Militsiya

Militsiya (Russian: милиция, IPA: [mʲɪˈlʲitsɨjə], Serbo-Croatian: милиција, romanized: milicija, lit. 'militia') were the police forces in the Soviet Union until 1991, in several Eastern Bloc countries (1945–1992), and in the non-aligned SFR Yugoslavia (1945–1992). The term Militsiya continues to be used in common and sometimes official usage in some of the individual former Soviet republics such as Belarus, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as in the partially recognised or unrecognised republics of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria. In Russian law enforcement, the term remained in official usage until the police reform of 2011.

The name militsiya as applied to police forces originates from a Russian Provisional Government decree dated April 17, 1917, and from early Soviet history: both the Provisional Government and the Bolsheviks intended to associate their new law-enforcement authority with the self-organisation of the people and to distinguish it from the czarist police. The militsiya was reaffirmed in Russia on October 28 (November 10, according to the new style dating), 1917 under the official name of the "Workers' and Peasants' Militsiya", in further contrast to what the Bolsheviks called the "bourgeois class protecting" police. Eventually, it was replaced by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Russian: МВД, MVD; Ukrainian: МВС, MVS; Belarusian: МУС, MUS), which is now the official full name for the militsiya forces in the respective countries. Its regional branches are officially called Departments of Internal Affairs—city department of internal affairs, raion department of internal affairs, oblast department of internal affairs, etc. (The Russian term for a raion department is OVD (ОВД; Отдел/Отделение внутренних дел, Otdel/Otdeleniye vnutrennikh del), for region department is UVD (УВД; Управление внутренних дел, Upravleniye vnutrennikh del) or, sometimes, GUVD (ГУВД; Главное управление внутренних дел, Glavnoye upravleniye vnutrennikh del), same for national republics is MVD (МВД; Министерство внутренних дел, Ministerstvo vnutrennikh del).)

Functionally, Ministries of Internal Affairs are mostly police agencies. Their functions and organisation differ significantly from similarly named departments in Western countries, which are usually civil executive bodies headed by politicians and responsible for many other tasks as well as the supervision of law enforcement. The Soviet and successor MVDs have usually been headed by a militsiya general and predominantly consist of service personnel, with civilian employees only filling auxiliary posts. Although such ministers are members of their respective countries' cabinets, they usually do not report to the prime minister or parliament, but only to the president. Local militsiya departments are subordinated to their regional departments, having little accountability to local authorities.

Internal-affairs units within the militsiya itself are usually called "internal security" departments.^{[citation needed]}

The official names of particular militsiya bodies and services in post-Soviet countries are usually very complicated, hence the use of the short term militsiya. Laws usually refer to police just as militsiya.

The short term for a police officer (regardless of gender) is militsioner (Russian: милиционер, Ukrainian: мiлiцiонер). Slang Russian terms for militsioner include ment (plural: менты, menty) and musor (plural: мусора, musora). Although the latter word is offensive (it literally means "trash" or "garbage"), it originated from an acronym for the Moscow Criminal Investigations Department (Russian: МУС, romanized: MUS, short for Russian: Московский уголовный сыск, romanized: Moskovskiy ugolovnyy sysk) in Imperial Russia. Ment is a close equivalent to the English slang term "cop" and derived from the Lwów dialect of Polish or possibly from the Polish word menda.

The following countries have changed the name of the police force from Militsiya (or equivalent) to a western-style name analogous to "police": Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Estonia, Lithuania, Moldova, Latvia, Mongolia, North Macedonia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Russia and Ukraine.

In 2019, Uzbekistan officially removed references to the word "Militsiya" from its laws without replacing them with "police".