Chekisty PDF Download

Author: John J. Dziak
Publisher: Free Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
A study of the KGB by an official of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Author: Donald Rayfield
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0307431835
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 592

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Book Description
Stalin did not act alone. The mass executions, the mock trials, the betrayals and purges, the jailings and secret torture that ravaged the Soviet Union during the three decades of Stalin’s dictatorship, were the result of a tight network of trusted henchmen (and women), spies, psychopaths, and thugs. At the top of this pyramid of terror sat five indispensable hangmen who presided over the various incarnations of Stalin’s secret police. Now, in his harrowing new book, Donald Rayfield probes the lives, the minds, the twisted careers, and the unpunished crimes of Stalin’s loyal assassins. Founded by Feliks Dzierzynski, the Cheka–the Extraordinary Commission–came to life in the first years of the Russian Revolution. Spreading fear in a time of chaos, the Cheka proved a perfect instrument for Stalin’s ruthless consolidation of power. But brutal as it was, the Cheka under Dzierzynski was amateurish compared to the well-oiled killing machines that succeeded it. Genrikh Iagoda’s OGPU specialized in political assassination, propaganda, and the manipulation of foreign intellectuals. Later, the NKVD recruited a new generation of torturers. Starting in 1938, terror mastermind Lavrenti Beria brought violent repression to a new height of ingenuity and sadism. As Rayfield shows, Stalin and his henchmen worked relentlessly to coerce and suborn leading Soviet intellectuals, artists, writers, lawyers, and scientists. Maxim Gorky, Aleksandr Fadeev, Alexei Tolstoi, Isaak Babel, and Osip Mandelstam were all caught in Stalin’s web–courted, toyed with, betrayed, and then ruthlessly destroyed. In bringing to light the careers, personalities, relationships, and “accomplishments” of Stalin’s key henchmen and their most prominent victims, Rayfield creates a chilling drama of the intersection of political fanaticism, personal vulnerability, and blind lust for power spanning half a century. Though Beria lost his power–and his life–after Stalin’s death in 1953, the fundamental methods of the hangmen maintained their grip into the second half of the twentieth century. Indeed, Rayfield argues, the tradition of terror, far from disappearing, has emerged with renewed vitality under Vladimir Putin. Written with grace, passion, and a dazzling command of the intricacies of Soviet politics and society, Stalin and the Hangmen is a devastating indictment of the individuals and ideology that kept Stalin in power.

Author: Elias Götz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135170611X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
This book examines the causes and consequences of the Ukraine crisis, with a special focus on Russia’s relations with the West. Towards that end, it brings together international relations scholars and area specialists. Issues covered include: the evolution of EU–Russia and US–Russia relations, the role of strategic culture and ontological insecurities in the formation of Russian foreign policy, the role of hybrid warfare in Russian military policy, the geopolitical drivers of Russia’s Ukraine policy, and a discussion of the decision-making dynamics that led to Russia’s intervention in eastern Ukraine. The contributors employ different theoretical approaches and offer partly complementary and partly competing analyses. In so doing, this book seeks to stimulate dialogue between different positions and advance our understanding of a topic that will shape the European security order for many years to come. This book was originally published as a special issue of Contemporary Politics.

Author: Robert W. Stephan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
An animated adaptation of the story of the same title by Maurice Sendak in which a small boy makes a visit to the land of the wild things. Tells how he tames the creatures and returns home. For primary grades.

Author: Volodymyr Pavlovych Horbulin
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
ISBN: 3643800452
Category : National security
Languages : en
Pages : 118

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Book Description
This volume seeks to address the security interest of independent Ukraine comprehensively in the light of international security cooperation options, including NATO membership. The Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces has cooperated with the Ukrainian parliament and defence ministry since 2000. Current cooperation focuses on defence management reform.

Author: David L. Perry
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810863065
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
Partly Cloudy: Ethics in War, Espionage, Covert Actions, and Interrogation explores a number of wrenching ethical issues and challenges faced by our military and intelligence personnel. David L. Perry provides a robust and practical approach to analyzing ethical issues in war and intelligence operations and applies careful reasoning to issues of vital importance today, such as the question of torture in interrogating detainees, employing espionage to penetrate hostile regimes and terrorist cells, mounting covert action to undermine their power, using discrimination and proportionality in military operations, avoiding atrocities in combat and counterinsurgency, and cultivating moral wisdom.

