… The police are the soul of citizenship and all good order. - Peter I.
Criminals were always caught. In the epic old Russian times, this was done by the prince's warriors - the squad was the only and universal state body. With the creation of a unified state in the 15th and early 16th centuries, “commoners” appeared who were sent from Moscow to where “robbers and tati” multiplied. Under the young Ivan the Terrible, lip huts were created in the localities, headed by lip chiefs elected from local landowners-nobles. They “looked for tates and robbers, and looked after and took care of that, so that one personally was nowhere and tates and robbers, robber camps and visits”. They obeyed the Rogue Order that had appeared in the middle of the 16th century, and in the capital the order was guarded by the Zemsky Order, the distant ancestor of Petrovka 38, which was located next to the Kremlin on the site of the Historical Museum.
However, in reality, a professional detective apparatus did not exist; for local nobles, catching thieves and robbers remained, if I may say so, a public duty in their free time from the main military service. And it was possible to find a gang of thieves or robbers in the Russian expanses only with the active participation of the population - the "secular" authorities themselves kept order in their native community, declared newcomers and suspicious ones, and identified "dashing people." In the cities, the order in the streets at night was guarded by the townspeople themselves as a free "service" - just as they themselves laid out and collected taxes, repaired city fortifications, and elected kissers at customs and taverns.
In patriarchal times, this was enough. But with the beginning of the new Russian era in the era of Peter's wars and transformations, the situation began to change. The growth of the army gave rise to desperate deserters; heavy taxes and duties produced the fugitive and disaffected. It became difficult to maintain order and "deanery" - especially in large cities with an influx of beggars, day laborers, and "courtyards". It would be interesting to answer the question of how Peter's reforms with their "revision", taxes and soldiers' ruling worsened the crime situation in the country - this is also a kind of "price" for forced modernization, but works that claim to solve the problem are often limited to general discussions about the growth of drunkenness, robbery and debauchery. Sometimes armed "parties" laid siege to entire cities, whose governors, together with the garrison invalids, did not dare to stick their noses out of the outskirts.
While transforming the country, Peter I attached great importance to the police; according to his thought, it is she who “brings contentment in everything necessary for human life, warns all illnesses that have happened, produces cleanliness in the streets and in houses, prohibits excess in household expenses and all obvious sins, despises the poor, the poor, the sick, the crippled and other indigent, protects widows, orphans and strangers according to the commandments of God, educates young people in chaste purity and honest sciences; in short, over all these, the police are the soul of citizenship and all good order”- as stated in the Charter of the Chief Magistrate of 1721. In short, the emperor saw the police as almost the main instrument for organizing the "regular" life of his subjects in his then little like "paradise" St. Petersburg.
For those times it was quite "European". The coming age of reason and Enlightenment destroyed the medieval picture of the world order; in the 17th-18th centuries, the achievements of the natural sciences asserted the human right to change the world around him, to be a subject, a creator of history. Why not change social reality on a rational basis? Thus, the opinion was born that the state is the embodiment of the "common good", for which every citizen was obliged to work. Cameralism was also born - the doctrine of government, or the then "management", which embraced a new model of government, the economy and the police, understood not only as a law enforcement service, but as a comprehensive system of state control and administration.
It is customary to call such a device a regular, or police, state - but for the people of the 18th century, this phrase was not synonymous with arbitrariness. On the contrary, it is a source of social optimism; it seemed that the key to happiness had finally been found, only it was necessary to formulate laws, improve the organization, and achieve the exact execution of the government's undertakings.
It is not surprising that it was Peter I, the first tsar in our history - a campaigner and a "technician" who established a professional police. By decree of June 7, 1718, he appointed the first police chief in the capital "for the best order" and defined his duties:
Promotional video:
1. It must be watched that the whole structure is regularly built … that the streets and intersections are equal and fair.
3. All streets and lanes must be kept clean and dry, free and unoccupied
5. watch and store with diligence, so that the measure and scales are straight, so also the price at the wrong time would not be raised and raised with such a product
8. For the whole quarter of a year, to inspect the residents' stoves, butts, hearths, baths and other things in the kitchens, where fire is found, and to guard them, so that the owner's oversight of what kind of disaster from the fire does not occur.
