Police crime in 1947 in the coverage of the Ukrainian SSR state security agencies

Abstract

One of the least researched issues in historical and legal science, such as crime in one of the main law enforcement agencies of police, which operated on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR, has been covered. Instead of counteracting, some police officers organized crimes and participated in them personally. The involvement of police officers in various criminal and official crimes has been revealed: treason during the Soviet-German war, robbery, bribery, extortion, assistance to criminals, official negligence. Materials collected by the employees of the Ministry of State Security regarding some negative aspects of the police officers activities during 1947 testify to significant abuses and violations of the law. It has been established that a certain part of the policemen were traitors during the war, worked with the occupation authorities and took part in repressions against members of the Resistance movement and ordinary people. This problem was acute at that time, because only 2 years had passed since the end of the war, and the state security authorities continued to work on identifying and detaining these persons, who were also among the police officers.

The problem of bribery in the police is the second in number of facts. It was widespread, as in the previous periods, among the employees of passport offices, traffic police, district police officers, who collected “tribute” from traders in the markets, having established a certain system of extortion, prices and appointed “senior” to collect bribes. There were even more odious cases when a whole group of policemen engaged in robbery, taking products and things from local villagers, while trying to disguise themselves as Banderites (copying the work methods of the KGB agents). Drunkenness was also quite common among police officers, which led to abuse, merging with criminal elements, and connivance with lawbreakers.

It has been emphasized that that was not the main aspect of the police activity that time. The majority of police officers faithfully fulfilled their duty to protect the law and combat crime. The stated facts are based on the materials of the Branch State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine, which have not been published before. Most of the given materials concern Kyiv, obviously, the capital’s KGB agents worked better than their colleagues from the periphery. Also, the document quite often does not indicate what measures were applied to the specified violators of the law and what was their further fate.