Background. This article examines the analysis of the activities of the local gen-darmerie to ensure state and public security in the North-Western Territory and the Polish provinces of the Russian Empire in the initial and climactic periods of the First Russian Revolution in 1905. Examples of the participation of the gendarme corps in the fight against the revolutionary movement and other manifestations of a protest nature are given. Materials and methods. To achieve this goal, an analysis of unpublished documents from the funds of the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Historical Ar-chive, as well as published materials was carried out. The work uses retrospective, prob-lem-chronological, historical-comparative, as well as general scientific research methods. Results. The conclusion is based on data from archival sources, memoirs of contemporaries of events and a number of modern researchers of the problem. Based on the study, it was concluded that the gendarmerie of the western outskirts of the Russian Empire performed a huge amount of tasks during the First Russian Revolution, but its small number did not con-tribute to the suppression of the revolutionary movement without close interaction with ci-vilian authorities, the armed forces and other law enforcement agencies. The author, explor-ing the activities of the gendarmerie in the Privislinsky Territory and the western provinces of the Russian Empire to ensure state and public security, for the first time considered the struggle of this law enforcement structure with the revolutionary movement in the frame-work of interaction with civil and military bodies. The present work, based on archival sources, memoirs of contemporaries of events and some researchers of the problem, deep-ens the information available in Russian historiography on this issue.