Appuyé sur les textes normatifs, relatifs au mariage et à la réglementation de la vie privée des gendarmes, cet article témoigne du contrôle matrimonial mais aussi social imposé aux femmes de gendarmes en raison du statut professionnel de leur mari. En effet, la dimension totale de la fonction gendarmique tend souvent à effacer ou gommer la séparation entre vie et espace professionnels et privés. Chemin faisant, les épouses sont, bon gré mal gré, partie intégrante de la communauté professionnelle de leur (...) mari. Pendant une grande partie du siècle, ce mode d’organisation a été profondément enraciné dans la culture du corps, participant de son identité. Nul doute cependant, que les contestations internes de 1989 et 2001, mais aussi la féminisation récente de la gendarmerie, conduisent aujourd’hui à des évolutions dans la façon d’appréhender les rapports de genre au sein de l’institution. (shrink)

Sylvie Clément, capitaine de gendarmerie, est sociologue et chargée d’études au Centre de prospective de la gendarmerie nationale. C’est à ce titre qu’en 2000 elle a été chargée d’une enquête sur les conditions de vie en caserne de gendarmerie. Il s’agit ici de la version publiée du rapport final remis à sa hiérarchie à l’été 2001, sous le titre initial La vie en bleu. Commande institutionnelle, le projet était d’emblée utile. D’une part il contribue à combler un (...) vide dans une bibliographie,... (shrink)

Words can mean different things to different people. This can be problematic, mainly for those working together in a bureaucratic institution, such as the secret service. Shared, certified, explicit and codified definitions offer a counter to subjective, solitary and/or culturally dominant definitions. It’s true that codified secrecy terms for secret services can be seen to involve a number of political, cultural, subcultural “languages”, but if words come from unclassified or declassified files, memorandums and/or records, one needs a deep understanding of (...) the secret services. A remarkable feature of this bureaucratic language is the evolving nature of, certain “keywords” as important signifiers of historical transformation. Thus, the changes in the language of the secret services depends at least as much on the internal changes of the secret services as on the transformation in the external political-social environment. In spite of the confusion of Hungarian secret services in the revolutions of 1918–1919 and the disintegration of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy, in the early 1920’s became a stable system. Between the two World Wars, the Hungarian State Police directed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Military Intelligence and Counter-Espionage directed by the Ministry of Defence, and the Hungarian Royal Gendarmerie directed by both of the Ministries had their own operational service. This structure existed unchanged until 1945. Simultaneously with the forward advance of the soviet troops, government began to re-establish the former system of the secret services in the eastern part of the country. After WWII, in 1946, the “State-protection Department” as political police became independent from the police. However, from the beginning, they remained under the control of the Communist Party. After 1950, the State Security Authority provided special services for the MIA and the Military Political Directorate of the MoD. After quashing the revolution in 1956, in the spring of 1957, the MIA Political Investigation Department was established which—with slight modifications—kept the structure created during the “state protection era”. The MIA III. The State-Protection General Directorate was established in 1962. The reorganization was finalized in the middle of the 1960’s, which resulted in the new system, which—with the structure of Directorates—became the ultimate structure of the state secret police until the abolishment of the MIA General Directorate III in January 1990. These organizational transformations were largely the result of exogenous historical-political changes. Moreover, each new period had a major impact on the organizational communication, language use and vocabulary of the secret services. This study seeks to interpret these historical transformations. (shrink)

