The police in the Russian empire on the eve of the 1917 revolution: development prospects

This article reviews the works of Russian and foreign researches concerned with the status of the police during the last decades of the Russian Empire. The independent nature of expression and personal involvement of the researchers in the selection of data on the issues under development explain the fact, that the works of writers, lawyers and journalists is a valuable source for study the history of the Russian law enforcement agencies. Objectively describing the structure of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the researchers in most cases deduced that there was a systemic crisis of the entire administrative enforcement mechanism in the country.