9. All suspicious houses, namely: shinki, grain, gambling and other obscenities, and report or appear about such courtyards
10. All walking and loitering people, and especially those under the guise, like what they hunt and trade, to grab and interrogate."
In 1722, the police appeared in Moscow, and by the Decree "On the establishment of the police in the cities" dated April 23, 1733, police teams were created in 10 provincial and 11 provincial cities; they were subordinate to the Chief Police Maester Chancellery, headed by Lieutenant General V. F. Saltykov.
What the small metropolitan police did not do: they informed the townsfolk about important incidents (instead of modern radio and television), followed the planting of trees by the townsfolk and charged them with fines for breaking the "linear birches", branded the clamps of cabs (as a registration of the official trade) and with extreme diligence "she caught beggars, which is why those did not decrease. The thankless work was done by ordinary army officers and soldiers. The aforementioned decree of 1733 demanded “to appoint police departments from the garrisons available in those provinces as police chiefs from captains, and in provincial ones - from lieutenants, one worthy person each; for the guard and maintenance of congress yards, one non-commissioned officer and one corporal, privates in provincial 8 each, in provincial 6 people each. " And there weren't enough of those:in 1736, the Cabinet of Ministers drew attention to the fact that combatant soldiers and officers were enrolled in the police, and in the regiments in the conditions of the outbreak of the war with Turkey - "shortage". Therefore, the townspeople in the old fashioned way went "on duty" to protect order from thieves and robbers.
Even in the days of the "Bironovschina" with its severity, the authorities were powerless in front of the bandit gangs. In the Tambov Territory, such a "party" of one hundred people in the spring of 1732 defeated the merchant's pier and customs (with five thousand rubles) on the Vyshe river. After dividing the "duvan", the robbers went down the river in boats, plundering landlord estates along the way. In A. L. Naryshkin's estate, they killed all the "patrimonial chiefs" and plundered or destroyed the lord's junk. In the rich village of Sasov, the gang robbed everyone in a row, and at the customs office again took state money "from five thousand and more." Near Sasov, the shatsky garrison soldiers entered into a firefight with the robbers; but some were shot at once, others "from that predatory fear" hastily retreated. The robbers went down the river with songs …
The government even allowed "when the merchants or the gentry needed to be afraid of the thieves, at state factories to sell guns at free prices". However, the authorities could not suppress the robberies even in the capital provinces. In 1735, the Senate ordered, "so that thieves would not have a haven," cut down the forest on both sides of the road from St. Petersburg to the Sosninskaya pier and clear the forests along the Novgorod road "to eradicate the thieves' havens."
Established in 1730 in Moscow to conduct "tatian, robbery and murderous affairs", the Investigative Order (it was located at the Kremlin wall on the present Vasilyevsky Spusk) became famous for the fact that the famous Moscow thief Vanka Kain became its most effective "detective". The newly-minted "informer and detective" caught criminals, runaways, buyers of stolen goods, opened thieves' dens - and, under the auspices of the officials of the Investigative Order, covered other villains, took bribes, "repaired insults and ruin" to innocent people, led a dissolute life. In 1749, it was necessary to create a special commission of inquiry - as a result of its work, the "thief Cain" went to eternal hard labor, and the staff of the Search Order was recruited.
Things were no better elsewhere. In 1756 the Senate pointed out to the Yaroslavl magistrate that the number of "thieves' parties" on the Volga had increased; robbers "rob and smash ships, and beat people to death, and not only particular people, but also state money are taken away, and they ride with cannons and other not small fire weapons." The magistrate called upon the townsfolk, "if they would find such thieves in parties, they would be caught in every possible way, and if it was impossible to catch them, then such villainous parties would be announced in teams, where appropriate, at the most extreme speed."
However, while law-abiding townspeople carried night watch from "dashing people", their neighbors "repaired theft" and "went to robbery with their comrades." The authorities sent military commands; but the defenders of the fatherland on their stands acted with the townspeople "very mischievously, inflicting mortal beatings. Records appeared in magistrate books: "A soldier who had an unknown wife on a swing at the tavern hit on the face, from which the blow fell dead." The warriors besieged disgruntled inhabitants in their own homes so that "the Yaroslavl merchants, from fear and threats, do not only produce trades, but do not dare to leave their homes either."
