This monograph describes the structures, access, and declassification procedures for Soviet-era civil and military archives located in Moscow. Although there are numerous holdings within former Soviet territory housing materials dated between 1917 and 1991, only those associated with the top leadership bodies (the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Politburo, Secretariat, and Central Committee); the diplomatic, security, and intelligence services (the NKVD, KGB, and GRU); and the former Soviet military are examined in this paper. The author gathered most of the information for this document through interviews with Russian archive officials during a visit to Moscow between May 23 and May 31, 1992. The information cutoff is October 1992. This monograph is a part of the ongoing RAND project on World War II, the early Cold War, and Korean War POW-MIA issues. Research for this paper was sponsored by the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and undertaken within the International Security and Defense Strategy Program of RAND's National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff. The monograph is expected to be of interest to officials and specialists seeking information on the organization of the post-Soviet archives.

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.

Offering a single, coherent framework of the political, economic, and social phenomena that characterize post-communist regimes, this is the most comprehensive work on the subject to date. Focusing on Central Europe, the post-Soviet countries and China, the study provides a systematic mapping of possible post-communist trajectories. At exploring the structural foundations of post-communist regime development, the work discusses the types of state, with an emphasis on informality and patronalism; the variety of actors in the political, economic, and communal spheres; the ways autocrats neutralize media, elections, etc. The analysis embraces the color revolutions of civil resistance (as in Georgia and in Ukraine) and the defensive mechanisms of democracy and autocracy; the evolution of corruption and the workings of “relational economy”; an analysis of China as “market-exploiting dictatorship”; the sociology of “clientage society”; and the instrumental use of ideology, with an emphasis on populism. Beyond a cataloguing of phenomena—actors, institutions, and dynamics of post-communist democracies, autocracies, and dictatorships—Magyar and Madlovics also conceptualize everything as building blocks to a larger, coherent structure: a new language for post-communist regimes. While being the most definitive book on the topic, the book is nevertheless written in an accessible style suitable for both beginners who wish to understand the logic of post-communism and scholars who are interested in original contributions to comparative regime theory. The book is equipped with QR codes that link to www.postcommunistregimes.com, which contains interactive, 3D supplementary material for teaching.

"The National Bolshevik Party, founded in the mid-1990s by Eduard Limonov and Aleksandr Dugin, began as an attempt to combine radically different ideologies: bolshevism and nationalism. In the years that followed, Limonov, Dugin, and the movements they led underwent dramatic shifts that eventually led to the support of Putin's conservative, imperialist regime over social justice and fundamental civil liberties. To illuminate the role of these right-wing ideas in contemporary Russian society, Fabrizio Fenghi examines the public pronouncements and aesthetics of this influential movement. He analyzes a diverse range of media, including novels, art exhibitions, performances, seminars, punk rock concerts, and even protest actions. His interviews with key figures reveal an attempt to create an alternative intellectual class, or a "counter-intelligensia." This volume shows how certain forms of art can transform into political action through the creation of new languages, institutions, and modes of collective participation"--

This monograph describes the structures, access, and declassification procedures for Soviet-era civil and military archives located in Moscow. Although there are numerous holdings within former Soviet territory housing materials dated between 1917 and 1991, only those associated with the top leadership bodies (the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) Politburo, Secretariat, and Central Committee); the diplomatic, security, and intelligence services (the NKVD, KGB, and GRU); and the former Soviet military are examined in this paper. The author gathered most of the information for this document through interviews with Russian archive officials during a visit to Moscow between May 23 and May 31, 1992. The information cutoff is October 1992. This monograph is a part of the ongoing RAND project on World War II, the early Cold War, and Korean War POW-MIA issues. Research for this paper was sponsored by the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and undertaken within the International Security and Defense Strategy Program of RAND's National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff. The monograph is expected to be of interest to officials and specialists seeking information on the organization of the post-Soviet archives.