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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.