Evolution of the Interaction Between Municipal Public Administration and the Police in the Context of Reforms and Counter-Reforms in the Russian Empire in the Late 19th — Early 20th Centuries

This article examines the complex and often conflictual interaction between munici-pal public administration bodies and the police apparatus in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Based on an analysis of key legal acts — in-cluding the Municipal Statutes of 1870 and 1892 and the Charter on the Prevention and Suppression of Crime — it has demonstrated that this period witnessed a shift from a model of conditional division of powers to a system of direct police domina-tion. The legal conflict initially embedded in Alexander II’s reforms — between the economic autonomy of municipal councils and the supervisory authority of the police — was sharply intensified by the reforms of Alexander III. The police’s right to ap-prove municipal council decisions, grounded in vague concepts of public order and tranquility, effectively functioned in practice as a veto over any initiative. The author concludes that this system proved detrimental to all parties involved: it suppressed the development of municipal public administration, distorted the functional role of the police by forcing it to engage in activities outside its proper domain, and ultimate-ly hindered urban modernization while reinforcing an archaic police-state model in which any form of civic autonomy was perceived as a threat.