How did Russians fight crime before there were police
Gangs of bandits appeared in Russia long before law enforcement bodies ever did. Therefore, both the peasants and the nobility had to take matters into their own hands to protect themselves from robbers and marauders.
At the turn of the 17th-18th centuries one Russian voevoda (local administrator), traveling on the Volga River near Nizhny Novgorod was "surrounded by three barques of Russian river pirates; each ba