Only the uprising of 1773-1775, when the impostor Pugachev fought almost on equal terms with government troops and took cities and towns, showed that the empire could no longer exist without an effective administration. The reform of 1775 divided the provinces and introduced a two-level administrative structure: a province with a population of 300-400 thousand souls and a county with a population of 20-30 thousand. In 1782, Catherine II approved the Charter of the Deanery; this voluminous document (it consisted of 14 chapters and 274 articles) for the first time regulated the structure of the police bodies, their system and main directions of activity. The cities were divided into parts (200-700 courtyards each) headed by private bailiffs, and parts - into quarters (50-100 courtyards each) with quarter overseers.
The Empress looked at their tasks broadly and addressed the police officers with a whole moral code of education of subjects by personal example: “Do not do something to your neighbor that you yourself cannot endure”, “Do not just do it hard for your neighbor, but do good for him, if you can,” “Lead the blind, give a roof to the one who has no, give a drink to the thirsty one, “have pity on the drowning man, lend a helping hand to the one who is falling,” “blessed is he who has mercy on the cattle, if your cattle and your villain stumble, raise it up”.
Administrative and police power in the county was transferred to the lower zemstvo court, headed by the captain-police officer elected by the nobility and elected assessors from the nobles and villagers. The first security guards from retired soldiers with hatchets and halberds appeared on the streets of the cities. The servicemen lived in their wooden or stone booths; thieves and robbers, they did not particularly frighten and often hunted in small trade.
In fact, for the whole county, there were 3-5 officials who were on the road and were obliged to carry out all kinds of orders from the governor. They could only fulfill their duties to maintain order, observe the passport regime, search for criminals, conduct investigations, suppress smuggling, fight fires, control measures and weights, collect arrears, recruit recruits, perform zemstvo duties, and control the work of taverns. The "witnesses" - mobilized peasants and bourgeois. The "Regulations on the Zemstvo Police" of 1837 divided the counties into camps, at the head of which the governor appointed (at the suggestion of the local nobility) a police officer. But they too had to rely on rural electives: sotsk - one from 100-200 and ten - from 10-20 households.
Another brainchild of Peter I, the State Security Service, or the secret police, the Preobrazhensky Prikaz in Moscow and the Secret Chancellery in St. Petersburg, acted more successfully. They were subject to cases: "1) about what malicious intent against the person of his royal majesty or treason, 2) about indignation or rebellion", as well as about embezzlement on an especially large scale.
Peter took up and rationalized the idea of obligatory denunciation, which was established in the 17th century. He wanted to supplement control from above with no less effective surveillance from below, and the only means of such feedback in a centralized bureaucratic system was to encourage denunciations. King
in 1713 himself urged his subjects to inform "about the heralds of the decrees and the law and the robber of the people … to us" - the "great sovereign" for the first time publicly pledged to personally accept and consider the news. For such a "service" the informer could receive the movable and immovable property of the culprit, "but if he is worthy, he will be worthy," and thus he hoped to acquire a new social status and "rank" in the Petrine state system. Beginning in 1742, the rules for the preparation of "reports" were published: "Gives the name to the name of the river; and what is my report, the points follow."
The "democracy" of denunciation, asserted from above, and its consecration as a worthy "service" that linked the denouncer directly with the sovereign, served as the basis for voluntary denunciation. It was this that became the real basis for the seeming omnipotence of the Secret Chancellery (1718-1726 and 1732-1762) and the Secret Expedition of the Senate (1762-1801) that replaced it. However, the archive of the punitive department shows that it did not resemble the apparatus of the corresponding services of modern times with their ramified structure, a contingent of staff members and non-staff informants. At the end of the reign of Anna Ioannovna, secretary Nikolai Khrushchov, 4 clerks, 5 sub-clerks, 3 copyists and one "back master" Fyodor Pushnikov served in the Secret Chancellery. By 1761, the staff even decreased to 11 people and the annual budget was reduced from about 2,100 to 1,660 rubles at the same rates. The same staff (14 people) with the same expenses was available in the Moscow office of the Secret Chancellery.
