Community role in maintaining law and order in a young small town in the 1960s-1980s (a case study of Divnogorsk, Krasnoyarsk region)

The role of the public in maintaining law and order in young small towns of the USSR in the 1960s-1980s has not been sufficiently studied in Russian historical science. At the same time, the activities of voluntary police assistants are a distinctive feature of Soviet society in the second half of the 20th century. The formation of new industrial settlements, such as Divnogorsk, required the presence and functioning of an effective system of internal affairs agencies to ensure public order in the emerging city. However, in the late 1950s - early 1960s, local police agencies were not strong enough to fully perform the functions assigned to them. In these conditions, they were helped by voluntary people's squads, which were created at enterprises and institutions and operated in the form of Komsomol active detachments. Leaders of organizations and party workers headed the people's squads. The paper examines the role of voluntary police assistants in maintaining law and order in a young small town using the example of Divnogorsk in the 1960s-1980s. The rights and responsibilities of the volunteer police officers, their motivation and methods of encouraging successful activities, typical cases of violation of order and prevention of offenses that the people's assistants of the police had to face are studied. The internal and external problems that the volunteer police units faced are analyzed, and the specifics of their regular night shifts are shown. The period of greatest prosperity of the voluntary people's squad activity in Divnogorsk was 1959-1966, when, thanks to the enthusiasm of the first citizens, assistance from the administration of enterprises and support from the police, assistance to the internal affairs agencies was maximally effective. Later, the final organizational formation of the people's squads took place, their activities became stable. They functioned successfully until the mid-1980s, and in the following years, the activities of voluntary police assistants declined.