Not Surprisingly, Russian Police View Themselves Far More Positively than Population Does

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 3 – Among most Russians, the police do not have a good reputation. They are viewed as corrupt and thuggish. But not surprisingly, that is not how the police view themselves, Mariya Zaprometova says, as can be seen from an examination of the group’s inhouse magazine, the Russian-language Police of Russia.

            Recent articles show, the MBK journalist says, that the police view themselves as important promoters of patriotism, the victims of false criticism from the population, adults concerned about the mental state of the rising generation, and protectors of the Russian Orthodox Church (mbk-news.appspot.com/suzhet/patriotizm-oporochivanie/).

                One article in Police of Russia describes how policemen attend patriotic lectures and films and then provide similar experiences for the population around them. That doesn’t get a lot of attention, the article’s author says; but it has a major impact on helping Russia recover from the 1990s.

            Another says that the police are very concerned about policing themselves and thus take criticism seriously. But much criticism, one writer says, is misplaced and seems directed less at improving the situation than in interfering with the work of the organs. Given how much criticism there now is, this must be a major problem.

            The police in their own view devote much of their time to ensuring that young people won’t become criminals. They’ve succeeded in driving down the crime rate among teenagers and are now working with others to ensure that the Internet doesn’t lead young Russians astray in the future.

            And the police view themselves as mainstays in the defense of the Russian Orthodox Church. Two years ago, the summer issue of the police journal featured a picture of Patriarch Kirill on its cover and a story about how the police worked tirelessly to find and return icons that had been stolen from a monastery.

            “It is possible,” the author of that article says, “that from the point of view of believers, the return of the icons to the monastery was God’s will. But without the professionalism of officers of the special police, these items and many other rare things might have ‘landed’ in private collections or left the territory of our country.”

            Had that happened, this policeman says, there would have been left “an irreplaceable gap in the cultural and historical heritage of the nation.”