Militsiya in the context of Russian police reform

Special settlements in the Soviet Union were the result of population transfers and were performed in a series of operations organized according to social class or nationality of the deported. Resettling of "enemy classes" such as prosperous peasants and entire populations by ethnicity was a method of political repression in the Soviet Union, although separate from the Gulag system of penal labor. Involuntary settlement played a role in the colonization of virgin lands of the Soviet Union. This role was specifically mentioned in the first Soviet decrees about involuntary labor camps. Compared to the Gulag labor camps, the involuntary settlements had the appearance of "normal" settlements: people lived in families, and there was slightly more freedom of movement; however, that was permitted only within a small specified area. All settlers were overseen by the NKVD; once a month a person had to register at a local law enforcement office at a selsoviet in rural areas or at a militsiya department in urban settlements. As second-class citizens, deported peoples designated as "special settlers" were prohibited from holding a variety of jobs, returning to their region of origin, attending prestigious schools, and even joining the cosmonaut program. Due to this, special settlements have been described as a type of apartheid by historian J. Otto Pohl.

After the special settlement system was officially abolished in the 1950s, most deported indigenous peoples were allowed to return to their homelands, except for the Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks, who were denied the right of return in the Khrushchev and Brezhnev era and largely remained in areas they were deported to because of the Soviet residence permit system (propiska).

The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR (MVD; Russian: Министерство внутренних дел СССР (МВД), romanized: Ministerstvo vnutrennikh del SSSR) was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union from 1946 to 1991. The MVD was established as the successor to the NKVD during the reform of the People's Commissariats into the Ministries of the Soviet Union in 1946 as part of a broader restructuring of the government. The MVD did not include agencies concerned with secret policing unlike the NKVD, with the function being assigned to the Ministry of State Security (MGB), which had been established during the Second World War. The MVD and MGB were briefly merged into a single ministry from March 1953 until the MGB was split off as the Committee for State Security (KGB) in March 1954.

This resulted in a system where one agency was responsible for domestic and foreign intelligence gathering, espionage, surveillance and secret police functions, and another responsible for the regular civilian police forces, fire departments and internal security troops. The MVD was headed by the Minister of Internal Affairs and responsible for many internal services in the Soviet Union such as the Militsiya, the national police force, the Internal Troops, which served as the USSR's national gendarmerie, the OMON riot control units, Traffic Safety, prisons, the Gulag system as well as the successive penal colonies, and the internal migration system. From 1966-1968, it was briefly known as the Ministry of Public Order Protection. The MVD was dissolved upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 and succeeded by its branches in the post-Soviet states, the largest being the Russian MVD, which inherited its predecessor's functions, though its Internal Troops would later become their own independent service - the National Guard.

The Militsiya (Ukrainian: міліція, pronounced [miˈl⁽ʲ⁾its⁽ʲ⁾ijɐ] ) was a type of domestic law enforcement agency (militsiya) that existed in various forms in Ukraine from 1919 until 2015. The Militsiya was originally formed while Ukraine was governed by the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the Soviet Union, and it continued to serve as a national police service in post-Soviet Ukraine until it was replaced by the National Police of Ukraine on 7 November 2015.

The Militsiya was under the direct control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (known by the Ukrainian acronym MVS and by the Russian acronym MVD), and it was widely seen as corrupt and inconsiderable to the demands of the Ukrainian public. During Euromaidan, the Militsiya was accused of brutality against protestors as well as kidnapping Automaidan activists, leading to the reputation of the Militsiya being irreversibly damaged. This resulted in its replacement under the post-Maidan Poroshenko presidency.

The presidency of Dmitry Medvedev began on 8 May 2008, when he became the 3rd President of the Russian Federation. Medvedev was the Head of the Presidential Administration during the 2nd term of Vladimir Putin as president, and the Chairman of Gazprom oil company. Dmitry Medvedev was the youngest Russian leader since 1918 at the time of his inauguration.

Medvedev's main domestic agenda was the wide-ranging Medvedev modernisation programme which aimed at modernising Russia's economy and society. In particular, the massive Skolkovo innovation center, part of the modernisation programme, is often regarded as Medvedev's brainchild. Another important program was the Russian police reform, launched by Medvedev in 2009, and led to the renaming of the Policing Organisation from Militsiya to police.

OMON is a system of military special police units within the National Guard of Russia. It previously operated within the structures of the Soviet and Russian Ministries of Internal Affairs (MVD). Originating as the special forces unit of the Soviet Militsiya in 1988, it has played major roles in several armed conflicts during and following the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union.

OMON is much larger and better known than SOBR, another special-police branch of the National Guard of Russia. In modern contexts, OMON serves as a riot police group, or as a gendarmerie-like paramilitary force. OMON units also exist in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and other post-Soviet states. However, some post-Soviet units have changed names and acronyms. Russian speakers commonly refer to OMON officers as omonovtsy (Russian: омоновцы; singular: omonovyets – Russian: омоновец).