Precincts of Police Officers in 1878: the Experience of Quantitative Research (on the Example of Kazan and Perm Provinces)

             One of the scientific problems facing the national historical science for the second century is the change in the relationship between the government and society during the "Great Reforms" of Alexander II the Liberator. Today, they are usually viewed through the prism of modernization theory. And in this regard, it is important to study the evolution of the internal affairs bodies in the period under review, because it was they who bore the brunt of confronting the negative social consequences of the modernization of the country. Since the last quarter of the XIX century, a police officer has become a grassroots element of the police structure. It was he who was associated with the peasants with the public order protection bodies, and possibly with the authorities in general. The study of the institute of police officers is therefore of interest for understanding the life of the province in the transitional era. The most active study of this institute, especially over the past 30 years ^{[1] [15]} has accumulated a huge factual material, including at the level of individual provinces and regions of Russia ^{[7] [22]}. In this regard, it seems superfluous to make a general description of the reform of 1878 in the article. It is presented in more than detail in other literature. However, there has not yet been any transition of the amount of accumulated material into quality. Perhaps the reason is that, as a rule, the institute of police officers was dissected, starting from the second half of the XIX century, using traditional methods of historical and historical-legal science, which relied on an illustrative approach. This led to diametrically opposite estimates. Thus, the liberal lawyer I. T. Tarasov, back in 1885, called the newly introduced institution of police officers "expensive and more harmful than useful", and the lower ranks themselves "uneducated and ignorant persons whose entry into the police service is not conditioned by exactly any qualification" ^{[21, pp. 58, 59]}. And the authors from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire in 1901, on the contrary, claimed that "... the constables ... won the trust of the population, and in their person the village received satisfactory police agents for the first time ..." ^{[12, p. 134]}. In the Soviet years, both in relation to police officers and the police in general, the "liberal version" prevailed, with some peculiarities, in the studies of authors from the universities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MOO). "All police activity in Russia was based on dishonesty, rudeness and assault," wrote, for example, T. U. Vorobeikova and A. B. Dubrovina in 1974 ^{[3, p. 32]} "Beggarly salaries and the lack of control of guards and guards on the ground determined abuse, violence to the population and extortion, – continued this tradition in 2012, a modern researcher D. A. Yaltaev. – Corruption has become an inevitable and ineradicable evil of the county police in the conditions of the tsarist security system" ^{[24, p. 148]}. Researchers from the universities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, after the 300th anniversary of the police in 2018, on the contrary, became in solidarity with the pre-revolutionary state scientists: "The system of free recruitment, increased criteria for personal and professional qualities of police officers, the opening of schools for the training of police officers, in general, the implementation of the Temporary Provision on police officers contributed to the organizational strengthening of the disparate staff, the beginning of "professionalization of "lower-level police personnel and, as a result, improvement of the professional competence of the rural police" ^{[1, p. 357]}.Thus, traditional research methods have not allowed over the past 1.5 centuries to implement the principle of objectivity in relation to the institution of police officers.

Their assessment from the XIX century to the present day is determined not by historical facts, but by the political views of the authors or ideological constructs. However, in addition to traditional research methods, the authors have also used prosopographic analysis in the last decade ^{[14] [18]}, which also, apparently, did not give the desired effect. The fact is that the "collective portrait" that the authors draw, based on the analysis of mass documents (service records and other lists of police officers) is certainly important for understanding the social essence of the lower ranks of the police, but it does not answer the question of the effectiveness of the institute. What, for example, is the share of well-deserved rewards of police officers, and which ones are due to the good relations of the lower rank with their superiors? What is the percentage of police officers who have committed offenses that the authorities decided not to make public in the general flow of those who quit "for domestic reasons", and what is the percentage of those who left for other reasons? No quantitative methods will allow us to determine this! In this regard, it seems logical to turn not to the officers themselves, but to the sites that they controlled. It is in the analysis of land plots that the principle of objectivity is fully realized, since it hardly made sense to distort the data on their "extent" or "population". It is also obvious that if the length of the site is, for example, several hundred versts, then it does not matter whether a former village teacher or a retired non-commissioned officer with a home education occupies the post of a police officer, he, for objective reasons, will not be able to cope with his duties in full.

