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Author: Michael David-Fox Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press ISBN: 0822990180 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 444
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.
Author: Michael David-Fox Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press ISBN: 0822990180 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 444
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.
Author: Simon Wolin Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 1040005314 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 372
Book Description
The Soviet Secret Police (1957) depicts the main aspects of the development, structure and functions of the secret police of the Soviet Union. Much of the information contained within comes from the personal testimony of Soviet citizens who had experienced various activities of the secret police, and forms a full and objective study of the secret police and its role in the Soviet system.
Author: Martyn Whittock Publisher: Robinson ISBN: 147214239X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 296
Book Description
'[R]eadable and thoughtful . . . does an excellent job of exploring how the murderous political police in all its incarnations defined the Soviet Union, and left a poisonous legacy still with us today' Professor Mark Galeotti, author of The Vory and A Short History of Russia Repression, control, manipulation and elimination of enemies assisted in the establishment of the Soviet state, and helped maintain it in power, but could not, in the end, prevent its collapse. Citizens of the West have, for the most part, been told a very simplified story of the repressive 'totalitarian' state that was the USSR. In fact, it was sustained by more than just policing and force. No amount of revisionist history can erase the reality of millions controlled, imprisoned and killed, but there was much more to the USSR's one-party state than this. Whittock tells a more complex story of the combination of cruelty, co-operation and compromise required to build and run a one-party state. Much of this is the story of the role played by the secret police in creating and sustaining such a form of government, but it is much more than simply a 'history of the secret police'. This is because the 'police state' which emerged (in which dissent, both real and imaginary, was undoubtedly policed, threatened and ruthlessly eliminated) was more than just the product of the arrests, interrogations, executions and imprisonments carried out by the secret police. The USSR was also made possible by a battle for hearts and minds which led millions of people to feel that they really had benefited from the system and had a stake in the new society.
Author: Louise Shelley Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134847467 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 283
Book Description
The first book to look in depth at the Soviet militia. A crucial aid to understanding the authoritarianism of the communist system and its legacy for Russia and the successor states.
Author: Jonathan R Adelman Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1000314359 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 380
Book Description
From the Great Purges in the Soviet Union in the late 1930s to the bloody elite purges in Eastern Europe in the late 1940s and early 1950s to the mass terrorism in Cambodia in the middle 1970s, the role of terror and the secret police in Communist politics has been powerful and highly visible. This book reviews the surprisingly sparse literature on the subject and presents new studies of secret-police forces and the political use of terror in the USSR, China, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Cambodia. The focus of each country study is the nature and extent of internal terror and repression, the range of external intelligence functions, and the effect of secret-police interference in internal policymaking processes. The book ably fills a void in the literature by providing needed case studies as well as a theoretical framework for understanding secret-police activity.
Author: Amy W. Knight Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1000263002 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 317
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: A. I︠U︡ Vatlin Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres ISBN: 0299310809 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 206
Book Description
During Stalin's Great Terror, more than a million Soviet citizens were arrested or killed for political crimes they did not commit. Who carried out these purges, and what motivated them? Alexander Vatlin opens up the world of the Soviet perpetrators using detailed evidence from one Moscow suburb. Spurred by ambition or fear, local secret police rushed to fulfill quotas for arresting "enemies of the people"—even when it meant fabricating evidence. Vatlin confronts head-on issues of historical agency and moral responsibility in Stalin-era crimes.
Author: Edward Peterson Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 0313075417 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 302
Book Description
The opening of the secret files of the East German Ministry of State Security after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 enabled this study. Most interesting are the reports from the thousands of spies at the local level, the analysis at the local and district levels, and the integration of nationwide reports in Berlin. These reports are surprisingly honest in describing the problems that would bring about the collapse of the Communist regime. They reveal advance knowledge among the Stasi operatives of the economic and political difficulties that plagued the state information that reached leaders who were powerless to change the system. The spy handlers conceded by September 1989 that in order to save socialism, they must change the GDR leadership. The coming of the Revolution of 1989 can be perceived in local spy reports as early as 1987. At the national level, reports highlight the negative effect of dependence on the Soviet Union, the role played by Mikhail Gorbachev, the collapse of the economy, the disastrous foreign debts, the refusal of Erich Honecker to reform, and the inability of his Politburo to remove him. At the local level, warnings point to the lack of incentive to produce, the ineptitude of central planning, the inability to acquire production resources, and the massive impact of West German television. Also instrumental were the brave citizens who kept pushing to leave, while others remained determined to stay and democratize the system, as well as the Protestant pastors who provided space for small groups that would eventually swell into hundreds of thousands.
Author: Michael David-Fox
Author: Michael David-Fox
Author: Simon Wolin
Author: Martyn Whittock
Author: Louise Shelley
Author: Jonathan R Adelman
Author: Ronald Hingley
Author: Amy W. Knight
Author: A. I︠U︡ Vatlin
Author: Niels Erik Rosenfeldt
Author: Edward Peterson