The police and society of the Russian empire in the post-reform period

The purpose of the article is to study the relationship between the Russian society and the police of the Russian Empire in the post-reform period, to understand the reasons for the negative assessment of the police. The research object is the relations related to the Russian public's assessment of the activities of police. At the same time, the subject of research is the materials of periodicals that represent the opinion of the educated part of the population of the Russian Empire about the activities of the police and criticism, including constructive. In the framework of the research methodology, using historical-legal, comparative-legal and comparative-historical methods, the analysis of the assessment of the activities of the police by the Russian society after the bourgeois reforms was carried out. Based on a number of facts, the author shows that the negative perception formed decades ago by a significant part of society of state bodies performing police functions is firmly rooted and continues to operate in the modern public consciousness. As historical experience shows, in pre-revolutionary Russia, there were also deeply rooted myths about the police and institutions that influenced the negative assessment of their activities by the public. It is concluded that although the negative attitude of the population to the activities of the police in the post-reform period had a real basis, in most cases it was formed artificially because of the influence of opponents of the existing system.

police, population, society, activity, myth, public, periodicals, negative assessment, criticism, reforms