ABSTRACT
Both the changes the regime made to the police and those it failed to complete had long-term consequences that ranged from shifts in the bureaucratic balance of power to farther-reaching damage to society and the state. Worsened rural lawlessness and continued reliance on the army to restore order in towns and peasant villages were among the most harmful consequences. So too were damage to the center’s ability to enforce its writ and increased popular resentment of the authorities. Failure to complete police reform also impeded the development of the new courts and elected local governments. Because Alexander II’s successors neither reversed nor completed his police reform agenda, the consequences of what he did and did not accomplish would be felt into the twentieth century. The Temporary Rules of December 1962, for example, remained in force until tsarism’s fall in 1917 and the police’s duties were never redefined in light of the Great Reforms. Also, after the introduction of the mounted rangers in 1878–1879, major expansion of the rural police did not occur until 1903, when the government replaced 67,000 village wardens with 40,000 salaried, armed, and uniformed village guards. 1 This force—which was described as “temporary”— was to allow the ratio of police to rural inhabitants to reach but not exceed 1:2,600—lower than the target set for Congress Poland (1:2,500) in 1866. 2 Nothing was done to increase this ratio in the Romanovs’ remaining years in power. Instead the regime increased the mobility of the force, first setting the share of mounted guards at 25 percent and later authorizing higher shares where conditions warranted this. 3 In the cities the regime enacted dozens of ad hoc increases in police positions and salaries rather than taking a comprehensive approach. As a result, many rapidly growing cities had only small police forces by the early twentieth century and police salaries ranged from modest to abysmal. 4 In 1912 when the Council of Ministers reviewed the state of the police, its account of police problems echoed Lanskoi’s 1855 complaints. Too heavy a workload, inadequate numbers, poor pay, and competitive relations with the political police were at the top of its list of police defects. 5
