There are a few concepts and names that help to understand the police in Russia today. The Rule of Law is a concept that many nations employ. There is a law. If you break it law enforcement officials may find you. You get tried in a court. You get punished if you broke the law. There is also the Rule of State Power. In this situation there's no law, state officials (or the current dictator) decide in their own heads what is right or wrong and who is right or wrong. These leaders send the police out to lock you up and punish you. Most countries are somewhere in between. The USA tends to lean towards the rule of law, but the laws are made by state officials (politicians) and can be used for political and coercive purposes. (See Kevin Weber is spending 29 years in jail for stealing a cookie, thanks to politicians). Russia before the USSR was formed and during the USSR's years tended to lean towards the Rule of State Power. "As early as 1565 Tsar Ivan the Terrible had used his political police force, the Oprichnina, for his reign of terror" (RJT 308).
During the Soviet era there were three police systems. The Russian Federation has these as The Federal Security Service, the Federal Border Service (both reporting to Russia's president) and the Militia, reporting to the Ministry of Internal Affairs (RJT 307). Right after the 1917 Russian revolution the law forces were established. In the mind of the new Russian dictators, it was important for them to stay in power for the good of the people, regardless of the consequences to the people (just as it's important for America's politicians to stay in power -- in their own minds, regardless of how they must vote in order to keep their campaign chests full). In the 1917 revolution, Lenin and his revolutionaries had no need to take political funds to stay in political power. They did not have to worry about anyone voting them out of office. All they had to worry about was how to avoid being shot out of power, just as they had out-shot the Czar. This lead them to create a power base. "In December 1917, the Council of People's Commissars created the Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (known by the Russian acronym Cheka). This was the first state security force ... (intended to) ... stop and liquidate "anti Bolsheviks(RJT 307). And, liquidate they did! About 50,000 people were charged, tried and executed by the Cheka. The Cheka was disbanded in February 1922 when the Communists were securely in power. The Cheka had a bad reputation with the people (not the political rulers) and its ending was a nice political ploy -- somewhat like America's politicians who executed something called political campaign reform. But, just as America's political campaign reform allowed politicians to pocket big money from special interests, the secret police reform in the Soviets simply resulted in a new style secret police, with a new name. The new state police "terrorstateists" (a word used to describe official government police -- like America's 1996 Attorney General Janet Reno's Waco killers -- who inflict terror on the people, in contrast to the word "terrorists" which describes unofficial, non-government people inflicting terror on people) were the State Political Administration (GPU), administered by the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD). Who would the Russian leaders choose to run the kinder and gentler GPU? Would you believe Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Cheka? Would you believe American politicians would call a law that enabled them to take millions of dollars from special interests "campaign reform"? Believe!
Trust me, I am a political leader and I have replaced the Cheka with a kinder and gentler GPU!
Now the centrally controlled GPU would go after the opposition, rather than the Cheka. A few years later, in 1924, the USSR came out with a constitution. In the new constitution the GPU was renamed the OGPU , the Unified State Political Administration (same but even more functions than the GPU) reporting directly to the party's Central Commission, with a commissariat of its own, rather than reporting to the NKVD commissariat. Its enlarged powers would be to direct activity in all of the USSR's state's political administrations, and military units assigned to the; all the supervison of the special departments of the frontiers and armies; the organization of the protection of the USSR's boundaries, Stalin would make good use of these extended powers, just as 1997-2000 American president Bill Clinton made use of the FBI to put his pals into the Whitehouse travel office and punish Linda Tripp who had helped expose him as a lecher.
Stalin used the OGPU to eliminate (kill, shoot, execute) his enemies, a much more evil use of state powers than Clinton, who merely tried to send his opponents to jail -- or just into disgrace. He also had the OGPU establish the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (GULAG).
The OGPU was also the agency that enforced the USSR's industrialization. Like the Cheka, it quickly was recognized as another brutal government police agency.
"Don't be afraid. I'm not the Cheka, I'm the GPU on the NKVD chain ... I mean the OGPU on Stalin's chain."
