Russia under the Old regime

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he ordered that anyone (serfs included) denouncing dvoriane evading service should receive their villages as a reward. But he no longer could afford to treat political crimes as an occasional nuisance because his enemies were legion and scattered among all the strata of society. He created, therefore, a separate police bureau, the Preobrazhenskii Prikaz, which he charged with over-all responsibility for dealing with political offences in the empire. This institution was introduced so surreptitiously that historians to this day have not been able to locate the decree authorizing its establishment or even to determine the approximate date when it might have been issued.11 The first solid information concerning this organ dates from 1702 when a decree came out detailing its functions and authority. According to its provisions, the head of the Preobrazhenskii Prikaz had the right to investigate at his discretion any institution and any individual, regardless of rank, and to take whatever steps he thought necessary to uncover pertinent information and forestall seditious acts. In contrast to the other branches of administration created under Peter, its functions were defined very vaguely - a fact which served to enhance its powers. No one - not even the Senate which Peter had set up to supervise the country's administration - had the right to inquire into its affairs. In its chambers thousands were tortured and put to death, among them peasants who resisted the soul tax or recruitment orders, religious dissenters and drunks overheard to make disparaging remarks about the sovereign. The uses of the police, however, were not confined to political offences, broadly defined as these were. Whenever the government ran into any kind of difficulty, it tended to call upon its organs for help. Thus, the complex task of managing the construction of St Petersburg, after various unsuccessful attempts was in the end entrusted to that city's police chief.

The Preobrazhenskii Prikaz seems to have been the first institution in history created to deal specifically and exclusively with political crimes. The scope of its operations and its complete administrative independence mark it as the prototype of a basic organ of all modern police states. It is one of the few dependable rules of history that, given enough time, private interests will always triumph over public ones simply because their advocates, as they stand both to lose and to gain more than do the guardians of public property, are infinitely more resourceful.

The dvoriane listed with the Office of the Heroldmeister in St Petersburg as serving under the Table of Ranks were even under Peter's semi-meritocratic regime recipients of exclusive privileges, holding as they did the bulk of the country's arable land and of its working population. Their hold on this property, however, was tenuous, being conditional