Local military and civilian authorities handled the delivery of suspects and criminals. The work of guarding and escorting convicts in the Peter and Paul Fortress (where the office itself was located) was carried out by officers and soldiers of the guards regiments. They kept the prisoners "in close watch"; watched, "so that they defecate in tubs, and not let them out"; allowed relatives to visit (so that the wives “were not there for more than two hours, but to speak aloud”). They also gave the prisoners "prayer books" and "fodder money", whoever had them, it was not worth counting on government fodder, and other prisoners "from hunger" did not live to see their affairs solved.
But this office worked smoothly: denunciation became for the authorities a means of obtaining information about the real state of affairs in the provinces, and for citizens it was often the only available way to restore justice or settle scores with an influential offender. And in general, the only possible means of participation in political life. “According to the purest conscience, and by the sworn office, and by all-assiduous spiritual pity, so that in the future Russia would know and shed inconsolable tears,” so in 1734 the clerk Pavel Okunkov was inspired by his mission, reporting on his neighbor deacon that he "He lives furiously" and "serve the Leninist." People complained about the negligent commanders who rob and oppress the local population. The governors and other administrators qualified such actions as a riot. But the supreme power itself, punishing the "rioters"she was in no hurry to abolish the right of appeal to the king, seeing in it a counterbalance to the corruption and lack of control of her agents.
Ascending the throne after the murder of his father (in a conspiracy against which he himself was involved), Alexander I declared in a manifesto of April 2, 1801: “. recognized for the good not only the name, but also the very action of the Secret Expedition to abolish and destroy forever, commanding all the deeds, in which they were, to give to the State Archives for eternal oblivion."
But the funeral was premature. In 1805, a secret "Committee for the Consultation on Matters Related to the Higher Police" was born as a meeting of the Ministers of War, Interior and Justice during the emperor's absence from the capital. Two years later, he was replaced by the "Public Security Committee". In 1811, together with the committee, there was already a whole Ministry of Police, which was in charge of "all institutions related to the protection of internal security." In addition, secret police existed in St. Petersburg (under the governor-general) and Moscow (under the chief of police). In 1812, the "Supreme Military Police" appeared - a military counterintelligence service to counter espionage and detect malfeasance of intendants and suppliers of goods for the army.
The competing structures managed, however, to overlook the revolutionary secret societies. Decembrist G. S. Batenkov, not without reason, sarcastically: “The heterogeneous police were extremely active, but their agents did not at all understand what to mean by the words Carbonari and liberals, and could not understand the conversation of educated people. They were mainly engaged in gossip, collected and dragged all sorts of rubbish, torn and soiled pieces of paper, processed their denunciations as it came to mind.
Nicholas I, who suppressed the uprising of the Decembrists, established in 1826 "His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery" - a special supreme body of power that stood over the entire state apparatus. Its III Branch became the first "special service" of a modern type in Russia. It was aimed at combating not with seditious words, but with real crimes against the state - revolutionary secret societies, espionage, corruption, official abuse. The new political police had an executive apparatus - the Separate Corps of Gendarmes (200 officers and 5,000 privates), parts of which were deployed in the gendarme districts. The sphere of jurisdiction of the "high police" and its chief, chief of gendarmes and friend of the tsar, Count A. Kh. Benckendorff, included a wide range of issues - from counterintelligence to censorship and malfeasance of officials.
At the end of each year, in Section III, a comprehensive report was drawn up, part of which was a “public opinion survey”. The emperor strove to obtain complete data on the reaction of various strata of society to certain decisions of the government, new laws, events abroad. The prohibition of torture by law required improvement in the conduct of interrogations, operational-search activities, the collection of objective evidence and information about the state of mind of society; for this it was necessary to create secret agents.
For the "direction of public opinion", the III Division used the newspaper "Northern Bee"; its publishers NI Grech and FV Bulgarin were privileged to publish news of the political life of Russia and Europe and notes about the emperor himself and the "august family". Benckendorff ordered articles and notes for the newspaper, for which he provided information; his subordinates translated materials from the European press for "Northern Bee". According to the plan of its creators, the III Section was to become not a contemptible "spy", but a respected body of supreme power and supervision; therefore, the former Decembrist General MF Orlov and Pushkin himself were invited to serve there …
As Benckendorff noted in one of the most submissive reports, "whatever the sovereign, the people love him, are devoted to him with all their soul and body …". However, by the end of the century, patriarchal “paternal” police custody became insufficient. With the abolition of serfdom, a painful breakdown of the traditional way of life began for society. Landlessness pushed masses of peasants into the cities, and young Maxim Gorky sang the praises of the domestic "tramp". But the judicial practice of that era noted the growth of the most barbaric crimes committed in the pursuit of profit and a completely "pure" public.
