Law and the Repression of Political Crime in Russia, 1826–1902

Abstract

Political repression, as indicated, consists of two parts: the forces of ‘law’ (no matter how the statutes are conceived and invoked) and the forces of ‘order’ (the political police). The intertwining of these agencies of prevention and repression is obvious. However, when writing about the evolution of these guardians of political and social tranquillity within an historical context it is reasonable, for the sake of clarity, to separate them from each other. In this chapter, therefore, we will deal with the foundations of the statutory and regulatory responses to political crime in Tsarist Russia and in the succeeding chapter we will focus upon the early evolution of Tsardom's political policing institutions which benefited so substantially from them.