Humanitarian activities of the county police in the second half of the XIX– early XX centuries (on the example of the Vladimir province)

MOROVA Ol'ga Viktorovna PhD in History Associate Professor; Department of History and Humanities; State University of Humanities and Technology 142611, Russia, Moscow region, Orekhovo-Zuyevo, Zelenaya str., 22 bldg.2, office 10 umr@ggtu.ru

Introduction

Law enforcement agencies have been and remain an important part of the Russian state system. Their key role in strengthening State power has not been questioned. However, the field of responsibility of the police authorities of the Russian Empire at the turn of the XIX- XX centuries was extensive and diverse. It included issues not only of state, but also of community and public administration, management in the field of economics, industry, transport, finance, control over compliance with laws and regulations, protection of personal rights and property, health care, social security, education, the spiritual sphere and monitoring the moral state of the population. All these issues were regulated by a complex set of normative acts of general legal significance, industry-specific nature, specific actions, and emergency authorities.

Police agencies were involved in their execution at different stages within the changing boundaries of authority and with ambiguously defined responsibilities.

At the end of the 19th century, the problems of the development of police structures and their functions in Russia became the object of educational, methodological and scientific interest of jurists and historians. Over two centuries, a rich domestic historiography of the activities of the city and county police has developed.

In the first decade of the XXI century. in the wake of the reform of the Russian law enforcement system, a significant number of research papers (dissertations, scientific articles) appeared, which analyzed the scientific literature accumulated by that time on the issue and attempted a multidimensional coverage of the activities of the police of the Russian Empire in the XIX – beginning. XXIV. ^{[1; 10; 11; 12]}

The authors of the research revealed the problems of the regulatory framework for the activities of law enforcement agencies, the specifics of their recruitment, the scope of competencies, standards of material security, etc.

In addition to general issues, the historians' sphere of interest included the activities of the police authorities of individual provinces and counties of Russia. (Glovinskaya S. N. Organization of the staff of the district police guard of the Chernozem center of Russia in 1901-1917. // History of State and Law, 2007, No. 8; Nosova E.S. "Personnel of the provincial administration in 1870-1905. (based on the materials of the Vladimir province)"//Science and modernity. Issue No. 8-1 / 2011; Khramtsov A.B. Tyumen county police: organization, financing, activity (1867-1917) // City Administration. 2008. No. 9; Shibaev V.V. The district police of the Russian state of the second half of the XIX–XX century (on the territory of Mordovia) from 1917 to 1960. dissertation... candidate of Historical Sciences 07.00.02 - Saransk, 2007, 266c., etc.).

Currently, the potential for studying the activities of Russian law enforcement agencies in the local dimension is extremely high. It is fueled by a significant number of archival documents from regional archives, and the remaining gaps in the problem field.

Thus, researcher V.V. Shibaev noted that for a long period in the country "there was interest only in the history of the political police in the context of its struggle against the revolutionary movement."^[17] A wide range of concerns of the county police, its socio-humanitarian functions remained in the shadow of the study.

Referring to historical sources at the regional level allows us to reveal an objective picture and the scale of the activities of local law enforcement agencies. An example is a description of the work of the district police, supported by archival materials, of one of the most difficult in socio-economic terms in the region – the Vladimir province. E. S. Nosova studied the personnel of the administration of the Vladimir province in 1870-1905 and highlighted the issues of staffing the district police. ^[12] However, the actual side of the social and humanitarian mission of the local guards of the Vladimir province was not reflected in any scientific work.

The purpose of this study is to characterize the humanitarian activities of the district police of the Vladimir province, based on real–life examples from the history of Pokrovsky District, Yuryev, etc., and to draw attention to this problem. In this study, materials from the funds of the Vladimir provincial government, the district police officers of the Pokrovsky district, and the police supervisor of the town of Nikolskoye were used.

The research is based on the principles of historicism, reliability and scientific character, chronological and historical-systemic methods are used.