In the last quarter of the 19th century, the growth rate of crime increased sharply - for example, the number of thefts and robberies increased sevenfold. There appeared specialists - professionals of the criminal world: in 1912, out of 100 convicts in the general courts accounted for 23% of those previously convicted in the general courts - including those who were caught 4-5 times. Loud trials gave contemporaries a reason to talk about the "brutality of the mores of the whole society." In the era of great reforms and glasnost, even a peaceful inhabitant was capable of audacity: the clerk from Isakov's store, who was swaggering right on the Nevsky, “blew a gondon in front of the public, and to the police who took him away, he said that“his mother was Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich's nanny. about what the police did to him, he will inform Herzen for publication in the Bell. " The urban bully, familiar to us, was also a novelty;In 1912, the Moscow authorities responded to a questionnaire sent by the Ministry of Internal Affairs with the question: "In what way is it mainly manifested and are there any special local types of hooliganism?" - pointed out: “In singing at any time of the day or night, even on the eve of holidays, ugly songs, in continuous street swearing, breaking glass, openly drinking vodka in squares and on the street, in the most impudent and daring demand for money for vodka; in insolent mockery of respectable people without any reason, in ridicule and mockery of women and their female bashfulness. "in the most impudent and daring demand for money for vodka; in insolent mockery of respectable people without any reason, in ridicule and mockery of women and their female bashfulness. "in the most impudent and daring demand for money for vodka; in insolent mockery of respectable people without any reason, in ridicule and mockery of women and their female bashfulness."
Real opponents also appeared in power. The terrorists from Narodnaya Volya managed to create a conspiratorial and centralized organization with its own printing house, a budget of 80 thousand rubles and a security service, whose agent worked for a long time in Section III itself. Alexander II was lucky for a long time: his train did not derail the rails that were blown up in the fall of 1878 on the way from the Crimea, the tsar managed to evade 6 point-blank shots from a revolver on Palace Square in April 1879; in February 1880, he was late for dinner, when the Narodnoye member Stepan Khalturin blew up the dining room in the Winter Palace - but still died from a bomb on March 1, 1881. It is also good that the success of the assassination attempt showed the impotence of its organizers: in all the provinces of Russia they counted no more than 500 reliable people, which was clearly not enough to establish a revolutionary dictatorship.
Reforms began in the police. By 1862, unified district police departments appeared; city administrations were established only "in those cities, townships and townships that are not under the jurisdiction of the district police" - they included all the provincial and a number of large and important district centers. The police began to admit citizens into its ranks on the principle of "free recruitment" - instead of the previous replenishment of army ranks. In 1880, Section III was liquidated: the political and simply the police united under the common roof of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Chiefs of police in cities and district police officers (no longer elected, but appointed) were subordinate to the governor, who, in turn, was subordinate to the director of the Police Department and the Minister of the Interior.
The district police officer had an assistant and an office (a secretary with clerks and registrars); the territory of the county was divided into 2-4 camps with bailiffs and their assistants - police overseers. Is it a lot or a little? For example, in the Tambov province with a population of one and a half million, there were 12 police officers and 33 police officers in the service, and a total of 126 police officers - these officers in fact could hardly keep the population entrusted to their care under control. After an unsuccessful “going to the people” - an attempt to rouse the peasants to fight the government - in 1878, 5 thousand police officers were added to the states of district police departments in 46 provinces; they obeyed the police officers and led all the same sotsky in the villages. “On them will be education, by their own example,among the masses of the people with a strict sense of legitimacy and trust in the government, they have to make absolutely harmless any utopian nonsense that, in one way or another, can spread among the people,”the press of the time wrote.
