 1,000 rubles a year. They are subordinate to district and city bailiffs, as well as police officers. In cities with a population of no more than 2 thousand people, according to the law of 1887, no more than five police officers were supposed to be, in larger cities - no more than one policeman per 500 inhabitants. For every four policemen, there was one senior. Their salary ranged from 150 to 180 rubles annually and 25 rubles for uniforms. All expenses were paid by the city.

In 1903, taking into account the ever-increasing amount of work performed by this institute, an additional category of lower ranks, guards, was introduced into the county police. United with the officers, they made up the police guard. The position of police officer was introduced in each volost, and the total number of guards was determined at the rate of no more than one per 2.5 thousand inhabitants.

The guards were armed with revolvers and edged weapons (sergeants) and checkers (guards; although they had the right to carry firearms, but acquired at their own expense).

Thus, the police in the Russian Empire was a very small structure, and the number of police officers in the provinces rarely exceeded two or three hundred people.

So, at the beginning of the 20th century, a police chief with an assistant and a secretary, three bailiffs with assistants, twelve police officers, twenty senior and eighty junior police officers served in the Kaluga province.

In Khabarovsk, the number of police officers was 30 (including a translator from Chinese and Manchu), in Vladivostok - 136, in Rostov-on-Don - 57.

The small number of low-ranking police officers was somewhat compensated by placing on the janitors the duty to provide assistance to the policemen if necessary: ​​“As soon as the law enforcement officer squeals his whistle, two or three janitors from the nearest doorways immediately grow near him”

With this help, and also due to the fact that the crime rate in the country was 10 times lower than it is now, the police were quite able to control the situation and maintain law and order.

As for the Separate Corps of Gendarmes, by 1917 it had only 1,000 officers and 10,000 lower ranks in its ranks, while most of the ranks of the corps were involved in ensuring the security of railways, less than a third remained on the share of the political police proper.

A significant shortcoming of the Russian pre-revolutionary police and gendarme corps was the lack of their own educational institutions. The lower ranks were recruited, as a rule, from retired army non-commissioned officers, and the commanding staff - from officials and officers of the armed forces. Russian Prime Minister P.A. Stolypin, in his draft reform of the Russian police, proposed the creation of special educational institutions. But "in order to save money" the project was postponed. Therefore, the police officers had to learn the wisdom of the police service exclusively in practice.

Service in the police has always been difficult and dangerous, and especially in the years of intensified political struggle. The revolutionaries referred to all police officials without exception as "enemies of the people" and sentenced them all to death in absentia. Killing a policeman was revered among the "fighters for the happiness of the people" for special valor.

The ranks of the police tried to honestly fulfill their duty. Let's just give one example. Served in the Moscow Presnensky police unit police officer Sakharov. Being a strict and fair police officer, he enjoyed well-deserved respect in the working-class districts. And when in 1905 an uprising broke out in the city, the neighbors-workers begged the policeman not to go to work. “I do not serve my sovereign in order to hide,” answered the honest warder and went on duty. Two days later, his corpse was fished out by soldiers in the Moscow River. There were 19 bullet and stab wounds on the body of the policeman - this is how the squad of militants dealt with him, sealing the "revolutionary brotherhood" with blood.

During the "bloodless" revolution in February 1917, the revolutionary squads and the rebel soldiers of the Petrograd garrison ruthlessly killed almost the entire staff of the capital's police. Police officials tried to the end to maintain order in the city. The sovereign had already been removed from power, the Provisional Government had already appeared, and the police stations surrounded by the rebels held out. They still hoped for help, which never came. According to some reports, up to 80% of the city's policemen were killed in those days ...

From the book "10 Myths about Russia" Alexander Muzafarov.