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Soviet Union [USSR] THE MINISTRY OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS
The MVD, which encompassed the regular, or nonpolitical,
police, had a long history in the Soviet Union. It was first
established as the NKVD on November 18, 1917. It has undergone
several organizational and name changes since then. When the KGB
was established in 1954, the security police was separated from the
regular police. The MVD was originally established as a
union-republic ministry (see Glossary) with headquarters in Moscow, but
in 1960 the Khrushchev leadership, as part of its general
downgrading of the police, abolished the central MVD, whose
functions were assumed by republic ministries of internal affairs.
Then, in 1962 the MVD was redesignated the Ministry for the
Preservation of Public Order (Ministerstvo okhrany obshchestvennogo
poriadka--MOOP). This name change implied a break with the allpowerful MVD created by Beria, as well as a narrower range of
functions. The changes were accompanied by increasing criticism of
the regular police in the Soviet press for its shortcomings in
combating crime.
Following Khrushchev's ouster, Brezhnev did much to raise the
status of the regular police. In 1966, after placing one of his
protégés, Nikolai A. Shchelokov, in the post of chief, Brezhnev
reinstated MOOP as a union-republic ministry. Two years later, MOOP
was renamed the MVD, an apparent symbol of its increased authority.
Efforts were made to raise the effectiveness of the MVD by
recruiting better-qualified personnel and upgrading equipment and
training. Brezhnev's death, however, left the MVD vulnerable to his
opponents, Andropov in particular. Just a month after Brezhnev
died, Shchelokov was ousted as its chief and replaced by the former
KGB chairman, Vitalii Fedorchuk. Shchelokov was later tried on
corruption charges. A similar fate befell Brezhnev's son-in-law,
Iurii Churbanov, who was removed from the post of first deputy
chief in 1984 and later arrested on criminal charges. After
bringing several officials from the KGB and from the party
apparatus into the MVD, Andropov sought to make it an effective
organization for rooting out widespread corruption; Gorbachev
continued these efforts.
Data as of May 1989
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