The Police of the Steppe Region in the Post-Reform Period: Pan-imperial Reforms and Regional Everyday Life

• Main Author: Anisimova I. V.
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: Transbaikal State University 2019-12-01
• Series: Гуманитарный вектор
• Subjects: russian empire; steppe region; judicial and legal system; police; reforms
• Online Access: http://zabvektor.com/wp-content/plugins/zv-magazine-manager/article-information-page.php?article=1329&locale=en

The article analyzes the establishment and development of police service in the Steppe Region in the last third of 19th – early 20th centuries on the basis of a wide range of documentary sources, some of which are first introduced in the scientific circulation. Additionally, the author focuses on identifying the particularities of police activities in the Central Asian outskirts of the Russian Empire. The methodological basis for the work was the main points of the neo-institutional theory, which allows us to identify and analyze the development of the main institutions of the judicial-legal and administrative systems, their interaction and functional efficiency. The organization of police activities in the region began in the 1860s century; it was distinctly different from the pan-imperial processes of the police development. “Importing” of police authorities to the Steppe Region did not take into account geographical and ethnic features of the region, the maintaining traditional judicial institutions and the legal norms in the judicial and legal system, lack of personnel reserve in the region. The features of urban, uyezd, volost everyday life caused difficulties in the police activities and made it difficult for police officials to perform their immediate duties. By the end of the 19th century, the police system of the Steppe Region experienced serious problems in the field of personnel maintenance, financing and the activity management. It led to a broad discussion of the state of the region’s police service in government circles and a number of measures to modernize the police institutions. However, despite the steps taken to reorganize the police system in the 1890s– early 20th century, the lack of cardinal reforms maintained regressive trends in police activities until the end of the Imperial period.