Author: Julie Fedor
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136671862
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This book explores the mythology woven around the Soviet secret police and the Russian cult of state security that has emerged from it. Tracing the history of this mythology from the Soviet period through to its revival in contemporary post-Soviet Russia, the volume argues that successive Russian regimes have sponsored a ‘cult’ of state security, whereby security organs are held up as something to be worshipped. The book approaches the history of this cult as an ongoing struggle to legitimise and sacralise the Russian state security apparatus, and to negotiate its violent and dramatic past. It explores the ways in which, during the Soviet period, this mythology sought to make the existence of the most radically intrusive and powerful secret police in history appear ‘natural’. It also documents the contemporary post-Soviet re-emergence of the cult of state security, examining the ways in which elements of the old Soviet mythology have been revised and reclaimed as the cornerstone of a new state ideology. The Russian cult of state security is of ongoing contemporary relevance, and is crucial for understanding not only the tragedies of Russia’s twentieth-century history, but also the ambiguities of Russia’s post-Soviet transition, and the current struggle to define Russia’s national identity and future development. The book examines the ways in which contemporary Russian life continues to be shaped by the legacy of Soviet attitudes to state-society relations, as expressed in the reconstituted cult of state security. It investigates the shadow which the figure of the secret policeman continues to cast over Russia today. The book will be of great interest to students of modern Russian history and politics, intelligence studies and security studies, as well as readers with an interest in the KGB and its successors.

Author: Alex Pravda
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191534749
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Leaders and leadership continue to dominate Russia's political development. Like his predecessors in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin has made a crucial impact on the substance and style of Russian politics. His efforts to use traditional tools of state power to manage democracy and market capitalism have had mixed effects on both. Leading Russia investigates the ambiguities and contradictions of Putin's rule from four perspectives. The volume first considers his leadership in the context of Russia's convulsive historical cycle of revolutionary transformation, breakdown, consolidation, and stagnation. The study then analyses how normative and institutional components of democracy have fared under Putin's regime of stronger executive control. It proceeds to examine the strengths and weaknesses of presidential power vis-à-vis bureaucratic, regional, and corporate groups. The volume concludes with two assessments of the strategic direction in which Putin is taking Russia. They explore the tensions between bureaucratic-authoritarian trends and Putin's apparent commitment to electoral democracy, market capitalism, and alignment with the West. The book helps to deepen our understanding of the cultural and institutional factors shaping Putin's leadership approach and policy priorities. More widely, it sheds light on the complexity of the relationship between post-communist leadership, democracy, and economic modernization.

Author: Amy W. Knight
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000263002
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
This book, first published in 1990, examines the origins and evolution of the security police, considering the continuities as well as changes in its function as guardian of the regime’s security. It analyses the KGB’s involvement in Kremlin politics, the structure and organisation of the KGB, its formal tasks and legal prerogatives as set forth by the Party leadership, and the actual functions it performs on behalf of the Soviet regime. Underlying this analysis is an attempt to assess the power and authority of the KGB relative to other political institutions and to explain the crucial dynamics of the Party- KGB relationship.

Author: Michael David-Fox
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822990180
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
A Penetrating Exploration of the Soviet Secret Police Apparatus Even more than thirty years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the role of the secret police in shaping culture and society in communist USSR has been difficult to study, and defies our complete understanding. In the last decade, the opening of non-Russian KGB archives, notably in Ukraine after 2015, has allowed scholars to explore state security organizations in ways not previously possible. Moving beyond well-known cases of high-profile espionage and repression, this study is the first to showcase research from a wide range of secret police archives in former Soviet republics and the countries of the former Soviet bloc—some of which are rapidly closing or becoming inaccessible once again. Rather than focusing on Soviet leadership, The Secret Police and the Soviet System integrates the secret police into studies of information, technology, economics, art, and ideology. The result is a state-of-the-art portrait of one of the world’s most notorious institutions, the legacies of which are directly relevant for understanding Vladimir Putin’s Russia today.