PEOPLE’S ARMED LAW ENFORCEMENT TROOPS
PEOPLE’S ARMED LAW ENFORCEMENT TROOPS (PALET), detachments of the Red Guard in the South Urals. Formed by the Ufa Council of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies in the Summer–Autumn period of 1917. They were first named workers’ militia druzhinas (detachments), whose task was to protect law and order in Ufa Guberniya. By Autumn, in the Gub. there were a number of druzhinas, i.e. those of Ufa railway workshops, depot of the Ufa Railway Station and Ufa City Council of Trade Unions as well as Sterlitamak, Birsk, Zlatoust and Minyarsk councils of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies, AshaBalashov, Bla goveshchensk, Bogoyavlensk, Verkhniy and Nizhniy Sim, Ust-Katav plants, etc. By October, soldiers of Belebey, Zlatoust, Sterlitamak and Ufa garrisons created Legions of Freedom. By order of the Ufa Gub. Revolutionary Committee dated October 26th, within the next two weeks, the druzhinas and legions established the Soviet Power in Ufa and uyezd centers. By April, 3117 people comprised various PALET, by May – more than 20 thous., after the transfer of several thous. people to the Red Army and the AllRussian Extraordinary Commission Army (June) – 12 thous. people. The PALET provided protection of public order, participated in the suppression of peasant uprisings in the South Urals and in the Volga region, and operations against units of the Orenburg Cossack troops. In July, after the defeat of the PALET by the Czechoslovak Separate Corps, People’s and Southwestern armies, the defeated PALET retreated from Ufa to the Kama River and joined the 2nd Red Army and the V.K.Blyukher’ Consolidated Ural Troop.