Another reason why the plots of 1878 are more important than the precinct officers themselves is that the "first draft" officers very soon, for various reasons, left the service, while their plots did not undergo fundamental changes. According to data for 1889, only 4 out of 110 police officers (3.6%) who were hired in 1878 remained in service in the Perm province. At the same time, not just people, but also many social characteristics of police officers were replaced. The absolute number of sites in the Perm province has not undergone any significant changes, increasing only to 123 (by 11.8%). If we take into account that the increase in the number of district plots lagged behind the growth of the population of the province, then it can be stated: over the decade, the relative number of district plots even decreased ^{[5, l. 85-119] [23]}.

Paradoxically, not only the general assessment of the institute of police constables has not undergone any changes in 1.5 centuries, but also the formal and quantitative analysis of the police stations of the Russian Empire was carried out for the first and last time in 1880 (!) ^{[10, pp. 80, 81]} and since then historians have only used its results without even trying to use new methods of processing the executive data collected by the Police Department. Meanwhile, already in the "Brief Outline of the activities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs" of 1880, there was an indication of regional specifics, which means that data on the size and population of sites that are fair for Russia as a whole obviously cannot be extrapolated to its regions.

As the basis of this study, the uryadnichesky sites of the Kazan and Perm provinces were selected, according to information for 1878. In 1870, only in these two provinces of European Russia, the institute of freelance police guards was introduced ^[16]. When determining the number of police officers in these two provinces, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire obviously took into account the presence of an additional police force. Thus, despite the fact that the provinces belong to different historical regions – the Volga region and the Urals, they are, by and large, comparable only to each other. But in the uniqueness of these two provinces, even in their own way, even more prominently, those common shortcomings stood out, which could not but arise when dividing the space of 4 billion square miles into 5 thousand police ranks.

Of course, 5,000 police officers were not enough. But the problem was that they were distributed extremely unevenly. Although a certain correlation between the population and the number of uryadnikov appointed to the province certainly existed. Thus, 84 police officers were sent to the less populated Kazan province ^{[13, p. 108]}, while 110 (31% more) were sent to the Perm province ^{[20, p. 90]}. The population of both provinces also differed by about the same proportion ^{[17, p. 45]}. But the area of Perm province was no longer a third, but 5 times the size of Kazan ^{[19, p. 3, 6]}, which is obvious when determining the number of police officers was not taken into account.

According to the "Brief Outline of the activities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs" of 1880, in the Western provinces there was 1 district officer or more for 1 volost, and in the rest, in 2/3 of cases, there was 1 district officer for 1-2 volosts ^{[10, pp. 80, 81]}. In the Kazan province, despite the presence of police guard detachments, the situation was even better than the all-Russian one, 1-2 volosts accounted for 73% of the district plots, and one of the plots was even less than the volost (Porokhovaya Sloboda of the Kazan district). The situation was fundamentally different in the Perm province, where the district district consisted of 1-2 volosts only in 10% of cases. However, the number of volosts in itself did not say much about the load on the constable. The correlation coefficient of the number of volosts with the number of settlements in the Kazan province (without the Powder settlement) was 0.6, with the length of the site – 0.4, with the number of inhabitants – 0.68. In the Perm province – 0.64, 0.3 and 0.56, respectively. In other words, it is not significant anywhere (above 0.8). In this regard, the number of inhabitants in the district plot (Table 1) and its length (Table 2) look more indicative characteristics ^{[4, l. 318-352] [5, l. 85-119]}.

          Table 1 – Distribution of the district plots in the Kazan and Perm provinces by population in 1878Number of inhabitants

Table 2 – Distribution of land plots in Kazan and Perm provinces by length in 1878Length (miles)

       According to the all-Russian data, the majority of the district plots (37.59%) included from 5 to 10 thousand inhabitants. The land plots of more than 5 thousand inhabitants made up 21.96% in the Russian Empire ^{[10, p. 81]}. Thus, the indicators in the Perm and Kazan provinces were 12-18 times lower than the average data for the empire in areas of less than 5 thousand inhabitants. The number of plots from 5 thousand to 10 thousand inhabitants was also much less widespread, and in the Kazan province – by an order of magnitude. More than half of all the district plots in both provinces included a population of 10 to 20 thousand inhabitants (Table 1), whereas in Russia as a whole the share of such plots did not exceed a third (34.23%) ^{[10, p. 81]}. Finally, more than 20 thousand inhabitants lived in Russia only in 6.22% of the district plots ^{[10, p. 81]}, whereas in the Kazan and Perm provinces their percentage was 5-6 times more. At the same time, in the Perm province, 4 (3.64%) plots included more than 40 thousand residents. 2 of them were located in Shadrinsky district, including the most densely populated – 1 section of 1 camp, numbering 45378 people ^{[5, l. 85-119]}. It is worth adding to this that the Shadrinsky district in the period under review was perhaps the most difficult in criminal terms. From Siberia, a significant number of vagrants and fugitive criminals penetrated there every year, who were detained in the county for a year – up to 450 people. In addition, ethnic crime flourished among the Bashkirs. According to one (!) parish (Gradokolmatskaya) Bashkirs of Shadrinsky district stole 690 horses from local peasants. In 4 Bashkir volosts, there were 520 people fined for various thefts ^{[6, l. 66 vol. — 67]}. Similar and obviously unbearable for one mounted police station could be justified by the presence of police guard units. However, in the Kazan province, probably due to a more compact population, the creation of such huge plots was avoided, and plots with a population of 30 to 40 thousand inhabitants were very rare here ^{[4, L. 318-352]}.

