The Secret Police and the Soviet System

The Secret Police and the Soviet System PDF Author: Michael David-Fox
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822990180
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
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.

The Secret Police and the Soviet System

The Secret Police and the Soviet System PDF Author: Michael David-Fox
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822990180
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 444

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

The Russian Secret Police

The Russian Secret Police PDF Author: Ronald Hingley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000371352
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
This book, first published in 1970, is an important study of Russia’s security services from their earliest years to the mid-twentieth century. Ronald Hingley demonstrates how the secret police acted, both under the Tsars and under Soviet rule, as a key instrument of control exercised over all fields of Russian life by an outstandingly authoritarian state. He analyses the Tsarist Third Section and Okhrana and their role in countering Russian revolutionary groups, and examines the Soviet agencies as they assumed the roles of policeman, judge and executioner. This masterly evaluation of Russian and Soviet secret police makes extensive use of hard-to-find Russian documentary sources, and is the first such research that studies Russian political security (Muscovite, Imperial and Soviet) as a whole.

Security Empire

Security Empire PDF Author: Molly Pucci
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300242573
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
A compelling examination of the establishment of the secret police in Communist Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Eastern Germany ​This book examines the history of early secret police forces in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War. Molly Pucci delves into the ways their origins diverged from the original Soviet model based on differing interpretations of communism and local histories. She also illuminates the difference between veteran agents who fought in foreign wars and younger, more radical agents who combatted "enemies of communism" in the Stalinist terror in Eastern Europe.

Revelations from the Russian Archives

Revelations from the Russian Archives PDF Author: Diane P. Koenker
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781780393803
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 836

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Book Description


The Stalinist Era

The Stalinist Era PDF Author: David L. Hoffmann
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107007089
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Placing Stalinism in its international context, The Stalinist Era explains the origins and consequences of Soviet state intervention and violence.

Revolution of the Mind

Revolution of the Mind PDF Author: Michael David-Fox
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801431289
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
Content Description #Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

Stalin and the Lubianka

Stalin and the Lubianka PDF Author: David R. Shearer
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300171897
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
This fascinating documentary history is the first English-language exploration of Joseph Stalin's relationship with, and manipulation of, the Soviet political police. The story follows the changing functions, organization, and fortunes of the political police and security organs from the early 1920s until Stalin’s death in 1953, and it provides documented detail about how Stalin used these organs to achieve and maintain undisputed power. Although written as a narrative, it includes translations of more than 170 documents from Soviet archives.

Stalin’s Terror

Stalin’s Terror PDF Author: B. McLoughlin
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230523935
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
The British, Irish, Russian, American, German and Austrian contributors examine the intricate nature of the mass repression unleashed by the Stalinist leader of the USSR during 1937-38. The first part of the collection deals with annihilation policies against the Soviet elite and the Communist International. The second section of the volume looks at mass operations of the secret police (NKVD) against social outcasts, Poles and other 'hostile' ethnic groups. The final section comprises micro-studies about targeted victim groups among the general population.

Tear Off the Masks!

Tear Off the Masks! PDF Author: Sheila Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691122458
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
When revolutions happen, they change the rules of everyday life--both the codified rules concerning the social and legal classifications of citizens and the unwritten rules about how individuals present themselves to others. This occurred in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, which laid the foundations of the Soviet state, and again in 1991, when that state collapsed. Tear Off the Masks! is about the remaking of identities in these times of upheaval. Sheila Fitzpatrick here brings together in a single volume years of distinguished work on how individuals literally constructed their autobiographies, defended them under challenge, attempted to edit the "file-selves" created by bureaucratic identity documentation, and denounced others for "masking" their true social identities. Marxist class-identity labels--"worker," "peasant," "intelligentsia," "bourgeois"--were of crucial importance to the Soviet state in the 1920s and 1930s, but it turned out that the determination of a person's class was much more complicated than anyone expected. This in turn left considerable scope for individual creativity and manipulation. Outright imposters, both criminal and political, also make their appearance in this book. The final chapter describes how, after decades of struggle to construct good Soviet socialist personae, Russians had to struggle to make themselves fit for the new, post-Soviet world in the 1990s--by "de-Sovietizing" themselves. Engaging in style and replete with colorful detail and characters drawn from a wealth of sources, Tear Off the Masks! offers unique insight into the elusive forms of self-presentation, masking, and unmasking that made up Soviet citizenship and continue to resonate in the post-Soviet world.

Fascination and Enmity

Fascination and Enmity PDF Author: Michael David-Fox
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822978105
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
Russia and Germany have had a long history of significant cultural, political, and economic exchange. Despite these beneficial interactions, stereotypes of the alien Other persisted. Germans perceived Russia as a vast frontier with unlimited potential, yet infused with an "Asianness" that explained its backwardness and despotic leadership. Russians admired German advances in science, government, and philosophy, but saw their people as lifeless and obsessed with order. Fascination and Enmity presents an original transnational history of the two nations during the critical era of the world wars. By examining the mutual perceptions and misperceptions within each country, the contributors reveal the psyche of the Russian-German dynamic and its use as a powerful political and cultural tool. Through accounts of fellow travelers, POWs, war correspondents, soldiers on the front, propagandists, revolutionaries, the Comintern, and wartime and postwar occupations, the contributors analyze the kinetics of the Russian-German exchange and the perceptions drawn from these encounters. The result is a highly engaging chronicle of the complex entanglements of two world powers through the great wars of the twentieth century.