Police Apparatus

The police apparatus provides everyday coercive and administrative control over society. The metropole needs this instrument to hold on to power, to maintain the desired order on the ground, and to keep basic records of the population, including through mechanisms of registration and restrictions on movement. From the 1600s to the present day, this system has changed only its signboards: voivode offices and investigative prikazes gave way to the city police and address bureaus in the Russian Empire. In the Soviet era, this branch of power was embodied in the vast structures of the NKVD and the MVD, and today the same supervisory and administrative function continues to be performed by the modern MVD system.

ID: S0024
Type: Institution
Peoples: Nokhchi (Chechens), Ukrainians
Version: 1.0
Created: 18 May 2026
Last Modified: 18 May 2026

Techniques Used

ID Name Use
T0035 Forced Passportization

Coercion of residents of the occupied territories (Mariupol, Kherson, and others) into obtaining Russian passports. Refusal of the aggressor's passport entails the threat of being deprived of housing, medical care, and basic social services.

T0032 Legal Segregation of the Population

The final legal enserfment of Ukrainian peasants (the decree of 1783), depriving them of the right to free movement and cementing their social marginalization[1].

T0104 Mass Killings of Civilians

Use of the Black Hundreds to organize mass and bloody pogroms against Jews and reprisals against the opposition with the connivance or direct support of the police[2].

T0021 Neutralization of the Opposition

Physical elimination of resistance leaders at the hands of the militia and law enforcement agencies: the murder of the head of the Volyn Rukh organization, the death of activist Melenkovskyi after a "conversation" at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and extrajudicial killings[3].

T0142 Restriction of Settlement Geography

The metropole's occupation administration legally prohibited the free residence of the Indigenous population in Tersky Town, organizing the forced expulsion of unapproved persons and total demographic control: in 1631, Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich issued a decree to the Prikaz of the Kazan Palace ordering a census of the newly arrived Nokhchi (Michkizians and Okochans) and ruling that those of them «who cannot be trusted» must be «ordered to be expelled out of Tersky Town, and ordered to go back whence each had come»[4]; to ensure surveillance, in the state register of serving people for the region of the Prikaz of the Kazan Palace for 1637, the central authorities recorded in detail the number of subordinate residents of Tersky Town, including 350 «Okotsky people» and 680 newly arrived «Okochans, and Tatars, and Michkizians, and Shibutians»[5]; and in 1640, on the orders of the Terek voivode, the Terek syn boyarsky P. Lukin and the clerk F. Belkov compiled a name-by-name register of the population of the Terek slobodas, rigidly recording every household of the subordinate Nokhchi (Okochans)[4][5].

Actors Using This Instrument

Campaigns

ID Name Description
C0034 Administrative Dismantling and Enserfment of the Left Bank (1781–1786)

The final legal enserfment of Ukrainian peasants (the decree of 1783), depriving them of the right to free movement and cementing their social marginalization[1].

C0068 Black Hundred Terror and Pogroms (1905–1907)

Use of the Black Hundreds to organize mass and bloody pogroms against Jews and reprisals against the opposition with the connivance or direct support of the police[2].

C0036 Establishment of the "Pale of Settlement" (1791)

Introduction of harsh territorial discrimination. The decree restricted the zone of residence and economic activity of the Jewish population, drawing the Pale of Settlement predominantly through colonized Ukrainian territories[7].

C0103 Full-Scale Invasion (from February 24, 2022)

Coercion of residents of the occupied territories (Mariupol, Kherson, and others) into obtaining Russian passports. Refusal of the aggressor's passport entails the threat of being deprived of housing, medical care, and basic social services.

C1117 Police Registration and Restriction of Settlement (1631–1640)

The metropole's occupation administration legally prohibited the free residence of the Indigenous population in Tersky Town, organizing the forced expulsion of unapproved persons and total demographic control: in 1631, Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich issued a decree to the Prikaz of the Kazan Palace ordering a census of the newly arrived Nokhchi (Michkizians and Okochans) and ruling that those of them «who cannot be trusted» must be «ordered to be expelled out of Tersky Town, and ordered to go back whence each had come»[4]; to ensure surveillance, in the state register of serving people for the region of the Prikaz of the Kazan Palace for 1637, the central authorities recorded in detail the number of subordinate residents of Tersky Town, including 350 «Okotsky people» and 680 newly arrived «Okochans, and Tatars, and Michkizians, and Shibutians»[5]; and in 1640, on the orders of the Terek voivode, the Terek syn boyarsky P. Lukin and the clerk F. Belkov compiled a name-by-name register of the population of the Terek slobodas, rigidly recording every household of the subordinate Nokhchi (Okochans)[4][5].

C0091 Stalling Democratic Reforms and Countering the People's Movement (Rukh) (1989–1990)

Physical elimination of resistance leaders at the hands of the militia and law enforcement agencies: the murder of the head of the Volyn Rukh organization, the death of activist Melenkovskyi after a "conversation" at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and extrajudicial killings[3].

References