The main part

Since 1862, the county with county and county-free towns, townships, towns and villages has been under the control of the county police. The county police department consisted of the county police officer and his assistant. Until 1889, the presence of the district police department from assessors elected from different estates, under the chairmanship of the police officer, operated. After that, the structure changed: now it is an office under the supervision of a secretary, messengers and executive officials, bailiffs, heads of separate tables in parts of the county. The lower ranks included police constables, hundreds, tens, county police and mounted police guards. The district police officers were appointed by the governors, the bailiffs – by the provincial government, mainly from local nobles with real estate in the province, according to the list compiled by the noble assembly at the general elections.

The district police officers of the Vladimir province, guided by the Charter of the Prevention and Suppression of Crimes, the Charter of the medical Charter of construction, the Forest Charter, the Charter of Agriculture, Land legislation and other numerous regulatory and administrative acts, led a not very numerous staff of their subordinates. ^[1]

County police officers ensured public peace and law and order in the territory of the counties, controlled the workers' and peasants' movement, anti-state protests, conducted investigations and searches for revealed offenses within their competence, controlled the consumer market, the sphere of local entrepreneurship, environmental management, and monitored compliance with fire safety standards. Police officers monitored the cleanliness of the streets of county towns and the sanitary condition of public institutions, were involved by the administration and local government in collecting taxes and collecting arrears. The county police were charged with the duties of "protecting the inviolability of the rights of the holy church and strict order in the performance of sacraments and rituals," keeping records of churches and monasteries, statistics of births, deaths, and marriages in the county.^[2]

Thus, by the beginning of the 20th century, the area of responsibility of the county police was extremely wide. A number of responsibilities were of great humanitarian importance, for example, monitoring the state of public health and combating illegal phenomena in the field of public morality.

The population structure of the Vladimir province was characterized by complexity, and the population was characterized by high indicators and density. In the second half of the 19th century, the number of factories, factories and men, women and children working in them grew rapidly.

The Vladimir, Pokrovsky and Shuisky counties of the Vladimir province were distinguished by a very high density of factory industry, the concentration of workers at enterprises located in these counties, with all the ensuing consequences, expressed primarily in an increase in crime.

According to provincial statistics, in 1902 the total number of crimes in these counties was 41% of the total number of crimes in the province. ^{[3; p.58]} Table 1 shows data on the number and types of crimes, from which it can be seen that the situation in the most populated counties was turbulent, the county police worked hard.

Table 1

The number and most numerous groups of crimes in the counties of the Vladimir province with high crime rates, per year

The criminogenic factors contributing to the formation of criminal qualities of a person were prostitution, gambling, drunkenness, and begging, which were widespread at that time. In general, as researcher V.V. Lysenko showed, "during the reforms, the Russian police have developed a fairly effective mechanism for combating this area." ^[11] Nevertheless, the daily monitoring of the state of public health and the solution of related issues was extremely difficult. In the process of fulfilling his duties, the district police officer and his subordinates had to contact people of different social status, educational level, civic consciousness, and personal responsibility. It was necessary to report on the execution of orders to the provincial board within the prescribed period.

One of the first humanitarian activities of the county police was the control over the mandatory establishment of hospitals for workers in factories and factories of the county. The Vladimir provincial government began to execute the circular of the Ministry of Internal Affairs dated September 21, No. 677, 1866. on the establishment of hospital facilities for workers in factories and factories numbering from 80 to 100 people. The Vladimir City Police Department and the police departments of the counties of the Vladimir province received appropriate orders, actively joined the work, which they reported to the Vladimir Provincial government. ^[6]

The district police officer of the Pokrovsky district police Department wrote in a report that he "has the honor to inform that at a meeting of breeders and manufacturers of the Pokrovsky district he obliged them to arrange hospital rooms," listed the names of entrepreneurs and the name of trading companies that had to do this. ^{[6; L.28]}; ^{[6; ll.30,30vol.]}

From those breeders and manufacturers who were included in this list, the Pokrovsky district police officer took subscriptions and monitored the fulfillment of their obligations. The bailiff of the 1st camp and the Nikolsky police supervisor monitored the implementation of the given directive by those who had industrial establishments on the territory of the village of Orekhovo, the town of Nikolskoye, which were part of the Pokrovsky district of the Vladimir province.

