Some questions of police studies in the Russian empire of the second half of the XIX century

This article provides a brief analysis of the essential approaches to the consideration of the problem of the police state in the context of certain provisions of police science. Revealing some aspects of the limits of the competence of the police institution in the general mechanism of state power, the author made an attempt to clarify the relationship between the trend towards democratic transformations of society and the strengthening of the rule of law, which is inseparable from the assumption of a number of natural prohibitions and restrictions.