Abstract
In modern-day Russia, policing is one of the most employed professions, with one police officer for every seventy-five people [1]. Considering the legacy of the Soviet Union, this should come as no surprise. In recent times, public order assets have been greatly revamped under President Vladimir Putin. This article explores the development of policing in Russia since the collapse of the USSR, fundamentally analysing the role of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Ministerstvo vnutrennikh del, MVD) and the importance – and controversies – of Russia’s riot police, the Special Purpose Mobile Unit (Otryad Mobil'nyy Osobogo Naznacheniya, OMON).
By Anthony Pollock
Introduction
Throughout the entirety of the Soviet Union, the role of the police was essential to the enforcement of the state’s repression and brutality. Under Vladimir Putin, the importance of the police, particularly the riot police, has been reinvigorated. Taking Putin’s career in intelligence and ‘colour revolutions’ against authoritarian rule occurring across the post-Soviet space in the last two decades into account, this is an expected development. By maintaining the Soviet tradition of being ‘instruments of the regime’ [2], the political allegiance of the police forces allows Putin and the siloviki – the ruling elite with security backgrounds – to rule with an iron fist. As the information war with the West wages on and the number of protests increases, the role of the police in Russian society will continue to be fundamental to the survival of Putin’s regime.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD)
Following the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks disbanded the tsarist police corps and replaced it with the militsiya under the control of the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), renamed the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) in 1946 [3]. After Stalin’s death in 1953, policing in the Soviet Union experienced great changes. The split of the MVD and the KGB (Committee for State Security) resulted in the MVD embracing nonpolice paramilitary services such as the internal troops (vnutrenniye voiska, VV) [4].
In post-Soviet Russia, the MVD is regarded as one of the ‘power ministries’ that has been an essential institution of state control and has experienced considerable gains in status since Putin came to power; largely due to the Second Chechen War [5]. Until 2016, the MVD was responsible for all policing units including the regular police force (renamed the politsiya following Medvedev’s reforms in 2011), the special police units of the OMON and SOBR, and the VV.
The MVD underwent a significant cut in personnel in 2016 following the creation of the National Guard (Rosgvardiya), which annexed the OMON, SOBR, VV and the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Okhrana (FGUP) from the MVD [6]. Dubbed ‘a Praetorian Guard on steroids’ by one analyst, the Rosgvardiya, allegedly consisting of over 350,000 officers, reports directly to Putin [7]. The Kremlin’s narrative maintains that recent protests and ‘colour revolutions’ are Western covert operations organised to destabilise the country, therefore a strong force is needed to maintain order in Russian society [8]. The Rosgvardiya’s direct chain of command supersedes the MVD’s over-bureaucratic chain of command, in which each constituent republic of Russia has its own interior ministry [9]. As a form of compensation for the ‘loss’ of manpower in the MVD, the Federal Migration Service and the Federal Drugs Control Service now fall under the rubric of the MVD [10].
Public order assets of the Ministry of Internal Affairs until 2016.
The OMON (Special Purpose Mobile Unit)
Founded in the USSR in 1988, the OMON (Otryad Mobil'nyy Osobogo Naznacheniya) deals with riots in cooperation with the MVD’s politsiya [11]. Similar to the OMON is the SOBR (Special Rapid Response Unit). Their roles overlap; both can be compared to the American SWAT as both are trained for public order and armed response operations. The OMON, however, mainly respond to civil unrest whereas the SOBR respond more to armed incidents [12, 13]. The Kremlin’s decision to move the OMON and SOBR into the Rosgvardiya was done to prevent local sympathies overpowering Moscow’s orders, as in 2008 the OMON in Vladivostok refused to suppress protests against tariffs on imported cars which affected the local population [14].
Controversy
Police misconduct is a problem in every country; however, the disregard of human rights by the police in Russia is a cause for concern, with police brutality and corruption being widely accepted as monumental issues [14]. A 2010 poll showed that 67% of Russians fear the police, with a further 81% feeling unsafe against arbitrary police behaviour [15]. The OMON were renowned as being the ‘stormtroopers of repression’ in the final years of the Soviet Union due to their willingness to use brute force [16]. Three decades later, it appears that there has been no shift in their approach.
At the beginning of the First Chechen War, OMON officers and VV troops were deployed to Chechnya, as the Russian government initially maintained it was an internal police matter, rather than a war [17]. Reports of misconduct and the deaths of civilians further increased the OMON’s notoriety [18, 19]. More recent controversies are a result of protests. In October 2020, OMON forces were sent in to break up the peaceful protest in Khabarovsk against the arrest of Governor Sergei Furgal, which resulted in the beatings of several older people [20]. 2021 has seen the largest anti-government protests in Russia since the wave of protests from 2011 to 2013 following the arrest of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. This resulted in a crackdown by the Kremlin, with OMON units resorting to violent measures to bring an end to 68% of the protests between January and March [21].
OMON controversies in other Post-Soviet States
It is not just in Russia where the OMON have been the figures of controversy. The successor organisations of the Soviet OMON in neighbouring post-Soviet states have continued in the same vein. In Ukraine, the now-dissolved Berkut, formerly the Ukrainian Soviet OMON, used excessive violence against protestors who partook in the Euromaidan Revolution in early 2014 against former President Viktor Yanukovych’s authoritarian government and were held responsible for the deaths of almost one hundred people [22, 23]. Several Berkut officers are now in the Rosgvardiya, while former commander Sergei Kusyuk holds the role of colonel of the Moscow OMON [24, 25].
In Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko’s OMON is infamously brutal. Following the reportedly rigged elections in 2020, protestors felt the regime’s full wrath, with the OMON allegedly responsible for unrestrained beatings, torture, and the deaths of protestors [26]. Lukashenko denounced the protest movement as being a Western campaign used to invoke instability in Belarus; a response that some analysts believe has created a roadmap for Putin to follow [27].
Conclusion
Overall, recent trends suggest that the siloviki are willing to utilise police brutality to ensure their reign continues. Despite an increased number of protests, however, the majority of Russians, 64%, view Putin’s leadership favourably and the disapproval rates were higher in 2013 [28]. Moreover, unlike in Belarus where almost one-fifth of the population participated in the protests, the number of protestors in Russia constitutes a small percentage of the Russian population [29, 30]. Nevertheless, the establishment of the Rosgvardiya suggests that the Kremlin recognises the need for security forces to be loyal and that protest movements do provide an existential threat to the regime.
Bibliography
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