These included a trading house under the firm of Savva Morozov and his sons, as well as merchant Yelisey Savvich Morozov, who, as of 1868, each had a paper spinning and weaving factory. Moreover, the Nikolsky police supervisor reported that the trading house of the firm of Savva Morozov and his sons already has a hospital with 50 beds with a department for 10 more beds, with a pharmacy and a permanent doctor, titular adviser V. V. Lazarev. ^{[6; L.30ob]}

Pokrovsky merchant Vikul Morozov, the heir of the deceased Elisha Savvich Morozov, on behalf of all the heirs of Elisha, gave a subscription to the Pokrovsky district police officer on the establishment of a hospital room at his factory, adding that his factory has a ready-made hospital with 12 beds, which was confirmed by the Nikolsky police supervisor in his report to the Pokrovsky district police officer on May 14, 1868. ^{[6; l.38, 39, 41]}

The Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) in the field of healthcare paid increased attention to the fight against venereal diseases, the spread of which by the state was closely linked to the state of national morality. On-site sanitary and epidemiological control was carried out by police supervisors. The incidence of syphilis was strictly monitored.

The district police officers kept a special report on medical and police activities in the city and the county. It recorded the number of women of free behavior, houses of tolerance in apartments listed. The police officer organized regular inspections of certain categories of the population and reported how many men and women were examined separately in factories and factories in the city and county, how many of those examined turned out to be infected.

Back in September 1854, the Ministry of Internal Affairs issued a circular approving the rules for the establishment of syphilitic departments at hospitals. ^[5] Infected with syphilis had to be placed for treatment in special rooms at hospitals. Sick women should be kept separate from men, and the rooms where they are kept should not be connected to each other. According to the circular, the police boards, together with the medical boards, were instructed not only to strictly monitor this. Their most important function was to find those responsible for the infection in order to stop the channels of spread of the disease.

All those being treated for a contagious disease had to be interrogated by the police, to find out from whom they were infected. This was how the "depraved behavior of a woman" was revealed, "the essence of wandering, mean and suspicious girls, soldiers' widows and daughters." ^{[5; ll.1ob-4]}

Those responsible for spreading the infection were fined and forcibly placed in hospitals. At the end of treatment, the women were treated differently. Soldiers' wives were given to their husbands with receipts, in which the husbands undertook to keep them and not allow them to debauchery.

The police asked for certificates of residence at work (vacation documents) about other infected people, as about vagrants. Upon receipt of certificates, the cured were sent under strict supervision to landowners or to those societies and departments to which they belonged. At the same time, money was required from the landowners or from the society for the treatment and nutrition of the cured. An interesting fact is that if the landlords or the society did not want to take back their wayward people, then the circular ordered them to be sent to Siberia.

The police guards of the town of Nikolskoye, as well as other counties, regularly performed this service. ^[9] Doctors of the hospitals of S. Morozov and V. Morozov, located in the town of Nikolskoye, Pokrovsky district, according to the results of examinations of workers and their family members, wrote to the offices of the factory management certificates on the referral of identified patients for treatment to the Pokrovsky Zemsky hospital.

In 1889, doctors A. Bazilevich and K. Ugryumov sent a weaver Avdotya Zakharova, a peasant of the Ryazan province of the Egoryevsky district; a dryer Alexey Kremnev, a reserve private, from the peasants of the Ryazan province of the Egoryevsky district of the Starovskaya volost of the village of Filinova; a ribbon worker of the BPF No. 395 Praskovya Varina, a peasant of the Tula province; a thresher Ivan Akimov.; knurler Leonty Fedorov; worker of a self-weaving factory Marfa Epifanova with her young daughter Ekaterina Perfilova; weaver Gordey Lobanov; yarn steamer Mikhail Selunev, a peasant; worker Savely Ivanov, a peasant of the Kaluga province of the Maloyaroslavsky district; a peasant of the Vladimir province of the Pokrovsky district of the Lukyanovsky parish of the village of Okulova Irina, who entered the service of the cook to the employee V.S. Balashev Afonasieva; Vasily the sizing Fedorov, a peasant of the Smolensk province; the dryer of OKZ No. 409 Avdotya Vasilyeva and her son Mikhail Petrov, 1 ½ years old.

