Избранные труды

1.3. The conformity of the basic parameters of the relations between the militia and the public in Russia with the main European standards

Why do we mean only the European standards? We have missed the unique experience of eufunctional ties of the Chinese police and the public. We just do not have any reliable information about it. But Russia is, by the way, an Eurasian country both by its national and religious traditions.

At the technological level the modern Russian relations between the militia and the public are similar to the German police-public relations at the second half of the forties and fifties and to those in the USA in the twenties, in the thirties and in the forties.

In this respect the selection of experts for Russia is of great importance. Among others those specialists are required who know the said periods not just by hearsay. We have quite enough our own specialists who solve problems by simple logical spreading of a general idea to a concrete situation. And with the exclusion of newly ones the said specialists are more skilled than western specialists. This is due to a specific nature of the Soviet education which have not provided training for a narrow specialization.

For a number of years I have been reading with curiosity some publications signed by “Nikolas Arena”. And I always think what sphere he is expert in. After N. Viner “An expert is a person of experience”. And I begin to understand that Nikolas Arena is probably a person who distributes money.

Grantors and granters are very different. In the hands of many of them a grant (donation, endowment, subsidy, dotation) may turn to grand (American slang: thousand dollars, a large sum) and even to grunt (luncheon voucher).

The situation in the sixties, seventies and in the first half of the eighties conforms at the technological level to the modern European standards of the police and public relations to a far greater extent than the present relationship between the Russian militia and the public.

It is probably not just by chance (this is not an argument but an illustration) that when creating a TV program in Omsk I used the experience of the Second TV of BRD and it was BRD that at the end of the sixties asked my permit for translation of my book “Use of Mass Media in Combatting Crime”.

1.3.1. The connection between the democracy and the mutual confidence of the public and police is not simple.

The French searches displayed, for example, that Soviet and Russian schoolchildren of the period of 1990–1993 are more law-abiding than French children of their age.[511] But Soviet and Russian schoolchildren have been grown up in the epoch of the so-called totalitarianism.

In this connection I would like to cite the opinion of another lawyer: “…There appear more and more… evidences (in post-communist countries and also in the USA and Great Britain) of problematic relationship between democratic processes and the law”[512].

1.4. I have started to observe an actual interrelationship of the militia and the public since 1968. So I may judge on their dynamics not just from literary sources. It is important to accentuate that it is the public that forms the environment for functioning of the law protective bodies, and that it is a matter of great significance for the successful activity of the police how the first comer reacts to a crime or to an action of the police. Not specially organized or prepared public but a person that has happened to be in statu nascendi (in the scene of action).

1.5. The importance of the relations between the law-abiding public and the police (For the sake of which we undertake this analysis).

The normal relations between the public and the police are necessary evidences of a democratic society.

But the relations between the police and law-abiding citizens are of great importance not only just by themselves. If it were so, the police might go into their shell and deal only with infringers, with lawbreakers. However it cannot do it for the following two reasons. First, a part of its functions is intended to serve the public upon the whole. These are a passport service, security service, traffic control inspection etc.

Second, being engaged in a law-protective activity the police has to involve also citizens into it. Sometimes it is achieved even by the thread of enforcement. (A citizen is called to give testimony under the threat of criminal responsibility in case of the refusal to give such a testimony).