“I was in the village of Leshkovo on the occasion of the temple festival, where there were a large number of people; I watched the flood, there were no incidents,”- however, there are not many such“empty”entries in the notebook of police officer Bazanov for 1881/82, recently found in the attic of an old house in Rostov the Great. The service was troublesome: the policeman conducted inquiries into criminal cases and cases of sudden death; he went around drinking establishments, checked the condition of roads and bridges, fought with fires and epidemics, identified passportless vagrants, suppressed rumors and rumors - and even, as a competent and authoritative person, he helped peasants write petitions.
City estates were divided into plots with district bailiffs, and plots - into districts, headed by district warders - the ancestors of the current district commissioners; these police officers commanded ordinary policemen. In the capital of the empire, under the leadership of the Chief of Police, 6 police chiefs, 13 district bailiffs of the first category, 19 - the second and the same third category, carried out order protection service. In their subordination were 16 senior assistant bailiffs of the first category and 19 - the second and third; junior assistant bailiffs, respectively, 30, 30 and 50. There were 125, 125 and 300 police overseers in three ranks; the number of policemen reached 4000 people. The detective and river police existed separately; the palace police were subordinate to the minister of the imperial court. There was also a police reserve in the person of the chief,a senior assistant, 2 junior assistants, 22 officers, 25 police officers and 150 police officers.
In the capitals and large provincial cities, there was a mounted police guard. It was subordinate to the mayor or provincial police chiefs and was used to disperse demonstrations and strikes, was exhibited at the royal passages along the streets, and also carried out a patrol service. In addition to a carbine, a revolver and a dragoon checker, a whip with a wire inserted inside served as a weapon - its blow cut through even the thickest coat. The horses were specially trained to push back the crowd: "Get siege on the sidewalk!" - a professional shout from the mounted police was heard in such cases.
The metropolitan policeman (in common parlance “pharaoh”), who replaced the veteran security worker, personified the entire police in the eyes of the inhabitants. They were recruited from soldiers and officers who had served their military service. The new law enforcement officer looked imposing compared to his predecessor: in service he wore a round black lacquer hat or a black cap, a black uniform and wide trousers with red piping (in the provinces - with orange piping). There was a badge on the chest with the policeman's number and the name of the site. The "Pharaoh" of the early 20th century was armed with a whistle, a revolver ("revolver" or "Smith-Wesson") and a soldier's saber, disrespectfully nicknamed by the people "herring". Petersburg and Moscow policemen, standing at the crossroads, had white wooden rods - to stop a particular crew; but they did not deal with the actual regulation of street traffic.
All sorts of manuals for police officers have appeared. From the handbook compiled by the police chief of the city of Kozlov I. I. Lebedev, it can be understood that the duties of the police were, as before, immensely broad. The vigilant policeman was supposed not only to suppress the illegal actions of the inhabitants, but also, from old memory, to find out if they had "intent against the health and honor of the imperial majesty or revolt and treason against the state" - and whether inappropriate "portraits of his imperial majesty" in all drinking shops, taverns and the like."
And also - to scout about "illegal communities" and "gatherings, general silence and calmness of the opposite", to suppress the spread of proclamations and "outrageous appeals", not to allow "seduction" into schism, patentless trade and collusion of traders and manufacturers for the sake of "price increases"; to catch "cattle roaming the streets"; watch for the "maintenance of silence and possible decency in brothels." He must see to it that "no one should be begging"; so that “no one would walk, embracing, and sing and whistle songs,” not write on the fences, not keep dogs without a leash - and, finally, in strict accordance with the behest of Catherine II, he was obliged to prohibit “all and everyone drunkenness”. The disobedient were to be detained with due "caution and philanthropy." In addition, the police were responsible for the protection of state institutions, post offices, prisons;organization of meetings and seeing off of the higher authorities.
But the police were late in organizing the fight against professional crime and revolutionaries. In St. Petersburg in 1866, a specialized criminal investigation department was created - the "Investigative Unit" in the department of the Chief of Police, whose work was based on the use of secret methods. Its first boss was the famous detective ID Putilin, a real thunderstorm of criminals. In 1881, the same structure appeared in Moscow, and then in Warsaw, Odessa, Riga, Rostov-on-Don, Tiflis, Baku. Only in 1908, the State Duma adopted the law "On the organization of the detective unit", according to which detective departments were created in 89 cities of the empire to fight "vicious elements" by means of "secret agents and external surveillance."
