MOSCOW: Moscow's typically traffic-clogged central thoroughfare was jammed this day with people, basking in a rare late-winter sun as a fire department marching band in lime-green uniforms and shiny gold helmets warmed up for a spring festival parade.
As the band prepared to march, Vladimir K. Kazerzin moved in with his men to help clear a path through the crowd. Mr. Kazerzin is a former philosophy teacher, not a police officer, and that is the point. He heads a contingent of volunteer police officers, called druzhiniki, who patrol with increasing frequency in the capital alongside the professionals to bolster their ranks and, at times, counter their belligerence.
"Look at that sad looking soldier in comparison with my guys," Mr. Kazerzin said with a glimmer of pride, pointing out a particularly morose conscript soldier working crowd control along with his volunteers. Nearby, Moscow police officers barked aggressively under their big fur hats at the crowd to clear out, prompting snarls of indignation.
Meanwhile, Mr. Kazerzin's men, mostly college students in red armbands and with piercings glittering in their ears, smiled and chatted with passersby, while directing them to spots where they could watch the parade without getting in the way.
For those who recall life in the Soviet Union, the druzhiniki are often a nostalgic reminder of the citizen patrols of students and grandmothers walking the streets in red armbands at the behest of the Communist Party to keep a lookout for hooligans and petty criminals.
Though their numbers have dwindled since the Soviet collapse, the government is working to revive the druzhiniki in part to help law enforcement agencies combat what officials fear will be a spike in crime and public disorder amid the growing unemployment and rising prices of the economic crisis. A group of lawmakers in the Russian Parliament is pushing legislation that could enhance the authority of existing volunteer patrols.
Today, these volunteer groups appear little different from the civilian neighborhood watch organizations found in many countries. But in Russia they offer a rare example of volunteerism in a society that remains largely skeptical of civic groups after years of forced social activism under the Soviets, and fears of a return to the days of civilian informers.
But the groups' proponents dismiss such fears. "When it comes to protecting children and driving teenaged hooligans from the playground, people will come together," said Vasily I. Solmin, a former submariner in the Pacific Fleet, who now heads a group of druzhiniki in Moscow.
Druzhiniki all but disappeared after the Russian government withdrew its support with the collapse of the Soviet Union, but re-emerged in force in Moscow following terrorist attacks on two apartment buildings that killed hundreds in 1999, said Irina Svyatenko, a member of the Moscow city legislature.
"At that time, people just decided to start patrolling their neighborhoods," she said. "They did not ask anyone for permission, and there was no government initiative. People just decided that this was needed."
There are now as many as 17,000 volunteers in Moscow and units in more than 40 other regions of Russia, said Vyacheslav I. Khalamov, an assistant to the chief of the Moscow druzhiniki. In the capital, volunteers help the police with crowd control at major public events like concerts, sporting events, public festivals and protests.
A favorite among the druzhiniki is working the annual Fourth of July reception put on by the U.S. Embassy here. "They even feed us and sometimes give us a bottle of beer," Mr. Kazerzin said.
In Soviet days, he said, they could detain people on misdemeanor charges and write traffic tickets and were compensated if injured while on patrol. For the most part, the current druzhiniki get little outside of free public transport and the red armband.
"We should be working on those issues that the police simply don't have time for, like small street crimes and crime prevention," Mr. Khalamov said.
The new legislation, which will likely come up for hearings in Parliament in coming months, would institute the druzhiniki on a federal level and allow them to impose fines for failure to obey their orders and provide compensation for injuries suffered while on patrol. Legislators have even debated the possibility of allowing the volunteers to carry weapons like batons or stun guns.
"We are now giving society a chance through this structure to fight against crime, help protect public order and, most importantly, to guarantee security in one's own backyard," said Vladimir A. Vasilyev, the head of the Security Committee in Parliament.
Critics, however, worry that this emboldened civilian police force could easily succumb to the substantial corruption that already pervades law enforcement agencies in Russia.
"If today we already have problems controlling our police, what happens when we create a far less trained, less disciplined and less controlled structure?" said Aleksandr Cherkasov, from the Moscow-based human rights organization Memorial.
Not so, said Valery I. Maximov, a retired police officer who now commands a 126-member regiment of volunteers in Moscow. He argues that since the volunteers are required to patrol with the police their presence can actually dissuade officers from yielding to corruption.
"When they patrol along with police," he said, "I know that the officer will not take a bribe because the druzhinik is watching."
