was created with authority over criminal questions and the labor
camps in the gulagsystem, as well as traffic and more mundane du-
ties. The MVD also expanded the strength and military equipment of
its internal troops, which were armed and equipped to put down ma-
jor political disturbances.
During the Leonid Brezhnevera (1964–1982), the MVD became
notoriously corrupt. One of Yuri Andropov’s first efforts to reform
the Soviet state on becoming general secretary in 1982 was to place
thousands of KGB officers into senior positions in the MVD, simul-
taneously purging the police. Andropov placed Vitalii Fedorchuk,
the KGB chair, into the ministry to stir things up. He was at first suc-
cessful. Former MVD chief Nikolai Shcholekhov was investigated
for corruption but committed suicide before being arrested. Leonid
Brezhnev’s son-in-law and Shcholekhov’s deputy, Yuri Cherbanov,
went to prison for several years.
Efforts to clean up the MVD in the Soviet period all failed in the
end. Fedorchuk in his service as interior minister was unable to
change the culture of the service. Despite the executionof a number
of corrupt officials, the MVD remained essentially unreformable. In
the late 1980s, the MVD’s mission changed to ensuring political sta-
bility, and MVD troops were committed to preserve peace in the Cau-
casus, Central Asia, and the Baltic republics—a mission that contin-
ues in Chechnya.
In post-Soviet Russia, the MVD remains unreformed, underfi-
nanced, and unprepared to deal with the heavily armed criminal
gangs that control many Russian cities. In the 1990s an average of
140 MVD officers died annually in firefights with criminals. Liaison
with Western police forces has been initiated, but as in the Soviet pe-
riod, the MVD remains the stepchild of the security community.- N –
NARODNAYA VOLYA(PEOPLE’S WILL). The most powerful revo-
lutionary movement of the 1860–1880s was populism, narodnich-
estvo, which saw Russia’s future as democratic and village centered.
In the 1870s young, idealistic Russian students took their message
“to the people,” traveling to the provinces to spread their doctrine ofNARODNAYA VOLYA(PEOPLE’S WILL)• 17106-313 G-P.qxd 7/27/06 7:56 AM Page 171