The documents show immigrants from the Moscow, Vladimir, Ryazan, Tula, Kaluga, Smolensk, Tver, Tambov provinces. More than 60 people - weavers, yarn steamers, boatwomen, coil disassemblers, winders, dyers, a bank, a starcher, dryers, dugouts, peat bogs, labourers, a laundress - were examined and registered by the police in one year.

In addition to them, their children and servants were sent for treatment: for example, Alexandra Mikhailova, 7 years old, and Matryona Demidova, the nanny, Philip Alekseev, the son of Vasily Alekseev, the weaver; Pelageya Ivanova, 12 years old, the daughter of Stepanida Fedorova, the weaver, and others.

The police guards of the town of Nikolskoye regularly reported to the Pokrovsky district police officer on what measures, within the framework of medical and police activities, were taken to eliminate the spread of venereal diseases in the town of Nikolskoye. He accordingly reported to the Vladimir provincial government and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Prostitutes were a special category that was subject to strict control by the county police. A namesake list of prostitutes was attached to a special statement on medical and police activities, which indicated their social status, age, and where they came from. Thus, 11 women from Vetluzhsky, Kovrovsky, Pokrovsky and other counties engaged in prostitution in Shuya. Among them are petty bourgeois Ekaterina Zelentsova, 26 years old, from Ivanovo-Voznesensk, peasant wife Ekaterina Shipova, 19 years old, from Shuisky parish, peasant girl Marya Onokhina, 16 years old, Shuisky district, peasant girl Daria Pavlovna Cheburashkina, 22 years old, from the village of Arinina Bogorodsky district. ^{[7; L.6]}

Inspections of prostitutes were a headache for the county police department. Especially, oddly enough, if there were no brothels in the city and county. ^{[7; L.7-8]}

The district police officer of the Yuryev police department of the Vladimir province wrote in a report that there are no brothels in Yuryev, but local artisans, scrubbers, pololschits of ridges in vegetable gardens are among the prostitutes. They were subjected to medical and police examinations on a monthly basis, as well as as needed. It was very difficult to assemble "this whole team of servants living in gardens, workshops and private houses" for inspections. Therefore, the demand of the Vladimir provincial government to inspect them 2 times a week was met with horror.

On March 14, 1899, the police officer on behalf of the police department asked for permission to inspect prostitutes at least once a week, citing important circumstances: "Otherwise, inspections will greatly embarrass prostitutes and take away their working time, and the police will be given a lot of work to collect and bring prostitutes for inspections." ^{[7; L.8]}

Measures to combat the spread of sexually transmitted and other infectious diseases have been woven into the rules for controlling migration flows and ensuring peace and order in the city and county.

Both in cities and in counties of the province, all owners, tenants, tenants of dachas, owners of manors, estates, country houses and all types of real estate in general, as well as their tenants and managers, owners and tenants of inns and visiting houses, owners and tenants of factories and factories, heads of charitable educational institutions, hospitals and other institutions were obliged to provide the police daily with information about all those who arrived at their residence, for whatever short period, as well as information about those who left during the day.^{[13; pp.715-717]}

This requirement did not apply to only two categories of visitors: 1) peasants who were passing through with wagons loaded with goods, stopping for the night or to feed horses at inns or visiting houses along the highways; 2) peasants who temporarily arrived in villages where they were listed as householders or family members.

From all others it was necessary to demand the presentation of a residence permit, in its absence, literate visitors had to write a handwritten explanation, which the owner of the premises had to give to the police along with information about where and when the person arrived, his first name, patronymic, surname or nickname. A person caught in the absence of a residence permit was facing criminal punishment.

At that time, the most massive migration flows of the population in the Vladimir, Moscow and other central provinces of Russia were associated with the periods of employment: from October 1 to Easter and from Easter to October 1.

According to the current rules, the owners and tenants of factories and plants with more than 50 employees kept their records of arrivals and departures. They were charged with keeping laced books sealed with the seal of the police department or the bailiff, in which they registered the personnel of the workers in alphabetical order, noted any changes daily and certified every day with a signature (either by the owner himself or by a person authorized by him). All information was sent, depending on the territorial location, to the police department, to the district police officer, to the bailiffs' headquarters, to the volost boards, to the police constables.

