Soviet State Security Services 1917–46

Soviet State Security Services 1917–46 PDF Author: Douglas A. Drabik
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472844092
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 65

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Book Description
The Bolsheviks' seizure of power in Russia in late 1917 was swiftly followed by the establishment of the Cheka, the secret police of the new Soviet state. The Cheka was central to the Bolsheviks' elimination of political dissent during the Russian Civil War (1917–22). In 1922 the Soviet state-security organs became the GPU and then the OGPU (1923–34) before coalescing into the NKVD. After it played a central role in the Great Terror (1936–38), which saw the widespread repression of many different groups and the imprisonment and execution of prominent figures, the NKVD had its heyday during the Great Patriotic War (1941–45). During the conflict the organization deployed full military divisions, frontier troop units and internal security forces and ran the hated GULAG forced-labour camp system. By 1946, the power of the NKVD was so great that even Stalin saw it as a threat and it was broken up into multiple organizations, notably the MVD and the MGB – the forerunners of the KGB. In this book, the history and organization of these feared organizations are assessed, accompanied by photographs and colour artwork depicting their evolving appearance.

Soviet State Security Services 1917–46

Soviet State Security Services 1917–46 PDF Author: Douglas A. Drabik
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472844092
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 65

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Book Description
The Bolsheviks' seizure of power in Russia in late 1917 was swiftly followed by the establishment of the Cheka, the secret police of the new Soviet state. The Cheka was central to the Bolsheviks' elimination of political dissent during the Russian Civil War (1917–22). In 1922 the Soviet state-security organs became the GPU and then the OGPU (1923–34) before coalescing into the NKVD. After it played a central role in the Great Terror (1936–38), which saw the widespread repression of many different groups and the imprisonment and execution of prominent figures, the NKVD had its heyday during the Great Patriotic War (1941–45). During the conflict the organization deployed full military divisions, frontier troop units and internal security forces and ran the hated GULAG forced-labour camp system. By 1946, the power of the NKVD was so great that even Stalin saw it as a threat and it was broken up into multiple organizations, notably the MVD and the MGB – the forerunners of the KGB. In this book, the history and organization of these feared organizations are assessed, accompanied by photographs and colour artwork depicting their evolving appearance.

The Russian Secret Police

The Russian Secret Police PDF Author: Ronald Hingley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000371352
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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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.

Bibliography On Soviet Intelligence And Security Services

Bibliography On Soviet Intelligence And Security Services PDF Author: Raymond G Rocca
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429711565
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
This annotated bibliography is a valuable tool for research and teaching on Soviet intelligence and security services and its role in the country's domestic and international affairs. It categorizes nearly 500 books, articles, and government documents pertaining to Soviet intelligence.

Stalin's Secret Weapon

Stalin's Secret Weapon PDF Author: Anthony Rimmington
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190928859
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
A chilling reassessment of the Soviet Union's advances in biological warfare, and the West's inadvertent contributions.

Smersh

Smersh PDF Author: Dr. Vadim Birstein
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
ISBN: 1849546894
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
SMERSH is the award-winning account of the top-secret counterintelligence organisation that dealt with Stalin's enemies from within the shadowy recesses of Soviet government. As James Bond's nemesis in Ian Fleming's novels, SMERSH and its operatives were depicted in exotic duels with 007, rather than fostering the bleak oppression and terror they actually spread in the name of their dictator. Stalin drew a veil of secrecy over SMERSH's operations in 1946, but that did not stop him using it to terrify Red Army dissenters in Leningrad and Moscow, or to abduct and execute suspected spooks - often without cause - across mainland Europe. Formed to mop up Nazi spy rings at the end of the Second World War, SMERSH gained its name from a combination of the Russian words for 'Death to Spies'. Successive Communist governments suppressed traces of Stalin's political hit squad; now Vadim Birstein lays bare the surgical brutality with which it exerted its influence as part of the paranoid regime, both within the Soviet Union and in the wider world. SMERSH was the most mysterious and secret of organisations - this definitive and magisterial history finally reveals truths that lay buried for nearly fifty years.

Stalin's Secret Police

Stalin's Secret Police PDF Author: Rupert Butler
Publisher: Amber Books Ltd
ISBN: 1782743510
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
Illustrated with more than 100 black-and-white photographs and expertly written, Stalin’s Secret Police is a chilling history of the Soviet secret police from 1917 to the fall of Communism.

The New Nobility

The New Nobility PDF Author: Andrei Soldatov
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1586489232
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
In The New Nobility, two courageous Russian investigative journalists open up the closed and murky world of the Russian Federal Security Service. While Vladimir Putin has been president and prime minister of Russia, the Kremlin has deployed the security services to intimidate the political opposition, reassert the power of the state, and carry out assassinations overseas. At the same time, its agents and spies were put beyond public accountability and blessed with the prestige, benefits, and legitimacy lost since the Soviet collapse. The security services have played a central -- and often mysterious -- role at key turning points in Russia during these tumultuous years: from the Moscow apartment house bombings and theater siege, to the war in Chechnya and the Beslan massacre. The security services are not all-powerful; they have made clumsy and sometimes catastrophic blunders. But what is clear is that after the chaotic 1990s, when they were sidelined, they have made a remarkable return to power, abetted by their most famous alumnus, Putin.

Stalin's Secret Agents

Stalin's Secret Agents PDF Author: M. Stanton Evans
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 143914768X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
A primary source examination of the infiltration of Stalin's Soviet intelligence network by members of the American government during World War II reveals the dictator's dubious partnerships with such top-level figures as Vice President Henry Wallace andchief advisor Harry Hopkins.

Russia and the Cult of State Security

Russia and the Cult of State Security PDF Author: Julie Fedor
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136671854
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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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.

The Soviet Secret Services

The Soviet Secret Services PDF Author: Otto Heilbrunn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000264815
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
This book, first published in 1956, analyses the Red Army’s strategic planning for a war involving nuclear weapons – whereby the front line is thinned out to protect it from nuclear attack and replaced by large-scale offensive operations in NATO’s rear. This new warfare technique had been successfully practised in WWII by Soviet partisan and guerrilla forces, and this book examines these foundations of Soviet secret services doctrine, and the principles by which they would operate.