Reforming the Local Police of the Western Provinces of the Russian Empire and Its Activities in Ensuring Public Safety (Second Half of the 60s – 80s of the 19th Century)

This article analyzes the activities of local police in the North-Western Territory of the Russian Empire in the 1866–1880s to combat threats to public safety. The main stages of reforming the local police in this period, the peculiarities of its organizational and staff structure, the impact of local conditions on the nature of the police service are considered. There is a dependence of approaches to the peculiarities of the police service on the domestic political course set by the central authorities and implemented by the local administration. The growth of the revolutionary populist movement led to the strengthening and centralization of the police power of the governor-general and provincial chiefs. The work used documents from the funds of the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Historical Archive, Russian State Military Historical Archive, national archive of Belarus, as well as from a number of published materials on this issue. It was concluded that the activities of local police bodies were multifunctional and concerned not only ordinary crimes, but also such areas as the control of interreligious issues. Despite the improvement of the official activities of local police bodies in the western provinces of the empire, a number of problematic issues still required their solution.