ABSTRACT
The evolution of law enforcement in the first decades of Soviet rule would determine the organization and activities of the militia until the dissolution of the Soviet state. The initial populism of the early Bolsheviks soon gave way to the realities of maintaining power and, early in the postrevolutionary period, a structured police force emerged whose personnel and functions reflected the state’s socialist ideology. A crucial relationship between the state and the citizen was established at this time: the state, in the guise of the ruling Communist Party, assumed responsibility for the regulation of the lives of its citizens. This relationship produced a pattern of state intervention in citizen activity that would characterize Soviet policing in subsequent decades and leave an important legacy for the post-Soviet states. Although the institution of the tsarist police was destroyed after the revolutions of 1917, a new police force was established along continental lines almost immediately. In addition to preserving the continental character of the tsarist police, an element of colonial policing was soon introduced as the Bolshevik government began to assert its domination over the reconquered territories of Central Asia, the Caucasus and Siberia.
