A police force is a staple in most communities on the planet and it is not uncommon for them to carry out abuse against members of the general population either at the instructions of those in charge, or of their own free will. Russia is no different, in fact it is easy to argue that under both tsarism and in the Soviet Union, the police force is generally used as muscle to maintain those in power, rather than to maintain order. This page will examine the changes made to policing and the police force under each leader of Russia between 1855 and 1953.
The Police Force under Alexander II
What already existed? Before Alexander came to the throne, in July 1826, Emperor Nicholas I set up a secret police department called the Third Section. It originally only consisted of sixteen investigators, which then grew to forty in 1855. Its general purpose included surveillance and the gathering of information about possible threats to the monarchy, for example political dissidents or heretical sects. It was also in charge of monitoring counterfeit money, stamps, and documents as well as exiling suspicious people. It was disbanded in 1880 and became part of the newly established Department of State Police.
The first security department set up in 1866 under Alexander II after a failed assassination attempt and it was called the Department on Protecting the order and Public Peace. It had twelve investigators and, unlike those departments that followed, it was not a secret force – its street address was commonly known across the whole Russian empire.
After another failed assassination attempt on the 6th of August 1880, Alexander established the Department of State Police under the Ministry of the Interior, by combining forces of the already existing uniformed police officers (called the Special Corps of Gendarmes) and the Third Section.
The Police Force under Alexander III
In 1881, after the assassination of Alexander II, the new secret police force of the tsar were established. They were called the Okhrana and their aims were spying, data collection on political offenders, and infiltration of terrorist organisations. The plain clothes detectives gathered information while specialist officers and undercover agents infiltrated terrorist cells and led them into actions that they would be arrested for. The Okhrana recruited thousands of bodies to masquerade as cab drivers, to read peoples post, etc. There were both domestic branches (to watch Russian citizens) and foreign branches (to watch Russians who had been exiled). In March 1882, there was a decree issued which allowed the police to declare any citizen subject to surveillance.
The Police Force under Nicholas II
When Nicholas II came to the throne, the Okhrana were still the main secret police force. However, after the 1905 almost-revolution, it was revealed how ineffective they were at quelling and controlling mass movements and that they may have actually worsened some of the unrest that caused the event in the first place. After 1905, they remained in operation at the control of the tsar until the revolution in 1917.
The Police Force under Lenin
The main police force under Lenin was the Cheka. This was a group of secret police, much like under the Tsars, who monitored any political opposition to the Bolshevik government. In the first month of its creation, the Cheka only consisted of 40 officials, but by the spring of 1918, it had evolved into having many different teams for different purposes. During the Russian Civil War, the Cheka were used to arrest, trial and even execute any possible political opposition, and it is thought that they murdered thousands in the name of political safety. In addition to supress political opposition, the Cheka were also in charge of persecuting deserters. In 1919 and 1920, there were believed to be almost three million deserters from the Bolshevik Red Army. There were around 1.3 million deserts arrested during this time period and several thousand were shot. The Cheka were dissolved in 1922 and replaced with the GPU, who were another political police force.
The Police Force under Stalin
When Stalin came to power, he continued using practically the same police force as Lenin had to maintain his power. Then, in 1934, it became known as the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, which is abbreviated to the NKVD in Russian. The NKVD were a major tool in Stalin’s Great Purges, helping with the institution of work camps, raising grain quotas to cause famines, and just mass killings the ‘cleanse’ the nation. Stalin also used the NKVD to calm his paranoia by having them eliminate anyone that he thought was a threat to him. The main official purpose of the NKVD was to maintain national security and their presence was well known throughout the country. They often had people arrested and sent to work camps for practically nothing, which created such a horror that people would report on the neighbours and friends out of fear that they would become the next target if they didn’t. The work of the NKVD between 1936 and 1938 led to the period being called the Great Terror. The NKVD also had a large intelligence network, and helped with ethnic and domestic repression. After Stalin’s death in 1953, the NKVD purges were halted, but their legacy is still horrifying to this day.