FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF POLICE LAW OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE (PART ONE)

The purpose of this article is to comprehend the historical stages for the formation and developmentof police law of the Russian Empire. Achievement of the set purpose involves studying the sourcesof police law, analyzing their content and significance for further development of the researchedbranch. The methodological basis of the work is general scientific methods of cognition, as wellas retrospective and comparative legal analysis. The article consists of three independent parts,where each is focused on a separate stage in the development of police law. The basis of theperiodization suggested by the author is the volume and quality of standards, specifications andguidelines that regulate policing.The first part of the article is focused on the stage of police law formation, which began in 1718with the creation of the Chief Police Executive Office and the approval of the position of the Chiefof Police. Peter the Great published “Guidelines for the Chief of Police in the St. Petersburg” inthe same year, which became the first source of police law in its classical sense. The content ofthe Guidelines was specified in the Decrees of the Senate and the Chief of Police. Instruction tothe Moscow Head Police Master Grekov was issued in 1721 by the analogy with the Guidelines,which differed from the Guidelines by the more detailed normative regulation of public relationsin the researched field.The conducted analysis of the sources of police law makes it possible to single out a number of keyfeatures of the normative regulation of policing at the stage of its formation, which should includemany functions that are not characteristic for the police in the classical sense, broad discretionarypowers with the absence of clear mechanisms of departmental and public control, involvement ofthe population to solve the problems facing by the police. The stage of formation of police law is also characterized by unsystematic presentation of legal material and the absence of the actualRussian doctrine of police law, which was not formed at that stage.Unsystematic specialized legislation, excessive multifunctionality of the police, the lack of thedoctrine of police law significantly reduced the effectiveness of policing. The mechanism of legalregulation, created at the stage of the formation of police law, needed serious reforms. In thisregard, the search for the ways to further improvement of the legal system of the Russian Empirein general and legal regulation of policing, in particular began in the second half of the XVIIIcentury on the initiative of Catherine II. The Charter of the Deanery or Police was approved in1782, which brought the legislative regulation of policing to a qualitatively new, codified level.The stage of the formation of police law with its approval in tsarist Russia should be consideredcompleted.