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E-book Policemen of the Tsar : Local Police in an Age of Upheaval

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s the minister responsible for the local police, Lanskoi had particular grounds for concern over their poor performance. His, however, was not the only ministry dependent on the police. A contemporary journalist described the local police as, in effect, the eyes, ears, and hands of the state. “Almost everything discussed by ministerial departments,” he noted, “originates with them and goes back to them for enforcement.”2 Count Benkendorf, the first director of the political police, whom the new tsar’s father had tasked with monitoring all the bureaucracy, had made a similar observation: that “every-thing” depended on the local police.3 Public health and sanitation, regulation of weights and measures, collection of vital statistics, and information on prices and the state of the harvest as well as the prevention and suppression of crime and public disorders fell to the local police. In addition, the police were responsible for arranging the billeting of troops, suppressing violations of the tax laws, trying petty criminal cases, and a long list of other duties.4The early development of the local police reflected the efforts of Russia’s most enlightened rulers to replicate Western models. Peter the Great, who reigned from 1682 to 1725, founded the Russian police in St. Petersburg in 1718 under Anton Divier, a Portuguese Jew whom he recruited in his trav-els to Western Europe. Peter instructed Divier to transform the new capital into a European city. To this end he made him responsible for the design of buildings, public sanitation, and flood control as well as keeping the peace.5Catherine the Great, empress from 1762 to 1796, corresponded with Sartine, the chief of the Paris police, for insight on improving Russia’s police forces.6She also expanded the police into Russia’s rural areas in 1775. Seven years later she did the same for cities that did not have them.7 She and Peter I were seeking to create institutions that could change society in positive ways rather than simply maintaining the status quo. Their effort to build what historian Marc Raeff has called a “well-ordered police state” had been the goal of rulers in Western and Central Europe since the seventeenth century. As Raeff observed, however, the corporations of nobility, urban guilds, and church authorities that Europe’s rulers had sought first to displace and then to enlist as instruments of their power were much weaker in Russia. The result was to require the creation of —and reliance on—a bureaucracy less capable than its European counterparts and that widened the gap between the autocracy and most of its subjects. year after coming to the throne in 1801, Alexander I, supported by enlightened bureaucrat Michael Speranskii, centralized command of the police in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.9 In 1811 he also created a sepa-rate Ministry of Police modeled after Napoleon’s.10 Like Napoleon, however, Alexander soon grew concerned that this Ministry might threaten his own power and in 1819 he abolished it. Tsar Nicholas I moved the police in a different direction. As historian Nicholas Riasanovsky observed, Nicholas was a great admirer of Peter the Great, who had first opened up Russia to Western ideas and practices.11 The failed revolt of December 1825 by army officers seeking to block his accession, however, made him suspicious of the Western political ideas that had inspired many of the rebels. To suppress such influences Nicholas created a political police, the Third Section of His Majesty’s Own Chancellery.12 A later Russian police historian assessed that this move reflected a belief that the local police had failed to achieve the lofty goals set by his predecessors.13 It did not, however, mean the abandonment of the regime’s reliance on the local police. Rather, in 1837, Nicholas enacted a statute that expanded the local police system he had inherited deeper into the countryside.14 But as Lanskoi complained to Nicholas’s successor, by the end of his reign in 1855, Russia’s police remained a weak and ineffective force.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

947.1 ABB p

Penerbit

Hungary : Central European University Press., 2022

Deskripsi Fisik

235 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9789633865767

Klasifikasi

947.1

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

-

Subjek

History of Modern Caucasus

Info Detail Spesifik

-

Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

-

Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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