          In addition to the densely populated significant number of police stations draw attention to the disparity between them, with equal pay and responsibilities of all police officers. So, for example, in the Perm province, the most sparsely populated 3rd section of the 3rd camp of Krasnoufimsky Uyezd numbered 1,659 inhabitants, i.e. 27 times less than the most populated ^{[5, l. 85-119]}. The problem was all-Russian. So in the central Tver province, where there were no police guards, the number of residents of the site varied from 4630 to 28930 (6 times) ^{[7, p. 7]}. In the Kazan province, the spread ranged from 4224 to 38886 (9 times) ^{[4, L. 318-352]}.

If a formal quantitative analysis of the plots by the number of inhabitants can state a slightly more advantageous position of the Kazan province than the Perm province, then it is necessary to recognize their actual "incomparability" in terms of length. However, in the empire as a whole, the length of the uryadnik sites differed significantly. At the same time, in more than 50% of cases, it ranged from 10 to 40 versts ^{[10, p. 81]}. This correlates well with the data for the Kazan province (53.57%) ^{[4, l. 318-352]}. In the Perm province, on the contrary, plots of more than 40 versts made up the overwhelming majority (84.5%) ^{[5, l. 85-119]}. If in Russia and the Kazan province the plots from 50 to 100 versts were about 20% ^{[10, p. 81]} (Table 2), then in the Perm province this figure was 2.5 times higher. As in the vast Perm and, oddly enough, in the compact Kazan province, there were sections with a length of more than 100 versts (Table 2), which, according to the "Brief Essay", were uncharacteristic for the rest of Russia ^{[10, p. 81]}. At the same time, as many as 5 sites (4.55%) in the Perm province crossed the mark of 200 versts. The largest was the 5th section of the 2nd camp of Cherdynsky Uyezd – with a length of 400 versts ^{[5, l. 85-119]}. How, for example, one rider could, according to paragraphs 16 and 18 of the "Instructions to police officers" of 1878, go around such a huge territory or personally check the fulfillment of guard duty by the population ^{[8, p. 15, 16]} is unclear. The possibility of delegating these powers to the guards was not provided for by the "Instructions". In general, after the establishment of police constables, the police guards of the Kazan and Perm provinces were planned to be eliminated by introducing additional posts of constables for the budget funds saved ^[6]. However, this measure has not been implemented in practice.

The smallest section in the Perm province was only 16 versts (1 section of the 1st camp of the Solikamsk district), i.e. it was 25 times smaller than the "longest" one ^{[5, l. 85-119]}. In Kazan, the spread over the length was, oddly enough, even more significant (from 2 to 144 versts; 72 times) ^{[4, L. 318-352]}. In the central Tver province, the spread over the length was much smaller (from 22 to 72 versts; 3 times) ^{[7, p. 7]}.

Logically, the population and the length of the plots should correlate in such a way that a small population compensates for the vastness of the territory and vice versa. However, in reality there is at least some correlation between these values (For the Kazan province, the coefficient is 0.18, and for the Perm province - 0.12). Thus, from the data of the formal quantitative analysis on two indicators, it can already be assumed that in 1/3 of the Kazan province police constables performing their functions, even taking into account the existence of guards, was difficult, and in 1/3 of the Perm province it is hardly possible at all. Especially when you consider that in the Middle Urals, the guards were concentrated in small detachments in county towns to perform the duties of policemen, and not distributed in rural areas – to help the guards as in Kazan ^[6].