The 1924 Church reform, through which the Romanian Orthodox Church decided to adopt the Revised Julian Calendar, led to dissent movements, mostly comprised of peasants, especially in the villages of Moldavia and Bessarabia. Considering the calendar change a heresy, these groups soon developed into religious communities that came to be known as Old Calendarists, or “stylists,” followers of “the old-style calendar.” Led by defrocked priests and monks who rejected the reform, the groups very quickly became the target of the secret (...) police and the Gendarmerie. What also drew the attention of the authorities and the Orthodox Church was that women, especially the younger ones, seemed to play important roles within the communities, not only in terms of membership, but also in preserving and spreading the Old Calendarists’ beliefs and religious ideas. As many members of the communities were being arrested, and their churches were destroyed, these women also suffered imprisonment, monastic incarceration, or were forced to hide from the authorities in caves or huts that they built in the woods. Though subjected to various forms of persecution, which continued through the communist period, the majority of them held strong to their beliefs and contributed to the forging of a religious identity. Using archival documents, in the forms of letters, postcards, photos, and declarations as primary sources, and drawing on interviews conducted with contemporary nuns and members of the Old Calendarist communities, the present article explores the personal stories of young Old Calendarist women. Building upon the work of Anca Șincan, this article challenges the notion that transmission of religion was the exclusive prerogative of older women. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the clandestine congress for the preparation of the All-Russian Congress of Muslim Students, organized in Kiev in 1913. Based on the archive sources of gendarme administration of Kiev Governorate and memoirs of the participants of the events, the process of preparing the organizational congress, its goals and tasks were examined. The role of reformist ideas among the organizers of the clandestine congress and their inclusion into the general imperial Muslim context was shown. The process of (...) politicization of the Kiev Congress under the influence of revolutionary-minded participants representing the Muslim Tartars of the Volga and the Urals was studied. It was shown that the socially active Muslim students of that time included both revolutionary circles and representatives of intellectual and political elites of the Muslim community of the Russian Empire who were seeking for opportunities to improve the situation of the Muslims of the Empire. The probable causes of the weak reaction of the security services of the Russian Empire to this congress were analyzed. Among them are: a) the intervention of representatives of the Muslim elite of the Russian Empire, b) the marginal nature of the "Muslim issue" for the Kiev gendarmerie. The special role of the deputy of the Forth Duma, the representative of the Muslim faction of Ibnamin Akhtyamov in the settlement of the problem of the Muslim students' arrest was noted. It is concluded that the congress in question was a manifestation of unifying tendencies among the Muslim students, which took place on the eve of the First World War. (shrink)

All major post-Worldwar political conflicts that made up the face of Belgian polities, were accompagnied by massive protests and intensive demonstration waves. Analysis of newspapers coverage and of the gendarmerie archives confirms this for the nineties. The 1990-1997 period is marked by an increasing number of demonstrations and demonstrators. The disappearance of the ideological and cultural-linguistical actions was, on the one hand, made up for by the further rising of other issues, and on the other hand by the near (...) institutionalisation of very classic issues like education or employment, who both secured their place on the street. There is no ground to call the 1990's dull, on the contrary: the number of demonstrations grew steadily and, especially in Flanders, Inglehart's Silent Revolution of Postmaterialist values took to the streets. The wider acceptance of demonstrations as a means of actions, the growing political alienation, and the greater openness of the political system are presented as plausible explanations. (shrink)

All major post-Worldwar political conflicts that made up the face of Belgian polities, were accompagnied by massive protests and intensive demonstration waves. Analysis of newspapers coverage and of the gendarmerie archives confirms this for the nineties. The 1990-1997 period is marked by an increasing number of demonstrations and demonstrators. The disappearance of the ideological and cultural-linguistical actions was, on the one hand, made up for by the further rising of other issues, and on the other hand by the near (...) institutionalisation of very classic issues like education or employment, who both secured their place on the street. There is no ground to call the 1990's dull, on the contrary: the number of demonstrations grew steadily and, especially in Flanders, Inglehart's Silent Revolution of Postmaterialist values took to the streets. The wider acceptance of demonstrations as a means of actions, the growing political alienation, and the greater openness of the political system are presented as plausible explanations. (shrink)

En expliquant comment les forces de l’ordre se dotent d’uniformes spécifiques au cours du xixe siècle, il s’agit de comprendre la signification de cet objet. Au-delà de l’utilité pratique du costume, qui peut faire débat, policiers et gendarmes affichent une prestance militaire qui renforce leur prestige. Mais ils montrent aussi qu’ils travaillent en toute transparence, en assumant leurs actes et en se plaçant au service du public. Ils prouvent enfin leur valeur en engageant des dépenses vestimentaires qui deviennent un gage (...) de respectabilité. S’il constitue un enjeu symbolique fort, l’uniforme évolue dans le sens d’une plus grande simplicité fonctionnelle au cours du xixe siècle, s’adaptant dans une certaine mesure à la mode masculine. (shrink)