Gomel. The Museum of Criminology.

The museum's exposition covers a wide time range – starting from the formation of the police in the Gomel province. Yellowish photographs, reports, reports to the office – they tell about famous detectives and policemen. Next, the events of the Great October, the reorganization of the royal gendarmerie and the birth of the militia. The fight against bandits who became violent in revolutionary times, the eradication of bandits who bred in the Civil War and the first decades after it. Criminal investigation and speculation, the era of NEP, the capture of adventurers and openly hostile elements of society.

One of the first high–profile cases in the region was the murder of a rural correspondent Lebedev: witness testimony and the alleged weapon of the crime was a sawn–off German rifle caught in a lake near the scene of the tragedy. Another high–profile case is the arrest of the fraudster Khasanov, who later became the prototype of Ostap Bender. This gentleman toured various cities, posing as the chairman of the Central Committee of Uzbekistan. And then he insinuated himself into the confidence of local officials, took large sums of money and disappeared. Khasanov was going to pull off such a scam in Gomel, but he found a scythe on a stone. In August 1925, he was exposed by the head of the criminal investigation department of the provincial Cheka, M.P. Khavkin.

After the war, one of the key areas of police work was the investigation of crimes committed by collaborators, surviving assistants of the occupiers. As an example, we can cite the story of the Yukhnevich gang, which terrorized the Zhitkovichi district. The bandits even blew up the local police department. However, the collected evidence was not destroyed, but the KGB of the BSSR became interested in the terrorist attack, and soon the gang was liquidated. In 1952, a group of saboteurs from among former Soviet prisoners of war was landed in the Gomel region. The mission is to gather intelligence, recruit new members and entangle a number of important government and military facilities in a spy network. But the police were on guard and stopped the subversive activity: the group was neutralized. All these fascinating stories are reflected in the form of photographs, notes, protocols and letters.

The second hall exhibits forensic equipment, fingerprinting devices, lock picks, various cartridges and cartridges for firearms, as well as products of "criminal creativity" (fake banknotes, homemade weapons, caches for transporting various contraband) and antiques seized during searches of thieves' dens. There is also a reconstruction of the criminologist's office. As well as photo chronicles and materials on the fight against the Morozov gang, which "terrified" the surroundings of Gomel and the Gomel region from the 1980s to 2004. By the way, the gang was taken by the Belarusian riot police, which had already been created to combat such global threats.

A separate stand of the exposition is dedicated to the tragic stories of law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty.