“. . .The Complaint . . . Should Be Left without Consequences as Unproven”: Resolutions on the Offenses Committed by the Vyatka City Police Officials (1906–1907)

The publication quotes a series of homogeneous documents (resolutions) from the fonds of the Vyatka City Police Department that is stored in the Central State Archive of Kirov Oblast. The first document examines a complaint filed by M.A. Vozhegov and M.E. Mikheev about taking away their things and money as well as beatings in the Vyatka police station. However, the investigation showed the legality of the actions of the police, and the complaint about the beatings was dismissed on formal grounds. The second document examines a complaint filed by I.N. Lubnin about the beating and extortion of money by a policeman during the arrest. However, the fact of medical examination was not confirmed by the investigation, and the witnesses claimed that the victim had fallen off a cliff and received injuries and scratches. In the last document, detained thief M.I. Koshchenkov complains about the beatings as well, but that time, it was not a simple police officer who had done it, but candidate for a class position Leont'ev. The witnesses including his cellmate did not confirm it. Even doctor A.A. Malevinskii, an independent witness, was inclined to see the reasons for the complaint in the patient’s psychological state and did not find any traces of physical beatings on him. The sources are published in accordance with the Methodological Recommendations for the Publication of Archival Documents in Printed Form (2022). The introductory article presents the formal quantitative analysis of complaints against police officers. It is explained that the majority of those complaints were groundless, and the documents published in the present selection are typical for the records management of police departments. Moreover, the article contains a brief biography of Vyatka Police Chief M.A. Verneev (1869–1927), the signatory of all three documents. The article also touches upon the archaeography and historiography of the documents about the offences committed by the police and the principles of reproducing the published text are discussed in.

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