ABSTRACT
The USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) was responsible for the maintenance of order in the Soviet Union. Grounded in the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, its mandate was to control crime, isolate political opposition (including political and nationalist movements), and combat economic activity outside the state sector. Like other ministries, the MVD was highly centralized. Its massive apparatus extended into every corner of the USSR, consisting of several functional branches: the militia, the internal troops (vnutrennye voiska or VV),2 the departmental and extra-departmental guards, the fire service, and the prison and labor camp systems. Together with the KGB and the procuracy, the MVD long enjoyed a monopoly of policing functions in Soviet society. Until the Gorbachev era, the MVD remained an extremely powerful-and seemingly unshakeable-instrument of state control, despite occasional changes in its name and scope of activities. The restructuring of the Soviet economy and Soviet society, however, as well as the rise of nationalism in the republics during the perestroika years, gradually undermined the institutional integrity of the ministry. The following discussion focuses on the organization and management of policing in the Soviet period and the critical role played by the police in the final period of the existence of the Soviet state.
