The MVD did not include agencies concerned with secret policing unlike the NKVD, with the function being assigned to the Ministry of State Security (MGB).

In 1962 the MVD was re-designated the Ministry for the Preservation of Public Order (Министерство охраны общественного порядка (МООП); Ministerstvo okhrany obshchestvennogo poriadka — MOOP).

The changes were accompanied by increasing criticism of the regular police, the militsiya, in the Soviet press for its shortcomings in combating crime.

A similar fate befell Brezhnev's son-in-law, Yuri Churbanov, who was removed from the post of first deputy chief in 1984 and later arrested on criminal charges.

After bringing several officials from the KGB and from the CPSU apparatus into the MVD, Andropov sought to make it an effective organization for rooting out widespread corruption; Mikhail Gorbachev continued these efforts.

In September 1988, Vlasov became a candidate member of the CPSU Politburo, and the following month he was replaced as chief of the MVD by Vadim Bakatin.

[5] As a union-republic ministry under the Council of Ministers, the MVD had its headquarters in Moscow and branches in the republic and regional government apparatus, as well as in oblasts and cities.