Those guilty of violating the rules of control could be fined up to 500 rubles or arrested for up to 3 months, or the closure of an industrial establishment.

The village authorities had to not only immediately inform the police officers about people arriving in the village without special purposes, with dubious or obviously malicious purposes, but also detain them until the police arrived. ^{[13; p. 716]}

It was especially necessary to follow the instructions on measures to combat the spread of terrible infectious diseases - typhus, cholera, plague, smallpox, diphtheria, croup, scarlet fever and syphilis. Even in this struggle, local representatives of the county or rural police were the first to whom, together with representatives of the zemstvo sanitary supervision, every householder and head of the family, every innkeeper, hotel, tavern, premises rented to workers, the owner of industrial establishments with a large number of employees was obliged to immediately report those who fell ill with a supposedly contagious disease in his house or the family. ^{[13; p. 726]}

Local representatives of the county police conducted special reports on the results of monitoring drunkenness among the population. The circular of the Vladimir governor to the district police officers dated May 3, 1890 ordered them to take strict measures "to stop the drinking of wine at rural gatherings, which has become customary – either at the expense of mundane sums or in the form of treats from persons who dealt with these gatherings" ^{[8, l.1]}

All police officers were obliged to identify and inform the zemstvo district chiefs about all such cases, the district police officer had to report monthly to the governor himself.

The bailiffs of the 1st and 2nd camps recorded in detail all cases of public drunkenness, when and where "a public drinking party was carried out by the peasants." A message was received from the bailiff of the 2nd camp that on May 22 and 23 in the village of Vaulovo of Funikovo-Gorsky volost, "a rural gathering of freedmen peasants had a drinking party with the proceeds from the sale of public meat." ^{[8, l.6]} Only in the 1st camp of the Pokrovsky district in April-June 1890. 14 cases of drinking were recorded.

It should be noted that the drinking parties were quite numerous - from 16 to 30 people took part in them, often the whole society. From 3 to 12 liters of vodka were drunk. The reasons were very different: the sale of public secular grass, a treat for hiring a fellow villager as a night watchman, the sale of meat, the sale of the remainder of the meadow, the acceptance of cattle from peasants of other villages into meadows, the digging of public ditches, the correction of a fence, the sale of a public bull, the purchase of a public bull, the collection of a fine for the loss of bread by a shepherd, the sale of a plot of frozen land, renting out the inn , etc .

The vigilance of the local police had results. So, the bailiff of the 1st camp of the Pokrovsky district reported to the Pokrovsky district police officer on August 3, 1890: "during the month of August there were no public drinking parties in the camp entrusted to me." ^{[8, L.26]} The same report followed on October 31, December 1, 1890.

The scale of the workload of local police officers can be imagined by the number of volosts and the population in the same Pokrovsky district: in 1902, 86,327 men and 91,278 women lived in 20 volosts. ^{[3, p.44]} The police did not always manage to prevent drunkenness, but reports and statistics collected by them caused a strong reaction from the authorities, the Orthodox Church, the public, which put the issue of combating drunkenness of the people at the forefront of the state and public agenda.

Local law enforcement officers, in addition to the above-mentioned and described examples of activity, were engaged in countering the spread of gambling and cheating, and combating professional begging in order to establish the moral foundations of society.

Conclusion

During the second half of the 19th century, the range of responsibilities of local police authorities expanded and the scope of powers changed. Their area of competence included various aspects of public life that needed to be cleansed of immoral manifestations.

In scientific and journalistic literature, the local police are much more exposed as a key tool in the fight against the revolutionary movement and anti-government protests. There is a distortion in the perception and assessment of the activities of law enforcement and public peace bodies that developed in the second half of the XIX century under the influence of liberal and radical public thought in Russia – their role seemed exclusively punitive, repressive, which significantly affected the authority of the most important part of the Russian public administration system.

However, the materials of the regional archives provide a more voluminous, vivid, objective description of the county police, and allow us to see its humanitarian activities for the physical and moral improvement of society.