Badge "Village Police".

[bayoswede]

Here is another Badge from Estonia, the seller said it was an Village Commissar ?

Very nice done a little bit darker than the photo in real life
numbered 12670 on back.

Does anyone know anything about it ?

Have a nice weekend

Christer

[deValcourt]

I believe this is as good a thread to start to showcase my little collection of "druzhinnik" and volunteer police badges and IDs as any other.

There is a distinct difference between the Soviet Union sponsored/strongly encouraged "Druzhinnik" organizations and regional or even "village police" like the badge from Estonian SSR below.

The "Druzhinniks" were organized through the Soviet MVD and trained by them as well. The MVD also issued them the IDs armbands and badges. In one sense they were like a "neighborhood watch" in that they kept an eye on the areas where they lived. However, they were also afforded special privileges, much of which are undocumented (like being given a "pass" during so-called random police ID checks just by showing the "Druzhinnik" ID - a pedestrian version of how MVD and KGB officers' ID gave their holders a walk from nearly any situation.

The village police, as was common in Estonia (even though they had "Druzhinniks" as well), were in existence before the Soviet invention and as far as I know still is. This is also the case with some of the Warsaw Pact countries. I know that Mongolia had an "Auxiliary Police" as did Hungary. I don't know much about the organization for the former, but the latter was a sort of cross between a reserve police officer and a voluntary national guard in that they were organized well and were active in maintaining order. In Hungary, after the reign of Rakosi was over and Kadar took over, they made a pledge to the people never to have a "secret police" again so long as they maintained an effective "Auxiliary Police" which in turn organized the "volunteer police" which are the most equivalent to the "Druzhinnik."

In Bulgaria, the direct equivalent of the "Druzhinnik" was the "Otryadnik" whose initial 1950-60s brass and enamel badges had both the Bulgarian and an unmarked solid red flag crossed on them - not much left to the imagination with that symbolism. The "Otryad" was initially organized by the KDS (the equivalent of the KGB) and is says so in the IDs through the 1960s. I get the impression, without any solid evidence to back it up, that after the KDS was absorbed back into the MVR (Soviet MVD) the "Otryad" was run by the MVR.

I'll post as many different types of the All-Union badges as I have and as many of the republican versions as I have as well. This could take a while since I am in transition between my old computer and this new one.

Which leads to this disclaimer: the following pictures were compressed/resized using Corel Photo-Paint and this is the first time I ever use this complicated software. So, while I've been planning a "Druzhinnik" thread for quite some time, this first post is also an experiment in how the software works for prepping photos for the forum threads.;)

Anyway, this is a numbered "Village Police" badge that I got from a former "Druzhinnik" - or what was called "Malevlane" (in Latin letters) in Estonia. Even though there is a bit of a bleed-over of red enamel onto some of the letters, the rest is in perfect condition.

From what I've been told (corrected, I should say) by my Estonian source, these "Kulavolinik" ("village police") badges were made just after WWII but only lasted until the 1950s at the latest.

The last picture is of the stamped serial numbers that were common to all of these badges.

Phillip

P.S. The weird colors in the second picture are from my learning process of how to compress pictures with this new software. Everything really is perfect.

[Greg Collins]

Thought I'd add my 2 cents in here, even though it's been a couple of years since the last post.

I really don't think there is a connection, per se, between the Kulavolinik and the Malevlane. The Malevlane/Druzhinnik was an auxilliary to the police; informant, neighborhood watch, that sort of thing. Minimally trained, unarmed...

I believe the Kulavolinik was the armed, professional policeman that was still in place when the Soviets took over in '45. "Village" can be, at times, interchangeable with "local". These, I believe, were the career police who had been such under all governments up to the Soviet take over. In other words, they also functioned under the Estonian monarchy, the SS/Order Police, and now the Soviets. Probably a few of the top dogs were arrested for their association with the Germans, but most were simply cops who did their jobs no matter which government was in power at the time. And, I believe, while they worked under the supervision of the NKVD until '46 and the MVD thereafter, they were fully absorbed into the MVD by the very early '50's. That's my take on it, anyway.

Here's my number 4296 badge...