Their employees specialized in the types of professional crime: 1) murders, robberies, robberies and arson; 2) thefts and professional gangs of thieves; 3) counterfeiting, fraud, forgery, forgery and other scams. They were engaged in registering criminals, establishing their identity, systematizing all information about them, issuing criminal records and searching for hiding persons. "Flying squads" were also created to be on duty in theaters, at railway stations, to round up tramps and to carry out patrol duty in the streets and markets. Criminals were registered in detective departments; photographs, anthropometric measurements and fingerprinting data were used to identify their identity; collections of thieves' tools were compiled. The first police service dogs appeared in the 1910s.
However, there was no national criminal investigation system, and there were no specialized educational institutions - only two-month courses for the heads of detective departments. Undercover underworld agents left much to be desired; According to police officials, “you have to rely on information obtained exclusively in this way,” wrote the “Police Bulletin”, “to bring the matter to the point that it becomes unknown where the criminal ends and the detective begins in him, where the unraveled knots of the old crime turn in this way into the ovary of a new one. The district bailiffs and district police officers were not eager to help the detectives: "We found the fools, we will hand over a good case from ourselves, and we ourselves will carry it out no worse." Besides, city detectives could not,and they did not have the opportunity to act independently in rural areas - where the criminals were safely hiding. And the technical means of detecting were limited, for example, the Penza "detectives" had only handcuffs, a set for fingerprinting and a camera.
The provincial gendarme administrations conducted political investigations; at the same time, they were independent of the governors who were responsible for security and peace in the province. Since the beginning of the 80s of the XIX century, there appeared "secret-search", later "security departments" at the offices of chiefs of police or city governors with their secret agents and detectives-"filers". They had their own agents in the ranks of the radical parties - the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Social Democrats; the gendarme general A. I. Spiridovich was the first to write their history - in a purely applied sense. But it was not possible to neutralize the revolutionary structures - they outplayed the enemy.
City and county bodies of the general police existed as if by themselves; there was no single structure coordinating their actions, not only at the level of the ministry, but also at the level of the province - which made it difficult to investigate crimes committed by the same gang in different places. The officials of the provincial government standing above them did not know the specifics of police work and were engaged in the protection of public order in between other matters.
In the same 60-thousand provincial Tambov, in the alarming 1905, order was guarded by only 3 bailiffs, 6 of their assistants and 71 police officers, while in fact only 40 people were on duty - the rest were on the road and carried out other orders from the authorities. The police did not risk appearing in the suburbs, where "the most marginal and dangerous element" lived, and the chief of police honestly warned the governor that his subordinates "might be powerless in the event of significant disturbances in the city."
The highest police ranks were relatively well provided for (the provincial police chief received 2-3 thousand rubles a year; bailiffs' assistants and bailiffs - from 500 to 1500 rubles), but junior and senior policemen carrying out daily service could receive only 150-180 rubles, that is fewer than the workers, whom they often had to "pacify". Rural officers were paid up to 200 rubles for hard, often dangerous and thankless work, but sometimes less. There were not enough weapons - the police got the remnants of the army supplies. Sometimes provincial policemen had to buy it at their own expense, and the townsfolk complained that "if necessary, they are not only unable to protect the townspeople, but also themselves."
Overloading with all kinds of responsibilities at a low salary made it difficult to select worthy personnel. Therefore, the police authorities delicately admitted that "drunkenness is not a rare exception among the police officers, guards, and city officers and threatens to undermine the confidence of the population" - which, however, was not high anyway. In vain the instructions instructed police officers to refrain from "drunken lifestyle", unauthorized absences and the ancient custom of collecting money from grateful population on holidays.
The police took bribes from the right and the wrong and used their official position - especially when the alcohol trade began to be limited in 1914. In 1916, the townspeople complained about the bailiff of the 2nd Arbat section of Moscow Zhichkovsky: “When Zhichkovsky, having multiplied the secret trade in wine everywhere in his area and making a fortune in this business, bought a car, a couple of horses and a two-seater motorcycle for his two kept women, four months ago, he was transferred to the 3rd Presnensky site. The master of the situation in the wine trade remained his senior assistant Shershnev, who concealed from the new bailiff all the secret wine trade in the precinct and began to receive monthly handouts one for himself and for the bailiff in triple size.