However, modern methods of multidimensional statistical analysis allow us to go further than formal quantitative data processing and not just again, as in 1880, to postulate weak comparability of the district plots among themselves, but to create their full-fledged typology. In Russian science, since the 1970s, the method of hierarchical cluster analysis has been used for this purpose. "Its essence," wrote I. D. Kovalchenko, one of the main Soviet theorists of quantitative history, "is that in a multidimensional space corresponding to the number of features ... "clusters" of similar objects are distinguished"... Taking this into account, and it is possible by mathematical data processing to identify clusters, ... groups of objects with similar properties" ^{[9, p. 434]}. I. D. Kovalchenko himself used cluster analysis for the agrarian typology of the peasant economy. However, the method is universal, as it was recently applied by Yu. V. Kuzmin in the history of technology ^[11].

However, for all its flexibility and prevalence, the hierarchical clustering method has an obvious drawback. It is not suitable for working with large data arrays. So it is quite difficult to apply it for clustering information about all 194 district plots. However, foreign scientists, including historians, use k-means cluster analysis in such a situation ^[27]. Its difference is that the scientist sets the number of clusters in advance, and then the program divides the specified set of objects into this number. For an accurate cluster analysis, the data on the district plots were reduced to comparable values by dividing by the standard deviation. At the same time, 3 characteristics of the district police station collected by the Executive Police Department were used. In addition to the already considered number of inhabitants and length, when creating a multidimensional model, the number of settlements in the site was taken into account. It seems that not only the number of inhabitants mattered to the police officer, but also whether it was concentrated in several dozen localities or in several hundred. Of course, the number of township boards with which the police officer had to interact is also important, but still to a lesser extent. For calculations, an Excel template ^[26] was used, built according to the improved algorithm "k-means++" by D. Arthur and S. Vasilvitskiy ^[25], and the number of clusters is set as "6", because regional specificity with such a number of clusters is more pronounced. It is worth noting that the mathematical algorithm of Arthur-Vasilvitsky does not consider this number of clusters to be the most effective. The distribution of the obtained arrays of uryadnik sites is presented in Table 3.

Table 3 – Results of cluster analysis of the district plots of the Kazan and Perm provinces in 1878 by the k-means methodCluster

The objects of the most extensive cluster (5) can be conditionally called "Kazan-type district plots", since it includes more than half (52.36%; 44) of all district plots of this province and only a quarter (25.45%; 28) of the Middle Urals. The average figures here are 43.41 settlements; 44.25 versts; 18340 inhabitants. The sites of the second largest cluster (1) can be conditionally called "sparsely populated", although, of course, only by the standards of the Kazan and Perm provinces. In this group, sections of the Perm province (32; 29.09%) predominate, and from the Kazan province — 23 (27.38%) sections. The average figures are 35.65 villages; 48.52 versts; 10,843 inhabitants. On the contrary, the sections of the sixth cluster can be called "overpopulated". The indicators for the average number of inhabitants here are 30016.2 with a relatively low number of settlements (72.25) and length (76.21 versts). This cluster includes only 13 (11.82%) sites of Perm province and 15 (17.85%) – Kazan. The Uryadnichesky sites of the third cluster can be conditionally called "scattered". With the average population indicators for the two provinces (17265.8), it has higher indicators of the number of settlements (124.69) and length (128.61 versts). Here, of course, sections of the Perm province predominate (14; 12.73%) and only 2 (2.38%) belong to Kazan. The second cluster includes the district plots, which can be conditionally called "scattered and overpopulated". It includes exclusively the areas of Perm province (7.27%), which are characterized by a huge number of settlements (483.88) and population (29,834,9) with a relatively small average length – 66. Finally, the fourth cluster is represented by "too large areas" of Perm province (4.54%), which, with a very modest average number of inhabitants (13223.8) and not the largest average number of settlements (120.8) are characterized by the vastness of spaces (275.2 versts).

Thus, the cluster analysis confirmed the conclusions of the formal-quantitative. After the reform of 1878, Kazan Province found itself in a more advantageous position than Perm Province. In general, in 2 provinces with police guards, two-thirds of the sites were difficult enough for patrolling by one person, and in 39 sites it was hardly possible for the police to carry out the "Instructions" in full. In addition, a classification of uryadnik sites has been created, which can be applied to other regions of Russia:

1) sparsely populated (28.35%);

2) Kazan type (37.11%);

3) scattered (13.4%);

4) overpopulated (14.43%);

5) too big (2.58%);

6) scattered and overpopulated (4.13%).

Moreover, the first type can be conditionally called "light", the Kazan type and scattered ones can be attributed to "medium complexity", and the last 3 types are "heavy", and frankly speaking, impossible for patrolling.