Stalin Goes all the way -- Rule by Dictatorship
"Stalin had eliminated all prominent Old Bolsheviks from positions of influence by 1936 and established a personal dictatorship"(JLN). He launched the drive for his coercive instruments to forcibly create the collectivization of agriculture to preserve capital for industry and remove any chance of power by the landed farmers. There were three phases on the road to political totalitarianism:
1...From 1924 to 1929 there was a struggle for party leadership between Stalin's new proletariat and the "old line middle class intellectuals."
2...From 1929 to 1934 there was the first 5-year plan, that created collectivized farms and a famine in the Ukraine.
3...After the possible 1934 Stalin murder of Russia's second most powerful leader, Sergei Kirov, formal procedures for the death penalty were removed for political crimes, opening the way for massive purges in the 1936 to 1939 years that would kill tens of millions, including 75% of the top army officers and 98 of the 139 members of the Central Committee in 1934.
By 1939 the party had been displaced as the rulers of the USSR by the police state. No Party Congresses were called between 1939 and 1952, and only one meeting of the Central Committee occurred. The secret police was manipulated by Stalin, who also had two police chiefs killed.
Totalitarianism had occurred because of the lack of any strong social or political infrastructure. It was aided by technology in remaining in control of the USSR, especially in the controlling of national minorities. Lenin had seen all of the nationalities merging as economic development occurred, but in the short term he saw the need to develop national minority socialist parties. Stalin sent Russians to the various states of the USSR to become leaders, and receive privileges of party membership that allowed them a higher standard of living. Khrushchev followed this example in the 1950's. This Russification has impacts right now, as member nations of the CIS react against the formerly privileged Russians in their midst. But, the new regime did bring the people of the USSR social-services, illiteracy was eliminated and general living standards rose from 1917 to 1953. But the command economy, and the emphasis on heavy industry (to build military might) always kept a cap on the types of goods available in the USSR.
Stalin's totalitarian government did bring military strength to the USSR, but at the expense of recreating serfdom, massive control of the proletariat, and stamping out individualism. This was not Democratic Centralism or Lenin-Marxism, and it struck terror, even to other members of the Communist Party -- who were more subject to police terror than the general population. (Of course, in the USA, we have our own versions of police terror, see The Police in the USA can kick you, beat you with flashlights and coverup what they did ... but they can also be held accountable). Once Stalin was to die, the party would want to make major changes.
After World War II the commissariats were made ministries. The NKVD became the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) and was responsible for the militia. The Commissariat for State Security (NKGB) became the Ministry of State Security (MGB) responsible for the state security force. The MGB controlled all, including regular police actions.
The Post-Stalin Police Settlement involved a redistribution of Stalin's political powers for the protection of the political elite (the nomenklatura) from "arbitrary charges" as well as a reassertion of the Communist Party dominance that Stalin had previously reduced by distributing power to government bureaucracies. Fearing the power of the MGB, they merged it into the MVD. and made Beria the Administrator. He strengthened the MVD while the newly liberated (by Stalin's death) party leaders wanted to weaken it. The solution. Shoot Beria. This reassertion of the Communist Party leaders was evident by the XX CPSU Congress in 1956 (Until the end of the 1980s, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was the dominant legal political party in the USSR and the major seat of police power.) The CPSU used its coercive powers for the prevention of combinations of dissident power factions, which was not likely to occur between the army and the secret police. The secret police had been a tool in the Great Purge of the army. (Untold millions of party, industry, and military leaders disappeared during Stalin's dictatorial use of police power in the "Great Terror," making way for a rising generation that included such leaders as Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. Fear instilled by a political secret police formed an essential part of the system called Stalinism.)
When Stalin died the head of the secret police and other coercive instruments (NKVD? OGPU? MVD?) was Lavrenty Beria, who had succeeded Yezhov, who had led led Stalin's purges in the 1930's. Beria was executed in 1953 by the newly resurgent CPSU, within months of the CPSU taking over after Stalin's death.
With Beria dead, more changes occurred in the police system. State Security was again separated from the MVD, and in 1954 the Committee for State Security (KGB) was formed, accountable to the Council of Ministers of the USSR.