Police officers did not shine in education: out of 1609 people who entered the police service from November 1, 1894 to August 1895, 17% had a higher education, 10.32% had a secondary education, and 72.68% had a lower education, despite the fact that a quarter of them and could not graduate from the district schools. Most of the policemen did not even have primary education.
Not surprisingly, with such a contingent, the crime detection rate was below 50% - and this was considered a fairly decent level. In 1906, the head of the detective department of the Kiev police reported that 793 of the 2355 crimes committed were solved (that is, 35%), but he believed: “… if we take into account those especially difficult conditions under which the officers of the detective police had to act during the reporting year, the percentage of crime detection in other properly organized police in Russia and abroad is quite satisfactory. And he was, perhaps, right - in 1907, 5705 crimes were committed in Moscow, and only 443 were solved - that is, less than 10%.
Police expansion projects required increased funding, which embarrassed both the Ministry of Finance and local city councils - it was the latter who provided the police with housing or "apartment" money at the expense of the city budget. Only in 1903, in 46 provinces, mobile paramilitary police units were established - foot and mounted police guards on state content, replacing the elective ten and sotsky. The guards and non-commissioned officers were recruited from retired ranks with experience of service in the cavalry or artillery; they entered the service with their horses (for the purchase of a horse and equipment they were given a loan - 120 rubles), but received a good salary - 400-500 rubles a year. In 1908, for 2.7 million inhabitants of the Tambov province, there were 329 non-commissioned officers and 1396 foot and horse guards; in Voronezh - by 2,5 million 249 police officers and 1146 guards.
Such guards were also created at the private funds of industrialists and landowners - at the factories of Savva Morozov in the Vladimir province there was a detachment of 77 mounted policemen. The guards looked like military men, not policemen - they wore gray soldier's greatcoats; in service were dragoon carbines, checkers and revolvers. They were trained in building, horse riding, and the use of weapons by specialists from the provincial gendarme office.
The revolution of 1905-1907 pushed the police department to reform. On the initiative of the Prime Minister and Minister of Internal Affairs P. A. Stolypin, an interdepartmental commission was created, headed by his deputy A. A. Makarov. The prepared project had in mind the elimination of functions unusual for the police (announcement of orders from the authorities, collection of taxes, swearing in), the establishment of police courses and schools with the introduction of educational qualifications for police officers, the establishment of a unified order of service with the elimination of departmental division, an increase in staff with the appointment of appropriate salaries … But all this required an increase in expenses from 35 to 58 million rubles per year - and the business stalled.
In vain its initiators argued that police work is "the most burdensome of all civilian services" and that "you cannot have a good police force without paying sufficient salary." After Stolypin's death, the draft went to parliament in 1912, but neither the Third nor the Fourth State Duma proceeded to consider it, and the new Minister of Internal Affairs N. A. Maklakov returned it for revision. On October 30, 1916, Nicholas II approved the resolution of the Council of Ministers "On strengthening the police in 50 provinces of the empire and on improving the official and financial situation of police officers." According to this law, the number of guards increased - from the proportion of one guard to 2000 people (and not by 2500, as before). But it was too late. In February 1917, a small police force remained the only defender of the collapsed monarchy - and was disbanded by the victors. Of course, no one spared the "Pharaohs" - but the new militia of students and other civilians was much inferior to them. Very soon the townsfolk felt themselves defenseless: “We are currently at the mercy of robbers and various shady personalities who dispose of our property with impunity. We feel such fear that we do not even dare to leave the house in the evenings, so as not to leave the house unguarded,”residents of Ryazan complained to the city council. The newspaper “Birzhevye Vedomosti” wrote: “Criminal elements terrorized Kharkov. Robberies and murders have become a daily occurrence. The police are unable to oppose anything to the work of thugs. Neither place nor time of day save citizens from robbery. Policemen are recruited from random elements, for the most part they do not even know how to handle weapons. The criminals released from prison feel great."
Igor Kurukin
