TALLINN, Estonia, March 29 (UPI) -- Russia's militiamen no longer work for the authorities as they did in Soviet times.
However, they do not yet work for the citizenry as is the norm in democratic countries. And that situation has left them alienated from both, uncertain of their proper role, and often effectively for sale to the highest bidders.
Those are just some of the conclusions offered in an article about attitudes in and about the militia of the Russian Federation prepared on the basis of survey data by Lev Gudkov and Boris Dubin and appearing in the current issue of the Levada Center's "Vestnik obshchestvennogo mneniya."
Gudkov and Dubin first present data about how Russians view the militia in their country as compared to how citizens of other countries view the police. In the United Staes and Western Europe, twice to three times as many people trust the police as distrustr them, but in Russia, only about one-fifth as many trust the militia as distrust them.
Indeed, according to one poll cited by the two analysts, almost as many Russians currently fear that they will suffer from arbitrary actions by the members of the militia -- 26 percent -- as are worried that they will fall victim to terrorists -- 29 percent -- or suffer as a result of ethnic conflicts (28 percent.
The two analysts suggest that a major reason for this pattern is to be found in the Soviet origins of the Russian militia. In Soviet times, they argue, "the most important functions [of the militia] were in the supervision and control of the population rather than in preventing crime or defending legality."
But as the Soviet system decayed, the militia decayed along with it, and many of its members lost their sense that they were part of the regime's system of controlling the population without recognizing that their proper role was to defend citizens from the actions of criminals.
Last fall, the Levada Center was able to conduct an unprecedented investigation among the members of the Russian militia, research that casts new light on how its members view their responsibilities, how they relate to other parts of society, and how they believe the government and population should treat them.
According to that poll, most of those now working in the militia believe that the Interior Ministry devotes "insufficient attention" to their work, that the militia is badly underfunded, that the population distrusts the militia, that the mass media are against them, and that the level of legal knowledge among the population is extremely low.
If these findings are not suprising, the survey did offer some intriguing data on whom current militia workers think they work for. According to the poll, 26 percent of the militiamen said they worked for the government, 25 percent said they worked for those who had money, and 59 percent said they worked for all residents of the city.
The share saying they worked for those with money was relatively constant across all age groups. But the share saying they worked for those in power rose from 20 percent among the youngest to 47 percent among the oldest while the fraction saying they worked for all citizens fell from 65 percent among the youngest to 37 percent among the oldest.
Such attitudes help to explain both the amount of corruption among militia employees and the de fact privatization of many militia groups. And they also help to explain why most members of the militia oppose giving the population greater access to information about the militia or greater control over its actions.
On the basis of their research, Gudkov and Dubin draw the following conclusion about the current state of the militia in the Russian Federation. "The multiplication of the number of 'masters' of the organs of state force ... is leading to the de-monopolization and division of these structures, to a loss of a feeling of responsibility and of corporate honor."
In that situation, they write, "If the KGB [sic] is now ever more involved in the economy [and earning money for its members as a result], the Interior Ministry [which oversees the militia] is to an ever greater degree being transformed into a private police, serving among others, criminal force structures."
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(Paul Goble teaches at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu in Estonia.)
