Donosy. Między normą a patologią relacji społeczeństwa z organami władz policyjnych. Refleksje nie tylko na przykładzie dziewiętnastowiecznych akt policyjnych: żandarmerii i ochrany

Abstract

Informing — entangled in a legal category system, marked a temptation to seize power indirectly, to acquire its attributes — found its place and recognition in the reality of society’s life in the nineteenth century. This is confirmed both by the legal norms adopted in tsarist Russia as well as social norms that evolved in the country. Particularly elaborate in terms of their form and types were denunciations used by police institutions in tsarist Russia — for them denunciations were one of the most important sources of information as well as means of communication. Police denunciations, unique methods of their creation and acquisition, sometimes barely legal ways of using them prevailed over the established norms of contact and collaboration between police agencies and society. The multitude and frequency of denunciations in police records testified to the existence of numerous pathologies in the relations between society and the police. What emerges as pathological in the light of the denunciations is the area of social penetration carried out by the police, ways of gathering information and ways of using it. Despite their shortcomings and the difficulties involved in assessing such documents, police denunciations are one of the most valuable categories of historical sources, which cannot be left out of any reliable research.